Lenny Susskind on the Evolution of Physicists

_{William Dembski

July 9, 2009

Intelligent Design}

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Khan keeps talking about testable hypotheses. Well here is your big opportunity- Please present a testable hypothesis for the non-telic position. However seeing that all of you who oppose ID have failed/ refused to do so is very telling about the nature of your position.Joseph_{July 11, 2009
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Nakashima-san:
I’m not sure why you are insisting on maintaining a private definition of macro-evolution.
Because the public one is vague, useless and even YECs accept it. Therefor by using that definition to settle something doesn't settle anything.Joseph_{July 11, 2009
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OK if it takes 25 million years just to get TWO specified mutation, well that alone is longer than the alleged divergence between chimps and humans. So if UCD occurred via just a few mutations UCD is OK. Ya see with a gene duplication it needs a whole new binding site, not just a one nucleotide change. There isn't enough time for that event to happen in a non-telic scenario. Next Khan sez something about evolutionary hypothesis- Too bad there aren't any pertaining to the proposed mechanisms.
to show design, you have to test it and present positive evidence in favor of it. and to do this, you need mechanisms, which you all seem to think are not important but in fact are critical.
The positive evidence for design has been presented and so have mechanisms. 1- Design is a mechanism if we go by the standard and accepted definitions of both words. 2- Dr Spetner has already written about this in 1997- see "Not By Chance" and his "non-random evolutionary hypothsis". IOW Khan your continued ignorance is not a refutation.Joseph_{July 11, 2009
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Mr Frost122585, But I want to make my point of view clear here, that say there really is no case at all that any macro evolution has ever been observed. Man may have come from an ape like ancestor but there has never been a mutation- or series of mutation- known among modern day apes that brought forth a human like offspring- and remember if evolutionists are correct this would be a minimal gap to fill as apes are said to posses 98% similarity with humans. I'm not sure why you are insisting on maintaining a private definition of macro-evolution. It completely vitiates your argument. Anyone can maintain private definitions of words and declare victory in an argument. Mutation is only one part of evolution. Why should modern apes become more human-like if there is no selection pressure, even if those mutations exist? Over what time scale are you willing to wait to test your hypothesis? Here's a back of the envelope calaculation. If species seem to last about 10 million years on average, and then are replaced via speciation by two new species, that is macro-evolution. Now if there are currently 10 million species on the planet, and their ages are randomly distributed, you'd expect 1 speciation event per year somewhere in the biological world. Macro-evolution in action!Nakashima_{July 11, 2009
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"Khan" (#75) wrote: "please explain why the difference between the cat and dog is that much greater than that between a fern and a redwood." According to www.timetree.org ferns' and redwoods' common ancestor lived about 400 million years ago. Cats' and dogs' common ancestor lived about 60 million years ago. And the differences between ferns and redwoods is much greater than the differences between cats and dogs.PaulBurnett_{July 11, 2009
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"Frost" (#79) wrote: "...there really is no case at all that any macro evolution has ever been observed." This is a standard creationist complaint, that nobody has ever directly observed one species morphing into another species while under direct observation. Among other things, that's because the time scale involved for macro evolution exceeds the 6,000 year old age of the earth. Most creationists accept micro evolution but reject macro evolution. This is akin to accepting teaspoons but rejecting gallons, or accepting inches but rejecting miles. For a thorough discussion of macro evolution, please see http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/macroevolution.htmlPaulBurnett_{July 11, 2009
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"you need mechanisms, which you all seem to think are not important but in fact are critical." If humans are able to create genomes or changes in genomes that result in novel complex capabilities, would you then say that your objection is no longer relevant.jerry_{July 11, 2009
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Frost,
which is marco- or very large jumps in complexity
which is exactly what we observe in the plant example. you seem to be tailoring your definition and taxonomic limitations to fit your argument.
