The absurdity of intelligent design

The Haaretz Hebrew edition, for example, recently published an article by Richard Dawkins and Gerry Quinn

Well, the Cystine Chapel might... I really don't know.

On the other hand, the Sistine Chapel was most assuredly designed, ;-)

Hey BB,

Elia Leibowitz is male.

Yes, but you must look carefully at Mt Rushmore. As you face it, just to the left of Washington is the distinct likeness of a monkey. I noticed that when leading a geology course for Wheaton College there. As half were YEC I had great fun on this and played with the design argument and asked whether it proved evolution.

The other possibility is that it is not a monkey but G W Bush

Does the Cystine Chapel split into two pieces in a reducing environment? :-)

Elia Leibowitz is male

None of those reproduce biologically, and thus are ineligible for natural selection.

Comment #48840 Posted by Bob Davis on September 19, 2005 01:59 PM (e) (s) None of those reproduce biologically, and thus are ineligible for natural selection. How can we know this? I mean, sure there are no baby Mt. Rushmores running around. Or are there? In fact I've purchased a few pet Mt. Rushmores and little keychain Eiffel Towers and even a beautiful baby solid metal paperweight Empire State Building. It is true that they have not grown at all.... yet.

When two species of objects have always been observed to be conjoined together, I can infer, by custom, the existence of one wherever I see the existence of the other; and this I call an argument from experience. But how this argument can have place, where the objects, as in the present case, are single, individual, without parallel, or specific resemblance, may be difficult to explain. And will any man tell me with a serious countenance, that an orderly universe must arise from some thought and art like the human, because we have experience of it? To ascertain this reasoning, it were requisite that we had experience of the origin of worlds; and it is not sufficient, surely, that we have seen ships and cities arise from human art and contrivance.

Paul Nelson wrote: Hey BB, Elia Leibowitz is male.

It certainly should be giving educators and decision-makers in Israel sleepless nights. The political-cultural struggle has become so heated that it is making headlines in the international daily press.

The Darwinist is no less moved and impressed by the complexity, the purposefulness, the order and the beauty that are revealed in animal and plant life, but he attributes them not to any intelligent designer, but rather to the statistical regularity of random processes that occur in the world.

Hey, Sal, last I heard, Flew had de-"converted." Flown the coop!

Guess the brainwashing didn't take, but then conversion just doesn't seem to be a very, uh, "scientific" process.

And do let us know when you get done pondering on things like, um, bamboo...

Cheerio!

With respect to the natural world and the universe, however, we do not have any prior knowledge of the existence of an intelligence that is capable of planning them.

A point I'll be making in the plainest language, and then tire of and drop (to many people's relief, no doubt, since they certainly know it as well as anybody): the Creationist/ID crowd do not care AT ALL about ToE, biology, science, etc.etc.etc.
They are too lazy, too damned self-obsessed, to take any notice of anything that isn't a mirror for the wonder that is themselves. They don't wish others to agree with their theories, but to submit to the force of their personalities, not the beauties of their faith or the strength and clarity of their ideas.
These aren't, mainly, the ignorant Christ-above-allers of the 70's creationists, full of fear about seeing the world find their fear irrelevant and childish, but the empty, manipulative Xians of the 90's, for whom the Christian (and Muslim and Hindu, as well, at times) religion is an excuse for whatever act may profit them, or flatter them.
Less meek, god-fearing folk than the typical born-again Xian of America have seldom trod the Earth before this.

Of course, who else would refer to Schroeder but Salvador? The "fine IDist" Schroeder is the same writer who made those great discoveries that masers emit atoms, that weight and mass is the same, that centrifugal force is a real force, that there were nine generations between Cain and Tubal-Cain, that the number of photo electrons depends on photons' frequencies, that kinetic energy is proportional to velocity, etc., etc., etc. No suprise Salvador likes Schroeder - both are in the same league as regards erudition and logic. BTW, Flew stated that he was misled by Schroeder. Whatever it says about Flew, anybody referring to Schroeder as an authority in any field should check with a doctor.

By any reasonable measure, the faces on Mt. Rushmore are much less complex than the un-sculpted part of the cliffs. The faces are smooth and easily described. The raw cliffs are very complex with innumerable nooks and crannies. The amount of information needed to describe the faces is tiny alongside the amount of information needed to describe the detailed, complex structure of an unaltered cliff face.

We recognize design by simplicity not complexity.

(This is why the Christians were unwilling to believe Kepler; because they felt a designer would have put the planets into perfect, simple, circular orbits --- not the messy ellipses that Kepler found.)

Dear Mr. Cordova,

"The Darwinist" doesn't exist, and this terminology is nought but an ill-conceived propagandist terminology meant to polarize. It reveals a lack of depth of consideration of the overall complexity, specified no less, of the nature of biologists, which you yourself and your cohorts contend exist in your so-called subscribed scientists. It is, in simple terms, a campaign in stupidity.

Scientists, of which those that work in evolutionary sciences are definitely a component of, have a marked awe of complexity, but rather than crumble to their knees and worship the unknown as a deity, they seek to understand it by applying the known and measurements to it in seeking answers fundamental to their observations. There is no supernatural clockmaker that can be determined by science, and the use of such strawmen seeks only to "convert" (in your words, a term that only reveals creationist agendas on your part) the gullible through smoke and mirrors. The apparent rejection of the personage who forms the basis of this thread shows further a rejection of that which denies your a priori perceptions of a "designer" (rather a God in disguise).

We recognize design by simplicity not complexity.

We recognize design by simplicity not complexity.

The Darwinist" doesn't exist, and this terminology is nought but an ill-conceived propagandist terminology meant to polarize. It reveals a lack of depth of consideration of the overall complexity, specified no less, of the nature of biologists, which you yourself and your cohorts contend exist in your so-called subscribed scientists. It is, in simple terms, a campaign in stupidity.

I've repeatedly seen claims that Antony Flew became a born again Xian. Yet, at other sites it is said he merely came to believe in a species of deism (as I do, depending on what day you ask me). Does anyone have the bottom line on Flew?

We have a very fine IDist in Israel by the name of Gerald Schroeder

I have a pretty good clue about what makes a very fine scientist - plenty of publications, important theories, etc. But since IDists don't really do that stuff, how can you tell a "very fine IDist" from a run-of-the-mill one?

Hey Paul; Hey Sal --- I have some questions for both of you. You, uh, seemed to run away from them the last time I asked.

...a knowledge of the behavior of designers...
Unpublished field work indicates certain common traits among designers-

* tendencies to make jokes & comments which others fail to understand: >66%
* (ahem) idiosyncratic wardrobe choices: >75%
* total caffeine dependence: >90%

Of these, life on earth shows evidence only of the first, which has the lowest correlation with designeritude of reported characteristics. This is hardly sufficient to establish a case, but it may at least point towards direction for further research.

...a knowledge of the behavior of designers...

AR wrote: "... that centrifugal force is a real force,..."

Is it an unreal force?

So, exactly what is happening when I spin a bucket full of water on the end of a rope? How come the water doesn't fall out?

My personal opinion of these people is the innate fear of wrongness they run from, which leads to otherwordly idealizations on their part in a way to explain what they cannot touch. So for me, this is just par for the course in dealing with Cordova and his ilk. Rather, I like trying to uncover the actual processes of thought they go through. If it helps someone else see the convolutions these people have to go through mentally in order to arrive at such a condition as a "designer" they "know exists" because something cannot possibly have occured without one (depsite no fingerprint) then perhaps my own comments will help someone, or gain notoreity and thus exposure. In which case, I cannot loose.

The DI does not argue by "inference from ignorance" in the classic sense. They are far from ignorant of the fossil and genetic data accrued in support of evolutionary theory. CHOOSING to ignore data is not ignorance, but a well-crafted ploy.

It may be a subtelty, but I'd rather classify the DI and ID supporters in general as having a willful resistance to science, born of a weakness of the mind, and a political/cultural agenda.

There is no such thing as irreducible complexity ... there is only a weakness of the mind to pursue the scientific truth. And their constant referral to evolutionary biologists as "Darwinists" is simply part of their political play-book.

