Azathoth

No,what I mean,is if everyone bought their ideas,certainly not a 'what if ID is real' scenario.

Shouldn't their alternate theory be applicable to real world situations?How does ID predict bacterial resistance,for example.

The sole focus of ID doesn't seem to be in finding out how the natural world works,apart from the statement that living things sprang from the brow of some creator.I've had very little experience with ID,seeing as it's not even mentioned where I live,so I'm a bit confused about this.

I'm not saying this,as if it's actually real,I'm wondering about if the proponents of ID actually got their wish:that everyone thought they were right,regardless of the truth of the matter.

I get the feeling,from watching some of the interesting tricks they use,such as deceptive quote mining,assertions without evidence....etc,that they don't care about anything except getting people to think the way they do,regardless of whether that way of thinking actually leads to progress.



Edited for clarity.Though that's often rare with some of my writing

Jobar

In a world where ID was true, and evolution untrue, then there would be no bacteria or virii adapting to our antibiotics- unless, of course, God thought it was amusing to create new resistant strains... which, given his personality in the old testament, he might.

Doubting Didymus

Excellent point! (of course, for all the adapting the do, viruses and bacteria never change out of their "kind", in this case the "little" kind.)

DNAunion

DNAunion: More than one person has presented this false dichotomy: that either evolution is true, or ID is true, but not both.

Once again, this is not in line with what IDists say. For example, here are some quotes from Behe. Actually, this is a post I haven't finalize yet - it's another in the "Miller misrepresented Behe" series" :-)

DNAunion: Compound strawman.

First, the ID claim is not that each and every novelty of life was designed by an intelligence. That’s nothing more than an exaggerated distortion of an opponent’s position.

Want support? Okay. But we have to keep in mind something Behe states elsewhere in his book. A person cannot be absolutely positive that something was not designed. Even things one may consider to be utterly meaningless, completely random, or otherwise requiring no intelligence at all to produce, could have been designed (such as some abstract art, or a homocide staged to look like an accident, etc.). Behe, knowing this, refrains from going so far as to say that anything was not designed: in such instances he just says that the case for design is weak.

DNAunion: You want more? Okay. It’s not like Behe says this kind of thing only once in his book.

DNAunion: What!?!?!?!? If we were to believe Miller, we would think that Behe would have never made such a statement. Yet it was in there, all the time, from the very beginning.

You want another quote? Sure.

DNAunion: And here’s another series of statements made by Behe on back-to-back pages, just for good measure. Keep in mind again that Behe knows that one cannot be absolutely sure that something wasn't designed.

DNAunion: And just what are those two systems?

DNAunion: I would like to point out that I believe a couple statements Behe made in that last quote are poorly worded. First, I think he meant something more along the lines of, “So although hemoglobin can be [loosely] thought of as a system with interacting parts…”. Why do I believe that? Because it appears to me that if he held that hemoglobin actually was a system of interacting parts that he would not have qualified his statement: Behe would have simply said, “So although hemoglobin is a system with interacting parts…” I think he took steps to qualify it, but only half as much as he meant to.

Second, Behe’s choice of the word “intriguing” in the last sentence is surely not the best: it’s not like he’s seriously proposing that there is a pretty good chance that “the man in the moon” was intelligently designed.

Regardless of the two instances of sloppiness, the main point still stands: Behe is giving us another biochemical “system” that he does not claim was designed.

DNAunion: Typing all of this stuff that Miller claims doesn’t exist is starting to hurt, so I will use ellipses to shorten this long quote up some (the pay off comes at the end anyway).

DNAunion: Hardly sounds like Behe is saying it’s intelligent design all the way. Same goes for this next quote (but keep in mind Behe’s continual mention of the fact that a person cannot absolutely rule out design: anything could have been designed, no matter how little evidence of design it displays).

DNAunion: Okay, all those quotes alone demolish Miller’s nonsense. And that was just point 1!

By the way, isn’t it really odd that someone who holds a Ph.D. in biology, and is a professor of biology at a respectable university, and claims to know Behe’s position well enough to go about “refuting” it professionally, would have overlooked all those above statements Behe made? Yep, something’s fishy. And what about all the other misrepresentations of Behe’s position that Miller uses as illegitimate weapons (such as his supposed, but easily countered, refutation of Behe on the cilium)? Why, it’s almost as if Miller is being dishonest; intentionally misrepresenting his opponent, repeatedly, for his own gain (we will see later in this post that Miller doesn’t like Behe’s design position because it goes against Miller’s religious beliefs).

Onto the next problem with Miller’s statements.

Second, ID doesn’t claim that the designing or instantiation of the design must violate natural laws. Let’s look at a watch of the kind Paley used in his design argument more than a century ago. Behe stated that such a watch contains at its core an irreducibly complex system. Therefore – and as we all know anyway, from good old common sense - a watch will not form from scratch by the action of only natural laws, left to themselves. Yet watches do exist, and they are clearly products of intelligent design. So does intelligent design theory claim that it must be God that makes all of our watches? Of course not. We non-supernatural humans make them, and at no time during their manufacture is any law of nature violated. Intelligence – including human-like intelligence - directing a process can achieve things quickly and easily that spontaneous natural processes either can’t or won’t.

