The Flawed Philosophy of Intelligent Design

Tech Central Station ^ | 11/17/2005 | James Harrington

[JamesP81]

They usually do it in the fall and they just did it a couple of weeks ago, but I'll get in touch with the campus pastor and see when they're doing it again and get the details to you.

[JamesP81]

Murray State University, Murray, KY. They hold the debate once per year. Unfortunately they had the creation scientist only a couple of weeks ago, so it's unlikely they'll do it again until next fall, but I'll get in contact with the campus pastor and see what the plans for next year are.

[thomaswest]

"IDers have a particular dislike for randomness,
Source this."

See, for example,
http://www.gotquestions.org/intelligent-design.html
"The specified complexity argument states that it is impossible for complex patterns to be developed through random processes. For example, a room filled with 100 monkeys and 100 typewriters may eventually produce a few words, or maybe even a sentence, but it would never produce a Shakespearean play. And how much more complex is biological life than a Shakespearean play?"
...
"The anthropic principle states that the world and universe are "fine-tuned" to allow for life on earth....The existence and development of life on earth requires so many variables to be perfectly in tune that it would be impossible for all the variables to come into being through random, uncoordinated events."

[jnaujok]

Yikes, that's a 2000 mile trip for me, definitely not something I could do for a night (or even a weekend.)

Oh well, there's always the lottery. (Random Chance and all.)

[BlueYonder]

You choose to selectively view the Universe in such a way that you think you can disclude the effect at either end of the scale because it doesn't fit your world view.

From the eighteen words I posted criticizing your breathtakingly irrelevant analogy between errors in a computer simulation and the natural process of evolution, you have discerned how I view the Universe?

Step away from the keyboard, take a deep breath and go lie down. You either can't read or don't comprehend.

[Antonello]

How does it integrate [the findings from] physics, geology and chemistry?

Physics: radiometric dating.
Geology: the fossil record.
Chemistry: genome mapping.

Just because mammals share characteristics (which I don't deny because it is observable and provable), doesn't mean they evolved from one another.

Add up your direct observation of shared characteristics, supportive observed genome similarities transcending species, transitional fossil records showing the diverging development of physical traits from common ancestors to multiple extant species, and radiometric dating to chart all of these data on a coherent timeline, and the case gets a tad stronger.

Fossils in itself doesn't prove anything. For example, if I buried a bicycle 20 years ago and buried a motorcycle in the same vicinity today; 200 years later if someone digs up these items, is it accurate for them to conclude that the bicycle evolved into a motorcycle on its own? They have a lot of shared characteristics.

See above about the various independent sources of evidence supporting each other.

[Non-Sequitur]

bump

[thomaswest]

"if I told you that a snake came up to me and started talking in fine Yiddish and that what he was to say would determine the entire future of the human race, would you believe me?
So do you believe that random chance could produce a talking snake or not? If not, why not?"
----
LOL. This was the funniest thing I read all day. If you want to believe in talking snakes or faeries, so be it. As Thomas Jefferson observed, "It does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are 20 gods or no god."

Inasmuch as Adam and Eve, according to creationism, had no opportunity to learn language, and we have no idea what language they spoke, it is unlikely that a snake would speak to them in unaccented English!

It is quite true: I do not believe that talking snakes arose by random chance. There is nothing in science or my personal experiences that allow for talking snakes to arise by natural processes.

By the same token, there are lots of myths and superstitions that I do not believe in.

[BlueYonder]

See, for example, http://www.gotquestions.org/intelligent-design.html

That reference throws no light whatsoever on what IDers like or dislike. Reasonable people have a particular dislike for randomness, to use your words, when the odds against are unreasonable. Believing in the unreasonable doesn't make it reasonable.

[Secret Agent Man]

Actually, now that I look at it, Gitt's theories on information are more applicable.

1. DNA (genetics, etc) for life is a molecular blueprint/code for that life form. A living thing's DNA makes it what it is, and is self-repairing and keeps the living thing what it is.

