Evidence for God from Science

Canuckster1127 wrote:

BGoodForGoodSake wrote:I highly doubt the phoenetic system came into existence fully blown and consciously. I would be willing to bet that this too had a pictographic origin.

Intelligence may have recognized it but is it really the origin of it? In other words you are equating the recognition and molding forces with origination.

I'm a little surprised you're attempting to draw a supportive analogy from language. Clearly, language is a result of intelligence and designed to communicate.

It is clear that those who use language are intelligent, however it is not at all clear that intelligence is required to develop complex adaptive systems.

For example the English one can hear in West African nations is a result of the deterioration of the English language of European settlers. Was it intelligence which allowed for the modification of English to what we currently hear today? Or was it imperfect replication which led to the result? Its easy to focus on the wrong thing. It's like looking at an airplane and then a bird and exclaiming that intelligence makes them both fly. When it is the wings.

In language the agents of replication may exhibit intelligence, however there is nothing external to the individuals driving the process of change in language. Intelligent Design does not proclaim that this intelligence exists within the medium.

The agents of recognition in a biological system is the viability of a given set of genes.

The focus should be on the fact that language is passed down, not that the medium is intelligent. It is passed down and modified, following which the medium determines which permutations are acceptable. It is this fact, that rules are imposed on variability that order is maintained while modifications take place.

If this is intelligence than any sort of limitation or rule is intelligence.
For example if a gene mutation causes a frog to abort than it is the environment that is exhibiting intelligence by rejecting this mutation.

BGoodForGoodSake wrote:

Canuckster1127 wrote:

BGoodForGoodSake wrote:I highly doubt the phoenetic system came into existence fully blown and consciously. I would be willing to bet that this too had a pictographic origin.

Intelligence may have recognized it but is it really the origin of it? In other words you are equating the recognition and molding forces with origination.

I'm a little surprised you're attempting to draw a supportive analogy from language. Clearly, language is a result of intelligence and designed to communicate.

It is clear that those who use language are intelligent, however it is not at all clear that intelligence is required to develop complex adaptive systems.

For example the English one can hear in West African nations is a result of the deterioration of the English language of European settlers. Was it intelligence which allowed for the modification of English to what we currently hear today? Or was it imperfect replication which led to the result? Its easy to focus on the wrong thing. It's like looking at an airplane and then a bird and exclaiming that intelligence makes them both fly. When it is the wings.

In language the agents of replication may exhibit intelligence, however there is nothing external to the individuals driving the process of change in language. Intelligent Design does not proclaim that this intelligence exists within the medium.

The agents of recognition in a biological system is the viability of a given set of genes.

The focus should be on the fact that language is passed down, not that the medium is intelligent. It is passed down and modified, following which the medium determines which permutations are acceptable. It is this fact, that rules are imposed on variability that order is maintained while modifications take place.

If this is intelligence than any sort of limitation or rule is intelligence.
For example if a gene mutation causes a frog to abort than it is the environment that is exhibiting intelligence by rejecting this mutation.

All good points Bgood.

Point well taken that not all change and adaptation, even within systems that clearly depend upon intelligence for creation and maintenance (such as a plane or language) are a direct result of intelligence.

However, I respectfully think you are still missing the main point, and that is that the establishment of the system in the first place requires some form of explanation by either intelligence, or adaptation and extension of existing organization into a higher form, or at least a form more suited to the environment in which it resides.

I've stated some of my reservations with regard to the Intelligent Design movement as it currently exists and I do have reservations.

However, I think it is valid to point out that isolating the element of intelligent design with biological systems as a matter of science is a valid question.

Natural Selection has been offered as the vehicle of explanation for development and change within our world and that explanation has been deemed to be "scientific" and is being taught in schools today.

I understand that science does not purport to have all the answers and that it is developing and moving forward. By definition it is committed to going where the evidence leads and as such it attempts, with varying degrees of success, to eliminate presuppositions where those presuppositions would limit or interfere with the process. I understand that, and respect it. In fact, I think the search for truth in that regard is noble and I see it as fully consistent with my beliefs and faith as a Christian. Truth is not a threat.

I understand that there is an inherent danger in theistic thinking of embracing a God of the Gaps type fallacy that seeks to insert Gods' creative or sustaining power into systems where there is not currently a definitive or adequate scientific explanation for why something is the way it is or how it developed and reached its current state.

