Is IC falsifiable?

I happened upon the blog of one "professorsmith" in a Google search, and a couple of exhanges ensued here and here. Due to professorsmith's increasingly itchy trigger finger, it's probably wise to just post this here, where it won't be "disappeared", as has happened a couple times already. Here's my latest comment to William Bradford:

William Bradford,

You said:

The historic nature of the analysis does complicate things does it not? Let me note that ID critics do not hesitate to allege that ID is unscientific because of evidentiary difficulties. Let me return the favor in a way by pointing out that a legitimate position to take is that the answer to a specific question currently lies outside the boundaries of an empirical answer.

Yes, since we don’t have certainty, let’s just call it a solipsistic tie, shall we? I understand that’s a position many ID proponents would like to sue for, but there’s no legitimate expectation of certainty in any of this, especially in forensic questions. Instead, we depend on consilience, parsimony, predictions, and liability to falsification. That won’t produce the kind of satisfaction you’re demanding, but that’s the point: such demands are euphemisms for “unfalsifiable”. That is, the reason my researcher friend say “get outta here” with that suggestion (along the lines of what you demand) is that it’s not a practical expectation, even in principle.

And while science is all about “evidentiary difficulties”, the difficulties ID struggles with of a different kind. As I said, a century ago, we didn’t have the knowledge of DNA that led to the modern synthesis, and even when the modern synthesis was formulated, we had not uncovered the evidence that has given rise to the move towards evo-devo extensions of the model. The whole reason for engaging in the enterprise of science is because we have evidentiary difficulties, but as the evidence accumulates, positive hypotheses emerge that excel in terms of explanatory and predictive power, as well as rationalizing the evidence and surviving potent opportunities to be falsified. The problem is addressed in a positive way.

IC, as I was mention to professorsmith, is a negative argument applied evolutionary theory. It doesn’t have an “evidentiary problem” of the same sort mainstream science does. It is committed to “proving a negative” as a principle, asserting that X cannot be accounted for, as opposed to saying “here is the evidence that X happened, and if X were not true, this other evidence would be in view, but is absent”. It’s a negative model, which completely reverses the nature of the evidentiary problem.

Unless ID proponents are prepared to advance a positive hypothesis (”here is evidence of the Designer as a phenomenological entity, and here is the explanation of of how the Designer effected the phenomena we see…”), it simply must remain a “critique”, a sophisticated expression of incredulity.

I have no problem with that orientation for ID, so long as they are upfront about that orientation. The evidentiary challenges are fundamentally different for evolutionary theory and ID, though.

You said:

Indeed. Unsatisfactory as they are incapable (so far) of rendering definitive answers.

I think you misunderstood the objection. “Definitive” is an artificial hurdle criterion for science. It’s precisely when the complaint comes back that a given framework isn’t ‘definitive’ that the scientist shrugs and realizes he’s been pushed outside of the boundaries of science. It’s an illicit demand, scientifically speaking, when “definitive” becomes the bar to acceptance.

You said:

This is a revealing comment Touchstone, although one you probably have not thought through thoroughly. My comments about IC (and those of other IDists) are firmly grounded in what we know. When I point out that translation mechanisms needed to enable protein synthesis are dependent on the function of enzymes x, y, z… I’m making an observation backed by the evidence of effects of rare diseases brought about by the disablement of a single one of these enzymes. No suppositions needed. You and others may argue that we will someday find pathways to mechanisms needed for translation and you can label criticism of that contention critiques based on ignorance however you need to note that the belief that such non-telic pathways exist is one firmly rooted in a form a faith.

Sure, I don’t think that’s even controversial. Science doesn’t eschew axioms and epistemic presuppositions. I certainly haven’t claimed that, and do not encounter that position in scientific circles I travel in. It’s a method, and as such, begins with a set of givens it considers necessary to enable the enterprise — natural explanations as a requirement for natural phenomena, for example. That’s not a revelation to anyone.

There’s no “guarantee” that the world is intelligible in naturalistic terms. It may not be. But science proceeds on the “faith-based” assumptions that it is, as a means of enabling the acquisition of (natural) knowledge. There are plenty of other domains (e.g. religion) that do not need the constraints of methodological naturalism, as they are not organized around the development of natural knowledge, as science is.

Science may well “overlook” God, if he’s invisible on natural terms, and that’s a risk inherent in the model. But it’s a profitable risk, as MN provides essential protection from the conflation of supernatural ‘knowledge’ with natural knowledge. Epistemically, natural knowledge is fundamentally destabilized if supernatural “evidence” is mixed in.

You said:

Neither do worn out tread mill arguments aimed at straw men. Try dealing with what IDists are actually claiming.

I keep hearing that I’m offering strawmen, but I’ve yet to see what the strawman is. In this post, professorsmith states “IC is falsifiable”. So I think that quote is clearly what one IDist is “actually claiming”. As I took that statement up in the comments, I learned from professorsmith that IC was, after all, NOT falsified in the general sense, if the flagellum were falsified.

So that raises the question of what she means by “IC is falsifiable”. Does that mean IC is only put to rest if every single biological structure any ID proponent can imagine as IC is furnished with a documented fully detailed step-wise pathway? That’s an absurd and cynical use of the term “falsifiable”, if so, simply because ID proponents can keep scientists running in the hamster cage ad infinitum that way.

So, I’m still unclear what the falisification regime for IC is generally. Even if we were to agree on the specific tests for the flagellum, and it was falsified, IC would remain intact, from what professorsmith says. So what does “falsifiable” mean in that case?

If you want to show me where the straw man is in that, I’d be obliged. It may be useful point out that I have been responding to professorsmith’s post, and subsequent comments, as opposed to a post belonging to Gene, Behe, or Dembski. I’m happy to be directed to statements from them or others that professorsmith subscribes to as answers, but as it is, I don’t see what “falisifiable” means for IC as a general proposition.

I’m glad you mentioned DNA. DNA is an information rich molecule whose function is dependent on the sequential order of its nucleotides and an encoding convention by which sequences acquire biological significance. There is no atelic chemical process which generates systems like this.

That’s just a naked beg to the question, isn’t it? I might as well just say there is no telic process which generates system like this, so long as that kind of begging works.

-Touchstone

As you can see, a torrent of vicious epithets there.

Read More...

Summary only...

And this is a problem, how?

Bill Dembski just can't seem to manage his frustrations very well. Now, he's annoyed that the demon hordes are punishing all the positive reviews for his new book on Amazon. Here's how Dembski tries to sublimate his anger:

William Dembski:
While such behavior by Darwinists may seem unjust, there are two upsides:

(1) As the saying goes, there’s no negative publicity.

