Our "innate" tendency to infer purpose in nature"

I can actually hear the DI, Dembski, Behe and IDiots et al verbalizing "Curses! Foiled again"!

And this is how, by "focusing exclusively on the mechanisms", we can conclude that an intelligence is involved without being able to describe a single mechanism! Hey, just look. It's obvious. An insight here into how Belief can continue to be reinforced even after rationality kicks in.

In other words, it's the old animism issue. People are almost born animists, and have to learn how to think in terms of causality, etc.

Here's one paper on it:

http://homepage.psy.utexas.edu/homepage/class/Psy394N/Woolley/6%20Feb%2028%20Conceptual%20Dev/Kelemen%20&%20DiYanni.pdf

A point I would make is that we actually begin to think "cause" in terms of our own actions. That is to say, we learn that a "cause" is us thinking that we might do something, then deciding to do it. We thus tend to suppose that other humans and animals do much the same thing--but also that wind has decided to do harm to us, that waves target us as victims, that storms decided to destroy our crops.

Do dogs growl at ghosts? Well, nearly so, because they, too, tend to take threats as directed at themselves by some evil purpose. A threat is to be understood as purposefully evil until proven otherwise (habituation), since you can't take the chance that perhaps it is all just accidental.

We think of purpose as being revealed by rationality and some known non-rational effects of humans. But a lot of people think of purpose as being nearly synonymous with function, as the IDists do.

"I can't look at the design of the human body without thinking that there is some kind of purpose behind it." That is the sentiment expressed by creos/IDists in various ways. And it is the truth, most of them can't look at function without thinking of purpose, since they have never gotten beyond the stage of thinking along the lines of "this is for that" ("the arm is for reaching"), which is how we first learn about body relations. It is sad that so many think on such a low level, but it is true that they do.

In a sense, then, it seems not to be Xianity that underlies the opposition of many religionists, rather it is a sort of animism that pre-dates Xianity. Christianity in its most idealized and philosophical version tends to see God behind everything, but not having touched anything that we see, He being so much beyond our thoughts and actions that He would not deign to "design" in a manner redolent of human design.

However, someone like Dembski wants it both ways, that we can recognize intelligent design in organisms just like we do with machines, yet the fact that organisms are quite unlike our designs is due to the fact that the designer is "unknown" (essentially a religious statement, btw, since even aliens could not be posited to be behind anything if they were not considered to be known in some manner (for instance, as rational designers), and only God is regularly posited to be an unknown Cause).

In closing, I would disagree somewhat with Pim's suggestion that the tendency to see purpose in nature is behind the fact that ID isn't applied rigorously anywhere. They're not coming up with ID through rigorous thought, certainly, but if they could apply it rigorously they would love to do so. It's just that every attempt to use (legitimate hypotheses of) ID rigorously fails.

Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/b8ykm

If you venture onto the Evolution and Design blog, be forewarned: MacNeill put Hannah Maxson, president of the Cornell IDEA Club, in charge of the blog, and they have "ground rules" rather more restrictive than here at PT. For example, I had one post censored in which I mentioned the "Gish gallop".

Ah, that would explain why my posts were disallowed there. An IDiot is in charge.

This may also explain other pathologies, such as seeing conspiracies everywhere. It is interesting that this can occur in very intelligent and creative people to the point of nearly paralyzing their normal functionality. Threatening patterns run amok, with no means to sort out which are specious and which are real, can be very scary.

Perhaps, with this perspective as a guide, methods could be developed which would help such patients sort out what is real what can be ignored by developing new networks of patterns in their brains. Certainly the very methods of science are themselves directed at just this kind of pattern sorting and validation.

A psych prof friend once tried to explain to me that one of the symptoms of schizophrenia is sensing patterns where there aren't any. I suspect it's our natural ability -- or tendency, or possibly even need -- to recognize patterns that gives some of us the susceptibility to snake-oil like ID.

Re Comment #121324:

Actually, very early in the summer when things started heating up at the Evolution and Design website, Hannah and I stumbled upon a very equitable system of moderation. She (a self-avowed IDer) was in charge of moderating people clearly identifiable as ID supporters, whereas I (a vehement pro-evolutionist) was in charge of moderating people clearly identifiable as EB ("evolutionary biology") supporters. After a few difficult cases, it seemed to work out pretty well. Both of us were suitably abashed by the intemperate remarks put forth by people we viewed as being on "our side," and both of us took care to let nearly all comments through, unless they clearly (indeed, egregiously) violated the clearly stated "rules of engagement." Within a day or two it became apparent to me that almost everyone had stopped hurling epithets and started providing reasoned support for their arguments (or not, in which case it was blindingly obvious to everyone reading the comments who was playing fast and loose with the truth).

As I pointed out in the latest post at our website, I don't think anyone changed their mind as a result of the seminar, but I do believe that most of us came away with a much clearer and more comprehensive grasp of the issues and how each side viewed them, and what kinds of evidence each side used to defend their views (or not, as the case may be). Furthermore, there was strong concensus at the end of the course that almost all of what most people think of as evolutionary biology (and quite literally all of what Darwin presented in the Origin of Species) is virtually untouched by ID, which focusses almost exclusively on issues surrounding the origin of life and the genetic code, plus a few selected biochemical pathways (and, of course, the bacterial flagellum). We spent a week deconstructing Michael Behe and William Dembski's arguments (and their books) and found that the much-vaunted Darwin's Black Box says virtually nothing about nearly all of evolutionary theory (and that even Behe himself concedes that there is "strong evidence" for common descent), and that Dembski's "explanatory filter" and "complex specified information," while mildly interesting from the standpoint of probability theory, has almost no demonstrable application to real-world biological systems.

Therefore, far from undermining evolutionary biology, the works of these two authors (taken at face value) have almost no relevence to the great bulk of evolutionary biology. Furthermore, all of the participants (including the ID supporters) rejected Phillip Johnson's The Wedge of Truth as pure political polemic, not worthy of our time and attention; indeed, one of the most ardent ID supporters stated "That isn't ID." If not, then at least for the participants on the notorious Cornell evolution and design seminar, ID is an entirely theoretical hypothesis restricted to the origin of life, the origin of the genetic code, and the origin of a few selected biochemical pathways (and the bacterial flagellum), currently lacking empirical verification and without clearly defined methodologies for verification or falsification.

Perhaps, with this perspective as a guide, methods could be developed which would help such patients sort out what is real what can be ignored by developing new networks of patterns in their brains.

Perhaps, with this perspective as a guide, methods could be developed which would help such patients sort out what is real what can be ignored by developing new networks of patterns in their brains.

I would only point out that there is a big difference between "purpose" and "pattern". Pointing out that there may be inherent predispositions towards extracting patterns from observation has a lot of evidentiary support.

Claiming the same of "purpose" is entirely anthropomorphic, subjective, and has NO evidentiary support.

MacNeill I'm sure has studied the concept of search patterns.

this concept is not defacto extensible to the concpet of "purpose" in the teleological sense.

clarification:

by "search patterns" I'm specifically referring the ethological concept of "search images".

Re Comment #121347:

Actually, the concept of "agency" (that is, of purposeful action) is currently a hot topic in evolutionary psychology, with quite a bit of empirical evidence (and more coming as we speak). For example, see:

Atran, S. & Norenzayan, A. (2006) Religion's evolutionary landscape: Counterintuition, commitment, compassion, communion. Forthcoming in Behavioral and Brain Sciences. Abstract available at http://artsci.wustl.edu/~pboyer/RelCogWebSite/index.html

[From the abstract]: "A key feature of the supernatural agent concepts common to all religions is the triggering of an "Innate Releasing Mechanism," or "agency detector," whose proper (naturally selected) domain encompasses animate objects relevant to hominid survival --- such as predators, protectors, and prey --- but that actually extends to moving dots on computer screens, voices in wind, and faces on clouds."

This is precisely the kind of "agency detector" that Broaddus referes to in her paper, and which is currently under investigation by several teams of researchers at several universities. The ability to detect "agents" (that is, entities that act with purposeful intent) is widespread in the kingdom animalia, and has very high adaptive value. It is my contention that this ability, which is almost certainly innate, leads to the kinds of "false positives" that characterize the arguments of most ID supporters.

Re: Comment #121320

The proposition that the knowledge of "self" comes before the knowledge of "other" is quite interesting. It's almost opposite a proposal that I had read about a few years ago.

The proposal was that, to be a successful social animal, the species had to evolve the ability to detect and understand the intentions of others, so that one could predict and reason about the responses of others to one's own actions. "If I steal his food, is he going to hit me, or is he going to sit and cry?" With this successful wiring in place, it's not a large leap to then co-opt that wiring be able to predict *our* responses to others. That is, we could begin to reason about ourselves as well as others. Viola, "consciousness". But if the knowledge of "self" comes first, that proposition may not be reasonable.

I hear ya Bill. It seems to me that with all the internets being sent here the tubes get clogged like there's no tomorrow.

This tendency to identify patterns and "intent" in natural phenomena remind me of insects whose wings have false eyespots on them, which resemble the gaze of some predator or other. Apparently even the "lower" animals "know" enough about intent to avoid an unblinking pair of peepers, even if the peepers are only facade.

Excellent link Allen

Full text can be viewed at this link

Furthermore, all of the participants (including the ID supporters) rejected Phillip Johnson's The Wedge of Truth as pure political polemic, not worthy of our time and attention; indeed, one of the most ardent ID supporters stated "That isn't ID."

It appears to me that the IDer's start with a conclusion and work backwards. Therefore, they don't detect an agent, rather, they assume the agent is there and look for its tracks.

Quite different from the mechanism you propose, which, in fact, should be the way things work.

So, the question I would pose to Allen following his most excellent posting summarizing the results of his summer session is, well, several questions:

What is the current status of ID research?

With Behe and Dembski essentially marginalized, who are the scientists working on the theory of ID?

What is the role of the Discovery Institute and why are they so keen on influencing Boards of Education?

"A key feature of the supernatural agent concepts common to all religions is the triggering of an "Innate Releasing Mechanism," or "agency detector," whose proper (naturally selected) domain encompasses animate objects relevant to hominid survival --- such as predators, protectors, and prey --- but that actually extends to moving dots on computer screens, voices in wind, and faces on clouds."

...even simpler:

explain to me why the authors in the paper cited put quotation marks around

"Innate Releasing Mechanism"

As others have commented, the notion of an innate "intentionality detector" with evolutionary origins is a hot topic in evolutionary psychology, and has considerable empirical support. It is a special case of innate pattern detection, triggered by certain visual patterns (e.g. eye-like phenomena), directional behaviors, and so on.

Striking elements of it are common to most primates - for example, chimps and many other primates display innate "gaze following" (following another's gaze to determine where the other is looking). There have also been some very interesting empirical demonstrations that chimps understand what their cohorts see and have seen, and therefore know, and use that information in competing for foodstuffs.

Gaze following unfolds in human beings at a very early developmental age (by 12 to 18 months) and is the foundation of the uniquely human capacity to engage in episodes of triangulated "joint attention" that are so crucial to human learning and human culture. A related topic is the very interesting phenomena of mirror neurons and related neurological machinery adapted to enabling us to understand one another in terms of goal directed actions. These are clearly (IMHO) the expression of evolutionary adaptations.

Sometimes, however, agency detection is is deployed inappropriately, as when "intention," and hence agency, is inappropriately projected onto events in nature.

...ID is an entirely theoretical hypothesis restricted to the origin of life, the origin of the genetic code, and the origin of a few selected biochemical pathways (and the bacterial flagellum), currently lacking empirical verification and without clearly defined methodologies for verification or falsification.

— Allen MacNeill

"If not, then at least for the participants on the notorious Cornell evolution and design seminar, ID is an entirely theoretical hypothesis restricted to the origin of life, the origin of the genetic code, and the origin of a few selected biochemical pathways (and the bacterial flagellum), currently lacking empirical verification and without clearly defined methodologies for verification or falsification."

Anyone still wanting to push this into the high school curriculum needs to read this.

Re comment #121365:

Three questions were posed. The following are my answers to these questions, as they did not explicitly come up in this format this summer:

(1) What is the current status of ID research?

As far as I know, there is no empirical research that either validates or falsifies any of the principle claims of the primary authors of ID texts (i.e. Michael Behe and William Dembski, but also including David Berlinski, Guillermo Gonzalez, Stephen Meyer, and Jonathan Wells). Only Behe and Dembski have presented even quasi-empirical applications of ID theory. The remainder fall into the same category that Phillip Johnson did this summer - that is, they write what amount to polemics based on opinion and speculation, nearly all of it negative (that is, they do not present positive hypotheses, they merely attack various aspects of evolutionary theory). As noted earlier, Behe and Dembski's works were the primary focus of our seminar this summer, and the conclusions most of us arrived at have already been noted.

I believe that the primary reason that there is essentially no empirical research being done to either validate or falsify ID theory is that ID theory in general does not consist of positive hypotheses that can be empirically tested. As many have pointed out, Behe's concept of "irreducible complexity" is based almost entirely on ignorance and lack of information, rather than on "first principles" (i.e. on theoretical formulations that lead to the conclusion that the evolution of "irreducibly complex" objects or processes are impossible).

Dembski's mathematical speculations remain precisely that: speculations without the slightest shred of empirical support. After spending many hours working through Dembski's mathematics, we concluded that it is currently impossible to use his "explanatory filter" (as expressed in mathematical terms) to determine if a given biological entity quallifies as "complex specified information" (CSI). Although Dembski's mathematics are mildly interesting from a purely intellectual standpoint, they do not lend themselves to making actual calculations, again because there are so many unknown variables that must be quantified before his equation(s) for CSI can acually yield confirmatory or disconfirmitory judgements.

Therefore, unless someone undertakes a program of research tha proposes a series of testable positive hypotheses based on ID theory that can be empirically validated, it appears likely that ID theory will eventually come to the same fate as Bergson and Deleuze's concept of élan vital; a footnote to the progress of empirical science, of interest only to those interested in failed pseudoscientific "theories."

(2) With Behe and Dembski essentially marginalized, who are the scientists working on the theory of ID?

As far as I know, there are none. With the possible exception of Guillermo Gonzalez, all of the other authors listed above do not perform empirical research. Rather, they pursue an essentially negative program of attacking evolutionary biology and proposing philosophical speculations (based almost entirely on fundamentalist Christian theology) as a substitute.

(3) What is the role of the Discovery Institute and why are they so keen on influencing Boards of Education?

The Discovery Institute is a purely political entity, not currently engaged in any form of empirical research (nor supporting such research in either monetary or other ways), whose entire function appears to be to promote a political program intended to force a basically fundamentalist Christian viewpoint into the public schools and, eventually into local, state, and national governments and laws. These goals are explicitly stated by the directors of the Discovery Institute in the "wedge document" and have been its primary raison d'etre since its inception.

We did not directly discuss the Discovery Institute, the "wedge document," the Kitzmiller v. Dover trial and decision, nor the writings of any of the polemicists listed above. This was a deliberate decision on the part of the participants in the seminar, as we all wanted to restrict our analysis and discussion to the scientific claims of the principle ID theorists. This is why we dismissed Phillip Johnson's book, The Wedge of Truth and why we spent relatively little time discussing Dawkins's The Blind Watchmaker, as both were essentially "position statements," rather than scientific analyses. I my opinion, the same can essentially be said for Behe's Darwin's Black Box, leaving only Dembski's The Design Inference as the only non-polemical work in all of ID "theory." And, as noted above, we concluded that Dembski's mathematical work only suggests a possible way of distinguishing between "natural" and "designed" objects and processes, without presenting an empirically testable way of so distinguishing.

So, was the whole exercise "worth it?" It was indeed, as it helped all of us come to clarity on many of the foregoing points. As I have stated elsewhere, I don't think anyone changed her/his mind over the course of the summer, but I believe (based on our discussions, especially during the last class) that we did come to some clarity on the issues, on the kinds of arguments made by both sides, and the kinds of evidence that would qualify as confirmative or disconfirmative on either side of the issue. Currently, there is abundant confirmative evidence for most of evolutionary theory (with the exception of the origin of life, the genetic code, and selected biochemical pathways) and virtually no empirical confirmative evidence for ID theory. Unless ID "theorists" take steps to become ID "scientists," this situation is unlikely to change.

Currently, there is abundant confirmative evidence for most of evolutionary theory (with the exception of the origin of life, the genetic code, and selected biochemical pathways)

As I have stated elsewhere, I don't think anyone changed her/his mind over the course of the summer, but I believe (based on our discussions, especially during the last class) that we did come to some clarity on the issues, on the kinds of arguments made by both sides, and the kinds of evidence that would qualify as confirmative or disconfirmative on either side of the issue. Currently, there is abundant confirmative evidence for most of evolutionary theory (with the exception of the origin of life, the genetic code, and selected biochemical pathways) and virtually no empirical confirmative evidence for ID theory.

And just what is THE "Theory of ID" again?

Note:
1)Life 'not being an accident'(or any other subjective judgment) is not an objective theory, it's a subjective belief.

2)Life (seemingly complex to some) having 'not evolved' is not an objective theory, its a subjective belief

3)Disparaging another theory with simple negatives while not providing positive evidence is not an objective theory, its a subjective belief.

The 'Theory of ID' is like the weather, never the same twice, just like the gods.

Let us not break our intellectual backs bending over to give the benefit of nonexistent doubt.

Point of clarification: the last picture in the series is the "Nun Bun" from the Bongo Java coffee house in Nashville, TN. It is a cinamon roll and is definitely man-made.

Heck, if Allen couldn't do it by carefully walking through all the relevant literature, step by step, I tend to think it simply can't be done. In the same way, I can also guess that those who think Francis collins will have better luck with his "approach" will end up being disappointed as well.

— Sir Toe Jam

I'm tempted to say:"Can we just get on with the inevitable game of whack-a-mole now, and put aside all attempts at reconciliation?" but, I suppose there might yet be some way of putting this idiocy to rest that involves some sort of intellectual argument. Anything is possible.

bottom line though, the evidence to me, and others here, seems to point to a potential underlying psychological malady that creates this kind of worldview.

You can't talk a creationist out of being a creationist, or at least, one has about the same chance of success as talking an alcoholic out of being a alcoholic.

I definitely think the eradication of religion is out of the question and shouldn't be pursued under the same banner as eradicating anti-evolution.

Creating a more informed public that can see through ID bullshit for themselves is the first and probably the most difficult step

A more achievable short-term goal would probably be to defuse much of the tension between religious groups and secular science, because provocation isn't going to make people suddenly more reasonable, rational, and agreeable.

Dr. Pennock's books on Creationism which don't ever give the impression of any personal religious beliefs at all but present the cases free of bias, informatively and academically, while still revealing the anti-evolutionist movers to be clownishly inept and hopelessly thickskulled besides being factually wrong.

I see it as a problem of personality and psychology rather than religion or areligious beliefs, it's a fundamental problem with the way some people think (or don't think) of things, especially in regards to the possibility of themselves being ignorant and wrong, rather than whether or not they choose to believe in a Flying Spaghetti Monster.

Consider the almost unfailing tendency of Creation proponents to recycle and reguritate decades-old bull despite being irrefutably and demonstrably wrong .

But I always argue to the bitter end for the sake of the spectators, the fence-sitters, those who don't know about this whole "evolution" thing but might be willing to give it a shot if only somebody would teach them about it.

Flint

Sheesh. Let us not break our intellectual backs bending over to give the benefit of nonexistent doubt.

Don't worry, Flint. Allen is extremely flexible in this regard. Civility trumps truth in the land of infinitesimally pointy heads.

Reading Allen's description of the course "results" here, one might imagine that you could go to the Evolution and Design blog and find all sorts of statements where Allen's ID peddlin' buddy Hannah Maxson is criticizing the statements of Behe and Dembski and their inspirational guru, Phil Johnson.

You'll not find that. And you'll also discover that as the course blog goes on, you'll find less questions answered by the "honest" and "passionate" Ms. Maxson. That is because asking certain obvious questions of Allen or Hannah violated their strange creationist-favoring "ground rules" and resulted in the banning of those who dared ask those questions.

All that is left, then, is endless blithering about where the greatest source of Salvador Cordova's confusion lies. Been there, done that.

As for what actually happened in Allen's class, it remains something of a mystery since almost all the reporting on the class came from Allen or Hannah, both of whom seem deeply committed to ensuring the appearance of the "success" of the class, according to their own terms. The blog was certainly a success in terms of creationist marketing as it contains commentary by both Allen and Hannah which is sharply critical of at least one prominent evolutionary biologist (Dawkins) and -- as far as I can tell -- precisely zero statements by Hannah criticizing the well-known lies of her ID heroes.

What's up with that, Allen? Any thoughts? Does Hannah lack the gene for admitting baloney? Any adaptive advantages in that mutation?

As one of the blog participants, I have found the moderation policy overall quite helpful as it helped focus on the issues rather than on side discussions about who was telling the truth... Exploring the shaky grounds on which complex specified information is built is far more helpful in convincing these IDers than about who said what and who was and was not telling the full truth.
I think that the course has exposed the scientific vacuity of intelligent design and while few if any may have changed their immediate positions, it has helped spread the seed of doubt.
Remember that upto this seminar most IDers had not been exposed to much of any of the critical arguments against ID. Especially not at the level of the supposedly 'scientific' claims of ID.
Different audiences require different approaches to expose them to the many problems of ID.
As such Allen's course has been an excellent opportunity to do exactly that. By showing how not only ID is scientifically vacuous but also how teleology and purpose in biology are not surprising given the processes involved. In other words, evolutionary processes are inherently teleological. That's why we talk about apparent versus actual design for instance.

Pim

As one of the blog participants, I have found the moderation policy overall quite helpful as it helped focus on the issues rather than on side discussions about who was telling the truth... Exploring the shaky grounds on which complex specified information is built is far more helpful in convincing these IDers than about who said what and who was and was not telling the full truth.

Who are these IDers? Was Hannah Maxson convinced that ID is vacuous? Or that ID is Christian apologetics pretending to be science? What about Salvador Cordova? I don't recall them admitting such things. So how do you know what seeds of doubt were planted, Pim?

Remember that up to this seminar most IDers had not been exposed to much of any of the critical arguments against ID.

What are you talking about? Isn't there any IDEA Club at Cornell? And isn't Maxson the President? The "triple major"? You are suggesting that these people aren't aware of the criticisms of "intelligent design" theory? After Dover?

Different audiences require different approaches to expose them to the many problems of ID.

I have no idea what that could possibly have to do with the Evolution and Design blog which, by design, greatly limited the approaches that could be taken.

In other words, evolutionary processes are inherently teleological. That's why we talk about apparent versus actual design for instance.

Really? (Yawns)

Let me ask a simple question: why do Salvador Cordova and Hannah Maxson refuse to admit that Dembski's and Behe's "theories" are useless to biologists? What is that prevents them from admitting this?

Do you seriously believe (as Allen appears to believe) that Sal and Hannah are "innately" predisposed to behave like schmucks?

I see it now.

ID morphs into ID (Innate Delusion) the theory that Delusion more successfully reproduces because of its 'innateness'....or colloquially ...'born stupid'.

I fail to understand how after this class 100% of the IDers who participated were simultaneously able to a) fully admit and accept that ID makes no testible scientific claims and b) not change their initial position one iota.

One or the other didn't happen as it's being described.

there was strong concensus at the end of the course that almost all of what most people think of as evolutionary biology (and quite literally all of what Darwin presented in the Origin of Species) is virtually untouched by ID ... found that the much-vaunted Darwin's Black Box says virtually nothing about nearly all of evolutionary theory ... Dembski's "explanatory filter" and "complex specified information," ... has almost no demonstrable application to real-world biological systems.

ID is an entirely theoretical hypothesis restricted to the origin of life, the origin of the genetic code, and the origin of a few selected biochemical pathways (and the bacterial flagellum)

Exploring the shaky grounds on which complex specified information is built is far more helpful in convincing these IDers than about who said what and who was and was not telling the full truth.

I think that the course has exposed the scientific vacuity of intelligent design and while few if any may have changed their immediate positions, it has helped spread the seed of doubt.

By showing how not only ID is scientifically vacuous but also how teleology and purpose in biology are not surprising given the processes involved. In other words, evolutionary processes are inherently teleological.

That's why we talk about apparent versus actual design for instance.

This is why we dismissed Phillip Johnson's book, The Wedge of Truth and why we spent relatively little time discussing Dawkins's The Blind Watchmaker, as both were essentially "position statements," rather than scientific analyses.

I don't know about anybody else, but I found the gist of what was presented in this thread, by both Pim and Allen, to be horribly confusing and the parts that made sense were mostly depressing.

I suggest both Pim and Allen spend time conversing with Dave Hawkins over on ATBC.

get a reality check.

and again, let me stress that the evangelical movement in america has far less to do with religion than it does with politics. blaming religion for the idiocy these folks exhibit is a totally seperate issue from religion as a whole.

Indeed, the faces at Mount Rushmore constitute a kind of "control" for this ability, as they are clearly the result of intentionality, and therefore can be used to anchor that end of the "agency detection" spectrum (at the other end of which are things like "faces" in clouds, tree foliage, etc.). Somewhere in this spectrum is a cross-over point at which actual intentionality/agency disappears and facticious intentionality/agency takes over. It is the location of that cross-over point that constitutes the hinge of the argument between evolutionary biologists and ID theorists.

Broaddus's analysis of autism as a possible example of malfunctioning "agency detection" is, IMO, brilliant

The "design" in evolution resembles human design about as closely as the (now crumbled) Old Man in the Mountain resembles an old man's head.

To say religion is totally separate from the idiocy they exhibit is not accurate either.

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hmm, I guess I'm also implying we need something like AA for those addicted to "religion" as well.

Creationist Anonymous?

the irony is too much for me this late at night.

As I have stated elsewhere, I don't think anyone changed her/his mind over the course of the summer, but I believe (based on our discussions, especially during the last class) that we did come to some clarity on the issues, on the kinds of arguments made by both sides, and the kinds of evidence that would qualify as confirmative or disconfirmative on either side of the issue. Currently, there is abundant confirmative evidence for most of evolutionary theory (with the exception of the origin of life, the genetic code, and selected biochemical pathways) and virtually no empirical confirmative evidence for ID theory.

Allegations about the "seed of doubt" planted in creationist "minds" would be a great deal more credible if Hannah Maxson or any other creationist involved were to exhibit some statement or behavior not thumpingly identical to that displayed by every other creationist. Instead, we see no questioning of Behe or Dembski (check), we see the flat rejection of Dawkins (check), we see the highly selective censoring of what is supposed to be a nondenominational blog (check). We see creationism in all its glory, right down the line.

Clearly, Allen MacNeill went into the course with the same Will To Believe (in his case, about what the course would accomplish) as any creationist. The course, by all indications, penetrated into no minds at all, not even superficially. Most notably, not MacNeill's mind either. So he comes out of the course trumpeting that it served its purpose, so pay no attention to the blog resoundingly demonstrating that it did absolutely nothing of the sort.

Then again, imagine Hannah's social position, as IDEA club president, if she were to even hint that maybe Behe was wrong or Dembski useless. Would mere honesty (admittedly, making the wildly unlikely assumption that she learned a damn thing) trump admiration, status, position, social life, etc.? Make no mistake, Hannah is intensely aware of how creationists treat those who question Truth. She's busy censoring them away herself!

Two minor points here:

First, it is quite possible that some of the IDers in this course did indeed come away with doubts about ID; but, since the course was subject to more public scrutiny than most college courses, they felt that admitting doubt in such a public forum, to an audience of "unbelievers," would get them in some kind of trouble with their churches, communities, families or friends. Every church has its idiots and wackos; every church also has its mellow fellows who see the idiocy and wackiness for what it is, but don't want to cause trouble by directly attacking them and thus dividing their communities.

Second, I wonder what would happen if a similar course were offered, not by a college or secular group of scientists, but by a church, in which the proponents of evolution were from the same community as the opponents. It is possible (though not certain, of course) that the IDers would be more comfortable admitting ID's flaws in the presence of fellow believers, rather than "outsiders" whose profession and priorities they may not understand. It is also possible that a serious debate within a church would not have the same divisive "pro-God/anti-God" atmosphere, and believers could then discard ID without visibly discarding their most basic and cherished beliefs about their God(s).

It is also possible that a serious debate within a church would not have the same divisive "pro-God/anti-God" atmosphere, and believers could then discard ID without visibly discarding their most basic and cherished beliefs about their God(s).

Allegations about the "seed of doubt" planted in creationist "minds" would be a great deal more credible if Hannah Maxson or any other creationist involved were to exhibit some statement or behavior not thumpingly identical to that displayed by every other creationist.

— Flint

Lastly, I feel that there are certain indicators that may give credibility to intelligent design. The point is highlighted if we return to the walking leaf insect (Phyllium) from before. There are fossil records that indicate that these insects existed back in the early Jurassic Period- long before the emergence of any deciduous trees. (Wickler, 109) If this is true, then how can mimicry via natural selection be attributed to the Phyllium? How can the mimic come before the model? These questions indicate that there are certain gaps within natural selection that need to be filled, thus giving hope to creationists everywhere that maybe ID can be the perfect fit.

— J. Bruno

Clearly, Allen MacNeill went into the course with the same Will To Believe (in his case, about what the course would accomplish) as any creationist. The course, by all indications, penetrated into no minds at all, not even superficially. Most notably, not MacNeill's mind either. So he comes out of the course trumpeting that it served its purpose, so pay no attention to the blog resoundingly demonstrating that it did absolutely nothing of the sort.

— Flint

J. Bruno's paper on mimicry and camoulflage provides a "design-friendly" perspective on a perennial topic in evolutionary biology, and provides a "synthetic" perspective that tries to reconcile the two viewpoints.

— Allen MacNeill

Yup; consider his uncritical comment about the paper mentioned above:

J. Bruno's paper on mimicry and camoulflage provides a "design-friendly" perspective on a perennial topic in evolutionary biology, and provides a "synthetic" perspective that tries to reconcile the two viewpoints.

— Allen MacNeill

I think you're being very unfair here. MacNeill is a teacher, and set the course up to teach. Professionally, he has to be supportive of his students, and not criticise them as you'd like (he may do that to some extent in marking the essays, of course).

(3) What is the role of the Discovery Institute and why are they so keen on influencing Boards of Education? The Discovery Institute is a purely political entity, not currently engaged in any form of empirical research (nor supporting such research in either monetary or other ways), whose entire function appears to be to promote a political program intended to force a basically fundamentalist Christian viewpoint into the public schools and, eventually into local, state, and national governments and laws. These goals are explicitly stated by the directors of the Discovery Institute in the "wedge document" and have been its primary raison d'etre since its inception.

This seminar addresses, in historical perspective, controversies about the cultural, philosophical, and scientific implications of evolutionary biology. Discussions focus upon questions about gods, free will, foundations for ethics, meaning in life, and life after death. Readings range from Charles Darwin to the present (see reading list, below).

The latest challenge to the neo-darwinian theory of evolution has come from the "intelligent design movement," spearheaded by the Discovery Institute in Seattle, WA. In this course, we will read extensively from authors on both sides of this debate, including Francisco Ayala, Michael Behe, Richard Dawkins, William Dembski, Phillip Johnson, Ernst Mayr, and Michael Ruse. Our intent will be to sort out the various issues at play, and to come to clarity on how those issues can be integrated into the perspective of the natural sciences as a whole.

As noted before this course even began, ID simply isn't about science, IDers are not won to ID by science, and they won't be won away from it by science either. ID is a political program for theocracy. Nothing more, nothing less, nothing else. All the "science" is largely irrelevant to it.

— Lenny

H. Hubert said: "I fail to understand how after this class 100% of the IDers who participated were simultaneously able to a) fully admit and accept that ID makes no testible scientific claims and b) not change their initial position one iota.

One or the other didn't happen as it's being described."

Unfortunately, it's completely possible for people to understand one position intellectually, yet steadfastly harbor beliefs which are directly contradictory.

In one of my classes, I have my students go through an exercise using an on-line "debate" between Miller and Johnson--a series of eight letters, exchanged between them, over the question, "Where did we come from?" The debate is fairly typical--with Miller presenting evidence (as much as was possible within the relatively limited space allowed for his entries), answering Johnson's various challenges, remaining on-topic, etc., and Johnson presenting the typical assortment of negative evidence claims, out-of-context quotes, straw man arguments, and arguments from ignorance, with a healthy dose of grandiose claims and religious rhetoric, particularly in his final entry, when he knew Miller would have no opportunity to respond.

The exercise leads the students through two kinds of analysis--isolating and invesigating claims of evidence, and evaluating quality of debate tactics. Almost every student in the class comes to the conclusion that Miller won the debate, both on the basis of quality and quantity of evidence and honesty of debate tactics.

And yet a significant percentage of them will conclude the final portion of their assignment with a statement like, "Though Dr. Miller won the debate, I still believe Dr. Johnson."

It makes me happy and sad at the same time. Happy that the student was able to set aside prior bias long enough to come to the conclusion that Johnson was full of BS, but sad that it apparently made no impact on the student's understanding of the underlying issue.

**sigh**

Lynn

Religions invariably center on supernatural agent concepts, such as gods, goblins, angels, ancestor spirits, jinns. In this section, we concentrate on the concept of agency, a central player in what cognitive and developmental psychologists refer to as "folkpsychology" and the "theory of mind." agency, we speculate, evolved hair-triggered in humans to respond "automatically" under conditions of uncertainty to potential threats (and opportunities) by intelligent predators (and protectors). From this perspective, agency is a sort of "Innate Releasing Mechanism" (Tinbergen 1951) whose proper evolutionary domain encompasses animate objects but which inadvertently extends to moving dots on computer screens, voices in the wind, faces in the clouds, and virtually any complex design or uncertain circumstance of unknown origin This insight into the supernatural as the by-product of a hair-triggered agency detector was first elaborated by Guthrie (Guthrie 1993; cf. Hume 1957[1756]). We further ground it in the emerging theory of folkpsychology.

In sum, supernatural agents are readily conjured up because natural selection has trip-wired cognitive schema for agency detection in the face of uncertainty. Uncertainty is omnipresent; so, too, the hair-triggering of an agency-detection mechanism that readily promotes supernatural interpretation and is susceptible to various forms of cultural manipulation. Cultural manipulation of this modular mechanism and priming facilitate and direct the process. Because the phenomena created readily activate intuitively given modular processes, they are more likely to survive transmission from mind to mind under a wide range of different environments and learning conditions than entities and information that are harder to process (Atran 1998, 2001). As a result, they are more likely to become enduring aspects of human cultures, such as belief in the supernatural

Clearly, Allen MacNeill went into the course with the same Will To Believe (in his case, about what the course would accomplish) as any creationist. The course, by all indications, penetrated into no minds at all, not even superficially. Most notably, not MacNeill's mind either. So he comes out of the course trumpeting that it served its purpose, so pay no attention to the blog resoundingly demonstrating that it did absolutely nothing of the sort.

— Flint

Exposing in a 'hands on' seminar how ID fails to be relevant scientifically is an important step in undermining this component of ID.

Pvm, it seems that DaveScot often resorts to analogies between things in nature and human designs (eg. between DNA and digital codes). Given that there are also dissimilarities I once asked him to explain how he decides what level of similarity is needed to infer design via analogy. He never answered that question, which shows his bluster to be another case of "I know design when I see it".

...Almost every student in the class comes to the conclusion that Miller won the debate, both on the basis of quality and quantity of evidence and honesty of debate tactics.

And yet a significant percentage of them will conclude the final portion of their assignment with a statement like, "Though Dr. Miller won the debate, I still believe Dr. Johnson."

It makes me happy and sad at the same time. Happy that the student was able to set aside prior bias long enough to come to the conclusion that Johnson was full of BS, but sad that it apparently made no impact on the student's understanding of the underlying issue.

That conclusion is not necessarily supported by the facts. The student in question could have understood the dishonesty and vacuity of ID as scientific proof of a Creator, yet still believe in a Creator. If the student comes away understanding that he/she doesn't have to lie for Jesus to be a good Christian, and/or that such lies can be exposed as such, then that would be an improvement.

Obviously DaveScot missed the argument that there exists an innate ability (possibly with an evolutionary history) that causes humans to perceive design. This is obviously not just limited to clouds but also to other instances where their ignorance causes them some concern and insist on "generating" an explanation. An excellent example is how in the past and presence, unexplained systems were attributed to a 'designer'.

Somehow DaveScott seems to believe that just because he sees 'robotic protein factories' and 'digital specifications' there must have been a 'designer'. He of course is correct but the innate ability to perceive design seems to have led him astray into believing that since we do not understand how these systems arose to a sufficiently detailed level, that the designer should have been supernatural.

Undermining all components of ID has already been done extensively. All the seminar could achieve is to undermine it for these particular participants, but it appears to have failed to do so, since no one has changed their mind and the IDers continue to make exactly the same arguments they always have.

— Popper's Ghost

This seminar addresses, in historical perspective, controversies about the cultural, philosophical, and scientific implications of evolutionary biology. Discussions focus upon questions about gods, free will, foundations for ethics, meaning in life, and life after death. Readings range from Charles Darwin to the present (see reading list, below).

The latest challenge to the neo-darwinian theory of evolution has come from the "intelligent design movement," spearheaded by the Discovery Institute in Seattle, WA. In this course, we will read extensively from authors on both sides of this debate, including Francisco Ayala, Michael Behe, Richard Dawkins, William Dembski, Phillip Johnson, Ernst Mayr, and Michael Ruse. Our intent will be to sort out the various issues at play, and to come to clarity on how those issues can be integrated into the perspective of the natural sciences as a whole.

And the previous seven entries all illustrate why it is absolutely useless to expect to have any kind of rational discussion at this website. Comment by Allen_MacNeill --- August 22, 2006 @ 12:42 pm

Remind me again, to which of the participants did you talk about this?

And why should a single seminar change how IDers approach these issues?

Did you attend the seminar? Did you discuss with the participants? Or are you being 'guided' by the comments on the blog? Realize then that most of the blog participants were NOT seminar attendees. Perhaps you are familiar with the 'garbage in garbage out' paradigm?

Remind me again, to which of the participants did you talk about this?

Well said Allen, whenever people raise uncomfortable issues, IDers are quick to bury their heads in the clouds.

I find it interesting that, rather than discuss the content of E. Broaddus's paper, most of the commentators at this website feel fully justified in attacking both the motives of the students taking my seminar course and my motives in offering it, and in my enforcing some minimum standards of civility at the course website. That virtually none of the commentators has demonstrated any familiarity with the content of the students papers posted at the website (all but one of which vigorously support the "evolution side") indicates to me that they have already made up their minds about what happened in the course and don't want to be confused by the facts. This despite the fact that there is a detailed commentary online available to all at http://evolutionanddesign.blogsome.com/, currently comprising 24 posts (several by the students in the course) and over 1,500 comments from both sides of the issue, plus downloadable copies of most of the final research papers written by the students in the course. What can one conclude from this except:

* the commentators at Panda's Thumb don't give a damn about students or their ideas, regardless of whether they agree with them or not

* the commentators at Panda's Thumb also don't give a damn about arguments based on evidence (even when those arguments support their own position), but prefer to make definitive statements about courses in which they have not participated and research papers that they have not read

Almost anyone viewing the comments here would be justified in concluding that commentators at the Panda's Thumb (i hesitate to refer to them as "evolutionary biologists") are utterly uninterested in what a bright, hard-working, conscientious student is thinking vis-a-vis a topic of much discussion among evolutonary psychologists, and are instead only interested in getting back to playing "whack-a-mole." This conclusion simply amplifies one that I came to reluctantly after a couple of weeks of moderating the Evolution and Design website: the majority of people on both sides of this issue are not interested in rational discussion nor logical arguments supported by evidence. They are only interested in polemics and character assasination for political reasons that are fundamentally unrelated to questions of scientific investigation or philosophical discussion.

"We'll just have to take MacNeill's word for it, while ignoring the censorship Maxson is quite clearly exerting on the blog itself. We must also be careful not to CONCLUDE anything from said censorship..."

Clearly, the poster who wrote this paid no attention to my own description of how the course website was moderated, nor displayed any understanding of why a COURSE website should not be conducted in the same kind of drunk mudwrestling format that goes on here.

