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Re: Scientist In Fight With NASA Over Intelligent Design

Posted: Mon Mar 12, 2012 3:12 pm
by bippy123
Ivellious wrote:RickD: You've just discovered one of my biggest qualms with ID as a scientific theory...there isn't even a consensus on what it means. It's just a vague cover-all idea that fills in all the holes by saying "well, something else (God, aliens, etc.) did everything, so don't ask questions why or how, because that is important is that it did."

Some ID proponents do accept the idea of aliens or something non-supernatural being the "designer." Some do not. Again, it's like they feel they can have a theory, not explain any of it, and say it's a done deal. In science the "how" is one of the vital aspects of describing the world, and ID stops well short of being able to explore that question at all. That's why there are different interpretations of what ID is even among its supporters.

I kind of liken it to string theory, which is another vague concept that has zero consensus on how it would work. If you ask a dozen string theorists what string theory is, you'll get the same general concept, but delve into the specifics and everyone has their own interpretation of how string theory works, what kind of equations describe it, hw it fits into physics as a whole, etc.

ID to me is alot more honest then darwinian theory because it does detect design but its beyond the scope of science as materialists have set it up to be to detect design. You see Ivellious the problem we have now is that Methodological materialism dictates to us how we can go about detecting design and that severely limits us in scientific progress.If the best available evidence is inductive and it leads us to saying that a metaphysical cause of life is the only one that more fits the evidence for life why cant we go along with it?

Science is supposed to be the search for truth not the search. Alot of darwinian assumptions are made "just because we say so" which is a claim without evidence from their own methodological materialist view. They are essentially the pot calling the kettle black. ID is inductive and there is nothing wrong with that. IN our experience as human beings on this earth a language has only been known to arise from a mind. DNA is a language.

Methodological naturalism is akin to scientism. Professor Joseph Needham warned against the short-sighted narrow dangers of scientism to be able to find all truth out.To me thsi says that the materialist definition of science must be made to be a bit broader . Science is the pursiut of all truth not just the pursuit of materialistic truths. When Needham decided to pursue studies into why scientific discoveries enjoyed an explosion in the 16th and 17th century west as opposed to stagnating in China is that scientists from the west believed that the universe was endowed by a rational and logical God with logical, rational laws that were made to be discovered by humans. China had no such belief system and this lead him to conclude that it was the Christian worldview that enabled such incredible progress through science.
Whats incredible about Joseph Needhame saying all of this is that he was an atheist, and that is also why you dont see atheist blogs mention needham much hehe

Re: Scientist In Fight With NASA Over Intelligent Design

Posted: Mon Mar 12, 2012 3:28 pm
by MarcusOfLycia
I didn't think the truth needed a consensus to remain the truth.

Nor that scientific inquiry should be limited by what we fully understand, or by things we can all agree on.

Re: Scientist In Fight With NASA Over Intelligent Design

Posted: Mon Mar 12, 2012 6:45 pm
by bippy123
MarcusOfLycia wrote:I didn't think the truth needed a consensus to remain the truth.

Nor that scientific inquiry should be limited by what we fully understand, or by things we can all agree on.

I agree 10000% Marcus, and this is also the only way science ever advanced anyways.
Great statement

Re: Scientist In Fight With NASA Over Intelligent Design

Posted: Mon Mar 12, 2012 7:38 pm
by RickD
Bippy wrote:
Rick ID doesnt explain to us who that creator is, all it tells us is that life had a designer, and that designer must have been very powerfull. As far as who the designer is that is left up to philosophers, theologians and logicians to argue, but ID does fit very well with Christianity. As far as who created the designer that isnt something that ID answers. Logically I like Peter Kreeft's analogy as to why there must be a first cause (God), and also WLC's Kalam cosmological argument.
From what I can see about ID, it's a very vague idea. It really doesn't commit to a whole lot. ID doesn't even present a testable model. Here's a couple of articles from the home site:
http://www.godandscience.org/evolution/ ... esign.html
http://www.godandscience.org/evolution/ ... ience.html

