Analyzing Intelligent Design {a structural construction of ID theory}

It's not just interest and if the creationists care enough about a result to invent excuses to deny evidence then that is an indication that it IS important to them, too.I genuinely beleive that this is the larger part of the scientific problem of how life began and that in itself makes it more important than the remainder.

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Well I don't agree. It may not always be reducable to simple mathematical formulae like gravitation and e=mc^2, but there have been many elegant formalizations of evolutionary ideas by those such as Fisher, Haldane, Sewall Wright, Maynard Smith etc. etc.

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The nature of biology has emergent properties that render it more complex than physics and not nearly as 'reducable'.

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And seeing that ID proponents want to criticize evolutionary theory as inadequate, they bear the burden of proof to present something more adequate.

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I don't have to present another tenet of science or provide something "in its place" in order to falsify a tenet of science. Something can be wrong and we still not know what is right. This just shows lack of education in the scientific method, I fear. Further, your reply is woefully inadequate to address my former accusation that there is no theory of evolution.If you recall I related to you that theories of science begin as an observation. They are then taken experimentally to the hypothesis level and from there to the theory level as the researcher's peers duplicate those experiments and add to them. You seem just to have brushed that all off by throwing out some names.Please:1) State the observation that began this theory.2) Present the paper that took the theory to the hypothesis level.3) Present the papers that took ToE from the hypothesis to the theory level experimentally. Or,4) Just honestly admit this has never been done at all. Somebody just suddenly blurted, hey, we gots us a theory of science, everybody else said, 'cool,' and you then began to teach this pseudo-science in our schools when it wasn't even science to begin with.While you're at it, throw out one paper published in the last 100 years that goes to the effect: 'here is some new evidence for Darwinism.'

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In your previous message you essentially conceded that ID cannot be used to solve applied problems in biology, so it doesn't seem very adequate yet.

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Now....easy.....there. This is not because it fails in some area. Please try to stay away from the disingenuous here. I've explained to you that ID is not biology and therefore will never solve problems in biology. You seem to want to twist this just a hair......

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I am far more concerned that they learn the critical thinking skills that enable them to recognize what is false. That way they can come up with their own concepts of truth and escape the deceptions of dogmas.

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GOOD. An honest Kansan. For the record I will just point out that EZ has just openly admitted here that he does not want truth in science. And if you really wanted students to be able recognize what is false, you would teach the controversy of the tenet along with its merits. But you refuse this. Why? It doesn't bother you that 90% of students who study this think it's bunk from a secular aspect? Why? Why don't we find this same phenomenon with relativity, gravity or thermodynamics?

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I could name scads of very specific and testable theories that are all derived from the basic Darwinian model. Let's just start with one. Evolution of insecticide resistance in insects.

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ToE would predict that repeated use of an insecticide on the same population would result in that population eventually becoming resistant because the treatment constitutes strong directional selection for resistance evolution. Based on this reasoning derived from ToE, we can predict that this process will be substantially delayed by rotating among different insecticides, but ONLY if they act via different modes of action at the molecular level.
Guess what? It works.

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If it didn't, we wouldn't be left with very many useful insecticides to protect our crops and we would all be paying a heck of a lot more for our food.

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It may work. The only problem, this is not Darwinism. This is evolution. We ALL accept the science of evolution and IDists ARE evolutionists.One need be careful to distinguish between the terms Darwinism and evolution. The latter is a science based concept that studies variations in the gene pools of populations of organisms over time.Conversely, Darwinism is a wishy washy conception (it seems that no two Darwinists can agree on much of anything) that takes this area of biology and extrapolates it ridiculously outside the realm of any known science. Darwinism boldly concludes that man sprang from a common ancestor with apes, that huge land dwelling animals called pakicetus somehow had their legs morphed into flippers and crawled into the oceans to turn into what we know today as modern whales, that reptile like organisms called therapsids almost ethereally evolved from reptiles into mammals and that larger mammals such as horses and elephants slowly evolved from tiny, less complex ameboids in violation of some of the most well proven laws of science.No tenet unique to Darwinism has ever been shown to be true in laboratory or field experiments in a manner that is non-controversial to all observers (natural selection is not a tenet unique to Darwin as it pre-existed his writings and is basically little more than common sense).Even simple speciation, a core component of Darwinism, cannot be shown or rejected in these fossilized substances as a sexual species is defined as two organisms that can interbreed and produce fertile, viable offspring and do so naturally. How do Darwinists go back in time sometimes millions of years to do these breeding experiments in order to hypothesize what species evolved into other species?

