If you don't believe in ID after this you will

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Would you agree that under theism asking for a “test of design” is silly if everything is designed by God?
Well, the scientist in the video made a compelling argument that design detection plays a useful role in many ways. One of them was solving crimes (and I can’t remember the other ones). So, I would have to say no. Design detection is not silly. I could talk on this a bit more, but … what do you think about that?
We know life can be intelligently designed; we’ve done it ourselves in the laboratory. But you still need to look at the likelihood of intelligent design in that case (no God) to look at life on earth. Now, under naturalism, intelligence evolved from inanimate matter in about 5 billion years on earth. Now it’s true there was more time (10 billion years) for it to evolve somewhere else in the universe before then, but these odds are not substantially greater and might be far less depending on the conditions; moreover, that intelligent agent would have to have found himself in a corner of the universe (such as ours) where life actually could be designed and had the means (laboratory, spaceship, etc.) to do it. So I’d still rate the posterior probability of intelligent design as unlikely.
So intelligent design of life doesn’t make sense if the designer himself was non-existent at one point (right?). However, since life does exist, against all odds, doesn’t that suggest a designer that … I don’t know … always existed? You don’t have to call him God. But you can if you want.
 
Well, the scientist in the video made a compelling argument that design detection plays a useful role in many ways. One of them was solving crimes (and I can’t remember the other ones). So, I would have to say no. Design detection is not silly. I could talk on this a bit more, but … what do you think about that?
OK I should have been more specific. Design detection may work in terms of detection of the actions of secondary designers. But it can’t work in the detection of design per se, not if theism is correct.
So intelligent design of life doesn’t make sense if the designer himself was non-existent at one point (right?).
That’s not what I said at all. If the universe were 100 trillion years old, we might infer it more likely that life on earth, coming about as rapidly as it did, was designed by an alien, who still may nevertheless not be existent in the present.
However, since life does exist, against all odds, doesn’t that suggest a designer that … I don’t know … always existed? You don’t have to call him God. But you can if you want.
No, it doesn’t, and I have pointed out repeatedly why the inference from the improbability of life arising by “chance” (which is only a measure of our ignorance BTW) to the existence of God is a fallacy.
 
No, it doesn’t, and I have pointed out repeatedly why the inference from the improbability of life arising by “chance” (which is only a measure of our ignorance BTW) to the existence of God is a fallacy.
If chance is only a measure of our ignorance we cannot draw any conclusions or make any predictions based on probability!
 
Initial reaction?
Well, he says that “natural selection was only vaguely understood by most evolutionary biologists until a decade or two ago.” My biology colleagues say this is a sterca tauri.

He talks a lot about measurement, fitness functionality, criteria for intelligent design information. Not sure where he gets with that.
 
Well, he says that “natural selection was only vaguely understood by most evolutionary biologists until a decade or two ago.” My biology colleagues say this is a sterca tauri.
I just asked one of my colleagues about the claim that “natural selection was only vaguely understood by most evolutionary biologists until a decade or two ago.” her response:

“I doubt very much that people like Ernst Mayr and Stephen J. Gould didn’t understand natural selection - it isn’t that difficult to grasp on a theoretical level, and Darwin’s argument for natural selection is actually quite clear. However, what you can say about phenotypic selection in natural populations is that according to Kingsolver et al. 2001, most experimental studies that have actually measured selection in natural population appear to have occurred during the past 25 years.”
 
"Not to mince words - the modern synthesis is gone"

“The edifice of the modern synthesis has crumbled, apparently, beyond repair.” http://static.howstuffworks.com/gif/charles-darwin-3.jpg
*It is time for a paradigm change - but neoDarwinists are stuck because they have so much philosophical baggage holding them down *(Image credit: Shaun Curry/AFP/Getty Images, Source here)

"The discovery of pervasive HGT and the overall dynamics of the genetic universe destroys not only the tree of life as we knew it but also another central tenet of the modern synthesis inherited from Darwin, namely gradualism. In a world dominated by HGT, gene duplication, gene loss and such momentous events as endosymbiosis, the idea of evolution being driven primarily by infinitesimal heritable changes in the Darwinian tradition has become untenable.

"Moreover, with pan-adaptationism gone forever, so is the notion of evolutionary progress that is undoubtedly central to traditional evolutionary thinking, even if this is not always made explicit.

The summary of the state of affairs on the 150th anniversary of the *Origin *is somewhat shocking. In the postgenomic era, all major tenets of the modern synthesis have been, if not outright overturned, replaced by a new and incomparably more complex vision of the key aspects of evolution. So, not to mince words, the modern synthesis is gone."

…It is not difficult to predict that Koonin’s analysis will not be received quietly by the very vocal leaders of evolutionary biology. They are still entrenched in neoDarwinism and show no signs of conceding any ground to anyone.


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I just asked one of my colleagues about the claim that “natural selection was only vaguely understood by most evolutionary biologists until a decade or two ago.” her response:

“I doubt very much that people like Ernst Mayr and Stephen J. Gould didn’t understand natural selection - it isn’t that difficult to grasp on a theoretical level, and Darwin’s argument for natural selection is actually quite clear. However, what you can say about phenotypic selection in natural populations is that according to Kingsolver et al. 2001, most experimental studies that have actually measured selection in natural population appear to have occurred during the past 25 years.”
Is nature really a struggle in which natural selection is the key factor?

British physicist David Tyler comments: In a perceptive essay, Daniel Todes focuses attention on the reactions of Russian biologists to Darwin’s writings. Many of these naturalists “were evolutionists before 1859″, so they did not dissent from common ancestry. However, their experiences of the living world were quite different from Darwin and Wallace, who drew their inspiration from densely populated tropical forests and related habitats. They witnessed a struggle for existence that matched the description Thomas Malthus had given of human communities. Using the same logic, Darwin and Wallace were stimulated to think about winners and losers in populations of animals and plants. The Russian scientists lived in a different world.

…Actually, Koonin is just as likely to be ignored as not quietly received. The fantasy creation story of fashionable atheism is in many places, government policy. Its proponents often have tenure and get their pay every month. The only solution is eventual retirement parties, followed by a big revaluation – = what do we really know? How much is mere propaganda?

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