ID in public schools

[ricmat]

That happens a lot. I think it’s due to the poor state of science education in this country. You’re not the first person to be shocked to discover that animal breeding does what natural selection does.

What surprised me is that you didn’t realize that selective breeding was a designed process, and not a random one. I’ll ignore your insult that follows.

It seems that you still don’t get it.

Selective breeding is GUIDED. In my example, potentially by the hand of Barbarian.

Selective breeding is used because this GUIDED process works better than just letting the horses “go at it” randomly in a big corral.

Guiding the process leads to bigger horses in a faster way than a trial and error approach.

Natural selection works much more slowly than the GUIDED selective breeding process, that’s why it’s used.

Bye bye.

 

[rtconstant]

Barbarian,

Purely for the sake of argument. If one was omniscient then wouldn’t a trial and error methodology actually be wasteful? Since the best outcome is already known?

 

[Reepicheep]

Yep. But simple. This is why, for example, engineers were able to greatly improve the efficiency and clean combustion of diesels by evolutionary processes, when design couldn’t do it.

I don’t mean to oversimplify; this is a very sophisticated approach, but it is simple concept:

**The simplest algorithm represents each chromosome as a bit string. Typically, numeric parameters can be represented by integers, though it is possible to use floating point representations. The floating point representation is natural to evolution strategies and evolutionary programming. The notion of real-valued genetic algorithms has been offered but is really a misnomer because it does not really represent the building block theory that was proposed by Holland in the 1970s. This theory is not without support though, based on theoretical and experimental results (see below). The basic algorithm performs crossover and mutation at the bit level. Other variants treat the chromosome as a list of numbers which are indexes into an instruction table, nodes in a linked list, hashes, objects, or any other imaginable data structure. Crossover and mutation are performed so as to respect data element boundaries. For most data types, specific variation operators can be designed. Different chromosomal data types seem to work better or worse for different specific problem domains.

When bit strings representations of integers are used, Gray coding is often employed. In this way, small changes in the integer can be readily effected through mutations or crossovers. This has been found to help prevent premature convergence at so called Hamming walls, in which too many simultaneous mutations (or crossover events) must occur in order to change the chromosome to a better solution.

Other approaches involve using arrays of real-valued numbers instead of bit strings to represent chromosomes. Theoretically, the smaller the alphabet, the better the performance, but paradoxically, good results have been obtained from using real-valued chromosomes.**
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_algorithm

Not quite what your kids do, um? The lesson is not only that evolution works better than design, it’s also that the system is cleaner and simpler, too.

God is a lot smarter than IDers would like to think.

Very complex. Very sophisticated. Very elegant.
It’s still a process of trial and error, from which the researchers then select the most useful results.
It’s still true that the researchers are guiding the outcome by defining the terms of the process and selecting the results that serve their needs.
It’s still true that, without the guidance of the researchers, this would be pointless.
There is Design, and the designers are intelligent.

 

[Reepicheep]

It only demonstrates that natural selection is a much better problem-solver than design.

(Cue God in “The Holy Grail”)

“OF COURSE IT’S A GOOD IDEA!”

Natural Selection, guided by human planning, is design.

 

[Reepicheep]

Steve40:
That’s right it is engineering and the only useful reason for physics chemisty and biology. Science without applied science is a lot of hot air.

ID isn’t engineering. In fact, engineering is going in exactly the opposite direction. ID is a religion, the official doctrine of the Unification Church.

Engineering is design.
ID, as it’s being used in religious debate, is a religious belief, and therefore, as I’ve said before, has no place being taught in physics class.

“Official doctrine of the Unification Church”? Barbarian, I hope you’re not trying to suggest that anyone who argues for ID is a Moonie?

 

[The_Barbarian]

Engineering is design.

With genetic algorithms, it’s moved a step beyond design. Engineering uses design for many things, and now is using natural selection for complex things that can’t be adequately solved by design.

ID, as it’s being used in religious debate, is a religious belief, and therefore, as I’ve said before, has no place being taught in physics class.

“Official doctrine of the Unification Church”? Barbarian, I hope you’re not trying to suggest that anyone who argues for ID is a Moonie?

No more than anyone who argues for YE is a Seventh-Day Adventist. But YE creationism is the invention of the SDAs.

 

[The_Barbarian]

Barbarian,
Purely for the sake of argument. If one was omniscient then wouldn’t a trial and error methodology actually be wasteful? Since the best outcome is already known?

