ID’s “predictive prowess”

ID predicts that neo-Darwinists will get so upset at a group of people following the evidence where it leads and unraveling their shaky theory that they will accuse ID of being a new brand of Creationism and not science.

Sorry…..

Here’s a few:

1) Origin of life: Intelligent design can predict that science will never be able to explain how this complex life arose (homochirality). This prediction has been confirmed every year for decades.

2) History of life: Life is shown too complex to develop slowly over time. Life will appear rapidly and remain in stasis. This has been confirmed countless times, i.e. the big bangs of life.

3) Irreducibly complex living forms exist.

4) Molecular machines.

5) Evolutionary convergence.

That after “billions and billions” of generations of any particular biological entity no new morphology will occur due to random mutations and natural selection.

Intelligent Design Theory predicts that the trademark evidences of design typically recognized by normal humans will be both ubiquitous and compelling - so much so that opponents will have to obtusely warn their disciples against acceptance of the obvious (as Francis Crick has done: “Biologists must constantly keep in mind that what they see was not designed, but rather evolved”).

In simpler words: if things are intelligently designed, they should appear so. They do.

ID predicts that many, if not all, innovative technology achievements of human kind (read agency) will have direct parallels in, or derivation from, biological systems.ID predicts that the information content (CSI) of living systems will decline, not increase, over time.ID predicts that the input of random, non-specific information into a functional or nonfunctional system will ever only degrade or inhibit that system in all but a few trivial and insignificant ways.

Well so much for formatting by the preview.

To note [off-topic] the Wordpress plugin Ajax Comment Preview provides an exact format preview.

The obvious one is that “junk” DNA is not junk.

To expand on the comments of edj,

The single most important prediction of Intelligent Design is that, although there might be the occasional degeneration of either macroscopic or microscopic structure, most structures should serve a purpose. Thus most organs should not be vestigial, and most DNA should not be “junk DNA”. There were those bold enough to say this when there appeared to be evidence to the contrary.

As time has gone on, it appears that the ID position has been vindicated compared to the position that most DNA would prove to be purely selfish, or that we should expect to find multiple examples of organs that were useful to our evolutionary ancestors but not to us.

This is an instance where not only is design theory making falsifiable predictions that appear to be corroborated, but where the Blind Watchmaker hypothesis can be legitimately considered a “science stopper”.

Peter,

Did ID really predict the big bangs of life?

Does gradualism, even if it were supported by the fossil evidence, prove that evolution is undirected, requiring no intellegence? That’s the claim of Dawkins, for instance. But must ID show an absence of gradualism? Doens’t Behe show that gradualism is no help in explaining non-telic origins of IC?

I was thinking the same thing as edj, to me that is the most compelling example!

ID would predict

1) Fx of Junk DNA
2) Fx for the appendix
3) That prokaryotes did not evolve from eukaryotes due to constraint issues:
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/...../5776/1011
4) That Human chromosome 2 and primate genome argument is not viable due to design constraints.
5) Genomes of “primitive” creatures like the Jellyfish can be more advanced then many contemporary species.
6) OOL (there’s gotta be stuff here)

- Polyfunctional DNA encoding is one I believe DaveScot made.

- Creature variation limited to either pre-existing (”built in”) or superficial changes, vindicated by Behe’s EoE work on the malarial parasite.

I guess I must be the exception among ID advocates. I think we are doing ourselves a great disservice by focusing on the design while ignoring the designer. I think this shows a lack of faith in the ID community. Sorry, that’s how I feel. We are engaged in a nasty war (don’t kid yourselves) against an entrenched and determined enemy. And we are the attackers. The way I see it, we cannot win this war the way we’re going about it. The enemy owns the territory. They have impregnable fortresses and giants in their midst. They own the educational system and they own the media. Unlimited propaganda and unmitigated deceit are their weapons of mass destruction. Sure, many of us have shown great personal courage but that’s not going to cut it. We won’t stand a chance if we think we can fight this war on our own. The enemy will crush us like bugs.

In my opinion, the most important falsifiable prediction of the ID hypothesis is the existence of a designer or a group of designers. If you truly believed in the existence of a designer, don’t you think that, given his vast intellect (nobody is going to design complex life forms by being stupid), he would have anticipated this battle a long ago and would have left us the means to fight it and win it? Where is your faith?

If you want to know how I think we can engage the enemy in open warfare and kick some ass, take a look at my blog.

PS. Dr. Dembski, you are being set up for a fall, in my opinion. I would decline the offer if I were you. Now is not the time. One man’s opinion.

