In a message dated 9/20/2000 3:21:46 PM Pacific Daylight Time,
sejones@iinet.net.au writes:
<< [...]
Paul Nelson, a leader of the ID movement, who is apparently lurking on the
Reflector and therefore must be shaking in his boots with fear (or is it
shaking
in his sides with laughter? :-) at all this brilliant falsifying of
unfalsifiable ID,
wrote:
>>
The use of ridicule seems to suggest that Wesley indeed is on to something.
The extent of how good his argument is will be determined by the refutation
of Wesley's arguments. Oh I forgot, SJ did not really provide us with any
such arguments. Is Paul Nelson shaking in fear or laughter? We shall see once
he returns to address Wesley's comments.
Looking at Wesley's comments it becomes clear that he has once again put his
finger on a major weakness of the arguments used by ID. Perhaps Dembski et al
will deliver in the future a more coherent argument about CSI. So far their
arguments have, as Wesley has so carefully and craftfully shown, some
problems.
<< PN>Hi Wesley:
>
>Do you have any examples of natural selection
>actually generating CSI?
[...]
To which Wesley, after a bit of huffing and puffing, replied, in effect (see
below), "well actually no Paul...but we have some *great* excuses why we
haven't"!
>>
You should really read more carefully Steve. The fact is that Paul et al have
yet to show that natural selection cannot generate CSI. Wesley again is
correctly pointing out that the arguments that natural selection cannot
generate CSI are unsupported. Given also Wesley's brilliant algorithm room
argument I would like to see how IDers intend to solve this problem? If one
cannot recognize apparant CSI from actual CSI (sound familiar? just like
apparant design and design) then what's the relevance?
Not only now does ID face the issue of not being able to eliminate a natural
designer as the causal agent of design (this basically means that design
cannot reliably eliminate apparant designers from actual designers, or even
more to the point actual design from apparant design) but it is also unable
to distinguish reliably between actual and apparant CSI.
It is therefore not surprising to see Wesley's comments invoke the responses
it has so far.
<< Steve
=====================================================
On Mon, 18 Sep 2000 23:17:43 -0500 (CDT), Wesley R. Elsberry wrote:
>
>Paul and I have discussed this topic before in email, so I'll
>post some of my comments.
>
>Paul's objection 1.D.: No known instances of CSI produced by natural
>selection are known.
>
>Let's explore CSI a little closer. We have two criteria that
>combine to yield Dembski's CSI: complexity at or above 500
>bits and match to a specification. I will call this CSI_500
>in order to introduce a slightly different perspective on CSI.
>Complexity is obviously distributed along the ordinal line of
>bits. Solutions to particular problems may represent CSI at a
>lower threshold than Dembski's step function of 500 bits
>proposes, but this should be clearly noted via use of a
>modifier to relate the level of complexity involved, like
>"CSI_250" or "CSI_50".
>
>No one questions the ability of natural selection to produce
>solutions at lower complexity levels. Whether one admits
>"CSI_50" or "CSI_250" as supported by the available evidence
>does not matter. What matters is that this level of
>performance is properly credited to the action of natural
>selection.
>
>Natural selection, though, is notoriously difficult to
>empirically isolate as a mechanism of action. The level of
>evidence needed to both implicate natural selection and to
>exclude genetic drift is high. Indirect evidence, such as the
>presence of linkage disequilibrium in a population, serves as
>an indicator of the action of natural selection, but
>biologists tend to want to see a clear relation between a
>cause of selection and an effect in distribution of traits in
>a population.
>
>Taking it as possible that adaptive features of organisms are
>designed and installed by an intelligent agent via a mechanism
>other than natural selection means that we cannot use as
>examples of the efficacy of NS those phenomena in question,
>unless and until we have in hand the same kind of evidence
>that suffices for Galapagos finch beak changes. This may
>simply never be available. But if all that is available for
>the alternative hypothesis of ID is the simple fact of
>CSI_500, then I doubt that many biologists will feel compelled
>to exclude natural selection as a live possibility on those
>grounds alone.
>
>What we are then left with is an argument that we should
>exclude from consideration a mechanism of generating solutions
>that we can observe to happen in modern populations and which
>produces CSI at lower complexity levels during our brief and
>spotty periods of observation in favor of a mechanism which
>has no independent evidence of operation and which is not
>currently observable. (That is, the intelligent agent
>putatively responsible for the biological system under
>question is not known from current observation or from
>independent evidence of the period in question.) I think that
>such an argument will find it rough going to convince
>knowledgeable people of its merits.
>
>We should do the calculations to determine the CSI level of
>various examples of NS in action, or general "descent with
>modification" in action. Things like bacteria digesting nylon
>with novel enzymes or the emergence of the impedance-matching
>apparatus of the mammalian middle ear need to be explored
>quantitatively. A spread of CSI levels may indicate an
>approach to the CSI_500 level that Dembski sets, and indicate
>that no essential qualitative difference exists between the
>capability of natural evolutionary algorithms and intelligent
>agency.
>
>
>Note: Dembski does discuss justifying CSI at lower bit levels
>than the universal small probability bound of 500 bits in TDI.
>If the universal small probability bound is met, though,
>justification is simpler.
>
>Also, it would focus the discussion wonderfully if either Paul
>or Bill would provide a worked example of running some scenario
>involving natural selection through the Design Inference. We
>are urged to "do the calculation" at the end of TDI, but there
>seems to be a dearth of serious examples with a complete set
>of calculations per each.
>
>Wesley
>
>
>>
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Thu Sep 21 2000 - 00:10:43 EDT