Lizard

Bilboe wrote:
Likewise, I think ID in biology is a reasonable hypothesis. However, until we can answer How? or Who?, I don't think we should accept it as theory.

Me:
Hi, Bilbo. Another ARN refugee.

I agree with the spirit of your comment. However, until ID dares to propose a positive hypothesis, it can hardly be called one. Notice Dembski calls it an "inference," not a hypothesis. And he hasn't even presented a convincing case that ID is a reasonable inference, given the complete lack of evidence for it.

At ISCID, the purpose was originally to develop testable ID hypotheses. I haven't been following it closely, but I haven't seen one yet. And BTW, after ten years of heavy ID promotion, doesn't it seem odd to just now start looking for scientific validation?

I think Dembski has lost heart, though. He's proposed a couple of ideas at ISCID, only to have them shot down (politely) by people who know more about science than he does (Well, he's a mathematician and theologian, not a scientist -- give the guy a break!). His response is to sulk and whine that others are preventing him from putting his ideas forth.

Dembski is not much in evidence on his own forum. The last time I looked, other Brainstormers were discussing how "complexity science" (whatever that may be) could identify morality. I'm surprised Dembski hasn't posted, since one of his 14 "uses for ID" was exactly that. ID scientists would determine what was in harmony with the will of the Intelligent Designer and what wasn't, and then they would reform society and culture accordingly. Hence the name of the CRSC, "Center for the Renewal of Science and Culture."

I assume that evangelical Christian values would be found to be in accordance with the Designer and non-evangelical Christian values would be found not to be. I don't know why IDers or other right-wing religionists would need a pseudoscience to help them identify God's will. They seem to know what it is already and be more than willing to enforce it on the rest of us in whatever way possible. Witness John Ashcroft.

[ May 13, 2002: Message edited by: Lizard ]</p>

Bilboe

Scientiae:
"My point was that we perceive 'intelligence' self-referentially. The Carl Sagan movie attempted to make that point, when the characters in the end suspected a hoax in the whole affair."

Me: Yes, but an intelligently designed hoax. No one doubted that the signals were sent by an intelligent agent. They only questioned who it was.

Scientiae: "Mathematics as a descriptive language may be in fact a universal concept, but there isn't necessarily a universal system of conveying the same concepts. Why must primes be universal?"

Me: I think that's a good question. As I mentioned before, I don't know if anyone ever challenged Sagan's idea. If I knew more about mathematics, I could say something intelligent here. As it is, the less I say the better.

Scientiae: "I think it is illustrative that, in Scenario 1, you went straight from a description of the phenomenon (i.e. 'signals of primes') to a conclusion (i.e. 'intelligent design') without exploring or offering any alternative hypotheses. Are you claiming that they don't exist?"

Me: I imagine there might be others. But in Scenario 1 we have a number of facts (or details) confronting us: 1) We don't know how a non-intelligent cause could produce such a signal. 2) We have something that is specified and complex. When we know the cause of something that is specified and complex, it is always (or at least, almost always) an intelligent cause. 3) We have a radio coming from a single source, probably a planet. We know intelligent agents can produce this, since we do it ourselves. To conclude that it was an intelligent agent seems extremely reasonable to me. To deny it seems to border on the irrational.
But compare that with Scenario 2. We still don't know how a non-intelligent cause could have brought it about. But then, we don't know how an intelligent cause could have done so, either. We still have something that is specified and complex, but is that fact alone able to bare the burden of proof of intelligence? I think Dembski would say Yes. I waffle. I'd feel better just saying that the presence of specified complexity gives us a good reason to hypothesize intelligence. But until we found out how an intelligent agent could have caused the signal, I wouldn't feel comfortable concluding that it did so.
Scientiae: "I was merely trying to provide a few in order to illustrate how SETI might work differently than ID. Yes, you are right: SETI does scrupulously eliminate the possibility of terrestrial or natural phenomena... and well, they should. Has ID?" If SETI uses the same kind of reasoning that Sagan did (and Dembski) in order to eliminate non-intelligent causes, then I would say it's the same as ID. As I said previously, I think ID is in a Scenario 2 situation. We don't know how intelligent agents could have added design to organisms, nor how they did it over billions of years.