Re: Scientist In Fight With NASA Over Intelligent Design

Posted: Mon Mar 12, 2012 8:53 pm
by bippy123
RickD wrote:Bippy wrote:
Rick ID doesnt explain to us who that creator is, all it tells us is that life had a designer, and that designer must have been very powerfull. As far as who the designer is that is left up to philosophers, theologians and logicians to argue, but ID does fit very well with Christianity. As far as who created the designer that isnt something that ID answers. Logically I like Peter Kreeft's analogy as to why there must be a first cause (God), and also WLC's Kalam cosmological argument.
From what I can see about ID, it's a very vague idea. It really doesn't commit to a whole lot. ID doesn't even present a testable model. Here's a couple of articles from the home site:
http://www.godandscience.org/evolution/ ... esign.html
http://www.godandscience.org/evolution/ ... ience.html
Good point Rick and nice links. Allready started going through them.
As I said before I was a theistic evolutionist who is now an old earth creationist/intelligent design proponent, but I'm also very open to young earth creationism if the evidence points in that direction, and I have no problem with either OEC or YEC and like the article says ID doesn't try to identify the designer but it won't slays be that way.

I believe that eventually ID models can eventually come out that are friendly to both OEC and YEC, and as I posted before the Hebrew word for day can be literal day or a period of time as Hugh Ross pointed out.

But one thing I know for sure darwinian evolution's days are numbered and it's just a matter of waiting for the eventual paradigm shift to happen. I sure hope it happens in my lifetime

Re: Scientist In Fight With NASA Over Intelligent Design

Posted: Mon Mar 12, 2012 9:10 pm
by Ivellious
I'm still confused by this idea of "scientific theory without any models, predictions, explanations, consensus, etc." If you want to wonder why hardly any legitimate scientists pay any attention to ID, it's because it promises to solve a scientific question by bypassing science entirely. You say that you hope models will "come out", Bippy. I'm only saying if they haven't even tried to present any thus far...I wouldn't get your hopes up. It's just straight up creationism, and I personally am glad most people see it as such. That's cool if you want to believe in ID/creationism, but don't try to feed it to everyone else as "science."

Re: Scientist In Fight With NASA Over Intelligent Design

Posted: Mon Mar 12, 2012 11:18 pm
by bippy123
Ivellious wrote:I'm still confused by this idea of "scientific theory without any models, predictions, explanations, consensus, etc." If you want to wonder why hardly any legitimate scientists pay any attention to ID, it's because it promises to solve a scientific question by bypassing science entirely. You say that you hope models will "come out", Bippy. I'm only saying if they haven't even tried to present any thus far...I wouldn't get your hopes up. It's just straight up creationism, and I personally am glad most people see it as such. That's cool if you want to believe in ID/creationism, but don't try to feed it to everyone else as "science."
Ivellious again ID doesn't have to lead to creationism but it does have strong implications for creationists, but to say that ID hasn't presented any testable simply isn't true . I'll post an article on that in a second, but I have to disagree with your assertion as to why the materialistic establishment won't take it serious is mainly be size their world worldview biases against it's possible implications, because they keep pushing the Darwinian model which failed on a massive scale in trying to account for the lack of intermediate fossils and extrapolating macroevolution from microevolution as well as show us how this explosion of information could take place through natural selection and random mutation. So in explaining this it shows that these socalled unbiased scientists can't are making assertions not on the evidence but on their biased worldview. And your calling this true science? I call this a failed theory in some major areas . I call it the Darwin of the gaps.

As for ID it's relatively new and it hasn't really been given a chance to grow in a scientifically fertile environment that Darwinism has enjoyed for over 150 years . Remember I'm catholic so I'm pretty free to explore both these options .



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Access Research Network
William A. Dembski Files
Is Intelligent Design Testable?