Given that, the idea of irreducible complexity within these systems seems to me to be a valid question and also gives rise to valid speculation, based on the evidence that there is something at work here that appears to give evidence of intelligent design in much the same way as we have been discussing the practise of archaeology, linguistics etc.

The difference is that what creationism addresses is CAUSE. What is being examined here is EFFECT. The question that raises in my mind then is why is it being deemed in such a context that Natural Selection is science, when it has not yet answered these questions, and Intelligent Design no science when it is simply forwarding an observation that the effect observed gives inference to some organizational synergy that appears beyond the initial elements involved?

My question would be, why not allow the question to be asked in the context of science?

To be consistent, if you relegate Intelligent Design to philosophy and religion and as such exclude it from the educational process within the hard sciences, shouldn't you do the same with the more metaphysical elements of attributing development and change to Natural Selection?

BGood wrote:For example the English one can hear in West African nations is a result of the deterioration of the English language of European settlers. Was it intelligence which allowed for the modification of English to what we currently hear today? Or was it imperfect replication which led to the result? Its easy to focus on the wrong thing. It's like looking at an airplane and then a bird and exclaiming that intelligence makes them both fly. When it is the wings.

Yes, it's the wings that make both fly. But you neglected a most basic difference between the two. Birds are living beings that fly on their own; airplanes are inanimate objects, unless directed to fly by who? Ah, yes, an intelligent being. What do you think will happen if you put a bird in the cockpit of an airplane? One thing's for certain, a whole lotta bird poop on some fine instruments but not much else. How's that for a natural selection metaphor? A dead bird inside of a locked airplane cockpit because he couldn't fly south.

Canuckster1127 wrote:My question would be, why not allow the question to be asked in the context of science?

To be consistent, if you relegate Intelligent Design to philosophy and religion and as such exclude it from the educational process within the hard sciences, shouldn't you do the same with the more metaphysical elements of attributing development and change to Natural Selection?

And that's exactly the point of ID, in my view. To address this obvious and unfair inequality between natural selection being taught as fact where none exists, at least at the macro level, and intelligent design being locked out of science classes when it tries to address this issue from a scientific perspective.

Byblos wrote:

BGood wrote:For example the English one can hear in West African nations is a result of the deterioration of the English language of European settlers. Was it intelligence which allowed for the modification of English to what we currently hear today? Or was it imperfect replication which led to the result? Its easy to focus on the wrong thing. It's like looking at an airplane and then a bird and exclaiming that intelligence makes them both fly. When it is the wings.

Yes, it's the wings that make both fly. But you neglected a most basic difference between the two. Birds are living beings that fly on their own; airplanes are inanimate objects, unless directed to fly by who? Ah, yes, an intelligent being. What do you think will happen if you put a bird in the cockpit of an airplane? One thing's for certain, a whole lotta bird poop on some fine instruments but not much else. How's that for a natural selection metaphor? A dead bird inside of a locked airplane cockpit because he couldn't fly south.

Think of an airplane like a virus. It doesn't reproduce on it's own, it requires an existing mechanism in order to replicate and accumulate modifications. The focus again is the ability to replicate and accumulate modifications, not the fact that the agent is intelligent.

Canuckster1127 wrote: All good points Bgood.

Point well taken that not all change and adaptation, even within systems that clearly depend upon intelligence for creation and maintenance (such as a plane or language) are a direct result of intelligence.

However, I respectfully think you are still missing the main point, and that is that the establishment of the system in the first place requires some form of explanation by either intelligence, or adaptation and extension of existing organization into a higher form, or at least a form more suited to the environment in which it resides.

Agreed, but origins are not something which natural selection and evolution address. The origins of language and life are still mysteries, scientifically speaking of course.

Canuckster1127 wrote:I've stated some of my reservations with regard to the Intelligent Design movement as it currently exists and I do have reservations.

However, I think it is valid to point out that isolating the element of intelligent design with biological systems as a matter of science is a valid question.

Natural Selection has been offered as the vehicle of explanation for development and change within our world and that explanation has been deemed to be "scientific" and is being taught in schools today.

I understand that science does not purport to have all the answers and that it is developing and moving forward. By definition it is committed to going where the evidence leads and as such it attempts, with varying degrees of success, to eliminate presuppositions where those presuppositions would limit or interfere with the process. I understand that, and respect it. In fact, I think the search for truth in that regard is noble and I see it as fully consistent with my beliefs and faith as a Christian. Truth is not a threat.

