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Dr. Mabuse
Septic Fiend
Sweden
9688 Posts |
 Posted - 04/19/2013 : 11:18:16 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by moe1
ID makes no religious claims. It is simply the theory that when one examines complex biological system one can observe that intelligence was involved in the process of creating these systems. Biological studies like evolutionary biology and intelligent design cannot do an adequate job talking about any kind of god this subject is outside of their fields.
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Let's have a look at your text, and correct some flaws and misconceptions:
ID makes no religious claims openly. It is simply the theory religiously motivated assumption that when one examines complex biological system one can observe that intelligence was involved in the process of creating these systems. Biological studies like evolutionary biology and intelligent design cannot do an adequate great job talking about removing any kind of god from this subject. ID is outside of their fields.
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Dave W.
Info Junkie
USA
26022 Posts |
Posted - 04/19/2013 : 13:05:37 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by moe1
I find this comment to be completely false. Starting with you assumption about junk DNA. The fact of the matter is the vast majority of the DNA that was thought to be “junk” has been found to have real function. |
This comment betrays a belief that "junk DNA" refers to necessarily function-less DNA, and is not a non-scientific term meaning, at best, "DNA with no known function."| If Darwinian biology were correct, the idea of junk DNA would cause some significant problems as well. Cells should not wait energy making useless DNA if they do then it would appear that natural selection is not doing its part. |
Nobody has ever claimed that natural selection is the most efficient process, and nobody has ever claimed that the energy spent duplicating DNA is highly reproductively disadvantageous. Truly functionless DNA (like endogenous retroviruses) can only be eliminated through mutation and selection, and selection on neutral DNA copying isn't very strong. How many more children, on average, could each of us have if our cells didn't expend energy copying non-functional DNA? I'd say a very small fraction of one.
A quick back-of-the-envelope calculation suggests that all of the hydrogen bonds holding DNA bases together (a large porportion of the total energy needed to duplicate DNA) in an adult human body requires about four tenths of a dietary calorie (0.072% of one Big Mac). Cutting that down by the fraction of DNA which is truly function-free just makes the selective pressure on removing it that much tinier.| Jonathan Wells says, “RNA transcribed from non-protein coding DNA play significant roles in controlling whether, where, and to what extent the protein coding regions are transcribed.” In other words we know most DNA is useful and it seems reasonable to assume we will discover reasons for the rest of the unknown DNA. |
Argument from authority. Besides which, Wells doesn't refer to "most DNA," he's talking about non-protein coding DNA that actually gets transcribed (not all non-coding DNA gets transcribed into RNA).
You also wrote:| ID makes no religious claims. |
ID makes exactly the same claims that creationism did until 1992. That's why Dembski said, "Intelligent design is just the Logos theology of John's Gospel restated in the idiom of information theory."| It is simply the theory that when one examines complex biological system one can observe that intelligence was involved in the process of creating these systems. |
A theory is an explanation. What you've just said isn't an explanation, so ID isn't a theory.| Biological studies like evolutionary biology and intelligent design cannot do an adequate job talking about any kind of god this subject is outside of their fields. |
ID doesn't study biology. At best, it is a branch of information theory that attacks mainstream biology as insufficient and/or just plain wrong. |
- Dave W. (Private Msg, EMail)
Evidently, I rock!
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Dave W.
Info Junkie
USA
26022 Posts |
Posted - 04/19/2013 : 14:19:12 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by moe1
If Darwinian biology were correct, the idea of junk DNA would cause some significant problems as well. Cells should not wait energy making useless DNA if they do then it would appear that natural selection is not doing its part. |
Let's try this another way: there's about 6.6 femtograms of DNA in a human cell, and 50 trillion human cells in an average 75-kilo adult, so 329 mg of DNA in an adult, or 0.00044%. If there's no significant bias in proportions, then because it takes a human mother about 75,000 calories to "build" a baby, we can estimate that it takes about a third of a dietary calorie to "build" that baby's DNA.
All of the baby's DNA. If truly "junk" DNA is only 1% of all DNA in a human, then it requires only 1/300th of a dietary calorie to duplicate all the "junk" DNA in a human baby. So if we took all that energy and saved it (by not replicating the junk DNA) and somehow combined it specifically into building more babies, then there could be one extra baby for every 22.5 million babies.
There will be approximately 132 million babies born in 2013, worldwide. Saving the expense of duplicating "junk" DNA would, with the same total energy expenditure, allow us to make an additional 5.8 babies. That's less than one extra child per billion humans per year.
As I said, there's not going to be a lot of selection pressure on an effect that small. Especially when the total, world-wide human population was less than a billion individuals until the early 19th century. |
- Dave W. (Private Msg, EMail)
Evidently, I rock!