One word, Bill: Dover.

William Dembski:
(2) I’ve been talking with the producers of EXPELLED (www.expelledthemovie.com) about making this book a companion volume to Ben Stein’s film.* Thanks PZ Myers, Wesley Elsberry, Peter Irons, and others for strengthening my hand in these negotiations.

We'd have to ask them to be sure, but I'd say Myers, Elsberry et al would be happy to tie The Design of Life to Expelled. Does Dembski think the movie is going to add some gravitas to his book? Make it more scientific? It may add a little more "snide" factor, but how does that help? I'd say getting those together would be a good thing.

They deserve each other.

Read More...

Summary only...

Does UD Have ODD?

I'm reminded by today's post on global warming by DaveScot over at Uncommon Descent today by a child I know who my wife says has "Oppositional Defiant Disorder", or "ODD" for short. Now, I'm NOT saying here that DaveScot is being childish in this post, or that UD is childish in some general sense -- that is an idea that has some things to recommend it, but it's not my point here.

The point of the connection I've made is that a child with ODD is not just at odds with a particular policy or decision, but has a basic antagonism to authority itself -- an 'oppositional orientation' as a means of approaching the world.

What's that got to do with DaveScot's latest post?
My answer would be to ask what global warming has to do with ID? The folks at Uncommon Descent aren't chained to any particular topic or argument than I am on this blog, but look at these entries from the past few weeks:

• The New York Times - Et tu, Brute?

• Pope for sound stewardship

• Skeptical Scientists Urge World To ‘Have the Courage to Do Nothing’ At UN Conference

• Climate Change - Is CO2 the cause?

• Weather Channel Founder: “[Global Warming] is the greatest scam in history”

• Getting Hollywood to “Sell the Product” to Children

All of those were posted in the last six or seven weeks, and they all present arguments critical of the idea that anthropogenic contributions to the earth's climate are a problem. This is more than a note in passing from UD. What's the connection? It's hard to find a "design" connection, or even a religious connection, aside from the obvious affinities between right wing politics and evangelical Christians. What more cleanly explains the "anti-Global-Warmingism" is an oppositional orientation to mainstream science itself. Much of modern science so well attested in practice (you can go get lasik and be contact and glasses free in a couple days, for example) that there's not much to assail for much of the edifice. But global climatology is a big, complex domain -- not as big as the topic of biological origins, but large and intricate in its own right -- that affords the denialist a lot more "wiggle room" than other scientific subjects.

Let's assume that UD is right about global warming. Now what? How does that become interesting or useful to their agenda. How is that in their interest? Why, it's just a means of discrediting the scientific establishment, isn't it? I'd be surprised if this was a conscious rationale announced on the part of UD authors, either collectively or individually. But it's hard to avoid the sense that ID as a movement, and UD as a site, is much more about "anti-science" than it is "pro" anything.

That's not a complicated concept to arrive at, which is what makes me wonder. If global warming is just a stone that UD might heave at the scientific community for the purposes of bashing out a window or two, isn't that a kind of validation of their critics' objections? That ID is a "proxy" for discrediting and marginalizing that which provokes cognitive dissonance?

I'm no supporter of ID, but just separating for a moment for the matter, it seems to me that finding common cause with the global warming deniers would be a way to hand your critics a club to beat you with. UD's support may in some way help cast doubt on the scientific establishment, and that's a good thing from their point of view. But in the end, if ID wants to be taken seriously as a research program of some kind that can compete with and displace other more objectionable elements in the curricula used to teach science, this kind of reflexive opposition really helps substantiate the assertion that ID is an "oppositional defiant disorder" when it comes to science, doesn't it?

If so, isn't that a very poor return on their investment?

Read More...

Summary only...

MikeGene on SETI and ID

This post over on TelicThoughts harkens back to a set of lively debates a couple years ago about how (dis)analogous SETI was to ID in terms of their basis for inquiry, their goals, and the filters that they each apply. MikeGene has apparently just recently become aware of some commentary on this from one of the SETI folks dating back aways.

Read More...

Summary only...

Good ID Discussion at TelicThoughts

I hadn't checked back in a while, and found over the weekend that the comment stream for the post "The Other Movement" had registered more than 300 comments since I first read it a couple weeks ago. It's not got just a lot of comments, there are a lot of long comments.

Not only does this thread inform on several levels and provoke thought, it positively condemns the goings-on over at Uncommon Descent. Try reading a little of the TelicThoughts thread, then quick switch over to reading a post by Denyse O'Leary, and you'll see what I mean. And note the correlation: the points where the thread loses its positive momentum as thoughtful exchange are generally the points where the UD posters jump in (see 'angryoldfat''s comments here -- angryoldfatman at UD? Betcha!).

Too bad that TelicThoughts gets so little of the ID spotlight compared to Uncommon Descent. I don't think I agree with the basic claims of "Mike Gene" and the crew there any more than I do with the people running UD (although evolutionary basics like UCD seem much less controversial and offensive to the TelicThoughts team), but at least the debate there happens with some thought. Oh, and there is a debate there, which is a huge difference as well.

Read More...

Summary only...

Dembksi on Comedy Central

Hat tip to Jon Curry for this - Bill Dembski talks creation and evolution with Jon Stewart, Ed Larson, and... someone else.


Fairly uncontroversial, but interesting if you've not seen Dembski on video before. Steward asks if the religious conversion preceded his scientific insights, and Dembski says that yes, his religious conversion came before his design discoveries[sic]. Stewart isn't at all surprised, to which Dembski responds that that's not a bad way to have it, Newton and all...

Read More...

Summary only...

Grumbling Under Dembski's Big Tent

Over on the "tracking thread" for Uncommon Descent at antievolution.org, "csadams" noticed this article, a recent interview with William Dembski geared at promoting Bill's new book. "csadams" highlighted a key statement in the interview:

Dembski:
I believe God created the world for a purpose. The Designer of intelligent design is, ultimately, the Christian God.

That comment was posted Thursday afternoon. By late evening, the folks at UncommonDescent had a post up, working the damage control buttons and levers over this quote. Clearly, someone at Uncommon Descent was monitoring the conversation at Antievolution.org, and realized this was something to get out in front of.

