David Hume on Intelligent Design.

The whole frame of nature bespeaks an intelligent author; and no rational enquirer can, after serious reflection, suspend his belief a moment with regard to the primary principles of genuine Theism and Religion.

(David Hume )

This is the third sentence of his “The Natural History of Religion” 1751

ID Optimism

I think that the optimism of IDers is related to how they think about the following diagram:

1. represents the total of all possible proteins that could be coded for in DNA.

2. represents all possible proteins with a selectable function.

3. represents all actually existing functional proteins.

4. represents proteins essential for the simplest living membrane bound organism.

IDers tend to think that the huge size of 1 and the comparatively tiny size of 2,3 and 4 points clearly to some other solution to random testing of possibles until we get the working examples that are needed.

IDers tend to think that even our present knowledge of genomes indicates the need for some other mechanism than random testing to find the necessary tiny needles in this vast haystack. Do the genomes we know look like efficient testing machines to find rare useful proteins?

IDers tend to think that the little orange circle is too big to allow chance to be a realistic explanation for the origin of life. Chance is just the wrong sort of explanation for what we see. It is a little like thinking that random selection of notes in sequence can produce a great symphony.

With objects like the rotary motor function of the flagellum the contraints upon so many proteins at once for selectable function tends to breed scepticism that this object can occur without a designer. This problem is compounded many fold whenever we then begin to think about the origin of life. If it is a real snag that we are struggling to deal with in the flagellum then it is infinitely worse for the origin of life. To reject other explanations outright says more about the rules we impose on our bank of possible explanations than about the real origins of the objects we are examining.

Off Topic.

If you live near Durham or are visiting near the area do take a trip to see a ridiculous sight in the cathedral. Close to the cloisters near the restaurant there is a bookshop with the title "Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge" on display you will find a book by Richard Dawkins entitled "The God Delusion." When asked about this the manager replied that it was done to "avoid discrimination."

Liar Liar!

We were all told the story of the young lad who cried wolf too often as he ran down the hill from the sheep pen. I suggest that the anti-ID movement needs to recall the story and apply it carefully to the current debate. I think if we are to have productive debate we ought to bite our tongues on the temptation to use the “liar” word.

A liar is not someone who has made a mistake or repeated a false claim from someone else in good faith.

A liar is someone who tells a lie. A lie is an intentional false statement. In other words the liar knows that what he is saying is false but goes ahead and says it anyway seeking to give the impression that it is true.

Wesley Elsberry of the NCSE has suggested that using the “liar” label for ID supporters is a good strategy:

If you want to drive a wedge between an audience of evangelical Christians
and the professionals in the ID movement, you need a third approach: show that
the ID advocate on stage with you has been lying to his followers. Show misquote
after misquote; demonstrate error after checkable error, and make the audience
understand that if the ID advocate claims that the sky is blue, their next step
had better be to look out the window to see for themselves. Evangelicals do want
to take Christ’s message to the world, but they also have a deep loathing of
liars. (here)

I would entirely agree with him with one important condition. You had better be sure that the label fits... otherwise this strategy is going to seriously backfire!

One example of an attempt to attach the “liar" label to the writers and supporters of “Truth in Science” has been made on this blog.

The accusation was made with regard to the following quotation from this document:

“I ‘know’ that Tutt’s differential bird predation hypothesis is correct because
I ‘know’ about peppered moths… However, for those who do not ‘know’ the peppered moth, whether they are scientists, teachers or members of the public, this
should not, indeed it must not be enough."

(This quotation has apparently since been replaced by the following:

“I know the peppered moth, and I know that J.W. Tutt was essentially correct in
his explanation of the rise of carbonaria [the dark form]. However, for those
who do not ‘know’ the peppered moth, whether they are scientists, teachers or
members of the public, this should not, indeed, it must not be enough.”

[see here])

The purpose of the quote in its original context was to establish that there are real problems with the Kettlewell data which was originally presented in support of the differential predation hypothesis. The quote was to establish the point that Marjerus recognised that further data was needed to demonstrate unequivically that the differential predation hypothesis was correct.

The original quotation was made of two sections of text:

(P27)

"I ‘know’ that Tutt’s differential bird predation hypothesis is correct because
I ‘know’ about peppered moths…

The paragraphs in between deal with Marjerus’ love of moths and life time study of them. In other words they are a defence of his statement “I know about peppered moths.”

(p29)

However, for those who do not ‘know’ the peppered moth, whether they are
scientists, teachers or members of the public, this should not, indeed it must
not be enough."

The “However” of the beginning of the second part of the quotation is clearly linked to the stem of the argument which formed the first part of the quotation. It is entirely legitimate in my view to put these two parts of the argument together and indicate the deleted section with the ellipsis mark.

The quotation does not seek to mislead people it simply establishes the point that Marjerus recognises that the evidence for the differential predation hypothesis needs to be improved.

To seek to attach the label “liar” as a result of the use of this quotation is an example (in my view) of where the “liar, liar” strategy is backfiring badly.

[Apologies for the truncated appearance of the quotations... I can't seem to make the blogger do them nicely! Any free education on this would be gratefully recieved.]

The definition of “Irreducibly complex.”

Definition 1. (From Darwin's Black Box)
A single system which is composed of several interacting parts that contribute to the basic function, and where the removal of any one of the parts causes the system to effectively cease functioning

Definition 2. (Behe's "pathway definition")
An irreducibly complex evolutionary pathway is one that contains one or more unselected steps (that is, one or more necessary-but-unselected mutations). The degree of irreducible complexity is the number of unselected steps in the pathway.

Definition 3. (Dembski's definition)
A system performing a given basic function is irreducibly complex if it includes a set of well-matched, mutually interacting, nonarbitrarily individuated parts such that each part in the set is indispensable to maintaining the system's basic, and therefore original, function. The set of these indispensable parts is known as the irreducible core of the system.

I had put my definition here.