In which buffalo schools Touchstone on CSI

[buffalo]

I certainly intended to put the humour in there. I am glad you noticed it. The website filed it under “Serious Notions with a Smile” which is what I intended. My “Proposal for Theistic Design Detector” falls into the same category.

I merely applied Dembski’s Explanatory Filter to God. Dembski claims that his EF applies to far more than just biological organisms. If you have a problem with such an application of the EF then talk to Dr Dembski. He himself applies the filter to a non-biological object, a series of supposedly random draws, see The Explanatory Filter.

ID is hoist with its own petard. They have carefully gone through their creationist literature taking out all the Bible verses and replacing God with the designer. Hence they cannot complain if people separate God from the designer (who could be space aliens of course). Given that God and the designer are separate for the purposes of rhetoric then it is not surprising if some people use that difference to show up the weaknesses in the ID position.

It is worth noting that Dembski himself does not seem to have done much work on his EF recently, despite the many criticisms it has received. I suspect that it is going the way of CSI and IC and is going to be quietly dropped in favour of the current “teach the controversy” and “strengths and weaknesses of evolution”.

rossum

Actually not.

Reinstating the Explanatory Filter

 

[tonyrey]

While evolution at least shows a trail of events that strongly suggest the theory is true, there is absolutely no evidence that shows how life began.

So science books will have to hide the business of abiogenesis as a fact of nature. That should please the atheists very much!

My explanatory filter has not detected any response to that reasoning! It is therefore true until it is shown to be false - unless science has abandoned the need for evidence to substantiate a theory…

 

[wanstronian]

I do object to it being taught in Science lessons because it is not science. I am not saying that it should not be taught. I am saying that it should not be taught as science because it is currently not science.

Then abiogenesis should not be taught either in science, because there is no science that can prove abiogenesis occurred without being designed. The prospects of accidental abiogenesis are so unlikely as to be nigh onto impossible. No experiment has ever proven that abiogenesis can happen on its own. While evolution at least shows a trail of events that strongly suggest the theory is true, there is absolutely no evidence that shows how life began.

So science books will have to hide the business of abiogenesis as a fact of nature. That should please the atheists very much!

I haven’t read a science book in a mighty long time. Do they present abiogenesis as fact? If so, then I agree completely that the books should be rephrased to emphasise that it’s hypothesis only, with only X supporting evidence (whatever X is - I know there’s been some minimally supportive experimentation done). To be fair it is the only scientific hypothesis around for the origin of life, as far as I know… panspermia maybe, but that only moves the problem.

 

[Charlemagne_II]

*I haven’t read a science book in a mighty long time. Do they present abiogenesis as fact? If so, then I agree completely that the books should be rephrased to emphasise that it’s hypothesis only, with only X supporting evidence (whatever X is - I know there’s been some minimally supportive experimentation done). To be fair it is the only scientific hypothesis around for the origin of life, as far as I know… panspermia maybe, but that only moves the problem. *

It’s been a few years since I’ve had access to college textbooks, so I don’t know how many (if any at all) even mention abiogenesis or treat it as anything other than an event that happened, without offering any evidence as to how it happened. However, as tonyrey notes, the explanatory filter is exceedingly difficult to establish the first stage as abiogenesis following a law of nature. That is, why is it inevitable that life should have appeared in the universe? As Dembski notes, only by expanding to infinity the number of parallel universes can it be argued that abiogenesis is able to follow the second stage of the explanatory filter – chance. But since there is no evidence these other universes exist, that cannot be taken as a scientific theory so much as a speculative hypothesis. The third hypothesis, intelligent design of life, at least has the advantage of being something discernible, since we are constantly engaged in the business of intelligently designing things and therefore ought to be able to recognize intelligent design when we see it.

