Responding to the comments from Damion starting here.
I missed the part of the article where you explained
YOU keep framing the issue in terms of "A Designer would've ___". That's what the BEAR article discusses, and yes the atavisms and vestiges are genera of the same question.
I’m asking someone who believes in an intelligent designer (anyone on the thread, really, not just you) to explain a particular pattern that actually exists in the data. Common descent makes sense of this pattern, but so far as I can tell, the design hypothesis does not.
The Designer made them that way. That makes sense of it, and explains it.
Now, I predict based on nearly innumerable past experiences that you're going to come back with "the Designer wanted to make it look like common descent?" Which I've already answered in at least two ways, which I will repeat here so everyone can keep score, and so maybe you'll actually advance the convo.
1) Your failure to recognise the many other sound and devastating refutations to Darwinism coupled with its total lack of evidence should help you understand that the fault lies with YOU for imposing the common descent paradigm on the facts, even though (by your own admission) the CD hypothesis doesn't explain all of them.
2) No, I don't know why the Designer did it that way, and neither do you, but it doesn't get us anywhere to keep asking that question over and over, esp when you admit you don't know anythg about the Designer.
Now, I hope that's the last time we ever have to discuss this.
Okay, then, what exactly should we expect to find on this hypothesis?
Meyer lists a dozen predictions on ID (scanned here for your convenience).
I listed quite a few in my BEAR1 article. I commend the Bible to your reading.
Refusing to engage in pointless name-calling counts as a defense, now?
Far from pointless. But clearly you can't bring yourself to bring one of y'all's heroes down a few notches. Fawning duly noted.
Of course there is a distinction between retrodictions and predictions, but both are necessary to get a working theory off the ground.
Not for historical questions. I'm sure PREdictions would be nice, but just b/c I posit George Washington crossed the Delaware as a conclusion of research, I don't need predictions about that to conclude it's true.
Is there any evidence from the tree of life or its fossils that might not be explainable under creation, on your view?
1) That's your job, really, as the skeptic.
2) One of the reasons I continue to blv in Christianity is that it succeeds in answering far more questions than other competing worldviews.
A creator can do anything it wants, up to and including speciation by common descent.
CAN, sure. But DID He? The Bible says He didn't. There's no evidence in CD's favor. the case doesn't look good.
Massive assumptions such as:
1) Individuals within a species exhibit new variations over time
2) Some variations are less adaptive to the environment than others
3) The Earth is really rather mind-bogglingly
Of all those, only #3 is an assumption. 1 and 2 are OBSERVATIONS.
The assumptions include the circular dating schemes you engage in, the interpretive grid you force onto the rocks you find in the ground, including ones that look like former life forms, dirt and water mixing together can somehow develop into elements of life that can convey vast amounts of information, that rocks mixed with water can produce information out of nowhere, and assuming that finch beaks getting larger and then going back to their original size means that rocks can become giraffes, given enough time.
That's more what I had in mind.
1. Does your concept of creationism have anything to say about how and why pseudogenes are distributed in species?
How, sure - God created and microevol affects the creation.
Why, not particularly, beyond the obvious, such as "God did it b/c He liked it and for His glory". Same for the other questions.
Well you can always posit that God supernaturally made the die come up six every single time, but there is a much simpler explanation to hand.
1) Simple is not always true. In fact, it's often NOT true.
2) How do you know it's simpler? God doing it seems to me a lot simpler than quintillions upon quintillions of coincidental occurrences. Maybe I'm missing sthg. If God is involved, it's not chance at all. You know that, right? So you have a workman in a workshop, or you have 10^gazillion rolls of the dice. I'm gonna go with the former as simpler.
I do not assume a given framework apriori.
Sure you do. You assume laws of science and mathematics exist. You assume your senses are reliable, that there really is an outside world and other minds. You assume your dating methods are correct. You commit the fallacy of affirming the consequent every single time you conclude something on the basis of observation, but that doesn't bother you. Your assumptions go on and on.
Surely you are not claiming that atavistic tails and GULOP pseudogenes (neither of which are at all functional in humans) are part of a deliberate design?
