I'll admit, my knowledge of the filter extends primarily from critiques of it. Regardless, my main objection to it is not the process of the filter, but the purpose of it. At its core it is designed (har har) to put a label on unexplained phenomena as being designed. I think there is great confusion in this country between math and science. Dembski supplies a robust detailed statistical model for isolating "design", but that it is a mathematical in nature doesn't make it science. Furthermore, the sole purpose of this model to identify the things which science does not yet have a clear explanation of and stamp it "design". I don't care how complex the model is, this is at best very lazy science. If the natural process responsible for a "design" conclusion becomes available... well, then that thing really wasn't evidence, but everything else still is! This provides a mechanism for moving the goal posts and dresses it as science. Dembski's specific role in the "Wedge" madness seriously undermines his work in this area, frankly. "Wedge" is admittedly a political, not a scientific, movement and Dembski's role in that movement puts an ugly "filter" with which to view his own work.
mia, you should let Dembski defend it first before dismissing it. i assure you it is NOT what you describe it as. it is an attempt to recognize that which is designed from that which is not. it dilineates from highly improbable (which is EVERY event in reality) that which is impossible apart from design. it is actually very rigorous. you seem to bring very serious biases to this discussion which make it near impossible to allow you to see this for what it is. now, i realize how unfair this statement sounds, but let's face it, you have not even read Dembski's own work on the subject but are dismissing it based on strawman arguments. that reveals an approach that is very unfair at least, to downright dishonest at worst (probably somewhere between the two. as for the goal posts moving...this too is false. you will see that even things that you may imagine would have passed the filter before we understood how they worked, would NOT in fact pass the filter. which is one reason i am so impressed with it. as for Dembski's role in the wedge, i understand what you are saying, but i would still say that his arguments stand on their own. now, to be sure, one thing that Johnson, Dembski, Wells, Behe and others are tryring to guard against is an a priori anti-design stance in science. i think their arguments are legitimate and should be considered. if science rejects something on philosophical grounds that nonetheless may be the case, then it suffers from cutting of its nose to spite its face. meaning, where science rejects design out of hand, it also limits its ability to find truth when truth does indeed involve design.
GT, i really want to honor you as i say this, but you continue to ignore my responses to you and you simultaneously use ad hominem. i have granted multiple times that the leading proponents of ID are in fact primarily Christians or those who believe in a Judeo-Christian concept of God. yet ID as a theory does not depend upon God or even establish God. all ID is able to do is establish that there is in fact a designer. so any references to the Wedge document etc, while fascinating (i have read the book when it came out years ago), have no bearing on the independent theory of ID. in order for you to successfully make the argument you are trying to make you would need to show that ID theory is inseperable from the notion of God. unfortunately, this would be an impossible task for you to accomplish because all the theory claims to show is that design is necessary for many of the systems we seen in nature. once again, it is important for you to understand logically that showing that the ID proponents believe in God or that they believe the designer is in fact God does nothing to make your point logically at all. it only shows that they believe in God and that God is the designer, which is not a secret and never has been. i hope this makes sense because you keep making the same argument over and over but missing my rebuttal of it. your argument, so that you know i understand it, can roughly be represented as this: 1. ID is really just about proving God exists 2. this can be proven by the fact that most of the ID proponents actually believe in God and even make statements to that effect publically and privately. 3. any theory that is put forth by people who believe in God and believe nature to be designed by God is actually inseparable from creationism and should not be considered legitimate. 4. Therefore ID is ineperable from creationism and should be dismissed as non-science. let me know if this represents your argument fairly. if not, by all means update it and let's see if it can syllogistically shown to be coherent logically. my suggestion to you is that it can not.