William A. Dembski
01.24.01
Eugenie Scott is a physical anthropologist who as director of the National Center for Science Education travels the United States warning audiences about the threat of creationism and unmasking its various guises. Intelligent design, according to her, is currently the most sinister of these guises. Scott has developed a standard shtick, which includes not only some well-worn arguments against creationism and some newer arguments against intelligent design (which she refers to as "neocreationism") but also some comedic elements, like the Monty Python wink-wink-nudge-nudge routine, which she uses when she wants to make clear to her audiences that the designer of intelligent design is really none other than the "Big G" of the Christian faith.

Recently (January 18, 2001) Scott presented a lecture at U.C. Berkeley sponsored by the department of integrative biology and titled "Icons of Creationism: The New Anti-Evolutionism and Science" (http://ib.berkeley.edu/seminars/index.html). The title alludes to Jonathan Wells's recent book _Icons of Evolution_, which critiques the various standard evidences used in textbooks to support Darwinian evolution. Scott presumably means to turn the tables and show that intelligent design is similarly open to criticism.

Scott's key criticism against intelligent design, both in her talk the other day and since the early nineties, has been that intelligent design is untestable. For instance, in an exchange with Stephen Meyer back in 1994 in _Insight_ magazine, Scott remarked that until design theorists develop a "theo-meter" (this neologism is hers) to test for design, they are treading water in a sea of retarded scientific aspirations. In her talk the other day at U.C. Berkeley she claimed that intelligent design does not propose any "testable model."

The testability objection to intelligent design can be interpreted in two ways. One is to claim that intelligent design is in principle untestable. This seems to have been Scott's line in the early nineties. Certainly it is a hallmark of science that any of its claims be subject to revision or refutation on the basis of new evidence or further theoretical insight. If this is what one means by testability, then design is certainly testable. Indeed, it was in this sense that Darwin tested William Paley's account of design and found it wanting. It simply won't wash to say that design isn't testable and then in the same breath say that Darwin tested design and refuted it.

The other way to interpret the testability objection is to claim that intelligent design may in principle be testable, but that no tests have been proposed to date. This seems to be Scott's line currently. Indeed, if the testability objection is to bear any weight, its force must reside in the absence of concrete proposals for testing intelligent design. Are such proposals indeed lacking? Rather than looking solely at the testability of intelligent design, I want also to consider the testability of Darwinism. By comparing the testability of the two theories, it will become evident that even the more charitable interpretation of Scott's testability objection does not hold up.

In relation to science testability is a very broad notion. It certainly includes Karl Popper's notion of falsifiability, but it is hardly coextensive with it and can apply even if falsifiability does not obtain. Testability as well covers confirmation, predicability, and explanatory power. At the heart of testability is the idea that our scientific theories must make contact with and be sensitive to what's happening in nature. What's happening in nature must be able to affect our scientific theories not only in form and content but also in the degree of credence we attach to or withhold from them. For a theory to be immune to evidence from nature is a sure sign that we're not dealing with a scientific theory.

What then are we to make of the testability of both intelligent design and Darwinism taken not in a generic abstract sense but concretely? What are the specific tests for intelligent design? What are the specific tests for Darwinism? And how do the two theories compare in terms of testability? To answer these questions, let's run through several aspects of testability, beginning with falsifiability.

FALSIFIABILITY: Is intelligent design falsifiable? Is Darwinism falsifiable? Yes to the first question, no to the second. Intelligent design is eminently falsifiable. Specified complexity in general and irreducible complexity in biology are within the theory of intelligent design the key markers of intelligent agency. If it could be shown that biological systems like the bacterial flagellum that are wonderfully complex, elegant, and integrated could have been formed by a gradual Darwinian process (which by definition is non-telic), then intelligent design would be falsified on the general grounds that one doesn't invoke intelligent causes when purely natural causes will do. In that case Occam's razor finishes off intelligent design quite nicely.

On the other hand, falsifying Darwinism seems effectively impossible. To do so one must show that no conceivable Darwinian pathway could have led to a given biological structure. What's more, Darwinists are apt to retreat into the murk of historical contingency to shore up their theory. For instance, Allen Orr in his critique of Behe's work shortly after _Darwin's Black Box_ appeared remarked, "We have no guarantee that we can reconstruct the history of a biochemical pathway." What he conceded with one hand, however, he was quick to retract with the other. He added, "But even if we can't, its irreducible complexity cannot count against its gradual evolution."

