DescentBB

Palzon wrote:next we'll be having to teach astrology and the reading of tea leaves as science.

Also, A statement like that doesnt seem to hold much weight given it isnt on context with that i said,

I.E Saying that IF creation is treated as a myth simply on the fact that science is unable to verify whether its true by it's standards,

Then schools should NOT be teaching evolution at all or at least they be teaching it in scientific philosophical seminars where people understand fully that this and all other unproven theories are NOT fact or correct but in testing.

Behemoth wrote:

Palzon wrote:

Behemoth wrote:

Bet51987 wrote:The question is not whether you believe in a god or not, the question is whether Creationism and Intelligent design should be considered science....and taught in schools along side evolution.

That is what its all about...

Bettina

If evolution is treated and teached as factually based curriculum, The so should creation.

and by the way...

behemoth, what you are suggesting is tantamount to affirmative action for science. not a real good idea, fella. next we'll be having to teach astrology and the reading of tea leaves as science.

a scientific theory is pursued because it is productive scientifically. it's not taught as fact but as theory. the accepted theory is the one that proves to be better than other competing theories. that doesn't mean the theory is accepted as true.

Behemoth wrote:Keep in mind these were just the ideas of men who lived not long ago, While the idea of creation has lasted well and alive through MANY and i repeat MANY CULTURES, not just within this century.

Your point here suggests to me that you are mistaking what the scientific method involves. There is no validity to induction by repetition as Hume showed. Science does not work that way at all. Science is not about observation, it is about critical testing that could refute our theory.

I'm not worried about scientific methods or anything of that nature, What I'm trying to get accros the board is the truth .. And a theory is just that until you prove it correct which Science has failed to do as of yet.

I'm not going to keep arguing over this as i said what you believe is what you believe regardless of whether its truth or not.

science does not ever prove facts, nor does it aim to prove them. the scientist accepts that we cannot ever prove with certainty what is true. this is what you misunderstand.

Palzon wrote:

Behemoth wrote:

Palzon wrote:

Behemoth wrote:

Bet51987 wrote:The question is not whether you believe in a god or not, the question is whether Creationism and Intelligent design should be considered science....and taught in schools along side evolution.

That is what its all about...

Bettina

If evolution is treated and teached as factually based curriculum, The so should creation.

and by the way...

behemoth, what you are suggesting is tantamount to affirmative action for science. not a real good idea, fella. next we'll be having to teach astrology and the reading of tea leaves as science.

a scientific theory is pursued because it is productive scientifically. it's not taught as fact but as theory. the accepted theory is the one that proves to be better than other competing theories. that doesn't mean the theory is accepted as true.

Behemoth wrote:Keep in mind these were just the ideas of men who lived not long ago, While the idea of creation has lasted well and alive through MANY and i repeat MANY CULTURES, not just within this century.

Your point here suggests to me that you are mistaking what the scientific method involves. There is no validity to induction by repetition as Hume showed. Science does not work that way at all. Science is not about observation, it is about critical testing that could refute our theory.

I'm not worried about scientific methods or anything of that nature, What I'm trying to get accros the board is the truth .. And a theory is just that until you prove it correct which Science has failed to do as of yet.

I'm not going to keep arguing over this as i said what you believe is what you believe regardless of whether its truth or not.

science does not ever prove facts, nor does it aim to prove them. the scientist accepts that we cannot ever prove with certainty what is true. this is what you misunderstand.

That was very naive and uninformed, as far as i remember, science's main goal IS to prove something and/or get down to how it works/operates correct me if i'm wrong?

Please take the time to delete stuff you're not actually responding to. You don't need to quote a whole post if you're only responding to one sentence.

Here's how to do it right:

Behemoth wrote:as far as i remember, science's main goal IS to prove something and/or get down to how it works/operates correct me if i'm wrong?

Science's main goal is to make observations and produce trustworthy hypotheses through extensive testing. There is no "proof" involved. There is only "more certain" and "less certain". Every experiment and every observation can strengthen or weaken a given theory, and the stronger a theory is shown to be the more likely it is to ultimately be true. (Some might say that, once a theory has been tested to a certain degree, it has been proven true. But then, what of theories like Newtonian gravity? The flaws in the theory couldn't be detected until very recently because we didn't have the technology.)

Consider yourself corrected.

Lothar wrote:There is only "more certain" and "less certain".

Not really helping me or anyone else thats coming to me for information on this subject needs or desires a definite answer.

Lothar wrote:and the stronger a theory is shown to be the more likely it is to ultimately be true.

I could go on and on about how this still is fallable in principle just because the way you are stating this is on a general base, such as the more hands that are raised on one thing make it so.

If science isnt supposed to be proving things right or wrong true or not true, Then why are people treating unproven things as fact?

As i stated earlier if you can neither prove creation or evolution then you need to treat evolution with as much respect as you do creation either as an idea, or as co-existing yet different ideas.

Behemoth wrote:If science isnt supposed to be proving things right or wrong true or not true, Then why are people treating unproven things as fact?

Because what science calls a "theory", the ordinary person would call a fact.

As has been mentioned previously, look at Newtonian Gravity. Most people would say it was a FACT. You drop something, it falls down, we can prove it, over and over, how can you deny it? And yet, Science still calls it a Theory. And with good reason, because we've already proven that Newtonian gravity fails where Einsteinian relativity takes over.

And beyond that, there ARE alternate ways of explaining the facts. For a silly example, you can explain many gravitational effects as simple inertia if you assume that everything in the universe is expanding at a uniform rate. But for a more serious one, scientist are still debating exactly what gravity is and how to unite the quantum and relativistic theories. Our understanding of the very nature of Gravity may change drastically in the near future. None of which denys that when you drop something, it still falls down.

That is the kind of truth that science deals with. There is always more to learn. And even after we've learned that Newtonian gravity is wrong, we still use it because it works, and works quite well, as a method for explaining almost everything.

What I'm trying to get at is that when the opponents of Naturalism go around saying "Evolution is just a Theory", they aren't really helping the cause of ID (or creationisim). It hits all of the scientist buttons. They immediatly throw the rest of your arguments into the crank file because from their perspective, it sounds like you don't understand what they are talking about.

The ID crowd (and actually, a bunch of other people who aren't interested in ID at all) are frustrated that the Scientific community is VERY resistant to any questions about the theory of Evolution by Natural Selection. It's a dogmatic position that they have been driven to because of their frustration with the nonsense that has been thrown at them by Creation Scientists for so long. AND, it's an unscientific position. EVERY theory should be open to questioning, no matter how well established it seems to be. (case in point, gravity).

