Nothing can disprove an unspecified, transcendental designer. Whatever is observed, this designer can always have designed it. It is precisely this that prevents the design inference from being a scientific hypothesis.
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You have fallen into the same trap that Bill has been in for his entire existence here. You confuse common descent with unguided evolution. There is no such connection, and nobody is trying to tell you that nested hierarchy shows unguided evolution. One hopes that, unlike Bill, you are rational enough to see your error.
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I’ve many times indicated that I’m not interested as much in whether a hypothesis is “scientific” as whether it might point to the truth. I think design inferences make use of data and understanding built up by science, but are more like philosophical than scientific conclusions. I understand that most of the people who post frequently here are either scientists or admirers of science, and that they are more interested in narrowly scientific arguments. But when we are discussing origins, it may not always be the case that restricting ourselves to scientific arguments will get us to the truth of what happened in the past. If, for example, it turns out to be the case that the origin of life required intelligent planning, restricting ourselves to “scientific” methods currently used to discover the origin of life would guarantee that we would never find the correct answer. I am not arguing that scientists should not employ such methods. But insisting that only such methods may be used to discover the origin of life begs the meta-question.
I never lie. What I said is my honest interpretation of the flow of argument in many discussions with Aquaticus and others. If I misinterpreted, you can show me where in those arguments I misread what my opponents said. But the search engine shows so many “hits” for “nested hierarchy”, spread over so many dozen topics, that I cannot find all the spots I’m remembering.
I disagree. You seem to be using some variation on Ockham’s Razor. But the Razor is only a pragmatic rule; the philosopher is not bound by it in an absolute sense.
That principle I understand perfectly. But in application it cannot guarantee that it will always yield the truth.
But it isn’t “unexpected” that a designer would be attracted to nested hierarchies. It isn’t guaranteed, but it’s not at all surprising. Designers are intelligent, organized folks who like tidiness, structure, arrangement of things, where they can easily be found. It’s not at all surprising that life would appear in nested hierarchies if there is a designer. If I were the designer of the cosmos, you’d see lots of nested hierarchies.
I ignore the edgy aspects of your post.
That is the nature of science. Is there a better principle that can guarantee the truth?
Post hoc justification. There are plenty of patterns in nature that are not nested hierarchies. One might point to the periodic table, for example. You elide structure and nested hierarchy without justification. It’s a very particular sort of order, one that arises naturally and inevitably from common descent and from no other process we know of.
And yet it’s a fairly chaotic pattern, of irregular shape, not symmetrical and not exclusively bifurcating. But I suppose that too would show some characteristic of the creator, since the creator is infinitely malleable to fit into whatever mold is needed. Can you predict an inordinate fondness for beetles?
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That’s two lies now.
No it isn’t. It’s a lie you concocted. Straight up dishonest, misleading political spin.
Lied. You lied about what happens in these discussions. You simply are not THAT dyslexic that you “misinterpreted” anything.
What arguments? Go find and link me one of these arguments where someone here "tried to give the impression that design is incompatible with a nested hierarchy" by quoting the sentences you think works to accomplish that. Then when you have done that you quote where you had to explain to someone here how design is compatible with a nested hierarchy.
I don’t need all of them, just a single concrete example of someone “trying to give the impression that design is incompatible with a nested hierarchy” and where you in turn had to explain to them that design is compatible with it.
I’ve now looked over about 10 examples of yours from the last 6 months where you have used the term nested hierarchy in a discussion, and in every single case you’re essentially accusing the opponent of claiming they are incompatible, where instead the opponent is the one explaining to you that they’re not incompatible, but proceeding to expound on the concepts of prediction and expectation. A particularly apposite recent example is @T_aquaticus doing that here.
He is explaining it to you.
EVERY instance of you discussing the nested hierarchy you pull that bs dishonest bait-and-switch, by first acting as if someone has claimed ID is incompatible with design, and then someone explains how it isn’t strictly logically incompatible and proceeding to expound on predictions and expectations.
Given how many times this has happened, and your supreme skills as a literature scholar, philosopher, and student of sophisticated theology™, it is simply not credible that you continue to labor under any misapprehensions.