Biologists, paleontologists, geneticists, and more, have long beaten the DI and ID supporters and the "game" of science. The rest, as they have admitted, is politics, and that is where we must beat them next.

Jeff

*cough* Wilkins and Elsberry...

So, exactly what is happening when I spin a bucket full of water on the end of a rope? How come the water doesn't fall out?

— Norman Doering

The centripetal force is the force pulling an object toward the center of a circular path as the object goes around the circle. An object can travel in a circle only if there is a centripetal force on it.

— Encyclopedia: Centripetal force

Centrifugal force is a force used to describe, e.g., an object being swung around on a string, for which the object pulls on the string. In fact the person holding the string is doing the pulling.

— Encyclopedia: Centrifugal force

Avoiding politics: Teaching intelligent design is not unconstitutional, but the institute doesn't support the Dover school board's stand because it doesn't want intelligent design to become a political issue, said Casey Luskin, program officer in the Public Policy and Legal Affairs department at the Discovery Institute's Center for Science and Culture. He said the Discovery Institute is "not trying to hinder their case in court," but the organization wants intelligent design to be debated by the scientific community, not school boards.

>Does PvM agree with the following bolded portion?: The Darwinist is no less moved and impressed by the complexity, the purposefulness, the order and the beauty that are revealed in animal and plant life, but he attributes them not to any intelligent designer, but rather to the statistical regularity of random processes that occur in the world.

— Sal

*cough* Wilkins and Elsberry...

— Wilkins

The DI does not argue by "inference from ignorance" in the classic sense. They are far from ignorant of the fossil and genetic data accrued in support of evolutionary theory. CHOOSING to ignore data is not ignorance, but a well-crafted ploy.

— Jeff

I am so tired of the old "random process" dead horse. Order arising from disorder doesn't happen randomly, but just because "stuff" in the environment must follow certain rules (physics, chemistry, etc). We could use Conway's "game of life" to demonstrate this principle. A random starting arrangment will inevitably form a more ordered pattern, simply by applying a few simple rules. Heck I can demonstrate it with a shoebox and a few magnetic disks. Arrange disks randomly in box, close lid, shake box (apply random force), open lid. If the discs are non-magnetic (say quarters) they will still be randomly arranged. But if they are magnetic (adding 2 simple rules: opposite poles attract, same poles repel), they will always be arranged as a neat stack or column. This simple experiment also effectively disproves the old creationist "probability" theory arguments. But don't just listen to me or take my results on faith, reproduce them yourselves and see what I'm talking about!

Avoiding politics: Teaching intelligent design is not unconstitutional, but the institute doesn't support the Dover school board's stand because it doesn't want intelligent design to become a political issue, said Casey Luskin, program officer in the Public Policy and Legal Affairs department at the Discovery Institute's Center for Science and Culture. He said the Discovery Institute is "not trying to hinder their case in court," but the organization wants intelligent design to be debated by the scientific community, not school boards.

...claims that Antony Flew became a born again Xian. Yet, it is said he merely came to believe in a species of deism. Does anyone have the bottom line on Flew?

— Mona

Letter from Flew, Dec 29, 2004 "I now realize that I have made a fool of myself by believing that there were no presentable theories of the development of inanimate matter up to the first living creature capable of reproduction." "I have been mistaught by Gerald Schroeder. ...it was precisely because he appeared to be so well qualified as a physicist (which I am not) that I was never inclined to question what he said about physics."

Norman writes "AR wrote: "... that centrifugal force is a real force,..."

Is it an unreal force?

So, exactly what is happening when I spin a bucket full of water on the end of a rope? How come the water doesn't fall out?"

Physicists call the centrifugal force and other forces which arise with respect to rotating systems fictitious because they arise from the coordinate transformation between the rotating and non-rotating frames of reference.

One easy way to visualize this, is to suppose we have a horizontal rotating disk with a clock face directed upwards.

Furthermore suppose you're looking down on this rotating disk. Then I shoot a ball across the rotating disk; the ball goes right over the "12". THe ball is actually on a straight line trajectory, and if the disk weren't rotating, the ball would pass across the disk and exit right over the "6". And while you're above the disk, and can see that the ball's trajectory is straight, to somebody on the disk, the ball's trajectory appears curved, like it was affected by a "true" force.

The ceiling of the Sistine Chapel has indeed shown to have a property of life (or at least part of the ceiling). How else can one explain the FSM?

That no ID advocate I've asked can tell me how ID 'theory' (or just design) can deal with 4 simple observations in nature that evolution effortlessly accounts for is quite telling. In fact, like how Lenny sets the example, let's again remind our readers as to what those observations were: 1) Why organisms appear to be related in clearly distinct patterns 2) Why organisms have sometimes idosyncratic 'designs' such as the birthing canal of the hyena that results in a 1/3 chance of death for a first time mother. 3) Why the original designer chose to make numerous similar animals with small alterations in various features, such as those that accompany the transitional forms between the original reptiles jaw and the mammalian jaw, rather than just get to the point of the final design to begin with? Why the trial and error? Why do we also see this with other structures such as the flagellum, type I,II, III and IV secretion systems and many other structures? 4) If a designer can make an efficient structure like a bacterial flagellum, why was he so bad at designing an ATPase? The ATPase of humans for example, only manages to convert 66% of the energy it gets from protons being pumped through into ATP. That's pretty good for something that evolved to be 'good enough' but for something that was designed it's pretty pathetic, especially considering the intelligent designers we have to compare it to, namely us wouldn't find such a low efficiency (wasting a full 1/3 of the energy given to it) as satisfactory. I would like Paul to explain what work ID theorists are doing that explains the above observations. Remembering that if ID is to be scientifically useful and be a replacement or at least an 'alternative' to evolution it must explain the same observations as well or better than the existing theory. Currently, evolution can easily explain any of the above, yet ID runs into a brick wall and shatters like glass. Any one ID hypothesis can account for each one, but no single ID theory can actually explain all four simultaneously without requiring an actual named designer or plain contradicting itself.

DarthWilliam proposes the demonstration of an ordered arrangement from magnetic disks in a shoebox. Until we open the shoebox, are the disks in a state between order and disorder? ;)

I often equate ID arguments with those of "ancient astronaut" theorists of the 1970s, who felt that the existence of pyramids in the Americas and Egypt implied a common source of design and construction information. I try to point out that these structures are similar because they reflect the inherent physical limitations of their building materials, among other things. Similarly, the "design" of the camera-and-lens eye reflects an adherence to physical constraints.

In the case of a shoebox of quarters, one can find apparent order in non-magnetic disks if the box is held at an angle slightly off-horizontal. The disks will array themselves into nearly-perfect hexagons of crystalline regularity. This is not because a thermodynamic demon or higher-power arranged them while our backs were turned, it's just the nature of uniform objects being packed together in a way that minimizes their freedom of movement.

I once tried to give this explanation to people in my church, after viewing a video on ID. I love these people, I respect many of them, and I am a devoted Christian, but I was saddened and disappointed by their brick-walled unwillingness to consider reason.

Hi Paul, nice to see you back. Last time you were here, you ran away without bothering to answer something I had been wondering about.

Lenny: If there is no such thing as a theory of ID, why does the ID movement call itself the ID movement? You say "it really doesn't matter what one calls the ID movemnet". If so, why name it after something that doesn't exist? Is it, or is it not, to imply that it DOES exist, even though it actually doesn't.

Paul: Well, let's pick a name that you might like, such as "The Fundamentally Religious and Scientifically Misbegotten Objections to Evolution Movement" (FRASMOTEM for short). FRASMOTEM is unwieldy, but if you can persuade others to use it, instead of "intelligent design movement," go for it. As I said earlier, however, the name won't really matter. Fred Hoyle coined "The Big Bang" originally as a cheeky jab (insult) towards a theory he never liked. Didn't matter: the name was widely adopted, because it was vivid and handy, and the scientific idea itself chugged right along. If the "intelligent design movement," however named, didn't exist --- meaning Behe, Dembski, Nelson, Meyer, Gonzalez, et. al, and their ideas --- this blog wouldn't exist. As I explain here, the study of evolution and a group of investigators one could call "evolutionists" existed long before a formally-articulated theory of evolution. There is more than enough content to the idea of intelligent design, even absent a theory, to make the conventions "intelligent design" and "ID" useful and accurate. But who knows? FRASMOTEM may have a promising future!

