Deniers Bad; Herd Followers Good???

BarryA at uncommondescent is complaining because IDists are sometimes called evolution-DENIERS. But he reckons that the ongoing "witch hunt" can be used to their own advantage. He lists quite a few examples of of people who, through the ages, have been deniers themselves and claims that without deniers there could be no progress in science. Writes BarryA:

There were a couple of doctors who were “stress deniers” in that they denied that stress caused peptic ulcers. They had the audacity to suggest that ulcers were caused by a bacterial infection. As a result, they were marginalized and scoffed at and (so I understand) heckled and laughed at during presentations. The end result: they won the 2005 Nobel Price in medicine for the bacterium Helicobacter pylori and its role in gastritis and peptic ulcer disease. The take home message that we should shout at every opportunity: today’s “deniers” are tomorrows heros.

Consider also the following:
Copernicus - geocentrism denier
Pasteur - spontaneous generation denier
Darwin - inheritance of acquired traits denier
Einstein - absolute reference frame denier
Gould and Margalis - Darwinian gradualism deniers
Hawking - Steady State Model denier
Conway Morris - purely random evolution denier
Woese - universal common descent denier
etc.

BarryA is hopelessly confused about something that is quite fundamental to all the examples he gives. These people didn't "deny current dogma" just for the sake of it. They came up with BETTER scientific explanations for observed phenomena. Darwin denied inheritance of acquired characteristics only in the sense that selection would be a better mechanism to explain adaptation. Copernicus denied geocentrism only in the sense that heliocentrism would better explain the apparent movement of stars and planets. I assume that BarryA included Gould because he somehow thinks that puctuated equilibrium somehow goes against "gradualism" (it doesn't) and he most certainly included Morris because his view towards evolution is highly teleological (something that is more than just slightly unaccepted [for scientific reasons]).


So, unlike the ID movement, these people didn't stick their fingers in their ears and shout "The designer did it! The designer did it!". They actually contributed to science. They were/are not deniers. IDists are.

Evidence FOR design? Finally???

Under the heading "Germ Free Animal Lifespan Evidence of Design" (26th Mar, 2007), uncommondescent's DaveScot thinks he might have found some good evidence for intelligent design. Animals that live under germ-free conditions (i.e. they are infected by no viruses, bacteria or any [other] parasites) can live twice as long as "normal" animals. Writes he:

This got me thinking about evolution vs. design. The animals raised germ-free could not have evolved in the natural world without exposure to bacteria but they could have been designed for GF life. The fact that they live twice as long in a GF environment when eating a diet that is nutritionally complete except for being sterile seems to be favorable evidence that animals were created in and for a germ-free world.

What DaveScot fails to realise is that this would not be evidence for design but simply evidence that animals can live twice as long in a germ free environment. DaveScot has used the typical ID creationist tactic of taking an observation, make a "hypothesis" and then claim that his hypothesis supports the observation. Well, duh. I would have to, wouldn't it. But imagine the hypothetical scenario where the germ free animals only lived half as long; DaveScot could still "hypothesize" that the animals did this because they were designed to do so. And given that ID gives you no clue as to which of these two "hypotheses" to choose from, we are left with choosing the one that the observations fit (see my article regardig ID predictions for more info). I.e., ID supports whatever is observed; anything can be evidence for ID. And if there is no evidence against ID, you can hardly claim that there is any meaningful evidence for it.

So, I guess we got no evidence for ID in the end. All we got evidence of was an ID creationist's failure to understand what can be counted as evidence. Surprise, surprise.

Who Designed the Designer?

This post comments on an article that appears on the "ID the future" website - "Who Designed the Designer? (A Lengthier Response)" by Jay Richards.

In it, Richards argues that there is no need to ask the question "Who designed to designer" since science only deals with proximate and not ultimate causes. He states that we can infer design even if we have no idea about who the designer is.

I agree, but then that is not the reason for asking who designed the designer. The real reason is this:

ID claims that, since it does not identify the designer, it is agnostic regarding the identity of it. It can not say whether or not the designer was God, Darth Vader, a blob of slime, x or anything else for that matter. The only thing it says is that the designer was intelligent. And intelligence is the only thing that can generate Complex Specified Information (CSI); material undirected processes (MUP - the usual ways things happen in the world) can not. From that it would seem to follow that MUP can not generate intelligence (e.g. via any evolutionary processes) for then MUP would be able to generate CSI. So, either (1) intelligence or CSI will have had to been injected into our universe at some (or several) point(s) in the past OR(/and) (2) intelligence is really a separate entity from the material world that, for all intents and purposes, "just is".

