In a message dated 10/1/2000 9:16:37 PM Pacific Daylight Time,
Nucacids@aol.com writes:
> You wrote:
>
> "You are building a strawman argument here."
>
> I don't think so. I have yet to meet an ID critic who doesn't think
> all ID proponents are either stupid, ignorant, irrational,
> dishonest, and/or motivated by emotion or religious belief.
> Let's face it. ID critics think ID is pure garbage, right?
> So how else do you explain people who take garbage seriously?
>
I think that the jump from "people think that ID is pure garbage" to "people
who believe in ID are stupid, irrational, dishonest etc" is a bit of a leap.
Nor would I state that all ID critics see ID as pure garbage. Wesley Elsberry
comes to mind as someone who has acknowledged the usefulness of ID in certain
areas of our daily life.
> FMA: I would like to hear more how ID has been useful. Could
> you refer me to some papers?
>
> No, but I don't think this is relevant.
>
True. I was just hoping to find a condensed form of your arguments. I am
quite interested in finding out about how ID is used to further our
scientific understanding.
> FMA: I have been searching on some of the terms you used:
>
> With the exception of Rubisco, these examples have been discussed
> on the ARN forum that is currently in suspension. When the board
> is up again, I can post the urls if you want. Rubisco, BTW, is something
> I plan to discuss in more detail once the stage is set.
>
Cool. The ARN boards can still be accessed though. At least the search
engines still point to inside the boards. I am presently reading the boards
and trying to understand all the arguments.
> FMA then quotes a section about enolase from someone's
> web page. Ironically, my response to this argument (on the
> ARN forum) entailed my specific hypothesis concerning this
> enzyme.
>
I have not gotten that far I believe. I assume that you are Mike Gene?
>
> FMA: This is also were a Mike Gene seems to make the somewhat silly
> assertion that "It's official. Behe's concept of irreducible complexity
> (IC) has found itself in the peer-reviewed scientific literature. "
> Of course he was correct but the paper all but demolished Behe's
> arguments.
>
> Actually, I found the paper very useful for strengthening a design
> inference (as I explained in the lengthy text of my response).
>
I apologize for using the word somewhat silly. I am presently reading your
discussion with Zeus and am learning quite a bit about your arguments.
>
> "First of all, this article shows that Behe's work has indeed
> contributed to science … what should be clear is that Behe's
> skepticism has served as an impetus for these scientists to
> develop a classification that did not exist before. Therefore,
> Behe has indeed contributed in an indirect way by serving as the
> stimulus for the creation of such a classification."
>
> Let's consider the complete context:
>
> " First of all, this article shows that Behe's work has indeed
> contributed to science. Thornhill and Ussery (T&U) write:
>
> "However, the more theoretical question about the accessibility
> by Darwinian evolution of irreducibly complex structures of
> functionally indivisible components, if such exist, has not been
> thoroughly examined. ….One factor hampering examination
> of the accessibility of biological structures by Darwinian
> evolution is the absence of a classification of possible routes.
> A suggested classification is presented here."
>
> Although one can argue about it, this can be viewed as a
> fundamental confirmation of Behe's thesis that the origin
> of these IC structures has not been explained by science.
Yet. Or that perhaps such explanations did exists (Robison's pathway on the
talk.origins website for instance comes to mind) but were never clearly
classified. Classifying the pathways revealed several pathways that Behe
might have missed. Even if IC systems had not been explained, this paper
provides for an outline of potential pathways. If Behe's argument is that
ICness is sufficient to infer design then this paper has put some doubt on
that.
"That definition has the advantage of promoting research: to state clear,
detailed evolutionary pathways; to measure probabilistic resources; to
estimate mutation rates; to determine if a given step is selected or not. It
allows for the proposal of any evolutionary scenario a Darwinist (or others)
may wish to submit, asking only that it be detailed enough so that relevant
parameters might be estimated. If the improbability of the pathway exceeds
the available probabilistic resources (roughly the number of organisms over
the relevant time in the relevant phylogenetic branch) then Darwinism is
deemed an unlikely explanation and intelligent design a likely one. "
In Defense of the Irreducibility of the Blood Clotting Cascade: Response to
Russell Doolittle, Ken Miller and Keith
Robison.