I understand that there is an inherent danger in theistic thinking of embracing a God of the Gaps type fallacy that seeks to insert Gods' creative or sustaining power into systems where there is not currently a definitive or adequate scientific explanation for why something is the way it is or how it developed and reached its current state.

Given that, the idea of irreducible complexity within these systems seems to me to be a valid question and also gives rise to valid speculation, based on the evidence that there is something at work here that appears to give evidence of intelligent design in much the same way as we have been discussing the practise of archaeology, linguistics etc.

The difference is that what creationism addresses is CAUSE. What is being examined here is EFFECT. The question that raises in my mind then is why is it being deemed in such a context that Natural Selection is science, when it has not yet answered these questions, and Intelligent Design no science when it is simply forwarding an observation that the effect observed gives inference to some organizational synergy that appears beyond the initial elements involved?

My question would be, why not allow the question to be asked in the context of science?

To be consistent, if you relegate Intelligent Design to philosophy and religion and as such exclude it from the educational process within the hard sciences, shouldn't you do the same with the more metaphysical elements of attributing development and change to Natural Selection?

I see your point, in many cases natural selection can seem like a mystical force in which faith is required that changes occurred in a wholly physical way.

However this is not what natural selection represents. It, can be observed, that the environment does indeed have an effect on groups of entities. Be they physical or not, variability within any grouping will cause disparate outcomes. Natural selection then is a collection of these observed mechanisms and principals.
Once discovered the application of these observed mechanisms to changes which would seem to have already occurred is not unreasonable.

While many focus on the idea that something may one day be explained naturalistically, which is a faith in science, the real science is in the observation of naturalistic determinism and the discovery of natural selective forces.

And again to go back and apply these new discoveries to explain past occurrances is not unreasonable.

Going back to the flagellum, one can either say it was a result of natural selection or intelligent design. Both positions are based on faith, however the naturalistic position can be tested and one day become science.

When a position can lead to experimentation and guide the direction of investigation, which in turn lead to falsiable claims then one is in the position to conduct science.

Determining that something is complex and specified thus leading to the conclusion that something was designed by an intelligent force may or may not be the truth.
But given the lack of evidence for the intelligent agent it is nothing more than an analogy based on human technology.
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

For instance I can claim that Egyptian heiroglyphs are exterrestrial in origin, however given only the manuscripts this claim is unsupportable,
even if ultimately this was the case.

The only reasonable conclusion currently, would be that intelligent forces; of which we are familiar with (who have been shown to create similar artifacts), are responsible for the relics.

Without evidence for the intelligent force, specified complexity in itself is not enough to claim intelligent origins. Simply because we do not know that it requires an intelligent force.

Take life for example, it has been claimed that life exhibits specified complexity. Is it a result of intelligent design? We cannot use the specified complexity argument to prove this because this assumes that; that which we are trying to prove is already true.

I have to say I am greatly enjoying our conversation, I have come to highly respect your opinion and look forward to more of your posts.

BGoodForGoodSake
To be fair, nothing can be determined without context.
No real world examples are of random strings alone.

I agree. Though this is not what ID says. They say that one can detect intelligence and design without context.
(that is why they talk about an extraterrestrial civilization coming on Earth AFTER humans are gone.)

Dembski provided several "examples" in which he claims to be able to detect which string contains IC or CSI.

I don't think it is possible. He thinks it is.

Canuckster1127
It certainly illustrates the need for revelation to provide the key.

To my understanding that is not what ID claims.

Canuckster1127
My question would be, why not allow the question to be asked in the context of science?

During the Dover trial Behe claimed that (according to his definition of "theory") astrology is a "theory".

Should it be tought in science class?

The problem raised by ID were considered by science. Actually BEFORE evolution id views were consiodered the most likely scenario to explain life. Then evolution came and scientific community based on scientific criteria decided that evolution was a better explanation. Hence either ID has some new data to be considered or the problem has already been set.

Moreover, I have nothing against considering the problem again scientifically.
Which does not imply one should teach it in science class (which I think is concerned with what is scientifically known, not with what is going to be discussed - otherwise again astrology or flying spaghetti monster are to be tought as well).
My opinion of course.

someone wrote above that ID claims SOME instances of intelligence can be detected, not ALL of them.
The strings I provided are certainly from the instances that ID claims to be detectable.
Just so that you know it.

angel wrote:someone wrote above that ID claims SOME instances of intelligence can be detected, not ALL of them.
The strings I provided are certainly from the instances that ID claims to be detectable.
Just so that you know it.