 

[wanstronian]

*I haven’t read a science book in a mighty long time. Do they present abiogenesis as fact? If so, then I agree completely that the books should be rephrased to emphasise that it’s hypothesis only, with only X supporting evidence (whatever X is - I know there’s been some minimally supportive experimentation done). To be fair it is the only scientific hypothesis around for the origin of life, as far as I know… panspermia maybe, but that only moves the problem. *

It’s been a few years since I’ve had access to college textbooks, so I don’t know how many (if any at all) even mention abiogenesis or treat it as anything other than an event that happened, without offering any evidence as to how it happened. However, as tonyrey notes, the explanatory filter is exceedingly difficult to establish the first stage as abiogenesis following a law of nature. That is, why is it inevitable that life should have appeared in the universe? As Dembski notes, only by expanding to infinity the number of parallel universes can it be argued that abiogenesis is able to follow the second stage of the explanatory filter – chance. But since there is no evidence these other universes exist, that cannot be taken as a scientific theory so much as a speculative hypothesis.

Given that the EF was devised by an ID Creationist, it’s clearly invalid to apply it to abiogenesis. It certainly isn’t used in other mainstream science.

As far as I’m aware, experimentation has shown that abiogenesis is at least a hypothetical possibility given the right conditions. It’s far from conclusive, but there are no alternative hypotheses other than those that posit an intangible, supernatural, unexplainable force. Clearly such alternative hypotheses don’t belong in a science book of any kind. The only current hypothesis with any scientific weight behind it is abiogenesis from primordial soup et al. - which, as I said, should be presented as the working hypothesis that it is.

The third hypothesis, intelligent design of life, at least has the advantage of being something discernible, since we are constantly engaged in the business of intelligently designing things and therefore ought to be able to recognize intelligent design when we see it.

But we can’t discern a designer, can we? We can only say that something seems irreducibly complex, or contains CSI. But there are no extant examples of IC, and CSI has been shown to be inadequate in proving actual intentional design. And neither of these hypotheses provide any verifiable information about a universal intelligent designer! Who do you suppose this designer is? Where did it come from? Is it subject to the ‘laws’ that allegedly prove its existence? If not, why not?

 

[rossum]

That is, why is it inevitable that life should have appeared in the universe?

How do we know that it is inevitable? We know that it happened, because we are here, but we cannot know that it was inevitable. A lot of non-inevitable things happen.

The third hypothesis, intelligent design of life,

Completely fails to explain the origin of life. If the designer is alive then the explanation fails. If the designer is not alive then you have to explain the existence of a non-living intelligence.

since we are constantly engaged in the business of intelligently designing things and therefore ought to be able to recognize intelligent design when we see it.

This is a very weak basis for any scientific theory. Snowflakes look designed, yet they are not. We see faces in clouds where there are no faces. If all ID has is “It sure looks designed to me” then it will never make it as science. It needs more than that to make it into the science classroom.

rossum

 

[rossum]

Dr Dembski’s proposed CSI has a number of problems. At heart it does not do what is claimed. It does not enable us to separate design from non-design.

Consider the specification: “A quote from Shakespeare.” Here is some text which meets that specification:
Now is the winter of our discontent
Made glorious summer by this sun of York
This piece of text is specified by the given specification. It contains 76 characters, including spaces, from a set of 53 (26 lower case, 26 upper case and space). That gives it a probability of 1 in (53 ^ 76) or 9 x 10^-132. This means that the CSI of this text is log[sub]2[/sub](1.11 x 10^131) = 435.32 bits.

Here is another piece of text:Abj vf gur jvagre bs bhe qvfpbagrag
Znqr tybevbhf fhzzre ol guvf fha bs Lbex
This is exactly the same length and taken from exactly the same set of 53 characters. However it is not specified since it is not “A quote from Shakespeare.” Its probability is exactly the same, 9 x 10^-132, but since it is not specified its CSI is zero.

Dembski asserts that it is not possible to generate CSI by any regular process. He is incorrect. If I use the regular process of ROT13 I can transform the second text into the first. This simple example shows that a regular process can increase the CSI from zero to 435.32. Had I chosen a longer example then the amount of CSI generated by the regular process would have been correspondingly greater. Arbitrarily large amounts of CSI can be generated at will by a regular process.

This is a very simple example, but it illustrates an obvious problem with Dr Dembski’s ideas. Regular processes can increase CSI. The idea of CSI as currently proposed is insufficient to distinguish between design and non-design. There is more work for Dr Dembski to do if his idea is to be useful.