Dembski's PR blunders and self-defeating attempts at satire are now something of a low-level legend in this debate, but while Dembski comes across as decidedly tone-deaf in the wider battle for "hearts and minds", Dembski's been a master of playing both sides of ID movement, internally. On one hand, when speaking to Christian groups, he's the faithful creationist, taking up the sword and spear of his two PhDs and charging forth to battle the demon hordes of Darwinism. On the other hand, when speaking "out in the open", in scientific circles or public fora, he's a mathematician philosopher, whose scientific genius has led him to the discover of emergent properties in nature that objectively implicate an Intelligent Designer.

While that has long seemed somewhat duplicitous, and transparently so, Dembski has made it work, and work well. Dembski continues to enjoy wide and growing support from creationist Christianity, and at the same time, he's been able to construct a "big tent" theme, a loose coalition of sorts committed not so much even to ID specifically, but to the destruction of "Darwinism". Just from looking at the regulars at UD, you can see an array of non-Christians congregating under the safe, challenge-free tent of the blog.

If you read the interview, it's puzzling that Dembski offered this quote up where he did, and in the way he did. Here's the wider quote:

4. Does your research conclude that God is the Intelligent Designer?

I believe God created the world for a purpose. The Designer of intelligent design is, ultimately, the Christian God.

The focus of my writings is not to try to understand the Christian doctrine of creation; it’s to try to develop intelligent design as a scientific program.

There’s a big question within the intelligent design community: “How did the design get in there?” We’re very early in this game in terms of understanding the history of how the design got implemented. I think a lot of this is because evolutionary theory has so misled us that we have to rethink things from the ground up. That's where we are. There are lots and lots of questions that are now open to re-examination in light of this new paradigm.

I note here as an aside that Dembski doesn't answer the question. The interviewer is asking about current conclusions as a matter of research, but Dembski isn't listening; he has something else he wants to say.

As has been noted both at antievolution.org and in the comment stream for UD's damage control post, Dembski doesn't qualify the second sentence there with an "I believe". As I read it it, it's fairly implied, and anyone who's read Bill on this subject before knows he's accustomed to making these distinctions. ID is science the proves the existence of an Intelligent Designer, but nothing more about Designer than simply he/she/it is capable of designing organic life. Dembski's identification of that Designer as the Christian God as just his personal belief, beyond any implications of ID.

And insofar as the ID supporters have understood this, it hasn't been a problem. But the implication has always been that this is about the science as science first and foremost, and as for the "who is the Designer?" question, Dembski's got a right to speculate outside of the confines of the Design Inference as anyone. But this quote here seems to go a little farther, and gives the sense that Dembski starts with the conclusion that God is the Designer, and ID is just so much "working the numbers backwards".

This has been the heart of much criticism level at the Intelligent Design movement. Science is supposed to go wherever the evidence leads. In contrast, ID, like creationist arguments before it, is something more like lawyering; given a conclusion, arguments are built up underneath it to support it.

Here's an example of the kind of grumbling Dembski's statement is likely to generate from "big tent ID supporters":

PlatosPlaything:
“The Designer of intelligent design, is, ultimately, the Christian God.”

Umm, that bothers me. This founder of the movement is not saying, “ID proves design, and in my opinion the designer is Jesus,” but, as a fact, the designer is Jesus. As you know, I’m a pagan ID supporter. Where does this leave people like me — as well as the scores of Jews, Muslims and atheists who support ID?

Here's another complaint:

dave557:
Silly old me, I was always under the impression that ID was cold, hard science. ID had nothing to do with god. Time and time again Demski and others have denied religious motive. Oh well, guess I was wrong

That captures the basic objection. However, this particular complaint should be taken with a grain of salt here. I don't know this poster "dave557" to be a sockpuppet -- an ID critic posing as a (nominal, at least) ID supporter as a means of discrediting ID -- but my money's on the guess that he is. He continues by providing a long-ish quote from PZ Myers about Dembski's book. Not something you'd expect from anyone but the Banninated™.

Another poster sees a problem with this from a "textbook" angle:

Frost122585:
The problem here is this. If dembski goes down as saying that the designer is the “christian” god then i dont see how this is going to get tought in any public school.

Dembski weighs in with his own comments:

William Dembski:
In the context of the review, I was saying that I — personally — believe the Christian God is ultimately the designer behind the world. I’ve also written elsewhere that the Christian God might use teleological organizing principles to implement his designs (e.g., that God does not need to specifically toggle the bacterial flagellum). And I’ve stressed throughout my writings that there are alternative philosophical frameworks for making sense of ID. None of these considerations undercuts the scientific core of ID.

Come on folks, it’s no secret that I’m a Christian and that I have various motivations for pursuing ID (if you want to put me on the couch, please do the same with Dawkins).

The reader can be the judge as to Dawkins' sincerity in this, but I'd bet Dawkins would disavow the idea that he has "various motivations" for assuming his conclusion -- that no god exists -- on an a priori basis, external to the scientific investigation of the matter. Isn't that quite different than what Dembski is admitting here for himself? It sounds like he's projecting his own worldview on to Dawkins, and everyone else: believe whatever you believe, for whatever reason, then work backwards toward a supporting case for it.

Dembski here seems close to openly owning up to his "working backwards". If so, I'd say that will continue to not only produce more grumbling the Big Tent of ID, but will give ID opponents some strong philosophical grounds to reject ID as not just "non-science", but "anti-science". Working backwards from an a priori conclusion towards a constrained supporting argument is polemic, the antithesis of scientific inquiry.

Read More...

Summary only...

Dembski's "Symmetry Inference"

William Dembski asks today about the Chris Comer firing:

Dembski:
What if someone in the same position as Chris Comer forwarded an email about a forthcoming talk by Ken Ham at a “fundamentalist church” in which he would recommend teaching creationism in public schools?

First, the right answer is "nothing". As problematic as Ken Ham is, here, it's hard to come up with a reasonable basis for firing someone for forwarding a notification of an upcoming event. I will add the caveat that it's perfectly acceptable to fire an employee for violating a direct prohibition -- I've fired people for sending out perfectly acceptable messages to customers in terms of content; they got fired because they had no authority to speak for the company in said messages, and even though they said nothing wrong in those emails, the potential liability for us had they said the wrong thing was very large. They were repeatedly and clearly instructed not to engage in such communications, but did it anyway.

Insubordination, plain and simple.


To the extent that simple insubordination is at the heart of Comer's dismissal, I'm fantastically uninterested in this story. Too bad for her, if so. Lesson learned, hopefully. But Dembski isn't appealing to that idea here, and is instead apparently hoping to justify the ostensible injustice here by suggesting that if the tables were turned, the "Darwinists" would now be calling for Comer's dismissal.