Lenny: That's nice. Now answer my question. I'll ask again: If there is no such thing as a theory of ID, why does the ID movement call itself the ID movement? You say "it really doesn't matter what one calls the ID movemnet". If so, why name it after something that doesn't exist? Is it, or is it not, to imply that it DOES exist, even though it actually doesn't.

Lenny: So I'll ask again; why, if weather forecasting and accident investigation are every bit as "atheistic" and "materialistic" as evolution, aren't you out there fighting the good fight to get God back into weather forecasting aqnd accident investigation. Why aren't you out there fighting the "materialistic naturalistic biases" of weather forecasting or accident investigation. Why does "atheism" in evolution get your undies all in a bunch, but "atheism" in weather forecasting doesn't.

Paul: Two questions for you (to help me answer this one, and to throw a little variation into Lenny's Game): 1. If life on Earth were designed by an intelligence, could science discover that? 2. When Darwin argued against design in the Origin of Species, was he doing science?

Lenny: Gee, Paul, you seem not to have answered my question. Again. I'll ask once more: why, if weather forecasting and accident investigation are every bit as "atheistic" and "materialistic" as evolution, aren't you out there fighting the good fight to get God back into weather forecasting aqnd accident investigation. Why aren't you out there fighting the "materialistic naturalistic biases" of weather forecasting or accident investigation. Why does "atheism" in evolution get your undies all in a bunch, but "atheism" in weather forecasting doesn't.

Lenny: Can you point me to any published public statement by Ahmanson wherein he disavows any of the positions he held as cash cow and chief cheerleader for the Chalcedon Foundation nutballs? If you want to tell me that he has repudiated his positions and is no longer as nutty as he HAS been for the past 20 years, then please tell me (1) which of his former positions he has repudiated and why, and (2) which of his former positions he has NOT repudiated, and why NOT?

Paul: Again with the Howard Ahmanson obsession. What to say? I'm happy to be supported by Howard's money. I guess you'd better put me on your list of unspeakable theocratic monsters. However, I'm a registered independent and voted for Obama here in Illinois, so maybe you should start a new list, "Confused and Inconsistent Theocratic Monsters," first entry, "Paul Nelson." I don't know what Howard's view were before; I don't know what they are now; frankly, I just don't care. The republic is in no danger from Howard Ahmanson.

Lenny: Gee, Paul, for some odd reason, you once again neglected to, ya know, answer my question. I'll ask again: Can you point me to any published public statement by Ahmanson wherein he disavows any of the positions he held as cash cow and chief cheerleader for the Chalcedon Foundation nutballs? If you want to tell me that he has repudiated his positions and is no longer as nutty as he HAS been for the past 20 years, then please tell me (1) which of his former positions he has repudiated and why, and (2) which of his former positions he has NOT repudiated, and why NOT?

Paul: Here are my questions again:

Lenny: Answer mine first, Paul. I'm not about to let you either set the agenda, or dance away from my questions. Back to you, Paul. Feel free to run away, again. I'll be waiting right here when you get back, and this conversation will once again take up exactly where it left off. I'm a very patient man. If I have to ask you the same questions a thousand times till I get an answer, then i will.

Sal, my questions for you (which you have run away from a dozen times already):

(1) what is the scientific theory of creation (or intelligent design) and how can we test it using the scientific method?

I do *NOT* want you to respond with a long laundry list of (mostly
inaccurate) criticisms of evolutionary biology. They are completely
irrelevant to a scientific theory of creation or intelligent design.
I want to see the scientific alternative that you are proposing----
the one you want taught in public school science classes, the one
that creationists and intelligent design "theorists" testified under
oath in Arkansas, Louisiana, Kansas and elsewhere is SCIENCE and is
NOT based on religious doctrine. Let's assume for the purposes of
this discussion that evolutionary biology is indeed absolutely
completely totally irretrievable unalterably irrevocably 100% dead
wrong. Fine. Show me your scientific alternative. Show me how your
scientific theory explains things better than evolutionary biology
does. Let's see this superior "science" of yours.

Any testible scientific theory of creation should be able to provide
answers to several questions: (1) how did life begin, (3) how did the
current diversity of life appear, and (3) what mechanisms were used
in these processes and where can we see these mechanisms today.

Any testible scientific theory of intelligent design should be able
to give testible answers to other questions: (1) what exactly did
the Intelligent Designer(s) do, (2) what mechanisms did the
Designer(s) use to do whatever it is you think it did, (3) where can
we see these mechanisms in action today, and (4) what objective
criteria can we use to determine what entities are "intelligently
designed" and what entities aren't (please illustrate this by
pointing to something that you think IS designed, something you think
is NOT designed, and explain how to tell the difference).

If your, uh, "scientific theory" isn't able to answer any of these
questions yet, then please feel free to tell me how you propose to
scientifically answer them. What experiments or tests can we
perform, in principle, to answer these questions.

Also, since one of the criteria of "science" is falsifiability, I'd
like you to tell me how your scientific theory, whatever it is, can
be falsified. What experimental results or observations would
conclusively prove that creation/intelligent design did not happen.

Another part of the scientific method is direct testing. One does
not establish "B" simply by demonstrating that "A" did not happen. I
want you to demonstrate "B" directly. So don't give me any "there
are only two choices, evolution or creation, and evolution is worng
so creation must be right" baloney. I will repeat that I do NOT want
a big long laundry list of "why evolution is wrong". I don't care
why evolution is wrong. I want to know what your alternative is, and
how it explains data better than evolution does.

I'd also like to know two specific things about this "alternative
scientific theory": How old does "intelligent design/creationism theory"
determine the universe to be. Is it millions of years old, or
thousands of years old. And does 'intelligent design/creationism theory'
determine that humans have descended from apelike primates, or
does it determine that they have not.

I look forward to seeing your "scientific theories". Unless of course you don't HAVE any and are just lying to us when you claim to.

(2) According to this scientific theory of intelligent design, how old is the earth, and did humans descend from apelike primates or did they not?

(3)

What, precisely, about "evolution" is any more "materialistic" than, say, weather forecasting or accident investigation or medicine. Please be as specific as possible.

I have never, in all my life, ever heard any weather forecaster mention "god" or "divine will" or any "supernatural" anything, at all. Ever. Does this mean, in your view, that weather forecasting is atheistic (oops, I mean, "materialistic" and "naturalistic" ---- we don't want any judges to think ID's railing against "materialism" has any RELIGIOUS purpose, do we)?

I have yet, in all my 44 years of living, to ever hear any accifdent investigator declare solemnly at the scene of an airplane crash, "We can't explain how it happened, so an Unknown Intelligent Being must have dunnit." I have never yet heard an accident investigator say that "this crash has no materialistic causes --- it must have been the Will of Allah". Does this mean, in your view, that accident investigation is atheistic (oops, sorry, I meant to say "materialistic" and "naturalistic" --- we don't want any judges to know that it is "atheism" we are actually waging a religious crusade against, do we)?

How about medicine. When you get sick, do you ask your doctor to abandon his "materialistic biases" and to investigate possible "supernatural" or "non-materialistic" causes for your disease? Or do you ask your doctor to cure your naturalistic materialistic diseases by using naturalistic materialistic antibiotics to kill your naturalistic materialistic germs?

Since it seems to me as if weather forecasting, accident investigation, and medicine are every bit, in every sense,just as utterly completely totally absolutely one-thousand-percent "materialistic" as evolutionary biology is, why, specifically, is it just evolutionary biology that gets your panties all in a bunch? Why aren't you and your fellow Wedge-ites out there fighting the good fight against godless materialistic naturalistic weather forecasting, or medicine, or accident investigation?

Or does that all come LATER, as part of, uh, "renewing our culture" ... . . ?