Behe also makes a good case that now in order for ICness to be a reliable
indicator of design that one need to estimate pathways and probabilities to
eliminate Darwinian pathways. Of course the same applies to ID pathways.
In my opinion this complicates matters significantly since ICness used to be
a clean way to infer design, no real pathways or explanations needed to
support ID, just the assertion that ICness meant that Darwinian pathways
could not lead to ICness. Although Behe did address indirect pathways but
considered them, without further calculations, unlikely.
"At no step --not even one-- does Doolittle give a model that includes
numbers or quantities; without numbers there is not science."
Behe pp. 95 Darwin's Black Box
> However, what should be clear is that Behe's skepticism
> has served as an impetus for these scientists to develop
> a classification that did not exist before. Therefore, Behe
> has indeed contributed in an indirect way by serving as
> the stimulus for the creation of such a classification. "
>
Sure, that's like saying that YEC'ism has contributed to research and papers
that showed their arguments to be fallacious. That in the efforts to rebut
Behe, scientists manage to categorize pathways should hardly be hailed as a
victory for ID. Perhaps a victory to Behe whose book has contributed to
clarifications of such pathways. But that's hardly what I believe Behe had in
mind.
> FMA: " It is rather ironic that you consider a critique of
> Behe's thesis to be a validation of his thesis."
>
> Why is it ironic? What I claim is that the thesis whereby
> these IC structures has not been explained by science was
> validated, not the IC = impossible to evolve
> or IC=ID thesis. It's actually a very minor point that has
> little to do with the rest of the text.
>
I disagree. That IC structures had not been explained by science was not
validated. But Behe went further, he claimed that IC structures could never
be explained by Darwinian pathways and that therefore ICness was a reliable
indicator of design. It's that thesis that I believe has been invalidated by
this paper. That Behe raised an interesting issue of ICness and has furthered
our understanding of how such systems could arise naturally.
> FMA: "Behe proposed IC as a case which rules out all gradual
> evolutionary pathways, not just two out of four
> possible gradual pathways. This oversight by Behe is
> certainly not to his credit. "
>
> I'm not interested in whether or not Behe himself is correct. I'm
> interested in the utility of the IC concept. That it rules out
> 50% of the pathways illustrates it is quite useful.
>
Perhaps. But that would have been the case even without Behe. So if your
argument is that Behe contributed to science by allowing scientists to more
clearly formulate pathways then you have a good point.
> FMA: It seems like a leap in logic to infer from the ICness
> of the system that therefore this was designed.
>
> Not if the inference is quite tentative. I think it all turns
> on how much weight you place on the shoulders of the
> conclusion. Nevertheless, I don't leap from IC to
>
My argument is merely reflecting the claims that empircal evidence exists for
ID. Some have taken the IC ID argument further than perhaps warranted by
evidence.
> design. The core of my inference is Paleyian (the origin of
> true machines are best explained by ID) and IC is simply
> a concept that helps to bring focus on this inference to
> find supporting or damaging evidence.
>
> FMA: "If it helps then fine but one should be careful to realize
> that many of the claims made by ID are quite erroneous,
> or unsupported."
>
> What is "unsupported" tends to be in the eyes of the beholder.
> As for erroneous claims, various critics have explained that
> my claims could be wrong, but no one has shown them to
> be truly erroneous (as far as I can tell).
>
I am not aware of your claims. I am talking about ID (Dembski) and IC (Behe)
> FMA: I understand that one might not want to get involved
> in addressing scientific criticism of ID but if ID wants to gain
> scientific acceptance then it must not hide.
>
> You attribute lofty goals or agendas to me that I do not have.
>
Too bad :-)
> I simply enjoy arguing and thinking about ID along with using
> it to probe the world. For me, it really does open many doors
> and it's really starting to make the world even more interesting.
>
Hard to argue against this.
> And BTW, I'm not the bogey-man coming to force-feed anyone's
> kids ID in the schools. I'm just someone, like you, who enjoys
> discussing this stuff in cyber-space.
>
Ditto.
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