I will point out that under a different encryption method, the One Time Pad, any string of the appropriate length can be regularly transformed into any other string of the same length by using the appropriate key. My simple example is just the tip of a very large iceberg.

rossum

 

[buffalo]

Dr Dembski’s proposed CSI has a number of problems. At heart it does not do what is claimed. It does not enable us to separate design from non-design.

Consider the specification: “A quote from Shakespeare.” Here is some text which meets that specification:Now is the winter of our discontent
Made glorious summer by this sun of YorkThis piece of text is specified by the given specification. It contains 76 characters, including spaces, from a set of 53 (26 lower case, 26 upper case and space). That gives it a probability of 1 in (53 ^ 76) or 9 x 10^-132. This means that the CSI of this text is log[sub]2[/sub](1.11 x 10^131) = 435.32 bits.

Here is another piece of text:Abj vf gur jvagre bs bhe qvfpbagrag
Znqr tybevbhf fhzzre ol guvf fha bs LbexThis is exactly the same length and taken from exactly the same set of 53 characters. However it is not specified since it is not “A quote from Shakespeare.” Its probability is exactly the same, 9 x 10^-132, but since it is not specified its CSI is zero.

Dembski asserts that it is not possible to generate CSI by any regular process. He is incorrect. If I use the regular process of ROT13 I can transform the second text into the first. This simple example shows that a regular process can increase the CSI from zero to 435.32. Had I chosen a longer example then the amount of CSI generated by the regular process would have been correspondingly greater. Arbitrarily large amounts of CSI can be generated at will by a regular process.

This is a very simple example, but it illustrates an obvious problem with Dr Dembski’s ideas. Regular processes can increase CSI. The idea of CSI as currently proposed is insufficient to distinguish between design and non-design. There is more work for Dr Dembski to do if his idea is to be useful.

I will point out that under a different encryption method, the One Time Pad, any string of the appropriate length can be regularly transformed into any other string of the same length by using the appropriate key. My simple example is just the tip of a very large iceberg.

rossum

It’s a setup and therefore designed. In addition it would take more CSI to set it up.

 

[Charlemagne_II]

wanstronian

The only current hypothesis* with any scientific weight behind it** is abiogenesis from primordial soup et al. - which, as I said, should be presented as the working hypothesis that it is.*

I’m not aware of any scientific weight. Can you provide that? Therefore, as hypothesis, it has no more verifiability than intelligent design.

And neither of these hypotheses provide any verifiable information about a universal intelligent designer! Who do you suppose this designer is? Where did it come from? Is it subject to the ‘laws’ that allegedly prove its existence? If not, why not?

That would not be a scientific subject, granted. But the existence of intelligent design where it is seen is certainly within the province of science. After all, what does a scientist do when he conducts and experiment? Doesn’t he intelligently design it … if he has any intelligence? And when we see his experiment at work, don’t we observe that it is intelligently designed? The notion that intelligent design is outside the province of science has no weight behind it at all.

Another example: we induce and deduce the existence of the Big Bang umpteen billions of years ago. We induce this conclusion based on evidence observed and accumulated over the past century. But we cannot go beyond the Big Bang to determine the cause of the Big Bang. Going beyond the Big Bang would be as impossible in a scientific way as going beyond the intelligent design of life. Even so, we don’t deny the Big Bang occurred just because we cannot examine the cause of it.

 

[rossum]

It’s a setup and therefore designed.

In that case every 76 character string is a ‘setup’ because I can always give you a key for a One Time Pad that will regularly transform that string into the Shakespeare quote. If every possible string shows design then CSI in its current form is useless as an indicator of design.

Every possible 76 character string can be regularly transformed in to that Shakespeare quote. Dr Dembski has more work to do with his concept if it ever to be of any practical use.

In addition it would take more CSI to set it up.

So? I have just shown that it is possible for a regular process to generate CSI in exactly the quantity required. If CSI can be generated by a regular process then you can no longer use CSI to indicate the presence of design. CSI may simply indicate the presence of a regular process, and Dr Dembski agrees that a regular process is not design.

rossum

 

[Charlemagne_II]

rossum

and Dr Dembski agrees that a regular process is not design.

Unless the regular process itself was designed. Where did the initial laws of the universe come from? Why were there even laws rather than chaos? Why did the universe at the Big Bang continue to expand rather than collapse upon itself? Was that pure chance? Prove it. Or was it by necessity? If by necessity, why necessity rather than chance? Nor can you prove necessity.

