John Moore from the National Post attempts to define ID. Yet when his claims are viewed from the perspective of The Design Matrix, he's shooting blanks:

ID is often referred to as Creationism light. In fact it's more Creationism in drag.

Cute, but false. The Design Matrix does not argue against evolution, it explores the manner in which evolution may have been shaped by design.

Though its proponents claim scientific neutrality, they are usually overtly religious people affiliated with overtly religious institutions.

False. While I am a theist, I am not overtly religious. Furthermore, I am not affiliated with any overtly religious institution, any religious institution, or any institution. I come to the table as a truly independent voice.

They have written essays and books about why ID is science.

False. I have never written an essay about why ID is science. The Design Matrix acknowledges that ID is not science and moves beyond this culture war dispute.

And yet when all the sophistry is boiled down, the theory amounts to "living things are complicated. Some-one must have made them."

False. The Design Matrix does not boil down to "living things are complicated. Some-one must have made them."

It may be a sublime idea worthy of religious and philosophical contemplation, but it fails to meet the definition of science.

Irrelevant. There is no compelling reason to think science is capable of determining whether or not life was designed. Because science has not come up with a objective methodology for resolving this issue, I move on and begin contemplating alternative methods of inquiry.

Denyse O' Leary posted this blog entry at Uncommon Descent. She notes Mike Gene's book The Design Matrix in referencing the notion of design and Darwin's take on it. What is striking is the lack of evolution of objections to design. To Darwin imputing design signifies: prove that God exists. There can be no physical evidence for a process implicating design because that is ruled out a priori. A good indicator that standards of evidence are in the eye of the beholder.

I have always maintained that ID is not science. Yet there is a flip-side to this coin: I have also maintained that ID is not religion. Ironically, while many on the ID side are uncomfortable with the "ID is not science" position and comfortable with the "ID is not religion" position, there appears to be perfect symmetry when it comes to the critics, who are uncomfortable with the "ID is not religion" position and comfortable with the "ID is not science" position. Just another example of yin-yang.

I have previously fleshed out different aspects of my views/approach:

To this, let's now add the relationship between theology/religion and The Design Matrix.

Read the rest of this entry »

If the ability to detect design necessarily entails a subjective element, then any investigator should be aware of the subjective obstacles that can come into play. And for those who have noticed, I have been laying the groundwork not only in The Design Matrix, but also here on Telic Thoughts.

I have tried to get people to understand that we all don't see and think alike. I have spoken of naïve realism, disconfirmation bias, stereotypes, maintaining an open mind, and confirmation bias.

Let me now add another concept from psychology "“ tolerance for ambiguity. I myself have a very high tolerance for ambiguity, as can be seen in The Design Matrix, but also in most areas of my life. But what is ambiguity tolerance? that Let me just quote from the short Wikipedia entry on this phenomenon.

Ambiguity tolerance is the ability to perceive ambiguity in information and behavior in a neutral and open way.

Ambiguity tolerance is an important issue in personality development and education. In psychology and in management, levels of tolerance of ambiguity are correlated with creativity,[1] risk aversion, psychological resilience, lifestyle,[2] orientation towards diversity (cross-cultural communication, intercultural competence), and leadership style.[3]

Wilkinson's Modes of Leadership is largely based on ambiguity tolerance. Mode one leaders have the least tolerance to ambiguity with mode four leaders enjoying and preferring to work in ambiguous situations. In part this is due to what Wilkinson calls 'emotional resilience'.

The converse, ambiguity intolerance,[4][5] which was introduced in The Authoritarian Personality in 1950,[6] was defined in 1975 as a "tendency to perceive or interpret information marked by vague, incomplete, fragmented, multiple, probable, unstructured, uncertain, inconsistent, contrary, contradictory, or unclear meanings as actual or potential sources of psychological discomfort or threat."