But the apparent symmetry Dembski sees here, the "symmetry inference" he's making in imagining an email alert going out for a YEC event from someone in Comer's position, isn't a sound inference. These are not two sides of the same coin.

Say what you want about the Center for Inquiry in terms of their agenda. Dembski describes them as a "virulently atheistic organization", and from what little I know about them, there's not much to dispute in that, beyond Dembski's typically emotionally-loaded language ("virulently" has got to be bad, doncha know). In any case, I don't think any "virulence" matters, so long as they are willing to affirm the integrity and value of methodological naturalism -- the 'operating guidelines' for science as it is effectively practiced.

And that's the difference. Ken Ham doesn't have a different scientific view. He has an anti-scientific view. Dembski is hoping to impose a kind of "philosophical relativism" here, and the implication in his idea is that, ultimately, there is no method to science, and that it is all just so much politics and subjectivity. But I'd be willing to wager that for all of the Center for Inquiry's "virulence" in their metaphysical outlook (if they do indeed promote one), they would emphatically affirm the importance of methodological naturalism as essential to the succesful pursuit of scientific inquiry.

Ken Ham, on the other hand, sees methodological naturalism as the problem itself, rather than the solution, just as Dembski does. That's what fundamentally distinguishes the practical effects of an email alert about a Center for Inquiry event, and an email alert about an upcoming speech by Ken Ham. The former is broadly compatible with the existing practice of science itself, and the latter is not, not even nearly.

Remember, I wouldn't countenance the firing of a person in Comer's position even if they had forwarded an email alert concerning an upcoming Ken Ham speech, or a long series of YEC-friendly alerts and notes. Insubordination is good grounds for dismissal, but none of the email alerts we're considering here begin to rise to the level of a dismissal. But let's identify Dembski's equation of these two email alerts -- one about the Center for Inquiry, the other about Answers In Genesis for what it is: an attempt, again, and as always, to erode the practice of science itself.

Whatever "evangelizing" the Center for Inquiry might undertake, they can affirm and support the practice of science, as it occurs in the curriculum of the school textbooks for the district. The evangelizing of Ken Ham has a completely different agenda: to de-legitimize and marginalize science itself, and to assert their own authority (in the name of God, of course) over the scientific enterprise. Fortunately, things are so lopsided at this point in terms of evidence against Ken Ham that there is a diminishing threat, even in this. The only people who listen to Ken Ham aren't the least bit concerned about science qua science anyway. Anyone approaching this with their eyes open won't be buying any of it.

Ken Ham cannot affirm the science textbooks and curriculum of Comer's school district. And because of that, the "Ken Ham" alert from Comer would be more than "non-neutral", it would be actively subversive of the schools position on science and its practice. So, I know Dembski is asking his question rhetorically, but the real answer is: if it happened, Comer should not be dismissed, but we would reasonably wonder about her basic competency in the areas of science, were we to learn that she's promoting the ideas of Ken Ham. Not a firing offense, and maybe not an offense at all, but a signal that somewhere along the way, the system failed to locate a competent steward for its Director of Science position.

We'd be troubled to learn that the Attorney General didn't believe in civil rights for blacks or minorities. Or that a sitting judge on the bench neither knew the law or approved of the concept of American jurisprudence. A "Director of Science" promoting Ken Ham would signal the same kind of problem, a basic hostility to the enterprise they are trusted to promote and develop.

Read More...

Summary only...

Welcome to "Inspired Designs"

A couple days ago, I worked up a "Successories"-style spoof image to make a point on an email loop I'm on. I got enough positive feedback to work up a small set of "posters", and so here they are, just in time for Christmas: inspirational posters for the Intelligent Design community, from your friends at Inspired Designs Studios.










(I burned some credits at iStockPhoto for the images, so these are legal to pass around.)

UPDATE: Added a couple more. The Dembski photo's not a stock photo.

UPDATE 2: Blogger doesn't allow external access to local images, apparently, so if you want to link to these images, it won't work. I may move these over to a Photobucket or Flickr account, but for now, feel free to grab these and host 'em wherever you'd like. Attribution appreciated -- Touchstone @ banninated.blogspot.com.

Read More...

Summary only...

O'Leary's Handy Uses For Creationism

In part four of Denyse O'Leary's appreciation of John Lennox's book God's Undertaker:Has Science Buried God?, Ms. O'Leary draws out the usefulness of creationist ideas for the development of science. Based on what O'Leary provides, I'm inclined to just pass on this book, which otherwise would have been one that intrigued me. She doesn't do much to distinguish Lennox's points from her own, though, and having read a fair amount of O'Leary in the past couple years, it's clear that she sees just what she wants to see in whatever she surveys; the posts in this series present quotes from Lennox of dubious value, which she then make a mess of with her own riffage on Lennox's quote.

Here's an example, starting with Lennox:

John Lennox:
" ... the rise of science would have been seriously retarded if one particular doctrine of theology, the doctrine of creation had not been present." (God's Undertaker, p.22)

My initial reaction to that is to roll my eyes, but with just this little bit presented, one would have to look at the larger treatment in the text to make a fair evaluation. I don't know how Lennox supports this statement, but here's O'Leary's expansion:

Denyse O'Leary:
Why is a doctrine of creation important? Lennox points out that it frees science from the idea that we ought to be able to deduce what is happening in the universe from fixed prior principles. If - in contradiction to such an idea - we assume that God is entitled to create what he likes (trilobites, giraffes, and whales, to name some examples), then our duty is to address what exists rather than to set rules for what can exist. Unfortunately, centuries ago, many scientists attempted to proceed by setting rules about what can exist, according to their theories. Many of their ideas were in conflict with reality, and unproductive conflicts were common.

I held off posting on this yesterday when going through the other two sections, as I was sure I just wasn't reading this part right. But having looked at it several times now, the unavoidable conclusion is that O'Leary finds creationism valuable because it keeps us from artificially limiting reality. The examples she gives are baffling. Do we suppose that with a 'creationist view' that we would dispute the reality of the trilobite, the giraffe, the whale? It's as if O'Leary thinks we'd be inclined to say one or more of those things "aren't real" if we can't deduce them from "fixed prior principles". The giraffe may be standing right in front of us, but we are inclined to deny it because we can't deduce if from physical law, and this is what creationism saves us from?

Science is anchored in observation. To the extent any of those three can be objectively observed, we're obligated to accomodate for them in our model of reality. O'Leary has things reversed, so far as I can see here, suggesting that science want to define what's real, then map our observations onto it. That's nuts. We observe, test, kick, scrape, measure, watch and use all empirical tools at our disposal to establish the phenomena, then we define our reality based on that.

