Henry Gee’s column
Intelligent design?
The fact that the work seems so surprising exposes another, more dangerous conceit that scientists are prone to. Dangerous, because it leaves science wide open to the temptations of so-called ‘Intelligent Design’. Advocates of this view object to evolution by invoking what Richard Dawkins has called the ‘Argument from Incredulity’ - that is, if I don’t believe that something is possible, it cannot happen.
Read more at Nature
Thanks to Glenn Branch for pointing out this interesting article.
Henry Gee wrote:
Wagner argues that the fallacy in the Intelligent-Design argument about the automobile motor (or any other system), is that proponents present the motor we see as The Motor, the exemplar, the only one possible, and, what’s more the best possible, surely optimized by a Designing Hand. But when Wagner searched the literature, he found that a wide variety of automobile motors have been described (Diesel, Wankel, Piston), each arranged in its own way, each its own solution to effective rotary motion in the autoworld. There is no such thing as The Motor, no Platonic perfection enforced on cars by Divine fiat. Instead we see ad hoc solutions that are not perfect, but idiosyncratic and eclectic – just what you would expect if motor design were working on its own, without a Designer.
Yes, Intelligent Design is so flexible that it can encompass almost anything. I agree thouhg that Cohen’s argument may not be the strongest argument against ID (ID’s failure at the theoretical and practical levels are far more compelling). But what Cohen has shown is that life is far better explained by science than by theology. Why would a ‘designer’ reinvent the wheel time after time? In fact, when looking at cars we notice that most engines are very similar. They all are based on a fossil fuel, have fuel injection mechanisms, a spark plug, cylinders. While we see some slight variation we also notice that the motor is quite limited in its variation. Of course we see how multiple designers can accomplish larger variations but I doubt that the multiple designer idea is going to be well received by creationists. Once again, an evolutionary explanation seems far more plausible than an appeal to our ignorance. Sigh…
Despite the fact that ID is scientifically dead, it seems that some strongly hold on to Dembski’s futile attempts to reliably detect design and consider (complex specified) information in life to be a problem for evolutionary theory. Of course, we on Panda’s Thumb have the luxury of being exposed to the facts and have come to realize that the concepts of ID are not only theoretically flawed, but empirically meaningless.
Dr. Gee:
This reminds me of what Stephen Jay Gould wrote in his “Big Fish, Little Fish”:
Typos are almost certainly mine and not Dr. Gould’s.
And the point is much the same as for Gee. If only the {fill in the blank} ever existed then evolution would not be a good explanation. That such gradations so often exist is yet another small piece of evidence for evolution.
– Anti-spam: replace “usenet” with “harlequin2”
Pim wrote:
So I guess we better just forget about electric cars or nuclear powered cars…or hydrogen fuel cells either for that matter.
Mayr’s What Evolution Is has a great discussion showing that Darwin was the first to think of species (and other biological terms) as populations rather than typologies. We often don’t realize at all how far-reaching this insight is.
No, it’s just what we would expect if motor design were related by “common ancestry,” with evolutionary changes that are selected to meet current needs, not an overarching end. Since many IDers admit that we know nothing about the biological designer(s) aside from their (disputed) existence, we also must admit that such designer(s) could do create species in any way including evolution. Even if design in general were not unfalsifiable, it is at this time, utterly useless to biological explanations.
I am not sure where Dr. Gee stands on whether a biological designer exists, but many critics of ID who publicly admit personal belief in a designer also get trapped into using the “without a designer” language. But what they all mean is that the designer part is unnecessary in the explanation. Science may not know all the details, such as in the origin of flagella, but neither do the IDers. Unlike scientists, however, IDers don’t even try to find out.
IDers do try to have it both ways, though. When pressed, they admit that “common design” does not rule out common descent, or even evolution. But they mostly refuse to speculate on a possible alternative, all the while knowing that most audiences will infer “independent abiogenesis.” But they give no hint as to a possible hypothesis of independent abiogenesis. So despite their many misleading arguments, including their abuse of the word “the” as Dr. Gee’s article mentions, evolution is still all we have.
Charlie: So I guess we better just forget about electric cars or nuclear powered cars … or hydrogen fuel cells either for that matter.
Nuclear powered cars??? So is Charlie proposing many designers for the flagellar motors? I doubt that multiple designers would be an acceptable solution to creationists. What about it Charlie? Are you accepting multiple designers? Or a fumbling single designer? As I said, the flagellum does not present for much of an intelligent design idea. But then again, ID is fundamentally flawed at a theoretical level, we may as well add theologically flawed.
Pim wrote:
Well, since I’m not a creationist, it doesn’t really matter to me if there is one or a hundred designers.