Scientiae: "I believe we do a great job of detecting human intelligence. Still, I think we have a poor understanding of that aspect of our intelligence that may be in fact mechanistic. We have an even worse understanding of other types of intelligence than our own, possibly so different that it may be imperceptible to us."

Me: It sounds like your suggesting that there are other things that could produce specified complexity, besides intelligence. And you might be right. From what I've read of Dembski, it sounds like he's offering an inductive argument: When we know the cause of SC, it is intelligence. Here is a case of SC. By induction, we can conclude that it is probably intelligently produced. But induction has weaknesses. We can never be certain that we have a large enough sample base for our inferences, being the most obvious. So I don't think we are in a position to rule out other causes of SC (or CSI, or whatever we should call it).

Scientiae: "Primes? Coming apparently from a star system? With planets? Sure, but then why not Elvis singing 'Hound Dog' from Tatooine? Because the example is biased and unrealistic. If only detecting extraterrestrial intelligences were so simple..."

Me: You've lost me here. But it sounds clever. OK if I laugh?

Principia

Go right ahead. Seems like all I can do these days...

SC

Bilboe

Liz: "I agree with the spirit of your comment. However, until ID dares to propose a positive hypothesis, it can hardly be called one. Notice Dembski calls it an "inference," not a hypothesis. And he hasn't even presented a convincing case that ID is a reasonable inference, given the complete lack of evidence for it."

Me: Hi Liz. Not such a bad place here, is it? I don't know what everyone complains about. I should probably be using another word besides "hypothesis." Only I don't know what it should be. How about distinguishing between "general hypothesis" and "specific hypothesis"? Going back to SETI and Scenario 2 (signal coming from everywhere), I think it would be reasonable to make a "general" hypothesis that it was intelligently designed. However, science ultimately wants specifics: How did the agents produce the signal? That's when we need "specific" hypotheses.
Likewise, in the case of ID, I think it is reasonable to make a general hypothesis that life and some of its parts were intelligently designed. But then science wants to know how: Give us specific hypotheses. Right now, I don't think IDists are ready to do that.
The rest of your post seemed to be mostly an attack on Dembski. I really don't want to get into that. I think Mike Gene is going about doing the kind of science that could strengthen ID. He's assuming that ID is true and seeing if it helps to understand living organisms better than not assuming it. Whether he has succeeded at all, I leave to the biologists to debate.

leonarde

Bilboe, You have at least one PM.
Cheers!

Lizard

Bilbo(e) wrote:
Is there something Mike Gene has published or described on his website that biologists can evaluate? I truly am not aware of exactly what Mike Gene is doing. I gather he is involved in biology in some way, but I've never heard him talk in specifics. If you know more, I'd like to hear about it.

Not sure what you and/or Mike mean by an ID assumption helping us understand living organisms better. If I am studying a bacterial flagellum, for instance, and I look at it assuming ID, I still see the same physical and chemical features in the structure as if I looked at it *not* assuming ID. No matter how I think the mechanism originated, it still has the same parts, and they still work based on the same chemistry, physics, etc.

If I assume ID about the bacterial flagellum, then what more can I say than, "I think an intelligent designer designed this?" I imagine analyzing flagella may be useful in the field of nanotechnology, in that someone may look at the bacterial flagellum's mechanisms and have an idea how to design something else. But in terms of life sciences, I don't see how an ID assumption either answers questions or leads to more interesting questions which stimulate more research.

