768 thoughts on “I lost my faith in ID”
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The Skeptical Zone
"I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible that you may be mistaken."
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It’s the residue of disorder!
You recognise other minds solely by the purposeful arrangement of parts, claims Behe but admits not everyone in Biology agrees with me.
From my reading of the exchange no one here has misrepresented the argument. You, on the other hand, have failed to address the criticisms rendered to Behe’s video proclamations, i.e., where is/are the quantitative criterion/criteria utilized to determine if parts are purposefully arranged and are they a case of an apparent purposeful arrangement of parts?
If you can’t address this/these criticisms just say so. Attempting to obfuscate the issue is easy to spot and as DNA_Jock says ‘is an easy tell’ for the vacuity of your position. Better to admit that ID cannot provide any worked out quantitative examples of design detection than to do what you are attempting to do. It ruins what little credibility you have left.
Bill’s latest shiny thing is a blatantly dishonest equivocation of the word “purpose”. Colloquially “purpose” is sometimes used as a synonym for “function”. But “purpose” in the context of “purposeful arrangement of parts” means a plan conceived and executed to achieve an intended result. In Behe’s context it doesn’t mean function.
Bill thinks he’s sooooo clever to find a scientific reference using purpose to mean function then claims that’s evidence for the second completely different usage of purpose as involving conscious intent being correct.
Well, I have not misrepresented your ‘argument’, Bill. But rather than go all ‘meta’ and tone troll, how about you describe for us this specific criterion for design detection that you are touting?
Cool story bro.
Waiting for you to explain the quantitative bit, or the wood shavings bit, Bill. Or really anything beyond “It looks designed to me”.
why ask folks to do something you claim has already been done. Simply provide the reference for the detailed worked out analytical excercise that demonstrates te flagellum is designed. You claim it has been done so why not help your fellow travelers out and give them the reference? Bill, the reference does exist doesn’t it?
How does that help the situation/analysis?
PeterP,
A structure with 30 parts has a stronger design inference than 3. A structure with parts that directly interact with each other has a stronger design inference than the flagellum motor and ATP synthase even though can be identified with same purpose which is aiding humans in energy production.
PeterP,
Thinking through it themselves ends in deeper understanding.
DNA_Jock,
This is straw-man argument 1C. You have all the fallacious rebuts down. Excuse me up front for using an Entropy labeling tactic you sharp shooter you 🙂
That you see an apparent purpose in the arrangement of parts does not demonstrate that the actual arranging was done for that purpose.
Let’s look at some examples to illustrate the problem;
Example 1: A brilliant chef arranges some ingredient to produce a great meal. So there’s an example of a purposeful arrangement of parts.
Example 2: That chef wrote down the recipe after he had finished. Now somebody buys the recipe book and follows that recipe. He gets a similar great meal. And his actions were purposeful. But this time, the purpose was the careful following of the recipe. So a completely different purpose from that of Example 1, but a similar arrangement of parts.
Example 3: The chef wasn’t actually all that brilliant. He had been making somewhat similar meals all of his life. But he varied them. So he was doing trial and error testing. The meal from Example 1 was really the result of a great deal of trial and error testing, rather than of a brilliant design. Again, a different description of how it happened, but the same arrangement of parts.
Now come to biology. It’s like Example 3 — trial and error testing to see what works well. And the result is written to the recipe book (the DNA). And then future arrangements of parts come from following a recipe rather than from brilliant design. And the recipe itself came from trial and error testing rather than brilliant design.
Alan Fox,
This is true but Behe is smart enough to know that this is an ad populum rebut.
Neil Rickert,
First: Thanks Neil this was very thoughtful.
Why do you think you had to use a mind for your analogy? How far can you go with pure trial and error design without learning being involved? What if you were describing the production of 1000 recipes for a commercial cookbook?
Behe is smart enough to know scientifically illiterate True Believers like Bill Cole will pay good money and swallow any pseudoscience crappola books Behe puts out.
Adapa,
Hey: A string of three original words 🙂
Note that Bill Cole once again has run from the critical question:
How do you tell apparent purposeful assembly of parts from actual purposeful assembly of parts?
Bill has no answer so he’ll just keep squirting squid ink and dodging the question.
Still waiting for the first honest post from you “Christian” Bill. 🙂 You have a lot of questions you’ve cowardly run from.
Because that’s what you are looking for. And I am trying to communicate with you.
If you record every arrangement in your trial and error testing, and then throw away the records of the ones that didn’t work, your recording procedure will turn out to be a learning algorithm.
