{"id":1577,"date":"2013-11-18T20:05:37","date_gmt":"2013-11-19T02:05:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/smilodonsretreat\/?p=1577"},"modified":"2013-11-18T20:05:37","modified_gmt":"2013-11-19T02:05:37","slug":"darwins-doubt-chapter-17-part-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/smilodonsretreat\/2013\/11\/18\/darwins-doubt-chapter-17-part-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Darwin’s Doubt – Chapter 17 – Part 2"},"content":{"rendered":"

This section is called “My Story” and talks about how Meyer is utterly unqualified to write this book.<\/p>\n

Meyer talks about how he wondered if scientists could justify an inference that intelligent design could be detected by science. \u00a0He also wondered if intelligent design could explain the origin of life. \u00a0He says<\/p>\n

My questions eventually led me to learn about a distinctive method of historical<\/em> scientific inquiry. That discovery led me to a method of reasoning that allows for the detection or inference of past causes, including\u00a0intelligent\u00a0<\/em>causes. {emphasis in the original}<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This is an odd discussion. \u00a0It seems to me that Meyer had never heard of the scientific method to this point. At least that’s what he’s implying. \u00a0Does he think he’s the only person who’s ever used inference<\/a> to study historical events?<\/p>\n

Indeed, he spent the first two chapters of the book trying to convince us that inference wasn’t acceptable in the study of paleontology. \u00a0How else can we study\u00a0historical<\/em> events scientifically?<\/p>\n

But now, Meyer has a stunning revelation to tell us, which is important because THIS version of historical inference is somehow different than what scientists do and THIS version of historical inference is correct and it works. \u00a0I can’t \u00a0wait to hear about this.<\/p>\n

Then Meyer talks about some people, who are all creationists, who greatly influenced him. \u00a0I couldn’t care less. They are creationists. \u00a0They have written books, for example Charles Thaxton co-authored\u00a0Of Panda’s and People<\/em> which featured prominently in the Kitzmiller case showing that ID was simply a disguised creationism.*<\/p>\n

Anyway, Meyer describes this idea that ‘the information-bearing properties of DNA might point to the activity of a designing intelligence’.<\/p>\n

These authors (not Meyer, but Thaxton, Walter Bradley, and Roger Olsen) claimed<\/p>\n

…that chemistry and physics alone could not produce the information in DNA any more than ink and paper along could produce a book. Instead, they argued that our uniform experience suggests a cause-and-effect relationship between intelligent activity and the production of information.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I’ll be the first to admit that intelligence (sometimes) produces information. \u00a0Sometimes intelligence produces random crap (I suggest googling “The Time Cube guy”).<\/p>\n

However, there’s a couple of issues with this idea though. \u00a0First is that organisms are fundamentally different than books. And this is a unbelievably common occurrence with ID-proponents. Forgive me for shouting.<\/p>\n

ORGANISMS SELF REPRODUCE. \u00a0BOOKS, CARS, AND WATCHES DO NOT!!!<\/strong><\/p>\n

The fact that I even have to spell this out just shows how much people are willing to accept any old crap as long as it supports their point of view.<\/p>\n

Second, there is an implication here that\u00a0ONLY<\/strong> intelligence can produce information. \u00a0And this is simply not true. \u00a0In fact, it’s so trivially untrue that William Dembski had to create a whole new kind of information (Functional Specified Information) to cover that massive problem with the idea.<\/p>\n

The final issue is that something like evolution isn’t 100% random. \u00a0It never has been and there’s not a biologist on the planet who would agree with that idea. \u00a0There is a fundamental idea in evolution that is not random. \u00a0That is the idea of selection. \u00a0Whether an organism is selected by an intelligence for a specific trait or by an environmental factor (such as a disease, ice age, oxygenation of the atmosphere, competition within the population, or other non-intelligence guided event), it is still a non-random process that results in those organisms with certain traits tending to survive while those without those traits tend not to survive (or reproduce, which is the same thing to biology).<\/p>\n

Meyer continues<\/p>\n

Experience does indeed seem to affirm that (specified or functional) information typically arises from the activity of intelligent agents, from minds as opposed to mindless, material processes.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Now, notice the addition (in parentheses) of what I mentioned before. \u00a0It’s obvious to anyone that information can come from randomness (that’s what the “snow” is on old TVs). \u00a0But that is random information. \u00a0It is not information that has a function (more on that in a second) nor does it seem to be specified. \u00a0That subtle addition of to the idea of information is critical to the idea of intelligent design. \u00a0Of course, the addition also undermines the entire concept.<\/p>\n

A specification is a product of an intelligence trying to describe the requirements of a device or process. \u00a0Specified information is therefore, nothing more than information which required an intelligence to develop. \u00a0A nice example of circular logic.<\/p>\n

In my experience with creationists.. excuse me “cdesign proponentsists”… I have often asked them to take a look at a sequence of DNA or a protein and determine whether it was designed or not. \u00a0Of course they can’t do it. \u00a0What they ask is, “What is the function?”. \u00a0If it has a function, then, of course, it was designed. \u00a0If not, then it was possibly random. \u00a0That’s the answer I get. \u00a0Any ID proponents can argue this, but it’s what happens.<\/p>\n

Now about information from randomness. \u00a0There is plenty of information that comes from randomness. \u00a0Think about a casino. \u00a0If you make one throw of the craps dice, then you will get some number between 2 and 12. \u00a0That’s not much information, but over time, you will get some information on the relative frequency of possible rolls on the dice. \u00a0After several hundred rolls, you will know that 7 comes up much more often than 2 or 12. \u00a0That is information from a random source.<\/p>\n

As I mentioned though, evolution (nor abiogenesis) is random. \u00a0Just want to make that clear, because that’s also an unfortunately common mistake made by creationists.<\/p>\n

Of course, as Meyer mentions, evolutionary biologists and paleontologists use different methods than laboratory chemists… sometimes. \u00a0But they do create testable hypotheses and then go out and determine if that hypothesis is supported or not.<\/p>\n

The discovery of Tiktaalik is a prime example of this<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Meyer asks if there is a distinctive method of historical scientific inquiry. \u00a0I guess the regular methods of scientific inquiry aren’t good enough for him.<\/p>\n

The next section describes this “historical scientific method and the design hypothesis”. \u00a0After a long time… I’m getting excited.<\/p>\n

___________
\n* The Kitzmiller testimony of Barbara Forrest was critical here as it showed almost a complete replacement of the word “creation” with “intelligent design” using a word processor program. \u00a0Which resulted in the beautiful transitional fossil of “cdesign proponetists”.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This section is called “My Story” and talks about how Meyer is utterly unqualified to write this book. Meyer talks…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":27,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[81,24,597,11],"tags":[939,467,946,283,15],"class_list":["post-1577","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-review","category-creationism","category-featured","category-skepticism","tag-creationism","tag-darwins-doubt","tag-featured","tag-intelligent-design","tag-skepticism-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/smilodonsretreat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1577","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/smilodonsretreat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/smilodonsretreat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/smilodonsretreat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/27"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/smilodonsretreat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1577"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/smilodonsretreat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1577\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/smilodonsretreat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1577"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/smilodonsretreat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1577"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/smilodonsretreat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1577"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}