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Author Topic:   What's the problem with teaching ID?
Dr Adequate
Member (Idle past 284 days)
Posts: 16113
Joined: 07-20-2006


Message 283 of 337 (665000)
06-06-2012 11:37 PM
Reply to: Message 278 by Genomicus
06-06-2012 10:31 PM


Re: There is nothing to teach about ID other than as an example of pseudoscience.
Correct, and proving a negative is always difficult. That's why, in general, I try to steer clear of trying to prove that evolution cannot account for feature X ...
... OK, so that method's a bust.
That's why, in general, I try to steer clear of trying to prove that evolution cannot account for feature X, and instead focus on predictions made exclusively by ID hypotheses.
But ... if you can't rule out evolution as an explanation for X, then X cannot be a prediction made exclusively by ID hypotheses, since it would also be compatible with evolution. Evolution would also predict that X can happen.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 278 by Genomicus, posted 06-06-2012 10:31 PM Genomicus has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 284 by Genomicus, posted 06-06-2012 11:56 PM Dr Adequate has replied

  
Dr Adequate
Member (Idle past 284 days)
Posts: 16113
Joined: 07-20-2006


Message 285 of 337 (665003)
06-07-2012 12:15 AM
Reply to: Message 284 by Genomicus
06-06-2012 11:56 PM


Re: There is nothing to teach about ID other than as an example of pseudoscience.
You're confusing a model's explanation with a model's prediction. There's a difference, ya know. Can you tell me what the difference is?
I can, but giving you so extensive a lesson in the philosophy of science would hardly be germane to my argument.
If evolution can explain something happening, it also predicts that it can happen. If it can happen under an evolutionary hypothesis, then it is not unique to an ID hypothesis.
Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 284 by Genomicus, posted 06-06-2012 11:56 PM Genomicus has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 287 by Genomicus, posted 06-07-2012 12:21 AM Dr Adequate has replied

  
Dr Adequate
Member (Idle past 284 days)
Posts: 16113
Joined: 07-20-2006


Message 288 of 337 (665006)
06-07-2012 12:27 AM
Reply to: Message 286 by Genomicus
06-07-2012 12:18 AM


ID Predictions
But it would be difficult to find such predictions. IDists generally refuse to identify either what the Designer's goals were or what constraints existed on Him attaining them --- besides affirming that he wanted organisms and had the power to produce them.
You could refine the hypothesis by supposing that (for example) he wanted giraffes in particular, and had the power to produce those, and then giraffes would be a necessary consequence of the hypothesis, but this would seem a little ad hoc would it not?

This message is a reply to:
 Message 286 by Genomicus, posted 06-07-2012 12:18 AM Genomicus has replied

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 Message 289 by Genomicus, posted 06-07-2012 12:31 AM Dr Adequate has replied

  
Dr Adequate
Member (Idle past 284 days)
Posts: 16113
Joined: 07-20-2006


Message 290 of 337 (665009)
06-07-2012 12:40 AM
Reply to: Message 287 by Genomicus
06-07-2012 12:21 AM


Re: There is nothing to teach about ID other than as an example of pseudoscience.
What you just said is just as philosophically sound as saying that "since the hypothesis that the flagellum was engineered can explain the similarity flagellar proteins share with other non-flagellar proteins, this means that the engineering hypothesis predicts that flagellar proteins share will share with other non-flagellar proteins."
Well, it would depend on what the theory IDists have yet to produce would actually do. If it was predictive in the same sort of way as evolution, but they differed in the areas in which they were more specific, then the specificity of one in one area would not actually give it the upper hand over the other.
Perhaps this discussion should wait until IDists have a hypothesis with any predictive power at all.

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Dr Adequate
Member (Idle past 284 days)
Posts: 16113
Joined: 07-20-2006


Message 291 of 337 (665010)
06-07-2012 12:44 AM
Reply to: Message 289 by Genomicus
06-07-2012 12:31 AM


Re: ID Predictions
Do you agree that if an ID hypothesis necessarily predicts biological feature X, while evolutionary theory only explains it, then confirmation of that prediction is a chunk of data in favor of the ID hypothesis?
Well, that would depend. Take my example of a Designer who is really keen on giraffes. This would predict giraffes, whereas evolution would only explain them. Nonetheless, this isn't really evidence in favor of the hypothesis of a giraffophile Designer.
If you could predict giraffes without recourse to adhoccery, then that would be a point in favor of ID, I'll grant you that.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 289 by Genomicus, posted 06-07-2012 12:31 AM Genomicus has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 294 by Genomicus, posted 06-07-2012 10:25 AM Dr Adequate has replied

  
Dr Adequate
Member (Idle past 284 days)
Posts: 16113
Joined: 07-20-2006


Message 313 of 337 (665055)
06-07-2012 2:20 PM
Reply to: Message 294 by Genomicus
06-07-2012 10:25 AM


Re: ID Predictions
Well, such a hypothesis of a designer (why on earth do you capitalize designer?) ...
In case He smites me for disrespecting His holy Name.
... who is keen on giraffe's would have been inspired by the existence of giraffes ...
Yeah, that's what I mean by it being ad hoc. It could make a very specific prediction and yet this wouldn't make us think it was true.
... so you couldn't predict the existence of giraffes precisely because they already exist.
Well, it depends how you do it. Obviously a theory is allowed to predict things which are already known --- for example Newton's theory predicted Kepler's laws, of which Newton was already aware. The thing is that Newton didn't have to build Kepler's laws into his theory, he postulated the inverse square law and Kepler's laws came out.
Now if you could have one simple hypothesis about the Designer which predicted giraffes and porcupines and pangolins and badgers and so on, then you might be on to something. But I can't see it happening.

