Evidence of design

[Speedwell]

I take it you have an issue acknowledging "all gears are designed'.
Ask anyone on the street are gears designed? The answer almost always will be yes. Show a picture of gears on a bugs legs and suddenly, "all gears are designed" becomes conjecture. Gears, by definition, are designed. As has been pointed out, a cause is not identified by merely acknowledging design in nature is real. I just like people too give some critical thought about why they have such a hard time acknowledging that.
The creationist who denied a fossil sitting on the table in front of him was indeed a fossil needs to give some thought to that too.

Once again you are (intentionally?) conflating "design" as organization towards function and "design" as purpose or intention. It's a good trick and may fool the man in the street, but we've seen it before and know how it works.

 

[Vaccine]

"Complex specified information" is a figment of William Dembski's imagination and no irreducibly complex biological structures have ever been identified.

Dembski has a rigorous definition of comllex specified information, if you care to find out about it.
You said there was "no" evidence before. I seriously doubt you've never heard of the 3 instances identified in Darwin's Black Box.

 

[Speedwell]

Dembski has a rigorous definition of complex specified information, if you care to find out about it.

I know about it. It has made him a laughing stock amongst mathematicians.

You said there was "no" evidence before. I seriously doubt you've never heard of the 3 instances identified in Darwin's Black Box.

Of course I have heard of them; read the book, in fact. Those instances have been falsified in exactly the way Behe suggested the could be, by describing a realistic, continuously functional Darwinian pathway from simple ancestor to present structure.
You're a bit late to the party; Darwin's Black Box is twenty years old and was pretty much repudiated by Behe himself on that stand during Kitzmiller v. Dover.

 

[Vaccine]

Design as intention or purpose is not directly detectable in an object.

I missed this earlier, my mistake. You are correct, intention is not directly observable.

 

[FrumiousBandersnatch]

We can start with this:
Design theorists hypothesize that if a natural object was designed, it will contain high levels of CSI[complex-specified information]. Scientists then perform experimental tests upon natural objects to determine if they contain complex and specified information. One easily testable form of CSI is irreducible complexity, which can be discovered by experimentally reverse-engineering biological structures to see if they require all of their parts to function. When ID researchers find irreducible complexity in biology, they conclude that such structures were designed.
http://www.intelligentdesign.org/whatisid.php

Which structures might those be - have you some definitive examples of irreducible complexity?

It is just another unfalsifiable concept posing as science. That some individual or individuals (with a vested interest) are unable to find a way that some feature could arise by evolutionary processes, doesn't mean it could not have evolved.

This argument has been applied to a variety of structures, from the camera eye to the bacterial flagellum, and - as far as I'm aware - plausible evolutionary paths have been found in every case. Not having an explanation doesn't demonstrate that there isn't one, and having an explanation without definitive evidence is no indication that it is correct. It's not a potentially fruitful path.

Dembsky's CSI or 'specified complexity' is a criterion that has no basis in science, and begs the question - it assumes design can't occur naturally, and to evaluate the CSI of some item, you must calculate the probability of it arising naturally, but in doing so, you must make assumptions about such probabilities - Dembsky's calculations assume evolution to be false.

Intelligently designed objects may have high values of CSI, but that doesn't mean that having high CSI necessarily means intelligent design. Computer simulations have shown that high CSI can arise through evolutionary processes alone.

But Dembsky's CSI calculations contain errors as well as dubious assumptions; he uses Kolmogorov (algorithmic) complexity measures in a non-algorithmic context, and assumes that parts are assembled at random because irreducible complexity assumes that they couldn't evolve... it's complete hand-waving baffle-gab bunk.

See the wiki article for a summary of the criticisms.

 

[Vaccine]

Once again you are (intentionally?) conflating "design" as organization towards function and "design" as purpose or intention. It's a good trick and may fool the man in the street, but we've seen it before and know how it works.

Did you see where I said "regardless the cause" or "cause not identified" ?

 

[Vaccine]

I know about it. It has made him a laughing stock amongst mathematicians.
Of course I have heard of them; read the book, in fact. Those instances have been falsified in exactly the way Behe suggested the could be, by describing a realistic, continuously functional Darwinian pathway from simple ancestor to present structure.
You're a bit late to the party; Darwin's Black Box is twenty years old and was pretty much repudiated by Behe himself on that stand during Kitzmiller v. Dover.

Remember they guy who refused to look through the telescope because he didnt want to acknowledg light was not instantaneous? Or people who said if we evolved from monkeys why are there still monkeys? Mocking some caricature of a scientific theory may look good now but won't hundreds of years from now.
Falsified by some objective standard or because some really smart guy who also thinks God doesn't tinker says so?
Or better yet let some judge decide?