Charlie: Well, since I’m not a creationist, it doesn’t really matter to me if there is one or a hundred designers.
But it surely makes a ID even more intractable
Pim wrote
Multiple Designers Theory doesn’t seem to get a very receptive response from IDists, even if it is the most detailed ID conjecture (aside from YEC stuff) available, if I do say so myself.
RBH
Pim wrote:
Not at all. Since we know nothing at all about the nature of the designer or the mechanism by which it is implemented, we are open to all possibilities.
Hear hear!
I often think that one of the greatest sins of creationism is a unflexible comittment to typological thinking. If you see organisms as existing as ideal Platonic forms, then it natually follows that you can’t change one into the other. Many creationist arguments simply have typology built in as a premise. For example, no matter how much evolution many have occured among domestic dogs, they’re still dogs, only makes sense to a typologist. For the rest of us, it’s a circular argument, wrongly assuming that “the dog” is a real thing rather than a useful abstraction.
I might also modestly point out that Multiple Designers Theory has a research methodology that has produced more actual data than current Dembski/Behe-style Single-Unembodied-Designer ID (SUDID_ research in spite of the latter having a large head start.
RBH
Exactly, because the designer argument is unconstrained it is meaningless, anything goes. Which is why it makes it ID even more irrelevant. Unless we can constrain ID in some manner of course. But that seems unlikely given that ID is all about an omnipotent designer, now isn’t it?
Charlie Wagner’s point, if I understand him, is that because of the similarities between man-made machines and living orgainisms, we should form similar conclusions about their genesis. That is, if we can conclude that machines are “designed”, then we should be able to use the same reasoning to conclude that life is “designed”.
Or, to put the argument another way, machines and life have similar features, and when we see those features in a machine we assume that it was designed, therefore when we see those same features in a living thing we ought to assume that it too was designed.
The problem with that argument is that there are no internal features of man-made machines that lead us to conclude that they were designed, since we already know they are designed without any examination of their workings.
If there was a machine like a car or a computer, but it could reproduce like a living orgainism, we might well assume that it was evolved, not designed (until we found evidence otherwise). So it isn’t true that the features of a machine that are similar to features of living organisms are used to conclude that the machine was designed.
Pim wrote:
No, it is not. Please confine yourself to what I actually say, not what you think I mean. My argument is very clear and specific: complex, highly organised systems such as are found in living organisms could not have bootstrapped themselves into exitence without the assistance of intelligent input. Now we know what intelligence is, and we can measure it to some degree, so let’s stick with that. I’m not making any claims about designers or their possible nature. In fact, I don’t like to even use the word “design” anymore.
Isaiah wrote:
Your first two paragraphs are right on the money. However, I disagree with what you say above. There are distinctive features that lead us to conclude that man-made machines and living organisms are the result of intelligent input. They display multiple structures and multiple processes with multiple functions. And these structures, processes and functions are all integrated in such a way as to support each other and to support the overall function of the system. These qualities are only found in intelligently guided entities irrespective of whether or not they are “man-made”. Whether or not the entity can reproduce is irrelevant, and only demonstrates a more advanced technology. Can you not imagine a time in the future when humans could build a machine that could reproduce itself? I certainly can.
Isaiah, I think you raise some interesting points.
A lot of creationists point to all these teleological things and say, Ah! we recognize this was designed for some purpose, is how we know something was designed by man, therefore intelligence, so anything which looks teleological must have been designed by an intelligence also. Stupid for many reasons. One of the more obvious reasons is, we can recognize things which were designed by man even if we have no idea what it’s function is, what processes it uses, and what overall system is created. For instance, you’re walking in the desert and you see a somewhat rectangular box composed of steel, inside which is a mangled, random, rusty collection of pieces of metal and plastic which superficially resemble machined parts. You don’t know anything about the structure, function, or system here, and nothing about its origin. But you’d conclude without thinking, this is obviously man-made. Like I’ve said before, identifying design is just a heuristic which depends on ways of loosely matching known creators with known created objects, and even then is capable of failing. The anthropocentric examples creationists use only work because you already know humans, they don’t work like creationists think, and even then they could fail any number of ways.
I was talking in general about ID. Your claom that ID is required is an interesing one lacking fully in any supporting evidence. But in order to infer design, you need to constrain the designer. Which is why motives, means and opportunities play such an important role.
That is merely appeal to analogy which suffers from the simple problem that such structures can arise naturally as well. A poor logical argument at most and a meaningless scientific argument. Unless of course Charlie accepts that natural selection can not be ruled out as an intelligent designer. In fact, so far Charlie has done little that would support such a leap of faith. In other words, similarity is a poor an argument logically as well as scientifically. That Charlie may believe he sees similarities is totally irrelevant for a logical or scientific argument. Take also into considerations that humans are quick to see similarities and easily misled and one may realize why we should not take such arguments too seriously. They failed with Paley, the fail with Paley-ontologist.