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Credible to some, obviously, but not to those of us who want a theory we can actually test and make predictions from.

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Fine. Throw some of these out unique to Darwinism. You haven't as of yet. How do you test and make predictions from your teachings that man sprang from an apoid?

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It does. We call it 'life on Earth'. If you want to argue origins, you need to take on the physicists and astronomers over in the "Big Bang and Cosmology" forum.
ToE does not deal with origins, only processes.

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And this is the crux of your (ID theorists') dissatisfaction with it, I suspect.

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You want a theory of origins with teleogical purpose in processes to substantiate your religious convictions and Darwinism denies you both of these things.

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But it still 'works' - and it is more powerful than any ID theory simply because it is actually useful and predictive.

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You are denying that Darwinism teaches that the origins of man is macroevolution from a common ancestor?

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Because it does not constitute a viable alternative explanation of how things work.
It has no predictive power in applied biology.

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So what? This has not seemed to bother you with Darwinism. Here you don't have any explanations of how things work or any predictive power, or any evidence at all other than a couple of rocks you think "look funny." Can you predict what species will evolve from what? What is it you think Darwinism predicts?Tell me at what point I've sucked you into the conversation, EZ.

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Design Dynamics

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You have declined to do so, so you stand rebutted by default.

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LOL...Well, I've never seen a paper that long rebutted in one sentence. You are a case my fine doctor of applied physics. Now perhaps you would like to rebut biological cost theory in three words or less?

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Design Dynamics

I'm not rebutting the Meginn paper itself. I said the science in it -thermodynamics, statistical mechanics, condensed matter physics, and numerical modeling techniques - looked sound.I requested you to elaborate on specific points from the paper that you feel support ID, or more precisely, your assertion that the mechanism of ID was to be found in quantum mechanics.Simply stating "this paper supports my assertion" without demonstrating how, isn't a scientific argument, and IMO is a violation of forum guidelines.Stating that "I am a case" is an ad hominem, and thus a logical fallacy. It also, IMO, violates forum guidelines.I read, understood, and have no issue with the science in, the Meginn paper, and feel it can serve as a mutual point of departure for elaboration of your assertion.If you do not wish to discuss this topic, fine, but IMO you should withdraw your assertion that the Meginn paper supports ID if you are unwilling/unable/just plain not interested in demonstrating how.

Hi Everyone!Though I'm replying to Jerry's message, this first paragraph is for everyone. I didn't trace back in the thread to see where the topic began to drift, but this thread is supposed to be about ID, not about evolution. Discussions about the development of the modern synthesis, early validations of evolutionary theory by the population geneticists and experimental support for evolution should be conducted in the [forum=-5] forum. If someone wants to address these issues there they can find an appropriate thread or start a new one.Hi Jerry,Those unfamiliar with evolutionary theory and the history of its development are not only permitted but encouraged to ask questions. If you're raising these issues because you're really unfamiliar with this area then this is fine: But if that's not the case and you're actually familiar with these areas then I'd like to encourage you to take a more constructive approach. Forcing people to start from square one when you already possess a fair amount of familiarity isn't helpful. Knowing the background of the development of evolutionary theory doesn't mean you have to accept it as valid, but feigning ignorance of it just isn't helpful.

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--	Percy
	EvC Forum Director