I don’t think some of those are really predictions of ID — for example, is irreducible complexity predicted by ID, or is it just something that most likely requires ID?

I’d like to disagree with the “talking head” about the idea that a theory about things that happened in the distant past necessarily must have predictive value, to be science. Does the idea that the universe started 15 billion years ago with a big explosion have predictive value, or is it just the most direct inference from the observed redshifts of distant objects?

If ID is compatible with the evidence, and no other theory of how life got to its present state is, then ID wins scientifically (at least for now) whether it has predictive value or not.

Or to put it another way: If the correct explanation of where life came from (whatever that may be) happens to have no predictive value, does that make it scientifically impossible to answer the question of where life came from? Predictive value, while certainly preferable to none, is not an absolute requirement of a scientific explanation.

How does Tom Cruise get past this kind of vetting?

DarelRex, in 14, mentions I’d like to disagree with the “talking head” about the idea that a theory about things that happened in the distant past necessarily must have predictive value, to be science.

I’ll agree with this. But, even if it isn’t a prediction about what happened, there is a need for the explanation to be internally consistent with the other claims of science (or to be strong enough to displace them).

My point is that the internal consistency is demonstrated by correlation to other predictions that were played out. The method, at least for science is: Observe an event, conjecture an explanation, deduce a prediction from the explanation, test the prediction, validate or debunk the conjecture. (From wiki, on Scientific Method.)

I would hope that the predictions of ID are of the type that can be tested - like some of the claims about probabilities that aren’t so extreme or obvious.

Greetings!
I do not know what predictions need to be made. Design is everywhere in nature and it is not hiding. Not only is it functional but is looks good as well. Intelligent Design is really self explanatory, nature is intelligently designed and it is this design in nature that requires an explanation. This is not a new paradigm to science. Before and after Darwin many of the great science giants searched the design in nature and with results that changed the world. They were not seeking to explain away God but uncover his handy work. Nothing we humans have ever designed and manufactured even comes close to what is found in nature.

One predictions I have for ID is that nature holds the keys to advanced technology for us humans to unlock. In every living thing at lease one technological advancement waiting to be discovered. Properly understood and utilized, all the organisms that make up our eco-systems will propel human intellect to places we cannot imagine.

If that is not Intellegent design then all engineers and artists are all frauds.

I further predict that the tech found in the organisms is there specifically for human intellect and use.

This is really a rule for science, but why not nature. I look at it this way, if I were a being whose intellect towers infinitely over every other being, but to whom were my children, I would design nature to teach and amuse them, to inspire and instill a sense of awe in them. The design I would have put in nature would be specifically for them and comprehensible to them.

(1) As already mentioned, “junk-DNA” would completely undermine ID if it turned out to really be “junk”. But, of course it isn’t.

(2) A fair-level of “front-loading” would be expected. When they find genes for the expression of digits in sea anemones (sea squirts?), this throws Darwinism for a loop, but is almost an expectation for ID.

(3) A complicated level/levels of regulation. If “junk-DNA” is not junk—as ID fully expected—then, concomitantly, it should have a function. The most likely function is that of regulation. When you consider that the ratio of non-coding to coding DNA is 48 to 1, then you must also expect an incredible level of regulation.

(4) Since we’re dealing with “information”, ID would expect “error-correction” for DNA (let’s remember that the Darwinists would be hoping for the opposite—gotta have lots of variation, you know).

(5) Again, because we’re dealing with “information systems”, one would expect high levels of redundancy built into the genome.

(6) Lots of environmental triggers: if you’re designing life that must deal with huge temperature and climatic changes, then there must be a way for the genome and the environment to interact.

Greeting again!

Science requires that nature be intelligently design so it can be intelligently investigated. This is a prerequisite for science that is all to often forgotten. If nature was not intelligently designed then no matter how much we investigated it, we would find it incomprehensible. It is precisely because it is designed that we can understand it.

(7) Using the analogy of a computer program, one would expect what I call “subroutines”, or, put another way, various parts of the genome that are used for a variety of purposes in an “on-demand” basis. These “subroutines” would be part of the “regulatory” system of the genome.

(8) Just as a computer must “compile” a program, there must be some kind of chromosomal system that associates the various “parts of the program” in a deterministic way. That is, the right parts have to be in the right place, and connected to one another in a ‘logical’ way.

Taking ID broadly, it predicts signs of intelligence. After that, you can make a bunch of lower-level predictions. Front-loading, DNA, molecular machines, etc.

