Intelligent Design in Universities

This is a very real problem in phylogenetics. In order to make phylogenetic inferences from nucleotide sequence data, we need to be able to detect homologous regions of a gene. That is, we need to be able to tell which nucleotide in one copy of a gene corresponds to which nucleotide in another, so that we can infer the occurence of mutation events.Consequently, the more mutations that occur between two copies of a gene, the more "information" is present. But at the same time, the more divergent are two copies of a gene, the less possible it is to infer evolutionary homology.If we have two copies of a gene from members of the same species, we have only a few mutation events, but they are easy to identify because the rest of the gene sequence is so clearly homologous. The information content is low, but the ease of extraction is high.If we have two copies of a gene from different species, the number of mutations events increases, but we have a problem because it's much less easy to identify homologous regions, so identifying the mutations is more difficult. The information content is high, but the ease of extraction is low.It's an active area of research in phylogenetic theory, but it's horribly mathematically complicated.I often wonder why IDists never mention entropy within copies of DNA sequences. It's probably because they daren't get involved in the question of homology, because they would have to admit that the homology of sequences is integral to the identification of entropy in the first place.Mick

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Emotion is everywhere in this debate. One MUST empty the mind of emotion when dealing with issues like this. Otherwise you are on the path to the Dark-side.

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You know, you're right. But maybe I can tell you a story to help you understand why the evo side is getting a bit irritated in this thread.I work in the specialty food industry. I have been training my palate for the last 10 years, with a concentration in olive oil and cheese. I just recently was told by an Italian professional olive oil taster (who tastes and evaluates olive oil for a living) that I had a great palate and would likely pass the certification process to become a professional olive oil taster in Italy.Now, I also sell olive oil in a retail setting every day, and as ours is a very casual shop that also sells great deli sandwiches, we get a very mixed clientele, many of whom have never had fine olive oil in their lives, some who buy it occasionally, and others who buy from us regularly.There exists a category of people whom I call the "prestige foodies". Those are people who are into food because they like it and are interested in it, but a big part of the draw for them is the cache and the "exclusiveness" of it and the message of affluence and high class is sends out to others.Every so often a person who fits the "prestige foodie" category comes into my section who wants to impress me or the people they are with regarding how much they know about olive oil, and they are almost always wrong about many facts. They clearly love olive oil, but they love being "the expert" even more. I am sure they are "the expert" in their circle, but they give out wrong information left and right.The people they are with are impressed, but I am not, of course, because I have been doing this professionally for years and they are just an enthusiastic, and very sloppy, amateur.They have a little knowledge about food, but are certainly not at a professional level. They think that because they read the NY Times food section and own a bunch of cookbooks and have paid a whole bunch of money to eat in expensive restaurants, they know everything there is to know about food. They sometimes spend a lot of time trying to "educate" me, and I then am forced to figure out a way to tactfully inform them of their errors and try to help them towards correct information. Sometimes I do not even bother because for certain people, it is much more important for them to feel that they are correct than to actually find out if they actually are from someone who actually IS a professional and has some expertise.Those people can be terribly irritating because they are basically telling me that the 10 years I have spent working hard to learn what I now know is irrelevant and that their amateur, untrained, error-ridden thoughts, that contradict the consensus of many thousands of people over hundreds of years, are correct.This is a very good analogy to JDB's performance in this thread. He is a very enthusiastic, and very convincing to people who are not experts in the fields he is discussing (that would be you) but not at all to people who actually ARE professionals.He is also very irritating because he knows just enough to be very wrong, and is very smug and condescending despite the fact that I don't think he even understands the claims he is making enough to address the corrections the professionals are trying to show him.Thus, you see him simply refuse to continue a discussion when presented with questions he can't answer.This message has been edited by schrafinator, 05-07-2005 09:21 PM

Right. The more precise statement is that due to the 2LOT only in closed systems must the total entropy increase as a result of spontaneous thermodynamic processes. In an open system local entropy can decrease at the expense of a global increase in entreopy outside of the system.And of course, the 2LOT applies only to systems in which the entropy is related to other thermodynamic potentials, such as internal energy, heat, Gibbs free energy.Despite the similar form of the Boltzmann and Shannon entropy equations, they are two different quantities, and there is no analogue of the 2LOT for Shannon entropy, no matter how much IDists want there to be.

