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Intelligent Design vs the Methodological Naturalism standard for science

socharlie

Active Member
Once again, there has been no *testable* hypothesis concerning ID yet proposed.

We agree that many scientists are and have been theists. But that is a *very* different thing than being a proponent of ID. Personal beliefs are not the same as scientifically validated beliefs, even when those beliefs are held by a scientist.
we exist
 

Polymath257

Think & Care
Staff member
Premium Member
as we established, if it were written on unobtainium ,rocks on a beach, felt tip, clouds in the sky, this would make no difference to the evidence for ID, which is the information specified, not the medium it is specified with

Not if the material can produce things that look like writing in a natural way. Certain types of flow structures can be mistaken as meaningful. For that matter, people find faces in clouds all the time. Those are NOT meaningful.


precisely, we know creative intelligence can produce lots of specified information, we have no verified examples of nature doing likewise- not to say it's not impossible, just which is 'simpler' in terms of better established, concluding ID is an inference to known mechanisms rather than unknown ones.

On the contrary, we know of many situations where complexity increases because of non-linear dynamics. 'Specified information' is a non-starter until you describe what you mean by 'specified'.

It's very interesting though, that you complain the analogy is unfair because it allows the remote possibility of an intelligent agent getting lost on the island...

No, it is unfair because it is a false analogy. Once again, it is all based on what we know about the situation: what do the natural processes produce, what are the possible intelligent agents, etc. In the case of a lost human on an island, we know enough to make a simple conclusion. That is simply not the case on a cosmic scale. In fact, what we *do* know argues against such an intelligence.

Yet you have no complaint being granted 100% a fully functional natural mechanism, fully capable of producing the exact same result. We have absolutely no evidence of any such exo-cosmic creation device in reality.

So the analogy is actually heavily biased towards a naturalistic explanation, yet you still choose ID. We would have to utterly rule out ID to an impossible degree to resort to the wave action as the best answer right? How do you go about ruling out God to anything like this extent?

No, it is NOT heavily biased in favor of a natural explanation. Here is a better analogy. We find a piece of bone on the ground and want to know whether natural processes split it apart or an intelligent agent did so. How do we determine this? Well, we know both intelligent agents and natural agents can produce split bones, so we go to the next level. What possible natural processes could produce that particular type of split in a bone? What sorts of intelligent agency could do it? Are there significant differences in the results of the two types of process? If not, then no conclusion can be drawn, although if an intelligent agent in the vicinity is known, that increases the likelihood of such a bit.

In the case of cosmic agency, we are still figuring out what natural processes can be expected to produce. We have no intelligent agency *ever* detected at that scale. The *simplest* way to proceed is to figure out more fully what natural processes can do and see if they are enough to explain the observations. As long as they are, or are even remotely close, that is the preferred choice *because* no intelligent agents off of Earth have ever been found.

Now, if we manage to travel to another star system and land on a planet with 'ordinary' geology, but still find structures that cannot be produced by said geology, *then* we have an argument for intelligent agents.

How do I go about ruling out God? Easy: we resort to supernatural explanations, well, never. Because supernatural explanations are not actual explanations: they are not testable, they are not predictive, and they are nothing other than 'just so' stories.


if you assume an unguided information generator, of course we can't give an exact figure for the odds, we just know it is astronomically low, again hence multiverse theory-

Wrong, and wrong. We do NOT know it is astronomically low until we have an inkling of mechanism. A naive calculation of the probability of a protein folding correctly gives wildly wrong answers. it does so because it doesn't take into account the mechanisms, specifically how amino acids interact with water. T
rying to do a calculation without knowing details is pointless, at best.

As for the multiverse theory, it was NOT proposed to get around astronomically low probabilities. Multiverse theories are a direct consequence of attempting to unit quantum mechanics and general relativity into a consistent theory. This was a *major* challenge for decades. But *every* way we have found to do so leads to some sort of multiverse.
That is NOT conclusive, but it is interesting on the theoretical level.

the problem is like the waves, you'd also have to rule out any intelligent agent to allow chance to win out, and we have no basis to do that other than personal preference

Exactly the opposite, we rule out natural processes to conclude intelligent agency. Sometimes this is easy to do (modification of rocks to have recognizable letters on it). And other times the natural explanation is the simpler.[/QUOTE]
 
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Guy Threepwood

Mighty Pirate
Not if the material can produce things that look like writing in a natural way. Certain types of flow structures can be mistaken as meaningful. For that matter, people find faces in clouds all the time. Those are NOT meaningful.

Of course not, neither is the letter I, but 'Eat at Joes' written in the clouds tells us with a great deal of confidence that a sky writer did it

because the improbability of each combinatorial sequence character compounds the rest- until the odds of one chapter of Shakespeare being written by a blind chimp is less than one in all the elementary particles in the universe. The universal constants are a tad more unlikely still



On the contrary, we know of many situations where complexity increases because of non-linear dynamics. 'Specified information' is a non-starter until you describe what you mean by 'specified'.