Help me out here. What does Darwinism predict?

“Help me out here. What does Darwinism predict?”

That some atheists may become intellectually fulfilled.

BarryA wrote:

Help me out here. What does Darwinism predict?

The way I understand it, Darwinian theory predicts gradual evolution, common descent and that all species can be classified so as to form a gapless family tree.

The sudden appearance of huge numbers of fully-formed species in the fossil record soundly falsifies the gradual evolution hypothesis. Killed at the starting gate.

Barry A (23):

To give you just one example - evolutionary theory was used to predict where and in what rock strata the Tiktaalik fossil would be found. That is why the researchers went to the time, expense and inconvenience of looking in northern Canada.

I think William Demski’s prospective interviewers are looking for that kind of prediction for ID. But I haven’t seen anything that specific coming from it yet.

we don’t just see a discontinuous tree, we see a discontinuous bush. There’s a lack of clear cut phylogeny. What used to be clear cut (remember the horse sequence?) eventually gets messier. The prediction is that evolutionists will eventually throw out the rest of their favorite examples and appeal to “sister branches” and convergence

We see all the phyla appear front loaded in the beginning and no new phyla emerge as time progresses. For example, ~500 vertebrate fish (Haikouichthys) were found in the early Cambrian in China.
D. G. Shu et al., “Head and Backbone of the Early Cambrian Vertebrate Haikouichthys,” Nature, Vol. 421, 30 January 2003, pp. 527, 529.

What about finding a vertebrate in the ediacara?
http://www.abc.net.au/science/.....984724.htm
and a year later http://www.abc.net.au/worldtod.....266616.htm
“NANCE HAXTON: That fossil, only six centimetres long, is now believed to be the oldest vertebrate fossil on earth at 560 million years old. It ultimately proves that the origin of all complex life goes back much further than previously imagined. Shaped like a tadpole, the creature had muscles, a head, a fin on its back, but most importantly a backbone.”

If OOL was a natural process we would expect multiple origins over time. A natural OOL could not predict biologic universals. Totally expected if they were the result of common design.

We should find that most observed cases of microevolution are really rigged and not the result of rm/ns. Spetner gives a whole list in chapter 7 in his book Not by Chance.

He didn’t put antibiotic resistance in his list but perhaps we now can. Look in DoL page 296 note 36: “In fact, a strict Darwinian explanation for antibiotic resistance seems to be more the exception than the rule. In times of environmental stress, bacteria go into a programmed defense that constitutes a targeted search for gene combinations that will enable at least a few of the bacteria’s descendants to survive (the genetic changes here are therefore not random mutations as understood within neo-Darwinism)…”

We can predict we’ll find a mechanism for these directed mutations triggered by an environmental cue.

Following on from the comment about nature being the key to advanced technology (indeed it already has) I feel that one often overlooked prediction of ID could be the key to a wonderful breakthrough. It’s a little complicated but bear with me. We know that ID predicts a line between micro and macro evolution which is uncrossable. This therefore means that elements of the DNA code are being protected from change. Now there are several, very real ways in which this can be done - evolutionists, of course, simply assume that nothing is happening so they don’t bother to research these - but I reckon that the coolest of these is the notion of molecular shielding. There are several ways that DNA nucleotides can be damaged - radiation is the most infamous one, but chemical damage does it too. If molecular shielding exists to protect nucleotides from macroevolution, then it must be capable of not only deflecting radiation, but also has a physical component to prevent unwanted chemistry. It’s a perfect forcefield on an atomic scale. The possibilities if we could get access to this power are amazing… we’re looking at totally real forcefields capable of stopping both matter and radiation. The US military would kill for stuff like that. Even better, because it is nano scale to begin with, it can have more mundane, practical function in materials; wire shielding, radiation suits, overalls.

Clarence,

The whole history of Darwinism is that evolutionists have gone looking for a particular fossil and they always find it. (Of course, later on they’re shown to be hoaxes.) But that’s because you can interpret any piece of fossil you find in any way you please. In Henry Gee’s book, “Deep Time”, he makes this very point.

What does Tiktaalik represent? It represents some kind of aquatic form that has digits. But sea anemones have the gene for forming digits. So what is the point of Tiktaalik? Has Darwinism “proved” that the “environment” brought about the gene for digits? I hardly think so. It very likely demonstrates prediction #6 in my earlier post, #18–that is, there should be plenty of environmental triggers. So your adventurers went to a specific type of environment and found a particular type of fossil. Whose prediction does it fulfill?

