Are retrodictions like this legitimate are they ?

Yes. I addressed this topic a while ago on another blog:

I'm using the word "prediction" the way scientists do, to refer to a direct implication of a theory, regardless of whether the implication has been confirmed by observation yet. For example, scientists speak of how "string theory predicts gravity", or how "QED predicts the magnetic dipole moment of the electron." They know, of course, that gravity was discovered long before string theory was invented, and that the magnetic dipole moment of the electron was measured long before Feynman, Schwinger and Tomonaga started piecing QED together. I understand that this usage departs from the colloquial definition of "prediction", and that it can be confusing to folks who are not scientifically savvy and who think that the word invariably refers to a prophecy or a forecast. Like every technical field, science often assigns specialized meanings to common words. Figuring this out is part of the frustration (and the fun) of learning a new field.

It's perfectly valid to say that a theory predicts something that has already been observed, as long as the theory is not based on the observation itself. Fisher's theory is not.

A smart extraterrestrial who had no idea what the human sex ratio was would nevertheless be able to predict that it is 50-50, based solely on Fisher's axioms.

SciPhi:

Because I can think of several ID retrodictions that would have been predicted in advance like this that are dismissed in the same manner.

Are you trying to say that if Fisher's theory makes a valid prediction/retrodiction, then there are ID prediction/retrodictions that are valid by the same standards? If so, could you give some examples?

Fisher's argument depends on only a few axioms. If you reread the descriptions that Raevmo and I supplied of Fisher's theory, you'll see that the 50-50 ratio is not "fed into" the argument; it's predicted.

But it isn't predicted it is "retrodicted".

Are retrodictions like this legitimate are they ?

Because I can think of several ID retrodictions that would have been predicted in advance like this that are dismissed in the same manner.

Ok Keith, the problem I have with this being touted as some confirmation of evolutionary theory is that it is a mathematical model of what is observed. Of course it fits the data it is constructed from the data.

They is why it is painting a bullseye around the target to some degree.

Hi SciPhi,

But it's not constructed from the data. If it were, then Fisher's argument would amount to a curve-fitting exercise and it would have been easy for you to meet my challenge of altering the theory to explain a 60-40 sex ratio.

Fisher's argument depends on only a few axioms. If you reread the descriptions that Raevmo and I supplied of Fisher's theory, you'll see that the 50-50 ratio is not "fed into" the argument; it's predicted.

The only way sense in which the 50-50 ratio factors into Fisher's theory is that he would have rejected the theory if its predictions didn't match reality. But that's true of any theory, and it certainly doesn't amount to painting bullseyes around targets.

No, please, do not mistake passion, which can change its mind, for fundamentalism, which never will. Passion for passion, an evangelical Christian and I may be evenly matched. But we are not equally fundamentalist. The true scientist, however passionately he may "believe", in evolution for example, knows exactly what would change his mind: evidence! The fundamentalist knows that nothing will.

Does anyone else agree with this formulation of fundamentalism? Just curious.

Could you point to the arbitrary steps in Fisher's argument (i.e. the ones that amount to "painting the bullseye around where the arrow hits")?

Ok Keith, the problem I have with this being touted as some confirmation of evolutionary theory is that it is a mathematical model of what is observed. Of course it fits the data it is constructed from the data.

They is why it is painting a bullseye around the target to some degree. Now that isn't a problem as I see it, unless your touting this as something other than a model constructed from the data. It is good work, but it is not some stunning account of the work of evolutionary theory IMO.

….The physicists, wearing hardhats, kneepads and safety harnesses, are scrambling like Spiderman over this assembly, appropriately named Atlas, ducking under waterfalls of cables and tubes and crawling into hidden room-size cavities stuffed with electronics.

They are getting ready to see the universe born again.

Again and again and again "” 30 million times a second, in fact.

Starting sometime next summer if all goes to plan, subatomic particles will begin shooting around a 17-mile underground ring stretching from the European Center for Nuclear Research, or Cern, near Geneva, into France and back again "” luckily without having to submit to customs inspections.

Crashing together in the bowels of Atlas and similar contraptions spaced around the ring, the particles will produce tiny fireballs of primordial energy, recreating conditions that last prevailed when the universe was less than a trillionth of a second old.

Whatever forms of matter and whatever laws and forces held sway Back Then "” relics not seen in this part of space since the universe cooled 14 billion years ago "” will spring fleetingly to life, over and over again in all their possible variations, as if the universe were enacting its own version of the "Groundhog Day" movie. If all goes well, they will leave their footprints in mountains of hardware and computer memory.

