"This is too vague a description to be considered a prediction."

Not really.  It just means that I was offering a principle which can be extended into different contexts.  No point in over-specifying.   Not to totally knock your point- I agree that given a particular system, we'd want to refine the terms of the predictive framework a little bit more.

"The problem is that you have not specified any criterion for distinguishing the complexity of naturally evolved systems and artificially designed systems. "

No, you're right.  But that is only because I have only been trying to explain the principle to you.  Obviously it would be pointless to go further if you won't even allow the validity of the technique even in principle.

So, do you acknowledge the validity of this idea in principle?

You run your empirical tests to determine what nature is observed to do.  Then you run your tests to see what intelligent agents can do.  Then you compare.  Real simple, in my book.

"It has been proposed (by me and others) that intelligently designed complexity can be distinguished from artifical complexity on the grounds that intelligent designers consciously remove nonfunctional parts of the design."

Like the hood ornament?

"First of all, the alleged "intelligent designer", despite frequent denials by IDists, is really an infallible God."

Well, if you can't allow them to define the terms of their own argument, you are not really treating the argument with respect, just as you would not appreciate me saying that evolutionary theory is just a cover for atheism.  You might say, "Well, that's simply not true, that's the difference" but I can retort the same way.  Such statements as the one that I have quoted really get us nowhere.  You have to take people at their words in these contexts, or simply not participate.

Not much, if your contention is that ID means persistent intervention.  Quite a bit, if you understand that you are allowed to design something and 'let it go' without later on having people challenge that it is designed (on grounds perhaps not defined right now).  Thus a house left untended will tend towards disrepair, but no one thinks on this account that it was not designed.  The inference, if anything, would be that it was poor design, but not that it was NOT designed.   Here we see where your persistent notion that 'despite denials' the only designer that ID refers to is an infallible designer fails to take the measure of the situation.  It could be Crick's aliens that seeded our planet's life, for example.  I don't recall Crick suggesting that the aliens were infallible, so he certainly wouldn't have been turned off by evidence of 'poor design.'

In terms of the biological system in question- the human one- Down's syndrome is just one deviation from the genetic code that leads to either death or significantly diminished operating capacity.   There are quite a few of them, aren't there?  A single mutation in the wrong place is all it takes.

But this is something we could test.  With the aid of our intelligent agency (Can biologists detect when another biologist has tampered with genes?  Or is any genetic tampering in principle not scientifically detectable in your view?) we can change out aspects of the genes to see what happens and get a really concrete idea about just how much deviation the human genome can tolerate.

"Yes, but that is based on our knowledge about children's toy blocks and the usual processes that create such stacks"

Actually, it was based on 30 minutes of video taped experimentation.  :)

Well, this might be a good idea to point out the flaw in your rebuttal example.  Balancing rocks such as you describe are formed by erosion.  They are not built up, they are carved out.  Its apples and oranges.

"DNA is itself thought to have been the result of self-replicating processes over extremely long periods of time. One hypothesis is that it evolved out of RNA."

Nothing like a string of 'is thoughts' to really bring me around to the strength of your scientific position.

"Is there? What is that threshold? You never specify it."

Again, my focus on the principle.  Again, your own view is depending on a threshold.  Somehow, and somewhere, you appear to be aware of what you can expect given enough time or chances or whatever, but I'll bet 10 hamburgers you can't tell me when that threshold begins or ends.

...You aren't following me.  I am only asserting that we can look at the code itself and manipulate it in order to see how much deviation it can handle before it doesn't work at all.  Somehow you've gotten on this 'virus detection' kick which is nowhere near the point I'm making.  Its the same as with the blocks:  you CAN run tests to establish your statistical threshold.  It IS possible.  It does not have to be arbitrary.

That is the main point of both my computer program example and my children's blocks analogy.

"Which is a more obscure way of saying that your description is too vague to be considered a prediction. Just what I said."

No, my friend.  Its a very direct way of explaining to you that if you don't even understand the principle I am applying, once I apply it to an actual biological system, you won't understand it then, either.  Since I have not actually formally applied it to a biological system- and I have explained this often enough now- its not reasonable for you to be looking for a specific prediction yet.  You need to be fair in your responses, please.

