The Designer’s “Skill-Set”
| November 29, 2005 | Posted by William Dembski under Evolution, Intelligent Design |
In September, Jon Stewart’s The Daily Show devoted several programs to the topic of evolution (“Evolution, Schmevolution — Who’s Right, Who’s Full of It”). What’s more, I appeared on one of those programs (go here and here).
In those programs, Stewart & Co. had some lines that were not only funny but also memorable. The one that sticks out poked fun at ID: “We’re not saying that the designer is God, just someone with the same skill-set.” That line is now being reused on the debate circuit, with Eugenie Scott, for instance, deploying it this November at a debate at Boston University (go here).
Although the line is funny, it is not accurate. God’s skill-set includes not just ordering matter to display certain patterns but also creating matter in the first place. God, as understood by the world’s great monotheistic faiths, is an infinite personal transcendent creator. The designer responsible for biological complexity, by contrast, need only be a being capable of arranging finite material objects to display certain patterns. Accordingly, this designer need not even be infinite. Likewise, that designer need not be personal or transcendent (cf. the “designer” in Stoic philosophy).
Bottom line: Jon Stewart & Co. are funny people, but their one-liners are no substitute for clear thinking.
54 Responses to The Designer’s “Skill-Set”
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.
DaveScott,
Since you are basing your theory on the presence of a designer then you must be able to offer some evidence that the designer exists. That we observe things that seem to have been designed can mean one of two things: they were actually designed or they are the result of natural process that we don’t fully understand. Science has identified numerous processes that could have led to the observed things; and since no designer has been identified then we must conclude, in the absence of evidence to the contrary, that natural processes were responsible. This is the scientific process. Invoking some unseen, unobserved, unknown designer to explain the observations is decidedly non-scientific.
If the designer could have been the result of chance interaction of matter then you are conceeding the basic point that a chance interation of matter could create life and intelligence. As for life as we know it being astronomically unlikely to have arisn without direction, there are many who would refute your assessment of the odds. I’m sure you will want to respond with page after page of examples of things that are astronomically improbable to have occurred by chance. All of the odds calculations I have ever seen make assumptions that may or may not be true. Without an absolute understanding of the likelihood of a myriad of things happening, you cannot reliably estimate odds.
I’m fairly sure that we can say the odds of life arising out of nonlife are, indeed, astronimically, insanely, absurdly, near zero.
And, what IF we had evidence that was irrefutable that it was indeed God who created all of this- you’re saying that by assuming, from the evidence, that he did it- it wouldn’t be scientific. Well, doesn’t that mean that science is severely limited in what it can and cannot do? You seem to be saying what so many others say- no matter how much evidence exists, we can never let a designer get his foot into the door. I’d say that good science is about following the evidence wherever it leads, not limiting it in this or any other manner that says- we can’t allow this, this, or that, no matter what evidence we have to suggest that this, this, or that are indeed responsible for what we’re seeing.
RobG you wrote:
“Since you are basing your theory on the presence of a designer then you must be able to offer some evidence that the designer exists.”
The evidence is presented in the design inference shown by numerous scientists working within all of the academic fields related to evolution. From Paleontology to biochemistry to statistics etc. In each academic field which evolution draws upon to make it’s case it can and has been revealed by numerous scientists that evolution fails at explaning what the data from their research presents. The designer is revealed through the design. If it can be proven that some type of naturally occuring system cannot come into existence through a purely evolutionary process then that in and of itself reveals the designer.
To give an example; Lets say that you were living 1000 years ago and you were walking through a forest and came upon a brand new 4 wheel drive Ford Bronco. Having no idea where it came from and no idea of modern technology where would you think that car came from? You could get your local wizard and shaman to investigate and they might come up with a theory that since all of those elements found in the car can be found in nature, that therefore the car is the product of nature. Or you may ask an architect where it came from and he might say that the factory is a product of nature but that the car is to complex for it to have come into existence without someone actually building the factory.
So the moral of the story is that there is a limit to what can come into existence within nature without an intelligence to make it come into existence. Nature provides raw materials but it cannot produce blueprints and it cannot build things based on blueprints. No matter how long you wait a Ford Bronco will never come into existence due to the workings of nature alone.
