Yesterday Jeffrey Shallit dissected the arguments of one, Tom Bethell, who tried to argue that Intelligent Design Creationism and Creationism were different things. It was fun to read even though we've heard the same nonsense from the IDiots several dozen times. (Bethall even used the Colin Patterson quote, for God's sake!)I thought that would be the end of it but, oh no, the IDiots have come back for more. Michael Egnor has posted a challenge to Jeffrey Shallit on the Discovery Institute blog Evolution News & Views [Jeff Shallit, Blueprints, and the Genetic Code]. After whining about how mean Jeffrey was to poor old Tom, Ednor gets to the heart of the issue. Apparently the IDiots are really taken with the fictional movie Contact. They think that because Jodie Foster can detect intelligent aliens by deciphering a signal from Vega, this means that Intelligent Design Creationism is real science.
Egnor demands that Jeffrey answer the following question ...
If the scientific discovery of a ‘blueprint’ would justify the design inference, then why is it unreasonable to infer that the genetic code was designed?Pull up your chairs and get out the popcorn. This is going to be fun.
[Photo Credit: The photograph is from the official website of the movie Contact]
17 comments :
This is amusing, because, of course, both Carl Sagan (Contact author) and Jodie Foster (star) are atheists.
Yes! Contact is my favorite movie...and what's that you say about crazy IDiots?
"They think that because Jodie Foster can detect intelligent aliens by deciphering a signal from Vega, this means that Intelligent Design Creationism is real science."
ID actually has no Jodie Foster argument, as I recall. Yet the question is a valid one, if extra-terrestrial intelligence can be detected, at least in theory, why not extra-universe (so to speak) intelligence, at least in theory, and by the same principles?
Bethell has been at this for a while. Besides being a candidate for for inclusion as one of the oldest living members of Glenn Morton's Longest Running Falsehood in Creationism club ("Darwin's theory, I believe, is on the verge of collapse.…", 1976), he is an experienced quote miner.
In short, he is a typical creationist.
"[I]f extra-terrestrial intelligence can be detected, at least in theory, why not extra-universe (so to speak) intelligence, at least in theory, and by the same principles?"
Umm, because it's not in our universe, and because "the same principles" that govern communication within our universe (e.g., the travel of signals along the geometry of spacetime) don't apply outside our universe (outside of spacetime)?
If the scientific discovery of a ‘blueprint’ would justify the design inference, then why is it unreasonable to infer that the genetic code was designed?
Hmmm.... because the "genetic code" (which he presumably misuses to mean genetic information) isn't a "blueprint"?
"... because it's not in our universe, and because "the same principles" that govern communication within our universe (e.g., the travel of signals along the geometry of spacetime) don't apply outside our universe (outside of spacetime)?"
But any effect in nature will be consistent and will involve the principles of nature, so if any extra-universe-being causes a ripple in the pond, it will be a real natural ripple. Thus extra-natural effects can be looked for, on the same principle as SETI folks do this, when they look for unintentional markers.
lee_merrill:
if extra-terrestrial intelligence can be detected, at least in theory, why not extra-universe (so to speak) intelligence, at least in theory, and by the same principles?
Since I'm usually analyzing this point, I feel obliged to reply.
First, let me note that your question is different from Egnor's. Egnor asks in effect, since we can use forensic evidence (motive, means and opportunity) to detect natural independent agents in criminology and SETI, why can't we detect other natural processes (which also makes up agents)?
Yes, we can, in spite of lack of motive. We can observe how natural processes change the genome.
Second, personally I believe that we could very well detect natural effects of interactions of all kinds. But then you would have to specify motive, means, opportunity, ie here the expected mechanism or result. This isn't what ID does.
[Btw, I don't see the philosophical point. Say that we some day will be able to initiate pocket universes by somehow making wormholes. Let us also posit that we can push information through. It seems we can do that even through singularities - in bubble experiments new bubbles are imprinted with adjustable parameters of the decoupling process. And it isn't clear how much character of singularity we are talking about here.
Then we could presumably write a coded message in the new universe background radiation that quantum processes can't erase. As an empiricist I could accept that definition of detected extra-universe intelligence, or the obvious risk for false positives in your "gods detection" scheme. But can you?]
lee_merrill:
We have popcorn left to munch on while we wait. It is instructive to now return to Egnor's specific detection scheme.
Egnor doesn't care about observing changes in the genome as we did to detect evolution. Which btw is way faster and more informative than observing changes in the genetic code.
Instead he claims that there is a specifiable "blueprint". But there isn't, there is only specifiable changes.
Let me give an illustrative example from the viewpoint of a creationist:
Information is in its technical sense slightly related to complexity as for example in Kolmogorov complexity. In common with the basic result that no one complexity measure can characterize all possible structures, Kolmogorov complexity is not well defined. In practice you can pick a specific compression scheme to compare information content, but you can't do much else with that type of information measure.