So, I suppose would be building a universe billions of light years across, with only a tiny planet orbiting a rather ordinary star, in a rather ordinary galaxy having His people on it.

But we don’t know His purposes or reasons, and so we should accept what we find in nature as being in accord with His intent.

But the obvious fact that (as engineers now acknowledge) natural selection is more efficient than design for highly complex problems, should be an important clue.

 

[Reepicheep]

I just sit on the sidelines and watch non-scientists attempt to refute scientists because for some reason it matters to them that ID be adopted. I can’t help but find that it threatens some’s faith. I can come up with no better reason. I certainly don’t argue with my doctor about his diagnosis and proposed treatment. I may doublcheck with another DOCTOR but I sure don’t start researching and deciding I can debate the issue with her.

I am not a Creationist.
I am against the idea that ID should be taught in science classes, or adopted as a scientific theory.
Though I do believe that God designed the existing universe, I also believe the place to discuss this issue is in theology class, not physics class.
“Intelligent Design” as it has been advanced in debates, is not a scientific theory. It is a theological position whose advocates want it to be adopted as science.

I still think Barbarian’s arguments depend on a mistaken definition of terms. Natural selection does not equal random chance. The engineering techniques he offers as examples are guided processes: not mere chance even if they use chance as a component.

 

[The_Barbarian]

Barbarian observes:
That happens a lot. I think it’s due to the poor state of science education in this country. You’re not the first person to be shocked to discover that animal breeding does what natural selection does.

What surprised me is that you didn’t realize that selective breeding was a designed process, and not a random one.

So is natural selection. That was Darwin’s great discovery. It isn’t random.

Barbarian observes:
It seems that you still don’t get it. This isn’t an insult. You still have the notion that natural selection is random when it is the antithesis of randomness. And you seem to think that breeding animals and then selecting whatever turns up that fits best to be a design project. It’s just natural selection.

Selective breeding is GUIDED. In my example, potentially by the hand of Barbarian.

It wouldn’t be a simulation of natural selection, it it wasn’t. That’s the part you don’t get.

Selective breeding is used because this GUIDED process works better than just letting the horses “go at it” randomly in a big corral.

You’re still not getting it. We got the highly specialized and evolved horses that way. And it’s no mystery, because we have enough fossil horses to see in detail how they evolved as the forests became sparse and open grasslands expanded. The line that led to modern horses became increasingly adapted to the open grasslands over time.

Guiding the process leads to bigger horses in a faster way than a trial and error approach.

Breeding is a trial and error approach.

Natural selection works much more slowly than the GUIDED selective breeding process,

Natural selection is what breeders use. They take over the function of selective pressure. And we have seen such rapid evolution occur in nature, when the pressure is intense.

Bye bye.

God bless, and keep in mind what you saw here. It’s worth thinking about.

 

[mich2]

Barbarian observes:

So is natural selection. That was Darwin’s great discovery. It isn’t random.

Barbarian observes:
It seems that you still don’t get it. This isn’t an insult. You still have the notion that natural selection is random when it is the antithesis of randomness. And you seem to think that breeding animals and then selecting whatever turns up that fits best to be a design project. It’s just natural selection.

It wouldn’t be a simulation of natural selection, it it wasn’t. That’s the part you don’t get.

You’re still not getting it. We got the highly specialized and evolved horses that way. And it’s no mystery, because we have enough fossil horses to see in detail how they evolved as the forests became sparse and open grasslands expanded. The line that led to modern horses became increasingly adapted to the open grasslands over time.

Breeding is a trial and error approach.

Natural selection is what breeders use. They take over the function of selective pressure. And we have seen such rapid evolution occur in nature, when the pressure is intense.

