Blame Aliens

Funny how under "what is intelligent design theory", he's got a paragraph that totally sidesteps the question it's purported to be answering.

If it's "best explained by...", then for Pete's (or Lenny's) sake, give us the explanation already.

Henry

It gets worse. Their only "arguments" are IC and CSI. Both of these set out to demonstrate that aspects of the universe cannot in principle arise without "intelligence". Since any designing intelligence of IC/CSI must a fortiori be complex/specified, the distal designers must ultimately be supernatural.

The argument that it takes complex intelligence to generate complexity always reminds me of the old Steve Martin bit:

You can be a millionaire and never pay taxes! You say.. "Steve.. how can I be a millionaire.. and never pay taxes?" First.. get a million dollars. Now.. you say, "Steve.. what do I say to the tax man when he comes to my door and says, 'You have never paid taxes'?" Two simple words: "I forgot!"

How do we get our current level of complexity? First, start out with ulitmate complexity. And by what specific means has ultimate complexity brought us to our current state of complexity? We forgot.

Where is Lenny? Haven't seen him lately. Has he been chasing them on their own blogs? I want to see his questions addressed. What is Intelligent Design Theory--not Evolution-is-wrong-theory--and then explain one non-trivial prediction it makes, which disagrees with evolution.

Maybe our universe is a science project for some smart alien kid in some much larger universe. Would the ID people like that idea? (Probably not.) How about if the kid's name is Jehovah? (I'm thinking "no".)

I hope we win first prize.

The empirical evidence for space aliens is no better than the evidence for a creator god, i.e. zilch. So why bring in another non-starter hypothesis?

Anything requiring the prior existence of the universe, like aliens, can not logically be the DI's "intelligent cause" of the universe. Clearly only supernatural entities satisfy the Discovery Institute's authoritative description of intelligent design.

— Reed A. Cartwright

It isn't just the problem of creating the universe, or even creating Privileged Planets. Once you claim that some structures and mechanisms of carbon-based cellular lifeforms are too complex to have arisen in any way other than intelligent design, you've ruled out carbon-based cellular lifeforms as the designers, since they themselves would have to have been designed. Then you start getting into some very weird convolutions about what sort of aliens you're really talking about. No wonder the answer to the question of the identity of the designer is "we don't go there."

If it's "best explained by . . . ", then for Pete's (or Lenny's) sake, give us the explanation already.

It gets worse. Their only "arguments" are IC and CSI. Both of these set out to demonstrate that aspects of the universe cannot in principle arise without "intelligence". Since any designing intelligence of IC/CSI must a fortiori be complex/specified, the distal designers must ultimately be supernatural.

from their webpage: In the area of journals, Michael Behe has defended his concept of "irreducible complexity" in the peer-reviewed journal Philosophy of Science published by the University of Chicago. There is also now a peer-reviewed journal that focuses on design theory, Progress in Complexity, Information, and Design, which has an editorial advisory board of more than 50 scholars from relevant scientific disciplines, most of whom have university affiliations. Finally, the works of design theorists are starting to be cited by other scholars in peer-reviewed journals such as the Annual Review of Genetics.

Intelligent Design Theorist handles the data:

Astronomer: Hmm. This data indicates planets like the Earth are extraordinarily rare.
Intelligent Design Theorist: Aha! Such a precious, unique planet. So priveledged!
Astronomer: Hmm. Now the data indicates planets like the Earth are extraordinarily common.
Intelligent Design Theorist: Wow, that's not likely, not by chance! What a beneficent creator, who so tuned the universe, that his beings may quickly spring forth and multiply. Truly, He lives!
Astronomer: Hmm. Now the data indicates planets like the Earth are neither too likely, nor too unlikely.
Intelligent Design Theorist: What data! That we were positioned so perfectly to observe that, surely means....

Where is Lenny? Haven't seen him lately. Has he been chasing them on their own blogs?

It's turtles all the way down....

OK. So if an article is cited to be countered and debunked, it counts in their favor?