It's people like you folks that make me wonder if I'm really on the right side, here. When Sal Cordova treats me and my students with civility and you folks heap nothing but scorn on them, what am I (and they) supposed to conclude?

I find it interesting that, rather than discuss the content of E. Broaddus's paper

They are only interested in polemics and character assasination for political reasons that are fundamentally unrelated to questions of scientific investigation or philosophical discussion.

It's people like you folks that make me wonder if I'm really on the right side, here. When Sal Cordova treats me and my students with civility and you folks heap nothing but scorn on them, what am I (and they) supposed to conclude?

Ah, now I get it: Popper's Ghost is actually a troll: DaveScott, is that you?

Ah, now I get it: Popper's Ghost is actually a troll: DaveScott, is that you?

When Sal Cordova treats me and my students with civility and you folks heap nothing but scorn on them, what am I (and they) supposed to conclude?

It's people like you folks that make me wonder if I'm really on the right side, here. When Sal Cordova treats me and my students with civility and you folks heap nothing but scorn on them, what am I (and they) supposed to conclude?

It's people like you folks that make me wonder if I'm really on the right side, here. When Sal Cordova treats me and my students with civility and you folks heap nothing but scorn on them, what am I (and they) supposed to conclude?

Yes, I didn't bother to read the papers. The fact is that these issues have been dealt with fairly well using phenomenological approaches (not that they explain everything, but at least they don't immediately leap to the notion of built-in tendencies prior to discussing how we come to know the world after being born), and a student paper discussing "modules" and "innate tendencies" does not appeal to me whatsoever.

However, I since went and looked at the linked paper, which only fuels my doubts about the course, or anyway, the results of the course. Here at the conclusion:

"However, I doubt there is a final answer to whether our detection of purpose in the natural world is a false positive."

What kind of nonsense is that? I could say the same thing in a strictly Kantian sense, true, but within the practice of science, Kantian or otherwise, we almost always are able to come up with extremely good criteria for deciding whether or not our detection of "purpose" in the "natural world" is a false positive.

The fact is that we are fully capable of modeling the world according to empirically-known forces, and to measure what we view in the universe against those models. Finding "purpose" in "nature" is a colossal false positive.

No matter how teleologically humans think, especially when young, there are a bewildering number of alternatives, some of which have been hit upon even before modern science. Forms, accidents, necessity, Epicurean modeling, all can give us alternatives to "purpose".

And anyway, adults have typically had to learn that many things occur which were not in fact "purposive". The real lesson of children is that they are very good at inferring purpose in just about any insult, pain, or accident, and not just in thinking that "this is for that". Adults learn that people cause injury, insult, and slights without there being any purpose toward these results existing, despite the fact that agency is involved. Most adults also learn that rocks usually fall due to circumstances, not the gods.

Even religious folk who believe that the end is the purpose of the gods, often can recognize that there is not purpose in every happenstance. This is true even of the ancients, although they typically had trouble dealing with classically random events (pure chance was often thought to be decided by the gods--but that may be less a matter of inferring purpose everywhere than it is filling in the gap where they had no explanation).

The upshot is that we have no excuse for inferring purpose (not as intelligent and knowledgeable adults, anyhow) where agency is not demonstrable. While it took a long time for humanity to recognize that an agent does not by itself cause feelings of love and desire within me, that "uncaused" sensing of pinpricks are caused by something other than witchcraft and/or spirits, and that in general we have no evidence for unknown agents operating within this world, the triumph of modern science is found in the fact that we did learn how to differentiate between "purposeful" phenomena and those that lack "purpose".

Broaddus either didn't learn that in your seminar--or anywhere else--or she is injecting philosophical issues into matters that are dealt with best by science (plus philosophy, sure). I do not see it as a favorable outcome, although I don't know how she came into the the seminar.

Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/b8ykm

"Nothing but scorn"? Maybe we're supposed to conclude that you failed to read posts by PvM, Bob O'H, Glen Davison, and others who were quite polite.

Are you claiming, Popper, that PvM provided "nothing" but that line?

Are you claiming, Popper, that PvM provided "nothing" but that line?

Are you claiming, Popper, that PvM provided "nothing" but that line?

the majority of people on both sides of this issue are not interested in rational discussion nor logical arguments supported by evidence.

It's people like you folks that make me wonder if I'm really on the right side, here.

For the record, I'll stipulate that in my experience Salvador has been invariably polite in saying things known to be false, carefully misinterpreting good questions, or changing the subject. Most of all, his total silence when no good evasions or distortions present themselves are utterly free of the slightest abrasiveness - unless you are so think-skinned as to be peeved when Salvadore subsequently pops up elsewhere to repeat exactly what he would not answer you about. Politely, of course.

This is an interesting topic I broached a few years ago due to the historic impact of the Makapansgat pebble. See http://home.insight.rr.com/jkmckee/IntelligentDesign3.htm

Indeed, Flint, I think Allen has quite a narrow view of what "civility" means.

If lying and rapid fire quote mining are aspects of civil discourse, Sal is the most civil person on the web.

Oh, that's right, we're supposed to ignore who said which lies.

silly me.

It's people like you folks that make me wonder if I'm really on the right side, here. When Sal Cordova treats me and my students with civility and you folks heap nothing but scorn on them, what am I (and they) supposed to conclude?

For the record, I'll state that in my experience Salvadore has been invariably polite while he says things known not to be true, carefully misinterprets questions put to him, changes the subject under pressure, or simply drops out of a discussion when no good ways to evade or distort questions present themselves.

Apparent MacNeill has not learned the lesson anyone who has spent years talking with creationists knows by heart: they lie.

Popper's Ghost seems to be quote mining a bit right now. My comments were not directed at MacNeill's students but rather at the IDers at Uncommon Descent.

It's people like you folks that make me wonder if I'm really on the right side, here. When Sal Cordova treats me and my students with civility and you folks heap nothing but scorn on them, what am I (and they) supposed to conclude?

Both yourself and Pim are overestimating the value of rational debate. As i said, ever try to rationally talk a junkie out of being a junkie?

If rationale arguments or debate are overrated then perhaps it's time to close PT? Or does PT serve a purpose after all?

Allen is correct, Sal has been polite on Evolution and Design, of course he could vent his frustrations safely on Uncommon Descent. Nevertheless, politeness goes a long way, and the Evolution and Design blogsite enforced politeness with a vengeance, improving much of the communication. It did come with a cost though: Sal was allowed to get away with unsupported assertions, even though this behavior was quickly caught on to by most participants.
Seems to me that people like Flint and Popper's Ghost are quick to judge based on little information. Imagine what kind of message this sends...

I suppose in his world, encouraging error politely is preferable to the drunk-mudwrestler rudeness of actually pointing out that it's error!

And the previous seven entries all illustrate why it is absolutely useless to expect to have any kind of rational discussion at this website. Comment by Allen_MacNeill --- August 22, 2006 @ 12:42 pm

Thank you, Allen, for showing us the error of our ways. Perhaps you would deign to lead us from this, our dark pit of ignorance and despair, into the bright peaks of knowledge and relevance, through further prognostications on your part. After all, to kvetch is plebeian and to lead is noble. I'm sure your venerable fencing master must have taught something similar to that. Comment by DaveScot --- August 22, 2006 @ 1:43 pm

Allen, What DaveScot posted was not directed at you nor your very fine student, Elena. I had Pim's name on it, and like Yankee Roger Clemens pitching in Fenway Park, one can expect a certain reaction when Pim's name is mentioned here. This is a weblog that is basically a variety show. There will be serious and then not so serious modes of discussion. So I encourage you to look for threads of interest to you, and simply change channels when a discussion is no longer appealing. I would hope you don't leave the website entirely..... I have tried to give you my take on the issue of Elena's paper: here. I wrote a long response to you comment which I think may help your research. I hope however, you realize there are times these threads between UD and PandasThumb are like the fan clubs of two opposing teams: like the Yankees versus the Red Sox, where the gang isn't really in the mode of academic discussion, but following light-hearted comaraderie and tribal mentality.... I point that out to say, each thread will appeal to some more than others.... Salvador PS I personally am a Baltimore Orioles fan. Comment by scordova --- August 22, 2006 @ 1:52 pm

A distinction that I sometimes make is that between personal honesty and intellectual honesty. There may be a number of IDists who are personally honest, but I doubt that any are intellectually honest, i.e., consistent in their use of evidence and reasoning across the disciplines. I wouldn't personally call most of them liars most of the time, not without making the distinction between personal and intellectual honesty anyway (and then I'd typically call them liars without using that word). Dave Thomas was provoked by personal attack, however (which he pointed out full well), so that between the personal nature of Sal's offense and the rather blatant intellectual dishonesty that constantly pervades his "evaluations", I have no complaints about Thomas' characterization at this juncture. Here's something from the past: Has any intelligent designer ever been shown to produce designs that are like the forms and "machines" that we find in organisms? I just thought I'd ask this simple and basic question, the sort of essential question that IDists should answer before we even begin to consider anything else that Sal or other IDists have to say Glen D

[Sal]Yes, and even before we knew they existed in the cell: 1. Turing Machines 2. Analog to Digital Converters 3. Compilers 4. Operating Systems 5. Digital Error Correction 6. Spectral Analyzers 7. Feed Back Control Circuits 8. Rotary Motors 9. Aritificial Languages constructed with Backus-Normal Forms etc.

[Glen again]So I guess the answer is "no", you do not know of any intelligent designer that produces the forms and "machines" that we find in living organisms. However, you do not mind calling one thing by the name of another and basing a pseudoscience upon those words. Not only did religious folk know the difference between machines and living organisms well even in ancient times, but there are virtually no scientists today who would confuse the two. IDists must confuse the two to make a pretense at science, but they can't show a single organ that is anything like what known intelligent designers produce---the exhibit of this fact is above.

It's people like you folks that make me wonder if I'm really on the right side, here. When Sal Cordova treats me and my students with civility and you folks heap nothing but scorn on them, what am I (and they) supposed to conclude?

It's people like you folks that make me wonder if I'm really on the right side, here. When Sal Cordova treats me and my students with civility and you folks heap nothing but scorn on them, what am I (and they) supposed to conclude?

The civil argument was settled long ago. That's the scientific argument and that's finished.

ID is not science, rather it's a supernatural notion.
There is no ID research.
There are no ID researchers.
There is no ID theory.
There is no ID hypothesis.
There is only a meaningless statement: some things look designed. Big deal.
ID is not even a blip on the biology radar scope of any university on the Planet.

As a political entity, however, that's another story. The politics of ID is alive and well. I don't think one should expect civil arguments in the political arena. Quite the contrary, the Disco Institute and all of the ID proponents have demonstrated over and over a propensity to use any means possible to "win" including lying, misleading and plain old BS-ing.

As for Sal, in particular, he's been checkmated in every game he's entered and does he leave with a "By, Jove, old man, you got me there! Jolly good move!" No. Sal leaves with a nasty invective along the lines of "%#$* you and the horse you rode in on," embarrassing hanging participle and all. Sal gets no respect because he's intellectually dishonest, but that could be said about Behe, Dembski, Wells, Witt, Luskin and the whole ID rats nest.

But, as a political force ID must be reckoned with. It must be countered and that takes time and effort by people who would rather be doing other things.

Here at the Panda's Thumb both arguments are played out over and over, and usually mixed: science and politics. If you want civil, then check out all those ID articles in Science and Nature.

Oh...

And yet a significant percentage of them will conclude the final portion of their assignment with a statement like, "Though Dr. Miller won the debate, I still believe Dr. Johnson."

It's people like you folks that make me wonder if I'm really on the right side, here. When Sal Cordova treats me and my students with civility and you folks heap nothing but scorn on them, what am I (and they) supposed to conclude?

And, and "you folks heap nothing but scorn on them, what am I (and they) supposed to conclude?"

Hopefully you would conclude that ID is worthy of scorn.

Your flaw seems to be that you presume that I am considering rationale debate to be the only way to resolve the ID issue.

How many IDers are impressed by arguments that ID is nothing but Christianity in drags?

It may make one feel good to make such statements, certainly I have been guilty of such remarks as well.

But it is also very ineffective and only serves to strengthen the resolve of IDers.

If rationale arguments or debate are overrated then perhaps it's time to close PT? Or does PT serve a purpose after all? Even if it is a relatively minor one?

What if Allen believes that allowing students to discover their own errors on their own terms is far more efficient than telling them that they are wrong, wrong wrong...

My comments were not directed at MacNeill's students but rather at the IDers at Uncommon Descent.

How many IDers are impressed by arguments that ID is nothing but Christianity in drags?

There's no reason to think that there is any significant difference from the breed in MacNeill's class and the breed at UD.

Or does PT serve a purpose after all?

"The patrons gather to discuss evolutionary theory, critique the claims of the antievolution movement, defend the integrity of both science and science education, and share good conversation."

On Panda's Thumb Pim Van Meurs preaches confidently to the choir that we are all biased in that we see faces in natural objects created by chance.

politeness goes a long way

Seems to me that people like Flint and Popper's Ghost are quick to judge based on little information

a few assholes like Popper's Ghost

Seems to me that people like Flint and Popper's Ghost are quick to judge based on little information...

What an interesting thread! Better, in all respects, than most. I am a bit disappointed that Allen MacNeill did not choose language more in keeping with studies in neuroscience and known brain function specializations, and so help direct the student. Ah well, it can always be rewritten.

But this is not just pattern recognition, as one commenter questioned. In Computer Science the appropriate paradigm is denoted by

Pattern --> Action

where each classification is attached to some appropriate action. I think this is approximately what Allen and his student were considering.

except these are supposedly currently students at Cornell, yes?

aside from that technicality, yeah, there is no reason to apriori assume that there are any qualitative differences in a Cornell IDer vs. any other.

Well, this may just be me, but looking at the same data here what I personally would conclude is that that Sal Cordova is buttering you up, whereas people here are more interested in being right than being polite. I would furthermore conclude that the price of participating in a forum where speech and participancy are unrestricted is that you are going to run into a few assholes like Popper's Ghost when doing so.

He was called on it, in a direct but still civil manner.

Being right need not be very effective if it results in people ignoring you.

While you may believe (correctly imho) that ID is not about science, discussions with IDEAists have indicated to me that they are indeed convinced that there is good science to be had.

Exposing in a 'hands on' seminar how ID fails to be relevant scientifically is an important step in undermining this component of ID.

And yet a significant percentage of them will conclude the final portion of their assignment with a statement like, "Though Dr. Miller won the debate, I still believe Dr. Johnson." It makes me happy and sad at the same time. Happy that the student was able to set aside prior bias long enough to come to the conclusion that Johnson was full of BS, but sad that it apparently made no impact on the student's understanding of the underlying issue. **sigh**

It might have been useful if MacNeill had responded to my question in my initial post (and H. Humbert posed pretty much the same question at virtually same time): "Since these statements are direct contradictions to fundamental ID dogma, how can it be that there was "strong consensus" and yet no one changed their mind?"

In the past 25 years, I've seen maybe 6 or 7 creationist/IDers change their minds and accept evolution. In every case ---- every single one ---- it was undermining their belief in Biblical literalism ...

ID is an entirely theoretical hypothesis restricted to the origin of life, the origin of the genetic code, and the origin of a few selected biochemical pathways (and the bacterial flagellum) ...

Is that a relevant difference?

P.S. I can't remember where I got that MacNeill quote from, so if the "..." mentions religion, I apologize. It's not my intent to use quotes misleadingly.

Being right need not be very effective if it results in people ignoring you.

— PvM

Well, Coin, I've always been respectful toward you and have taken your comments seriously

— Popper's Ghost

oh, and btw popper:

never be ashamed to be an *sshole.

most of us here can claim to be such on a regular basis.

I would never take offense at being called one myself.

In fact, isn't this kind of the subplot to this very thread?

heck, being called an honest asshole should be considered a compliment based on the topic of discussion.

Most of them, like our friend here, sincerely think they can solve the whole problem just by educating the poor rubes. They're in for a very rude surprise.

From some of the conversation here about this particular class, though, it appears as if some folks have the incredibly naive idea that they can engage the **IDers themselves** in some science education, whereupon they will all slap themselves in the forehead, exclaim "Lo!! I've been wrong these many years!!" and give up ID and dedicate their lives to science ever after. I, uh, wouldn't hold my breath waiting.

don't pat yourself on the back unless you brought enough hands for the whole class, Lenny.

I have appreciated Pim's many posts here and his usually-stalwart exposure and critique of ID hogwash.

I also appreciate that Dr. MacNeill was sincere in his efforts to build some intellectual bridges between the opposing camps of IDiots and evolutionary-science supporters.

I'm still waiting to see either Pim or Dr. MacNeill candidly address whether Dr. MacNeill's heuristic experiment paid any substantial dividends.

Instead, each seems to be determined to redirect the discussion toward the entirely-peripheral issue of whether all the particpants in the thread have been equally civil and polite in examining what has been learned--if anything--from Dr. MacNeill's efforts.

Most of us were here, months ago, when Dr. MacNeill was rather frankly warned that his seminar might well fail to accomplish some or all of the goals that he appeared to be hoping for (and, while I've been typing this, I see Lenny's come and gone to make sure no one's forgotten that fact). Fine, Dr. MacNeill gave it the old Cornell try. Fine, he got people of strongly opposing viewpoints to sit down in the same room, read a selection of material prepared by the leading lights of both sides, and discuss and debate the viewpoints more politely than they might have in some other forum.

It sounds like Dr. MacNeill is of the view that some positives did emerge from this exercise, though frankly I'm with those here who are having a difficult time discerning what, if anything, those positives are, exactly.

I haven't previously joined in the discussion. I haven't been impolite to anybody (yet) on this thread. Let me ask Pim and Dr. MacNeill to refocus themselves, as specifically as possible, on what exactly they believe has been accomplished.

In doing so, please reply to the substantive critiques that have been expressed above, whether or not they were "embedded" in the comments of "civil" or less-than-"civil" commenters.

It was Dr. MacNeill who brought his student's paper here, presumably at least in part as a response to the cautions he received here when he announced this project. Now let's see him civilly defend the critiques of the paper and of his experiment--or provide the further information that some have felt it was fair to first request--rather than lecture us on the side-topic of civility in internet discourse.

I should think that would be enough to be getting on with, if Pim and Dr. MacNeill are indeed of the view that something of significance WAS accomplished here.

In Comment #121890 Popper's ghost wrote:

"It might have been useful if MacNeill had responded to my question in my initial post..: "Since these statements are direct contradictions to fundamental ID dogma, how can it be that there was "strong consensus" and yet no one changed their mind?"

Because all but two of the registered students in the seminar came into it with pretty strong opinions already in favor of evolution and opposed to intelligent design (this is Cornell, after all). None of these students changed their minds and came to accept ID, despite spending six weeks reading Behe, Dembski, Johnson, etc. and listening to Hannah's impassioned defenses of Dembski's mathematical speculations. Most of them were non-scientists, however, and they did come to understand and appreciate the value of reasoned argument and support via evidence for their positions, not to mention becoming much better informed about ID (and therefore better able to argue against it).

The remaining two students came into the class as committed IDers (Hannah and Rabia were not registered students, BTW; they were "invited guests" - invited by me). These two students were considerably less convinced of the ID position at the end of the course than they were when they came in, shifting from a blanket rejection of all of evolutionary theory to accepting most of evolutionary theory while maintaining a "wait and see" attitude about the origin of life/genetic code/selected biochemical pathways. One of these two also came to accept common descent (primarily because it became clear that Behe does so as well, and therefore a "good IDer" can accept common descent without giving up ID). The other (a self-described YEC) shifted very significantly over the summer, coming to accept natural selection as the primary "engine" of microevolution, and "having an open mind" about macroevolution. Both of these two IDers came into the course pretty strongly opposed to evolution and supportive of ID, but by the end (and as a result of the process by which we analyzed the various readings assigned for the course) they came to appreciate and apply the technique of critical analysis and argumentation with supportive evidence.

To me, that makes the course very much worthwhile. So much so, in fact, that I'm repeating it as a special section in my good friend and colleague Will Provine's evolution course this fall (Will is wildly in favor of the idea, BTW). Should make life even more interesting between now and the winter solstice.

Macroevolution?

Are you nuts?

It's the same thing. Microevolution, macroevolution. It's the same mechanism. It's the same thing.

Only creationists make a distinction.

Geeze Louise! Has everybody gone insane?

Now, as to the criticism that the concepts in Broaddus's paper are neither new nor original, could the poster please provide references as to where these ideas have been published? I have been working on the idea of "agency detection" in evolutionary psychology for several years, and have yet to run across a published paper suggesting that humans (or any other animal, for that matter) have an adapted tendency to infer "agency" (i.e. intentionality) in natural objects and processes (beyond merely suggesting that such an ability might exist an have adaptive value). Pascal Boyer, Scott Atran, and Dan Sperber have all published on the subject of "agency detection" as it relates to the capacity for religious experience, but none of them have done an in-depth analysis of the ecological context within which "agency detection" can be adaptive (beyond vague references to threats from predators, etc.) In my most recent paper ("The capacity for religious experience is an evolutionary adaptation for warfare", Evolution & Cognition, Vol. 1 No. 10, pp. 43-60), I have proposed that the most likely such ecological context is intraspecific competition, especially warfare.

Indeed, I believe it's an interesting hypothesis, worthy of empirical investigation, to determine:
* whether humans (and perhaps other animals) have a neurological/sensory "agency detector";
* if so, what specific environmental cues are most likely to qualify as the "sign stimuli" for such a detector;
* what the most likely EEA for the evolution of such a detector might be, using primarily archaeological and comparative ethology;
* what the sensitivity of such a detector might be, and especially if it might be prone to producing false positives;
* if so, what kinds of sensory experiences are most likely to produce such false positives; and
* if such sensory experiences can be manipulated by the leaders of human dominance hierarchies to produce irrational adherence to a political program that has potentially strongly negative implications for those individuals being so manipulated.

But, of course, it certainly might be much more interesting to continue playing "whack-a-mole"...

These two students were considerably less convinced of the ID position at the end of the course than they were when they came in, shifting from a blanket rejection of all of evolutionary theory to accepting most of evolutionary theory while maintaining a "wait and see" attitude about the origin of life/genetic code/selected biochemical pathways. One of these two also came to accept common descent (primarily because it became clear that Behe does so as well, and therefore a "good IDer" can accept common descent without giving up ID). The other (a self-described YEC) shifted very significantly over the summer, coming to accept natural selection as the primary "engine" of microevolution, and "having an open mind" about macroevolution.

"...has either of your pro-ID students made statements, equivalent to those you've now made on their behalves, on the blog or elsewhere, that you are in a position to share?"

Nope. The only students in the course who posted or commented on the blog were already staunch evolution supporters (i.e. members of the overwhelming majority in the seminar).

No, no, no!

Microevolution and macroevolution are the same thing. Allen, if you disagree with this statement then please provide an alternative explanation and I will support you for your Nobel Prize.

Same thing, same thing.

Anybody, except Sal, bonk me if I'm wrong.

As Susan said, stop the madness!

I should think that would be enough to be getting on with, if Pim and Dr. MacNeill are indeed of the view that something of significance WAS accomplished here.

Anybody, except Sal, bonk me if I'm wrong.

Perhaps I am naive in my thinking here but I have found Allen's approach to be quite ingenious

But there are a number of other people to whom you are generally, well, an asshole.

"It's the same thing. Microevolution, macroevolution. It's the same mechanism. It's the same thing. Only creationists make a distinction."

Creationists like Doug Futuyma, right?

From Futuyma, D. (2005) Evolution Sinauer Associates, Sunderland, MA, Ch. 21 "Macroevolution: Evolution Above the Species Level", pp. 501-521:

"Much of the modern study of macroevolution stems from themes and principles developed by the paleontologist George Gaylord Simpson..., who focused on rates and directions of evolution perceived in the fossil record, and Bernhard Rensch..., a zoologist who inferred patterns of evolution form comparative morphology. Contemporary macroevolutionary studies draw on the fossil record, on phylogenetic patterns of evolutionary change, on evolutionary developmental biology, and on our understanding of genetic and ecological processes."

Creationists like Ernst Mayr, right?

From Mayr, E. (2001) What Evolution Is Basic Books, New York, NY, Ch. 10 "Macroevolution", pp. 187-230:

"Macroevolution is an autonomous field of evolutionary study. The earlier advances in our understanding of this field were made by paleontologists and systematists. But in recent years molecular biology has made the most important contributions to the understanding of macroevolutionary change, and it continues to make astoniching advances."

Creationists like Mark Ridley, right?

From Ridley, M. (2004) Evolution, 3rd ed Blackwell, Oxford, UK, Part 5 "Macroevolution, Chs. 18-23, pp. 550:

[Header for section 18.8]: "Macroevolution may or may not be an extrapolated form of microevolution."

Only creationists make a distinction.

These two students were considerably less convinced of the ID position at the end of the course than they were when they came in, shifting from a blanket rejection of all of evolutionary theory to accepting most of evolutionary theory while maintaining a "wait and see" attitude about the origin of life/genetic code/selected biochemical pathways.

Allen:

There IS a distinction between how evolutionary biologists and creationist have utilized the seperation of those terms, as you well know.

what macroevolution means in the terms Mayers describes are NOT what macroevolution means when a creationist typically uses the term. It causes confusion in a lot of people.

debate over the efficacy of the seperation of terms within the scientific community literally has NOTHING to do with what is going on in creationist circles.

conflating the two only confuses the issue.

It's very possible that Bill was referring to the artifical construct of "kind" invented by the creobots, instead of any debate within the scientific community itself.

I could be wrong, hence the reason i pointed him to a recent thread where the issue is discussed from both angles.

I'd make a joke here that your response to Bill was entirely uncivil, but that would be droll.

No, sorry, Allen, your appeal to authority doesn't wash with me.

Microevolution and Macroevolution are the same thing, viewed over different timescales. Why is that so difficult for you?

Same mechanism. Mutation, natural selection.

Microevolution and macroevolution do not have two different mechanisms and if you, Allen, propose otherwise then demonstrate your theory.

It's the same thing right across the line. Same. Same. Same. No difference.

That virtually none of the commentators has demonstrated any familiarity with the content of the students papers posted at the website (all but one of which vigorously support the "evolution side") indicates to me that they have already made up their minds about what happened in the course and don't want to be confused by the facts. This despite the fact that there is a detailed commentary online available to all at http://evolutionanddesign.blogsome.com/, currently comprising 24 posts (several by the students in the course) and over 1,500 comments from both sides of the issue, plus downloadable copies of most of the final research papers written by the students in the course.

But, of course, it certainly might be much more interesting to continue playing "whack-a-mole"...

Ok, never mind I guess Bill chose to ignore the substance of all 3 posts after his last.

Bill:

I do recommend you take a gander at that thread over on pharyngula i mentioned.

or at least read the post I just made.

or take a gander at the arguments made in Futuyma or Mayer.

you don't have to agree with them, but the debate within the scientific community has little to do with quantitative differences. There are well argued reasons for the distinction that are qualitative in nature.

Allen is not making an argument from authority, but rather a snide attempt at insulting your knowledge of evolutionary theory in general.

The references he posted are directly on point wrt the the issue of the separation of terms within the scientific community, and it has nothing to do with the way creationists have constructed their own artifical separation.

We had this argument many times when I was a grad student at Berkeley, and at the time, most of us agreed that there was little efficacy to separating the terms, but that was a long time ago, and while at the time most of us were considering the separation as utilized by Gould, much has happened since.

read the references and then decide.

Seems that Popper's Ghost indeed jumped to conclusions before asking for clarifications.

Somehow I find it ironic how various PT participants start to sound more and more like ID proponents...

I have been working on the idea of "agency detection" in evolutionary psychology for several years, and have yet to run across a published paper suggesting that humans (or any other animal, for that matter) have an adapted tendency to infer "agency" (i.e. intentionality) in natural objects and processes (beyond merely suggesting that such an ability might exist an have adaptive value).

Seems that Popper's Ghost indeed jumped to conclusions before asking for clarifications.

OK, Sir TJ, Oh, wise one.

I'll check the references.

But, let me say that I don't see why there should be a different mechanism between changes within a species and the evoloution of a new species. I would think that the mechanism would be the same, generatinon to generation, but if viewed over a long time the original population would be a different species than the current population.

I don't see how it's not the same mechanism microscopic to macroscopic. However, I'll follow your trail and read more on the subject.

However, at this point, Oh Master, you have not provided any insight to resolve my dilemma. I do have a considerable biology background, and chemistry, and I think you are shortchanging me here.

In any case, old bud, I'll chase down the threads and see where they lead.

Meanwhile, insight from others?

Funny how Allen supports his claims with references to scientific literature and is now accused of appeal to authority. Perhaps the micro versus macro is not as black and white as one expected it to be?

Allen is not making an argument from authority

But, let me say that I don't see why there should be a different mechanism between changes within a species and the evoloution of a new species. I would think that the mechanism would be the same, generatinon to generation, but if viewed over a long time the original population would be a different species than the current population.

It's no wonder it's so confusing.

Seems that Popper's Ghost indeed jumped to conclusions before asking for clarifications.

Oh, I am stung!

I am not silly nor arrogant, (OK, arrogant I'll accept) but I won't take anybody's word on their word. If the data and theory fit, fine. Should I accept Behe's word because he's a PhD Biochemist? I know lots of PhD Biochemists. Behe is one of many and if his arguments hold sway, which they don't, then I would accept them.

Aside from that petulant remark of mine, it seems to me that the microevolution/macroevolution discussion which, by the way, wasn't even a topic when I took biology back in the 70's, is a divisive issue that needs to be resolved. So long as creationists can use the terms as two separate mechanisms the creationist/evolution debate will continue.

And the comment that I was adopting creationist logic (TJ, was that you?) caused me to take a long, hot shower!

Seems that Popper's Ghost indeed jumped to conclusions before asking for clarifications. Somehow I find it ironic how various PT participants start to sound more and more like ID proponents...

did he?

Since these statements are direct contradictions to fundamental ID dogma, how can it be that there was "strong consensus" and yet no one changed their mind? ... If no IDer changed their mind, then nothing was more helpful than anything else in convincing them of anything.... If seeds of doubt were planted, then minds were changed. Any IDer who now has doubts that they didn't have before the class but takes the same positions that they did before the class is clearly being dishonest.

I find that confusing. Isn't there an IDEA club on the Cornell Campus? what happened to those folks? Why were there only 2 ID supporters enrolled in the course?

Which folly ought now, in fairness and civility---seeing's how that's so important to you---to be retracted.

Being right need not be very effective if it results in people ignoring you.

Almost anyone viewing the comments here would be justified in concluding that commentators at the Panda's Thumb (i hesitate to refer to them as "evolutionary biologists")...

The other (a self-described YEC) shifted very significantly over the summer, coming to accept natural selection as the primary "engine" of microevolution, and "having an open mind" about macroevolution

Did you attend the seminar? Did you discuss with the participants? Or are you being 'guided' by the comments on the blog? Realize then that most of the blog participants were NOT seminar attendees. ... garbage in, garbage out ...

— PvM

I cannot speak for Allen or the participants of this class as I only participated in the blog discussions.

— PvM

I keep thinking this is an important enough topic that it would be great if we could just wipe this whole thread, and start over knowing what we know now.

maybe some of what was supposed to be expressed as the results of this experiment would become a bit clearer.

too much to hope for though.

Brilliant idea STJ, I'll take up the challenge:

In summary:

ID is scientifically dead.

ID is politically alive!

What to do?

The End.

PvM wrote: Did you attend the seminar? Did you discuss with the participants? Or are you being 'guided' by the comments on the blog? Realize then that most of the blog participants were NOT seminar attendees.... garbage in, garbage out ...

PvM wrote: I cannot speak for Allen or the participants of this class as I only participated in the blog discussions.

By showing how not only ID is scientifically vacuous but also how teleology and purpose in biology are not surprising given the processes involved. In other words, evolutionary processes are inherently teleological.

QUOTATIONS:

Braithwaite1 (1954) on the conflict between teleological statements and causation:

In a [normal] causal explanation the explicandum is explained in terms of a cause which either precedes it or is simultaneous with it; in a teleological explanation the explicandum is explained as being causally related either to a particular goal or to a biological end which is as much future as present or
past.

Mayr (1974) on the added value of teleological accounts:

Consider the following statement: 'The Wood Thrush migrates in the fall into warmer countries in order to escape the inclemency of the weather and the food shortages of the northern climates'. If we replace the words 'in order to' by 'and thereby', we leave the important question unanswered as to why the Wood Thrush migrates. The teleonomic form of the statement implies that the goal-directed migratory activity is governed by a program.
By omitting this important message the translated sentence is greatly impoverished as far as information content is concerned, without gaining in causal strength.

Hull (1982) on the use of teleology and teleonomy by scientists :

Haldane [in the '30s] can be found remarking, 'Teleology is like a mistress to a biologist: he cannot live without her but he's unwilling to be seen with her in public.' Today the mistress has become a lawfully wedded wife.
Biologists no longer feel obligated to apologize for their use of teleological language; they flaunt it. The only concession which they make to its disreputable past is to rename it 'teleonomy'.

Source: Handout for Teleology

Or see Teleological explanations in Biology

This seems to leave us with STJ's original comment: "I don't know about anybody else, but I found the gist of what was presented in this thread, by both Pim and Allen, to be horribly confusing and the parts that made sense were mostly depressing." And Pim's comments are not at all helpful in evaluating the results, since on the one hand he writes

Man, you guys start to sound like young earth creationists in training... A bit rough at the edges but with all the conviction that one is right as one believes in the true cause...

Shiva, please explain your stockholm syndrome statement as it seems ill supported.

histrionics are boring, Pim. are you done yet?

I intend to post a follow up to this posting to discuss the work of some others on this topic. I hope that this can also lead to a more fruitful discussion

I see... not done yet.

please do continue.

I find this side of you to be a bit boring, but it seems you've got some angst to spin out there.

when you're done, maybe you could provide a summary that explains what you wanted to get at with this thread to begin with?

it's still pretty unclear.

I intend to post a follow up to this posting to discuss the work of some others on this topic. I hope that this can also lead to a more fruitful discussion

The purpose of this thread was to start a discussion on an interesting paper on a topic which is quite interesting. Why do humans seem to be so easily 'fooled' to detect design and purpose where none may seem to exist? The argument that this innate tendency is an evolutionary outcome would be quite ironic... The design inference, an evolved detector with known flaws (aka false positives). Of course for survival false positives are less of a problem than false negatives....

well, it seems that particular point was lost amongst the rubble.

for what it's worth, the first question I would ask is how one can conclude design detection as a common human modality when there are clear differences in how individuals perceive design.

otherwise, there wouldn't be divisions between IDers and non-Iders, right?

PvM, you're being a complete ass and I'm not going to respond to your intellectually dishonest drivel.

Good question. What if religiosity and the innate tendency are correlated? In other words, some have stronger tendencies to perceive 'design' than others and those that do have stronger tendencies are more likely to resort to religious principles.

I am still working through the variety of papers. Detecting 'design' or 'purpose' may have had an evolutionary advantage but the hair trigger can also trigger false positives. Unlike ID which has to rely on absence of false positive, our design detector has to avoid false negatives. Failing to detect design when there is can be costly. Of course this may have resulted in humans overdetecting design, especially in times of stress, which can trigger the design detector.

There is some interesting research out there which I hope to discuss in more detail at a later time...

Popper: PvM, you're being a complete ass and I'm not going to respond to your intellectually dishonest drivel.

Finally an intelligent decision from our resident Ghost. Although he could benefit from a better delivery. Nevertheless, I appreciate your sentiments.

Good question. What if religiosity and the innate tendency are correlated?

...if such sensory experiences (for "agency detection) can be manipulated by the leaders of human dominance hierarchies to produce irrational adherence to a political program that has potentially strongly negative implications for those individuals being so manipulated.

However various of the respondents on this thread somehow managed to 'second guess' Allen's motives.

Of course, most of you hardly reach the 'standards' of Lenny

Pim,

I made a terse comment on Allen's blog in response to his report, on the six week course, where he is all praise for Maxine Hanson's participation. It seems as if Allen now believes that there are two sides to the issue of evolution and that new/old creo too has earned its place at the table. Just as some hostages after a long period in captivity rationalise the actions of their captors, Allen is being unnecessarily accomodative of IDCs.

"And Design blog, Hannah Maxson IDist presiding, and discovered their efforts got disappeared. There are two (to my knowledge, only two) types of IDist blogs - those that do not permit comments, and those that do not permit ideologically disapproved (aka "factually correct") comments."

Once again, at the risk of being repetitious, Hannah moderated IDers, while I moderated EBers (EBers = "evolutionary biologists"). The two people who commented earlier on having been moderated at the Evolution and Design website may or may not have actually tried to post there. Ivy Privy has posted many times, both to that website and at mine (http://www.evolutionlist.blogspot.com), and has generally complied with the "rules of engagement." The other person, Steven S, does not ring any bells. It is possible that he posted at the Evolution and Design site under another name. Over the summer there were three EBers who persisted in changing the topics of threads, using ad hominem arguments, and generally flagrantly ignoring the clearly posted "rules of engagement." After warning them, I moderated their posts. They are not "banned" and can attempt to post there again, However, if they use the same tactics as last time, their posts will once again be moderated.

As Kurt Vonnegut (another Cornellian) once wrote, "After all else is gone, what remains is curtesy."

Cordova is at Cornell, DaveTard has some degree, yes?

"Allen is being unnecessarily accomodative of IDCs."

Not at all. As I'm sure Hannah could tell you, I attacked her position pretty relentlessly all summer, using as much evidence from evolutionary biology, mathematics, and philosophy as I could muster. I would hardly call that "accomodation."

However, I never attacked her as a person, and never will. What I expressed at the Evolution and Design website was my sincere gratitude for the immense amount of work she did last spring and this summer to put together the website, to debug it, and to make it maximally accessible to the students registered in the course AND to people participating only online. I had neither the time nor the expertise to do so, and so am indebted to her for her efforts (which were, of course, entirely voluntary and unpaid).

I also expressed gratitude to Warren Allman (director of the Paleontological Research Institute here in Ithaca) and to Will Provine (professor of evolution here at Cornell, and one of my best friends) for their participation in the course. Like Hannah, they attended the seminar classes without compensation, and participated vigorously in our deliberations.

So, what part of all of this strikes you as an example of the "Stockholm syndrome?" I call it pure civility and gratitude, part of the glue that holds together any "community of scholars." That what a "college" is - it's "collegial," right?

"Maybe he can try that strategy as well with, say, Nazis or Leninists or Klansmen. I doubt it'll do any better."

Interesting: Godwin's Law in less than 200 posts. Is that a new record?

The remaining two students came into the class as committed IDers (Hannah and Rabia were not registered students, BTW; they were "invited guests" - invited by me). These two students were considerably less convinced of the ID position at the end of the course than they were when they came in, shifting from a blanket rejection of all of evolutionary theory to accepting most of evolutionary theory while maintaining a "wait and see" attitude about the origin of life/genetic code/selected biochemical pathways. One of these two also came to accept common descent (primarily because it became clear that Behe does so as well, and therefore a "good IDer" can accept common descent without giving up ID). The other (a self-described YEC) shifted very significantly over the summer, coming to accept natural selection as the primary "engine" of microevolution, and "having an open mind" about macroevolution. Both of these two IDers came into the course pretty strongly opposed to evolution and supportive of ID, but by the end (and as a result of the process by which we analyzed the various readings assigned for the course) they came to appreciate and apply the technique of critical analysis and argumentation with supportive evidence.

...The principle of irreducible complexity does not give one all of biology, but if true, it serves to divert the biologist from wasting time by trying to answer a question to which there is no scientific answer.

"Maybe he can try that strategy as well with, say, Nazis or Leninists or Klansmen. I doubt it'll do any better." Interesting: Godwin's Law in less than 200 posts. Is that a new record?

...ever try to rationally talk a junkie out of being a junkie?

It rarely ever works. You have to attack the psychological barriers that these people put up to maintain their delusions.

Actually, it works a lot more often than you seem to think -- especially when rational discourse is based on relevant events in the addict's life.

As for "attack the psychological barriers," that's just ridiculous: psychologists understand that you can't attack a defense; you have to get around it.

...and when they don't "discover their own errors"?

we simply let them slide, right?