(4) The most militant of the Ayatollah-wanna-be's are the members of the "Reconstructionist" movement. The Reconstructionists were founded by Rouas J. Rushdoony, a militant fundamentalist who was instrumental in getting Henry Morris's book The Genesis Flood published in 1961. According to Rushdoony's view, the United States should be directly transformed into a theocracy in which the fundamentalists would rule directly according to the will of God. "There can be no separation of Church and State," Rushdoony declares. (cited in Marty and Appleby 1991, p. 51) "Christians," a Reconstructionist pamphlet declares, "are called upon by God to exercise dominion." (cited in Marty and Appleby 1991, p. 50) The Reconstructionists propose doing away with the US Constitution and laws, and instead ruling directly according to the laws of God as set out in the Bible---they advocate a return to judicial punishment for religious crimes such as blasphemy or violating the Sabbath, as well as a return to such Biblically-approved punishments as stoning.

According to Rushdoony, the Second Coming of Christ can only happen after the "Godly" have taken over the earth and constructed the Kingdom of Heaven here: "The dominion that Adam first received and then lost by his Fall will be restored to redeemed Man. God's People will then have a long reign over the entire earth, after which, when all enemies have been put under Christ's feet, the end shall come." (cited in Diamond, 1989, p. 139) "Christian Reconstructionism," another pamphlet says, "is a call to the Church to awaken to its Biblical responsibility to subdue the earth for the glory of God . . . Christian Reconstructionism therefore looks for and works for the rebuilding of the institutions of society according to a Biblical blueprint." (cited in Diamond 1989, p. 136) In the Reconstructionist view, evolution is one of the "enemies" which must be "put under Christ's feet" if the godly are to subdue the earth for the glory of God.

In effect, the Reconstructionists are the "Christian" equivilent of the Taliban.

While some members of both the fundamentalist and creationist movements view the Reconstructionists as somewhat kooky, many of them have had nice things to say about Rushdoony and his followers. ICR has had close ties with Reconstructionists. Rushdoony was one of the financial backers for Henry Morris's first book, "The Genesis Flood", and Morris's son John was a co-signer of several documents produced by the Coalition On Revival, a reconstructionist coalition founded in 1984. ICR star debater Duane Gish was a member of COR's Steering Committee, as was Richard Bliss, who served as ICR's "curriculum director" until his death. Gish and Bliss were both co-signers of the COR documents "A Manifesto for the Christian Church" (COR, July 1986), and the "Forty-Two Articles of the Essentials of a Christian Worldview" (COR,1989), which declares, "We affirm that the laws of man must be based upon the laws of God. We deny that the laws of man have any inherent authority of their own or that their ultimate authority is rightly derived from or created by man." ("Forty-Two Essentials, 1989, p. 8). P>The Discovery Institute, the chief cheerleader for "intelligent design theory", is particularly cozy with the Reconstructionists. The single biggest source of money for the Discovery Institute is Howard Ahmanson, a California savings-and-loan bigwig. Ahmanson's gift of $1.5 million was the original seed money to organize the Center for Renewal of Science and Culture, the arm of the Discovery Institute which focuses on promoting "intelligent design theory" (other branches of Discovery Institute are focused on areas like urban transportation, Social Security "reform", and (anti) environmentalist organizing).

Ahmanson is a Christian Reconstructionist who was long associated with Rushdooney, and who sat with him on the board of directors of the Chalcedon Foundation -- a major Reconstructionist think-tank -- for over 20 years, and donated over $700,000 to the Reconstructionists. Just as Rushdooney was a prime moving force behind Morris's first book, "The Genesis Flood", intelligent design "theorist" Phillip Johnson dedicated his book "Defeating Darwinism" to "Howard and Roberta" -- Ahmanson and his wife. Ahmanson was quoted in newspaper accounts as saying, "My purpose is total integration of Biblical law into our lives."

Ahmanson has given several million dollars over the past few years to anti-evolution groups (including Discovery Institute), as well as anti-gay groups, "Christian" political candidates, and funding efforts to split the Episcopalian Church over its willingness to ordain gay ministers and to other groups which oppose the minimum wage. He was also a major funder of the recent "recall" effort in California which led to the election of Terminator Arnie. Ahmanson is also a major funder of the effort for computerized voting, and he and several other prominent Reconstructionists have close ties with Diebold, the company that manufactures the computerized voting machines used. There has been some criticism of Diebold because it refuses to make the source code of its voting machine software available for scrutiny, and its software does not allow anyone to track voting after it is done (no way to confirm accuracy of the machine).

Some of Ahmanson's donations are channeled through the Fieldstead Foundation, which is a subspecies of the Ahmanson foundation "Fieldstead" is Ahmanson's middle name). The Fieldstead Foundation funds many of the travelling and speaking expenses of the DI's shining stars.

Ahmanson's gift of $1.5 million was the original seed money to organize the Center for Science and Culture, the arm of the Discovery Institute which focuses on promoting "intelligent design theory". By his own reckoning, Ahmanson gives more of his money to the DI than to any other poilitically active group -- only a museum trust in his wife's hometown in Iowa and a Bible college in New Jersey get more. In 2004, he reportedly gave the Center another $2.8 million. Howard Ahamnson, Jr sits on the Board Directors of Discovery Institute.

Since then, as his views have become more widely known, Ahmanson has tried to backpeddle and present a kinder, gentler image of himself. However, his views are still so extremist that politicians have returned campaign contributions from Ahmanson once they learned who he was.

So it's no wonder that the Discovery Institute is reluctant to talk about the funding source for its Intelligent Design campaign. Apparently, they are not very anxious to have the public know that most of its money comes from just one whacko billionnaire who has long advocated a political program that is very similar to that of the Islamic fundamentalists in Afghanistan, Iraq and Iran.

Do you repudiate the extremist views of the primary funder of the Center for (the Renewal of) Science and Culture, Howard Ahmanson, and if so, why do you keep taking his money anyway? And if you, unlike most other IDers, are not sucking at Ahmanson's teats, I'd still like to know if you repudiate his extremist views.

Oh, and your latest round of blithering about "anti-God" and "anti-religion" prompts yet another question, Sal (whcih, of course, you also will not answer).

(5) Sal, you must KNOW that your ID heroes are in court right now
trying to argue that creationism/ID is SCIENCE and has NO RELIGIOUS
PURPOSE OR AIM. You must KNOW that if the courts rule that
creationism/ID is NOT science and IS nothing but religious doctrine,
then your ID crap will never see the inside of a science classroom. So
you must KNOW that every time you blither to us that creationism/ID
is all about God and faith and the Bible and all that, you are
UNDERMINING YOUR OWN HEROES by demonstrating, right here in public,
that your heroes are just lying under oath when they claim that
creationism/ID has NO religious purpose or aims.

So why the heck do you do it ANYWAY? Why the heck are you in here
yammering about religion when your own leaders are trying so
desperately to argue that ID/creationism is NOT about religion? Are
you really THAT stupid? Really and truly?

Why are you in here arguing that ID/creationism is all about God and the Bible, while Discovery Institute and other creationists are currently in Kansas and Dover arguing that ID/creationism is NOT all about God and the Bible?

Why are you **undercutting your own side**????????

I really truly want to know.

Lenny, Lenny, Lenny -- may I call you Len? Leonard? Okay, Mr. Flank.

You are wound way too tight, my man. Result: Michael Ruse drank your Heinekens in Miami last week (ask him -- and I paid, too). We got a great turnout for our debate, and most the audience wanted to keep going with the Q & A until Harvey Siegel, the chairman of the philosophy department, called a halt. You could have had a case of beer, on me, and a long conversation about all your deepest worries concerning ID.

But you'd rather play Lenny's Game (tm) here. I understand, it's fun. But I quit, remember? You win! You're the champ! Da Boss! You're the toughest, meanest, most ruthless herpetologist ever to crush those wicked old religionists beneath his boot heels, to the greater glory of science, freedom, and the American Way. I'll ship you a nice trophy. Anyway: I played Lenny's Game (tm) one last time (the last time), strictly for laughs. But the game is kinda boring after all a while. Repetitive, you know.

A friendly word of caution: excessive use of THE CAPS LOCK KEY and punctuation!!!!???? are symptoms and should be looked into.

