ID, Bayesian inferences and the Priors of MN

[Timothy_Horton]

@T_aquaticus

Allusions to evidence, but no actual evidence.

Imaginary evidence for an imaginary design produced by an imaginary Designer. You have to admit the ID-Creationists are consistent.

[Mercer (John Mercer)]

@Timothy_Horton

An imaginary designer is a perfectly logical assumption when dealing with an imaginary design.

@Timothy_Horton

Imaginary evidence for an imaginary design produced by an imaginary Designer.

This reminds me of the voiceover (language advisory) that I wish didn’t interfere with a beautiful piece of music, Frank Zappa’s Watermelon in Easter Hay.

[Eddie (Edward Robinson)]

Argon:

I followed the conversation backwards, as you asked. I don’t see anything that falsifies my inference of what you were driving at, but I don’t see anything that confirms it, either. The context doesn’t make it clear enough what you intended by your remark. So I withdraw the inference. You’re right that it’s not good jump in partway through a conversation without having read the rest. Sorry to have irritated you.

[T_aquaticus]

@colewd

The evidence and argument is all over this discussion you read it but apparently did not comprehend it. Your just selling against the design argument and if I was in your profession I might do the same thing but would not feel good about the hypocrisy I was a part of.

Allusions to evidence, but no actual evidence.

[Eddie (Edward Robinson)]

@Faizal_Ali

Wow, speaking of logic fails: We know how clocks arise, and that they do not arise thru natural processes.

No, that won’t do. It doesn’t deal with the flaw in your reasoning. The point is that if we didn’t know how clocks arise, by your logic we would be warranted in thinking that they must have arisen by some yet-undiscovered natural process. And that would be an erroneous conclusion. So how do you know you’re not making an erroneous conclusion when you confidently infer that the first DNA must have arisen by entirely natural processes? How do you know the first DNA wasn’t in fact an artifact?

@Faizal_Ali

Absent any evidence, or even the barest beginnings of some kind of account, of how a non-biological designer could come into existence and how it would create things, to claim that the natural process of DNA replication had a non-natural beginning is a total non-starter.

I’m not claiming that as an assured conclusion. I’m saying that nothing in either your premises or your reasoning rules it out. Your argument over-reaches. That doesn’t mean your conclusion is wrong; it’s possible to come to a correct conclusion by inadequate arguments. I was merely pointing out the inadequacy of the argument, not arguing for the contrary position.

[Eddie (Edward Robinson)]

@T_aquaticus

No one is making that extrapolation. The evidence is a phylogenetic signal, and we are interpolating between living organisms, not extrapolating.

@T_aquaticus

All of the evidence we do have is consistent with evolution.

You continue to confuse “common descent”, which I have not opposed, and which several other leading ID people have not opposed, with various accounts of evolutionary mechanism. The extrapolation I was referring to pertains to the mechanism, not to the bare fact of genetic continuity. Dobzhansky himself said, years ago (I paraphrase) that it was an extrapolation to assume that macroevolution was caused entirely by additive microevolutionary changes. And in fact the whole point of many of the Altenberg people and others is that macroevolution may require mechanisms beyond those found in normal inheritance, normal variation, point mutations, etc. You have made it plain that you think that the sort of things that explain antbiotic resistance and changes in moth colors can be extrapolated backward as far as one wishes, and that there is no problem explaining anything at all in evolution, not even the starkest differences in body plans, by simple extrapolation. But not all professional evolutionary biologists agree with you. You are of course free to differ from them, but no one appointed you “the voice of evolutionary biology” and gave you authority to dismiss their understanding as inferior to yours.

@T_aquaticus

I grow indignant when the refuse to address the evidence that I pointed to above.

I haven’t refused to address the evidence for common descent. I haven’t discussed it, because I don’t oppose it. I have discussed the claim that the set of purported evolutionary mechanisms you accept is adequate to explain everything that happens in evolution. I have said that I don’t regard that claim as established beyond reasonable doubt. You seem to insist that it is established beyond reasonable doubt, and it looks as if neither of us is going to yield on that point. The difference seems to be that philosophers have much sterner standards for “demonstration” than evolutionary biologists do. So our casts of mind are different, partly no doubt due to temperament, but also partly due to very different academic training. For this reason, further discussion is unlikely to get us anywhere. You will continue to frustrated by the fact that inferences and extrapolations you regard as certain, I regard as unwarranted. (Which is not to say false.) My goal here is not to oppose evolutionary biology as such, but only to make sure that none of the readers here are bullied into any conclusion by claims that undemonstrated things have been demonstrated.

@T_aquaticus

Did you forget the analogy you used?

Eddie: “Teachers decide that a student has plagiarized on the same sort of probabilistic arguments (“What are the chances that this whole paragraph from Bertrand Russell could have been dreamed up by the student independently?”) that ID uses.”

Genes don’t (presumably) have minds or intentions; students do. I thought you were talking about genes. So I repeat: I’m unaware of any ID argument that because two brothers have similar DNA, design is the cause.

[Timothy_Horton]

@colewd

I suck but thankfully Eddie is hitting it out of the ballpark.

Too bad the rest of us are playing tennis.

[colewd (Bill Cole)]

@T_aquaticus

Allusions to evidence, but no actual evidence.

Can you support this claim it is not actual evidence?

[Eddie (Edward Robinson)]

Why doesn’t it surprise me that you would turn to an insurance agent to define a term in the middle of a serious theoretical discussion of causation?

