Uncommon Descent Serving The Intelligent Design Community

ID’s “predictive prowess”

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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.

Comments
On the Giraffe: http://www.discovery.org/scripts/viewDB/index.php?command=view&id=4072Patrick
February 6, 2008
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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?congregate
January 27, 2008
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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
January 27, 2008
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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
January 27, 2008
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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
January 27, 2008
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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
January 26, 2008
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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.magnan
January 26, 2008
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congregate: (211): Efficiency. Occam's Razor.PaV
January 26, 2008
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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.Mapou
January 24, 2008
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PaV- What are the ID principles that lead us to expect that junk DNA would have a function?congregate
January 24, 2008
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Absolutely. Was there ever any doubt? I don’t mean to be flippant but when was the last time you or I designed something even remotely as comnplex as a brain or a liver that worked?
I don't know when was the last time. Probably a couple of weeks ago. I failed. But that does not mean that there is necessarily a vaster power needed to design something that complex. For example, regular humans have designed chips that can greatly outperform brains at certain tasks. The complete distributed internet may have a similar level of complexity as the brain. Who knows. It's hard to measure. But to me your assumptions are not self evident.hrun0815
January 24, 2008
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hrun0815: Here your assumption appear to be: ‘designer is smarter than you, me and JunkyardTornado’ and ‘designer does not like junk’. Absolutely. Was there ever any doubt? I don't mean to be flippant but when was the last time you or I designed something even remotely as comnplex as a brain or a liver that worked?Mapou
January 24, 2008
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Junkyard, my code may be full of junk but not intentionally. It’s only because I am not that smart. Junk DNA is too obvious for an intelligent designer to overlook, in my opinion.
Does that mean you (and I) are not 'intelligent designers'? How do you know how much smarter the intelligent designer of life as we know it was? That is exactly the point JunkyardTornado was making... you have to come up with very specific assumptions about the intelligent designer to conclude that there should or should not be non-functional DNA in organisms. Here your assumption appear to be: 'designer is smarter than you, me and JunkyardTornado' and 'designer does not like junk'. 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)?hrun0815
January 24, 2008
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Was the war against slavery a work of God? How messy was that process?JunkyardTornado
January 24, 2008
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That dead code may be completely obsolete, but not just random data. But if you have a statically allocated array of 100K and only 50K is ever used, then you will have a 50K long string of randomness in your actual code.JunkyardTornado
January 24, 2008
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Junkyard, my code may be full of junk but not intentionally. It's only because I am not that smart. Junk DNA is too obvious for an intelligent designer to overlook, in my opinion. Remember that we're not talking about any designer here. If you can design and create complex life, I would say that you are a little bit smarter than average.Mapou
January 24, 2008
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Mapou: Your program is full of junk, unless its absolutely optimal in terms of speed and space usage. But aside from that, I think all programs have a certain percentage of dead code, which is doing nothing but sitting in memory. So before release you make sure that every single subroutine is actually being referenced somewhere, and if it isn't you yank it out. To what end?JunkyardTornado
January 24, 2008
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Interesting. As a software engineer, I don’t remember ever intentionally leaving junk code in my released programs. That would be a dangerous practice, in my opinion. Why would anyone want to leave unused code in an application?