2. This DNA is a code for life. It contains information as to what that particular life form will be, and how it will function. and what attributes it will possess.

3. This 'code' can be studied and deciphered. DNA doesn’t use a binary code, but a quaternary one. Whereas the unit of information in the computer is a 1 or a 0, the unit in DNA can be T, A, C or G. We have learned some of the rules of how DNA works, we know that if certain things are present in an organisms' code, they will have certain attributes (good or bad). We speak of genetic inheritance, genetic drift, inbreeding, all based on the understanding that we know information is passed along.

4. When we take this data code (A-T, C-G pairings) and put it into context, we are able to make information out of this data (genes, how dna works, inheritance, etc).

5. Random processes cannot generate coded information; rather, they only reflect the underlying mechanistic and probabilistic properties of the components which created that physical arrangement.

6. Re-phrasing 5, coded information cannot arise by chance. Information requires a sender (a source of intelligence).

7. The information we see in the genetic code of life requires a source of intelligence behind it. It needed a source of intelligence (man) to discover the information and beign to understand it. You cannot have information without intelligence to create it.

[BlueYonder]

It is quite true: I do not believe that talking snakes arose by random chance.

Why then talking apes?

[garybob]

Science is knowing that the first phytoplanktons that actually created oxygen led to the largest die-off in the history of the planet as they pumped their lethal, toxic, noxious waste into the atmosphere. The creatures that were left were adapted to use oxygen. Over time, the phytoplanktons became plants, the remaining organisms founded the animal kingdom.

Since no one was around to observe this event, it is merely conjecture, a theory if you will. Unless you have hard evidence to the contrary? And assertions, however stridently and loudly proclaimed, do not pass as "hard evidence".

[jnaujok]

From the eighteen words I posted criticizing your breathtakingly irrelevant analogy between errors in a computer simulation and the natural process of evolution, you have discerned how I view the Universe?

Those weren't the words you picked out. You picked out the words that followed my explanation of an experiment using genetic algorithms and an FPGA (Field Programmable Gate Array) starting from a useless program and using random chance and "natural selection" of the best fit to arrive at (in about 100 generations) an algorithm that was not only fit to perform the function, but so fit to perform the function that the human beings who ran the test were unable to explain the method by which it was created or how it worked.

That is the main tenet of ID is it not? Are you saying that God now interferes with computer lab experiments?

I was initially responding to someone who said that it took four years of college to learn that computers do what they are told. If I were him, I would have picked up a book, because in 1978, when I first read a computer programming book, that's what they started with. I then went on to tell how, just like in a natural organism's DNA, sometimes the program goes wrong.

I then went on to give an example, admittedly a trivial one. That "random mutation", however, was pruned from existence when I hit "exit". My point was that, even in computers, random mutations occur.

I then went on to explain that if we use those random mutations to actually produce new programs using a mechanism similar to those found in nature (reproduction of the most fit plus small random mutations, or recombining best programs and picking bits from each one), those programs can display unbelievable complexity and fitness for the solution very rapidly.

You made clear in your response that you either A) didn't read past the first paragraph, or B) chose to read it and then claim that I was, I believe you chose the term "stupid", to claim that it related to reality in any way.

A computer was used to model a process that occurs in nature (Genetic Algorithms). That process produced an "evolved" program that exceeded the human capability to understand or explain. My statement that this result bears grave consequences for our view of the natural world, where literally trillions of generations have occurred since the first bacteria are found in the fossil record, was labeled by you as "stupid". To me that established a mindset and a world view that you espouse. Yes, it is an assumption on my part, but one based on evidence you've provided.

I haven't checked, but something tells me that you labeled the word "dumb" in the article as an ad hominem attack, and then you proceeded to engage in the same type of ad hominem attack against me.

[Antonello]

I feel compelled to make a couple of clarifications to my post...

In my response to your quote of:
'Just because mammals share characteristics (which I don't deny because it is observable and provable), doesn't mean they evolved from one another',
I failed to clarify that it is not believed that existing species 'evolved from one another', but from common ancestors.