But when opening up the community to questions about this paradigm, we should avoid saying "Evolution is just a theory". It's not communicating what we want to communicate to the scientific community. To them it means "I'm ignorant about science". Something along the lines of "We must be allowed to question the assumptions of Neo-Darwinisim and explore the alternatives in an open and scientific process" communicates what we are trying to say much better.

Kilarin

Thank You kilarin You're point was very well made.

It's not the fact that i'm calling evolution a theory but i want to try to understand why people treat both UNPROVEN things differently, You gave a good example but its easy to prove we actually have some sort of "gravity" if thats what you wish to call it.

A natural selection idea seemed like a good explanation for a few things but to me it left alot of things out, such as how did the energy to start the "big bang" even come from? if from other universes then where did they come from?

I suppose many of my questions could or couldnt be answered promptly but all i'm trying to do is figure stuff out.

Behemoth wrote:It's not the fact that i'm calling evolution a theory but i want to try to understand why people treat both UNPROVEN things differently...

(Lothar, am i doing this right?)

Simple. Evolution is treated differently from Creationism for only one reason, falsifiability/testability. Just because Creationism is not testable, does not mean that it is untrue. It only means that it is not science, not scientific "knowledge". Hence, my claim that ID/Creationism belongs in philosphy class and not science class. BTW, a great many secular philosphies would also fall into the category of philosophy as opposed to science. These should also not be part of the science curriculum.

Of course, it could happen in the future that we develop ways of testing Intelligent design or creationism in some other form. Also, some new test or critical evidence could be discovered that would create a need to ammend, or discard Evolutionary theory.

One last note, as I have said elsewhere recently, ID may be worthy of mention in the science class for two reasons: 1. more research may be warranted to see if the idea is at all scientifically fruitful. 2. it may be relevant as far as a historical/social context for understanding evolutionary theory and it's place (as the best theory we currently have). But teaching it as science is not warranted or appropriate.

Behemoth wrote:It's not the fact that i'm calling evolution a theory but i want to try to understand why people treat both UNPROVEN things differently, You gave a good example but its easy to prove we actually have some sort of "gravity" if thats what you wish to call it.

Though strictly unproven, there is yet a mountain of evidence that life on the planet has evolved over time. There is no evidence, to my knowledge, of creation in the biological record. The sense in which people say that evolution is a "fact" is that evolution is simply the observation from the historical record that living things have descended with modification. Evolution means "descent with modification". How the evolution occured, natural selection, genetic drift, etc. are the subjects of theories about evolution. I don't know how you would construct a scientific theory around the idea of creation, unless it was something you could observe, or unless there was no evidence to support another line of inquiry. Yet we do have such evidence. In science, we have to deal with it.

A natural selection idea seemed like a good explanation for a few things but to me it left alot of things out, such as how did the energy to start the "big bang" even come from? if from other universes then where did they come from?

I wouldn't confuse theories of biological evolution with ideas of the origin of the universe or even abiogenesis. Natural selection and other biological concepts of evolution are independent of these other theories. Natural selection, for example, needs something to select from before it begins to act.

I suppose many of my questions could or couldnt be answered promptly but all i'm trying to do is figure stuff out.

Very well said. As are we all.

Behemoth wrote:If evolution is treated and teached as factually based curriculum, The so should creation.

Um, why? Thats just going to kick up a major shitstorm because not everyone reads the same holy book. I say leave science to the schools and leave theology to your pastor.

MD-2389 wrote:I say leave science to the schools and leave theology to your pastor.

Sums up my opinion. Lothar, do you think schools should teach only Christian ideas or all religious implications? Does intelligent design encompass all religions or only a blessed few?

Zuruck wrote:Does intelligent design encompass all religions or only a blessed few?

ID doesn't encompass any religion at all. The philosophical implications of a theory, whether that theory be Natural Selection or ID, are seperate from the truth or falsity of the theory.

ID is an attempt to detect design by intelligent agents. If, as the ID proponents suggest, ID is found in the very structure of life, the social and religious implications can be argued by philosophers and theologians from all camps. The Naturalist may go with the Clark explanation that intelligent aliens designed life on earth.

Let's pick a non ID example to try and make this clearer. Suppose that a scientist is exploring the theory that the Egyptians used anti-gravity machines to build the pyramids. (Yeah, it's a silly example, but a real one).

Now then, suppose this scientist actually found good hard evidence that his theory was true. What would happen? People would start arguing about what it MEANT. Did aliens give the egyptians anti-gravity machines? Were the egyptians left overs from a more technologically advanced society? Did God, Angles, or Demons give them anti-gravity machines? How did we lose that tech? AND, many people will declare that the theory can NOT be true because they don't like the philosophical implications of the theory.

All of which will have absolutely nothing to do with whether or not there was good evidence the egyptians had anti-gravity machines. Was there evidence? or was there not? THAT is the question.

THAT is the situation we are dealing with regarding Natural Selection and ID. The creationists want to deny Natural Selection no matter what the evidence is, because they don't like the implications. The Naturalists want to deny that ID is even a science, because they don't like the implications. The implications have nothing to do with the evidence for or against the theory.

Kilarin

Zuruck wrote:Lothar, do you think schools should teach only Christian ideas or all religious implications?

I haven't said schools should teach any Christian ideas. I also haven't said schools should teach ID.

Perhaps you should read before you assume things.

[EDIT]

here, I'll even make it easy for you to see what I've said on the subject:

Lothar wrote:As for the question of whether ID belongs in the science classroom: Not in the form I'm talking about (the abstract.) It's not developed well enough to be taught to anyone yet -- it's still a work in progress. I honestly don't know enough about the ID-origins position to be able to say whether or not there's enough valid information there for it to be brought into the public school curriculum, but I certainly won't be pushing for it.

[/EDIT]

Does intelligent design encompass all religions or only a blessed few?

In the form I've talked about ID, it encompases any philosophy that involves intelligent agents with the power to design things. I'm pretty sure most of us believe in some sort of intelligence, though not all of us show it very often :P

In the form the Kansas school board was talking about it, it was restricted to religions that have extremely powerful god(s). You'll notice my first post in this thread said it was good for KU to do what they did.

I ask because I really don't know that much about ID. How is the curriculum taught if there is no backing?

Zuruck wrote:I ask because I really don't know that much about ID. How is the curriculum taught if there is no backing?

It can be taught only one way. By claiming that some things are too complex to have happened by chance. Using the eye, as an example, and then show that science has an "inadequate" explanation for it. Then they would simply say that it "must" have been intellegently designed. Thats it....find all of the other complicated subnets, insert ID, and Its endless after that.

ID'ers have no proof, or evidence to support there theory but they don't need one. All they need is a powerful tool and the mythology experts like Dembski found the way......in fact, there one and only tool.....Politics.

