Can ID be disproven?

[Meadmaker]

Until then, the goalpost of irreducible complexity is moving about as if some MIT students are using it for a football prank.

~~ Paul

With respect to the fruit fly experiment, ID predicts...well, we aren't sure exactly what it predicts, except in vague terms. Evolution, on the other hand, predicts....?


I'm not sure where the goalposts ought to be planted.

 

[Meadmaker]

Finally read the answersingenesis link about those nylon-consuming bacteria, and I'm afraid they have a very good story to tell. Are they right? I doubt it, but I can't prove them wrong.

For those not interested in the link, I'll give a 5 cent version. These bacteria can adapt to lots of different novel foodstuffs. Bacteria that can't digest nylon will predicatably change into bacteria that can digest nylon in a very short time span, although if there is some other initially undigestible food source, they will adapt to that. They liken the development of nylon-digesting to the development of antibodies to a specific virus. In other words, the nylon digesting enzymes are a particular reaction to a specific environmental condition, not a random development of a new structure.

They also say this mechanism is evidence for design, because this rapid adaptability comes from a particular structure that they believe will someday be shown to be irreducibly complex.

 

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

With respect to the fruit fly experiment, ID predicts...well, we aren't sure exactly what it predicts, except in vague terms. Evolution, on the other hand, predicts....?

That it might take a huge test tube and millions of years.

I don't believe that anymore, but I abandoned that belief based on theological musings, not scientific ones. In fact, I think that belief is completely and totally compatible with all science as we know it. In other words, ID and evolution are not contradictory.

It's not compatible with the philosophy of science, although you might argue that it is compatible with the facts. However, explain how it is that God reaches out and pokes some chromosome somewhere to effect a desired outcome. Don't you think ID should at least tackle that question? ID has a story about an intelligent designer, but refuses to even mention the back story. Why is that?

On the evolutionary side, there are an awful lot of people who absolutely refuse to accept the possibility that God interferes with the process, even though that lack of intervention is in no way provable.

That is because it would be futile and stupid for science simply to accept a supernatural explanation. Really, do you want scientists to just give up on understanding the naturalistic evolution of some biological objects? Which ones? Behe's favorites?

Meanwhile, ID goes a bit beyond what I believed when I was a Christian. It asserts that the biological evidence absolutely contains evidence of design, that certain structures could not happen by chance and selection pressure alone. That is a scientific claim, but testing it is very, very, difficult. As such, it is in the category of an unproven, untested, hypothesis.

Testing it is impossible. However, you could present a logical proof that the flaggelum, say, could not have evolved. Dembski make a poor attempt at this in No Free Lunch. Since then, no one has bothered even working on this. Why is that?

Neither position is scientific. Creationism is inconsistent with physical evidence, and unguided evolution is beyond what science can confirm, ...

Biology is confirming it just fine. Perhaps you aren't paying attention. On the other hand, as you said above, you can always assume that god poked things now and again. What possible purpose such an assumption has I can't imagine.

~~ Paul

 

[drkitten]

Davefoc,

My interest in the topic comes from my experience back in the days when I was a Christian. Back then, I believed in both evolution and intelligent design, although the word had not yet been coined at least in the popular press. I believed that God formed the world and created laws of physics and all of that stuff. Then, he guided the process of evolution with his own direction. When he needed it, he would introduce a "random" mutation here and there so that life evolved under His direction in the manner He wanted.

I don't believe that anymore, but I abandoned that belief based on theological musings, not scientific ones. In fact, I think that belief is completely and totally compatible with all science as we know it. In other words, ID and evolution are not contradictory.

So why the hostility? Why the debate?

Because what you describe (the technical term for it is "theistic evolution") is not, in point of fact, "intelligent design" or even compatible with it.

 

[davefoc]

Because what you describe (the technical term for it is "theistic evolution") is not, in point of fact, "intelligent design" or even compatible with it.

I don't understand why you would say not compatible with it. I looked up a few definitions of ID and none of them seemed to preclude the possibility that evolution does occur. The assertion is just that intelligent design is a better explanation for the existence of some complex structures.

from wikipedia:

Intelligent Design (sometimes abbreviated ID) is the controversial assertion that certain features of the universe and of living things exhibit the characteristics of a product resulting from an intelligent cause or agent, as opposed to an unguided process such as natural selection.

 

[Iacchus]

Because what you describe (the technical term for it is "theistic evolution") is not, in point of fact, "intelligent design" or even compatible with it.

Yet if it was intelligently designed, in conjunction with evolution, it would be a better argument for intelligent design.