The fact is that for complex systems like the bacterial flagellum no biologist has or is anywhere close to reconstructing its history in Darwinian terms. Is Darwinian theory therefore falsified? Hardly. I have yet to witness one committed Darwinist concede that any feature of nature might even in principle provide countervailing evidence to Darwinism. In place of such a concession one is instead always treated to an admission of ignorance. Thus it's not that Darwinism has been falsified or disconfirmed, but that we simply don't know enough about the biological system in question and its historical context to determine how the Darwinian mechanism might have produced it.

For instance, to neutralize the challenge that the irreducible complexity of the bacterial flagellum raises against Darwinism, Ken Miller employs the following argument from ignorance. Like the rest of the biological community, Miller doesn't know how the bacterial flagellum originated. The biological community's ignorance about the flagellum, however, doesn't end with its origin but extends to its very functioning. For instance, according to David DeRosier, "The mechanism of the flagellar motor remains a mystery." Miller takes this admission of ignorance by DeRosier and uses it to advantage. In _Finding Darwin's God_ he writes: "Before [Darwinian] evolution is excoriated for failing to explain the evolution of the flagellum, I'd request that the scientific community at least be allowed to figure out how its various parts work." But in the article by DeRosier that Miller cites, Miller conveniently omits the following quote: "More so than other motors, the flagellum resembles a machine designed by a human."

So apparently we know enough about the bacterial flagellum to know that it is designed or at least design-like. Indeed, we know what most of its individual parts do. Moreover, we know that the flagellum is irreducibly complex. Far from being a weakness of irreducible complexity as Miller suggests, it is a strength of the concept that one can determine whether a system is irreducibly complex without knowing the precise role that each part in the system plays (one need only knock out individual parts and see if function is preserved; knowing what exactly the individual parts do is not necessary). Miller's appeal to ignorance obscures just how much we know about the flagellum, how compelling the case is for its design, and how unfalsifiable Darwinism is when Darwinists proclaim that the Darwinian selection mechanism can account for it despite the absence of any identifiable biochemical pathway.

CONFIRMATION: What about positive evidence for intelligent design and Darwinism? From the design theorist's perspective, the positive evidence for Darwinism is confined to small-scale evolutionary changes like insects developing insecticide resistance. This is not to deny large-scale evolutionary changes, but it is to deny that the Darwinian mechanism can account for them. Evidence like that for insecticide resistance confirms the Darwinian selection mechanism for small-scale changes, but hardly warrants the grand extrapolation that Darwinists want. It is a huge leap going from insects developing insecticide resistance via the Darwinian mechanism of natural selection and random variation to the very emergence of insects in the first place by that same mechanism.

Darwinists invariably try too minimize the extrapolation from small-scale to large-scale evolution, arguing that it is a failure of imagination on the part of critics to appreciate the wonder-working power of the Darwinian mechanism. From the design theorist's perspective, however, this is not a case of failed imagination but of the emperor's new clothes. Yes, there is positive evidence for Darwinism, but the strength and relevance of that evidence on behalf of large-scale evolution is very much under dispute, if not within the Darwinian community then certainly outside of it.

What about the positive evidence for intelligent design? It seems that here we may be getting to the heart of Eugenie Scott's concerns. I submit that there is indeed positive evidence for intelligent design. To see this, let's consider an example that I recycle endlessly in my writings (if only because its force seems continually lost on Darwinists). Consider the movie _Contact_ that appeared summer of 1997, based on the novel by Carl Sagan. In the movie radio astronomers determine that they have established contact with an extraterrestrial intelligence after they receive a long sequence of prime numbers, represented as a sequence of bits.