Conservative christians, a weak US president, and other political figures in religious states help them hammer their cause through...Politics and money, because ID is just a hypothesis that would fail miserably if left to its own credibility.

Bettina

Bet51987 wrote: ID'ers have no proof, or evidence to support there theory but they don't need one. All they need is a powerful tool and the mythology experts like Dembski found the way......in fact, there one and only tool.....Politics.

Give me real proof that your "theology" is any more true then mine, And not a bunch of shadow-like excuses on how this changed form to this, or how cells can multiply with other cells.

Bet51987 wrote: because ID is just a hypothesis that would fail miserably if left to its own credibility.

That's why it's been around in all civilizations since civilization started, WAY before the U.S or evolution came around...

Behemoth wrote: Give me real proof that your "theology" is any more true then mine, And not a bunch of shadow-like excuses on how this changed form to this, or how cells can multiply with other cells

I could start with viruses that when attacked, try countless other mutations until one arrives that is resistant to what is trying to kill them...

Behemoth wrote: That's why it's been around in all civilizations since civilization started, WAY before the U.S or evolution came around...

Then my question to you is this. Since its been around that long, what evidence in all those millenia has it come up with to support itself.?

Bettina

Bet51987 wrote:ID'ers have no proof, or evidence to support there theory but they don't need one.

Ok, why is the burden of proof necesarrily on ID? Does natural selection not have to prove that it can evolve irreducibly complex structures?

The theory of Evolution by Natural Selection has certainly piled up a lot of Evidence in it's favor, but only for changes that can happen where each step has an advantage over the previous. Your virus example is a good one. The virus mutates, lots and lots of random changes. If a change happens to have an advantage, then it reproduces more rapidly than the others. And, of course, mutation builds upon mutation over time. This is Natural Selection. It's intuitive, it's backed up by lots and lots of evidence.

What Natural Selection does NOT have any evidence for is the ability create irreducibly complex structures. If you can't build a structure one step at a time, with each step having an advantage over the previous one, then Natural Selection can't select for it. That isn't a new argument, it's pretty much the definition of Natural Selection.

So, we come to the eye, it's very complicated, could it have evolved? Well, at the HIGH level, Darwin comes up with an unlikely, but possible path to the eye. So, at that level at least, its within the realm of possibilities for Natural Selection. Natural Selection CAN build up very complicated structures, as long as they are not IRREDUCIBLY complex.

Saying that ID is just an argument from ignorance is a straw man. And it can be thrown right back at the Naturalists. The Naturalists say that they can't explain how a Flagellum could have evolved, but they know it did anyway. <sigh>

Honestly, ID doesn't say that something can't have evolved because we don't understand it. It's exactly the opposite. ID says that once we REALLY understand some structures, right down at the root level, we realize that they violate the requirements for Natural Selection.

What kind of "Proof" do you want that a structure is irreducibly complex? Science must be falsifiable to be science. So what would we have to find that would be sufficient evidence to meet Darwin's criteria for violating Natural Selection?

"If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed, which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down". -Darwin, Origin of Species-

Kilarin

Kilarin wrote:What Natural Selection does NOT have any evidence for is the ability create irreducibly complex structures.

Irreducible complexity (IC) takes Darwin's statement and flips it around, hoping nobody notices that the flipped version is not the same. Darwin said systems must be able to be formed by "numerous, successive, slight modifications". IC instead speaks about whether it's possible to take apart a system piece by piece. In other words, IC assumes that every piece added along the way is still present in the current form. Why should we make that assumption? Why couldn't there have been more pieces, some of which were necessary at certain stages but later became superfluous and were removed through natural selection?

There's no reason to suppose that natural selection could not build systems piece-by-piece that would later have some parts removed, leaving a system that is irreducibly complex. Further, natural selection has been observed to be able to create irreducibly complex systems. More detail, including links to examples, can be found at the Don Lindsay Archive.

Mercury wrote:Irreducible complexity (IC) takes Darwin's statement and flips it around, hoping nobody notices that the flipped version is not the same. Darwin said systems must be able to be formed by "numerous, successive, slight modifications". IC instead speaks about whether it's possible to take apart a system piece by piece. In other words, IC assumes that every piece added along the way is still present in the current form.

That was a very enlightening observation! Thanks a lot!

Mercury wrote:IC assumes that every piece added along the way is still present in the current form.

No, IC says that if all parts are required FOR THE STRUCTURES BASIC FUNCTION, then you can't take any away. A Flagellum needs multiple complicated parts before it can perform it's basic function. A few of those parts do exist in other parts of the cell, but even if all of the parts were pre-existing, chance alone isn't adequate to assemble them into a flagellum. You need Natural Selection to KEEP together partial assemblies, and then building upon them. But the partial assemblies don't HAVE any advantage here, they don't work at all.

On to Don Lindsay's counter examples. What Lindsay does is set up systems that are obviously reducibly complex, and then prove that they are reducibly complex. Not exactly a big deal. Take his Bola spider example. It's quite clear that a spider can catch a moth using only parts of this system. There is nothing IC about it, and I certainly hope no respected ID scientist ever claimed otherwise.

McDonalds reducibly complex moustrap is MUCH more interesting. The other reducible mousetrap example is more along the lines of what you usually see. Silly nonsense that sounds more like the creationist claiming the decay rate of radioactive isotopes may have changed over time than real scientist attempting to make cogent arguments. McDonalds is better than most. But I still have problems with some of the steps.
Step 1: I'm not certain step one would actually catch any mice, but lets just grant him that.
Step 2: adding the coil, seems to be much more of a disadvantage than an advantage. The trap was already weak enough that most (if not all) mice could escape, even if they did happen to trigger it. Now we just made it weaker. There isn't much advantage to an extended lifespan of a trap that doesn't catch anything. The coil is only there because it's needed several steps later. I have a hard time granting precognition to Natural Selection this way.
Step 4: is quite a jump, you have to add several mutations at once, you need the change in the trigger mechanisim, a rotation of the trap, and the staples. McDonald claims the staples are optional at this point, but they aren't. Previous to this step, the trap was supposedly catching mice by pinning them between the two sides of the spring wire. Now the trap is using one side of that wire as a hammer to smash the mouse against the floor. And if that wire is not attached to the floor, the end result will be the spring wire flying across the room and a frightened but unharmed mouse. This step LOOKS like a very simple change from the previous step, but once you look closely you see that it's almost a completly different trap.

And so on. VERY interesting, the best attempt yet, but it still falls short in my opinion. Especially considering how difficult it is to catch a mouse with a completly working and assembled snap moustrap.