"We are now on the endgame," said Lyn Evans, of Cern, who has been in charge of the Large Hadron Collider, as it is called, since its inception. Call it the Hubble Telescope of Inner Space. Everything about the collider sounds, well, large "” from the 14 trillion electron volts of energy with which it will smash together protons, its cast of thousands and the $8 billion it cost to build, to the 128 tons of liquid helium needed to cool the superconducting magnets that keep the particles whizzing around their track and the three million DVDs worth of data it will spew forth every year.

The day it turns on will be a moment of truth for Cern, which has spent 13 years building the collider, and for the world's physicists, who have staked their credibility and their careers, not to mention all those billions of dollars, on the conviction that they are within touching distance of fundamental discoveries about the universe. If they fail to see something new, experts agree, it could be a long time, if ever, before giant particle accelerators are built on Earth again, ringing down the curtain on at least one aspect of the age-old quest to understand what the world is made of and how it works.

"If you see nothing," said a Cern physicist, John Ellis, "in some sense then, we theorists have been talking rubbish for the last 35 years."….

[Emphases added.]

Whether you're a materialist or a theist, your rational inquiry into the nature of reality will come to the bottom of the ontological pile. And what do you come up against?

Well, materialism says you come up against a physical something-or-other whose nature consists in necessitating the instantiation of the actual physics that obtains in the universe. But such a nature, if it is truly ontologically ultimate, is inherently unintelligible because such a thing (be it impersonal cosmic law, cosmic computer code, fundamental stock of mass-energy, whatever), is devoid of purpose, of value; and, because it's mindless, it's also devoid in itself of sense, meaning, consciousness and reason. It needs minds at least as sophisticated as ours to detect things like sense, meaning, and reason"”and I simply don't remotely understand the concept of something possessing sense/meaning/reason if there is no mind to grasp that fact about it–"“which, on the materialist hypothesis, there wouldn't have been at the Big Bang or whenever. I just find that idea completely unintelligible.

Mind, by contrast, is intrinsically intelligible, and that's because mind is the locus inhabited by purpose, value, sense, meaning, consciousness and reason.

Now we might not know exactly how the mind arises from the brain, etc. But even if we don't know that, we do understand our own minds in the sense that we understand our own mental contents. We understand thoughts and emotions, reasons and meanings, numbers and logic, moral principles and values, we understand what it's like to understand something, because we are directly acquainted with it every time we understand something.

Mind can also understand matter. But matter can't understand mind. Nor do abstract entities understand anything, but rather are themselves objects of the mind's understanding. Mind can design things, from a shovel to a spaceship to a software program.

It seems to me, then, that if you're looking for the nature of the ultimate ontological and explanatory reality, mind has a lot more going for it than the materialist alternative. And that's why most people believe in some kind of God, I suspect.

The only thing that logically accomodates intelligibility is understanding. And understanding is an inherent property of mind, not of material objects or of abstract entities. Atheism fails as an understanding of the world precisely because what it does is, in effect, to deny that there is anything ultimately understandable about it. It is saying, in effect, that there is no ultimate understanding to be had, no ultimate meaning or purpose or value inherent in the world's existence; and thus, that at bottom, reality is unintelligible.

Now reason itself rejects this. Reason by its very nature demands that the objects of reason, including reason itself, be intelligible, and rejects the ultimately unintelligible as being not truly real. In other words, it takes intelligibility, not merely sense-perceptibility, as a basic criterion of reality.

Nihilistic celebration of unintelligibility goes against the grain of our own rational nature, or against reason itself. One can still choose to go that route. But the only rationally intelligible route to choose, is the road that leads to mind as being ontologically basic and as being implicated even in the most basic structures of the material universe , because that, I contend, is the sole way to secure the ultimate and complete intelligibility of reality.

Let me quickly pre-empt one objection. It will be objected that human minds cannot understand God. But that does not threaten the intelligibility of reality, because on the theistic hypothesis, God understands God"”and hence everything is understandable, even if it's not understandable by everyone.

check out this article also. the comments that people left under it are…i dont even know.

If your logic takes you from "I would happily have forgone bestsellerdom" to "he's saying that it's about the money", then perhaps it's best not to judge the logic of others.

Regardless of motives, Dawkins is making a ton of money from The God Delusion. It's at #17 on the NYT bestseller list after more than half a year.

Infidel, by Ayaan Hirsi Ali, is at #18.

Christopher Hitchens' new book, God is not Great, is at #3. Here's a review by Michael Kinsley.

[Dawkins]I would happily have forgone bestsellerdom had there been the slightest hope of Duns Scotus illuminating my central question: does God exist?

So basically he's saying that it's about the money. But Dawkins is exaggerating a bit. One does not have to read all that stuff to avoid gaffes like his 'omniscience contradicts free will' twaddle. One merely has to know enough to avoid the modal fallacy.