Although in the actual SETI program (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) radio astronomers look not for something as flamboyant as prime numbers but something much more plebeian, namely, a narrow bandwidth of transmissions (as occur with human radio transmissions), the point nonetheless remains that SETI researchers would legitimately count a sequence of prime numbers (and less flamboyantly though just as assuredly a narrow bandwidth transmission) as positive evidence of extraterrestrial intelligence. No such conclusive signal has yet been observed, but I can assure you that if it were to be observed, Eugenie Scott would not be complaining about SETI not having proposed any "testable models." Instead she would rejoice that the model had been tested and decisively confirmed.

Now what's significant about a sequence of prime numbers from outer space is that they exhibit specified complexity -- there has to be a long sequence (hence complexity) and it needs to display an independently given pattern (hence specificity). But what if specified complexity is also exhibited in actual biological systems? In fact it is -- notably in the bacterial flagellum. Internet mavens have been pestering me for actual calculations of complexity involved in such systems. I address this in my forthcoming book (_No Free Lunch_), but such calculations are out there in the literature (cf. the work of Hubert Yockey, Robert Sauer, Peter Rüst, Paul Erbrich, Siegfried Scherer, and most recently Douglas Axe -- I'm not enlisting these individuals as design advocates but merely pointing out that methods for determining specified complexity are already part of biology).

Even so, it appears that Eugenie Scott would not be entirely happy admitting that intelligent design is positively confirmed once some clear-cut instances of specified complexity are discovered in biological systems. Why not? As she put it in her U.C. Berkeley lecture, design theorists "never tell you what happened." Well, neither do SETI researchers. If a SETI researcher discovers a radio transmission of prime numbers from outer space, the inference to an extraterrestrial intelligence is clear, but the researcher doesn't know "what happened" in the sense of knowing any details about the radio transmitter or for that matter the extraterrestrial that transmitted the radio transmission.

Ah, but we have experience with radio transmitters. At least with extraterrestrial intelligences we can guess what might have happened. But we don't have any experience with unembodied designers, and that's clearly what we're dealing with when it comes to design in biology. Actually, if an unembodied designer is responsible for biological complexity, then we do have quite a bit of experience with such a designer through the designed objects (not least ourselves) that confront us all the time. On the other hand, it is true that we possess very little insight at this time into how such a designer acted to bring about the complex biological systems that have emerged over the course of natural history.

Darwinists take this present lack of insight into the workings of an unembodied designer not as remediable ignorance on our part and not as evidence that the designer's capacities far outstrip ours, but as proof that there is no unembodied designer (at least none relevant to biology). By the same token, if an extraterrestrial intelligence communicated via radio signals with earth and solved computational problems that exceeded anything an ordinary or quantum computer could ever solve, we would have to conclude that we weren't really dealing with an intelligence because we have no experience of super-mathematicians that can solve such problems. My own view is that with respect to biological design humans are in the same position as William James's dog studying James while James was reading a book in his library. Our incomprehension over biological design is the incomprehension of a dog trying to understand its master's actions. Interestingly, the biological community regularly sings the praises of natural selection and the wonders it has wrought while admitting that it has no comprehension of how those wonders were wrought. Natural selection, we are assured, is cleverer than we are or can ever hope to be. Darwinists have merely swapped one form of awe for another. They've not eliminated it.

It is no objection at all that we don't at this time know how an unembodied designer produced a biological system that exhibits specified complexity. We know that specified complexity is reliably correlated with the effects of intelligence. The only reason to insist on looking for non-telic explanations to explain the complex specified structures in biology is because of prior commitment to naturalism that perforce excludes unembodied designers. It is illegitimate, scientifically and rationally, to claim on a priori grounds that such entities do not exist, or if they do exist that they can have no conceivable relevance to what happens in the world. Do such entities exist? Can they have empirical consequences? Are they relevant to what happens in the world? Such questions cannot be prejudged except on metaphysical grounds. To prejudge these questions the way Eugenie Scott does is therefore to make certain metaphysical commitments about what there is and what has the capacity to influence events in the world. Such commitments are utterly gratuitous to the practice of science. Specified complexity confirms design regardless whether the designer responsible for it is embodied or unembodied.