Kilarin

Kilarin wrote:No, IC says that if all parts are required FOR THE STRUCTURES BASIC FUNCTION, then you can't take any away. A Flagellum needs multiple complicated parts before it can perform it's basic function. A few of those parts do exist in other parts of the cell, but even if all of the parts were pre-existing, chance alone isn't adequate to assemble them into a flagellum. You need Natural Selection to KEEP together partial assemblies, and then building upon them. But the partial assemblies don't HAVE any advantage here, they don't work at all.

As far as I understood Mercury, the argument is that you don't know if the the Flagellum had more parts during its evolution then it has today. These additional parts could have taken over when one of its (now existing) parts failed. In other words, the machinery you see now might be IC, but it might not have been during its prior evolution. Making it IC was, so to say, the last step in its evolution, where everything unneeded was eliminated.

By the way, there are now more and more accounts that can explain how the flagellum evolved (just google 'evolution' and 'flagellum'). The most interesting one (from my non-biologist perspective) is this one by Ian Musgrave. He makes the argument that the flagellum is only IC when seen from one particular perspective, this is when you make specific assumptions about what its function might be:

The eubacterial flagellar system is also interesting as it shows how misleading "design" thinking is. In this case what is defined as IC depends on our point of view. When viewed as a motile stucture, the flagella is IC. Remove the motor, it stops functioning, remove the hook (universal joint) it stops functioning, remove the fliament it ... well, it still works sort of . Viewing the flagellum as a motor, and an IC motor at that, provides no insights into the origin or functioning of this structure.

But view it as a secretory structure, it is NOT IC, remove the filament and it still works, remove the hook and it still works, remove the motor and it still works, not as well as with the motor, but it still works.

Thus, if the flagella is a secretory system that has been co-opted for a motile function (while still retaining some of it's secretory function), then the ICness of the system is in the mind of the beholder, and a clear path for it's evolution is opened up.

What kills ID for me is that looking around, the design of a lot of things is pretty shoddy. Especially us 'god created' humans. We are barely adapted to walking upright, over 60% of us require glasses, and over 60% are fat pigs. Who were we designed by, a 5th graders with a fetish for McDonalds?

That and people who believe in ID also believe the Earth is 6k (10k?) years old. Just..wow..talk about lack of reasoning!

I think the only time a god can be introduced into nature is before the big bang.

Testiculese wrote:That and people who believe in ID also believe the Earth is 6k (10k?) years old. Just..wow..talk about lack of reasoning!

It appears at least one of the people participating in this thread ALSO doesn't know how to read to see what those he's arguing against actually claim.

Or possibly he knows how to read but prefers to debate straw men.

Either way... talk about lack of reasoning!

Yeah, Pandora explained what I meant about IC.

A few comments on John McDonald's reducibly complex mousetrap:

Kilarin wrote:Step 2: adding the coil, seems to be much more of a disadvantage than an advantage. The trap was already weak enough that most (if not all) mice could escape, even if they did happen to trigger it. Now we just made it weaker. There isn't much advantage to an extended lifespan of a trap that doesn't catch anything. The coil is only there because it's needed several steps later. I have a hard time granting precognition to Natural Selection this way.

If that's a problem, simply add a step between 1 and 2: the wire thickens or otherwise strengthens. By the time the spring variation emerges, the wire is thick enough that both traps with and without the spring have enough force to adequately trap mice, but the traps without are slightly stronger for their first few catches.

Now, why would natural selection favour the weaker trap? It has nothing to do with precognition. The spring allows the trap to last longer without wearing out. Maybe that means those spring traps are still spry enough to get busy with other traps even after they've caught dozens of mice. By contrast, the no-spring traps are stronger for the first two catches, then about equal to the spring traps for the next two, and after that they're soon worn out, unable to catch mice, and also unable to catch the node of any nearby curvaceous lengths of wire. So, while the spring traps have dozens of offspring over their long lifetime, the non-spring traps only have a few. Over time, a mutation in one of the many spring traps may lead to even thicker wire, and this is soon passed on due to its obvious benefit, allowing the spring traps to overcome their initial slight disadvantage to the other traps while maintaining their longevity.

This assumes there are enough mice in the environment that even the slightly weaker spring traps survive long enough for their staying power to become an advantage. If resources were scarce, it's quite plausible that the spring trap variation would never take hold. Conversely, if resources were extremely plentiful, then variations that strengthened the traps past a certain point may not matter, and favourable mutations might deal with things like attracting mates or having more mousetrap offspring. (And this demonstrates a limit of these analogies. Just looking at the incremental changes only shows us half of the picture: the other half is the environment which determines how beneficial a change may be.)

So, your critique is based on only considering fitness without also considering reproductive life and number of offspring. Of course, when dealing with mousetraps it's hard to fault you for overlooking that. But, if this mousetrap analogy is going to be stretched to mirror natural selection, then mousetrap sex can't be ignored.

I won't go in detail about the other steps you disputed. The point is that while a spring mousetrap looks irreducibly complex, appearances can be deceiving. Even if you think some of the jumps in McDonald's traps are too big, he still provided 14 intermediates leading up to the modern snap mousetrap, which is 14 more than should exist if the final form is irreducibly complex. These flaws in Behe's mousetrap analogy are systemic, also applying to more technical examples where he claims that certain molecular machines cannot be built incrementally with selectable intermediates.

Kilarin wrote: Ok, why is the burden of proof necesarrily on ID?

Because ID is the one doing the challenging.
(Sorry for the late reply, I'm having a lot of trouble logging in. It waits a long time then hangs.)


P.S. Mercury, Pandora, Kilarin. Thanks for the great posts. I've learned a lot from those.

Bettina

Mercury,

From John McDonald's web page link in Mercury's last post wrote:The mousetrap illustrates one of the fundamental flaws in the intelligent design argument: the fact that one person can't imagine something doesn't mean it is impossible, it may just mean that the person has a limited imagination.

Mercury wrote:I won't go in detail about the other steps you disputed. The point is that while a spring mousetrap looks irreducibly complex, appearances can be deceiving. Even if you think some of the jumps in McDonald's traps are too big, he still provided 14 intermediates leading up to the modern snap mousetrap, which is 14 more than should exist if the final form is irreducibly complex. These flaws in Behe's mousetrap analogy are systemic, also applying to more technical examples where he claims that certain molecular machines cannot be built incrementally with selectable intermediates.

If all of the so-called intermediate forms for McDonald's mousetrap evolution can actually function as such, then why weren't there any mousetraps of those designs (or anything remotely similar) ever marketed? The answer is simple: because none of them work! His poorly-designed mousetraps still required an intelligent agent to create them. Furthermore, even the components used in his mousetraps required an intelligent agent for their origin. This is called "begging the question." He does nothing to refute Behe's anaology.

