GunnerJ

Of course not. Ed's big strategy is to make hundreds of unevidenced, bullshit assertions, and then, when people call his bullshit for what it is, he "proves" it by saying that no one has disproved it, and therefore it must be true.

Oolon Colluphid

Hey Rim, do I get the impression you guys don't get along?

Oolon

Automaton

Specified complexity is complexity that was specified, therefore, if life contains specified complexity, life was designed. It's not an argument, it's merely stating "life was designed therefore life was designed".

I'm getting sick of this Ed fellow. Where are the sophisticated (*snicker*) creationist debaters? All we're getting lately are these infuriating morons who "answer" refutations of their lies with more, vaguely related, lies.

theyeti

Thanks to Bill Dembski's penchant for obfuscation, that's what most people tend to think. However, he defines CSI (which is synonomous with SC) as something whose likelihood of comming about is extremely improbable. He is using the word "complexity" the way most of us would use "improbability", which is what causes so much confusion. Thus, SC can't be generated by natural means by defintion. This works great for Dembski, because his critics will look for ways that CSI can be generated in nature, and then by showing that it wasn't improbable at all, Dembski will claim that it wasn't really CSI to begin with. Therefore, it's impossible to refute the CSI argument. However, to claim that CSI exists in nature is to beg the question. There's no particular reason to believe that CSI exists, and certainly nothing Dembski has done would make us think so.

theyeti

P.S. I use the term "functional complexity" myself in regards to creationist "information can't increase" arguments. There are lots of ways that increased functional complexity can evolve. I would avoid the term "specified complexity", because it can't evolve by definition, and will only serve to confuse people.

Oolon Colluphid

I’ve deliberately avoided Dembskian stuff, it's just too boring, or so it seems. I guess I'll have to bite the bullet here.

I just don't follow this. Calling something 'too improbable' is too intangible. I'd thought Dawkins had nailed all that ages ago, and the next paragraph or two of CMI explains why: not leaping up the cliff-face, but walking up the grassy slope behind it. Is Complex Thing X too improbable to have come about in a single step? Of course. Could it have come about in a long long series of small (ie inherently not all that improbable) steps from something slightly different, each step building on the previous? Probably. If not, why not? Can it not be broken down step by step? If that is the reason, how is Dumbski saying anything different from alleged irreducible complexity?

So what is the use of his SC idea if examples cannot be cited? If it's just that we've not yet figured out how this complexity arose, the best he's got a specified complexity of the gaps.

Dumbski: This thing has SC.
Dawkins: Here's why it doesn't.
Dumbski: Well it wasn't SC then.

Am I missing something? Is it really that simple -- and stupid?

Oolon

[ March 12, 2002: Message edited by: Oolon Colluphid ]</p>

theyeti

Dembski has what he calls his "universal probability bound". Anything with a probability of ocurring that's less than 1 in 10^150 is said have specified complexity, and thus not be able to be formed by natural processes. The only thing that confuses me is that lots of things with such a low probability happen all the time; for instance, the exact arrangement of molecules in a star at a give time is extremely improbable. But of course some arrangement is going to occur. This is where, I think, the specification comes in -- supposedly, the event being specified in advance is what's unlikely. Afterall, if you had a particular arrangement of atoms in a star in mind, the chances of finding it are astronomically low (no pun intended). But exactly how this applies to living things is unclear to me. The vertebrate eye, if specified in advance, may be highly unlikely. But the evolution of some sort of light detection ability is a different story all together. I think this is (but one of many) serious flaws in his argument.

Guess what? It isn't. In No Free Lunch, Dembski completely ties his argument to the fate of IC. He has to do this because IC (which he merely assumes as being a correct argument) is the only way to know how something came about, and thus one can do a probability calculation. Even with IC, we have the same damn problem as with SC. You can't tell if it's defined as a structural property of something regardless of its origin, or if it's defined in terms of its origin -- something that couldn't have come about gradually. Dembski uses IC so that, by definition, it could only have come about in a single step. Thus, he's really begging the question when he claims that the flagellum is IC. Personally, the weakness of the IC argument is enough to lay Dembski to rest, IMO.