summer, i have already answered your question once, but admittedly i am philosophically and theologically trained. (what is your training by the way? you have not told us in another thread wherein you were asked). at any rate, here is Behe answering your question....it is a bit long and this is a 13 year old document, but it is interesting nonetheless. In reply to:
Mop, my bias is against parading a political agenda as science. If I am not level towards ID it is because of how it is routinely used as a tool of Wedge. Cdesign proponentsists should be insulting to us all. It has routinely been used as a remarkably disingenuous tool inject the creation discussion into where it clearly does not belong. This is not a bias, it is a declaration by Wedge, and you can't pretend like that is not on the table, mop, you just can't. If ID is a valid theory it is not the victim of the "orthodoxy", but the distinctly non-scientific individuals who wave it as their banner. Even as you describe the rigorous process of the Filter, you must recognize it is not science but the application of a mathematical construct to attach meaning to what is not defined. This very action is anathema to the pursuit of science on its face. This is not because I don't like the conclusion (ultimately I agree with the conclusion) but it is not science, its math... whats more it is math in service of inserting faith into the classroom under the robes of guise of science. Finally, I find your notion that the "orthodoxy" is invested in protecting evolution just wrongheaded. Do you have any idea how much money would be made by the scientists, and the university which tenures them, who were able to 'debunk' evolution? Any tenured scientist would have no fear of reprisals anyway and any non-tenured scientist would assure himself tenure somewhere if he could meaningfully prove it. These are men who are singularly iconoclastic and spend their whole careers desperately trying to change the paradigm and thusly to be enshrined. The concept that any prof or even any university would try to uphold the status quo is asinine on its face. The reason why ID meets such resistance is not because the status quo resists it, but because it is (at least at this point) bad science. The reason why it is denounced so openly and loudly is because of the Wedge's crusade to keep ID in front of the cameras.
"Irreducible complexity" and bacterial flagellum, again? NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
MOP, you also make the same point time and again. You say that while most believers in Intelligent Design are Christian, that doesn't mean the 'theory' necessarily requires that God be the Intelligent Designer. In fact, as the Wedge Document explicitedly shows, Intelligent Design isn't meant to be a scientific theory. The proponents of ID mean it to be a Trojan horse for insinuating their version of conservative Christian theology into society, education, and science. ID is not about science. ID is about theology.
GT...you are conflating two issues....the fact that ID theory can be used by the Wedge goals is obvious. of course something that finally shows that design is in fact tenable would be useful to Christians wanting to allow for God back in the discussion. once again however, this is separate from the theory of ID itself. you are just wrong GT....no matter how many times you utilize the same fallacious logic, it gets no more substantial. in fact, it is a bit surprising that you continue to beat your head up against a logically false argument as if it will somehow become logical by its mere repetition. again, i only make the same point again and again because you continue to not let it inform your point. if my point is somehow illogical show me. i am inviting you to disprove it. instead you continue to repeat something that i have shown to be illogical.
here is an elementary thumbnail sketch introduction to the explanatory filter from 1996 by Dembski himself: In reply to:
So Dembski's "Explanatory Filter" is essentially boiled down to one argument... every thing in the universe is the result of one of three things (A) natural law, (B) chance, or (C) design. If not A and if not B, then C. To apply this filter to any observation requires that the observer understand all natural laws of the universe. If natural law is not completely understood, then A can never be ruled out. If A can't be ruled out, then C can not safely be inferred. The alternative is to risk what I spoke of before... inferring C based off of incomplete understanding of A, in which the conclusion must be doubted. We do not profess to understand fully even the most basic natural laws, therefor Deisgn can never be inferred by this model This is a deeply flawed argument on its face.
