Expelled at Biola — Ben Stein Receives the Phillip Johnson Award

“People don’t like to be told that what is obviously true is false.”

Great line, Gil, even if it is a paraphrase. The key words being “obviously true” — not “empirically demonstrable and published in at least three peer-reviewed journals.”

It seems to me that materialistic “scientists” are saying that we’re not allowed to believe in God until we can prove beyond the shadow of a doubt — using methods woefully inadequate to the task — that He exists. It’s like saying we’re not allowed to make love to our wives until we can demonstrate, via both formula and experiment, that the ladies are actually in love with us.

I want the movie to come out so I can stop having to worry about reading spoilers.

But the fact that a scientist has to have his face masked is more evidence that the PT-mafia (NCSE/TalkOrigins/Panda’s Thumb/wickedpedia) will destroy those who do not toe the neo-Darwinian line.

William Wallace says, “the fact that a scientist has to have his face masked is more evidence that the PT-mafia… will destroy those who do not toe the neo-Darwinian line.”

Or evidence of a scientist who cares more about his career than Truth. Just a few posts down we find a real man resigning when NASA opposed publication of his findings. That is the proper response.

Everyone seems to forget that evil rarely enters through the front door — it creeps in, one compromise at a time. The reason someone can be fired today for not toeing the party line is because someone ignored an easier opportunity to stand up for truth yesterday, and someone else an even easier opportunity the day before that, etc.

The Nazis didn’t appear suddenly at every Jew’s door, y’know. Everyone who wasn’t thinking wishfully saw it coming…

“It seems to me that materialistic “scientists” are saying that we’re not allowed to believe in God until we can prove beyond the shadow of a doubt — using methods woefully inadequate to the task — that He exists. It’s like saying we’re not allowed to make love to our wives until we can demonstrate, via both formula and experiment, that the ladies are actually in love with us.”

Gerry, this simply isn’t true. No scientist says you or anyone else can’t believe in God, or for that matter anything else - unicorns, celestial teapots or that 2+2+5. Anyone can believe in what they want. The issue is, claiming that your belief is something that it isn’t - like claiming that God created the universe is a science, which it isn’t.

Even more horrifyingly, this leading genomic researcher (whose face is blacked out and voice disguised in the movie, to protect him from the destruction of his life and career by Darwinists) said that as much as 30% of the research in his field is shelved and never published because it might provide ammunition for “creationists.”

Perhaps Dr. Dembski should persuade this researcher to submit his research to PCID, under a pseudonym. I wouldn’t be happy if 30% of a field was being censored in this way. If this claim is true, there should be plenty of research there to be published. Let’s see it!

No, actually the issue here is that it isn’t science to claim that God didn’t create the universe–which is the metadata of Darwinism. The point of Expelled (all together now) is that the materialism of the modern age is, first of all, exclusionary and brutal in its tactics, and most importantly, questionable on many fronts. If the rhetoric of Huxley, Gould, Dawkins and Myers does not make the first point clear, then it can never make clear. And the second point doesn’t have to be exposited: it is a fait accompli on the basis of modern molecular science.

If 30% of research is being shelved then the conspiracy must extend to the accountants too. After all, don’t you think somebody would be kicking up a fuss by now if 1/3 of the money spend just appeared to vanish? Won’t they be wondering what happened?

Or is there a special “scientific” phrase for this 1/3 of results? Let me guess, “the study was inconclusive”? Or lets try “funding was removed before the end of the study”? Or even better “the researcher had to be fired (expelled) due to the wrong results”?

30% does sound like an awful lot to keep suppressed consistently. I’d be more inclined to believe 3% - perhaps a decimal point has shifted by accident?

Hi Gil,
I went, too, along with my daughter, son-in-law, their 3 month old daughter, and another friend. I especially liked Ms. Crocker’s presentation and the quote “When something is true, if you think about it, it will still be true”.

My granddaughter got very excited every time there was applause.
However, I was disappointed at not seeing more of the movie. Somehow I didn’t understand that we were only to see a few clips. Oh well, I was planning to go see it in the theater anyway.

Walt Ruloff is my hero.

Perhaps Dr. Dembski should persuade this researcher to submit his research to PCID, under a pseudonym. I wouldn’t be happy if 30% of a field was being censored in this way. If this claim is true, there should be plenty of research there to be published. Let’s see it!

I’m not an academic, so I’m not familiar with the publication process, but it would seem to me that different niches of research science would constitute a “small world”, where people doing similar research are familiar with one another. If this is the case, is a mere pseudonym really sufficient to protect one’s identity from peers and coworkers?

“People don’t like to be told that what is obviously true is false.”

As David Scot has said,

“It appears to require many years of uncritical academic brainwashing for highly intelligent people to sincerely arrive at any other than the intuitively obvious conclusion that complex machines don’t design themselves out of thin air.

I’m a pretty hardcore materialist but I know a complex machine when I see one and I know how complex machines get designed.

