“Excellent post! I think he does misrepresent ID a little though- after all ID is not about appealing to anyhting other than a required intelligent artificer.”

How could anybody not misrepresent ID when what is commonly understood regarding the theory is being expressed primarily by its detractors? Look at the thread that O’Leary started on Wikipedia if you want a clarification on this.

In one of my posts there I traced the history of Wikipedia’s article on Intelligent Design. Through hundreds of revisions, Wiki has never understood precisely what ID is. In fact, the current article is more inaccurate than most of the previous versions.

Anyway, that’s another discussion altogether.

My hope for meriologist is that he/she can grasp not only what we mean by ID, but why we insist that purely natural processes are inadequate to explain the complexity we see particularly at the cellular level, and why that inadequacy lends support to ID, rather than to a future re-defining of Darwinian processes.

If purely natural processes are inadequate, then hoping that a future insight might help, leads nowhere – particularly if that insight still relies on the idea of purely natural processes. ID has already adequately dismissed the that notion, so why bother going further?

People wonder why ID presents a negative argument first. I think it’s clear that ID needs to topple the “a designer would not have made the world as it is,” argument. It’s important that ID do so in order to at least allow for discussions in the scientific community regarding the merits of a design hypothesis. If scientists are still asserting that a designer would not design a certain way, then it is really fruitless to expect that such scientists would welcome an alternative discussion.

Now as for all of this Turing stuff… I think it is important to note the anthropocentric reality of the Turing model in the eyes of ID. That is, it took a designing intelligence (Turing)to demonstrate the constraints and nature of computational systems.

So one needs to appeal to Turing himself before they can fully understand his work.

Or as the master of incompleteness remarked in so many words “the human mind is always greater than the machine because the mind can evolve higher levels of intelligence”

The originator of the human intellect must have been a greater intelligence- that is all we know- that ID is the most rational explanation here.

“Let me at least answer your question, though. The simple answer is that I would conclude that something was designed if it seemed likely that it was.”

OK, it does seem that your posts are perhaps held up in moderation. But also, I haven’t been on here for a couple of days, so forgive me for replying to this so late.

This is a pondering of mine, so please take it as such, and not written in stone as my essential belief – if the DNA had been discovered prior to Dawin, and at the time of his research it was known about the 4 digit code in the DNA, I wonder if Darwin would have thought “a designer would design in such a way,” rather than what he did say. Not that Darwin would have then determined that design was the better hypothesis vs. chance and necessity, but; would such a thought have led him to explore the question more?

I’m still stuck on the issue of why Darwinists leave the possibility of design out of their vocabulary and prefer that future evidence will show Darwin as correct more conclusively. Makes me wonder how confident they really are in the current theory.

Of course, you could point out that IDists do this as well. All are hopeful that future evidence will more conclusively support their theory. A lot is invested in thorizing, so hope in one’s ideas is a natural expectation. But the current ID theory has not been around long – Paley hypothesized it, but did not have the evidence of complex specified information that we now have in the DNA code.

Now all the confirmation bias aside (and I think any honest Darwinist needs to admit that this bias is going on – and history shows that it is and has) does it not seem reasonable (given all the Darwinian explanatory failures) to question whether the current problems will in fact find a future resolution?

Is it not reasonable to consider alternative theories as possible explanations for the gaps? After all, ID fits with all of the same evidence used for chance and necessity. It’s not hard for ID to do so, if one sets aside any assumptions about what a designer would or would not do.

But ID also has answers to the areas for which chance and necessity do not currently have answers – such as CSI and IC steming from purposeful design, rather than purposeless random processes. The Darwinists still have not explained how the CSI and IC features came about. ID posits a simple and very basic explanation – that they stem from information.

I perceive that all of these questions are going to have to contend with some very difficult tasks ahead – we are going to have to explore more in-depth, origin-of-life questions to get at the answers to where that information came from.

I realize that I stated CSI comes from information – that was intentional, because it seems to me that very basic information is necessary to even reach any kind of specified complexity. That seems to be the way our minds work as well; basic information is built upon to reach more complex thought.

I think one of the reasons Dr. Dembski is doing the math on this is to show conclusively what many of us already suspect intuitively. I fail to see how there can be any counterintuitive explanation at this very basic level. Granted such intuition and/or counterintuition requires rigourous support.

We understand information at the most basic level as existing in certain spaces; yet we don’t know how this is so. Does a space require the information prior to its essence or does a space generate the information in tandem with its essence? You might see this as a chicken or egg problem, unless you posit that information is a constant of the universe. If so, the constant comes before the space. The constant allows for the specific manifestation of its essence in the space. Or another way to look at it; the space is the essence of its prior information.

I think that the bottom line to all of this, between Darwinists and IDists, or more metaphysically; between theists and non-theists, is that one side assumes the essence of space (including matter) is first, while the other side assumes the essince of information is first. The problem here is that when given matter, we are at the same time given information. Matter cannot exist without information – matter is a conduit of information. If you posit even a small particle of matter, you have information – that it is a small particle of matter; it has a structure, and so forth.