But your point about my wife cleaning the house was not appropriate.  As I explained in using that example, by your view of science the possibility  that my wife cleaned the house is excluded from the start.  Since its obvious that this is the most reasonable conclusion in this one case ('obvious by other means.')  If science cannot be brought to bear to 'prove what is obvious' then science has an inherent flaw.

The blocks are a different example, and once again, has nothing to do with whether or not blocks were caused by an intelligent agent or not.  I don't know how many times I can say it.  In fact, I'm not going to say it again.  You can keep re-reading what I already said until you get it if you like.  Perhaps you can ask clarifying questions, but I'm not your old record that you can get to repeat over and over again.

"How is the child-block scenario relevant to that claim?"

Asked and answered.

"In my book, that's just plain simplistic. Since biological evolution in nature takes place over eons of time, you are going to have a tough time replicating such conditions in the lab."

Nothing like rendering a view untestable in principle.     Wow, what a superior position, hiding the testability of your 'scientific theory' in the hiddenness of past time.  That sounds like evolution is the scientific equivalent of the Invisible Pink Unicorn.

"Is it your opinion that hood ornaments appeared on cars as a random phenomenon? Can you think of no reason why manufacturers put them there?"

Ah, indeed I can.  But the function does not pertain to the ability of the vehicle as a whole to function, does it?  It is an extra, that serves a legitimate purpose.  You've just opened the door for looking for similar design features in biological organisms.  Thanks.   :)

"Johnny, you try to associate evolution theory with atheists for a very special reason"

No, I was not.  What I said was you wouldn't like it if I did the very same thing you were doing.  Doesn't look like you liked it!  Shocker.  So, you can join Stathei in your mind-reading that gets the debate no where.  Its the same thing.  Ultimately, its just a waste of bandwidth, don't you think?

"You also don't recall that Crick repudiated this old 1970 "Directed Panspermia" speculation two decades later"

Nope, I'm well aware of that.  I didn't check your link, but I did read his repudiation at one time.  I bet when I read it gain, he repudiated it not because it appealed to intelligent agency as being unscientific by default, which was my point in bringing it up in the first place.

"Yes, but there aren't a lot of them relative to the overall population, and they tend not to pass on their mutation to succeeding generations. So how does this support Intelligent Design?"

Or, how does it support evolution?  You are only saying that if you have enough time you can ignore what you actually observe.  Nice.

"After all, some of those balancing rocks may have been put there by gods or super aliens."

The balancing rocks are contiguous rocks.  They are not distinct components.  Sorry.

Example:  I think you would agree that if it were posited that all biological organisms were the result of evolutionary processes in the last 10,000 years, then evolution is not a viable option.  What about 100,000 years?  What about 2 million years?  Obviously, you think 4.5 billion years to be 'enough.'  What if I don't?  Do you have anything empirically demonstrable to show that 30 millenia is a reasonable threshold to believe that what is otherwise impossible is actually possible?

Reading comprehension, my friend.

Perhaps if Cimics is so inclined, he can try his hand explaining what I already said.

"Neither of which do anything to make your case. Please stop temporizing, and tell us what criteria you would use to show that any biological design was caused by an intelligent agent."

If you cannot stomach milk, I'm not going to give you meat.

I have an unanswered post, in case you missed it.

Quote from: Copernicus

Evolution predicts that nonfunctional detritus will hang around in the design, not that every piece of apparent detritus really is detritus. Hence, IDists have to explain the function of every aspect of the design. In the case of severe mutations--two-headed calves, for example--they are going to have a problem explaining the function of that second head. "Two heads are better than one?"

We live in an imperfect world.  Christianity has an explanation for that.  The fall.  Or aside from Christianity, God has allowed evil in the world for purposes of His own.  The consequence of this imperfect world is that things can get screwed up.  So while the design may have been perfect initially, conditions in this world may have damaged genes, etc causing those mutations.  I don't think an ID'er has to defend an apparent function on the individual organism level.  The ID'er simply needs to point to the typical design (or designs) for the type of organism involved.

