Irrefutable Design

ethlehem, Pa. — IN the wake of the recent lawsuits over the teaching of Darwinian evolution, there has been a rush to debate the merits of the rival theory of intelligent design. As one of the scientists who have proposed design as an explanation for biological systems, I have found widespread confusion about what intelligent design is and what it is not. Advertisement

First, what it isn't: the theory of intelligent design is not a religiously based idea, even though devout people opposed to the teaching of evolution cite it in their arguments. For example, a critic recently caricatured intelligent design as the belief that if evolution occurred at all it could never be explained by Darwinian natural selection and could only have been directed at every stage by an omniscient creator. That's misleading. Intelligent design proponents do question whether random mutation and natural selection completely explain the deep structure of life. But they do not doubt that evolution occurred. And intelligent design itself says nothing about the religious concept of a creator.

Rather, the contemporary argument for intelligent design is based on physical evidence and a straightforward application of logic. The argument for it consists of four linked claims. The first claim is uncontroversial: we can often recognize the effects of design in nature. For example, unintelligent physical forces like plate tectonics and erosion seem quite sufficient to account for the origin of the Rocky Mountains. Yet they are not enough to explain Mount Rushmore.

Of course, we know who is responsible for Mount Rushmore, but even someone who had never heard of the monument could recognize it as designed. Which leads to the second claim of the intelligent design argument: the physical marks of design are visible in aspects of biology. This is uncontroversial, too. The 18th-century clergyman William Paley likened living things to a watch, arguing that the workings of both point to intelligent design. Modern Darwinists disagree with Paley that the perceived design is real, but they do agree that life overwhelms us with the appearance of design.

For example, Francis Crick, co-discoverer of the structure of DNA, once wrote that biologists must constantly remind themselves that what they see was not designed but evolved. (Imagine a scientist repeating through clenched teeth: "It wasn't really designed. Not really.")

The resemblance of parts of life to engineered mechanisms like a watch is enormously stronger than what Reverend Paley imagined. In the past 50 years modern science has shown that the cell, the very foundation of life, is run by machines made of molecules. There are little molecular trucks in the cell to ferry supplies, little outboard motors to push a cell through liquid.

In 1998 an issue of the journal Cell was devoted to molecular machines, with articles like "The Cell as a Collection of Protein Machines" and "Mechanical Devices of the Spliceosome: Motors, Clocks, Springs and Things." Referring to his student days in the 1960's, Bruce Alberts, president of the National Academy of Sciences, wrote that "the chemistry that makes life possible is much more elaborate and sophisticated than anything we students had ever considered." In fact, Dr. Alberts remarked, the entire cell can be viewed as a factory with an elaborate network of interlocking assembly lines, each of which is composed of a set of large protein machines. He emphasized that the term machine was not some fuzzy analogy; it was meant literally.

The next claim in the argument for design is that we have no good explanation for the foundation of life that doesn't involve intelligence. Here is where thoughtful people part company. Darwinists assert that their theory can explain the appearance of design in life as the result of random mutation and natural selection acting over immense stretches of time. Some scientists, however, think the Darwinists' confidence is unjustified. They note that although natural selection can explain some aspects of biology, there are no research studies indicating that Darwinian processes can make molecular machines of the complexity we find in the cell.

Scientists skeptical of Darwinian claims include many who have no truck with ideas of intelligent design, like those who advocate an idea called complexity theory, which envisions life self-organizing in roughly the same way that a hurricane does, and ones who think organisms in some sense can design themselves.

The fourth claim in the design argument is also controversial: in the absence of any convincing non-design explanation, we are justified in thinking that real intelligent design was involved in life. To evaluate this claim, it's important to keep in mind that it is the profound appearance of design in life that everyone is laboring to explain, not the appearance of natural selection or the appearance of self-organization.

The strong appearance of design allows a disarmingly simple argument: if it looks, walks and quacks like a duck, then, absent compelling evidence to the contrary, we have warrant to conclude it's a duck. Design should not be overlooked simply because it's so obvious.

Still, some critics claim that science by definition can't accept design, while others argue that science should keep looking for another explanation in case one is out there. But we can't settle questions about reality with definitions, nor does it seem useful to search relentlessly for a non-design explanation of Mount Rushmore. Besides, whatever special restrictions scientists adopt for themselves don't bind the public, which polls show, overwhelmingly, and sensibly, thinks that life was designed. And so do many scientists who see roles for both the messiness of evolution and the elegance of design.

Michael J. Behe, a professor of biological sciences at Lehigh University and a senior fellow with the Discovery Institute's Center for Science and Culture, is the author of "Darwin's Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution

Those who argue evolution traditionally argue that creation of life was *spontaneous* and has evolved since.

