Thank God for skunks

[vz71]

ID fails to meet the requirements of scientific credibility, for reasons that Rossum has clearly demonstrated upthread (and for other reasons also).

Please elaborate for me.
If the only significant difference between ID and evolution theory is the person in the drivers seat, then I am not seeing a problem.

 

[wanstronian]

The vitriol of your own posts shows otherwise.

Care to point to some evidence?

So am I to believe the words or the actions?

Believe what you want, mate.

 

[GreggAlvarez]

The fact that the creators of ID have clearly stated their belief that the Designer is God is actually irrelevant. ID fails to meet the requirements of scientific credibility, for reasons that Rossum has clearly demonstrated upthread (and for other reasons also).

Their belief is what is irrelevant in their conclusions. I have read articles by ID people and they clearly state the contrary to your presumptions. What are even the requirements for scientific credibility when it comes to design? Is evolution supposed to have been the way we want it? No viruses. No bacteria. Or anything like that. Sam Harris (although not a evolutionary scientist) seems to cling to the idea that “if it makes people sick, then it is clearly unintelligent design.” (Or something like that… I forget the actual quote in Letter to a Christian Nation. Of course, this is the same person who thinks we believe Genesis is a scientific text.)

I have to go prepare for this conversation sometime soon.

 

[You]

What requirements does id have to meet to have scientific approval?

 

[wanstronian]

Please elaborate for me.
If the only significant difference between ID and evolution theory is the person in the drivers seat, then I am not seeing a problem.

That may be the only significant difference in the conclusion (although I’d have to think about that a bit more carefully, and in any case it would depend on how you define “significant”), but the difference in process, in terms of evidence, predictive and explanatory power, falsification, bias reduction, parsimony, objectivity, and methodology, is huge.

Ultimately, it boils down to how intellectually honest one wants to be. If you’re happy to posit an unnecessary, inexplicable, undetectable, inscrutable, supernatural designer just to force reality to fit your own dogmatic preconceptions, then IDC is for you!

 

[You]

This is science, and personal opinions that are not backed up by evidence carry no weight at all.

Once you have:* independent evidence for the existence of a designer.

• evidence that the designer can do what he/she/it/they are supposed to do.
• evidence of when the designer acted.

then you can get back to us.

We already have all three of those for evolution. ID currently lacks all three. If you want to play the science game then you need to play by the science rules. If you don’t have the evidence then you might find the theology game or the philosophy game more rewarding.

rossum

*I don’t know where the evolution of the skunks defense mechanism is to be found in fossils.
*So, I don’t know how evolution ‘did it’.
*I don’t know when evolution evolved the skunks defense mechanism.

 

[vz71]

The problem with ID is purely that it’s unscientific, regardless of what one posits as the Designer’s identity.

It is also unscientific to claim that no one caused it all.
It is simply unscientific to make claims for that which we have no evidence.

So we are left with this nearly infinitely complex machine.
And a pefectly reasonable conclusion that if there is a design, there is a designer.

People can cry ‘unscientific’ all they want, but it is the pot calling the kettle black.

 

[vz71]

*I don’t know where the evolution of the skunks defense mechanism is to be found in fossils.
*So, I don’t know how evolution ‘did it’.
*I don’t know when evolution evolved the skunks defense mechanism.

I imagine it would be very difficult to find fossil evidence for something made of soft tissue.

 

[You]

I imagine it would be very difficult to find fossil evidence for something made of soft tissue.

So how am I supposed to know what happened, was the skunk created?

 

[Tonitz]

The prime defect with ID is the assumption that something that functions with such complexity even as a germ, let alone a skunk, is designed. “Design” is you reverse engineering adaptation to explain something whose existence is incorrectly explained by design though it stems from God. That something is dependent of God exists requires neither design not direct creation. Go figure!

 

[rossum]

To equate the conclusion that an intelligence is the source of the order, purpose, and complexity of what we have observed with a “Flying Spaghetti Monster” is to read into what is being said, which is obviously not being taken seriously to begin with.

My point about the FSM was that mere assertion that a designer exists is insufficient. The human brain can see design where none exists - we see shapes and faces in clouds where there are no designed shapes or faces. ID has tried, and so far failed, to come up with objective, as opposed to subjective, ways of detecting design. Richard Dawkins uses the word “designoid” for things that appear designed but are not actually designed. Evolution is good at producing designoid things.

Besides that, since we can agree that the purpose of genes is indeed instruction, what gives them that purpose?

Purpose is an external property assigned to an object by something external. A rock can have many different purposes, but none of those purposes are intrinsic to the rock. Those purposes are assigned to the rock by whoever is using it to make a rockery, to smash a window or to build a dry stone wall.

What we do know of the universe is that it works systematically, according to certain “blueprints” if you will. If it didn’t it would be impossible to study conclusively, as probability would dictate that an outcome would not repeat itself. It is hard even to imagine a universe were things did not act in a certain order.

The universe is mostly regular. Parts of quantum mechanics are not regular but chance. Regularity is not the same as purpose. We can harness that regularity and use it for our purposes, but regularity on its own is not purpose. We can use a single regularity, such as gravity, for many different purposes. As with the rock the purpose is external to the object.

Is it not logical to conclude that source of the clear purpose of a skunk’s defense mechanism cannot be found in its genetics, nor its line of ancestors, nor the entire evolutionary process, nor the entire chain of cosmological events that brought about life on Earth, but the intelligence in which it and the entire process of what we consider reality coming into existence was first conceived?

I disagree. I see no problem with finding the source of the skunk’s defence mechanism in its genetics, in its line of ancestors and in the entire evolutionary process leading up to the modern Skunk. You see design, I do not. That is why ID so badly needs an objective way of detecting design. In the absence of any objective criterion we only have our subjective personal opinions to rely on.

