Is Dembski just using God-of-the-Gaps?

[Ben]

Could someone explain to me what the difference is between Dembski's explanatory filter and the God-of-the-Gaps argument?

-Ben

[Urban Ranger]

Who

*confused look*

[Why A Duck]

I just wanted to say that in the interest of figuring out what the hell you were talking about, I went to this (http://www.nctimes.com/~mark/bibl_science/dembski.htm) page.

Ow. You owe me a new brain.

(Dembski appears to be trying to prove the hand-of-god in the design of the universe by applying mathematical theory. Either that or he's got a really good chili reipe.)

[A Monkey With a Gun]

Originally posted by Urban Ranger
Who

*confused look* I'm not sure, but I think he's one of the many YEC windmills Ben Quixote loves to tilt at.

[Darwin's Finch]

In this month's Natural History magazine, there was a write-up about Intelligent Design. Three of the main proponents (Michael Behe, Jonathan Wells and William Dembski) all contributed brief essays, which were then critiqued by scientists (by the phrasing of this statement, it should be clear that I do not consider Intelligent Design to be anything resembling a science, any more than plain ol' "Creation Science").

Dembski's argument essentially boils down to a recasting of the whole "evolution violates the second law of thermo" routine: new "information" cannot arise without help, i.e., an intelligent Designer. He also likes to use the phrase "specified complexity" a lot, but never really explains what he means by "specified"; the closest he comes in his N.H. article is to say: Intelligence leaves behind a characteristic trademark or signature--what I call "specified complexity." An event exhibits specified complexity if it is contingent and therefore not necessary; if it is complex and therefore not easily repeatable by chance; and if it is specified in the sense of exhibiting an independently given pattern.
Now, would anyone care to translate that into coherent English?

You will note that Dembski also breaks out the old "probability" chestnut: "if it is complex and therefore not easily repeatable by chance". Here, he is essentially saying that complex structures cannot arise by chance. And I would have to agree: there are, in fact, natural laws which dictate how complex structures are formed at the molecular level - structures like DNA did not necessarily have to be "designed" to operate as they do. One could certainly argue that these laws are put in place by a Designer; such a position is untestable, of course.

Ultimately, Dembski, et al., are simply reworking Creation Science to appear more "science-y" to the masses. In the end, however, another of Dembski's statements shows his true bias:
As Christians, we know naturalism is false. Nature is not self-sufficient....

Since the initial assumption of Intelligent Design is that naturalism is false, there's not much room for a scientific conclusion.

[RTFirefly]

As I understand it, the difference between YEC and the IDTs is like this:

YEC advocates believe that God actively and deliberately created everything a mere several thousand years ago. OTOH, IDTers believe that the naturalistic processes by which the Universe, and later, life on earth, came into being, happened more or less as conventional scientists believe they happened - but that it took a nudge from God, here and there, to produce advances from one form of life to another.

Now, a comment:

These two types of theories are clearly in scientific opposition. They give two completely different views of the history of the Universe, and of life on Earth. Their main point of agreement is that God was involved somehow.

Their intellectual dishonesty is shown by the absence of any catfight between the two 'theories'; instead, adherents of both have their guns trained solely on evolution, AFAICT.

As it says in the 25th chapter of Deuteronomy:

13: "You shall not have in your bag two kinds of weights, a large and a small.
14: You shall not have in your house two kinds of measures, a large and a small.
15: A full and just weight you shall have, a full and just measure you shall have; that your days may be prolonged in the land which the LORD your God gives you.
16: For all who do such things, all who act dishonestly, are an abomination to the LORD your God. The Bible they profess to believe in condemns them as abominable.

[Ben]

Originally posted by Beeblebrox
I'm not sure, but I think he's one of the many YEC windmills Ben Quixote loves to tilt at.