That doesn't make it non-science though, does it? Just a not-(yet?)-very-well-supported theory. If we were to find hidden alternative functions than wouldn't that tend to validate ID?

No, you need more than that. You need to show that the alternative functions could not plausibly have arisen by Darwinian means.

But beyond that, ID does seem to make some predictions with regard to junk DNA that evolution does not: that the usual (i.e. non-defective) formulation of junk-DNA serves a purpose -- all of it.  Perhaps evolution allows for all DNA to be coincidentally useful -- although that does seem to stretch the odds -- but ID actually predicts it.  From an investigative standpoint, a belief in ID could actually spur research:  "that LOOKS like junk but it must have a purpose!"  Isn't expanding our knowledge what science is all about?

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Just because we fail to perceive an existing function, that doesn't mean that its design was guided by an intelligent agent.

True.  But the point was that ID makes predictions and those predictions could in fact spur scientific inquiry in a way that evolutionary theory might not.

...In any event, you've already suggested that ID makes a prediction -  that all DNA has a purpose.  That's not a prediction that evolution makes, right?  It's just that evolution can be explained as consistent with whatever the DNA results happen to be.  So here, ID makes the useful prediction, while evolution does not.

Also interesting is the similarity this junk DNA has to human language.  That suggests the possibilty that this seeming morass of evolved junk is actually a very highly ordered design.

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The kind of "junk" I was talking about was things like vestigial limbs in whales and other aquatic mammals.  What hidden modern function do you see for those traces of land-dwelling function?

Don't know.  I did a brief search and several creationist websites have suggested functions for several of the so-called vestigial organs.  I am sure such sites hold no credibility with you, and indeed I am not going to vouch for them since I just stumbled upon them in a google search, but some of their observations about vestigial structures on whales were interesting.

Another possible answer would be that the structures would somehow be useful to US.  Certainly that other animals have some similarities to humans makes them good experimental subjects, for example.

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You say that the junk DNA was manipulated by an intelligent agent of some kind to enhance its survivability. That its purpose was (to paraphrase Aristotle) its "final cause". I say that its survivability is the very mechanism that allowed it to outlast competing designs. There was no purpose. Some self-replicators are just better than others, and those are the ones that last longer. What a surprise.

The point though was the function of so-called "junk" DNA.  You say it randomly evolved, and you also say that random evolution results in vestigial structures.  The evidence suggests that all DNA may in fact serve a useful function.  ID would predict that, while evolution would not.  Evolution would simply be consistent with it.  That's the kind of charge evolutionists usually make against creationists.  Interesting to see the tables turned.

Let's not forget where it started from. This is a discussion on the question of whether ID makes any testable predictions. Do you have an opinion on that?

Do you think that you can defend his position?

It also happens to be the possibility that is incompatible with ID--the one that most biologists who happen to be Christians subscribe to.

I agree with this depiction of what ID proponents claim. One minor point--no genome is ever "stabilized". In theory, our bodies were designed to survive conditions that existed many millenia ago. The collective "genome" is not optimal for survival in the present world, which means that it is technically unstable.

Do you think that any evidence exists to support the claim that major "jumps" in evolution ever occurred?

Darwinian theory promotes the concept of gradual change, because radical mutations in nature--the two-headed calf, for example--tend not to survive very long, let alone to procreate.

That is, we see radical mutations that occur in nature, but we have never seen one that seems to succeed in creating a new species or "jump in evolution", as you put it.

Not necessarily. Anyone attempting to promote phlogiston theory nowadays would simply be dismissed as a quack scientist.

You still need to show that ID provides some necessary explanation that Darwinian evolution cannot, because Darwinian theory is already known to work. Not even ID proponents (those with scientific credentials, that is) deny this.

Which is one reason for the junk DNA discussion.

False. Whatever your reason for bringing that topic up, it has nothing at all to do with ID.

Evolution theory does not predict that "junk DNA" is non-functional.

