What is "design" and how to detect it

[ScottA]

Hi,

As it came up, once again, in another thread, I'ld like to invite the ID crowd here once more to define what they exactly mean by the term "design", how it can be objectively detected and what the null hypothesis is.

It is my understanding that they use the loaded version of the word "design". As in, "being done by an actual designer". Some conscious entity. Not some process.

For example, I could speak about the "design" of this snowflake:

View attachment 163066

But I wouldn't be talking about the type of "design" that the ID crowd talks about when they use the word "design".


How to objectively detect this "design" (being the type of "design" that ID'ers refer to)?

How to define it, in such a way that it can be differentiated from "non-design" or "natural design"?

So, let's settle this once and for all. (although i'm not getting my hopes up - but you never know, right? I'm an optimist I guess).

Regards

I think you are likely to get lots of would-be evidences for ID, but I think they are all arguable.

What is NOT arguable, is a personal intervention from that so-called designer. But if that is not what you are looking for...then you probably won't find it (Him).

 

[Jimmy D]

"Design" is involved when there is no clear reason "why" something occurred.

We don't know "why" so it must be designed?

I think you are likely to get lots of would-be evidences for ID, but I think they are all arguable.

Please post these evidences, no one else has managed any decent ones so far.

 

[DogmaHunter]

The evidence that points to a reason behind why the universe came into existence.

And which evidence is that and how does it point to this mysterious "reason"? And what is that "reason"? And why does that "reason" imply "design"?

The evidence would be life itself.

How? It's mere existance?

[
By "life" I mean everything you observe as true and everything I observe as true.

Que?

There has to be a reason we observe things as true and therefore there has to be a reason we are capable of observing in the first place.

I'm afraid you're going to have to make a lot more sense then that...

We did not give ourselves the ability to observe, so what is the purpose of our ability to observe? The purpose would be to find what is true.

This doesn't follow.

We can observe because we evolved to be better at survival. It kind of helps to be able to see, hear, feel and smell things.

 

[DogmaHunter]

How could I know? I'm a person not a brine shrimp. The purpose of a brine shrimp is to survive, I think humans are purposed to do more than just survive.

Why?

We're here to figure out what is true.

How do you know?

 

[DogmaHunter]

"Design" is involved when there is no clear reason "why" something occurred.

Argument from ignorance, right out the gates.

No one has explained "why" life would develop from non-life, so this implies design.

Argument from ignorance, confirmed.

I wonder how people can say such things and even be proud of it...

 

[The Barbarian]

Barbarian observes:
All of this went on long before the doctrine of "intelligent design" was invented. The creationist habit of claiming things discovered by science is a particularly unfortunate one, from the standpoint of reputation. So far, "intelligent design" can't do anything at all. You're just trying to borrow from real science.

The concept of intelligent design has been around longer than Darwin.

Nope. The Dover Trial thoroughly examined the claims of ID and found it was just the lastest disguise for YE creationism, which is no older than the 20th century.

Intelligent design's prediction of finding function for the majority of DNA was validated and evolutionists claim the majority of DNA is useless was debunked.

That's false too. When I was an undergraduate in the 1960s, scientists were already talking about the functions of non-coding DNA, long before creationists invented "intelligent design."

(argument that non-redundant English doesn't fit rules of grammar)

Barbarian chuckles:
Neither does "you ain't fooling nobody." But everyone understands what it means. You see, the huge redundancy in English makes such sentences intelligible, even if they don't fit the rules. This is, as I told you, why there is less information in your sentence than in a random string of symbols.

I think this is straying from the OP of "what is design".

It probably wasn't a good idea for you to bring up "information", then. As you see, it isn't very good for "intelligent design."

Specified complexity, not indistinct simplicity, are the requirements to infer design.

The problem is, no one can find "specified complexity", unless they've decided in advance that it is. Would you like to test that idea?

Barbarian observes:
Notice that Paley had to use a human-made artifact to make his point; if nature had produced it, no rational person would have inferred design:

In crossing a heath, suppose I pitched my foot against a stone, and were asked how the stone came to be there; I might possibly answer, that, for any thing I knew to the contrary, it had lain there for ever: nor would it perhaps be very easy to show the absurdity of this answer. But suppose I had found a watch upon the ground, and it should be inquired how the watch happened to be in that place; I should hardly think of the answer which I had before given, that, for any thing I knew, the watch might have always been there. Yet why should not this answer serve for the watch as well as for the stone? -William Paley

And therein lies the failure of ID.

His point is still valid.

His "point" is that natural objects are signs of God. But as you see, he had to use a human-made object to make the point, because natural objects don't show design.

I could substitute a sandcastle to illustrate it.

Another artifact. You see where this is leading you?

Had he known about the functional gears on the planthopper's legs he probably would have used those.

He might have, if he was unaware of other biological stops of less-evolved nature in arthropods. But since simpler versions exist, it seems rather foolish to argue that they couldn't.

We could even use a heretofore undiscovered alien object to detect design using specified complexity. SETI is looking at electromagnetic radiation to infer an intelligent agent at work.

Precisely because it would be an artifact made by another intelligent creature, not a natural thing.

 

[sfs]

Do you think God designed the first genes?

You mean in some way apart from natural processes? I see no reason to think so.

 

[sfs]

Citations please.