Oh well... (http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=106280)



-Ben

[Ben]

Specifically, my question regards Dembski's "explanatory filter." It sounds to me like his argument is thus:

I (Dembski) have discovered a great way to detect whether a system is designed. Mind you, this isn't just creation science- it's a general technique which can be used in any situation, (law enforcement, for example) and it just so happens that the biggest discovery we've made with it is that life was designed. It works like this: we look for rational, scientific explanations of the evidence which don't involve design. If we can't find any, then and only then, kicking and screaming, are we forced to conclude that a designer was involved.

Thus far, nobody on the Pizza Parlor has offered any explanation for how Dembski's explanatory filter is anything but the God-of-the-Gaps argument cloaked in a layer of highbrow-sounding verbiage. I think I'll ask on talk.origins and see what they say. All I know is, Dembski & Co. are very, very eager to have us believe that his argument-by-default isn't GotG.

-Ben

[Darwin's Finch]

I don't know...it sounds pretty clear that this "explantory filter" is exactly the same as GotG. Whether that's what IDers want everyone to believe doesn't change the reality of the situtation.

[Ben]

sounds clear from my description, or from theirs?


-Ben

[Erofeev]

Ben,

I think Dembski is clearly using a GOTG argument, all dressed up for the ball. The proponents of ID have a very difficult time defining who or what the designer is; indeed, they seem to avoid the question (See Massimo Pigliucci's features on ID, including a debate with Dembski, accessible through the links at the talk.origins website).

If you cannot define who or what the designer is, then if you have decided that a feature of an animal or plant is not scientifically explainable, you are forced to throw up your hands and say "I dunno, I give up, it must have been that mysterious designer again." In other words, the God of the gaps.

That's what bothers me so much about the attempts in Ohio to introduce ID in science classes, because ID implies that at some point, you just stop looking and chalk it up to the designer.

[Podkayne]

Originally posted by Erofeev
[The proponents of ID have a very difficult time defining who or what the designer is; indeed, they seem to avoid the question (See Massimo Pigliucci's features on ID, including a debate with Dembski, accessible through the links at the talk.origins website).

Oh, they have a very specific Designer in mind; only problem is, if they mention Him by name, the Supreme Court won't let them peddle their claptrap in public schools, so they play all coy . . . "It could be aliens," indeed!

[My Darn Snake Legs]

Intelligence leaves behind a characteristic trademark or signature--what I call "specified complexity." An event exhibits specified complexity if it is contingent and therefore not necessary; if it is complex and therefore not easily repeatable by chance; and if it is specified in the sense of exhibiting an independently given pattern.

Actually, it can be boiled down to plain english. It's philosopher-speak and he really shouldn't have thrown it into an article in a science magazine. Wrong audience to be throwing round the words "necessary" and "contingent" in a philosophical sense.

All it means is that if something has not been in existance for all of eternity then it must have had some sort of a creator. IIRC, the example that he uses in his book is that of a watch found in a glade. Someone who comes upon this watch is not going to think that it has always just been there, but rather that it must have had a maker. This may have been an arguement from Behe, but it works just as well here. I think that Dembski's arguement is a good one. Why should we look at the universe and think that it has always been here? Why shouldn't there have been a "first mover?"

Another good book that explains a link between science and religion is called Quarks, Chaos & Christianity by John Polkinghorne. He makes some really good points, I think.


Dembski's article (though I haven't read it yet) is probably better understood if one has already read his book which I believe is titled Intelligent Design, though it is at home and I haven't read it recently.

--==the sax man==--

[Darwin's Finch]

Originally posted by SMUsax
IIRC, the example that he uses in his book is that of a watch found in a glade. Someone who comes upon this watch is not going to think that it has always just been there, but rather that it must have had a maker.

This is the biggest weakness in the whole ID philosophy: examples. When Dembski uses high-fallutin' philosophy-speak, it's easy to confuse and obfuscate to the point where a reader may actually begin to suspect he knows what he's talking about. When he starts to provide examples, the facade falls away, and we see that he hasn't a clue.

If I were to find a watch in a field, unless I were a complete dunderhead, I would know it was constructed by humans. It did not coalesce out of the ether, it was not the product of random chance, nor was it assembled by chipmunks. It mas manufactured in Taiwan.