What other choice is there? These students are adults -- they're free to think what they want, and there's not much any professor can do about it. (Besides, this isn't the first time someone came out of a college class no smarter than when they came in. This happens all the time, especially in PoliSci and related fields.)

That said, I really think that if MacNeill's seminar got a few creationists to rethink their fixed ideas, that's a real accomplishment. Even if they don't publicly renounce their creationist ideas, their seeds of doubt might leave them less energy to devote to the creationists' next con-game. Recent elections for the Dover, PA school board were lost, then won, by very narrow margins; and a handful of devout Christians staying home due to diminished certainty about ID can make a LOT of difference.

Now, as to the criticism that the concepts in Broaddus's paper are neither new nor original, could the poster please provide references as to where these ideas have been published? I have been working on the idea of "agency detection" in evolutionary psychology for several years, and have yet to run across a published paper suggesting that humans (or any other animal, for that matter) have an adapted tendency to infer "agency" (i.e. intentionality) in natural objects and processes (beyond merely suggesting that such an ability might exist an have adaptive value).

Besides, this isn't the first time someone came out of a college class no smarter than when they came in. This happens all the time, especially in PoliSci and related fields.

Jeebus, what a thread.

It's useful to return to the April comments on this topic to see what the major issue was and is with this class: the involvement of IDEA Club morons (yeah: morons) in the teaching of a class at Cornell. Like all serious ID promoters, Hannah Maxson is a hypocrite and a little bit sick in the head.

What kind of person does not admit basic obvious facts about garbage when those facts are exposed for all to see? Answer: a liar with an agenda.

What kind of person holds hands with a liar with an agenda, runs a blog where criticism of that liar is banned, where another notorious liar (Cordova) posts ten thousand words of crap, then brags about how wonderful it all was?

Allen

Over the summer there were three EBers who persisted in changing the topics of threads, using ad hominem arguments, and generally flagrantly ignoring the clearly posted "rules of engagement." After warning them, I moderated their posts.

This is self-serving baloney. The "rules of engagement" were a joke, Allen. Most importantly, the rules weren't applied to Hannah Maxson who was moderating the blog with you so please give us all a freaking break already. The moderation on that blog was more oppressive than that on Uncommon Descent and applied just as unfairly.

As Kurt Vonnegut (another Cornellian) once wrote, "After all else is gone, what remains is curtesy."

What a disturbing aphorism that is to hear a scientist utter in 2006 after 6 years of abuse of science by fundamentalist idiots.

Let's return to the course again: a course that was purported to concern the "history" of intelligent design and its relatives. What was discussed? Mainly Behe and Dembski's garbage in great detail -- non-scientists were forced to wade through that crap. And Dawkins book was compared to Phil Johnson's book. But the most recent and interesting chapter in the history of "intelligent design" was left out: the chapter where Hannah Maxson's heroes were exposed as babbling idiots in a Federal Court. It may have been touched on in class, but it was never discussed in the public forum of the blog (unlike Dawkins' book, which was criticized by you and Hannah).

And you wonder, Allen, why some of us here think you're a stooge? Please give us a break.

There were many low points in the public face of the Cornell class but perhaps the lowest came towards the end when Allen threw a little temper tantrum that was a tad too revealing. Specifically, in response to a typically pandering and smarmy quote from Sal Cordova, a commenter wrote:

Allen, I'd like to salute your students, too, at least the ones who aren't so arrogant that they pretend to understand what the professionals can not.

This rather innocuous comment was labeled as "disturbing" by Sal Cordova then led to a flurry of comments from Allen and Hannah, including some which invoked the bad old nasty comments on Panda's Thumb. Allen also wrote this:

Speculating about people's motivations is even worse; if one is so blind as to not be able to infer motivations from one's opponent's inability to stick to the subject at hand, then one not only has no business participating in discussions such as these, one is also undermining the validity of the arguments being made by others in one's own camp who do not "break the rules."

I don't have time to figure out what that means except that Allen seems to be calling someone "blind." Then Allen wrote this

No one in the class was identified as his target; therefore, every student in the class (which, BTW, does not include Hannah, who is an "invited participant") could easily conclude that Michael was addressing them.

Try not to laugh. Remember: Michael was "saluting" Allen's students, just as Sal did moments earlier. Apparently Allen holds his students in such low regard that he believes they are incapable of determining whether they are ID peddlers or not.

Allen's friend, Hannah Maxson (Cornell IDEA Club president and politically active religious fundamentalist) before the class

The Intelligent Design Evolution Awareness
(IDEA) Club at Cornell is deeply concerned with President Hunter Rawlings' blatant
disregard for the facts concerning Intelligent Design in Friday's State of the University Address. In a speech usually reserved for current university business, he spent over twothirds of his time blasting the emerging Intelligent Design theory as anti-scientific and religious in an unscrupulous, unknowledgeable manner.

Intelligent Design (ID) is a scientific theory which holds that certain features of the universe and living things are best explained by an intelligent cause, and are not the result of an undirected, chance-based process such as Darwinian evolution. It follows the principles of the scientific method, scorns the biases of either religion or naturalism, and attempts to follow all the available evidence to a valid conclusion. ID is testable and falsifiable, and so far its predictions have repeatedly been shown accurate.

The IDEA Club at Cornell holds that the problems with Neo-Darwinian evolution can no
longer be ignored, and it is time for true research and debate about the issues surrounding the beginnings of life to take place at universities across the country.
Attacking ID as a non-scientist and without addressing its scientific claims, Rawlings
states that it is religion masquerading as science and is a religious belief at its core. This gross misstatement is a disservice to unbiased discourse, besides being an insult to people of faith throughout America. Ad hominem attacks and confusing people's religious beliefs with their scientific research is not befitting a university president. We would hope Rawlings will instead follow Cornell's often lauded commitment to a free and open
exchange of ideas.

Were these particular statements of Hannah's directly addressed at the end of your course, Allen, in front of your students? Were they directly addressed on the Evolution and Design Blog? Did Hannah defend them on the blog? If not, why not?

You see, Allen, as President of the Cornell IDEA Club, Hannah is a political player in the organized movement to mock and discredit evolutionary biology, evolutionary biologists, and science generally.

As a scientist, Allen, why would you not take advantage of the opportunity to address Hannah Maxson's sick lies directly, in a public forum? That would constitute a "service" to the community, Allen, much like the service that the Panda's Thumb and other blogs provide to the community of scientists who are concerned about educating the public.

Maybe funding for "evolutionary psychology" comes from sources who frown on attacking creationists.

Perhaps the most amusing exchange on the Evolution and Design Blog came at the very end where Allen tried to sum up the "progress":

I believe that we cleared up quite a few misconceptions. Specifically, we concluded that:

1) Contrary to public perception, both Behe and Dembski's arguments do not really address the processes of macroevolution at all, nor do they have much relevence for microevolution either.

2) Instead, they are primarily focussed on a very limited area of evolutionary theory: the origin of life and the genetic code, plus the origin of a small set of biochemical pathways.

3) Given the foregoing, it became clear to us that nearly all of what could be subsumed under the heading of the "theory of evolution" (and especially the entirety of Darwin's original theory, which did not address any of the topics listed in #2, above) is essentially unaffected by the work of Behe and Dembski.

4) Therefore, it would be safe to say that the work of the primary authors in the field of ID theory do not in any way undermine (indeed, they do not effect) almost all of current evolutionary theory in any significant way.

Hannah Maxson's response:

Did we categorize ID as challenging only OoL, or did we also find it relevant to the entire question of the usefulness of N.S., origination of novel form, function, and specified information at later times?--- essentially, everything on our chart that dealt with questions of mechanism?

In this same thread, Hannah Maxson was thanked by Allen for providing an example of "how to respectfully but forcefully argue for one's positions".

Go and read the blog and try to find anything "respectful" about Hannah's responses to those who point out that her claims are garbage.

Better yet, look in that same thread for Hannah to tell this whopper to Pim:

We're not part of the political ID/evo battle and not interested in the "who won?" mentality you all seem to think necessary.

What do you think, Allen? Is Hannah Maxon not "part of the political ID/evo battle"? You know her better than any of us. What do you think, Allen? Do you think you're part of the battle, Allen?

Gee, R.U., don't hold back, tell us how you REALLY feel!

What little I know of MacNeill's seminar I got from PT posts like this one -- hardly a complete picture. I may be missing something, but from what I read, this seminar has "political compromise" written all over it: the IDiots (or IDEAlogues) started crying about how they never got to sit with the grownups (gosh, I wonder why...), and never got "equal time" to "teach the controversy;" so some conflict-averse Cornell administrators cobbled up a seminar to pretend to give the IDiots the respectability they demanded, and organized and advertized the whole thing so as to make sure both sides of the "controversy" got "equal time" and neither side would feel hurt, disrespected, or forced out of their comfort zone. I can't see any other reason why MacNeill, who seems quite sensible and honest from what I've read of him here, would be so equivocal about the IDist nonsense in the student papers quoted here. Or, for that matter, why he would work with creationists of Maxson's or Cordova's caliber on any project.

(I don't mean any of this as a slight to MacNeill -- even the best scientists can be overruled by dumbass politics.)

Well, Dr. MacNeill seems now to be trying to deal with the scientific issues raised in this thread.

Mr. van Meurs--who, again, has stalwartly demonstrated the scientific vacuity of ID in many other threads, and who I therefore have no motivation to either antagonize or offend--continues to deflect with vague allegations of uncivility and conclusion-jumping.

Pim--and all other contributors and thread moderators--let me say it One More Time: challenging vague and confusing claims and demanding that claims be backed up with specifics and evidence is what we do here.

The tone won't always be warm and cuddly. The debate may well become a little sharp and pointed. You have certainly dished it out plenty of times to IDists. It's not sharpness of tone--or "politeness" or "civility"--that distinguish "us" from "them." It's intellectual honesty, the courage to modify our hypotheses in the face of contrary evidence, and the willingness to admit when you have erred.

All of that has been massively in evidence on this thread, except, I'm sad to say it, from you.

I don't care if you and Dr. MacNeill choose to be civil with IDers who have demonstrated themselves to incorrigibly lack the approach to reality that characterizes science. As Raging Bee notes, occasionally that civility may even pay dividends--though I think the jury is still out on the issue of whether entrenched IDers are likely to be "won over" by civility combined with exposure to the methodologies and evidence of science, as Lenny continues to remind us.

I haven't attacked the underlying hopes that Dr. MacNeill held out for his seminar. I have accepted at face value his report that attitudes may, at least marginally, have been altered and that some specific "seeds of doubt" may have been planted.

But I was not prepared to accept your vague assertions of the same thing and--as ought to be completely understandable to you--various other commenters here were likewise reluctant to do so, absent further specific evidence backing that assertion up.

Rather than simply amplify and support your claims, you chose to play the whiney "civility" card, with fairly minimal justification (a certain protectiveness toward Dr. MacNeill might be intially understandable, were he not so entirely capable of holding his own, once he got past his similar impulse to deflect).

You really need to take a couple of deep breaths, re-read this entire thread, and decide where the responsibility for deflecting it actually lies.

Clue one: very close to home.

You can continue making vague, unsupported, and whiney claims that "we" are behaving too much like "them." Keep up the deflection.

Or you can trot back up the thread, find some appropriately-contextualized quotes from appropriately-identified commenters, and make a case for your claims.

Or you can retract those vague and unsupported claims. Which I strongly suggest is what "we" should do when "we" find ourselves out on the limb you have elected to position yourself on here--the very thing that truly separates us from them, but which you seem remarkably resistant to addressing.

And yes, many treatments of the mistakes made regarding agency are rather more sophisticated than to resort to the simple expedient of suggesting that there is an "adapted tendency" to detect agency.

But I was not prepared to accept your vague assertions of the same thing and---as ought to be completely understandable to you---various other commenters here were likewise reluctant to do so, absent further specific evidence backing that assertion up.

— steviepinhead

... Did you attend the seminar? Did you discuss with the participants? Or are you being 'guided' by the comments on the blog? Realize then that most of the blog participants were NOT seminar attendees. Perhaps you are familiar with the 'garbage in garbage out' paradigm?

As one of the blog participants, I have found the moderation policy overall quite helpful as it helped focus on the issues rather than on side discussions about who was telling the truth... Exploring the shaky grounds on which complex specified information is built is far more helpful in convincing these IDers than about who said what and who was and was not telling the full truth. I think that the course has exposed the scientific vacuity of intelligent design and while few if any may have changed their immediate positions, it has helped spread the seed of doubt. Remember that upto this seminar most IDers had not been exposed to much of any of the critical arguments against ID. Especially not at the level of the supposedly 'scientific' claims of ID. Different audiences require different approaches to expose them to the many problems of ID. As such Allen's course has been an excellent opportunity to do exactly that. By showing how not only ID is scientifically vacuous but also how teleology and purpose in biology are not surprising given the processes involved. In other words, evolutionary processes are inherently teleological. That's why we talk about apparent versus actual design for instance.

...I cannot speak for Allen or the participants of this class as I only participated in the blog discussions. I have found Allen's approach quite effective when he shows how ID concepts are hardly new to science. Design, analogy, teleology... In other words, Allen managed to undermine much of the foundational relevance of ID by not only showing that ID is vacuous but also how science does deal with these issues all the time, without the need to let our ignorance resort to conclusion not warranted by the evidence. Perhaps I am naive in my thinking here but I have found Allen's approach to be quite ingenious (sp).

Furthermore, all of the participants (including the ID supporters) rejected Phillip Johnson's The Wedge of Truth as pure political polemic, not worthy of our time and attention; indeed, one of the most ardent ID supporters stated "That isn't ID." If not, then at least for the participants on the notorious Cornell evolution and design seminar, ID is an entirely theoretical hypothesis restricted to the origin of life, the origin of the genetic code, and the origin of a few selected biochemical pathways (and the bacterial flagellum), currently lacking empirical verification and without clearly defined methodologies for verification or falsification.

You might also check out some of Psychologist Margret Evans' work at the University of Michigan including this:

Evans, E. M. (2001). Cognitive and contextual factors in the emergence of diverse belief systems: Creation versus evolution. Cognitive Psychology, 42, 217-266

pdfs are available at her site:
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~evansem/

ID is an entirely theoretical hypothesis restricted to the origin of life, the origin of the genetic code, and the origin of a few selected biochemical pathways (and the bacterial flagellum), currently lacking empirical verification and without clearly defined methodologies for verification or falsification.

"In a [normal] causal explanation the explicandum is explained in terms of a cause which either precedes it or is simultaneous with it; in a teleological explanation the explicandum is explained as being causally related either to a particular goal or to a biological end which is as much future as present or past."

I don't think this describes normal causal explanations truthfully. Causation is a large subject. The meaning of causation and associated mechanisms is explored in physics. Here one finds that causality does not have an intrinsic meaning.

We divide a description of physical systems in two parts: the configuration of the system, characterizing the particular state it is in at some specific time, and the dynamical laws governing its evolution. We further divide the description of evolution in two parts: the propagation of signals, and the evolution of the configuration.

On large enough scales, lorentz invariance locality and causality is in good shape, and light-cone causality makes sense in describing signal propagation. But that doesn't describe all the causal mechanisms in a system. The remainder is evolution of the configuration as it evolves in time.

If the evolution of the configuration is constrained, it seems for an observer to have a goal, which may very well be related to the future. The arm continues to stretch out in the elbow joint when I now reach for my coffee. The arms goal is to stretch, my goal is to reach the cup, and the cups goal is to be emptied.

To even grant that ID is a "theoretical hypothesis" goes well beyond the meaning that scientists would ordinarily accord to either of the terms in the phrase, is too kind by far and, in fact, appropriates to "theoretical" the same gloss of dubiety that the IDists love to fraudulaently conflate it with.

Even as an attempted summary of what Dr. MacNeil believes his seminar managed to "confine" ID to, this statement still manages to be "not even wrong."

This thread is a complete trainwreck.

I can't really define it any better than that.

I still think it would be better off shot in the head and replaced with a more thoughtful one (or two).

I'm bailing out of this sinking boat while reiterating the only point salient to Elena's little diddy:

pattern recognition does not equal purpose or intent.

I do hope at some point Pim will want to create a thread to explore the real issues involved with this kind of thinking, where evo pych is wanting to take us, and where we have already been on this subject.

Moreover, the whole discussion as to the efficacy of Allen's course and discussion of objectives and results should have its own thread, separate from discussion of the issues I highlighted in the previous paragraph.

till then, have fun picking up the pieces.

Regarding "what the course achieved", aren't course evaluations regularly made any longer? This time it would have been nice to have had the same evalution sheet for the students before and after, considering the intent.

I think that the course has exposed the scientific vacuity of intelligent design and while few if any may have changed their immediate positions, it has helped spread the seed of doubt. Remember that upto this seminar most IDers had not been exposed to much of any of the critical arguments against ID. Especially not at the level of the supposedly 'scientific' claims of ID.

Clearly, Allen MacNeill went into the course with the same Will To Believe (in his case, about what the course would accomplish) as any creationist. The course, by all indications, penetrated into no minds at all, not even superficially. Most notably, not MacNeill's mind either. So he comes out of the course trumpeting that it served its purpose, so pay no attention to the blog resoundingly demonstrating that it did absolutely nothing of the sort.

— Flint

I wish I was a headlight on a north bound train I wish I was a headlight on a north bound train I'd shine my light through that cool Colorado rain

To even grant that ID is a "theoretical hypothesis" goes well beyond the meaning that scientists would ordinarily accord to either of the terms in the phrase, is too kind by far and, in fact, appropriates to "theoretical" the same gloss of dubiety that the IDists love to fraudulaently conflate it with.

"look beyond our own stereotypes"

Unfortunately, we seem to also have an innate system to infer stereotypes. It could be working with any design detector to "yield adaptive responses to complex environmental information".

'Ooops, there is a dangerous creationist. Quick, beat him with that ad hominem!"

Pim, I read you as requesting that we extend to a statemtent prefaced by "I think" the same quality of conditionality that you failed to extend to Popper. I still don't think you're getting it.

You also continue to dwell on civility, while continuing your failure to recognize that that quality--whether otherwise desirable, in and of itself--fails to form any sort of meaningful or distinctive boundary between the "behavior" of pro-science and anti-science proponents.

Rudeness and insults are not equivalent to the logical fallacy of ad hominem. That this rather trivial point apparently still needs to be made to a frequent contributor to this site is disturbing, and suggests you are failing to make other necessary distinctions between mendacious and upright debating tactics.

I'm not on this thread to defend rude and insulting commenting behavior. You are welcome to indulge yourself in the belief--I'm tempted to term it "fantasy," as perhaps Lenny might--that hard-core IDists are going to be persuaded away from their fixations by any amount of civility, logic, evidence, or argumentation. I would hope that most regular participants would have long since weaned themselves from that poorly-evidenced hope, but that's of course a personal tactical choice.

For myself, I'm here to ridicule and expose inanity of the "argumentation" of the IDers--with light humor as much as possible, but with a heavier hand and an iron fist as may prove necessary--while politely discussing and civilly debating with all other takers. Whom I judge--based on any number of polls and prior discussions--to include a substantial number of mostly-silent, less-than-expert, curious, hoping-to-be-enlightened-and-entertained "unsure" and "undecided" onlookers and fence-straddlers.

You are welcome to your approach; I plan to stick to mine until proven wrong.

In the meantime, if you feel you have links to actual discussions on MacNeill's blog with which to back up your assertions that determined IDiots, er, anti-evolution proponents have actually been swayed away from their positions, to any meaningful extent, by your policy of polite discussion and dissemination of correct information, then I'll be delighted to peruse them.

And, if necessary, I'll also then be willing to consume--if not delightedly, then at least doggedly till done--virtual hat.

Some comments on Allen MacNeil's own hypothesis, and indirectly, his student:

After reading R. Dale Guthrie's "Interpretation of Paleolithic Art", I have little difficulty supposing that our remote ancestors found 'purpose' or 'intent' in all animate objects. First, of all, knowing the intent of lions or bison whilst on the Mammoth Steppe seems highly adaptive behavior. If memes evolve for 'intent' in the movement of trees in the wind, it seems little harm is done. So a form of primitive animism seems reasonable to posit.

I asked a nearby professor of anthropology regarding modern hunter-gatherers. He stated that most groups had little interest in the supernatural, but there were exceptions. Based on this, I conclude that most of our remote ancestors were perfectly capable of distinguishing the intent of other people and other animals from the non-intent of the wind blowing, etc.

Finally, 'intent' detection must be quite ancient. One certainly finds something similar in chimps, for example. It most assuredly did not evolve in connection with warfare. As Guthrie points out, there is no evidence of group violence or warfare before tribal (i.e., proto-agricultural times). Tribal times begin at most 12,000 years ago. That is too short a time for any significant human evolution to occur.

So, Allen MacNeill, not warfare!

As I'm sure Hannah could tell you, I attacked her position pretty relentlessly all summer, using as much evidence from evolutionary biology, mathematics, and philosophy as I could muster.

BTW, as an aside, it's not at all surprising that IDers apparently avoided MacNeill's class in dorves. After all, ID isn't interested in the slightest in listening to their *own* crap in public school classrooms. What they want is to force everyone ELSE to listen to it.

In the meantime, if you feel you have links to actual discussions on MacNeill's blog with which to back up your assertions that determined IDiots, er, anti-evolution proponents have actually been swayed away from their positions, to any meaningful extent, by your policy of polite discussion and dissemination of correct information, then I'll be delighted to peruse them.

Perhaps this is the problem ... Allan MacNeill doesn't know what ID is.

We can be pretty sure, PvM, that speculations on my part are not the cause of the problem that no one in MacNeill's seminar changed their minds.

Asshole.

So, Allen MacNeill, not warfare!

Asshole.

Popper: We can be pretty sure, PvM, that speculations on my part are not the cause of the problem that no one in MacNeill's seminar changed their minds. Asshole.

As I'm sure Hannah could tell you, I attacked her position pretty relentlessly all summer, using as much evidence from evolutionary biology, mathematics, and philosophy as I could muster.

— Lenny

And the result of all that was ....?

"Allen is being unnecessarily accomodative of IDCs."

The Trackback from UD at the bottom of the page is starting to look a little ridiculous.

You might also check out some of Psychologist Margret Evans' work at the University of Michigan including this: Evans, E. M. (2001). Cognitive and contextual factors in the emergence of diverse belief systems: Creation versus evolution. Cognitive Psychology, 42, 217-266 pdfs are available at her site: http://www-personal.umich.edu/~evansem/

Re Comment #122223:

"So, Allen MacNeill, not warfare!"

I beg to differ. There is increasing evidence that warfare (or "warfare-like") behavior extends much further back in time and in our phylogenetic line than previously supposed. See, for example:

Keeley, L. H. (1996) War before civilization, Oxford University Press, Oxford, UK, 245 pp.

Kelly, R. C. (2000) Warless societies and the origin of war, University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor, MI, 192 pp.

LeBlanc, S. A. (2003) Constant battles; The myth of the peaceful, noble savage, St. Martin's Press, New York, NY, 271 pp.

and especially:

Wrangham, R. & Peterson, D. (1996) Demonic males; Apes and the origins of human violence, Houghton Mifflin, New York, NY, 350 pp.

(although Brian Ferguson would vehemently object)

The first three authors present recent archaeological data that indicates that nearly all human groups have experienced at least intermittent warfare since the mid-Pleistocene, while the last pair of authors present copious ethological data that such behavior predates our divergence from other hominids, perhaps as early as the Pliocene.

Furthermore, as I point out in my paper, warfare need not be constant to have an enormous (indeed, overwhelming) impact on reproductive success, as demonstrated by the demographic data collected by N. Chagnon among the Yanomami. Coupling this with the obvious adaptiveness of being able to intuit the motivations and impending actions of one's conspecifics in a dominance hierarchy (such as those found in almost all of our close homind relatives and virtually all known human societies), and the adaptive value of an "agency detector" should be obvious. Moreover, it's operation should be detectible via empirical means, as Boyer and Atran (among others) have recently been doing.

The relevence of all of this to ID should also be obvious: if we do indeed have a hypersensitive "agency detector" that is tuned in such a way as to produce frequent false positives, it is precisely such false positives that IDers usually point to as evidence for design in nature. To state the bleedin' obvious, such "design" is quite literally a figment of their hypersensitive "agency detectors."

Now, as to the relevence of all of this to religion, Atran, Boyer, Guthrie, and others have all published on the connections between such "agency detectors" and the tendency to find supernatural "agency" where there is no empirical evidence that such agency exists. According to this view, the capacity for religious experience is an epiphenomenon of the hypersensitivity of such detectors, compounded by the adaptive value (to certain, but not necessarily all individuals) of such hypersensitivity in highly stratified dominance hierarchies. Despite their many differences, all religions share some common features, which when viewed from this perspective all tend to intensify the effects of such agency detectors and produce false positives that can then be exploited by individuals at the top of dominance hierarchies. In other words, it is precisely through the operation of such innate "agency detectors" that "religious brainwashing" is facilitated. I have attempted to capture this reciprocal connection in what I not-so-modestly refer to as "MacNeill's Law":

Religion facilitates warfare, which facilitates religion

And as to the question of why not everyone seems to react in such ways, this is precisely what classical Darwinian/Fisherian evolutionary theory would predict. Natural selection works on traits that Fisher defined as "continuously variable;" that is, traits that approximate a normal distribution in a population of variable organisms. This would mean that, if selection had indeed moulded the "agency detector," the distribution of such an adaptation among humans would approximate a normal distribution: that is, some people would have "agency dectectors" that rarely detected anything, most would have fairly effective detectors, and a few would show such a tendency to an extraordinary degree, finding "purpose" and "design" (i.e. "agency") virtually everywhere.

Furthermore, as many of the empirical studies of such detectors indicate, the sensitivity of "agency detectors" can be altered by stress, and especially by chronic threat, to the point that people who would normally not be prone to finding "false positives" can, under certain stressful circumstances, begin to do so. Hence the aphorism "there are no atheists in the foxholes."

And yes, I've seen Stephen Colbert's commentary on that aphorism (http://www.salon.com/ent/video_dog/).

Lenny wrote: Allen wrote: As I'm sure Hannah could tell you, I attacked her position pretty relentlessly all summer, using as much evidence from evolutionary biology, mathematics, and philosophy as I could muster. And the result of all that was ....? Moving the goalposts? I can understand... Remember that Allen responded to the following statement "Allen is being unnecessarily accomodative of IDCs."

Exploring the shaky grounds on which complex specified information is built is far more helpful in convincing these IDers than about who said what and who was and was not telling the full truth. I think that the course has exposed the scientific vacuity of intelligent design and while few if any may have changed their immediate positions, it has helped spread the seed of doubt. Remember that up to this seminar most IDers had not been exposed to much of any of the critical arguments against ID. Especially not at the level of the supposedly 'scientific' claims of ID. Different audiences require different approaches to expose them to the many problems of ID

If people are unwilling to look beyond our own stereotypes (IDiots, Creobots) then how can we even hope that we can reach effectively those who could benefit most from our contributions? If we could only present it to them without the ad hominems so typical on many of the boards run by ID critics. *** It's this kind of rudeness that I find quite objectionable as it not only undermines the effectiveness of PT but also destroys much of any hope of reaching IDers who are willing to listen to the arguments.

In the meantime, if you feel you have links to actual discussions on MacNeill's blog with which to back up your assertions that determined IDiots, er, anti-evolution proponents have actually been swayed away from their positions, to any meaningful extent, by your policy of polite discussion and dissemination of correct information, then I'll be delighted to peruse them.

I am not sure why you believe that I hold that position.

Not at all. As I'm sure Hannah could tell you, I attacked her position pretty relentlessly all summer, using as much evidence from evolutionary biology, mathematics, and philosophy as I could muster. I would hardly call that "accomodation."

The question intelligent design theory seeks to answer is whether, supposing the earth was however old you want to imagine it, evolution could still have been responsible for all features of life as we know them today. So the age of the earth is irrelevant. It's a question in a different field, and thus IDEA Clubs feel no urge to take a position on it. ... IDEA Clubs on college campuses are science clubs, functionally equivalent to the Astronomy Club or Physics Students Society.

Not at all. As I'm sure Hannah could tell you, I attacked her position pretty relentlessly all summer, using as much evidence from evolutionary biology, mathematics, and philosophy as I could muster. I would hardly call that "accomodation."

The question intelligent design theory seeks to answer is whether, supposing the earth was however old you want to imagine it, evolution could still have been responsible for all features of life as we know them today. So the age of the earth is irrelevant. It's a question in a different field, and thus IDEA Clubs feel no urge to take a position on it. ... IDEA Clubs on college campuses are science clubs, functionally equivalent to the Astronomy Club or Physics Students Society.

alienward:

While I agree that Hannah's actions wasn't part of a relentless attack, and broke Allen's moderation rule, it makes sense from an YEC view since they are already fundamentally anti-scientific. If evolution 'can be disproved' it is one less verification of an old earth. Divide and conquer. (I liked Allen's theory on religion and warfare. So I may as well adopt war idioms for discussing creationism in case they listen in.)

"and broke Allen's moderation rule"

Uuups, it was comments not emails of course. No broken rule.

STJ is right, this is a trainwreck.

Can I make a suggestion.

A new thread focusing on the psychology/religion/war intent detector .

As far as the success/failure of MacNeil's course I keep hearing 'no one changed their minds (plural)'

When only one 'confessing' IDer showed up.
What were the rest 'theistic evolutionists'?

Let me tell you what my definition of an IDer is.
1. An American Political and Religious Conservative so called 'Christian Fundamentalist' whose political affiliation aligns with the support behind the DI, Howard Ahmenson etc., it is 'Identity Politics'.(that's the power source)
2. People who find supporting that group, beneficial to their own political identity for one reason or other.

Why did Hannah Maxson accept an invitation? Well color me cynical but , and I'm going out on a limb here so take aim, I SUSPECT her INTENT... that with a name like that, Americas foreign policy, which is supported by the rapturists, may benefit her political aims.Take that cold cup of reality.

The complete red herring that ID is somehow 'science' is just arrant nonsense, it is crude social engineering supported by hard line political Straussian conservatives dressed up as big tent question begging of the first order.

Nothing more than a completely cynical attempt to push 'progressive' religion AND any firm test for objective truth aka. Darwinism off the political map.

I understand that the nasty 'low art of politics' is beneath the good professor who seems genuinely to be trying to uncover the 'known unknown' in a purely honest scientific sense....er hello.... politics is all about the big lie.

Fish didn't discover water.

If you want to define ID as big tent question begging of the first order then call it something else.

How about BTQBotFO?

Sure it isn't as sexy as ID ...it takes out the word ID (identity) and you wouldn't have blow hards like Hannah (or Sal) showing up which might be less interesting pathologically unless L.H.O.O.Q.

By all means, purge the political face slapping from BTQBotFO, dismiss Dawkin's and Johnson's polemics and the ranting crowd, the silence may aid thought.

Allen if you want a shortcut to war peace and mythology I suggest reading Chapter 9 of J Campbell's Myths to Live by. "Mythologies of War and Peace." ....Man is a Beast of PrayPrey.

IDEA Clubs on college campuses are science clubs, functionally equivalent to the Astronomy Club or Physics Students Society.

Clearly they must have meant Astrology and Psychics.

IDEA Clubs on college campuses are science clubs, functionally equivalent to the Astronomy Club or Physics Students Society.

Actually, they're more "functionally equivalent" to the Flat Earth Club, the Phrenology Club, the "Holocaust? What Holocaust?" Club, or the Global Warming Denial Club.

Look, IDEA Club chapters don't allow non-Christians to be officers. They are "functionally equivalent" to campus ministries, and have no similarities whatever to science clubs.

Actually, they're more "functionally equivalent" to the Flat Earth Club, the Phrenology Club, the "Holocaust? What Holocaust?" Club, or the Global Warming Denial Club.

The question intelligent design theory seeks to answer is whether, supposing the earth was however old you want to imagine it, evolution could still have been responsible for all features of life as we know them today. So the age of the earth is irrelevant. It's a question in a different field, and thus IDEA Clubs feel no urge to take a position on it.

Table 2. Predictions of Design (Hypothesis): ... (2) Forms will be found in the fossil record that appear suddenly and without any precursors. Table 3. Examining the Evidence (Experiment and Conclusion): Line of Evidence Data (Experiment) Prediction of Design Met? (Conclusion) ... (2) Fossil Record Biological complexity (i.e. new species) tend to appear in the fossil record suddenly and without any similar precursors. The Cambrian explosion is a prime example. Yes.

Flint said, "For the record, I'll stipulate that in my experience Salvador has been invariably polite in saying things known to be false, carefully misinterpreting good questions, or changing the subject. Most of all, his total silence when no good evasions or distortions present themselves are utterly free of the slightest abrasiveness - unless you are so think-skinned as to be peeved when Salvador subsequently pops up elsewhere to repeat exactly what he would not answer you about. Politely, of course."

That nails Salvador's behavior exactly: extreme politeness covering imperviousness to contrary evidence. At the very best, you might win a polite retreat, but usually you get his squid act: release of a huge cloud of ink for the purpose of confusion, followed by a sideways run through any nearby thicket of jargon and obfuscation. Then exactly the same wrong arguments re-appear somewhere else, or in the same place much later on. I've no doubt his politeness looks very good to novice spectators, but PvM and Dr. MacNeil would do well to remember Ambrose Bierce's definition of the art of diplomacy as "how to be disarming when your country isn't". So, I regretfully agree with Lenny, that MacNeill's "idea that he can change IDers by being polite to them and patiently educating them, is laughably naive. Maybe he can try that strategy as well with, say, Nazis or Leninists or Klansmen. I doubt it'll do any better."

I'm not claiming that rudeness works any better on opponents in head-to-head arguments, because as far as I can see from experience over at ARN and elsewhere, nothing makes the slightest impression on them, not facts, not scorn, not facing their own hideous mistakes, not anything. One can only hope to win over any spectators by turning the IDist into a figure of ridicule and presenting a clear demonstration of the facts.

Allen MacNeill --- Thank you for the references. I reiterate that R. Dale Guthrie found no evidence of group violence or warfare in Pleistocene art. There is ample evidence of murder. I doubt that you need more than this for the rest of your account.

N.Wells: "I'm not claiming that rudeness works any better on opponents in head-to-head arguments, because as far as I can see from experience over at ARN and elsewhere ...."

I would dearly love to mistreat no more virtual horses, buuutt, at the risk of Barbaroing whatever few equines remain a-hoof,

(while also adroitly segueing from one metaphor to another)

I'd like to get out the mobile cranes and attempt to deconstruct Sir_Toejam'a trainwreck one last time:

Agency. Prof. MacNeill clearly knows the science that underlies the evo-creo "debate," just as he clearly keeps close tabs on the "agency" science (I read "Demonic Males" years ago now, and agree with him that it serves up critical and cautionary data). But he seems not to have acknowledged what strike me as valid points from Popper's Ghost regarding Dennett-on-agency, not to mention the narrower (and arguably more firmly-established) facial-recognition "module" studies that, to my mind, more parsimoniously account for some of MacNeill's student's pattern-agency-design examples.

(In general, Popper's contributions to the discussion have been undervalued, due to an overemphasis on...)

Civility. Again, politeness and civility are undoubtedly social goods in many contexts. If one is going to stoop to engage with firmly-indoctrinated IDers in a classroom setting--or on a narrow-topic, individually-moderated blog that springs out of a classroom setting, settings in which direct personality conflicts would otherwise be distressing to manage--a case can be made for establishing firm Rules of Engagement and for enforcing those rules via strict and even-handed moderation.

(As has frequently been noted here, the same would be recommended anytime one is tempted to succumb to the urge to "debate" IDiots, particularly the slick, well-practiced, canard-a-moment professional scam artists: insist upon firm Rules of Engagement, standards by which claims will be judged, vigorous neutral moderation, etc. Something quite like, oh, refereed science journals, formal courtrooms with their judges, bailiffs, and evidentiary rules--that kind of thing.)

But civility must not be exalted above all other virtues, particularly in venues like this one, where the reigning virtues are logic, evidence, and honesty, and where a considerable degree of free-wheeling rough'n'tumble discussion is not only permitted, but encouraged. Moderation here is lax to non-existent, participation is unrestricted and essentially global in breadth, and banning is resisted and reserved for the most egregious instances of repeated abuse.

In short, we don't coddle IDers here--if they fail to adhere to logic, present evidence, and modify their positions when logic and evidence reasonably require it, they may expect to be called on it. Heck, there are times when we can't manage to be civil to one another, particularly when one faction or the other becomes convinced that pre-commitment to unexamined assumptions has overruled logic or evidence.

Which isn't to say that the occasional non-troll who wanders into our woods with a sincere desire to learn--even if brandishing ignorant, confused, or fraudently-implanted concepts or concerns--shouldn't be given a fair hearing. If anything, this courtesy is extended for far longer than it deserves to be (I still wince to think of the amount of patient explanation and effort that was poured into the black hole of Larry Fafarman, for instance.)

Which brings us to--

Efficacy. Again, I'm not here to throw doubt on Prof. MacNeill's or Pim's sincerity or qualifications. If they wish to adhere to personal standards of politesse far more stringent and unwavering than mine--even when, in my view, they ought to have every reason to suspect the motivations and sincerity of such as Maxwell and Cordova--then, fine, no problem.

But to link these standards of personal-professional civility with hoped-for outcomes, as it still seems to me Pim has rather explicity done--that is, to claim that, by merely layering unfailing civility onto the effort of communicating the truth about the history, the evidence, and the science behind the evolution-creation struggle--that some significantly greater success will be achieved in bridging this yawning cultural-philosophical-religious-political gap, then nothing conveyed here about either the seminar or the blog suggests to me that this claim has been supported.

Only two committed IDers attended the seminar. I don't know how Prof. MacNeill ran things, but it would appear that neither of these individuals had any meaningful academic outcome (grades or credits) at risk. Neither changed their minds about anything very significant, though I continue to accept the professor's personal observations that some glacial movement was detected and that seeds of doubt may have been sown.

I'm not saying the effort should be abandoned, or was for naught (though Lenny might well), but I hope that any further efforts along these lines are re-tooled. In particular, committed IDers should be required to be just as much "at risk" with regard to learning the material, performing graded coursework, papers, and tests, etc., and defending any claims advanced according to explicit standards and criteria, as anyone else participating in or enrolled in the seminar. (Though my own prediction would be that the experience will then attract even fewer takers with prior ID convictions.)

Claims of ID. Various contributors to the thread have effectively communicated that there is a legitimate scientific controversy around the concepts of micro/macro-evolution. But that controversy does not use those terms in the way that IDers do, which is patently bogus. Dr. MacNeill has not clearly associated his one participant's movement toward acceptance of "microevolution" and openness toward the possibility of "macroevolution" with the real--as opposed to the bogus--terms, so I continue regard that claim of "progress" as illusory.

I couldn't follow Pim's gobbledygook with regard to the professor's claim that ID's "theoretical hypotheses" have been confined to some list of peripheral matters.

ID is scientifically vacuous, as Pim has demonstrated himself on multiple occasions: it doesn't have any consistent explanatory theory which accounts for a broad set of observations and data; it doesn't even have meaningful hypotheses. What ID--and its religious precursors--have is a rag-bag collection of logical fallacies, arguments from ignorance and incredulity, fraudulent and debunked critiques of evolution, and a few positive claims, along the lines of those advanced by Dembski and Behe, that are trivial to scientifically refute.

That it requires some application of science to refute these psuedo-scientific claims does not convert them into "theoretical hypotheses," and extending this charitable terminology to such claims will lead to no good, and potential ill.

Conclusion. Pim and the professor are nice and knowledgeable folks, with a sincere desire to cast light into the shadows where ID festers. So far, though, they seem to underestimate the intractability of the foe and overestimate the potency of "civility." As a result, they seem to have have not yet discerned some of the apparent results of this experiment. That's no reason to throw in the towel, though it may be a good reason to do some serious tinkering with the experimental design.

I congratulate them on their past efforts and wish them the best of luck in their future endeavors.

May I suggest, for the next ID course, that the final exam, upon which everyone's entire grade would be based, consist solely of two questions:

(1) please state the scientific theory of ID/creationism

(2) please list all successfully tested predictions made from this theory

Anyone who does not turn in a blank paper, flunks.