To Joseph O'Donnell: Your questions can be drawn into One Big Question. Namely: Why isn't every organism absolutely perfect in every respect? After all, if it's an omnipotent, omnibenevolent Designer we're talking about, then why doesn't every organism live forever, with all imaginable capabilities and features? Right? I should be able to teleport myself to New Zealand if I wanted to; heck, my dog should be able to do the same, and to write computer code to boot. What was the designer thinking?

Okay, here I go...I'm running away...away...I'm a vampire and must flee the bright light of science...here I go, I mean it, seriously, I really am running away this time...just kidding. Actually, any Panda's Thumber in the southwestern Michigan area is invited to say hello this evening at Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo. Loren Haarsma (a physicist from Calvin College) and I will be discussing ID tonight at McCracken Hall, Room 3293, 7:00 to 9:00 pm, with additional open discussion later at the Wesley Center coffeehouse. Ask your questions in person.

Sorry, Lenny. All I hear so far are the electronic crickets.

"Maybe the DI thinks they need several more years of scientific obfuscation and more fundie judges before conditions are right for them. Their comment about not wanting intelligent design to become a political issue seems just a bit disingenuous to me."

If I were the DI, I'd go for the Supreme Court. After all, that's the part of the American legal system that's been most thoroughly infested with political appointees sympathetic to their cause.

"One easy way to visualize this, is to suppose we have a horizontal rotating disk with a clock face directed upwards."

The dominant effect there is Coriolis force, not centrifugal force. True, still a fictitous force, but still a bad example. A better one is the rollerskates-in-train example: Imagine you stand in a train with walls of glass, wearing rollerskates. Neglect internal friction in the ball-bearings of the rollerskates. Imagine that the train starts accelerating.

To an observer outside the train (that is, in an inertial frame of referance) you look stationary. From the train frame (which is now no longer inertial because the train is accelerating) you look like someone is pulling you in the direction opposite of the train's acceleration with a force of ma, where m is your mass and a is the acceleration of the train. This percieved "force" is a fictitous force - as opposed to a physical force such as gravity.

Centrifugal force is simply the general, fictitous force applied to rotating systems. Coriolis force is rather more complicated because velocities are involved. The formula for coriolis force is (IIRC): -2m*\omega x v, where \omega x v is the vector product between the angular velocity of the reference frame and the translational velocity of the object relative to the rotating frame. I may have gotten the sign of the vector product wrong, though.

"4) If a designer can make an efficient structure like a bacterial flagellum, why was he so bad at designing an ATPase? The ATPase of humans for example, only manages to convert 66% of the energy it gets from protons being pumped through into ATP. That's pretty good for something that evolved to be 'good enough' but for something that was designed it's pretty pathetic, especially considering the intelligent designers we have to compare it to, namely us wouldn't find such a low efficiency (wasting a full 1/3 of the energy given to it) as satisfactory."

Actually >50 % efficiency is very, very good compaired with industrial-scale human energy conversion.

"Until we open the shoebox, are the disks in a state between order and disorder? ;)"

Since they are quite a lot larger than a nm, I would expect them to be in a distinct state even while the box is closed.

"Two questions for you (to help me answer this one, and to throw a little variation into Lenny's Game):

1. If life on Earth were designed by an intelligence, could science discover that?

2. When Darwin argued against design in the Origin of Species, was he doing science?"

1. Probably not, unless we actually meet the intelligence in question.

2. Very probably yes - Darwin rarely made public statements willy-nilly, although having not read his book, I cannot - obviously - be certain. Quite apart from those facts, whether Darwin was or was not scientific hardly matters a century and a half after his death. Newton was a crackpot most of the time, but we still use his laws of motion (and some of his differential calculus too).

- JS

Flank to Nelson: If I have to ask you the same questions a thousand times till I get an answer, then i will. Flank to Cordova: Sal, my questions for you (which you have run away from a dozen times already)...

So, exactly what is happening when I spin a bucket full of water on the end of a rope? How come the water doesn't fall out?

— Norman Doering

The convergence was placed there to confound naturalistic interpretations.

— Salvador T. Cordova

NB:  The content filter appears to get indigestion on hyperlinks back to particular comments.  One seems okay, but two get deemed "questionable content" overall.  If this is a Bayesian filter (which appears likely) it could use some re-tuning using PT hyperlinks as "known ham".

Easily the biggest challenge facing the ID community is to develop a full-fledged theory of biological design. We don't have such a theory right now, and that's a problem. Without a theory, it's very hard to know where to direct your research focus. Right now, we've got a bag of powerful intuitions, and a handful of notions such as 'irreducible complexity' and 'specified complexity'-but, as yet, no general theory of biological design. Touchstone Magazine 7/8, 2004, pp. 64---65.

— Paul Nelson

To Joseph O'Donnell: Your questions can be drawn into One Big Question. Namely: Why isn't every organism absolutely perfect in every respect?

— Paul Nelson

After all, if it's an omnipotent, omnibenevolent Designer we're talking about, then why doesn't every organism live forever, with all imaginable capabilities and features? Right? I should be able to teleport myself to New Zealand if I wanted to; heck, my dog should be able to do the same, and to write computer code to boot. What was the designer thinking?

Okay, here I go...I'm running away...away...I'm a vampire and must flee the bright light of science...here I go, I mean it, seriously, I really am running away this time...just kidding

That no ID advocate I've asked can tell me how ID 'theory' (or just design) can deal with 4 simple observations in nature that evolution effortlessly accounts for is quite telling. In fact, like how Lenny sets the example, let's again remind our readers as to what those observations were: 1) Why organisms appear to be related in clearly distinct patterns 2) Why organisms have sometimes idosyncratic 'designs' such as the birthing canal of the hyena that results in a 1/3 chance of death for a first time mother. 3) Why the original designer chose to make numerous similar animals with small alterations in various features, such as those that accompany the transitional forms between the original reptiles jaw and the mammalian jaw, rather than just get to the point of the final design to begin with? Why the trial and error? Why do we also see this with other structures such as the flagellum, type I,II, III and IV secretion systems and many other structures? 4) If a designer can make an efficient structure like a bacterial flagellum, why was he so bad at designing an ATPase? The ATPase of humans for example, only manages to convert 66% of the energy it gets from protons being pumped through into ATP. That's pretty good for something that evolved to be 'good enough' but for something that was designed it's pretty pathetic, especially considering the intelligent designers we have to compare it to, namely us wouldn't find such a low efficiency (wasting a full 1/3 of the energy given to it) as satisfactory. I would like Paul to explain what work ID theorists are doing that explains the above observations. Remembering that if ID is to be scientifically useful and be a replacement or at least an 'alternative' to evolution it must explain the same observations as well or better than the existing theory. Currently, evolution can easily explain any of the above, yet ID runs into a brick wall and shatters like glass. Any one ID hypothesis can account for each one, but no single ID theory can actually explain all four simultaneously without requiring an actual named designer or plain contradicting itself.

Paul Nelson:
"Lenny, Lenny, Lenny --- may I call you Len? Leonard? Okay, Mr. Flank.
You are wound way too tight, my man. "

Once again you fail to even acknowledge his questions. Is this because you have no answers? Or is it because you do not know what a question or answer is?

According to Merriam-Webster Online a question is:

"1 a (1) : an interrogative expression often used to test knowledge (2) : an interrogative sentence or clause b : a subject or aspect in dispute or open for discussion"

DrLenny is asking 2: an interrogative sentence or clause

According to Merriam-Webster Online an answer is:

"1 a : something spoken or written in reply to a question b : a correct response
2 : a reply to a legal charge or suit : PLEA; also : DEFENSE
3 : something done in response or reaction
4 : a solution of a problem"

I see the problem here. You are answering by 3: walking out. DrLenny is looking for 1a: something spoken or written in reply to a question.

I hope this helps.

Actually >50 % efficiency is very, very good compaired with industrial-scale human energy conversion.

Hydroelectric power, a renewable resource, is generated when hydraulic turbines are turned by the force of moving water as it flows through a turbine. The water typically flows from a higher to a lower elevation. These turbines are connected to electrical generators, which produce the power. The efficiency of such systems can be close to 90 percent.

Whenever they start talking about Mt. Rushmore, the first thing I think of is the Face on Mars. I mean, it looks like it was designed, so it must be designed, right?