The same goes with jet planes, bicycles and everything else man-made that is so often used in ID examples (well, maybe not the Taiwan bit, but you know what I mean).

If I were to come upon a chipmunk in a field, however, I have no such a priori knowledge of where it came from: a chipmunk is not a watch.

Organisms do not come with a "Made by God" stamp. We are left to infer their origins based on the evidence at hand. Could they have been created by God (or some other "intelligence")? Sure. Could they have been the result of purely naturalistic processes? Sure. How do we tell the difference? That depends on whether God, if He were responsible, chose to leave His mark. But neither complexity, nor the fact that everything must arise from something else, is sufficient, in my opinion, to prove that a Designer must be responsible.

Why should we look at the universe and think that it has always been here? Why shouldn't there have been a "first mover?"

Conversely, why shouldn't we look at the universe and think that it has always been there? Why should there have been a "first mover"?

[My Darn Snake Legs]

I think you should make up your mind. Do you want an example, or do you want a theory? If you get just a theory, then you complain that there are no examples of that theory. If you get an example of the theory in action, then you say that the examples are weak.

ID is a theory of what might have happened. This is the same as the scientific theory of what might have happened.

Both religion and science are a way of looking at evidence and interpreting the results. You cannot argue that science only deals with facts and that religion only deals with ideas/theories. They are both an interpretation of the evidence at hand.

Someone said that Dembski was stopping the process of looking for a final answer. He's not. He is proposing an alternative to the Scientific theory. The scientist who argues against him (as Richard Dawkins has) is often doing so because he has firlmy committed himself to a belief that there is nothing else out there to discover. To me, this does not sound very scientific at all.

If you are looking for a small sign that says "Made by God" you are looking in the wrong place. The organism itself is a "Made by God" sign. The reason that you have faith that the watch was made by someone in Taiwon is because you know that people in Taiwon make watches. Assuming that you have not been to the watch factory in Taiwon, you know what you do about these people because someone told you so and you don't have any good reason to disbelieve it. If someone tells you that God makes universes, what reason do you have to say that He doesn't?

--==the sax man==--

[mrblue92]

Originally posted by SMUsax
I think you should make up your mind. Do you want an example, or do you want a theory? If you get just a theory, then you complain that there are no examples of that theory. If you get an example of the theory in action, then you say that the examples are weak.You need both. You need a theory that can be falsified (and therefore modified to fit new knowledge), and you need examples to predict, test, and modify the theory. It is isn't science to say, "There's intelligent design," and never question or test it.
The scientist who argues against him (as Richard Dawkins has) is often doing so because he has firlmy committed himself to a belief that there is nothing else out there to discover. To me, this does not sound very scientific at all.If you find a scientist who believes there is truly nothing left to discover, then it's probably the case that he isn't of much use to science. But I think you are being wholy unfair in presuming that a scientist who argues against a particular position (especially *your* particular position in any give circumstance) is doing so for that reason. Do you dismiss his arguments because they do not follow logically, or because you've already presupposed their falsehood? Is that your prejudice or his? That argument can go both ways, you see.
If you are looking for a small sign that says "Made by God" you are looking in the wrong place. The organism itself is a "Made by God" sign. The reason that you have faith that the watch was made by someone in Taiwon is because you know that people in Taiwon make watches. Assuming that you have not been to the watch factory in Taiwon, you know what you do about these people because someone told you so and you don't have any good reason to disbelieve it. If someone tells you that God makes universes, what reason do you have to say that He doesn't?Psst... it's "Taiwan". As Darwin's Finch demonstrates, that argument is an old straw man. (William Paley, 1802) The universe is not a watch. If we want to, we can travel to Taiwan, look at the watch factory, see the crate of new watches being shipped out, and talk to the guy who made it. Or, if the factory no longer exists, we can find evidence of the history of Taiwan and its watch-making industry. You can't exactly go to the universe factory and ask God for the engineering specifications, can you? Nor can we find God's corporate logo stenciled on Antarctica. There is no irrefutable and binding logical connection between the two situations.