DaveScot (29),

I’d agree that front-loading would be a good prediction for ID. I think my question to that would be, when did the front-loading occur? If it was front-loaded at or near the origin of life then ID would need to explain why the fossil record shows increasing complexity over time, rather than having complex features crop up all over the fossil record, even at the early stages, which is what one might expect from front-loadinng.

To give an example: there have been occurences of chickens being stimulated to produce teeth (”hen’s teeth”). Those teeth were reptilian in nature, as might be expected from an evolutionary origin. They did not produce mammalian teeth. So the question for front-loading advocates is, if front-loading is true then we can predict that chickens can be stimulated to produce mammalian teeth (because the genes, being front-loaded, are already there).

That is a clear and specific prediction. Surely a research programme could work on that?

On your comment:

“ID does not dispute common descent.”

I think this is one of the things the ID Movement needs to clarify. Some (e.g. your good self, Mike Behe) don’t dispute it. Others (William Dembski, for example) seem to. Why the disagreement? How will William Dembski answer that in his interview?

PaV, I simply don’t agree with your comment that a fossil can be interpreted any way you please. Like the rest of science, inetrpretations of fossils are peer reviewed and criticised by the expert community and a consensus opinion emerges once there is sufficient data. If you have an explanation that fits the evidence then the community will concur; if you don’t then your opinion is just your own and essentially of no sscinetific relevance. To say that most fossils Darwinists search for are hoaxes in simply untrue - there are quite literaly millions of fossils in museums, and the number of “hoaxes” would amount to a handful. In a few hours I can find literally hundreds, possibly thousands of fossils on beaches a couple of hours drive from me - are you seriously saying that these are hoaxes?

I think you miss the point about the search for Tiktaalik. According to evolutionary theory there ought to have been transitional species between fish and the earliest land-dwellers. Given that the fossil record shows and absence of land-dwellers in earlier strata and the appearance of land-dwellers in later strata, it follows logically that the transitionals should have fossils represented in strata intermediate between them.

Also, one would expect the transitionals to appear in strata derived from a river or shallow water where they could transition to land. By combining these time and environment limitations the researchers could find the most suitable strata in which to search for the transitionals. And they succeeded - a big plus for evolutionary theory.

Converesely, I see Tiktaalik as a negative for ID. If the designer has designed fish, and then wants to design something for the land, why bother with a transitional? Why not just design land-dwellers and cut out the middle-man (or middle-fish, if you like). That is what ID needs to explain: if ID is true then why Tiktaalik?

DaveScot,

“And just for the record, the Tiktaalik prediction speaks only to evolution by common descent not evolution by chance & necessity. Try again. ID does not dispute common descent.”

So you are saying that the dna for all creatures for all history existed in the first life form? If not then there are some gaps. How do you explain these gaps?

one problem with the front loading hypothesis is that it also seems to imply gradualism, but unlike Darwinism this would be pre-programmed like the gradual development of an embryo.

ari-freedom: “one problem with the front loading hypothesis is that it also seems to imply gradualism”

What’s wrong with that?

Davescot 29:

Why isn’t lateral sequence transfer in the recent past a plausible explanation?

I think the easiest prediction for ID is to follow up on Behe’s ideas from the Edge of Evolution. Namely, there is a limit to what natural processes can do and we expect to find that in the world around us.

For example, in the future when the genomes are mapped for all mammals and there exists mappings of multiple variants within each species, what will be found in these gene pools. It would then be possible to look at the gene pools not only of the species but of the genera and families.

NDE would predict new variations increasing over time at the species level and thus the gene pools of the genera and families would exhibit greater variation over time but ID would predict less variation over time at the species level as the main cause for species formation is loss of information, not gain of information.

Of course there will be both but if the gain of information is small and trivial in terms of implications for evolutionary biology then ID is vindicated and NDE falsified as a generator of novelty. The basic NDE prediction is that novelty will appear at the species level and eventually lead to new families and orders. But if the evolutionary tree is getting thiner at the edges and not thicker then ID is vindicated and NDE falsified.

There is research going on today that is investigating this which is why I say there is much ID research proceeding in biological laboratories even if it is not designated as such. Every time a biologist maps a genome of a species or multiple members of a species, he/she is doing ID research.

DaveScot wrote:

Being a proponent of ID by way of ancient front loading of the genome I was very pleased to see the results of this experiment but hardly surprised by it. I’d been expecting this result. I also expect to see genomic information coding for phenotypic features that were never expressed by the ancestors of the organism.