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sailingsoul
SFN Addict
2830 Posts |
Posted - 04/24/2013 : 15:32:21 [Permalink]
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I thought I would add this here, so I did. Oh! and the response at the end of this short video makes me smile big time and belongs here too.
edit to add second link |
There are only two types of religious people, the deceivers and the deceived. SS |
| Edited by - sailingsoul on 04/24/2013 18:03:43 |
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Dr. Mabuse
Septic Fiend
Sweden
9688 Posts |
Posted - 04/25/2013 : 11:18:27 [Permalink]
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Too bad it looks like moe1 won't be showing up again. He seemed to have so many misconceptions about biology and evolutionary theory that we could have straightened out for him.
Maybe I was too harsh on him?
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Dr. Mabuse - "When the going gets tough, the tough get Duct-tape..."
Dr. Mabuse whisper.mp3
"Equivocation is not just a job, for a creationist it's a way of life..." Dr. Mabuse
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Dave W.
Info Junkie
USA
26022 Posts |
Posted - 04/25/2013 : 13:54:34 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by Dr. Mabuse
Maybe I was too harsh on him? |
I'd prefer to think that my math was indisputable.  |
- Dave W. (Private Msg, EMail)
Evidently, I rock!
Why not question something for a change?
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sailingsoul
SFN Addict
2830 Posts |
Posted - 04/25/2013 : 16:22:44 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by Dave W.
Originally posted by Dr. Mabuse
Maybe I was too harsh on him? |
I'd prefer to think that my math was indisputable.
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Yeah right, dream on! We all know it was my good looks and charming personality. |
There are only two types of religious people, the deceivers and the deceived. SS |
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Tim Thompson
New Member
USA
36 Posts |
 Posted - 04/27/2013 : 10:46:16 [Permalink]
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I guess I am getting into the discussion a bit late, and have not scanned all 22 pages. Still, I would like to make what I think are some important observations concerning the Intelligent Design (ID) hypothesis.
Of course this is well known to be false. ID not only makes a religious claim, it is in its essence nothing but a religious claim. And this is the religious claim that it makes: It is not possible to explain the existence of complex biological system by any natural process, thus requiring the existence of a supernatural intelligent designer. This is sufficient, by itself, to deny the intelligent design hypothesis any scientific validity.
One of the most important figures in the foundations of modern philosophy is Adelard of Bath, who lived approximately from 1080-1152 Amongst his many significant contributions was the book "Questiones Naturales" ("Questions on Natural Science"; dates from somewhere between 1107-1133), in which we find the early foundations of "natural philosophy", which by the 19th century had transformed into what we now call "science" (the Oxford English Dictionary traces the origin of the word "scientist" to 1834 and William Whewell). This book immediately became a standard text, commonly used in European schools for over 100 years thereafter.
In this book, Adelard establishes the fundamental principle of Natural Philosophy: All natural phenomenon must be entirely explainable in terms of other natural phenomenon. This remains the most fundamental principle in natural science to this day. ID violates this most fundamental principle, and does so explicitly. Therefore my assertion above that this, by itself, disqualifies ID as a scientific hypothesis on most fundamental grounds.
But there is more. ID suffers from two serious logical fallacies, though they may not be strictly independent: (1) The argument from ignorance and (2) The false dichotomy.
The argument from ignorance is the claim that "Darwinian evolution" cannot explain the evolution of complex systems. This is just a disguised version of "if I can't explain it, then it must be impossible". The fact that there is no known explanation for some given phenomenon from a given hypothesis or theory today cannot be taken as a definitive argument that no such explanation can ever be possible, but that is exactly the primary assertion of ID. There is no formal proof and no formal argument, simply an assertion of limited value.
The false dichotomy is the assertion that if Darwinian evolution (or any other theory or hypothesis of evolution) fails to explain a given phenomenon, then ID must be the correct explanation. But in reality there could easily be any number of viable theories or hypotheses of evolution that might explain the given phenomenon, not just ID.
These two fallacies are easily recognized, and even in the absence of the violation of the most fundamental principle, would certainly render ID a non-scientific hypothesis, or at best perhaps a seriously flawed hypothesis, even if its scientific nature were accepted. But in reality, their true weakness is starkly revealed by the natural advance of science.
The natural advance of science that I refer to is the relatively new field of self organizing systems or self organized criticality, introduced in 1987. The self organization of complex systems is seen in slowly evolving non-linear non-equilibrium systems. This idea is widely applied throughout the physical & biological sciences. While there is as yet no definitive explanation in hand for the biological evolution of the complex systems criticized by the ID hypothesis, that is somewhat less important than the observation that the science of self organizing systems is an obvious target for a program of research to find an explanation. It is an obvious indication of the weakness of both the argument from ignorance and the false dichotomy. We now have a valid scientific theory which might well explain the very phenomena that the ID hypothesis claims to be impossible.