McDonald's arguments demonstrate one of the fundamental flaws of evolutionary reasoning: Just because someone has the "imagination" to come up with a story of how something might have come about, it does not follow that it is possible it could actually happen that way.

I personally think ID is not useful at all, at least in the sense of increasing the understanding of anything... It feels to me like a way of getting out of actually explaining something. Saying something was 'created' gives no helpful information, and doesn't even try to. Evolution does have faults, but at least you can prove something about it. With ID, there's not even any point. Any anomaly will just get explained away as a "higher being's work," which is no explanation at all.

To me, ID seems senseless. The only particular benefits it has is in the minds of the more fundamental Christians (IDK about there being nonchristians involved in ID). I'm even Catholic and I can't understand why anyone would bother with it... AFAIK, God gave people minds that can reason to be used, not put up on the shelf in favor of whatever your particular dogma is.

"Earth is the center of the Universe." Mmmhmm. Looks like the Pope was wrong. Some might take that as an example that anyone can be wrong (in particular those who base their opinion on what is or amounts to religion), but that's just me.

It doesn't matter if ID is "the truth" or not. What matters is if you can explain and predict anything testable with it. So far, ID has not suceeded at all, and by its nature cannot. Evolution has, at least to a degree. Such a difficult choice.

The fact is, ID is irrelevent to understanding. It simply doesn't matter if it's the truth, and that's the point that should be argued, not the details.

Samuel Dravis wrote:Evolution does have faults, but at least you can prove something about it. With ID, there's not even any point. Any anomaly will just get explained away as a "higher being's work," which is no explanation at all.

Your simple explanation is correct and is exactly my point. You said it all and don't let anyone brainwash you into thinking otherwise.

I believe as science advances the "unsolved areas" (ID to some) will get solved scientifically thru evidence. Science always advances...Where will ID go then...

Bettina

Bet51987 wrote:I believe as science advances the "unsolved areas" (ID to some) will get solved scientifically thru evidence. Science always advances...Where will ID go then...

Just note that I'm not saying that ID is wrong, per se; I'm saying that it's pointless to argue for or against it because ID is little more than a thought experiment. It may be correct. No one knows for sure. The only sure thing is that ID is, in a practical sense, useless.

Mercury wrote:mousetrap sex can't be ignored.

HA!

Mercury wrote:Even if you think some of the jumps in McDonald's traps are too big, he still provided 14 intermediates leading up to the modern snap mousetrap, which is 14 more than should exist if the final form is irreducibly complex.

It is quite an achievement. Not good enough to prove that a snap trap is reducible, but much better than I thought could be done. But he shouldn't be wasting his time on the mousetrap. You can only stretch the analogy so far (as your mousetrap sex comment pointed out so well) And even if he eventually did succeed in proving a mousetrap was reducible, he wouldn't really have proven anything. At least *I* do not assume that 100% of structures that anyone identifies as IC are all actually IC. That kind of accuracy is almost NEVER true in ANY science. Proving the mousetrap was reducible would not prove the Flagellum was. Finding a counter example, even a real one within the cell, would certainly prove that that particular object could have evolved, but it wouldn't prove that all structures had. Which is also true in reverse. Proving that the Flagellum was IC and couldn't evolve, would NOT prove that no other structure had evolved.

One of ID's biggest weak points (And yes, I DO admit it has them) is that it doesn't have really good solid definitions for some of it's ideas yet. Irreversible Complexity being right at the top of that list. The idea is intuitive, but needs a more rigorous definition. That just proves that the science of ID is young and growing.

But it seems to me that the central question here still comes back to the falsifiability of ID and Naturalistic Evolution. ID CAN be falsified, for any particular structure, by proving that there WAS a gradual developmental path to that structures final form. Naturalistic Evolution should ALSO be falsifiable, for any particular structure, by proving there was NOT a gradual path to that structure.

McDonald has certainly made progress in the attempt to prove a mousetrap is reducible. I don't think he'll be able to fill in those final gaps, but then I didn't think he would be able to get as far as he has. So if he DOES surprise me and come up with a completely rational gradual path to the mousetrap, or much better yet, the Flagellum, I will concede that that structure is NOT IC and could have evolved completely naturlistically.

What evidence would the Naturalists accept that a structure was designed? Is there any evidence at all that would not be explained away as "An argument for Ignorance?" ID can be disproved by a positive result, thats much easier to achieve than the negative that Naturalistic Evolution requires.

In a nutshell, IS Naturalistic Evolution still falsifiable?

Betina wrote:P.S. Mercury, Pandora, Kilarin. Thanks for the great posts. I've learned a lot from those.

Thank you for being willing to listen!

Samuel Dravis wrote:The only sure thing is that ID is, in a practical sense, useless.

Why? It seems that you're working from the assumption that if we believe something was designed, we would quit studying it. Why? This is certainly not the attitude being taken by the scientist interested in ID. They are studying nature quite intensely looking for evidence of design. The Naturalist can simply dismiss the details about any structure with "It did evolve, so it MUST have evolved" (not that they all do), but the only way to prove something was designed is to understand it VERY well, down at the lowest level.

We already use the search for design in science every day. Cryptography, Forensics, and Archeology use it all the time. Why should biology be any different? Lets take a simple example. If a new airborne variety of ebola popped up and caused a devastating plague across america, you can bet that G. W. Bush would have biologists tearing through that gene sequence to determine if the plague had evolved naturally, or if it had been designed. USEFUL information there.

Which brings us to a more general application, if some micro biological structures were designed, and could not have evolved naturally, it will change the way we deal with diseases. Some things we should expect to pop up through mutations, other things we should expect to be impossible.

And finally, lets take the Arthur C. Clark theory to remove the religious implications that many find objectionable. If aliens took a hand in guiding the evolution of life on this planet, would you not think that finding proof of that was USEFUL information? It changes the whole way we view the universe, it changes lots of our basic assumptions. And far from stifling research, it would greatly increase research as more and more scientist attempted to learn everything they could about these aliens by studying the way they had tampered with us.

And to sum up, lets get out of the hypothetical and into reality. Behe's arguments about the Flagellum have spurred an INTENSE amount of research into that object, from both sides of the camp. I don't think that any rational person can deny that we know much more about the Flagellum and it's related structures now than we would have if Behe had never written his book and proposed his unusual theory.

Kilarin

Lothar, I wasn't pointing my statement at anyone on this board in particular. Well, maybe Stryker, since he thinks the Earth is only 6000 years old, and somehow ignores...dinosaurs.

I ommitted some things 'cause I got called away while I was posting..I also wanted to mention that since ID is so gung-ho in saying a god is responsible for the design of everything, then said god is also resposible for designing AIDS, E. Coli, Bird flu, Tuberculosis, New Jersey drivers, Lukemia, etc, etc, I could go on for hours about the crippling and horrific things on this planet. Created and released to us by the god. Do you agree?