Anti-theists should stop kicking and screaming like little kids who don’t get their way. Intellectual honesty demands you go where the evidence leads.”

russ - it depends a bit on the field, but genomics is probably one where it is easier to do. Certainly if 30% of the results are being hidden, it shouldn’t be too difficult to work out what sorts of results you are getting in your sub-area, and then replicate them in others (ha! In your rival’s sub-area) and publish those.

It would also be possible to publish results and frame the discussion in terms of “this is something we don’t understand, but I’m sure someone will sort it out eventually”. Even if this can’t be done with every result, it should be doable with a decent proportion of the 30%.

Anyone can believe in what they want. The issue is, claiming that your belief is something that it isn’t - like claiming that God created the universe is a science, which it isn’t.–Portishead

Claiming the laws that govern nature “just are the way they are” isn’t science.

Claiming that a population of single-celled organisms gave rise to the diversity on this planet isn’t science as it cannot be objectively tested.

Claiming that matter and energy are all that is required to account for all we observe isn’t science.

And BTW most of the greatest scientists who ever walked this planet saw science as a way to understand “God’s” handy-work.

“Claiming the laws that govern nature “just are the way they are” isn’t science.”

Correct, which is why science doesn’t do that. Newton may have had the first theory of gravitation, but science didn’t rest on it’s laurels and so we had Einstein later coming up with the general theory of relativity and researchers searching today for gravitons and gravitational waves, whilst astronomers look at possible changes to the behaviour of gravity over cosmological distances. It doesn’t end in “gravity is just the way it is”, nor does the rest of science.

“Claiming that a population of single-celled organisms gave rise to the diversity on this planet isn’t science as it cannot be objectively tested.”

Perhaps not. This is something that may never be definitively known.

“Claiming that matter and energy are all that is required to account for all we observe isn’t science.”

Trouble is, that IS all we need for what we observe in the universe today. If anyone thinks that something extra is needed they ought to say what else is needed and give their evidence.

“And BTW most of the greatest scientists who ever walked this planet saw science as a way to understand “God’s” handy-work.”

Probably true, but their feelings about it weren’t science - the work they did was, but their beliefs were just their own personal beliefs.

Allanius wrote:

“The point of Expelled (all together now) is that the materialism of the modern age is, first of all, exclusionary and brutal in its tactics, and most importantly, questionable on many fronts.”

No - it just requires good solid evidence for alternatives as well as itself. If you think that having to provide evidence is “exclusionary and brutal” then you’ll never be satisfied because science will always require evidence. It’s certainly exclusionary and brutal about ideas that have no evidence behind them.

DLH, Re 18:

Once we go beyond searching for “laws” of nature, and begin to seek for the origin of “complex specified information” such as DNA and the cell “factories”, that I consider that natural laws are inadequate to explain that and we must look beyond them to intelligent causation

Actually, we can refine this a bit:

1 –> Natural regularities reflect underlying mechanical necessity that we try to capture in statements of “laws of nature.” [E.g. we see that heat + oxidiser + fuel --> fire, reliably, and infer to laws of combustion to explain it.]

2 –> That is fine when we seek to explain regularities. But, we also try to explain contingent situations. [E.g. the origin of Garibaldi Hill here in Montserrat - monogentic (one-shot eruption) cooled down dome, or is it that we have evidence that it is a formerly active mini volcano in its own right with its own little history of eruptions, pyroclasit flows and all the way up to plinian eruptions and associated deposits?]

3 –> Highly contingent situations arise form chance or agency, based on our observation. For simple instance: a die sits on the table in front of us, 6 uppermost: necessity, chance or agency? Necessity may explain — using gravity and the dynamics of intermolecular repulsive forces and elasticity [very slight deflection reflecting distortion of inter-atomic relationships and resulting forces] — how it simply and reliably sits on the table, but the uppermost face is either chance or agency.

4 –> Science often studies such contingent situations, and we have developed techniques for identifying the source of contingent outcomes. For instance, experiment designs are often based on the statistics of populations and the difference between what could be expected on chance variation and intentful experimenter intervention.

5 –> Now, in certain situations, contingency show itself in information-storage capacity, and further shows itself in functionality dependent on that information, e.g the DNA code and the molecules that hold it and process it in the cell.

6 –> Such FSCI has a contingency pattern in which the functionality is relatively isolated in the space of possible configurations: to better than 1 in 10^150. in particular, when we have information storage beyond 500 - 1,000 bits, we can very reasonabley infer that islands of functional configurations are incredibly solated in teh config space. So much so that no random-walk based search on the gamut of our observed universe could be expected to reach the shores of an island of functionality.

7 –> In short, biofuncitonality is observed to be base don DNA strands of at least of 300 - 500,000 4-state elements. The resulting config spaces start at about 10^180,000 cells, makign islands of functionality so isolated that they simply are not credibly accessible to a random walk based search in any even very generous prebiotic soup scenario.

