Why do you infer that? You’re still not explaining how the inference works. You are just mindlessly stating facts from which the conclusion doesn’t follow.
To be clear, I also think the purpose of wheels is to make a car a useful vehicle, but I don’t infer that merely from the fact that wheels make it easier for the car to move. I infer that because I already know the car is designed.
But we are dealing with something we don’t know was designed. That’s what you’re trying to establish by (an attempt at) inferring purpose, but none of the factoids(the flagellum propels a bacterium) you state lead to that conclusion. The fact that something does something, or performs some activity, or has some effect, does not entail or even indicate it was created intentionally for that purpose. It simply doesn’t follow. As I tried to get across with the cup of coffee giving off heat. We can both agree that the cup of coffee was made for a purpose, and even it’s heat has a purpose. But it’s purpose is not to give off that heat to the air around it. That is not why I made the cup of coffee. So you can’t just infer that something was made for some purpose just because it has that effect.
The only criteria I see from Behe (which you don’t spell out) is that if it seems like a very low probability of happening, then God did it.
But the epistemological value of that criteria is pretty scanty… because that is the same argument for alleging the existence of God - - and this proof for God only works for those who already believe in God’s existence.
So I guess this is a new branch of the thread but I thought it would be interesting to explore the question in the thread title, in the context of a virus. The question would work on any piece of recombinant DNA but let’s use a virus like SARS-CoV-2 as a somewhat obvious example.
If we wanted to know whether a virus had been manipulated by humans, even to the extent that it had been created by humans somehow, what would we do? Would we use the tools of the ID movement?
That’s one question. But now, no matter how we did it, suppose that we discovered that a particular virus had been “created” by humans, by standard genomic manipulation that introduced a new gene fragment, fused to an existing gene, so as to make the virus more dangerous (or less dangerous, doesn’t matter). Would we call this “intelligent design”?
I think the answer has to be yes, but then what do we call the rest of the viral genome? “Unintelligent design”? “Previous intelligent design”? Or do we just say, “yeah, well some humans manipulated the virus but that’s just another piece of intelligent design in the viral genome?”
You can apply this reasoning to any genetic manipulation by humans, including all GMOs and even wacky things like the insertion of English text into protein sequences by humans or by gods.
We can put the car on a hill and see with the wheels it moves and without them it does not. The same way if we knock out the flagellum motor from bacteria we will see their movement impeded.
This is not the right question. The proper question is why can we infer a purpose. We can infer a purpose from the observed evidence. In my example I used a simple knock out experiment. Is this proof, no. It’s basically scientific methodology.
“In the beginning, God created the earth, and he looked upon it in His cosmic loneliness.
And God said, “Let Us make living creatures out of mud, so the mud can see what We have done.” And God created every living creature that now moveth, and one was man. Mud as man alone could speak. God leaned close to mud as man sat up, looked around, and spoke. Man blinked. “What is the purpose of all this?” he asked politely.
“Everything must have a purpose?” asked God.
“Certainly,” said man.
“Then I leave it to you to think of one for all this,” said God.
How much less precise or likely is “God did it”? In the case of your hypothetical Martian turbine vehicle, we know someone who manufactures vehicles, and it’s not “a mind”; it’s human beings. Therefore we infer that something rather like a human being manufactured the Martian vehicle, probably in a factory.
Flagella, on the other hand, aren’t manufactured, certainly not in factories. They’re made by bacteria based on DNA sequences inherited from earlier bacteria.
That is not a reasonable inference at all. And it isn’t clear what “at least as capable as a mind” would even mean. Now bacteria, which do make flagella, don’t understand anything. They just do it. And bacteria are made by other bacteria, back as far as we can see. No minds are involved, or at least there is no evidence for them.
If the original RNA virus (if we can identify it) can bind to the ACE receptor highjack the ribosome inside a human cell and replicate I would conclude it was designed given demonstration that the sequences are somewhat rare that can do this. Why this specific virus was designed I don’t have a clue.
If we could identify original sequence and saw that it did not have this capability in humans then a set of experiments that demonstrate if there is a good chance ( P value .05) chance this capability is feasible by random genetic change from the original sequence would eliminate human interaction as a probable cause.
(facepalm) Still wrong Bill. That lets you imply function, not purpose. You seem to be trying your level best to not understand what everyone keeps telling you, that function =/= purpose.
Rarity is never a reasonable or sufficient criterion for inferring design. I don’t think any ID scholar has ever asserted this, because it’s so obviously wrong.
