gpuccio (186):

I think the meaning is clear enough. If only a phenotypic variation is selected, but it does not correspond to a genotipic variation, the variation will not be transmitted. In some way, any phenotypic variation has to originate form the genotype, or to be converted to a genotypic difference. What other model have you in mind?

I think I see where your problem lies here. You seem to be assuming that there should be selection FOR junk. I have never claimed such a thing. The designer would select for whatever phenotype desired and the junk would simply go along for the ride. Even non-selected for DNA can be transmitted to subsequent generations.

And to you.

GEM of TKI

PS: Tried Chrome — nope. Safari may tempt me, or Opera. But it’s maybe 6 weeks out on the fix-up to release candidate . . .

Therefor if we did not observe any traces or the traces we thought we observed turned out to be caused by nature, operating freely, the design inference would fall.

I have stated that several times already and not one of you can comprehend it.

Why is that?

The EF works. The ONLY problems the EF has are the data used and the people using it.

The EF demands TWO criteria be met:

1- the ruling out of chance and necessity

PLUS

2- Specification

If those two are met then it is safe to infer design.

And yes as with ALL scientific inferences that can either be confirmed or refuted with future research.

It is true that biological phenomemon have been explained but not by nor because of the theory of evolution.

So to refute the design inference for the bacterial flagellum all one has to do is demonstrate that a designing agency is not required.

To do that just take some populations of flagella-less bacteria and see if a flagellum develops.

Right now your position doesn’t have any empirical evidence to support it…

1) That informational saltations necessarily follow from design is not my position: it is an essential concept of ID. That the saltation can be detected if it is complex enough is the essence of the EF.

One can imagine a scenario in which a designer simply nudged certain mutations in a particular direction for particular adaptive purposes, in a manner that in each case was indistinguishable from mutations that are random with respect to the adaptive significance of the mutations. An examination of the phylogenetic history of the resulting organisms would reveal no shifts of either phenotype or subparts (proteins, for example) larger than those that were possible by means of random mutations and selection – yet the the outcome was preconceived and actualized by that means. No saltations would be present, yet the outcome was designed.

You appear to be saying that it is not possible that a designer operated in this way. Why? Why is it a necessary entailment of ID that designers are constrained to work only by effecting “informational saltations?”

So, I don’t understand your series of statements of the kind:
“ID entails no assertions regarding the number of designers. ID survives any finding.”

What I am asking for are entailments of ID theory, and the empirical tests of such predictions such that failure to observe the predicted outcome is something that ID may not “survive.”

“not one single phenomenon attributable to design has ever been shown to have other explanations”.
“not one single phenomenon attributed to design has ever been shown to have other explanations.”

The difference between these two statements is huge. It is analogous to the difference between:

“Not one single geometric circle has ever been shown to have a shape other than that of a circle” (true by definition), and

“Not one single geometric form thought to have been a circle has ever been shown to have a shape other than that of a circle.”

The first is certainly true, by definition. The second is not.

That’s the difference.

So, please show me a single phenomenon, outside biological information, which can be attributed to design by the ID procedure, and which has been proven to have another explanation.

I’m not aware of anyone actually “applying” the EF either “outside” or “inside” biological information. Moreover, the filter could be (for the sake of argument) 100% accurate in discerning human artifacts from natural objects, yet return 100% false positives when pointed at biological objects (because biological objects are not designed).

Either known laws of necessity can explain one thing, or they can’t. For known laws of necessity I obviously mean things like the laws of physics, and any detailed and quantitative physical explanation based on them.

“Laws of necessity” don’t explain things – people do. In the relevant instances, scientists do. Nor are phenomena “either explained or not explained.” Virtually all physical phenomena for which he now have explanations once were in need of explanation, and moved from the category of “unexplained by known laws of necessity” into the category of “explained by the known laws of necessity” by dint of human effort. Moreover, there remain many phenomena for which we have no firm explanation in the context of mathematical physics and chemistry (say, the particular compositions of the moons of jupiter, or then nature of dark energy), yet for which we have no reason to believe that natural explanations are not attainable. It follows that there may be many phenomena for which natural explanations cannot be offered in terms of the (imbecilic, repetitive ID shibboleth) “chance or necessity,” yet for which we have no reason to conclude that they were thereby designed.

This is why the filter doesn’t work. The status, “can’t be explained in terms of chance or necessity” is contingent: explanation in terms of chance or necessity doesn’t simply lie there, self-evident. Rather, the class of objects that are explained thereby is constantly changing, and constantly expanding, as explanations are proffered and tested.

Over approximately the last 150 years, biological phenomena have moved progressively from the “unexplained” category into the explained. Of course, you don’t find those explanations “credible,” the escape hatch you have built into your definitions that enables you to force them to be “true.” But no matter: that migration will continue apace, whether you like it (or even acknowledge it) or not.

I have a sad suspect: in the end, all your arguments, or what remains of them, are arguments from authority. A lot of people think that way, how dare you think differently? Again, how sad.

Actually, what I have repeatedly, even monotonously stated is that contests of bare assertion (either yours or mine) get us nowhere, and that the way out of such contests is to specify necessary entailments of your theory that are subject to empirical test, such that your theory is placed at risk of disconfirmation. That is the furthest thing possible from an argument from authority.

Pax vobiscum

On FireFox – Have you tried Google Chrome?

It’s FAST and sleek.

It seems that the main focus for this thread is over.

but, a further note on the tangential issue you have raised is relevant.

Kindly note that your incorrect inference to an equation of design and [Biblical] creationist thought has been corrected by three persons: GP, the undersigned and Jerry [not to mention Mr MacNeill as linked].

In sum:

1 –> Per definition, all creationists are design thinkers [cf. Newton's General Scholium to his Principia as a case in point].

2 –> However, Creationists are practicing a form of what is called by Plantinga Augustinian science. (That is, there is a particular set of writings that are held to report the actual state of the world in the past, from a trustworthy source; that trustworthiness being based on the tradition of knowing God in the face of Christ, multiplied by a particular view on the reading of the relevant scriptural tradition.)

3 –> Design theory is not Augustinian, appealing instead to generally accessible and accepted empirical data and to an otherwise uncontroversial principle that per such evidence we may infer accurately and even reliably to intelligent vs unintelligent causal factors.

4 –> As a result, Creationists [of various flavours], theistic evolutionists [broad sense], members of other faith traditions than the Christian or event he Judaeo-Christian one, deists, agnostics and even atheists may — and do — practice design science.

5 –> Further to this, various models of how “tweredun” are inherently compatible with the question of a method that allows us to credibly test if tweredun. (No sense putting a suspect on trial if there is no good reason to think that here was arson . . . )

6 –> This last being logically prior, we can see how Creationist, Frontloading etc models of how tweredun are all committed to the principle that design happened.

7 –> So, a method that makes design expectations specific, and makes in effect testable predictions [as summarised above] — i.e. through the “aspects form” explanatory filter — exposes all such onward models to a key point of empirical test. (And BTW, that is part of the objection to ID made by that school of theistic evolutionists who hold that design is real but undetectable by empirical methods.)

GEM of TKI

(PS: Looks like the prob is with FF 3.0.10 [Safari has no such probs . . . ], am now living off 3.5 beta, which has interesting “betazoid” effects!)