Actually >50 % efficiency is very, very good compaired with industrial-scale human energy conversion.

— JS

Comment #48869 Posted by Pierce R. Butler on September 19, 2005 06:29 PM (e) (s) ...a knowledge of the behavior of designers... Unpublished field work indicates certain common traits among designers- * tendencies to make jokes & comments which others fail to understand: >66% * (ahem) idiosyncratic wardrobe choices: >75% * total caffeine dependence: >90%

Let me be more precise, I meant some other engineers and technical people.

To Norman Doering's question (whether centrifugal force is a real force) several answers have been posted (see above). Centrifugal force belongs to a class of forces that are referred to in physics as "forces of inertia." Physics view all forces of inertia as fictitious. In particular, unlike real forces, the inertia forces cannot ever be represented as derivatives of a scalar potential. It is, though, sometimes convenient to handle forces of inertia as if they are real forces (this is called D'Alembert's principle) - we can write the so-called kineto-static equations in which forces of inertia appear along with real forces, but this is just a formal trick enabling one to easier solve certain classes of problems. It is a textbook stuff, but the "MIT scientist" Schroeder is as ignorant about centrifugal force as he is about masers or even about the biblical story. That is, apparently, what makes him a "fine IDist," as per Cordova's assertion.

I've been arguing for some time that the hallmark of design isn't simplicity so much as elegance.

Hydroelectric power plants can be up to 90% efficient while a nuclear plant can get even higher than that if well run.

— Joseph O'Donnell

However, while complexity (and therefore its opposite - simplicity) can be quantified (there are several quantitative definitions of complexity), how can you quantify "elegance?"

Not true; while nuclear plants may have capacity factors well in excess of 90%, their thermal efficiencies are in the neighborhood of 33% (you can check the heat rates of nuclear-steam plants to confirm this). They use the same working fluid as coal-steam plants and have similar thermodynamic limits.

All this talk of Mt. Rushmore puts me in mind of a question that's been puzzling me. How do I go about applying Dr. Dembski's Explanatory Filter to Mt. Rushmore? How do I get probability estimates to plug into his formulas?

All this talk of Mt. Rushmore puts me in mind of a question that's been puzzling me. How do I go about applying Dr. Dembski's Explanatory Filter to Mt. Rushmore? How do I get probability estimates to plug into his formulas?

"Yes, sir, Officer Obie, I cannot tell a lie, I put those asterisks in that post."

Lenny, Lenny, Lenny --- may I call you Len? Leonard? Okay, Mr. Flank.

To Joseph O'Donnell: Your questions can be drawn into One Big Question. Namely: Why isn't every organism absolutely perfect in every respect?

Okay, here I go...I'm running away...away...I'm a vampire and must flee the bright light of science...

< quote>enny, Lenny, Lenny --- may I call you Len? Leonard? Okay, Mr. Flank.

Paul, paul, paul.

You can call me whatever you like.

Just answer my damn questions.

All this talk of Mt. Rushmore puts me in mind of a question that's been puzzling me. How do I go about applying Dr. Dembski's Explanatory Filter to Mt. Rushmore? How do I get probability estimates to plug into his formulas?

The usual procedure for that is to pull something out of your ***.

Lenny, Lenny, Lenny --- may I call you Len? Leonard? Okay, Mr. Flank.

Sorry, Lenny. All I hear so far are the electronic crickets.

In a pro-scientific forum such as this, accuracy is important. Have you been keeping a record of just how often you have repeated these queries?

It seems to me that Mssr. Cordova has fled those questions >12 times just in the several months I've witnessed your encounters, but he may have grounds for slander if it's only been eleven.

And what's your plan if Nelson's resistance exceeds one kiloflight?

For some reason (masochism I guess) I checked out the link on Paul's message. It's just the URL for the Discovery Institute, no surprise, but my curiosity was piqued by a link to 'Peer-Reviewed & Peer-Edited Publications Supporting the Theory of Intelligent Design'. I was curious to see how many 'peer reviewed' publications these guys could scrape together, so I looked at the section for "Books Supportive of Intelligent Design Published by Prominent Trade Presses" (oo! Prominent! You know that's gotta be good!), under which they listed some piece of trash by Guillermo Gonzalez and Jay W. Richards, called "The Privileged Planet: How Our Place in the Cosmos is Designed for Discovery". Wondering which "Prominent Trade Press" put it out? Regnery Publishing, the same far-rightwing publishing house that put out the swiftboat smear jobs against Kerry last year. That's one of their 'Peer-Reviewed & Peer-Edited Publications'.

Anyway, Regnery must be more prestigious than I thought. I urge all the good scientists on PT to submit their manuscripts to them from now on, for what must no doubt be a hard but fair editorial review process.

You know, I think my computer must be broken. It appears to be unable to download Salvador's and Paul's answers to Lenny's questions.

Dan, I suspect that Salvador and Paul are probably just getting bored with the discussion of the theory of ID again. (I love that one) I'm sure most people they talk to are able to "get it" without even investing too much time to the matter.

This is too bad because I too would very much like to see them or anyone answer Lenny's very good questions- I want to know what exactly this theory of ID can tell us.

Here is a _____.

A) There is a being that likes to make _____s exactly like this _____.
B) This being is capable of creating an entire universe that will proceed with only occasional tweaking to form the conditions necessary for a _____ exactly like this to arise. This is the way in which the being prefers to create these _____s.
C) The being does this frequently
D) It is possible that through a gradual series of natural events a _____ exactly like this _____ could come into existence without the involvement of any intelligent being.

Given these propositions, which is more likely, that the being in A and B created the _____, or that the _____ arose through a series of random natural processes?

The absurdity and meaninglessness of this question is obvious. As long as you assume the existence of the being in A and B, the answer will always be that no matter what the object, rock mt. rushmore or universe with intelligent life, it was more likely to have been created then to have simply occured. Is there anything else to the argument for ID based on probability?
It seems that maybe irreducible complexity is a slightly less meaningless concept. At least with IC you could possibly form some kind of research program and maybe even make predictions (under these kinds of conditions a spontaneous generation of complex novel biological form is likely to occur, etc.), which then of course would lead to how did that happen, but at least its not a total logical DUH like the probability argument. You can't prove "the IDer made that" but you could prove or disprove "that did not arise through an evolutionary process of variation and selection". Am I wrong here? Is this already understood by everybody and their mother?

The problem with the Mt Rushmore analogy is that we know it looked different only a few decades before, as this before-and-after picture illustrates:

http://216.247.8.124/pixfiles/3270.jpg

Given what we know about geology, we can rule out the faces appearing just by chance. In other words, we synthesize all our knowledge re: Mt Rushmore before concluding the faces were carved by intelligence.

Now, here's a more interesting example, from Kodachrome Basin State Park, Utah:

http://www.geog.uu.nl/fg/berendsen/images/hardcockrock.jpg

So. Designed or not designed? ;)

@Bob Davis

Sorry to say this because your "modest experiment" idea is very funny but it deals with abiogenesis and not with acceleration of speciation as observed during the Cambrian and hence named Cambrian Explosion.

Cheers,
Sandor

Stop!! Please.

There is a God.

He is rich and famous, and he is laughing at us...wondering if he should continue to laugh or simply ignore us.

Life as we now it, we will never understand.

It is a calculated "accident". Have fun, he said.

Enjoy your fights, let us us hope they do not harm the rest too much.

Yours Truly,

Creation Inc.
Founded a Zillion Years Ago.

Given what we know about geology, we can rule out the faces appearing just by chance. In other words, we synthesize all our knowledge re: Mt Rushmore before concluding the faces were carved by intelligence. Now, here's a more interesting example, from Kodachrome Basin State Park, Utah: http://www.geog.uu.nl/fg/berendsen/images/hardco... So. Designed or not designed? ;)

— KC

or (2) they are just pulling all these numbers reight out fo their *ss.

— 'Rev Dr' Lenny Flank

@Bob Davis Sorry to say this because your "modest experiment" idea is very funny but it deals with abiogenesis and not with acceleration of speciation as observed during the Cambrian and hence named Cambrian Explosion.