Okay, so in Miller’s one statement we have two clear misrepresentations of intelligent design (on top of many others I have pointed out elsewhere). So do we have any idea what might motivate Ken Miller to use underhanded tactics in an attempt to shoot down ID, instead of sticking to sound science and facts? Yes, we do. ID doesn’t fit his religious ideas.

DNAunion: Ah yes, now we all understand.

In fact, keeping Miller’s religious distaste for Behe and intelligent design in mind, let’s take another look at the original Miller statement, keeping an eye out for his religious bias.

DNAunion: Yes, there is a pretty strong hint of religious “anger” mixed in there. Miller is upset with IDists because he feels they have God being an active participant in nature, intervening at various points because of the inadequacy of nature; and this differs from Miller’s religious belief. From what I gather from his two statements here, apparently Miller has a hands-off view of God, believing that He setup the laws of nature such that they themselves would be capable of achieving it all: producing life from non-life as well as producing and all its subsequent novelties. Miller apparently feels that IDists “insult” his God by claiming He couldn’t get it right at the beginning. And then Miller let’s his religious distaste get the better of him; since ID doesn’t agree with his personal religious beliefs, he feels justified in doing whatever he can – no matter how disingenuous, dishonest, deceitful, or devious – to stomp out Behe and ID for good.


DNAunion: Unless, of course, ... you don't really know Behe's position.

monkenstick

DNAunion, are you in any way related to behe?

DNAunion

DNAunion: Well, we are both middle aged men, with a big gut and a balding head. :-)

But other than that, no, not at all. I just think he is getting a bum deal with all the misrepresentations/straw men people use to "Refute" him. As I said, I don't bother with objections that I can't find a flaw in quickly.

Doubting Didymus

Was Jobar even talking about behe? I thought he was commenting on my and azathoths conversation.

AtlanticCitySlave

Intelligent design theory is simply that there are complex biological structures that cannot be explained by evolution (i.e. they couldn't have arisen), and thus they require an intelligent designer, which could be, technically, an alien or some other being that can in someway create the tiny things we see in biology class.

I don't see how this isn't a theory. I think what may be the case is everyone is assuming that a theory cannot point to an unexplained or unprovable (as yet) being, but that is exactly what the ID people argue as being illogical (they often hold that this isn't proven by science itself). Behe makes this argumet (as do some of the others).

Also, it seems to me they very often focus on the EFFECTS of intelligent theory (what it would be like if it were true), and in this way I don't think they're not being scientific. After all, many scientific theories are based on inferences of evidence, not necessarily being able to see the cause or what not. For example, "strings" in string theory cannot be seen, but it would be odd to say string theory isn't a theory. The theory was developed based on inferences.

I personally don't see the overall problem with calling it a theory. It is certainly falsifiable (one of the few almost agreed upon tests of a scientific theory). If it were to be found (by all the smart biologists out there) that certain structures aren't irreducibly complex or that there's no problem if they were that way, then simplicity and the evidence would justify us in discarding the intelligent design theory. Of course, this is exactly what seems to be argued (there is no convincing evidence and simplicity and background knowledge point to a naturalistic explanation). But, the ID people obviously don't think it's been argued well enough.

I do agree (with some other posters) that the problem mainly comes down to how one defines theory. What is and is not a theory is still hard to pin down. What is and is not "scientific" is also still hard to pin down. But, I think in the end, intelligent design theory is not going to fall because it doesn't classify under some definition of "theory", it's going to fall because, even under their own use of "theory", it's false.

But, that's just my two cents...Bye.

HRG

No, that's the argument in favor of the ID hypothesis/theory. The theory itself just says "An intelligent designer did it".
Sure, but ID theory is based on the (alleged) absence of evidence for a non-intelligent origin.

Yes, that's what Behe would like us to think, but it confuses the refutation of an argument for ID with the refutation of ID itself. How would a recognition that X could have arisen without ID amount to a refutation of "An intelligent designer did X" ?

Regards,
HRG.

Jobar

DNAUnion, Didymus is quite correct. I was not trying to claim that any specific IDist does, or does not, allow that evolutionary mechanisms exist; only that *if evolution is denied* then the world would of necessity appear quite different. While I think that Behe is thoroughly mistaken, I do not try to make him out to be a YEC. (I *would* like to hear him speak in depth concerning the descent of man, though. )

I have to agree with pz on ID not being a theory. The progression goes idea => hypothesis => theory => law; an idea which is expanded and seems like a real possibility becomes a hypothesis. To become a theory, evidence in favor of the hypothesis must be gathered and shown, and to my knowledge no such supporting evidence exists for ID, and quite a lot of evidence weighs against it. If we talk about an ID 'theory' we give it too much credit. A theory should offer coherent and logical explanations for observed phenomena; it should also allow testable predictions to be made. AFAIK there's nothing like this for ID.