PREDICTABILITY: Another aspect of testability is predictability. A good scientific theory, we are told, is one that predicts things. If it predicts things that don't happen, then it is tested and found wanting. If it predicts things that do happen, then it is tested and regarded as successful. If it doesn't predict things, however, what then? Often with theories that try to account for features of natural history, prediction gets generalized to include retrodiction, in which a theory also specifies what the past should look like. Darwinism is said to apply retrodictively to the fossil record and predictively in experiments that place an organism under selection pressures and attempt to induce some adaptive change.

But in fact Darwinism does not retrodict the fossil record. Natural selection and random variation applied to single-celled organisms offers no insight at all into whether we can expect multi-celled organisms, much less whether evolution will produce the various body-plans of which natural history has left us a record. At best one can say that there is consilience, i.e., that the broad sweep of evolutionary history as displayed in the fossil record is consistent with Darwinian evolution. Design theorists strongly dispute this as well (pointing especially to the Cambrian explosion). But detailed retrodiction and detailed prediction are not virtues of Darwin's theory. Organisms placed under selection pressures either adapt or go extinct. Except in the simplest cases where there is, say, some point mutation that reliably confers antibiotic resistance on a bacterium, Darwin's theory has no way of predicting just what sorts of adaptive changes will occur. "Adapt or go extinct" is not a prediction of Darwin's theory but an axiom that can be reasoned out independently.

Challenging me in _American Outlook_ biologist Alex Duncan remarked: "A scientific theory makes predictions about the world around us, and enables us to ask and answer meaningful questions. For example, we might pose the question 'why do polar bears have fur, while penguins have feathers, given the similar nature of their environments

Evolution provides an answer to this question. The only answer creationism (or intelligent design) provides is 'because God made them that way.'" Actually, evolution, whether Darwinian or otherwise, makes no predictions about there being bears or birds at all or for that matter bears having fur and birds having feathers. Once bears or birds are on the scene, they need to adapt to their environment or die. Intelligent design can accommodate plenty of evolutionary change and allows for natural selection to act as a conservative force to keep organisms adapted to their environments. Contrary to Duncan's remark, intelligent design does not push off all explanation to the inscrutable will of God. On the other hand, intelligent design utterly rejects natural selection as a creative force capable of bringing about the specified complexity we see in organisms.

It's evident, then, that Darwin's theory has virtually no predictive power. Insofar as it offers predictions, they are either extremely general, concerning the broad sweep of natural history and in that respect quite questionable (Why else would Stephen Jay Gould and Niles Eldredge need to introduce punctuated equilibria if the fossil record were such an overwhelming vindication of Darwinism?); and when the predictions are not extremely general they are extremely specific and picayune, dealing with small-scale adaptive changes. Newton was able to predict the path that a planet traces out. Darwin's disciples can neither predict nor retrodict the pathways that organisms trace out in the course of natural history.

But what about the predictive power of intelligent design? To require prediction fundamentally misconstrues design. To require prediction of design is to put design in the same boat as natural laws, locating their explanatory power in an extrapolation from past experience. This is to commit a category mistake. To be sure, designers, like natural laws, can behave predictably (designers often institute policies that end up being rigidly obeyed). Yet unlike natural laws, which are universal and uniform, designers are also innovators. Innovation, the emergence to true novelty, eschews predictability. Designers are inventors. We cannot predict what an inventor would do short of becoming that inventor. Intelligent design offers a radically different problematic for science than a mechanistic science wedded solely to undirected natural causes. Yes, intelligent design concedes predictability. But this represents no concession to Darwinism, for which the minimal predictive power that it has can readily be assimilated to a design-theoretic framework.

EXPLANATORY POWER: According to Darwin the great advantage of his theory over William Paley's theory of design was that Darwin's theory managed to account for a wide diversity of biological facts that Paley's theory could not. Darwin's theory was thus thought to have greater explanatory power than Paley's , and this relative advantage could be viewed as a test of the two theories. Underlying explanatory power is a view of explanation known as inference to the best explanation in which a "best explanation" always presupposes at least two competing explanations and attempts to determine which comes out on top. Design theorists see advances in the biological and information sciences as putting design back in the saddle and enabling it to outperform Darwinism, thus making design currently the best explanation biological complexity. Darwinists of course see the matter quite differently.

