Detecting Design Requires a Trained Eye

_{William Dembski

April 29, 2009

Intelligent Design}

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I received this email from a colleague in London who used to have an office in the place where the Shard London Bridge (a massive skyscraper) is being built. His insight about design detection requiring a trained eye is good. His insight about Darwinists having purposely (by design?) trained their eyes not to see design is great. Indeed, if you can’t see design in biology …

Hi Bill

… Look at this http://www.shardlondonbridge.com.

This will become the tallest building in the whole of Europe. It is being built in the place of a semi-tall building I was working in not more than 3 months ago. I have since moved close by to another office because of the building work.

I use the public subway system to arrive at London Bridge Subway station to get to work. I took this picture [see below]. In the picture you see the work that is going on on the ground to start this tall building.

To the untrained eye, it looks like a mess and the workers don’t seem to know what they’re doing. They seem to be placed around everywhere. Why aren’t they building the thing? 🙂

When I walk past it, it reminds me of the cell. The biochemists see a mess in the cell with molecules sloppily floating around because of their ignorance and the deliberate Darwinist glasses they wear.

But in the cell are perfectly orchestrated parts all doing their specific bit to ensure the whole cell is healthy and functioning to support life. The picture is representative of this to me.

The design is there, but it needs as much a trained eye as to remove the design blocking ideas like chance and natural law.

Regards
[snip]