Why *must* organisms necessarily have been designed any more than mountains, rivers, valleys, or snowflakes? (And if you say "Second Law of Thermodynamics", prepare to be beaten about the head and shoulders by dopers far more vicious than I...)

[Darwin's Finch]

Originally posted by SMUsax
I think you should make up your mind. Do you want an example, or do you want a theory? If you get just a theory, then you complain that there are no examples of that theory. If you get an example of the theory in action, then you say that the examples are weak.

As mrblue pointed out, we should have both. The example is meant to clarify and/or support the theory. The "watch in the field", or the mousetrap, or any other obviously man-made object says absolutely squat about natural objects. The unfortunate truth is that there are no good examples of design in nature, simply because they all require the presumption that they were designed!
ID is a theory of what might have happened. This is the same as the scientific theory of what might have happened.
The major difference between the two being that scientific theories must be testable. ID theory is not. In order to detect intelligent design in nature, you must begin with the assumptions that a) nature was "intelligently" designed, and b) such design is detectable. But then you have the problem of trying to read the Mind of God: how / where would He leave His mark? To say the organism itself is His mark is nothing more than a belief statement. It could just as easily be the mark of nature.
Someone said that Dembski was stopping the process of looking for a final answer. He's not. He is proposing an alternative to the Scientific theory.
He's not proposing anything new. He has, as I quoted before, flat out stated that he "knows" naturalism to be false. He is therefore incapable of arriving at anything resembling a "scientific" conclusion.
The scientist who argues against him (as Richard awkins has) is often doing so because he has firlmy committed himself to a belief that there is nothing else out there to discover. To me, this does not sound very scientific at all.
The scientist arguing against him is doing what scientists do: critiquing his argument. Nothing in science is simply accepted (if the opposite were true, we'd be hip-deep in failed "cold fusion" power plants by now). There is also very little in the realms of science which does not have competing theories for explaining a given phenomenon. There is plenty of argument within the field of evolution as to how it works. Dembski, et al., are simply sniping from the outside, essentially saying, "Ha! It doesn't work, God did it!" Surely you can see how this sort of claim isn't going to win most scientists over. It's rather like many claims here in GD: if someone doesn't buy it, you can bet there will be cries of "Cite, please!" The problem, of course, is that IDers can't/won't provide those cites.

[The Ryan]

Originally posted by Ben
Could someone explain to me what the difference is between Dembski's explanatory filter and the God-of-the-Gaps argument?
For starters, while GotG is prone to be constantly being tornd down, it at least has something to say, as opposed to Dembski, who refuses to made a single concrete statement.

[The Ryan]

Originally posted by SMUsax
All it means is that if something has not been in existance for all of eternity then it must have had some sort of a creator.
Is this paraphrasing Dembski, or is it your own opinion? Because if it's the latter, I'd like to see some reason why that is so.

Why should we look at the universe and think that it has always been here?
Why shouldn't we? It seems to me that Occam's razor suggests that we shoudln't assume that it has a creator.

If you get an example of the theory in action, then you say that the examples are weak.
That's because they are weak.

ID is a theory of what might have happened.[/quot]
No, it's not. First of all, it's not a theory. Not in the scientific sense. Secondly, it doesn't tell us anything about what happened. It just tells us what didn't happen.
"Do you have a theory of how this man died?"
"Why, yes. I believe that a secret cabal of oil magnates allied with drug smugglers didn't implant a microchip that slowly realeased a poisen into his system".
"Uh, thanks..."

[quote]This is the same as the scientific theory of what might have happened.
So where are the experiments? The scientific write ups? A person other than Dembski that actually understands what he's talking about?

If someone tells you that God makes universes, what reason do you have to say that He doesn't?
For one thing, how does the guy that's telling me this know himself?

[RTFirefly]

Originally posted by mrblue92
Nor can we find God's corporate logo stenciled on Antarctica. But I'm still hoping to find an engraved portrait of Slartibartfast embedded in a glacier over a Norwegian fjord. :)

[bonzer]

Originally posted by SMUsax
If someone tells you that God makes universes, what reason do you have to say that He doesn't?