 

[hammegk]

... the technical term for it is "theistic evolution" ...

Or perhaps '~materialist evolution'? No theology there sfaik.

 

[Iacchus]

from wikipedia:

Intelligent Design (sometimes abbreviated ID) is the controversial assertion that certain features of the universe and of living things exhibit the characteristics of a product resulting from an intelligent cause or agent, as opposed to an unguided process such as natural selection.

That works for me.

 

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

Of course, if God creates these clever biological mechanisms either by tweaking mutations or poking selection pressures, then the phrase "unguided process such as natural selection" becomes murky in the extreme.

~~ Paul

 

[drkitten]

I don't understand why you would say not compatible with it. I looked up a few definitions of ID and none of them seemed to preclude the possibility that evolution does occur. The assertion is just that intelligent design is a better explanation for the existence of some complex structures.

ID specifically denies the possibility that those complex structures originated via evolution.

Let's take Behe at his word for a moment about the bacterial flagellum, for example. Behe argues that the flagellum has no possible evolutionary precursors -- that it cannot arise as a result of mutation from an earlier form. I will assume for argument's sake that he is correct.

But in this case, it's equally impossible to arise via theistic evolution, because if it cannot arise as a result of any possible mutation, it can't arise as a result of God-directed mutation, either, since God-directed mutations are a subset of the possible mutations. In order to create the bacterial flagellum, God (or the mysteriously unspecified "designer") must have resorted to some other method for creating the first flagellum. Of course, God has a lot of tools in his shed -- but whatever tool he used, it wasn't theistic evolution.

Let's look again at Meadmaker's comments:

When he needed it, he would introduce a "random" mutation here and there so that life evolved under His direction in the manner He wanted.

Behe's central point is that "introducing a 'random' mutation" would not suffice to explain the origin of an irreducibly complex system. Meadmaker's God, who restricts Himself to introducing mutations and otherwise letting life behave normally, is provably different from Behe's, who performs operations that could not be done just by mutations.

Ergo, Meadmaker's "theistic evolution" is incompatible with ID.

 

[PatKelley]

To put a fine point on it, ID is an attempt to embrace "micro" evolution or evolution within kinds and deny "macro" evolution, or evolution of kinds. Both of these are made-up creationist terms specifically made for apologetics, and a supposed way of getting around things.

Still doesn't work. To qualify as a change of "kind" in ID, change would have to originate somewhere other than in DNA. Any change in DNA is a mutation, unless it is completely unrelated to its precursor, or arrives ex nihilo (has no precursor).

So to truly test ID, we have to assume some things arrive ex nihilo, an even more brash assumption than assuming chemical evolution to biological evolution, and something which Pasteur put the lie to long ago.

However, we could set up a completely sterile nutrient-rich environment and see if it produces a "kind" fully formed. Consider, that to allow extinction, some form of creation of kinds must take place or we'd just be depleting our kinds, add to which all kinds would have had to exist since the beginning of the fossil record.

This is the most ridiculous part of ID/Creationist arguments. They accuse evolution of saying "the watch appeared on the ground fully-formed" when that is precisely what their argument is, albeit with "somebody put it there."

 

[PatKelley]

Double post only hit button once.

 

[clarsct]

All I have to say is that God-induced evolution and evolution via natural selection look very, very similar.

Repeat after me: Occam's Razor is our friend....


At any rate, if the IDiots want to say that they can prove their claims, then they can do so. It isn't up to me to do so. I'm still waiting for their evidence.

 

[davefoc]

drkitten, I believe our disagreement is largely semantic and as such perhaps not that interesting, but I will post once more on the subject and allow you the last word if you choose to make another post on the subject.

ID as I understand it is essentially this:
At one or more times in the history of life on earth an intelligent designer inserted the genetic coding into the some genomes either of new or preexisting organisms to provided those organisms with some cool irreducibly complex features. Under some ID theories organisms may evolve after their genome has gotten a little supernatural update but evolution won't create any really cool irreducibly complex features, only the intelligent designer or designers can do that.

I took this phrase of Meadmaker "he would introduce a "random" mutation here and there" to mean that the intelligent designer inserted genetic coding into the genome to create the irreducibly complex features.

Perhaps you objected to the term ""random" mutation". I agree that what he meant by that was ambiguous. But it seems that it could be taken to mean that the intelligent designer messed with genome in such a way as to cause a change that the intelligent designer was interested in creating.