 

[Speedwell]

Falsified by some objective standard or because some really smart guy who also thinks God doesn't tinker says so?
Or better yet let some judge decide?

Falsified by the standard Behe himself proposed.

It's a dead letter. It was only ever intended by the Discovery Institute who co-opted Behe and Dembski's work to be a Trojan Horse for biblical creationism, anyway. A "wedge" as they called it, for their Dominionist political agenda.

 

[FrumiousBandersnatch]

... Gears, by definition, are designed.

Bingo! give it a name, and it must therefore have all the familiar attributes associated with that name... like intelligent design.

But wait, since we're talking definitions, these aren't cogs or toothed wheels or cylinders, they don't have cut teeth, they don't alter the relation between the speed of a driving mechanism and the speed of the driven parts - should they be called gears at all?

Perhaps you'd like to post a definition that doesn't define gears in terms of the properties the Issus 'gears' don't have (above), but does mention or imply intelligent design ?

 

[Loudmouth]

We can start with this:
Design theorists hypothesize that if a natural object was designed, it will contain high levels of CSI[complex-specified information]. Scientists then perform experimental tests upon natural objects to determine if they contain complex and specified information. One easily testable form of CSI is irreducible complexity, which can be discovered by experimentally reverse-engineering biological structures to see if they require all of their parts to function. When ID researchers find irreducible complexity in biology, they conclude that such structures were designed.
http://www.intelligentdesign.org/whatisid.php

Irreducible complexity was already falsified by Muller in 1918.

"... Most present day animals are the result of a long process of evolution, in which at least thousands of mutations must have taken place. Each new mutant in turn must have derived its survival value from the effect which it produced upon the "reaction system" that had been brought into being by the many previously formed factors in cooperation; thus a complicated machine was gradually built up whose effective working was dependent upon the interlocking action of very numerous elementary parts or factors, and many of the characters are factors which, when new, where originally merely an asset finally become necessary because other necessary characters and factors had subsequently become changed so as to be dependent on the former. It must result, in consequence, that a dropping out of, or even a slight change in any one of these parts is very likely to disturb fatally the whole machinery; ..."
"Genetic Variablity, Twin Hybrids and Constant Hybrids, in a Case of Balanced Lethal Factors", by Hermann J Muller, in Genetics, Vol 3, No 5, Sept 1918, pp 422-499.

Irreducible complexity was dead from the start. If CSI misidentifies irreducible complexity as being designed then CSI is not a valid method for detecting design.

 

[Vaccine]

Falsified by the standard Behe himself proposed.

Then you can objectively show it to be so?

It's a dead letter. It was only ever intended by the Discovery Institute who co-opted Behe and Dembski's work to be a Trojan Horse for biblical creationism, anyway. A "wedge" as they called it, for their Dominionist political agenda.

That would be a philosophical argument. You claimed if was falsified by an objective scientific standard.

 

[Speedwell]

Then you can objectively show it to be so?

Yes. It has been twenty years; there is a considerable body of scientific literature on the subject.

That would be a philosophical argument. You claimed if was falsified by an objective scientific standard.

Actually it is just an historical footnote. Scientifically it has been falsified by Behe's own standard, which he has conceded to.

 

[Vaccine]

Yes. It has been twenty years; there is a considerable body of scientific literature on the subject.

I know there is a considerable literature on the subject. What everyone is waiting for is an objective falsification.

Scientifically it has been falsified by Behe's own standard, which he has conceded to.

That doesn't even pass the straight face test.

 

[Vaccine]

Bingo! give it a name, and it must therefore have all the familiar attributes associated with that name... like intelligent design.

But wait, since we're talking definitions, these aren't cogs or toothed wheels or cylinders, they don't have cut teeth, they don't alter the relation between the speed of a driving mechanism and the speed of the driven parts - should they be called gears at all?

Perhaps you'd like to post a definition that doesn't define gears in terms of the properties the Issus 'gears' don't have (above), but does mention or imply intelligent design ?

I suppose the guy who denied a fossil was a fossil had the same objections. Dont be that guy.
Design in nature isn't an illusion, it's real. The question is what caused it?

 

[Vaccine]

Irreducible complexity was already falsified by Muller in 1918.