On the face of it, you're making a naked appeal to authority. The mere fact that someone makes an argument is no reason in itself to believe it. The conclusion is only as strong as the evidence supporting it.
Or are you trying to say that it's merely necessary for Dembski to present a possibility? Sure the universe could be designed, but so what? We knew that already.
If not those, you're trying to throw the ball into the other court. But I'm not the one making any claim about "what" makes a universe - I'm quite happy to admit that I don't know why there's a universe. Dembski however is making a claim, namely that the universe is here because of some Intelligent Designer. It's quite legitimate for me, or anyone else, to question his reasoning in defending this claim, without having to make any alternative hypothesis. One can decide that Dembski's reasoning is shoddy and inadequate, independently of all other possibilities.

[JonF]

Many cannot see any difference between Dembski's proposals and GOTG.

Ben (and anyone), if you are up for some moderately heavy reading you might want to look at Not a Free Lunch But an Expensive Box of Chocolates (http://website.lineone.net/~rwein/skeptic/NFLpropFAQ.htm) (a work in progress, but nearing completion). The author, Richard Wein, just posted the first draft of a proposed summary in talk.origins with the message ID <3ca38d1f_1@mk-nntp-1.news.uk.worldonline.com> (Google hasn't picked it up yet, so I can't post a URL):

Post by Richard Wein to talk.origins, via Google Groups search (http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&selm=3ca38d1f_1%40mk-nntp-1.news.uk.worldonline.com&rnum=7)

[Text replaced with link. -- MEB]

[JonF]

Oh, and for those interested in recent critiques of Dembski and other proponents of or aspects of ID (including several articles by ID proponents), I recommend Intelligent Design Creationism and Its Critics (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0262661241/qid=1017363563/sr=8-1/ref=sr_8_67_1/102-3940260-8591354), Robert T. Pennock (ed), ISBN 0262661241.

Dembski was all a-twitter when he realized where his articles were being published: see How Not to Debate Intelligent Design (http://www.arn.org/docs2/news/dembskiattackspennock010702.htm). But Pennock had the appropriate permissions, apparently including written permission from Dembski ( I can't find the link right now). Wesley Elsberry responds to Dembski at Comments on W.A. Dembski's Press Release of 2002/01/08 (http://www.antievolution.org/people/dembski_wa/wre_20020116.html).

[MEBuckner]

Moderator's Note: JonF, if you can't find somebody else's words on-line anywhere you can link to them, the solution is still not to go ahead and copy them all into your post anyway.

[mrblue92]

Originally posted by RTFirefly
But I'm still hoping to find an engraved portrait of Slartibartfast embedded in a glacier over a Norwegian fjord. :) I suppose that means mousetraps are an abomination.

Wait! Look at Italy!

Does that mean God's a Texan?!? :confused: :eek:

We're all doomed. :D

[Erofeev]

Podkayne,

I should have made my argument clearer. I agree there is little doubt about who Dembski's designer is. What I should have said is that the ID theorist is unable to specify the nature of the designer specifically enough to demonstrate how you would go about testing ID theory.

SMUsax,

Dembski's proposal does indeed imply that you should stop looking for answers, not for the chemical or physical structures of living things but how they got to be that way. Dembski may be very capable, for example, of explaining how the bombardier beetle synthesizes a nasty cocktail for its enemies, but tell me just how he proposes science try to find out how the beetle developed that talent? Waits patiently... So boiled down, his argument is essentially that, pending a better explanation, it's ID. Once you've reached that conclusion, why look any further?