Damion, am I a creationist? Do creationists believe that God created everything?
If you think that God did in fact make some junk, on purpose, feel free to say so.
Ah, some Darwinism of the gaps! It's junk, you think, b/c you don't know what function it could possibly perform. So, since you know all, it's junk!
Micro-evolution cannot account for any of these elements, because they are exhibited across different species within clades.
You, a Darwinist, are objecting to coincidence? Please!
24 comments:
Rho:
2) No, I don't know why the Designer did it that way, and neither do you, ...
Did the Designer use common descent to create different species, or not? And how do you know?
You seem to be arguing against CD when proposed by evolutionists, and then arguing that the Designer could have done it that way.
No He didn't, b/c He told us how He did it, and it wasn't that way.
Would you agree that the Designer created different species with the appearance of common descent?
No. CD is in your imagination.
Well, now I'm confused. It seemed to me that the "historical fact" referred to "a particular pattern that actually exists in the data." This "particular pattern" being the appearance of common descent.
Now it seems that you deny this particular pattern exists.
It also contradicts your assertion 2) wherein you state that the Designer did it that way, you just don't know why.
YOU keep framing the issue in terms of "A Designer would've _____".
No, no, no. Once again, I've framed my arguments as "Common descent would have ______" and then explained how we’d expect to see vestiges and atavisms distributed within clades if common descent were true. Thus far, every atavism, vestige, and pseudogene has fit the pattern that Darwin foresaw in the only diagram that he included in the Origin.
I leave it to you to show how creationism implies what a particular designer would have done respecting such things as pseudogenes. I doubt your theory can tell us anything about these features, beyond noting that “Whatever we find is what God did.”
The Designer made them that way. That makes sense of it, and explains it.
An explanation logically relates the facts to the theory. Merely stating that your theory encompasses facts X,Y,Z cannot be called an explanation. Here is what an explanation looks like:
“A pseudogene is (by definition) the result of a mutation which prevents a working gene from being expressed. The theory of common descent predicts that pseudogenes can only be found in descendants of ancestors who had functional copies of those same genes, because a pseudogene is a broken copy has been generated from a transcription error of the working copy.”
Here is what an explanation emphatically does not look like:
“It is that way because a magical mind made it so, for mysterious reasons, by means unknown.”
Your failure to recognize the many other sound and devastating refutations to Darwinism coupled with its total lack of evidence…
I admit that I’ve not seen any valid (much less devastating) refutations to Darwinism just yet. Can you cite or link to the best one?
As to total lack of evidence, I’ve been discussing the predictive power of Darwin’s theory to logically entail the specific pattern of every single pseudogene every discovered, over a century after the theory was originally postulated. If that doesn't count as evidence, I guess nothing does.
I’ll have to address Meyer’s predictions later, but first, I should ask whether you stand behind them all.
You assume your senses are reliable, that there really is an outside world and other minds.
Yup. So what? Everyone does that, out of necessity.
You assume laws of science and mathematics exist.
Nope. We test them out. You think the law of universal gravitation
didn't withstand rigorous scrutiny? Do you think it wasn't tested against new evidence such as observed comet trajectories?
You assume your dating methods are correct.
Nope. We test them out.
You commit the fallacy of affirming the consequent every single time you conclude something on the basis of observation...
If I see a QWERTY keyboard in front of me, then there is one. I see one, so there is one.
How exactly is that affirming the consequent?
Now let's really talk paradigms for a moment. Here are the assumptions that I want everyone to make:
1) The outside world is really there, other minds and warts and all.
2) We really are observing it.
3) Our observations are reliable most of the time.
4) Our reasoning is reliable at least some of the time.
I do not wish anyone to presume that the universe is naught but matter in motion, nor that it is populated by powerful invisible immaterial minds. These are questions which must be examined without presupposing the truth of what we are trying to prove.
The ideal mindset, IMHO, is that of the curious agnostic Vulcan, who hopes to convert to an Earth religion (possibly secular humanism) and it trying to logically determine which of the many theories about the world best fit the facts that she has available.