I suspect a part of the confusion for O'Leary here is the equivocation of the term "rule" or "law" here. In the creationist model, rules for reality are prescriptive, due to Christianity's metaphysical subjectivism. Reality is realized, and constrained by the will of God.

In the scientific view, the rules are descriptive. There's no underlying prescription, and the 'rules' than are identify are rules only by virtue of their identifying symmetries and uniform dynamics. So, to a scientist, "[setting] up rules for what can exist" is a fantastically confused statement. We don't make up rules for what exists, we just do our best to describe what exists, and how it exists. Descriptive, not prescriptive. Maybe that's a key clue for O'Leary.

Denyse O'Leary:
Having taught sections of the Design or Chance? adult night school course at St. Michael's in the University of Toronto, I also have a clear sense of another issue: A doctrine of creation encourages people to believe that the universe is worth studying because it puts a limit on the things you would need to know in order to understand. For one thing, even by positing an actual beginning of time, it closes off an infinite past in which virtually anything could have, and has, happened.

Here, I believe we have O'Leary projecting her own confusions about the concept or reality on the general population. Even if we grant her premise -- that the masses need things "dumbed down" so as not to exasperate them -- this in no way retards science itself. If anything, creationism thwarts the advancement of science by positing "pedagogical falsehoods" on the syllabus. A concept may make things easier to understand, no doubt, but that is not, in and of itself, scientifically useful. It's only as useful as it is accurate, performative in predictions and explanations, and unfalsified by salient tests.

Denyse O'Leary:
Assume, for example, that our theory of the universe does not include a doctrine of creation. We might assert - as some cultures have - that the universe is supported on an infinite series of turtles who (in some greater infinity) are swimming in an endless sea. Why study it? The information gained from one turtle may be no use in interpreting another, and then - even if you could get to the end of the turtles (which you cannot, because the series is infinite) - you would then confront the endless sea. All the information you have accumulated is a mass of interesting sludge, really. The prospect of understanding the universe is actually impossible. Lennox aided my understanding of this question by noting that the Jesuit Fathers who visited the advanced kingdom of China in the early modern period had difficulty at first persuading the Chinese scholars that many features of the universe can be understood by simple equations. They had not expected to find the unverse comprehensible in that way.

I don't know of any cultures that suppose that "the universe is supported on an infinite series of turtles". This objection isn't material to O'Leary's point, but it's indicative of the kind of ... "whatever!" approach she brings to science and the philosophy of science. From what I can find (see here, for example and here), Hindu culture has imagined the earth (as opposed to O'Lery's use of 'universe' here) as borne on the back of an elephant, which stood on a single tortoise, and that's about as close as I can come to finding support for her statement here. The Wikipedia article on "Turtles All The Way Down" attributes the "infinite turtles" idea to a single person, someone sparring with Bertrand Russell after a lecture. I won't make a bigger issue of this than just to note: when you start looking at the "building blocks" O'Leary uses, even those often are imaginary, or widely mistaken.

But suppose we are presented with a "turtles all the way down" cosmology. Now what? Well, to the extent you could verify it, you'd have a most significant answer. There are fewer more profound answers to be had, if the theory checks out. Oddly, O'Leary claims this would all be "interesting sludge, really", in yet another example of her command of the language. "Sludge"? She then announces that this would render the prospect of understanding the universe "actually impossible". Yet, she's just posed the foundations for understanding the universe. If the reality is "turtles all the way down", something we can verify, or even just verify that these turtles really do extend a very, very, very long way down and that they do somehow "support the universe", then a significant level of understanding the universe has been "actually achieved".

I know, I know. O'Leary's paragraph here is more incoherent than it is wrong.

I'm just sayin'.

Just to really get things thoroughly confused, O'Leary points to mathematical principles as a useful means for modeling and describing our universe, an approach that apparently hadn't occurred to the Chinese before some Jesuits introduced the idea. But that's not creationism at all, and in fact is the very antithesis of creationism. In proposing math as a key resource in understanding the universe, the Jesuits were proposing a perfectly materialist model of the universe. There's nothing "creationist" about the inverse-square law. In fact, maths are the building blocks for the "non-created" model of the universe, a universe governed by impersonal physical dynamics, rather than the arbitrary will of God. I can't think what O'Leary imagined the pedagogical value of math to be in terms of creationism, but for now, I'm thinking she's as confused about what Lennox is really saying as she is on the cultural popularity of "turtles all the way down".

Denyse O'Leary:
So a doctrine of creation imposes limits on what we must understand in order to gain a picture of our universe. That is critical for science as we understand it. If we assume that if the Big Bang happened roughly 13.7 billion years ago (conventional dating), then anything that could not have taken place within that period by random movements alone either did not happen or happened because of exterior or prior guidance. Or something else? At any rate, we are justified in seeking an explanation.

I'll agree that creationism imposes limits on understanding. But this is positively perverse, epistemologically. And the example she gives demonstrate this. If we are to discover a process or phenomenon that exists and requires 20 billion years of running to reach the state it is in now, we'd have to revise our estimates of the age of the universe. QED, so long as we have reason to trust the calculations on the process timeline. The existing estimates are where they are based on the demands for a model that harmonizes all that we have to go on. If you change the evidence and facts in view, then the estimates might very well need to be changed to accomodate it.

Read More...

Summary only...

YWAM/NewLife Killer In His Own Words

Given BarryA over at Uncommon Descent's "interest" in the question of atheism inciting murderous hatred in Matthew Murray, the man identified as the shooter in the YWAM/NewLife killings, there are some "interesting" stretches of commentary from Murray's online postings to review here. For what it's worth, the comments put together in that post seem much more problematic for the kind of Christianity Murray grew up in.

I'm a homeschooler. I've got six kids, four of school age, and their entire schooling has been homeschooling. My wife is quite active in the local homeschool co-op, and we are surrounded by evangelical homeschoolers; this is my demographic. We use Sonlight curriculum, and because of that, both my wife and I have been active in their online community for homeschooling families for years.

I'm intimately familiar with the culture of Matthew Murray's upbringing.

But you know what? For all the references and anger, all the possible "incitement to hate" that I could try and identify in Murray's words, all of that is secondary. This is a young man who went right off the deep end. He's responsible for his terrible actions, and no matter how vicious or hypocritical or humiliating he found his lot in life to be, growing up in a homeschooling fundamentalist Christian home, that's not sufficient to make it "interesting" to me to suggest fundamentalist Christianity is somehow to blame for the murders.