Perhaps you objected to the idea that all the intelligent designing wasn't accomplished at the same time. Certainly the young earth creationists might believe something like this. But as I understand the notion of intelligent design, doing it all at once is not a requirement.

Perhaps you believe that ID precludes all evolution. I didn't get that out of what I read and it would seem like an incredibly stupid notion if that is what IDers believe. But maybe they do believe that and I am just wrong on that.

 

[Meadmaker]

Let's imagine that God has put together a lot of cool stuff using his double helical tinkertoy set. Now he has a bacterium sitting there, but God thinks it would be cool to put a tail on it. "Let there be flagella..No. That would be too easy." says God.

Instead, God decides that he will introduce "random" mutations into the DNA of the bacteria. A little bit here, a little bit there, now you have a protein that sticks together. Then put a new one in that makes it wiggle...whatever. Of course, this process takes thousands, or possibly millions of years, but that's just a few days to God.

How does he make these random things happen? God isn't bound by such ridiculous things as the uncertainty principle or quantum mechanics. He can choose when that atom will decay, or which way that brownian motion will take the microscopic particles. He's God. He can do that.

Does ID say that this scenario is impossible? No it does not. But isn't it still an irreducibly complex structure, which ID says can't come about that way?

ID doesn't say that. ID says it serves no purpose until it is complete, and so it can't arise by natural selection. Until it's complete, that poor little bacterium with a partial flagellum would be at a disadvantage, and wouldn't evolve like his tailless buddies. Unless he had help.

So God, before he starts this experiment in flagellum production, separates out a few bacteria from all the rest. He puts them in a separate place so they won't have to compete with the other bacteria who have an advantage because they aren't wasting their energy making half-formed flagella.

When he is done, he lets the flagella-bearing bacteria back into the general population, where they take over.

Voila. Intelligent design, and theistic evolution.

And the evidence in the fossil record would exactly match the theory of punctuated equilibrium, which says exactly the same thing, but without the God part.

 

[Meadmaker]

What possible purpose such an assumption has I can't imagine.

~~ Paul

I'm sure you can't.


And I ask again, what are we afraid of?

 

[Taffer]

And I ask again, what are we afraid of?

The teaching of something that isn't scientific in a science class.

 

[Tricky]

And the evidence in the fossil record would exactly match the theory of punctuated equilibrium, which says exactly the same thing, but without the God part.

Um... no it doesn't. True, there are gaps in the fossil record, but there are some fossil lineages which are almost unbroken in their succession and preservation. I refer to marine animals such as foraminifera and diatoms. Because they are small, hardbodied, and they are buried whenever sediments are buried, they can be seen to undergo exactly the sort of transformation you describe, but every step is recorded, or at least its manifestation on the shell of the creature is. You can put the succession of fossils on film and it would look as if the organism were gradually curling, becoming more ornate, going from a coil to a helix, and any number of other changes.

We use these organisms to correlate ages in marine sediments, and it is very precice.

Punctuated evolution only says that at some times, evolution moves faster than others. It does not say that organisms jump from one form to another without intermediated forms.

However, if your scenario were true, then ID would predict that between two irreducibly complex species, no intermediate fossils would ever be found. Evolution predicts that they will. Guess which one has been correct time and time again?

 

[Roboramma]

Voila. Intelligent design, and theistic evolution.

Meadmaker, are you saying basically that God might cause certain mutations that would not be beneficial to the organisms affected by them, but then keep them alive, allow them to reproduce, etc, until he later gave their decendents, and then their decendants, other mutations that lead to an irriducibly complex organ which could not have come about without god keeping those intermediate organisms alive and reproducing, because they were actually less fit in their natural environment than their contemporaries?

Two issues. One, would that mutation be possibly or likely to have occured without god's intervention? What I mean is do we need god for the mutation or just to keep the gene around in the gene pool once it's there?

Two, how does god keep the organism alive? For instance, if the mutation caused the organism to be blind, does god give it a good shove if it's about to walk off a cliff, or is he more subtle than that?
If so, does he do it simply by altering the environment in some way?

 

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

Couldn't God, the almighty and magnificent creator of every corner of the universe, simply have planned in evolution from the get-go?

If I was God, I'd be insulted by this poke-a-little-here-and-there crapola that his believers make up just so they can rag on evolution, and by proxy, on naturalism and atheism. His ancient believers managed to extoll His glories in the Bible, but nowadays they can't even give Him credit for a decent design.

His works are beyond all understanding, except for this nit-picky, pathetic, fix-it-after-the-fact genome poking nonsense. You've reduced him to a bad auto mechanic.

~~ Paul