Good point Charlie. Another example you can use is the weather, since we all know that weather is intelligently guided.
Pim, I notice you like to just dismiss things as “irrelevant”, “lacking supporting evidence”, “meaningless”, “a poor argument”, “not to be taken seriously”. Fortunately, I’m immune to this kind of tactic. Perhaps you could use some of your alloted bandwidth to actually argue your case.
No they cannot. Saying it unfortunately doesn’t make it so.
Natural selection can be ruled out as an intelligent designer. It can only work on already existing variation and has no creative power of its own.
And thus when continued sources of variation are available, natural selection can be an excellent ‘designer’ but Charlie misses the point, ID hypotheses cannot eliminate natural designers. In fact as I have shown in various postings, natural selection and variation are very capable on generating information, complexity and even IC systems.
What I find fascinating is why Charlie seems to continue to make his claim about natural selection when it can be shown how natural selection, given a source of variation, can be an excellent designer?
Will Charlie be willing to look at the work by Schneider, Adami, Lenski and many others who have shown contrary to Charlie’s beliefs that natural selection can be an excellent designer? To use an analogy, given a box of parts and tools, can an intelligent designer not design because it can only work with existing variation?
Charlie’s errors were already explained to him elsewhere
http://pharyngula.org/index/weblog/print/788/
That is of course totally erroneous. Function, and intent are two different concepts. That natural selection is inherently teleological is well explained by Ayala and Ruse. So now we have a problem namely that teleology is not sufficient to infer ID.
But then again, ID never amounted to much anyway. It is inherently an argument from ignorance and analogy, neither one very useful scientifically.
“Now we know what intelligence is, and we can measure it to some degree, so let’s stick with that.”
Things I know about intelligence:
(1) a property of animal central nervous systems (2) …?
Pim wrote:
In an article in the May 8 issue of the journal Nature, Richard Lenski, Charles Ofria, Robert Pennock, and Christoph Adami report that the path to complexity is paved with a long series of simple functions, each unremarkable if viewed in isolation. This project alleges to address a fundamental criticism of the theory of evolution, that complex functions cannot arise from mutation and natural selection. Unfortunately, this work is deeply flawed and I reject it in its entirety. The central question is: can computer simulation models yield knowledge about the real world? The answer is an emphatic no. The very best we can hope for is that a simulation model is consistent with the real world. No one could ever logically prove that a simulation model was absolutely true. But just being consistent is too weak to rely on for validation. The primary value of simulation models is heuristic, and they may be used to confirm what is already known to be true and to strengthen its validity. These authors are not using simulations in this manner, they are using them to establish the validity of biological evolution by mutation and selection. There is no evidence that their simulations have any validity wrt evolution in the real world. Their simulation models are a fiction and are in no way representative of the real world. In addition, they have attacked a strawman argument of their own creation. They seek to explain complexity, when complexity is not the issue. I can generate complexity on a computer using random processes simply by iterating a simple equation such as Xn = X^2 + C where X and C are complex numbers with a real part and an imaginary part. As I have explained at great lengths previously, what evolutionary theory has to explain is not complexity but organization, the kind of organization that is found in biological systems.
they have attacked a strawman argument of their own creation. They seek to explain complexity, when complexity is not the issue.
A couple of points to consider:
It’s conceivable that the authors are addressing arguments of Dembski et alia , rather than Wagner et nemo , and “complexity” is central to the arguments of those more prominent Paleyists, not a “strawman… of their own creation”.
While I would agree that ID pretty much means whatever its proponents say it does, and that varies quite a bit, I don’t think complex numbers (in the sense of “x + iy”) have ever been part of the “complexity” they’re talking about.
Charlie misses the point:
By setting up the strawman that a simulation can at most be ‘consistent’ with the real world, Charlie can reject the knowledge acquired from simulations. When for instance Charlie makes the unsupported claims about natural selection and variation, simulations can show that he is wrong. It’s fascinating to me to what extent Charlie has to go to reject science. Fascinating indeed. Then again it was Charlie who made these poorly informed claims about natural selection and variation and when it is shown that these mechanisms can indeed lead to information, complexity, organization Charlie objects.