Yup. If this sort of behavior is what prompted your other thread, I see your point, to a degree. It bothers me all the more because I am a theist, and have never seen the need for intellectually dishonest pseudoscience to defend my faith. Quite the contrary.If you can't trust someone's physics, can you trust their metaphysics?

So often what I find is not just bad Science, but even worse Theology.

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

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I don't know quite what to make of your statement that ID is "a methodology". In the same sentence you say that ID employs science, and on other posts you have said that the methodology used by ID is the scientific method, the same as any other kind of research.

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Barring this confusion, your definition is basically reasonable. You are essentially describing the aim of ID research - that is, to detect the signal of design in the natural world. But as you have said in other posts, the methodology you would use to detect such design would be the scientific method. ID is an "epistemological framework" that is external to science but motivates the kind of scientific questions we might ask. This is why it is meaningless to talk of "ID research" - becase ID research would be scientific research, simply motivated by a search for the signal of intelligent design in nature. In other words, ID is a worldview, an intellectual framework, or an ideology that motivates the kind of questions that we ask, and motivates the kind of research that we carry out. But it is not a part of science. It just "employs" science in order to answer the kind of questions that ID theorists happen to be interested in.

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Nothing confusing in there to me unless we try to pull this from one post, that from another and so and so, then try to place those tenets into one post pretending they are all on the same subject. I take it you no longer want to discuss bios logos?1) There is no such thing as ID research. I have profusely expressed this. Biologists research biology. And yes, they can be IDists, Jewish or atheists as that is a separate subject with no logical connection. And yes, it is meaningless to talk about ID research, so, why do you bring this up every other post?2) You find it incredulous that methodologies can be based in science? Why? You don't think the scientific method involves science, that is a methodology.3) It is correct that when we detect design, we do so under the scientific method using known science and math.4) Yes, ID is also a worldview, an intellectual framework, and an ideology that motivates others to study it, or if it threatens their belief system, to destroy it at all costs. So can be any field, lacking perhaps others becoming involved with the intention of destroying it. That seems rather unique to ID.

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This makes ID one ideology among many. The humanist ideology, for example, believes that the increase of human scientific knowledge is a noble thing in and of itself. This is what motivates my own research. Like ID, humanism isn't a research methodology, and it is external to the scientific method. Another example would be Marxism-Leninism. In the mid-20th century, Soviet research was motivated by a need to show that the soviet economic system was capable of achieving equivalent or better scientific research than the capitalist economic system of the US. This competitive ideology resulted in research effort being devoted to weapons technology and the space race. It didn't make that research any less scientific, it just shaped the kind of questions that were asked, and the areas of research that received investment.

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ID is much more than just an ideology, it simply is not a "theory" in itself as outsiders want to see it. It is a discipline and a body of thoughts which are very diverse. My background is based in chemistry, as such, you will hear a lot of hard science from me. Dembski is a double PhD in math and philosophy (and working on a second masters, lol) as such, his perspective is quite different and much of his stuff is heavy mathematics and philosophy. Tipler is a mathematical physicist, so what do we get from him? Contributions in mathematical physics slanted toward ID. Behe is a biophysicist hence, his fascination with flagella, cilia and all of that. Sal has his own background and as such will do contributions from what he knows.This is a very diverse field, but this this is true of every major field. They just may not be so much in the public spotlight.

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So, according to your definition, ID is fundamentally external to science. Just as we would not expect "humanist hypotheses" or "Stalinist hypotheses", we don't expect "ID hypotheses". These are all just alternative worldviews, different ways of motivating researchers to ask specific kinds of questions that can be answered by scientific methodology.

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No, ID is not external to science because it garners science under it's larger umbrella.

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The examples you have given seem to agree with my interpretation of your position. Harvey presumably believed that the Earth and everything on it had been designed by an creators. Yet because this belief was external to the scientific method, it did not make him incapable of carrying out valid scientific research. Scientific research whose fundamental motivation may have been the glorification of the creator.
That's fine.

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BINGO. Harvey is a good example. Harvey's anatomical observation began via design as he pictured purpose--teleology, but teleology stopped there and methodological naturalism took over as he took that observation through the scientific method placing the anatomy of the human circulatory system firmly in science. Basically the same deal with Robert Boyle and some of Newton's stuff, btw.

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Why would we want to "detect purposeful design in systems and artifacts"?

