The Deflection Technique (Apprenticeship Lesson)
| September 10, 2005 | Posted by William Dembski under Intelligent Design |
Over the years, I’ve learned a few things that may usefully be imparted to bright and budding ID theorists. The lesson I’m about to impart is one I adverted to in my paper “Dealing with the Backlash against Intelligent Design” on my designinference.com website.
To illustrate the lesson, let me give an example from my graduate days in mathematics. At the end of the first year in grad school at the University of Chicago, the math students take oral exams. Depending on whom you get to examine you, this can be a stressful experience. One way to relieve the stress, when asked to prove a theorem on the blackboard, is to introduce a small inaccuracy, one that takes a bit to unravel but is easily rectifiable. The inaccuracy, depending on the professor who is examining you, will consume considerable time and energy. Yes, you will have to endure some berating. But when it’s gone on long enough, you rectify the error. By then the clock has run out and you’ve passed the exam.
Fast forward to my blog entry yesterday titled “What’s Your Favorite Dawkins Quote.” There I gave as my favorite Dawkins quote “Even if there were no actual evidence in favor of the Darwinian theory, we should still be justified in preferring it over all rival theories.†I stated the quote this way on purpose, leaving off a little parenthetical in that sentence that doesn’t at all change its significance. I was waiting how long it would take for kneejerk Darwinists to jump on it. See for yourself at The Panda’s Thumb: “Dembski quote mining Dawkins.”
Now, you may be thinking that I’m just making this all up after the fact. Let me assure you that I’m not. Unlike the evolutionary process with which they are so enamoured, kneejerk Darwinists are supremely predictable. In the future, when I do something like this, I will provide prior confirmation with a date-time stamp elsewhere on the Internet.
By the way, in case you’re wondering what is the point of this exercise, it is to highlight that Dawkins regards evolution as an axiom that does not require empirical confirmation (note that he has made this point in other places and not just in the above quote). What’s gratifying is to see the kneejerk Darwinists at The Panda’s Thumb falling all over themselves trying to justify Dawkins’s ludicrous claim.
That was the point of the exercise. In the best Marxist fashion, Darwinism is collapsing of its own internal contradictions. What you are seeing at The Panda’s Thumb is a sign of things to come.
[P.S.: Squeamish readers of this blog may worry that I'm cynically manipulating the Darwinists. Quite the contrary. I'm doing this for the Darwinists's benefit, giving them the reality therapy they need to exit the land of the lotus eaters and return to Ithaca. Alternatively, I'm giving them an experience in Socratic elenchus. Frankly, I doubt Socrates would have had much patience with the sophists at The Panda's Thumb.]
41 Responses to The Deflection Technique (Apprenticeship Lesson)
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DonaldM
You’re referring to a book. Does it contain an answer to my question above? I repeat:
“I would like to know if the explanatory filter has been successfully applied to a biological system. I am also wondering how you define the boundary of such a system. For example the bacterial flagellum. Does one focus on the structure in a cell, the cell, a culture of cells, the phenotype of a particular bacterium or is it more abstract?
Why not have a FAQ site that can be updated and easily cited and referenced.
Dear Mr. Fox,
The flagellum does not arise from bacterial populations lacking one via any known deterministic law; the flagellum has extremely small probability of arising due to chance (see chapter 5 of No Free Lunch); the bacterial flagellum is specified (conforms to a pattern detachable from the object itself); hence, it exhibits specified complexity and induction tells us it was designed.
However, that is a criticism I have heard, and I don’t know where Dembski has formally analyzed the flagellum according to the EF, so I guess the criticism is valid. It mirrors my own criticism of Dembski in that he doesn’t provide the baby-stepped analysis and application of IC or the EF to any biological structure. But the astute reader might do such an analysis himself.
Alan Fox: Just go to the library and check out TDR. And why are you complaining over at Panda’s Thumb about the responses to your posts here? That’s playing games.
Personally, I request you stop that practice. Did you think no one would notice?
“They just keep playing the same old pittiful cards because that’s the hand they’re stuck with, and there’s nothing they can do about it.”
Apparently they can deny that “Darwinism” can be defined as Darwinism and deny that a distinction between “macroevolution” and micro even exists. In fact, it is rather amusing that some Darwinists are condemning the very definitiion of using the terms macro and micro as something that only ignorant Creationists would do. Yet these terms are used in the writings of Darwinists themselves.
I think I’ll stick with “Darwinists”…although given the urge to merge typical to Darwinists they will probably keep trying to definition in some way. Another example of such avoidance is the reliance on a pollution of language like the blurred term “evolution” which merges all mythological narratives of Naturalism in with basic facts like, “When some organisms die then there may be more of these other ones and stuff.”
DonaldM
I never made a secret of the fact. I made the fact known myself. I am pleasantly surprised that I am still permitted to post here. This refutes the allegation that Dr Dembski censors all criticism.
And as someone else noted, the posting rate here has increased.
JaredL said “But the astute reader might do such an analysis himself.”
Well, where do you start? What aspect of a biological system do you consider? Keeping with the prokaryote flagellum, do you consider its structure in terms of the types and number of proteins from which it is constructed, how it develops in the daughter cell after cell division, does the genetic encoding for its structure enter the equation? What about its functionality, the energy input for the “motor”? Defining the boundary of the (biological) system you propose to analyse doesn’t seem that straightforward to me.
May I suggest, again, you read No Free Lunch chapter 5? Then we might skip a lot of preliminaries which are time consuming and which have already been done. Thanks.
Alan Fox, you asked,
Who is defining success here? ID theorists are saying yes–and they’re inviting others to work the same question, asking only that they have an open mind to what they may find. Ask anyone at Panda’s Thumb, and you’ll get a quick knee-jerk “no.” As Donald M said so well in comment # 27,
TomG – Where has the EF been applied rigorously to a system in a published work? I haven’t gotten a response from Dr. D on that, nor on where it was rigorously shown that any biological system is IC according to his revamped definition of IC in NFL chapter 5, though I have asked several times. I too would like to have something to point to.
JaredL
I promise to read NFL chapter 5 (revised)if you read this article:
http://www.talkreason.org/articles/jello.cfm
I am unaware that the criticisms therein have yet been addressed. And I second your request to TomG.