Dave, let me see if I get this right. Are you saying that ID predicts that all the information needed for an organism to adapt to its environment via natural selection is pre-programmed from the beginning and is not the result of random mutations (as per Darwinian evolution theory)?

33 mike1962
because that’s not what the fossil record is telling us

In response to post 14
ID predicts that there are characteristics that, when those characteristics emerge and the origins are known, are the result of design. IC and SC are two of those characteristics (there could be more). Humans make cars which exhibit IC and cars are a product of design. This can be falisfied. For instance, if one can show that IC and SC can emerge independently of design (and independently of already existing IC and SC structures) that would falsify the notion that IC and SC reliably signal design. If it can be shown that there are no characteristics that reliably signal design, that would falsify the notion that design can be reliably detected.

ari-freedom: “one problem with the front loading hypothesis is that it also seems to imply gradualism”

What’s wrong with that?

I’m not an expert in these matters but may I venture that it only implies micro-gradualism (variations in the phenotype), that is, starting from a fully formed genome? Please, correct me if I’m wrong.

Once we show that there are characteristics that reliably signal design, we should then try to examine whether or not life and the universe exhibit those characteristics.

So basically, ID research would attempt to look for what characteristics reliably signal design and then it would try to determine (look into, research) if life and the universe exhibit those characteristics.

ID predicts that when M & NS operate, they will be characterized more as trench warfare (breaking things) than as an arms race (making things).

One of the problems with making predictions is that the evidence for ID based on analogous systems in engineering just keeps rolling in at such a rapid pace. But what if that evidence hadn’t been discovered yet?

Here would be some predictions most of which would be post hoc but some may yet to be discovered. These are based entirely on what one would expect from an intelligently designed system from an engineering perspective.
A robust specificationSpecification integrity controlsManufacturing facilities with quality controlOptimized materialsMaterials selection schemesDimensional tolerance controlSequenced assembly instructionsAssembly control and error checking systems
Coordinated transport systems for materials and wasteBuild-in testFeedback and feedforward systemsError checking and correctionModularity and reusability in componentsSignalling between functional modulesFault sensing systems and responseParallel processingRecursive systems
Contrained redesign capabilitiesInternal acceptance testing of new designsControlled failureCoordination with outside systems (ecological awareness)Built-in learning

Looks like the ul and li tags don’t work like they do in the preview. Here’s the list again:

*A robust specification
*Specification integrity controls
*Manufacturing facilities with quality control
*Optimized materials
*Materials selection schemes
*Dimensional tolerance control
*Sequenced assembly instructions
*Assembly control and error checking systems
*Coordinated transport systems for materials and waste
*Build-in test
*Feedback and feedforward systems
*Error checking and correction
*Modularity and reusability in components
*Signalling between functional modules
*Fault sensing systems and response
*Parallel processing
*Recursive systems
*Contrained redesign capabilities
*Internal acceptance testing of new designs
*Controlled failure
*Coordination with outside systems(ecological awareness)
*Built-in learning

front loading as an alternative to rm/ns to explain observed cases of microevolution makes sense. Limited descent makes sense (for example, lions and tigers probably had a common ancestor as they can produce hybrid ligers)

But bacteria turning into people through front loading? Pardon my Yiddish, but that sounds a bit “farfetched.”

OK. Here are some predictions that I believe a proponent of ID and/or front-loading could make.

(1) Optimality of DNA. If anything in nature was designed by a Higher Intelligence, DNA was. If something is intelligently designed for some purpose, then it should be optimal for that purpose. Of course, it can get a bit tricky if an entity is designed for many different purposes which have conflicting requirements, necessitating some sort of engineering compromise. Nevertheless, one simple prediction that ID would make is that NO biologist will ever be able to build a genetic code which can do a BETTER job than DNA for ALL of the following purposes: regulating the development and functioning of organisms; transmitting genetic information faithfully from one generation to the next; and making minor adjustments (mutations) in response to environmental changes. If someone can design a molecule that excels DNA in one of these areas and equals it in the others, then ID is falsified.

(2) Inexhaustibility of DNA as a research model. If DNA was designed by a Supernatural Intelligence, then one would expect it to be a perpetually fruitful research subject for scientists - especially computer scientists, and that these scientists will always be able to make refinements in computer coding and data storage by copying existing features of DNA molecules. If we ever reach a stage where scientists can say, “That’s it. We have nothing more to learn from DNA. We’ve now got data storage devices that incorporate all of its desirable features and more besides,” then ID will become obsolete as a hypothesis. Why? Because any Designer that’s dumber than Homo sapiens doesn’t deserve to be called a designer, that’s why.

