Where’s the testing?
Where are the empirical predictions of the hypotheses you listed? You don’t list hypotheses and choose the one you like best. That has nothing to do with science.
You really don’t get the most basic concept of hypothesis testing, do you?
There are extremely few historical events in the last 4.5 billion years you have enough information to calculate a probability for. I can’t think of any offhand. What was the probability a 10km asteroid would strike the Yucatan peninsula 66 MYA ?
The better question would be what’s the probability that a crater of X dimensions , with rocks aged 66MYA was caused by an asteroid of y dimensions 66 MYA…
I would suspect the probability is high.
Edit: even with abiogenesis, the analysis will be the same. Given X initial conditions and y result (the first cell)… what’s the chance that y result was achieved through a particular path.
Of given X initial conditions, a particular path would be followed say 7/10 times to get the first cell… that’s an explanation with a high probability.
I thought that with your vast scientific experience, you would be able to fill in the implied hypotheses without needing them spelled out.
One example of a hypothesis implied by A, B, and C would be: “Ores on Mars can be turned into almost 100% pure metals by the normal workings of natural laws and/or chance incidents such as asteroid strikes or earthquakes.”
It should be possible for an experimentalist in geology, materials science, chemistry, etc. to test that hypothesis by subjecting ores to various simulations of events that take place on Mars. (artificially generated impacts with the force of asteroid strikes, radiation bombardments, etc.), and recording whether such events generate enough free metals (iron, aluminum, copper, etc.) in one location to provide the casing for a machine such as the one described. Or even just by leaving ores lying around, as they do on Mars, and seeing if any “natural law” regularly or even occasionally causes e.g., iron oxide (fairly common on Mars, I believe) to separate into pure iron and pure oxygen.
And if the earth environment isn’t suitable, soon we will have robots good enough to run the tests on Mars. For example, the robots might find that there was a huge rise in free iron (or some other metal) in the vicinity of asteroid impact craters, as opposed to spots far from asteroid impacts. So the machine might have somehow come into existence by using the free iron (or other metal) near impact craters. On the other hand, If they found no appreciable amount of free metal on Mars anywhere, then the hypothesis that enough free metal to make a metal casing for a machine could be generated by asteroid impacts would be disconfirmed.
Another example of a hypothesis to test: “Electronic circuitry and working lights, radar dishes, etc. can be produced without any design, if you let an iron oxide desert be bombarded with ultraviolet rays long enough.” That’s in principal testable. If we find partially assembled machines all over the surface of Mars, in various stages of completion due to being started at various points over the past few billion years, that would tend to confirm the hypothesis. On the other hand, if we find nothing but rocks and dust all over the whole surface of the planet, and nary a machinelike part in sight, that would tend to disconfirm it.
I’m sure you are quite capable of generating more hypotheses of this nature, to test A, B, and C. And I’m quite sure that you privately believe that such testing, if carried out, would rule out those three hypotheses, leaving only the design hypothesis as a credible explanation of the mechanical gadget. Not that I expect you will ever admit to that private conclusion here.
[Last paragraph deleted as unnecessary, by author.]
Nice assessment @evograd.
Behe’s position is that God designs by means of natural causes and effect … not by Super Natural effects or causes. If you want, I can pull out the video again, and show you exactly where he says this in a video-taped interview.
Behe never once, anywhere, states that Adam and Eve, or anything else, happens by a miraculous suspension of natural processes…
This is consistent with the problem that experimental testing in the lab or in the field is incapable of controlling for the Independent Variable of God, of God’s work, of God’s presence, of God’s design.
It can’t be done.
LOL! More Eddie-logic. Things that are known to be designed by human are designed.
How can evolution ever withstand such a brilliant piece of ID-Creationist reasoning? 
How do we put some real rigor into a decision to NOT debate “randomness” with people who reject religion? There’s got to be a way to keep this from happening, over and over…
More precisely, that God executes his designs by means of natural causes and effects. But he doesn’t say even that, dogmatically. And in fact, many of his detractors, like Jerry Coyne, accuse Behe of proposing a God who tinkers with nature supernaturally all the time. All that one can say is that Behe leaves open the possibility of a completely natural implementation of design, and that he also leaves open the possibility that God implements design by tinkering with nature.
It’s true that he says nothing about whether the creation of Adam and Eve was natural or supernatural. At least, I haven’t seen any statement about Adam and Eve in his work. The difference between him and Venema is that Venema shows a marked preference (based on population genetics) for a natural origin of Adam and Eve, whereas Behe seems indifferent whether the origin was natural or supernatural, as the evidence for design in the human body doesn’t depend on that question. By “design” Behe doesn’t mean “miracle”; he means “design” as an architect or engineer would mean it.
And of course Behe has never proposed testing for God; in fact, he explicitly states that he is not trying to prove the existence of God, but only the existence of design.
And Jerry Coyne, and the others, would be wrong.
Yep… agreed!
Nope… I don’t think so. I used to accept this position of yours… but I don’t think you can produce a single statement by him, in any of his books, that say God used Super-Natural procedures … with one exclusion: the moment of creation we typically call the Big Bang!
All you need to do to prove me wrong, @eddie, is quote where Behe has ever said such a thing!