That shows that this crap line about incompatibility and the false insinuation that anyone is " trying to give the impression that design is incompatible with a nested hierarchy" that you have to subsequently correct is a piece of dishonest spin. A sort of line you’ve rehearsed to throw up in discussions such as these. Which shows you are a dishonest person. One who does not tell the truth, the whole truth, but works to mislead and spin instead. A LIAR.
That is an outright historical falsehood. Nobody predicted the nested hierarchy of life before it was found.
Some do some don’t. Designers like structure and rules, except when they are messy and cluttered, you know how designers are. All over the place. One can invent a million rationalizations for why a designer might be any particular things on any given occasion.
But there’s nothing about liking structure or tidiness that raises the probability of a nested hierarchy over innumerable other structural arrangements or systems of organization. There are many other systems of organization that are “tidy” and “structured”. I like having my kitchen utensils sorted by different types (forks, spoons, knives etc.) in their own compartment. They’re not sorted into nesting sets. And in any case life’s organization by shared-derived characteristics doesn’t make them easier to find.
Your rationalizations are all crap.
Eddie you are at bottom just a shitty spin-doctor. I hope nobody is wasting their money paying you to write that crap.
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I was going to reply to some of your points, but your speech is so uncivilized that it’s not worth it. Normally you are one of the more patient people here, but here you have descended to the lowest level. That’s disappointing. But don’t worry, Paul King, our resident “master of the moral high ground” regarding how we should speak to each other, will, if he follows his past pattern, give you a pass.
This is a story without a model at this point. You have two. major problems with this story.
-The sequence problem
-The waiting time problem
The “nested hierarchy” argument fails to differentiate design from common descent. The appearance of new features and new features arriving multiple times supports the design argument. Maybe there is a mechanism in the cell that can account for these changes. The current theory as it stands does not.
As has been told to you innumerable times, design and common descent are not mutually exclusive and therefore shouldn’t and can’t be differentiated. When you say “design” you really mean “separate creation”. Nested hierarchy is evidence against separate creation, not against design. You will of course ignore this, as you have ignored it every time in the past.
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Attracted, yes, executed, not really.
Yet the most rigorous human attempt to create a nested hierarchy, the military, universally requires additional, designed, massive exceptions to function.
But designed objects never fit what we see in life: a single nested hierarchy that is superimposable on the nested hierarchy of components. In other words, different brands of cars should always use 10mm bolts that differ in minor, nonfunctional ways. No one who builds cars, no matter how much they like tidiness, has ever done that.
So, your desperate handwaving is dead wrong. Perhaps, like Bill, you just don’t grasp the concept?
You didn’t, though. You replied to the decidedly edgy:
with a lengthy response, hilariously, that makes your claim that you are ignoring those aspects objectively false!
Yup, that’s Eddie!
But your tone-policing clearly is a reply, again confirming Mikkel’s point.
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@swamidass this thread is completely at odds with the Mission and Values of this site, as sometimes are other threads. I find it disturbing that the moderators even allow some of these posts as they are: the vitriol, accusations of lies, character assassination, distortion, self-superiority, and utter lack of interest in points of view other than their own.
This, I know, is not what you had in mind.
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I agree with this.
I agree with this.
As for the detailed back-and-forth between Bill and others here, I have not followed it and make no comment.
I’m not “policing” his tone; only a Moderator could do that. I’m simply indicating that I will not respond to arguments and charges couched in that tone. Everyone has the right not to converse with people he finds bad-tempered and insulting.
The language in Rum’s post is abusive enough that it would be appropriate for a Christian (or anyone else) here to flag it, and get it grayed out; but it won’t be me, as I have a policy of never flagging posts directed at me, no matter how unjust or insulting or abusive.
And speaking of replies, the Christian world is awaiting your 10-year-delayed reply regarding the contents of your Christian belief. But you have no intention of ever delivering that reply, correct?