It does not motivate researchers to stop looking for functional significance in "junk DNA". The ID hypothesis does not motivate researchers to do ANYTHING that they would not ordinarily do in looking for that significance.

Nor is there the slightest hint that the newly discovered functionality could only have arisen by intelligent design. Nor have any of the researchers involved in the discovery (to my knowledge) have anything at all to say about intelligent design. In short, your DNA topic is a red herring.

I don't know where you got that impression. I don't think anyone had any expectations about "junk DNA", and it rather surprised scientists that so little of the DNA seemed to have purpose.

Intelligent Design doctrine, as far as I know, says nothing at all about it. Extrapolating from my "optimization" criterion for distinguishing "guided" and "unguided" design processes, one might argue that one expects to find nonfunctional residue in DNA, and that would refer to the part of the DNA that maps into the human genome. "Junk DNA" falls outside that zone.

ID has played zero role in the discovery of functional aspects of what was previously called "junk DNA". It did not inspire scientists to do anything that they wouldn't have done anyway in the normal course of science. That is, ID does not spur research as you claim it does. Its sole effect on science has been to influence some politicians to try to modify the science curriculum to suit a religious agenda.

Although you said that you would separate "junk DNA" from phenotypical variation, you simply seem unable to do that.

Nothing in ID seems to inspire any research directions at all. The literature seems to be devoted entirely to proving that some evolved genetic structures are incompatible with Darwinian principles.

What would make it scientific is a verifiable principle that would objectively distinguish those structures that were allegedly "intelligently designed" from those that arose by unguided evolution. That is what Behe and Dembski have been trying to do and have not succeeded in doing.

Being inspired by belief in God and being inspired by belief in Intelligent Design are two entirely different things. Most biologists are probably believers in God, but most are certainly believers in Darwinian evolution. My comment was that ID makes no predictions that inspire research goals. That's a completely different point, and I think that you know that.

What types of investigations does it call for that would not normally be done?

Indeed. ID only makes the prediction that one won't find a natural cause for some unspecified evolutionary "leaps". Hence, it does not spur any learning at all. If anything, it relies on ignorance to sustain it.

DNA is actually more like assembler code than human language, but even that is a stretched analogy. Let's not read too much into such metaphors. The important thing is that DNA molecules can be seen as having "words" that fit together in "syntactic patterns"--like procedure names and parameters (or objects and methods) in a computer program that you might write. One can use modified linguistic text mining techniques to extract "information" from "word patterns" that we find in DNA.

According to the linguists, all human languages obey Zipf's Law. It's a really weird law, but it's not that hard to understand. Start off by getting a big fat book. Then, count the number of times each word appears in that book. You might find that the number one most popular word is "the" (which appears 2,000 times), followed by the second most popular word "a" (which appears 1,800 times), and so on. Right down at the bottom of the list, you have the least popular word, which might be "elephant", and which appears just once.

Set up two columns of numbers. One column is the order of popularity of the words, running from "1" for "the", and "2" for "a", right down "1,000" for "elephant". The other column counts how many times each word appeared, starting off with 2,000 appearances of "the", then 1,800 appearances of "a", down to one appearance of "elephant".

If you then plot on the right kind of graph paper, the order of popularity of the words, against the number of times each word appears you get a straight line! Even more amazingly, this straight line appears for every human language - whether it's English or Egyptian, Eskimo or Chinese! Now the DNA is just one continuous ladder of squillions of rungs, and is not neatly broken up into individual words (like a book).

So the scientists looked at a very long bit of DNA, and made artificial words by breaking up the DNA into "words" each 3 rungs long. And then they tried it again for "words" 4 rungs long, 5 rungs long, and so on up to 8 rungs long. They then analysed all these words, and to their surprise, they got the same sort of Zipf Law/straight-line-graph for the human DNA (which is mostly introns), as they did for the human languages!

There seems to be some sort of language buried in the so-called junk DNA! Certainly, the next few years will be a very good time to make a career change into the field of genetics.