This is the weird thing about Behe… he is so darn careful about how he describes God’s design efforts as expressed through highly nuanced natural processes… (as though it would ruin his whole argument if he ever suggested that God would ever want to use super-natural procedures)…
And yet, simultaneously, Behe thinks that science can detect natural procedures by God vs. natural procedures without God… how would that ever be possible?
I don’t know the answer to that, George. I used the word “chance”, and immediately someone turned it into “randomness,” and launched into disquisitions about photons, quantum effects, etc. Every discussion here, it seems, is considered illegitimate until it is retranslated into terms and a frame of reference that atheist and agnostic biologists regard as the only possible terms and the only reasonable frame of reference. “Science” means “what atheist/agnostic biologists count as science.” Paul Nelson has tried to show the shortsightedness of this, both in his comments here and in his various essays on methodological questions in science. To those Christian readers out there who want to follow up on this, I recommend getting hold of any of the essays on method that he has written. One of them is in the big fat Crossway book, but he has others elsewhere, if one pokes around.
It should be easy to disprove Atheists are wrong about their definition … if they are wrong.
But in any case, where can you find a single mention by Behe that Adam or Eve were created by super-natural events? … Or that anything, other than the Universe itself, was created by super-natural events?
I didn’t say he asserted that. I said he left it open as a possibility. He doesn’t ever say: “God does not tinker” or “God uses only natural causes.” If he wanted to exclude the possibility of tinkering, he could easily do so. And this refusal to exclude it has left him open to criticism from those who accept only natural causes: Venema, Coyne, Giberson, Collins, etc. all read Behe as secretly believing in miraculous intervention, but as lacking the forthrightness to say it up front. As far as I can tell from the remarks of Aquaticus here, he interprets Behe in that way as well. When I’ve tried to persuade him that Behe limits his argument to establishing design, not establishing miracles, Aquaticus doesn’t seem to buy it. So most people interpret Behe’s silence on the question of tinkering in exactly the opposite way to your own.
I think that both you and the others are reading too much into Behe’s silence. You read naturalism into it; they read supernaturalism. My view is that he thinks both options are possible, and simply doesn’t want to commit to one or the other, because, in his view (whatever Venema or Aquaticus or others might say) it makes no difference to his design arguments. He’s convinced that the flagellum’s very structure and function scream “design”, and whether it came into existence by God directing the necessary mutations miraculously, or whether God gave nature the powers to feel its way toward a flagellum without any supernatural help, is beside the point. Whether purposeful arrangement of parts was done by God directly or indirectly (by some form of front-loading), it still indicates design.
So agonizing over whether Behe privately believes in supernatural tinkering with mutations, or front-loading, is a waste of time. It wouldn’t change how Behe argues for design, no matter which of those he believed. (I know that Venema and many here would say it should change the way he argues, but I’m concerned to make sense of what he actually says, not what others think he ought to say, if he were “logical” like themselves.)
Anyhow, what has this got to do with Bayesianism? Why don’t you start a new topic: “Behe’s views on miracles vs. front-loading” or the like?
I don’t think it is as easy as you think for Behe.
But let’s say that it is. It doesn’t appear to be much of a possibility … since he has never even suggested it as a possibility.
I will retract my whole position on this if you can find any sentence from him, saying that it is a possibility, and which has not been implicitly rescinded by some other statement of his.
I think it would help bring a little justice and order to how people are treating his current writings… but I don’t think such a statement exists anywhere in his corpus.
As I said, he doesn’t commit himself one way or the other. But he is a member of the Catholic Church, and, as far as I know, accepts the main points of Catholic theology. And it’s pretty hard to get around explicit statement that Adam and Eve were specially created, not part of a primeval horde of at least 10,000 hominids that evolved naturally, as Venema holds. So on general grounds I would think that Behe supposes Adam and Eve to be specially created, but because he doesn’t write much about theology or his personal beliefs, I have no idea how he squares that with his acceptance of common descent. For all I know, he might even accept Genealogical Adam!
[Note: I won’t respond further on Behe here. Start a new topic!]
Never once referring to a miraculous action by God is quite a disciplined stance for any Catholic to hold.
You can spin and re-spin to your heart’s content. But this is my allegation: he never once describes God performing a miracle (excluding the Big Bang).
If he has, or does, then my allegation dies. But not until, no matter how much you try to poo-poo the significance of my allegation.
Thanks for this, Ashwin, but I really would like to hear why Dembski made the remark about Fisher and Bayesianism. Maybe Paul Nelson can clarify when he returns. He knows Dembski’s thought well, and presumably can set forth the distinction Dembski had in mind.
Moderators: I recommend taking the whole section above about Behe and miracles out of here and moving it to its own topic.
Joshua has set up @Moderators as a working call sign.
Dembski has written an entire chapter on the subject.
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/2937/1e7fa4432ab0ef52edcbe8b7065a49dc7d1b.pdf&ved=2ahUKEwjdwaatrsfhAhVzyosBHVgNCUwQFjAAegQIARAB&usg=AOvVaw290bkUgZjwey1mv56x-ZiX
The reasons are simple… the probability for design is very difficult to compute.
The model I proposed was more of an intuitive approach to highlight epistemological issues…
Dembski points out issues with Fischer’s approach which he believes can be resolved by defining limits for “specified complexity” , which would then be equated to design… This is not accepted by Scientists. I don’t know much about specified complexity and how it applies to Fischer’s methods.
End of the day, both processes when filtered through MN lead to a bias towards PN.