This allows Dr. Dembski to logically and inductively infer design as a potential explanation as opposed to hoping that there’s just a little more time to allow for the Darwinian process
first, Dembski's work has never been shown to have any relevance to actual biology. i read a few of the papers and stopped when i noticed the only biological "example" he used was calculating the probability of the words used to describe the flagellum being randomly formed, or something like that. if one of you wants to explain how his work is relevant to biology, i would be happy to hear it. second, again, evidence against one theory is not evidence for another.even if we test 100 different evolutionary hypotheses and they are all falsified, it doesn't make design any more likely than another naturalistic hypothesis we missed. they both have the same amount of positive evidence in favor of them: zero. to show design, you have to test it and present positive evidence in favor of it. and to do this, you need mechanisms, which you all seem to think are not important but in fact are critical.Khan_{July 11, 2009
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"why is one logical leap any smaller than the other?" Well one of these logical leaps is an analysis of intelligence and we have seen how much that has produced in the last 10,000 years and especially in the last 300 years and even more especially in the last 110 years. We have not seen much positive (in terms of information building) that nature can produce going back as far as you want. But given that, I will put a caveat on what humans can produce in the future since I do not know exactly what synthetic biology has accomplished so far.jerry_{July 11, 2009
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Khan, "...to be a legitimate field of scienific inquiry, it has to have mechanisms that allow for testable hypotheses. you can not support a hypothesis through process of elimination, or else it is nothing but speculation." When I see Dr. Dembski calculating the probabilities of complex spcified information arising via unplanned naturalistic processes over specific periods of time in order to test the justification for the Darwinian mechanism, he is doing just what you suggest - testing a mechanism. Only what he's doing, is he's negating the mechanism's true ability to function in the manner that Darwinists suppose. This allows Dr. Dembski to logically and inductively infer design as a potential explanation as opposed to hoping that there's just a little more time to allow for the Darwinian process. You state, "you can not support a hypothesis through process of elimination, or else it is nothing but speculation." Science IS a process of elimination. You start with a hypothesis, and through a process of elimination, you remove those parts of the hypothesis that don't work [according to the data], and you reform your hypothesis based on what you've just observed by the data. What you've just stated makes no sense whatsoever. It makes sense that you would say it, because it is of course, one of the peculiar practices of many Darwinists - failure to eliminate the ideas that don't work - and/or when they don't work - rather, creating new hypotheses in order to artifically force them into harmony with the larger theory; Occam's Razor be damned. What ID theorists are really doing is the work the Darwinists should be doing with Darwinian theory - the work that Darwin himself suggested when he wrote: "A fair result can be obtained only by fully stating and balancing the facts and arguments on both sides of each question. [OOS]" So IDists are doing for Darwin what the Darwinists themselves fail to do.CannuckianYankee_{July 10, 2009
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But I want to make my point of view clear here, that say there really is no case at all that any macro evolution has ever been observed. Man may have come from an ape like ancestor but there has never been a mutation- or series of mutation- known among modern day apes that brought forth a human like offspring- and remember if evolutionists are correct this would be a minimal gap to fill as apes are said to posses 98% similarity with humans.Frost122585_{July 10, 2009
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Well I think we ar eon the same page now as to what macro evolution is and understood to be- which is marco- or very large jumps in complexity. As far as the flagellum Behe has never argued this in regards to macro evolution but merely as one example of a system that requires all of its parts intact to function. This claim of Behe's has still not been refuted but merely argued that sub systems within the flagellum- the type 3 secretory system- may be aboriginal to the system and served as a vehicle allowing the flagellum to evolve over time. But I should add that Behe and Stephen Meyer after research believe the type 3 system is a degenerative part of the flagellum evolving after the flagellum as a whole existed- hence the evolutionary argument thereof would be false and inadequate of explanation of the origin of the flagellum. As for me I do not know either way.Frost122585_{July 10, 2009
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Frost, ok, misunderstood your question. plants still have a great deal of complexity and to exclude them from the debate is absurd. do you also exclude bacteria, eukaryotic cells, fungi, viruses, etc? if you do, then i guess the iconic flagellum is out of the picture too..Khan_{July 10, 2009
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There is a great deal more complexity in the linage to ancestor of cat and dog. Obviously living things that move around and have brains and intelligences at the levels of cats and dogs require a lot more mutations.Frost122585_{July 10, 2009
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Frost,
That is we are looking for the ancerser to the cat and the dog and we are asking for observed evolution from the ancerstor to them.
