Groundless Annual Ritual of ID Self-Congratulation

I would also like to congratulate the ID folks on their staggering accomplishments. They have proven once again that if anyone wants to find out where the real research is being done they can easily determine who is and who is not actually testing their hypotheses. Way to go guys. Keep up the imaginary work. Meanwhile I have equaled their entire publication oytput this year and that without my own journal, editorial board or millions of dollars in funding. Maybe they should get a real lab before spouting off about how much they have accomplished, or if they have one somewhere, maybe they should learn how to use it. Until then, no one is going to be impressed.

I note that the same place where he speaks about a picture of Mount Rushmore, he also says, "And a simple living bacterium contains more information than a like-sized speck of sand." This got me to wondering the difference between the pairs not mentioned: A picture of Mount Fuji and a bacterium, etc., as well as between a picture of Mount Rushmore and Mount Rushmore itself, etc.

Then I was thinking about a real picture - it is very likely that a real picture (outside a clean closed lab) will contain a number of bacteria and even specks of something or other- and, of course, the real mountains contain lots of bacteria and sand.

What particularly interests be, though, the information in the human-made objects - the pictures and Mount Rushmore as contrasted with the natural things, Mount Fuji, a bacterium and sand. What does the quantity of information tell us about the origins of the thing? For if we have somewhat the same information content in the artificial objects and the bacterium, and somewhat less in Fuji and dust - one must really wonder about what that tells us about the origins of artificial objects - how does Mount Rushmore differ from something that just grew?

While I'm certainly not a fan of BIO-Complexity, I wish we'd focus on the content of the articles (and, really, lack thereof) rather than the shenanigans of the authors. Although the lack of productivity does say something, the emptiness of the ideas is far more significant.

The lack of articles is a reasonable, if imperfect, measure of the lack of interest in intelligent design "ideas" in the scientific community -- and even the creationist community. Heck, if they can't get creationists to submit and publish there, how could they get legit scientists to do so?

Jeffrey Shallit said: Heck, if they can't get creationists to submit and publish there, how could they get legit scientists to do so?

At least the ID folks can't be accused of contributing to destruction of the forests with their avalanche of 4 papers.

Jeffrey Shallit said: Heck, if they can't get creationists to submit and publish there, how could they get legit scientists to do so?

What happened to the claim that ID creationists stand for ideas?

https://me.yahoo.com/a/JxVN0eQFqtmgoY7wC1cZM44ET_iAanxHQmLgYgX_Zhn8#57cad said:

What happened to the claim that ID creationists stand for ideas?

But they do! Just not too many. Let's see, there's "Jesus made us," and "Praise Jesus." Maybe put in "G-d" for "Jesus" in David's profundities. To be fair, it's hard to write too many papers about those ideas, overwhelming as they are. Glen Davidson

TomS said: What does the quantity of information tell us about the origins of the thing? For if we have somewhat the same information content in the artificial objects and the bacterium, and somewhat less in Fuji and dust - one must really wonder about what that tells us about the origins of artificial objects - how does Mount Rushmore differ from something that just grew?

One big problem with the ID people is that they use “high information content” to mean whatever they want it to mean, and more often than not, use it to refer to low information content–i.e. more orderly, highly compressible patterns that can be expressed as fewer bits than random, incompressible patterns.

The problem with "information" as an indicator of design is that it amounts to taking the logarithm of the number of possible arrangements of the "parts" of a specified object, where "parts" can be as made as arbitrary and with as fine a resolution as one wants in order to jack up the improbability of their specified arrangement.

Anyone can do a detailed enough description of a rock and make it look too improbable to have been assembled in the lifetime of the universe.

ID/creationists have a serious fundamental issue; they don't believe science explains anything because most ID/creationists - their PhDs included - don't know basic science at even the high school level; and that is not hyperbole.

When ID/creationists make the assertion that science doesn't - or can't - explain the existence of something, they are thinking of what they themselves understand to be science. Most of them don't know the origin of their misconceptions; they don't know the socio/political history of the movement to which they have dedicated their lives.

Having eliminated "science" as an explanation, ID/creationists then attempt to justify intelligent design with pseudo information theory in which they attempt to show that there is too much "information" in an assembly to have happened in the history of the universe. But "information" is simply an asserted probability disguised by taking the negative logarithm to base 2 of the reciprocal of the number of arrangements of a set of arbitrary parts coming together out of a tornado to produce some specified arrangement.

The probability is chosen in such a way that Np is less than or equal to one; where N is Seth Lloyd's estimate of the number of logical operations required by a computer to replicate the known universe. The log₂N turns out to be about 500, so you just have to come up with a p such that log₂p is less than or equal to -500.

Thus, ID is nothing but "razzle-dazzle" high school math made to look like it demonstrates that intelligence is required to produce what "science" can't explain. You simply can't build any kind of real scientific research program on that.

in which he has the impudence to suggest that “the materialist neo-Darwinian conception of nature is almost certainly false,” and to offer thoughtful reasons to believe that the non-material dimensions of life—consciousness, reason, moral value, subjective experience—cannot be reduced to, or explained as having evolved tidily from, its material dimensions

callahanpb said:

TomS said: What does the quantity of information tell us about the origins of the thing? For if we have somewhat the same information content in the artificial objects and the bacterium, and somewhat less in Fuji and dust - one must really wonder about what that tells us about the origins of artificial objects - how does Mount Rushmore differ from something that just grew?

