The URL Nelson tried was incorrect.
<http://inia.cls.org/~welsberr/ae/dembski_wa/19990913_csi_and_ec.html>
should serve up a page.
Does CSI arise in natural processes? We have a situation
where those who say "no" do so because they exclude a priori
various possible examples. Dembski has stated that he is
working on an in-principle refutation of the power of natural
selection to produce CSI, but it is not yet here and available
for comment. Dembski's in-principle refutation of the power
of natural selection present in his 1997 NTSE paper is notable
by its absence in either TDI (where it was promised to be
section 6.3) or in "Intelligent Design" chapter 6, which
appears to be an otherwise lightly edited version of the NTSE
paper. A primary reason for its absence, IMO, is that Bill
Jefferys ripped it apart in the discussion period at the NTSE.
In the meantime, we can note that natural selection has the
properties that Dembski claimed uniquely showed the character
of intelligent agency (see TDI section 2.4 and my review in
the March/April 1999 RNCSE). Also, we can point out that
Dembski considers natural selection to simply be an element of
the set of evolutionary algorithms
(<http://inia.cls.org/~welsberr/ae/dembski_wa/19990913_explaining_csi.html>).
As such, it is just a bit glib to dismiss what we can learn
from the computational instances as having no application to
what we can know about natural selection. At least, it doesn't
make sense to do so if we take Dembski's definition of
"evolutionary algorithms" seriously.
<http://inia.cls.org/~welsberr/ae/dembski_wa/19990913_csi_and_ec.html>
<http://www.deja.com/=dnc/getdoc.xp?AN=532248147>
<http://inia.cls.org/~welsberr/ae/dembski_wa/dembski_ans.txt>
<http://inia.cls.org/~welsberr/ae/dembski_wa/sc_resp_wre.html>
<http://inia.cls.org/~welsberr/ae/dembski_wa/resp_wre_19991229.txt>
<http://inia.cls.org/~welsberr/ae/dembski_wa/resp_wre_20000202.txt>
<http://www.deja.com/=dnc/getdoc.xp?AN=536978916>
<http://inia.cls.org/~welsberr/zgists/wre/papers/antiec.html>
Wesley
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