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Cuneiformist
The Imperfectionist
USA
4955 Posts |
 Posted - 02/22/2008 : 10:50:48
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This is a new post up at UD. Titled, "Intelligent Design: Did Biological Life Require It?" it is supposed to| stimulate thought and discussion. As that discussion unfolds, I expect that this article will be revised over time in the same way that a paper submitted to a journal is often revised during the process of review. The purpose of this article is to attempt to bring some clarity to the discussion of intelligent design and the origin and diversity of biological life. |
I am just starting it now, and I'll perhaps post comments later as I work through it....
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Dave W.
Info Junkie
USA
26022 Posts |
Posted - 02/22/2008 : 13:47:10 [Permalink]
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The article is actually in six parts on Denyse's own blog (well, one of her dozen), the UD post just being a "hey, look at this" thing:I. Introduction
II. Defining some terms and concepts
III. The role of intelligent design in science
IV. Functional Information
V. Application to Biological Life
VI. Conclusion There are a lot of problems with this. The biggest is that Kalinsky never gets away from an image of proteins forming by having random amino acids stick to each other. It's a creationist canard that's been with us for over five decades, and simply won't go away. For example, in section V he says,Taylor et al. have estimated that the mass of the earth would equal about 1047 proteins, of 100 amino acids each.[7] If we suppose that the entire set of 1047 proteins reorganized once per year over a 500 million year interval (about the estimated time period for pre-biotic evolution), then that search permits about 1055 options to be tried. Using Eqn. (3), Inat [is about] 185 bits of functional information. Of course, this scenario is much more generous than any scenario under consideration, but at least we will not be underestimating Inat. Assuming that the only "natural" way for proteins to be created is to randomly mix them up is not generous at all. For a mind-numbingly obvious example, if you have DNA that encodes for vinculin, the "probability" that at least some cells in your body will create vinculin is very close to one, and not some extremely low number based upon vilculin's 1,066 amino acid length. Beyond that, some short peptides are known to catalyze other protein reactions, making it more likely that certain amino acid chains will appear. None of this shows up in Kalinsky's article, nor is there any evidence within it that he may have considered these well-known issues to be problems for his hypothesis.
And that's it. That's his basis for his whole article: that he has the ability to generously calculate the odds of an unspecified 100-amino-acid protein coming into existence naturally, and then compare those odds to the odds that other proteins will occur naturally, and whichever is greater "wins." Kalinsky shows himself to be unable to calculate the odds of anything, however, relying upon biologically naive "tornado in a junkyard" calculations where things are simply tossed together.
Kalinsky even chides scientists for not testing their assumptions, while he fails to test his own assumption. It's that bad. |
- Dave W. (Private Msg, EMail)
Evidently, I rock!
Why not question something for a change?
Visit Dave's Psoriasis Info, too. |
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HalfMooner
Dingaling
Philippines
15831 Posts |
Posted - 02/22/2008 : 16:33:43 [Permalink]
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Thanks for the summary, Dave. So essentially, all this "new" stuff by Kalinsky is just a variation on the old argument from incredulity. "I can't see how all these amino acids could assemble themselves in this exact order (and I refuse to consider the Iron Sulfur World, RNA World, or other hot contemporary hypotheses of how the simple chemicals self-organize into complex), so godditit."
He also seems to be ignoring what to me is another important point: The detailed biochemistry of life that we see around us is probably only one of an almost infinite number of possible biochemistries that might have been.
Earth life's present "location" was not the only possible "destination."
We possess the biochemistry that we have (and are) simply because of the way things first chanced to self-organize into life, and because of how this chemistry chanced to evolve since. We could easily have been creatures made up of an entirely alien mix of biochemicals, arguing about how that precise unique make-up could have been self-organized or "designed."
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“Biology is just physics that has begun to smell bad.” —HalfMooner
Here's a link to Moonscape News, and one to its Archive. |
| Edited by - HalfMooner on 02/22/2008 16:41:38 |
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Cuneiformist
The Imperfectionist
USA
4955 Posts |
Posted - 02/22/2008 : 17:05:02 [Permalink]
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Thanks, Dave. I only got part through it, but it was clear from section IV that he was going in the "it's impossibly unlikely that life can just spontaneously form" direction.
My understanding about proteins and DNA, etc., is limited. But my understanding is that things like carbon doesn't just form molecules at random, and that proteins also form and act in predictable ways.
Likewise, we could speculate that when I drop a ball off a cliff, there are myriad ways it could go. But it's silly to say that its always landing in some small radius around the base of the cliff is because some intelligent force acting on it. Gravity and physics govern how the ball will fall, limiting our choices for where it's going to end up.