What I want to focus on here, however, is not the testing of Darwinism and design against the broad body of biological data, but the related question of which theory can accommodate the greater range of biological possibilities. Think of it this way: Are there things that might occur in biology for which a design-theoretic framework could give a better, more accurate account than a purely Darwinian and therefore non-teleological framework? The answer is yes.

First off, let's be clear that design can accommodate all the results of Darwinism. Intelligent design does not repudiate the Darwinian mechanism. It merely assigns it a lower status than Darwinism does. The Darwinian mechanism does operate in nature and insofar as it does, design can live with its deliverances. Even if the Darwinian mechanism could be shown to do all the design work for which design theorists want to invoke design (say for the bacterial flagellum), a design-theoretic framework would not destroy any valid findings of science. To be sure, design would then become superfluous, but it would not become contradictory or self-refuting.

The same cannot be said for Darwinism and the naturalism it embodies as a framework for science. Suppose I were a super-genius molecular biologist, and I invented some hitherto unknown molecular machine, far more complicated and marvelous than the bacterial flagellum. Suppose further I inserted this machine into a bacterium, set this genetically modified organism free, allowed it to reproduce in the wild, and destroyed all evidence of my having created the molecular machine. Suppose, for instance, the machine is a stinger that injects other bacteria and explodes them by rapidly pumping them up with some gas (I'm not familiar with any such molecular machine in the wild), thereby allowing the bacteria endowed with my invention to consume their unfortunate prey.

Now let's ask the question, If a Darwinist came upon this bacterium with the novel molecular machine in the wild, would that machine be attributed to design or to natural selection? When I presented this example to David Sloan Wilson at a conference at MIT two years ago, he shrugged it off and remarked that natural selection created us and so by extension also created my novel molecular machine. But of course this argument won't wash since the issue is whether natural selection could indeed create us. What's more, if Darwinists came upon my invention of a novel molecular machine inserted into a bacterium that allows it to feed on other bacteria, they wouldn't look to design but would reflexively turn to natural selection. But, if we go with the story, I designed the bacterial stinger and natural selection had nothing to do with it. Moreover, intelligent design would confirm the stinger's design whereas Darwinism never could. It follows that a design-theoretic framework could account for biological facts that would forever remain invisible within a Darwinian framework. It seems to me that this possibility constitutes a joint test of Darwinism and intelligent design that strongly supports intelligent design -- if not as the truth then certainly as a live possible theoretical option that must not be precluded for a priori philosophical reasons like naturalism.

In conclusion, there is no merit to Eugenie Scott's claim that intelligent design is untestable or hasn't put forward any "testable models." Intelligent design's claims about specified and irreducible complexity are in close contact with the data of biology and open to refutation as well as confirmation. What's more, as a framework for doing science intelligent design is more robust and sensitive to the possibilities that nature might actually throw our way than Darwinism, which must view everything through the lens of chance and necessity and take a reductive approach to all signs of teleology in nature.

But isn't intelligent design just a stone's throw from fundamentalist Christianity and rabid creationism? Even if a theory of intelligent design should ultimately prove successful and supersede Darwinism, it would not follow that the designer posited by this theory would have to be the Christian God or for that matter be real in some ontological sense. One can be an anti-realist about science and simply regard the designer as a regulative principle -- a conceptually useful device for making sense out of certain facts of biology -- without assigning the designer any weight in reality. Wittgenstein, for instance, regarded the theories of Copernicus and Darwin not as true but as "fertile new points of view."