What we find in living things is a complexity on a scale vastly superior to that of a Ford Bronco. Even the smallest living cell contains technology so complex that we don’t understand much of what is going on. Machines created out of molecules. Nanotechnology. Self replication. Data storage and comprehension at the molecular level. Corporations are pouring millions of dollars into researching how to copy the data storage and retreival capacity going on in a cell. A single gram of dried DNA, about the size of a half-inch sugar cube, can hold as much information as a trillion compact discs.
The wizards and shamans may only see nature, but the those who use logic and reason see a designer.
“Since you are basing your theory on the presence of a designer then you must be able to offer some evidence that the designer exists.”
The evidence is essentially of the same kind that makes us believe that the humans moving around us are doing so out of intelligent agency, and not as a result of some unknown laws that we can’t determine yet. Their behavior indicates intelligence, and so we conclude that they are intelligent. It is a basic first principle of our thinking that “From marks of wisdom and intelligence in the effects, we can infer wisdom and intelligence in the cause (in the absence of evidence to the contrary)” (more or less as Thomas Reid would put it). If we reject this principle outright, then we should also do so when we consider the people around us, and be skeptical about whether they are really acting intelligently when they appear to be.
“That we observe things that seem to have been designed can mean one of two things: they were actually designed or they are the result of natural process that we don’t fully understand. Science has identified numerous processes that could have led to the observed things;…”
Yes, science has identified numerous processes that COULD have led to the observed things; but none which could have done so realistically. The idea that there was a sequence of beneficial mutations that arose over the ages, without any intelligent agency at all, such that the end result was the vast array of breathtakingly sophisticated molecular machines we find around us, properly speaking belongs in the realm of fantasy. Whence comes this blind faith in the power of natural, unguided processes to produce the marvels of biochemical engineering on which life depends?
“and since no designer has been identified then we must conclude, in the absence of evidence to the contrary, that natural processes were responsible.”
Rather: since no realistic natural processes have been identified then we must conclude, in the absence of evidence to the contrary, that an intelligent designer was involved.
“Invoking some unseen, unobserved, unknown designer to explain the observations is decidedly non-scientific.”
Yet invoking unseen, unobserved, unknown ancestors and evolutionary pathways is somehow the paradigm of science? We do not have to know the identity of the designer to know that a designer was involved. That is the whole point of the Explanatory Filter.
I mispoke in the above. When I wrote ths:
“Or you may ask an architect where it came from and he might say that the factory is a product of nature but that the car is to complex for it to have come into existence without someone actually building the factory”
It should read:
“Or you may ask an architect where it came from and he might say that the car is a product of nature but that the car is to complex for it to have come into existence without someone actually building the car in a factory”
RobG
“Science has identified numerous processes that could have led to the observed things;”
BS. Not a single process has been demonstrated to be capable of producing non-trivial speciation. It’s all extrapolation without a single demonstrated instance of the creation of a novel cell type, tissue type, organ, or body plan.
“and since no designer has been identified then we must conclude, in the absence of evidence to the contrary, that natural processes were responsible”
Again, this is wrong. Human engineers have demonstrated the capability of genetic engineering. There is one example in nature of genetic engineers thus, unlike bogus extrapolations of rm+ns, there is one demonstrated instance of intelligent design. The only question is whether there is more than one and whether another acted in the past.
RobG
“You could get your local wizard and shaman to investigate and they might come up with a theory that since all of those elements found in the car can be found in nature, that therefore the car is the product of nature.”
You badly need to broaden your knowledge base. Isolated human tribes have encountered advanced technology in the past. They unfailingly attribute the technology to divine origin. Arthur C. Clark said “Any sufficiently advanced technology appears as magic.”
The design IS evidence of a designer, by the way, just like fecal droppings are evidence of animals. The problem is that RM+NS has been held out to be the designer without a single demonstration that it is capable of producing anythjng more than trivial variations that don’t approach the generation of novel cell types, tissue types, organs, or body plans. The modern synthesis is an abysmal failure. Get used to it.