^ yes crucial point, a pile of bricks is more 'complex' in structure than a neat brick wall. But the wall better displays ID because it has more specified information as opposed to unspecified or 'Shannon' information. 'specified' is just a convenient word, but the principle is that this information I write now, specifies an emergent/separate function or purpose- in this case ultimately convincing you I am totally right! :)

And this gets to the deeper meaning of specified information, which cannot exist without the capacity for anticipation, that in turn cannot exist without creative intelligence- that's putting a deeper issue very briefly



No, it is NOT heavily biased in favor of a natural explanation. Here is a better analogy. We find a piece of bone on the ground and want to know whether natural processes split it apart or an intelligent agent did so. How do we determine this? Well, we know both intelligent agents and natural agents can produce split bones, so we go to the next level. What possible natural processes could produce that particular type of split in a bone? What sorts of intelligent agency could do it? Are there significant differences in the results of the two types of process? If not, then no conclusion can be drawn, although if an intelligent agent in the vicinity is known, that increases the likelihood of such a bit.

That's a perfectly good analogy but it removes the specific issue of information we are discussing, if the bone has a hole for a necklace and 'Dave loves Jenny' etched in it, that changes the odds dramatically


In the case of cosmic agency, we are still figuring out what natural processes can be expected to produce. We have no intelligent agency *ever* detected at that scale. The *simplest* way to proceed is to figure out more fully what natural processes can do and see if they are enough to explain the observations. As long as they are, or are even remotely close, that is the preferred choice *because* no intelligent agents off of Earth have ever been found.

again, that would preclude SETI from concluding ID in mathematical sequences, by the exact same rationale I conclude it in universal mathematics.

But I agree entirely with the logic, what can intelligence do v. what can nature do, hierarchical digital information systems have only one proven source out of these two.

Now, if we manage to travel to another star system and land on a planet with 'ordinary' geology, but still find structures that cannot be produced by said geology, *then* we have an argument for intelligent agents.

agreed also, this logic works on earth, it works in cosmic radio waves, it works on other planets, I just don't see the basis to suddenly pivot, and forbid the same logic applying to the origins of the universe and life

How do I go about ruling out God? Easy: we resort to supernatural explanations, well, never. Because supernatural explanations are not actual explanations: they are not testable, they are not predictive, and they are nothing other than 'just so' stories.

So we can do the same for anything

#1 define supernatural as 'not an explanation'
#2 label the theory 'supernatural'
#3 hence said theory is not an explanation

That is precisely the circular reasoning Hoyle used to dismiss the BB

You argued yourself that you consider intelligence a natural phenomena, -- not a supernatural one

so why allow other natural phenomena to compete on the cosmogony playing field, but prohibit this one? Other than the fact it would win far too easily?

I have no need to do the reverse, I can grant you the existence of your waves on the beach, your multiverse, any unguided mechanism you like, ID still has the greater power of explanation



Wrong, and wrong. We do NOT know it is astronomically low until we have an inkling of mechanism. A naive calculation of the probability of a protein folding correctly gives wildly wrong answers. it does so because it doesn't take into account the mechanisms, specifically how amino acids interact with water. T
rying to do a calculation without knowing details is pointless, at best.


As for the multiverse theory, it was NOT proposed to get around astronomically low probabilities. Multiverse theories are a direct consequence of attempting to unit quantum mechanics and general relativity into a consistent theory. This was a *major* challenge for decades. But *every* way we have found to do so leads to some sort of multiverse.
That is NOT conclusive, but it is interesting on the theoretical level.

again you could argue both points with Hawking, he explicitly credits the multiverse with power to create our otherwise improbable universe 'eventually' because it has infinite attempts.

Of course the multiverse comes equipped with one restriction, making sure that one thing must never be created: anything that could be described as God, since that would ruin the entire point. Yet apparently this flying spaghetti multiverse has already created intelligent beings, bent on reverse engineering their own universe, with no inherent barriers (according to Andre Linde) to creating their own one day....

oops!

I must run for now but I appreciate the civil debate
 
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It Aint Necessarily So

Veteran Member
Premium Member
When you hear hooves, think horses, not zebras.

I heard that quite a bit in my education. I have an amusing anecdote for you.

Have you ever heard of Pete's Pond in Botswana? National Geographic set up a live streaming camera so that people like us could tune in and see what was coming to the watering hole to drink. One evening, I was watching, and heard the clip clop of hooves off camera and approaching. I thought how odd it was that there were horses there. You can probably guess what it was. I laughed out loud at myself.
 