Hi Jerry,
I'm not retired yet, so I am going to have to make this my last reply for this afternoon (hopefully I can resist temptation ). I would argue you haven't falsified anything.
Evolution works perfectly well to explain how life changes and diverges.
If you want to say it shouldn't be taught, then you have to come up with something that serves its function as well or better.
ID, as we have established, cannot do that. 1. Darwin's observations on the Galapagos Islands.2. The Origin of Species and Descent of Man3. How about 165 volumes of American Naturalist for starters?
Almost every theoretical argument presented formally in this journal since 1867 has been based on evolutionary theory directly or indrectly. So these scientists were all wasting their time !?I think you are trying to discredit evolution by demanding something far too narrowly defined.
Useful scientific models of the world can be developed in more ways than just the sequential process you describe. They can be stated mathematically or verbally and still be testable and useful. Without interpreting that too literally, I would say there are probably several hundred published every day. I am working on a couple of my own right now.What in 'creation' has ID ever produced / explained / solved with respect to biological processes? Nothing - by your own admission. I don't need to twist it at all. If it can't solve problems in biology it is no good for anything to me or thousands of other biologists who have problems to solve and ROUTINELY use ToE insights to do so.It is just another unfalsifiable dogma developed for the sole purpose of infering teleology and challenging naturalism without providing any intellectual scaffold for making inferences at all, let alone superior ones.Evolutionary theory has provided insights critical to the level of agricultural productivity and quality of medical treatment we all enjoy today. ID theory provides only pipe dreams, not solutions. Now Jerry, you are twisting my words a bit.
I never said I didn't care about truth in science, I said I was *more* concerned with critical thinking about how to determine false-hoods.
For some reason they seem to outnumber truths by something like 100 or 1000 to 1. This controversy of which you speak is only in the minds of those who feel spiritually unsatisfied with the entirely naturalistic (and wholely satisfactory) explanations provided by ToE and feel spiritually driven to inject teleology into life sciences, however they can. Let's not split hairs. It is the whole ToE that is currently under attack in this state, not just Darwinism, although most of the creo's synonomize the two. Yes, It does. And there is no explanation more consistent with the huge body of evidence from completely independant lines of science than Darwinian evolution. These include geology, molecular genetics and paleontology just to name the most pertinent. I am beginng to think that's what it would take to convince you.
But we *do* watch species diverge into new species all the time. Just go over to my thread on "Macroevolution: Its all around us" for a bunch of very current examples. We begin by examining the fossil record and are able to produce a series of convincing intermediate forms from appropriate geological strata. So paleontology supports the inference.We examine living species of apes and humans morphologically in various stages of developmpent and find that various morphometric
measurements provide us with estimates of phylogenetic distance between humans and different primate lineages and find that conventional taxonomy supports the inference.We take blood samples from all primate lineages and humans and compare sequence homology of DNA and mitochondrial DNA and compare the phylogeneitc distances generated by these data to those generated by the other means and find that molecular genetics supports the inference (we still have > 95% of genetic sequences in common with chimps and we diverged from that lineage several hundred thousand years ago).Short of going back in time, we can only use *indirect* indicators to establish degrees of relationship and use these degrees of relationship to infer paths of descent. But the fact that very similar conclusions are converged upon by very different empirical approaches adds immensely to our confidence in the model.I might ask you how ID would go about establishing degrees of relationship, but of course you are going to say it doesn't concern itself with such 'biological' problems. Now Jerry, you are really starting to sound like a creationist.
I think I've just answered that.
Darwinian ToE (am I going to have to put "Darwinian" in front of 'ToE' all the time to keep you from getting slippery on me ?) is eminently powerful at predicting the results of all *observable* and *testable* experiments we can reasonable formulate with existing nature.
You will have to hang around some 100's of thousands of years to directly observe higher level taxa evolve.Your argument is a straw man because you are demanding direct observational evidence of processes that occur on geological time scales. You try to discount the power of ToE by saying that what we can observe and test is evolution, but not Darwinian evolution. No offense, but that is really a big cop out. Especially considering you admit that your theory has no explanations whatsoever to offer for any applied biological problems. Total creationist garbage. Another ploy that is getting really old, really fast.
To say evolutionary biologists disagree *about* ToE is like saying the automobile is a failed invention just because two car designers can't agree on the kind of tires to put on a particular model.
Because its an actual scientific theory, it is always being fine-tuned in highly specific areas. It evolves itself. It is not an immutable myth like creationism and ID theory.Sorry, but I am going to have to let some other evo gladiator step into the ring at this point. Like I said, I still have work to do, and as it happens, it is all based on [Darwinian] evolutionary precepts.Have fun Jerry.edited once for typos and minor grammar only - EZ.This message has been edited by Admin, 05-12-2005 04:24 PMThis message has been edited by EZscience, 05-12-2005 05:41 PM

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Sorry, but I am going to have to let some other evo gladiator step into the ring at this point. Like I said, I still have work to do, and as it happens, it is all based on [Darwinian] evolutionary precepts.

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Thanks for your posts. I hope your PhD is in something that actually exists.

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Design Dynamics

EZscience,Please contact me at xxxxxCheers!Mickedited by mick to remove personal email addressThis message has been edited by mick, 05-13-2005 12:31 AM

To admin and everyone:First, let me apologize for being part of the problem for the digression.But you can see the problem here is a recurrent one.I am sure the ID'ists would love to debate their own theory on their own terms, but it has no real substantive structure for making biological inferences.The only way to demonstrate this is by comparing it functionally to ToE.
That is the 'gold standard' that ID seeks to replace, or at least displace.
ID is incapable of offering us the useful inferences that ToE can, but that can only be demonstrated by repeatedly resorting to examples of what ToE *can* do.I would love to debate the validity of ID theroy as it relates to some specific, tangible, biological example,
but it is a 'ghost theory' that seeks to exist as such, without accepting any burden of proof or responsibility for formulating any testable predictions regarding real world biological phenomena.JDB's comments on this thread are clear proof of that.In response to my requests in message 43: So I ask you, how can you debate the validity of a theory that refuses to make any testable predications about the living things it purports to explain without repeatedly refering back to a theory that does?EZThis message has been edited by EZscience, 05-14-2005 10:28 AM