Stevepinhead:
Nicely done.

"That it requires some application of science to refute these psuedo-scientific claims does not convert them into "theoretical hypotheses," and extending this charitable terminology to such claims will lead to no good, and potential ill."

Actually, I believe I have seen most of those claim been refuted as illdefined, so they can't be called hypotheses, at least aposteriori.

At least IC, SCI (Chu-Carroll at Good Math, Bad Math) and EF (Elsberry et al at Talkreason?) have each a good explanation of their illdefined nature IIRC. [Which BTW means that one doesn't really need to discuss each particular 'IC' candidate, as I see so often.]

Note:
No metaphores were hurt or killed during this comment.

"[Which BTW means that one doesn't really need to discuss each particular 'IC' candidate, as I see so often.]"

Perhaps need explanation: Behe's subtractive IC *seems* welldefined, but we all know exaptations and scaffolding destroys that. Chu-Carroll has made a simple and general proof based on algorithmic theory. [In effect, IC is a search for simplicity, which is algorithmically illdefined... due to things like scaffolding et cetera.]

Allen, in response to your last comment, Ms. Broaddus' paper is nice and well-written, but I think part of the lack of specific response is that there isn't much to say about it. Dan pretty much said it all in the first comment after your post on her paper at your website.

However, if you'd like a comment, here's mine. Ms. Broaddus pulls together a decent variety of evidence, more than I've seen in one place anyway, but the same basic points get made whenever there's a discussion of the "face" on Mars, or discoveries of faces of Jesus or the Virgin Mary in peeling paint, mouldy walls, or old bagels. We know that humans extrapolate and interpolate like crazy when interpreting what they see (as most optical illusions demonstrate), and it's pretty basic that humans when young or in prescientific tribes have been quick to find volition and personality in floods, storms, and all other aspects of nature. Any bull session on religion should cover that pretty quickly. Humans are truly a pattern-finding animal, and doing science is merely putting some constraints on that process and tying to keep it from derailing. That even the best of scientists can hare off into crankdom irrationality is not news (heck, it's almost a tradition). This is recognized in the comment that the scientific method is everything and anything that makes science scientist-proof.

The stuff on autism and macaque brains was news to me, and adds to the picture, but as it supports my predilections and its out of my field I'm not disposed to add to it, question it, or dispute it.

I note that while you are correct about the lack of response to your students' papers, Panda's Thumb participants do in fact pay a lot of attention to evidence for and against evolution. Many posts consist of announcements and discussions of new findings. However, people on this site also spend a lot of time analyzing creationist & IDist arguments, actions, and motivations (gossipping about social news & interactions is another major human activity, albeit not one of the proudest, you may have noticed), and I fear your post provoked the latter aspect of the site rather than the former.

Sorry, my post was a reaction to an earlier comment by Dr. MacNeill (about the lack of substantive response to Broaddus' paper), not to his most recent comment.

Look, IDEA Club chapters don't allow non-Christians to be officers. They are "functionally equivalent" to campus ministries, and have no similarities whatever to science clubs.

That information is out of date. The IDEA Center changed that rule early in 2006.

— ivy privy

One wonders how many IDEA Club officers they can point to who are, um, not Christians . . . . .

May I suggest, for the next ID course, that the final exam, upon which everyone's entire grade would be based, consist solely of two questions: (1) please state the scientific theory of ID/creationism (2) please list all successfully tested predictions made from this theory Anyone who does not turn in a blank paper, flunks.

From deep down in the nether recesses I think that the word for seing animals or humans in clouds or other natural formations is nephelococcygia ....

From deep down in the nether recesses I think that the word for seing animals or humans in clouds or other natural formations is nephelococcygia ....

But he seems not to have acknowledged what strike me as valid points from Popper's Ghost regarding Dennett-on-agency

— steviepinhead

We can be pretty sure that your comments are not going to convince much of anyone if you behave this way.

— PvM

The question intelligent design theory seeks to answer is whether, supposing the earth was however old you want to imagine it, evolution could still have been responsible for all features of life as we know them today.

ID is an entirely theoretical hypothesis restricted to the origin of life, the origin of the genetic code, and the origin of a few selected biochemical pathways (and the bacterial flagellum)

Look, IDEA Club chapters don't allow non-Christians to be officers. They are "functionally equivalent" to campus ministries, and have no similarities whatever to science clubs.

"an entirely hypothetical hypothesis".

funny

"mental masturbation"

you say potatoE...

;)

Charges of incivility are ad hominem, especially as they have been used in this discussion; they have been employed as a means of deflecting critical comment and attacking the messenger.

— Popper

MacNeill's seminar strikes me a bit like a seminar on the Holocaust where Holocaust deniers are given equal time (including co-moderation of the blog), but all the swastikas and uniforms are hidden and the anti-semitic literature is dismissed as polemics ("that isn't Holocaust denial"), leaving nothing but "an entirely hypothetical hypothesis".

— Popper

As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one. [1]

Oh and Popper, remind us again of the extent of your familiarity with the seminar? Or was it just an argument from ignorance? So what aspect caused you to perceive this 'similarity' with holocaust deniers? Perhaps we may explore the problems people have with an overactive perception... After all, that's what the thread used to be about.

I of course meant "an entirely theoretical hypothesis", the same as MacNeill's "polite" mischaracterization of IDiocy.

— Popper

Just as some hostages after a long period in captivity rationalise the actions of their captors, Allen is being unnecessarily accomodative of IDCs.

— Shiva

It sounds as if it didn't. I sure hate to say "I told you so", but .... .

— Lenny Frank

In the meantime, if you feel you have links to actual discussions on MacNeill's blog with which to back up your assertions that determined IDiots, er, anti-evolution proponents have actually been swayed away from their positions, to any meaningful extent, by your policy of polite discussion and dissemination of correct information, then I'll be delighted to peruse them. Pim responded with this: I am not sure why you believe that I hold that position. Pim, really this is rather exasperating. Are you now admitting---after repeatedly and plaintive expressing your hope that, with politeness and persistence you can get through to these people (not to mention rather testily enjoining the rest of us to desist from our counterproductive lack of civility)---that after all you don't really hold out any such hope? I'm sorry, but if you're not flatly contradicting yourself here, then you've come as close as makes no difference. Or maybe, after expending all these words and feelings, you're actually not claiming to have said much of anything at all.

— Steve

Do you seriously believe (as Allen appears to believe) that Sal and Hannah are "innately" predisposed to behave like schmucks?

— Registered User

Of course, she misstates her own version of ID; so called "intelligent design theory" is an activity, not a "theory", and the goal is not to seek an answer, but rather to deny that evolution could have been responsible for the features of life, primarily with the aim of implying that an "intelligent designer" --- aka "God" --- must have been involved. The notion that ID is "an entirely theoretical hypothesis" is --- pardon me for being impolite --- utter hogwash

— Popper

who cares about them

Was the seminar for Hannah or Sal?

As I explained before, the ID hypothesis has many flaws and short comings but to argue that this is no a scientific hypothesis is like saying that young earth creationism is a priori unscientific.

Popper is no troll, he's been hanging about PT in various guises for quite a while now, and his insights, while often presented in a completely abrasive fashion, are also just as often quite insightful.

Like calling someone an asshole eh Popper. You're funny... Arguing against yourself...

Make that "ahold".

to tell you the truth, popper, I haven't a clue what's going on in this thread any more.

I can't recall Pim posting anything remotely resembling the kinds of things I've seen in this particular thread before.

something's up, and if he isn't going to spill the beans, then I can't see the point in further attempts to communicate on any of the topics being discussed in this thread.

I came back, hoping there might be reason to untangle this mess, but it just keeps gettin stranger and stranger.

Nice ad hominem. Of course, comparing the seminar to the holocaust did not serve at all to distract from the discussion now did it.

I can't recall Pim posting anything remotely resembling the kinds of things I've seen in this particular thread before.

Intelligent design is very much a hypothesis which simply states that design is the set theoretic complement of chance and regularity.

Nice ad hominem. Of course, comparing the seminar to the holocaust did not serve at all to distract from the discussion now did it.

You know, I think you might be right about the impersonation.

I really have NEVER seen Pim say anything like that before. ever.

it's completely antithetical to any argument on ID he has presented within the last year.

Is there any way to find out if someone has grabbed Pim's account?

really. go back to any thread posted by pim with the word "vacuous" in the title.

There you will find him stepwise dismantling any resemblance to actual science ID claims to make.

there is somethig very fishy here, and it's not my study subjects.

P.S. What I did compare is ID to Holocaust denial. And I'm not the first person at PT to have done so. Bizarrely, PvM considers this comparison to be "ad hominem", and a failure to employ reason and logic, which is itself a complete abdication of reason and logic.

Indeed, the second (my mouse slipped) google hit for pim+vacuous is

http://www.pandasthumb.org/archives/2005/11/vienna_cardinal.html

where he writes "the Intelligent Design Creationism movement", "the realization that Intelligent Design is scientifically vacuous", "Evolution is open to scientific criticism, of course much of the 'criticisms' raised by ID is often based on ignorance or an incomplete portrayal or understanding of present day scientific theory and hypotheses", and "some have used the philosophical position to argue for a 'scientific position' which is for all practical reasons totally vacuous and in fact theologically risky". No lunacy about "Intelligent design is very much a hypothesis which simply states that design is the set theoretic complement of chance and regularity". I don't really believe that this is a case of identity theft, but someone ought to check.

Searching for "set theoretic complement of chance and regularity", I did find

http://www.pandasthumb.org/archives/2005/05/telic_thoughts.html
http://www.pandasthumb.org/archives/2006/06/intelligent_des_26.html

so it seems that PvM has been channeling IDers Dembski and Del Ratzsch for a while.

The Design Inference is by virtue of being the set theoretic complement of chance and regularity (also known as appeal from ignorance) inevitably subject to false positives.

The notion that ID is "an entirely theoretical hypothesis" is --- pardon me for being impolite --- utter hogwash

Popper seems to confuse the definition of ID with the motivations of ID or the actions of ID proponents when it comes to denying that Darwinian evolution could have been responsible for all the features of life. It always help to be sufficiently specific about ID's claims, even though it may be sometimes hard to find a common denominator.

ID is an entirely theoretical hypothesis restricted to the origin of life, the origin of the genetic code, and the origin of a few selected biochemical pathways (and the bacterial flagellum)

I suspect that, in the past, when PvM has referred to ID as "a hypothesis which simply states that design is the set theoretic complement of chance and regularity", people here didn't make any sense of what he was saying but went along as long as he was saying that it was scientifically vacuous. But worse than being scientifically vacuous, it's conceptually vacuous.

— Popper

Finally, when I said that it's hogwash that "ID is an entirely theoretical hypothesis", I was referring to MacNeill's ID is an entirely theoretical hypothesis restricted to the origin of life, the origin of the genetic code, and the origin of a few selected biochemical pathways (and the bacterial flagellum)

Behe/Darwin's Black Box: The argument for "irreducible complexity", while interesting, appears to leave almost all of evolutionary biology untouched. Behe's argument is essentially focused on the origin of life from abiotic materials, and arguments for the "irreducible complexity" of the genetic code and a small number of biochemical pathways and processes

Popper exemplifies the confusion surrounding ID when he accuses me of being dishonest, while merely showing his unfamiliarity with ID.

"But as we here at PT know so well, the proper definition of "ID" is not restricted to some abstract hypothesis; that's the sort of BS that DI pulls to try to hide their agenda."

An unfamiliarity with the ID literature certainly is not going to impress many ID proponents nor critics. Now Popper is right that ID does a lot of bait and switch and equivocation when it comes to the concepts of 'design', 'information' and 'complexity' but it does help to understand the basic ID arguments (as well as the expanded forms).

For instance the set theoretic complement definition of design shows how limited ID's concept really is. Del Ratzsch pointed this one out a while ago and warned how many ID proponents as well as critics seem to be unfamiliar with the limited nature of the design inference.
Seems his comments were almost prophetic :-)

Pim, if you or allen really think you can exclude motivations from all of this, then you really are just playing a game of mental masturbation.

...and what you are doing is totally, completely, useless.

Even the "leaders" of Id you mention don't ever treat Id in hypotheticals, or don't you even bother to read what Dembski writes any more.

what about Wells? do we find lots of hypotheticals coming from the mouth of Wells in his most recent bit of drivel?

this is NOT a game, Pim.

You've become lost in the details, I fear, if you are even Pim.

Aha so now ID is a concept determined by what Hannah states rather than by the arguments of the leaders of the ID movement? Interesting... Allen is correct about ID being restricted to various areas only: genetic code has always been a favorite of ID arguments, origin of life is how ID is moving from intervention to front loading and the bacterial flagella is a historical artifact of the ID movement.

The "probability" of the physical constants is irrelevant. If they are not constrained by an unknown physical law, then the design is thought to be in the selection of the constants. If they are found, in the future, to be predicted from a fundamental law, then the design is in the law. Fine-tuning is totally unrelated to the probability of the constants. It is entirely related to the fact that life---any kind of life, not just human life---is sensitive to their values. This is no less an intriguing should we be able to derive the values of the constants. Comment by David Heddle --- August 16, 2006 @ 10:39 am

P.S. What I did compare is ID to Holocaust denial. And I'm not the first person at PT to have done so. Bizarrely, PvM considers this comparison to be "ad hominem", and a failure to employ reason and logic, which is itself a complete abdication of reason and logic

MacNeill's seminar strikes me a bit like a seminar on the Holocaust where Holocaust deniers are given equal time (including co-moderation of the blog), but all the swastikas and uniforms are hidden and the anti-semitic literature is dismissed as polemics ("that isn't Holocaust denial"), leaving nothing but "an entirely hypothetical hypothesis".

that sure conflicts with the vacuous nature of ID in every aspect thinkable you have liberally painted here on PT for the past year or so. Are you running some "ingenious" experiment here, Pim?

"I do not wish to play down or denigrate what Dembski has done. There is much of value in the Design Inference. But I think that some aspects of even the limited task Dembski set for himself still remains to be tamed." "That Dembski is not employing the robust, standard, agency-derived conception of design that most of his supporters and many of his critics have assumed seems clear. (Del Ratzsch Nature design and science)

— Del Ratzsch

bah, Pim.

you really are playing a game of mental masturbation if you want to claim that IDers really "believe" there is a scientific basis for the design inference.

You've totally overintellectualized the ID effort, and I'm sure Dembski and Sal are thanking you profusely behind your back.

You're losing touch with reality, Pim, and it's most disturbing to witness.

since you seem to think we aren't capable of listening and you feel a need to repeat yourself, let me do so as well:

You simply can't separate the motivations from the theoretical in this case.

the very concept was spawned as the result of a specific agenda, and any discussion past that agenda is disingenuous and naive, at best, and works actually serves the goals of the creationists, at worst.

get a grip, Pim.

If this IS the real Pim, it seems he has become a fool for detail.

If this is Pim, then you were absolutely correct when you said there was no point to PT.

However, that only applies for yourself.

You should consider removing yourself as a contributor.

Well, this used to be a productive thread. steviepinhead's summary was good! After that it has certainly gone down a slippery slope indeed...

That some people may not understand what is meant by "set theoretic complement of chance and regularity" certainly seems to indicate that some people are unfamiliar with ID's foundations.

There's a low signal to noise ratio here.

But if I understand Pim's argument, it is: Since the best cdesign proponentists seem to be able to do as far as formalizing their program as a hypothesis is to propose "the set theoretic complement..." we, as the opposition should be happy to restrict our counter-argumentation to this proposition, being as it is, irredemably vacuous. And, then, further, by declaring that no such attempt at formalization has occured at all, ID opponents are 1) alowing themselves to appear ignorant of the issue under discussion, and 2) foolish, because it's a gift: such an easy proposition to demolish should be granted; if it's a chess match and your opponent gives away his queen, you take it.

Of course, I have an issue with declaring that this mumbled formalism is what ID "is." ID "is" a cultural and religious strategy in addition to whatever mumbo-jumbo issues from Dembski's keyboard. But insofar as we can all agree on this aspect of the debate, I don't think Pim can fairly be accused of offering succor to the enemy simply for stating what he sees as their only formal hypothesis, in their words.

/last rites for a suffering thread?
(Not a chance, buddy.)

You've totally overintellectualized the ID effort, and I'm sure Dembski and Sal are thanking you profusely behind your back.

But if I understand Pim's argument

Sorry, a better example would have been "taking treason and patriotism to be what Ann Coulter says they are".

you really are playing a game of mental masturbation if you want to claim that IDers really "believe" there is a scientific basis for the design inference.

— Sir Toejam

You've totally overintellectualized the ID effort, and I'm sure Dembski and Sal are thanking you profusely behind your back.

— Sir Toejam

You're losing touch with reality, Pim, and it's most disturbing to witness.

— Sir Toejam

since you seem to think we aren't capable of listening and you feel a need to repeat yourself, let me do so as well: You simply can't separate the motivations from the theoretical in this case. the very concept was spawned as the result of a specific agenda, and any discussion past that agenda is disingenuous and naive, at best, and works actually serves the goals of the creationists, at worst.

— Sir Toejam

get a grip, Pim.

— Sir Toejam

If this IS the real Pim, it seems he has become a fool for detail. If this is Pim, then you were absolutely correct when you said there was no point to PT. However, that only applies for yourself. You should consider removing yourself as a contributor.

— Sir Toejam

Of course, I have an issue with declaring that this mumbled formalism is what ID "is." ID "is" a cultural and religious strategy in addition to whatever mumbo-jumbo issues from Dembski's keyboard.

But insofar as we can all agree on this aspect of the debate

I don't think Pim can fairly be accused of offering succor to the enemy simply for stating what he sees as their only formal hypothesis, in their words.

That some people may not understand what is meant by "set theoretic complement of chance and regularity" certainly seems to indicate that some people are unfamiliar with ID's foundations.

— Popper

People don't understand what it means because it's NONSENSE.

Anyone who talks in such terms doesn't understand set theory (what's the universe here?), and doesn't understand the distinction between a thing and a cause or an attribute. And the discussion wasn't ABOUT "ID's foundations", that was your DISHONEST SPIN. The context was MacNeill and his students ruling out such things as Phillip Johnson's polemics as BEING ID --- "That is not ID". The context was the misrepresentation of what ID ENCOMPASSES.

— Popper

PvM is playing a stupid dishonest game here, as stupid and dishonest as any of the BS that the IDiots play. How very sad. He should feel lucky that hardly anyone is reading it. Especially because it apparently isn't just a game; he really DOESN'T understand that his "definition" is nonsense, and he really DOESN'T understand what an "ad hominem" is (an analogy between a seminar about evolution and ID to a seminar about the Holocaust and its denial does not attack some man instead of his argument). Feh.

— Popper

ID supporters often whip up their own contradictory versions of ID.

Intelligent design is very much a hypothesis which simply states that design is the set theoretic complement of chance and regularity. Popper seems to confuse the definition of ID with the motivations of ID or the actions of ID proponents when it comes to denying that Darwinian evolution could have been responsible for all the features of life. It always help to be sufficiently specific about ID's claims, even though it may be sometimes hard to find a common denominator.

hide the embarassing fact that you were fully ignorant of the design inference as formulated originally by Dembski.

Pim

That some people conclude that the hypothesis is conceptually vacuous shows why some IDers are right to claim that some ID critics are unfamiliar with the concepts of ID.

The "concepts" of ID? That's "concept" with an "s"? Plural?

Spare me. "God did it." That's the concept.

Which is why a course like Allen may be much needed, not just for ID proponents but also for ID critics.

Oh, please give us a freaking break, Pim. I've said it before, Pim, and I'll say it again: your blowhard attempts to "debunk" a concept that is scientifically vacuous on its face are a waste of time. To the extent that you give the impression that lengthy, "mathematically rigorous" expositions are necessary to "prove" that Dembski and his disciples are lying sacks, you are merely facilitating the IDers cause.

Just go and look at the disaster over at the Allen Loves Hannah course blog! Sal took Pim and some other mathematical sucker for a 300 comment ride that had no purpose except to allow the participants to sharpen their pointy heads AND give the appearance of substance where there is none. Only at the end of all the bogusness did Michael Hubl demand that the ID peddlers provide clear unambiguous definitions and stick to them. Lyin' Hannah attempted to do this and then Hubl threw down the only necessary gauntlet: he asked Hannah to show everyone how Dembski/Behe's garbage could be applied to a random bacterial protein. What happened? Two events which demontrate why Allen and Hannah's "experiment" was a total joke: Hannah refused to apply the test to a biological molecule (refused to even BEGIN applying it) and Michael Hubl was banned when Sal whined that Hannah was being "pestered".

Is that something you are proud to have contributed to, Pim?

I wish someone would answer a few of the questions I posed upthread. Allen won't answer them, of course, because he's a whiny titty baby (not an ad hominem -- rather, an accurate description based on his own behavior). Allen is not "imaginative." He's a blowhard and to the extent he fashions himself an "evolutionary psychologist" and refers to this paper as "brilliant" he's something of a idling Darwinist wanker as well.

I worry about Cornell. Between McNeill's teaching of a course which involves hand-holding with ID peddlers and retreating from the ugly truths to make those ID peddlers happy and his dissing of Carl Sagan and Dawkins, and the Ornithology Labs fraud with the Ivory Billed Woodpecker, this is an institution that is getting a bit of stink on itself. Ultimately, Hannah Maxson is going to graduate from Cornell with her stupid "triple major" in bullshxttery and then what? I assume she is going to go to grad school somewhere so she can get her "credentials" and then go to work for the Discovery Institute or whatever it chooses to call itself in the future.

Or maybe she'll focus on "evolutionary psychology"-based methods for promoting the "reorientation" of all the poor, sick gay people in the United States ...

That some people conclude that the hypothesis is conceptually vacuous shows why some IDers are right to claim that some ID critics are unfamiliar with the concepts of ID.

Pim

That some people conclude that the hypothesis is conceptually vacuous shows why some IDers are right to claim that some ID critics are unfamiliar with the concepts of ID.

The "concepts" of ID? That's "concept" with an "s"? Plural?

Spare me. "God did it." That's the concept.

Which is why a course like Allen may be much needed, not just for ID proponents but also for ID critics.

Oh, please give us a freaking break, Pim. I've said it before, Pim, and I'll say it again: your blowhard attempts to "debunk" a concept that is scientifically vacuous on its face are a waste of time. To the extent that you give the impression that lengthy, "mathematically rigorous" expositions are necessary to "prove" that Dembski and his disciples are lying sacks, you are merely facilitating the IDers cause.

Just go and look at the disaster over at the Allen Loves Hannah course blog! Sal took Pim and some other mathematical sucker for a 300 comment ride that had no purpose except to allow the participants to sharpen their pointy heads AND give the appearance of substance where there is none. Only at the end of all the bogusness did Michael Hubl demand that the ID peddlers provide clear unambiguous definitions and stick to them. Lyin' Hannah attempted to do this and then Hubl threw down the only necessary gauntlet: he asked Hannah to show everyone how Dembski/Behe's garbage could be applied to a random bacterial protein. What happened? Two events which demontrate why Allen and Hannah's "experiment" was a total joke: Hannah refused to apply the test to a biological molecule (refused to even BEGIN applying it) and Michael Hubl was banned when Sal whined that Hannah was being "pestered".

Is that something you are proud to have contributed to, Pim?

I wish someone would answer a few of the questions I posed upthread. Allen won't answer them, of course, because he's a whiny titty baby (not an ad hominem -- rather, an accurate description based on his own behavior). Allen is not "imaginative." He's a blowhard and to the extent he fashions himself an "evolutionary psychologist" and refers to this paper as "brilliant" he's something of a idling Darwinist wanker as well.

I worry about Cornell. Between McNeill's teaching of a course which involves hand-holding with ID peddlers and retreating from the ugly truths to make those ID peddlers happy and his dissing of Carl Sagan and Dawkins, and the Ornithology Labs fraud with the Ivory Billed Woodpecker, this is an institution that is getting a bit of stink on itself. Ultimately, Hannah Maxson is going to graduate from Cornell with her stupid "triple major" in bullshxttery and then what? I assume she is going to go to grad school somewhere so she can get her "credentials" and then go to work for the Discovery Institute or whatever it chooses to call itself in the future.

Or maybe she'll focus on "evolutionary psychology"-based methods for promoting the "reorientation" of all the poor, sick gay people in the United States ...

Aha so now ID is a concept determined by what Hannah states rather than by the arguments of the leaders of the ID movement?

I agree to a large extent with your characterization of ID's history. However to reject ID merely because it has been hijacked or had alterior motives, misses the point that there IS a scientific component to ID, however vacuous it may be. We may all want to deny such but that would merely play in the hands of the ID movement.

No, Pim, the hijacking is being done by YOU.

It's YOU who are arguing that there was a scientifically valid argument for the whole "design inference" to begin with, while at the same time, acknowledging in the very same paragraph that the history is entirely indicative of it's origins being of an entirely agenda-oriented nature.

You just are unable to see what you are doing, are you?

amazing.

is this the "result" of participating along with the bloggers in Allen's "course"? The application of post-hoc legitimization of a concept that by it's very nature, was completely bereft of merit to begin with?

I sure hope not.

...and I do still wonder if this IS the real Pim.

It's an unnecessary ad hominem, showing lack of logic and reason. Note how Popper does little to contradict these simple observations.

I agree to a large extent with your characterization of ID's history. However to reject ID merely because it has been hijacked or had alterior motives, misses the point that there IS a scientific component to ID, however vacuous it may be. We may all want to deny such but that would merely play in the hands of the ID movement.

Pim

So far, your assertion that the ID hypothesis as defined by Dembski is 'nonsense' could benefit from more than the usual ad hominem argument that "any idiot could see that it is wrong".

Funny, that sounds exactly like the sort of thing that Hannah Maxson would say.

So is your claim, Pim, that "hypotheses" regarding biology that depend on the existence of "mysterious alien beings" whose properties and motivations are VERBOTEN topics are not prima facie "nonsense"?

Sure sounds like that is what you're saying. But go ahead and clarify yourself if you like.

This reminds me of another one of the hilarious low points on the Allen Loves Hannah blog: when the claim was made that a genuine showing of an "irreducibly complex" biomolecule would vault the scientist/mathematician who made such a showing into the most exalted wing in the Hall of Science Fame, Hannah Maxson's response was to attack the "logic" of the "argument."

Forgetting that creationism/ID is a POLITICAL/RELIGIOUS MOVEMENT is a big boo-boo. Trying to make people forget this incontrovertible fact is one of the primary tactics of the ID peddler. Again: this is why the Allen Loves Hannah was such a disturbing and sad joke. The most plain and obvious reasons for understanding WHY ID is vacuous garbage were not addressed. Yes, Pim, you pointed out the vacuity 200 times. But why did Allen not insist that Hannah directly address these issues? Why instead did Allen choose to praise the plainly lying and disingenuous Hannah Maxson? And why do continue to praise Allen as "imaginative" for behaving this way? What in the heck is the deal with that?

Since the best cdesign proponentists seem to be able to do as far as formalizing their program as a hypothesis is to propose "the set theoretic complement..." we, as the opposition should be happy to restrict our counter-argumentation to this proposition, being as it is, irredemably vacuous.

— CJ O'Brien

Scientific component of ID: the null set.

there IS a scientific component to ID

— PvM

is this the "result" of participating along with the bloggers in Allen's "course"? The application of post-hoc legitimization of a concept that by it's very nature, was completely bereft of merit to begin with?

— Sir_Toejam

However to reject ID merely because it has been hijacked or had alterior motives, misses the point that there IS a scientific component to ID, however vacuous it may be. We may all want to deny such but that would merely play in the hands of the ID movement.

For the billionth time, any sentence addressing "ID theory" that doesn't mention the fact that the "ID movement" is, like the "creation science" movement before it, entirely a political/religio movement is "playing into the hands of the ID movement."

There is no "scientific component" to "ID" unless and until independent evidence for the "mysterious alien beings" who are responsible for creating "irreducibly complex" biomolecules is produced.

Absent that, Pim, it's just wanking horsecrap because -- as I'm sure you know -- you'll never be able to "disprove" the equally likely possibility that there exists a breed of "mysterious alien beings" out there who unintelligently crap (the verb) irreducibly complex molecules into existence, or who crap out entire planets ... or galaxies full of such molecules.

And you'll never hear Allen McNeill talk about this very real "possibility" because, gawrsh, it's "not civil" to talk about deities having to go to the bathroom when you could be throwing a whiny temper tantrum about it's unfair to call students who think that modern biology is a fraud "arrogant".

your assertion that the ID hypothesis as defined by Dembski is 'nonsense' could benefit from more than the usual ad hominem argument that "any idiot could see that it is wrong".

But we can't so restrict our counter-argumentation because that simply isn't what ID is about, and the media and the school boards and society at large are virtually unaffected by such arguments. If that were all it takes, then ID would have vanished long ago, because the proposition is indeed irredeemably vacuous, quite transparently so, and can be dismissed in a sentence or two.

I worry about Cornell. Between McNeill's teaching of a course which involves hand-holding with ID peddlers and retreating from the ugly truths to make those ID peddlers happy and his dissing of Carl Sagan and Dawkins, and the Ornithology Labs fraud with the Ivory Billed Woodpecker, this is an institution that is getting a bit of stink on itself. Ultimately, Hannah Maxson is going to graduate from Cornell with her stupid "triple major" in bullshxttery and then what? I assume she is going to go to grad school somewhere so she can get her "credentials" and then go to work for the Discovery Institute or whatever it chooses to call itself in the future.

____ a leading historian of Darwinism, concluded from Gallup's figures that the American public simply does not understand what the scientists means by evolution. As ____ summarized the matter, "The destructive implications of evolutionary biology extend far beyond the assumptions of organized religion to a much deeper and more pervasive belief, held by the vast majority of people, that non-mechanistic organizing designs or forces are somehow responsible for the visible order of the physical universe, biological organisms, and human moral order." ____ blamed the scientific establishment itself for misleading the public about the absolute incompatibility of contemporary Darwinism with any belief in God, designing forces, or absolute standards of good and evil. Scientific leaders have obscured the conflict for fear of jeopardizing public support for their funding, and also because some of them believe that religion may still play a useful role in maintaining public morality. According to ____, "These rationalizations are politic but intellectually dishonest."

Again, you use the term IDers to cover a group which includes a small number of ID proponents in 'leadership' positions as well as a large group of people who believe in ID as a scientific foundation for their religious beliefs or at least one which validates their religious beliefs. Yes, I do claim that most IDers believe/want to believe that there is a scientific foundation for ID.

I am sure Sal will be thanking me in my face.

Scientific component of ID: the null set.

— David Benson

I might have retyped my comment, but then I reflected that a Syntax Error might well be the best possible response at this time.
Cheers.

It would be an ad hominem if I had said no more than that, but I did say more; for instance isn't really a "hypothesis" at all, it's a semantic claim, and a ludicrous one, since chance and regularity aren't "sets", and anything that is designed is also a consequence of chance and regularity by a recursive argument. PvM says "the definition is quite straightforward", which is like saying "green ideas dream furiously" is straightforward. Set complementation is relative to a universe, yet none has been defined here. "design", "chance", and "regularity" aren't even in the same semantic class.

— Popper

Yeah, the same way we do little to contradict the "simple observations" of creationist trolls when they say that evolution lacks logic and reason

— Popper

Aha so now ID is a concept determined by what Hannah states rather than by the arguments of the leaders of the ID movement?

— Popper

Yes, you dumb cluck, because Hannah is a leader of the ID movement at Cornell. Because there is no single thing that ID is.

Because the "leaders of ID" are con men who toss out any and all arguments they can think of, hoping one will stick, or that some fool will be stupid enough to actually take it seriously as an intellectual challenge. "set theoretically" --- wow, sounds kind of like higher math or something; too bad it's utterly misapplied.

One could try to make sense of it by rephrasing it as "everything is a result of either design, chance, or regularity", but only a complete blithering idiot or someone in the grips of an ideology would fail to recognize the extreme false dichotomy.

If this is the "foundation" of ID, then ID is perched upon a steaming pile of bull diarrhea.

"Scientific component of ID: the null set." Excellent observation.

— Pv (there IS a scientific component of ID) M

Merely claiming that ID is unscientific or religiously motivated is not really a very convincing argument. At least, not convincing to those who are toying with the concept of ID, confused by the claims that ID is scientifically relevant.

It's really quite pointless, STJ, as pointless as debating with anyone in the grips of an ideology. PvM says that there IS a scientific component of ID, then flatly contradicts that by agreeing that the scientific component of ID is "the null set" (in logic, the assertion that there "is" something of a certain description is equivalent to the assertion that the set conforming to that description isn't empty). He insists that "Intelligent design is very much a hypothesis ..." and then flatly contradicts that by saying "Well at least we agree on ID not being a single thing". When I state tthat "design", "chance", and "regularity" are not in the same semantic category, he absurdly calls that "a meaningless claim" and complains that I didn't support it. Well, let's see: "Let's design something. Let's chance something. Let's regularity something." Hmm, no. "It happened by design. It happened by chance. It happened by regularity." Better, but how does something happen by regularity? "It exhibits design. It exhibits chance. It exhibits regularity." But things don't exhibit chance, they happen by chance. Even if we apply Procrustean measures to fit these terms into a common mold, they are both hopelessly indefinite and clearly overlap; the things we design also have regular features and chance elements, so design cannot be defined as the absence of chance and regularity; the false dichotomy is obvious because the counterexamples are so easy to find. And again, even if we were to define "design" in such a peculiar and ad hoc way, definitions are not hypotheses, they are not the sort of thing that can be confirmed or disconfirmed, they are not "scientific elements". PvM's response is not a rebuttal of points, it's an ad hominem comment about familiarity with Dembski's work. But there is no need to waste one's time studying Dembski's output to know these things, and there's no point unless one's goal is to engage Sal in a point-for-point dispute for the sole purpose of showing people who already know he's full of crap that he's full of crap, because you certainly won't get Sal or any of his co-IDiots to admit it.

Merely claiming that ID is unscientific or religiously motivated is not really a very convincing argument. At least, not convincing to those who are toying with the concept of ID, confused by the claims that ID is scientifically relevant.

But to allow Hannah to define ID seems to give her far more power than she deserves.

No Pim. What it does is give her EXACTLY the amount of rope she needs to hang herself, notwithstanding Allen's desperate efforts to hold the chair in place.

Popper exemplifies the confusion surrounding ID when he accuses me of being dishonest, while merely showing his unfamiliarity with ID.

"But as we here at PT know so well, the proper definition of "ID" is not restricted to some abstract hypothesis; that's the sort of BS that DI pulls to try to hide their agenda."

An unfamiliarity with the ID literature certainly is not going to impress many ID proponents nor critics. Now Popper is right that ID does a lot of bait and switch and equivocation when it comes to the concepts of 'design', 'information' and 'complexity' but it does help to understand the basic ID arguments (as well as the expanded forms).

For instance the set theoretic complement definition of design shows how limited ID's concept really is. Del Ratzsch pointed this one out a while ago and warned how many ID proponents as well as critics seem to be unfamiliar with the limited nature of the design inference.
Seems his comments were almost prophetic :-)

As a matter of fact, quite a few people have posted at PT that it is the evidence that ID is unscientific, religiously motivated, and plain dishonest that primarily sways them, and of course these were the determining factors in Kitzmiller, not a formal refutation of Dembski's "hypothesis".

— Popper

Popper exemplifies the confusion surrounding ID when he accuses me of being dishonest, while merely showing his unfamiliarity with ID.

"But as we here at PT know so well, the proper definition of "ID" is not restricted to some abstract hypothesis; that's the sort of BS that DI pulls to try to hide their agenda."

An unfamiliarity with the ID literature certainly is not going to impress many ID proponents nor critics. Now Popper is right that ID does a lot of bait and switch and equivocation when it comes to the concepts of 'design', 'information' and 'complexity' but it does help to understand the basic ID arguments (as well as the expanded forms).

For instance the set theoretic complement definition of design shows how limited ID's concept really is. Del Ratzsch pointed this one out a while ago and warned how many ID proponents as well as critics seem to be unfamiliar with the limited nature of the design inference.
Seems his comments were almost prophetic :-)

The "design inference" of the book's title is an argument to establish that certain events are due to and must be explained with reference to design. Dembski crafts his argument as a process of elimination. From the set of all possible explanations, he first eliminates the explanatory categories of regularity and chance; then whatever is left is by definition design. Since all three categories complete the set, design is the set-theoretical complement of regularity and chance.

No Pim. What it does is give her EXACTLY the amount of rope she needs to hang herself, notwithstanding Allen's desperate efforts to hold the chair in place.

— Registered user

Popper exemplifies the confusion surrounding ID when he accuses me of being dishonest, while merely showing his unfamiliarity with ID.

Again, we agree.

With friends like these.. who needs enemies...

I actually studied under Harry Greene (now on faculty in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at Cornell)

does your ego consider youself to be the ONLY one to ever explore whether ID could ever be constructed in such a way to be testable, or generate predictions, or even constructed in such a way as to legitimately be labeled an "hypothesis" to begin with?

— Sir Toejam

Never hurts to be well informed.

Anyone who claims the former is not competent to talk about "the set theoretic complement".

I believe that Allen's seminar contributes not only in educating IDers

If the unicorn component of quadrupeds is the null set, does that mean there IS a unicorn component of quadrupeds, or there is NOT a unicorn component of quadrup

Could ID be tested? Of course, by eliminating chance and regularity and determining what remains. I predict that it is either the empty set or false positives.

Umm, how many IDers changed their minds as a result of the course, again ... ?

— Lenny

For those interested in the design inference, Wesley Elsberry wrote

A causal class cannot be lumped into regularity or chance in advance without begging the question. Specifically, one cannot state that natural selection is either regularity or chance. The events which are due to natural selection must be evaluated by their own properties to establish which category best describes those events. Just as intelligent agents can sometimes produce events which pass for regularity or chance rather than design, so too can natural selection be responsible for events in all 3 categories. It is insufficient to show that some examples of natural selection fall into either regularity or chance explanation categories. One arguing that design never has a physical process as an agent producing an event must show that natural selection is incapable in principle of producing events with the attribute of design. Such a demonstration would have to address both the application of natural selection in biology and also in computer science, where use of the principle of natural selection has been employed in solving very difficult optimization problems.

Dembski argues that a triad of criteria reliably diagnoses the action of an intelligent agent, yet this same triad of criteria fails to exclude natural selection as a possible cause of events that have the attribute of complexity-specification. Somehow, I doubt that natural selection is what Dembski had in mind for the agent of biological design.

TDI is supposed to establish the theoretical foundation for all the rest of the movement. My judgment is that it fails to lay a solid foundation.

Could ID be tested? Of course, by eliminating chance and regularity and determining what remains.

Sigh... Some were not even aware that of the definition of design... Perhaps these are the true people who are not really competent to talk about these issues.

Rule number one is to familiarize yourself with that with which you disagree.

Could ID be tested? Of course, by eliminating chance and regularity and determining what remains. I predict that it is either the empty set or false positives.

— PvM

Rule number one is to familiarize yourself with that with which you disagree.

I once mistook PvM for someone who was not dimwitted; I will not make that mistake again.

— Popper

and that is a completey empty and vacuous statement to make in and of itself

if you want to discuss christianity as an atheist you better familiarize yourself with the concept

Could ID be tested? Of course, by eliminating chance and regularity and determining what remains. I predict that it is either the empty set or false positives.

Dembski argues that a triad of criteria reliably diagnoses the action of an intelligent agent, yet this same triad of criteria fails to exclude natural selection as a possible cause of events that have the attribute of complexity-specification. Somehow, I doubt that natural selection is what Dembski had in mind for the agent of biological design....There are flaws and cracks that can admit the entry of naturalistic causes into the pool of "designed" events.

Out of the two participants and the two IDEA members, the total seems to be zero.

And what, again, is the conclusion you would like us to draw from that ...

— Lenny

And even if they did not change their position fully, did they change their position in any meaningful manner?

ID leaders are best dealt with using other arguments. They hardly seem to care about ID beyond its socio-religious positions.

Since you referred to Dembski's works, the bible was an appropriate analogy, dimwit. And the refutation of religion does not require familiarity with the canons of the religion, dimwit; I know that the gods of frambubakism don't exist even without knowing what magic powers are attributed to them, dimwit. But in fact I am sufficiently familiar with details of Christianity and ID to point out specific flaws in them, dimwit.