[RTFirefly]

I'd like to quote just one section of Elsberry's response to Dembski's criticisms of Pennock:
Dembski broaches the topic of books with collections of essays designed to make the opposition look ridiculous. While much is made of the fact that critics do attend and present at conferences put on by the Discovery Institute Center for Renewal of Science and Culture, and that conferences are a normal part of scientific endeavor, it seems that no attention has been paid to the other normal part of the aftermath of a conference: publishing the proceedings. I find it very interesting, and just perhaps revealing, that the ID proponents have been keen to set up conferences with critics invited(1), and keen to publish collections of essays by ID proponents(2), but have somehow failed to print even one proceedings volume from a conference that included critics of ID. If one had even been attempted, I think I would have heard about it. If one wishes to talk about "fairness", what could be more fair than actually publishing the proceedings and letting the rest of the world see what the ID critics had to say at those conferences?(3) It is not as if the vicissitudes of editing a collaborative volume have proved to be beyond the mettle of ID proponents; the list of edited volumes containing pro-ID essays certainly shows that the capability exists. It's just the will that seems to be conspicuously absent. He's absolutely on target here. Publishing the proceedings is a normal and essential part of such conferences, otherwise they're nothing more than a place for persons in the field to gossip and make job contacts. Without the proceedings, nobody who didn't show up has any reference of what new knowledge was presented, and what progress was made in the discussions of any controversial issues.

If proceedings are generally not published, or (even worse) they're published some of the time, but not for those conferences where critics of ID present papers, then that casts serious doubt (without seeing a word of their actual work) on whether they're attempting to do science rather than evangelism.

And my previous point about the apparent absence of conflict between young-earth creationists and old-earth intelligent-design theorists also speaks to this.

[JonF]

Originally posted by MEBuckner
Moderator's Note: JonF, if you can't find somebody else's words on-line anywhere you can link to them, the solution is still not to go ahead and copy them all into your post anyway.

Erk? The material is not copyrighted, and I attributed the source and provided a link that those with newsreaders can use ... wherein lies the sin?

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by SMUsax
IIRC, the example that he uses in his book is that of a watch found in a glade. Someone who comes upon this watch is not going to think that it has always just been there, but rather that it must have had a maker. This may have been an arguement from Behe, but it works just as well here.

This works only if you are assuming the person who finds it has prior knowledge of watches. If that person is an African Bushman, he will not be able to tell the difference between a watch and some other things he have seen before. Depending on the watch, he might think that it's a rock or some weird creature.

Which brings us to where we are at. Since we have no prior knowledge that organisms are designed and made, where is the logical basis for us to assume that they are?

[Urban Ranger]

Intelligence leaves behind a characteristic trademark or signature--what I call "specified complexity." An event exhibits specified complexity if it is contingent and therefore not necessary; if it is complex and therefore not easily repeatable by chance; and if it is specified in the sense of exhibiting an independently given pattern.
Now, would anyone care to translate that into coherent English?

Okay. Here "necessary" doesn't mean "logically necessary," but the condition that "is uncaused and independent of all else." "Contingent" is the opposite of "necessary."

AFAIK, this says something is intelligently designed if:

1. This event has a cause
2. It is deemed to have low probability to happen by chance
3. There is a recognisable pattern

It seems to be that Dembski's thesis is a post hoc explanation. He knew what he was looking for, so he made a thesis in such a way that, if followed through it results in the desired outcome.

In engineering we call this "working backwards." :D

[MEBuckner]

Originally posted by JonF
Erk? The material is not copyrighted, and I attributed the source and provided a link that those with newsreaders can use ... wherein lies the sin?
Moderator's Note: I think we would prefer, unless the material is explicitly not copyrighted (i.e., it has a notice attached saying "Anybody may reproduce this anywhere he wants, so long as this notice is retained" or it's the Gettysburg Address or something) that posters avoid copying entire essays to the boards.

Remember that there are copyright ramifications to anything posted to these boards. If one of our posters reproduces another person's words on the SDMB, the poster has assigned the Chicago Reader, Inc. (and its successors and assigns) a nonexclusive irrevocable right to re-use that person's words in any manner it (or they) see fit without notice or compensation to that person. But does our poster actually have the right to so assign someone else's words like that? For a short "quotation" from someone, it's not a problem; for an entire essay, it seems like only common courtesy to be careful.

Finally, linking instead of mass copying and pasting is easier on us Mods, because then we don't have to play Solomon and try to figure out if there's a problem or not.