please explain why the difference between the cat and dog is that much greater than that between a fern and a redwood. thanks.Khan_{July 10, 2009
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cannuckian,
If natural processes are inadequate empirically, then it’s reasonable to consider design as a possible alternative.
sure, it's reasonable to consider anything when shooting the breeze on a blog. but to be a legitimate field of scienific inquiry, it has to have mechanisms that allow for testable hypotheses. you can not support a hypothesis through process of elimination, or else it is nothing but speculation.Khan_{July 10, 2009
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jerry
So if I cannot show that human intelligence can create macro evolutionary changes, I then have no right to say that nature cannot do it.
all i'm saying is that you frequently say there is evidence for microevolution but not macroevolution and that we can not extrapolate from one to the other. yet you are perfectly willing to extrapolate from the minimal amount of biological design we have done so far to creating de novo novel complex features. why is one logical leap any smaller than the other?Khan_{July 10, 2009
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And Jerry, his argument about whether humans can produce macro biological creatures is moot- we all know that intelligence is seen in animals as well as humans- that is what beavers do to dams- yet humans are vastly more intelligent and thus we can rightly speculate that the designer of biological living things including ourselves could have, and most likely would have greater intelligent prowess than we have. This fallows from the fact that you always need greater resources to account for greater intelligent effects especially according to evolutionary theory which also speculates simple to complex evolution meaning it took great many years/time, changes and huge populations to being us to the human being.Frost122585_{July 10, 2009
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Jerry Iam just calling BS on his "observed" examples for Macro evolution because they are not even close to such examples. Kahn you understand what i am saying- I understand what you are saying- and we both know plants are not nearly as complex and animals. The bottom line is that when we are tlaking macro evolution we are talking about vastly different complex kinds turning into different kinds. That is we are looking for the ancerser to the cat and the dog and we are asking for observed evolution from the ancerstor to them. No such macro evolution has ever even been closely observed because as evolutionists say "it takes millions of years for it to happen." Yet the fossil record is very deplete of such examples which should be represented robustly according to the Darwinian idea of small scale random mutation across large populations. This does not rule out macro evolution as a possibility but we need real evidence of it not the small scale changes or induced changes by people.Frost122585_{July 10, 2009
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Proof That Birds Evolved From Turtles or something. Evo-devo strikes again.Nakashima_{July 10, 2009
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Jerry, If O'Leary was giving out awards for "What is ID?" your 3 post essay would get my vote. Khan, "if you have six alternatives and you eliminate one, it doesn’t make the others any more likely to be true." That's not the situation Jerry was describing. He was describing two alternatives with (your) six examples as the same alternative that are faulty. The only other alternative to natural processes is design. If natural processes are inadequate empirically, then it's reasonable to consider design as a possible alternative.CannuckianYankee_{July 10, 2009
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"Even if it were absolutely confirmed that evolution alone could not explain certain biological structures, biology would not conclude they were designed without first examining other naturalistic possibilities, even those with scant empirical evidence" I assume you mean by the term "evolution," Darwinian evolution. Remember the term existed before Darwin and though some equate the two there is no reason to do so. Evolution is just the change in the frequency of alleles over time and it can happen a lot of ways. People in biology are looking into alternatives to Darwinian evolutiojn all the time. If fact I have been the one to bring up how some others think it might have happened. It is a form of gradualism but not Darwinian gradualism. Remember Gould questioned neo Darwinism almost 30 