MOP, Of course we are arguing more than one issue. MIA is arguing that ID is bad science, I'm arguing that ID being bad science is secondary - the more important issue is the motives of the individuals and organizations pushing this intellectual trash. They aren't interested in scioence. Most of them don't do science. ID isn't science, it's a means to accomplish a social agenda. Aren't you concerned that much of the money behind the Discovery Institute, and thus behind ID, comes from Howard Ahmannson? Do you think Ahmannson is concerned about whether the explanatory filter is scientifically sound?
mia, i suppose you could put it that way (your initial summation) but then you slip into false conclusions. the filter has very specific parameters to measure by which something is or is not designed based upon its information content measured in bits of information. therefore, if something passes through it as "design" but is shown to in fact NOT be design, the filter has failed and is proven false altogether. so far, this has not happened. could it happen? sure.....but he introduced the filter in 1996 and this has not yet happened. that says something. GT, you are continuing to use variations on ad hominem and it is fallacious. i am too tired of trying to explain this fallacy to you to try again here. i suppose you can continue thinking you are correct but i assure you that your argument fails one of the most basic tenets of logic.
GT, to be clear, my argument is not just that it is bad science, it is that it is NOT science. It is counter to the very nature of science in fact. It presumes a conclusion that can not be falsified. The "Explanatory Filter" by ruling out natural law in design says explicitly if you can test it, then it isn't design. Meaning that anything which may be attributed to design must first and foremost not be testable. If it becomes testable later, then the goal posts get moved and it is excluded from the list of "designed" things. This is not science. In my mind politics should not have a say in the matter of including OR excluding ID from the classroom. The arbiter should be solely one criteria... is it science? By all accounts it appears not to be, so that should be the end of the conversation. Getting into the nastiness of Wedge is a trap, GT WT, it lets The Wedge choose where that battle will be fought... in the realm of politics. They want the fight there because of one reason, because ID on its own lacks any credibility and is not robust enough withstand rigorous scrutiny. So they are trying to make the argument that the problem is its connection to religion, which is a tangential point at best... but as long as they can keep the argument there, then this is a philosophical distinction not a scientific one... and they have a shot at winning that. It is a trap, GT WT, don't fall into it.
mia, does that mean that in 13 years since these two papers i posted we haven't made any progress on the many systems that ID lists as irreducibly complex? at least to the point that ID is shown to be not true? serious question.
great point satatalyzer...now if i could just get GT to agree. bacterial flagellum has not been shown to have evolved in any meaningful way as far as i am aware.
what intermediate forms? Dembski must be delusional (entirely possible, but knowing him personally i don't think so): more on the flagellum
Dembski's response is essentially saying if you remove any part of the flagella then it can not function as a means of transportation, and is therefor irreducibly complex. This is true only if you presume that the flagella evolved specifically and exclusively to be a form of transportation. If however intermediate forms had separate intermediate purposes, the argument no longer holds water. We return to the mouse trap. The mouse trap has a spring, a hammer, a plate, a trigger and the platform. If anyone of these things were removed, then the mousetrap would not function therefor the mousetrap is irreducibly complex... as a mousetrap. That said, a mousetrap without a trigger and plate, may not be useful as a mousetrap, but it can serve other purposes (Ken Miller's tie clip) and that those other purposes are how you get from point A to point B. ID presumes that morphological features can only have ever been useful for the one task they serve now. In that light, the complexity of the flagella is staggering. When you consider that the flagella did not appear suddenly as is, but rather evolved its subparts over time and for different purposes, its evolutionary narrative becomes less mystifying.
The TTSS (Type III Secretion Systems) mentioned in your first article of dembski's response. It is a bacterial form almost identical in composition to the flagella, but missing a few parts... and it still serves a purpose. Dembski spends the most of his article saying why he thinks the intermediary form is no big deal.
Your entire second link is about TTSS. The original argument is the flagella doesn't happen in steps, because it is irreducibly complex. The individual parts of the flagella serve no purpose divorced from the others, therefor all of the parts must of been "designed" at the same time. Then along comes TTSS, which has almost all of the same parts of the flagella but they serve a separate purpose. The original argument, that the parts serve no purpose when separated, is refuted because they demonstrably do. You'll notice in the second article Dembski has changed the argument. He is not defending irreducible complexity, rather he is attacking common decent... This is 100% true in the second article and mostly true in the first, as well.