Yep, that's exactly it. This is probably why he had to tie it in with the IC argument. SC can only be calculated with respect to a given chance hypothesis, but that doesn't mean that there aren't other hypotheses. Detecting CSI would require the rejection of all possible chance hypotheses, even those that we haven't yet thought of. So there's really no way to positively detect CSI, it's just leftover when we've decided that something couldn't form through natural processes. But since there are chance hypotheses that are unknown, the CSI argument boils down to an argument from ingorance.

I'm afraid so. If you want to see an example where he does exactly that, see <a href="http://www.arn.org/ubb/Forum1/HTML/001828.html" target="_blank">this</a> ARN thread. In NFL, Dembski brings up the example of T-urf13, a functional gene that formed de novo from a random DNA sequence. He gives us all sorts of reasons why it doesn't have CSI; in other words, reasons why its formation wasn't improbable. Okay, fine, but same reasons he gives for T-urf13 apply to all genes, and there isn't any reason to assume that the formation of any gene is improbable. He pretty well screwed himself there. This is why his CSI argument is now attached at the hip to the IC argument. As IC goes, so goes Dembski.

theyeti

[ March 12, 2002: Message edited by: theyeti ]</p>

Ed

Not necessarily. The DNA strand in one human may have had many more versions than one human today. Some of those may be what we call junk DNA today.

Quote:

Ed: Not prissy, just trying to keep things at a higher level. From chambers between the Crust and the Mohorovicic Discontinuity. These chambers would collapse after the water was released thru the ridges that are found on the ocean floors. lp: Ed shows total ignorance of geology. Those ridges are where new oceanic crust is formed. And those big water chambers he talks about would have been very unstable.

That is their present function but it may have been different in the past. I know they would be unstable that is their purpose.

Quote:

lp: Ed ought to go over to Evolution/Creation and write a point-by-point rebuttal to the Flood-Geology criticisms. Ed: I am afraid I dont have time. lp: Ed can cry us all a big river about how he has lots of time to post here but not much time to analyze Flood-Geology criticisms. Could it be that he does not want to see counterevidence?

I prefer discussing with actual people not websites.

Quote:

lp: Like how am I supposed to have failed? Ed: None of my arguments for the existence of God have been refuted. lp: 1. What would Ed consider a refutation?

If strong evidence was found that the universe is eternal. That would make the existence of God unneccesary.

Quote:

lp: 2. Where are Ed's demonstrations of the nonexistence of all other possible deities?

I didnt demonstrate their non-existence but I did demonstrate how they are not likely to be the cause of the universe.

Quote:

lp: However, Ed's jumping from position to position is very evasive and self-contradictory. One wonders if he'd claim that Jesus Christ was a myth if that would help him win an argument. Ed: How God created the universe is not essential to the Christian faith but of course the existence of Christ IS essential. So a christian cannot deny that and still remain a christian. lp: Ed tries to have it both ways: treat the Bible as literal history and deny that he does that.

No, but certain parts of the bible are required to be understood as literal history in order to understand salvation while others are not such as Genesis 1.

Quote:

lp: ... If Heaven is a sin-free realm, then that demonstrates that such a realm is feasible. Ed: Such a realm is of course feasible but God considers moral free choice extremely important for the present world. lp: Then is Heaven worth going to? This sort of thing seems like whipping oneself and then moaning and groaning about how painful it was to be whipped.

Huh? I dont understand.

[b] But one God's primary purposes for creating humans is for them to have free will. It would be like sabotaging the very purpose of one of your computer programs.

Ed

While junk DNA may not have a purpose at present, it may have had a purpose in the past in another environment.

RufusAtticus

Yes and junk DNA might not have existed until 1954 when we started looking for it. Is there any point to your supposin'?

Do you actually have a testable hypothesis for a past function for junk DNA? Otherwise, your comment is worthless.

-RvFvS

Oolon Colluphid

Hi again Ed. I see you've been back. Now about those fossils...

Oolon the getting-less-patient