What IS evidence of design? (CLOSING STATEMENTS ONLY)

Which of these is designed: Is this paint splatter or modern art: More to the point, we're not actually talking about design. We're talking about telling the difference between something people did versus something people didn't do. "Something people did" is not the definition of design.I'm convinced that recognizing design has to be mathematical. Obviously Dembski thinks so, too, but he also thinks he already has a mathematical method for recognizing design. Anyone who agrees with Dembski is welcome to demonstrate the technique on these images.--Percy

You could probably do a pretty fair job of telling which were done by people and which were not.Earlier I said that what is really being discussed is whether we can recognize things produced by people, but "design" hasn't really been defined. Dembski at least has a (claimed) mathematical definition.--PercyEdited by Percy, : Grammar.

Seems like a better question for Jar.--Percy

See Dembski - Wikipedia.--Percy

I couldn't help reading more of the Dembski entry at Wikipedia and found this: --Percy

You and Jar are asking the same question of the wrong person. I already said Dembski only thinks he can detect design. As the section about specified complexity in the Wikipedia article about Dembsi says: Design and specified complexity are just two of the many dots Dembski has failed to connect. Where Dembski is right, in my view, is in thinking that the problem must be approached mathematically.--Percy

Hmmm. Without reading back, didn't you already agree that you hadn't defined design? Maybe not, but otherwise isn't what you're doing is identifying things done or made by people?--Percy

This seems a significant observation to me. Intelligence is forward looking, can anticipate, can plan for the future. Evolution is backward looking, can only respond to changes that have already occurred, cannot perceive impending change. It does seem reasonable to accept that any indications we find of forward looking change in the history of life could be evidence of intelligent involvement.The problems for irreducible complexity are that none of the proposed examples holds up, the connection to design is asserted rather than demonstrated, and it hasn't proven to be something that can be studied and researched if judged by the number of researchers studying and researching it, which is 0, Michael Behe included.--Percy

Hi NoNukes,I'm not sure what the problem is. Dembski thinks that specified complexity is an indicator for design, and he thinks he has a mathematical method for detecting specified complexity. I place the emphasis on the word "thinks".I believe I've posted links to the Wikipedia article on Dembski a couple times. Since I've been debating his views for years my information on Dembski doesn't come from there because I can go from memory, but it appears to echo pretty much what I've been telling you. I agree with Dembski that if design can be detected that it will be mathematically.--Percy

You probably got this from John Woodmorappe's article Irreducible complexity: some candid admissions by evolutionists. If you go back and look more carefully you'll see how you screwed up the citation, since he mentions Koch immediately after that quote, which is actually from the abstract for A yeast prion provides a mechanism for genetic variation and phenotypic diversity (Heather L. True and Susan L. Lindquist, Nature 407, 477-483, 28 September 2000). At least it's not 39 years old, but the abstract continues: Wow! The abstract concludes with a proposed solution for the conundrum introduced at the beginning and concludes in completely opposite fashion to what you thought! We really should create a quote mining archive. This one would deserve to be featured prominently.Irreducible complexity is the modern form of the argument, "I can't imagine how this could have happened naturally, it must be due to something outside of nature." And no, irreducible complexity is not "discussed in the literature, but it is not named this way." That's because irreducible complexity is not a synonym for "things we as yet have no idea how they happened."--Percy

Hi Slevesque,You must not have read part of my post, so allow me to quote myself: One more time: The quote is not from a 1972 paper in Genetics titled The importance of untranslatable intermiates by Koch. The quote is from a 2000 paper in Nature titled A yeast prion provides a mechanism for genetic variation and phenotypic diversity by True and Lindquist. No, I wasn't quote mining you. In fact, I think you're quote mining yourself because you left out your own first sentence: Honestly, I had no idea how to respond to a claim that a paper incorporating the fact that random mutations accumulate in inactive genes that might one day become reactivated (something we knew long before the year 2000, raising the question why the abstract phrased it in way that makes it seem like they thought it was a new idea) was actually discussing irreducible complexity. The whole principle of irreducible complexity is that it couldn't have happened naturally and must have been carried out by a designer, and finding natural pathways would seem to work against that.--Percy

Off-topic question: How *old* is that boat, and what's that big, bulbous thing on the front behind the bow gun?--Percy

It's sporting the same number on the bow as the USS Cole, but with the twin antennae towers it doesn't look like it or an Arleigh Burke. I think you must be right that it's a Kidd because it bears a fair resemblance to the picture of one in the Wikipedia article, but probably the US Navy doesn't share numbers between ships, so I wonder if there was a USS Cole predecessor. The Wikipedia article on the Cole hints at one with its lead sentence: "The second USS Cole..."What looked like a bulbous object to me may have been just me misjudging the perspective. At first I thought it was forward of the front antennae tower, but now I think it's right beneath it.--Percy

I think what caught my attention most in this thread was the belief that irreducible complexity has some kind of legitimacy as an idea when it is favored by only a tiny minority among scientists (and I'm being kind), and it is not the focus of active research anywhere, including by Michael Behe, the idea's originator.--Percy

Hi Dawn,You've come too late to the party. Please see Message 349.--Percy