Telic Thoughts member kornbelt888 makes a point that I like:

Well, one definition is: Relating to the use of science or technology in the investigation and establishment of facts or evidence in a court of law. Except for an actual "court of law", I think that sounds closer to what is going on with Mike and his fellow-travelers. I don't normally think of detectives when I think of "philosophers", and I think of this as more detective work than anything else. Plus I just like the sound of the word "forensic."

The analogy between The Design Matrix and a police investigation is useful in many ways. Here are three:

Read the rest of this entry »

In his book, Vital Dust, Nobel Laureate Chritian de Duve writes, "A bioengineer attempting to construct a cell designed to proliferate as fast as possible could not come up with anything better than a bacterial cell." Indeed. In fact, as I point out in The Design Matrix, reproduction is the means by which a front-loading designer can perpetuate designs far into the future. Yet the simple perpetuation of design through reproduction would not be enough. The cell, as a vehicle that both expresses and carries the design, would be designed with sufficient resiliency to persist across deep time. It is this inherent resiliency that prevents the blind watchmaker from relying entirely on mutation and reproduction such that the original designs would all be erased over deep time due to countless selection pressures. Resiliency, in essense, represents a phenotypic space where the blind watchmaker is not needed. This combination (balance?) of enhanced proliferation and resiliency would allow the designed life forms to spread a network of deep roots into and througout the entire Earth, further ensuring many existing populations are significantly tied to their original ancestral states "“ the designed state (ie., front-loading).

Recent discoveries about the resiliency of bacterial life continue to impress scientists. One recently discovered species, Chryseobacterium greenlandensis, is quite remarkable:

Read the rest of this entry »

Metaphors typically break down when we begin to take them literally. Any investigator who tried to use the literal interpretation of a metaphor as a research guide would quickly find themselves with a rather useless guide. For example, if the sky really is angry, this implies the sky contains some type of nervous system given that emotions, from a scientific viewpoint, are attached to nervous systems. However, since the sky has no brain, the understanding of meteorology is not at all advanced by seeking brains and neurotransmitters among the clouds. Neither will we find brains and neurotransmitters among the molecules that are hydrophobic. But all this changes when we turn to the use of metaphors in molecular biology.
The design terminology that is used in the language of molecular biology does not break down when interpreted literally. Consider the process of protein synthesis as an example. To make a protein, a specific sequence of twenty different building blocks, known as amino acids, must be linked together. Yet how does the cell know what sequence to put them in? That information comes from the DNA molecule, where a specific sequence of building blocks, known as nucleotides, encodes the amino acid sequence. The cell employs machinery that translates the nucleotide sequence of the DNA into the amino acid sequence of the protein. We can thus legitimately think of the DNA as literally encoding the amino acid sequence, just as it is valid to think of the process of protein synthesis as an event that literally translates the DNA code-script into an amino acid sequence. While the sky does not actually possess emotions, the cell does actually encode and translate things. (p.45)

I'm almost done reading The Design Matrix for the second time. I'll probably read it a third time. I thought I would just post some of the passages that I especially enjoy. Feel free to comment on them, or post your own favorite passages from Mike's book.

It is my belief that there are people in the world like me — people who are tired of the heated debates, name-calling, innuendo, and political fights. Such people might find themselves in the middle ground and would rather focus on the hypotheses, the arguments, and the evidence. We might not be completely convinced that life was designed, yet we find the hypothesis to be tremendously intriguing. Rather than belaboring the concern as to whether the study of Intelligent Design should be labeled science, metaphysics, or religion, it is my belief that there are people who would rather just ponder the issues that are raised by design and evolution.

(Introduction, p.xi) Read the rest of this entry »

After reading The Design Matrix, where next do you turn as you await the appearance of volume 2? I've finally finished reading Marc Kirschner and John Gerhart's, The Plausibility of Life and, if the concept of front-loading tantalizes you, I highly recommend it. In fact, I plan to post various excerpts from the book over the summer and put together a book review.

But let me start with three points.

Read the rest of this entry »