ID and the bias inherent in human nature

It's as JonF says, Stephen Meyer from Discovery Institute giving an introductory talk on Intelligent Design. The video quality is poor, but instead of watching it I'm just listening while I work. It's very light on the science because he's speaking to a lay audience, anyone familiar with the ID arguments could follow it this way pretty easily.I'm about three quarters through, and Meyer is giving the traditional ID presentation. First he makes the argument for design, then he follows with the "information requires intelligent sources" argument. If you want to know what ID is saying, I think this is an excellent presentation.I was surprised to find that Meyer is so young.Most discussions about ID quickly bog down in details that pale in significance with the foremost problems of ID, that neither of the alternatives they won't discuss is attractive:

• Ultimately, life somewhere had to arise naturally, or
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• Life had a supernatural origin.

The first falsifies ID, the second isn't science.--Percy

I forgot to mention that Meyer also makes a strong appeal against methodological naturalism. He says science looks for the best natural answer, while he is just looking for the best answer.About information, he doesn't really define it in this talk. He does talk about complexity versus specified complexity. If it weren't a lay audience he might have preferred speaking from an entropic perspective, but there's no way to know for sure. The analogy he used was a long random string of letters (complex) versus a sentence (specified complexity).He also used a number of examples, the bacterial flagellum among them. He analogized them to machines and represented them diagramatically as machines, and makes the point that they're all irreducibly complex. But his main point is that they couldn't have come about naturally and could only have been designed.Meyer also spoke of a community of scientists working and making progress on ID and the trials they face at the hands of the scientific establishment. He described the BSOW journal incident in which he figured so prominently, and said the BSOW simply declared ID to not be science and refused to allow the issues raised by his paper to be addressed in future editions of the journal. Which is true. He mentioned the peer reviewers, but gave no hints as to who they might be, and he might not even know.Meyer talks extremely confidently, in that he is like Behe, but this kind of presentation is only effective before lay audiences. Before scientists it is unpersuasive. Scientists would probably like to see at least these two things:

• Studies, perhaps blind studies, where the principles of ID are applied to accurately identify which objects are designed.
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• Evidence of implementation of the design. For example, once the designer completed the design of the bacterial flagellum, how did he actually implement that design in a biological organism?

Presentations of ID are often accompanied by examples of fields that already use ID, and they cite archeology and forensics. It is statements like this, so persuasive to lay audiences, and so obviously misleading to scientists, that raises the hackles of scientists. Sciences like archeology and forensics are seeking evidence of human activity, not evidence of intelligent design. An archeologist who finds an ancient stone tool does not analyze its specified complexity. He looks for signs of human actions on the stone like strike marks from another stone. A forensics expert does not analyze the specified complexity of rifling marks on a bullet to find if it was intelligently designed, he just matches it with riflings from known firearms to figure out which one fired it.This is all obvious to us, of course, but it is easy to mislead lay people, and that is why ID takes their arguments to lay audiences rather than scientific journals.--Percy

This was discussed in the thread Meyer's Hopeless Monster, discussion begins at Message 185.In October of last year I predicted Sternberg would experience dire repercussions (Message 179), and this is what has happened. The issue is one of trust. Sternberg violated his trust as editor to sneak a pet paper into the BSOW journal. The paper didn't belong in the BSOW journal because, independent of the validity of ID, the paper was incredibly bad science, and it was written on a topic far outside the normal purview of BSOW, which confines itself to taxonomy.Sternberg's protests that the paper passed peer review just brings general guffaws from true scientists - even inexperienced undergrads in biology would have found the paper notable for its rambling style and its tendency toward unsupported assertions and assertions supported with specious or irrelevant arguments. The paper could only have passed peer review if the peer reviewers had been hand chosen by the editor to rubber stamp it. Any legitimate peer reviewer would have immediately responded, "What is a paper on biological information doing in a taxonomic journal?"Sternberg also protested that the BSOW journal does regularly deviate from its taxonomic focus, but my Message 177 makes clear this isn't so.Sternberg's protests of innocence are also responsible for causing distrust. If he really believes he did nothing wrong, then he could do it again, so everyone is steering clear.Sternberg's protest that he isn't really a supporter of ID, he is just keeping an open mind, rings so falsely that this, too, contributes to distrust. Why would an editor who doesn't accept or reject ID work so hard to include a spurious paper? It doesn't add up.Sternberg's defense of Meyer also causes distrust. The ID argument is no less superficial today then when Paley made it a couple hundred years ago. If Sternberg is unable to detect this, then is he really a scientist other scientists at the Smithsonian could have faith in?Sternberg's situation is of his own making. He'll have to start afresh somewhere else. My guess was Discovery Institute where he won't have to hide his true colors, but who knows? He seems intent on a serious science career, and that couldn't happen at DI.--Percy

And you should boycott all products that are the result of scientific developments until such time as the scientific community bows to your demands. --Percy

Hi Limbo,In Message 65 Zyncod wrote: This is worth expanding upon. Many Creationists believe evolutionists are opposed to religion and so have adopted evolution as a sort of alternative religion. Its is easy to see how Creationists reach this conclusion. After all, evolution implies a different version of creation than the Bible, and they can't both be true, so you must choose one or the other. Anyone choosing evolution must be rejecting the Bible, rejecting God, and worshipping evolution, which is why you said this: Except that science isn't atheistic. Just like plumbing, accounting and county fairs, science takes no position one way or the other on God.The actual situation of God and scientists isn't anything as simple as Creationists like to believe. More scientists than not believe in God. Many believe in the Christian God. Where they differ from Creationists is not in their belief in God or in the saving grace of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, but in their rejection of the Bible as a literally inerrant account of events. It isn't God or religion that scientists reject but a literally inerrant Bible.Like Jar and some other evolutionists here, I believe in a God who created existence. What I don't believe is that the Bible is an accurate account of how God created. I believe Genesis records one of the Middle East's early creation stories.It is for this reason that evolutionists like Jar and myself and others have no emotional investment in evolution. We try as much as possible to be "follow-the-evidence-where-it-leads"-ists. If evolution turns out to be wrong, all it means is that we've improperly followed the evidence. It would carry no more significance than taking a wrong turn while on a trip. In other words, if evolution is shown to be wrong it wouldn't affect our religious beliefs at all. We'd still think of Genesis as a creation myth of a pre-scientific people.This is in stark contrast to Creationists. If Creationism is proved wrong, then it means Creationist religious beliefs are wrong. Creationists have an enormous emotional stake in this debate, and so they're able to justify almost any means of countering what they perceive as a threat to faith. Science deals with the world of the senses, the spirtual deals with the world of God and the soul. They are two different realms, and outside of Creationism, they are not mutually exclusive.--Percy

Sorry, this makes no sense to me. I can't figure out what you're trying to say. Can you clarify? Again, I can't make sense of this. How is dealing with the evidence of the senses a "disembodied ideal" that "scientists try to live up to, but fail." Sounds like you have a beef with Weinberg.--Percy

Don't you think you're overgeneralizing? Scientists are a varied group. Some are religious, some aren't. Some are anti-religion, most aren't. Attitudes about religion are so varied among scientists that it couldn't possibly serve as any unifying force. What scientists hold in common is the view that the universe is comprehensible through observation, study and analysis. --Percy

--Percy