The Science of Design

TheRealityCheck.Org ^ | 4/10/05 | Mark Hartwig

[orionblamblam]

> The eye gene has 130 sites. That means there are 20 to the power of 130 possible combinations of amino acids along those 130 sites.

No, there aren't. Because the vast majority of those combinations simply won't work.... and they won't work at very much smaller gene sizes. Successful small genes build up bits at a time, not suddenly fall together.

What you've quoted is another example of lying through statistics.

[newheart]

I disagree. That is not a scientific conclusion, it's a philosophical conclusion. Both science and philosophy seek to explain the world, so just because you seek to explain the world through your observation and deduction does not make that scientific reasoning.

I am going to have to do some study to determine how much the scientific method has changed since I learned it in school. If you are correct, I clearly have no understanding of it.

No, ID is not scientific because it is not capable of being disproven (among other things).

I am not convinced that the principle of falsifiability, as heralded as it is, is sufficient to deny 'scientific' status to a line of reasoning or an entire method of inquiry such as ID. For one reason (not to be too clever) the principle itself is not falsifiable. Second, in many of these kinds of issues, what actually constitutes falsifiablitiy is open to debate. Not in every case, of course, but increased complexity often results in increased complexity of the requirements of falsifiability. (I suspect there may be a connection here to the irreducible complexity arguments of the ID crowd, but I'll have to explore that later.)

Let me give an example that is not directly related to ID, but perhaps will shed some light on this discussion.

As an aside, it is curious that you have chosen an example that might link ID with creationism. Sure, for many people their stance on ID is a veiled creationism, but that is not a fair charge against the major proponents, Dembski, Behe, et al.

The falsifiability problem tends to result in exactly the kind of reasoning you rightly criticise but the same thing can be said of much of evolutionary theory (especially where it wanders off course and speculates about ultimate origins). Much speculation about the causes of the Cambrian 'explosion' seem to be little different from your 'the Creator is more subtle and clever than we previously thought' style of argument.

ID is entirely different. It shuts off further speculation. For example, you see something that you think is irreducibly complex and so you say, "aha that's proof that of ID. I'm done." A scientist will say, let me think harder about that, perhaps it's not irreducibly complex, perhaps it's just too complex for me to figure out today. And then tomorrow he or she turns the key and gets the answer. That's science.

I cannot imagine Michael Behe ever saying 'I'm done.' When evidence can be brought forward that will demonstrate that those things he considers irreducibly complex are not in fact, I would expect him to be quite open to rethinking. The leading ID scientists are no more (and in many cases are less) married to their conclusions than evolutionists.

So believe in it all you want, but don't try to claim it belongs in a science class - because it doesn't.

I'm not really in an either/or mode here. I am simply advocating that in a free society, these arguments are essential and, with all due respect, they are rightly placed in 'science class'. (I don't make the same argument for full-blown creationism because the presuppositions there are quite explicit and are definitely matters of faith. But then, I'm not opposed to students being presented with the concepts related to all three.)

To preemptively exclude ID from the science curriculum simply because it suggests that there may be evidence of intelligent agency is, in my opinion, anti-scientific. If we are going to go that direction, we might as well follow David Hume's arguments to their logical end and argue that since causality is completely impossible to identify, we may as well do away with scientific inquiry altogether.

[Ignatz]

No, there aren't. Because the vast majority of those combinations simply won't work....

What you've quoted is another example of lying through statistics."

The author did not assert that there are 20 to the power of 130 possible workable combinations of amino acids along those 130 sites, just that there are 20 to the power of 130 possible combinations of amino acids along those 130 sites.

I see you've lowered yourself to irrational name-calling already. Perhaps you should take a break and cool off before you tackle the other items from post #33.

[Elsie]

I see your point.

[Elsie]

But *something* is clearly virtually inevitable.

But that 'something' CANNOT make the NEXT hand dealt be like itself!

[Elsie]

Including Dawkins program as well................

 

 

 

Methinks there is a PROBLEM with this example.  Any of you great minds see it??

 

The Dawkins program to produce the string "Methinks it is like a weasel" involves three processes:

1. Random variation -- on each "generation", 1/8th of the character strings in the "population" (size selected by user) have one of their text characters completely randomized to some other character.

2. Selection -- the character string which has the most "correct" characters (or if more than one such string exists, the most recent such) is flagged, and a) will be "bred", and b) won't itself be mutated or replaced by one of its own "offspring".

3. Reproduction -- the current "most fit" character string undergoes "sexual reproduction' with randomly chosen other strings, and the resulting offspring replace the "mates". (This is actually more akin to biological lateral gene transfer.)

So all three of the processes necessary for evolution to take place are in the Dawkins program. And, as predicted by "evolutionists", the results are swift and sure -- the mutating, reproducing, subject-to-selection population very quickly (within seconds) produces a Shakespeare text string which the creationist "pure random" methods would not have produced before the Earth permanently froze over.

Including Dawkins program as well................

 

 

 

Methinks there is a PROBLEM with this example.  Any of you great minds see it??