[Eddie (Edward Robinson)]

@Faizal_Ali

You are very confused. I reject the very idea of “design” in biology, never mind that of some non-biological “designer.” So why would I have any burden to support claims that I reject?

I’m curious: As a psychiatrist, how do you relate to your Christian patients? Or to your Muslim ones? I would think that your view of the world would make it hard for you to sympathize with those whose view of the world is grounded in the doctrine of Creation.

[Eddie (Edward Robinson)]

@colewd

Eddie has written hundreds if not thousands of words on the subject and you try to synthesize it to 3 words. Give me a break.

Thanks for the kind words and support, Bill. It’s people like you that I’m most often writing for here, not the people I’m writing to. I know that many of the people I’m writing to here have long since made up their minds on both the religious and the scientific issues, and that they are here to defend an entrenched position, not to engage in a potentially life-transforming dialogue. The only value of my participation on a site like this is to encourage others, especially religious believers, not to back down just because someone with a Ph.D. in some technical branch of biology says something in declarative tones about what has been “demonstrated.”

[Timothy_Horton]

@Eddie

It’s people like you that I’m most often writing for here, not the people I’m writing to .

Talk about the blind leading the blind…

@Eddie

The only value of my participation on a site like this is to encourage others, especially religious believers, not to back down just because someone with a Ph.D. in some technical branch of biology says something in declarative tones about what has been “demonstrated.”

Yeah, don’t listen to those egghead scientists with their fancy schmancy 150+ years’ of consilient positive evidence and their scientific testable hypotheses. Go for the gusto with the imaginary Designer and the imaginary evidence for design!

[colewd (Bill Cole)]

@Eddie

Thanks for the kind words and support, Bill. It’s people like you that I’m most often writing for here, not the people I’m writing to . I know that many of the people I’m writing to here have long since made up their minds on both the religious and the scientific issues, and that they are here to defend an entrenched position, not to engage in a potentially life-transforming dialogue. The only value of my participation on a site like this is to encourage others, especially religious believers, not to back down just because someone with a Ph.D. in some technical branch of biology says something in declarative tones about what has been “demonstrated.”

Hi Eddie
I have been discussion this subject 4 years now and I think you understand the design argument as well as anyone. The design argument has strength and weakness like any inference but what I find is that its detractors are so busy trying to refute it they never have taken the time to understand it. The number of misrepresentations are epic.

I had a discussion with Perry Marshall (Evolution 2.0 author) a couple of weeks ago and he is not a design supporter but indeed understood the arguments strength and weaknesses. Perry is an evidence where ever it leads type of guy.

I very much enjoy reading your thoughts. Thank you.

[Timothy_Horton]

@colewd

I have been discussion this subject 4 years now and I think you understand the design argument as well as anyone.

It’s not hard at all to understand “this LOOKS designed to me so it must BE designed!!” and “science can’t explain this to my satisfaction so ID wins!!”. That’s all the ID-Creationists have ever offered. IDC is characterized by having no positive evidence, no testable hypotheses, no way to be falsified, no clue.

[colewd (Bill Cole)]

@Timothy_Horton

It’s not hard at all to understand “this LOOKS designed to me so it must BE designed!!” and “science can’t explain this to my satisfaction so ID wins!!”. That’s all the ID-Creationists have ever offered. IDC is characterized by having no positive evidence, no testable hypotheses, no way to be falsified, no clue.

Amazing. How long have you been debating agains ID?

[Timothy_Horton]

@colewd

Amazing. How long have you been debating agains ID?

Long enough to know you guys are all empty bluster and couldn’t produce any positive evidence for ID-Creation if your lives depended on it. You’re Exhibit A.

[colewd (Bill Cole)]

@Timothy_Horton

Long enough to know you guys are all empty bluster and couldn’t produce any positive evidence for ID-Creation if your lives depended on it. You’re Exhibit A

In all seriousness your lack of comprehension appears to be an epidemic among materialists.

[Timothy_Horton]

@colewd

In all seriousness your lack of comprehension appears to be an epidemic among materialists.

You could shut me up anytime by providing your positive evidence for ID, or by providing your testable hypotheses, or by providing a real way to falsify ID (not Behe’s stupid “evolve a flagellum in the lab”). Barring that you could explain how to do science, any science, when you have to allow for undetectable and unrepeatable supernatural meddling.

You won’t do any of the above of course because you can’t. ID-Creationists are all hat, no cattle.

[Eddie (Edward Robinson)]

@Timothy_Horton

Yeah, don’t listen to those egghead scientists

I listen to scientists with respect when they describe actual empirical work that they personally have carried out. When they speculate about hypothetical past events they can’t experiment on in the lab, or when they speak out of their fields, or when they dismiss the work of colleagues whose books they haven’t even read (e.g., many of the scientists here who have dismissed the book of Shapiro haven’t read it, and others are convinced that Denton can’t possibly make a good case for design but won’t try reading even a few chapters of his work), or when they make big generalizations about “science” that touch on philosophical questions they’re not well-versed in, I take their comments with a grain of salt.

@Timothy_Horton

150+ years’ of consilient positive evidence

“150 years of major disagreements among evolutionary theorists regarding evolutionary mechanisms” would be closer to the mark. But I don’t suppose you’ve ever read Gould’s Structure of Evolutionary Theory, or any equivalent work by a historically literate biologist, so this will be news to you.

[Timothy_Horton]

@colewd

In all seriousness your lack of comprehension appears to be an epidemic among materialists.

You’re as funny as Eddie whining about in his 9 years of presenting his same dumb “computer on Mars” every last person pointed out why the example was fallacious and worthless.