I don’t think the quantity of information tells us very much. The main thing that stands out about Mt Rushmore (if you did not know its history) is the human significance assigned to the faces there. If anything, lower information content (greater compressibility of the image) is a more likely indication of “design” but it’s a very poor indicator. E.g., if you had a jar of red and blue marbles and shook it randomly, the information content (ignoring geometry--suppose the jar forces a particular lattice) then the information is logarithmic in the number of ways to assign red and blue. If you observe the same jar and find, say, a checkerboard or striped pattern of red and blue, then this will have lower Kolmogorov complexity and be more highly compressible (thus less information content). You might reasonably conclude that a process other than random shaking produced the pattern (and could formalize this by assigning a p-value based on compressibility, since most states are incompressible unlike the stripes and checkerboards). You could also conjecture a designer, but it is not obvious. E.g. if you see that all the red marbles are on the bottom, and later observe that the red marbles are much heavier than the blue marbles, this could have resulted from shaking. One big problem with the ID people is that they use "high information content" to mean whatever they want it to mean, and more often than not, use it to refer to low information content--i.e. more orderly, highly compressible patterns that can be expressed as fewer bits than random, incompressible patterns. While it's true that given a highly incompressible high information pattern, there is no reason to attribute it to design (because randomness explains it well), the converse is not true. Orderly low information patterns often result from equilibrium conditions.

IanR said: While I'm certainly not a fan of BIO-Complexity, I wish we'd focus on the content of the articles (and, really, lack thereof) rather than the shenanigans of the authors. Although the lack of productivity does say something, the emptiness of the ideas is far more significant.

The Behe paper was published in Protein Science and was not an experimental paper but a simulation.

callahanpb said:

TomS said: What does the quantity of information tell us about the origins of the thing? For if we have somewhat the same information content in the artificial objects and the bacterium, and somewhat less in Fuji and dust - one must really wonder about what that tells us about the origins of artificial objects - how does Mount Rushmore differ from something that just grew?

I don’t think the quantity of information tells us very much. The main thing that stands out about Mt Rushmore (if you did not know its history) is the human significance assigned to the faces there. If anything, lower information content (greater compressibility of the image) is a more likely indication of “design” but it’s a very poor indicator. E.g., if you had a jar of red and blue marbles and shook it randomly, the information content (ignoring geometry--suppose the jar forces a particular lattice) then the information is logarithmic in the number of ways to assign red and blue. If you observe the same jar and find, say, a checkerboard or striped pattern of red and blue, then this will have lower Kolmogorov complexity and be more highly compressible (thus less information content). You might reasonably conclude that a process other than random shaking produced the pattern (and could formalize this by assigning a p-value based on compressibility, since most states are incompressible unlike the stripes and checkerboards). You could also conjecture a designer, but it is not obvious. E.g. if you see that all the red marbles are on the bottom, and later observe that the red marbles are much heavier than the blue marbles, this could have resulted from shaking. One big problem with the ID people is that they use "high information content" to mean whatever they want it to mean, and more often than not, use it to refer to low information content--i.e. more orderly, highly compressible patterns that can be expressed as fewer bits than random, incompressible patterns. While it's true that given a highly incompressible high information pattern, there is no reason to attribute it to design (because randomness explains it well), the converse is not true. Orderly low information patterns often result from equilibrium conditions.

One has to wonder at the internal angst and rage that these "leaders" of the ID/creationist movement carry with them day after day after day throughout their entire lives.

Just look at the all the effort hat has gone into constructing their Potemkin village of cargo cult science. You have people like David L. Abel spending years of his retired life faking a funding organization - probably a 501 (c) (3) organization - out of his home. This organization is supposed to be supporting a faked industry of publishing about ID, pretty much all of it being Abel citing himself.

And all of the ID/creationist crowd do it; this has been going on since the 1970s, through numerous lawsuits and court defeats and with taxpayers picking up the tab on pretty much all of it.

It is all fueled by fundamentalist extremism and hatred of secular society. The "materialist" is the new Satan.

The one thing I have found impressive about creationists and ID types, particularly the ones who are commenters here and at TSZ and at Uncommon Descent, is their ability to declare victory.

They are just great at that. Few of us are in their league.

IanR said: While I'm certainly not a fan of BIO-Complexity, I wish we'd focus on the content of the articles (and, really, lack thereof) rather than the shenanigans of the authors. Although the lack of productivity does say something, the emptiness of the ideas is far more significant.

IanR said: While I'm certainly not a fan of BIO-Complexity, I wish we'd focus on the content of the articles (and, really, lack thereof) rather than the shenanigans of the authors. Although the lack of productivity does say something, the emptiness of the ideas is far more significant.

harold said:

IanR said: While I'm certainly not a fan of BIO-Complexity, I wish we'd focus on the content of the articles (and, really, lack thereof) rather than the shenanigans of the authors. Although the lack of productivity does say something, the emptiness of the ideas is far more significant.

False dichotomy - Implies that we must do one or the other. False accusation - Implies that contributors to this venue do not engage with the content of ID publications, when in fact they do.

Never let the IDists decide what will be discussed. If we just focus on the "content" of their articles we'll play into their hands, defending ongoing science for not being complete and perfect, while ignoring all of the explanatory value that evolution has for the lack of portability of innovations among most multicellular organisms, as well as for explaining the fossil record of life.

The DI pays Klinghoffer to slime people and subjects that they don't like. If that doesn't speak volumes of what it's all about, what does? Context doesn't matter?