 

The Dawkins program to produce the string "Methinks it is like a weasel" involves three processes:

1. Random variation -- on each "generation", 1/8th of the character strings in the "population" (size selected by user) have one of their text characters completely randomized to some other character.

2. Selection -- the character string which has the most "correct" characters (or if more than one such string exists, the most recent such) is flagged, and a) will be "bred", and b) won't itself be mutated or replaced by one of its own "offspring".

3. Reproduction -- the current "most fit" character string undergoes "sexual reproduction' with randomly chosen other strings, and the resulting offspring replace the "mates". (This is actually more akin to biological lateral gene transfer.)

So all three of the processes necessary for evolution to take place are in the Dawkins program. And, as predicted by "evolutionists", the results are swift and sure -- the mutating, reproducing, subject-to-selection population very quickly (within seconds) produces a Shakespeare text string which the creationist "pure random" methods would not have produced before the Earth permanently froze over.

Including Dawkins program as well................

 

 

 

Methinks there is a PROBLEM with this example.  Any of you great minds see it??

 

The Dawkins program to produce the string "Methinks it is like a weasel" involves three processes:

1. Random variation -- on each "generation", 1/8th of the character strings in the "population" (size selected by user) have one of their text characters completely randomized to some other character.

2. Selection -- the character string which has the most "correct" characters (or if more than one such string exists, the most recent such) is flagged, and a) will be "bred", and b) won't itself be mutated or replaced by one of its own "offspring".

3. Reproduction -- the current "most fit" character string undergoes "sexual reproduction' with randomly chosen other strings, and the resulting offspring replace the "mates". (This is actually more akin to biological lateral gene transfer.)

So all three of the processes necessary for evolution to take place are in the Dawkins program. And, as predicted by "evolutionists", the results are swift and sure -- the mutating, reproducing, subject-to-selection population very quickly (within seconds) produces a Shakespeare text string which the creationist "pure random" methods would not have produced before the Earth permanently froze over.

[orionblamblam]

> Methinks there is a PROBLEM with this example.

It doesn't support your preferred conclusion.

[PMCarey]

I am going to have to do some study to determine how much the scientific method has changed since I learned it in school. If you are correct, I clearly have no understanding of it.

Well, then how would you distinguish scientific reasoning from philosophical reasoning? I see I.D. as more philosophical than scientific, but if you care to distinguish the two and explain why I.D. belongs in the science and not the philosophic camp, I'm happy to hear what you have to say - and maybe I'll even change my mind!

As an aside, it is curious that you have chosen an example that might link ID with creationism. Sure, for many people their stance on ID is a veiled creationism, but that is not a fair charge against the major proponents, Dembski, Behe, et al.

I did state that my example was not "directly related to I.D." and so my intent was not to link I.D. with creationism; but rather it was to show that once you put what I consider to be an unscientific assumption into a scientific discussion, you can allow anything.

I cannot imagine Michael Behe ever saying 'I'm done.' When evidence can be brought forward that will demonstrate that those things he considers irreducibly complex are not in fact, I would expect him to be quite open to rethinking. The leading ID scientists are no more (and in many cases are less) married to their conclusions than evolutionists.

I disagree. Once you postulate I.D. as an explanation for an unexplained phenomenom, you are unlikely to look for other explanations. Now, someone else may find that explanation for you (as you indicated yourself "evidence is brought forward" - but it won't be by Michael Behe.)

Think of it this way. The planets take a wandering path through the nighttime sky. For thousands of years, western scientists attempted to find a natural explanation for these paths. The first attempts involved "wheels within wheels" which provided a complicated and crude estimate of the paths. The real answer wasn't discovered until Kepler postulated ellipitical orbits for the planets and Newton laid down the foundation for those orbits with gravitation theory.

Now imagine instead that those scientist belong to a tradition that rejected a natural explanation and instead embraced the idea that planets wandered as they did because they were really Gods and thus there was no point in explaining planetary movements because they went where Gods wished to go. Don't scoff because some cultures did explain things in that way and they did not have the scientific traditions handed down by the Greeks. Once they have that as their working model, they did not seek to replace it with a scientific model.

That to me is the basic problem with I.D. It assumes that such natural explanations for biological forms do not and cannot exist and from that point on, you have ruled out scientific progress. Now progress may come and people like Michael Behe may be forced to retreat on one point or another, but they won't be ones making those discoveries.

[Elsie]

It doesn't support your preferred conclusion.

Why don't you just say that you don't know?

[orionblamblam]

There may well be hundreds of small problems with the program. But the biggest one is that the results don't produce evidence to support your prejudice.

[Elsie]

Ok: I'll accept that you don't know.

[orionblamblam]

If only you'd accept the fact that YOU don't know....

[Elsie]

Ah...

...but I do!

[orionblamblam]

That certainly does not seem to be the case based upon the available evidence.

[Elsie]

Dawkins's simulation was plainly stated in his book to demonstrate selection, not evolution. It was intended to show the difference between cumulative selection and single-step selection. Attempts to apply Dawkins's simulation to evolution as a whole are a misreading of his book.