What I’m saying is as relevant for particular structures as for entire organisms. You are entirely focused on one specific particular structure as if that is the only solution to a particular challenge. That is not what biology is about. Evolution is about being successful by gaining an edge over the environment (which includes the competition, but is a wider concept) in any way possible, it is not about finding any one specific structure that helps you doing that.
Where you get caught by the Texas Sharpshooter fallacy is that you overlook the possibility of numerous other potential solutions to the challenge, i.e. numerous alternative ways to achieve similar functionality, of which the actual structure is just one instantiated example. The question is not ‘what is the probability of drawing a full house’, the queston for poker is ‘what is the probability of drawing a hand of cards that can beat my particular opponent at that place and time’. If the hand you draw is a full house, it fulfills its purpose. If the hand you draw is a four-of-a-kind, a straight flush or a royal flush you have achieved the same functionality and so these hand also fulfill the purpose. These alternatives must be considered to come up with the answer to the question.
The full house analogy doesn’t even work for poker, let alone for biological evolution which, as I said in my earlier post, has far too many variables and solutions to be analysed analytically. In short, your example is not only wrong, it is simply irrelevant to the discussion of evolution.
Actually, there is quite a bit more to it. First of all, contrary to what you say, no, we can’t actually compute the probability of evolution doing anything specific. There are far too many variables and complex relations between them for us to be able to do so. That you are able to calculate the probability of drawing a full house in one go doesn’t mean that you are able to calculate future outcomes of evolution (bar in the most generic terms). At most we can try to simulate evolution, but even that, right now, is limited to quite simplistic Mickey Mouse situations that bear almost no relation to the physical and chemical biological world.
Then there is this: what if the Designer works through evolution? In that case the options are not independent and your ‘probability through elimination’ calculation would be false.
Could the flagellum be an evolutionary outcome that the Designer wanted and made happen? Like, if you win the lottery, is it blind luck or could it be that God decided to give you a lucky break? Who knows? How could we ever hope to compute that?
This stuff is metaphysics and theology, not science.
That would seem to be self-contradictory. If a theory were highly successful the alternatives would not be really viable.
Besides for design to be a viable alternative it would be up to the supporters of design to produce a theory that equally well accounted for the evidence. Young Earth Creationists are committed to a paradigm that has serious problems with the evidence. ID is in principle free to attempt to do better, but seems more interested in maintaining a “big tent” alliance than actually becoming a scientific alternative to evolution.
In both case the problem would seem to be primarily with the supporters of design.
He showed no such thing. His “dependency graph” is an ad hoc assemblage, not an actual dependency graph. If you added more taxa, the graph would change, and each combination of species would end up with its own ever smaller module.
Enlighten me. What is the reason? Oh, I know: prior religious commitment.
The hypothesis remains untested. Compare it to general relativity which has a model and several tests of that predictive model. The theory became generally accepted after the first successful confirmation ty Eddington. Catholics (largest Christian group) are free to accept evolution yet 70% of the population remains skeptical that purely natural means could cause the patterns we are observing.
Why do you think that only a minority of the public accepts primate evolution by natural means?
A perceived threat to human distinctiveness and dignity.
A natural aversion to the idea of kinship with other apes.
A perceived threat to a coherent faith worldview.
A substantial degree of success from the rhetoric of anti-scientific organizations such as DI and AiG.
A general deficit of scientific understanding among the public, many of whom believe the world to be younger than Egypt, and some who hold to ancient Mesopotamian flat earth cosmology.
Common descent is a theory that has withstood innumerable tests and it remains one of the most well-supported theories in all of science.
There is no poll where respondents were asked whether they think a natural process “could cause the pattern”. They’re invariably always just asked what they think actually happened, not what they think could happen in principle. Nobody have been polled about what “could cause the patterns we are observing”.
It’s also completely irrelevant what most people believe since facts aren’t decided by popular opinion. There’s literally a fallacy in logic named after your argument.
The problem is that the tests that it has withstood does not eliminate the competitive theory.
It matters because most all have been taught the theory in school and with a solid tested hypothesis that it explains life’s diversity this would be very unlikely. Maxwells theory of electro magnetism does not suffer from any problem of doubt. either does general relativity.
I have not seen anyone who is objective, listened to the ID arguments and not started to seriously doubt the grand claims of evolutionary theory.
The public matters because they are a large source of academic funding. If they did not matter why would there be so much public discourse on the subject?
No, that is not a problem, in part because there isn’t a competitive theory. If you mean “design” it appears to be unfalsifiable and so impossible to eliminate anyway (as well as being unscientific).
Well, I’m right here. I’d suggest that better informed people are not likely to start doubting evolution based on ID arguments.
There is no competitive theory. You don’t have a theory that predicts anything, you just have infinitely malleable ad-hoc rationalizations.
No, what people have been taught in school does not matter with respect to what is true about the world.
Still irrelevant what most people accept or reject. Heck, most people hold various inconsistent views on all sorts of matters, that doesn’t support anything you’re saying.
I have seen plenty of reasonable, rational people listen to the ID arguments and find them to have innumerable problems. Many of them religious believers who nevertheless think the ID arguments fail.
Mattering with respect to public policy isn’t the same as mattering with respect to determining what is true about nature and history. That’s why we employ scientists to do research, rather than just poll the public to find out how stuff works.
Ah, but I have tried that, too, and what I’ve learned is that if you approach this topic from the standpoint of pure objective curiosity, and then realize – and point out – that IDC is a steaming crock, you will then be accused of not being objective. Can’t win that one.
“Design” isn’t a theory. It’s a handwave. You can’t connect the supposed “dependency graph” with any process, much less one expected from divine creation.
Even you would have to agree that this sentence, as written, is word salad. Perhaps you could rephrase.
All due respect, but you are in no position to decide who’s objective.
If design is true it is not ultimately falsifiable as it explains everything. On the other had it can be falsified as a direct cause such as Maxwell and Einstein have done with their theories. If we look at a specific example like the bacterial flagellum evolution could falsify that it requires design in order to explain its origin by showing evolution can build it.
From my experience the opposite is true. The people I have discussed this with are very well informed in the sciences. Evolutionary theory has many good aspects to it but falls short of explaining certain observations at the cellular level.
Quite obviously falsifiability does not demand that a theory may be proven false if it is true.
Have they? Many people argue that physics is “designed”.
No, that would not falsify design. Indeed, even though it has been shown that eyes may be built by evolution many people insist otherwise.
Let me also point out that this in no way addresses the fact that evolution is successful to a point that would be extremely surprising if it were false. That proponents of design have not even managed a rival theory that is equally successful rather speaks to the point.
I think that the existence of complexities we don’t fully understand is just a fact and to be expected of a highly complex situation where we have quite limited information.
That doesn’t really explain why ID looks more like apologetics than science. Nor ID’s use of smear tactics. Nor does it negate the evidence that exists.
On a personal level I found both Darwin’s Black Boc and The Design Inference far weaker than claimed. Especially the latter - the fact that the proposed method was a simple eliminative argument based on taking design as an unquestioned default is a problem (it’s a style af argument liable to false positives - and it isn’t really how we identify “design”). Choosing specifications with hindsight is not equivalent to making predictions. And the fact that it is utterly impractical to apply the argument to non-trivial cases makes it useless anyway. The fact that the ID movement chose to shower Dembski with praise for this non-achievement speaks volumes.