That’s patent not parent. -ds

How does one respond to equating search spaces to cheeses, soups, and coffeemakers?

The author is sneaks in information about the search space. He likens it to swiss cheese and noodle soup. In reality, unless you sneak in information about the search space, it starts out not as a swiss but rather a cheddar and the noodle soup is just a clear broth – i.e, all points equal. Thus no search algorithm can pick a better starting point than any other in the absence of information that would bias the selection. The second way a search algorithm can stand out is if it learns something from its mistakes. The evolutionary search algorithms in question by definition have no prior knowledge of the search space and they do not learn anything from previous samples.

So basically Tellgrens critique, if I may continue the food analogies, is a crap sandwich minus the bread.

I tried to read the sited paper, but it had too much greek in it for me to follow, especially on a friday afternoon. However, I did follow some of Tellgren’s argument reguarding UPB. The need for some sort of threshold beyond which “almost impossible” becomes “miracle” is necessary. Dembski’s 10^150 is a plenty generous number, I don’t care how big the universe actually is. As far as I am concerned, when it comes to biology, the number of organisms that ever existed on planet earth should be quite adequate as a UPB. I bet that number is more like 10^50 or something. However, it hardly matters. If UPB were set at 10^1000, abiogenesis as currently understood, would still be in the miracle class.

It isn’t the challenging position. It’s the established position believed by a majority of the earth’s intelligent inhabitants since they still were still living in caves. But even if not that far back Paley’s watchmaker argument predates Darwin by 50 years. ID is the watchmaker argument using the most recent scientific and engineering knowledge. The challenge for Darwin’s propenents is to support the larger claims with empirical evidence, a task they’ve failed at for 150 years and counting. The only progress they’ve made is to bully their way into basic science class to teach Darwinian theory in a vacuum devoid of criticism. -ds

As a matter of fact he has. Go here.

Possibly a response to the right Erik but not to the critique by Erik mentioned here which is dated today. -ds