"... Most present day animals are the result of a long process of evolution, in which at least thousands of mutations must have taken place. Each new mutant in turn must have derived its survival value from the effect which it produced upon the "reaction system" that had been brought into being by the many previously formed factors in cooperation; thus a complicated machine was gradually built up whose effective working was dependent upon the interlocking action of very numerous elementary parts or factors, and many of the characters are factors which, when new, where originally merely an asset finally become necessary because other necessary characters and factors had subsequently become changed so as to be dependent on the former. It must result, in consequence, that a dropping out of, or even a slight change in any one of these parts is very likely to disturb fatally the whole machinery; ..."
"Genetic Variablity, Twin Hybrids and Constant Hybrids, in a Case of Balanced Lethal Factors", by Hermann J Muller, in Genetics, Vol 3, No 5, Sept 1918, pp 422-499.

Irreducible complexity was dead from the start. If CSI misidentifies irreducible complexity as being designed then CSI is not a valid method for detecting design.

Hi Loudmouth glad to see you still here.
When you lool back in history at all the bad arguments people made when Darwin presented his theory of evolution, what do you against think about those people?
It just may be intelligent design theory will be falsified, but it will happen on objective scientific grounds, not by mistepresenting csi or sepcified complexity and declaring victory.
Attacking a caricature of a theory may look good now, but I don't thnk it will a hundred years from now when level headed people prevail.

 

[sfs]

We can start with this:
Design theorists hypothesize that if a natural object was designed, it will contain high levels of CSI[complex-specified information].

That's a hypothesis. After you propose a hypothesis, you're supposed to go on to test it. Nothing in the rest of what you quote proposes a way of testing this hypothesis.

Scientists then perform experimental tests upon natural objects to determine if they contain complex and specified information.

There are no experimental tests to determine either complexity or specification. As Dembski defines it, complexity is just improbability. No one knows how to estimate (much less measure) the probability of a complex (in the normal sense) feature arising by evolution, for example.

One easily testable form of CSI is irreducible complexity,

There is no logical connection between CSI and irreducible complexity. "Complex" here doesn't mean what it does for Dembski, and there's no reason that an irreducibly complex system has to have any particular amount of CSI.

When ID researchers find irreducible complexity in biology, they conclude that such structures were designed.

If this is really how ID researchers proceed, then we should not be wasting our time considering their conclusions. Nothing in this logical train makes the slightest bit of sense.

 

[sfs]

I know there is a considerable literature on the subject. What everyone is waiting for is an objective falsification.

Who's everyone? If the ID theorists ever come up with a coherent, testable hypothesis that actually implies ID if true, and if they provide some evidence that the hypothesis is correct, then it will be time to start thinking about falsification. Until then, why bother?

 

[FrumiousBandersnatch]

I suppose the guy who denied a fossil was a fossil had the same objections. Dont be that guy.
Design in nature isn't an illusion, it's real. The question is what caused it?

Evolution - it's a great designer; the principles are widely used in industry to evolve new product designs and optimize existing ones.

 

[Loudmouth]

When you lool back in history at all the bad arguments people made when Darwin presented his theory of evolution, what do you against think about those people?

Assuming you are asking what I think of those people back in the 1850's . . .

I applaud their engagement in the fledgling practice of science. What Darwin and Wallace were presenting was brand new and should hvae been challenged in a manner that was both fair and thorough. Here we are 150 years later and the theory has passed all of those tests.

It just may be intelligent design theory will be falsified, but it will happen on objective scientific grounds, not by mistepresenting csi or sepcified complexity and declaring victory.

Muller falsified irreducible complexity back in 1918, and did so objectively. There is nothing stopping evolution from taking away parts of a system until the removal of any additional parts will have detrimental effects. Irreducible complexity is an expected outcome of evolutionary processes, and has been for over 100 years.

As for CSI, even ID/creationists can not come up with a way of testing it. For example, what units is CSI measured in? How is it computed? If I gave you a 1,000 base pair DNA sequence would you be able to measure the complex specified information in that sequence?

A while back a person posed a very similar problem at Uncommon Descent. None of the ID luminaries could show how anyone could scientifically measure CSI. I will see if I can't find that thread again, it's been a while. However, this has always been the case. Behe has never proven that a single system could not evolve, irreducible or otherwise. He has simply asserted it. Dembski has simply asserted that only intelligence can produce CSI, and that life contains CSI. He has no formal way of measuring CSI, and more importantly he has never demonstrated that only an intelligence can produce CSI. ID is simply a long list of either false or untestable assertions.

Attacking a caricature of a theory may look good now, but I don't thnk it will a hundred years from now when level headed people prevail.

How is ID not a caricature of a real scientific theory?

 

[Loudmouth]

I suppose the guy who denied a fossil was a fossil had the same objections. Dont be that guy.
Design in nature isn't an illusion, it's real. The question is what caused it?

All you are doing is playing the definition game. Point to what you think is designed, then present evidence that it is designed. Asking people on the street what their opinion is does not count as scientific evidence, in case you were wondering.