Every time you get sick with a virus (the flu or a cold, say), it's because your body has no ability to make antibodies that are a good match for that virus. Yet in a couple of weeks, your bloodstream will be filled with white blood cells that have DNA coding for antibodies exquisitely tuned to match that virus. That DNA didn't exist before you got sick. Where does the information in it come from?

 

[SkyWriting]

Every time you get sick with a virus (the flu or a cold, say), it's because your body has no ability to make antibodies that are a good match for that virus. Yet in a couple of weeks, your bloodstream will be filled with white blood cells that have DNA coding for antibodies exquisitely tuned to match that virus. That DNA didn't exist before you got sick. Where does the information in it come from?

Yes it did exist before you got sick. That's how it multiplied and grew to fight the infection. Or else you died.

Here: Support your claim with outside help. I haven't even read these. You support it, I'll say I was (dead) wrong.
http://www.historyofvaccines.org/content/articles/human-immune-system-and-infectious-disease
http://www.thebody.com/content/art2499.html

http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/0/22028517

 

[sfs]

Yes it did exist before you got sick. That's how it multiplied and grew to fight the infection. Or else you died.

Here: Support your claim with outside help. I haven't even read these. You support it, I'll say I was (dead) wrong.
http://www.historyofvaccines.org/content/articles/human-immune-system-and-infectious-disease
http://www.thebody.com/content/art2499.html

http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/0/22028517

No, you don't have antibodies that are well matched to all new pathogens. You have antibodies that are partial matches. The partial match prompts the B cells coding for those antibodies to proliferate and to mutate very rapidly; the process is call somatic hypermutation. The end result is a new set of B cells with DNA sequence that did not exist in your body prior to infection.

Even the range of antibodies that you can produce before infection wasn't programmed into your DNA when your were born. Instead, the relevant DNA is created by V(D)J recombination in maturing B and T cells.

 

[Loudmouth]

I agree, life didn't just happen by 'chance'. Also, isn't a photocopier designed?

The human genome has 6 billion bases in the diploid genome. All but about 50 or so of those bases in your genome will match your mother or father's genome. The probability of this occurring by chance are 4 to the 6 billionth power which is a really big number.

Therefore, according to your logic (or lack thereof), your genome is impossible. Of course, you have to ignore the natural process of genetic heritability, but when has ignoring facts ever stopped you before?

 

[Loudmouth]

If there's not a reason/purpose for our ability to observe, then why observe anything? Maybe, the purpose of why we observe things is to find the truth. At least that reason/purpose does make sense and has more explanatory power than: "why does there have to be a reason/purpose for our ability to observe?" This is just a question with no explanatory power, yet there's still a reason you ask it. So why did you ask? Was it to get to the truth?

The only explanation is that a species capable of making observations is one possible outcome of many within our universe. Murphy's Law and all . . .

 

[ChetSinger]

You mean in some way apart from natural processes? I see no reason to think so.

Then I'm curious. What part do you think God played in the creation of the earth, and the life on it?

 

[sfs]

Then I'm curious. What part do you think God played in the creation of the earth, and the life on it?

I believe he's responsible for all of it. I think that includes the first cell, the baby born yesterday with 50 new mutations, the malaria parasites that have killed two young children while I've been writing this response. Whether he is somehow more responsible for some parts than others is outside my ken.

 

[ChetSinger]

I believe he's responsible for all of it. I think that includes the first cell, the baby born yesterday with 50 new mutations, the malaria parasites that have killed two young children while I've been writing this response. Whether he is somehow more responsible for some parts than others is outside my ken.

OK. I'll agree with the first, but not the second or third as they're a result of sin.

 

[SkyWriting]

Even the range of antibodies that you can produce before infection wasn't programmed into your DNA when your were born. Instead, the relevant DNA is created by V(D)J recombination in maturing B and T cells.

I'm confident "the range of antibodies that you can produce"
was programmed into your DNA at your conception.

 

[SkyWriting]

I'ld like to invite the ID crowd here once more to define what they exactly mean by the term "design", how it can be objectively detected and what the null hypothesis is.

Intelligent creative Design is recognisable whenever an end product has properties that do not present themselves from the properties of the parts it is made of given the amount of time one could expect the combinations to be produced without success.

A classic example of a room full of monkeys typewriting a readable sentence is limited by the lifespan of the monkeys, the typewriters, and the air conditioning system keeping them comfortable.

But the biggest factor is their attention span. My wife is a teacher, and she will back me up on this.

 

[sfs]

I'm confident "the range of antibodies that you can produce"
was programmed into your DNA at your conception.

Your confidence is both justified and completely beside the point. We are born with the ability to produce lots of different antibodies, and the ability to fine-tune them when exposed to new challenges. What we aren't born with, however, is the information needed to produce all of those trillions of antibodies - and it is the information that we were talking about. It requires a certain number of bits of information to specify an antibody, bits that are stored in DNA. Those bits of information did not exist when you were born.

 

[SkyWriting]

Your confidence is both justified and completely beside the point.

Thank you and it was your point you were making. Inane or not.

"Even the range of antibodies that you can produce before infection wasn't programmed into your DNA when your were born."

 

[SkyWriting]

Argument from ignorance, confirmed.

I wonder how people can say such things and even be proud of it...

You have millions of cubic tons of life and non-living material to work with
as well of the attention of every living and dead scientist to work with.
And not one theory to test? Are you living proud?