(3) The existence of active or dormant equivalents for each and every functional vertebrate gene in all phyla of metazoa (animals). We already know that genes for the expression of digits have been identified in sea anemones. However, even a fairly modest version of the front-loading hypothesis would also imply that sponges (which are animals) should have these genes too. A bolder version of the hypothesis (one front-loading event, at the dawn of life) would imply that plants and bacteria should have these genes as well.

With regard to (1): an article in “Science Daily” (Fen. 9, 2007) at http://www.sciencedaily.com/re.....230116.htm refers to DNA as “nearly optimal for encoding signals of any length in parallel to sequences that code for proteins.” It reports that Dr. Uri Alon and his doctoral student Shalev Itzkovitz “showed that the real genetic code was superior to the vast majority of alternative genetic codes in terms of its ability to encode other information in protein-coding genes.” That sounds like DNA is good but not optimal. The researchers “also demonstrated that the real genetic code provides for the quickest incorporation of a stop signal–compared to most of the alternative genetic codes–in cases where protein synthesis has gone amiss.” My prediction here is that even IF alternative genetic code turns out to be better than DNA at BOTH of these things (encoding other information as well as incorporating a stop signal) then there should definitely be some other function of DNA (e.g. long-term transmission of genetic information) at which the alternative genetic code does not perform as well as the code we find in DNA. If, on the other hand, DNA turns out to be merely in the top 1%, say, of all possible designs, then this discovery would suggest that DNA in its present form somehow developed over the course of time from something less perfect, and that it stopped improving when it reached a local fitness peak.

As regards prediction (2), things are looking good for ID, if an article in “Science Daily” (Feb. 23, 2007) and available online at http://www.sciencedaily.com/re.....034152.htm is anything to go by. “In a report scheduled for the April 9 issue of ACS’ Biotechnology Progress, a bi-monthly journal, Masaru Tomita and colleagues in Japan point out that DNA has been attracting attention as perhaps the ultimate in permanent data storage.

“Data encoded in an organism’s DNA, and inherited by each new generation, could be safely archived for hundreds of thousands of years, the researchers state.”

It sounds like DNA will be a pretty fruitful area for computing research, for the foreseeable future.

(3) is perhaps the easiest prediction to test. Does anyone know of any confirming or disconfirming genetic data from sponges or from plants?

PaV @ 18 -

(1) As already mentioned, “junk-DNA” would completely undermine ID if it turned out to really be “junk”. But, of course it isn’t.

Just to clarify - what if some junk DNA had no function, but the rest did?

(3) A complicated level/levels of regulation. If “junk-DNA” is not junk—as ID fully expected—then, concomitantly, it should have a function. The most likely function is that of regulation. When you consider that the ratio of non-coding to coding DNA is 48 to 1, then you must also expect an incredible level of regulation.

Would that imply that organisms with more junk DNA would need more regulation, and hence be more complex? Would that be an ID prediction?

Bob

This is a fascinating discussion! I particularly like Venus Mousetrap’s prediction that a forcefield must be protecting DNA. Discovery of this field would completely vindicate ID - I would compare it to Eddington’s discovery of the bending of light-rays around the eclipsed sun, thereby corroborating general relativity. And, as VM says, it would have fantastic applications in industry. These are exciting days all right for ID! When have Darwinists ever improved our lives as much as ID one day will?

Still, I’d like to hear Prof. Dembski’s list. He’s being a bit of tease - asking us mere laypeople to guess what ID predicts, when he, the leading ID scientist in the world keeps the real ID predictions close to his chest! And no girl likes being teased….

So Dr Bill, no more flirting, let’s get to second base right now!

Peace and kisses,
Zoe.

I don’t have the exact quote at hand but I don’t think Francis Crick intended panspermia to be taken too seriously. It was really intended as a “call to arms” to wake up the OOL community because he felt there were real problems they weren’t addressing.

Carl Sagan spent a lot of time and effort debunking the idea of UFO’s even though his popularization of SETI as the inevitable result of evolution and “billions and billions” of earth like planets probably was responsible for the widespread belief we’ve been visited by aliens.

However, if this is a confirmed prediction of ID it presupposes something that many IDists, particularly the devoutly religious, don’t want to accept - that the designer is no longer with us. If we don’t make that presumption then what was observed could be the result of a designer actively suppressing the evolution of P. falciparum.

Just because the house is built doesn’t mean the builder goes away. He may be living in it even

One other prediction illustrates the difficulty of making predictions.

