It doesn’t, I misunderstood what you wrote.
In what way does natural selection not determine which variations survive? Do you mean that in a conscious sense, then I would agree with you, but as an aggregate of a multitude of non-intentional (big picture-wise) organic and cosmic (radiation, impact events, etc.) actions I would say that it is determining the survivors.
I know, I am one :). Although I wouldn’t say we rely on them; it’s one interesting area of AI, certainly.
Well, inasmuch as there’s an organised effort to get ID included in the school curriculum, there is a “they”, and “they” deserve refuting, because I genuinely believe they will damage things if they get their way. Lookit; in the absence (to my knowledge) of observations of abiogenesis, I’m happy to give ID about as much credence as any other theory based on pretty much pure speculation; very little (this goes for abiogenesis too). I find the general principle of positing a higher power to fill any gap in our knowledge to be lazy (and counter-productive, as it forestalls further enquiry), but I am happy to admit this to be personal preference.
What irks me is when creation theories (in particular ID) are posited as contending with evolution theories, because they do not. This whole daft controversy is rooted in a perceived slight that was never intended, and a conflict that does not exist. By seeking to displace teaching of an observable phenomenon and a falsifiable hypothesis in favour of untestable speculation which does not even address the same problem, I believe that ID advocates are damaging schooling. Very little time was spent in my classes on the spontaneous (or otherwise) emergence of life, because we know little about it (in fact it was pointed out that our knowledge was minimal). By contrast, a fair amount of time was spent on the observable fact of evolution, and the falsifiable hypothesis of natural selection. This was not to the exclusion of ID, because ID has nothing to do with evolution. This is the point the OP made, and the thing that those pushing for ID teaching routinely ignore.
And I don’t hate anyone; certainly not for such trivial reasons as this. I will, however, oppose what I perceive as efforts to institutionalise stupidity. I won’t have my future kids miseducated as part of a misguided effort on the part of religious types to forestall science from eliminating their god of choice, as they see it. If this were a discussion about the wisdom of a national curriculum, however, I suspect you and I would find ourselves in agreement, and we could each happily school our children as we see fit.
The Merc redeemed itself with this article today (although it’s actuall a reprint of a Washington Post article): President reignites evolution debate.
No mix-up of Darwin’s theory and ideas about the origin of life.
I’m guessing that this is the article the Post ran yesterday, reprinted today in the Merc. Better than nothing, I guess…
You guessed correctly.
Which doesn’t alter the fact that flies are being naturally sorted out by frogs. Even if the mechanism was “designed,” the mechanism still exists.
The student is going to spend 24 hours a day in my science class? He doesn’t have any of his own time?
Should physics teachers provide time and materials for students to study the possibility that gravity is caused by magic?
I created the noteriety? I made them lie? I make them say that eyeballs are irreducibly complex when they know damn well they aren’t? What exactly are you accusing me of?
You’re right that I shouldn’t have said that they’re strictly limiting their objection to the first organisms. (Most also believe (to varying degrees) that novel phyla, or in some cases, novel species require intelligent design too). However the common denominator and fundamental objection here is the original structures of life itself.
Michael Behe very clearly states that if you can show that natural processes can create a sufficiently complex entity then ID is falsified:
Indeed he does, in which case fair enough; ID as he proposes it is falsifiable. I would take issue with his specification that it would take an instance of natural selection producing a sufficiently complex organism to falsify ID; it would only take an instance of a mechanism other than an intelligent designer (this is another example of the creationists’ adversarial approach to science, IMHO). But otherwise, yeah, he seems to be taking the position that pretty much everything is irreducibly complex, which is a perfectly falsifiable statement. Still an appeal to ignorance and a lazy way of formulating hypotheses (to my mind), but falsifiable by empirical investigation.
Let’s look at how an ID “scientist” develops his hypothesis, and you’ll see why it’s not science. We’ll go thru the steps of the Scientific Method:
Characterization (observation): Hmmm. There are a bunch of things that we see in nature that seem too complex to evolve accidentally. Seems like if you don’t have all the parts, there is no use for just some of the parts. Eyes, some cell process, the falgellum of the paramecium, etc.
Hypothesis: TThere must be an “intelligent designer” who interferes with evlolution and facilitates the creation of these oddities.
Prediction: If there is an intelligent designer, then he/she/it will a) do such and such or b) have x, y, z characteristics.
Experiment.
I invite anyone here to fill in the detalis for #4. I can’t. What experiment do we do to address any of the items in 2 or 3. If IDers said that the Designer was one of a race of giant spiders living on Jupiter, that at least is something we could test for. As it is, there is nothing.