Glen Davidson

Well you can certainly discuss both things at once. It turns out that the single publication is based on a demonstrable fraudulent supposition. So even if the authors did try to do any real experiments, their conclusions would be completely worthless, regardless of their results. And citing yourself in the same pseudo journal you are publishing the paper in is definitely not the way to establish the validity of the assumption. Neither is completely ignoring the vast amount of research that conclusively disproves the assumption.

Look, we have known that gene duplication is a major factor in evolution for over forty years. We know the mechanism by which duplicate genes arise. We know the fates of duplicated genes and their relative probabilities. We know some of the mechanisms that operate to result in neofunctionalization. We have many examples of genes that have evolved in exactly this way. This is like saying that "planes cannot fly because they are denser than air, duh!" It ignores all of the theoretical and empirical evidence that already exists. Now why am I not surprised by that? And this is the one paper they managed to publish all year! Literally unbelievable.

This was a great, and a bit better, year for ID and YEC and good guys everywhere who question old time evolution!
its an embarrassment of riches.
The great debate, books attracting the educated public, and constant attention and attack (bringing more attention but keep it under your hat) and pretty good internet talk and education.
iD thinkers are a historical revolution to certain conclusions in origin subjects. Its unlikely they will just be historical footnotes but will prevail in their basic criticisms. YEC criticisms use, and advance, in carving out the land we want and think we can get.
There is not freedom in public institutions but that is for next year.
ID/YEC are the ones using freedom, rebellion, and tools to handle hostile resistance just like any revolution ever did.
Yes noral and intellectual heritage can be claimed.
Our opponents can only , at best, say they are fighting for a true though old order.
They are the conservatives. We are the rebels.
If research papers and activity is humble and still ID/YEC is the talk of the science world then one can predict just a wee bit more might finish the job.

As the greatest president of america once said. ASK yourself if you are better off this yearend as opposed to the previous yearend if your a creationist!! Ask same question if your an evolutionist!!

DS said: Well you can certainly discuss both things at once. It turns out that the single publication is based on a demonstrable fraudulent supposition. So even if the authors did try to do any real experiments, their conclusions would be completely worthless, regardless of their results. And citing yourself in the same pseudo journal you are publishing the paper in is definitely not the way to establish the validity of the assumption. Neither is completely ignoring the vast amount of research that conclusively disproves the assumption. Look, we have known that gene duplication is a major factor in evolution for over forty years. We know the mechanism by which duplicate genes arise. We know the fates of duplicated genes and their relative probabilities. We know some of the mechanisms that operate to result in neofunctionalization. We have many examples of genes that have evolved in exactly this way. This is like saying that "planes cannot fly because they are denser than air, duh!" It ignores all of the theoretical and empirical evidence that already exists. Now why am I not surprised by that? And this is the one paper they managed to publish all year! Literally unbelievable.

Robert Byers said: This was a great, and a bit better, year for ID and YEC and good guys everywhere who question old time evolution! its an embarrassment of riches. The great debate, books attracting the educated public, and constant attention and attack (bringing more attention but keep it under your hat) and pretty good internet talk and education. iD thinkers are a historical revolution to certain conclusions in origin subjects. Its unlikely they will just be historical footnotes but will prevail in their basic criticisms. YEC criticisms use, and advance, in carving out the land we want and think we can get. There is not freedom in public institutions but that is for next year. ID/YEC are the ones using freedom, rebellion, and tools to handle hostile resistance just like any revolution ever did. Yes noral and intellectual heritage can be claimed. Our opponents can only , at best, say they are fighting for a true though old order. They are the conservatives. We are the rebels. If research papers and activity is humble and still ID/YEC is the talk of the science world then one can predict just a wee bit more might finish the job. As the greatest president of america once said. ASK yourself if you are better off this yearend as opposed to the previous yearend if your a creationist!! Ask same question if your an evolutionist!!

callahanpb said:

harold said:

IanR said: While I'm certainly not a fan of BIO-Complexity, I wish we'd focus on the content of the articles (and, really, lack thereof) rather than the shenanigans of the authors. Although the lack of productivity does say something, the emptiness of the ideas is far more significant.

False dichotomy - Implies that we must do one or the other. False accusation - Implies that contributors to this venue do not engage with the content of ID publications, when in fact they do.

I'd go further and say that the focus should be on shenanigans with lower priority on addressing article content unless there is anything new to address (which is rare). I completely agree that there is time for both, and that contributors to pandasthumb and similar blogs really do carry out both on a regular basis. But the bigger temptation in addressing ID/creationism is going down the rabbit hole and giving the impression that poses a serious challenge to science. Most ID output relies on the repetition of old, debunked claims. Rather than treating each one as new, it may be preferable to dismiss each one with the concise reference to the debunking. It is generally more satisfying for contributors to write new arguments, and there is probably not much harm in that, but I think if anything the balance is weighed too heavily towards treating ID/creationists as if they are arguing in good faith and could actually be "set straight" by a rational rebuttal.

harold said:

callahanpb said:

harold said:

IanR said: While I'm certainly not a fan of BIO-Complexity, I wish we'd focus on the content of the articles (and, really, lack thereof) rather than the shenanigans of the authors. Although the lack of productivity does say something, the emptiness of the ideas is far more significant.

False dichotomy - Implies that we must do one or the other. False accusation - Implies that contributors to this venue do not engage with the content of ID publications, when in fact they do.