Almost every time I have an extended exchange with Eddie I have my credentials and intelligence insulted. Somehow being a lab technician isn’t fancy enough for Eddie and everyone who studies or have studied biology are just stupid and unsophisticated. Eddie can blather at length on topics ranging from philosophy through astronomy and cosmology, to atmospheric science and climate change, recommend books, papers, pop-sci articles, and authors on these topics, but if anyone who isn’t a HiGhLy SoPhIsTiCaTeD ScHoLaR with a PhD in the relevant field dares to criticize or call into question these authors and their books and articles we’re effectively told to shut up and peruse every last words they ever wrote or spoke before we should even consider opening out mouthes.
Eddie has no qualifications in any of these fields himself. Don’t give me your hypocritical indignation here. Learn to recognize flaws in people on your side on the fence please.
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And yet in an earlier post you disagreed. Is it just that you are bad at expressing yourself?
But you did make a comment, one that started this particular back and forth.
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Do you mean my post to Ron Sewell? I do not see where my post to him disagreed with what I just said to you.
No, I refer to this:
Now of course the error here is something you impute to some other, unspecified persons. But does anyone say anything like that, much less “always”? You are commiserating with Bill about an error he is the major proponent of. Isn’t that an odd thing to do? Unless of course you are merely recognizing a fellow member of the tribe.
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But you did respond while denying you were doing so. That’s pretty funny.
But you are conversing when you reply!
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I have no problem agreeing with you that people on my side of the fence attack at times. Why not just agree with me, with the proviso that we do it on both sides? I have recently made it a point to abuse people who abuse me. But it should never be allowed start. That’s my point.
I would gladly refrain from pointing out the intellectual shortcomings (real, or perhaps in some cases only imagined in my mind) of some biologists here if they would refrain from talking down (often with biting comments thrown in) to everyone who disagrees with them, not only about biology, but about cosmology and about climate change and about definitions of words and about university hiring policies and about everything else. What comes across is: “We’re lab scientists, so we are the appointed spokespersons for “SCIENCE” (never mind what James Tour or Michael Polanyi or Paul Feyerabend or Paul Davies or John Polkinghorne says) and you guys are a bunch of clods who need to be taught that the universe is a series of unplanned accidents who resist this truth only because of your religious prejudices; and by the way you need to learn proper deference to Anthony Fauci and Michael Mann, and you need to ignore all normal principles of historical philology and define terms like creationism only the way we do.” Those of us with a traditional humanities education (including a good dose of history and philosophy of science, some of it written by scientists) deem this sort of approach to be aggressive and macho and intellectually unjustified, and so I offer resistance to it. I’m sure I have gone overboard in my resistance sometimes, and for that, I acknowledge my excesses.
For the record, I regard Rumraket as quite intelligent and, when he sticks to explaining scientific concepts and does not dismiss arguments from highly intelligent scientists as “crap”, one of the more moderate voices here, because he (mostly) keeps his atheist/materialist philosophy to himself and sticks to points of substance.
I add that I wouldn’t even be on these message boards, arguing with biologists, if a certain section of the scientific establishment (a small but loud minority of the total number of scientists) hadn’t been vicious to the ID people. Before the assault on ID, I was never seen in public arguing about evolution, never seen defending anything even superficially close to creationism, etc. In that sense, I’m a creation of the people here who are complaining about me, and of their parallel numbers at the NCSE etc. If I’m a Frankenstein Monster, the aggressive, materialist, atheist, reductionist attackers against IDers are Dr. Frankenstein. They set me loose on the world, by their injustice, their vicious personal attacks on people I know and respect, their double standards in argument and regarding decorum, and their contempt for any version of “science” that contains any element of philosophical reflection and intellectual humility.
I’ll take my share of the blame for sometimes rubbing Rumraket the wrong way. It would be nice if some of the others here would occasionally acknowledge blame for rubbing me and others the wrong way. But I don’t expect I will ever see that. The atmosphere here is way too polemical and partisan.
I thank Marty for his intervention. I apologize to Marty for any role I had in agitating Rumraket and causing his explosion. It would be nice if Rumraket could at least withdraw that charge that I am a liar. I might not accurately remember things I read or wrote months ago, in columns whose titles I can no longer remember, and partisanship may color my memories, but I always try to report honestly what I remember, and I never knowingly lie. It’s against my moral code.
Pedantry.
I withdraw “always.” I did honestly report what I thought had happened sometimes.