Personally, aliens are just exchanging one form of methodological atheism (not that I agree Evolution has anything to do with atheism, I still can't see how it in any challenges my belief in God, but whatever) for another form of atheism- plus the nutters that come with it. Come on, surely people realise if we start peddling this space alien crap to people we're just encouraging children to think aliens are the creators. If evolution breeds atheists, then won't teaching kids that aliens made us create Raelians or something equally as absurd?

All these IDiots are doing is driving people away from Christianity by making us look stupid, and further, probably going to do nothing more than add further weight for people to deny God.

All these IDiots are doing is driving people away from Christianity by making us look stupid, and further, probably going to do nothing more than add further weight for people to deny God.

In the area of journals, Michael Behe has defended his concept of "irreducible complexity" in the peer-reviewed journal Philosophy of Science published by the University of Chicago. There is also now a peer-reviewed journal that focuses on design theory, Progress in Complexity, Information, and Design, which has an editorial advisory board of more than 50 scholars from relevant scientific disciplines, most of whom have university affiliations. Finally, the works of design theorists are starting to be cited by other scholars in peer-reviewed journals such as the Annual Review of Genetics.

Well I dont know if anyone has said this yet but ... since we are talking about who created the universe and since we're freely speculating, apparently with no limitations but the limits of imagination, I guess an alien COULD be the creator of the universe ... why not? Just because he himself would have to have a universe that was created by something else ... so maybe infinite aliens, okay. Or maybe just a few stages of creation by aliens until you get to the original god-created universe ... who knows, that could be. I dont see anything in particular in the essential summations of ID to rule this possibility out. Just because it is freaking crazy stupid definitely doesn't rule it out with the ID guys.

The IDers lose either way. Either the ID is God and the big bad scientists are just unfair atheists for excluding God from science, OR, the designers are plain old ordinary mortal non-supernatural space aliens, and all the ID whining about "materialistic biases" is nothing but irrelevant (and illegal, in a classroom) religious apologetics. I wish they'd make up their friggin mind which one they prefer.

I believe their Journal is called "the REALLY serious journal of science and stuff that's backed by public opinion, King James edition"

I think Irreducible Complexity may be a scapegoat for an implicit fundamental of observation limits. If we cannot observe it, and thus cannot determine its existence, it doesn't exist. Or rather, cannot be assumed to exist unless demonstrated otherwise. In ID, such observation is implicit in the conceptor's own ego, that if they cannot see it, it cannot exist; thus, elements finer than the observable do not exist, and their existence cannot therefore be due to actions and interactions as proposed by physics. This is behind the origin of the universe and the availability of the unobservable subatomic particles in particle physics, and because this challenges the proponents of ID's belief in the existence of God, despite arguments by christians saying the two are not mutually exclusive, that God may have initiated such action, it cannot exist because it cannot be seen. Or is ignored. Indeed, it bolsters faith rather than challenges it, and no one who believes in something as "true" enjoys being told, even in a friendly manner, that they are wrong. When it is wrapped up into your fundamental existence, then it becomes an attack on your very existence, and thus must be denied.

I cannot see anyone so intriguingly foolish as to think what they cannot see is greater than what they can, but then ... I've never had my knowledge of the sun's rising challenged, either. One just understands it will happen, and goes about one's business. The Aztec felt differently, but then, those where the Aztec, and here the parallel is striking.

However, it seems the biggest flaw with ID is not its existence, but its application: Why does the peppered moth have peppered wings, because God made it so. End of discussion. End of science. If the understanding and existence of things is wrapped up in such an easy answer, why do even IDers debate? Or convert? Or try to get those others to agree? Obviously, God made the skeptics, so this is all part of His universe, and thus "perfect."

Cheers

Lenny, if you fancy a laugh on the subject of peer reviewed journals, check out the following.

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/helium/zircons.html

In the response to this article, Humphries writes:

"Recently an anti-creationist geochemist, a part-time instructor at the University of Kentucky named Kevin Henke[1], posted on the Internet a 25,000-word rejection[2] of scientific evidence that the world is only about 6,000 years old, the helium-leak age of zircons (radioactive crystals) from deep underground. In politics, his procedure would be called "mud-slinging," which in this case tries to bury truth under a mountain of minutiae. I normally don't reply to Internet posts from skeptics because I want them to try to publish their criticisms in peer-reviewed scientific journals, the proper place to carry out scientific debates.