— Sandor

Quick replies to various while en route to Seattle from Western Michigan Univ. (standing-room only last night in the chemistry building auditorium, for a debate with Loren Haarsma of Calvin College):

1. Jake said I picked a nit about Hebrew names but ignored the no-theory-of-ID business. No: I went on (and on) about the latter here; as to the former, that really was the tiniest of nits and hardly worth picking, except that I have Israeli nephews with female-sounding names and know that it's an easy mistake to make.

2. For Lenny's Game (tm) players, here is a convenient set of cut-and-paste Paul Nelson Answers to be used in almost any game session. Alienward had the right idea:

-- Paul Nelson is a crazy, anti-science YEC.
-- There is no theory of intelligent design. Paul said so himself.
-- Howard Ahmanson is a dangerous theocrat-wannabe, and Paul Nelson takes his money anyway.
-- "The intelligent design" movement is a misleading but rhetorically useful name for religious objections to evolution.
-- If ID advocates were consistent, they should try to reform meteorology and indeed any science to include appeals to divine intervention. But they only care about biology, for religious reasons.
-- Paul needs to lose some weight. I mean, really: have you seen the guy?

My doctor would want me to include that last one.

3. Joseph, my semi-facetious answer to your questions was intended to get you thinking about the buried (but real) assumptions behind what you are asking. You appear to want design to be both (a) false [testable, but wrong] and (b) vacuous [untestable in principle]. Elliott Sober has pointed out that this "any stick will do to beat a dog" approach founders logically. Many of the same ID critics who spend dozens of pages trying to find plausible Darwinian scenarios for the origin of this or that complex structure (to refute, say, Mike Behe), in their next chapter complain that ID asserts nothing about the world, and thus cannot be tested or challenged by observation in any way. Which explains why the previous chapter attempted to do just that (i.e., test an ID claim about irreducible complexity).

Anyway, let's take the "ID is testable but wrong" fork. Do you really think that ID predicts optimality for any given biological system?

I won't be able to reply until I'm settled in my Seattle hotel (tomorrow).

Lenny,

What have you to say to Jason Rosenhouse's comment that Dembski's argument (and by extension, part of ID) is "scientific"?
http://www.csicop.org/creationwatch/probability-two.html

Vedd Rocke:

"This is too bad because I too would very much like to see them or anyone answer Lenny's very good questions- I want to know what exactly this theory of ID can tell us."

Well, you asked for it :)

1. What is the scientific theory of intelligent design, and how do we test it using the scientific method?

ID is the scientific explanation of observed complexity:

Life is too complex for us to ever understand, therefore a being indistinguishable from God, but that is not specifically named as God, had to have designed (but not necessarily created) it all. This is not a "God of the Gaps Argument", because, by definition, God has no gaps.

Evolution, however, IS a "God of the Gaps Argument", because it has lots and lots and lots of gaps, and therefore, if it cannot explain Everything, it explains nothing!

ID can be scientifically tested through observation --- just look at life. It is very complex and very diverse, therefore it was designed.

ID can be falsified in several ways. I) If you discover any life that is not complex, and prove that the designer did not design it that way, ID is falsified. II) If you can create the current diversity of life in the Laboratory, controlling for noninterference by the Designer, ID is falsified.

2. According to this scientific theory of intelligent design, how old is the earth, and did humans descend from apelike primates or did they not?

The age of the earth is not relative to ID theory. As to "and did humans descend from apelike primates or did they not?" The answer is Yes.

3. what, precisely, about "evolution" is any more "materialistic" than weather forecasting, accident investigation, or medicine?

What makes you think that weather forecasting is a science? Such a claim is absurd and falsified daily!

Accident investigation and medicine are not historical sciences --- they are based upon direct observation, not wild guesses about the past.

4. do you repudiate the extremist views of the primary funder of the Center for (the Renewal of) Science and Culture, Howard Ahmanson, and if so, why do you keep taking his money anyway?

The personal views of ID supporters are of no relevance to the scientific validity of ID. BTW, most funding for evolution "science" comes from the U.S. government, an institution that freely acknowledges that it has committed mass killings (e.g. WWII, Vietnam, etc) and has Weapons of Mass Destruction!

All of these answers are available in ID literature. Please pay more attention in the future.

Mendaciously yours,

Shenda

As to "and did humans descend from apelike primates or did they not?" The answer is Yes.

— shenda

Shenda: Or do you mean "yes to both."

Shenda said:

"ID can be falsified in several ways. I) If you discover any life that is not complex, and prove that the designer did not design it that way, ID is falsified. II) If you can create the current diversity of life in the Laboratory, controlling for noninterference by the Designer, ID is falsified."

Well, prions are not complex and might be said to be alive. Have I falsified intelligent design? Or are they not alive because they are not complex (e.g. not a cell)? As for part II, I think Bob Davis is working on that experiment. Would you like to volunteer?

3. Joseph, my semi-facetious answer to your questions was intended to get you thinking about the buried (but real) assumptions behind what you are asking. You appear to want design to be both (a) false [testable, but wrong] and (b) vacuous [untestable in principle].

— Paul Nelson

Anyway, let's take the "ID is testable but wrong" fork. Do you really think that ID predicts optimality for any given biological system?

That no ID advocate I've asked can tell me how ID 'theory' (or just design) can deal with 4 simple observations in nature that evolution effortlessly accounts for is quite telling. In fact, like how Lenny sets the example, let's again remind our readers as to what those observations were: 1) Why organisms appear to be related in clearly distinct patterns 2) Why organisms have sometimes idosyncratic 'designs' such as the birthing canal of the hyena that results in a 1/3 chance of death for a first time mother. 3) Why the original designer chose to make numerous similar animals with small alterations in various features, such as those that accompany the transitional forms between the original reptiles jaw and the mammalian jaw, rather than just get to the point of the final design to begin with? Why the trial and error? Why do we also see this with other structures such as the flagellum, type I,II, III and IV secretion systems and many other structures? 4) If a designer can make an efficient structure like a bacterial flagellum, why was he so bad at designing an ATPase? The ATPase of humans for example, only manages to convert 66% of the energy it gets from protons being pumped through into ATP. That's pretty good for something that evolved to be 'good enough' but for something that was designed it's pretty pathetic, especially considering the intelligent designers we have to compare it to, namely us wouldn't find such a low efficiency (wasting a full 1/3 of the energy given to it) as satisfactory. I would like Paul to explain what work ID theorists are doing that explains the above observations. Remembering that if ID is to be scientifically useful and be a replacement or at least an 'alternative' to evolution it must explain the same observations as well or better than the existing theory. Currently, evolution can easily explain any of the above, yet ID runs into a brick wall and shatters like glass. Any one ID hypothesis can account for each one, but no single ID theory can actually explain all four simultaneously without requiring an actual named designer or plain contradicting itself. And just so you don't try the obsfuscation again: 1) Obviously asks you (the ID 'theorist') here to explain how ID predicts or explains why organisms appear related in a manner that highly suggests evolution (but not 'design'). 2) Is the direct question as to how ID theory explains poor suboptimal designs in the animal kingdom. Your original irrelevant obsfuscation of trying to pretend all four questions were this one was rather irrelevant. 3) Is related more to question 1, but asks the simple question if animals didn't evolve over time gradually, how does ID theory explain why the designer chose to use lots of small iterations of many animals (in such an obviously linked fashion, such as the mammals->Birds transition) rather than just going straight to the bird to begin with. Nice obsfuscation though Paul. 4) Brings up a paradox on the molecular level for ID: Why are some structures massively efficient and others massively deficient. The bacterium flagellum, IF designed is extremely well designed yet compared to a similar mechanism structure the ATPase (itself using the proton motive force to function) is massively inefficient. How does ID theory explain why the designer did such a bad job on this yet such a good job on something else. How was it empircally determined. So will Paul show that ID actually has some science behind it and is actually capable of addressing the SAME biological phenomena? Remember folks, evolution as a theory explains EVERY one of these observations extremely well. What kind of gymnastics will ID have to undergo to actually get any sensical theory to be able to explain these observations. Very obviously, ID clearly hasn't got any explanation now and probably won't do. Too much money being wasted on pointless PR events (like Paul just bought up in fact) and not enough on having people do actual work on benches. Oh well, I'll keep asking with the eventual hope some IDist will actually bother answering my questions with actual science and not rhetoric. It will be a long time it seems.