The Shard

Comments

Allen, I understand what anathema means and I used the term on purpose. I cannot speak for you but for the vast majority of Darwinists I speak with the term fits very well.ellijacket_{May 1, 2009
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Nakashima,
Far from working in unity, the action is more like a Three Stooges movie in the middle of a pie fight, and some people are makig pies out of the remains of pies just thrown!
I must say, this cellular pie fight illustrated in the video has the most incredibly purposeful and finely-tuned end result I've seen for pastry combat =P. I can only imagine how tough it must be for that molecule to "walk(at incredibly high speeds)" a tight-rope with all of the pie chaos that ensues.PaulN_{May 1, 2009
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Sal Gal-san, Thank you for your correction. I now understand that a semiotic agent is a necessary part of the system. I was previously under the impression raw measurement data could be used, such that the agent was merely a transduction, from photons to numbers for example.Nakashima_{May 1, 2009
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Allen, ----"[1] DEFINITION of “anathema”: 1. A ban or curse pronounced with religious solemnity by ecclesiastical authority, often accompanied by excommunication; denunciation of anything as accursed." Anathema to the church of Darwin....it's fitting. ellijacket is correct :)Clive Hayden_{May 1, 2009
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Nakashima (6), I asked in (2), "Is there a design-detecting agent that is not designed?" It appears to me that Dembski's argument from specified complexity is predicated on the existence of entities to which he must assign high specified complexity. To be technical, the specified complexity of an event is computed in terms of a semiotic agent's descriptions of events. I don't see how Dembski would assign anything but very low probability (high complexity) to the event semiotic agent. And "semiotic agent" is his compact description of that event. An event with high complexity and a short description has high specified complexity. Thus when he assigns high specified complexity to an event and infers intelligent design, he does so only with reference to an event -- a semiotic agent -- he may in turn infer is intelligently designed. A semiotic agent essentially "sees the patterns" in nature. If intelligent design is in the eye of the intelligently designed beholder, then the design inference is a logical mess.Sal Gal_{April 30, 2009
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Nakashima says,
the action [in the cell] is more like a Three Stooges movie in the middle of a pie fight, and some people are makig pies out of the remains of pies just thrown!
Young readers, look here.Sal Gal_{April 30, 2009
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Damn; sorry, the preview showed the Greek characters, but when it was dumped into the comments, these were converted into ?? marks. How are people ever going to learn their Greek? What's this world coming to...Allen_MacNeill_{April 30, 2009
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Mr PaulN, I'm glad you like them. I think the first video is probably quite familiar to UD readers, but I wanted to link to the version that has the narration of what all those cool pictures were trying to teach you. The unity you see is therefore an artifact of the storytelling. Far from working in unity, the action is more like a Three Stooges movie in the middle of a pie fight, and some people are makig pies out of the remains of pies just thrown! The second video shows that yes, it is a sloppy mess inside a cell, and the clean-up by animators and educators should not be confused for the real thing. The map is not the territory.Nakashima_{April 30, 2009
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In #4 ellijacket asserted:
"It requires a worldview that considers design anathema to understand why this appearance is an illusion." [Emphasis added]
Nope: the way a trained evolutionary biologist would state this is: "It requires a worldview that considers design ~~anathema~~ unnecessary to understand why this appearance is an illusion." See the difference? The ID version imputes a moral judgment [1] that isn't there in the EB version. [2] [1] DEFINITION of "anathema": 1. A ban or curse pronounced with religious solemnity by ecclesiastical authority, often accompanied by excommunication; denunciation of anything as accursed. 2. An imprecation; a curse; a malediction. 3. Any person or thing anathematized, or cursed by ecclesiastical authority. ETYMOLOGY: From Late Latin anathema (“‘curse, person cursed, offering’”) from Ancient Greek ??????? (anathema), “‘something dedicated, especially dedicated to evil’”) from ????????? (anatith?mi), “‘I set upon, offer as a votive gift’”) from ??? (ana), “‘upon’”) + ?????? (tith?mi), “‘I put, place’”). The Ancient Greek term was influenced by Hebrew ??? (herem), leading to the sense of "accursed," especially in Ecclesiastical writers. [2] DEFINITION of "unnecessary": 1. Not needed; superfluous, unneeded, needless. 2. Done in addition to requirements; unrequired. ETYMOLOGY: "un" (not) + < Middle English necessarye < Old French necessaire < Latin necessarius (“‘unavoidable, inevitable, indispensable, requisite’”) < necesse (“‘unavoidable, inevitable, indispensable’”), neut. adj. with esse and habere, prob. orig. ne cessum or non cessum < ne (“‘not’”) + cessus, pp. of cedere (“‘yield’”). Isn't it curious how ID supporters immediately jump to the conclusion that evolutionary biologists are all about branding other people as "evil", rather than arguing about things being logically necessary or unnecessary. Why would that be, exactly?Allen_MacNeill_{April 30, 2009
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Thanks for the videos Nakashima! Those are some of the most convincing portrayals of design I've seen so far. =) To see all of those complex cellular mechanisms working in unity toward predefined goals is amazing!PaulN_{April 30, 2009
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Those messy biochemists made a video of how sloppy it is in there. WOW, but not so realistic, ne? A more realistic view of that molecule 'walking' down the actin filament.Nakashima_{April 30, 2009
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The biochemists see a mess in the cell with molecules sloppily floating around because of their ignorance and the deliberate Darwinist glasses they wear.
??? Who says that there is "a mess in the cell with molecules sloppily floating around?" What relevance could this post possibly have to "detecting design" -- your friend [snip] knew, before he even looked at it, that this was a construction site.pubdef_{April 30, 2009
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It reminds me of nothing so much as that hotel in Pyongyang. It looks like something the makers of a very low-budget sci-fi film would use to show the capital of the evil aliens, who would probably look like bugs.tribune7_{April 30, 2009
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Nakashima-san I thought design could be detected via a mathematical procedure, an algorithm which did not require judgement on the part of the implementor of the algorithm. You raise a very interesting point. From that picture, using Dr. D's method could you infer design sans a "trained eye"? I think probably not. I think, however, after observing the site for a bit and discerning a pattern in the movements of the workmen and machines which after a bit cause an effective change in the environment you should be able to calculate the CSI and conclude what you are seeing is being done according to design (i.e. a blueprint). A trained eye, of course, would likely see the pattern just from the photo.tribune7_{April 30, 2009
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Off Topic - Bad Design Detected By Untrained Eye What did the Prince say about this building? It reminds me of nothing so much as that hotel in Pyongyang. What awesome, eye-stabbing gracelessness.Nakashima_{April 30, 2009
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I'm quite confused. I thought design could be detected via a mathematical procedure, an algorithm which did not require judgement on the part of the implementor of the algorithm. i know there was a bit of confusion about the Explanatory Filter, has it completely lost status to the trained eye?Nakashima_{April 30, 2009
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@3
It requires a “trained eye” or at least subtle coercion to understand why this appearance is an illusion.
There we go, that's better. I think the point of this post is to give credence to the idea that when you look at something that doesn't immediately scream design or purposeful and harmonious order, such as the example of the scattered array of construction workers, it only takes a little more thought and observation to see that there's actually a very mindful orchestration of activity working towards a unified goal.PaulN_{April 30, 2009
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It requires a “trained eye” or at least training to understand why this appearance is an illusion.
It requires a worldview that considers design anathema to understand why this appearance is an illusion.ellijacket_{April 30, 2009
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Surely the opposite is true? Biologists, and indeed most intelligent people, see the apppearance of design in life at all levels. It requires a "trained eye" or at least training to understand why this appearance is an illusion.Mark Frank_{April 30, 2009
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Bill, Is there a design-detecting agent that is not designed?Sal Gal_{April 29, 2009
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Detecting Design Requires a Trained Eye
Really? I thougt design in nature is so obvious that it
screams design
as Scordova, Kairosfocus and others have stated here before. Even in one of your posts (Flopping around, witnessing the rebellion) the term appeared.sparc_{April 29, 2009
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