However, in this case I want to take the opportunity to share updated information about our research which will appear later this year in the RATE[3] "results" book[4] and in the accompanying book for laymen.[5] I also plan to submit technical details of this reply to a peer-reviewed scientific journal, the Creation Research Society Quarterly (CRSQ). If Henke chooses to sling yet more mud, let him try to do so in a scientific journal. The RATE helium research has been peer-reviewed and published in several different scientific venues. Critics like Henke must gird up their loins and undergo the same kind of scientific discipline---if they want people to take them seriously. If they refuse to do that, I plan not to reply to them further."

I genuinely believe this to be a sign of serious delusion.

Since any designing intelligence of IC/CSI must a fortiori be complex/specified...

I think the notion that the "designer" must be more "complicated" than the design comes from bad understanding of concepts such as entropy and information, but this notion is basically the same old, same old dross that the creationists have been peddling as pure gold for years: the thoroughly discredited SLOT argument.

a "who designed the designers" reductio ad absurdum circularity: "It's turtles all the way down . . . .."

So, the ID folks have done it (again). They have used their publication in Philosophy of Science to "answer" the question about peer reviewed publications ... just as I predicted.

I was (as a philosopher of science and a subscriber to that journal) somewhat alarmed when the issue came out with Behe's paper. It was in response to some critics, BTW. Of course, they are right to say it is a peer reviewed journal from the University of Chicago Press. Shame it isn't a science journal. Of course, there are a fair number of papers (particularly in philosophy of physics) which could probably be published in science journals that appear there, but that's just my guess - and Behe's paper certainly isn't one of them.

Given some other papers I've seen floating around I am wondering whether IDers and stuff are going to try to hijack philosophy journals more ...

The "turtles all the way down" quote comes from Terry Pratchett's DiscWorld (eg in "the science of" book). However, it is just a restatement of an older reference to infinite regression - and, although I recognised it as such the first time I read Pratchett, I've got so used to seeing the Pratchett one around that my memory is struggling to recall anything else now.

I've seen this "turtles" quote many times, and the meaning is pretty clear. But just out of curiosity, what is the original origin of the expression?

I first read the phrase "Turtles All the Way Down" in a book by Stephen Hawking. According to the story, a bigname scientist was giving a lecture on astronomy. After the lecture, an elderly lady came up and told the scientist that he had it all wrong. 'The world is really a flat plate supported on the back of a giant tortoise." The scientist asked "And what is the turtle standing on?" To which the lady triumphantly replied: "You're very clever, young man, but it's no use -- it's turtles all the way down."

I first encountered this phrase in Hofstadter's Godel Escher Bach. It seems to have been an old story even then. Here's another take for what it's worth. And over here it's attributed to Fred Hoyle, who in turn attributed it to Thomas Gold.

William James gets the credit in this article.

An aside: I remember the turtle-holding-up-the-world concept as part of several Native American creation myths, desert tortoise in the southwest, sea turtles on the east coast. If it's a hindu idea, maybe it's worldwide. If it's worldwide, maybe it's TRUE. Maybe it IS turtles all the way down.

I vote for "intelligent design" to replace "turtles".

I think I have the Theory of ID now, which may help calm Lenny down.

What ID is saying is that our current understanding of the mechanisms of the universe are insufficient to explain the nature of organisms. That's a proposition ID is free to make (although clearly not proven to the point that most scientists would find satisfactory) and it leads to two - and I think only two - possible conclusions.

Either the mechanisms of the universe really are insufficient, or our understanding of them is flawed.

Throughout the history of science -- and ID claims to be science -- in every case that contradictions between understanding and repeatable observation have occured and been resolved, it's been our understanding that's at fault. The universe continues to be consistent, despite our limited abilities to comprehend it. There are plenty of places at the edge of our understanding where such a consistency has yet to be demonstrated, and doubtless there are misunderstandings in the corpus of things we imagine to have been sorted out, but there are no places where we clearly perceive what is going on but have given up investigating ways to fit it into the framework.

