The Creationist Explanaton

[Speedwell]

What do you mean by evolution here? Certainly nobody denies that in the natural world when a mutation occurs in a creature it will be tested by a process of natural selection as to whether it is benficial for survival of the creature or not, and that if beneficial that the mutation can be expected to proliferate through the population.

Except that it continuous randomly distributed variation on which selection acts, not individual mutations--but that is a side note.

And few deny that this has happened. So yes the theory of evolution falls within the scope of design, clearly this process has been designed into the created world.

A proposition which is generally referred to as "Theistic Evolution" and which is not the same s ID.

I specifically referred to "new things". Are you suggesting that random variation is able to invent a new functionally coherent system or thing such as a feather or a pentadactyl limb or a blood cell, or a self reproducing organism?

Yes.

Are you suggesting that natural selection is able to work on things that do not yet exist or are not capable of self reproduction?

No. Evolution does not require such a thing.

Clearly Darwins molecular fiddler is not capable of such feats. We must find a more plausible explanation, and the recognition of design evident points us in the right direction.


Clearly the natural process is incompetent to produce the observed effect.

Ah, the old argument from incredulity.

There are a great many qualified and competent professionals who point this out and are then maligned and quashed because they have dared to.

Or because ID is bogus. And, IMO, an insult to the Christian faith.

 

[Anguspure]

No explanation can exclude a designer. The presence of intention is unfalsifiable. The problem comes when you try to prove its presence in natural objects. What is being denied is not the presence of design in natural objects, but that ID proponents have demonstrated that it is present.

We don’t “deduce” design, we infer design. And we don’t infer design based solely upon “something’s mathematical complexity.” Complexity, or unlikelihood, alone is not enough to infer design. Something else is necessary — and that something else is called specification.

Virtually every basic ID work explains this fundamental point about complexity and specification. Here’s a nice example from Bill Dembski and Jonathan Witt’s book Intelligent Design Uncensored:

ntelligent agents … often leave behind a trademark or signature of design. The signature consists of two features found together: (1) the designed thing is complex, and (2) it fits an independently given pattern — to use the technical term, it’s specified. The full term then for this two-part signature of design is specified complexity. Find either feature by itself and there’s no clear indication that the thing was designed. Find them together and we have clear evidence that a mind purposefully designed the thing. Since information can possess these twin features of being complex and specified, this signature of design is also referred to as complex specified information (CSI).

An illustration will show that this somewhat imposing label points to a pretty commonsense way of spotting design. If we flip a coin five hundred times and write down the sequence of heads and tails, the resulting sequence will be quite complicated. We, and future generations, could spend many lifetimes trying to repeat that exact sequence at random. But despite its complexity, no sensible person would decide that this sequence of heads and tails was the result of design. Why? The sequence isn’t specified. It doesn’t match an independently given pattern.

Now a sequence of four coin tosses that are all heads does conform to an independently given pattern — all heads. So it’s specified. However, no sane person would bet the farm that this series of four heads was designed (through the use of a trick coin, for instance). The reason is that the series isn’t especially complex. Somebody could get four heads in a row through dumb luck probably after no more than a few minutes.

But imagine this scenario. A captured soldier appears on a live Internet video feed. His captors insist that he will be returned unharmed if his commanders meet all of their demands. The soldier is gagged and his captors train a rifle on him in case he tries to communicate with anyone watching the video. He passes the time by napping, eating gruel and flipping a quarter. He does this five hundred times and then takes a nap. Nobody pays much attention to this, until a friend of the captive, following a niggling suspicion, studies the video feed a second time. He writes down the sequence of heads and tails and discovers that the sequence spells out and repeats a message in Morse code. The heads represent the dots, and the tails the dashes. Translated, it reads, “They are holding me in the basement of the British Museum. They plan to kill me after you meet their demands.”

