ID (split from Christians and White Horses by Lothar)

[Samuel Dravis]

ID is a science?

is there any imperical evidence that backs up ID?
is there any experiments that you can replicate that supports ID?

Absolutely. Here's an emperical, repeatable experiment you can carry out to demonstrate that intelligently generated information can be distinguished from randomly generated information in a consistent way. We'll even make it a double-blind test...

You will need:
- Several pages of human-generated text with meaning. (Paragraphs from a novel will do).
- Several pages of randomly-generated text (draw some scrabble tiles or something).
- Several volunteers.

Give the pages to your test leader. Do not tell him which are human-generated. Have him give the pages to the volunteers and see if they can pick out the ones that are human-generated. If they consistantly can, this demonstrates that there is a method for the detection of the operation of intelligence.

How exactly does that prove intelligence is behind the samples? You could eventually come up with identical results from intelligent and randomly generated texts.. Granted, intelligence is more likely, but it does not disprove chance.

[Kilarin]

Even if you determined that something couldn't have evolved, that doesn't necessitate that it was designed.

I am curious as to what your alternative is.

To assert "ID is science" reveals utter incompetence, but more importantly and disturbingly, a thorough disrespect of true science.

Why?
Ignore the entire Creationist thing for a moment. Lets pull up a concrete example.
A plauge hits the U.S. It appears to be an airborn version of ebola, with various deadly aspects of other viruses as well.

Are you honestly telling me you do NOT think it would be scientific to analyze that virus to detect if it was a natural mutation or designed in a lab?

Come on, we do this all the time. Was the photo tampered with? Is that a rock, or an axe head? I freely admit that the Creationist come into this with a preconcieved notion, but be honest enough to admit that the Naturalists do as well. Otherwise, there wouldn't be such a fuss about this. There is nothing inherently "Unscientific" about testing for design.

And, as I said before, denying that ID is a valid "Science" means denying that Evolution could be a science. Scientific theories must be falsifiable. Darwin specified how to falsify his theory, and it involves looking for organs that could not evolve. If Science disalows that search, they deny Evolution the trait of falsifiability.

[Jeff250]

Even if you determined that something couldn't have evolved, that doesn't necessitate that it was designed.

I am curious as to what your alternative is.

You don't have to provide an alternative theory to refute an idea. To refute it, that's all you have to do is refute it. In this example, dissatisfy Darwin's provided test.

Without this test, Evolution fails as a science. SO, evolution MUST embrace ID as a science because it is the goal of ID to discover if there are any complex organs which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modification.

Design would not necessitate a falsity of evolution. Consider a grand designer who initially big banged the universe in such a way that the evolution of life would occur. Here, there would be design, yet there would also be natural evolution. Therefore, a discovery of design (in and of itself) cannot be used as a test to dissatisfy evolution.

Also, if the above wasn't what you were suggesting but instead you were trying to equivocate intelligent design with the search for things too complicated to evolve, you're barking up the wrong tree. While some ID-ists might try to use examples of things that cannot evolve as evidence for ID, they also use numerous other techniques. So there's no reason to accept the unnecessary baggage of ID when all we need to do is try to dissatisfy one of Darwin's tests to begin with.

[Weyrman]

On the other hand, none of Darwin's Tests have actually been proved true. Things have been touted as "evidence", but are only interpreted according to the wishes of the researcher. In all cases, assuptions are made as we don't have direct proven lineage backwards or forwards that show without a doubt that evolution has happened.

Adaptation and natural selection within a species definitely, as that is refining or "paring down" the genetic code, but meaningful addition to existing genetic code by random mutation, that has yet to be proven.

[Kilarin]

Design would not necessitate a falsity of evolution.

Absolutely granted. And also, if I have not made myself clear, I believe in Natural Selection and Evolution.

We should separate the issue of whether a scientific theory is true from the philosophical implications of that theory.

When Darwin published "Origin of the Species" and proposed Natural Selection as a mechanisim for Evolution. His theory was attacked, NOT primarily because people had objections to the science, but because people objected to the philosophical implication of that theory. Philisophical implications are NOT science. Darwin's theory of Natural Selection DID open up a nice hole for Naturalist to explain the universe without needing a God. But that has nothing to do with the science. Other philosophies will interpret the "grand meaning" behind evolution differently. We must not judge science based on philosophy.