Well, yeah it is still somewhat a ghost but I am fairly quickly clothing this penguin. I am reading "Theory of Dielectrics Dielectric Constant and Dielectric Loss", 1958, from Oxford by H Frolich.
http://www.amjbot.org/cgi/content/full/91/3/386I am working out (if the means below do find the ending in a mind) my

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specific, tangible, biological example

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showing with defintions of both macro and micro states that the torus/membrane is a designable dielectric
and at issue is the natural purpose I derive by concluding with a sentence different but not incompatible with Forhlich should the (my mind's) intension relax any further tension.Frohlich's statement page 58

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This type of order called long-distance order because it defines right and wrong directions for any latticepoint. In contrast,short-distance order is the order of neighbours relative to each other. It means that, in view of the interaction, the direction of a dipole is always influenced by the directions of its neighbours. Each dipole tends to orient itself in a certain direction relative to neighbours. Long-distance order vanishes in the disordered state, or in liquids. Short-distance order persists, however, though it decreases (underline)with(underline) increasing temperature.

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My statment on purpose of the natural purpose design is ...long distance order increases with decreases in temperature.The could be gleaned from the following prestatment page annotations I made one afertoon this past week. If the end is reached however I doubt that the issue will then be if TOE vs ID is any different but instead how ID enlarges TOE. The functionality of ID will BE larger than CURRENT TOE but ToE may "evolve" itself in that culture. The difference in functionality comes about because there will be more man-made options in ID than artificial selection is in evolutionary theory. ID may eventually only be taught as an engineering discipline leaving the creator out of that department for the architectural blue print as the lesson plan etc but it will have dissolved from current differences in the truth of finding natural selection in nature.I really do appreciate your adding your comments to EvC. You and few other newer comers have really ratcheted up the discussion of biology here. Thanks.This message has been edited by Brad McFall, 05-14-2005 11:35 AM

Thank you Brad,So your opinion is that ID theoretically could be made compatable with ToE ?I see how you have mapped a geometric model taken from dielectrics onto a botanical example, but I am not convinced this demonstrates intentional design.Because this margo / torus structure is a natural phenomenon in dielectrics (and maybe other physical systems0, we might reasonably expect the same sort of structure to emerge through evolution in some sort of plant morphologies where it happens to represent a good solution to a physiological problem.Interesting, to be sure, but do you consider it evidence of design ? This message has been edited by Adminnemooseus, 05-14-2005 01:36 PMSorry - getting lazy again - title changed - EZ.This message has been edited by EZscience, 05-14-2005 03:01 PM

If this modeling works woodyplant caviation prevention is a secondary consequence of thermal current adaptibility to capilary force variances since the tops of plants are hoter and the roots cooler.This is something that a botanist might be able to evaluate regardless of the matching of levels of organinzation I am explicitly developing and thus I could be falisfied before I get the next detailed post off. I doubt that will happen.If the whole thing works it would be possible to desgin new artifial selection expts based on the model that are not presently imagined. Only the artifical selection will include knoweldge of what the plant anatomy is for. I understand you question if this is really a design and not rather ad hoc. It will depend on the genetics. I havent posted the contraints (which might not be true) on the transmission genetics involved as I currently see it. I have not seen any written material that the Margo/torus IS a dielectric but only that it 'solves' problems of pressure (not voltage). This model doesn't "solve" any such physiological problem but relates differences of the Earth-Sun line into morphological differences of woodyness.
It would support the notion that seed ferns are "proophetic" types of forms in plants as Agassiz proposed for sauroid fish in animals and would relate the NATURAL PURPOSE of the woody plant to seperating ionic bonds by seeds that fall to the sun while the wood tracks out the fall of the seed across generations. (this is unclear as I have it expressed)There is no stoping someone from interpreting any advance made on the speculation (or hypothesis) in terms of biology of phenotypes and geneotypes but I would use the biophyics to show a different mode to biological thought (not incompatible with a GOD of ID in so far as the intelligence is at least the architect"")not possible since the Modern Synthesis since that rested simply on the natural but not man made difference.Sure the work might later be used to predict populations of bacterial seeding throughout the solar system but this gets to be called speculation and that is not what I am doing in trying to build the sphere of Frohlich out of the heritable substance in the torus membrane.ID needs to do this kind of work but I cant fault it without the tangible case as I dont know of any model that attempts to have a true existence of macro and micro states clearly defined and tested not only in theory but in fact. This doesnt mean that a structure for ID is not thinkable. It is.If you want a clearer explanation you will have to wait as I think it through again.This message has been edited by Brad McFall, 05-14-2005 01:38 PMThis message has been edited by Brad McFall, 05-14-2005 01:40 PM