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There's many reasons. First, how do you know it's an artifact if you see no design in it? SETI scientist want to detect design in the signals we receive from space to know if there is other life out there. Why? Scientific curiosity. We want to know, that's all. It's not like I can do anything about it when I find out, but I want to know.Tell me, as a temporal human, aren't you even curious as to your origins? I am mine. There's not much I can do with that when I find out, but I want to know because that is the innate nature of my species.Abiogenesis is basically just a crock based on nothing in science. When we show life as designed, which we have (it's just a matter of convincing your type of the facts), then you biologists will get out of that trench you are staggering in dug by religionist college professors and do some real science for a change in that area. Wouldn't THAT be cool.

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I see a connecting link here. Archaeologists and cryptographers generally study human artefacts. The assumption that human beings design their artefacts in an intelligent way is something with which few people would disagree. We have plenty of evidence for the ability of humans to design artefacts intelligently. Given what we know about human beings, the most parsimonious explanation for the existence of stone arrowheads, burial mounds, or written communication is that they were intelligently designed by human beings. Your list of ID research would have been better if it had left out palaeontologists, who generally do not study human artefacts, and do not seek patterns of intelligent design in their objects of study.

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Yeah, but again, how do they know they have an artifact? They detect design and infer culture through a process called semiotics, which we also employ. When design is detected, they know they have an artifact.Consider an archeologist who uncovers what appears to be a rock roof supported by pillars on a dig. Did this structure occur by some natural law or process or was it designed by a builder for a particular use? The archeologist will have to determine this. If she concludes this to be a structure designed by a civilization, then perhaps she should continue this dig which could possibly uncover an ancient city or culture. But if this is just some strange-looking natural occurrence formed through natural law or process,
then her money might be better spent researching another avenue.Similarly, imagine a paleontologist discovering what seems to be a strange fetish possibly carved of bone. Perhaps the scientist is unfamiliar with fetish carvings in culture but he concludes, this is a strange bone, indeed. Is there any chance this bone could have received this shape naturally in some peculiar, yet undiscovered species, or is this a designed artifact resulting from intelligent intent? If the bone was formed naturally, this paleontologist has a lot of research work ahead of him to draw new hypothesis.In the above two analogies, both of these scientists will employ techniques of design to determine if their discovery is in effect an artifact or simply came into existence by perfectly natural, explainable and expected processes.In the bear fetish example above, the paleontologist employs design methodology and concludes this is most definitely a designed item, and furthermore, is a carving done in the style of the Zuni tribe around 3000 years earlier.We detect design so that the system can be classified as purposefully designed or natural and go home and have a beer and watch kick boxing. You can take it from there if you wish.

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What "entire story" are you talking about? First of all, let's consider evolution. I have not come across a proponent of ID who has ever suggested that evolution should NOT be taught in the classroom. This is because evolutionary theory is a product of science.

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Some evolutionary theory is. But basically I'll give you this one because you won't find me believing it shouldn't be taught either if it is responsibly taught.The study of antibiotic resistance, virus mutations and mutations of all kinds is hard science and need be taught as such. Now I don't want "magic" taught as science such as wolf-like critters poofing into whales. However, I have no problem even with this, if it is taught fairly and denoted there is no experimental evidence to support it or no way it can be scientifically falsified. I mean teach it as a possibility, but leave it at that level without the Neo-Darwinist embellishment which falls outside the realm of science..

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You have already stated that ID is not a product of science. At most it is the search for the signal of intelligent design in the natural world. At least it is an ideological motivation for the kind of scientific research we might carry out. ID, therefore, is not a part of the story of science, any more than Marxism-Leninism is.

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Nah...I disagree basically with all of that. I'm not even sure what you mean. Genetics wasn't a product of science until a monk made it so. Relativity wasn't a product of science until a patent clerk showed it to be true mathematically. There is no such thing as a story of science. Science is discovered and brought into the field by people. Then that story can only be told historically.

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1. ID research aims to identify the signal of intelligent design in the natural world

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Actually, that would be biological analysis done by biologists many of whom are IDists. Others of us might apply methodologies to biological systems, but that is not really research.

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2. The scientific method permits us to make scientific inferences about the existence, actions and intentions of of historical human (or non-human, in the case of SETI) agents based on the artefacts that they have designed.

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Partially on artifacts, but there are other pieces of evidence.