Anyhow, what's frustrating about ID (among many things) is that aside from saying "well, some things were designed" ID has nothing else to add. DaveScot has already said that common descent is allowed for. That is, they have no answer for the ERV argument, and so they have to admit that primates all have shared ancestry. So how do we imagine the designer comes into play here? Did the designer take a creature X, insert some DNA in it that was programmed to, over time, change things up to introduce orangutans, gorillas, chimps, and humans? Or did he (she? it?) periodically (once every few hundred thousand years?) teleport to earth and tinker with primate DNA (with a tricorder or something? A magic wand?), and then teleport away?
Not only are these questions unanswered, I don't hear anyone even asking them. And not just the "scientists"-- not even the sycophants posting at UD seem to care about much beyond the "some things must have been designed" bit.
Really frustrating. |
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HalfMooner
Dingaling
Philippines
15831 Posts |
Posted - 02/22/2008 : 17:41:05 [Permalink]
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They are very good, over at UD, at carefully confining their thinking to their box.
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“Biology is just physics that has begun to smell bad.” —HalfMooner
Here's a link to Moonscape News, and one to its Archive. |
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Dave W.
Info Junkie
USA
26022 Posts |
Posted - 02/22/2008 : 20:35:09 [Permalink]
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Okay, I can't find anything on this Kalinsky person outside of Denyse's numerous posts and re-posts of this same piece.
This is how "design detection" stops dead. Any attempt to figure out more about Kalinsky's hypothesis is terminated by being unable to get the "background information" on the author. Background information is required to correctly assign probabilities to events. Kalinsky doesn't include any background information about protein formation, and so reaches the conclusion that it is many orders of magnitude more improbable than it really is. We can't get background information on Kalinsky which might help us figure out where he (or she!) went wrong prior to the just-published article, and so we cannot assign any probabilities to any possible cause of this travesty of statistics.
This is a case study in why "design detection" fails. All the examples "Kalinsky" (don't even know if that's an alias or not) offers of design detection in use in actual sciences requires background information. SETI requires us to assume that ETs will think of the same things we do when trying interstellar communications. Archeology assumes that people have been doing more-or-less the same things over the last umpty-ump thousand years. Criminal forensics assumes that whatever caused the crime (be it human or "natural" - gotta love that distinction) isn't something magical or alien to us, but discoverable in human existence to date. And any design detection going on in mainstream biology today assumes that human tinkering with genomes is distinguishable from non-human tinkering (call it "evolution"), a point totally lost on the ID crowd.
Kalinsky wants us to believe that we can assign reasonable probabilities to events without any knowledge of them aside from the total possibility space and the "desired result" space. Divide, and you've got a probability, but one that ignores everything that goes on in the "black box" Kalinsky created that might change the probabilities to favor some outcomes or disfavor others.
For example, Kalinsky (K from now on) would have us believe that scientists at a crime scene would look at a chess board with four white queens and four black queens all lined up in a single row with no other pieces on the board would sit down to do a probability calculation of how likely such an event would occur with randomly sprinkled chess pieces, find that it's rather extraordinarily unlikey, and only then conclude that someone had set the pieces up like that. Normal forensic scientists, on the other hand, would look into the "black box" of the rules of chess and understand almost right away that there's gotta be at least one king on the board for it to have been a normal game position.
K simply doesn't understand that working evolutionary biologists look inside the black box for a living. That's their whole job: to figure out how some things are more "probable" than others. And the "how" is vitally important. K wants us to ignore the "how" in favor of "a designer did it." |
- Dave W. (Private Msg, EMail)
Evidently, I rock!
Why not question something for a change?
Visit Dave's Psoriasis Info, too. |
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Pelayo
Skeptic Friend
USA
70 Posts |
Posted - 02/24/2008 : 08:32:18 [Permalink]
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| Intelligent design? Well, the 1958 Edsel was the product if intelligent design. The proponents of this farcical idea should explain why humans have the problem with the inability to use their right and left hands with equal ability. Why is it, when we compare humans with other animals, humans are among the weakest, slowest, and have mediocre eyesight? |
I have a habit of posting without reading all previous comments, if I am repeating someone, well, excuse me, please.
"No tendency is quite so strong in human nature as the desire to lay down rules of conduct for other people." - William Howard Taft
"God ran out of new souls a long time ago and has been recycling jackasses." - Anon |
| Edited by - Pelayo on 02/24/2008 08:34:12 |
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Dave W.