years ago. There is a book titled appropriately "Macroevolution" which lays out some of these alternatives. Since I have brought this up here, some people have been undermining Gould which I find interesting. There is an evolutionary biologist who comments here occasionally who has said that Darwin is dead and prefers some of the ideas of Gould and his associates better than he does Darwin's ideas. So I would not pigeon hole us a reflexively anti Darwin or anti naturalistic. That is way to simple. We can accept anything naturalistic that can be proven or strongly supported. What we find is that it is the Darwinist who are reflexively rigid about what is possible. ID could except Darwinian evolution if there were any evidence for it. That is the ironic thing here.jerry_{July 10, 2009
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CY, That post was largely satirical about many Darwinian thoughts and comments lately on this blog and how Darwinism accounts for everything, even physics now. What was interesting is at least Susskind at the beginning did allow for other beliefs like ID, though he is committed to Darwin. The lecture was in 2006, so not sure where he stands now. If he is still so open. There's a video where it states he reject ID, but don't have time to watch it today. Not sure how militant it may or may not be. Other than his Darwinian stance, the video brought back math memories, kinda fun to review. And I'm sure I'll do it when time is available since its free. QM is something I've only browsed in the past, not delved to deeply. There is one point where he talks about "loss of information" on a QM rule. And he readily treats physics as Information. So there are many areas, like Nakashima stated of natural agreement. But the Lion story... haha... well, I'm no beauty, but it had me laughing like a beast.DATCG_{July 10, 2009
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Frost122585, Let me give you a short background. I believe khan first started commenting here last November or December. He will know more exactly. He objected to my claim that there is no proof for macro evolution. He offered some examples of symbiosis as proof of macro evolution. Thus, if true according to khan, my claim that there was no evidence for macro evolution was bogus. If I remember right, I then did three things. First, I asked him to explain in detail how his examples were evidence of macro evolution. Second, I explained to him that the definition of macro evolution we use here is different from what he was using and he said his definition was the standard definition in the evolutionary biology world. So we have been arguing over how to use the term "macro evolution. "Third, I did not rule out all instances of macro evolution (our definition) by naturalistic means and that maybe his cases might be good examples but we have to look into it. In the course of things, I believe I agreed that I did not know enough about endosymbiosis (one of his specific cases) to make a determination how it happened and whether it was macro evolution or not. There have been back and forths since that time mainly over what is macro evolution and what counts as macro evolution. Aside from this, often in one of my typical arguments supporting design, I make the point that humans will have the capability to create life or at least to change life in more than trivial ways in the near future. Thus, since a current intelligence can modify life extensively, it is possible for a past intelligence to have created life and to manipulate evolution at appropriate places since our limited human intelligences should be able to do it soon. So in the last week or two khan has been questioning whether humans can create macro evolution according to our definition and if we have any examples of it. And if we cannot, then my claims that intelligence can create life or macro evolutionary changes has no basis in reality and I cannot use it to support a past intelligence doing it. I assume it is in jest that he is making this argument because I doubt there will be few at Panda's Thumb that would take that tack. So if I cannot show that human intelligence can create macro evolutionary changes, I then have no right to say that nature cannot do it. khan may want to add or subtract or modify this account.jerry_{July 10, 2009
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Khan:
hypotheses (alternatives in your word) do not function like dice. if you have six alternatives and you eliminate one, it doesn’t make the others any more likely to be true. each one has to be individually tested. this is really a fundamental flaw in your logic that you just do not seem to get.