Yes, things that appear to be designed might not be designed. Then again, they might be designed. How do you know for certain that the universe as we know it was not designed?

Snowflakes look designed, yet they are not. We see faces in clouds where there are no faces. If all ID has is “It sure looks designed to me” then it will never make it as science. It needs more than that to make it into the science.

Again, we find a watch on the floor of a desert. We examine its works and deduce that it was designed. Are we deceived? No. The watch and the snowflake are not comparable. And the universe is not necessarily one mighty huge snowflake, though the atheist would certainly like to think so.

 

[rossum]

Unless the regular process itself was designed. Where did the initial laws of the universe come from?

This is the theistic evolution position: God set up the initial conditions of the universe and evolution, as described by science, is discovering exactly how those initial conditions produced us. This is different from the ID position which requires intervention by the designer along the way. It is sometimes called the “Front Loading” question.

This position has no necessary argument with standard scientific evolutionary theory since its action takes place back at the Big Bang, long before the evolution of life on earth got started.

Yes, things that appear to be designed might not be designed. Then again, they might be designed. How do you know for certain that the universe as we know it was not designed?

How do you know for certain that the universe was not created last Thursday with the appearance of age? Show me evidence of your proposed designer and I will have a look at it.

Again, we find a watch on the floor of a desert. We examine its works and deduce that it was designed. Are we deceived? No. The watch and the snowflake are not comparable.

So, you deny that the desert was designed by God? You deny that each individual grain of sand was designed by God? You deny that the placement of those grains was designed by God? If the omnimax deity is the designer then everything is designed and the detection of design is useless – whatever I test registers as designed. If you detect design in the watch but not in the desert then either there is a part of the universe that is not designed or your design detector has a fault. Which is it?

Paley used a heath in his original example. Is there any specific reason why you changed it to a desert?

And the universe is not necessarily one mighty huge snowflake, though the atheist would certainly like to think so.

And so do you, if you can detect a difference between the watch and the rest of the universe.

rossum

 

[buffalo]

This is the theistic evolution position: God set up the initial conditions of the universe and evolution, as described by science, is discovering exactly how those initial conditions produced us. This is different from the ID position which requires intervention by the designer along the way. It is sometimes called the “Front Loading” question.

This position has no necessary argument with standard scientific evolutionary theory since its action takes place back at the Big Bang, long before the evolution of life on earth got started.

How do you know for certain that the universe was not created last Thursday with the appearance of age? Show me evidence of your proposed designer and I will have a look at it.

So, you deny that the desert was designed by God? You deny that each individual grain of sand was designed by God? You deny that the placement of those grains was designed by God? If the omnimax deity is the designer then everything is designed and the detection of design is useless – whatever I test registers as designed. If you detect design in the watch but not in the desert then either there is a part of the universe that is not designed or your design detector has a fault. Which is it?

Paley used a heath in his original example. Is there any specific reason why you changed it to a desert?

And so do you, if you can detect a difference between the watch and the rest of the universe.

rossum

The problem Catholic theology has is that God sustains and participates in His Creation. He does not wind it up and let it go.

 

[Charlemagne_II]

rossum

This position has no necessary argument with standard scientific evolutionary theory since its action takes place back at the Big Bang, long before the evolution of life on earth got started.

The evolution of life on earth is not a separate question. Planetary evolution is vitally connected with the origin and evolution of the universe. The laws on this planet that allow for evolution were set in the primordial blast of light. It should come as no surprise that the element hydrogen is the dominant element of the universe. Was that an accident? Why not some other element? Why isn’t there a universe without hydrogen? Without hydrogen there would be no water anywhere in the universe. Without water there would be no life, and therefore no evolution.

Even snowflakes have hydrogen! The design begins at the beginning.

 

[rossum]

The evolution of life on earth is not a separate question.

Yes it is. The origin of the universe is cosmology and relies very heavily on physics, both quantum mechanics and general relativity. The origin of life on earth is abiogenesis and relies very heavily on chemistry. Evolution only starts after the origin of life and relies heavily on biology and biochemistry.