Why is that the case? with evolution all the ‘misses’ are missing and all you are seeing are the sucessful variants. How do you account for those iterations in your analysis?
all good ‘teachers’ provide a worked example before cutting the students loose on the problem set. This is a universally understood method of coveying information. Now, imagine going into a first year calculus class and having the teacher hand out the final test prior to any instruction on the material and telling the students to think it through themselves? Not going to be very succesful in transfering that knowledge to the students afterall why have instructors if they are not going to instruct?
now I am sure you don’t want to fail in your endeavor of conveying the paradigm changing methodology that ID provides so when can we expect that worked out quantitative example of the explanitory filter in action, Bill?
It’s not, because we’re not talking about some “populum” “beliefs” but about scientists. Oh, and not just any scientists, but scientists who are experts in the concerned fields of study.
What you mean to say here is that finding a structure with 30 parts would fool you better into imagining it to be designed than one with three. It’s not an inference Bill, it’s an anthropomorphic projection.
People keep forgetting that they’re themselves made of such parts, and thus that intelligent designers themselves depend on those parts to even try and design anything. You put the cart-before-the-horse Bill, as usual.
You are simply unable to admit that there is no worked example that demonstrates the detection of design, yet you continue to pretend there is by this charade. I’ve been asking for such for a decade, as demonstrated, and nobody has been able to produce such. Just excuses. And now you have joined them. Just excuses. You know don’t have such an example, and if people can indeed just ‘think it through’ then you don’t actually have any physical evidence.
Jesus must be so fucking proud of you. Another Liar for iD
… says the guy who previously argued that the gospels must be true, because so many people believe it to be.
Honestly, Bill. I haven’t seen you mention a single form of fallacious reasoning you aren’t guilty of yourself. A bit more self awareness, perhaps?
I am curious to hear Alan’s take on this. Or Neils.
Assuming he is not a bot. No way to know for sure.
We know what your take on it is. Provoke until people react and then use those reactions as “evidence” as to how unfairly poor theists are treated here. Nobody gives a shit.
Your screeds regarding fitness are as predictable as they are uninformed.
Phoodoo was that snotty nosed little kid in grade school who desperately needed attention so he cried to the teacher about every tiny perceived slight done to him by the normal students. 😀
Corneel,
We all have some more than others. If I do please point it out. The current example is pretty marginal as I was comparing known pure fiction to a book with historical content.
I also was not accusing Alan of of a logical fallacy as the context was Behe commenting on his own position. He was arguing against his own position using a logical fallacy.. Pretty cleaver 🙂
Entropy,
So your claim is that ad populum arguments are limited to certain parts of the population?
Hey Bill,
How do you tell apparent purposeful assembly of parts from actual purposeful assembly of parts?
I won’t comment, because this is not the appropriate thread for discussing moderation.
Actually, what Behe is doing is “Lampshading”, the well known technique of dealing with a gaping plot-hole by drawing attention to it.
It’s all about maintaining the Willing Suspension of Disbelief.
It’s not my claim. It’s obvious. Mainstream conclusions matter when it’s the scientists in the appropriate fields who hold them. They know better by necessity.
Entropy,
Its your claim.
How many of these guys have studied Behe’s claims in depth. Of the ones I have talked to very few understand his claims.
It’s obvious. Fallacies refer to improper reasoning. It’s not improper reasoning to point to what actual experts conclude.
For you to be able to tell, you’d have to understand Behe’s claims. From what I have witnessed, the experts notice problems at every level, some of those are levels that people like you would never try and check.
Entropy,
There is a reason for ad populum arguments being a fallacy. They don’t directly address the merits of the argument. There is no way to know if the population you are referring to has the knowledge to access the particular argument.
Many of the experts have used straw-man arguments over the years starting with Ken Miller. The first straight discussion I have seen is Swamidass in the debate I posted. Some of the objections were theological in nature like human design vs divine design.
That the events in the gospels are historically accurate was exactly what you were trying to establish with your argumentum ad populum. You are just going around in circles again.
Corneel,
It was not my intent. I was demonstrating that the comparison was apples and oranges. Pure fiction to a book with historical content. In hindsight the claim is so lame I should have ignored it.
When confronted with something we know little about it’s proper to be skeptical if the experts in the appropriate scientific field reach the opposite conclusion. From that alone I know I will find lots of poor reasoning in any of Behe’s “works.”
Of course, knowing that Behe is an apologists means that Behe must deform and cherry-pick, tell half truths, start with the only goal of reaching his preferred conclusion regardless of the evidence. That Behe doesn’t care about truth, but about sounding convincing to his target audience: people who will mindlessly buy into whatever shit he wants them to buy.
False. I’ve seen some of Ken Miller’s counterarguments to Behe’s bullshit and they’re spot on. That you don’t like his conclusions doesn’t make them straw-men. As I said, to be able to tell you’d have to understand what’s going on. I suspect you neither understand Behe, nor Miller. That you just prefer Behe’s “conclusions.”