The “irriducible complexity” idea isn’t an hypothesis, but an observation. The existence of the Designer is the hypothesis, driven by the observation of “irriducipble complexity”. It’s a hypothesis in name only, since it can neither be verified nor falsified (unless the designer decides to reveal itself to us).
Behe’s suggestion for a thought experiment is kind of stupid. No, it’s actually really stupid, thought it wouldn’t be an uninteresting experiment to do anyway. It would be kind of redundant as “forced evolution” has already been accomplished numerous times (take antibiotic resistance, as one rather disturbing example, or even something as radical as generating organisms with a different genetic code).
Anyhow, what does he mean, really, by “equally complex”? First he needs to define that. As ID “theorists” define “irreducible complexity” in terms of their own incredulity (“I simply can’t understand how this could happen”), which is quite subjective in nature, “irreducible complexity” ultimately means whatever they can’t believe based on their own chosen parameters, which, so far as anyone can tell, are essentially arbitrary. They’ve got to do better. Is equally complex just a function of the number of so-called essential parts? Are there no other criteria? Because just throwing out numbers like “forty parts seems like too many, but maybe if it isn’t, twenty certainly isn’t” is simplistic, if not disingenuous. Certainly there must be more to complexity than that. His watch and mousetrap analogies could have vastly different numbers of parts, but he rightly considers those examples “irreducibly complex”. He needs to do a much better job of defining his terms. By the way, where did he get 10[sup]4[/sup] for the suggested number of doublings? A conservative estimate for the doubling time in a bacterial culture during its log phase of growth (which would have to be maintained throught the experiment by continually pumping fresh broth into the culture vessel and pumping out waste products) is about half-an-hour (for E. Coli under optimal conditions, it’s around 20 minutes). So ten-thousand doublings would take around 5000 hours, or about 208 days. So we’re supposed to get something in less than 2/3 of a year that may have taken tens-of-millions of years to evolve naturally. Whatever.
Anyway, suppose he wakes up one day a bit less obtuse and can define in some meaningful way whatever the hell it is his criteria are supposed to be. His proposed experiment would rely upon random mutation and some clever set of conditions that would apply selective pressure favoring motility over any other possible adaptaion. Random mutation is a given, but forced evolution to produce such an outcome is a taller order. There’s really no reason to assume that a close copy (I’m sure the odds are incalcuably remote the same thing would just appear by chance), or even a reasonable facsimile of the bacterial flagellum would inevitably arise. It could be something completely different (though something about fluid dynamics at the micro scale might make something like bacerial flagella more likely than, say, fish-like fins). We are operating on a background of random mutation, after all. The only really predictable outcome, in terms of probability, in such a complex and undeterministic system, is that, should selective pressures not wipe out the culture entirely, some descendant of the innoculate will have greater motility than its ancestors.
Well, all right, after some as-yet-unspecified amount of time, now we’ve got a more motile sub-species of bacteria. What’s cool about this is we’ve been freezing a representative sample of the culture periodically, so we can follow the evolutionary process pretty closely throughout its history by looking at the end result, and can trace its emergence over the course of the experiment. It is a given that if no one has tampered with our setup, and we’ve relied only upon mutation and selection to yield this more-motile species, that its means of motility evolved from the genes of its ancestors, and nothing from outside of the system was introduced (e.g., we didn’t transform the bacteria with a plasmid of our own design at some point to introduce some gene that does what we want).
Since I have a limited imagination, let’s say the result looks quite a bit like a flagellum; but it’s built out of fewer proteins, let’s say fifteen; and they’re not the same proteins as the one that make up any naturally-occurring flagella. We’ll call this structure a flagelloid. We know exactly what these proteins are variants of, because we can sequence all the ancestors. We can even say, with impressive precision, when and where the motif or gene replications, point-mutations, deletions, transpositions, etc. occurred to yield these new variants.
Now, it turns out we can delete some particular genes that make up this flagelloid, and the baceria can still get around (albeit less well); and these deletion-mutants actually look a bit like some early ancestors of “E. flagelloidus”. But if we delete some of other the genes that make up the flagelloid, the whole thing fails to work. So, the flagelloid looks a lot like it has what ID “theorists” would call a “irreducible core”. However, since we basically watched, step by step, random genetic change and selection produce the thing, it is, by definition, NOT irreducibly complex.