I don't know about you, but in my attempts to write complex code, I certainly ended up with some routines here or there that in the end were not called up or even properly debugged.hrun0815
January 24, 2008
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JunkYard: Also, what about previous revisions of software that are kept around even though they haven’t been used in years. In that case, its the opposite principle - not trashing something when it isn’t all that expensive to preserve. Interesting. As a software engineer, I don't remember ever intentionally leaving junk code in my released programs. That would be a dangerous practice, in my opinion. Why would anyone want to leave unused code in an application?Mapou
January 24, 2008
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Also, what about previous revisions of software that are kept around even though they haven't been used in years. In that case, its the opposite principle - not trashing something when it isn't all that expensive to preserve.JunkyardTornado
January 24, 2008
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PaV said: Based on ID principles, you would expect “junk-DNA” to have function, contrary to what was the consensus among Darinists [the study of Samatha husbands?]. But isn't waste an inevitable by-product of any design endeavor we are familiar with? Isn't there "junk-dna" for your computer lying around a lab somewhere in Silicon Valley? Would we expect human waste to have some crucial undiscovered function? OK I guess it does, but only in an indirect way.JunkyardTornado
January 24, 2008
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congregate: Based on ID principles, you would expect "junk-DNA" to have function, contrary to what was the consensus among Darinists. As to "junk" having no function, let's remember that Darwinists thought that tonsils were junk, that the appendix was junk, etc. Then function was found.PaV
January 24, 2008
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PaV- What about junk DNA? Excellent question. What about it? The general sense here at UD seems to be that the intelligent design theory predicts that there will be no such thing as junk DNA. But I don't understand how that follows from the theory. What part of the theory exactly that would compel that conclusion? If the theory says that the designer(s) wouldn't put junk in the genome, isn't that saying something about the designer? What evidence do we have to tell us what the designer(s) would or wouldn't do?congregate
January 24, 2008
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congregate: What about "junk-DNA"? And, if something has already been confirmed, how could it then be a prediction? I predict that the sun is hot.PaV
January 23, 2008
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So, almost 200 responses later, can anyone provide anything that satisfies Dr. Dembski's original request for:
any samples of things that intelligent design theory has predicted, which researchers have later determined to be true?
There are many examples above of predictions, but I didn't see any that have been confirmed by researchers.congregate
January 22, 2008
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jerry, you wrote this: After thinking about this process of variation and modification of the gene pool by genetic processes for a couple years now, I believe it was designed to work this way. It is a way of modifying populations so they can thrive and survive in different environments without direct intervention and that to me is fantastic design What I highlighted is exactly what I've been trying to hammer away at with you. So we're on the same page on this afterall. Yes, it is a 'speculative' view, but it sure seems to make a lot of sense. Where I disagree---and this is surely 'speculative' too---is that I don't think, as population genetics would tell you, that genes are "eliminated" and "fixed". Again, intuitively, I think the genes are always there in the genome and in the population. Random changes can occur to these genes, either in the coding region or in the regulatory region surrounding the coding sequence, resulting in differing phenotypic expression. So I propose a thread for the future, namely that the variation and genetic processes of the modern synthesis is beautiful design to allow for the flowering of life on the planet. I wouldn't word things just this way, but, that said, what you write summarizes my view quite closely. Asa Gray pretty much had this view. Thanks for taking the time to write out your views. Your full of surprises---pleasant ones, of course. It would be absolutely crushing for the Darwinists. But here we are on this site reflexively denigrating the methods that are before our eyes that could enable us to humiliate the Darwinists. Again, where I see things differently is that I believe their ideas on what you're calling 'devolution' is wrong as well, not that the unfurling of the information that becomes present in the major taxa doesn't involve random processes; hence, I think the humiliation will ultimately be deeper. But I must say, I'm quite pleasantly surprised to see that there is very little distance between our views. Pace.PaV
January 21, 2008