Taking this aspect...ID to me means that the way religions are taught is incorrect, and if all you religious folk insist that your religion is taught correctly...then no 'loving god' would create such things to the people whom s/he loves so dearly, so ID is then garbage. Nature and your god don't mix well in religion, so if I have to choose, I choose nature.

( edit: I'm too rushed to make cohesive posts..I need internet at home again :/ )

Repo Man wrote:If all of the so-called intermediate forms for McDonald's mousetrap evolution can actually function as such, then why weren't there any mousetraps of those designs (or anything remotely similar) ever marketed? The answer is simple: because none of them work! His poorly-designed mousetraps still required an intelligent agent to create them. Furthermore, even the components used in his mousetraps required an intelligent agent for their origin. This is called "begging the question." He does nothing to refute Behe's anaology.

You're going way beyond Dr. Behe's analogy. It's not about marketing, and everyone, including Behe, is well aware of the fact that mousetraps are built by intelligent agents and don't naturally reproduce. Behe's claim was that unlike other types of mousetraps which could have a series of useful precursors, the snap mousetrap couldn't. That is the claim that McDonald's mousetraps showed to be wrong, and he also managed to do it in a way that corresponds more closely to natural selection than the transitions to other types of mousetraps that Behe himself proposed.

Just curious, but have you read Darwin's Black Box where Behe presents this argument?

Kilarin wrote:It is quite an achievement. Not good enough to prove that a snap trap is reducible, but much better than I thought could be done.

What is your definition of "reducible" that allows 14 reduced mousetraps in a progression leading to the snap mousetrap to not qualify? You can suggest that some of the steps are still to big, but they are all drastically smaller than what should be the case if the snap mousetrap is irreducibly complex.

But he shouldn't be wasting his time on the mousetrap.

Why not? Others have dealt handily with Behe's biochemical examples, though few can or care to follow Behe or his critics in those areas. The mousetrap remains a great analogy of irreducible complexity that non-experts can more easily understand, and so showing how stepwise processes can produce something that looks irreducibly complex helps to show why the foundation of Behe's argument isn't sound.

At least *I* do not assume that 100% of structures that anyone identifies as IC are all actually IC.

I agree. I don't see any scientifically rigorous definition of what is IC. As such, what a person considers IC seems to depend mainly on their intuition and imagination.

ID CAN be falsified, for any particular structure, by proving that there WAS a gradual developmental path to that structures final form. Naturalistic Evolution should ALSO be falsifiable, for any particular structure, by proving there was NOT a gradual path to that structure.

I think you're conflating ID and IC in a way that may get others on your case here. Just because something can be shown to not be IC doesn't mean it wasn't ID. Why would an intelligent designer only be responsible for designs that are IC? Also, I'm sure you're aware that proof is the domain of math and alcohol; science deals with evidence and falsification.

Anyway, the trouble is that you're expecting evolution to be falsified the same way a proposed IC structure is falsified. Evolution can be falsified other ways, but when it comes to finding a case where a gradual path cannot be imagined, that's pretty ambiguous and so far it hasn't happened. Evolution can be falsified by showing that something did not (not cannot) come about through simple changes. For instance, there's already a lot of evidence showing that sharks share ancestry with other fish while whales are more directly related to land mammals. Because that is already known from many independent fields, it would be problematic if sharks suddenly expressed uniquely mammalian traits. On the other hand, when further evidence of mammalian traits is found in whales, this further supports (but never proves) evolution and common descent.

Evolution also can't prove that every breed of dog came about through natural processes guided by human breeders. How could we prove that there's no gradual path leading back from a poodle to a wolf-like ancestor? In fact, it's pretty easy to see a plausible path, with DNA and other evidence to back it up, even though we can't be entirely certain about each step of the way. How can we absolutely rule out any supernatural involvement by an intelligent agent in the emergence of poodles? Especially when we're dealing with processes that took far longer than a human lifespan, it's quite likely that there will be a lot of uncertainty. That doesn't diminish what we do know. The evidence that poodles and wolves are related doesn't go away just because we don't have an exact lineage.

McDonald has certainly made progress in the attempt to prove a mousetrap is reducible. I don't think he'll be able to fill in those final gaps, but then I didn't think he would be able to get as far as he has.

Of course he won't. He started with one gap between nothing and a modern snap mousetrap. Now he has 15 gaps between all his transitions! All the intermediates he proposes just make more "missing links". [/sarcasm]

Seriously, I don't see why you are still holding on to the snap mousetrap as IC. At best, you could argue that some components within McDonald's more rudimentary traps are IC.

Kilarin wrote:Why? It seems that you're working from the assumption that if we believe something was designed, we would quit studying it. Why? This is certainly not the attitude being taken by the scientist interested in ID. They are studying nature quite intensely looking for evidence of design. The Naturalist can simply dismiss the details about any structure with "It did evolve, so it MUST have evolved" (not that they all do), but the only way to prove something was designed is to understand it VERY well, down at the lowest level.

I fail to see how whether something is designed or not changes the object in any way. Research into the same thing would have identical results if you thought it was designed or not (provided no bias was involved). The only thing that would change is your saying it was made by someone. Great.

Also, even understanding something down to the 'lowest level,' as you say, would not prove that something was designed or not, as things can be designed badly. Just take a look at some of the inventions that try to do the same thing that examples of already exist in nature, oftentimes with incredible efficiency compared to our solutions. It wouldn't prove your object wasn't designed either. Perhaps the likelihood of it being designed would be changed, but there is no certainty.

'Evidence' of design does not mean something was in fact designed. Hmm.. Somebody's face in a pancake on Ebay anyone? People see 'design' when there is none all the time. I could infer intelligent design from that pancake.

So...tell me again why ID is useful?

We already use the search for design in science every day. Cryptography, Forensics, and Archeology use it all the time. Why should biology be any different? Lets take a simple example. If a new airborne variety of ebola popped up and caused a devastating plague across america, you can bet that G. W. Bush would have biologists tearing through that gene sequence to determine if the plague had evolved naturally, or if it had been designed. USEFUL information there.

Useful because it has practical application. You're trying to discover if God did it? You already know he did! You don't need to find that out. With genetically modified plague it is reasonable to assume that it could have been made by groups attacking someone because of the level of current technology. You know, I could look at that particular plague and say "God/aliens/terrorists/random geneticist in ireland could have done it!" and you know what? I could be right. The thing I don't see is how that description (at least the God/unknown all powerful alien part) is useful or necessary in defeating such a plague. I doubt you'd be able to bring those two into a court of law to stand trial.