So now, around the edge of the new millennium, we have a reasonable understanding of the 3% of the DNA that makes amino acids, proteins and babies. And the remaining 97% - well, we're pretty sure that there is some language buried there, even if we don't yet know what it says. It might say "It's all a joke", or it might say "Don't worry, be happy", or it might say "Have a nice day, lots of love, from your friendly local DNA".

I didn't say that the gall bladder was useless, just that the human body could be easily modified to survive without it. The design is imperfect.

So your idea seems to be that the imperfections are built into us so that we can use them to discover how to get around the imperfectons that are built into us. Rolling Eyes

Your best defense against this observation seems to be that all of that apparent waste and non-functionality is really the most optimal design possible.

The evidence does not suggest that all DNA serves a useful function.


YET. Some of those sites that I posted links for suggest that there is enough information for us to surmise that it may eventuallly turn out to be the case, however.

Perhaps you should publish a paper in a biology journal that points this out and gives the web site links.

It is also true that the evidence does not support the existence of leprechauns YET.

The "inspiration issue" was obfuscated by your attempt to confuse faith in God with belief that God intervenes miraculously in nature directly to perform design changes in biological organisms. What caused organisms to evolve flagella? It was a miracle! A miracle, I tell you! Wink

One can believe in God and still believe that God does not intervene to make miraculous design changes in biological organisms.

All you are saying is that ID theory's contribution is to spur scientists on to discover function where none apparently exists. Since scientists do that anyway as the normal course of doing science, the ID hypothesis is completely superfluous.

It makes no testable claims, and it isn't needed to spur scientists on to do their work.

What are they?

I mean from the perspective that major changes in the genome has ceased to occur.

What makes you think that? We could still be in the process of evolving. Maybe God doesn't think we've reached perfection yet.

By jump, I was not necessarily saying a single radical change. It could be a group of minor changes whose end result is a radical change. Or it could be a radical change. :)

That's a rather important distinction in this discussion. Darwinian evolution takes the position that such changes are almost always small, incremental steps. ID takes the position of radical change.

The problem with "junk DNA" is that scientists suspected that there was function in the 97% even before the term was coined. IDists have seized upon the term as if it were some kind of prediction by Darwinian theory. They have exaggerated their own "prediction", since nothing in their theory actually predicts that "all" DNA will be functional. Don't forget that IDists do not claim that EVERY biological change is guided by intelligence, so there is no reason why every segment of DNA must be functional. As I've said before, the junk DNA issue is a complete red herring.

I read both papers. The first is not a research paper, but a rehash of what other IDists have said. The second is about the so-called Theory of Organizational Problem Solving (TOPS) and was produced by a colleague of Dembski. Nothing wrong with that. But there is a method for distinguishing genuine research papers from those that merely mimic research--the peer review process. No ID paper has been published in a peer-reviewed biological research journal. Until that happens, ID "research" does not qualify as anything more than wannabe science.

The above sources suggest scientists were actually surprised that the junk DNA did have a purpose after all.

That is pure rubbish. Read the TOPS paper again.... In other words, he admitted that ID did not inspire the research, but he went on to blithely state that ID would have inspired it more strongly than the Darwinian framework that did inspire it, if only it had had the chance.

First of all, Zipf's law is an experimental observation about vocabulary in language, not a theoretical law promulgated by linguists. Secondly, you don't need to explain Zipf's law to me. I am a linguist.

So you ought to pay attention to what I have to say next. Thirdly, Zipfian distributions apply to all sorts of natural phenomena, not just vocabulary frequencies. For example, it is found in earthquake magnitudes, notes in musical compositions, income distributions, and sizes of settlements. Saying that junk DNA is like human language on the basis of Zipf's law is pure obfuscation. People engage in such nonsense in order to dress up a claim in pseudo-scientific gibberish.

I didn't say that the gall bladder was useless, just that the human body could be easily modified to survive without it. The design is imperfect.

That just means the design is no longer optimal. Not a problem for ID if the view is that the design process stopped sometime in the past.

To my knowledge, no ID proponent has ever made such a claim. Can you give a reference?