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PaV, Here is what I believe about the modern synthesis and it is long but written relatively quickly so may not be entirely coherent. 1) The modern synthesis was developed by evolutionary biologists in the 1930's and 1940's to take care of problems with Darwin's original ideas. That should not be controversial. 2) It has changed over time to accommodate new information, the most dramatic being the discovery of DNA and the genome. But other changes have taken place besides these which are also accepted as part of the basic paradigm. This should not be a point of dispute. For example, genetics is a huge field and has several different theories associated with it. All are part of the modern synthesis and some are speculative. 3) There are two separate but broad basic processes that are part of the modern synthesis paradigm. (By the way I use modern synthesis since most evolutionary biologists consider the term neo Darwinism inappropriate and out dated despite the wide use of it here.) These two basic processes are a) the creation of variation in the genomes of gametes in multi-cellular organisms and b) the subsequent expression of these genomes of the gametes in the population of the organisms after mating through principles of genetics. First a gamete or gametes gets changed through some variation creation event to produce something that is not in any of the members of the population and then second, the genomes of a new off spring are changed to reflect this new change to the genome that is in some of the gametes. These are two independent processes. At least I believe they are but am willing to discuss why they are not. I am not interested in single celled organisms for this discussion though I realize it is an important topic area. So I am keeping it to multi-cellular animals for this discussion. So far I hope it is non-controversial since I am just making the same demarcation that Behe has made. 4) Somehow a gene pool is created and I use the Wikipedia definition of gene pool. Here it is "In population genetics, a gene pool is the complete set of unique alleles in a species or population. A large gene pool indicates extensive genetic diversity, which is associated with robust populations that can survive bouts of intense selection. Meanwhile, low genetic diversity (see inbreeding and population bottlenecks) can cause reduced biological fitness and an increased chance of extinction." If you or anyone want to deny such a thing as a gene pool exists, then I suggest a thread be started and we can have a discussion. To me it is a no brainer and while I am sure there is lots to learn, it is easy enough to look at humans and all the variation that exist in their physical features and capabilities. Today there is a constant mapping of individual human's genomes or parts of them to validate this concept. We may never get the complete human gene pool but a large subset is now being developed. I posted links on this above. 5) I also believe that the gene pool is constantly being modified over time by variation events to gametes. These variation events are of several different types. For now I will accept Allen MacNeill's 47 mechanisms and do not feel capable of disputing any of them. But as I will say below, it does not make any essential difference because there is no evidence they ever created anything of consequence. 6) How the gene pool grows and contracts depends mostly on the second process which can include lots of sub processes we do not fully understand. This I usually refer to as the genetic side of the modern synthesis. In other words how do the genomes of the gamete cells get expressed in the gene pool and what frequency does each allele (or other genetic demarcation you want to use) have in the population and how does this change over time. (Behe uses Darwin's term, natural selection, in the Edge of Evolution to designate this process but I bet if asked he would admit that this second basic process is not a single process but considerably more complicated.) 7) Now here is one of the key things I do not accept in the modern synthesis, namely, that the gene pool gets modified gradually over time in such a way that when gametes combine they eventually produce a novel complex functionality that did not exist before. In other words I deny that there is any evidence that suggests that macro-evolution takes place over time because of small variation events in the genomes of gametes that then lead to small changes in the gene pool and eventually lead to large functional changes in members of the population. Gradual processes happens but there is no evidence of anything of consequence for evolution ever resulting from it. Since this assumption of the modern synthesis lacks any empirical evidence, it is discarded from my paradigm. But since there is good empirical evidence that the other parts of the paradigm have validity, then there is no reason to discard them. So I assert that small changes do take place but that there is no evidence that these small changes lead to anything but trivial changes to the genome. Can I be more clear. You are welcome to disagree with any of my statements above but the statements I have laid out are no threat to ID in any way and falsifying them does not necessarily strengthen ID. As I will outline below, I believe accepting them strengthens ID immensely and makes it a more acceptable paradigm to the scientific community. We must accept that sometimes these small changes to the genome lead to dramatic consequences in the natural world. Namely, genomes will be altered to allow some organisms to live in an environment where the genomes of their ancestors would not have been able to survive. And more than likely these organisms will be somewhat morphologically different but not necessarily so. This process by which some offspring with certain allele patterns are more likely to survive is our famous friend, natural selection. But again I assert that there is no evidence to support that the changes to the genomes will be nothing but trivial in terms of evolutionary biology. Again I want to emphasize that trivial changes can have dramatic