I find Swamidass useless. I don’t care about theological bullshit.
Entropy,
Several scientists I have talked to that are in the field have lots of respect for Behe’s arguments especially the concept of irreducible complexity. His logic is solid and clearly thought through.
If you understood Behe’s argument you would of picked up Ken’s straw-man its as clear as the nose on your face. Kens position of Behe’s argument. Irreducibly complex structures can’t evolve. Do you see the straw-man here?
Why do you find him useless?
(cough cough) Here we go again. “I know lots of scientists who agree with ID but I can’t give their names because they’ll be EXPELLED!”. You’re so full of shit your eyes are brown.
Why don’t you explain YOUR understanding of Behe’s argument then Bill.. Every time someone here repeats it to you all you do is go “NUH-UH, you don’t understand!!”. That’s about as craven and dishonest as it gets.
Bill, this statement fails the sniff test. Site rules require us to assume that you genuinely believe this statement to be true.
There are no scientists “in the field” that have lots of respect for Behe’s arguments.
His conception of ‘irreducible complexity’ as originally formulated rests on the assertion that such structures cannot evolve. This assertion is (as you are no doubt aware) FALSE. Behe’s more recent version is such structures are “unlikely”.
Waiting for someone to put some numbers on that. Hey, Bill, you could be the first! Knock yourself out!
Looks to me like you are the one strawmanning here, but rather than getting ‘meta’, how’s about you describe Behe’s argument in your own words, and explain Ken’s Miller’s position too.
The only conclusion allowed within site rules is that you are utterly clueless. But hey, demonstrate that you actually understand these issues, and I will gladly concede.
No, I was asking you to comment on his opinion. That is what posts are for, right? To be commented on by others?
Who is bringing up moderation?? What in the world would make you think we are discussing moderation? How weird.
I am still interested in Neil’s take. Does he feel that eyes become brown because of the amount of food consumed by an individual accumulates to such a degree that it can be seen through the eyes?
Neil, what is your take on the biology of that? Alan?
Typical IDist. They say they want to understand the biology, but the only people they WON’T ask are the biologists.
We need to take up a collection and buy Phoodoo a pacifier. He isn’t interested in discussing evolutionary biology or any related topic. Seems he just needs the attention and something to put in his mouth.
OK Phoodoo, be sure and run crying to the Moderators again about how you don’t approve of letting others express their opinions.
I doubt that scientists have respect for Behe’s arguments. I haven’t met one who doesn’t make fun of his bullshit. I’m a scientist myself, and I have absolutely no respect for his arguments. Not a tiny bit.
The logic of his “irreducible complexity” is very clear, but the conclusion false. Behe used to define irreducible complexity as something that would fail without all the parts that made it, and that “thus”, it could not evolve. That it was beyond evolutionary phenomena. So, “they cannot evolve” is not a straw-man, it’s the conclusion of the argument.
I have discussed this shit with many IDiots, and all of them agree that the idea is that irreducibly complex structures cannot evolve. Some go farther into claiming that they cannot evolve by definition! (Which is not what Behe said, he has that intermediate step: something that fails if missing one or a few parts. Otherwise it would be a circular argument). So, if that’s not the conclusion, then what’s the point of the argument? Why are so many creationists making a straw-man of an argument that they love?
Bill didn’t mean scientists. He meant “scientists”. Religious propagandists like Douglas Axe, Ann “green screen” Gauger, Gunter Bechly and the rest of the DI’s clown circus.
Maybe a bit off topic, but I would need a definition of “pure” fiction. Nearly every novel ever written is set in some present or past context which is historically accurate. And they frequently revolve around actual documented events, like wars or industry practices or crimes.
Your argument here sounds like “Sherlock Holmes must have been a real person because those stories are set in London, and London is a real historical city.” In most novels, only the foreground is fiction.
However, more than half of the organisms on earth are parasites, and as a rule parasites are irreducibly complex.
Behe has been on the defensive for some time, as one logical (and demonstrable) objection after another has undermined his arguments. Lately, I read he’s been reduced to demanding documented proof of every mutation that has occurred since life began. Pretty much since he made a fool of himself in Dover, he’s avoided making scientific arguments, and instead spent his time preaching to the choir using scientistical-sounding jargon.
Call me naive, but I believe some of these folks aren’t really propagandists. They simply CANNOT grasp the principles of evolution. Their approach is to assert that “evolution implies X” and then carefully and skillfully perform laboratory experiments demonstrating that X can’t and doesn’t happen. Their scientific positions are like “We have shown definitively that the crocoduck is impossible. Therefore Jesus!”