8 –> but contingencies on the relevant scale of complexity and specificity are routinely produced by agents using insight and intent: more or less reliably functional software requiring 600k bits upwards is something all of us who deal with computers address daily.

9 -> So, we have a choice of two sources for such contingency, one of which arguably is inadequate [chance], the other of which is adequate [intelligence]. It is not hard — absent selective hyperskepticism — to see which explanation is superior.

That’s why evolutionary materialism is doomed to failure as a paradigm.

GEM of TKI

DaveScot (17),

“If science is brutally exclusionary to things lacking evidence then why doesn’t it brutally exclude the notion that chance & necessity turned bacteria into baboons?”

Actually, it does exclude the notion that bacteria turned into baboons. Evolutionary theory takes the position that, aeons ago, basic life forms (we’ll use bacteria for now, but it’s not necessarily the case that it actually WAS bacteria) mutated into bacteria with a modified genome. That process continued over the ages. Eventually the modifications to bacteria resulted in new species of bacteria, which also mutated over the ages. The cumulative effect of the mutations, resulting in slightly different organisms, is what produced the diversity of life, including baboons and humans. And of that the fossil record, and increasingly our understanding of genetic relatinships, provides considerable evidence.

“There is evidence that bacteria and baboons are structurally related but there’s not a bit of evidence to support chance & necessity as the mechanism behind the relationship.”

It’s one of several dozen mechanisms, amply supported by evidence. It seems many IDers accept what they term “microevolution” because there is ample evidence that they cannot deny - well, that is just random mutation and natural selection. Given time, that process can and does produce entirely new species, and there is considerable evidence for it.

DLH (18),

“However, it was that Judeo-Christian world view within which scientific endeavors were launched. A number of authors have addressed that.”

Actually, scientific endeavours were also launched in the Muslim world (China and India too) and the legacy is with us today - stars with names such as Betelgeuse and Aldebaran, for instance.

“Where is the logic in then explicitly rejecting that world view and calling it “science”?”

I don’t understand this. Science is a METHOD, not a worldview. Nor is that worldview “rejected” - many scientists accept it (just as many accept Islam or other religions) , it just does not arise in their work and nor is there any reason for it to arise in it. Worldviews do not provide the evidence that scientists need in order to do their work, because worldviews are a philosophical or faith position and not evidence-based.

“Once we go beyond searching for “laws” of nature, and begin to seek for the origin of “complex specified information” such as DNA and the cell “factories”, that I consider that natural laws are inadequate to explain that and we must look beyond them to intelligent causation - just as we recognize human agents as such intelligent causes for the information we see around us and this system over which we are communicating.”

You may consider that, but the overwhelming view of scientists wordlwide is quite different - virtually all save a handful consider that the appearance of design is not a result of actual design.

Here Ye! Here Ye!

Dr. Berlinski’s THE DEVIL’S DELUSION in stores tomorrow!

kf at 19, number 9. Actually you have one source for contingency that exists and is arguably inadequate, and one that is adequate and arguably nonexistent. There is as yet no undisputed positive evidence for (non-human, unless-time-traveller) intelligence acting at any particular time and place in the history of life or the universe (before modern, non-timetravelling humans).

The fact that nobody has explained yet exactly how any particular bit of contingency came about by natural processes is not evidence that intelligence did it.

Clarence @ 21,

“because worldviews are a philosophical or faith position and not evidence-based.”

I don’t think so. This is a classic example of the media-driven false dichotomy between “Science” and “Faith”. My “worldview” isn’t the result of my personal preference for fantasy over fact, it is the result of the conclusions I have reached based on the evidence that I have been presented with. This is also historically true of a great number of scientists who saw evidence for a Creator and strove to understand His works by studying them and explaining them to the world.

Yes, DS, that’s why I included caveats about humans and time travellers. There is certainly the possibility that an invisible pink unicorn created itself and then created complexity in the past, but there is no positive scientific evidence for that possibility. Or any other.

DaveScot (23),

There is no contradiction, the position is quite clear. Bacteria do not turn into baboons, period. As I mentioned earlier they mutate into other bacteria, which mutate again etc. etc. for aeons. The cumulative effect of those changes over vast stretches of time is the diverse life we see on Earth today including baboons and humans. There is absolutely no contradiction there - the only difficulty is for humans such as you and I to picture a span of time of four billion years and all the events that might happen in that time.

Nor do I recognise your “God of Chance”. There is no such thing and, as has been pointed out numerous times, evolution operates by SELECTION. If you think there are gaps in the evidence, it is because the fossil record doesn’t show each individual that ever lved sho we don’t have the “begats” that we do in the Bible. But the overall picture we get from fossils is one of increasing complexity as time goes by, and a good (and improving) record of evolutionary relationships for many creatures, including whales, horses etc. Certainly the picture isn’t perfect - but it’s a great deal better than any picture we have of design, isn’t it?

