An event or structure is contingent if no regularity or law of nature can explain it. Or, if you will, if its occurrence is not a necessity. To this alder, the planthopper gears are contingent.
Only by your own custom definition of “specified”. No one else is obliged to use or agree with your own made-up definition.
That’s not the definition of contingent. Don’t you ever get tired of these silly ID rhetorical word games?
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You are the one guilty of playing word games here for I am pretty sure you know perfectly well that it is a current practice in science to name a given scientific notion or concept with a word whose common definition doesn’t match perfectly. The important thing is to define the scientific meaning of said word rigorously and to stand by it all along, which is exactly the case regarding ID definition of contingent.
Moreover, as for the ID definition of contingent, I stand by the fact that it is very close to the common definition.
Science sometimes uses custom definitions which are accepted by the scientific community. You are using ones made up by ID-Creationists like Dembski which aren’t accepted by anyone except possibly other ID-Creationists. Once again ID-Creationism has no scientific evidence and is using childish word games to try and define itself into existence.
But each ndividual cloud shape is so unbelievable improbable. Which you have already granted.
You tell me! You are the one proposing a method for design detection that supposedly is objective and measurable. Now you tell me that there actually are degrees of similarity (= degrees of specification) and not all of those warrant the design inference.
I don’t recall Demsbki saying this (he might have done, I just haven’t ever seen it). How then do you in practice differentiate between such degrees of similarity? Do you have anything quantitative, or is it just based on your subjective impressions?
This comes across as “an event or structure is contingent if it is physically impossible.” That may not be what you intend, as that meaning is not the same as “its occurrence is not a necessity.”
Planthopper gears do not break any laws of nature. In what way do you determine that planthopper gears are contingent?
Maybe definition 3…
Merriam-Webster
1 : dependent on or conditioned by something elsePayment is contingent on fulfillment of certain conditions.a plan contingent on the weather
2 : likely but not certain to happen
3 : not logically necessary - especially empirically
4a : happening by chance or unforeseen causes
b : subject to chance or unseen
c : intended for use in circumstances not completely foreseen contingent funds
5 : not necessitated - determined by free choice
but like specification, it is a offbeat usage, suggesting to me that these words are chosen because they carry a connotation or aura of design. It strikes me that the assignment of design in ID is very much contingent upon the assignment of contingency for the assignment of design. The conclusion is begged.
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I think @Giltil is correct on this point. All features of organisms are contingent. i.e. They do not arise necessarily. Evolution could have occurred or God could have created life without the planthopper gears arising. However…
OK, so you have finally allowed us to determine what you are getting wrong.
This is not a correct use of “specified.” The simple fact that something looks like something else does not define it as “specified.”
The plant hopper gears arise because they are functional, and evolution is the process by which functional aspects of biological systems arise without design being necessary.
If these gears are “specified”, it is only to the extent that they perform a function. Humans create and use gears for the same reason.
This is NOT the case for the other examples you keep using. Cloud formations spelling out messages in a human language are not the result of any functional needs of clouds, nor of the process by which clouds arise.
No, you can’t. Not without a massively more detailed account of how structures are built than biology currently possesses.
You are wrong twice, well done.
We do have such an account.
But such an account is not needed to make such predictions, any more than we need to know what causes gravity to predict the future movements of planets.
No, we don’t.
This remarks show that you don’t understand the difference between what can be predicted from laws and what can be predicted based on chance.
I advise you to read Jonathan Losos’s book Improbable Destinies for a discussion of (among other things) when we can and can’t predict convergent evolution.
One can also predict based on previously observed correlations, without knowing anything about what causative factors or mechanisms might be at play.
Neither laws nor chance are particularly pertinent to the predictions I am discussing.
Very unreliable procedure, in most areas of life, and certainly when it comes to predicting what could evolve by chance. One should understand causality before trying to make predictions about things.
Can Losos explain how unguided mechanisms produced the planthopper’s legs, in the molecular detail that I require? If so, tell me where I can find his discussion of that particular point.
That you require? Nobody should care about what you personally require.
I have explained how these gears could have evolved already. Whether this suffices to satisfy you is of zero value or consequence.
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What a particular scientifically ignorant and ideologically biased “natural theologian” requires to persuade him to accept a scientific fact is of no relevance to the validity of that fact, I regret to inform you.
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Don’t know if he could, but it’s not in the book. Still, what you require bears no clear resemblance to what should be considered sufficient evidence. I mention Losos as a general account of how convergent evolution works (and doesn’t).
How do you think we determined that cigarettes cause cancer? Or maybe this is another scientific fact that has not yet been demonstrated to your personal satisfaction?