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Dr Adequate
Member (Idle past 284 days)
Posts: 16113
Joined: 07-20-2006


Message 327 of 337 (665079)
06-07-2012 5:05 PM
Reply to: Message 324 by Genomicus
06-07-2012 4:43 PM


Re: There is nothing to teach about ID other than as an example of pseudoscience.
Of course, if you had followed this thread you would know that I don't advocate the teaching of ID in school.
That is what the thread's about; you can hardly get snippy with Taq for supposing that your posts were intended to relate in some way to the topic.

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Dr Adequate
Member (Idle past 284 days)
Posts: 16113
Joined: 07-20-2006


(1)
Message 332 of 337 (665088)
06-07-2012 6:14 PM
Reply to: Message 329 by Genomicus
06-07-2012 5:18 PM


Whimsical Design
That's not my argument. I'm simply pointing out that the FLH makes a specific prediction which non-teleological evolution does not make. And it's not a case of "the designer wanted giraffe's" any more than evolutionary predictions are like that.
But it does seem to be quite like the giraffophile designer.
In order to say that the conservation of such-and-such proteins would not be part of an evolutionary prediction, you have to suppose them to have so little use that natural selection would not conserve them. As you say, such a protein needs to be of so little use that "deleting it won't kill the organism, or even significantly reduce its fitness" --- and the significance of its contribution to fitness must in fact be so tiny that selective pressure won't prevent its deletion from becoming fixed in a population.
And yet the designer has to be so extraordinarily keen on these proteins that he wants every organism to have them, and indeed must install some sort of (as yet completely undiscovered) mechanism to prevent them from being strafed into nonsense by genetic drift.
Well, what is that but a whim that you postulate for your Designer ad hoc? It's unnecessary to his plan of having life, it's a mere preference. It's as though someone designed a car with an open fireplace to make back-seat loving more romantic. Someone might do that on a whim, but you can't predict that anyone would do it, because it's inessential to the main function of a car. The wheels are predictable, the engine, the steering mechanism; but the fireplace is just something of which we retrospectively have to say: oh, look, apparently the designer thought that that would be a good idea.
Now evolution provides an explanation for the stability of such proteins --- the explanation would be that they're not so useless that their presence or absence is invisible to natural selection. This also explains why we have found no mechanism (except natural selection) to maintain their stability.
A design hypothesis has to arbitrarily attribute a whim to the designer in order to explain the conservation of these proteins; it certainly cannot predict their existence; and cannot by itself explain why we have found no mechanism (except natural selection) to conserve them.
Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 329 by Genomicus, posted 06-07-2012 5:18 PM Genomicus has replied

Replies to this message:
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Dr Adequate
Member (Idle past 284 days)
Posts: 16113
Joined: 07-20-2006


Message 336 of 337 (665165)
06-08-2012 10:24 PM


Thread Closing
As the thread has closed for all but summations, it seems futile to quiz Genomicus on the reason for his assertions. I shall just content myself with pointing out some of the problems.
* We have no evidence that any of these proteins was inessential to LUCA.
* Looking around at organisms today, we have every reason to suppose that anything as advanced as LUCA (recall that it is the last universal common ancestor) would possess proteins the absence of which would not have been fatal under all circumstances, but which would have been inconvenient, and would have been selected against.
* Without any mechanism for how front-loading works, we can hardly place constraints on what LUCA would have been like in order for front-loaded evolution to occur.
* It is on evolutionary grounds alone that we deduce what proteins LUCA had from the study of modern organisms. Without a mechanism for front-loading, we have no reason to say which proteins LUCA would or wouldn't have. And clearly we can have no warrant to use an evolutionary reconstruction of LUCA to support a front-loading hypothesis.
* Now, given that we cannot see LUCA and that front-loaders cannot, without additional hypotheses deduce anything about LUCA, it is plain that my car-with-a-fireplace analogy holds. For what we see are modern organisms: organisms to which these proteins must be (as Genomicus has claimed but has not proved) about as much use as a fireplace to a car. FLE does not predict that we should observe these phenomena; but also it does not even adequately explain them, since no mechanism is even posited, much less demonstrated, for their preservation (natural selection being, by G's hypothesis, insufficient); nor, of course, any motive for the designer in wishing to preserve them by this undiscovered mechanism.
So: evolution explains the distribution of these proteins in modern organisms by saying that they're basal and are preserved by natural selection. FLE, as Genomicus has so far expounded it, provides no explanation for either how (mechanism) or why (motive of the Designer) they should exist in modern species --- and gives us no warrant for thinking them basal, since that is a conclusion drawn from the premise that evolutionary processes are responsible.
Maybe this could be continued on another thread.
---
As for the problem with teaching ID (apart from the whole First Amendment thing) it would be that they don't seem to have got anywhere. They know the sort of things they'd like to be able to do, but they haven't actually done them.
Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.
Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

  
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