Specifically, we can identify both Shannon and Kolmogorov information associated with genomes. It isn't practically useful I think, but doable. Instead of giving references I will give another example.
Apparently a model for allele frequencies in asexual populations looks like Bayes theorem.
Bayes theorem is also a model for trial and error bayesian inferences. There it decides which hypotheses should be weakened or strengthened. By that model we could call the population's alleles hypotheses and the frequencies its current theory of the environment.
This is information that the population picks up in its genome at selection by the environment. It is contingent. Changing environment will lose the meaning of the information. Over time it will make the population forget the old environment and learn about the new one.
Not an especially exciting observation except for the analogies we can make. But more interestingly we can learn a lot:
We can see that even if genomes doesn't exhibit static and communicable information, it has definable and measurable information.
We can't point to a specific feature of a system and say "this is the information". What we can say is that we can observe information change.
In the Kolmogorov complexity case, comparing differences in compression before and after by the chosen compression method. In the Shannon information case, data loss over a channel by the chosen coding method. In the analogy I used it is by observing allele frequencies change.
Information is a relative, not absolute, measure. And information isn't an object, nor a specific characteristic. Instead it is a property of the whole system.
Information needs extrinsic models (is semantic) to be useful. Yet that usefulness consist solely in observing changes, not in communicating intrinsic information. Intrinsic information isn't specifiable (per above), nor communicable as we can only measure changes.
The above is confirming well known properties about complexity and information.
But we can also extract well known consequences for biology: information isn't an especially useful measure or concern for biology. Genetic or phenotypic information is contingent on the environment, see above.
Okay, what we can observe is changes per your own chosen specification. Above it was by observing changes in allele frequencies. Observing changes in allele frequencies is exactly what evolution already tells us to do. And, I might add, in a much more, um, informative fashion.
"Then we could presumably write a coded message in the new universe background radiation that quantum processes can't erase."
Is there any current science (or at least well-regarded hypothesis) to show a possibility of anything but randomness arising from a universe-creation event?
Jeffrey Shallit is only half right, when he says, “Creationism is the belief that the Book of Genesis is literally, scientifically true — that the earth was created in six days, etc.” That’s only true if one is from a rather dogmatic minority of Christians, mostly Baptists. Interpreting the word “day” as an epoch is also a literal interpretation, and is the one used by progressive creationists who agree with the substance of raw scientific data. Evolutionists much prefer an easy target, however, and fixate on the young-Earthers. I wonder if any of Sandwalk's fans have ever read Genesis 1 objectively and with scholarship.
Dragon
Jud:
Is there any current science (or at least well-regarded hypothesis) to show a possibility of anything but randomness arising from a universe-creation event?
No, that is why a code would stand out assuming it isn't drown by that background.
Jud - said:
“Is there any current science (or at least well-regarded hypothesis) to show a possibility of anything but randomness arising from a universe-creation event?
“No, that is why a code would stand out assuming it is not drown by that background.”
Dragon replies - Jud, you obviously have not read Hugh Ross' "Creation as Science" yet. Presumably because you are hung-up on the possibility that any inference of "intelligence" is a bad thing. I presume that you are intelligent and neither my assumption nor your intelligence is a bad thing. Go for it. Reading the book does not make you an IDiot, primarily because Hugh Ross is definitely not an ID’er.
Dragon
Jeffrey Shallit is only half right, when he says, “Creationism is the belief that the Book of Genesis is literally, scientifically true — that the earth was created in six days, etc.”
Jeffrey Shallit didn't say anything of the sort.
"I wonder if any of Sandwalk's fans have ever read Genesis 1 objectively and with scholarship."
Me! Me! I have! Including formal coursework at college. The very strong conclusion I have come to, after such serious reading, is that Genesis can not in any way, shape, or form be viewed as scientifically instructive or descriptive of the origin of biodiversity. Genesis is not without its merits, but textbook science is not one of them.
Dragon said... "I wonder if any of Sandwalk's fans have ever read Genesis I objectively and with scholarship."
Mark said – “Me! Me! I have!”
Dragon replies – Mark, can you be a bit more specific about what Genesis I may or may not offer, in terms of being scientifically instructive, besides the very broad term “biodiversity.” Also, I know of no one who claims that the Bible is a “science textbook.” However, the people who wrote it and the implicit and explicit predictions made by them were made in the context of the same physical universe to which we are all confined. Biblical references to natural phenomena are testable by scientific, historical and anthropological means. A document that has been attacked and defended for over 4000 years is a perfectly good document to use for comparison and testing (without being considered a scientific textbook), and at least as good as Darwin’s 150 year-old “Origin of Species.”
With respect, remember… Genesis I:I does say “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” This was a notion rejected by naturalists till Einstein and for decades more.
Dragon
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