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3. ID should be taught in schools as an alternative to the theory of evolution.

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Now, is it me, or does point number 3 not logically follow from points 1 and 2?

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Your logic, my friend, is atrocious. Put that into a syllogism and see how ridiculous it sounds. lol...This is not anything I have inferred.

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Do you agree that we can explain the patterns of complexity and integration in biological systems better if we incorporate the idea of an intelligent creator? If so, why? Because none of the ID research you describe (paleontology, archaeology, cryptography and SETI research) has ever come up with a single piece of evidence that organic biological life was intelligently created.

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Well gee, I wonder if this could be because paleontology, archaeology, cryptography and SETI research does not STUDY organic life. Do you reckon? Of course, Idists have come up with evidence. But yes, not only do I agree that the complexity of biological systems can be better explained by design, I can show mathematically this is the ONLY way that complexity was created. What then will do? Ignore it and hope it goes away? It ain't going away--it's growing--how are you going to deal with it because the public is demanding to be taught this. In the Nature article Sal was featured in, a poll was taken that showed 75% of college students want to be taught this. How are you going to stop that demand, bu book burning and propaganda? Come on, this is 2005.

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A second question for you. Given the clear research achievements of the Soviet ideology, should Marxism-Leninism be taught in the biology classroom in an effort to "consider the entire story". If not, why not?

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No, as I don't see any logical connection at all between Marxism-Leninism and the design of biological systems. I don't think you really do either.

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A third question for you (added in edit). given that SETI is the research project that most closely approximates your definition of ID research, why would you have ID taught in biology classes rather than astronomy or physics classes? Sticking with astronomy for a second - one field of intelligent design research you have forgotten is astrology. Astrology is the view that human fates are intelligently designed by the movement of planets. One can believe in astrology and still carry out valid scientific research into the movement of planets. Many early astronomers were believers in some form of astrology. Would you like to see astrology taught alongside ID, in astronomy classes, in order to tell "the complete story"?

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I would not have ALL design courses taught in biology classes, but I would certainly have the design of biological systems taught there. And no, there is nothing scientific about astrology at all that I am familiar with. Apples and oranges. But you teach abiogenesis in biology classes, there is certainly nothing scientific about that, in fact it defies the laws of science and common sense. You already ARE doing what you accuse me (falsely) of attempting to do.

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One more question. According to you, people who claim that ID is more than "a methodology that employs science and mathematics to detect purposeful design in systems and artifacts" are either "detractors and media activists, Eugenie Scott or other pseudo-scientific politicos".

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Strawman. I never said this. You have deduced this yourself from more than one of my writings.

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Which of these categories does Sal fall into? Because he claims rather more than you are willing to permit him to claim. Specifically, Sal has claimed that the ID concept is that a divine hand has shaped the course of evolution [in the nature article that he has cited].

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No he doesn't proclaim more than I permit him too, I couldn't care less of his religious views and fully support his right to believes as he wishes. Dembski does it the same way. Their religious beliefs are purely up to them and you twist that like the rest of them do, of course, by trying to paint the fact that since they believe in the God of the Bible as the designer somehow makes the scientific basis of ID null and void.Nonsense. I know Sal well and am aware that he has things floating around in space that he helped design. How come his religious beliefs didn't interfere with that, if it interferes with his ID? You guys are not using any logic on this as most of the science you use in the lab right now was brought to you courtesy of avid creationists. That's a fact. Research it for yourself.

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One last question (added in edit). What, specifically, would you "teach" to children in biology classes regarding ID? Would you simply teach that the scientific method permits us to make inferences regarding the actions of intelligent historically-existing agents? Is that it? Because that is essentially all you have said.

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That may be all I've said on here. But that certainly isn't all there is. Do you think you could teach biology in 25 informal posts most of which are utilized by having to defend the subject rather than teach it? We haven't even touched on most of the tenets of ID in this thread.

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If that is all you would teach, then Sal, who believes that there is scientific evidence for the existence of Adam and Eve, and who believes that the laws of physics necessitate the existence of God, will no doubt be the first in line to argue with you!