ID is a science that has serious philosophical implications. As has been pointed out, ID does not REQUIRE that a supernatural being designed our universe. THAT is a philisophical conclusion. One that can be disputed by people with other philosophies. The Arthur C. Clark explanation is always viable. No supreme being, just advanced aliens who helped life along, or even jump started our entire universe. The philisophical implications of finding design at the molecular level in life, are philosophy, not science. They can be argued by philosphers for years and no agreement need be reached.

But when judging the SCIENCE of ID, we must be careful not to make the same mistake that was made with Natural Selection. We must not reject the science because of any philosophy it might imply. Behe's argument, that irreducibly complex machines violate the basic requirements of Natural Selection is sound scientifically. Whatever it's implications.

Please note, it is NOT complexity that is the problem. It's IRREDUCIBLY complexity. This post is getting long, but we need an example here.

lets compare two mouse traps, one of which is irreducibly complex, and the other not.

Trap 1: A large bucket half full of water, a wooden ramp leads up to the edge and a hinged arm leads out over the bucket. The end of the arm is baited with cheese. When a mouse crawls out on the arm to get the cheese, it's weight causes the arm to tip and dump the mouse into the water where it drowns. This is a fairly complex trap, but is it irreducibly complex? No. Lets come up with an evolutionary scenario for it.

I want to catch mice, so I'm going to "evolve" a mouse trap in my storage building by multiplying anything that actually catches a mouse. (I'm "Natural Selection" in this scenario.)

So, could an empty bucket, all by itself, catch a mouse? Well, they HAVE at my house. Not very often, but it does happen. so it's possible a bucket sitting in my shed might catch a mouse, so I duplicate it and fill my shed with lots of empty buckets.

My roof might leak, and one of the buckets fills half way up with rain water. Now mice that fall in drown instead of trying to jump out. More dead mice in that bucket, So I fill all the buckets half-way with rain water.

Now suppose a broom falls against the side of one of the buckets? Now the mice have a path up to the bucket, so that bucket will catch more mice, I duplicate it and now we have lots of buckets with a broom leaning against them.

One of the brooms happens to get broken. Now any mouse crawling to the end of the broom handle will cause the broken end to tip and drop it into the bucket. My mouse trap is getting quite efficient, I break ALL the broom handles in the same way.

And for the last step, one day, I'm eating my lunch and a piece of cheese falls off my sandwich and lands on the end of one of the broken broom sticks. Now we have the complete trap, bucket, water, ramp, hinged arm, and bait.

Is this scenario very likely? No. But it is POSSIBLE, each step provided an advantage over the step before it. This system CAN evolve, it is not irreducibly complex.

BUT, for Trap 2: lets look at the more typical victor snap mouse trap. If you take off the spring, or the hammer, or the trigger, or the bar, or the base, if ANY one of those parts is missing or damaged or misplaced, your trap will NOT catch any mice. Even supposing I had all of the exactly correct parts, hundreds of them, and put them into a big box and shook them around, I would never catch a single mouse. A wooden base falling flat onto the desk will NOT catch mice. If a spring and a hammer happen to get tangled together in the right way, (unlikely, but lets just assume it happens) it will still NOT catch mice. NOTHING short of the complete mousetrap, with every part (you can leave out the bait, but that's it), assembled correctly, will ever catch a mouse. Heck, at my house, even WITH all the parts they seldom catch mice.

You can not evolve such a system, because there is NO advantage to it until it is ALL there and in working order, and evolution can only build things one step at a time. In nature, we have found just such irreducibly complex systems. The cilium, the flagellum, etc. These system are not only useless without every single part, but actually detrimental. You can read more about them at http://www.arn.org/docs/behe/mb_idfrombiochemistry.htm

THIS is what ID is about. That is the science we should judge.

[Tetrad]

regarding the mousetrap:

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/behe/review.html

[Kilarin]

Keith Robison doesn't achieve his goal here, in my opinion. He shows that once a moustrap HAS a base (the floor in this case) you can improve upon that base. Granted, but it doesn't make a moustrap reducibly complex. Once a mousetrap has a spring, you can replace it with a better spring. So what? Even if you grant that the floor is not a base (which I don't), the remaining elements within the mouse trap still make it irreducibly complex.

And he then goes on to argue down rabbit trails about nonsense issues such as Psuedogenes. ID doesn't say that natural selection doesn't work. ID doesn't say that evolution never happens. ID says that SOME systems show evidence of design.

Really, overall this article is an excellent example of why I believe in ID.

"Creation Science" is usually a lot of wishful thinking and bunk. I was raise to believe in a literal 7 day creation that happened 8 to 10 thousand years ago. I finally abandoned that theory when I realized that, while there ARE exceptions, most of the "Creation Science" crowd out there simply make up wild stories in a desperate attempt to make the actual facts fit in with what they believe.

