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.

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.

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.

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!

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.

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.

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:

Researchers in Trinidad relocated guppies (Poecilia reticulata) from a waterfall pool teeming with predators to previously guppy-free pools above the falls where there was only one known possible predator (of small guppies only, therefore large guppies would be safe).1 The descendants of the transplanted guppies adjusted to their new circumstances by growing bigger, maturing later, and having fewer and bigger offspring.

The speed of these changes bewildered evolutionists, because their standard millions-of-years view is that the guppies would require long periods of time to adapt. One evolutionist said, ‘The guppies adapted to their new environment in a mere four years–a rate of change some 10,000 to 10 million times faster than the average rates determined from the fossil record.’2

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.

“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.

“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.

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.