Darwin called his book “On the Origin of Species”. He did not call it “On the Origin of the Universe, Life and Species.”

There is no inherent difficulty with a front loaded universe giving rise to life through a process of abiogenesis and to species through a process of evolution.

You failed to answer my question about whether the desert was not designed or your design detector was faulty.

rossum

 

[rossum]

The problem Catholic theology has is that God sustains and participates in His Creation. He does not wind it up and let it go.

How is that a problem? An omnicompetent God can easily sustain the process of evolution. Looking at the major ID figures, Professor Behe is happy with common descent and most of evolution:“For the record, I have no reason to doubt that the universe is the billions of years old that physicists say it is. Further, I find the idea of common descent (that all organisms share a common ancestor) fairly convincing, and have no particular reason to doubt it. I greatly respect the work of my colleagues who study the development and behavior of organisms within an evolutionary framework, and I think that evolutionary biologists have contributed enormously to our understanding of the world. Although Darwin’s mechanism – natural selection working on variation – might explain many things, however, I do not believe it explains molecular life.”

– Michael Behe, Darwin’s Black Box, page 5.

rossum

 

[buffalo]

How is that a problem? An omnicompetent God can easily sustain the process of evolution. Looking at the major ID figures, Professor Behe is happy with common descent and most of evolution:“For the record, I have no reason to doubt that the universe is the billions of years old that physicists say it is. Further, I find the idea of common descent (that all organisms share a common ancestor) fairly convincing, and have no particular reason to doubt it. I greatly respect the work of my colleagues who study the development and behavior of organisms within an evolutionary framework, and I think that evolutionary biologists have contributed enormously to our understanding of the world. Although Darwin’s mechanism – natural selection working on variation – might explain many things, however, I do not believe it explains molecular life.”

– Michael Behe, Darwin’s Black Box, page 5.rossum

If God sustains evolution then it is not unguided or random. It also posits that God uses deleterious mutations to serve His purposes. He could of course, but it just doesn’t make sense. Remember, God looked upon His creation and called it good. Corruption came after the fall.

 

[Charlemagne_II]

rossum

You failed to answer my question about whether the desert was not designed or your design detector was faulty.

Likewise, you failed to answer these questions. Where’s the quid pro quo?

Unless the regular process itself was designed. Where did the initial laws of the universe come from? Why were there even laws rather than chaos? Why did the universe at the Big Bang continue to expand rather than collapse upon itself? Was that pure chance? Prove it. Or was it by necessity? If by necessity, why necessity rather than chance? Nor can you prove necessity.

What atheism does not want to deal with is the difficulty of explaining why the history of the early universe plays right into any theory of how life can evolve.

Also, the history of the early universe made not only life possible (stars and their planets, both preconditions for life) evolved out of the early universe), but also life reflecting upon itself. Why should such a creature as man appear, as if he were the culmination of where life was heading (aimlessly?). And why is man, of all creatures, the only one who can figure out through mental gymnastics where he came from? If there was no aim for man, why didn’t life stop at the one celled creatures who first populated the planet? What advantage was there in bacteria giving up their kingdom, since they still populate the earth? We certainly can’t say they were striving for higher consciousness, since that would imply intelligent design, which by definition is beyond the aim of bacteria.

 

[Charlemagne_II]

rossum

You failed to answer my question about whether the desert was not designed or your design detector was faulty.

Were the oceans that feed us and the lakes that give us drink designed? Was the atmosphere designed for us to breathe in? Was natural splendor designed for us to enjoy? Was our very convenient distance from the sun designed? Was oil designed to be found under both desert land and oceans? Was coal designed to be found in West Virginia? Were the potash mines in the desert near Carlsbad, New Mexico designed for our use? Were mountains designed for climbing up and skiing down? Were the rain forests designed for our benefit?

What is the point of your question?

 

[Charlemagne_II]

“It is true, that a little philosophy inclineth man’s mind to atheism; but depth in philosophy brings about man’s mind to religion: for while the mind of man looketh upon second causes scattered, it may sometimes rest in them, and go no further; but when it beholdeth the chain of them confederate and linked together, it must needs fly to Providence and Deity.” Francis Bacon

Anticipated Heisenberg’s remark by three centuries.