Not so with information. Information can exist apart from a material conduit. Otherwise information could not be passed from one conduit to another. When we read written language, we take the information from the conduit of the page to the conduit of our brain – our information processor. But the information itself is not inside the paper of the page, nor is it inside the ink of the printing. Therefore, neither the page, nor the print is actually the conduit. The real information that the page is a conduit of, is that it is made of paper, and it has certain physical properties. The same for the ink. The information we gather from the page is in-fact merely expressed on the page and in the ink. The information in-fact is not there. It is somewhere else. Where is the information exactly? Does it become information only when it is processed by our brain?
Does it actually require our brain in order to be information?

The one problem I see metaphysically for the Darwinists is the assumption that space [matter (and time?)] are constants of the universe. Intuitively (and given Big Bang cosmology) it is not, and it presents with an absurdity – that infinite regression we’ve discussed in previous threads.

I fail to see how any space can exist without the information required to define it. So we’re still stuck with the problem of what drives the constant of information. To answer this, both sides hypothesize a thoretical and seemingly paradoxical explanation – quantum or design.

The design “paradox” is of course the older of the two. I also believe that it is the more parsimonious of the two. Let’s set religion aside here, and accept that logically, a necessary first cause possessing all of the essential information (not written in ink on a page, or encompassed within a physical conduit) makes the most sense. Aside from some complicated and even more paradoxical quantum explanation, a designer seems the more parsimonious.

It also seems to me that if you posit a quantum explanation, you then need to “unexplain” an awful lot of science we already understand. This is why I think a lot of quantum theorists believe that their ideas will revolutionize science. If the theories turn out to be in-fact true, how could they not?

ID in my understanding is a very limited theory. It does not attempt to include all of biology into the theory. Neither does it attempt to posit an altogether counterintuitive paradoxical position in order to escape an uncomfortable metaphysical necessity. Behe states that IC only applies at the cellular level, for example. ID does not attempt to encompass all biological processes to the design explanatory filter. Those issue are left alone (but with perhaps future applications, once more is known). So unlike Darwinism, ID has limited itself – and left all other questions up to other disciplines – theology, philosophy, etc.

If you see things differently (as I’m sure you do), then please educate me. That’s what I’m here for.

Although I only quoted the first part of your post, I address some of your other issues above.

I would be interested in knowing what kinds of evidence would lead you to accept design over chance and necessity.

CY,

As much as I’d like to continue this conversation, it may not be possible since my comments are being held up for hours in the moderation queue when they aren’t being deleted outright.

Let me at least answer your question, though. The simple answer is that I would conclude that something was designed if it seemed likely that it was.

The hypothetical examples I give in my earlier comment are from opposite ends of the designed/undesigned spectrum. Neither phenomenon, at the time of discovery, has an explanation in terms of undirected physical causes. However, it seems likely that we will find such an explanation for the magnetic phenomenon, so we provisionally conclude that it is undesigned. On the other hand, it seems unlikely that we will ever find such an explanation for the “brand name” phenomenon, so we provisionally conclude that it is designed. If it’s a toss-up, then the right thing to do is to admit that we simply don’t know.

The tricky part of this, of course, is in choosing which criteria to use in deciding whether design is the likeliest explanation, versus undirected physical causes. If I’m ever removed from moderation, perhaps we can discuss the appropriateness of various criteria.

What if we found something that could not be explained by what we already know to be true of chance and necessity? That is to say, we could not explain it without ignoring or contradicting what we already know to be true.

The question becomes: Do you reconsider the ideological assumptions you make from the start, “Or is getting a predetermined answer more important to you, truth be damned?”

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To date: Mere’s answer is we can never exhaust our ability to appeal to future knoweledge (regardless of any contradictions to current knowledge).

In this, he is satisfied that his position is falsifiable, enlightened, and scientific.

Sorry I got you miffed. Didn’t mean to, and nevertheless, I apologize. I wasn’t trying to mock you personally, but an argument that I’ve seen from some Darwinists, that design has to be stamped out plainly in order for them to accept it. Perhaps that’s not where you are coming from.

I would be interested in knowing what kinds of evidence would lead you to accept design over chance and necessity.

Why is design the better conclusion in this case?

Because if we actually found those hidden messages, it seems more probable to me that they would have come from an intelligent source than that they had been created by an undirected process, known or unknown.

If I had lived before 1859, I suspect that I would have been a creationist, because I don’t think I would have foreseen how it was possible for undirected causes to give rise to the complexities of life.

Thank God (so to speak) for Darwin.

The above is a rather modern view of design. Let’s call it the “Brand Name” view. In this view, things aren’t really designed unless they have the brand name clearly stamped in a “conserved and unexpressed region.”

CY,

Go back and read my comment again. I explicitly state that I am giving examples from both ends of the designed/undesigned spectrum.

Nowhere do I state that things aren’t designed unless they are stamped with a brand name.

You have a nasty habit of attributing ridiculous positions to evolutionists. You actually thought that Dawkins believed in intelligent, selfish genes. Now you’re claiming that I consider “brand names” to be a requirement for proving design.

Can’t you at least make some effort to find out what evolutionists actually believe before you dismiss it out of hand? Or is getting a predetermined answer more important to you, truth be damned?

Why is design the better conclusion in this case?