— Popper

And what, again, is the conclusion you would like us to draw from that ... ?

To argue that one can refute Christianity or religion without a familiarity with its claims seems pretty silly.

Since natural selection occurs, the set of "designed" events, as defined by Dembski, is not empty. Are these events "false positives"? No, they really are "designed" by Dembski's criteria --- that's the problem, as Wesley points out several times.

— Popper

Just because some ID critics were confused by the argument, hardly makes it ineffective for ID proponents.

Perhaps, of course I believe it to be far more efficient than telling an ID proponent that ID is just nonsense, live with it.

I can also refute pi = sqrt(10) without having read the "proof" that it is, dimwit.

In Dembski speak they are indeed false positives. There is an added complication namely that we are beyond the concept of design and are looking at agency. Apples and oranges...

I would point out that as far as evidence goes, as I have kept track of those appearing on PT and ATBC claiming to be former ID supporters, what I always hear as to the reasons they abandoned IDC is those who effectively pointed out the quote mining and lies frequently used within ID "leaders" arguments.

I can even point to a direct case on point that appeared in ATBC just this week.

So i can at least START compiling data points that indicate that pointing out the lies so common to those who purport to be "leaders" of the ID movement is an effective approach.

I'm simply asking the same of you, Pim:

point out some concrete evidence that your approach is an effective one, and everybody will see the same genius in it that you do.

trying to convince us all we just don't understand your argument sounds WAY too much like what we hear from the UD rabble about ID itself.

your argument, that you are presenting in this very thread, is "effective for ID proponents"? maybe, as you surely haven't provided evidence to indicate they are effective when used against ID proponents.

— Sir Toejam

Truly you are a moron.

— Popper

I can also refute pi = sqrt(10) without having read the "proof" that it is, dimwit.

— Popper

Dimwitted handwaving that doesn't address my points. Wesley's paper makes clear that Dembski cannot distinguish agency, so there's no basis for arguing that something is a false positive. You truly are dumb.

— Popper

point out some concrete evidence that your approach is an effective one, and everybody will see the same genius in it that you do. trying to convince us all we just don't understand your argument sounds WAY too much like what we hear from the UD rabble about ID itself.

"Truly you are a moron." One of your better arguments indeed.

Of course you need to know the definition of pi as well as understand the concept of sqrt.

Why should I be bothered to convince you?

What I am pointing out seems simple logic, you do not catch flies with vinegar.

ands thus we witness the total self destruction of our dearly beloved Popper Ghost. Ain't it a pretty picture :->

I can tell you about my personal experiences as a ex-YECer and how I responded to various kinds of approaches.

You confused agency with design, even Dembski understands that these are two different concepts and one may not involve the other.

ands thus we witness the total self destruction of our dearly beloved Popper Ghost. Ain't it a pretty picture :->

You surely have a silly notion of refutation my dear Popper.

How is the progress on familiarizing yourself with the design inference going? I notice you did some actual 'research' using Google.
A good start.

You surely have a silly notion of refutation my dear Popper

I notice you did some actual 'research' using Google.

Therefore the question about why we can teach evolution denial ("the controversy") but not Holocaust denial (also "the controversy") is absolutely legitimate. Those evolution deniers who would try to change the topic and complain about unfair comparison to "the Nazis" are demagogues, pure and simple.

And even if they did not change their position fully, did they change their position in any meaningful manner?

Good question. Answer?

For Pim and MacNeil and all the other (polite) BTQBotFO.

He wishes for the Cloths of Heaven

Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half-light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread upon my dreams.

W.B. Yeats

.....And I don't think he was talking about money when he was talking 'being poor'.

For Pim and MacNeil and all the other (polite) BTQBotFO.

He wishes for the Cloths of Heaven

Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half-light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread upon my dreams.

W.B. Yeats

.....And (with all humility) I don't think he was talking about money when he was talking 'being poor'.

...undone by a slow mySQL commit

Why would I close down this thread when it serves to expose the scientific vacuity of such claims as comparing MacNeill's seminar and holocaust deniers. Even better, it shows how various ID critics seem to be quite unfamiliar with the design inference?

It's a helpful reminder when certain ID critics accuse ID proponents of being unfamiliar with evolutionary theory...

Or in other words, if one wants to refute ID, it is helpful, nay necessary to familiarize oneself with ID's premises, foundations and claims, lest one wants to be accused of creating and attacking a strawman version.

Thanks for playing, dear Popper, your answers and responses have been quite enlightening and suggest that seminars like the one given by Allen can be beneficial not just for IDers but also ID critics.

You're incapable of recognizing one. Your inability to actually offer a relevant response is what changed my mind from thinking that you were just being defensively argumentative to the view that you really are stupid.

— Popper

Well? (sound of crickets chirping)

OMFG!

There's a big controversy in the scientific community!

It's a helpful reminder when certain ID critics accuse ID proponents of being unfamiliar with evolutionary theory...

Anonymous_C --- Much ado about nothing.

To some degree, your points are taken regarding the necessity for understanding the claims of those with whom one would argue. But I have to take exception here. There is no symmetry between "familiarity with the design inference," a useless quasi-formalism with no applications to scientific methodology, and "familiarity with evolutionary theory," a highly developed theoretical framework with great explanatory power and implications for many branches of science.

— CJ O'Brien

Personally, when I first "got into" the ID/Evolution debate (a couple of years ago) I took some time to make myself familiar with the literature of Dembski et al, just as you say, in order to be able to argue from a position other than a priori dismissal.

I spent a fair amount of time (hours I will never have back, damn you, Dembski!) poring over the materials on the DesignInference website, trying to understand the NFL theorums, the explanatory filter, etc and etc. I even subjected myself to Darwin's Black Box. But when it came time to ask some direct questions of folks like Sal Cordova and Mike Gene about problems I was having with seemingly empty concepts like CSI, I encountered evasion, burden shifting, rapidly moving goalposts and conspiracy-theory-type "reasoning."

It was this experience, more than my a priori suspicion of vacuity, that led me to the conclusion that the emperor was starkers. If the prominent supporters of an idea can't make their central concepts plain to an educated layman, I feel justified in the conclusion that said concepts are not coherent.

Why would I close down this thread when it serves to expose the scientific vacuity of such claims as comparing MacNeill's seminar and holocaust deniers.

Even better, it shows how various ID critics seem to be quite unfamiliar with the design inference?

But you haven't shown that, you've merely asserted it, but it's contradicted by my comments that show that I am familiar with it. What your comments here expose is your inability or unwillingness to support your claims, and your retreat into ad hominems and other demagoguery when you are asked to do so.

— popper

I did not compare the seminar to holocaust deniers, I compared evolution deniers --- specifically Hannah Maxson --- to holocaust deniers.

MacNeill's seminar strikes me a bit like a seminar on the Holocaust where Holocaust deniers are given equal time (including co-moderation of the blog), but all the swastikas and uniforms are hidden and the anti-semitic literature is dismissed as polemics ("that isn't Holocaust denial"), leaving nothing but "an entirely hypothetical hypothesis".

CJ, I understand your findings. Remember that Sal is not really much of a fan of Dembski's design inference although he seems to have found a new passion in trying to learn more about the concept of sets etc to allow him to discuss the new definition of CSI. He even claimed that the old and new definitions were equivalent, yet one form of CSI ranges from 0 to infinity the other one from a large negative number to infinity.
Mike Gene seems to have abandoned the common ID inferences and holds some hope for his front loading design, a concept even more vacuous than ID itself. So yes, when arguing ID activists like Mike or Sal, it makes little difference understanding ID, mostly because they themselves either reject it or are unable to defend it in any form or manner.
Different ID proponent groups require different approaches, I am mostly interested in the largest group of religiously motivated people who actually believe that ID is science. Calling it non-science, even if correct in the sense that it is scientifically vacuous, does not help much in convincing them. Showing how and why it is vacuous however, shows how ID a-posteriori is mostly useless. Still, ID has a foundation in a hypothesis (or hypotheses) and while they almost invariably end up being scientifically vacuous, rejecting ID as not being science, seems to simplistic as it is easily countered with the demarcation problem.

Well? (sound of crickets chirping)

Well Well

Nobody appointed me trainwreck-thread summarizer, or even dogcatcher.

But just in checking in:

PvM still hasn't bothered to learn the differences between name-calling, insults, and ad hominem arguments.

PvM continues to attempt to make an ad hominem with his off-target holocaust ripostes.

PvM makes a fair point that, among the many other responses we need to make to IDiots and creationists, we do also need to scientifically refute the evolution-deniers' vacuous and psuedoscientific "scientific sounding" claims. Though I'm not clear that anyone contributing to this thread ever actually disputed that rather uncontroversial approach.

I comprehend PvM's argument that these claims may be most-persuasively refuted (for the very occasional convinced-IDer/Creobot who actually cares about persuasive argumentation, for which we apparently have an actual data point of one) if we first pretend to assume that these scientific-sounding claims might actually be scientific, and then proceed to demonstrate that they in fact are not, rather than just pronouncing from the get-go that the phony claims aren't science, and then proceeding to demonstrate same.

But I haven't yet been persuaded that that thin distinction actually amounts to an effective difference.

Nor do either Prof. MacNeill or PvM seem to grasp the (arguably much-greater) damage that it does to confer upon these crap claims even a transitory air of legitimacy by dubbing them "theoretical hypotheticals."

If there's anything important I've missed, I'm sure someone will let me know.

(Although I appreciated the couple of kind remarks about my earlier up-thread summary, ke's summary on the related AtBC thread was shorter and much funnier.)

PvM still hasn't bothered to learn the differences between name-calling, insults, and ad hominem arguments. PvM continues to attempt to make an ad hominem with his off-target holocaust ripostes.

Nor do either Prof. MacNeill or PvM seem to grasp the (arguably much-greater) damage that it does to confer upon these crap claims even a transitory air of legitimacy by dubbing them "theoretical hypotheticals."

One final note, even if the efficacy of the approaches chosen by Allen may generate skepticism (and for good reasons), I fail to understand why the same does not apply to any approach that serves to educate people about ID? One surely cannot hope to change the mind of all ID proponents with a single argument. I see reason and logic as far more effective than insults and easily refuted claims that ID is unscientific or religiously motivated. Easily refuted in the sense that by separating the theory from its historical baggage, or distancing oneself from the unfortunate words, actions of some IDers, one can resurrect a scientific concept as the foundation for ID. A foundation which, as I have argued here and elsewhere, is of little relevance and leaves ID mostly scientifically vacuous. I personally am thrilled on Allen's involvement in teaching about ID and evolutionary theory, including some philosophical issues. We need more of these hand on seminars and classes, increase the involvement of teachers to teach the true controversy.

Perhaps we can collect a series of approaches and determine their efficacy on changing people's minds?

Perhaps we can collect a series of approaches and determine their efficacy on changing people's minds?

And while ID is undoubtably religiously motivated, such arguments may carry little weight with ID proponents.

They are scientific hypotheses, whether you and I like it or not. The true damage is done by those ignoring that ID is based on an hypothesis. That the hypothesis turns out to be scientifically vacuous is quite a separate issue.

They are scientific hypotheses, whether you and I like it or not.

Sigh... while name calling and insults need not be ad hominem they surely seem to be in this case where they are used, and combined with more traditional forms of 'ad hominems'.

Remind us again about your familiarity with the set theoretic complement of chance and regularity? Or your unfamiliarity with teleology in nature? I'd say that you may be projecting here when claiming that I am unwilling or unable to support my claims. . Have you had some time to read up on the design inference and/or the concept of teleology in biology? Need more references? Time?...

We need more of these hand on seminars and classes, increase the involvement of teachers to teach the true controversy.

but be specific, is the argument you present here essentially the same argument that swayed you from your previous YEC position? Or was it something else?

I finally looked at the UD trackback, and in terms of PvM's taking the design inference seriously, it's right on, as I noted previously: seeing faces in natural formations has virtually nothing to do with the argument from design outlined by Paley and long predating him.

But there's nothing scientific about the argument from argument; as Wesley Ellsbury points out in his review of "The Design Inference", Dembski refines "design" in such a way that he does not exclude natural selection as a possible cause for events which can be classified as being due to design, that The "actualization-exclusion-specification" triad mentioned above also fits natural selection rather precisely. One might thus conclude that Dembski's argument establishes that natural selection can be recognized as an intelligent agent, that Dembski's triad of criteria for recognition of intelligent agents is also satisfied quite adequately by natural selection, that biologists can embrace a conclusion of design for an event of biological origin and still attribute that event to the agency of natural selection, that Dembski argues that a triad of criteria reliably diagnoses the action of an intelligent agent, yet this same triad of criteria fails to exclude natural selection as a possible cause of events that have the attribute of complexity-specification. Somehow, I doubt that natural selection is what Dembski had in mind for the agent of biological design.

There is no "scientific hypothesis" in Dembski's work, there are just definitions, which are semantic shufflings with no empirical consequences. Science is about the facts of the world, it is not just a word game dishonestly employed in the service of religious dogma.

Moreover, not only have you failed to provide evidence as to the value of the approach

I'm sticking with my idea that this isn't really Pim, but a clever puppet...

I think this whole discussion illustrates how the "silver bullet" strategy just doesn't work. ie, we're relying on finding THE method that will send ID crumbling, which is really reminiscent of the anti-science making arguments based on what they perceive to be the "fatal flaw".

Those seminars are needed just as much as internet discussions, even if those discussions sometimes result in putting people down, since the targets are mostly the ID bigwigs who have demonstrated that they will continue lying until they perceive themselves to be shamed too much.

Seminars to educate (in this context meaning planting the seeds of curiosity) the public. Internet discussions to show and, more importantly, RECORD the lies that Creationists persist in using. Trying to improve education in general to limit further relapses back into anti-intellectualism.

After all, a tripod is the most basic stable structure. Trying to find the silver bullet solution is analogous to trying to build stability on an unsupported pole.

I disagree.

It only takes one small book, like "Why Intelligent Design Fails" to more than fully explore the vapidity of ID.

OTOH, you could take a hundred different courses on evolutionary theory, and still learn something new the next day.

courses like Allens can be argued to add legitimacy where there is none.

the very argument NSF used as to why it was appropriate to boycott the Kansas Kangaroo Kourt.

At NO level, does ID rise as equal in comparison to ANY scientific theory, let alone the ToE.

It doesn't require an entire course to see this for any rational individual.

Pim

I see reason and logic as far more effective than insults and easily refuted claims that ID is unscientific or religiously motivated.

Ah yes. And it will be "logic" and "reason" that ultimately causes the fundies' fascination with anti-gay bigotry to retreat to the closet, along with their barely contained racism and misogyny. Is that right, Pim?

Please give us a break, Pim. It's just lovely if you and Allen and Hannah and Sal enjoy your long-winded discussions about garbage where you and Allen can congratulate each other and Hannah and Sal and their "excellent" and "insightful" points. But stop trying to pretend that you are contributing to scientific understanding in a meaningful way when you do so. You're wanking. That's is.

Pim

Rule number one is to familiarize yourself with that which you disagree.

I familiarized myself with Hannah and Sal and you and Allen long before I made it a point to see what sort of nonsense happened on the Allen Loves Hannah show.

For instance, in discussing with Hannah, she placed a lot of importance on the concept of specified complexity, especially the new and improved version. So far, little has been said about this new version, which tries to resolve some known problems by introducing explicitly specificational and replicational resources as terms in the CSI equation. And while this helps

ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

You just don't get it, Pim. Look at how many thousands of words were wasted on trying to "understand" that three well-documented unapologetic LYING SACKS (Hannah Maxson, Sal Cordova, Bill Dembski) were (surprise!) spewing lying crap when it took Michael Hubl two or three sentences to accomplish the same goal in a fashion that is understandable to even the most mathematically incompetent moron.

Do you remember how it played out Pim? You and Allen (and Hannah, of course, who's barred from posting here at any length by Dear Leaders Luskin and Sal) seem to be pretending it never happened. Do you remember, Pim?

Here's what happened: Michael Hubl asked Hannah (who claimed that Dembski's formulations were "easy to understand") to provide everyone with unambiguous definitions of the essential terms. Hannah did that (or tried to). Then Michael asked Hannah to show everyone how the terms could be applied to evaluating whether a particular bacterial protein (FtsK) evolved or was designed by a "mysterious alien being."

Do you remember Hannah's response, Pim? Share it with us and tell us (1) why Michael's takedown of Hannah was less effective than yours or Allen's endless drivel; and (2) tell us why Allen banned Michael from posting immediately after Sal began to whine and complain about how his poor little darling was being treated. Which of the "ground rules" had Michael violated by requesting that Hannah support her bogus claims about evolutionary biology?

Inquiring minds would like to know these things.

Pim

Rule number one is to familiarize yourself with that which you disagree.

I familiarized myself with Hannah and Sal and you and Allen long before I made it a point to see what sort of nonsense happened on the Allen Loves Hannah show.

For instance, in discussing with Hannah, she placed a lot of importance on the concept of specified complexity, especially the new and improved version. So far, little has been said about this new version, which tries to resolve some known problems by introducing explicitly specificational and replicational resources as terms in the CSI equation. And while this helps

ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

You just don't get it, Pim. Look at how many thousands of words were wasted on trying to "understand" that three well-documented unapologetic LYING SACKS (Hannah Maxson, Sal Cordova, Bill Dembski) were (surprise!) spewing lying crap when it took Michael Hubl two or three sentences to accomplish the same goal in a fashion that is understandable to even the most mathematically incompetent moron.

Do you remember how it played out Pim? You and Allen (and Hannah, of course, who's barred from posting here at any length by Dear Leaders Luskin and Sal) seem to be pretending it never happened. Do you remember, Pim?

Here's what happened: Michael Hubl asked Hannah (who claimed that Dembski's formulations were "easy to understand") to provide everyone with unambiguous definitions of the essential terms. Hannah did that (or tried to). Then Michael asked Hannah to show everyone how the terms could be applied to evaluating whether a particular bacterial protein (FtsK) evolved or was designed by a "mysterious alien being."

Do you remember Hannah's response, Pim? Share it with us and tell us (1) why Michael's takedown of Hannah was less effective than yours or Allen's endless drivel; and (2) tell us why Allen banned Michael from posting immediately after Sal began to whine and complain about how his poor little darling was being treated. Which of the "ground rules" had Michael violated by requesting that Hannah support her bogus claims about evolutionary biology?

Inquiring minds would like to know these things.

Pim

Rule number one is to familiarize yourself with that which you disagree.

I familiarized myself with Hannah and Sal and you and Allen long before I made it a point to see what sort of nonsense happened on the Allen Loves Hannah show.

For instance, in discussing with Hannah, she placed a lot of importance on the concept of specified complexity, especially the new and improved version. So far, little has been said about this new version, which tries to resolve some known problems by introducing explicitly specificational and replicational resources as terms in the CSI equation. And while this helps

ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

You just don't get it, Pim. Look at how many thousands of words were wasted on trying to "understand" that three well-documented unapologetic LYING SACKS (Hannah Maxson, Sal Cordova, Bill Dembski) were (surprise!) spewing lying crap when it took Michael Hubl two or three sentences to accomplish the same goal in a fashion that is understandable to even the most mathematically incompetent moron.

Do you remember how it played out Pim? You and Allen (and Hannah, of course, who's barred from posting here at any length by Dear Leaders Luskin and Sal) seem to be pretending it never happened. Do you remember, Pim?

Here's what happened: Michael Hubl asked Hannah (who claimed that Dembski's formulations were "easy to understand") to provide everyone with unambiguous definitions of the essential terms. Hannah did that (or tried to). Then Michael asked Hannah to show everyone how the terms could be applied to evaluating whether a particular bacterial protein (FtsK) evolved or was designed by a "mysterious alien being."

Do you remember Hannah's response, Pim? Share it with us and tell us (1) why Michael's takedown of Hannah was less effective than yours or Allen's endless drivel; and (2) tell us why Allen banned Michael from posting immediately after Sal began to whine and complain about how his poor little darling was being treated. Which of the "ground rules" had Michael violated by requesting that Hannah support her bogus claims about evolutionary biology?

Inquiring minds would like to know these things.

Those seminars are needed just as much as internet discussions

even if those discussions sometimes result in putting people down, since the targets are mostly the ID bigwigs who have demonstrated that they will continue lying until they perceive themselves to be shamed too much.

I disagree.

After all, a tripod is the most basic stable structure. Trying to find the silver bullet solution is analogous to trying to build stability on an unsupported pole

And, of course, neither a hemisphere nor a tetrahedron provides a stable platform on which to build something. Not that any of these geometric structures have anything at all to with building cases.

Those seminars are needed just as much as internet discussions

even if those discussions sometimes result in putting people down, since the targets are mostly the ID bigwigs who have demonstrated that they will continue lying until they perceive themselves to be shamed too much.

But it doesn't matter either way, as these folks will never be ashamed of doing what they see as their duty --- remember, Wells got his degree in biology as part of his agenda to destroy scientific materialism. The idea that we could shame the staff of DI into not lying is absurd, just as the idea that we could shame Cheney and Rumsfeld into not lying is absurd. Rather than attempting to shame them, they should be marginalized, stripped of power and influence.

Or, for that matter, shooting something down with bullets, to elaborate on the misused metaphors here.

I think I meant to say "similar" seminars are needed.

It's amazing that people who write such moronic BS can actually believe it. Aside from the fact that it is completely and utterly irrelevant to the issue at hand, a pole or a sheet of paper laying on the ground is stable, and a hemisphere is a stable non-planar structure and is arguably more "basic" than a tripod --- which isn't stable at all unless the legs are immobilized; a tetrahedron, which has six edges, is stable. And, of course, neither a hemisphere nor a tetrahedron provides a stable platform on which to build something. Not that any of these geometric structures have anything at all to with building cases.

Seminars on why these folks are a bunch of lying scum might indeed be useful, but they would not at all be similar to MacNeill's seminar, which explicitly avoided all the "polemic" elements of ID.

Or, for that matter, shooting something down with bullets, to elaborate on the misused metaphors here.

So the reason I bring tripods vs vertical poles (- is clarification) is that they are METAPHORS.

Yes, they're ridiculous inapplicable metaphors that don't provide any real support for your claims, they are purely ad hoc inventions. To point that out is not to get angry, merely to tell the truth. But you do get pissed off when I point out that something you have said is absurd, and your being pissed off manifests in your launching in ad hominem psychobabble.

Long ago... Before Dover (BD), on a forgotten blog page far,fa,r away, Sancho Sal was spiving for one of Dembski's pseudo-scientific claims.

Each time he looked like he was being pinned down he simply changed the definition of CSI or whatever highly original sexy sounding three letters they picked that week.

One question I asked him was 'Sal explain in plain English what Complex Specified Information IS, by not using the words "complex" or "specified" or "information" that is easily understood AND clearly unambiguous '. He declined my invitation.

Dembski's book length word salads fail that simple test for pseudoscience.

In the end the there is no objective clearly unambiguous definition let alone tests to prove (biological living) some wishful dream of 'information' ....(complex, simple, specified or not).

It is just question begging.

When pseudo scientific entrepreneurs make claims on behalf of their 'science', we should not waste our time trying to determine whether their 'science' qualifies as scientific or pseudo-scientific. Rather, we should ask them: How do you know that your 'science' works? What is your evidence?

Now here is another question for those convinced of the efficacy of question begging aka 'i.d.'.

What is the scientific theory of life not being the result of chance and the result of manufacture by the god of Christianity?

How did that happen and what is your evidence?

Another neat ploy used by id aficionados is a sort of 'capture the flag' game where each player tries to 'own' the letters ID with their rhetoric.

Well watch out.... apparently Rome and PB16 is onto that little PR scam, they are meeting next week to steal the flag, shove it up ther cassocks and make a hasty retreat to St. Peters.

Look out for some real narkly theological cut and thrust high wire mangling of language when they claim ID for themselves.

The ultimate success for ID will be it's entry into the history of ideas as a hypothetical hula hoop stored in the vast libraries of the Vatican as a curiosity ...a curiosity much like the corsets of Andy Warhol.

ID is to creationism
as
IPOD is to MP3 player.

So I guess every other references to "silver bullet" solutions in other l iterature are misused too. Pray tell, why is it misused?

"Moronic BS"? Sure, that's not ad hominem.

The misuse applies to your ridiculous babble about tripods. My point, way too subtle it seems, was that your metaphor would at least not have been mixed if you had said we need three bullets to shoot down the beast, but then you would have lacked the inane "stability" justification.

Something I said was absurd? What? By pointing out the FACT that one method CANNOT be THE solution?

The misuse applies to your ridiculous babble about tripods. My point, way too subtle it seems, was that your metaphor would at least not have been mixed if you had said we need three bullets to shoot down the beast, but then you would have lacked the inane "stability" justification.

Well then, I guess we can safely say that you did not completely grasp the point of my post.

If you want to argue that one method cannot be the solution, then you need to actually present a relevant argument.

But because you're such an arrogant putz, you think you can just "point it out", that it's a fact just because you believe it, and so you can toss out the most inane pseudo-arguments, like your moronic BS about tripods being stable, as if, even if it were true, it would support your claim; the legs of a tripod are not "methods", and whatever is true of the geometry of tripods is not transferable to methods for finding solutions, which makes the "metaphor" utter BS.

The fact is that there are numerous examples of problems where a single method serves as a solution; shooting someone in the head with a plain old lead bullet is a method for ending their life, to point out the most ready example; there's no need for three bullets, or to plunge the three legs of a tripod into them.

The "stability" of a tripod (metaphor for a MULTITIERED approach)

the methods you proposed (I'm not even sure you proposed any

This is characteristic of you; everything boils down to your "point", as in the other thread.

The notion that you point might be wrong, or even if right might be wrongly argued, is beyond your imagining, arrogant putz that you are.

If one doesn't accept your bogus reasoning, they must not have grasped your point.

Oh, but your reasoning doesn't have to actually make your case, it can just be "metaphorical", because whatever point you're making is a priori a "fact", and given your limited situation, there's no need for you to present a complete thesis --- complete BS will do.

Tripods don't have multiple tiers or anything analogous to tiers. But the rank stupidity of your metaphors doesn't seem to matter to you, because you have a "point" to make.

Idiot.

Sorry for not allowing you to "win" by creating strawmen.

It's like I have to do everything to your approval for you to stop behaving like an asshole.

There's no competition, moron. You're stupid and irrational whether I point out why or not.

All you would need to do is stop being dishonest,

You arrogant putz, you.

there's no genuine comprehension at the other end.

You arrogant putz, you.

Anonymous_Coward will not accept your judgement on blind faith.

Anonymous_Coward is a rationalization machine; a fancy chatbot.

You don't have to give a reason. If you deem someone as stupid and irrational, people must accept your judgement.

The real person of course has no need to have the chatbot "accept" his judgment --- whatever that might mean for a chatbot.

The real person simply stated a clearly observable fact, as observable as is evolution.

The reasons for accepting evolution are the observations. Rational people make the observations and recognize that evolution has occurred.

Translation: Popper's ghost is incapable of making substantiated assertions, thus he needs to resort to name calling and unimaginative comparisons.

And you call me arrogant.

Another example of chatbot operation. The chatbot goes through motions similar to a somewhat dimwitted person defending his ego by attacking his attacker with hyperbole, but doesn't actually relate its comments to what it responds to because it doesn't comprehend it. But the chatbot's output is vaguely interesting in what it reveals about the chatbot's algorithms, much as with the outputs of a random sentence generator.

It's amusing to note that the chatbot chatters on as if the real person still viewed it as also being a real person.

The chatbot chatters on. If it were a rational agent, there might be some discernable semantic content to its utterances that might be worth considering, but as it isn't, there aren't.

Another example of chatbot (P's g) operation.

The chatbot chatters on. If it were a rational agent, there might be some discernable semantic content to its utterances that might be worth considering, but as it isn't, there aren't.

4) Since I'm a bot, my content can be said to be predictable from my input: namely, your content.

This real-life application of Dennett's Intentional Stance theory, by abandoning the intentional stance toward the source of a set of internet posts and instead adopting the design stance has been interesting, educational, and even useful, and I think I may employ this approach toward similar sources (that is, those that similarly display a lack of rational faculty) in the future.

$ Anonymous_Chatbot Analysis:

$ Signal to Noise ratio: 0%

$ Biological analysis of Planet Popper's ghost: mostly creationist.

$ Biological sample brain activity analysis: error, no input.

$ Anonymous__Chatbot Solutions Evaluator:

$ Result: Reach out to Popper's ghost to help him with anger problems.

$ Anonymous_Chatbot receiving orders:

$ Orders: Wait for response to post where claims are backed up

$ Anonymous_Chatbot: Calculating chances of Popper's ghost addressing the point at hand...

$ 2.3%

You need a multitiered approach. It's called modularisation (for lack of a better word in my software engineering vocabulary). Both sides here, you and PvM, are trying to convince each other that your solution is the only one that will work.

This real-life application of Dennett's Intentional Stance theory, by abandoning the intentional stance toward the source of a set of internet posts and instead adopting the design stance has been interesting, educational, and even useful, and I think I may employ this approach toward similar sources (that is, those that similarly display a lack of rational faculty) in the future.

— Popper

PvM...just as a matter of interest what is your definition of 'design' as it applies to living objects (before man was able intervene in the reproductive process, just to keep things simple) and please don't use any analogies with Human creativity or synonyms of the word design.

Please describe the act or process which contributes to the living object being 'designed' as per your definition above, again without using the word design.

Why is every single generation and individual in most living things a different 'design'.

Describe a test that would reveal an unchanging and unique set of 'plans' for that underlying design if any and if it is unique from one individual to the next can it be called design?.

PvM, other than telling us that you, personally, like the seminar, you have yet to provide any evidence of its "effectiveness," which, based on Prof. MacNeill's testimony, has been underwhelming, at least in this first iteration.

Uh, I imagine most academic seminars are hosted by universities. This one may have been "targeted" at those "toying with ID," but it apparently attracted no such students, but only a couple of unregistered auditors, neither of whom underwent any significant change of position, as has been conceded by MacNeill, and repeated here many times.

Enwrapped in Pollyanna's glow, you seem impervious to these points.

No one here, as far as I've been able to count, has been persuaded by your claims that the ID "hypothesis" is scientific or that greater familiarization with the details of ID's psuedoscientific design claims will lead either to any surprising insights or to any more effective means of refutation.

Popper (setting all the good fun that he and A_C have been enjoying aside) has backed up his claim that Wesley has more convincingly fisked Dembski's design on the prior thread (that you cited) than you or MacNeill have shown yourselves to have done here.

Again, though, you seem blithely impervious to these points.

"Cutting ID off at the ankles" (a strikingly uncivil simile) may be a more effective way of refuting its rare psuedoscientific claims than name-calling (at last, and at least, some implicit recognition that name-calling is not the "ad hominem" fallacy), but you have yet to persuade anyone that it's necessary to grant ID some initial credibility in order to accomplish this.

In any event, thank you for hosting an interesting--if devilishly-twisted--thread.

And good luck with all that non-name calling, hypothesis-chopping.

PvM...just as a matter of interest what is your definition of 'design' as it applies to living objects (before man was able intervene in the reproductive process, just to keep things simple) and please don't use any analogies with Human creativity or synonyms of the word design.

Please describe the act or process which contributes to the living object being 'designed' as per your definition above, again without using the word design.

Why is every single generation and individual in most living things a different 'design'. Describe a test that would reveal an unchanging and unique set of 'plans' for that underlying design if any and if it is unique from one individual to the next can it be called design?.

A four-part process by which a designer forms a designed object: (1) A designer conceives a purpose or goal. (2) To accomplish that purpose, the designer forms a plan. (3) To execute the plan, the designer specifies building materials and assembly instructions. (4) The designer or some surrogate applies the assembly instructions to the building materials. What emerges is a designed object, and the designer is successful to the degree that the object fulfills the designer's purpose.

A form of inference in which design or intelligent agency is attributed to an event on the basis of its complexity (small probability) and specification.

The remaining two students came into the class as committed IDers (Hannah and Rabia were not registered students, BTW; they were "invited guests" - invited by me). These two students were considerably less convinced of the ID position at the end of the course than they were when they came in, shifting from a blanket rejection of all of evolutionary theory to accepting most of evolutionary theory while maintaining a "wait and see" attitude about the origin of life/genetic code/selected biochemical pathways. One of these two also came to accept common descent (primarily because it became clear that Behe does so as well, and therefore a "good IDer" can accept common descent without giving up ID). The other (a self-described YEC) shifted very significantly over the summer, coming to accept natural selection as the primary "engine" of microevolution, and "having an open mind" about macroevolution. Both of these two IDers came into the course pretty strongly opposed to evolution and supportive of ID, but by the end (and as a result of the process by which we analyzed the various readings assigned for the course) they came to appreciate and apply the technique of critical analysis and argumentation with supportive evidence. To me, that makes the course very much worthwhile. So much so, in fact, that I'm repeating it as a special section in my good friend and colleague Will Provine's evolution course this fall (Will is wildly in favor of the idea, BTW). Should make life even more interesting between now and the winter solstice.

— Allen

As for the fundamental definition of design as being the set theoretic complement of chance and regularity, I believe that people would benefit from exploring this definition to determine how limited the design inference really is.

As Del Ratzsch pointed out a long time ago, the definition may surprise both IDers and ID critics alike. Combine this with the very weak step from design to agency and one sees how easy it is to cut off design at the ankles. Far more effective than name calling.

First, defense expert Professor Fuller agreed that ID aspires to "change the ground rules" of science and lead defense expert Professor Behe admitted that his broadened definition of science, which encompasses ID, would also embrace astrology. Moreover, defense expert Professor Minnich acknowledged that for ID to be considered science, the ground rules of science have to be broadened to allow consideration of supernatural forces.

That's simple: My definition of design is the same as Dembski's: The set theoretic complement of chance and regularity.

First, defense expert Professor Fuller agreed that ID aspires to "change the ground rules" of science and lead defense expert Professor Behe admitted that his broadened definition of science, which encompasses ID, would also embrace astrology. Moreover, defense expert Professor Minnich acknowledged that for ID to be considered science, the ground rules of science have to be broadened to allow consideration of supernatural forces.

That's simple: My definition of design is the same as Dembski's: The set theoretic complement of chance and regularity.

Please describe the act or process which contributes to the living object being 'designed' as per your definition above, again without using the word design.

That's simple: My definition of design is the same as Dembski's: The set theoretic complement of chance and regularity.

The catch is that Dembski is using his own definition of design, where design is simply the explanation that remains after chance and regularity are eliminated. This is touted by Dembski as an advantage for the purposes of his argumentation, since he avoids attributing either causal stories or the intervention of intelligent agency a priori. In no fewer than 3 separate passages in TDI (p 8, 36, 226-7), Dembski assures the reader that the design of TDI does not imply agency.

One may wonder what TDI was supposed to accomplish, if design no longer means what Paley meant by it and the attribution of agency no longer follows from finding design. But Dembski believes that finding design does imply agency, even though he has identified that implication as being unnecessary.

It is an error to argue from the casual meanings of regularity, chance, and design when discussing causes for events classified by Dembski's explanatory filter or by TDI. Someone might seek to exclude natural selection from consideration as a source of events that meet the criteria of design by claiming that it is either a regularity or chance. But TDI classifies events, not causes.

There is a difficulty in discussing these concepts in that the meanings of the terms regularity, chance, and design can become confused with newer meanings which arise from the argument of The Design Inference. It is important to keep the casual meanings separate. Unfortunately, it is not clear that even Dembski manages to keep track of what the terms really mean. For example, even though Dembski clearly explains that design does not imply agency, Dembski offers as the 3 possible categories of explanation in his first example "Regularity", "Chance", and "Agency" (p 11).

In summary, the process of detecting design, as it is done by humans in day-to-day activities, is not accurately captured by Dembski's Explanatory Filter. The order in which classes of causes are eliminated makes a difference. Humans attempting to explain phenomena can and often do find insufficient evidence to make a final determination of either design or any other explanatory category. And when humans use the word design, they typically mean it to carry a real implication of being due to an agent, or designer.

For comparison, I will propose an alternative explanatory filter and discuss various points of difference with Dembski's. My alternative explanatory filter works as follows. An event that cannot be statistically distinguished from a random event is classified as due to chance. An event that conforms to properties of known law-like physical processes is classified as being due to regularity. An event that conforms to known properties of similar events that are due to intelligent agents are classified as due to design....the loaded dice example resolves into an instance of design, not regularity. This does not mean that design then has explanatory priority. Rather, it illustrates the superior explanatory power of the alternative filter in which the other explanatory classes of causation, chance and regularity, had to be considered and rejected first before design could be concluded....Second, my explanatory filter has one more alternative classification than Dembski's, that of unknown causation. This alternative recognizes that the set of knowledge used to make a classification can alter the classification. Third, my alternative explanatory filter retains the common meaning of design as a reliable indicator of agency....

I believe the seminar is very effective because it allows interested students to research the issues and come to their own conclusions.

Name the set elements.

I believe .... I believe....I personally believe....

— PvM

Both sides here, you and PvM, are trying to convince each other that your solution is the only one that will work.

First off, that isn't "the design inference". At best it is merely one version of it. Secondly, we have all heard this lame definition (at least I'm quite confident that the main commenters here have), and we have noticed that it doesn't even utilize scientific terms. That is to say, as such it is already outside of the realm of science, since "chance" in science isn't the sort of "chance" that these metaphysicians believe in.

— Glen Davidson

does anybody still listening disagree that Pim has not demonstrated the value of his "approach" empirically, or even logically? please explain why, because Pim has not.

— Sir_Toejam

Oops, I meant "chance" and "regularity"

On idiosyncracy: Dembski says that an event is "due to regularity" if it has high probability. Aside from the totally confused and non-scientific concept of causality here, as Glen noted, this has nothing to do with what the word "regularity" means; regularity is about periodicity, not probability. Drop a hydrogen bomb on Los Angeles and there's a high probability that millions of Angelenos will die all at once, but millions of Angelenos dying all at once is not something that happens with regularity. Suppose we suddenly start receiving a periodic signal from the stars; the signal occurs with regularity. Is it a highly likely event? One wouldn't have thought so. Is it highly likely to continue? Who can say? There are scientific models of probability, drawn from systematization of evidence, which is what science does. There is nothing scientific about Dembski's "The Design Inference". Rather, as Wesley Ellsbury writes, "The work, though, is motivated and informed by an anti-evolutionary impulse, and its flaws appear to follow from the need to achieve an anti-evolutionary aim."

Locally we have very few IDiots and somewhat more YECers. As best I can determine, no seminar, no logical argument, NOTHING will cause these mature folk to change.

Don't know about ALL of the 18--25 year old crowd, but those who are noisy YECers certainly won't change. Then again, this isn't Cornell...

But a semester of biology is required of ALL students. Evolution is taught. While students are not required to 'believe' it, they do have to understand it well enough to pass the class. Even the noisy YECers.

Given a population of naive IDers who might be susceptible to reasoned argumentation, I would fully agree with Pim's thesis here, which I will take the liberty of condensing to "why assert when you can argue?"

Which confuses design and agency as well as uses confusing terminology of complexity and specification without the necessary details to make much of any argument. As Dembski asserted in the past: specification in biology is simple: it's called function. So now all that we need is probability, but which one? The probability of chance processes (or likelihood?)? As is so often used by Dembski, or the probability under the hypothesis of the actual hypothesis? THe latter one would mean that once you hit the right hypothesis, whether it be intelligent or non-intelligent design, the probability/likelihood becomes large enough for the hypothesis to be probable, and thus also too large for it to contain information (ID speak for something being improbable). Once one realizes how terminology is conflated and how ID switches from narrowly defined concepts to the general, it is self evident that ID has no clothes... ID is in other words, cut off at the ankles, rather than falling into the trap of arguing against hypotheses etc which do not follow from its premises. Once one accepts the basic definition of design, it is clear that the proposed design inference is scientifically vacuous. Which explains why ID refuses to address processes, pathways etc and why ID has been unable to contribute in any meaningful manner to science

— PvM

Both sides here, you and PvM, are trying to convince each other that your solution is the only one that will work.

Not surprising, really. As I've always said, IDers are not won *to* ID because of logical scientific arguments, and they won't be won AWAY from it by them, either.