Jack Golightly (25),

“My “worldview” isn’t the result of my personal preference for fantasy over fact, it is the result of the conclusions I have reached based on the evidence that I have been presented with. This is also historically true of a great number of scientists who saw evidence for a Creator and strove to understand His works by studying them and explaining them to the world.”

Well, if they were reying on “evidence” then it wasn’t a faith position. But I think you’ll find that when people refer to this “evidence” it turns out not to be evidence, as understood by science - it’s usually highly ambiguous and very subjective, and essentially dependent on the desires, the culture and prejudices of the observer. What you interpret as “evidence” of a Creator might not be by me or someone else - and indeed, even two people who see it as evidence of a Creator may have different interpretations of the nature of the Creator.

DaveScot at 28:

There is no evidence to support the notion that other or past instances [of genetic engineers] took the form of invisible pink unicorns. I’ll agree with that much of what you wrote. I suppose that’s progress.

So, DaveScot, we’ve agreed that there is no evidence for the invisible pink unicorns. Indeed someone is making progress. But you’ve left the door open for other possibilities. And no doubt other possibilities do exist. What evidence is there for those other possibilities? And what is it about that evidence that supports those other possibilities while not supporting the invisible pink unicorn?

DaveScot,

I’ll try to put this as simply as I can. A bacteria cannot change into a baboon. I made this statement because you asked for evidence that a bacteria could change into a baboon. Now, whilst you may be familiar with the concept that accumulated changes in the genome can lead to a diversity of species over billions of years (including baboons and humans), past experience suggests that there are folks out there - largely creationists - who really do think that the position of evolution is that bacteria mutate straight into baboons. Clearly nonsense, but that seems to be the way some of them think.

On your question about variation: the variation itself is random. Basically, as you know, our genes are based on a long self-replicating molecule called DNA. Like a lot of molecules, its stucture changes randomly depending on the conditions in which it subsists. That includes random changes which occur during replication (e.g. when reproduction occurs). Those random changes can result in expression of the genes which, in some circumstances, result in an advantage to the organism which gives it a better chance of survival and/or reproduction, in which case the advantageous mutation has more chance of being passed on to offspring. When working at a population level, the result is that the mutation propagates throughout the population because of the selection of the advantageous effects. There is absolutely no evidence for any “purpose-driven” variation.

—–congregate: “So, DaveScot, we’ve agreed that there is no evidence for the invisible pink unicorns. Indeed someone is making progress. But you’ve left the door open for other possibilities. And no doubt other possibilities do exist. What evidence is there for those other possibilities? And what is it about that evidence that supports those other possibilities while not supporting the invisible pink unicorn?”

So, what is your world view with respect to neo-Darwinism, theism, and intelligent design? Are you a materialist Darwinist or a self contradictory TE. My guess is the former. Why remain in the shadows?

“The overwhelming view of scientists worldwide is quite different - virtually all save a handful consider that the appearance of design is not a result of actual design.”

And that’s the difference between a worldview and a method.

Just for the fun of it (and until the coffee kicks in), let’s revisit this notion of selection. As we know, Darwin himself was uncomfortable with his most famous phrase. “Selection” cannot be invoked without agency, and there is no agent in nature per se. “Survival of the fittest” was thrown in as an alternative; but this is a tautology and tells us nothing about the how of origins.

So we’re back where we began—how to account for the self-evident goodness of nature, which was the whole point of Darwin’s book to begin with. Naïve religious people have a way of accounting for this goodness, since they believe that God created the heavens and the earth and his eternal qualitites are evident in everything that has been made.

But what about the followers of Darwin—you know, those sober greybeards who don’t have a worldview but only a scientific method? Just what is their method of accounting for the high degree of selection necessary in order to draw something of great value from undifferentiated matter—or for that matter of accounting for matter itself?

So far this mysterious ameliorative power has not been demonstrated in any lab under natural conditions. There is no empirical method for making it show itself or casting light on its nature. The only hard evidence we have is inferential.

But then what “method” distinguishes Darwinism from a worldview? It interprets what is seen in nature according to the theory of natural selection. There is no clear difference between the “method” seen, for instance, in evo devo, and the worldview it reflects.

Show ameliorative evolution in action—demonstrate it for its own sake and not merely by inference. Until then, permit us to be skeptical of Darwin’s rather bold proposition.

StephenB-I’ve noticed you asking other people to state their worldview. Why are you asking?

With respect to neo-Darwinism, I’m not sure what you mean by that. With respect to theism, I don’t believe in any gods. With respect to intelligent design, I think it is an intuition with as yet nothing substantial to back it up and no explanatory power, though it is not impossible that some day there might be more. As an unsupported and unuseful intuition, it is not an appropriate subject for US public school science classes.

DS:

Intelligent agency is no different. If it happened once and it is presumed that the physical laws which permitted it once operate the same way in other times and places it a reasonable possibility that it happened elsewhere in the vastness of time and space. So we search for signs of them.

And have we found any signs yet?

When something is observed in the present and the physical laws which allow it in the present are presumed to have worked the same way in the past then science works on the presumption that it was possible in the past and is possible again in the future.