So what's your point? For someone to believe in ID they need to be able to independently decipher number strings?

I have no point to make. I'm just trying to check with people with different opinions if what I think I understand about ID is correct.

For someone to believe in ID they need to be able to independently decipher number strings?

I think they claim they can. Or at least they claim to be able to detect independently if a string contains IC or CSI (possibly without deciphering it).
I think they cannot. I think I'd have some problem to objectively prove that human DNA is more complex than Escherichia coli DNA. Probably in the end one can do it, but I believe it is quite a tough task. Even then I believe it is meaningless (I mean completely unsupported by any scientific objective argument) to talk about probability of natural cause vs intelligent design.

I believe there is no scientific support at all to ID hypothesis, at least no more than to astrology. You sometime said that you think there is some good science in ID. For what I saw you seem to be an honest thinker.
I would appreciate if you wanted to tell me what you are referring to...
Honestly. I am not looking for troubles...

angel wrote:Can someone identify the "IDblocks" better than guessing?
Or explain me how to do?
[if you need longer strings I can post quite a number of Gigs! ]

Longer strings would be nicer. Anyhow, I found one program on the web and ran it on your data (leaving in CR/LF's which were counted as characters. There wasn't much difference among the groups but 4 and 6 seemed the least random and 1,2,3,7, and 11 the most.

sandy_mcd wrote:

angel wrote:Can someone identify the "IDblocks" better than guessing?
Or explain me how to do?
[if you need longer strings I can post quite a number of Gigs! ]

Longer strings would be nicer. Anyhow, I found one program on the web and ran it on your data (leaving in CR/LF's which were counted as characters. There wasn't much difference among the groups but 4 and 6 seemed the least random and 1,2,3,7, and 11 the most.

It might be some kind of binary data.

Perhaps it uses the following translation
1 = 00
2 = 01
3 = 10
4 = 11

Once divided each block broke down nicely into 16 bit blocks.
This is another reason why I thought this was some sort of binary data.

It's definitely not ascii unless there is some shifting or some other type of encryption. I tried alternate translation schemes.

I thought another posibility was that it might encode images, but no luck there.

My final thought was that this constituted data of an unknown format so I ended the analysis there. I was unable to determine which one was random. Although my quick statistical analysis does point to groups 1 and 8 as being the least random. What method did you use Sandy?

It depends on how you define random (mathmatically) I suppose.

sandy_mcd
4 and 6 seemed the least random and 1,2,3,7, and 11 the most.

No particular correlation between your guesses and the real CSI strings.
Your program probably uses some sort of Shannon entropy to quatify randomness. Unfortunately Shannon entropy works best if you have many strings of the same kind and you know they are of the same kind (which is not what ID says) but is quite useless if one has one single string. This is due to the fact that you would need to know the probabilities of each symbol while you just know the frequencies in that particular string. Moreover, you need to know the alphabet which is used.
In fact the randomness does depend on the alphabet.
E.g. the string 01010101010101010101010101010101
is considered random in the alphabet {0,1} and homogeneous in the alphabet {00, 01, 10, 11}.
If you want to get nearer you need some software working with Kolmogorov complexity (or perhaps something from seti could help)

BGoodForGoodSake
It might be...

Relax, I was not particularly nasty. I did not invent any scrambling arbitrary procedure. The origin of the strings is either random (at least I generated it randomly with my laptop) or directly from some source which is claimed to have both IC and CSI by ID.
By "directly" I mean that I did not scramble, encode, chypher or encrypted the string. I simply represented the original string using the symbols 1,2,3, 4 in place of the usual T,G,A,C. Just I randomly chose the association between letters and numbers.

Have fun.

angel wrote:

BGoodForGoodSake
It might be...

Relax, I was not particularly nasty. I did not invent any scrambling arbitrary procedure. The origin of the strings is either random (at least I generated it randomly with my laptop) or directly from some source which is claimed to have both IC and CSI by ID.
By "directly" I mean that I did not scramble, encode, chypher or encrypted the string. I simply represented the original string using the symbols 1,2,3, 4 in place of the usual T,G,A,C. Just I randomly chose the association between letters and numbers.