Which brings us to a more general application, if some micro biological structures were designed, and could not have evolved naturally, it will change the way we deal with diseases. Some things we should expect to pop up through mutations, other things we should expect to be impossible.

We do the best we can with the available information, and prepare ourselves accordingly. If something is impossible to predict, we cannot predict it, end of story. "Someone could make something completely different from anything we've seen previously and it might kill us all." Interesting. ID helps us deal with this how?

And finally, lets take the Arthur C. Clark theory to remove the religious implications that many find objectionable. If aliens took a hand in guiding the evolution of life on this planet, would you not think that finding proof of that was USEFUL information? It changes the whole way we view the universe, it changes lots of our basic assumptions. And far from stifling research, it would greatly increase research as more and more scientist attempted to learn everything they could about these aliens by studying the way they had tampered with us.

I agree, that could be good information, but ID helps us here how? We would have come across the same information and come to the same conclusions without it. Only this time there would be concrete proof for it. I'd be willing to listen then. Until that time, however, there's very little point.

And to sum up, lets get out of the hypothetical and into reality. Behe's arguments about the Flagellum have spurred an INTENSE amount of research into that object, from both sides of the camp. I don't think that any rational person can deny that we know much more about the Flagellum and it's related structures now than we would have if Behe had never written his book and proposed his unusual theory.

So an argument spurs research. This is new? It could have been about anything else. ID is not special, and all that research, so far, has not done much to help its cause.

Behe was not being 'unusual' either. People have believed something/someone made the world for quite a while. Trying to describe that scientifically is not particularly innovative...

Mercury wrote:Others have dealt handily with Behe's biochemical examples, though few can or care to follow Behe or his critics in those areas.

Actually, I DO try to follow them as best I can, and I attempt to keep an open mind while doing so. Most of the arguments have been unconvincing to me, as I have already covered in previous posts. McDonalds mousetrap is the most impressive so far and, despite it's obvious flaws, does deserve serious thought and consideration, which I am giving it.

Mercury wrote:I think you're conflating ID and IC in a way that may get others on your case here. Just because something can be shown to not be IC doesn't mean it wasn't ID. Why would an intelligent designer only be responsible for designs that are IC?

You are absolutely correct. Thank you for pointing that out.

Mercury wrote:but when it comes to finding a case where a gradual path cannot be imagined, that's pretty ambiguous and so far it hasn't happened.

I'll have to disagree with you there, but I conceed that a more rigorous criteria for IC is needed.

Samuel Dravis wrote:You're trying to discover if God did it?

No, actually, we are trying to discover if ANYONE did it. The "who" is not really a part of the question that ID can answer.

Samuel Dravis wrote:

Kilarin wrote:If aliens took a hand in guiding the evolution of life on this planet, would you not think that finding proof of that was USEFUL information?

I agree, that could be good information, but ID helps us here how? We would have come across the same information and come to the same conclusions without it.

Perhaps we are dealing with a difference of opinion on exactly what ID is. ID is the search for design. If we discovered evidence within the structure of cells that aliens had tinkered with our DNA, that would be ID. If you are saying that the only concrete proof would be meeting the aliens or finding an artifact I will have to disagree. *I* would certainly not be convinced just because Zaphod Beeblebrox showed up and claimed he designed me. Finding his initials carved in my brain, now THAT would be a different matter.

Testiculese wrote:no 'loving god' would create such things to the people whom s/he loves so dearly, so ID is then garbage.

Two points here.

1: From a Christian perspective, this is a complete non issue. According to Christian Theology the world wasn't supposed to be this way. It was supposed to be perfect. Unfortunantly, there was this entire bit about the "Tree of knowledge of good and evil" and a fall.

No we can discuss point 1 from a religious perspective all day, but it has NOTHING to do with ID because of:

2: ID is about detecting design. It doesn't have anything to say about the designer. The designer could be a lousy designer. The designer might even be malicous. Our "design" might have been worked out by some committee of aliens who never really made much progress on the actual DNA work because they couldn't settle on a good mission statement. Or we might be the equivilent of a lego set for some divine infant who is, literaly, just playing with us.
ID is a scientific theory that is, for obvious reasons, quite popular with creationists. But it is NOT creationisim, anymore than Evolution is athiesim.
The philosophical/religious implications of a theory have nothing to do with whether that theory is supported by the evidence or not.

Kilarin

Kilarin wrote:

Samuel Dravis wrote:You're trying to discover if God did it?

No, actually, we are trying to discover if ANYONE did it. The "who" is not really a part of the question that ID can answer.

I'm saying that if you're already convinced that someone did it you're going to look for that evidence and find it if you want to, much like the people with the pancake. ID hasn't helped them figure out if it was made or not, and it won't help anyone else.

Kilarin wrote:Perhaps we are dealing with a difference of opinion on exactly what ID is. ID is the search for design. If we discovered evidence within the structure of cells that aliens had tinkered with our DNA, that would be ID. If you are saying that the only concrete proof would be meeting the aliens or finding an artifact I will have to disagree. *I* would certainly not be convinced just because Zaphod Beeblebrox showed up and claimed he designed me. Finding his initials carved in my brain, now THAT would be a different matter.

I'm saying I need Zaphod and evidence. Neither one by itself is sufficient for more than speculation.

Wikipedia, Falsifiability wrote:Claims about verifiability and falsifiability have been used to criticize various controversial views. Examining these examples shows the usefulness of falsifiability by showing us where to look when attempting to criticise a theory.

Non-falsifiable theories can usually be reduced to a simple uncircumscribed existential statement, such as there exists a green swan. It is entirely possible to verify that the theory is true, simply by producing the green swan. But since this statement does not specify when or where the green swan exists, it is simply not possible to show that the swan does not exist, and so it is impossible to falsify the statement.

That such theories are unfalsifiable says nothing about either their validity or truth. But it does assist us in determining to what extent such statements might be evaluated. If evidence cannot be presented to support a case, and yet the case cannot be shown to be indeed false, not much credence can be given to such a statement.

You see where I'm coming from now?

I understand what ID is. I disagree about its being a theory though; it's more of a conjecture.

Samuel Dravis wrote:'Evidence' of design does not mean something was in fact designed. Hmm.. Somebody's face in a pancake on Ebay anyone? People see 'design' when there is none all the time. I could infer intelligent design from that pancake.

Actually, what you're doing there is matching a pattern. Or, at least, if you're doing it right all you're doing is matching a pattern. A lot of the discussion in this and other threads has been over what exactly "doing it right" is. Unfortunately, we keep getting derailed by people talking about evolution... (though, this thread started with a discussion of Kansas, so it really *should* be about evolution.)

You should never infer design if the pattern is reasonably likely to be formed by law or chance. A face in a pancake? A vaguely turtle-shaped cloud? These are entirely plausible given the mechanisms we know are involved in pancake and cloud formation...