It Aint Necessarily So

Veteran Member
Premium Member
"if it is based on observing the natural processes of the natural world and making inferences by induction from observations then its science."

Science is a very difficult thing to define, the above definition rules out forensic science, anthropology, psychology by restricting it to purely natural forces.

I think that you're having a problem with the word natural. You seem to be using two different definitions interchangeably. One definition of natural is the opposite of supernaturral, and another is the opposite of artificial. Human artifacts are natural by the first definition, but not by the second.

if those implications happen to support something commonly understood as 'God', I have no prejudice against that which would cause me to overrule the scientific observations,

It's not enough that observations be consistent with the existence of a god. The god hypothesis only gains relevance when it can explain some of those observations better than competing hypotheses. Presently, we have no need for a god to account for anything. We no longer need one to account for the apparent motion of the sun through the sky or the lightning and thunder coming from it. We don't need one to account for the diversity and commonality in the tree of life or for how the galaxies, stars, mountains, and elements formed.

And we don't need a god hypothesis to account for the existence of the primeval universe or the first life in the universe..

Once again, to be clear, these are not arguments against the existence of creator gods like the deist god, for example. They are reasons for not inserting gods into our hypotheses until they are needed.

when we look at the Rosetta stone we know it was not created by natural processes

There it is again. By one definition of natural, the Rosetta stone was created by natural forces.

You seem to be making an equivocation error by saying that since the Rosetta stone is artificial, we should consider a supernatural origin for DNA, the information system you commonly refer to.

But DNA is not like human language, which is symbolic. You have to learn symbolic languages for them to be useful for communicating instructions such as how to bake a cake.

Nobody needs to understand anything for DNA to be "read" and its instructions rendered into proteins, for example. You call it digital, but the chemicals do their things according to their size, shape, and charge distribution. That's a mechanical process.

Incidentally, I make a distinction between information, which has to be apprehended to be such, and form, which doesn't.
 

Polymath257

Think & Care
Staff member
Premium Member
Of course not, neither is the letter I, but 'Eat at Joes' written in the clouds tells us with a great deal of confidence that a sky writer did it

because the improbability of each combinatorial sequence character compounds the rest- until the odds of one chapter of Shakespeare being written by a blind chimp is less than one in all the elementary particles in the universe. The universal constants are a tad more unlikely still

And there is absolutely no way you can know that. The chimp example assumes a random distribution of typing on the typewriter. That is the *only* thing that allows the calculation to go forward.

In the case of the universal constants, there is no known mechanisms for setting them, no known way they could even be different, and no hypotheses on the horizon for either. In the absence of anything like that, there can be no probability calculation. For example, if there is a physical process that drives the constants to their present values, it may well be when we get more understanding that the calculated probability is close to 1.

AT THIS POINT WE CANNOT KNOW.

ANY calculation based on the range of possibilities for the fundamental constants is garbage.
 

robocop (actually)

Well-Known Member
Premium Member
This is a little awkward to understand and needs more explanation



Rudolph Steiner was a philosopher and educator, and he had some off the wall religious ideas. Uncertain as to the reference, because I have not read it.

From the scientific perspective the natural turbulent flow of water and air follows a fractal pattern, which is described by Chaos Theory. If Rudolph is referring to this okay. This observed variation is not true randomness.

The variations in clouds, patterns on butterflies, snow flakes, and the variation in fern leaves all may be described by fractal math. Of course, no two clouds, butterflies, snowflakes, and fern leaves are exactly a like, but all look like clouds, butterflies, snow flakes and fern leaves, because this determined by the chain of cause and effect determined by natural laws,

If you are going to bring into the mix Alien Creators lets break out the aluminum tinfoil helmets with magnetic sparkly antenna.
It talks about things like the perforations of a bone being aligned with water flowing through the bone, ram's horns being like a water vortex, and several other things. Not sure how you can attribute these things to fractals but I can at least see how there might be some genetic code to produce fractal body plans.

I'd be happy to brush off the cover and look them up if you are interested.

Not sure why you dismiss Alien creators so readily... Stephen Hawking believes in a hundred years we will make contact!
 

robocop (actually)

Well-Known Member
Premium Member
Confusing to say the least. First, science is progressively developing the ability to design intelligence. Human Creative intelligence is a confirmed attribute of human nature. At present, there is no falsifiable hypothesis of ID, nor a creative intelligence beyond human intelligence.
It is indeed a difficult task to find falsifiability. Let me try again.

Suppose that you could show that there was no artistic vision in life. That would be a way to falsify creators since we put art into our designing intelligence as well.

Is that a good one or do I need to go back to the drawing board?
 

Polymath257

Think & Care
Staff member
Premium Member
It is indeed a difficult task to find falsifiability. Let me try again.