You and I exist in the present. How much would you invest in the search for signs of prehistoric DaveScot and congregate?

congregate,

Forgive me if I’m misreading you, but it seems you’re raisng the same objection you raised earlier in the thread on Chimpanzee-Human Hybrids, namely, that if we are to claim intelligence as the most likely cause we somehow need independent evidence of the presence of that intelligence.

I answered your objection there, but the thread was closed, so you had no opportunity to respond.

My response remains the same*:

Artifacts are [sufficient] evidence [for] the historical presence of an intelligent agent. When we first found stone artifacts in the Americas from the ice age, it overturned the long-held idea that there were no humans on the continent during that time: the designed artifacts established historical presence. So ancient carbon-based machinery and digital coding devices establish the prescence of (an) ancient Intelligence(s).

The point is, if we find artifacts they are usually taken as sufficient evidence of historical presence. It was the case when we found stone tools lodged in ice-age bison ribs…the artifact (the tools) needed an explanation, and the most likely explanation was intelligent agency. Even though this was the first evidence we had of Ice Age intelligence on North America, it was sufficient. I don’t see why it should be different in the case of carbon-based artifacts.

(*Note, I included edits from my original post to make my point clearer and fix an error I made earlier.)

Atom-You are reading me right. I was glad that thread was closed, because it was too long, but sorry because I was enjoying the discussion.

The stone hunting tools you mention are indeed evidence for humans, but in large part because we know that humans existed at that time and had the ability to create similar things. We know that because of multiple lines of evidence.

I guess our difference is that what you call carbon-based artifacts, I call biological phenomena. I don’t think there is any evidence that those phenomena are artifacts, merely an intuition that they sure are complicated. I’m not yet convinced by the vague mathematics and information theory that intelligent design proponents find so compellingly preclusive of the possibility of unintelligent origins.

As an aside, I would say the most likely explanation for the tools was humans, rather than intelligent agency. Do you think the first archeologist who found some said “hmm, I bet an intelligent agency created this!”

Congregate:

Re 24:

Actually you have one source for contingency that exists and is arguably inadequate, and one that is adequate and arguably nonexistent. There is as yet no undisputed positive evidence for (non-human, unless-time-traveller) intelligence acting at any particular time and place in the history of life or the universe (before modern, non-timetravelling humans).

The fact that nobody has explained yet exactly how any particular bit of contingency came about by natural processes is not evidence that intelligence did it.

Really?

a –> We know that the state of our cosmos is such that intelligent agents may EXIST. For [as DS pointed out] we instantiate such agents. (Nor do we have any good reason to infer that we exhaust the possible nature or configuration of such agents.)

b –> We have an observed pattern, of causal factors tracing to chance, necessity and agency; associated with observed, reliable markers: contingency, complexity, specificity.

c –> We know that natural regularities trace to mechanical necessity, as the fire example at 19 illustrates, and as the way a die sits on a table [cf 19] illustrates.

d –> By contrast, which of its six faces is uppermost is a contingent phenomenon, calling for different causal factors. And, we know that agency and/or chance could account for this.

e –> Further, when we have sufficiently complex and specifically functional contingency — e.g. if we were to have a string of about 400 dice expressing in a six state code, information that guides an algorithmic process or is a message in a language or the like — such reliably traces to agency.

f –> We have an empirically based reliable sign of agency, on the strength of which we may infer to agency [which is possible] in cases where we do not observe the agents at work.

g –> In the case of DNA and increments in DNA for body plan level biodiversity, we have FSCI well beyond the relevant complexity bound.

h –> We thus have excellent reason — absent a priori commitments that reflect worldview assumptions rather than evidence — to infer that DNA etc are artifacts of agency. (In effect SETI has spoken, but in a chemical signal we have known about for 55 years or so.)

Atom has spoken well on this also.

GEM of TKI

PS: Clarence at 21 — where, when did we have a certain specific and unique; globally transforming, self-sustaining, accelerating phenomenon often called the Scientific Revolution? What was its historical, cultural and philosophical/ worldviews context?

Thank you congregate for your response.

congregate wrote:

The stone hunting tools you mention are indeed evidence for humans, but in large part because we know that humans existed at that time and had the ability to create similar things. We know that because of multiple lines of evidence.

I don’t know if I set up the context clearly enough, but my point was that we didn’t know that humans were around at that time (in that part of the world at least.) Let me give you an excerpt from “1491″ (p.166) to show the proper historical context:

Indeed, he was now claiming that the artifacts were half a million years old. Half a million years! One can imagine Hrdlicka’s disgust — Homo Sapiens itself wasn’t thought to be half a million years old. By asking Figgins to unearth any new “discoveries” only in the presence of the scientific elite, Hrdlicka hoped to eliminate the next round of quackery before it could take hold.