Now, a cloud that looks like a high-resolution painting of a turtle is a different matter. If you see something like that, perhaps you can infer design... if you see, for example, a cloud that looks like this, you can pretty safely infer design. The pattern is both complicated (requiring a high degree of chance if randomly generated) and inaccessible to the underlying laws (clouds don't have any reason to prefer to form lion faces over any other shape). Both of these are absolutely required to be able to say anything about design.

One of the biggest problems with ID as a whole is that almost everybody is willing to talk about it, but almost nobody is willing to study it rationally. Everybody has an opinion about ID, either as an origins position or as a general philosophical framework, but very few people have taken the time to study and experiment with ID to try to really understand what can and can't be reasonbly done with it. Very, very few people have done something like Drakona's ID forum games, even in their own minds, in order to try to get a handle on which parts of ID truly are reasonable and which are not. Instead, virtually everybody makes statements about ID based on the fact that they heard some hick with a 7th-grade edumacation say "ID proves Christians right!"

I'm saying I need Zaphod and evidence.

So you're saying there's no possible way, no matter how much other evidence you had, that you'd believe aliens were involved in designing you unless they actually showed up and admitted it?

That strikes me as overly skeptical.

Samuel Dravis wrote:I'm saying that if you're already convinced that someone did it you're going to look for that evidence and find it if you want to

With many issues, including this one, almost everyone involved comes into it with an opinion. To try and claim complete impartiality is being dishonest, mainly to yourself. The issue isn't to eliminate the preconcieved opinion, but to recognize it and allow for it as best as possible. That applies to BOTH sides of this argument. If preconcieved opinions invalidated a theory, we would have to invalidate Naturalistic Evolution as well, a silly proposition.
Many researchers go into a particular study (whether it be string theory, identifying a carcinogen, or whatever) with a preconcieved opinion. This warns us to double check their work, but it does not prove their work is invalid. And, again, just to emphasise, it applies to BOTH sides of the argument. We must double check the work of Stephen J. Gould just as closely as we double check Behe and Dembski. Double check, not dismiss. Just because they are opinionated does not prove they are wrong.

I WAS a young earth creationist. I was rasied that way, and trained that way, and was lucky enough to be educated in a college with some of the best young earth creationists scientists around. They were real scientists and head and shoulders above the average crowd of "creation scientists". And yet, I eventually decided that the evidence simply could NOT support this view, so I abandoned it. No, this did NOT devistate my faith, it just required some modification in the way I interpreted the book of Genesis. Behe and Dembski caught me by surprise. I was not expecting to come back into the creationist camp. I found their arguments, unlike most "Creation Science" to be solid and convincing, so I jumped over the fence again. It IS possible for people with preconcieved opinions to change their minds when they see the evidence.

Samuel Dravis wrote:I'm saying I need Zaphod and evidence

As lothar pointed out, I find this a bit of an odd position. The belief in common descent is based upon evidence, without us actually having SEEN the event occur in most cases. The "creation scientists" often use this argument against common descent and it is usually laughed off by serious scientists. Surely you aren't claiming they are right? It sounds like you are saying that NOTHING would convince you aliens had designed our DNA without the aliens being themselves discovered. Which sounds to me like the creationists claiming that they will never believe in Evolution unless they see it happen. But perhaps I'm misunderstanding what you are saying?

Kilarin

Lothar wrote:Actually, what you're doing there is matching a pattern. Or, at least, if you're doing it right all you're doing is matching a pattern. A lot of the discussion in this and other threads has been over what exactly "doing it right" is.

I'm not certain where looking for design is different from pattern matching. We can detect artificial items with a high degree of probability, which is what ID is all about, right? What exactly do you do when you're trying to 'find' evidence then?

You should never infer design if the pattern is reasonably likely to be formed by law or chance. A face in a pancake? A vaguely turtle-shaped cloud? These are entirely plausible given the mechanisms we know are involved in pancake and cloud formation...

But there's only been one such pancake I've ever heard of. Does that make it ID'd just because it is unlikely? No.

Now, a cloud that looks like a high-resolution painting of a turtle is a different matter. If you see something like that, perhaps you can infer design... if you see, for example, a cloud that looks like this, you can pretty safely infer design. The pattern is both complicated (requiring a high degree of chance if randomly generated) and inaccessible to the underlying laws (clouds don't have any reason to prefer to form lion faces over any other shape). Both of these are absolutely required to be able to say anything about design.

Again, just pattern matching (abeit with a low chance). If you could prove that it was impossible for the event to happen without some kind of intelligent intervention, that'd be more like it. As it is, while ID can be used to figure a probability that something was designed, it cannot prove anything either way - which is my whole point.

One of the biggest problems with ID as a whole is that almost everybody is willing to talk about it, but almost nobody is willing to study it rationally. Everybody has an opinion about ID, either as an origins position or as a general philosophical framework, but very few people have taken the time to study and experiment with ID to try to really understand what can and can't be reasonbly done with it. Very, very few people have done something like Drakona's ID forum games, even in their own minds, in order to try to get a handle on which parts of ID truly are reasonable and which are not. Instead, virtually everybody makes statements about ID based on the fact that they heard some hick with a 7th-grade edumacation say "ID proves Christians right!"

If some of the statements I've written that you did not choose to comment on are wrong, I'd appreciate it if you told me.

So you're saying there's no possible way, no matter how much other evidence you had, that you'd believe aliens were involved in designing you unless they actually showed up and admitted it?

That strikes me as overly skeptical.

Let me amend that then. If the evidence is so much so that the probability of random chance is almost nothing, then I could be convinced. That would just remain my opinon, even so. Any opinion wouldn't change the fact that ID cannot prove anything.

Just because they are opinionated does not prove they are wrong.

No, it doesn't. Thing is, I can look at the night sky and see that the constellations do look like people and animals. Proving that they were actually were made by someone is a different matter. Take a look at that Wikipedia article I posted.

The belief in common descent is based upon evidence, without us actually having SEEN the event occur in most cases.

Yes, it is. This is a weak point in evolution. However, we've seen microevolution occur quite a lot, and there seems to be no reason why it would not work with larger species as well. I find this a more reasonable path than to say that it was made by someone/something whom we've never seen, can't prove the existence of and have no evidence for, i.e. an opinion. w/e.

From what I've seen they still beat around the bush, The cellular tests arent productive for me to call them hard-evidence against ID and as far as I'm concerned it will probably be somewhere around the next 10 years or so before they can come up with something else that will suffice enough.

However I'm still interested in this topic, So for the sake of being open-minded I'd like for someone to present a good link with information that's been tested and proved to be effective.