Wrong, people who say evolutionists claim life 'spontaneously' popped into being are uneducated creationists and IDers. It is a term used to make any natural origin of life hypothesis sound ridiculous. Nothing but another lame god of the gaps argument.

The complex protein structures, and the other building blocks of life, could have taken a very long time to chain together. IDers make it sound like evolution teaches that one second there was nothing, then suddenly a cell popped into existence from the air. That is a lie.

I am not arguing whether or not life evolved or was put into place exactly as it is today.

You cannot argue this, either you understand science, or you don't. We don't 'choose' to believe in gravity or relativity, same goes with evolution. Whether you understand it or not is irrelevant.

but if someone would like to demonstrate irrefuteable evidence to that theory, I would be interested to see it.

I suspect you know nothing about how the theory of flight and germ theory work, yet you have no problem getting in a plane, or accepting that your runny nose is caused by a virus? Open a highschool biology textbook if you want evidence, but let's be honest, it has nothing to do with evidence, you just don't want to understand.

Regardless, we are not talking about working the microwave here. Only biologists are capable of fully understanding the mechanisms that cause speciation, we have to take their word for it. Either the scientific method works, or it doesn't.

My point was that creation {in the case of this program} took place by *design*.

But what does that have to do with anything? I don't think you have a point.

If your point is that the program was designed by evolutionists and that therefore it should not be trusted, you have made a circumstantial case for distrusting the program.

But you need to do better than that. "It's made by evolutionists, therefore it's false" just doesn't work. If you think there is something logically wrong with the program, find it and say so.

Remember that Michael Behe does not deny microevolution of the sort that takes place in the program. He does not deny that organisms can adapt to their environment. He denies that the type of small changes that take place in that computer program could end up producing something with irreducible complexity. There may be other reasons to reject evolution, but they're outside the scope of this thread. This thread is only about Michael Behe's theory that IC cannot be evolved.

The program has done exactly what Michael Behe says is impossible: it's shown so-called "irreducible complexity" can be evolved by making small changes to a "design DNA," like the kind of mutations scientists have observed in animals, the kind of mutations Michael Behe admits take place in nature.

There has been absolutely no "moving of the goalposts." If you wish to discuss something separate (like speciation, or the origins of life itself), that's for a different thread. I'm not trying to be rude (well, I was last night hehe) but it's important not to lose focus on a single issue at a time.

But you need to do better than that. "It's made by evolutionists, therefore it's false" just doesn't work. If you think there is something logically wrong with the program, find it and say so.

Go back to my post and find that quote.

I can not argue with someone who makes up quotes.

Unless I were to respond to your earlier statement... "I am not capable of making an intelligent point, so I make up quotes to create a strawman that I can argue against".

In this case, I would have to agree with your self-assessment.

You *really* get way too worked up over this. You have misrepresented what I have said, and in fact made up stuff and put it in quotes. I strongly suggest that you take a chill pill, relax and it will work itself out.

I could care less if you agree with me, OK? Drop it.

Go back to my post and find that quote.

I can not argue with someone who makes up quotes.

Putting things in quotation marks doesn't always mean a direct quote, it can mean a paraphrase. In this case, I wasn't even paraphrasing you (because I don't know what your argument is), I was paraphrasing a possible explanation for your argument. Perhaps I could have been clearer, because I did not mean to imply that you said those exact words, or even that you meant something similar to those words.

I'm trying to figure out why the fact that the program was "designed" matters. Why? I'm trying to figure out how that has any bearing at all, and you won't say!

Is it because the program was designed by evolutionists, therefore you don't trust it?

Is it because the program was designed in general, and did not evolve on its own, that you distrust it?

Are you just making a general throwaway insult by pointing out that evolutionists sometimes design things?

What??? What is the point of your post? You leave me guessing. If you'll just say your post has no point, that it was just meant in jest, and that there's nothing wrong with the evolutionists' computer program, I'll leave it alone. (in fact, if you don't respond to this post at all, I'll leave it alone... but if you come up with a valid reason to doubt AVIDA, then by all means I will treat it seriously and carefully)

So many so-called intelligent scientists working so hard to design a program that will help them prove that no intelligent design was needed to create life as we know it.

Using a designed computer program to disprove Michael Behe's theory is in no way illogical or inconsistent.

Let me put it to you another way: Creationists claim that ONLY intelligent design can be responsible for "Irreducible Complexity"

Evolutionists, on the other hand, believe Intelligent Design AND Evolution are BOTH capable of producing things with irreducible complexity. Scientists would never argue that intelligent designers couldn't design things, or that God couldn't have created the Earth, or that it's impossible for God to have designed all of the species. They argue that there is no scientific evidence to believe Intelligent Design theories, and that ID is based on illogical and unscientific claims.