Unlike Barry, who simply popped off with an opportunistic bit of musing, the posts from Murray here shine at least a little bit of light on the mind and attitudes behind the killings. I wonder how "interesting" Barry thinks the situation is now, having read the posts of nghtmrchld26?

It doesn't matter, as far as blame is concerned for the killing, however. For all of that, Murray bears the guilt for his actions. It was his choice, his course of action, and his alone.

What remains is the lingering sense that BarryA, ostensibly concerned about the spread of hatred, about demonization, has engaged in the very practice he's concerned about. Barry's no more empowered to unilaterally instill hate in his readers than Ted Haggard or Richard Dawkins are in theirs (does Haggard have an audience anymore?); we must choose to adopt the hatred being offered. But posts like Barry's represent the offer, just as much as the angry words of those he's upset by (Dawkins, Hitchens, et al).

Read More...

Summary only...

The Hatred Libel

Barry Arrington is one of my favorite posters at Uncommon Descent. Posts like this are so good at showing the bankruptcy of ID, that one naturally wonders if "BarryA" is extraordinary success in the "deep cover troll" operations that get launched from time to time by the feisty folks at AntiEvolution.org.

This post in particular has the scent of a "false flag operation", putatively pro-ID, but powerful in its discrediting the cause it purportedly advances. BarryA is a contributor at UD, not just a commenter, and I can't recall where, but I know I've read posts by people who are familiar with this guy in real life, so this must be legit. And just so we're clear, that's fine with me.


Do Dawkins and Dennett Incite Hatred? is the title of the post.

Wherein, BarryA says this:

BarryA:
The media is reporting that Matthew Murray posted the following on the web: ”I’m coming for EVERYONE soon and I WILL be armed to the @#%$ teeth and I WILL shoot to kill. …God, I can’t wait till I can kill you people. Feel no remorse, no sense of shame, I don’t care if I live or die in the shoot-out. All I want to do is kill and injure as many of you … as I can especially Christians who are to blame for most of the problems in the world.”

Look at the last part of that quote closely. One wonders if Murray has been reading Dawkins or Dennett. By blaming the world’s ills on religious people do Dawkins and Dennett incite to hatred and make it more likely that tragedies of this sort can occur? I don’t know, but it is an interesting question.

Now, this is a post at Uncommon Descent, the flagship (!) blog for the Intelligent Design movement. This is a blog that is continually at pains to point out that ID is a scientific enterprise, and unrelated and unattached to religion qua religion. From Dembski on down to DaveScot, offenders are repeatedly scolded about conflating ID and Christianity or any particular brand of God. ID defenders routinely bristle at the suggestion that ID is a proxy for evangelical Christianity.

But here, the flagship ID blog is pursuing the intricate scientific details of teleogical design with respect to... well, Barry's not going in that direction at all.

This post is about the scariness of atheism.

There's not much "intelligent design" (pseudo-)science to work with here. Like so many other posts at UD, this is a political missive. Another grenade launched from the ID trench of the Culture Wars.

But remember: ID really is about the science.

As for the "merits" of the post, well, I think the large significance of this post is that BarryA feel comfortable with this kind of "interesting" question in this context. Looking the rationale he's offering topples it over pretty quickly.

• Does BarryA suppose that those who cause the world's ills somehow deserve to be killed, even if we grant Barry his premise?
• Does Barry believe people are responsible for their own actions, or not?
• Does Christian "hatred" of the abomination of homosexual intercourse implicate Christianity in the hate-motivated murders of homosexuals?
  

It's just a non-starter from BarryA, here. And that's what's most disturbing. It's so poorly thought out, that the "design inference" for this post is that it's a bit of low opportunism, an attempt at cheap rhetorical points to make with the faithful on the blog by exploiting a tragedy.

There's a nice self-referential aspect to this post though. Barry's sort of testing his own theory, by spreading his own brand of ill to the world. What now, BarryA? Who's reading your posts, and are you worried?

Read More...

Summary only...

O'Leary: Lennox Part 3

In part 3 of Denye O'Leary's appreciation of John Lennox and his book God's Undertaker: Has Science Buried God?, she tackles the idea of information. She quotes Lennox, who finds it "remarkable" that information is invisible, and comments:

Denyse O'Leary:
Not only that, but information, as Lennox goes on to demonstrate, is immaterial. Example: The knowledge that the concert you hoped to attend has been cancelled due to an ice storm is immaterial. The storm is quite material, but your knowledge that the concert has been cancelled is immaterial, even though it may have been conveyed by material things.

Shades of George Gilder, actually!

There's a Nobel Prize embedded in here, apparently. Forget the rest of this, that's what's remarkable, that Lennox has demonstrated that information is immaterial. I just recently finished reading Leff & Rex's Maxwell's Demon 2, which is a tour de force review of the subject of Maxwell's Demon. Which is, of course, all about information and entropy. While the subject is complex, and to be sure, even established 'experts' in information theory occasionally have disagreements about some of the basics of information as a scientific concept (see Tom Schneider's rejection of "self-information" in favor of "surprisal", for example), "information" is perfectly and completely physical.

And this little example Denyse throws out here is a point at which we can reasonably doubt that Denyse has even the bare beginnings of the conceptual framework needed to be a meaningful contributor in these discussions. I haven't read Lennox's book, and I'm quite prepared to allow that he as a more sophisticated view of the concept of information than Denyse relates here. But as it is, Denyse betrays complete incompetence with the subject matter here. Her example is the "information" that a concert has been canceled, due to a storm. The storm is material, but the information that the concert has been nixed is immaterial.

I'll try to resist the obvious opportunities at humor here, but what does Denyse think her brain is for, anyway? Does she suppose her brain is material? Is it real? The "information" Denyse claims is immaterial is most certainly material -- and is represented by the electrical configurations -- the "brain-states" of any and all who received and stored the message about the canceled show. Now granted, one can't "see" the electrical patterns that reify this knowledge because they are safely ensconced inside someone's skull. The ice storm that prompted the cancellation is a different matter, and quite observable, perfectly "visible", if maybe a little whited-out.

So the visible ice storm leads to a decision (a brain-state) in some individual that determins the show should be canceled. Additional bits of information (brain-states) are marshalled into the service of communicating that decision, and the recipients of this information reach new brain-states as a result of receiving the message. All the electrons are in the right places.

But Denyse can't see 'em, so apparently they don't exist. Kind of a grown-up version of the mistake my 1 year old twins make in thinking that if they can't see me, I can't see them.