Yes, of course. What you’re saying that that the only currently known source of “intelligent design,” which is human minds, can only be ruled out by looking at an evolutionary past or trajectory. That’s pretty damning for an ID argument, since it means (as actually we all know) that known mechanisms of variation, selection, and drift, combined with phylogenetic probing of the past, can explain design. That, in fact, is what you just asserted yourself. This probably explains why red herrings about “methodological naturalism” and falsehoods about OOL are so popular among defenders of ID. Because the tools you just used are the tools that destroy ID as an alternative to evolution. (They don’t destroy design, at all, but I know that design is not a topic of interest to ID.)
But you know, that wasn’t even the point. The point was that there’s something weird about identifying human design in the midst of some other kind of design, when your whole case relies on tortured and flawed analogies with human minds. If you can easily pick out the effects of a human mind on a viral genetic sequence, then doesn’t that mean the human mind’s effects are substantively different from the other ones? And doesn’t that mean that the analogy is a joke?
If we discovered that in order to self replicate any cell 5 specific proteins had one specific sequence that would allow this function to happen how would you explain the origin of these sequences?
Sure. You can falsify if ID was the direct cause by showing an evolutionary pathway. I am not sure I understand why this is a damning argument.
I don’t see how you connect the dots here. The test is to see if these mechanisms are validated with a likely p value. If a human inserted this sequence in a lab in China then none of these mechanisms account for the observed sequence. It was generated by humans in a lab.
The human mind is a way to test the hypothesis as we are doing with this discussion.
No, you can’t. That an evolutionary pathway to X from Y might be possible, does not show that X was not actually designed. It does not make sense to have a falsification criterion for some hypothesis A(that X was designed), that another hypothesis B(that X evolved) is possible.
The design-hypothesis can’t be “X was designed and couldn’t possibly evolve”. Why on Earth would that latter part need to be part of an ID hypothesis?
By thinking in this way you are actually revealing to us that your “inference”(which it isn’t, really) is fundamentally one of evangelicalism, advocacy, and apologetics You intend to try to argue for a particular religious conclusion, by assuming all alternatives to be impossible by fiat, until such a time as that assumption is disproved. That means you’re not trying to follow the evidence and fact to whatever conclusion they might imply, you’re trying to reach a desired conclusion even before looking at any of the facts. It’s so painfully obvious.
Over and over and over again you exhibit abysmally poor reasoning.
Lots of ways. Why did you change the subject? The subject was rarity. Do you understand that this looks like an attempt to avoid answering questions?
Let me try again. You say that we can detect intelligent design in a genetic sequence, by comparing that sequence to likely antecedents and determining likelihood that the new sequence arose by known mechanisms. If that likelihood is very small, we conclude/infer intervention. I completely agree with this. I think this means that we should do the exact same thing to detect “intelligent design” in every other part of every other genome on the planet. We can combine phylogenetics with sequence analysis and statistical methods and look for the telltale signs of “intelligent design,” just like we can for this virus. Do you disagree?
I don’t know what “hypothesis” you mean but it’s notable that you avoid addressing my point, which is that if we have genetic evidence of human manipulation of a virus or anything else, and we call that “intelligent design,” then how do we distinguish that “intelligent design” from, for example, a clear signal of selection on a set of binding sites in, for example, a virus?
I don’t think you understand what any of this really means. When we infer design in a human intervention (such as use of genetic modification in viruses or in mosquitos), are we just detecting design? Or are we actually doing something else, which so many others in this conversation are pointing to (because it’s painfully obvious): working back from the final state to look for steps that we know could have been undertaken by a human. Those two things are very different. To conflate them is ridiculous.
If I did it was not my intent. By rarity I meant there are very few sequences that perform the function. What do you mean?
This is interesting. I want to ponder a bit. I really like the discussion you started even if we may disagree on a few points.
I will think about this…Yes your communication is clear. We infer design if the sequence had to travel a long way to get from A to B and the functional space around B is indeed rare.(very few sequences perform that function).
As Behe states in his discussion with @swamidass the longer the distance and the rarer the function the stronger the design inference.
I think you should check again with the ID literature. The smart ones in ID know that mere rarity of an outcome is neither necessary nor sufficient for design. This is a very basic topic in design thought.
No Bill, you’re still getting the basic concepts wrong. With the feedback from natural selection a natural process has no problem ending up on a local fitness peak even if the specific peak is rare. There is also no reason any particular sequence has to be selected. Any “good enough” working sequence will do.
Which is demonstrably wrong for the reasons people have explained to you ad nauseum.