Sorry… the last comment should have been directed at Mentok.
Mentok, you really need to crack more books. You continually demonstrate your shallow knowledge of the world in your claims.
As usual dave you miss the point. You may want to look at what the point is in a post before you try and think of ways to discredit parts of an argument otherwise you end up looking like a person with nothing to say but many ways to say it. What you just did is if someone says that the sun is so hot that when he was exposed to it for an hour he got a sunburn, and then you respond “man are you dumb, the sun is so hot it would burn you to a crisp if you were really exposed directly to it”. Try and take it down a notch…umkay?
[...] I refer you to this series of comments in Bill’s weblog: Or skip them if you like. I do not think that they are compatible. ID and Evolution [...]
RobG is making a simple point which his respondents seem to be missing.
Bill Dembski’s original post says that the designer of life, as postulated by ID theory, need not have God’s full “skill set” — all that’s needed is the capability of “arranging finite material objects to display certain patterns.”
RobG is simply pointing out that a finite designer of this sort (a technologically advanced extraterrestrial, for example) is itself an instance of complex specified information, and thus according to ID theory must also have a designer.
Logically, there could even be a chain of designers: life’s designer, life’s designer’s designer, life’s designer’s designer’s designer, etc. Eventually, no matter how long or short the chain is, it must end with a “prime designer” who is the ultimate source of the complex specified information that is being passed down the chain.
This prime designer is either natural (i.e. part of the universe) or supernatural. If it is natural, then its complex specified information arose out of undirected natural processes, which ID says is impossible. This means that according to ID theory, the prime designer must be supernatural.
This is why RobG claims that ID is inherently religious, even though the immediate designer of life could conceivably be a finite being of the sort described by Dembski.
DaveScott says:
“Not a single process has been demonstrated to be capable of producing non-trivial speciation. It’s all extrapolation without a single demonstrated instance of the creation of a novel cell type, tissue type, organ, or body plan.”
Here’s a short list (only 80-90 articles) of published research papers that document macroevolution:
http://www.christianforums.com.....ation.html
key phrase “non-trivial speciation”. RM+NS has not been shown to produce “non-trivial speciation” as Dave said. Even then, most scientists can’t even decide what the clear definition of a species is.
Josh,
What do you mean by “non-trivial speciation”? Did you even look at the list? I don’t know what you expect to see? Do you expect to see a completely new species popping up completely formed without any gradual intermediate forms? Do you expect this to have happened over the course of only the hundrend years or so that scientists have been looking? That would be creationism and is exactly what evolution says does not happen. The development of a new species is a very subtle thing, which is why many scientists have disagreements as to exactly what constitutes a species.
RobG,
I think you are describing exactly the difficulty with empirically confirming evolution by RM & NS.
Observable instances of evolution caused by RM&NS will invariably be minor and gradual (finches, pepeered moths, etc.), and thus provide no evidence that RM & NS realistically has the power to cause macroevolution (e.g. our evolution from ape-like ancestors).
Moreover, there are no detailed testable descriptions of evolutionary pathways which describe macroevolution.
My earlier message didn’t appear, so I’ll try again.
“Non-trivial speciation” was implicitly defined (by Dave Scot, if I understood him correctly) by example: the creation of a novel cell type, tissue type, or body plan would be examples of the kinds of changes that are here being called “non-trivial”.
The question is, does RM&NS realistically have the power to produce such non-trivial changes?
Of course, we can’t observe such non-trivial changes taking place, so that’s one way in which the empirical evidence for evolution is necessarily limited.
Are there then detailed, testable pathways by means of which such changes could plausibly have come about in nature and without intelligent guidance, solely by means of RM and NS? No.
From the brief descriptions I think I’ve read some of those articles in the past but I’d have to look them up to be certain (and to be able to coherently discuss their contents). Needless to say, my impression of the time: I wasn’t convinced. Have you ever read them yourselves RobG or are you blindly accepting the assertion that they do in fact support your position? Give one specific example “non-trivial speciation†to discuss.