I have run into the argument a number of times that if a Creator (the propounders of this argument discount space aliens) wanted to re-use a part from one organism in another one, He would simply copy the relevant DNA where it was needed. On the other hand, the cytochrome C gene seems to have been copied with slight modifications from organism to organism, so that there is a branching tree effect.

The branching tree isn’t quite as perfect as it is cracked up to be, and different proteins can give different branches. And how much variation can be allowed between different families, orders, classes, and phyla is not clear. Nor is it clear that the different forms of cytochrome C are not optimized to serve the purposes of the different organisms. To affirm the latter would take more knowledge about optimal organism function than we possess.

However, one point is probably valid. If one designs an airplane and a car, certain designs will be taken over without significant modification, especially if the designer is the same, such as is apparently the case for the Saab. Why don’t we see this in nature?

Those arguing this way have a point. Perhaps we do see here a prediction for intelligent design. Is is falsified?

Actually, no. One frequently sees the same system re-used in a number of organisms. Histones and hox genes come to mind.

But these examples are compatible with gene conservation and common descent. What is really striking is where common descent is not a reasonable explanation. What is really striking is when we have such things as bacterial rhodopsin showing up in rice. Nobody that I know of claims that the common ancestor of these had the gene. On the face of it, this would seem to falsify common descent.

However, the immediate response is that this is “lateral gene transfer”; that the rice somehow got a bacterial gene inserted into its genome. So far it is a just-so story. We have no idea whether this can happen, or how easy it is. As examples of “lateral gene transfer” pile up, we should start asking questions about mechanism, and how easy it really is to get bacterial genes to go to the right place in the genome of another organism. Lateral gene transfer may be a fertile field for research by ID adherents.

The breakdown of the final common ancestor to a network of shared genes is the NDE expression of a prediction that ID has been making for a long time.

The religious perspective: G-d created man, creation was complete, He rested, generally assume order and degradation afterwards except for a few specified miracles to make a point.

Life from aliens: more aliens could always try to seed earth with new lifeforms. Why assume they would stop trying?

Dave

No matter what happens, evolution or lack thereof, it can be fobbed off as the intervention of a designer.

Or the non-intervention, which is a very important distinction and one of the pillars of Western Culture and science, itself.

It becomes a theory of everything, much like chance & necessity

Very good point. Darwinism, like theism, is not a science.

becomes when decoupled from statistical probability, and thus explains nothing.

Not objectively or measurably. But remember, anything extrapolated far enough becomes a matter of faith.

Which is the wonderful thing about ID: it is not meant to be extrapolated any further than any other practical, useful science.

Here’s criteria for design; object meets/doesn’t meet criteria; object is/may not be designed.

A very simple program. And who is the designer? The program can’t address it.

Continuing from #21:

(9) This is an expectation; not a prediction: Since Bateson showed that morphology can take on geometric proportions from one taxa to another, we should expect some kind of mathematical formulation to occur. To have a mathematical equation programmed right into the genome would be inefficient. So, something along these lines will probably be discovered at the level of a protein complex, or a protein complex interacting with miRNA and siRNA (my guess)

(10) Again, an expectation; not a prediction: As progress is made in robotics wherein sophisticated programming allows for very life-like motions, a similarity between the signal processing scheme of animals and machines is likely to emerge.

tribune7
Still you need some basis for assuming non-intervention. Maybe we (or something else) are pre-programmed to turn into some super creature at some time in the future?

ari

Still you need some basis for assuming non-intervention.

Well, yes. The idea that miracles must not be expected is one of the axioms of our culture. Other cultures do not hold this.

And note that this axiom is not based on science but rather science is based on it.

Clarence #31:

“I simply don’t agree with your comment that a fossil can be interpreted any way you please. Like the rest of science, inetrpretations of fossils are peer reviewed and criticised by the expert community and a consensus opinion emerges once there is sufficient data.”

This is a very naive view, Clarence. It’s not that simple.

“I think you miss the point about the search for Tiktaalik. According to evolutionary theory there ought to have been transitional species between fish and the earliest land-dwellers.”

Maybe you’ve missed the point that evolutionary theory—Darwinism—predicts all kinds of intermediate forms. Where are all the other millions of intermediate forms that the fossil record was predicted, by Darwin, to contain?

Let me add: you missed my point about the possible environmental factors that effect the genome. IOW, how can you distinguish between a genome that has adapted itself to a particular environment, and a genome that has been “produced” by the same said environment? How do you confidently distinguish the one from the other?