Since Paul Nelson apparently wishes us folks at PT to believe that he has a sense of humor, perhaps he will appreciate the following simple and logically-unassailable demonstration that--on the assumption that the Bible contains reliable evidence for the nature of *God*--then that very nature of *God* herself falsifies ID and adds weight to evolutionary theory.

Evolutionary biologists predict that complex life forms (which ID would claim must have been designed) can instead be shown to evolve and change over time. Although the behavior of complex life forms exhibiting culture, language, and the capacity to design other complex structures is plastic, such behavior is underlain by a genetic component. Thus behavior itself ought to be subject to evolutionary change over time. When enough changes accumulate, speciation has taken place.

In the Old Testament, *God* was indisputably a unitary, arbitrary, jealous, and wrathful being--perhaps due in part to competition from various "false gods" believed in by non-chosen peoples (although such Just-So speculations are not a necessary part of this explication).

By the time of the New Testament, however, several thousand years later, *God* had clearly evolved, exhibiting both behavioral and phenotypic changes: not only was she was much more loving, but she had speciated into three "daughter" forms which manifested in different environments. While arguably this speciation may have been due in part to signal success in her initial environment (the "god-hood" plane of existence, where *God* had successfully squeezed out her competitors), again this speculation forms no part of the core explication of *God*ly evolution.

Anyway, let's take the "ID is testable but wrong" fork. Do you really think that ID predicts optimality for any given biological system?

this "any stick will do to beat a dog" approach founders logically

Hmm, maybe I should've looked up "mendacious" before posting. Nice parody, Shenda.

Hmm, maybe I should've looked up "mendacious" before posting. Nice parody, Shenda.

— Argy

Why not just answer his questions? Here, I know your answers, so you can just cut and past them:

— alienward

You appear to want design to be both (a) false [testable, but wrong] and (b) vacuous [untestable in principle].

— Paul Neslon

Argy,

The weird part is that, while I intended a parody, it is actually a decent summary of what ID supporters say. Once again it shows that parody and farce are virtually indistinguishable from ID's reality.

Thanks for noticing the use of mendacious to indicate the parody :)

Shenda

--- Paul Nelson is a crazy, anti-science YEC. --- There is no theory of intelligent design. Paul said so himself. --- Howard Ahmanson is a dangerous theocrat-wannabe, and Paul Nelson takes his money anyway. --- "The intelligent design" movement is a misleading but rhetorically useful name for religious objections to evolution. --- If ID advocates were consistent, they should try to reform meteorology and indeed any science to include appeals to divine intervention. But they only care about biology, for religious reasons.

What have you to say to Jason Rosenhouse's comment that Dembski's argument (and by extension, part of ID) is "scientific"? http://www.csicop.org/creationwatch/probability-...

Anyway, let's take the "ID is testable but wrong" fork. Do you really think that ID predicts optimality for any given biological system?

Anyway, let's take the "ID is testable but wrong" fork.

To Paul Nelson and his friends:

The only recent example of meteorology which didn't suffer from that dreaded methodological naturalism, were the statements by various fundamentalists (many of whom I bet are Young Earth Creationists like yourselves) to the effect that Hurricane Katrina was Divine Retribution for the sin in New Orleans. So this the kind of improvement you want to wreak on biology and the rest of science? Boy, it's hard to believe you've utterly failed.

Paul,

"ID Critics" is an incorrect term. In your words (give or a take a few) there isn't any such thing as ID. And IDists and scientists haven't been in any sort of "debate" for about 150 years now. All those fine articles you see are critiques of IDsts not ID. Coming soon "XYZ for IDists" and the "IDist's Guide to Evolution".

Shiva, I used that term too. Not sure what Paul's definition is, but mine is "critic of the ID strategy." So "ID critic" includes many fellow "Darwinists" who actually believe in ID in the general sense, but reject it as a scientific idea. ID critics note the retreat from testable "creationist" alternatives to the "don't ask, don't tell, but bait-and-switch at every opportunity" of ID. At least two of us (Ronald Bailey is the other that comes to mind) interpret that as leading IDers privately recognizing, but not admitting, that evolution has no promising scientific competition.

Actually, there are dozens of (more or less) quantitative definitions of complexity.

"ID can be falsified in several ways. I) If you discover any life that is not complex, and prove that the designer did not design it that way, ID is falsified. II) If you can create the current diversity of life in the Laboratory, controlling for noninterference by the Designer, ID is falsified.

— shenda

Shenda: I am ashamed to say that without the mendacity, I wouldn't have twigged that it was a parody.

Ved Rocke:

"Hmm, how does one ensure that the second test tube recieves no divine intervention, put it in a lead box?"

Utterly simple:

If it does not generate life, it received no intervention from the designer (who is not necessarily divine) or the designer's agents. Therefore it was controlled against design.

This is applicable to all such types of experiment; if it generates negative results it is proof that the designer did not intervene!

Shenda

Hmm, how does one ensure that the second test tube recieves no divine intervention, put it in a lead box?

Shenda: I am ashamed to say that without the mendacity, I wouldn't have twigged that it was a parody.

Heh heh! Now Lenny's back over on the Steve Steve thread, but I've given him the slip once again.

"Infallible." Grrr!

Heh heh! Now Lenny's back over on the Steve Steve thread, but I've given him the slip once again.

Louis Pasteur:" The more I study nature, the more I stand amazed at the work of the creator. Into his tiniest creatures, God has placed extraodinary properties that turn them into agents of destruction of dead matter."

I won't be able to reply until I'm settled in my Seattle hotel (tomorrow).

The hopelessness and meaningless of your lives must be hard to deal with.

Ah, for the rich, fulfilled life of a mindless internet troll...

This write-up will interest you guys -- it's a reaction to my talk in the Western Michigan debate, by a skeptical philosophy graduate student there.

Joseph, can we pick one of your four questions, to focus our discussion? How about number 1?

Lemme know...

Sure, Paul, and while you work on your answer to the first of Joseph's four questions, why don't you take a whack at any of Lenny's?

I mean, of course, an actual, direct, and serious answer. Not the usual Paul Nelson song-and-dance, I-may-spout-ID-nonsense, but-I'd-be-a-boon-drinking-companion guff that we've seen documented here SO many times!

Needless to say, I won't be holding my breath...

Or, since you're tired of "Lenny's Game^TM," howsabout a response re: the logical inconsistency you've claimed causes arguments against ID to "founder"?
#49108, if you missed it.

I'll be happy to discuss any response you might offer to J. O'Donnell's questions as, I'm sure, will J.O'D. and others.

Or anwer a question for me -- -why would design matter, even if it were proven?
Since design is decoupled from implementation, it would seem that whether or not any given item was designed is pretty much irrelevent to science. What science would be concerned about is the implementation, the "how did they do that?" question, to which "it was designed" is not a answer.

hugs,
Shirley Knott

Joseph, can we pick one of your four questions, to focus our discussion? How about number 1?

Re "What science would be concerned about is the implementation, the "how did they do that?" question, to which "it was designed" is not a answer."

Which is why I prefer the phrase "deliberately engineered" over the rather vague phrase "intelligently designed".

Henry

This write-up will interest you guys --- it's a reaction to my talk in the Western Michigan debate, by a skeptical philosophy graduate student there.

Joseph, can we pick one of your four questions, to focus our discussion? How about number 1? Lemme know...

This is a blog for crying out lound. You don't need to write a book to respond to each one of them.

— Alienward

Joseph, you probably know this, but in case you don't, Paul is a YEC. And he dosen't even believe that properly interpreted science will support that position. He admits the scientific evidence points to billions of years, but believes in the young earth anyway.

Just thought you should know, before you commit yourself to arguing, that your opponent doesn't listen to reason.

Just thought you should know, before you commit yourself to arguing, that your opponent doesn't listen to reason.

hi, there is someone from God's own country saying something good about ID and evolution together at
http://sqsme.blogspot.com/
with love,
shafiq

Wasn't his book on common descent announce late 90's by some ID proponents? Last time I checked it was still 'pending'.