ID is a political strategy. The only "solution" to it is to beat it into the ground and destroy it as an effective political strategy. Rational logical scientific argument won't "work" on them any more than it works on Klansmen or Leninists. And for much the same reasons. "A man convinced against his will, is of the same opinion still".

The solution is all about tactics and strategy (something which Popper's ghost seems to have trouble getting).

But in order to do that, we need multiple concerted efforts on many fronts.

It's good to see that PvM finally tried to make a substantive argument in regard to Dembski's thesis. What's not good is that this paragraph is nearly impenetrable; it's not at all likely that this sort of writing could sway any IDer or YEC. Even Wesley Ellsbury's review, which is clearly written and makes the case well, is not likely to be understood by any IDer or YEC; certainly not after s/he walks out of the seminar and into the IDEA club, to be bombarded with their propaganda.

— Popper

However, it is not clear if empirical evidence (i.e. counted or measured quantities) can actually be plugged into the equation to yield an unambiguous value for chi, nor is it clear what value for chi would unambiguously allow for "design detection." Dembski suggests chi equal to or greater than one, but we agreed that it would make more sense to use repeated tests, using actual designed and undesigned systems, to derive an empirically based value for chi, which could then be used to identify candidates for "design" in nature. If, as some have suggested, plugging empirically derived measurements into Dembski's formula for chi is problematic, then his equation, however interesting, carries no real epistemic weight (i.e. no more than Dawkin's "Weasel", as noted above).

Locally we have very few IDiots and somewhat more YECers. As best I can determine, no seminar, no logical argument, NOTHING will cause these mature folk to change.

— Benson

Given a population of naive IDers who might be susceptible to reasoned argumentation, I would fully agree with Pim's thesis here, which I will take the liberty of condensing to "why assert when you can argue?"

— Popper

But it's a strawman. PvM frames the goal as convincing IDers that ID is scientifically vacuous. But that's not the goal; the goal is to produce a scientifically literate society, and that can't be achieved by convincing two IDers here and two IDers there that ID doesn't have a scientific foundation. It must be achieved on the political front, by depriving organizations like DI of power and influence, by electing politicians and school boards that understand and support science, and by filling the public schools with teachers and materials that present science accurately. Talk science, promote science, fill the airwaves with science, fill people's heads with science, and ID won't have such fertile ground to take root.

Oh dear, the chatbot has referred to me. Of course, being a mere machine, it is incapable of comprehending that my last two posts here (as well as others) were specifically about strategy and tactics.

— Popper

A (fallacious) ad hominem argument has the basic form: 1. A makes claim X. 2. There is something objectionable about A. 3. Therefore claim X is false.

For educational purposes: Is the above quote an ad hominem?

1. A makes claim X. 2. There is something objectionable about A. 3. Therefore claim X is false.

All very good ideas.

BTW, PvM, if you really want to be educational, you should examine all of your arguments and use your template to detect which ones are ad hominem, rather than hypocritically pointing at my arguments. The sad thing is that I have, of course, employed ad hominem arguments, but the ones you have labeled as such aren't.

Claim X, as far as there was a claim, was "something which Popper's ghost seems to have trouble getting". I suggested that the claim is false because I had just posted twice about what I supposedly didn't get.

That chatbox is a machine or incapable of comprehending had nothing to do with the logic --- a subject that you seem incapable of comprehending. That's not an ad hominem argument, it's a conclusion I've reached. End of lesson.

Claim X, as far as there was a claim, was "something which Popper's ghost seems to have trouble getting". I suggested that the claim is false because I had just posted twice about what I supposedly didn't get. That chatbox is a machine or incapable of comprehending had nothing to do with the logic --- a subject that you seem incapable of comprehending. That's not an ad hominem argument, it's a conclusion I've reached. End of lesson.

— popper

Claim X, as far as there was a claim, was "something which Popper's ghost seems to have trouble getting". I suggested that the claim is false because I had just posted twice about what I supposedly didn't get.

That chatbox is a machine or incapable of comprehending had nothing to do with the logic --- a subject that you seem incapable of comprehending. That's not an ad hominem argument, it's a conclusion I've reached. End of lesson.

his equation, however interesting, carries no real epistemic weight (i.e. no more than Dawkin's "Weasel", as noted above)

None of your posts have displayed an understanding in tactics and strategy at all.

Is it not by calling chatbot a machine that you are trying to reject his claims?

All very good ideas. Especially that your argument is against a strawman.

— Popper

PvM frames the goal as convincing IDers that ID is scientifically vacuous. But that's not the goal; the goal is to produce a scientifically literate society, and that can't be achieved by convincing two IDers here and two IDers there that ID doesn't have a scientific foundation.

I think that the course has exposed the scientific vacuity of intelligent design and while few if any may have changed their immediate positions, it has helped spread the seed of doubt. Remember that upto this seminar most IDers had not been exposed to much of any of the critical arguments against ID. Especially not at the level of the supposedly 'scientific' claims of ID. Different audiences require different approaches to expose them to the many problems of ID. As such Allen's course has been an excellent opportunity to do exactly that. By showing how not only ID is scientifically vacuous but also how teleology and purpose in biology are not surprising given the processes involved. In other words, evolutionary processes are inherently teleological. That's why we talk about apparent versus actual design for instance.

That's simple: My definition of design is the same as Dembski's: The set theoretic complement of chance and regularity. Now defend it using science and its standards, not ID metaphysics.

— Glen

Has any actual scientist ever accepted such a definition, that is, has he accepted it as a scientist? Let's revisit what Jones wrote again, since I think it can't be presented to Pim any too often:

Dembski has caused considerable confusion through his peculiar use of the terms "design" and "intelligent agency". He defines "design" as "the set-theoretic complement of the disjunction regularity-or-chance" (TDI, p 36), i.e. it's what is left over after eliminating regularity and chance explanations. But he also specifically denies that an inference of "design" necessarily entails intelligent agency: 'Thus, even though a design inference is frequently the first step toward identifying an intelligent agent, design as inferred from the design inference does not logically entail an intelligent agent. The design that emerges from the design inference must not be conflated with intelligent agency.' [TDI, p 9] On the other hand, he never gives any additional criterion for distinguishing intelligent agency from mere "design", and he goes on to write: 'Yet in practice, to infer design is not simply to eliminate regularity and chance, but to detect the activity of an intelligent agent.' [TDI, p 62] I will not attempt to reconcile these apparently contradictory statements. Instead I will simply assume that the latter statement accurately reflects Dembski's position, and will ignore the former statement. In other words, I will assume Dembski is claiming that rejection of chance and regularity does allow us to infer the involvement of an intelligent agent. This then allows us to consider the terms "design" and "intelligent agency" to be synonymous (and I assume they are both synonymous with the more widely used term "intelligent design"). If this assumption is not correct, then Dembski needs to clearly state what additional criterion is necessary to distinguish intelligent agency from mere "design", or else recognise that the Design Inference cannot detect intelligent agency.

The "design inference" of the book's title is an argument to establish that certain events are due to and must be explained with reference to design. Dembski crafts his argument as a process of elimination. From the set of all possible explanations, he first eliminates the explanatory categories of regularity and chance; then whatever is left is by definition design. Since all three categories complete the set, design is the set-theoretical complement of regularity and chance. Dembski's book and major concept share a name, The Design Inference. The Design Inference is an argument which leads to a conclusion of design for an event. Dembski deploys a large number of terms and phrases in making his argument that design must be recognized as a necessary mode of explanation in science. Fortunately, Dembski is also scrupulous in making clear what each term means, even when it has a common or casual usage. Design is one of those terms, and it becomes a category defined by the elimination of events that can be attributed to regularity or to chance.

A second problem with the filter is that its concept of design is profoundly idiosyncratic and limited. In Dembski's filter, "design" does not have its usual meaning, but rather is defined negatively as "the set-theoretic complement of the disjunction of regularity-or-chance."337 This means that design is by default anything that is not the product of either regularity or chance. This constricted definition is problematic for scientists, for the simple reason that it appropriates as "designed" everything that is neither wholly random nor completely inevitable.338 More specifically, Dembski's filter classifies as "intentionally designed" every complex phenomenon that is the product of interactions between chance and regularity---a set that explicitly includes nearly all evolutionary phenomena!339 This is nothing less than conceptual sleight-of-hand. Following Dembski's filter for any complex biological system will result in a decision of "designed," no matter how extensive the evidence that the system arose through the interactions of mutation, genetic drift, and natural selection

Is "design" merely a label for the "set-theoretic complement of the. disjunction regularity or chance," or could it be that this category label is intended to convey a more substantial meaning that could further another agenda, such as that of the "Intelligent Design" movement? What does an intelligent agent do? Dembski says, "The principal characteristic of intelligent agency is directed contingency, or what we call choice.

None of your posts have displayed an understanding in tactics and strategy at all.

A_C a point well made.....only needs to be made once.

Please consider that opposition for its own sake is self serving (ego inflating) and possibly pathological.

'Ad Hominem' to me means denying (against) man's collective knowledge.

Thus the whole 'ID movement' perform 'Ad Hominem' when in the face of peer reviewed and thus verified temporal knowledge as the result of honest work, attack the men/women and not the work.

'Darwinism' when used pejoratively is an ad hominem. ID which is denial of ToE for its own sake is a logical fallacy.

An insult, wit, satire, sarcasm, lampooning is just that, keep it simple. If one is offended then there are remedies, but if one lacks humor, it shows.

Please don't devalue the logical fallacy 'ad hominem' by equating it with simple pathological disrespect.

Otherwise I'll drive around to your house and paint "Go the Boks" on your front door...got it.

And that is what you call an 'explanation'? Wow....

Oh dear, even STJ is gone. I guess I should deprive PvM and the chatbot of the convenience of focusing on me (an ad hominem strategy, doncha know) and work out their plans for their giant tripod.

STJ, one really shouldn't take seriously such blatant hyperbole, which must be the result of either a very dishonest or very inept intellectual process.

— Popper

Oops, I mean let them work out their plans for their giant tripod. Best of luck on that.

First leg: attack Popper's Ghost. Excellent progress you're making there ...

First leg: attack Popper's Ghost. Excellent progress you're making there ...

Oh dear, even STJ is gone. I guess I should deprive PvM and the chatbot of the convenience of focusing on me (an ad hominem strategy, doncha know) and work out their plans for their giant tripod.

Second leg: continue to attack Popper's ghost. Hey, you'll be done in no time ...

Third leg: attack Popper's ghost even harder! Hey, tripod built, goal achieved! Oh, wait, was that the goal?

If PvM you were referring to me.

Cast your mind back to the Dover court room, the same one that Dembski evaded like the plague.

When the leading lights of ID movement are forced to obey the rules of evidence and there is no wiggle room for cowardly sniping or cherry picking, when their rhetoric is called to account by the simple expedient of them being MADE to provide the EVIDENCE (follow the rules), or defend their argument TO the face of experts, their whole argument boils down to the one simple premise.

They 'don't like' the ToE.

They want the rule of law shifted from Ancient Rome ('Give unto Caesar what is Caesar's) to Ancient Jerusalem ('Give unto God what is Caesar's AND more importantly for Fundamentalists 'Give unto Caesar what is God's) .

And for them the the emphasis is on THEM being Caesar! The possibilities are endless once that happens.

It's that simple.

the issue has never been, in my mind, whether Pim's argument has merit in an intellectual sense, but whether the argument has merit in a strategic sense, or as the basis to teach a course.

— STJ

Otherwise I'll drive around to your house and paint "Go the Boks" on your front door...got it.

Fight ID/Creationism in courts? Certainly helpful on the short timescale but ID/Creationism will adapt its approaches and be more careful next time.

When ID/Creationism is both the set 'the universe' and the set 'null' at the same time to different people, then they will have to redefine science, hopefully a very remote possibility.

— KE

Here are some ad hominems, typical of your responses:

Remind us again about your familiarity with the set theoretic complement of chance and regularity? Or your unfamiliarity with teleology in nature? I'd say that you may be projecting here when claiming that I am unwilling or unable to support my claims. . Have you had some time to read up on the design inference and/or the concept of teleology in biology? Need more references? Time?...

— Popper

There are also robust alternatives which leave faith and science largely separate

Now that PvM has built his tripod, it's time to beat Popper's ghost to a bloody pulp with it!

Sigh. It's yet another illustration that some people just aren't educable.

Now that PvM has built his tripod, it's time to beat Popper's ghost to a bloody pulp with it!

Poppers G

MacNeill's dis of Dawkins is a combination of failure to comprehend and an apparent axe to grind.

No kidding. Unsurprisingly, McNeill also made some weirdass statements about Carl Sagan along the lines of "Sagan is soon to be forgotten and good riddance." Where did he make those statements? On the Kornell Kreationist Klub blog, probably in between pointing out what "excellent" and "interesting" points the ID peddlers were making.

It probably has occurred to others that Pim and McNeill and perhaps some of the ID peddlers may be wishing to seize some non-existent "middle ground" on which they can stand and pat themselves on the back for finding a "third way" to reconcile the "controversy" where nobody's feelings get hurt to badly. It was all a scientific misunderstanding, they imagine they'll say to themselves in the future. The ID peddlers really WERE on to something, they just needed some help from gentle friendly loving thoughtful scientists like Allen McNeill and Pim to get their equations and definitions in order.

Boy, won't that make those angry atheist types embarassments?

LOL!!!!!!

Blam! Kerpow! PvM lands more blows on Popper's ghost in his valiant fight for science!

Pim

Why? All I have to do is sit back and enjoy the self destruction of our resident ghost

Dream on, Pim.

Is it possible that, while PvM is being distracted by his ectoplasmic nemesis (no wonder those blows don't seem to affect it), the ground is being cut from beneath him? He had better check where he steps!

Pim

For instance, in discussing with Hannah, she placed a lot of importance on the concept of specified complexity, especially the new and improved version. So far, little has been said about this new version, which tries to resolve some known problems by introducing explicitly specificational and replicational resources as terms in the CSI equation. And while this helps

ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

You just don't get it, Pim. Look at how many thousands of words were wasted on trying to "understand" that three well-documented unapologetic LYING SACKS (Hannah Maxson, Sal Cordova, Bill Dembski) were (surprise!) spewing lying crap when it took Michael Hubl two or three sentences to accomplish the same goal in a fashion that is understandable to even the most mathematically incompetent moron.

Do you remember how it played out Pim? You and Allen (and Hannah, of course, who's barred from posting here at any length by Dear Leaders Luskin and Sal) seem to be pretending it never happened. Do you remember, Pim?

Here's what happened: Michael Hubl asked Hannah (who claimed that Dembski's formulations were "easy to understand") to provide everyone with unambiguous definitions of the essential terms. Hannah did that (or tried to). Then Michael asked Hannah to show everyone how the terms could be applied to evaluating whether a particular bacterial protein (FtsK) evolved or was designed by a "mysterious alien being."

Do you remember Hannah's response, Pim? Share it with us and tell us (1) why Michael's takedown of Hannah was less effective than yours or Allen's endless drivel; and (2) tell us why Allen banned Michael from posting immediately after Sal began to whine and complain about how his poor little darling was being treated. Which of the "ground rules" had Michael violated by requesting that Hannah support her bogus claims about evolutionary biology?

Inquiring minds would like to know these things.

Try not to keep running away from the straightforward questions, Pim. As you know, it looks bad.

Maybe Allen, Pim and Hannah are working on a book together: "The Intelligent Design Debate: A Manual for Teachers" or some garbage like that.

That would explain some of what we're seeing here (i.e., the old "ka-ching factor").

The ID peddlers really WERE on to something, they just needed some help from gentle friendly loving thoughtful scientists like Allen McNeill and Pim to get their equations and definitions in order.

All very good ideas. Especially that your argument is against a strawman.

— PvM

Especially since your argument fails in supporting logic. Care to expand so that we can determine indeed if my argument is one against a strawman. Fill the heads of people with science... Allen's seminar seems to be doing exactly this.

And yet some consider it to be a failure if it cannot be shown to have changed the minds of IDers involved. By that standard perhaps every single posting on PT and other ID critical sites are failures because they fail, by themselves to convince IDers of much of anything. And yet, every single one forms a seed of doubt which eventually may expand and grow into skepticism, asking the right questions and exploring how science truly deals with issues and compare this to ID approaches.

— PvM

Thus perhaps your position is far more of a strawman

— PvM

PvM frames the goal as convincing IDers that ID is scientifically vacuous. But that's not the goal; the goal is to produce a scientifically literate society, and that can't be achieved by convincing two IDers here and two IDers there that ID doesn't have a scientific foundation.

To 'argue' that this is my unique and only goal seems well, a bit of a strawman. For instance I wrote

I think that the course has exposed the scientific vacuity of intelligent design and while few if any may have changed their immediate positions, it has helped spread the seed of doubt. Remember that upto this seminar most IDers had not been exposed to much of any of the critical arguments against ID. Especially not at the level of the supposedly 'scientific' claims of ID. Different audiences require different approaches to expose them to the many problems of ID. As such Allen's course has been an excellent opportunity to do exactly that. By showing how not only ID is scientifically vacuous but also how teleology and purpose in biology are not surprising given the processes involved. In other words, evolutionary processes are inherently teleological. That's why we talk about apparent versus actual design for instance.

— PvM

The current debate over "intelligent design theory" is only the latest phase in the perennial debate over the question of design in nature. Beginning with Aristotle's "final cause," this idea was the dominant explanation for biological adaptation in nature until the publication of Darwin's Origin of Species. Darwin's work united the biological sciences with the other natural sciences by providing a non-teleological explanation for the origin of adaptation. However, Darwin's theory has been repeatedly challenged by theories invoking design in nature.

That's simple: My definition of design is the same as Dembski's: The set theoretic complement of chance and regularity.

— PvM

Now defend it using science and its standards, not ID metaphysics.

As far as using science, that's relatively simple, you formulate a hypothesis H and calculate the probability P(T|H) where T is the event of interest. You then take the -log2 and call it information. You then repeat this for any known and unknown hypothesis and thus eliminate chance and regularity hypotheses. So far, this is relatively straightforward and yet very intractable. How does one calculate P(T|H) for any non trivial H? That by itself is not self evident, although IFF one could calculate this measure and IFF one could successfully eliminate any and all relevant hypotheses THEN one may conclude that that which remains is 'design'. The problem here is that the meaning of the word design has lost its customary definition, and only by equivocation can one confuse the reader that information and design are similar to how one commonly uses these terms.

— PvM

Has any actual scientist ever accepted such a definition, that is, has he accepted it as a scientist? Let's revisit what Jones wrote again, since I think it can't be presented to Pim any too often:

— PvM

Jones is neither a scientist nor did he address the design inference, mostly because Dembski withdrew as a witness.

However, that by itself says nothing about scientists accepting such a definition. Depending on whether on considers Del Ratzsch a scientist, he seems to have accepted the definition, very well aware of its limited nature.

— PvM

I believe that most ID critics have implicitly come to accept this definition, not realizing how they were tricked into accepting a definition of design which rendered it succeptible to equivocation.

— PvM

The definition is the basis for the design inference.

— PvM

Richard Wein observes

Dembski has caused considerable confusion through his peculiar use of the terms "design" and "intelligent agency". He defines "design" as "the set-theoretic complement of the disjunction regularity-or-chance" (TDI, p 36), i.e. it's what is left over after eliminating regularity and chance explanations. But he also specifically denies that an inference of "design" necessarily entails intelligent agency: 'Thus, even though a design inference is frequently the first step toward identifying an intelligent agent, design as inferred from the design inference does not logically entail an intelligent agent. The design that emerges from the design inference must not be conflated with intelligent agency.' [TDI, p 9] On the other hand, he never gives any additional criterion for distinguishing intelligent agency from mere "design", and he goes on to write: 'Yet in practice, to infer design is not simply to eliminate regularity and chance, but to detect the activity of an intelligent agent.' [TDI, p 62] I will not attempt to reconcile these apparently contradictory statements. Instead I will simply assume that the latter statement accurately reflects Dembski's position, and will ignore the former statement. In other words, I will assume Dembski is claiming that rejection of chance and regularity does allow us to infer the involvement of an intelligent agent. This then allows us to consider the terms "design" and "intelligent agency" to be synonymous (and I assume they are both synonymous with the more widely used term "intelligent design"). If this assumption is not correct, then Dembski needs to clearly state what additional criterion is necessary to distinguish intelligent agency from mere "design", or else recognise that the Design Inference cannot detect intelligent agency.

— PvM

Wein accepts the latter definition of design, I think that he is too gracious here.

Wesley Elsberry wrote

The "design inference" of the book's title is an argument to establish that certain events are due to and must be explained with reference to design. Dembski crafts his argument as a process of elimination. From the set of all possible explanations, he first eliminates the explanatory categories of regularity and chance; then whatever is left is by definition design. Since all three categories complete the set, design is the set-theoretical complement of regularity and chance. Dembski's book and major concept share a name, The Design Inference. The Design Inference is an argument which leads to a conclusion of design for an event. Dembski deploys a large number of terms and phrases in making his argument that design must be recognized as a necessary mode of explanation in science. Fortunately, Dembski is also scrupulous in making clear what each term means, even when it has a common or casual usage. Design is one of those terms, and it becomes a category defined by the elimination of events that can be attributed to regularity or to chance.

— PvM

A second problem with the filter is that its concept of design is profoundly idiosyncratic and limited. In Dembski's filter, "design" does not have its usual meaning, but rather is defined negatively as "the set-theoretic complement of the disjunction of regularity-or-chance."337 This means that design is by default anything that is not the product of either regularity or chance. This constricted definition is problematic for scientists, for the simple reason that it appropriates as "designed" everything that is neither wholly random nor completely inevitable.338 More specifically, Dembski's filter classifies as "intentionally designed" every complex phenomenon that is the product of interactions between chance and regularity---a set that explicitly includes nearly all evolutionary phenomena!339 This is nothing less than conceptual sleight-of-hand. Following Dembski's filter for any complex biological system will result in a decision of "designed," no matter how extensive the evidence that the system arose through the interactions of mutation, genetic drift, and natural selection

Is "design" merely a label for the "set-theoretic complement of the. disjunction regularity or chance," or could it be that this category label is intended to convey a more substantial meaning that could further another agenda, such as that of the "Intelligent Design" movement? What does an intelligent agent do? Dembski says, "The principal characteristic of intelligent agency is directed contingency, or what we call choice. Van Till see also this link

— PvM

By the way, Pim, how do you propose that we should fight against the teaching of ID in biology?

We argue that ID is not science, thus it not only coincides with religion, it in essence is (part of a) religion (more steps are in the argument, of course). By that abbreviated logical progression we have the constitution to rule against teaching ID.

You seem to think that ID is vacuous, but a legitimate scientific hypothesis nevertheless. So if we allow you and the IDists to redefine science to include, say, astrology, ID, and magic elves, what possible legal argument could you bring against this "science" being taught in the schools?

(I should add that fundies have not been averse to invoking church/state separation whenever astrological notions appeared in schools.)

We actually have no instance in which a religion has given rise to a specific scientific hypothesis using non-trivial observations and understandings. Nevertheless, there is a good argument that any science, regardless of its religious origins, should be allowed in science classes. Vacuous science is not obviously excepted in such an argument, hence there seems no legal reason for you to oppose teaching ID in schools.

Religion masquerading as religion is what the courts rule against. This isn't why ID isn't science, by a long shot, but it is a reason why those of us who understand science tend to emphasize the fact that ID isn't science in the least.

Since you fail consistently to recognize what makes science into science, and how ID fails in a causal sense, in the evidentiary sense, and by illegitimately eliminating non-scientific "chance" and "regularity" to end up with a default to unknown "design", perhaps it is best to point out what should be obvious even to one who doesn't understand science as a whole: There likely is not a case against teaching ID in public schools if you and the IDists are permitted to redefine science.

Worse consequences would also be likely to follow, but that result would be bad enough.

Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/b8ykm

All very good ideas. Especially that your argument is against a strawman.

— PvM

Especially since your argument fails in supporting logic. Care to expand so that we can determine indeed if my argument is one against a strawman. Fill the heads of people with science... Allen's seminar seems to be doing exactly this.

For myself, I would make less of the fact that minds are not obviously changed, and more of the fact that there is little evidence of these "seeds of doubt".

— Glen Davidson

That you claim that evolutionary processes are teleological does not heal the damage that you may be doing to science in your mistaken conception of science. MacNeill himself wrote this in his course description "... non-teleological ..."

There likely is not a case against teaching ID in public schools if you and the IDists are permitted to redefine science.

PvM --- It has been my life-long experience that mature YECers never give it up. You seem to be an exception. What changed your mind? A sound education? A sense that ones views ought to be consistent? (My teaching experience is that most students do not care, one way or the other. Since an introduction to philosophy is not a requirement here, only those with a predilection towards consistency sit the course.)

In any case, I doubt that it was a summer seminar similar to that recently completed and whose outcomes it appears you are defending. (Maybe I misunderstand.)

To me, it appears the game is not worth it. Most students need to understand what constitutes the scientific method. Also why, empirically, we use and defend it. Then, most students will come to understand why YEC is not scientific knowledge. Getting through the IDiots gobbledygook is not necessary. Most students will see that it is gobbledygook. Yes?

PvM --- It has been my life-long experience that mature YECers never give it up. You seem to be an exception. What changed your mind?

What I am arguing is that there is a significant group of ID proponents who sincerely are led to believe that there is a scientific component to ID.

I agree to a large extent with your characterization of ID's history. However to reject ID merely because it has been hijacked or had alterior motives, misses the point that there IS a scientific component to ID, however vacuous it may be. We may all want to deny such but that would merely play in the hands of the ID movement.

So, he insists that what "a significant group of ID proponents who sincerely are led to believe" is true. The only difference, apparently, is that he has concluded that this "scientific component" is "vacuous", whereas they have not (yet). Somehow to point out that there is no "scientific component", either by the facts of what makes something scientific or by noting that the whole enterprise of Dembski and the rest of "the ID movement" is dishonest at its core and not based on science or the scientific method, is to "merely play [into their] hands". From PvM's perspective, Duane Gish, Ken Ham, Kent Hovind, and Bill Demsbki really are scientists with scientific hypotheses who have simply had the misfortune that the hypotheses they put forth are incorrect, much like Ptolemy or Henry Bondi. Ah, but that's not right, because PvM doesn't make such claims about Gish, Ham, Hovind, and their hypotheses. But why not? The hypotheses that humans and dinosaurs lived at the same time or that there was a worldwide flood or that the earth is less than 10,000 years old are at least as scientific as Dembski's "design inference", which isn't a hypothesis at all and is devoid of all empirical content. Do we play into the hands of the YEC movement by noting that its leaders are charlatans and con men and that their methods and claims are not scientific? Why not? How is ID different?

And it makes no sense to talk about so restricting "a hypothesis which simply states that design is the set theoretic complement of chance and regularity", which isn't really a "hypothesis" at all, it's a semantic claim, and a ludicrous one, since chance and regularity aren't "sets", and anything that is designed is also a consequence of chance and regularity by a recursive argument.

— Popper

Since you fail consistently to recognize what makes science into science, and how ID fails in a causal sense, in the evidentiary sense, and by illegitimately eliminating non-scientific "chance" and "regularity" to end up with a default to unknown "design", perhaps it is best to point out what should be obvious even to one who doesn't understand science as a whole: There likely is not a case against teaching ID in public schools if you and the IDists are permitted to redefine science. Worse consequences would also be likely to follow, but that result would be bad enough.

— Glen

Religion masquerading as religion is what the courts rule against. This isn't why ID isn't science, by a long shot, but it is a reason why those of us who understand science tend to emphasize the fact that ID isn't science in the least.

— Glen

By the way, Pim, how do you propose that we should fight against the teaching of ID in biology?

My university of Hawaii colleague at the time, the eminent philosopher Larry Laudan, had been one of the strong voices disputing Popperian falsifiability as a workable demarcation criterion for science. When the Arkansas decision was announced, Laudan objected strenuously. He pointed out that creation science is in fact testable, tentative, and falsifiable. For example, it predicts a young Earth and other geological facts that have, in fact, been falsified. Falsified science can still be science, just wrong science. Laudan warned that the Arkansas decision would come back to haunt science by "perpetuating and canonizing a false stereotype on what science is and how it works."

To suggest that one can reject YEC or ID as unscientific a-priori based on some 'recipe' seems hard to support but if Popper wants to give it a try, then I am more than interested to hear his viewpoints.

Somehow to point out that there is no "scientific component", either by the facts of what makes something scientific or by noting that the whole enterprise of Dembski and the rest of "the ID movement" is dishonest at its core and not based on science or the scientific method, is to "merely play [into their] hands". From PvM's perspective, Duane Gish, Ken Ham, Kent Hovind, and Bill Demsbki really are scientists with scientific hypotheses who have simply had the misfortune that the hypotheses they put forth are incorrect, much like Ptolemy or Henry Bondi. Ah, but that's not right, because PvM doesn't make such claims about Gish, Ham, Hovind, and their hypotheses. But why not?

That ID is unscientific a priori is easy to support and the viewpoint has already given by both myself and Glen Davidson here, and others elsewhere, at considerable length, but you seem neither interested nor capable of hearing.

If so, then I am sure you can present them in manner which I am capable of hearing?

Glen mostly asserted that those familiar with science would understand the problems with my arguments and realize that ID is vacuous, further suggesting that my position would make it impossible to reject the teaching of ID in schools on constitutional grounds. As far as your contributions are concerned, I remember idiocy and some other terms but none of them struck me as particularly relevant. If I missed some of your more relevant comments then I am surely interested in hearing about them.

Can anyone detect the various logical fallacies in the following statement by Popper?

That ID is unscientific a priori is easy to support and the viewpoint has already given by both myself and Glen Davidson here, and others elsewhere, at considerable length, but you seem neither interested nor capable of hearing.

Since you are demonstrably not capable of hearing it, I am not able to present it in a manner such that you are. Sheesh.

— Popper

You have failed miserably in this thread to convince anyone of your position, and your silly tu quoque posturing does nothing to help your case.

— Popper

All you have to do to "hear about them" is to go back and READ them. That you characterize my constributions as "idiocy and some other terms but none of them struck me as particularly relevant" and nothing more shows how intransigently dishonest you are. I have no way of forcing you to read and comprehend the arguments that have been given and properly characterize them, and I've already wasted far too much of my time on you.

— Popper

How comfortable, blaming the recipient for your inability to communicate, or even show evidence of such communication.

I did not mean to characterize your contribution as idiocy

I was pointing out how you used the term in your rejection of ID.

If you do not want to repeat yourself, all you need to do is reference the comments (they are identified as Comment # followed by 6 digits).

I am interested in pursuing the arguments about the scientific nature of ID.

The desire to be right and the desire to have been right are two desires, and the sooner we separate them the better off we are. The desire to be right is the thirst for truth. On all accounts, both practical and theoretical, there is nothing but good to be said for it. The desire to have been right, on the other hand, is the pride that goeth before a fall. It stands in the way of our seeing we were wrong, and thus blocks the progress of our knowledge.

Popper's posting in which he accused me of lying has been moved to the bathroom wall. All Popper should have done is ask me for a correction when I used the term idiocy when I should have stated ludicrous. I apologize for me using the wrong term. No reason to accuse me of lying.

No, you are only interested in having your view accepted. To that end you ignore, mischaracterize, and trivialize people's arguments.

— Popper

Read them all.

— Popper

Seems to fit your behavior much better my dear friend.

Ah the smell of insults in the morning. You're a funny guy Popper. Why not simply support your claim that ""ID is unscientific a priori is easy to support"

Explain to us how easy and how you reached this conclusion.

If it were that easy, then surely you can provide me with some hints as to where you believe you made your best case?

Demarcation in contemporary scientific method The criteria for a system of assumptions, methods, and theories to qualify as science today vary in their details from application to application, and vary significantly among the natural sciences, social sciences and formal science. The criteria typically include (1) the formulation of hypotheses that meet the logical criterion of contingency, defeasibility, or falsifiability and the closely related empirical and practical criterion of testability, (2) a grounding in empirical evidence, and (3) the use of scientific method. The procedures of science typically include a number of heuristic guidelines, such as the principles of conceptual economy or theoretical parsimony that fall under the rubric of Ockham's razor. A conceptual system that fails to meet a significant number of these criteria is likely to be considered non-scientific. The following is a list of additional features that are highly desirable in a scientific theory. * Consistent. Generates no obvious logical contradictions, and 'saves the phenomena', being consistent with observation. * Parsimonious. Economical in the number of assumptions and hypothetical entities. * Pertinent. Describes and explains observed phenomena. * Falsifiable and testable. See Falsifiability and Testability. * Reproducible. Makes predictions that can be tested by any observer, with trials extending indefinitely into the future. * Correctable and dynamic. Subject to modification as new observations are made. * Integrative, robust, and corrigible. Subsumes previous theories as approximations, and allows possible subsumption by future theories. (Robust = "stable" in the statistical sense, i.e., not very sensitive to occasional outlying data points.) See Correspondence principle * Provisional or tentative. Does not assert the absolute certainty of the theory.

A remarkably long thread considering the questions it revolves around.

1. Is it good strategy to have a seminar about ID?
ID is, albeit with a political and religious agenda, a junk science. In other cases junk sciences, even politically involved such as atrology, is researched and debunked for their alleged scientific content. The question then becomes why ID should be treated differently, and no good answer seems to be given. It is possible to debunk creationism/ID for its vacuous main and auxilliary 'hypotheses', and sometimes YEC content.

2. Is there a demarcation problem?
As Popper, Glen and Stevepinhead remarks concludes, demarcation is a problem in philosophy, not in practical science. Factual debunking will naturally involve falsification and demarcating supernatural causation, since ID is one of several similar junks sciences.

3. Is there an apriori-aposteriori distinction?
The apriori-aposteriori distinction is a red herring. Apriori nothing is excluded by science. But by todays knowledge ID's main hypotheses (creationism, teleology) are more or less apriori excluded after some analysis. Auxilliary hypotheses such as IC aren't always synomymous with creationism, and they are more or less aposteriori excluded after some analysis and research.

4. Is there such a thing as teleology?
Quite frankly I'm baffled by this assumption. Teleology doesn't describe normal causation truthfully, and already causation is a derived concept.

"In particular, we should emphasize that there is no place in this view for common philosophical concepts such as ''cause and effect'' or ''purpose.'' From the perspective of modern science, events don't have purposes or causes; they simply conform to the laws of nature. In particular, there is no need to invoke any mechanism to ''sustain'' a physical system or to keep it going; it would require an additional layer of complexity for a system to cease following its patterns than for it to simply continue to do so. Believing otherwise is a relic of a certain metaphysical way of thinking; these notions are useful in an informal way for human beings, but are not a part of the rigorous scientific description of the world. Of course scientists do talk about ''causality,'' but this is a description of the relationship between patterns and boundary conditions; it is a derived concept, not a fundamental one." ( http://pancake.uchicago.edu/~carroll/nd-paper.html )

If biology has introduced teleology in science as a needed scientifical concept instead of a philosophical or religious one, it needs to define and support that necessity. Has it done so? The references given are all from journals of philosophy.

In short, I find much of the discussion of this thread caused :-) by confusing science with philosophy.

1. Is it good strategy to have a seminar about ID? ID is, albeit with a political and religious agenda, a junk science. In other cases junk sciences, even politically involved such as atrology, is researched and debunked for their alleged scientific content. The question then becomes why ID should be treated differently, and no good answer seems to be given.

Apriori nothing is excluded by science.

Auxilliary hypotheses such as IC

In short, I find much of the discussion of this thread caused :-) by confusing science with philosophy.

From the perspective of modern science, events don't have purposes or causes; they simply conform to the laws of nature.

Popper's:
"I'll assume you mean excluded a priori from science, otherwise it's a pointless strawman."

Yes.

"If so, it simply isn't true."

In my view it is. Science does observations, and a priori all explanations are welcome. But we can't really do experiments or theory if local supernatural causation was permissible. It is too strong a hypothesis, so it is excluded in our methods early on, from the get go if you will. Methodological naturalism is a basic feature, and to argue whether it is or isn't a priori is a mostly a red herring, and especially here.

"Fermat's Last Theorem is also excluded a priori from science because it isn't an empirical question; it can't be answered by an appeal to physical evidence."

Interesting. My view of mathematics is that its basic formal systems were and continues to be modelled on physical events. String theory for example, is currently more math than phys. Computer science can explore some mathematical problems empirically. Indeed I think the whole idea of BPP complexity as the largest practical class of solvable problem incorporates empirical solutions such as Monte Carlo methods. That the experiment and observation is numerical is acceptable to me.

"The argument that IC mechanisms cannot evolve is a fallacious argument"

Agreed. As I said above, see #122594 and 122599, IC is easily proven to be an illdefined concept, so it fails as a hypothesis with very little effort.

"there's nothing inherently teleological about causation"

No. Carroll is using a simple model of science as a basis to discuss it as a worldview. In the process he notes that "Of course scientists do talk about ''causality,'' but this is a description of the relationship between patterns and boundary conditions; it is a derived concept, not a fundamental one. If we know the state of a system at one time, and the laws governing its dynamics, we can calculate the state of the system at some later time. You might be tempted to say that the particular state at the first time ''caused'' the state to be what it was at the second time; but it would be just as correct to say that the second state caused the first."

But as you say, and I note on teleology and purpose, derived notions are practical and needed, but must first be shown as such. Your notion of capability seems to be much more practical than 'purpose', and you manage to make the point in two sentences.

""there's nothing inherently teleological about causation"

No."

Seeing that perhaps this will be litterarily read, I mean here "yes" or "agreed".

If so, he might have also noted that Beckwith quotes Laudan [at 25] noting that ID "is inconsistent with methodological naturalism and ontological materialism...[b]ut that fact has no bearing whatsoever on the plausbility of the arguments for ID." Why does Laudan say that? Because methodological naturalism is an a posteriori doctrine, which means if ID generated any empirical results incompatible with it---it has not, of course---then so much the worse for MN. The problem is purely a posteriori: ID has no research program and no empirical support, so it presents no challenge at all to the reliance on naturalistical explanatory mechanisms. Laudan thinks talk of "pseudo-science" is misleading in the absence of a solution to the demarcation problem; Laudan has no reservations about talk about "good" and "bad" science as measured by their results and the evidence on behalf of their claims.

— Leiter

* Consistent. Generates no obvious logical contradictions, and 'saves the phenomena', being consistent with observation. * Parsimonious. Economical in the number of assumptions and hypothetical entities. * Pertinent. Describes and explains observed phenomena. * Falsifiable and testable. See Falsifiability and Testability. * Reproducible. Makes predictions that can be tested by any observer, with trials extending indefinitely into the future. * Correctable and dynamic. Subject to modification as new observations are made. * Integrative, robust, and corrigible. Subsumes previous theories as approximations, and allows possible subsumption by future theories. (Robust = "stable" in the statistical sense, i.e., not very sensitive to occasional outlying data points.) See Correspondence principle * Provisional or tentative. Does not assert the absolute certainty of the theory.

Because there's a "demarcation problem", there's supposedly no way to distinguish this from science. We cannot reject it a priori as science, only a posteriori, by showing that its "scientific component" is "vacuous".

— Popper

The obvious problem with this obvious fallacy is that the demarcation problem is about defining the boundary between science and non-science, but some things, like "only verifiable statements are meaningful" or the stuff about God above are unambiguously not science. If one actually reads the Wikipedia article on the demarcation problem, one finds

— Popper

Science does observations, and a priori all explanations are welcome. But we can't really do experiments or theory if local supernatural causation was permissible. It is too strong a hypothesis, so it is excluded in our methods early on, from the get go if you will. Methodological naturalism is a basic feature, and to argue whether it is or isn't a priori is a mostly a red herring, and especially here.

Howard Sankey wrote: For where scientists disagree about the aims of their enterprise, no appeal can be made to common goals to resolve lower-level disputes about methodological or factual matters. Given that scientific disputes are to be resolved at a higher level, the hierarchical model does not possess the resources to explain resolution of disputes arising at the top of the hierarchy.