Bill Dembski seems to argue something alongs the lines of point (2) in his upcoming book "The Design of Life" where he writes:

There are now good reasons for thinking that no such causal mechanism exists and that mind is inherently irreducible to brain.23 This is good news for intelligent design, which treats intelligence as irreducible to material entities and the mechanisms that control their interaction. At the same time, it does not mean that intelligence should be regarded as something “supernatural.” Supernatural explanations invoke miracles and therefore are not properly part of science. Explanations that call on intelligent causes require no miracles but cannot be reduced to materialistic explanations. Indeed, design theorists argue that intelligent causation is perfectly natural, provided that nature is understood aright.

Bill is claiming above that his view of intelligence should not be considered supernatural, because supernatural events invoke miracles. But given that intelligence cannot be reduced to materialistc explanations (i.e. mind is really a separate entity from the brain in which it emerges from [according to Bill]), it also follows that there is no way we can scientifically test for it and thus intelligence is outside the scope of science and is for all intents and purposes supernatural.

Point (1) from above fares no better. MUP are, according to Bill, the only natural events that can take place and thus the insertion of intelligence/CSI into out universe would, by definition, be supernatural.

So, the real reason why we should not be asking the question "who designed the designer" is because logically, ID is not agnostic regarding the nature of the designer; ultimately, according to ID, there has to have been a supernatural designer.

Racism - sexism

Following up on my comment regarding William Dembski's "revelation" that Darwin was a racist (March 21st, 2007), I would just like to mention that, since Dembski is a "Southern Baptist" and since Southern baptist's wives must submit themselves graciously to their husband's leadership, it would follow that Dembski is a sexist.

Dembski finished his original post with :

Okay, all together now with feeling: “WE LOVE DARWIN. WE LOVE EVOLUTION. WE LOVE THE STATUS QUO.”

Okay, all together now with feeling: “WE LOVE DEMBSKI. WE LOVE INTELLIGENT DESIGN. WE LOVE HYPOCRISY.”

It's a happy Darwinian world after all...

I haven't been posting much lately for the simple reason that all that seems to be coming out from the ID camp now-a-days is mere random moaning about ... whatever they feel like moaning about. I keeping with their fashion of not proposing any positive evidence for their "theory" they seem to even having stopped attacking evolution and are now merely attacking the irrelevant personal opinions of "evolutionists" - dead or alive.

The latest in line to do so is none other than Bill Dembski. On march 20th, under the heading "It's a happy Darwinian world after all..." he quotes a passage from Darwin's "The Descent of Man" where Darwin presents some rather interesting views regarding the traits that should be passed down in human societies (as a side note, the entire book "The Descent of Man" can be read online). Darwin's views were no doubt wrong much for the simple reason that he seems to have thought that in regards to "nature vs nurture" human traits (he was mostly talking about behaviour in this particular chapter) seem to have been firmly decided by nature (i.e. behaviour is passed along from parent to offspring genetically/deterministically not because it is learned). Bill, of course, brings this up not because Darwin was wrong but because it is an easy target for "evolution-bashing". Bill, like many of his ilk, seems to have a hard time separating the scientific hypotheses/theories proposed (that have changed in the last 150 years, btw) from the views expressed by the theory's originator. The validity of a scientific explanation does not rest on the niceness of the person proposing it, but on the evidence supporting it.

Why is that so hard to understand?

QUIZ-time

Take the "On the ID World quiz" and test your knowledge about Intelligent Design.

New website - expansion of The DesignInterference

After blogging about the predictions that ID supposedly make (Nov 12th, 2006) and then engaging in a debate about the very same point at overwhelmingevidence, I decided that I would, now and then, write articles that are a bit more formal than my usual blogs. These articles will deal with some of the more fundamental problems with ID and will also be a bit more "meaty" than my posts at "The DesignInterference". I have created a separate web-site, On the ID World, for these articles (this site will also contain some other writings that are not ID related). The first ID article, No, Intelligent Design Theory can NOT predict!, is on now online.

The new site looks HIGHLY similar to my other web-site, "In an ID World", from where the code was taken and some of the menu-options of "On the ID World" still link there. I will change this as soon as I have the time available.


Enjoy.