Unfortunately I am constrained in how far I can go in giving the evolutionary background and development of the Skunk’s defence mechanism. You may want to look up the development of the anal scent glands in the Mustelidae, weasels, which are related to the Skunks.

I promise we are doing the very same science.

ID is trying to do science without data and failing. No data, no science.

rossum

 

[vz71]

So how am I supposed to know what happened, was the skunk created?

Well obviously something happened.
Else it would not be there.

But let’s not hypothesize that God did it…that would be unscientific.

Better to state that some factor in the environment over the years (we do not even know duration) caused the animals to develop a distinctive odor and the ability to spray it.
That way the question is neatly answered with vacuum.

 

[vz71]

My point about the FSM was that mere assertion that a designer exists is insufficient. The human brain can see design where none exists - we see shapes and faces in clouds where there are no designed shapes or faces. ID has tried, and so far failed, to come up with objective, as opposed to subjective, ways of detecting design. Richard Dawkins uses the word “designoid” for things that appear designed but are not actually designed. Evolution is good at producing designoid things.

Well that does break it down a great deal.
So how do we know something is designed?

We see randomness of the clouds…until we also notice the plane skywriting.
Then the random squiggles make sense.
We suddenly have a design from apparent randomness.
What is the real difference?

Are we really being so impudent as to believe that only something we are responsible for is designed?

 

[Tonitz]

Regarding Rossum’s post: Amen.

 

[You]

Well obviously something happened.
Else it would not be there.

But let’s not hypothesize that God did it…that would be unscientific.

Better to state that some factor in the environment over the years (we do not even know duration) caused the animals to develop a distinctive odor and the ability to spray it.
That way the question is neatly answered with vacuum.

You mean the scientists don’t know what happened, do they guess at a cause?

 

[rossum]

Well that does break it down a great deal.
So how do we know something is designed?

We see randomness of the clouds…until we also notice the plane skywriting.
Then the random squiggles make sense.
We suddenly have a design from apparent randomness.
What is the real difference?

Are we really being so impudent as to believe that only something we are responsible for is designed?

It is difficult to have design without a designer. We have many examples of human designed objects, so we find it reasonably easy to recognise human design. Forensic Science and Archaeology are two sciences which can recognise human design.

One issue with ID is that there is no independent evidence for their designer. Was this piece of DNA designed by the ID designer? How can we tell. There is no evidence that the ID designer is capable of moving a single molecule around to form DNA. An unknown designer with unknown powers cannot be falsified. Being unfalsifiable is not a good thing for a scientific theory. Darwin gave two examples of things that could not evolve. So far ID has failed to show any examples of things that could not have been designed.

As to the cloud writing, would a being from planet Zorg, who used a completely different script, recognise sky writing as designed? The problem with recognising design is that it depends on the knowledge of the being doing the recognising. Different sets of knowledge will give different answers to the question “Is this designed?”

ID lacks a means to objectively identify design. So far all they have are elaborate versions of “It sure looks designed to me.”

rossum

 

[rossum]

I imagine it would be very difficult to find fossil evidence for something made of soft tissue.

Possible, but rare. Much more common is the examination of DNA and matching DNA with similar species to determine placement within the Tree of Life.

Skunks are closely related to Weasels and other small carnivores which commonly have strong smelling scent glands where Skunks have their defensive glands. Scent glands are reasonably common in mammals, and often used to mark territories.

Scent glands are modified sweat glands, and sweat glands are ubiquitous among land mammals.

rossum

 

[You]

It is difficult to have design without a designer. We have many examples of human designed objects, so we find it reasonably easy to recognise human design. Forensic Science and Archaeology are two sciences which can recognise human design.

One issue with ID is that there is no independent evidence for their designer. Was this piece of DNA designed by the ID designer? How can we tell. There is no evidence that the ID designer is capable of moving a single molecule around to form DNA. An unknown designer with unknown powers cannot be falsified. Being unfalsifiable is not a good thing for a scientific theory. Darwin gave two examples of things that could not evolve. So far ID has failed to show any examples of things that could not have been designed.

As to the cloud writing, would a being from planet Zorg, who used a completely different script, recognise sky writing as designed? The problem with recognising design is that it depends on the knowledge of the being doing the recognising. Different sets of knowledge will give different answers to the question “Is this designed?”

ID lacks a means to objectively identify design. So far all they have are elaborate versions of “It sure looks designed to me.”

rossum

You may be right in that, for instance, a recently cloned squirrel, would not be able to recognize design in creation. But other creatures have always sensed a creator of nature. The only differences between ‘people of old’ and ‘modern man’ are a pair of safety glasses, a pipette tube and some noxious reducing chemical and a strange overconfidence in gram scales. The wise old people with their tales of creating spirits were relaying the results of an experiment of thousands of years of human experience with nature. They knew things too… aye… …aye.

 

[tonyrey]

The prime defect with ID is the assumption that something that functions with such complexity even as a germ, let alone a skunk, is designed.

It is** not **the assumption that something which functions with such complexity is designed but something which functions purposefully - in addition to the fact that purposeful complexity requires an adequate explanation.

It is absurd to imagine purposeless inanimate molecules alone have magically succeeded in producing immensely complex, purposeful living organisms without any insight or knowledge of what they are doing! It would be the greatest miracle in the history of the universe… apart from the spontaneous appearance of the universe from nothing…

 

[tonyrey]

Well that does break it down a great deal.
So how do we know something is designed?

We see randomness of the clouds…until we also notice the plane skywriting.
Then the random squiggles make sense.
We suddenly have a design from apparent randomness.
What is the real difference?

Are we really being so impudent as to believe that only something we are responsible for is designed?

That sounds remarkably like hubris to me!

It is ironic that a person uses reason to deny that reason is significant…