Now, ID claims that for the first time ever our understanding of science is so good that we have identified a breakdown in the continuum of physical law that cannot be explained any other way.

This is an astounding claim - but from where does this understanding come from? Intuition. It doesn't come from Dembski's maths, which is as he admits based on a theological framework rather than taking an unusual phenomenon and investigating it dispassionately through mathematical tools. It doesn't come from Behe's analysis of extant systems, about which the most that can be said is that they're at the edge of our current understanding - like all new science. No, it's just intuition, the very thing science is designed to test rather than accept.

Yet ID says despite its extraordinary implications and lack of evidence, intuition here is strong enough to be used to move on to the next step.

Let's assume ID is right on this point too.

Intuition says 'if it looks designed, it must be designed, and if it's something we can't design it must be the product of higher intelligence' - which sidesteps the small business of why unintelligent forces are barred from shaping functional complexity, or how you could tell the difference if they're not so barred.

Let's assume ID is right on this point too.

If natural forces cannot create intelligence (the only logical conclusion of ID's chain of reasoning) and intelligence is necessary to explain what we see, then ID must be proposing a supernatural entity outside physics. Otherwise, we're back at the turtles - unless ID is saying that 'intelligence' is a fundamental property of the universe that doesn't need creating, that somehow manifests itself through complexity in the way gravity manifests itself through mass. That would at least be an interesting idea and one that might be amenable to scientific study, although I think you'd be hard pushed to differentiate it from dull old evolutionary thinking.

Which means ID starts from a questionable proposition, moves through an untestable assumption and arrives at God.

That's the theory of ID: multiply the questionable via the untestable and reach the divine.

D = QU

R

Suppose that 20,000 years into the future humans have discovered a way to transcend time and to manufacture quantum signularities, even "tweaking" them to produce somewhat predictable results. The humans could step outside of time (and space, since the two are related) and "seed" new universes with the bottled singularities (or cause two superstring branes to colide, or however cosmology actually works). In that sense, humanity could be the intelligent designer (sowing lots and lots of singularities so that some universes "work out"). In point of fact, in that scenario, we could have been our OWN creator. A self-creating universe. Using ID methodology, how could IDers plausibly demonstrate that this is not what happened? No need for aliens (they is us), no need for a god, and we make full use of the only intelligent designer we know of in existence: us.

Which means ID starts from a questionable proposition, moves through an untestable assumption and arrives at God.

Except nobody believes this, not even the ID people. They all start with God, non-negotiably, and need to find some way to make the universe fit whether it does or not. Nobody past the age of maybe 5 would ever seriously propose that reality has been confected by invisible magicians (whose origin is not to be thought about), based on observation alone.

For the sake of fun, let's ask The Designer some questions.

Questions for the Intelligent Designer:

Why did you design extinct species?
Did you also create non-life, asteriods, for example, and why are they still hurtling around us?
Did you create aliens who then created us? :-)

I will conclude that if an Intelligent Deisinger exists, "he" has made a few mistakes.

Can the ID'ers admit that The Designer made mistakes? Isn't that a logical conclusion or is The Designer perfect, in which case, it could not be the same designer who created the extinct species?

I believe that the IDers would say something along the lines of:

"feature x is too complex to be explained by anything other than an intelligent designer. This doesn't neccesarily mean that feature x was designed well, just that it had to be designed for it to have come about. If you happen to believe that the designer was God then this crappy design has theological implications."

something like the above anyway.

"Ummm, not sure where this comes from.  Maybe the DI folks think they've demonstrated this, and thus avoid the nasty problems that H.G. Wells envisioned, but they have done no such thing, and worse, it just leads to a "who designed the designers" reductio ad absurdum circularity:  "It's turtles all the way down . . . .."

I think the notion that the "designer" must be more "complicated" than the design comes from bad understanding of concepts such as entropy and information, but this notion is basically the same old, same old dross that the creationists have been peddling as pure gold for years: the thoroughly discredited SLOT argument."

Absolutely. But the point is that by ID logic, an alien designer must ultimately have been designed by something supernatural - hence ID being inherently religious.