Doesn't exist. Immaterial.

I won't even bother with the conflation these examples introduce, the confusion they spread in confusing the "retail" definition of information (knowledge or data that is contextualized for human processing, like the news of a canceled concert) and the scientific definition of information, (the reduction in uncertainty about physical configurations). Denyse isn't ready for "Remedial Information Theory 100" just yet.

Maybe a way to point at the major blunder Denyse is promoting here is to ask: OK, take away all physical objects and entities, for the sake of argument, here. Does this "immaterial" information about the canceled concert still exist? If there are no brains in the entire universe, would such news be "immaterial information"? If not, why not? If she should reply that of course, immaterial information needs a material "home" -- a place to exist -- then I'd say she's on the road to recover from this mistake. She's not there yet, but you can see the right answer from that point.

Information is physical. Where there is physical existence, there is information. Where there is no physical existence, there is no information.

Assuming, of course, that Denyse is confused, and that Lennox hasn't -- mirable dictu! -- actually inverted the whole of physics and demonstratede that information is immaterial.

Read More...

Summary only...

Denyse O'Leary: What a Design Argument Is (or isn't)

Denyse O'Leary holds forth on design arguments over here at ARN. She's enamored of John Lennox's book God's Undertaker: Has Science Buried God? and uses Lennox's thoughts (or so it seems, it's hard to tell which ideas are hers here and which are Lennox, which is unfortunate for Lennox) to provide some riffage on intelligent design.

Denyse O'Leary:
With admirable clarity of thought, Lennox avoids confusing design in the universe and life forms with either creationism or Scriptural literalism. A design argument asserts that the evidence for design in the universe and life forms should be taken at face value, that is as evidence that the entities are designed. And Lennox does just that.

Denyse, of course, does confuse design of the universe with creationism/Biblicism. Yet she admires Lennox's 'clarity of thought' here. Lennox conflates design with creationism himself, as it turns out, so what Denyse here is admiring, ostensibly, is Lennox's 'clarity' in sanitizing the argument, laundering out the overtly religious language and underlying epistemology, so that it might read, nominally at least, in some "science-ish" way. Earnest discussions and arguments from creationists on this topic have been disasters in the public forum, so Denyse here admires not clarity so much, but 'effective obscurantism' in avoiding overt displays of magical thinking in scientific discussions. Obfuscation as 'clarity', just another day in the ID universe.

She (and/or Lennox?) contend that a design argument simply accepts evidence for design, as, well, as evidence for design -- at "face value", doncha know. Why didn't those evilutionist scientists think of that? Just accept the evidence for the evidence it is...

It's as radical as it is vacuous. The whole point of scientific investigation is to get beyond "face value" for the phenomena we observe around us. There's nothing wrong with a "face value" interepretation, it's just exceedingly trivial, epistemically. I wonder if Denyse really understands what the term "face value" implies.

Denyse O'Leary:

There are several contrary materialist positions:

1. Design is an illusion. In recent years, that has increasingly come to sound like whistling in the dark.

Denyse is projecting. Every year, more and more evidence is added to the knowledge repository, further detailing the mechanics of evolution, the psychology of man, and man's natural proclivity for anthropomorphizing the world around him. Creationism gets incrementally more problematic as more and more gaps in the repository get filled in -- creating, perversely, two gaps in which to inject the creationist God where there previously was one. Maybe it's this sense that Denyse is appealing to? With all the gaps that get addresses over time, science is experience runaway growth in the number of holes in its theory. Surely it must soon collapse because of all these little gaps!

Enough on this one -- it's just Denyse in self-congratulatory mode.

Denyse O'Leary:
2. Or perhaps there are uncountable numbers of flopped universes out there and ours just happens to be unusually nice. That idea goes down well in popular culture - just think of the FILMS! It can spawn - but it is presently untestable.

I confess, I'm behind on the literature -- I don't even know what a 'flopped' universe is supposed to be. It certainly is true to say that other universes are untestable, given the way we define 'universe'. But it's worth pointing out that the "Cosmic Landscape", as it's called by String Theory heavy Leonard Suskind -- a complex of innumerable other universes -- it isn't so much magical thinking as is engaged by creationist "design arguments". The cosmic landscape is something that proceeds naturally out of the mathematical models that underwrite String Theory. While String Theory is nowhere close to 'established' in the scientific sense yet (and may never be), if it does bear out, then it brings with it maths that fairly require a "landscape" in which universes come to be, and develop with different cosmological parameters (it is the suite of configuration of parameters that gives rise to the term 'landscape' in Susskind's model).

It's directly not testable. It may not even be possible to test indirectly (although this isn't at all clear at this point). Nevertheless, the Cosmic Landscape idea can point to a set of epistemic credentials that creationist ideas cannot; it proceeds automatically, organically, from the solution sets that String Theory math models yield. If String Theory is correct for this universe, then the nature of the theory is such that we are reasonably led to the conclusion that this universe is one of a great many, mathematically.

Denyse O'Leary:
3. Lastly, some argue that the question is not a proper concern of science - in common parlance, "Let's just rule it out of order, and ignore the evidence." That raises the question of what science is, if it is not an effort to learn more about the universe we live in.

Yes, that's the common reaction: Let's just rule it out of order, and ignore the evidence.

I hear that all the time. It begs credulity to suppose that Denyse has not had access to the concept of methodological naturalism, or the basics of the philosophy of science. Science is an effort to learn more about the universe we live in, but it is a disciplined effort, dedicated to a concept of "learning" that is epistemically sound. Those are crucial, and daunting constraints. Science specifically seeks to avoid the magical thinking and superstitious interpretations Denyse wants to "add to the mix" here, and for good reason. Those elements delegitimize the epistemological foundations of the whole enterprise. Indulge Denyse and her creationist "learning" here, and all scientific learning gets devalued down to the credibility level of her 'knowledge'. Science is as strong as its weakest link in the epistemic chain, and Denyse is proposing imaginary segments of chain.

Denyse O'Leary:
But a design argument is not an argument for special creation -. the sudden appearance of multicellular life forms out of nothing. Design does not require such events and does not provide direct evidence for them either. In a designed universe such events are at least a possibility, but other inferences and evidence must establish them. The mere fact of design does not establish them.

Doesn't matter. Magical thinking about "design", even when it loudly disavows "special creation" and "poofing" of Adam and the animals out of thin air isn't any more respectable or useful than "poofing". Denyse might suppose it happened in a 'non-poof' way, but in a way that's still 'designed', but that's as perfectly magical as the "poof" idea. So why bother with such meaningless distinctions.