Maybe you can help me out with something…I might be totally blind concerning Darwin’s theory. I was brought up as a catholic and went to catholic school. I was taught Darwinian Evolution in the 6th or 7th grade and remember the responce of all the kids towards the hypothesis…it was “awesome”!.
Of course, the lesson focused on the process of “natural selection” and did not get into the process of genetic mutations as such, but only mentioned a process of change existed.My parents never complained about the school curriculum teaching the Darwinian hypothesis as my father himself believed it to be a plausible although imperfect hypothesis himself. Eventually, as I grew older, I started to believe the process of natural selection being the “direction force” of evolution was simply an oversimplification of a deeper theory…However, in high school, Darwinian Evolution was not taught in itself, but only mentioned as being an hypothesis which was being proven continuously through the findings of new fossil records.
Evolution itself means a change within a system which increases in complexity and development. In other words, a decaying process is not a form of evolution eventhough it contains a change in state over time
So, now, if you will, I would like to ask you to explain how the process of “natural selection” is being manifested as being the “directional force” behind Evolution.
I say this because the oversimplified version which I was taught in 6th grade doesn’t add up.
So what if environmental changes destroyed some lifeforms and preserved others. It only means that certain species of lifeforms have been extinct because of their harsh environment which could come from an overincrease in the number of preditors,or drastic changes in wheather patterns. But this, in no way explains why there is an increase in complexity of life relative to time.
Let us assume the earth as being a perfect environment, meaning that no species that ever existed became extinct. All the missing links would still exist before our eyes, alive, enabling us to witness Evolution.Certainly, the path of evolution would not be a perfect ascension of complex lifeforms…Life is not perfect .However, the overall picture would be there. Here natural selection is out of the picture and yet, we are still left with an evolution of life. What other directive force, leading to an evolution of Life could we believe would exist other than genetic mutation?
If genetic mutation would, in such a case be the only solution, whether we fully understand the process or not, would not such a process be considered non-random?

Andre

 

[reggieM]

Q. Sir, in your 1995 edition of Biology, I believe it’s the Elephant Book?

A (Kenneth Miller). That’s correct. It’s generally known by that name.

Q. Did it not state in that book, “It is important to keep this concept in mind. Evolution is random and undirected, and the part “evolution is random and undirected” was in bold print?

…]

A.(Kenneth Miller) … So yes, sir, it does say that.

(Transcript of Testimony of Kenneth Miller, Day 2 of Kitzmiller Trial (Sept. 27, 2005), pgs. 4-8.)

 

[reggieM]

An evolutionist explains …
bioinfo.med.utoronto.ca/Evolution_by_Accident/Evolution_by_Accident.html

“I’m more concerned about my fellow evolutionists who go to great lengths to eliminate chance and accident from all discussions about the fundamental causes of evolution …”

“We call these events accidental; we say that they are random occurrences. And since they constitute the only possible source of modifications in the genetic text, itself the sole repository of the organism’s hereditary structures, it necessarily follows that chance alone is at the source of every innovation, of all creation in the biosphere. Pure chance, absolutely free but blind, at the very root of the stupendious edifice of evolution: this central concept of modern biology is no longer one among other possible or even conceivable hypotheses. It is today the sole conceivable hypothesis, the only one that squares with observed and tested fact. — Jacques Monod (1971)”

“I’m not sure how the chance-deniers deal with mass extinctions and all the other things that happened. Perhaps they think mass extinctions are really non-random events but they just forget to tell us why? Perhaps they don’t think this is part of evolution so they can deny that chance plays a role in evolution by ignoring history?
Most likely, the chance-deniers just never think about the significance of the fossil record.”

“According to Dawkins, evolution cannot be haphazard, random, or accidental, else it could never achieve the design attributed to it.”

“We have seen that living things are too improbable and too beautifully “designed” to have come into existence by chance. (Richard Dawkins).”

… and thus Darwinists cannot understand their own theory. One radically contradicts the other on the fundamental nature of evolution itself.

 

[The_Barbarian]

I still think Barbarian’s arguments depend on a mistaken definition of terms. Natural selection does not equal random chance.

I said that natural selection is the antithesis of randomness. Mutations are random, but natural selection is not.

The engineering techniques he offers as examples are guided processes:

No. In many cases, the engineers using them, don’t even understand how the solution works. If you call that a “guided process”, than anything can be a guided process.

It is unremarkable that a microprocessor can perform such a
task–except in this case. Even though the circuit consists of only a small number of basic components, the researcher, Adrian Thompson, does not know how it works. He can’t ask the designer because there wasn’t one. Instead, the circuit evolved from a “primordial soup” of silicon components guided by the principles of genetic variation and survival of the fittest.
netscrap.com/netscrap_detail.cfm?scrap_id=73

not mere chance even if they use chance as a component.

Natural selection uses chance as a component too. But it is not random itself. Remember, a random process, plus a non-random process, is a non-random process.

 

[edwest2]

More nonsense. The life you see around you, we are told, just happened to end up this way. A different mutation here or there in the past, and even humans might have ended up looking differently.