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I am sure the ID'ists would love to debate their own theory on their own terms, but it has no real substantive structure for making biological inferences.

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Right. Neither does Darwinism. The only thing that will make biological inferences is biology. You need to grasp this because ID is not short on something here, it's just that there is no such thing as ID biology and you seem either not wanting to accept this, or to jump on it as if you have proved something. There is no Darwin biology, either. Only biology is biology and this is what makes biological inferences. Now I certainly view biology with a different perspective than you, but it is still biology.

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The only way to demonstrate this is by comparing it functionally to ToE.

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That is the 'gold standard' that ID seeks to replace, or at least displace.

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ID is incapable of offering us the useful inferences that ToE can, but that can only be demonstrated by repeatedly resorting to examples of what ToE *can* do.
I would love to debate the validity of ID theroy as it relates to some specific, tangible, biological example, but it is a 'ghost theory' that seeks to exist as such, without accepting any burden of proof or responsibility for formulating any testable predictions regarding real world biological phenomena.

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Again. There is no such thing as ToE. Darwinists made that term up and just like to pretend they have a theory. You have offered no experimental evidence that man had a common ancestor with ape that cannot be explained away by common sense, that reptiles morphed into mammals, that wolfoids turned into whales and the list goes on ad nauseam.You then want to mix all of this pseudo-science in with what we do know about evolution. Evolution studies variations in the gene pools of populations of organisms over time--viruses mutating as in SARS, HIV or Bird Flu--many other areas such as genetic defects in infant births, errors in transcription during nucleic acid replication and the inheritability of certain genetic traits through interbreeding.This is not a theory that predicts any new species morphing out of another one. In fact, you have no way to predict or explain that at all, thus you have no ToE. .

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jdb writes:
I could not quote anything in ID that would explain something biologically, either better, or worse (than ToE)

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So I ask you, how can you debate the validity of a theory that refuses to make any testable predications about the living things it purports to explain without repeatedly refering back to a theory that does?

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Again. There is no ToE--There is no theory of Darwinism--There is no theory of ID. But ID has tenets within it that are predictable and testable. You're just playing with semantics as best I can tell.Go finish your papers.

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Design Dynamics

which >95 % of actual biologists will claim is founded on Darwinian ToE. Why does this concept seem to disturb you so much ?It has been explained in numerous threads that it is unreasonable to expect empirical testing of historical events in 'real' time . Get 'real' Jerry Maybe you would feel more comfortable with a world-class cladogram of insects 'morphing' into winged and wingless forms back and forth again ?
If you read this thread starting here you might learn something about how powerful inferences from evolutionary theory can actually be.We are are still waiting with baited breath for Inference No. 1 from ID theory.This message has been edited by EZscience, 05-14-2005 09:55 PM

Hi Jerry, You are right to say that there is no Darwinist biology. Darwinism is a product of biology, and it is a product of the scientific method. It is not something external to biology that was forced upon the natural world. The Darwinian theories were developed by scientists who examined the natural world, and tried to come up with a theory to explain what they saw.Darwinism just happens to be the theory of choice within biology, because it seems to work pretty well. There may be alternative theories, but they aren't as good. There is no such thing as Darwinist biology, because Darwinism was created by biologists and only exists in the framework of the scientific method. I'm sure I don't have to repeat this, but "Darwinism is a theory, and not a fact". It is a scientific theory that may or may not be an accurate description of nature.In this respect, ID (in its contemporary incarnation as described, for example, by the discovery institute) is very different to Darwinism.The kind of ID that is promoted by the discovery institute is NOT a product of biology, and it is NOT a product of the scientific method. ID is something external to biology and science that has been forced upon the natural world by non-scientists who have their own political and religious agenca. ID is not the theory of choice in biology, because it doesn't perform very well.That's the big difference. Darwinism is a product of biology and the scientific method. ID is not a product of biology, and it is not a product of the scientific method. Darwinism is internal to biology. ID is external to biology.Mick