Or is it? Say, for instance, the ID “theorist” wishes to cut me some slack, and isn’t going to disqualify the flagelloid by the anemic number of parts that make up the “irreducibly-complexoid core” (I call it that since it only appears irreducibly compex, so far as we know, naïvely). A structure has arisen, by what is evidentially manifestly a process of Darwinian evolution, and it contains a sufficiently satisfying number of individual parts that are required for its function, parts that must work in concert with all the other parts, perfectly, or, if absent, the whole machine breaks down.
What is to stop the ID “theorist”, if he or she believes God is the Designer, from proposing that, since the structure meets whatever list of criteria they say is required to “prove” irreducible complexity, it really is irreducibly complex, and that God just miracled it into existence?
Did I sample every ancestor?
Did I witness every mutation?
Did I shield the system from any possible external influence, naturalistic or otherwise?
Can I disprove the notion that the finger of God poked into my culture vessel and touched a little proto-flagelloid, nudging it imperceptibly a certain way? Do I know for a fact that God did not influence the system in a manner that, given my limited time and resources, was missed by my empirical methods? Does the fact that I literally cannot sample every ancestor (because the sampling process ultimately destroys bacterial cells to extract their components and analyze them) not speak to my ultimate humbleness in the face of an omnicient intelligence? Is there any good reason to assume God isn’t trying to teach me something with a miracle in this instance? Do I, in fact, know all and see all?
In short, to all of the above: No.
So, you see, even if Behe or some other schmuck decides to give me a reasonably-designed thought experiment, and I’m a big enough sucker to go through the trouble of actually performing it, expecting a fair critique of my results, and I witness the evolution by natural selection of an irreducibly-complexoid structure that meets all the criteria the ID “theorists” decide upon, there is absolutely nothing stopping them from whipping out the “Goddidit” trump card and declairing the battle won once again. Because, you see, this is what they already do. They argue from incredulity, so anything that strikes their fancy as incredible is incredible. There’s no deeper principle involved, no prediciton one could make, no fact that could possibly refute the notion of “irreducible complexity”. Some of the more honest IDers might concede individual examples of purportedly IC structures, but there is nothing that stands in the way of miracles. Nothing. And since IC structures, in the minds of these people, who count in their number a fair proportion of politically-and-ideologically-motivated theistic apologists, are a priori miracles, there’s no way to disprove it. It’s supernatural. It’s beyond science. In principle, anything can be IC. Because they say so, because they can’t accept any other possibility.
Because it’s religion, a metaphorical pig-in-a-party-dress, an imposter science, a sham.
LoopyDude. Beautifully written as always. I think the really deep insight in that is that anything one could do to make the experiment viable in a lab (speeding it up) is inherently “directing evolution” and so would undermine the point of the experiment.
But your other objection seems to me to be that since ID’ers aren’t behaving rationally to begin with they can’t be relied upon to recognize when their hypothesis has been falsified. Maybe so, but that doesn’t change whether their assertion is logically falsfiable or not. I stand by the notion that it is falsifiable in principle (though not in practice for the reasons you mentioned).
You can’t just say that a position is unfalsifiable because the positer (is that a word?) is an idiot.
Also, their critique of evolution is perfectly rational. It’s a reasonable question to ask if there are certain entities which are too complex to have come about through random chance and natural selection. The question is not inherently irrational, nor is an affirmative answer unfalsifiable. If we happened to find that several billion years ago there were aliens roaming the solar system with a penchant for biochemistry, the question would come up again. And reasonable people would be asking themselves, is chance and natural selection really a persuasive explanation for what happened on earth, or do I find it implausible?
The ID’ers are well within their rights as rational thinkers to find the current explanations unpersuasive. And to attack it at every weak point. Where they’re utterly full of it is by providing an explanation that introduces more complexity than it explains.
Which may refute evolution but does not even begin to provide support for ID. Unless of course it is suggested that the only way to produce an irreducibly complex object is by ID (a proposition for which I have seen no support).
Correct me if I’m wrong, but I’ve always thought this was the core tenet of ID. Otherwise, why use that name for the “theory”…?
The only directing in the experiment is the application of selective pressure. This is sufficiently analagous to what happens in nature that it really doesn’t matter.