“Do you expect to see a completely new species popping up [in the fossil record] completely formed without any gradual intermediate forms? That…is exactly what evolution says does not happen.”
Depends on what evolutionary model/historical narrative you’re talking about. I’m guessing you’re in the Dawkins camp. All of you have to do is give a single example of CSI coming about by non-intelligent means and that’d be enough to shut us up.
Rob- the problem is, we’ve seen speciation of guppies (as one example) that took place 10 million times faster than NDE says it would, and that we find in the fossil record. So, the quickness of it causes a problem for NDE as well…plus, this is fairly non trivial- not even that entire list was speciation from NS, many of the items described artifical selection by scientists. A new breed of dog doesn’t excite me much, nor should a lab created plant species excite me…nor should a very small change (no new organs, body types, forms, etc.) excite me. From the list, I see a lot of changes that merely mean bigger or small plants, or tiny changes within animals that aren’t showing any new information added to the genome and such.
You can google speciation and, I found this on the AIG site (it’s a creationist site), but they have info and quotes from evolutionists who were shocked at the speed of speciation (which would, as you said yourself, support creationism)
http://www.answersingenesis.or.....iation.asp
One example:
Something doesn’t add up. That doesn’t fit the gradual model, and it doesn’t fit any other NDE model for that matter. And these changes themselves are, indeed, fairly trivial- in that we see guppies that are slightly different, labelled a new species, but not much changed from their little friends. If we see guppies form legs and start walking around on 2 of them- that would be non-trivial. Then again, even lesser changes would be non-trivial, but there’s no empirical evidence to back up the claim that NS could do much more- we alway see limits with NS and RM. We see that animals and plants run into barriers an stop changing.
keiths (in post #41): “This prime designer is either natural (i.e. part of the universe) or supernatural. If it is natural, then its complex specified information arose out of undirected natural processes, which ID says is impossible. This means that according to ID theory, the prime designer must be supernatural. This is why RobG claims that ID is inherently religious, even though the immediate designer of life could conceivably be a finite being of the sort described by Dembski.”
This claim isn’t true. In the words of Dr. Dembski, “Natural causes are incapable of generating CSI. [Thus] either the CSI was always present or it was inserted. Intelligent design theorists differ about which of these possibilities obtains for the universe taken as a whole. On the one hand are those…who see all the CSI of the universe present at its start. On the other hand are those…who see CSI emerging in discrete steps, with no evidential informational precursors, and thus through discrete insertions over time (Pages 170-171 of Intelligent Design).”
If CSI was present from the beginning, it would essentially be part of the “fine-tuning” of the universe. While this puts atheists in the uncomfortable position of having to have faith in the existence of (presently) unknown, and potentially unobservable phenomena (i.e., a multiverse), it’s not logically incompatible with atheism.
Josh
I don’t see where in the guppy example the bigger fish were claimed to be a new species. The classic definition of same species is having the ability to produce fertile offspring. Were the bigger guppies unable to produce fertile offspring with the smaller guppies?
Rapid adaptation in higher animals appears very often in scale and cosmetic features. It doesn’t make a new species. It just makes differently proportioined and colored members of the same species. The range of variation in domestic canines, which can all interbreed to produce fertile offspring, which only 20,000 years were only three wild sub-species (jackal, wolf, coyote), is a great eample of the range of fast adaptation that doesn’t result in classic speciation.
Hi jay,
If I understand your comments, you’re saying that the “prime designer” in my argument does not need to be supernatural, according to ID theory, if all of the CSI was already present when the universe was formed, AND the (still highly speculative) branching multiverse theory holds, wherein universes are being continually created, each with a different set of fundamental constants. A branching multiverse will eventually provide the right set of constants, giving us our CSI for free, with no need for a supernatural “prime designer.”
Is that a fair summary of your position?
Assuming for the moment that it is, I would respond by saying that
1. ID theorists generally hope (for reasons outside of the theory itself) that the prime designer IS supernatural, and are unlikely to want to “purchase” falsifiability at the expense of closing off the possibility of a supernatural prime designer.