I'd go further and say that the focus should be on shenanigans with lower priority on addressing article content unless there is anything new to address (which is rare). I completely agree that there is time for both, and that contributors to pandasthumb and similar blogs really do carry out both on a regular basis. But the bigger temptation in addressing ID/creationism is going down the rabbit hole and giving the impression that poses a serious challenge to science. Most ID output relies on the repetition of old, debunked claims. Rather than treating each one as new, it may be preferable to dismiss each one with the concise reference to the debunking. It is generally more satisfying for contributors to write new arguments, and there is probably not much harm in that, but I think if anything the balance is weighed too heavily towards treating ID/creationists as if they are arguing in good faith and could actually be "set straight" by a rational rebuttal.

I very strongly agree. I have been able to tersely summarize the content of ID arguments since at least 2004, and there have been no changes. For fun I'll do it off the top of my head right now. I do not imply that these are original to ID; other than some word games mentioned in "1)" they mainly aren't, but they are the content of ID. 1) I declare that some science-y sounding thing ("complex specified information", "irreducible complexity", "decrease in entropy", usually) can't exist unless created by magic; my science-y sounding term basically means "looks complicated to me". I don't define this science-y sounding thing in a way that would allow others to independently identify or measure it, of course (or in the case of entropy, which is defined and measured, I ignore the definitions and use the term incorrectly). Then I point to some aspect of a living cell, usually in a way that reveals ignorance of relevant biology (even if I am a biologist by training), and claim that it has whatever science-y sounding thing I was talking about. I don't justify this claim, I just make it. Then I declare that I have shown that the "bacterial flagellum" or whatever has "CSI" or whatever, and so therefore, we can ignore all evidence for its evolution, on the grounds that I have "proven" that it "couldn't have evolved". I don't actually deal with any evidence for evolution at all. By doing this I intend to imply that the same is probably true of all aspects of life, of course. I just talked about the "bacterial flagellum" to create the false impression of being very scientific and technical. 2) I note that scientists can study things that were actually designed by humans, such as paleolithic tools or whatever. I ignore the fact that scientists also frequently study things that were designed by insects and other non-human animals. I declare that I see some analogy between living cells and something complicated like machines or computers. Then I declare that because of this analogy, living cells must have been "designed" by "an intelligence". I may allude to Paley, or I may just steal his wrong idea without giving him attribution. I don't actually deal with any evidence for biological evolution, of course. And I repeatedly present this as an argument against "evolution", even though it's at best a (bad) argument against abiogenesis. 3) I note that someone somewhere once had a correct idea that was censored by some "orthodoxy"; typically I refer to Galileo. The historical Galileo wasn't even terribly strongly censored but that's irrelevant, I could come up with someone who was, of course, it has happened. I then note that I have been criticized by scientists. I then declare that criticism or failure to publish anything I produce in any venue I demand is "censorship" by an "orthodoxy", even though this is obviously not the case. I then make one further illogical leap, declaring that since I am being "censored" by an "orthodoxy" I must be correct, even though in reality orthodoxies have censored wrong ideas plenty of times. 4) I take some terrible person from history, usually but not exclusively Hitler, and claim that they accepted the theory of evolution and practiced atheism. In the case of Hitler that's demonstrably wrong in both cases; the Nazis always claimed to be Christian and Nazi ideology is fundamentally grounded in wrong ideas about biology. Of course, I could have come up with someone who actually was a cruel dictator, atheist, and didn't deny evolution. I could have said Fidel Castro, for example; his ideology endorses atheism and communist Cuba has, somewhat uniquely among communist countries, a record of embracing western biomedical science, albeit at a scale limited by economics. But everybody knows that Hitler is worse than Fidel Castro so I say Hitler instead. I then make the false and rather amoral accusation that if one bad person didn't deny evolution, everyone who doesn't deny evolution is equally bad. I ignore that fact that numerous cruel, murderous leaders were religious creationists, so that by this unfair standard, everyone, regardless of attitude toward theory of evolution, is always "just as bad" as some truly horrible historical character. 5) Although not included in many ID books, in settings from court rooms to informal comments, ID advocates often proudly declare an infinitely moving goal post strategy. No-one can ever "prove" such and such a point to their satisfaction, because they proudly ignore any reasonable evidence and demand a deliberately impossible standard of "proof". Usually this strategy also denies abiogenesis but is presented as if it related "evolution", although Behe did famously say that he wouldn't accept an evolutionary relationship between lineages unless he saw "every single mutation" involved in their divergence from a common ancestor. That's really about it.

Maybe next year, ID can do better. For example, they could examine these Ice Pancakes on the River Dee. this gives them a good opportunity to show the prowess of the ID design detection methods.

Were those ice pancakes intelligently designed?

Were those ice pancakes the result of natural processes?

This is a chance for ID experts to pull out their CSI calculators and give us a definitive answer as to whether or not these pancakes are designed. In order to be scientifically valid, any answer will, of course, need to show all working and calculations.

ID claims to have methods that can detect design. Here is a chance for them to demonstrate those methods for the rest of us.

harold said: I know people will rush to "add" things, but before doing so, think carefully. What you are "adding" is probably covered above.

TomS said:

harold said: I know people will rush to "add" things, but before doing so, think carefully. What you are "adding" is probably covered above.

6) It doesn't seem that such-and-such could have arisen by natural means. Therefore there is a supernatural agency. 7) If there isn't the supernatural, then things would not be as desired. (For example, that we wouldn't have a guarantee of knowledge. Or that we wouldn't have a purpose.) I cannot resist pointing out that an argument like (7) can be countered by pointing out that a supernatural agency is no guarantee of a desired outcome. In a word, Satan.