Have fun.

~Brilliant!

Due to the nature of DNA and how it encodes for proteins there are significant sections of the resulting protein strands which are unimportant for the function of the protein. At this point I don't think it would be possible to determine which strings are random without actually building the proteins, unless of course you conveniently included the start codons, OR we can look for stop codons, but let's give it a try.

Three conviniently divides into each line and I will assume that there is no frame shift in any of the samples.

Armed with this knowledge I was unable to find anything definitive.
I think samples 3,5,7 and 11 might be complete junk, but none of the samples seemed to encode for proper genes. There were stop codons everywhere in normal distributions.

This is to be expected if the code was not segregated from the junk DNA.
If all you supplied were mostly encoding portions one would expect less stop codons. A good example of emergent properties from a few simple rules. (I gave an example of earlier on in this thread about emergent properties.)

The 8th sample seemed as if it might encode for something...
And the 5th sample looked kind of like a GAG protein, maybe an endogenous retrovirus? That would explain the stop codons...

Again no conclusions could be made.

Are you sure there were no accidental frame shifts?

I'll try to respond better to this when I have some time to process it and to research some of the issues for myself.

Quickly I would note, that just because any of us here, pro or con on the issue cannot definitively identify evidence of non-randomness in 1 of 10 number strings, does not mean it cannot be done.

This is an exercise with relevence both to intelligent design and to the type of work that SETI is doing. I don't believe those working on SETI necessarily identify that they have precise algorithms with which to establish things with certainty, yet I suspect their work is not as highly criticized.

I am not a scientist, nor do I play one of TV nor do I profess to be one. If you have any doubts, I can provide you with the name of a college professor who had me for a semester in Advanced Botany as I completed a Business Degree because I could not make any general science course fit my last semester. He very graciously allowed me to miss the final exam and take the hardest C I ever earned.

I think I'm reasonably open minded and try to be fair with the opposing side. As I've stated before, I have not made a final decision, (nor will I necessarily) with regard to the Intelligent Design as a definitive approach either in Science, Philisophy (although I tend to believe Philosophy is its natural home) or its practical application in terms of social and political issues.

I do know, however, that people more versed in this area than I, have strong points to make and I'll do what I can through references on our main board and outside to provide a frame of reference.

It's a fallacy to demand of Intelligent Design any higher standard of certainty to its thesis than is demanded of competing theories. Certainly it should be held to the same standards however.

I'm not avoiding it. I'll get to it as soon as I can and give as good an answer as I can.

Canuckster1127 wrote:I'll try to respond better to this when I have some time to process it and to research some of the issues for myself.

Quickly I would note, that just because any of us here, pro or con on the issue cannot definitively identify evidence of non-randomness in 1 of 10 number strings, does not mean it cannot be done.

This is an exercise with relevence both to intelligent design and to the type of work that SETI is doing. I don't believe those working on SETI necessarily identify that they have precise algorithms with which to establish things with certainty, yet I suspect their work is not as highly criticized.

The difference here is that SETI is looking for evidence of life elsewhere, through observation, and have not made any claims.

ID claims that the complexity of life here is evidence for intelligent interference. And then goes about categorizing the various complexities.

One uses the earth and our own technology as a basis for hoping to detect signs of a similar kind of intelligence. Like heading for the new world to find arable land, based on the fact that we have arable land here.

The other uses our technology as an analogy for our existence. Like likening our earth and its inhabitants as products of a cosmic farm for greater beings based on our own exploitation of farm animals.

Inference and inductive reasoning cannot go out of the bounds of the specific examples the conclusion is pulling from. In other words identification of complexity thus leading to an intelligent source is an assumption.

It's like throwing a stone and a brick into the pond and inducting that hard objects will sink. All I have to do is find one thing which is hard and apparantly does not sink. Polypropylene.

For ID all I have to do is find one thing which is complex and it is not clear that it was a result of intelligence. Life.

Does this mean ID is wrong? Absolutely not, it makes a compelling case.
But is ID really a scientific endeavor?

Canuckster1127 wrote:It's a fallacy to demand of Intelligent Design any higher standard of certainty to its thesis than is demanded of competing theories. Certainly it should be held to the same standards however.

I'm not avoiding it. I'll get to it as soon as I can and give as good an answer as I can.

I am not clear on what these higher standards are. When you get the chance could you list them. If you have the time of course.
=)