Interesting report on debate between ID/Evolution

A lot of this discussion goes on because we state things imprecisely.

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Mop:

Is there anything inconsistent with the "science" of ID that the designer(s) designed a primordial soup in just the perfect recipe and with knowledge of the temperature, atmosphere, etc., so that eventually from the soup without any other intervention would rise primitive forms of life which would eventually over 3-4 billion years evolve into various species including humans?

 

no SD...in fact a few ID scientists believe something close to that. the primary argument is that design is necessary to get what we have today and that no mechanism currently suggested begins to explain the specified complexity we see.

this may be a fair analogy:

an evolutionist looks at the code behind a computer program and thinks they have found the explanation for the program. in one sense, they may have, but it is a secondary explanation which still leaves the explanation for how that code works and where it came from. ID is suggesting that the world needs a computer and a programmer to explain the code and the program.

 

Mop
Re your analogy: genetic algorithms. Not designed, highly optimized.

 

Mia:

Your posts have convinced me that you are very knowledgeable in the subject matter, very good at explaining the issues to those like me who know very little about the subject, and extremely patient. I applaud you for all such charateristics.

Mop:

So some ID scientists agree that man could have evolved from the primordial soup without any subsequent intervention, but it took an omniscient (dare I say God-like creature) to mix the soup with just the right ingredients?

How do ID scientists intend to test this hypothesis? How could such a theory possibly be proven false? Could not the answer to any observed anomaly in the evolution of life on earth simply be that the designer designed the anomaly into her design?

Do the ID scientists have a hypothesis as to how this god-like omniscient creature was designed?

Does ID science establish that there is more than one god-like creature because doesn’t the irreducible complexity theory require that the “designer” must have been designed?

 

The un-designed designer seems more plausible than infinite regress.

 

Yet, the designer must be more complex than the complexity hurdle surpassing things it designed. So, the designer must be designed, according to ID. Thus infinite regress, reducto absurdum.

 

No, the only way to avoid infinite regress is with an un-designed designer. The infinite regress belongs to the atheist, not the believer.

 

Coel
Agreed on your last point. What I meant was, if at its core ID is about a complexity test, then the designer of items that are "too complex to not be designed" must itself be too complext to not be designed, etc, etc.. That is, this is an implication of ID, not of faith.

 

both face infinite regress unless something is put forth which stops the regress. for someone who believes in a designer they could invoke the undesigned designer. someone who doesn't believe in a creator has the same problem, but no answer. steady-state theory had its day in court and, at least for now, appears to have lost. so we have a universe with a "beginning" but no explanation for why, how, or who? (if who is even the right question).

 

Exactly Mop, which is why ID “scientists” are really theologians.

It simply does not work to base a theory on the hypothesis that complicated things must have been designed, but then have a caveat that in some cases the complicated thing came into existence without design.

If you agree that God or some other designer(s) designed the soup, then there is nothing for scientists to disprove. How could a scientist disprove that the soup was created by God?

 

good points SD only i am talking about the "prior" that both scientific theories don't choose to deal with. ID COULD invoke the undesigned designer, but choose not to and Evolution could try to invoke the steady state theory (which is all but dead currently) or the multiverse theory which is just another way of invoking God but calling it something else. in other words, neither theory can avoid infinite regress if challenged to explain what was prior so it is no good accusing one of it if you don't also accuse the other. this is a double-edged sword that cuts both ways.

 

So Lemme Now moved to the West mall and closing in on 200 postss I will guess without reading the last 50 circular argument posts. Mop still hasn't listed a single peice of scientific research data that can be used as scientific evidence supporting the religiously founded theory of ID?

I will read through the last 50 posts though in a few minutes to confirm there was noc change from the first 150 posts.

ID remains a religious theory that assumes that ANYTHING unexplainable means that "has to be" an intelligent designer ( the White Swedish looking lightly beaded clean dut designer, not the swarthy darker skinned bearded designer). Only a religiously based theoriy can explain the unexplainable- that is the entire premise of ID, nothing more nothing less. That devoid of any other explanation this is the one and only explanation..(hold up your Bible here!)

 

In reply to:

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As to infinite regression... this is a strawman. Evolution is a theory specifically about speciation by natural selection, that is the sole scope of the theory. It presumes that life already exists before the mechanisms can be applied. The mechanism by which life came into existence (designer, or otherwise) is not a part of the theory. Observation into that phenomena would represent an entirely different discipline. That said, until a method of observation (direct or indirect) can be described, the pursuit would not be science.

It has been offered that a theory on the origin of species which does not include the origin of life is unsatisfying. While I can appreciate that, it does not undermine the theory anymore than failing to understand smelting or metallurgy undermines the understanding of the workings of an internal combustion engine. Knowledge of metallurgy would enhance the understanding, but it is not required to define the principals.

 

summer, i concede that i have not been putting forth evidence (i linked to papers put forth by those who do that) as i am coming at this as a philosopher not a scientist. i readily admit that.

having said that....of all the patently false things you have said....this one takes the cake:

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SDhorn, in case I've misrepresented myself... I'm a technology guy, not a science guy, by profession. My degrees are in psychology and communications. I have an interest in physics in specific and the sciences in general... but that interest is entirely personal. This means, that my claim to authority on this subject has no special standing when compared to mop's... aside from being correct, that is...

Fundamentally, I don't believe that this is an issue which should require professional intervention. The process of naturalistic observation described by the scientific method is clear, and doesn't need skilled interpretation. There is a clear delineation for what is and is not science on its most basic level. ID seeks to obscure the distinction by making the argument a philosophical AND political one. That said, the only arbiter for what is and is not science, should be science itself.