In August 1927 Figgins’s team at Folsom came across a spear point stuck between two bison ribs. He sent out telegrams. Three renowned scientists promptly traveled to New Mexico and watched Figgins’s team brush away the dirt from the point and extract it from the gully. All three agreed, as they quickly informed Hrdlicka, that the discovery admitted only one possible explanation: thousands of years ago, a Pleistocene hunter had speared a bison.

After that, Meltzer told me, “the whole fourty-year battle was essetntially over. [One of the experts, A.V.] Kidder said, ‘This site is real,’ and that was it.”

There was a fourty-year argument over whether or not humans were there on the continent at that time. Established science (”the experts” in the book) said NO, NO, NO! Up to that point, there was no evidence of their presence, direct or indirect.

But the discovery of a single stone artifact settled the argument was over and established the historical presence of intelligent Pleistocene humans. Tools (and machines) are sufficient evidence of the historical presence of intelligent agents.

congregate wrote:

I guess our difference is that what you call carbon-based artifacts, I call biological phenomena. I don’t think there is any evidence that those phenomena are artifacts, merely an intuition that they sure are complicated. I’m not yet convinced by the vague mathematics and information theory that intelligent design proponents find so compellingly preclusive of the possibility of unintelligent origins.

It is fine if you feel that way, but again, we have direct evidence that intelligent agents can create machinery of that type but lack a corresponding level of evidence that unguided mechanisms can do so. So intelligent agents are at this point the most likely explanation.

As an aside, I would say the most likely explanation for the tools was humans, rather than intelligent agency. Do you think the first archeologist who found some said “hmm, I bet an intelligent agency created this!”

It is the intelligence of the humans that allow them to make sophisticated tools. This is how we know that ancient humans were intelligent in the first place: by their tools and art. So Intelligence is the important causal factor, not their “humanity”. Indeed, one can imagine alien (non-human) life forms creating similar machines, using the same causal mechanism, Intelligence. So forgive me if I cut to the chase and point out what is important causally.

DS:

Well argued.

I would, however make a tongue-in-cheek note, i.e. that NDT serves a very “practical” purpose: it rhetorically underpins a worldview — evolutionary materialism — used to justify many policy, cultural and lifestyle agendas that would otherwise be much more questionable.

Admittedly, that is not a technical, wealth-generating applicability, but it is a most potent “practical” use.

GEM of TKI

Atom:

Excellent. (I couldn’t resist remarking!)

GEM of TKI

Thanks GEM.

Always good to hear from you.

kairosfocus,

you said

“that NDT serves a very “practical” purpose: it rhetorically underpins a worldview — evolutionary materialism”

While true, it also serves another practical purpose and that it explains nearly all the origins of current world species. Just how many is certainly up for debate but the percentage of species whose origin is due to Darwinian process is very high. (I understand the debate on just what a species is can be contentious)

So when one discusses this with someone who supports modern evolutionary theory, it should be recognized that this is where they are coming from. Supporters of ID focus on the many anomalies, while supporters of Darwinian processes focus on the large number of examples of it working.

So when we disparage things such as neo Darwinism, we should also recognize its relevance to origin of the variety of life forms on the planet. We tend not to here as the modus operandi is to disparage just as it is on the pro Darwin sites to disparage ID.

Atom- I agree with kf, well stated.

With regard to the 1491 argument, as I said I don’t believe that ID proponents have yet uncovered the equivalent of that unambiguous stone artifact.

Regarding the most likely explanation for complexity, I’ll repeat myself from that other thread: you are convinced it’s more likely the work of an unarguably capable agent for which there is no evidence of its existence, while I am more impressed with the agent that is only arguably capable, but definitely exists.

Intelligence may be a necessary ingredient in complexity-making (that necessity is a key part of the basic argument of ID), but it is not sufficient. If those intelligent humans did not have opposable thumbs, or the cpaacity to interact with matter, they would not have been able to create the tools. So I don’tthink intelligence is the only thing that is important causally.

—–congregate: “StephenB-I’ve noticed you asking other people to state their worldview. Why are you asking?”

That’s a fair question and it deserves a fair answer.

I have found ID critics are much more disposed to solicit information than to disclose it. My perception is that many of them love to scrutinize but they hate being scrutinized, meaning that they prefer to pounce from the shadows. If an ID critic is going to grill me or someone else about the design inference, I also want to grill him about what often turns out to be an irrational rejection of a self evident truth.

One aspect of the failure to disclose is the tendency to dismiss basic terms as irrelevant. Darwinism, for example, is a perfectly legitimate term to mark those who believe in a non-directed evolutionary process, as opposed to someone like Behe, who believes in a God-directed process. For some reason, Darwinists bristle at the prospect of being accurately characterized, which, to me at least, is another indication that they would prefer not to be held accountable.

As a general rule, Darwinists are hyper-skeptics, by which I mean that they reject not only intelligent design but also the self evident truths that make rationality possible in the first place. Quite often, they reject the scientific justification for a design inference not because the evidence isn’t there, but because they doubt the minds capacity to apprehend general knowledge at any level. Under the circumstances, their proclivity to reject ID is a special case of a more general problem, hyper-skepticism.

