Greetings, @Faizal_Ali!
Just out of curiosity, how would you define a “good argument?”
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One using valid logic and based an accurately perceived and interpreted evidence.
How do you define it?
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Sorry but that’s demonstrably false. Iterative processes involving selection feedback (i.e evolution) can produce the same results as a one time “design”.
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Why does it have to be that one specific target? Sharpshooter fallacy anyone?
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Yes it’s a really weird article. I’ve read it through now 3 times and I can’t find where he establishes that this information can’t have evolved. We are told the bitscores, we are never told why they can’t evolve. It’s just asserted. Gilbert seems to have found a bare assertion intensely persuasive.
Kids, that’s your brain on IDcreationism. Just say no!
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We’ve read it and understand it just fine. It’s simply wrong because it does not accurately model actual evolutionary processes.
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It’s the usual cargo-cult pseudoscience. It has some fancy technical jargon about “Uniprot accession numbers” (omg people who can say that must be clever and knowledgeable) and “bit scores” and “neuron–glial fibre contacts”, accompanied by some graphs with nonsensically labeled axes. And the numbers are huge. They’re exponents, people. EXPONENTS!
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And it works. @Giltil is all “What a brilliant article! A gem! Makes some really good points, you should all read it!” And, you know what? He’s going to just keep on saying that, even as he remains completely unable to answer your questions.
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Guys, this is getting needlessly acrimonious. Let’s try to keep on topic. If you don’t have a favorite argument for ID, it’s better to stay out of this instead of filling this thread with sarcastic comments. This conversation will be more interesting if the ID skeptics (of which I am one) can suspend their disbelief for a moment and think of good arguments against their position. If you can’t do that, it’s better to hold your horses.
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Thank you for asking, @Faizal_Ali! I like your definition (although there is a distinct possibility that we would disagree on the proper interpretation of some of the evidence out there).
Anyhow, even if you don’t think there are any good arguments for ID, perhaps you have a plausible argument you would like to share (as per the allowance of the question in the original post)?
Greetings to @dga471 as well! Do you have an argument for ID you would like to share?
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Just to add another observation: you don’t need to believe in a position to think there could be better or worse arguments for it. For example, @PdotdQ has debated a lot of flat-earthers, and he has remarked that some of their arguments are more sophisticated and are not easily dismissed without a good knowledge of the relevant issues. That doesn’t mean that @PdotdQ thinks the Earth is flat.
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This is a mischaracterisation of Gpuccio’s article for regarding the information jump, he doesn’t simply use qualitative expression such as « really a lot » but he quantifies it rigorously.
But here’s the problem. Sophistication is not a measure of goodness, if you mean goodness as in persuasive. In fact a highly technical argument might even be a bad argument because it can be difficult to understand.
So it might be a “good” argument in the sense that it is difficult to rebut because doing so takes specialist knowledge. But that also means people who aren’t already convinced of the conclusion will refrain from accepting the argument because they don’t fully understand it’s implications or how it works.
In general, good arguments are arguments that are easy to understand, while drawing from uncontroversial premises most people would agree to. That’s usually the hallmark of a good argument. It takes something people are unlikely to object to, and then with some straightforward and clear logic derives a conclusion. Arguments of that type are more likely to be persuasive.
Coming up with a very convoluted argument using difficult to parse philosophical concepts and technical jargon, while they may superficially sound very impressive, are often bad arguments as they dissuade even the people who agree with them from employing them in debates because they fear they can’t defend them if challenged.
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Yeah he really rigorously says there’s a jump of “10^2000 bits”. We’re left wondering what it is about 10^2000 bits that can’t evolve. It’s just asserted it can’t, we aren’t told why.
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No, he doesn’t. He just makes up his own definition of “information” that he uses throughout the article. That does not constitute “rigour.”
And you keep ignoring the main point: He does not show how he has determined that this much “information” cannot be produced by evolution. He has no reason to deny that evolution could produce really, really, really a lot! of information in 100 million years.
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My basic problem with ID is its philosophical framing. ID assumes a modernist, mechanistic conception of the natural world. This seems to not gel with the common intuition that there seems to be teleology or design in nature. But within this mechanistic conception of nature, all you can get is extrinsic teleology, like the Watchmaker argument. The Designer tends to be viewed as a super-powerful demiurge who takes the components of nature and assembles them into purposefully built machines. He intervenes in nature at the appropriate times, making it able to overcome (what ID advocates view as) natural constraints. Thus we have book titles like Darwin Devolves. The implication is that a designer is required to prevent this devolution and create useful things.
To me, this is misguided. A more promising solution (and better argument for design overall) is to recognize that the mechanistic conception of the world, useful as it is, is an incomplete one. Design and purpose exist in nature, but intrinsically - at the level of metaphysics, not physics. The Designer doesn’t need to intervene to prevent devolution - he implants and sustains teleology and purpose in the fundamental behavior of nature from the very beginning. This actually fits better with classical conceptions of who God is. Instead of a superpowerful demiurge, God is the cause and ongoing sustainer of existence of all things including the laws of nature itself.
This conception of reality is based on Aristotelian-Thomistic philosophy, and is common among Catholics (which is probably also why fewer Catholics are anti-evolution compared to evangelicals). Edward Feser has talked about this at length, for example in this blog series: Edward Feser: ID versus A-T roundup.
Because in this view, design operates at the level of metaphysics, there is no need to make scientific arguments against evolution in order to “prove” design like many ID proponents do. Design is not a competing scientific theory, but a philosophical interpretation of empirical, scientific findings. Thomists regard teleology as evident from nature, but it’s not measurable or quantifiable. It’s somewhat like a basic metaphysical intuition like the belief that there is a mind-independent reality. This is to me the strongest “argument”, not necessarily for Intelligent Design™, but for design and teleology in general.
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There are no plausible arguments, just as there are no plausible arguments for the sun being smaller than the earth. Unless you think “Well, if I hold my hand out in front of me, I can cover it with my thumb” is a “plausible” argument.
If you trust reason, there should not be any plausible arguments for things for which we have sufficient reason to know are not true. Unless you are some post-modernist thinker who holds reason and logic under suspicion.
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Thank you for sharing your thoughts @Faizal_Ali. Since you don’t think there are plausible arguments, perhaps it is better for you to stop responding on this thread and start listening to others.
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I don’t think there’s anything wrong with pointing out what you see as problems with other people’s arguments, even if they think they’re good.
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Sure, but the point of this thread, as I perceive it, is to suspend our disbelief for a moment and think of more interesting arguments for ID. From my cursory survey of what has occurred, it seems that the majority of ID skeptics are unwilling to do that, but merely reiterate their basic reasons for rejecting ID in the first place. Thus, the tone of this thread is uninteresting and tending towards acrimony and tiresome repetitiveness.
Suspending disbelief in order to come up with novel arguments is not a weird thing to do. It’s common and fun, and may help you to understand and explain your own position better, especially when debating with others. I remember even Jerry Coyne’s blog tried this at least once, many years ago, when they held a competition for coming up with the best model to explain how original sin spread to the rest of the world. It’s an instance of model-based thinking, which is basically how science operates anyway. Given certain premises, how can you tweak a model so that it can still cohere with the evidence in the least awkward way possible?
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