All of this reveals yet another weakness of the ID hypothesis. Genuinely scientific hypotheses suggest a program of research, or at least some experiments, which can be performed to test & verify the hypothesis. So consider two biologists, one an "evolutionist" and the other an "ID-ist". Put them in a lab, or in the field, and ask yourself the question: How would the experiments conducted by the ID-ist, in an effort to validate the hypothesis, differ from the experiments conducted by the evolutionist? I don't know of any difference, at least I have never seen reference to any. That being the case, then ID is not superior to standard evolution when it comes to the prosaic task of providing practical, natural descriptions of biological phenomena. So one has to wonder about the explanatory power or usefulness if the ID hypothesis. Hence, even if we allow the ID hypothesis all of the validity it claims, we still have to wonder: Who cares? Since it operationally explains all known natural systems in exactly the same manner as does standard evolution, why even bother with ID anyway?
The myriad of weaknesses outlined here are certainly enough to dismiss the ID hypothesis as, in the words of Wolfgang Pauli, "not even wrong", as a scientific hypothesis. ID is a theological hypothesis, not a scientific hypothesis.
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The point of philosophy is to start with something so simple as not to seem worth stating, and to end with something so paradoxical that no one will believe it. -- Bertrand Russell |
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Machi4velli
SFN Regular
USA
854 Posts |
Posted - 05/02/2013 : 13:58:02 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by Tim Thompson
The argument from ignorance is the claim that "Darwinian evolution" cannot explain the evolution of complex systems. This is just a disguised version of "if I can't explain it, then it must be impossible". The fact that there is no known explanation for some given phenomenon from a given hypothesis or theory today cannot be taken as a definitive argument that no such explanation can ever be possible, but that is exactly the primary assertion of ID. There is no formal proof and no formal argument, simply an assertion of limited value.
The false dichotomy is the assertion that if Darwinian evolution (or any other theory or hypothesis of evolution) fails to explain a given phenomenon, then ID must be the correct explanation. But in reality there could easily be any number of viable theories or hypotheses of evolution that might explain the given phenomenon, not just ID. |
If they stopped at "Darwinian evolution doesn't appear to explain X," and didn't go on to conclude that an intelligent designer made it, could they potentially offer some useful information?
Say someone went this way:
1. Suppose (uniformly) random mutation led to adaptation X
2. Suppose adaptation X increased breeding probability of those with the adaptation by some number a and decreased breeding probabilities in non-mutated by some number b (or call a and b functions of time or generation)
3. Hypothesis: the adaptation would take hold and dominate the species within 10,000 generations
and then they proved these assumptions lead to a very small probability of this adaptation taking hold, and concluded that either this hypothesis and/or these assumptions should be rejected under reasonable conditions on the a and b (whatever conditions are reasonable to the particular adaptation and hypothesized environmental circumstances).
Couldn't this type of thing be worthwhile if they would stop short of what they conclude? (Or is this roughly your point in mentioning the experimental procedures would not necessarily be different except for the conclusions?) |
"Truth does not change because it is, or is not, believed by a majority of the people."
-Giordano Bruno
"The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, but the illusion of knowledge."
-Stephen Hawking
"Seeking what is true is not seeking what is desirable"
-Albert Camus |
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Tim Thompson
New Member
USA
36 Posts |
Posted - 05/03/2013 : 08:31:31 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by Machi4velli
Couldn't this type of thing be worthwhile if they would stop short of what they conclude? (Or is this roughly your point in mentioning the experimental procedures would not necessarily be different except for the conclusions?)
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That is indeed my point.
Generally speaking, I think that "intelligent design" is not, as the subject heading says, a stupid idea. I think it requires some intelligence to realize that the world looks intelligently designed, which philosophers and scientists have acknowledged now for centuries. However, asserting that the world looks "intelligently designed", on the one hand, and asserting that it can be scientifically or logically proven that it must have been "intelligently designed", on the other hand, are clearly two vastly different things, and therein lies the rub.
So a genuinely scientific approach would be to assert that there is no natural explanation for phenomenon X, and then "intelligently design" a program of research & experimentation to empirically prove it. But modern proponents of ID are not interested in such things, they simply stop at the bald assertion and hope nobody will notice that their approach to ID is what really constitutes the fundamental nature of "stupid". |
The point of philosophy is to start with something so simple as not to seem worth stating, and to end with something so paradoxical that no one will believe it. -- Bertrand Russell |
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KateRoss
New Member
1 Post |
Posted - 06/26/2019 : 06:50:05 [Permalink]
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| This is a very interesting topic for me. thanks for the links. I'll go and look. |
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Dr. Mabuse
Septic Fiend
Sweden
9688 Posts |
Posted - 06/30/2019 : 23:08:41 [Permalink]
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You're welcome, Kate.
Be sure to come back and give your own views on why Intelligent Design is stupid.
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Dr. Mabuse - "When the going gets tough, the tough get Duct-tape..."
Dr. Mabuse whisper.mp3
"Equivocation is not just a job, for a creationist it's a way of life..." Dr. Mabuse
Support American Troops in Iraq:
Send them unarmed civilians for target practice..
Collateralmurder. |
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Intelligent Design is Stupid
