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

[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 (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

[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, 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. 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.

[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?!? :eek:

We’re all doomed.

[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]

[q]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.[/q]
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.”

[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.