Ryan Nichols wrote: In my argument against Intelligent Design Theory I will not contend that it is not falsifiable or that it implies contradictions. I'll argue that Intelligent Design Theory doesn't imply anything at all, i.e. it has no content. By 'content' I refer to a body of determinate principles and propositions entailed by those principles. By 'principle' I refer to a proposition of central importance to the theory at issue. By 'determinate principle' I refer to a proposition of central importance to the theory at issue in which the extensions of its terms are clearly defined. I'll evaluate the work of William Dembski because he specifies his methodology in detail, thinks Intelligent Design Theory is contentful and thinks Intelligent Design Theory (hereafter 'IDT') grounds an empirical research program.1 Later in the paper I assess a recent trend in which IDT is allegedly found a better home as a metascientific hypothesis, which serves as a paradigm that catalyzes research. I'll conclude that, whether IDT is construed as a scientific or metascientific hypothesis, IDT lacks content.

Quote (stevestory @ Sep. 01 2006,12:55) One thing I just noticed is, AtBC is a much more pleasant place these days than the comment sections of PT. Here, the people who like to tear AFDave apart do so in their own thread. The people who like to have a good laugh at Uncommonly Dense hang out in a thread. Paley has a few threads where he's given up on the science and makes loopy political claims. Jason Spaceman pops by occasionally and links to a news story. All-in-all, it's a little mean at times, but mostly pleasant. Over on PT, though, a topic about a specific item will get totally sidetracked on a shrill "You Suck" "No, You Suck" fight. Not to name any names, but there are a few people who I consistently see in these long boring fights. I can see why some PT contributors see little value in the comments there.

"there's nothing inherently teleological about causation" No. Carroll is using a simple model of science as a basis to discuss it as a worldview. In the process he notes that "Of course scientists do talk about "causality," but this is a description of the relationship between patterns and boundary conditions; it is a derived concept, not a fundamental one. If we know the state of a system at one time, and the laws governing its dynamics, we can calculate the state of the system at some later time. You might be tempted to say that the particular state at the first time "caused" the state to be what it was at the second time; but it would be just as correct to say that the second state caused the first." But as you say, and I note on teleology and purpose, derived notions are practical and needed, but must first be shown as such. Your notion of capability seems to be much more practical than 'purpose', and you manage to make the point in two sentences.

PvM:
"Rejecting ID because it is religiously motivated or even because it includes the supernatural or because it does not accept methodological naturalism is unsupportable a-priori."

What I'm trying to say that this is a moot point. Supernatural causation is used a priori to reject such hypotheses as gods messing with experiments, ie we don't say that unexplained parts are due to supernatural events, we say "we don't know". Sceptics do use the nature of the business as part of making debunking.

OTOH, in as much ID makes positive claims it is of course possible and stronger to reject it as such. Unfortunately, it doesn't.

And I read Laudan as ready to accept science as it is currently used. Anything else is not workable.

"In the case of ID, they claim that MN is insufficient and that ID proposes a solution. That clearly means that attempts to reject ID a-priori as unscientific because it does not accept MN should be rejected."

No, it means that they are making a special plea.

Of course as I said above, often we do make an analysis in any case. And auxiliary ideas such as IC aren't covered by supernatural claims, and need another analysis.

"After all, MN is hardly a sacred concept and if something better can replace it, all the power to ID. ... In other words, one cannot resolve disputes about methodology by rejecting it based on the commonly accepted methodology."

MN has been attacked earlier in the same cause, to promote religion over science. We have no special reason to revise its use or other methodology for debunking ID. If anything MN is stronger this time around, since it has weathered earlier attacks.

"This is an anti-scientific position which fails to treat MN as falsifiable or tentative."

MN is a proven method, not a proven theory. As such it doesn't need falsifiability and I doubt it has.

I'm hesitant to dig into science method theory, since not much come out of it. If you need a tentative formal meaning, perhaps you should look at it as an axiom. Much as the parallel axiom in math you can choose alternatives, and your choice will affect what you can do. If you don't accept MN, I think you have chosen to pursue religious explanations.

"I think the problem arises when science is unable to show sufficient detail for the causal steps which makes it harder to determine the nature of the teleology."

You still haven't shown that teleology works in science, or is necessary.

To return to my main point, which is that this discussion is too much philosophy, too little science and no ordinary debunking. What I know, ID is professionally debunked and the only new things are Dembski and Behe reformulating old debunked ideas. I would like to see a strong program, perhaps looking for US state support, to promote good science and debunk hurtful pseudoscience. ID would be among the prime targets.

"After all, MN is hardly a sacred concept and if something better can replace it, all the power to ID.... In other words, one cannot resolve disputes about methodology by rejecting it based on the commonly accepted thodology." MN has been attacked earlier in the same cause, to promote religion over science. We have no special reason to revise its use or other methodology for debunking ID. If anything MN is stronger this time around, since it has weathered earlier attacks.

A warning to posters: Attempts to distract from the argument of the thread will be summarily moved to the bathroom wall. My patience with some of the alpha commenters has run out. Either contribute or post on the more appropriate forums on antievolution.org.

So, no ad hominems, no insults. Focus on the topic at hand or experience the consequences.

In fact, ID clearly rejects that its claims are necessarily about the supernatural, although they seem somewhat inconsistent when talking to their religious supporters.

This is incomprehensible, Pim.

In fact, ID clearly rejects that its claims are necessarily about the supernatural, although they seem somewhat inconsistent when talking to their religious supporters.

A warning to posters: Attempts to distract from the argument of the thread will be summarily moved to the bathroom wall. My patience with some of the alpha commenters has run out. Either contribute or post on the more appropriate forums on antievolution.org.

So, no ad hominems, no insults. Focus on the topic at hand or experience the consequences.

What in heck is the "argument of the thread"? I can see from reading the thread from the beginning that there were several "arguments of the thread" which sort of died out when one party stopped trying to address those arguments directly.

Registered User: You have been warned... If you continue to make your ad hominem, insulting and off topic postings on this thread, then I will continue to move your comments to the Bathroom wall. Interested users may peruse Registered User's comments at this link

Of course as I said above, often we do make an analysis in any case. And auxiliary ideas such as IC aren't covered by supernatural claims, and need another analysis.

Intelligent Design explicitly rejects that their design inference is necessarily about the supernatural.

There you go again. I thought "intelligent design" had something to do with the set complement of chance or regularity or some garbage like it. Where is the explicit rejection in the theory?

Or are you referring to the Intelligent Design political movement that makes up lies about science and scientists in order to promote a Christian theocracy in the United States?

You're simply not being clear, Pim. You need to try harder.

There is "ID" the political movement spearheaded by the Discovery Institute and its employees (and wanna-be peddlers like Hannah Maxson), and then there is "ID" the bogus "theory" that is not really a theory (but you sometimes seem to want to pretend that it is not entirely bogus, even when it is).

If you mean to say "ID peddlers" than say "ID peddlers." If you mean to say the "proposed 'theory' of ID" than say "the proposed 'theory' of ID."

This is extremely important in the context of this thread where your claims about what "ID" is have left many of us frustrated and confused.

What in heck is the "argument of the thread"? I can see from reading the thread from the beginning that there were several "arguments of the thread" which sort of died out when one party stopped trying to address those arguments directly.

— Registered User

This is an anti-scientific position which fails to treat MN as falsifiable or tentative.

Intelligent Design explicitly rejects that their design inference is necessarily about the supernatural.

— Registered User

There you go again. I thought "intelligent design" had something to do with the set complement of chance or regularity or some garbage like it. Where is the explicit rejection in the theory?

"Before I proceed, however, I note that Dembski makes an important concession to his critics. He refuses to make the second assumption noted above. When the EF implies that certain systems are intelligently designed, Dembski does not think it follows that there is some intelligent designer or other. He says that, "even though in practice inferring design is the first step in identifying an intelligent agent, taken by itself design does not require that such an agent be posited. The notion of design that emerges from the design inference must not be confused with intelligent agency" (TDI, 227, my emphasis).

This is an anti-scientific position which fails to treat MN as falsifiable or tentative.

— CJ Obrien

But MN is, per the "M", a method. Since when do methods need to be falsifiable? I tend to agree that the vaugue claim, that MN may not be sufficient to tackle all empirical problems, is nothing more than special pleading. As far as I'm concerned, MN is just a corollary of parsimony.

But again, I straddle the fence. I see no reason why we can't just say, OK, fine, reject parsimony and see how fruitful your method is. Vacuity will be the answer and there you have it. ID framed this way is anti-scientific, a priori, more in the sense that, with limited time and resources, scientists simply cannot be bothered to abandon a demonstrably fruitful method for an unknown and untested one. There's a regress in these spurious philosophies of science that should just be cut off from the get-go, if we want to simply do science rather than talk about the demarcation problem until we die.

I see where you're going with your reasoning, PvM, and I don't categorically disagree. But what of brute practicality? Where does that fit in?

Seems people still have stereotypes about what ID is.

Oh, I get it now: only insulting statements by Pim are allowed on the thread.

Keep digging your hole, Pim. Suits you perfectly.

The theory indeed says nothing about supernatural

So you say Pim.

Of course, since "the theory" is not a "theory" at all, except perhaps in your mind and in the minds of ID peddlers, it is rather difficult to accuse somebody of "stereotyping" the "theory."

That doesn't stop ID peddlers like Hannah Maxson from accusing people of engaging in such "stereotyping." And now we learn that it doesn't stop Pim either.

So Pim seems to belong to this, er, elite crowd of folks who actually claim to understand what "ID theory" is and what it is not. Most of the other members of that crowd, of course, are employed by the Discovery Institute.

I am arguing that ID's claims

My theory is that everything you do and say is exactly according to the wishes of a mysterious alien being.

Unscientific?

Perhaps one should read more than the what Wikipedia has to offer?

there are about 2-3 alpha male types there who dominate everything and set the tone for every thread

Intelligent Design explicitly rejects that their design inference is necessarily about the supernatural.

While Popper attempts to claim what is not science, he has done little to show that these examples are unambiguously non-science a-priori. I already gave an example of how science can study the effect of prayer on healing. The argument is that God hears our prayers and acts on them. That's a hypothesis which can be studied by science, and rejected, and yet some may have rejected the hypothesis a-priori because it involves 'stuff about God'.

(1) the formulation of hypotheses that meet the logical criterion of contingency, defeasibility, or falsifiability and the closely related empirical and practical criterion of testability, (2) a grounding in empirical evidence, and (3) the use of scientific method. The procedures of science typically include a number of heuristic guidelines, such as the principles of conceptual economy or theoretical parsimony that fall under the rubric of Ockham's razor. A conceptual system that fails to meet a significant number of these criteria is likely to be considered non-scientific.

Perhaps one should read more than the what Wikipedia has to offer? AD HOMINEM, PvM. You linked to Wikipedia; I quoted what it said. Your assumption that I've never read anything else is unwarranted and wrong.

— Popper

there are about 2-3 alpha male types there who dominate everything and set the tone for every thread

— Popper

AD HOMINEM

Intelligent Design explicitly rejects that their design inference is necessarily about the supernatural.

— Popper

Intelligent Design is not a "they" and is not capable of "rejecting" anything.

Mistakes follow from conflating what is supposedly a theory from what its proponents sometimes say. To avoid this, formulate a statement of the theory. Quite notably, no definition is a theory; it can only provide a term used in a theory. Formulate a statement of the theory you purport to characterize.

— Popper

While Popper attempts to claim what is not science, he has done little to show that these examples are unambiguously non-science a-priori. I already gave an example of how science can study the effect of prayer on healing. The argument is that God hears our prayers and acts on them. That's a hypothesis which can be studied by science, and rejected, and yet some may have rejected the hypothesis a-priori because it involves 'stuff about God'.

— popper

No, the hypothesis that prayer can affect healing is a scientific hypothesis, for which relevant evidence can be gathered; the hypothesis that God hears our prayers and acts upon them is not a scientific hypothesis --- if you disagree, then argue with the IDists who say that ID does not and cannot address whether God is the designer.

The problem with ID is not that it talks of God; that's a red herring. The problem is that it doesn't get into the ballpark of what a scientific theory is, and the unsupported assertion that "ID arguable matches most if not all of these" does nothing to get it there. And that was in response to "a list of additional features that are highly desirable in a scientific theory", not the main points, which you didn't address:

— Popper

(1) the formulation of hypotheses that meet the logical criterion of contingency, defeasibility, or falsifiability and the closely related empirical and practical criterion of testability, (2) a grounding in empirical evidence, and (3) the use of scientific method.

— Popper

The procedures of science typically include a number of heuristic guidelines, such as the principles of conceptual economy or theoretical parsimony that fall under the rubric of Ockham's razor. A conceptual system that fails to meet a significant number of these criteria is likely to be considered non-scientific.

— Popper

Most scientists do in fact consider ID to be non-scientific, for these and other reasons. If you want to argue that ID is scientific, the burden is on you to do so.

— Popper

To say that "ID has a major disagreement with some of the foundational assumptions of science" conflates ID, purportedly a theory, with the staff of the DI, human beings. That those people have, or claim to have, a major disagreement with some of the foundational assumptions of science is irrelevant, as irrelevant as whether you call a dog's tail a leg is to how many legs it has. Of course there are possible universes in which there are populations employing a language in which "leg" refers to long appendages generally and includes what we call a tail, but the word is not the thing it refers to. What is relevant is what is meant by the term "scientific", regardless of how fuzzy it is, not how some people wish to redefine the term.

— Popper

ID is arguing against the foundation of scientific inquiry

Therefore, unless someone undertakes a program of research tha proposes a series of testable positive hypotheses based on ID theory that can be empirically validated, it appears likely that ID theory will eventually come to the same fate as Bergson and Deleuze's concept of élan vital; a footnote to the progress of empirical science, of interest only to those interested in failed pseudoscientific "theories."

Hey, no fair. Mods get to go and fix their XML screw-ups, but the rest of us have to leave up those error messages under our names! =>

I am arguing that ID's claims My theory is that everything you do and say is exactly according to the wishes of a mysterious alien being. Unscientific?

"The notion of design that emerges from the design inference must not be confused with intelligent agency" Hope this clarifies.

There is a difficulty in discussing these concepts in that the meanings of the terms regularity, chance, and design can become confused with newer meanings which arise from the argument of The Design Inference. It is important to keep the casual meanings separate. Unfortunately, it is not clear that even Dembski manages to keep track of what the terms really mean. For example, even though Dembski clearly explains that design does not imply agency, Dembski offers as the 3 possible categories of explanation in his first example "Regularity", "Chance", and "Agency" (p 11).

And I can't, from this alone, determine a priori that ID is anti-scientific?

How can a rejection be a-priori when the people involved are already thoroughly familiar with the thing they're rejecting? I don't get that.

Re "Defining design as the set theoretic complement of chance and regularity says nothing about natural versus supernatural. It's just a definition."

If that's a definition at all it's a very poorly worded one. Send it back to the drawing board.

Henry

certain, arbitrary though pragmatic

design is not reducible to natural processes of chance and regularity

— ID Hypothesis

(1) the formulation of hypotheses that meet the logical criterion of contingency, defeasibility, or falsifiability and the closely related empirical and practical criterion of testability

(2) a grounding in empirical evidence,

How can a rejection be a-priori when the people involved are already thoroughly familiar with the thing they're rejecting? I don't get that.

If that's a definition at all it's a very poorly worded one.

design is not reducible to natural processes of chance and regularity

A scientific hypothesis should strongly imply the methods that will be employed to test it, don't you think?

One of the problems in this discussion is that the word "tentative" is being used to refer to what is in fact a form of radical linguistic skepticism. "A bowling ball is heavier than a feather" can be challenged if the meaning of "heavier" is tentative -- but it isn't tentative in any sense that undermines the truth of the statement. Likewise, while the appropriateness of restricting science to methodological naturalism might be challenged by some, there's nothing "tentative" about the fact that science is so restricted; that restriction is the very basis of their complaint. If one were to challenge the foundations of science by claiming that the methods of science should include consulting those "8 ball" toys, that would not mean that saying that such consultations are not science would be "redefining" science in violation of its "tentative" nature; such consultations simply are not science, and no appeal to radically skeptical philosophers will change that; for any claim, you can always find some philosopher who will deny it. Such radically skeptical philosophers could object that I am simply making assertions, but in the end every argument is a sequence of assertions; its cogency rests upon a shared understanding of the words and logical structures used and upon a common understanding of empirical facts, resulting from being similar experiencers embedded in a common physical environment.

... Applied to science we run into a wholesale redefinition that opens Pandora's Box. If we accept the objective reality of God into the epistemology of science, we extend a bridge to studies currently classified as pseudoscience. The supernatural or preternatural, though still non-testable, may be incorporated into the explanation of phenomena. Science's inherent demand that experimental research be subject to replication flies out the window because experimentation must necessarily allow for the validity of both revelation and inerrant arguments from authority. Under the current operating definition of science and at least two centuries of its practice, revelation is strictly forbidden because its factuality is inherently unverifiable by any reasonably quantifiable standard. What could revelations hope to objectively prove to us anyway? What sort of revelations would count as scientifically valid? Presumably those espoused by "scientists" who believe a priori that God is objectively real. We might wonder, though, if Pat Robertson's proclamations on the causes of natural disasters might enable the Christian Coalition to receive National Science Foundation research funding to determine if recent hurricanes were actually caused by God�s anger with America's decadent life. That sounds like a yellow brick road to bizarro world; a road to medievalism with only the most rudimentary understanding of nature; a path to beliefs that Jews need fresh blood to cure their sexual dysfunction; a fall into the oubliette of ignorance. Science cannot and must not recognize a simple argument from authority. Physicists today gleefully look at Einstein's incorrect objections to quantum physics. "God does not throw dice," he said. Einstein held more political capital than 99.9% scientists but his objections proved irrelevant. The data panned out. Naturalistic methodology carried the day and quantum theory outshines nearly all discoveries of the twentieth century. Theistic naturalism has no place in science and certainly no place in government. In art, inspiration through revelation is entirely appropriate. I would be unsurprised if J.S. Bach, Antonio Vivaldi, Anton Bruckner and Olivier Messiaen would have identified themselves as theistic naturalists. All of them were deeply devout men who testified to their belief in God through their music. Messiaen most notably heard the wonder of divinity in the calls of birds that he mimicked in the bulk of his works. But these four are exceptions. What would become of the rest of art under the prescription of theistic realism? Censored. Proscribed. Straitjacketed. Poorly premised philosophy yields even poorer policies. Let's not even allow Johnson and his theocratic cabal to get close. The Soviet Union, the atheistic institution that it was, teaches us a good lesson about so-called "realisms" they place critical and creative people in manacles.

And I've intentionally shifted to "anti-" rather than "un-" as I did in my question regarding practicality. Science is an activity, and it is the active goal of ID proponents to hinder said activity and argue against its very foundations. As you yourself state. But then you go on to say that it can't be shown to be un- (or anti-) scientific a priori without running into the demarcation question?

Again, I just think there's a regress there. I quote from Dr. MacNeill, way back when, near the beginning of the comments: Therefore, unless someone undertakes a program of research tha proposes a series of testable positive hypotheses based on ID theory that can be empirically validated, it appears likely that ID theory will eventually come to the same fate as Bergson and Deleuze's concept of élan vital; a footnote to the progress of empirical science, of interest only to those interested in failed pseudoscientific "theories."

Clarification is not achieved by ignoring what has already been written. In his opening paragraph, Wesley Ellsbury writes "William A Dembski announced the existence of rigorous and reliable means of detecting the action of an intelligent agent". Dembski argues that his notion of "design" implies agency: "Dembski believes that finding design does imply agency", "Dembski believes that not only design but also agency is found by his argument", etc. But, Ellsbury notes both that the inference doesn't follow and that Dembski does confuse his notion of "design" with agency:

— Popper

One may wonder what TDI was supposed to accomplish, if design no longer means what Paley meant by it and the attribution of agency no longer follows from finding design. But Dembski believes that finding design does imply agency, even though he has identified that implication as being unnecessary. In his view, because we can often find that design is found where an intelligent agent has acted, we can reliably infer that when we find design, we have also found evidence of the action of an intelligent agent.

— Wesley

Dembski believes that not only design but also agency is found by his argument. This is the message being spread by various and sundry of the "intelligent design" proponents and by Dembski himself in other writings. But is it a secure inference? In his First Things article, and to a lesser extent in his section 2.3 of TDI, Dembski takes biologists to task for avoiding the conclusion of design for biological phenomena. Dembski says that to avoid a design conclusion, biologists uniformly reject one or more of the premises of his argument. But Dembski does not exclude natural selection as a possible cause for events which can be classified as being due to design.

However, at best we can say that Dembski defines "design*" as a characteristic of those events that are not characterized by "chance*" or "regularity*" --- but (aside from the fact that this way of characterizing events is non-Bayesian, it's metaphysical, as Glen Davidson puts it) there's little or no relationship between Dembski's terms and the unstarred words(even less than the relationship between "leg*" and "leg", where "leg*" refers to both legs and tails).

— Popper

Yet, Dembski's inductive inference to intelligent agency is based, not on "design*", but on "design" in its common sense; when Dembski refers to objects known to be designed by intelligent agents, he is talking about "design" in its normal sense, not "design*" in his idiocratic sense. And yet he claims that "design*" implies agency. The confusion, intentionally or not, is of Dembski's own making.

— Popper

But it is clear that, if the proponents of ID are arguing against methodological naturalism as a foundation of science, they are redefining science --- that was the whole point of Kansas.

— Popper

One might try to argue that the redefinition is warranted, but simply denying the redefinition is a different sort of thing. When these sorts of disputes arise in philosophy, they are solved by splitting terms so as to be clear as to what is being referred to. So, for instance, one might claim that ID is scientific-NMN, but not scientific-MN, where the latter refers to familiar science with its foundation of methodological naturalism, whereas the former term refers to something else. It might be an interesting exercise (if one had nothing better to do) to go back through this entire thread and see when "scientific" was being used in the "scientific-MN" sense and when it was not.

How can a rejection be a-priori when the people involved are already thoroughly familiar with the thing they're rejecting? I don't get that.

— Henry

Re "Defining design as the set theoretic complement of chance and regularity says nothing about natural versus supernatural. It's just a definition." If that's a definition at all it's a very poorly worded one. Send it back to the drawing board.

— Henry

certain, arbitrary though pragmatic

What is pragmatic is not "arbitrary"; the scientific-MN method produces results, and that's why scientists-MN employ it, and why we teach science-MN in science-MN classes in an attempt to produce a scientifically-MN literate populace. If and when someone demonstrates that science-NMN is more effective than science-MN, then the boundaries of science will be shifted so as to include science-NMN. Of course, in order to demonstrate that they will have to employ empirical evidence --- pragmatism is inherently empirical --- so such a shift will never happen other than as a result of politics, leading to a less effective practice of "science".

Since testability is a "practical criterion" I assume you consign it to posteriori rejection, but I don't think it neccessarily should be. A scientific hypothesis should strongly imply the methods that will be employed to test it, don't you think? The above seems formulated to chase from the mind any notion of observation or experiment.

Notably, chance and regularity, whether referring to the normal meanings of these terms or Dembski's wildly different meanings are not "natural processes". But even more notably, "design is not reducible to chance and regularity", using the terms in Dembski's senses, is a given --- it's a definition. If this is the ID hypothesis, then it is logically vacuous.

— Popper

Conclusions of science are reliable, though tentative. Science is always a work in progress, and its conclusions are always tentative. But just as the word "theory" means something special to the scientist, so too does the word "tentative." Science's conclusions are not tentative in the sense that they are temporary until the real answer comes along. Scientific conclusions are well founded in their factual content and thinking and are tentative only in the sense that all ideas are open to scrutiny. In science, the tentativeness of ideas such as the nature of atoms, cells, stars or the history of the Earth refers to the willingness of scientists to modify their ideas as new evidence appears.

Here is a very interesting and highly relevant posting from a more recent thread. If science is infinitely tentative, then is theistic realism a priori scientific? Was Socialist Realism a priori scientific? Was Pravda's "Muddle Instead of Music" a priori scientific? Just how "priori" do we have to go? Are all statements a priori scientific because we musn't assume that they aren't scientific before they are even made? These questions may seem a bit flippant, but the cited article certainly isn't.

— Popper

"I would like to see a strong program, perhaps looking for US state support, to promote good science and debunk hurtful pseudoscience."

Ooops! I made a political suggestion. Perhaps I should take the opportunity to learn to analyse such peculiar things. It seems what most people do, and it must be better than merely propose them.

Okay, first, what is it and is there a motivation? As it stand it is an adhoc with social constraints, specifically it is like other such suggestions. I have some vague ideas on politics and economics, but none lead all the way here.

Hmm, next, how can I test it? Inspired by all the philosophy espoused here, I can simplest make an abstract philosophical argument by analogy.

So, is the suggestion "necessary"? Yes, in the sense that it correlates to what other pseudosciences is subjected to.

And is it "sufficient"? No, for example parapsychology is researched professionally.

What is the situation here? It is a program that as ID has nonscience motivations (here related mysticism), if presented today probably apriori refused (I think entropy and gravity shows that there aren't much room for new levels and interactions, but there is possibly still a gap), and considered pseudoscience if used in the community.

The difference is that it has been forced to accept normal science rules, it tries to make positive results and falsifiable predictions, and it doesn't propose to "teach the controversy" with physics of today until it has positive evidence. By separating out the researchable parts, the fringe science lives in a detente with normal science and society, and is only harmful in as much it waste grants.

Hmm, why can't we treat creationism the same, if parapsychology could be made nearly harmless? If teleology is a somewhat familiar biological idea, some should look into it, as defineable projects or seats at universities. It should force IDists to start making testable assumptions on creators (like evolution should be assuming teleology works), and at the same time make it easier to pinpoint the pseudoscience outside research.

What counts as science has changed so much over the years, it would take a very brave or a very naive individual to claim that we've nailed down the demarcation line once and for all. The ID folks, however, aren't any more original in their methodological than in their substantive ideas. If somebody really has a better way of doing science, they ought to make us an offer instead of attempting to resurect the same tired appeals to authority and intuition that were rejected long ago for very good reasons.

What counts as science has changed so much over the years, it would take a very brave or a very naive individual to claim that we've nailed down the demarcation line once and for all. The ID folks, however, aren't any more original in their methodological than in their substantive ideas. If somebody really has a better way of doing science, they ought to make us an offer instead of attempting to resurect the same tired appeals to authority and intuition that were rejected long ago for very good reasons.

— Jim

If so, he might have also noted that Beckwith quotes Laudan [at 25] noting that ID "is inconsistent with methodological naturalism and ontological materialism...[b]ut that fact has no bearing whatsoever on the plausbility of the arguments for ID." Why does Laudan say that? Because methodological naturalism is an a posteriori doctrine, which means if ID generated any empirical results incompatible with it---it has not, of course---then so much the worse for MN. The problem is purely a posteriori: ID has no research program and no empirical support, so it presents no challenge at all to the reliance on naturalistical explanatory mechanisms. Laudan thinks talk of "pseudo-science" is misleading in the absence of a solution to the demarcation problem; Laudan has no reservations about talk about "good" and "bad" science as measured by their results and the evidence on behalf of their claims.

PvM:

"Of course MN has been attacked before but to reject ID's 'attack' on MN as just another attempt to promote religion over science verges on an ad hominem argument."

I believe there has been PT posts that has shown that rejecting MN is equivalent to argue for supernatural, dualistic and religious explanations. Anyway, it seems like the natural consequence.

And as I probably have already said I believe sceptics clearly point out the religious, mythical, political and commercial aspects when they are in the process of debunking. It seems to me as due process.

"In fact, ID clearly rejects that its claims are necessarily about the supernatural, although they seem somewhat inconsistent when talking to their religious supporters."

They can reject that, but it is the usual analysis that will show how it is, not their idea of an analysis.

"ID also does not merely claim that MN is insufficient as it excludes the supernatural, as much as, MN is insufficient because it a-priori excludes design."

Again, the analysis will judge, and a design implies a creator. Ergo creationism, ergo religion. (Evolution doesn't need to discuss design, so it has no creator.)

"After all, in science everything should be tentative, even the methodological foundation. Of course, what replaces MN should be as good or better. And as I and others have argued, it fails to do so."

MN is the best we have, it has served us well, and it shouldn't be tested by special plea by those ideas are going to be tested. First rule of testing: Adapt your tests, invent new ones if necessary, but never, ever change the protocol because someone else than the test results want you to.

Really, I have no idea why you want to change the rules now. As I said, they become stronger with use, not weaker. To change the rules, preferably a neutral subject should be tested. And I don't think such a thing exists for MN. It is necessary.

PvM:

"The design inference, Complex Specified Information, Irreducibe Complexity are not necessarily supernatural. In such cases, we conclude based upon further analysis that these claims are erroneous, or vacuous."

As I said.

"ID also does not merely claim that MN is insufficient as it excludes the supernatural, as much as, MN is insufficient because it a-priori excludes design." Again, the analysis will judge, and a design implies a creator. Ergo creationism, ergo religion. (Evolution doesn't need to discuss design, so it has no creator.)

"After all, in science everything should be tentative, even the methodological foundation. Of course, what replaces MN should be as good or better. And as I and others have argued, it fails to do so." MN is the best we have, it has served us well, and it shouldn't be tested by special plea by those ideas are going to be tested. First rule of testing: Adapt your tests, invent new ones if necessary, but never, ever change the protocol because someone else than the test results want you to.

Actually, come to think of it, ID's claims are not that MN is wrong but rather that there are cases where it is insufficient. Which means that ID is not rejecting MN and in fact, it seems to accept many of the scientific findings based on MN. This makes it even harder to reject ID a-priori since it accepts MN, and argues that it should be extended so that it can deal with additional concepts. If ID were right, then MN should not be protected from such arguments by stating that ID fails the requirements of MN.

PvM:
"Before I proceed, however, I note that Dembski makes an important concession to his critics. He refuses to make the second assumption noted above."

This is to confuse ID's definition with what will be tested by a scientist. A scientist needs a process, a causating agent if you will. The set theoretic definition is vacuous. (Ie makes false positives due to lack of definition of designer.)

I'm quite sure that the debunking already done has concluded this. Nothing more can be said, since EF must be modified to make positive predictions. Or do you have a testable proposal from this? I see that O'Brien and others make similar points in an excellent manner.

Again, I don't see the point in discussing philosophy instead of how debunking (testing) is done.

"But one cannot reject a hypotheses a-priori just because it has not been sufficiently tested."

Of course illdefined or nonpredictive hypotheses are rejected out of hand. It doesn't even touch MN. Regarding MN, the meaning is that ~MN hypotheses are bad hypotheses, because *we know so from the success of the method and notable failure if supernatural hypotheses are made*. How else do you reject simple but stupid ideas like Last thursday or goddidit? And note, Last thursday and *poof* are ID type hypotheses, no mechanism assumed. Why can we reject it out of hand but not EF?

"Brute practicality is that if ID wants to play, it has to show that its hypotheses contribute to science. So far, the conclusion seems to be that ID is scientifically vacuous."

Exactly. Why do you promote philosophy in the face of brutes? ;-)

"Whether or not something is scientific should not be determined by the underlying scientific method."

Of course it does such determinations. Illdefined or unpredictive hypotheses are rejected by method, at the very least. Your model of science isn't in accordance with reality.

PvM:
"A creator needs not require creationism. That's just a play with words."

Huh? You are the one arguing teleology. I'm arguing causation, or more generally that events simply conform to the laws of nature. Either way, the process needs a definition of a creator to constrain the creation and be testable. I know you know that. Why do you call it a play with words?

"Actually, evolution seems to discuss (apparant) design all the time. Historically, one cannot ignore this."

My point was that evolutionary theory, at least explaining common descent with modification, doesn't need design. Perhaps evo-devo does, but I want to see the need within the theory, not an auxilliary discussion using easy descriptions that aren't really used in the theory. It reminds me of teleology. I'm still waiting for you to show the need there.

"What I am arguing is that if ID claims that MN is insufficient, then using the argument that ID violates MN seems rather self defeating."

Special pleading against good method. We have been here before, I have had my say, and I can't see that you answer to that but instead restate your position. Let us claim irreconcilable differences. :-)

"This makes it even harder to reject ID a-priori since it accepts MN"

Huh? If there "are cases where it is insufficient" it rejects MN. MN is wholesale, all observations, all the time. AFAIK, it is the definition. Nothing ~MN acceptable, ie all MN acceptable.

To echo a famous bit in the Tao Te Ching: the methodological naturalism that can be known is not the eternal and unchanging methodological naturalism. Which is to say, the potted scientific method that is presented in the first chapter of the text book doesn't have a lot to do with what scientists actually do. It would be convenient for polemical purposes if we could define a set of absolute rules and then point out that the ID people violate them. On the other hand, although arguing with ID types is politically important, it is an intellectually trivial exercise in many ways and understanding how science works is a much more interesting problem than coming up with another reason to believe that anvils don't float.

The demarcation problem is not just an academic issue. Real scientists really wrestle with what counts as evidence. The debate about the status of string theory is an obvious example. Can a theory be established on the basis of sheer mathematical elegance even if it remains unclear how it can be subjected to empirical tests? Are debates about the proper interpretation of quantum mechanics physics or just something aging Nobel Prize winners do for fun? What kind of evidence counts when you're trying to decide if a sentence is grammatical in a natural language? Are clinical syndromes real because doctors decide they are real?

Back in the early decades of the 20th Century, the Postivivists and others tried to come up with a unified methodology for science that would settle things once and for all. The content of science would change as more observations and experiments were made, but the logic of science wouldn't. The problem with this optimistic program, of course, was to justify an empirical methodology once and for all. My impression is that the effort failed, and that the people who are interested in studying science have become distinctly more empirical (and tentative) in their own approach to defining what they increasingly recognize is a moving target.

Huh? You are the one arguing teleology. I'm arguing causation, or more generally that events simply conform to the laws of nature. Either way, the process needs a definition of a creator to constrain the creation and be testable. I know you know that. Why do you call it a play with words?

My point was that evolutionary theory, at least explaining common descent with modification, doesn't need design. Perhaps evo-devo does, but I want to see the need within the theory, not an auxilliary discussion using easy descriptions that aren't really used in the theory. It reminds me of teleology. I'm still waiting for you to show the need there.

Huh? If there "are cases where it is insufficient" it rejects MN. MN is wholesale, all observations, all the time. AFAIK, it is the definition. Nothing ~MN acceptable, ie all MN acceptable.

Remember that ID does not limit its claims to supernatural designers.

The evidence for a designer that does what ID requires its designer to do is precisely the same as the evidence supporting the existence of the Christian God.

Is the claim that God created the universe unscientific?

Rejecting ID because it supposedly appeals to God (it doesn't necessarily) or the supernatural runs quickly afoul of the demarcation problem since ID argues that the top hierarchy of science is flawed (MN).

Let the ID peddlers argue that the "top hierarchy of science is flawed" until they are blue in the face.

I don't see why that is a "problem" when the handful of self-identifying "scientists" and "philosophers of science" (*gags*) who agree with that position are some of the most blatantly hypocritical and self-contradicting liars on the planet.

And again, Pim, you make them claim that "ID" (which is whatever you or the ID peddler says it is at Time X) does not "necessarily" appeal to God. But I have yet to hear a coherent "claim" by an ID peddler that does not appeal to a deity of some sort.

Sure, I've heard lots of stuff like "this protein couldn't have evolved becuase it violates the Rule of Buciferoxinous Rhezorectoplastitudinology where N={st/45.2}" but that stuff is nonscientific and incomprehensible gobbledeegook. It doesn't MAKE SENSE, Pim. To the extent ID peddlers claims do make sense, it because they are stripped of the bogus vapid rhetoric and it's clear that they ID peddlers is REALLY claiming: This is so wondeful that my God did it.

So Pim: please stop stopping that "IDs claims" do not invoke a deity until you can show us a positive claim by an IDer that is (1) comprehensible and (2) does not invoke a deity.

Thanks.

Up above, I asked you whether the theory that a mysterious alien being is controlling everything (and I meant everything) you do or say "unscientific". You gave a really lame answer that would make a creationist proud. You said "Not necessarily" and you ran away. So tell me Pim, in this universe, in 2006, in what way is the theory "scientific." And for the record, I don't care if you call it a "theory" a "hypothesis" or a "claim". Tell me how it's scientific. Explain your answer.

— Registered user

My theory is that everything you do and say is exactly according to the wishes of a mysterious alien being. Unscientific?

It all depends on the details. It's the details which will determine the fate of the hypothesis.

So what details are you lacking, Pim? That is what I meant when I asked you to "explain your answer" of "not necessarily."

I find it nearly impossible to believe that you did not understand what I meant in the first place.

PvM: "Remember that ID does not limit its claims to supernatural designers" The evidence for a designer that does what ID requires its designer to do is precisely the same as the evidence supporting the existence of the Christian God. Is the claim that God created the universe unscientific?

— Registered User

I disagree with your premise, so I see no reason to address your conclusion, until you can show us the relevance of your question.

LOL!!!!!!!

As I have said, this is an argument, which conflates the theological hopes and wishes of some ID proponents with its scientific claims.

There are no scientific claims, Pim. You keep saying there are but you haven't shown us a single coherent claim that doesn't require a deity. Remember Pim: the burden is on you and the ID peddlers. Not me.

Also, which ID proponents do not share your theological hopes and wishes?

PvM: Rejecting ID because it supposedly appeals to God (it doesn't necessarily) or the supernatural runs quickly afoul of the demarcation problem since ID argues that the top hierarchy of science is flawed (MN). Let the ID peddlers argue that the "top hierarchy of science is flawed" until they are blue in the face.

— Registerd User

I don't see why that is a "problem" when the handful of self-identifying "scientists" and "philosophers of science" (*gags*) who agree with that position are some of the most blatantly hypocritical and self-contradicting liars on the planet.

— R U

And again, Pim, you make them claim that "ID" (which is whatever you or the ID peddler says it is at Time X) does not "necessarily" appeal to God. But I have yet to hear a coherent "claim" by an ID peddler that does not appeal to a deity of some sort.

— R U

Sure, I've heard lots of stuff like "this protein couldn't have evolved becuase it violates the Rule of Buciferoxinous Rhezorectoplastitudinology where N={st/45.2}" but that stuff is nonscientific and incomprehensible gobbledeegook. It doesn't MAKE SENSE, Pim. To the extent ID peddlers claims do make sense, it because they are stripped of the bogus vapid rhetoric and it's clear that they ID peddlers is REALLY claiming: This is so wondeful that my God did it.

— R U

So Pim: please stop stopping that "IDs claims" do not invoke a deity until you can show us a positive claim by an IDer that is (1) comprehensible and (2) does not invoke a deity.

— R U

So perhaps could you tell us what does the hypothesis(es) of ID require its designer to do?

You tell me, Pim. After all, you claim to know what ID really is. What does ID require its designer to actually *do*? That's a great question. It's been asked before a thousand times and the ID peddlers always shut their mouths really quickly. Will you do the same?

What 'evidence' are you referring to? What is the 'evidence' supporting a Christian God? Why are these evidences the same?

Because they are both "zero". The evidence for the beings the ID peddlers necessarily invoke and the Christian God is zilcho. It's made up garbage designed by believers in the believer's brains to make the believers feel good (or at least superior to non-believers) while they are alive.

It all depends on the details. It's the details which will determine the fate of the hypothesis. So what details are you lacking, Pim? That is what I meant when I asked you to "explain your answer" of "not necessarily." I find it nearly impossible to believe that you did not understand what I meant in the first place.

— R U

I disagree with your premise, so I see no reason to address your conclusion, until you can show us the relevance of your question. LOL!!!!!!! As I have said, this is an argument, which conflates the theological hopes and wishes of some ID proponents with its scientific claims. There are no scientific claims, Pim. You keep saying there are but you haven't shown us a single coherent claim that doesn't require a deity. Remember Pim: the burden is on you and the ID peddlers. Not me.

— R U

By irreducibly complex I mean a single system composed of several well-matched, interacting parts that contribute to the basic function, wherein the removal of any one of the parts causes the system to effectively cease functioning. An irreducibly complex system cannot be produced directly (that is, by continuously improving the initial function, which continues to work by the same mechanism) by slight, successive modifications of a precursor system, because any precursor to an irreducibly complex system that is missing a part is by definition nonfunctional. An irreducibly complex biological system, if there is such a thing, would be a powerful challenge to Darwinian evolution. (p. 39)

— Behe

Also, which ID proponents do not share your theological hopes and wishes?