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No, we don't argue about it. We have a few much beloved YECs within ID and Sal happens to be one of them. We'll keep him, thank you. We also have many agnostics like mturner, bertvan and jazzmaster on ARN. We will keep them as well. And we will keep the atheists like Fred Hoyle and Brig Klyce. One size fits all, my man, just like Legg's panty hose.But when these modern IDist teach this in your classrooms, they will most likely teach it from MY textbook, and there ain't one god, fairy, leprechaun or Santa Clause anywhere in there. Just science.

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Design Dynamics

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I suppose the main problem for ID theorists is that they have no idea what a supernatural intelligent design would look like

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Couldn't be anymore irrelevant. I spend hours on my riding mower and have no idea what the designer of that looks like. All I care about is it is designed well, and cuts my grass.

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which means they have no way of testing whether an observed biological system meets their (nonexistent) criterion.

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Unrelated again. But we have many ways of detecting design in system, including biological ones.

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Design Dynamics

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Couldn't be anymore irrelevant. I spend hours on my riding mower and have no idea what the designer of that looks like.

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Come on now, of course you do.You know that the designer is a fellow human being. Therefore, you know almost everything there is to know about them from a "What sort of intellegent thing designed this mower?" standpoint.You do realize that the phrase, "they have no idea what a supernatural intelligent design would look like" has nothing to do with the actual visual appearance of the designer, don't you?It is referring to the fundamental nature of the designer.It's that you deem it off limits to ask any, "what sort of intelligent thing designed this frog" sorts of questions.(Edited to fix quote box)This message has been edited by schrafinator, 05-07-2005 10:49 PM

You know very well what the designer looks like: a lot like you actually. It is because you know the designer in enough detail that you are darned sure the lawnmower was designed by that particular kind of designer. How is having and idea or not of what a supernatural intelligent design would look like not relevant? That surprises me.It would be very intesting to see what these ways of detecting design are then. Or will this be the usual arguements from incredulity and from lack of knowledge rather than positive steps to take in detecting design?Sorry jumped in too soon. I'l shut up a bit and left Schraf run with it.This message has been edited by NosyNed, 05-07-2005 10:49 PM

C'mon, Ned, I like your posts, please contribute.

Question.If the designer did not look like JDB, let's say the designer was not a bilateral critter would the lawn mower look as it does?If the designer was a starfish, what would a lawn mower look like?Would we recognize it as a lawn mower?

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

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but genetic deaths are likely to have more than one effect in the causality (that's why Nosy didnt understand Jianyi Zhang).

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Nobody understands Jianyi, Brad. It's easy to mark him off as a crackpot until you learn the guy is an MD with a PhD in some area of biology. There HAS TO BE something to his research (maybe). One of these days when I get time I'm going to his page to dissect it.I enjoy your posts although I must admit that you may be ahead of me in many areas.

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Design Dynamics

Thanks Schraf but it isn't helpful to duplicate what you are saying. I'll go back to letting things ripen a bit before picking off the easy ones.

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Well obviously. What I was saying was, that a bookie can't predict the exact probability of a horse winning a race, but we assume that a horse has a probability of winning.

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Ok. I think we're on the same page.

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Excellent word 'spontaneous', that clears things up a lot, thank you. May I ask though: Are these mutations spontaneous in the same way that a radioactive nucleus decaying at any given moment is spontaneous, or is it spontaneous in that it has a cause, but its impossible to isolate what that cause is?

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Maabe the word 'cause' wasn't very good either. This gets pretty deep as you hammer it and make me think about it. Note that I mistyped the word 'maybe' in that last sentence. Did that have a cause (had it been unintentional)? I suppose it was caused by my fingers hitting the wrong key, but it didn't really require anymore energy because my fingers were being used anyhow and it requires just as much energy to type maybe as maabe.But is there anyway you can predict I will type the word maabe rather than maybe? I certainly don't ever recall doing so in the past. If there is probability there, I don't see it. So wasn't that a random mistake similar to copying errors in neucleic acids?

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Design Dynamics

Correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems as if the discussion has reached the point where it crosses over to personal judgement calls and interpretations.Can it be stated that the boundaries of this point can be reached in scientific terms? If so it seems silly to me to say ID is not science.Take Global Warming for instance. Some scientists are on one side of the issue, and some are on the other. Yet the majority does not seem to claim that the minority is practicing pseudo-science...just wrong in their interpretation of the evidence. Why? Because both sides are expressed in purely scientific terms. This is an important distinction.This message has been edited by Limbo, 05-07-2005 11:54 PM