2. Atheists would need to employ the multiverse gambit only if they already accepted Dembski’s ideas on CSI. If you believe that natural causes can generate CSI, then our one little universe is enough.
3. If the multiverse theory turns out to be unfalsifiable, you’ve simply substituted one falsifiability problem for another.
4. ID folks are unlikely to want to hitch their wagon to a highly speculative cosmological theory which may be discredited at any moment.
5. Even if Dembski accepted the multiverse theory, I suspect that he might still object to the idea that the multiverse could produce CSI in its “offspring” in the absence of a supernatural prime designer. After all, an undirected branching multiverse sounds perilously similar to natural processes in our own universe which Dembski believes cannot generate CSI. Let me stop there; I don’t want to put words in Dembski’s mouth, especially as a guest on his weblog!
DaveScot-
Maybe it doesn’t I thought the article itself was on rapid speciation in general…so, I assumed they were saying the bigger and smaller guppies had become different species.
The list of examples on the page that was linked to (in the comment above mine) didn’t contain many classic examples of speciation either from what I could tell with my google search, and much of it was lab guided artifical selection and implanted genes in various plants that merely changed each plant and animal to a degree which I would personally consider adapating not evolving in any real manner.
Dog breeding is a classic example…you would think that with artifical selection, in the time it’s been, we would see SOMETHING novel come out of it. I still think that selection, whether it be natural or artifical thru breeding systems, hits a barrier at some point and goes no further in any changes. We continually see this with the e coli and other organisms with very short cycles of reproduction. The scientists can get them to change slightly to a point, but they always run into a brick wall where the animal or plant will no longer accept any change and merely dies. I’ve no confidence that nature can do any better even if given more time- the artifical selection with the survival element taken out should be much more superior and take less time, but we continue to see the brick wall that abruptly demands an end to change in the organism and it dies.
There were lots of novel things come from dog breeding but it was all just adjustments in scale (both absolute size and relative sizes different anatomical features) plus fur color, length, & texture.
Now if something non-canine came up, like say retractalbe claws, that would be interesting and different from the type of change observed so far.
But anyhow, we’re on the same page. There’s been no controlled observation or experiment where any novel cell types, tissue types, organs, or body plans have evolved.
keiths: You wrote: “if all of the CSI was already present when the universe was formed, AND the (still highly speculative) branching multiverse theory holds, wherein universes are being continually created, each with a different set of fundamental constants. A branching multiverse will eventually provide the right set of constants, giving us our CSI for free, with no need for a supernatural ‘prime designer.’ ”
I think that’s a proper extrapolation from what I wrote. I don’t think that it’s in disagreement with what Dr. Dembski calls the “fundamental claim” of ID: “there are natural systems that cannot be adequately explained in terms of undirected natural forces and that exhibit features which in any other circumstance we would attribute to intelligence.” Notice that he doesn’t say “…which must be attributed to intelligence.”
As for your statements:
#1 – I think that most ID theorists have independent reasons for belief in a supernatural designer.
#2 – Whether they know it or not, I think that atheists already need to employ the multiverse gambit to attempt to explain away cosmological “fine-tuning.”
#3 – Not sure which unfalsifiablility problem you’re referring to.
#4 – I don’t think that such explanations fall within the proper scope of ID. ID only aims to detect the presence of “systems that cannot be adequately explained in terms of undirected natural forces.”
#5 – See #1 above. Dembski has addressed multiverse hypotheses in his “Chance of the Gaps” essay: http://www.leaderu.com/offices.....CEGAPS.pdf
My only point was to refute the statements that “according to ID theory, the prime designer must be supernatural…” and “that ID is inherently religious.” Because atheists may appeal to a multiverse explanation for CSI, it’s logically possible for them to accept the conclusions of ID theory. Some might even insist that no explanation of CSI is needed, as suggested by Dawkins (of course, not specifically in reference to ID): “An atheist before Darwin could have said, following Hume: ‘I have no explanation for complex biological design. All I know is that God isn’t a good explanation (sic), so we must wait and hope that someone comes up with a better one.’ … such a position, though logically sound, would have left one feeling pretty unsatisfied…” Before Darwin, or with ID theory.