Replies

I see ID as a ‘theory of everything’

ID = "Goddidit" = theory of anything at all = theory of nothing.

Question one:
Are variation, mutation, and natural selection ‘alone’ responsible for DNA’s intelligent grammar-like code, error correction, and beyond that – your own intellect?

So far as I know.

Question two:
Does behavior arise out of the interaction between individuals with their environment, not from a freely willing self that produces behavior independently of causal connections?

Definitely not the latter.

Question three:
Is there is no finally correct way to behave, or finally justifiable goals, but only the desires and intentions that currently constitute us, all of which may change as human nature and cultures change?

Is moral absolutism tenable? Count me unsure. What I am sure is that it's not a question for biology or geology.

Question four:
In seeking a coherent explanation for existence – an explanation incorporating an ontological design phase that is rational, coherent and therefore intelligent, what do you do?

Realize that you're spouting question-begging gibberish, forget about science, and say a few prayers?

Information Theory Vade, you are going to need to deal with it at some time because Darwinian explanations are becoming archaic with DNA research and life itself.

Science uses math, but mathematicians are too ignorant of science to invalidate science. Since you're so impressed with Dembski and his demagoguery upon some misapplied math, here he is on the topic of what ID needs as a next step.

A problem we now face with intelligent design is that even if the educational mainstream opened its arms to us (don't hold your breath), we have no sustained course of study to give them. A curriculum provides that, and much more. It takes the crazy-quilt of science and systematizes it into an intellectually coherent position. Students are thus introduced to a research tradition and not merely to a disconnected set of claims and arguments, or worse yet to some effective but easily ignored criticisms. Darwinists, by contrast, have a curriculum -- indeed, one that is steadily gobbling up discipline after discipline (evolutionary psychology being one of the more visible recent additions). Daniel Dennett was right when he called Darwinism a universal acid. Darwinism's hold on the academy is pervasive and monopolistic. By building a design curriculum, we attempt to restore a free market.
Becoming a Disciplined Science: Prospects, Pitfalls, and Reality Check for ID, by Wm A. Dembski.

It's worse than he makes it sound. You have no content to put in a curriculum. You can only say what ID isn't (Evolution), how things didn't happen. (They didn't evolve.)

That's not much content and it's very likely all false. Piss-poor excuse for a science, that.

From Dembski's quote:

Students are thus introduced to a research tradition and not merely to a disconnected set of claims and arguments...

Dembski is so unfamiliar with science that he doesn't realize that all claims and arguments are connected via a historical timeline and a progressive accumulation of evidence.

You said (emphasis mine:)

Science uses math, but mathematicians are too ignorant of science to invalidate science.

Jeepers, Vade! That is a sweeping declaration.

It’s not like Dembski is the only mathematician looking at the algorithmic nature of being. Off the top of my head, there’s Stephen Wolfram, Stephen Hawking, Roger Penrose, Max Tegmark, Jürgen Schmidhuber, Nicolo Dallaporta, Iain Stewart. And unless you exclude Cosmology, Physics and Astronomy from "science," they certainly appear qualified to me.

Some of the biggest names in science, like Newton, Einstein, Gödel were essentially mathematicians, relied on the work of mathematicians and mused about all that there is. Where would we be without Schwarzschild and Riemann?

IMHO, these mathematician-scientists are highly qualified to ask and answer the deep questions of science. And my prediction is that they will continue to ask and answer – and, yes, some of their answers may require rethinking in other fields of science.

That Dembski and Wolfram dare to look for algorithms in evolution should not be offensive. Just my two cents...

You have answered nothing and yet, everything. Thank you.
It seems we need a reality check for the prospects and pitfalls for naturalistic evolution.

ID and the Information Theory merely point out the fact that an object does not displace its medium. Information, intelligence, and design are self-evident. We see it in physics, DNA, and life. These theories do not dismiss evolution, as you seem to think, they simply state there is more here to look at than the Theory of Evolution as it stands now.