1) I declare that some science-y sounding thing (“complex specified information”, “irreducible complexity”, “decrease in entropy”, usually) can’t exist unless created by magic; my science-y sounding term basically means “looks complicated to me”. I don’t define this science-y sounding thing in a way that would allow others to independently identify or measure it, of course (or in the case of entropy, which is defined and measured, I ignore the definitions and use the term incorrectly). Then I point to some aspect of a living cell, usually in a way that reveals ignorance of relevant biology (even if I am a biologist by training), and claim that it has whatever science-y sounding thing I was talking about. I don’t justify this claim, I just make it. Then I declare that I have shown that the “bacterial flagellum” or whatever has “CSI” or whatever, and so therefore, we can ignore all evidence for its evolution, on the grounds that I have “proven” that it “couldn’t have evolved”. I don’t actually deal with any evidence for evolution at all. By doing this I intend to imply that the same is probably true of all aspects of life, of course. I just talked about the “bacterial flagellum” to create the false impression of being very scientific and technical.

I don't know how many words have been written promoting ID. That could be estimated. My money would say billions.

It takes less than a thousand words to summarize the actual relevant content.

A complete discussion of ID, in chronological order, touching on all major published ID works, could probably be done quite succinctly.

I estimate that ID generates a million words of repetition of prior failed arguments, and deliberately bombastic verbosity, for every actual meaningful word.

There is no need to feign exaggerated "respect" for recycled bullshit every time it is recycled.

The members of the Discovery Institute actually do have a lot to be self-congratulatory about. Here is their 2011 tax return: http://207.153.189.83/EINS/911521697/911521697_2011_08d99acd.PDF

The actual designer was not YHWH, it was Ugly Big Magic Sky Boss.

From the post and the comments I gather that we can easily see obvious problems and contradictions in ID thinking, but that different ones occur to different people depending on their individual backgrounds. This can lead to arguments breaking out over the strength or weakness of the various arguments. I am not interesting in denigrating anyone else's argument, but happen to like my own for some reason, although I think it is rarely considered by others.

My background is that armed with a B.S. in Physics I got a job as a computer programmer in an engineering department, then got an M.M.E. and became a mechanical engineer and spent over 30 years designing and developing turbine parts. This gave me the perspective that human engineering design work is a process that is strongly analogous to biological evolution. Some new ideas in design are the result of random accidents, and most are simply new combinations of existing ideas which could have (and may in fact have been) the result of randomly fitting different ideas together to see if they mesh. That is, a process that could be done by a mechanical process (e.g., computer) using random searches (e.g., the Monte Carlo method, and genetic algorithms).

From there it also occurred to me that this same process could be (and I think is) the way "intelligence" (i.e., the generation of ideas) works. There are no nerve cells that monitor and report what is going on our roughly 73 billion neurons and quadrillions of synapses as we think, so new ideas appear to arrive out of nowhere by magic, but I suspect it is the evolutionary process of trying things randomly, applying a selection criterion to weed out the worst failures, and then testing the rest for survival in the marketplace (design) or marketplace of ideas (intelligence).

For memory and communication, biological evolution uses chemicals, mainly DNA. Humans have much better means to transmit ideas, so we can see things like automobiles and phones evolving quickly over our life times. Biological evolution works more slowly, but it has had billions of years and massively parallel systems (e.g., billions of bacteria trying to learn how to digest citrate, in Dr. Lenski's experiment). So far I would say biological evolution has had much more spectacular results, and I can assure you that for each successful new engineering design there were many failed attempts along the way.

There is either magic or there isn't. I don't think there is, which implies that human design and intelligence must be a mechanical procedure (in a general sense), and the evolutionary process seems the most likely to me - we know it works. Every day I see something (a quote from Edison about finding out hundreds of ways of making batteries that don't work, an article about the sources of Lucas's "Star Wars" and the ways he combined those sources, etc.) which strikes me as supporting evidence for my perspective. So far the only possible magic evidence for intelligence that I can think of was Kekule's dream about intertwined serpents which led to his discovery of the nature of carbon bonds in benzene, but even that could be explained as combining previous knowledge into a new permutation by random search. (I don't find any paranormal evidence convincing.)

From this perspective, the problem I see with ID is that it doesn't understand either design or intelligence. That is its fundamental contradiction, for me. It think it's all evolution, all the way down.

JimV

harold said: I don't know how many words have been written promoting ID. That could be estimated. My money would say billions. It takes less than a thousand words to summarize the actual relevant content. A complete discussion of ID, in chronological order, touching on all major published ID works, could probably be done quite succinctly. I estimate that ID generates a million words of repetition of prior failed arguments, and deliberately bombastic verbosity, for every actual meaningful word. There is no need to feign exaggerated "respect" for recycled bullshit every time it is recycled.

Something, somehow, somewhere, is wrong with evolutionary biology. Please let it be something supernatural.