Suppose that you could show that there was no artistic vision in life. That would be a way to falsify creators since we put art into our designing intelligence as well.

Is that a good one or do I need to go back to the drawing board?

It's rather hard to define 'artistic vision' and seems to be a matter of opinion even for human-made art.
 

Jose Fly

Fisker of men
Intelligent Design is falsifiable by us beings not being able to design intelligence. Then you have to ask were the conditions right for this a long time ago. As we develop sciences of consciousness, we'll see how it forms and gets passed on.
I'm not sure what you mean by this. Are you saying that if H. sapiens cannot "design intelligence", then ID creationism is falsified? If so, that makes no sense to me.
 

Guy Threepwood

Mighty Pirate
I think that you're having a problem with the word natural. You seem to be using two different definitions interchangeably. One definition of natural is the opposite of supernaturral, and another is the opposite of artificial. Human artifacts are natural by the first definition, but not by the second.

Yes I understand the distinction, it depends on context but that can sometimes get confused in these discussions

It's not enough that observations be consistent with the existence of a god. The god hypothesis only gains relevance when it can explain some of those observations better than competing hypotheses. Presently, we have no need for a god to account for anything. We no longer need one to account for the apparent motion of the sun through the sky or the lightning and thunder coming from it. We don't need one to account for the diversity and commonality in the tree of life or for how the galaxies, stars, mountains, and elements formed.

Well that's the debatable part, obviously most people conclude that we do- that's not an argument in itself- but just declaring 'we don't need God' doesn't touch on substance.

If the argument is that there is no God directly flying the sun across the sky in a chariot, then the same rationale says that automated software denotes that it was written spontaneously without intelligent agency.

i.e. automated function ≠ automated origin, in fact I think a far better argument can be made for the exact opposite


And we don't need a god hypothesis to account for the existence of the primeval universe or the first life in the universe..

Once again, to be clear, these are not arguments against the existence of creator gods like the deist god, for example. They are reasons for not inserting gods into our hypotheses until they are needed.

Likewise we don't need to insert a multiverse hypothesis for anything God cannot do, but the two arguments are not equal. There IS one proven method for creating information systems such as we are discussing and it's NOT a naturalistic one

There it is again. By one definition of natural, the Rosetta stone was created by natural forces.

sure, and by the other it is artificial,- though this can also be defined as 'super-natural' in that creative intelligence can transcend 'nature', achieve what' nature' alone never can, it all comes down to the phenomena of anticipation of consequences, which can only exist in a conscious mind.

You seem to be making an equivocation error by saying that since the Rosetta stone is artificial, we should consider a supernatural origin for DNA, the information system you commonly refer to.

But DNA is not like human language, which is symbolic. You have to learn symbolic languages for them to be useful for communicating instructions such as how to bake a cake.

Exactly, and genetic code software specifies information that is read, translated, copied, by hardware nanomachines, even including parity bit error checking as our systems employ, it is uncannily computer like.

Nobody needs to understand anything for DNA to be "read" and its instructions rendered into proteins, for example. You call it digital, but the chemicals do their things according to their size, shape, and charge distribution. That's a mechanical process.

So typing ink on paper is a mechanical/ chemical process, computers use electronic signals along with some mechanics traditionally, and could feasibly use chemistry also - as before, it doesn't matter if 'methinks it is like a weasel' is written in clouds, stone, radio waves or chemicals, it's the information itself that can tell us something about it's origin

That's not to say the sophistication of the biological hardware reading the information is irrelevant, but it too had to be specified by information one way or the other
 
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robocop (actually)

Well-Known Member
Premium Member
OK let's start fresh on the subtopic of falsifiability. Here are five questions about whether ID may one day be falsified. I'm sorry I am losing it so these questions may not be written perfectly. Please try to understand what I'm saying.

1) Does consciousness always come from other consciousness? If so, practically proven. If not, that is a lack of evidence (but then there can be one civilization that springs up and makes several others). We may answer this question someday. If there is a lack of evidence here, it detracts from ID.

2) Is there too much artistry in creation for there to not have been a Creator (capitalized out of respect)? For instance, why don't mammals have there anuses and penises as one?
If it's impossible to test whether creation had artistry like we put art into things we design, that is a lack of evidence and detracts from ID. But again if possible, this would outright decide it.

3) After looking at the stars that are close enough can we conclude with Einstein's relativity that it is not possible to have Alien life exist on a close enough planet to come here in time? Remember there might have been recent creation if it's true.

4) Is it easier for a civilization on one planet to spring from another civilization on another or just crop up itself? Depending on the odds we may have a theory that mixes the two or we may find that it is too difficult and then give in to chance.

Even if these do not prove falsifiable I still have my own philosophy which I have never experienced disproof of and people heard my replies without responding. But that doesn't mean it might one day be proven impossible.
 
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