If they would actually formulate a theory, stick to falsifiable examples, and not move the goalposts whenever those falsifiable examples are, as they have been, falsified, then there might be some cause to at least respect their inquisitive spunk. But that isn’t what happens. Maybe some IDers are sincere, but the overall movement most clearly is not. It’s driven by an ideology opposed to “naturalism” because of what is perceived as its corrosive effects on society. The naturalist is set up as the classic straw man, and a campaign of false doubt is being promoted to relaim the predominant role of theism. Or haven’t you read of the Discovery Institute’s Wedge strategy. Hell, they can’t even acknowledge that the bacterial flagellum is a non-issue. They insist scientists must produce an exact reproduction in the lab, or something like an exact archeological record, to be satisfied that natural selection could have produced such a thing. The overwhelming plausibility of the development of complexity in nature through Darwinian Evolution, as supported by an enormous volume of data, simply isn’t enough for the ideologue. And really, nothing is.
If that were all I was doing in making an effort, I might consider that a reasonable comment. Unfortunately, idiocy isn’t nearly the only deceptive rhetorical weapon being used by creationists.
It’s not even close to rational. Their approach to framing the argument is basically to posit conditions not unlike taking a bunch of metal and wood, throwing it all in a blender, and expecting to come out with a mousetrap. See? Can’t be done! Evolution disproven!
Well, if nature actually worked even remotely like that, they might have a point. But any complete utter fool ought to be able to see that it doesn’t. What more is there to explain? Unless you want me to quote entire books on the subject, the matter really ought to be settled with that argument alone.
Everyone has a right to be completely mistaken. I don’t thing there should be a right to sell the credulous a bill of goods by using cleverly-crafted falshoods to promote a discredited ideology and mythology which has been so completely debunked that there is no rational cause for debate. While God has not (and never can be) disproven, anything remotely resembling theistic creationism has, to the extent that it is possible for mortals to examine the evidence, with a level of accuracy and reasonable confidence equalling that of any other branch of science. It’s good to be open-minded, but it’s absurd to have to consider every crackpot hypothesis or pseudo-theory that gets thrown at you just because someone is feeling contrarian. There’s an infinite regression of idiocy and falsehood out there. Academic and intellecutal honesty doesn’t require that all ideas be given equal weight. Science is not a democratic process. It’s ideally an evidence-based process, and evidence, plus the admittedly-imperfect human ability to make sense of it, is what dicatates the form of the thoery, and nothing else. ID has no evidence. They have, quite literally, only a campaign of denial and incredulity which, quite frankly, strains the ability of those who are willing to actually learn about the subject to accept is sincere.
I inadvertently started a duplicate thread on this very subject and so I asked the Moderators to shut it down. I am joining this discussion somewhat late.
However, before the thread was closed Metacom “politely” 
challenged me to debate in this forum by making the same “stupid statement” I did in the other thread.
Well go ahead Metacom, quote me and let’s have the discussion right here. If nothing else, maybe I can learn ya some manners. Oh, I’m at work so the postings will be few and far between … for the moment.
Falsifiability has to do with propositions, not concepts. So when you talk about something being falsifiable, it would help if you indicated the proposition. Also, something can be verifiable without being falsifiable, and verifiable propositions are also valid. This is probably bleedingly obvious to everyone, but I have no idea what someone means when they say “natural selection isn’t falsifiable,” and then presume it isn’t scientific. I don’t know what the proposition is, and if it’s been observed than obviously it’s useful for scientific purposes.
Well, you did confuse IQ with knowldge. It’s a common mistake, and one that you should have no problem correcting. Whether or not you deserved to be called “stupid” for making that mistake pretty much depends on whether or not you do correct it.
Ok, how about this:
The concept or name “Intelligent Design” implies there is a designer, without specifying what this designer is or how it was designed. This, all by itself, is unfalsifiable. How do you disprove a mystery designer? This is just a thought that popped in by reading this thread and is not aimed at anyone in particular nor is it my idea to credit or discredit any poster. It’s just that, to me, Intelligent Design proponents commit a logical fallacy in assuming that because we don’t know how something came to be it must have been created by the mystery designer. If this is not the case and that’s not what they propose, then if we strip Intelligent Design of a superior entity all we have left is this: “We can’t explain this yet.” That’s a theory?
I’m with the party who believe Intelligent Design not science, those who are behind it have been less than compliant with the scientific community, and it should not be taught in a science class (keep in mind, science in the classrooms already teaches that we can’t explain everything).
Does natural selection imply that there is someone making selections?
No. That’s what “natural” means (by natural processes).
Is the covert suggestion that intelligent design doesn’t imply a designer? Because it does in every single use of the term by anyone, pro-, anti-, or neutral. “Intelligent” means “sentient,” “design,” means “planned.” That the forces of the universe might possess intelligence and have a will to create is not what ID proponents suggest, but that there is an intelligent designer.