In jerry's defense, I would say that he is not just talking about eliminating Darwinism but naturalism as a whole. He is correct, I think, that eliminating unguided naturalism would only leave either supernaturalism, guidedness, or both. The problem is that "unguided naturalism" is not a hypothesis, but a philosophy pointing to a multitude of hypotheses, some of which have yet to be developed. Until hard evidence of either design or the supernatural is presented, there is no conceivable way to eliminate unguided naturalism in the first place — and no scientific reason to. Of course, so many here treat naturalism and Darwinism as essentially identical, so that evidence against the second becomes evidence against the first. The possibility of non-evolutionary naturalistic theories is repeatedly thrown out the window in the race towards supernaturalism, and I've never head either Dembski or Behe explain exactly why. They usually aren't confronted with it, because opponents are too busy explaining why evolution holds up against their claims. Even if it were absolutely confirmed that evolution alone could not explain certain biological structures, biology would not conclude they were designed without first examining other naturalistic possibilities, even those with scant empirical evidence — because scant is still better than none. And in the absence of any evidence for anything whatsoever, or means of testing incoming predictions, science wouldn't be at liberty to do much more than bystand, waiting for someone to feed it with something substantial.Lenoxus_{July 10, 2009
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Kahn, Your examples for macro-evolution are micro-evolution. As to macro design, it happens daily as has been pointed out. As to future bio-macro designs, most certainly according to "evolutionist" and your beliefs, given enough time, anything is possible. Given that anything is possible by evolutionist, then Intelligent Designers will develop macro evoulution. Are you one of those guys who doubt we ever made it to the moon? You alone do not get to set the parameters of time. But I suspect Intelligent Designers will quickly master bio-macrodesigns within the next 100-1000 years. Genomic Sequencing and current research, plus advances in analytical tools make this a faily easy prediction. Try reading up on Kurzweil, et al, for future science accomplishments. I find it amazing how you doubt the ability of the human mind to design future lifeforms when they've already created TransGenic corn, oats, etc., being used around the world. Your position is absurd. I'll even quote Professor Susskind for you to tie this in slightly back to topic: "Unitarity - Quantum equivalent, which tells you, that you can always reconstruct the past from the future." Using Dr. Susskinds words, looking towards the future Kahn, what do you see with regards to science? Scientist using stones to make pharmaceutical drugs? Or, Scientist using Micro-tools, lasers, high-speed Big Blue-like Computers and Genetic programs to create new life forms? Scientist have already discovered switches for repairs in biology, or switches that turn limbs on and off. Discovery of such switches is half the battle of research. To seriously think they will not use this information in future life engineering projects is to believe car engineers will not one day make a car that runs on electric propulsion. Oh wait, they've done that already. Your argument doubts modern day scientist and science so much it seems in favor of some backwards working 3rd world socialist nation like Venezuela, or maybe you think American scientist will all be Lysenkoist the next hundred years? We have not retreated to a Stalinista state.... yet. ;-) It sounds like you need more faith in your secular, atheist, evolutionist Designers.DATCG_{July 10, 2009
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Check out this at PBS: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/elegant/program.html Lenny is featured. It's actually very interesting. Brian Greene is a superb narrator, and this series should be of interest to UD readers. It's a very good presentation of the evolution of physics from Newton to string theory.GilDodgen_{July 10, 2009
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earlier I said “What’s an example of a failed prediction from naturalism? (I’m sure there are some, as even theories like Newton’s laws have made them. I just can’t think of any at the moment.)”. I just realized that I should have written "evolution" instead of "naturalism", although either will do. (Personally, I'd say naturalism doesn't predict anything by itself whatsoever — not positively, anyway.)Lenoxus_{July 10, 2009
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jerry,
Each such failure is another nail in that naturalistic theory’s coffin and as such increases support for an alternative and one of these alternatives is the intelligent cause
hypotheses (alternatives in your word) do not function like dice. if you have six alternatives and you eliminate one, it doesn't make the others any more likely to be true. each one has to be individually tested. this is really a fundamental flaw in your logic that you just do not seem to get.Khan_{July 10, 2009
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jerry,
But if the genomes show no evidence of the formation of complex novel capabilities then that will be evidence for ID. Because that is what ID predicts.
I don't understand what you are saying her at all. could you please rephrase it?Khan_{July 10, 2009
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