On the other hand, if I assume the flagellum is a product of natural processes, i.e., evolution, I can observe how it is different or similar to other, related structures, which likely were precursors to it, which likely came later, etc. If I see the flagellum in context with its evolutionary forerunners, I can follow the development of more and more efficient solutions to a problem. If I look at that progression with an ID assumption, the only thing I can assume is that the intelligent designer works by trial and error, implementing and discarding each solution in turn in favor of another, very similar solution that's just a little more efficient in the environment. This is what we observe in evolutionary sequences, except that we don't assume every new species or mechanism was created outside the context of existing forms, in other words, poofed suddenly into existence.

It seems to me the physical evidence would be the same, no matter what your assumption. And if you apply rational methods to analyzing the evidence, you would logically infer that living organisms and mechanisms change over time in a clearly progressive fashion. Some species live for a long time, and other species evolve from them, but some become extinct.

The only kind of ID that makes any sense to me, given that evidence, is a Deistic notion that God created the laws of physics, chemistry, etc., and natural processes took it from there. And with that assumption, isn't evolution the obvious explanation?

Another possibility is that the ID is mostly hands-off, but every now and then designs something like the bacterial flagellum or the blood-clotting cascade, which I imagine is what the major ID proponents are suggesting. I think Dembski said if a plausible evolutionary scenario could be developed for the bacterial flagellum, then ID would be invalidated. But plausible evolutionary scenarios have been put forth. Naturally, there are many complex things in nature that are not yet fully understood, however, if you look at the news, important evolutionary evidence seems to be uncovered daily, and mysteries are being solved at an unprecedented rate.

Anyway, if there is some chance that we might understand the natural world better by adopting an ID assumption, I'm in favor. But so far, I don't understand how it would help. In fact, I see that an ID assumption creates more logical problems than it solves vis-a-vis the "intelligent designer," possible mechanisms it might employ, etc., etc.

And I really would like to know what Mike Gene is doing along these lines, if anyone knows.

Bilboe

Liz,

Here's a thread that Mike started last month at Brainstorms. Now maybe he succeeded in showing that the concept of IC is useful for doing research, maybe he didn't. It might be useful for debate, but how about starting another thread for that? If ID occurred, it seems to me that approaching research problems in biology from an ID perspective could be useful. If, as you say, it isn't useful, then I think this would weaken the ID hypothesis. If it is useful, I think it would strengthen it. Could it strengthen it enough to make it theory? Interesting question.

<a href="http://www.iscid.org/ubb/ultimatebb.php?ubb=get_topic;f=6;t=000017" target="_blank">http://www.iscid.org/ubb/ultimatebb.php?ubb=get_topic;f=6;t=000017</a>

hezekiah jones

Did I read that right? charlie d. made a comparison to YECs, caught shit for it, and then apologized to the YECs? Ha ha!

Bilboe

Yeah, they're pretty strict over there, Hezzy. You'd have to bite your toungue so many times, it might fall off.

Dr.GH

The broadcast of primes couldn't have too much content. First, it would seem that one
would need to broadcast the binary form. If the "intelligence" were sending the binary of
very large primes they could easily be mistaken for noise, so a repeating list of small
primes would be the best you could do. So, because no other intelligence could
recognize the signal as a signal unless they also knew what primes were, we are left with
a "message" that can only say "We exist, manipulate EMR, and use math that has
primes." The location of the signal from a point doesn't mean that the "intelligence" is at
that location, and so there is not much difference between the two proposed scenarios. If the intelligence broadcasts in such a way that the signal is recieved from all directions they either broadcast at nearly the start of the universe, or are both very advanced, and possibly paranoid (or are insuring that every possible listener can hear the "message" as soon as possible).

This and a buck fifty will by a cup of coffee in DC.

I should have added that as the signal (primes) is the same in both scenarios, I'll just assume that this would indicate an intelligence. Like the ID creationists, I needn't identify any particular intelligence. But, a possibility that appeals to me is that the future humans invent time travel and are broadcasting primes to mess with our primitive heads.

[ May 15, 2002: Message edited by: Dr.GH ]</p>