Don't agree? OK, let's think about more sophisticated, "adult" idea of how design is carried out. Panspermia, perhaps? No, that doesn't help at all, because any Designers who bootstrapped organic life on earth however many billions of years ago would themselves have to be designed, as they have all the "face value" evidence of being designed themselves! Or suppose it is Yahweh after all, and instead of the clumsy sideshow parlor trick approach -- *poof* and behold! Meet Adam -- God uses slow, gradual, organic processes that He controls in subtle, elegant ways to steer the development of organic life toward his design goals.

That doesn't help, either.

God would have to exhibit all the "face value" evidence of being designed Himself! See, it doesn't matter at all who design proponentists suppose the Designer was (or were, if there were many). Whatever he/she/it/they are like, they by definition have the capability to design organic life, which is, per the principles of Intelligent Design, de facto proof that that the Designer was designed.

It's wholly disingenuous, then, to suggest that this makes any difference at all. It's an utterly useless qualification on the merits. It does have the potential to make the ID arguments seem a little less silly, though, and I suggest that is why Denyse says what she does here.

Denyse O'Leary:
There is much confusion on this point in North America. Many on both sides profit from the confusion. The materialist atheist benefits the most because he evades the looming falsification of his central idea - an accidental, purposeless universe - by loudly insisting that design means special creation or a universe created in six days (144 hours). Because he usually has the ear of a sympathetic media corps, he can buy a lot of time for his interpretation.

Not. Design, per Design advocates, means having "complexity" and "specificity" as a Designer, and thus being designed. It invokes infinite regress, if the principles are taken seriously at all. But wait, says Denyse: God stops the regress, He wasn't designed!

Oh, yeah? Well then "specified complexity" or whatever other criterion you want to use as your razor for positively identifying "designedness" doesn't hold. If "God" can be "accidental, purposeless" -- not the product of design, in other words, why can't the universe? This is logical box Denyse cannot get out of, except for through "magical answers". God isn't beholden to these principles, after all, right Denyse? Denyse has the "Creationist Magic Answer Get Out Of Logical Contradiction Card" in her hand, and she's playing it here.

Oh, and don't forget to swirl in a small dose of conspiracy theorism into the mix here, too. That's an important part of the argument from design.

Denyse O'Leary:
Meanwhile, the special creationist hopes that the powerful arguments for design can be co-opted as arguments for special creation. Having little incentive to help set the record straight, he doesn't.

And at the same time the Scriptural literalist - usually a young Earth creationist - is primarily interested in finding science evidence that conforms to his favoured interpretation of the words of Scripture. Actually, many people in that camp do not even like design arguments, as such because design arguments are not drawn from the Scriptures and can be advanced and defended in the absence of any scriptures.

Yeah, and that should be a sobering point for Denyse to observe. YEC creationism, as ridiculous as it is, is both more honest and more coherent than Intelligent Design. ID is the worst of both worlds -- it subverts the epistemic foundation of science with its superstition, and yet it is too embarrassed of its own superstitious nature to identify with overtly superstitious ideologies. Double whammy. Many YECs rightly see it as the most hopeless case of all; it's not faithful or redemptive in its expression, and viciously vacuous as a matter of science. You gotta give YECs credit for at least offering a hypothesis that is liable to falsification, an idea that is nomimally germane as a matter of science. When they claim the earth is 6,000 years old, they are at least offering a claim that can be evaluated. ID can't even manage that.

The allergic reaction Denyse has to allegations of being a 'creationist' is quite plain to see in posts like this. But she's just in a state of denialism. She's believed her own BS, and has fooled herself into thinking ID is something more scientific than YEC, when in fact it's actually far less scientific. It's a persistent, ongoing identity crisis she's dealing with. ID is creationism, by an large, and the panspermian hangers-on do not rescue ID as 'non-religious'. They just broaden the exotic nature of the religious basis for ID.

Read More...

Summary only...

Moving the 'Edge of Evolution' Goalposts

Over at the latest UncommonDescent post here, discussing the ramifications of the evolution of antibiotic resistance, "getawitness" says:

getawitness:
By which I mean a falsification of Mike Behe’s putative “edge” of evolution. Gil’s point, I think, is that a bacteria could never develop such resistance because Behe is right. So that would be a unbeatable antibiotic.

"russ" replies:

russ:
Falsification of his “edge of evolution”, or simply adjusting where the edge lies? If bacteria successfully adapt to each and every antibiotic, there’s no evidence that that will lead to anything more than an altered bacterium.

In other words, "It will never be a dinosaur, nyah!"

I don't know what this means for Behe's 'edge of evolution' (OK I do know what that means for EoE, but that's another discussion), but what is being adjusted here are russ's goalposts in the discussion. Behe's argument is not that "at some point things get impossibly improbable" -- although it might as well be, come to think about it. Evidence that "each and every antibiotic" successfully adapt most certainly would be problematic for Behe's claims, but russ finds refuge, apparently, in that falsification of Behe, or evidence for evolution in the general case, it's still not the overwhelming earth-is-not-flat kind of proof that allows russ to "keep the faith", as it were. Sure, adapative bacteria. But that's no dinosaur, no whale, mind you!

"getawitness" later notes the moving of the goalposts:

getawitness:
Falsification of that edge, yes. He would be free to move the goalposts and draw another line in the sand.

"russ" begs off thusly:

russ:
But is “moving the goalposts” really a fair characterization? Edge of Evolution is an attempt to establish where the limits of evolution lie. NDE THEORY says that you can go from nothing to humans via natural processes with no intelligence. EoE says that the best available DATA indicate that the best you can do is decrease overall function in an attempt to survive. Showing somehow that NDE is even better than we thought at trench warfare does not constitute “moving the goalposts”, or “drawing another line in the sand”. You seem to be using those expressions merely to gain rhetorical points.

Yeah, nothing like making your case as a cheap ploy to gain "rhetorical points". Showing that NDE (he really means the underlying biology modeled by the theory) is "better than we thought a trench warfare" DOES necessitate moving the goalposts, as its this "better"-ness that Behe supposes is precluded by the constraints and probabilities involved.

I think that's as much as anyone like "getawitness" can expect to see by way of capitulation to the evidence from the ID fanboys. "getawitness" has clearly been trying to be on his/her best behavior, and has survived a while, but if DaveScot reads this, "getawitness" is banninated.

UPDATE: Yep, "getawitness" is banninated, but with his posts left intact (so far), and per After the Bar Closes, it was Hermagoras, all along.

Read More...

Summary only...