effects, especially in terms of disease and medical issues and maybe in some cases, survival in certain environments. I also am willing to listen to various theories on how the gene pool gets modified that are different from natural selection, genetic drift and gene flow. I am sure that genetics can adjust to accommodate other mechanisms. It is not a big deal. So if you have any objections to the above comments, limit it to multi-celled animals because at the moment that is all I am interested in. If you have any questions or dispute any of this, please ask simple questions as opposed to putting thoughts into my mouth. Maybe I haven't expressed it clearly enough. I find nothing of what I say that contradicts Behe, Dembski or Wells so it may be a question of semantics. I have read Behe's book in the last year and just got finished Dembski and Well's book. Now here on is my purely speculative ideas and treat is as one person's speculation. After thinking about this process of variation and modification of the gene pool by genetic processes for a couple years now, I believe it was designed to work this way. It is a way of modifying populations so they can thrive and survive in different environments without direct intervention and that to me is fantastic design. So I believe it is possible that the DNA/RNA/protein system of life was designed as such so it could be modified to be flexible in changing environments. To me it is beautiful design but it is limited and these limitations are probably part of the design. So I propose a thread for the future, namely that the variation and genetic processes of the modern synthesis is beautiful design to allow for the flowering of life on the planet. However, the original gene pool for the various segments of life may have to be created for this to happen because natural processes will never lead to any gene pool that is robust enough to accommodate the changes necessary. So most of the life on the planet is devolution after these original gene pools are established. Again speculation to be verified, falsified or modified by future research. That is why I say that the investigation of genomes is ID research because I believe it will support Behe's proposition that there is no novelty within all these genomes despite tens of millions of years of evolution or maybe devolution and zillions of reproductive events. What could be more devastating for the Darwinist then for ID to first appropriate most of their pet theory and then use it to show that all these species of birds, fish, mammals, beetles etc. are nothing but devolution of a gene pool long gone. There is no or little evolution in birds; there is no or little evolution in fish; there is no or little evolution in carnivora despite 10's of millions of years for each and zillions of reproductive events. It would be absolutely crushing for the Darwinists. But here we are on this site reflexively denigrating the methods that are before our eyes that could enable us to humiliate the Darwinists. Long live variation plus natural selection and its variants. These are the tools to vanquish the Darwinists. Here is my proposed ID paradigm 1) ID => evolution with novelty 2) variation + natural selection => devolution => richness of life => extinction Most of the action is in 2) but 2) could not happen if not for 1). Again all speculative but to me it makes more sense that anything else I have heard.jerry
January 21, 2008
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jerry, I like your "limited common descent". It sounds, pretty much, like my thoughts on the subject---and,... it's pithy!PaV
January 21, 2008
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PaV, I do not consider common descent as essential to accept one way or the other. In fact I do not really consider it part of the basic evolution debate. It is something that follows or does not follow from the empirical evidence. It is a conclusion that one can accept or not accept based on the data. I hope this is clear enough. Also when I do discuss common descent, I distinguish between what some call universal common descent and what I call limited common descent. For the latter some species could descend from a closely related ancestor but not from an original single celled organism. Take this hypothetical example; cows and goats may be descended from a common ancestor but this does not mean they are necessarily descended from the first mammal directly or from lizards and amphibians before them. Since I consider the origin of species that have functional differences a mystery, I really have no concrete basis to assert or deny common descent. So as far as am concerned one can take or leave common descent in the evolution debate. I believe this is Dembski's position also. I don't find it a necessary one way or the other but something to be proven or falsified based on the evidence. Now, I have opinions but they are not essential one way or the other to what I call the real debate. If you want to dispute any of this, then I have no idea what could be disputed since I am essentially saying I don't know for sure and don't find it essential for the debate. I will answer the next part, which is the essential part, in the next post.jerry
January 21, 2008
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I'm also confused. The whole point of Spetner's NREH was to replace the NDT for examples of MICROevolution. (he doesn't even claim to pretend to have a theory for macroevolution since that was never observed) And the front loaders need the NREH before we can even talk about expanding it to explain universal common descentari-freedom
January 21, 2008
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