Apparently the soldier has an all heads coin and an all tails coin (or some other way of determining the outcome). And apparently he has used this method to create a message for his rescuers. Having been presented with the Morse code message, no commander in his right mind would say, “Well, the heads and the tails were bound to occur in some sequence or other. I refuse to consider the possibility that the sequence was laid down by design.” No, he would immediately infer design because the complex sequence conforms to an independently given pattern. In other words, the complex pattern is also specified. (pp. 64-65)

"Why" is not a question which science can answer. For that you have to turn to religion.

Actually I think simply "turning to religion" is also flawed and full of pitfalls, and might only form a small part of a complete answer. Certainly no religious document or philosophy that I am aware of supplies the specific answer as to why tails are different on different creatures.

So, when a 7 year old asks a question an intelligent Creationist explanation that recognises all of the factors, and including the part that ND may have to play, is therefore more complete than one that simply espouses the narrow view of methodological naturalism.
After all it is a more complete response that an intelligent person will find intellectually satisfying.

 

[pitabread]

Unfortunately "specification" tends to be too ill-defined to be useful. It's one of the fundamental problems with Dembski's attempts to argue for identification of design. There's a reason nobody uses Dembski's "complex specified information" for anything.

 

[Anguspure]

Except that it continuous randomly distributed variation on which selection acts, not individual mutations--but that is a side note. A proposition which is generally referred to as "Theistic Evolution" and which is not the same s ID.



Yes.

No. Evolution does not require such a thing.

Self reproduction is fundamental to natural selection. If the mutated organism does not reproduce into a population of organisms that exhibit the same mutation then any benefit is lost.

Ah, the old argument from incredulity.

Observation of 60 000 generations of E-coli should make anyone incredulous.

 

[sfs]

An extract from a recent article by Casey Luskin:

The purpose of Dr. Bhushan's paper was to encourage engineers to study nature when creating technology. For some reason, however, he felt compelled to open his article with the following disclaimer:

Nature has gone through evolution over the 3.8 Gyr [Gigayear, equal to one billion years] since life is estimated to have appeared on the Earth. Nature has evolved objects with high performance using commonly found materials.

Why did Bhushan feel this was necessary?

The obvious answer: one customarily opens a article with an introduction that provides context for its contents. The evolutionary history of life is the appropriate context for a discussion of biomimetics. Let's see what Luskin's answer is...

The answer is hard to miss. The widespread practice and success of biomimetics among technology-creating engineers has powerful implications that point to intelligent design (ID). After all, if human technology is intelligently designed, and if biological systems inspire or outperform man-made systems, then we are confronted with the not-so-subtle inference that nature, too, might have been designed.

To prevent ID-oriented thoughts from entering the minds of readers, materialists writing about biomimetics have long upheld a tradition of including superfluous praise of the amazing power of Darwinian evolution.

Okay, I'm trying not to engage in hyperbole here, but that's one of the dumbest things I've seen this week. It's jaw-droppingly ignorant of how scientists actually think about intelligent design.

 

[SkyWriting]

I somehow missed your point, poor in what information. The link to scholarly articles on biodiversity didn't explain much. What are you driving at?

Biodiversity is good design.

 

[mark kennedy]

Biodiversity is good design.

Yep and it's indicative of a well designed molecular mecanism. This isn't so much about external traits as internal mechanisms. Genetics is the prize.

 

[pitabread]

Pattern recognition is part of the way we identify design but as you say is not entirely reliable because after all the patterns involved are relatively simple.

The appraisal of functional coherence recognises the heirachal integration and purpose in a system. That when we observe a large number of small parts brought together in a coherent fashion to perform a higher function we are observing something that has been designed.

I'm not suggesting pattern recognition is infallible. In fact, I've wondered if claims of seeing intelligent design in nature is an example of apophenia (i.e. a false positive).

Insofar as your claims of "functional coherence", I'm not aware of such a use in detecting design at least when it comes to human artifacts. Rather detection of design seems to rely on pattern recognition of signs of manufacture in contrast to naturally-occurring patterns. For example, take a look at this video on identification of stone tools: How To Tell a Rock from a Stone Tool

In another example, SETI bases their identification of intelligent alien signals based on searching for narrow-band signals whereby the only known source is artificially manufactured radio transmitters. This is in contrast to naturally occurring wide-band signals.

