ID’s “predictive prowess”
| January 14, 2008 | Posted by William Dembski under The Design of Life |
A producer from one of the national talking heads programs is discussing with FTE’s PR firm whether to interview me or Jonathan Wells regarding our new book THE DESIGN OF LIFE. The producer has some reservations about interviewing us:
Hi [snip],
As I’m sure you know, one of the main claims any scientific theory can make is predictive prowess. In other words, if a theory is true, then other things should also be verifiable experimentally, or by research. Before we make a call on your clients, can you or they provide any samples of things that intelligent design theory has predicted, which researchers have later determined to be true?
Thanks.
[snip]
I have my own list of answers, but I’d like to hear those of this group.
220 Responses to ID’s “predictive prowess”
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PaV- What are the ID principles that lead us to expect that junk DNA would have a function?
hrun0815: Btw: what do you think does it mean that there are some organisms that are apparently full of junk DNA (e.g. humans) and others that contain virtually none (e.g. S. cerevisiae)
Well, I was hoping someone else would post a reply to your question since I’m not an expert in these matters. I can only repeat what I’ve been hearing lately, and it’s all over the place. Junk DNA is turning out not be junk after all. They apparently have essential regulatory functions. I guess a Darwinist’s junk is an IDer’s treasure. LOL.
congregate: (211):
Efficiency. Occam’s Razor.
Most of the so called “junk DNA” may necessarily have to encode many levels of additional information (in addition to protein specifications in the “coding” DNA) in order to actually build higher multicellular organisms. If this is true, little or no true “junk DNA” would be a necessity of biological organization and would not be special predictions of either ID or Darwinism. But as it has been pointed out a number of times here, if most of the “junk” DNA is information intensive at many levels, RV + NS has been given further great difficulties in explaining it.
Then why are there not another billion or more truly extraneous junk base pairs in addition to the present 3 billion in the genome? Maybe it gets too disadvantageous in cellular terms, like in the energy costs in chromosome duplication.
Of course Darwinism has actually predicted the presence of a lot of true junk in the genome, but no problem since it can’t be falsified and one prediction we can be sure of is that a good Darwinian story will be concocted to explain the mostly absence of junk. Most likely something involving a selective advantage of efficiency in the cell cycle.
No or little “junk DNA” would be predicted by ID assuming desire for efficiency or elegance are characteristics of the designer. But as I mentioned, little or no true junk in the genome may be a necessity not a choice.
PaV-
As I understand it Occam’s Razor is a general principle for choosing between alternatives, rather than a principle that derives from the idea that some things are too complicated to arise naturally. Can you clarify for me how it is an ID principle?
As magnan suggests, efficiency would be an ID principle if desire for efficiency is a characteristic of the designer. But it’s hard to measure efficiency when you don’t know what all the factors to be taken into account are. A designed biological system might be efficient for using resources but inefficient for developing diversity. How do we measure efficiency in general? Do the standard examples of bad design represent inefficiencies that argue against design?
congregate:
Can you clarify for me how it is an ID principle?
How does one clarify the obvious, pray tell?
Only rascals seek evasion from truth through equivocation.
PaV-
Let me try to clarify what this rascal’s understanding is. As I understand it, Occam’s Razor (OR) is a method for choosing between two competing explanations. If two explanations are equally good at explaining some observation, OR says to go with the one that is the simplest. I don’t see that as an “ID Principle”, I think it is a standard scientific rule of thumb.
You may say that Occam’s Razor says to pick ID over mainstream evolution, but I don’t think you can use OR to predict an absence of junk DNA under ID.
congregate:
This is likely my last response to you. You take a position to “efficiency” that is equivocal. You feel as though we need to know the designer in order to know whether the designer is efficient, or has that as a goal. We wouldn’t be talking about design and designers unless we already had experience of both. Your experience of design, I’m sure, makes it obvious that efficiency is a value. So, this can be simply presupposed. So, let’s not waste time on semantics.
PaV-
How can that be your last response, you haven’t responded yet?
How is Occam’s Razor an ID principle?
You take a position to “efficiency” that is unrealistically simplistic. What is the efficiency that a designer would value? A two door small car is more efficient for taking me to work; a pickup truck is more efficient for carrying large loads of building materials.
Are art paintings “designed”? Are they all characterized by efficient use of materials?
If ID predicts no junk DNA because junk DNA is inefficient, what does ID say about the recurrent laryngeal nerve, which goes from the brain to the throat looping around the aortic arch, adding about twenty feet of nerve fiber in a giraffe? That seems inefficient to me. Maybe there is a question for ID research, what is too inefficient to be produced by a designer?
On the Giraffe:
http://www.discovery.org/scrip.....38;id=4072