“Given that the fossil record shows and absence of land-dwellers in earlier strata and the appearance of land-dwellers in later strata, it follows logically that the transitionals should have fossils represented in strata intermediate between them.”

Conversely, how do you know that it isn’t the case of a “land-dweller” adapting itself to an intermediate environment, rather than an aquatic form adapting itself to a more terrestial environment? Remember, it’s an intermediate. Now you can see why we need lots of ‘intermediate forms’ to untangle the mess.

“Converesely, I see Tiktaalik as a negative for ID. If the designer has designed fish, and then wants to design something for the land, why bother with a transitional?”

If He explained the answer, would you understand?

More to the point: does every “design” have one, and only one, form to it? Isn’t it possible to “design” something in such a way that it takes on different forms in different circumstances?

DaveScot wrote:

If the designer is still in the neighborhood still able to intervene then all bets are off. No matter what happens, evolution or lack thereof, it can be fobbed off as the intervention of a designer.

I’m not sure I understand this argument. What is the difference between the designer being present a long time ago to front-load a bunch of genomes (say during the Avalon explosion) and then be absent for 100 million years (for whatever reason) before returning to front-load a new set of genomes? Why would the new intervention either falsify the ID hypothesis or render it unfalsifiable? Maybe the designer was not absent between life form explosions. Maybe he had a reason to wait a 100 million years. After all, you did suggest the possibility of multiple front-loadings. I don’t get it.

Bob O’H @ 49:

“Just to clarify - what if some junk DNA had no function, but the rest did?”

In Darwinian theory, when no conceivable idea exists for the necessary intermediates between form A and form B, we’re told/assured that “well, we don’t know what it’s function is, but someday we will.” It all looked like “junk” to Darwinists before. Now it’s obvious that it isn’t all “junk”. When you have some plants that have four copies of the genome, to know why that’s the case isn’t so obvious at times. I imagine we’ll find that some of the “junk” sure appears to be “junk”. According to Fred Hoyle, you would expect some “junk”—but this is from the man, of course, who demolished Darwinian theory in his book, “The Mathematics of Evolution.”
Maybe there’s a reason for some “junk”. One of the predictions of ID that I listed included one about ‘redundancy’. Would that classify as “junk”?

“Would that imply that organisms with more junk DNA would need more regulation, and hence be more complex? Would that be an ID prediction?”

To a degree it would be a prediction.

Let me ask you this: Would Darwinain theory “predict” that rice would have over 50,000 proteins in its genome while humans would only have about 30,000?

PaV

To have a mathematical equation programmed right into the genome would be inefficient. So, something along these lines will probably be discovered at the level of a protein complex, or a protein complex interacting with miRNA and siRNA (my guess)

How would the structure of the proteins and RNAs be coded and inherited if not from the genome? Are you suggesting some other form of inheritance?

Bob

“Would that imply that organisms with more junk DNA would need more regulation, and hence be more complex? Would that be an ID prediction?”

To a degree it would be a prediction.

To what degree? I don’t understand your qualification.

About the “what if only some junk DNA had function” question, I was asking whether some junk DNA being non-functional would (in your phrase) “completely undermine ID”. I’m still interested in knowing this.

Bob

Nevertheless, it’s certainly a virtue of scientific proposals to be able to say what evidence would count against it.

I think this is what most Darwinists are looking for, a specific experiment that can potentially falsify the ID hypothesis. Unless ID theorists can specify such an experiment, I believe that ID will not be accepted as a science. The fact that ID can be confirmed (a sudden return of the designer to the scene would do it) does not carry much weight, in my opinion.

OK, enough already!! Let’s all pipe down so that Prof. Dembski can get a word in here!!! I want to hear the actual list - not just everyone’s pie-in-the-sky speculations!

Sheesh, some people just like hearing the sounds of their own voices

Smiles,
Zoe.

The fossil record is evidence for rapid change followed by relative stasis.
This suggests that DNA is capable of changing radically in a short period of time. Present research demonstrates that small changes can be guided by an externally directed intelligent force. We are already doing such experiments although our methods are crude. For example recently scientists have introduced genes into various animals to make them glow in the dark. I say crude because we are simply taking an existing gene from one animal and introducing it into another… or messing with a particular gene site. We had prior knowledge gained from research that this particular gene and position coded for something that glows.

Radiation may be a better alternative to causing change. We know for example that fruit flies can be mutated when exposed to random X-ray radiation, none of the mutations are beneficial because the radiation is not specified.<