If you have specific examples of objects, signals, etc identified some other manner, then by all means present them.

Certainly not, but: When a scientist is writing a professional piece or expressing a professional opinion he should keep those opinions and beliefs that fall beyond the scope of what he is capable of establishing through his science to himself.

In my reading of scientific journal papers over the years, I can't ever recall reading a paper on biology in which scientists made claims explicitly supporting atheism.

Absolutely they're 2 different concepts. It seems however that in order to be considered a "Scientist" for the purpose of the former one must regularly pay homage to the later.

The existence of theists that are also scientists rebuts the second claim. Look up Francis Collins as a great example.

At the point where a designer interacts with the natural world it is not a supernatural explanation. Certainly to make an inference of who or what the designer might be could be supernatural, but the basic identification of design falls entirely within the objective/natural scope.

And how would you distinguish between something purely natural versus a supernatural designer interacting with the natural world?

In fact, let me give you an illustrative example. Consider the following hypothesis: God's intervention is actively required for healthy plant growth.

Please describe how I could construct an experiment to test this hypothesis.

The point is that those who are committed to an explanation that excludes a designer are missing the point when a child asks the question "Why?".

You're assuming that the "why" in the OP is asking an existential question. However, given the context of the question and its specificity to anatomical differences between dolphin and shark tails, I see no reason to infer that.

When I ask why does the motorcar have a nicely shaped hood, I might look at the all of the functional reasons and study the factory that produced it. But a complete answer also takes into account the recognition that the thing was designed, that somebody wished it to be that way and was not just an adhoc accident of the factory floor.

Tell you what then: why don't you ask God why they made the shark and dolphin tails the way they did and report back with the answer?

Well you should, it is very good and very accesible. I gave a copy to my 14 year old son who inspite of finding some of the technical parts a little difficult, enjoyed it thoroughly.

I've read a lot of ID literature in the past (mainly stuff by Dembski, Behe, Denton, et al). Does this book offer anything new compared to various ID published work in the past?

While I think the very concept of ID and design detection to be quite fascinating--one of the reasons I've read as much ID literature as I have--I find the attempts to bring forward a scientific approach to be thoroughly disappointing. The interjection of religious politics into ID certainly hasn't helped matters.

Naturally occuring recursive algorithms may create incredibly complex patterns but they have never been observed to combine in order to perform a higher level function, even one level higher, let alone at the much higher levels of coherence evident in even the most basic of life forms.

I don't know what "one level higher" is supposed to mean. If you're using some sort of measurement or classification here, you haven't defined it.

Alphabet soup may have many pretty patterns of letters swirling around in it but the letters will never ever combine in a way to communicate a message to an observer.

This isn't an example of recursion though. I suggest reading up on genetic algorithms. It might change your mind about what evolution is capable of.

 

[pitabread]

Okay, I'm trying not to engage in hyperbole here, but that's one of the dumbest things I've seen this week. It's jaw-droppingly ignorant of how scientists actually think about intelligent design.

It's positively conspiratorial.

 

[dreadnought]

God works in mysterious ways, does He not?

The fact that there are two animals in the ocean ... one fishtails and the other flaps ... might look good on a Darwin tree -- but only on paper.

Darwinians try to find peace in their cleverness. Do you think they find it?

 

[dreadnought]

Like I said, if you're on a science forum and expecting every explanation to fit into a tweet-sized post, you're in the wrong place.

You asked for explanations re: dolphin tail evolution, I gave you concise responses. Can't help you beyond that.

I suspect some people ramble on science forums.

 

[dreadnought]

No.

If evolution isn't seeking a perfect existence, then it is flawed, I believe. The Lord offers a perfect existence.

 

[SkyWriting]

I'm not suggesting pattern recognition is infallible. In fact, I've wondered if claims of seeing intelligent design in nature is an example of apophenia (i.e. a false positive).