It is offered that ID is a legitimate scientific theory. Is it observable? No. Can you use it in experiment? No. Is it falsifiable? No. It is not science.

 

Thank god even mop agrees ID should not be taught in the public school science curriculum.

While there is a certain tedium to demolishing ID every few months in its constant re-manifestations, it is a necessary job that many on this thread have achieved splendidly. Thanks.

 

xover, i have said that repeatedly every time i have joined in one of these debates. i am not in favor of ID being taught in school. however, i am in favor of legitimate criticisms of neo-evolutionary theory being taught.

 

mia,

one of the main problems with your entire argument is that Evolutionary theory is actually the attempt to falsify ID. think about it historically. there was a time when most scientists assumed that the world was designed by God (it didn't seem to slow down science at all by the way), but darwin came along and purported to show that "Biology is the study of complicated things that give the appearance of having been designed for a purpose." (this is a Dawkins quote!). you see darwinism is the attempt to show that the biological world is not in fact designed. the question is whether or not it has succeeded. after 150 years has darwinism shown how information is added from one generation of species to the next (a necessary first step if we are going to trust that a species can change into another species). i would argue no. in fact, what we see is that when something comes along which looks to have more information, it actually is just a rearrangement of previously existing information. fiddling with pre-existing genes and coming up with a non-functional fly with extra wings, is not an example that satisfies the challenge i am putting forth.

in addition to this, whenever we see design in the world, we find that it was in fact brought about by intelligence. i am not speaking of merely complexity or low probability, i am talking about specified complexity. this is what ID is attempting to quantify. Dembski has done some excellent foundational work on this goal. admittedly, more needs to be done.

as for tests....ID has predicted several things which have turned out to be correct. for instance, ID predicted that "junk DNA" would be shown to be not "junk" after all. in the past couple of years, this has proven to go in ID's direction as junk DNA has been shown to have some important functions. vestigial organs would also be predicted to have a purpose in an ID model....over time we have found that many of the organs originally thought to serve no function and to be holdovers from earlier species in our ancestral lines evolutionarily speaking have in fact turned out to have functions after all. a few remain, but a mere fraction of what originally existed.

keep in mind that it is evolution that would be the "science stopper" in cases like vestigial organs because science would have less reason to keep seeking functions for organs deemed to be merely vestigial organs. on the other hand ID would keep the pursuit going with the belief that what we see was designed by intelligence.

as for falsifiability of ID...here is an article written by Behe in 2,000 which does a far better job answering this false accusation of ID than I could hope to without going back to school for 8 years.




is ID falsifiable?


however, i would like to propose a question to you....is evolution falsifiable? after all (to paraphrase Dembski) to disprove evolution one would have the burden of proving that NO conceivable darwinian pathway could explain a particular organism or feature of an organism. how is that falsfiable? if ID'ers point to such irreducibly complex features of organisms and evolutionists have no pathway yet, all they must do is come up with some bizarre pathway, regardless of how likely, and claim moral victory that it is indeed possible.

in fact, this has happened repeatedly in descriptions of how early life arose on the planet. first it was in primordial soups, but when we discovered that such "soups" were not very conducive to life in the earth's early atmosphere, the new "conceivable" model was deep in the ocean where the early stages of life could be protected while they evolved. the point is that we don't have any clue how early organisms evolved to the point at which modern scientists believe they know how they evolved forward (i am not speaking of abiogenesis here just how we got to the first cells when we know there were earlier predecessors but we have no idea how the earlier became the cells we know of).

so is evolution falsifiable? how?

here is a good article on this question by Dembski:




is ID testable? evolution?

 

mop, your argument is ever shifting. We evoloution supports your argument, you say that some IDers include evolution. When you feel put upon you say that you are the new paradigm shift. When ID is attacked for lacking maturity, then you say it predates evolution. While there is a logical thread which puts any of these into an ID argument, you invoke all of them which lacks consistency. Like the Filter, you put the goal posts where ever it suits you and then say no one has responded to your arguments. It is frustrating and pointless.

These stuff you posted here in this most recent thread is just weak. Evolution is not a science stopper, and it is falsifiable, the problem is most of the things which would have falsified it have already been proven true. Evolution required an extremely old earth, it was right. Evolution required that there be DNA, it was right. Saying it is a "science stopper" is a (forgive me) a ridiculously myopic statement which bears no scrutiny whatsoever.

Dembski is not the irrefutable source you keep quoting him as. He is a hack with an agenda. You share his agenda, so he is appealing to you, but he is still a hack. I respect Behe, but to say he is misguided is an understatement.

Mop, this is just a farse and I'm done.

 

mia, you are misrepresenting my argument. i won't speculate as to whether this is purposeful or not, but regardless it is wrong of you.

i said that evolution has proven to be a science stopper in certain instances not that it is overall. i used a very specific example of vestigial organs. i notice you didn't respond. i also notice that you accused me of moving the goal posts but didn't qualify that statement so i have no way of responding to what i see as a baseless of claim.

as for your claim that Evolution is falsifiable. could you tell me in a concise manner how we could falsify evolution today? i am very curious. considering it is a theory that explains the entire diversity of life on the planet, it would seem to need to be falsifiable. by the way, when did the theory of evolution predict anything like DNA? did Darwin predict such a thing?

if dembski is a "hack with an agenda" then you ought to argue against his statements rather than using ad hominem. it is interesting how as we move foward in this discussion your arguments get more and more fallacious....is there any reason for that? your logic is breaking down and originally it was quite good. i am disappointed....

 

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Woohoo!!! I am internally consistent. Yes!

 

i agree mona..you are. and i always enjoy your posts as well...for the record!