I'll make a table: this is what the two groups believe

	Intel. Design	Evolution
Creationists	CAN create IC	CANNOT create IC
Evolutionists	CAN create IC	CAN create IC

Evolutionists believe both ID and Evo can produce IC. Creationists believe only ID can produce IC.

Scientists have never denied that ID can produce IC (it would be absurd to do so).

The difference, as you can see, is whether the two groups believe evolution can ever produce IC.

The program was designed to show that evolution can. There is nothing illogical at all about that. The fact that ID can ALSO create IC is irrelevant, because both scientists and creationists agree that it can.

Irony can be painful I guess.

I was not saying the program could not be trusted because it was designed by evolutionists.

I was not saying that evolutionists *always* believe in spontaneous generation of life, although the mutation that goes from a blob of non-life into a self-replicating entity could certainly be considered "spontaneous".

I was trying to highlight the irony of a computer program that proves evolutional theory of human beings having evolved from random evolution of life through mutation and natural selection... as opposed to an intelligent design... that was infact, an intelligent design.

I still think the Creator of this program should have relied upon a random defect in some computer memory somewhere to have sprung the fundamental program element..then, it could have evolved itself within the memory of computers throughout the Ethernet and eventually outgrow MicroSoft in market share...oops..there I go again!

>>Inteligent Design and Science are mutually exclusive

"If a watch proves to the existence of a watchmaker but the universe does not prove the existence of a great Architect I consent to be called a fool.": Voltaire

“Entropy in a closed system must always increase until it reaches a maximum.”: The second law of thermodynamics

Bicycles rust, the reverse never happens (Rust turning into bicycles) Darwinists just want to play the movie backwards and state that order is not important. They are wrong. The question should be WHY do they do this, what makes evolutionists disregard obvious laws? (my two year old both understands and causes entropy.)

The answer is slightly different for each person, but it boils down to they have a reason not to want a supreme being in the universe.

That said, I believe :-) that true science (Science without preconceived notions) is merely another form of theology (Since we are studying what was left for us to study by our creator.)

Twist this, as you will. Since open mindedness in some arguments (Like whether or not I exist) gets boring after a few initial excursions. Having considered the alternatives and crashed powerful computers making calculations on evolution’s probability, I conclude that the basic laws of this universe do not allow for me to exist without creation taking place.

My mind is made up therewith.

"My point was that creation {in the case of this program} took place by *design*."

But what does that have to do with anything? I don't think you have a point.

It was an excellent point illustrating the utter blindness and hypocrisy of evolutionists. A point that obviously went over your head.

By the way, you spend far to much time, and too many words attempting to defend your positions. It's boring.

Brevity is the soul of wit.

Your lottery example goes right over my head. Without knowing all the possible mechanisms it is not possible to compute probability. We observe things happening. Improbibility does not prevent them.

Over on another thread we have someone presenting another vision of ID, on in which genes are frequently swapped or inserted between species. This is known to happen in bacteria, and it is known that certain kinds of viruses can insert their genes into their host's genome. Mutation is not the only kind of variation. You can't calculate probability if you don't know the rules of the game.

I have an answer for that too. But ... when I was a young student at college I wrote a term paper. To some extent what I wrote about was beyond me then nevertheless sometimes things expressed are just a algebraic substitution -- a mere placement of this fact next to that formula in numb application of some order. As I reread -- up in the attic I found it, it made more sense to me now then it did back when.

In the paper I was considering information flow between systems. I wrote "H" for the informational energy of a system receiving some quanta of information, dH. Then the record skipped. It occurred to me that I had no idea -- despite Shannon's work, and despite Chomsky's perceptrons what information was. What is information? What is order?

Yet it seemed to me then that something like Chomsky's bit-pattern perceptron was at work with some mixture of quantum levels of atoms -- that just as an atom will aborb only certain frequency quanta of light, so to does any distinct information subsystem only absorb certain characteristic quanta of information. That is the system must be preconditioned, ready to identify that pattern, or whatever information is. I didn't care whether it was a pattern, its more general.

In other words the system must somehow already be aware of any new information it can possibly later receive. It needs that awareness to receive it at all.

Yet I still am not sure what information is, or what order is, I only wrote then and know now that there is a place and a time for everything under the sun. And not until that time and place is it even knowable.

* * * * *

The lottery example was to show an extension of MacKay's 1841 work. How easily and readily and generally and deeply people are led astray by statistics.

Mixing genomes can not increase the informational energy in a system. It makes things broader but shallower.

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