No one has suggested an account for major themes of the variety of life which does not make reference to common descent with variation. Even if there were a fatal flaw in evolutionary biology, there is no other account which supplies an adequate fix for that flaw. Even if there were an alternative account, there is no known supernatural account.

booby wrote:

"its an embarrassment of riches."

well he got the first three words right if your a creationist you should be bareassed alright

This gave me the perspective that human engineering design work is a process that is strongly analogous to biological evolution.

https://www.google.com/accounts/o8/id?id=AItOawmKClPHRhWOQyCVGlIJhJOKy_uJujWHa74 said: So far the only possible magic evidence for intelligence that I can think of was Kekule's dream about intertwined serpents which led to his discovery of the nature of carbon bonds in benzene, but even that could be explained as combining previous knowledge into a new permutation by random search. (I don't find any paranormal evidence convincing.) From this perspective, the problem I see with ID is that it doesn't understand either design or intelligence. That is its fundamental contradiction, for me. It think it's all evolution, all the way down. JimV

https://www.google.com/accounts/o8/id?id=AItOawmKClPHRhWOQyCVGlIJhJOKy_uJujWHa74 said: From this perspective, the problem I see with ID is that it doesn't understand either design or intelligence. That is its fundamental contradiction, for me. It think it's all evolution, all the way down. JimV

harold said:

This gave me the perspective that human engineering design work is a process that is strongly analogous to biological evolution.

Yes, it is strongly analogous, although turbines don't reproduce themselves with variation and experience different types of selective pressure and random distribution of genetic traits. You may be making a common error about ID, though - thinking that ID is the result of sincere, honest misunderstanding.

callahanpb said: These examples--common in human artifacts--are vaguely analogous to a kind of lateral gene transfer that is virtually absent from living things, in which the design and the substrate are inextricably meshed. The fact that life is full of similar but not quite the same structures, except in the case of common descent, is kind of “design filter” that really does distinguish the work of intelligent designs from the product of evolution, and reinforces rather than refutes the existence of a designer of living things.

thinking that ID is the result of sincere, honest misunderstanding. I don’t think he was making that error.

One prominent feature that is common to all those "arguments": lack of error correction, even when the error is repeatedly corrected by those with expertise in the relevant field(s).

Oh, they might occasionally decide that a particular error doesn't work any more and then switch to a different one, or even recommend that others stop using that particular error in their "arguments".

And, error correction is an utterly crucial feature in science, engineering, medicine, and I presume pretty much any other technical field.

Not to mention the implied assumption that the "designer" shares their aversion to the use of natural processes to produce the result that we see.

Henry

DS said:

booby wrote: "its an embarrassment of riches."

well he got the first three words right.

Henry J said: Not to mention the implied assumption that the "designer" shares their aversion to the use of natural processes to produce the result that we see. Henry

harold said:

thinking that ID is the result of sincere, honest misunderstanding. I don’t think he was making that error.

Hopefully not, but I made that error very, very briefly, when I first learned about ID, and I have seen many people make it. It's always good to reinforce what ID actually is. It's amusing to recall how amazed I was by the level of bullshit, before I became more accustomed to it.

TomS wrote:

"I excuse those scientists who are so interested in their subject that they will take any occasion to talk about it."

Thanks Tom.

And, of course, philosophers are professionally obliged to take seriously arguments that no one else has the time for.

TomS said:

Henry J said: Not to mention the implied assumption that the "designer" shares their aversion to the use of natural processes to produce the result that we see. Henry

Not to mention: Design is not enough. There also needs to be production. Think of all those wonderful designs which were never realized by production.

TomS said:

harold said:

thinking that ID is the result of sincere, honest misunderstanding. I don’t think he was making that error.

Hopefully not, but I made that error very, very briefly, when I first learned about ID, and I have seen many people make it. It's always good to reinforce what ID actually is. It's amusing to recall how amazed I was by the level of bullshit, before I became more accustomed to it.

How do you describe the many treatments of the anti-evolutionary arguments which treat them as if the arguments had something substantial, or even scientific, to them? I excuse those scientists who are so interested in their subject that they will take any occasion to talk about it. And, of course, philosophers are professionally obliged to take seriously arguments that no one else has the time for.

harold said:

TomS said:

harold said:

thinking that ID is the result of sincere, honest misunderstanding. I don’t think he was making that error.

Hopefully not, but I made that error very, very briefly, when I first learned about ID, and I have seen many people make it. It's always good to reinforce what ID actually is. It's amusing to recall how amazed I was by the level of bullshit, before I became more accustomed to it.

How do you describe the many treatments of the anti-evolutionary arguments which treat them as if the arguments had something substantial, or even scientific, to them? I excuse those scientists who are so interested in their subject that they will take any occasion to talk about it. And, of course, philosophers are professionally obliged to take seriously arguments that no one else has the time for.

ID should be constantly rebutted. It's pure bullshit, yes, but it's also insidious propaganda. I don't take it seriously as an honest or even coherent hypothesis, because it isn't. I do take it seriously as a threat to science education and policy.

Seems more like an annual ritual of self-confabulation.

Palaeonictis said:

harold said:

TomS said:

harold said:

thinking that ID is the result of sincere, honest misunderstanding. I don’t think he was making that error.

Hopefully not, but I made that error very, very briefly, when I first learned about ID, and I have seen many people make it. It's always good to reinforce what ID actually is. It's amusing to recall how amazed I was by the level of bullshit, before I became more accustomed to it.

How do you describe the many treatments of the anti-evolutionary arguments which treat them as if the arguments had something substantial, or even scientific, to them? I excuse those scientists who are so interested in their subject that they will take any occasion to talk about it. And, of course, philosophers are professionally obliged to take seriously arguments that no one else has the time for.

ID should be constantly rebutted. It's pure bullshit, yes, but it's also insidious propaganda. I don't take it seriously as an honest or even coherent hypothesis, because it isn't. I do take it seriously as a threat to science education and policy.