Pardon me fat fingers. I meant "is trying" above. My bad.
determine which of the many theories about the world best fit the facts that she has available.
The problem that this isn't the way it works. Facts are interpreted by a context, and that is really what a worldview is, a massive context used to interpret all known facts. They do not interpret themselves. How do you expect facts to guide you when competing pictures of the world can explain the same set of facts in different ways?
NAL,
It seemed to me that the "historical fact" referred to "a particular pattern that actually exists in the data." This "particular pattern" being the appearance of common descent.
To me and many others it's the appearance of creation. I think you're a bit confused as to what I meant.
Damion,
Thus far, every atavism, vestige, and pseudogene has fit the pattern that Darwin foresaw in the only diagram that he included in the Origin.
I doubt it, but I'll take your word for it for the sake of argument here.
I leave it to you to show how creationism implies what a particular designer would have done respecting such things as pseudogenes.
I'm not really qualified to make such a judgment.
I doubt your theory can tell us anything about these features, beyond noting that “Whatever we find is what God did.”
Given that I'm looking for internally consistent explanations, ones that reflect a logical worldview, that is perfectly sufficient.
Merely stating that your theory encompasses facts X,Y,Z cannot be called an explanation.
Sure it does - explaining what caused the fact in question is an explanation.
“A pseudogene is (by definition) the result of a mutation which prevents a working gene from being expressed. The theory of common descent predicts that pseudogenes can only be found in descendants of ancestors who had functional copies of those same genes, because a pseudogene is a broken copy has been generated from a transcription error of the working copy.”
Creationism says: “A pseudogene is (by definition) the result of a mutation which prevents a working gene from being expressed. The theory of creation predicts that pseudogenes can only be found in descendants of ancestors who had functional copies of those same genes, because a pseudogene is a broken copy has been generated from a transcription error of the working copy, and this of course does not imply common descent or macroevolution, since we don't deny microevol and mutations."
See how easy it is when you actually understand what the other side is saying? It's much like when you rule out natural causes for creationists, as if we don't hold to BOTH supernatural AND natural.
“It is that way because a magical mind made it so, for mysterious reasons, by means unknown.”
Evolution much more resembles magic, actually.
Does it make you feel better to use so many strawmen? Is that why you do it?
And not all the reasons are mysterious - I say God did it for His glory b/c He thought it was good. Nothing mysterious about that.
I admit that I’ve not seen any valid (much less devastating) refutations to Darwinism just yet. Can you cite or link to the best one?
Anyone can read the many discussions on that topic on this blog. Someone who makes so many strawmen and ignores refutations is not the best judge. But there is always hope for change for you.
I’ve been discussing the predictive power of Darwin’s theory to logically entail the specific pattern of every single pseudogene every discovered
Which creation can also acct for. So in reality you have nothing.
I’ll have to address Meyer’s predictions later, but first, I should ask whether you stand behind them all.
Hmm, good question. I'll have to get back to you on that.
You assume your senses are reliable, that there really is an outside world and other minds.
Yup. So what? Everyone does that, out of necessity.
1) You just conceded that, contrary to your earlier assertion, you DO in fact make assumptions.
2) The question is not whether everyone does that, but whether the worldview one espouses can account for it. Why should I believe that my senses are reliable, if I'm just atoms banging around?
You assume laws of science and mathematics exist.
Nope. We test them out. You think the law of universal gravitation didn't withstand rigorous scrutiny?
You're apparently unfamiliar with the problem of induction.
You commit the fallacy of affirming the consequent every single time you conclude something on the basis of observation...
If I see a QWERTY keyboard in front of me, then there is one. I see one, so there is one.
There are plenty of other possibilities - your eyes don't work right, your brain doesn't work right, you're a brain in a vat, you've been taken over by an alien...
I know you think those are unlikely, but that's not the same as PROVING them wrong. I'd be interested in what evidence you can bring fwd to prove your assertion. Or you could do the rational thing and admit you have faith in all sorts of things, but that would require intellectual honesty.
Here are the *****assumptions***** that I want everyone to make:
Earlier you had told me you don't have faith in anything.