Info Junkie
USA
26022 Posts |
Posted - 02/24/2008 : 14:20:38 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by Pelayo
Intelligent design? Well, the 1958 Edsel was the product if intelligent design. The proponents of this farcical idea should explain why humans have the problem with the inability to use their right and left hands with equal ability. Why is it, when we compare humans with other animals, humans are among the weakest, slowest, and have mediocre eyesight? |
The ID response to this is that "intelligent design" doesn't imply "optimal design." Of course, that allows them to simply claim that anything might be design, and even random things are just really, really poor design. On the other hand, having non-optimal design just makes God look weak, so let them have it. |
- Dave W. (Private Msg, EMail)
Evidently, I rock!
Why not question something for a change?
Visit Dave's Psoriasis Info, too. |
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Pelayo
Skeptic Friend
USA
70 Posts |
Posted - 02/24/2008 : 15:38:47 [Permalink]
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DaveW, sometimes I let my attempts at sarcasm get out of hand. I am using "design" in quotation marks because I can think of no other way to say (write?)it. I believe that the simple fact that humans are "designed" just so they can barely survive in a primitive environment, as opposed to being physically superior to that environment, means that those characteristics were developed through evolution. No animal should evolve any characteristic beyond the absolute minimum to survive. Man's intellect and ability to think makes up for many physical shortcommings. He can kill a much stronger animal because he can make a weapon. Man cannot chase and catch an antelope, but his arrow can.
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I have a habit of posting without reading all previous comments, if I am repeating someone, well, excuse me, please.
"No tendency is quite so strong in human nature as the desire to lay down rules of conduct for other people." - William Howard Taft
"God ran out of new souls a long time ago and has been recycling jackasses." - Anon |
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Dave W.
Info Junkie
USA
26022 Posts |
Posted - 02/24/2008 : 15:59:16 [Permalink]
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| Exactly right, Pelayo. I was just pointing out what the creationists have already said about the "poor design" argument. Humans are built pretty crappily. We can choke on our food, fercryinoutloud. And a lot of people have taken poor design to mean that God wasn't involved, or if he was, he's a bad designer. The creationists have simply replied, "okay, we'll take the bad designer option, thanks." In other words, no matter how bad the design, ID concludes that a designer did it, making the argument even more farcical. |
- Dave W. (Private Msg, EMail)
Evidently, I rock!
Why not question something for a change?
Visit Dave's Psoriasis Info, too. |
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Pelayo
Skeptic Friend
USA
70 Posts |
Posted - 02/24/2008 : 16:18:08 [Permalink]
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I just joined this site recently, and I want to be ready when and if the IDers start screwing with our local school curricula. Intelligent Design is a brilliant subtrefuge to teach creationism. It looks like we are in a debate that we cannot win. It also looks like you guys have been beating your heads against a brick wall for a long time.
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I have a habit of posting without reading all previous comments, if I am repeating someone, well, excuse me, please.
"No tendency is quite so strong in human nature as the desire to lay down rules of conduct for other people." - William Howard Taft
"God ran out of new souls a long time ago and has been recycling jackasses." - Anon |
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Kil
Evil Skeptic
USA
13477 Posts |
Posted - 02/24/2008 : 16:54:56 [Permalink]
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| I can't remember if I welcomed you to SFN, Pelayo. So just in case, welcome to SFN!! |
Uncertainty may make you uncomfortable. Certainty makes you ridiculous.
Why not question something for a change?
Genetic Literacy Project |
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Dave W.
Info Junkie
USA
26022 Posts |
Posted - 02/24/2008 : 17:06:16 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by Pelayo
I just joined this site recently, and I want to be ready when and if the IDers start screwing with our local school curricula. |
That was happening almost exactly a year ago in your neck of the woods. At least at a state level.| Intelligent Design is a brilliant subtrefuge to teach creationism. |
It would be brilliant if it weren't transparent. It's the things that the ID public relations department have come up with that are what really "work." Cries of "academic freedom" and the branding of evolution as a Nazi ideology get a lot of play and a lot of attention within the lay community, and it takes a lot of time and effort to counter those tactics.| It looks like we are in a debate that we cannot win. |
The winning strategy seems to be to show the undecided that the creationists expect them to be stupid to get them to believe their arguments. That way, they will see that the creationists aren't just attacking science, but the people - on a personal level. There will be rebellion against the creationists once a tipping-point of anger is reached. It's a matter of time.| It also looks like you guys have been beating your heads against a brick wall for a long time. |
Blind Man: "Buddha once sat before a wall, and when he stood up he was enlightened."
Cord: "Are you comparing yourself to Buddha?!"
Blind Man: "No, only to the wall."
- Circle of Iron
Edited to add names to dialog. |
- Dave W. (Private Msg, EMail)
Evidently, I rock!
Why not question something for a change?
Visit Dave's Psoriasis Info, too. |
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More ID
