From: Ivar Ylvisaker <ylvisaki@erols.com>
>There is something fundamentally flawed in the way that Dembski
>constructs his argument for design.
>
>Scientific knowledge advances through a process of proposing
>hypotheses, testing them, and then, based on the results, confirming,
>rejecting, or, most commonly, modifying them.
>
>This is not Dembski's approach. On page 68 of The Design Inference
>(TDI), he writes "Indeed, confirming hypotheses is precisely what
>the design inference does not do. The design inference is in the
>business of eliminating hypotheses, not confirming them." And in
>a reply to Wesley Elsberry in this mail list, he wrote "Design
>inferences are among other things eliminative arguments, and what
>they must eliminate is a chance hypothesis (or more generally a
>family of chance hypotheses)."
>(http://www.calvin.edu/archive/evolution/199909/0383.html) His
>explanatory filter implements his eliminative approach. The filter
>eliminates all "regular" and "chance" events -- presumably, all
>naturally caused events, Dembski does not define his terms very
>carefully -- and labels as "design" any event that survives.
>
>But his approach cannot not work. The problem is that anyone using
>the approach must identify "all the relevant chance hypotheses H
>that could be responsible for some event" (page 222 of TDI). (Note
>chance hypotheses can include regular hypotheses by setting
>parameters appropriately.) But how can anyone do this? It is not
>enough to identify all the relevant hypotheses that one knows. One
>must also identify all the relevant hypotheses that one does not
>know. Otherwise, some events that the filter labels as design will,
>in fact, be due to unidentified natural causes. One can not exclude
>the possibility that all of the events that pass through the filter
>will be due to natural causes. Obviously, such an imperfect filter
>is useless for Dembski's purpose, which is to show unmistakable
>evidence of an intelligent designer that might be his God. And, so
>far as we know, the number of possible hypotheses about natural
>causes is effectively infinite.
Thanks, Ivar. This is the same point that I've made on a number of
occasions. Elsewhere, Dembski claims that the design inference gives no
false positives. But this is clearly untrue. Even if he is able to eliminate
all natural hypotheses that we can think of, it's always possible that some
unknown explanation may exist.
It's worth adding that, not only has Dembski failed to eliminate *all*
possible natural hypotheses, as his method requires, but he's failed even to
eliminate the one most relevant hypothesis, that of evolution by random
mutation and natural selection.
>Dembski claims that there are real events that are "complex" and
>"specified." Complex, specified events will pass through Dembski's
>filter and, hence, are supposed to be design events. Dembski's
>examples include the creation of DNA, Shakespeare's sonnets, and
>Behe's irreducibly complex (IC) systems. But, Dembski has never
>explained in detail, step-by-step, how we can infer such events are
>design events using his explanatory filter (or using anything
>similar). In particular, he never lists all possible relevant
>hypotheses. He takes it for granted that his conclusions are obvious.
>But they are not. And, since Dembski cannot identify all possible
>relevant hypotheses, he never can apply his filter to anything
>interesting like these examples.
I recently wrote to Dembski, asking him to cite a specific application of
the design inference which had successfully detected design in nature.
Somewhat to my surprise, he replied. However, less surprisingly, his replies
evaded the issue. His first reply referred to work he intends to publish in
the future. Since that is of little use to us now, and since Dembski has
already claimed to have detected ID in nature, I wrote back stressing that I
wanted to know about an *existing* application. He then referred me to the
work of Behe on the bacterial flagellum, but failed to give any specific
citation. I've written back, pointing out that Behe, in Darwin's Black Box,
does not make any specific probability calculation for the origin of the
bacterial flagellum, and asking, again, for a reference to a specific
application. I also asked him, if he could not give such a reference, to
answer some questions about exactly how the design inference should be
applied, since he has been equivocal on a number of issues, leading to much
controversy over what the design inference really is (e.g. between Wesley
and me). At the moment, I'm still waiting for a reply. I'll report back here
if I receive one.
>If you think it obvious that Shakespeare wrote the sonnets, try
>applying Dembski's eliminative approach. I agree that an intelligent
>being wrote the sonnets. It was probably Shakespeare but this is
>controversial. But my reasoning is scientific. There is historical
>evidence of man called Shakespeare, the sonnets exist, we can observe
>today poets writing sonnets, etc. All of this persuades me that the
>sonnets are the product of a designer. What I cannot do and what
>Dembski cannot do is prove that the sonnets were not generated by
>some unknown natural process. Unlikely yes. Proof, no.
Some ID proponents would probably reply that the design inference is not
intended to be a proof, only an inference to the best explanation. However,
this is clearly untrue. Dembski's method gives no way of comparing
alternative explanations. And, as I mentioned above, he has clearly claimed
that the design inference produces no false positives:
"I argue that the explantory filter is a reliable criterion for detecting
design. Alternatively, I argue that the Explanatory Filter successfully
avoids false positives. Thus whenever the Explanatory Filter attributes
design, it does so correctly."
(http://injil.com/real/ri9602/dembski.html )
Richard Wein (Tich)
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