So let’s look at another aspect of organization found in biological systems. Scale free networks. I am working on these fascinating concepts and show how simple and observed mechanisms of gene duplication and divergence can explain the scale free nature of these protein, gene and RNA networks. Scale free networks not only help explain how evolution happened but also degeneracy, modularity, robustness and evolvability. So while Charlie is seen rejecting simulations that disprove his claims, science is moving forward on understanding how evolution happened based on the facts. Btw Charlie’s example of complexity indicates a bit of unfamiliarity with these concepts. Which is probably why he made these poorly informed assertions. Such as
or this whopper
and this one
All of these reports support the notion… Except of course those that don’t and in fact science seems to have a far better grip on these issues than Charlie.
Notice how Charlie is perpetuating that ‘appeal to ignorance’ approach so characteristically of ID? Combine this with the poor approach of analogy and one understands why ID is scientifically flawed, meaningless and in fact in many cases rebutted.
And then Charlie and his strawmen enter. Let the entertainment begin I’d say…
Another good rebuttal of a Charlie claim
From Here
Note that it is sufficient to reject this claim to show that at least in principle variation and selection can explain these features. Thus the example of Nilsson and Pelgers for the eye and the ‘reptile to mammal’ transition where we see the jaw bone move to become the inner ear are theoretical and evidentiary examples contradicting Charles ‘claims’.
or
Link
Evolutionary mechanims to decrease Informational entropy have been described in much detail for instance. Of course the SLOT arguments against evolution never made much sense.
And a final one
Compare this with for instance
Functional Divergence Caused by Ancient Positive Selection of a Drosophila Hybrid Incompatibility Locus
Daniel A. Barbash, Philip Awadalla, Aaron M. Tarone
LOL!!!!!!!
Sorry I didn’t mean it that way. I’m just talking that theology might be a bit off topic.
Ok lets go into this
True but just as much as Christianity has lead to “evil” to. Why? Because the people in power where promoting their faith via evil means.
And take that in the context Galileo means it. He means it in the sense that the bible is not a litteral account but moral guidelines. That its true meaning is things like be good to your fellow man, take care of the creatures of the earth, etc. He in no way proclaims that the book of Genisis is literal. The “true meaning” to him was the meaning behind the story.
Basically this is what you would call most mainstream Christian scientists these days. They believe in God but do not believe the bible is a litteral historical account because the evidence does not support it. Also you have to think about how the bible evolved and it has evolved. Just from translations from one language to another over the thousands of years different parts has had a impact on the stories in the bible.
My son when he was 6 came to me and asked about the book of Genisis and if it was true and I asked him why does he ask. note my son went to a Catholic school at that time and goes to a Australian Uniting Church now He was interested in what it would mean if they found life on Mars. I asked him “What do you think it means?” he thought and said “Well maybe Adam and Eve is just a story that is a bit true” I asked “what do you mean “a bit true” and he said “well maybe the story kept changing”. I asked “Why would would a story change” and he said “each time its told from one person to another it could change a bit”. I asked “why would that happen” and he said “different people might remember it a bit different and they might add bits to make it more exciting”. I asked “so if this is what happens to the stories in the bible what does that mean to you?” and he looked puzzled and I asked “Do you still believe in God?” and he says “Yes” and I asked “so what why doesn’t the change in the bible change your belief in god” and he said “because god didn’t write the bible people did”
I was very impressed with his mode of thinking. He still reads the bible (only 8 now) and he’s starting to read parts of the gnostic library specifically gospels that didn’t make it into the New Testament because Irenaeus felt it threatened the simple model of Christianity that he was trying to band all the different groups of Christianity under.
My favorite quote from the Gospil of Thomas
I do respect your views as many others here do. What we don’t respect is people making claims and pointing to the bible and saying “It says it right here” the bible is no historical fact in many cases and not scientific data in any form. We’ve put a large burdon on you to come up with examples that support your faith supported by data. To this date not even the icons of YEC, OEC, IDers have been able to support their claims with data.
If you have a problem that you think doesn’t mix with evolution, like the angler fish or poystrate Fossils then please do ask it. I would suggest doing a bit of research before asking to make sure its not already clearly debunked. There, unfortunately, are tons of debunked notions of why evolution can not be true.
Hopefully if you come up with one it hasn’t been shown before and its a little better then this one that made me laugh the other day.
note i only included the last 2 lines as that is where this big gap came into play.
roger wrote
Sure. We would like folks to try to stick to the topic of the essay that stimulated a thread of comments, and we have “The Bathroom Wall” – a sort of off-topic form – for comments that wander away from the topic of the initial essay.
RBH
Thanks RBH didn’t know where to take off topis stuff like this So…Roger meet me in the Bathroom after school! :P
The Bathroom Wall
Okay… to boys room, then? Or is this facility multi-gendered?… :o
Okay… to boys room, then? Or is this facility multi-gendered?… :o
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