I assume you retract that statement. I applaud you.
I don't grant these assumptions. What do we do now?
All I can say, Rho, is that if you think "goddidit that way" counts as an "explanation", then it's just as well you're not a scientist, or an engineer, or even attending a science class. I can just imagine the examination:
Why does gold exhibit a cubical face-centered crystal structure?
Goddidit.
Why does the Sun shine?
Goddidit.
Why is grass green?
Goddidit.
Fail
But, but, I explained everything!
cheers from icy Vienna, zilch
It's much like when you rule out natural causes for creationists, as if we don't hold to BOTH supernatural AND natural.
except when discussing if natural processes can create 'information' of course, then the goalposts shift so that there are no longer any natural processes
Facts are interpreted by a context
So what context is used to interpret this claim to fact? ie, is it a fact that all facts are interpreted according to context? if we apply this to all claims to fact (such as this one), we end up with an infinite regress
or is it just a brute fact that should be accepted as true? if so then it's no longer obvious that all facts do require a context
and that is really what a worldview is, a massive context used to interpret all known facts.
If it's true or a very good explanation of a vast number of facts, it should also be able to guide us towards discovery of other facts very efficiently. this is a massive plus in favour of science
but 'God did it' doesn't help us do this because it's too vague, the same way as astrological hypotheses don't help me plan out my life because they are far too vague as well
They do not interpret themselves.
Again, you have presented a claim to fact that seemingly we are expected to take at face value
how do you come up with the rules for these interpretations? for what reason should someone who doesn't share your worldview accept those rules? you may just be interpreting them in the context of your worldview and not theirs, after all. possibly they may think the criteria you offer are OK in and of themselves, but not sufficient to evaluate their worldview. or what if, even if they agree with your criteria, they simply don't think your explanation meets your own standard but you do?
How do you expect facts to guide you when competing pictures of the world can explain the same set of facts in different ways?
With appeal to things like its ability to guide us to further discoveries
appeal to occam's razor to rule out unnecessary elaborations
it [the explanation] has to actually do some work without becoming caught up in excessively trivial levels of detail
ie on one hand it shouldn't simply be consistent with the data, because if you are vague enough anything can count as an 'explanation' simply because it happens to be consistent with just about any discovery eg astrology, marxism, Goddidit, the fact polar bears' fur is white are consistent with various and multiple contradictory views purely due to the fact they are consistent with a lot of things - but they aren't explaining anything because they are so vague (this point being something Rhology continually fails to understand for some reason)
on the other you don't need to go over ever minor turn of the wheel, the speed to the nearest cm per hour of each car, or the engineering history of each car to explain why a traffic accident occurred - you just need the outline of events so it's clear enough what the reasons are for why a particular set of events occurred (note: I'll preempt Rhology missing the point by stating now this example is nothing to do with whether the event is directly observable or not, it is merely to illustrate that while an explanation needs detail it doesn't have to have ludicrous levels of detail before being acceptable)
zilch,
See here, please.
Okay, this particular is about pseudogenes, but pretty much the same stuff could be said about other genes which don’t code for anything, such as ERV sequences which we find at the same part of the genome in different species.
Creationism says: “A pseudogene is (by definition) the result of a mutation which prevents a working gene from being expressed. The theory of creation predicts that pseudogenes can only be found in descendants of ancestors who had functional copies of those same genes, because a pseudogene is a broken copy has been generated from a transcription error of the working copy, and this of course does not imply common descent or macroevolution, since we don't deny microevolution and mutations."
Okay, now we are getting somewhere. What you are saying is that every pseudogene was once a working copy, within the same species in which the pseudogene is now extant. Humans, fruit bats, and guinea pigs all used to be able to metabolize vitamin C, just like other mammals, but all their GLO genes broke, each independently and over the course of microevolution within a species. It is an interesting theory, but it cannot predict why closely related species have pseudogenes which are broken in the same way, whereas phylogenetically distant species have pseudogenes which are broken in different ways. Common descent predicts that different species within a clade will inherit the same non-functional genes from their common ancestor. How does creation account for the fact that exactly the same nucleotide is missing from humans as other primates?