Insofar as your claims of "functional coherence", I'm not aware of such a use in detecting design at least when it comes to human artifacts. Rather detection of design seems to rely on pattern recognition of signs of manufacture in contrast to naturally-occurring patterns. For example, take a look at this video on identification of stone tools: How To Tell a Rock from a Stone Tool

In another example, SETI bases their identification of intelligent alien signals based on searching for narrow-band signals whereby the only known source is artificially manufactured radio transmitters. This is in contrast to naturally occurring wide-band signals.

If you have specific examples of objects, signals, etc identified some other manner, then by all means present them.



In my reading of scientific journal papers over the years, I can't ever recall reading a paper on biology in which scientists made claims explicitly supporting atheism.



The existence of theists that are also scientists rebuts the second claim. Look up Francis Collins as a great example.



And how would you distinguish between something purely natural versus a supernatural designer interacting with the natural world?

In fact, let me give you an illustrative example. Consider the following hypothesis: Is God's intervention actively required for healthy plant growth?

Please describe how I could construct an experiment to test this hypothesis.



You're assuming that the "why" in the OP is asking an existential question. However, given the context of the question and its specificity to anatomical differences between dolphin and shark tails, I see no reason to infer that.



Tell you what then: why don't you ask God why they made the shark and dolphin tails the way they did and report back with the answer?



I've read a lot of ID literature in the past (mainly stuff by Dembski, Behe, Denton, et al). Does this book offer anything new compared to various ID published work in the past?

While I think the very concept of ID and design detection to be quite fascinating--one of the reasons I've read as much ID literature as I have--I find the attempts to bring forward a scientific approach to be thoroughly disappointing. The interjection of religious politics into ID certainly hasn't helped matters.



I don't know what "one level higher" is supposed to mean. If you're using some sort of measurement or classification here, you haven't defined it.



This isn't an example of recursion though. I suggest reading up on genetic algorithms. It might change your mind about what evolution is capable of.

Yawn. When asking "why" you don't get to guide the answers.

 

[SkyWriting]

If evolution isn't seeking a perfect existence, then it is flawed, I believe. The Lord offers a perfect existence.

Not in this life.

 

[SkyWriting]

I suspect some people ramble on science forums.

It's a requirement of always being wrong, to explain how you got to your soon to be replaced wisdom.

 

[dreadnought]

Not in this life.

Not if we don't repent.

 

[Anguspure]

Does this mean you've read Wagner's papers on evolution and development and you reject his conclusions? I ask because the bit from Wagner that you quoted might give the impression that he thinks there no explanation based on natural processes for the origin of evolutionary novelties is possible. I trust that you are aware that that would be quite a mistaken impression to give.

He is questioning the competence of NS to produce the observed phenomena, that is more than enough to rock the boat and we needn't try and put words in his mouth.

The only natural process that seems acceptable in the scientific community is natural selection and anybody that questions its efficacy, in the face of much evidence, is maligned and labelled as ID or worse "Creationist"!

https://evolutionnews.org/2018/01/darwinian-lysenkoism-in-america/

 

[Anguspure]

The obvious answer: one customarily opens a article with an introduction that provides context for its contents. The evolutionary history of life is the appropriate context for a discussion of biomimetics. Let's see what Luskin's answer is...

Okay, I'm trying not to engage in hyperbole here, but that's one of the dumbest things I've seen this week. It's jaw-droppingly ignorant of how scientists actually think about intelligent design.

Then why the continuos homage to evolution where it is not warranted?

"We discovered xyz is useful and abc does whatever, and one mustn't forget that almighty evolution dunnit."

 

[pitabread]

It's a requirement of always being wrong, to explain how you got to your soon to be replaced wisdom

Given how creationism's lack of explanatory power is on full display in this thread, I'm not sure what you are gloating about.

 

[pitabread]

I suspect some people ramble on science forums.

Just curious have you ever read any scientific literature? Maybe an article or two, journal paper, book, textbook?