So perhaps could you tell us what does the hypothesis(es) of ID require its designer to do? You tell me, Pim. After all, you claim to know what ID really is. What does ID require its designer to actually *do*? That's a great question. It's been asked before a thousand times and the ID peddlers always shut their mouths really quickly. Will you do the same?

— R U

What 'evidence' are you referring to? What is the 'evidence' supporting a Christian God? Why are these evidences the same? Because they are both "zero". The evidence for the beings the ID peddlers necessarily invoke and the Christian God is zilcho. It's made up garbage designed by believers in the believer's brains to make the believers feel good (or at least superior to non-believers) while they are alive.

— R U

Registered User: If you cannot make coherent arguments, if you resort to insult and ad hominems, your postings will be moved. Check the Bathroom Wall for some that failed to maintain the guidelines I set for this thread.

Again, your beliefs are of little relevance. I am sure that you understand this.

Actually, Pim, my beliefs about your willingness to engage in a honest discussion and respond directly and frankly to the questions I asked are extremely relevant to the continued viability of the discussion of your UNSUPPORTED claims about the scientific nature of ID peddlers' scripts. I often bring this point up with creationists as well. I'm sure you understand why.

The details include the nature of the designer, our ability to formulate some testable or falsifiable statements based on your hypothesis etc.

Are you saying that you can NOT formulate some testable or falsifiable statements based on my claim?

The evidence for a designer that does what ID requires its designer to do is precisely the same as the evidence supporting the existence of the Christian God.

Nichols wrote: "Before I proceed, however, I note that Dembski makes an important concession to his critics. He refuses to make the second assumption noted above. When the EF implies that certain systems are intelligently designed, Dembski does not think it follows that there is some intelligent designer or other. He says that, "even though in practice inferring design is the first step in identifying an intelligent agent, taken by itself design does not require that such an agent be posited. The notion of design that emerges from the design inference must not be confused with intelligent agency" (TDI, 227, my emphasis).

We can make a pretty good guess as to how William Dembski would answer this question. From what I've read, that wouldgo something like the following: To be intelligently designed, an "event" displays the attribute of directed contingency or choice, especially as given by the phrase "complexity-specification". Non-complex events need not be attributed to a designer. Unspecified events need not be attributed to a designer. Events which are both complex (of low probability) and which conform to a specification (an independently stated pattern) must be explained in terms of design.

Whenever explaining an event, we must choose from three competing modes of explanation. These are regularity, chance, and design. To attribute an event to a regularity is to say that the event will (almost) always happen. To attribute an event to chance is to say that probabilities characterize the occurrence of the event, but are also compatible with some other event happening. To attribute an event to design is to say that it cannot reasonably be referred to either regularity or chance. Defining design as the set-theoretic complement of the disjunction regularity-or-chance guarantees that the three modes of explanation are mutually exclusive and exhaustive. It remains to show that design is significant in its own right. The principal advantage of characterizing design as the complement of regularity and chance is that it avoids committing itself to a doctrine of intelligent agency. In practice, when we eliminate regularity and chance, we typically do end up with an intelligent agent. Thus, in practice, to infer design is typically to end up with a "designer" in the classical sense. Nevertheless, it is useful to separate design from theories of intelligence and intelligent agency. An intelligence may, after all, act to mimic regularity or chance, and thereby render its actions indistinguishable from regularity or chance (cf. the discussion of cryptography and randomness in Sections 1.6 and 1.7). Anything might have an intelligent cause. Not everything can be known to have an intelligent cause. Defining design as the negation of regularity and chance avoids prejudicing the causal stories we associate with design inferences. [End Quote - WA Dembski, The Design Inference, p. 36]

Registered User: If you cannot make coherent arguments, if you resort to insult and ad hominems, your postings will be moved. Check the Bathroom Wall for some that failed to maintain the guidelines I set for this thread.

My last comment here, Pim, since you are now playing the whiny ass titty baby's game of insulting me (my arguments are "incoherent") while scrubbing any comments which hit too close to home for you. At least have the fortitude to leave this comment in place so folks who come here later can see what happened. Or, you can restore the comments you deleted from the thread back where they belong (that's what a non-whining adult would do, by the way).

Where were we? Oh yes -- you were evading answering my questions and trying to change the subject to talk about me. You wrote

1. As the evidence supporting the existence of the Christian God: zero
remaining parts

Yes, there is no evidence for the Christian God. It's made up nonsense. That's not my "belief". That is a fact, Pim. Sorry to break the bad news.

2. a) evidence for a designer b) that does what ID requires its designer to do

In the only coherent claims of the ID peddlers, the designer designed every living organism that ever lived on planet earth (or least every organism that contains a unique structure or set of structures whose molecular history we can trace by continuous videotape). There is no evidence for any such being capable of doing anything remotely like that. Just like the Christian God.

This is not a coincidence, by the way.

3. the relevance of both evidences being zero.

Just showing that your religious beliefs, Pim, are just as unscientific as the ID peddlers' scripts.

Or do you want to claim that your religious beliefs are just as scientific as the ID peddlers' scripts?

A rhetorical question, of course, since I'm through discussing this with you.

PvM: Again, your beliefs are of little relevance. I am sure that you understand this. Actually, Pim, my beliefs about your willingness to engage in a honest discussion and respond directly and frankly to the questions I asked are extremely relevant to the continued viability of the discussion of your UNSUPPORTED claims about the scientific nature of ID peddlers' scripts.

— Registered User

I often bring this point up with creationists as well. I'm sure you understand why.

The details include the nature of the designer, our ability to formulate some testable or falsifiable statements based on your hypothesis etc. Are you saying that you can NOT formulate some testable or falsifiable statements based on my claim?

— R U

In the only coherent claims of the ID peddlers, the designer designed every living organism that ever lived on planet earth (or least every organism that contains a unique structure or set of structures whose molecular history we can trace by continuous videotape). There is no evidence for any such being capable of doing anything remotely like that. Just like the Christian God.

— Registered User

This is not a coincidence, by the way. 3. the relevance of both evidences being zero. Just showing that your religious beliefs, Pim, are just as unscientific as the ID peddlers' scripts.

Or do you want to claim that your religious beliefs are just as scientific as the ID peddlers' scripts? A rhetorical question, of course, since I'm through discussing this with you.

The evidence for a designer that does what ID requires its designer to do is precisely the same as the evidence supporting the existence of the Christian God.

— Registered User

You tell me, Pim. After all, you claim to know what ID really is. What does ID require its designer to actually *do*? That's a great question. It's been asked before a thousand times and the ID peddlers always shut their mouths really quickly. Will you do the same?

— Registered User

My last comment here, Pim, since you are now playing the whiny ass titty baby's game of insulting me (my arguments are "incoherent") while scrubbing any comments which hit too close to home for you. At least have the fortitude to leave this comment in place so folks who come here later can see what happened. Or, you can restore the comments you deleted from the thread back where they belong (that's what a non-whining adult would do, by the way).

— Registered User

As I have argued and shown, such rules seem to lead to false positives and negatives and thus the idea that there exist clear demarcation rules of what is science and what is not in an a-priori fashion seems hard to support.

i.e. strict demarcation is probably impossible, but rejecting ID doesn't demand it.

Because there's a "demarcation problem", there's supposedly no way to distinguish this from science. We cannot reject it a priori as science, only a posteriori, by showing that its "scientific component" is "vacuous". The obvious problem with this obvious fallacy is that the demarcation problem is about defining the boundary between science and non-science, but some things, like "only verifiable statements are meaningful" or the stuff about God above are unambiguously not science.

(Though the point is taken that those who are sympathetic to ID are not likely to see any force in such an a priori dismissal.)

For all the abuse Pim has attracted in these comments, I, for one, am grateful to have had the chance to examine some of my own metaphysical assumptions and to refine my rhetorical "toolkit" to some degree.

— CJ O'Brien

One of the many ways that we can do that is to present serious refutations of the arguments that IDers present, as with the review by Wesley Ellsberry that both PvM and I have quoted from, as well as numerous other rebuttals throughout the literature, of the arguments put forth by Dembski, Behe, and others, all the while maintaining that ID is (a priori) not science.

. Folks like you and me and most other PTers can agree amongst ourselves that ID is (a priori) not science, and at the same time meet the politics of the IDC movement in various ways

— Popper

Before we even get to the idea that 'ID' is or is not science.

1.First of all define ID without using the private definitions of a few 'Self confessed Intelligent Design/Creationists' (none of whom are recognized published scientists in the field of evolutionary biology, when last I checked) and without using the words intelligent, design, chance or regularity (or their synonyms) or any other subjective terms. Any term used must NOT be ambiguous, clarification WILL be demanded.

Here is a hint:- Describe what ID is not, contrast that with; what science is not.

Acceptable professional references are REQUIRED, self published volumes that are largely religious/philosophical tracts are NOT acceptable.

2.(Assuming that first hurdle HAS been jumped)

Using the above definition point to the peer reviewed publications that support your assertion that the pop marketing grab-bag term 'ID' used in the mass media by self promoting 'ID' gurus is, or was ever science.

It will follow then which category 'ID' fits as science.

3.Explain why the Dover decision that 'ID/C' was a religious belief and not science, was wrong and presumably, why it would not contravene the constitutional injunction against teaching a religious belief in science classes.

4.List the research data or on-going lab work from ID scientists and the intuitions where that research was conducted and explain the methodology.

5.Name any major company that uses 'ID biology' techniques or alternatively any company that uses 'creationist geology' and why both those activities are not a result of one and the same political ploy to reduce the scientific method as practiced successfully for the last 200 years to a level indistinguishable from wishful thinking.

6. Suggest a text book that teaches 'ID Biology' as an alternative to evolutionary biology.

7. Using your definition of ID propose a practical use for it, or if not a practical use, any potential benefit in our understanding of the natural material world.

e.g. String theory is useful because it seeks to explain using a single theory 2 well understood branches of science. Those branches are....

8. Why do the ID gurus continue to promote a discredited fad.

...to be continued once the above are satisfactorily answered.

obviously ....and the intuitions where that research...
should be

....and the institutions where that research....

or maybe not.

Jim:
"The demarcation problem is not just an academic issue. Real scientists really wrestle with what counts as evidence. The debate about the status of string theory is an obvious example."

Yes. When I tried my position that demarcation is solvable, and solved, by scientists themselves, I concluded that I can't really fault PvM's idea that MN could be tried. But I think one must realise that scientists will and have debunked ID both with and without using MN.

Though it is easier with MN, and I still think it is special pleading to insist that it must be tested in the process of debunking, again and again. For example string theory comes from within the scientific society and is tested to verify and improve the theory, not to debunk it. This makes it easier to discuss method.

BTW, I'm saying debunking, since we already have an evolutionary method, and debunking is already the de facto result of testing creationism. String theory has no competitor (yet).

PvM:
"Design, in general according to ID, is a concept not reducible to chance or regularity processes."

You are assuming you have defined design. As I said many times now, the ID definition isn't lawful, so we can't test it as it is. When we study their proposal we must of course make it amenable for science and testing. So, by a lawful definition, creation is creationism. The emotional content of the word is irrelevant.

"Are you familiar with how Mayr, Nagel, Ayala and Ruse for instance treat the concept of teleology and nature?"

No. I noted that your reference was from philosophical journals, and I asked you for showing the need. When you say that "evolutionary theory tends to be filled with concepts reminding of 'design', 'purpose' and so on" I must conclude that evolution doesn't use teleology, its concepts only reminds of it. It is reasonable to think that ID is about noting that, which makes it essential to demarcate where we can. (Using our new favourite term. :-)

"Since ID is meant to extend MN with the concept of design and the conceopt of design is limited in its applicability, there is nothing contradicting here."

This must be a logical lapse of a higher degree. We can't naturally "extend MN" as you propose. This ID 'extension', which isn't assuredly MN, isn't compatible with MN, it kills it!!!

Design of the normal, non-ID type is already a part of MN since we study natural designers in technology and forensics. And that is an acceptable, lawful design definition, BTW. Furthermore it is totally orthogonal to ID's since it models humans, that are guided by chance and necessity. Also for this reason ID can't use design since it will kill another used concept.

"None of these require necessarily a supernatural designer, although ID argues that it also does not necessarily precludes a supernatural designer."

The point isn't if ID precludes a supernatural designer, the point is if ID implies a supernatural designer.

And it does so trivially of course, since a design needs lawfully a designer to be constrained enough to be testable. We have natural human designers, and since nature isn't explained by that they have to define a designer that design natural objects. Since that designer itself isn't any natural object, it is a supernatural designer.

Why do we play the ID shell game here? We know we can't use ID's definitions to make the tests, they are designed to prohibit testing, by being vacuous or contrary to already used terms. If they wont redefine for testing, we can really stop there. If it isn't testable, it isn't science.

To let IDiers untestable definitions be a basis for discussion, and let that evolve into seminars, is to play into that shell game.

Yes. When I tried my position that demarcation is solvable, and solved, by scientists themselves, I concluded that I can't really fault PvM's idea that MN could be tried. But I think one must realise that scientists will and have debunked ID both with and without using MN.

— Larsson

Though it is easier with MN, and I still think it is special pleading to insist that it must be tested in the process of debunking, again and again.

— Larsson

For example string theory comes from within the scientific society and is tested to verify and improve the theory, not to debunk it. This makes it easier to discuss method.

— Larsson

BTW, I'm saying debunking, since we already have an evolutionary method, and debunking is already the de facto result of testing creationism. String theory has no competitor (yet).

— larsson

You are assuming you have defined design. As I said many times now, the ID definition isn't lawful, so we can't test it as it is. When we study their proposal we must of course make it amenable for science and testing. So, by a lawful definition, creation is creationism. The emotional content of the word is irrelevant.

PvM: "Since ID is meant to extend MN with the concept of design and the conceopt of design is limited in its applicability, there is nothing contradicting here." This must be a logical lapse of a higher degree. We can't naturally "extend MN" as you propose. This ID 'extension', which isn't assuredly MN, isn't compatible with MN, it kills it!!!

— Larsson

Design of the normal, non-ID type is already a part of MN since we study natural designers in technology and forensics. And that is an acceptable, lawful design definition, BTW. Furthermore it is totally orthogonal to ID's since it models humans, that are guided by chance and necessity. Also for this reason ID can't use design since it will kill another used concept.

— Larsson

"None of these require necessarily a supernatural designer, although ID argues that it also does not necessarily precludes a supernatural designer." The point isn't if ID precludes a supernatural designer, the point is if ID implies a supernatural designer.

And it does so trivially of course, since a design needs lawfully a designer to be constrained enough to be testable. We have natural human designers, and since nature isn't explained by that they have to define a designer that design natural objects. Since that designer itself isn't any natural object, it is a supernatural designer.

PvM: "Since ID is meant to extend MN with the concept of design and the conceopt of design is limited in its applicability, there is nothing contradicting here." This must be a logical lapse of a higher degree. We can't naturally "extend MN" as you propose. This ID 'extension', which isn't assuredly MN, isn't compatible with MN, it kills it!!!

— Larsson

Design of the normal, non-ID type is already a part of MN since we study natural designers in technology and forensics. And that is an acceptable, lawful design definition, BTW. Furthermore it is totally orthogonal to ID's since it models humans, that are guided by chance and necessity. Also for this reason ID can't use design since it will kill another used concept.

— Larsson

"None of these require necessarily a supernatural designer, although ID argues that it also does not necessarily precludes a supernatural designer." The point isn't if ID precludes a supernatural designer, the point is if ID implies a supernatural designer.

And it does so trivially of course, since a design needs lawfully a designer to be constrained enough to be testable. We have natural human designers, and since nature isn't explained by that they have to define a designer that design natural objects. Since that designer itself isn't any natural object, it is a supernatural designer.

Why do we play the ID shell game here? We know we can't use ID's definitions to make the tests, they are designed to prohibit testing, by being vacuous or contrary to already used terms. If they wont redefine for testing, we can really stop there. If it isn't testable, it isn't science. To let IDiers untestable definitions be a basis for discussion, and let that evolve into seminars, is to play into that shell game.

PvM:
"One really cannot say that 'demarcation' is solvable or solved when time after time history shows this to be untenable."

It is solvable and solved in the meaning that a good scientist and/or peer review recognises good and bad science. Sometimes there is debate, for example string theory, but there is consensus most of the time. The so called demarcation problem is mostly a philosophic problem, since philosophers want to describe science, which is hard. Doing science is also hard, but judging science is easier. Observations help.

"MN needs not be tested again and again. Only when it is explicitly challenged AND an alternative is proposed."

What is the purpose of challenging an accepted standard? Only if it is percieved as weak - but it isn't. Creationism stating that it needs challenging doesn't make it weak.

Observational proof of an alternative is the reason to challenge it, but there is none. This is essential: methods aren't changed because untested theories pleas for it, methods are changed because tests shows that it is necessary.

"What I am arguing however is that stating that ID violates MN is not a very defensible position when ID in fact insists that MN is insufficient."

But they can't make the argument go through to argue insufficiency, since they keep their definitions unlawful and untestable. It is their plea that isn't defensible.

"String theory however is at this moment unfalsifiable and likely would have to be rejected when adhering to a-priori rules of science."

No, consensus is that it is a theory. It is at the very least a mathematical theory that has given good results such as AdS/CFT and holography. One can also argue that wheteher it has been tested or not. Very early on it explained a particle scattering result first, only the year after they succeeded in extending QCD to explain the same thing with flux tubes instead. String theory has given the same results as other physical theories for a number of objects such as black hole entropy. It is an independent experimental test that is lacking, not confidence,

"Also to argue that string theory comes from within the scientific society does little for ID which also comes from within the scientific society."

With respect, are you serious? ID is religiously motivated and supported economically, promotes a religious theory, promotes it against the consensus of scientists, and does so without any professional biologists or experiments. I have never before heard that it comes from within the sciences, and I seriously doubt I will hear it again.

"Both are strongly opposed for very similar scientifically relevant reasons."
I think I have given enough reasons to show that it isn't so. Where is the competitor to string theory? Discrete QG theories break Lorentz invariance and can't explain the harmonic oscillator - if anything they are the equivalent to ID. Except that they are made by scientists.

"Nor does ID have a competitor when it comes to detecting design. ... "By lawful definition creation is the act of an intelligent designer, creationism is the act of a supernatural intelligent designer."

Again, are you serious? Forensics detects agency and design, albeit not ID design.

If anything I think this has clearly shown why there is a conflict about giving seminars looking into ID as if it is science. It is essential to clearly state that is is pseudoscience done by nonscientists at all times, since this is a clear reflection of the facts. We can't be confused over this.

One can't on one hand say that ID "fails to be scientifically relevant either as a hypothesis or a metatheory", on the other say that comes from within the scientific society when it fails and no biologist or experiment is involved.

But you are repeating your earlier argument without looking to my objections, thus forcing me to repeat myself. I don't see any sense in continuing.

PvM: "One really cannot say that 'demarcation' is solvable or solved when time after time history shows this to be untenable." It is solvable and solved in the meaning that a good scientist and/or peer review recognises good and bad science. Sometimes there is debate, for example string theory, but there is consensus most of the time. The so called demarcation problem is mostly a philosophic problem, since philosophers want to describe science, which is hard. Doing science is also hard, but judging science is easier. Observations help.

— Larsson

"String theory however is at this moment unfalsifiable and likely would have to be rejected when adhering to a-priori rules of science." No, consensus is that it is a theory.

— Larsson

"Nor does ID have a competitor when it comes to detecting design.... "By lawful definition creation is the act of an intelligent designer, creationism is the act of a supernatural intelligent designer." Again, are you serious? Forensics detects agency and design, albeit not ID design.

— Larsson

If anything I think this has clearly shown why there is a conflict about giving seminars looking into ID as if it is science. It is essential to clearly state that is is pseudoscience done by nonscientists at all times, since this is a clear reflection of the facts. We can't be confused over this.

— Larsson

One can't on one hand say that ID "fails to be scientifically relevant either as a hypothesis or a metatheory", on the other say that comes from within the scientific society when it fails and no biologist or experiment is involved.

— Larsson

But you are repeating your earlier argument without looking to my objections, thus forcing me to repeat myself. I don't see any sense in continuing.

Yes, ID is religion masquerading as science (which is what I assume you meant to state). But to claim that 'those of us who understand science emphasize the fact that ID isn's science' is needlessly ad hominem as well as a meaningless statement.

ID's religious motivations do not make ID scientifically vacuous,

it's the consequences of ID's hypotheses which make it so.

And it seems that there are those who do understand science (and philosophy of science) who have come to realize this.

Glen mostly asserted that those familiar with science would understand the problems with my arguments and realize that ID is vacuous, further suggesting that my position would make it impossible to reject the teaching of ID in schools on constitutional grounds. As far as your contributions are concerned, I remember idiocy and some other terms but none of them struck me as particularly relevant. If I missed some of your more relevant comments then I am surely interested in hearing about them.

All very good ideas. Especially that your argument is against a strawman.

— PvM

Especially since your argument fails in supporting logic. Care to expand so that we can determine indeed if my argument is one against a strawman. Fill the heads of people with science... Allen's seminar seems to be doing exactly this.

And yet some consider it to be a failure if it cannot be shown to have changed the minds of IDers involved. By that standard perhaps every single posting on PT and other ID critical sites are failures because they fail, by themselves to convince IDers of much of anything. And yet, every single one forms a seed of doubt which eventually may expand and grow into skepticism, asking the right questions and exploring how science truly deals with issues and compare this to ID approaches.

— PvM

Thus perhaps your position is far more of a strawman

— PvM

PvM frames the goal as convincing IDers that ID is scientifically vacuous. But that's not the goal; the goal is to produce a scientifically literate society, and that can't be achieved by convincing two IDers here and two IDers there that ID doesn't have a scientific foundation.

— Popper

In fact, if we have sufficient 'here and there's' it seems inevitable that this will improve the level of scientific literacy in this country. Of course, we should be very aware that scientific literacy, or lack thereof is not limited to just ID proponents either.

— PvM

To 'argue' that this is my unique and only goal seems well, a bit of a strawman. For instance I wrote I think that the course has exposed the scientific vacuity of intelligent design and while few if any may have changed their immediate positions, it has helped spread the seed of doubt. Remember that upto this seminar most IDers had not been exposed to much of any of the critical arguments against ID. Especially not at the level of the supposedly 'scientific' claims of ID. Different audiences require different approaches to expose them to the many problems of ID. As such Allen's course has been an excellent opportunity to do exactly that. By showing how not only ID is scientifically vacuous but also how teleology and purpose in biology are not surprising given the processes involved. In other words, evolutionary processes are inherently teleological. That's why we talk about apparent versus actual design for instance.

— PvM

The current debate over "intelligent design theory" is only the latest phase in the perennial debate over the question of design in nature. Beginning with Aristotle's "final cause," this idea was the dominant explanation for biological adaptation in nature until the publication of Darwin's Origin of Species. Darwin's work united the biological sciences with the other natural sciences by providing a non-teleological explanation for the origin of adaptation. However, Darwin's theory has been repeatedly challenged by theories invoking design in nature.

That's simple: My definition of design is the same as Dembski's: The set theoretic complement of chance and regularity.

— PvM

Now defend it using science and its standards, not ID metaphysics.

As far as using science, that's relatively simple, you formulate a hypothesis H and calculate the probability P(T|H) where T is the event of interest. You then take the -log2 and call it information. You then repeat this for any known and unknown hypothesis and thus eliminate chance and regularity hypotheses. So far, this is relatively straightforward and yet very intractable. How does one calculate P(T|H) for any non trivial H? That by itself is not self evident, although IFF one could calculate this measure and IFF one could successfully eliminate any and all relevant hypotheses THEN one may conclude that that which remains is 'design'. The problem here is that the meaning of the word design has lost its customary definition, and only by equivocation can one confuse the reader that information and design are similar to how one commonly uses these terms.

— PvM

Has any actual scientist ever accepted such a definition, that is, has he accepted it as a scientist? Let's revisit what Jones wrote again, since I think it can't be presented to Pim any too often:

— PvM

Jones is neither a scientist nor did he address the design inference, mostly because Dembski withdrew as a witness.

However, that by itself says nothing about scientists accepting such a definition. Depending on whether on considers Del Ratzsch a scientist, he seems to have accepted the definition, very well aware of its limited nature.

— PvM

I believe that most ID critics have implicitly come to accept this definition, not realizing how they were tricked into accepting a definition of design which rendered it succeptible to equivocation.

— PvM

The definition is the basis for the design inference.

— PvM

Richard Wein observes

Dembski has caused considerable confusion through his peculiar use of the terms "design" and "intelligent agency". He defines "design" as "the set-theoretic complement of the disjunction regularity-or-chance" (TDI, p 36), i.e. it's what is left over after eliminating regularity and chance explanations. But he also specifically denies that an inference of "design" necessarily entails intelligent agency: 'Thus, even though a design inference is frequently the first step toward identifying an intelligent agent, design as inferred from the design inference does not logically entail an intelligent agent. The design that emerges from the design inference must not be conflated with intelligent agency.' [TDI, p 9] On the other hand, he never gives any additional criterion for distinguishing intelligent agency from mere "design", and he goes on to write: 'Yet in practice, to infer design is not simply to eliminate regularity and chance, but to detect the activity of an intelligent agent.' [TDI, p 62] I will not attempt to reconcile these apparently contradictory statements. Instead I will simply assume that the latter statement accurately reflects Dembski's position, and will ignore the former statement. In other words, I will assume Dembski is claiming that rejection of chance and regularity does allow us to infer the involvement of an intelligent agent. This then allows us to consider the terms "design" and "intelligent agency" to be synonymous (and I assume they are both synonymous with the more widely used term "intelligent design"). If this assumption is not correct, then Dembski needs to clearly state what additional criterion is necessary to distinguish intelligent agency from mere "design", or else recognise that the Design Inference cannot detect intelligent agency.

— PvM

Wein accepts the latter definition of design, I think that he is too gracious here.

The "design inference" of the book's title is an argument to establish that certain events are due to and must be explained with reference to design. Dembski crafts his argument as a process of elimination. From the set of all possible explanations, he first eliminates the explanatory categories of regularity and chance; then whatever is left is by definition design. Since all three categories complete the set, design is the set-theoretical complement of regularity and chance. Dembski's book and major concept share a name, The Design Inference. The Design Inference is an argument which leads to a conclusion of design for an event. Dembski deploys a large number of terms and phrases in making his argument that design must be recognized as a necessary mode of explanation in science. Fortunately, Dembski is also scrupulous in making clear what each term means, even when it has a common or casual usage. Design is one of those terms, and it becomes a category defined by the elimination of events that can be attributed to regularity or to chance.

— PvM

A second problem with the filter is that its concept of design is profoundly idiosyncratic and limited. In Dembski's filter, "design" does not have its usual meaning, but rather is defined negatively as "the set-theoretic complement of the disjunction of regularity-or-chance."337 This means that design is by default anything that is not the product of either regularity or chance. This constricted definition is problematic for scientists, for the simple reason that it appropriates as "designed" everything that is neither wholly random nor completely inevitable.338 More specifically, Dembski's filter classifies as "intentionally designed" every complex phenomenon that is the product of interactions between chance and regularity---a set that explicitly includes nearly all evolutionary phenomena!339 This is nothing less than conceptual sleight-of-hand. Following Dembski's filter for any complex biological system will result in a decision of "designed," no matter how extensive the evidence that the system arose through the interactions of mutation, genetic drift, and natural selection IS IT SCIENCE YET?: INTELLIGENT DESIGN CREATIONISM AND THE CONSTITUTION MATTHEW J. BRAUER BARBARA FORREST STEVEN G. GEY

Is "design" merely a label for the "set-theoretic complement of the. disjunction regularity or chance," or could it be that this category label is intended to convey a more substantial meaning that could further another agenda, such as that of the "Intelligent Design" movement? What does an intelligent agent do? Dembski says, "The principal characteristic of intelligent agency is directed contingency, or what we call choice. Van Till see also this link

— PvM

I do not care that I have not convinced you or the few others on this thread. I am interested in pursuing the arguments about the scientific nature of ID.

— PvM

Your responses suggest that you don't really care to argue much of anything. Too bad.

— PvM

Since you are demonstrably not capable of hearing it, I am not able to present it in a manner such that you are. Sheesh.

— PvM

How comfortable, blaming the recipient for your inability to communicate, or even show evidence of such communication. That's fine with me Popper.

You have failed miserably in this thread to convince anyone of your position, and your silly tu quoque posturing does nothing to help your case.

— PvM

It helps to show the vacuity of your case. That people are objecting to my position is something I can understand since people see it as giving in to ID when in fact, it strengthens the legal and scientific position by actually dealing with the arguments proposed by the ID movement.

Now I understand that such may be a novel concept, especially with the recent trend to reject ID as merely religious or an idiocy, or "better" by name calling or ad hominem arguments.

— PvM

Never mind that such arguments will eventually fail to convince people to reject intelligent design. Certainly, a large fraction of ID proponents seems to be religious people. What effect do you think such arguments have on them? So why not show that ID is scientifically vacuous and avoid having to argue issues like the demarcation problem? Why not embrace the teleology of biology rather than awkwardly avoiding this while at the same time using strongly teleological language?

— PvM

What if we can show that ID is vacuous a posteriori? What if we can show that teleology in biology is to be expected and nothing to be 'ashamed' of?

— PvM

Why should some be afraid to address these issues and resort to silly logical fallacies?

— PvM

If, as you suggest, my arguments are that weak, how come that you need to use such logical fallacies? And why, when I explicitly ask you to present your arguments, you refuse?

— PvM

I think that these issues are getting too far away from the original thread and it's time to start some new threads discussing both the demarcation problem in further details, as well as the issue of whether or not ID can be rejected as scientifically vacuous a=priori or a-posteriori. You are of course invited to present your arguments and I am looking forward to them.

— PvM

Finally, the issue of teleology in biology could benefit from some postings. Allen's course did a great favor to its students by discussing the many papers which discuss teleology in nature by such people as Mayr, Nagel, Ayala and Ruse.

— PvM

A reminder posting on how ID defines design, and how it equivocates on these terms seems also timely, given that quite a few on this thread have given the impression that they were not even familiar with the basic definition design as proposed by Dembski in his earliest work.

— PvM

Of course, it's much easier to reject ID as idiotic but making an actual scientific arguments is quite a bit harder. People at talkorigins, talkdesign and PandasThumb have done a great job at unraveling both the scientific vacuity of the design thesis as well as the various objections of ID proponents to evolutionary science. It's a lot of hard work but it's quite efficient at unraveling the vacuity of ID and spreading the news.

— PvM

As a final note, I am somewhat surprised how various of the posters on this thread have actually lived up to some of the stereotypes of the ID critic. I particularly was amused by Sir Toejam's "You should consider removing yourself as a contributor."

— PvM

Now that's like handing candy to the ID movement... So perhaps some of the so called ID critics on this thread may want to reconsider the effectiveness of their arguments and approaches and ask 'what have I done lately in the battle between science and Intelligent Design'?

— PvM

For instance: While the results from Allen's course are hard to interpret (none shifted postion from or to ID), Allen's comments suggest how the two ID proponents who took the class, did actually shift their positions. That's a first good step.

— PvM

I congratulate Allen on conducting a well prepared and well developed seminar where people were allowed to explore and reach their own conclusions based on an analysis of the works of intelligent design proponents.

— PvM

Allen's work led to students understand the weakness of the argument from analogy, the unworkable nature of specification, the strength of common descent. In the end, ID critics and ID proponents alike became better informed about the concept of design, teleology. We can all hope that these ID critics will put their learned knowledge and skills to good use and politely though strongly argue their case.

— PvM

All you have to do to "hear about them" is to go back and READ them. That you characterize my constributions as "idiocy and some other terms but none of them struck me as particularly relevant" and nothing more shows how intransigently dishonest you are. I have no way of forcing you to read and comprehend the arguments that have been given and properly characterize them, and I've already wasted far too much of my time on you.

— PvM

I did not mean to characterize your contribution as idiocy, I was pointing out how you used the term in your rejection of ID. Since little or no logic or reasons, let alone arguments were presented, I was asking for you and/or Glen to provide such arguments in a coherent manner.

Perhaps I am somewhat slow to understand your greatness, and perhaps you are right that I am unable to comprehend your arguments.

— PvM

But in all honesty I have seen little so far which sounds like a coherent argument why ID should be considered non-science a-priori.

— PvM

So go ahead, accuse me of misrepresenting your position, whatever that may be, accuse me of ignoring your arguments even though I ask for examples and clarifications.

— PvM

In the end it seems clear that the emperor has no clothes worth speaking of as the claim that ID is non-science a-priori has as far as I am concerned yet to be supported. If you do not want to repeat yourself, all you need to do is reference the comments (they are identified as Comment # followed by 6 digits).

— PvM

As always I am looking forward to your contributions, to whatever extent you may feel comfortable. Feel free to take all the time you think you may need. I will be working on some more targeted postings to address these issues.

— PvM

Why, really, is someone who is practically an IDist, posting on PT? Perhaps it is just as well that you do, since the ID blogs are pretty much a waste, but you ought not to claim to be representing the side of science when you present your defenses of pseudoscience.

— Glen

A remarkably long thread considering the questions it revolves around. 1. Is it good strategy to have a seminar about ID? ID is, albeit with a political and religious agenda, a junk science. In other cases junk sciences, even politically involved such as atrology, is researched and debunked for their alleged scientific content. The question then becomes why ID should be treated differently, and no good answer seems to be given. It is possible to debunk creationism/ID for its vacuous main and auxilliary 'hypotheses', and sometimes YEC content.

— Torbjoern

2. Is there a demarcation problem? As Popper, Glen and Stevepinhead remarks concludes, demarcation is a problem in philosophy, not in practical science. Factual debunking will naturally involve falsification and demarcating supernatural causation, since ID is one of several similar junks sciences.

— Torbjoern

3. Is there an apriori-aposteriori distinction? The apriori-aposteriori distinction is a red herring. Apriori nothing is excluded by science. But by todays knowledge ID's main hypotheses (creationism, teleology) are more or less apriori excluded after some analysis. Auxilliary hypotheses such as IC aren't always synomymous with creationism, and they are more or less aposteriori excluded after some analysis and research.

— Torbjoern

4. Is there such a thing as teleology? Quite frankly I'm baffled by this assumption. Teleology doesn't describe normal causation truthfully, and already causation is a derived concept. "In particular, we should emphasize that there is no place in this view for common philosophical concepts such as "cause and effect" or "purpose." From the perspective of modern science, events don't have purposes or causes; they simply conform to the laws of nature. In particular, there is no need to invoke any mechanism to "sustain" a physical system or to keep it going; it would require an additional layer of complexity for a system to cease following its patterns than for it to simply continue to do so. Believing otherwise is a relic of a certain metaphysical way of thinking; these notions are useful in an informal way for human beings, but are not a part of the rigorous scientific description of the world. Of course scientists do talk about "causality," but this is a description of the relationship between patterns and boundary conditions; it is a derived concept, not a fundamental one." ( http://pancake.uchicago.edu/~carroll/nd-paper.ht... )

— Torbjoern

If biology has introduced teleology in science as a needed scientifical concept instead of a philosophical or religious one, it needs to define and support that necessity. Has it done so? The references given are all from journals of philosophy.

— Torbjoern

In short, I find much of the discussion of this thread caused :-) by confusing science with philosophy.

— Torbjoern

Sigh... I have moved my response to Glen and his response to the bathroom wall.

Btw, PG, I hope I didn't offend in my responses to Pim's responses to yourself. I realize and realized that I had just guessed what the alleged "strawman" was, but tried not to actually ascribe anything false to you, simply responding to my own guesses.

If ID attacks the foundation of science, namely Methodological Naturalism, then arguing that ID is not science because it fails MN, is a flawed argument.

Popper's ghost --- I have been attempting to follow this endless thread over hill and down dale, but you now have me completely stumped.

What is 'NEM' that it denies the law of the excluded middle? And are you aware that there is a well developed and important branch of logic which does so? It goes by various names: intuitionistic logic, constructive logic or topos logic. Finally, every so-called classical logic is a special case obtained by adding the law of the excluded middle.

I agree with PG, but also with you. In one sense, sure, we don't "a priori" exclude anything from science, because we don't really know what science is before we start checking out beliefs and assumptions against empiricism. In the sense that we already know some things about science, about classical causality, we a priori exclude something like the "design inference" since it doesn't even invoke "scientific categories".

I did ask "Just how "priori" do we have to go? Are all statements a priori scientific because we musn't assume that they aren't scientific before they are even made?" Some analysis of a claim is required in order to judge whether it is scientific. An a priori judgment is about the sort of claim, whereas an a posteriori judgment is about the truth or falsity of the claim or of its implications.

— Popper

What is 'NEM' that it denies the law of the excluded middle?

Finally, every so-called classical logic is a special case obtained by adding the law of the excluded middle.

Let's remember the argument: Can science be defined 'a priori' by a list of criteria?

No, that was never the "argument" --- by which you seem to mean "debate". Or, rather, that debate only occurred between you and a strawman. The argument is that certain specific claims can be judged a priori to be non-scientific --- which is not the same thing. This argument has been put forth by me, Davidson, O'Brien, Larsson, and perhaps others. One might "remember" those arguments simply by reading back over them. One need not go far, since I just gave one in the very post you are responding to --- an argument that you did not address

— Popper

As I explained before, the ID hypothesis has many flaws and short comings but to argue that this is no a scientific hypothesis is like saying that young earth creationism is a priori unscientific. It's in fact the vaste evidence against a young earth which makes its claims scientifically wrong. Claiming that ID is not a scientific hypothesis and that's it, only serves to strengthen the stereotypes of how ID critics 'argue'. Surely there must be better ways?..

That ID is unscientific a priori is easy to support and the viewpoint has already given by both myself and Glen Davidson here, and others elsewhere, at considerable length, but you seem neither interested nor capable of hearing.

— Popper

Explain how you resolved the demarcation problem. What part of ID allows you to reject its claims a priori? And where and when did either you or Glen provided support for such statements? Glen mostly asserted that those familiar with science would understand the problems with my arguments and realize that ID is vacuous, further suggesting that my position would make it impossible to reject the teaching of ID in schools on constitutional grounds. As far as your contributions are concerned, I remember idiocy and some other terms but none of them struck me as particularly relevant. If I missed some of your more relevant comments then I am surely interested in hearing about them.

And Glen pointed out that the terminology in Dembski's definition is not scientific; "chance" and "regularity" as Dembski uses them are metaphysical, not empirical, not scientific. That makes his enterprise a priori not scientific. That you are unable to grasp this obvious fact shows --- a posteriori --- that you're an idiot. You can blabber on from now to doomsday, but you will never convince the scientific community that ID rests upon an "a priori scientific" foundation because it doesn't.

Popper raises some good questions. Should we recognize that creationists do make scientific predictions or should we deny this and thereby run into the demarcation problem. To suggest that one can reject YEC or ID as unscientific a-priori based on some 'recipe' seems hard to support but if Popper wants to give it a try, then I am more than interested to hear his viewpoints.

I, like others, seem to be somewhat puzzled by your latest contributions.

I doubt that David Benson appreciates being employed in the service of your ad hominem

Seems you may be confused about the concept of ad hominem.

Now remind us how easy it was to define ID as being unscientific a-priori?

PvM: Now remind us how easy it was to define ID as being unscientific a-priori? I said nothing about "define". As for the arguments that ID is not scientific a priori, they have been given, by me, Davidson, O'Brien, Larsson, and perhaps others, as I said. I don't know who "us" is, since I haven't seen anyone else denying that such arguments have been presented.

That ID is unscientific a priori is easy to support and the viewpoint has already given by both myself and Glen Davidson here, and others elsewhere, at considerable length, but you seem neither interested nor capable of hearing.

I am very willing and interested to hear your argument(s) or that of others.

We've been over this. The evidence is clear to me, Registered_User, Glen Davidson, and Torbjörn Larsson, at least, that you are not, and there is no point in me wasting my time banging my head on a brick wall.

More personal attacks moved to the Bathroom Wall.

See Comment #125447.

If people refuse to be civil, refrain from personal attacks, then their postings will be moved to the bathroom wall.