Here is Coyne again:
The sequences of human and chimp φGLO, for example, resemble each other closely, but differ more from the φGLO of orangutans, which are more distant relatives. What’s more, the sequence of guinea pig φGLO is very different from that of all primates.
This is precisely as one expects on common descent, because more time since the putative common ancestor (of primates and guinea pigs) would mean more mutations accumulate within in the GLO pseudogene.
Moreover, the φGLO is just one case. We can find pseudogenes in every species, and in each case the broken copies are distributed (across species) in so as to be clustered by clade.
I say God did it for His glory b/c He thought it was good.
It glorifies God to break functional genes in the same way across all the primates? If so, how so?
More importantly, though, I should note once again that the distribution of pseudogenes had to come out a certain way, on common descent. Your God theory does not require that they be distributed in any particular way, AFAIK.
Okay this post is about world-views and epistemology and such...
Given that I'm looking for internally consistent explanations, ones that reflect a logical worldview, that is perfectly sufficient.
I’m looking for which framework or particular worldview (e.g. Atheism, Baha’ism, Christianism, Daoism, etc.) explains the facts that we can all agree upon by observing the world around us. It seems clear to me that we oughtn't assume the view we are trying to prove, but do our best to approach the problem from the outside, using only the assumptions that all humans must make.
…you DO in fact make assumptions.
I listed them somewhere around here. Nowhere in the list will you find metaphysical naturalism, although upon reflection I should have included something about memory, and failed to do so, IIRC.
The question is not whether everyone does that, but whether the worldview one espouses can account for it. Why should I believe that my senses are reliable, if I'm just atoms banging around?
Now we're talking about an internal critique of E&N. Part of that worldview is that species came about via natural selection. Does natural selection tend to reward better eyesight or hearing in mammals, especially those which are (in the wild state) both predators and prey? To state the question is to answer it.
How does creation account for the fact that exactly the same nucleotide is missing from humans as other primates?
1) Once again you affirm the consequent - a fallacy related to your blind acceptance of inductive judgments. But that's not news - you do it literally every time you make a statement you think is factual.
2) Given that, ANYthing I say that does not incorporate a logical fallacy would be preferable to your own conclusion.
3) Positing divine intervention would be perfectly reasonable within my worldview.
4) Or a 'coincidence'. Let not the Darwinist who believes we are here as a result of a confluence of coincidental events numbering in the quadrillions of quadrillions and more complain about my invocation of coincidence!
And look, honestly, before you complain as I know you're dying to do, answer the charge of constant logical fallacy that you employ in science. Answer the problem of induction.
Affirming the consequent is largely a matter of how one frames an argument. If you choose to reframe my argument in an invalid form, that is your problem not mine.
Here is the argument again:
A - The totality of relevant evidence about life on Earth is either predicted or explained by common descent, but not by any competing theory
B - Common descent is most probably true, relative to any competing theory
• If A, then B
• A
• :. B
Now this is presumably where you say that unbelievers are not allowed to engage in inductive reasoning, for some reason or another. That way, we don't have to talk about which theories better fit the actual evidence and can retreat yet again to our presuppositions.
To address the spectre of 'affriming the consequent' I have to get annoyingly technical for the moment, because the underlying epistemic problem here is one of how to properly implement Bayesian inference:
H1 = Common Descent
H2 = Intelligent Design
E = Collected relevant evidence (e.g. orthologous pseudogenes & ERVs, genetic and phenotypic homologies, biogeography, etc.)
The Bayesian equations are as follows:
P(H1|E) = P(E|H1) * P(H1) / P(E)
P(H2|E) = P(E|H2) * P(H2) / P(E)
Mostly I've been focusing my arguments on the contention that P(E|H1) is close to one, because the collected evidence about the nature of life on Earth (E) is either consistent with or logically necessitated by the truth of H1.
Coyne's bad design arguments, by contrast, are implicitly addressing P(E|H2) and concluding that it is low if the intelligent designer is presumed to be brighter than the author himself, who is confident that he could have done better than, say, the recurrent laryngeal nerve. These are the lines of argument addressed by one of the BEAR posts.
who is confident that he could have done better
Spare me the arrogant chest-puffing until you actually do something that remotely approaches such. Talk is cheap.