In other cases, critics have decided in advance to reject the ID arguments no matter what, as is indicated when they keep posing the same objections over and over again without even bothering to consider the answers. It is part of their “no consession policy.”

Equally important, it is helpful to know the precise nature of a critic’s biases and prejudices. We all have them, but not everyone is open to revealing them. It helps me to know, for example, whether someone is a theistic evolutionist or, as I assume in your case (you have not yet disclosed it), an atheist Darwinist. Put another way, I prefer to answer questions in the context the questioner’s scientific/philosophical world view as opposed to volleying back and forth without any communicative framework at all. It seems fair to me.

congregate,

Thank you for your kind words.

congregate wrote:

With regard to the 1491 argument, as I said I don’t believe that ID proponents have yet uncovered the equivalent of that unambiguous stone artifact.

Point taken. Implicit in this admission is agreement with the general point of my example: a true artifact is sufficient to establish the historical presence of an intelligent being. You disagree about whether or not the artifacts I present are “true” artifacts, but at least you are open enough to admit that the general point I made was valid.

But please, define a method for how we could distinguish a true artifact from merely an apparent artifact. (You have concluded that carbon-based machines are not ture artifacts, so you must have at least a general method.)

congregate wrote:

Regarding the most likely explanation for complexity, I’ll repeat myself from that other thread: you are convinced it’s more likely the work of an unarguably capable agent for which there is no evidence of its existence, while I am more impressed with the agent that is only arguably capable, but definitely exists.

When we analyze this further, we see that you are subtly begging the question.

I present an object. It is a rare type of object, but one with which we have other examples. We know from experience that intelligent agents such as humans (and theoretically other types of non-human intelligences, if they exist) can produce these types of objects at will. Moreover, we have no direct evidence that any other cause is capable of producing this type of object.

Without knowing where or when this object came from, we tentatively conclude that intelligent agents are the most likely cause for this object.

We then learn that it was found in a time and place where we have no other evidence for human (or non-human) intelligence being present.

Now, either this object validly establishes the historical presence of an intelligent agent, or it does not.

Please answer this question to yourself, does it or does it not?

Then ask yourself if the object I am describing is a spear point found in Pleistocene strata in North America, or an ancient carbon-based digital copying machine.

…

congregate wrote:

Intelligence may be a necessary ingredient in complexity-making (that necessity is a key part of the basic argument of ID), but it is not sufficient.

I’ll agree with you. I meant it is the most important aspect, not the only necessary one. You can add thumbs to your list if you like, but non-human, thumbless intelligent agents are not an absurd idea. Non-carbon based intelligences are also a theoretical possibility. So if we want to remain as general as possible, but not too general, we can possibly settle on necessary attributes for constructing complex machinery as:

1) Intelligence
2) Sufficient ability to interact with matter

Humans can do both. Theoretical aliens could possibly do both. Matrix-style AI robots may one day be able to do both. So I think those are two necessary attributes for any machine-making agent. Would you like to add others?

StephenB-
Thanks for a fair answer.

I think the point of an ID blog is to provide information about what ID is, and what the arguments for it are to those who are curious about it. So I’m not surprised that ID critics here behave the way you describe, nor do I think it is inappropriate.

Darwinism may indeed be a perfectly legitimate term, but it is also one about which there is some controversy. Many mainstream biologists seem to feel it is not appropriate for various reasons, particularly when it is used by a nonmember of the group. As you define it, I guess I’m a Darwinist, since I think the evidence indicates that evolution is a non-directed process.

As for self-evident truths and the possibility of rationality, that’s beyond the level of my thinking on this issue. I have not studied the question but it is not evident to me how the existence or nonexistence of design relates to the truths that make rationality possible, whatever they may be.

—–congregate: “Intelligence may be a necessary ingredient in complexity-making (that necessity is a key part of the basic argument of ID), but it is not sufficient. If those intelligent humans did not have opposable thumbs, or the cpaacity to interact with matter, they would not have been able to create the tools. So I don’tthink intelligence is the only thing that is important causally.”

Intelligence is a necessary but insufficient explanation for the cave man’s first hunting club, his handy sharpened-stone, and his all-purpose skinning and killing tool. Intelligence is a necessary but insufficient explanation for the scratched pictures on the walls of the cave dwelling, or for the symbols that represented words and sentences. By your standards, we cannot draw inferences about intelligent agency from these artifacts.

Atom-

But please, define a method for how we could distinguish a true artifact from merely an apparent artifact. (You have concluded that carbon-based machines are not ture artifacts, so you must have at least a general method.)

That is the central goal of ID theory, so I don’t feel too bad about not having a good answer. I guess my conclusion is that it is not possible to distinguish a true artifact from an apparent artifact based solely on the object itself. It can only be done with knowledge of the context of the object. Maybe this is where one of StephenB’s self-evident truths should come in, but is failing to make itself evident to me.