I also withheld a response to your motorcycle analogy, not out of a lack of anything suitable to say, but because I tend to believe that an analogy that uses inanimate objects in situations that examine living things suffers fatal flaws if that situation would require impressing living traits on the proxy items in order to make sense. If you wish, however, I could craft a response to how your bikes might be perceived in an anthropological sense.

[Antonello]

I kind of suspected you were aiming for Gitt. It's quittin' time and I've got to head home. I'll post a reply to your latest after dinner.

[thomaswest]

"Evolution correctly integrates the findings from physics, geology, and chemistry about the age of the earth. Evolution makes sense of why all us mammals share so many characteristics in common."

"How does it integrate physics, geology and chemistry? Just because mammals share characteristics (which I don't deny because it is observable and provable), doesn't mean they evolved from one another."

"Fossils in itself [sic] doesn't prove anything... I'm just searching for the concrete evidence that so many claim exist."
----
I am not sure I understand your point. Do you deny that fossils exist? Do you deny that fossils show a chronological understanding from simpler life forms to vertebrates, then to dinosaurs, then to mammals? Do you deny that fossils show a development from simpler plants to present-day angiosperms?

I can assure you that fossils exist. I have one right here on my mantlepiece. It is of a fish that lived in Devonian times.

[garybob]

The real fact is, 98.5% of all life on earth died during that period.

And you know how much life constituted 100%? Really? What was the population numbers and what did the population consist of?

My point is this: Know the difference between a fact and a theory. This is a big planet and many have confused local events for global events. With the planet made up of 80% water, don't presume 98.5% of anything died off.

[jnaujok]

No, I have no hard evidence, since your measure is "were you there."

I have only the incredibly circumstantial evidence of massive fossil records, ice cores, radio isotope dating, the fact that Oxygen would vanish in a few million years without a constant source of it on the planet, massive evidence of anaerobic bacteria and life forms before this event, and the complete absence of them afterwards, the arrival of whole new forms of life that used photosynthesis rather than metal-acid reactions as energy sources, and then another set that suddenly use redox reactions for the first time in the fossil record, thousands of scientific papers, thousands of books, millions of established scientific facts and researchers agreeing, the fact that Oxygen in inorganic chemistry is a corrosive, quickly absorbed gas that almost never, ever occurs in its elemental form in nature.

But no, no hard evidence.

[thomaswest]

You posted: "Fossils in itself doesn't prove anything. For example, if I buried a bicycle 20 years ago and buried a motorcycle in the same vicinity today; 200 years later if someone digs up these items, is it accurate for them to conclude that the bicycle evolved into a motorcycle on its own? They have a lot of shared characteristics."

I reply:
Your analogy makes no sense. Bicycles do not select mates, give birth to baby bicyles that grow up to select new mates, and thus have new baby bicyles, some of which mate and produce new ones, and so on. This is the fundamental flaw in ID, because it ignores reproduction that mixes genes more or less randomly and selection for certain survival characteristics in the offspring.

[jnaujok]

If I have a fossil record, and the record before time period X shows 1000 species, and after time period X, I see only 15 species, then I can state unequivocally that the fossil record shows that 98.5% of all species have died off.

The fact that it's a big planet just means that I have a lot more fossil records showing the same thing, and improving my degree of assurance that the statement is accurate.

Oh, and the planet is 71% water, and all of those lifeforms that I refer to lived in or on the water. The nice part is that massive ocean kills sink wonderfully to the bottom and become part of the sedimentary record. The *fact* that this same die-off appears at the same time in all the fossil records all around the world puts paid to your "local event" idea. The production of oxygen as the waste product of phytoplanktons was the greatest threat to life in the history of the planet. Worse than the extinction of the dinosaurs, worse than any other event in the fossil history.

That is a *fact* not a conjecture. The evidence is massive and well researched. The level of confidence in the oxygen die-off is 99.99999999%. You'll note, it's not 100%, because that's the scientific method. Tomorrow we could find out that aliens came down and culled the planet. But that would only null out the *method* of extinction, not the *FACT* that it happened.