Ultimately, the main question that confronts scientists working on a theory of intelligent design is whether design provides powerful new insights and fruitful avenues of research. The metaphysics underlying such a theory, and in particular the ontological status of the designer, can then be taken up by philosophy and theology. Indeed, one's metaphysics ought to be a matter of indifference to one's scientific theorizing about design. The fact that it is not for Eugenie Scott says more about her own biases than about the biases of design theorists, whose primary task is to explore the fruitfulness of design for science. Yes, we've got our work cut out for us. But instead of facilitating that work, Scott and her National Center for Science Education are far more interested in exiling that work to oblivion. Fortunately, design theorists have suffered exile for so long at the hands of Darwinists that we've learned to operate effectively even in oblivion.

William Dembski

Copyright 2001 William A. Dembski. All rights reserved. International copyright secured.
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http://www.arn.org/docs/dembski/wd_isidtestable.htm

This article sums up my feelings pretty well

Re: Scientist In Fight With NASA Over Intelligent Design

Posted: Tue Mar 13, 2012 5:40 pm
by Kurieuo
People confuse ID with being a theory, when it is simply put an observation. So saying there are no models for ID is kind of a mute issue.

It's like observing an apple fall from a tree (AFFAT). "Ah-huh", I say, "so provide me with some testable models for your AFFAT."

But it's just an observation. What is ID? Simply put, it is an observation of information, complex information observed in biochemistry. Is a model needed to justify these observations? No more than seeing an apple fall from a tree.

A lot of ID books simply attempt to explain what counts as information, for example, specified or irreducible complexity. When IDists like Dembski or Behe hear the question "provide us with your models", they generally understand this to mean "how do you detect information in biology". However, what many asking the question in fact mean is "provide us with your models for how the information got there" (e.g., God).

There is like an error in translation issue going on, and both sides seem to be missing what each other is really saying (knee-jerk reactions perhaps?). Although I have seen prominent IDists respond to the models questions saying such is the realm of philosophy, before then quickly retreating back to identifying information in biology in the scientific realm.

Where did such information observed under the microscope in biology come from? Well, I'd agree that such up to everyone's own philosophical beliefs and worldview to answer.

Re: Scientist In Fight With NASA Over Intelligent Design

Posted: Thu Mar 15, 2012 9:29 am
by coldblood
God is too complex to have “just happened.” Some super intelligence must have designed him. It is the logical extension of ID.

Re: Scientist In Fight With NASA Over Intelligent Design

Posted: Thu Mar 15, 2012 11:23 am
by Byblos
coldblood wrote:God is too complex to have “just happened.” Some super intelligence must have designed him. It is the logical extension of ID.
And that's where you're categorically wrong. God is the exact opposite of complex, in fact God's simplicity is one of the hallmarks of classical theism.

Re: Scientist In Fight With NASA Over Intelligent Design

Posted: Thu Mar 15, 2012 11:35 am
by bippy123
coldblood wrote:God is too complex to have “just happened.” Some super intelligence must have designed him. It is the logical extension of ID.
I think you need to familiarize yourself with the first cause argument dude. If that doesn't help please google hilbert's hotel so that you could see how illogical your statement if infinite regression.

Re: Scientist In Fight With NASA Over Intelligent Design

Posted: Thu Mar 15, 2012 12:00 pm
by coldblood
Byblos
I get it. A simpleton created the universe. Classic!

Re: Scientist In Fight With NASA Over Intelligent Design

Posted: Thu Mar 15, 2012 12:02 pm
by coldblood
bippy123
Infinite regression and first cause preclude each other. You can’t have it both ways. Sorry.

Re: Scientist In Fight With NASA Over Intelligent Design

Posted: Thu Mar 15, 2012 12:05 pm
by Byblos
coldblood wrote:Byblos
I get it. A simpleton created the universe. Classic!
It is quite evident (that you get it). :shakehead:

Re: Scientist In Fight With NASA Over Intelligent Design

Posted: Thu Mar 15, 2012 12:57 pm
by bippy123
coldblood wrote:Byblos
I get it. A simpleton created the universe. Classic!
No wonder why Doctor Antony Flew left Atheism in 2004, He simply saw that atheism was no longer intellectually tenable and iseeing the kind of arguments put forth by atheists, its no wonder why the greatest atheist philosopher of the last half of the 20th century left atheism lol