No, this is an abdication of human reason. We are told by the Church that through natural reason alone we can see that living things were made, but, the secular world tells us otherwise. There was a roll of the dice (actually, many rolls) and because our genes kept giving us bigger and bigger brains, here we are. Nothing supernatural about it. God would disagree.

God bless,
Ed

 

[The_Barbarian]

More nonsense. The life you see around you, we are told, just happened to end up this way.

Everything that is, “just happens.” How it happens is science. Why it happens is religion.

A different mutation here or there in the past, and even humans might have ended up looking differently.

This happened a lot. Many different types, each a bit different.

No, this is an abdication of human reason. We are told by the Church that through natural reason alone we can see that living things were made,

Of course living things were made. The only difference between you and other Catholics, is we accept the way it happened.

 

[rtconstant]

So, I suppose would be building a universe billions of light years across, with only a tiny planet orbiting a rather ordinary star, in a rather ordinary galaxy having His people on it.

But we don’t know His purposes or reasons, and so we should accept what we find in nature as being in accord with His intent.

But the obvious fact that (as engineers now acknowledge) natural selection is more efficient than design for highly complex problems, should be an important clue.

Heh, well fair enough. I was just throwing it out there. After I posted it I started to consider exactly what kind of answer you could give. It was a bit of a presumptive question.

 

[edwest2]

Thank you, Barbarian. You are right, I do not accept the standard, textbook evolutionary theory. Textbook evolution assumes that I must accept a lot of things happened randomly and then that some were selected, naturally. I’m not against research.

Peace and God bless,
Ed

 

[Ghosty]

Computer programs do not design themselves any more than the information designed into your body developed due to a natural process. There would be no driving force or reason in natural selection for you to have much of the functionality that you have. If there is a plausible mechanism for evolution it must have taken a lot of creativity to come up with.

It’s OK to say you don’t know. Don’t be afraid of it.

My point is that there IS a designer, and that it can be known purely by human reason. The fact is, however, that it CAN’T be known through arguments based on science and material necessity (i.e. irreducible complexity).

I’m quite confused by your post, because you seem to think that I’m saying evolution doesn’t require a “programmer”, when in fact I would say we could know it needed a programmer long before we even knew evolution was real (as the ancient secular Greek philosophers figured out purely through observation of the natural world, without any concept of evolutionary theory).

Peace and God bless!

 

[Orogeny]

Thank you, Barbarian. You are right, I do not accept the standard, textbook evolutionary theory. Textbook evolution assumes that I must accept a lot of things happened randomly and then that some were selected, naturally. I’m not against research.

Peace and God bless,
Ed

Of course you are not against research, Ed. You just insist that “God did it” must be the conclusion.

Peace

Tim

 

[abucs]

I don’t think ID should be taught in schools because really, we don’t know how things are done.

I would wish to oppose the default position though in many schools which seems to be ‘scientific materialism’.

Perhaps a different non science course can be taught about the limits of science and the evidence which seems to refute ‘scientific materialism’.

The problem is though that it is more of a philosophy / religious subject matter with no ‘obvious’ immediate commercial benefit, which i think a lot of schooling is directed at.

In the commercial world, the idea that all there is, is matter and common laws is all you need for subjects like engineering and chemistry etc.

It’s only when you progress in science to the quantum level, or the probabilities of life and the probability of our physical laws that the idea of ‘scientific materialism’ breaks down.

I do think there are huge commercial possibilities with such subjects as quantum physics but it’s likely to be only a few who will be involved in this area and thus the mass of people at high school or even tertiary studies receive a science education that is almost entirely compatible with the ‘scientific materialist’ philosophy.

As such many ideas, such as undirected evolution are what seems to ‘make sense’ to a lot of students simply because their science will not have advanced past the ‘scientific materialist’ level IMHO.

I would wish a seperate syllabus talking about the assumptions of science, its limitations, its origin and some of the outstanding questions from a philosophical basis. These questions would refer to the probabilities of things happening just in nature and the quantum realities of ‘the observer effect’ and the ‘uncertaincy principle’ to name but two. I would also highlight the break down of the ‘cause and effect’ principle at the quantum (basic) level.

Perhaps then you could introduce current theories to address these issues such as String Theory (10 dimensional nature), Parrallel Universes and Many Worlds (or universes) theory.

Of course then you could also introduce the theory that to me makes the most sense - God, or call it Conscious Creation or whatever you want to be politically correct.

I’d favour calling it what it is though - God.