Dr. Funkenstein,
I had forgotten that I had even posted on this thread.
So what context is used to interpret this claim to fact? or is it just a brute fact that should be accepted as true?
This gets chalked up to me writing with too much brevity. I think this flows from the definition of what evidence is. The claim that was made earlier is we should "[try] to logically determine which of the many theories about the world best fit the facts that she has available." Now this essentially is appealing to evidence as a means for validating how one should view the world. Evidence is formed when bare facts are interpreted within a context. In this way, the context imparts meaning to the fact. I don't think this is too shocking of a notion. Finding a deceased person takes on different meanings in light of a suicide note or an angry spouse. The context here dictates the meaning associated the fact of finding a dead person.
Now, my contention is that the interpration scheme of methodological naturalism used in science limits the types of meaning that can be derived from the scientific facts collected during an experiment. If one truly limits themselves to a naturalistic methodology, then should they really be surprised that the evidence (fact + interpretation) that they obtain from the scientific experiment is naturalistic as well?
This takes us to the crucial question, if scientific evidence is formed by interpreting through a naturalistic context, how can it possibly be an independent judge between naturalistic and supernaturalistic worldviews?
If it's true or a very good explanation of a vast number of facts, it should also be able to guide us towards discovery of other facts very efficiently. this is a massive plus in favour of science
Well now we are slipping into a different kind of truth test: pragmatism. The problem here is that pragmatism as a theory of truth does not necessarily tell you if something is true, but only if it works. Granted, if something is true then it will work as well, but just because something works does not mean it is true. I think we both agree that pantheism is false, but it has apparently worked for a large number of people for a long period of time.
Another criticism of a pragmatic theory of truth is that it really requires us to have knowledge of the long-term "consequences" to effectively judge whether or not something works. Sure the theory may work now, but how do we know that some other experiment later will not invalidate it? In this regard, I think that a pragmatic truth test ultimately can be reduced to fideism.
As an aside, I think Christianity is on safe ground here. I think one could make a very strong argument that modern science itself is the fruit of the Christian mindset that there is a God of order who placed laws in the universe for us to discover.
Again, you have presented a claim to fact that seemingly we are expected to take at face value
Then please explain how a fact can independently generate its own context and derive meaning from itself. I'll give you start. "Mr. Brown is wet." Now get to it. What is the true meaning of this fact? Is it that Mr. Brown got caught in the rain? Did he fall into a koi pond? Or, was he hosed by a nasty neighbor kid?
This is a bit tongue-in-cheek, but the point is that a bare fact demands a context in order to be interpreted. I think this is pretty obvious.
*Part 2*
how do you come up with the rules for these interpretations? for what reason should someone who doesn't share your worldview accept those rules? you may just be interpreting them in the context of your worldview and not theirs, after all. possibly they may think the criteria you offer are OK in and of themselves, but not sufficient to evaluate their worldview. or what if, even if they agree with your criteria, they simply don't think your explanation meets your own standard but you do?
This is exactly my point! Different people can use different interpretive grids (or contexts if you prefer) to look at data. And the evidence derived from that context is totally useless for overturning a competing explanation based on a different context.
With appeal to things like its ability to guide us to further discoveries
Again though, this is pragmatisim. Look, I agree with you that methodological naturalism is great for the most part because God did establish some natural laws. But, I am not a naturalist and I feel free to compare the evidence from science against other sources of non-scientific knowledge. Furthermore, I am not afraid to appeal to an anti-realistic view of a theory if I truly feel the non-scientific knowledge is particularly compelling.
appeal to occam's razor to rule out unnecessary elaborations
Yes, and indispensable tool. However, I think you are cutting too deep. God is necessary to make sense of the world.
it [the explanation] has to actually do some work without becoming caught up in excessively trivial levels of detail
All for simple theories.
I'm going to pass on the rest because I am tired, and I don't think they are the meat of the discussion here.
Cheers
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