Now, either this object validly establishes the historical presence of an intelligent agent, or it does not.

Please answer this question to yourself, does it or does it not?

For me, a single apparent spear point found in billion year old rock would be an interesting discovery and spur a search for more, but would not by itself validly establish the presence of an intelligent agent. It might suggest the presence of a previously unknown natural process. The presence of an iPod would probably establish the existence of an intelligent agent though. Maybe I don’t know enough about how reliably spear points are identified.

Then ask yourself if the object I am describing is a spear point found in Pleistocene strata in North America, or an ancient carbon-based digital copying machine.

Well, you said it’s rare, so it can’t be an ancient carbon-based digital copying machine; those are all over the place. You don’t want to see the ones in the back of my refrigerator.
I think the pre-1927 lack of evidence for pleistocene humans in North America is of a different magnitude than the current lack of evidence for pre-500,000 years ago intellligence. Given the evidence now in existence, and the nature of the searches that have been made so far, I think it is a lot more likely that new (old) human settlements will be discovered than that new (Earth-affecting) intelligences will be discovered. But that likelihood has not been scientifically determined by me, in either case.

Regarding the necessary attributes for an agent to create complex machinery, it may be stating the obvious, but the only one I can think of to add to intelligence and sufficient ability to interact with matter is existence.

StephenB at 54: I didn’t make myself clear, I guess. I meant just the opposite of what you took from my quoted statement.

If we grant that intelligence is necessary for the creation of complexity, then all those things you describe are indeed the basis for an inference of intelligent agency. However, intelligence is not sufficient to create them. A goldfish with the intelligence of Einstein would not be able to create a sharpened stone. At least by my definition of intelligence.

congregate wrote:

The presence of an iPod would probably establish the existence of an intelligent agent though

Again, I appreciate your frankness in agreeing that any “true” artifact is sufficient evidence to establish the historical prescence of an intelligent agent. You say that an iPod would do it. So the general point must be valid.

I wrote:

Then ask yourself if the object I am describing is a spear point found in Pleistocene strata in North America, or an ancient carbon-based digital copying machine.

and you responded:

Well, you said it’s rare, so it can’t be an ancient carbon-based digital copying machine; those are all over the place. You don’t want to see the ones in the back of my refrigerator.

Rare is a relative term; I ment rare in terms of physical objects; I think you would concede that machines and tools are not the most common types of objects in the cosmos.

But let’s not get stuck on an unimportant word. Please remove “rare” from my scenario.

Revised:

I present an object. It is a type of object of which we have other, known, examples. We know from experience that intelligent agents such as humans (and theoretically other types of non-human intelligences, if they exist) can produce these types of objects at will. Moreover, we have no direct evidence that any other cause is capable of producing this type of object.

Without knowing where or when this object came from, we tentatively conclude that intelligent agents are the most likely cause for this object.

We then learn that it was found in a time and place where we have no other evidence for human (or non-human) intelligence being present.

Now, either this object validly establishes the historical presence of an intelligent agent, or it does not.

Please answer this question to yourself, does it or does it not?

Then ask yourself if the object I am describing is a spear point found in Pleistocene strata in North America, or an ancient carbon-based digital copying machine.

You still don’t know which type of object I’m referring to.

Earlier, you learned and conceded that if I was discussing a spear head, it is rationally valid to infer the historical presence of an intelligent agent from such object.

But if the object is an ancient digital carbon-based copying machine, which is a perfectly acceptable reading of the above, then suddenly it is not rationally valid to infer the historical presence of an intelligent agent from such object, even though described in exactly the same terms in the scenario.

You problem appears to not with the method, but with the implications.

Fruthermore,

congregate wrote:

I think the pre-1927 lack of evidence for pleistocene humans in North America is of a different magnitude than the current lack of evidence for pre-500,000 years ago intellligence.

How is this so? There was a complete lack of evidence for humans on the North American continent during that time, according to the scientific consensus of that day. Indeed, anyone who disagreed was labelled a “crank” and would have their career in anthropology/archeology ruined.

From “1491″, p. 164:

Hrdlicka regarded himself as the conscience of physical anthropology and made it his business to set boundaries. So thoroughly did he discredit all purported findings of ancient indians that a later director of the Bureau of American Ethnology admitted that for decades it was a career-killer for an archeologist to claim to have “discovered indications of a respectable antiquity for the Indian.

In Europe, every “favorable cave” showed evidence “of some ancient man.” Hrdlicka proclaimed in March 1928. And the evidence they found in those caves was “not a single implement or whatnot,” but of artifacts in “such large numbers that already they clog some of the museums in Europe.” Not in the Americas, though. “Where are such things in America?” he taunted the amateurs.

Hrdlicka and all the other professional anthropologists of his day were as convinced of the absence of evidence concerning Pleistocene Americans as you are concerning ancient Carbon-Machine builders. You both purport(ed) that there was/is no evidence for the existence of e