And THIS is also what brought me back into the creationist camp. This very pattern. When one side of an argument starts making up wild fantasies, you know it's because they can't logically defend their point any more and are just clinging to their belief in any way they can. AND, shockingly enough, the tables have turned. It is now the Naturalists making up wild stories and defending philosophy instead of Science.

LOOK at the flagellum. It's not that there are a LOT of parts, it's not even that it's complex, it's that it's demonstratively obvious that you can NOT make this work with ANYTYHING less than a full and complete system. There is no possible path to lead to it. The Naturalists argue that this molecule or that molecule actually exists as part of something less complex. So? The fact that you can find gaskets in other machines does NOT explain how an outboard motor was built. I've heard stories that smelled like this before. But it was "Creation Scientists" telling me that the amount of dust on the moon proved it had been created recently, or that the rate of decay of radio isotopes might have changed over the last few thousand years. Or that dead animals in the flood would have naturally settled in the order we find in the geological collumn.

Up until the ID movement gained strength, evolutionist generally ignored Creation "Scientists". And with good reason. Most of these so called "Scientists" are bogus humbugs who know nothing about science and only embarrass themselves and Christianity when they speak before any crowd actually educated in Biology. When the evolutionists present facts, the "Creation Scientist" would present wild fantasies. And I mean WILD.

NOW, it's all reversed. The attacks on Behe's work sound JUST LIKE Creation Scientists to me. Perhaps life came to earth on a comet, already complex! Perhaps all the parts needed for a Cilium already existed in other parts of the cell and just came together in the right order by good luck? Or my favorite, "well, it obviously DID evolve, so it obviously CAN" (Yes, that HAS been presented as an argument). You can use a mouse trap spring as a tie clip, so that proves Behe wrong! Complex molecules simply "appear" or "arrive". Systems consisting of dozens of intricate interacting parts are assumed to have spontaneously organized themselves, despite the fact that we can NOT show any signs of such self-organization in the test tube, no matter how favorable we make the environment. It's pathetic to hear "Scientists" whining like this.

I rejected Creation Science (But not the Creator), when I realized that there was better "Science" in your average fantasy novel then in what I was reading under the title of "Creation Science". I came back into the fold when Behe made Creation Science scientific and turned the Evolutionists into fantasy novelists.

[Weyrman]

Natural Selection is the paring down of existing variables until only the optimum variables for the given situation are left.

Example:
A breed (assume purebreds)of cat having both long and short haired types moves from a hot climate into a very cold climate. By natural selection over time only long haired cats survive to breed with other long haired cats until the short haired variety no longer occurs. The cat is now optimumly suitable for its environment. But if the the cats are now forced to move back into much warmer climates, short haired varieties will not naturally occur as the genetics for it has been bred out.

This is natural selection, the cat has not evolved to suit its environment. That would need the build up of the correct genetic material by totally random mutations within a few generations in order for the cat species to survive at all. it's only chance would be to breed with other short haired cat breeds in order to reintroduce the short haired variety. They have not created new material, just regained that which was last and have also ceased to be a purebred race.

[Weyrman]

I actually get the Creation Science magazine and notice that each article notes the author's qualifications and often issuing university, often list employment history and any comments about any published ducument is meticulously footnoted for your own cross referencing.

[Kilarin]

They have not created new material

Cosmic rays and copying errors.
No really. The genetic code is just like a computer program. If you make random changes to it, the odds of the program still working are pretty small. BUT, occasionally, the random change will create new code that still works, and rarer still, you will get changes that actually improve the program in some way.
Cosmic rays and copying errors (among other causes) make random changes to the genetic code all the time. While "New material" should certainly be rare, but it is by no means intrensically impossible.
IF it can happen one mutation at a time, with each mutation having an advantage, change in the genetic code IS possible. This does NOT neccesarily imply that there is no Creator. From a philosophical point of view, you could even say that Evolution was designed into the very structure and nature of the genetic code.

each article notes the author's qualifications and often issuing university,

Like I said, there ARE exceptions, I have had the privilege of knowing some excellent scientist who happened to be Creationists. But they are the exception, not the rule. And just being a scientist does not mean you aren't arguing philosophy instead of science. Some very excellent scientist are foaming at the mouth about Behe and babbling nonsense because they happen to also be Naturalists and the philosophical implications of Behe's (and Dembski's) work outrages them.