You also have the Wedge, which disproves the notion that ID is irreligious in nature. But after Dover ID has mostly been dead.

I think booby's contribution was the most valuable, because it shows that religious conviction overrides anything in the Real World. And I'm convinced that the religious conviction is sincere. These guys SAY they have ideas, and not having any doesn't matter to them. It doesn't even register. They SAY they had a great year, and the fact that ID has been moribund for a decade isn't meaningful.

What we're seeing is yet another example of the mechanics of religous belief, AKA "making stuff up". All they need is faith and trust, no pixie dust required. As Dawkins wrote, if the Templeton Foundation ever offers a reward for Virtuoso Believing, these guys would be serious competitors for it.

Interesting article today on salon.com about why intelligent people sometimes cling to belief even when presented with overwhelming objective data showing that they're wrong.

"Religion’s smart-people problem: The shaky intellectual foundations of absolute faith".

I have learned a new word: "fideism", meaning those that base their beliefs exclusively on faith, making belief arbitrary, and thus leaving no way to distinguish one religious belief from another.

As the author puts it "Fideism allows no reason to favor your preferred beliefs or superstitions over others. If I must accept your beliefs without evidence, then you must accept mine, no matter what absurdity I believe in."

This rings pretty true to me. I have had discussions with any number of religious science deniers, and the polite exchanges always go the same way, they are upset that I won't grant "equal time" to their belief. In their minds, science is a belief system and religion is a belief system and faith in either one is equally valid. The concept of "preponderance of evidence" in matters of ascertaining truth simply doesn't apply to anything religious.

Flint said: I think booby's contribution was the most valuable, because it shows that religious conviction overrides anything in the Real World. And I'm convinced that the religious conviction is sincere. These guys SAY they have ideas, and not having any doesn't matter to them. It doesn't even register. They SAY they had a great year, and the fact that ID has been moribund for a decade isn't meaningful. What we're seeing is yet another example of the mechanics of religous belief, AKA "making stuff up". All they need is faith and trust, no pixie dust required. As Dawkins wrote, if the Templeton Foundation ever offers a reward for Virtuoso Believing, these guys would be serious competitors for it.

Robert Byers said: YEC has never been so famous. ID is very famous amongst the educated classes. This forum exists because of this fame and presence.

I suspect next year will also be great. A hunch.

Robert Byers said: Thanks. However most creationists are as high as a kite [...]

Just Bob said:

Jeffrey Shallit said: Heck, if they can't get creationists to submit and publish there, how could they get legit scientists to do so?

Hmmm... curious idea... what would happen if an evolutionary biologist were to submit a non-ID-friendly paper to Bio-Complexity, a paper that was obviously of publishable quality. Would the editors have the moral integrity to publish something that undermines their theological position? Or would they CENSOR it? Has anyone tried that?

Frank J said:

Just Bob said:

Jeffrey Shallit said: Heck, if they can't get creationists to submit and publish there, how could they get legit scientists to do so?

Hmmm... curious idea... what would happen if an evolutionary biologist were to submit a non-ID-friendly paper to Bio-Complexity, a paper that was obviously of publishable quality. Would the editors have the moral integrity to publish something that undermines their theological position? Or would they CENSOR it? Has anyone tried that?

What I would love to see is a paper that is "non-ID-friendly" in one respect but "very-ID-friendly" in another. For the former it would say absolutely nothing about design or designers, or about "weaknesses" of evolution. For the latter it would make clear, testable hypotheses of origin of species that contradict the conclusions of mainstream science, and have a lot of data to support them. Preferably they would conclude that many species arose independently from nonliving matter, but if that's too difficult, they could at least validate Behe's ~4-billion-year-old ancestral cell, whose origin, and subsequent speciations, supposedly required processes radically different than mere "RM + NS." This would, of course be a hoax, like the famous Sokal one, but far more interesting to see the reaction of the editorial team.

stevaroni said:...they are upset that I won't grant "equal time" to their belief.

Baghdad Bob Byers.

fnxtr said: Baghdad Bob Byers.

Interesting anecdote - I'm out of town visiting family for the holidays. My family all attend a very large conservative, evangelical nondenominational church. It's not fundamentalist by any means, but it's conservative. While picking my niece up from Sunday School after church yesterday, I noticed a poster on the classroom door that had a big picture of a Dragonfly and some information about them. Toward the bottom, it mentions the fact that Dragonflies used to be quite a bit larger than they are now, back about 250 million years ago. The poster was not incredibly prominent, but it was easily visible to anybody walking by that room.

These days, I only step inside a church once a year, but I used to be quite familiar with evangelical christianity, and I have NEVER seen an explicit repudiation of YEC inside an evangelical church before. Frankly, I was somewhat taken aback--but in a good way!

stevaroni said: Interesting article today on salon.com about why intelligent people sometimes cling to belief even when presented with overwhelming objective data showing that they're wrong. "Religion’s smart-people problem: The shaky intellectual foundations of absolute faith".

someotherguy86: Toward the bottom, it mentions the fact that Dragonflies used to be quite a bit larger than they are now, back about 250 million years ago.

Henry J said:

someotherguy86: Toward the bottom, it mentions the fact that Dragonflies used to be quite a bit larger than they are now, back about 250 million years ago.

And wasn't there more O2 in the air back then, which was why insects could be larger than they can be today? Henry

someotherguy86 said: Interesting anecdote - I'm out of town visiting family for the holidays. My family all attend a very large conservative, evangelical nondenominational church. It's not fundamentalist by any means, but it's conservative. While picking my niece up from Sunday School after church yesterday, I noticed a poster on the classroom door that had a big picture of a Dragonfly and some information about them. Toward the bottom, it mentions the fact that Dragonflies used to be quite a bit larger than they are now, back about 250 million years ago. The poster was not incredibly prominent, but it was easily visible to anybody walking by that room. These days, I only step inside a church once a year, but I used to be quite familiar with evangelical christianity, and I have NEVER seen an explicit repudiation of YEC inside an evangelical church before. Frankly, I was somewhat taken aback--but in a good way!

Would it be permitted to say anything about the actions in the natural order - the “manufacturing arm” in service to design? How much can one say without reference to time - and is there a taboo on mentioning deep time?"

— TomS

Just Bob said:

someotherguy86 said: Interesting anecdote - I'm out of town visiting family for the holidays. My family all attend a very large conservative, evangelical nondenominational church. It's not fundamentalist by any means, but it's conservative. While picking my niece up from Sunday School after church yesterday, I noticed a poster on the classroom door that had a big picture of a Dragonfly and some information about them. Toward the bottom, it mentions the fact that Dragonflies used to be quite a bit larger than they are now, back about 250 million years ago. The poster was not incredibly prominent, but it was easily visible to anybody walking by that room. These days, I only step inside a church once a year, but I used to be quite familiar with evangelical christianity, and I have NEVER seen an explicit repudiation of YEC inside an evangelical church before. Frankly, I was somewhat taken aback--but in a good way!

Hallelujah! (But a caveat: It could be that just one Sunday School teacher put up the poster, and it hasn't been noticed yet by the YEC deacons. It's even possible that the, uh, poster of the poster didn't even notice the (gasp!) ancient-Earth bit. Let's hope that's not the case, but I'm often disappointed by the extent to which evangelicals will go to avoid offending YEC.)

Toward the bottom, it mentions the fact that Dragonflies used to be quite a bit larger than they are now, back about 250 million years ago. The poster was not incredibly prominent, but it was easily visible to anybody walking by that room. These days, I only step inside a church once a year, but I used to be quite familiar with evangelical christianity, and I have NEVER seen an explicit repudiation of YEC inside an evangelical church before.

— someotherguy86

someotherguy86 said: .Interesting anecdote - ... While picking my niece up from Sunday School after church yesterday, I noticed a poster on the classroom door that had a big picture of a Dragonfly and some information about them ... Dragonflies used to be quite a bit larger than they are now, back about 250 million years ago.... ... I have NEVER seen an explicit repudiation of YEC inside an evangelical church before. Frankly, I was somewhat taken aback--but in a good way!

Hallelujah!

— Just Bob

@stevaroni:

IMO no one in the last 155 years has "trumpeted" evolution more than Pope John Paul II. His description of the evidence as "convergence, neither sought not fabricated" was at once the most powerful sound bite in its defense, and, intended or not, a huge slap in the face of anti-evolution movement. Anti-evolution activists do nothing but seek and fabricate "evidences," but even with that blatant cheating, have not been able to force it to converge on one of the mutually-contradictory literal interpretations of Genesis. ID activists know better than to even try, as they did long before "cdesign proponentsists."

Henry J said: And wasn't there more O2 in the air back then, which was why insects could be larger than they can be today? Henry

scienceavenger said:

Henry J said: And wasn't there more O2 in the air back then, which was why insects could be larger than they can be today? Henry

That and no birds to take advantage of those large, clumsy, flying lunches.

For larger flying organisms, you need at least one of the following: more dense atmosphere, more usable O2.

Anyone who spent a significant amount of time in aircraft in Southeast Asia about 45 years ago knows the significant effects that atmospheric density (affected by altitude, temperature and humidity) have on aircraft operation.

How, by the way, do we know exactly what sea-level barometric pressure was a couple hundred million years back?

Gargantuan flying reptiles are a much more practical idea if you don't limit them to today's paltry atmosphere.

They should get Klinghoffer to update the intelligentdesign.org site. A lot of it seems like it hasn't been updated since their loss in Dover in 2005. The old links should tell anyone just how well the intelligent design creationist scam is going today.

I looked up their Resources and Science links in some posts to TO.

https://groups.google.com/d/msg/talk.origins/sVDeXplWWMo/qWKztj-LCtQJ

https://groups.google.com/d/msg/talk.origins/sVDeXplWWMo/TTu9RSV9hYUJ

They are still linking to the IDNetwork pages as if that IDiot organization hasn't been defunct since around 2009. Does Intelligent design network still exist? It looks like the last updates to their web site occurred around 2009. There are no events scheduled and their last press release seems to have been in 2007. The Discovery Institute hasn't updated their other material to reflect the removal of their claim to have a scientific theory of intelligent design to teach in the public schools from their education policy statement. That change apparently happened Feb 2013, but there was no annoucement about it. Why do the IDiots let their web site degrade to such a state? Shouldn't it be expanding with wonderful things to note happening all the time?

Ron Okimoto said: Why do the IDiots let their web site degrade to such a state? Shouldn't it be expanding with wonderful things to note happening all the time?

Just Bob said:

Ron Okimoto said: Why do the IDiots let their web site degrade to such a state? Shouldn't it be expanding with wonderful things to note happening all the time?

They're too busy researching in their green-screen labs, knowing design when they see it, and preventing Hitler.