What Would "ID Research" Be?

by Bilbo

In a recent thread the comments turned to the common accusation that ID proponents do not do any "ID research." I'm just curious. What do the critics mean when they demand that ID proponents should do "ID research"?

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69 Responses to “What Would "ID Research" Be?”

olegt Says:
November 6th, 2010 at 10:38 am
That's pretty simple, Bilbo.

So far, ID theorists have concentrated on criticizing evolutionary biology. Criticism can, in principle, show that a scientific theory is wrong (e.g., logically inconsistent or inconsistent with experimental tests), but even if it topples the reigning paradigm it does not automatically replace it with superior knowledge.

Assume, for the sake of the argument, that evolutionary biologists had it wrong and life was designed by a bearded dude. Is there a positive research program that can come out of this assumption? Daniel Smith has been asking this kind of question on this board persistently, but I don't think anyone has tried to answer him.

Comment by olegt — November 6, 2010 @ 10:38 am

Bradford Says:
November 6th, 2010 at 10:57 am
Olegt:

So far, ID theorists have concentrated on criticizing evolutionary biology. Criticism can, in principle, show that a scientific theory is wrong (e.g., logically inconsistent or inconsistent with experimental tests), but even if it topples the reigning paradigm it does not automatically replace it with superior knowledge.

I had similar thoughts before reading Mike Gene's ideas about evidence for facilitated evolution. Whether one considers the evidence sufficient is a different issue. But it does indicate that evolutionary biology is not intrinsically anti-ID.

Assume, for the sake of the argument, that evolutionary biologists had it wrong and life was designed by a bearded dude. Is there a positive research program that can come out of this assumption?

First, how does evolutionary biology give rise to definitive statements one way or the other about design by a divine source. The implication from Olegt's statement is that evolutionary biology rules it out. But if that is the case it needs to be specified what are the particulars that rule it out. If they cannot be specified then at most evolutionary biology can be said to be non-responsive to the question.

Second, in principle, could there be an intermediate causal trail that establishes evidence for a divine attribute in a causal chain, like conscious intelligence for example, but cannot proceed past this to divine properties like omniscience or a capacity to control laws of nature? It seems to me that IDists affirm this second possibility.

Comment by Bradford — November 6, 2010 @ 10:57 am

olegt Says:
November 6th, 2010 at 12:52 pm
Bradford wrote:

First, how does evolutionary biology give rise to definitive statements one way or the other about design by a divine source. The implication from Olegt's statement is that evolutionary biology rules it out.

No, Bradford, evolutionary theory does not rule God out, it just makes him a superfluous figure in biology as well as in, say, planetary motion.

Comment by olegt — November 6, 2010 @ 12:52 pm

Bradford Says:
November 6th, 2010 at 1:05 pm
Olegt: No, Bradford, evolutionary theory does not rule God out, it just makes him a superfluous figure in biology as well as in, say, planetary motion.

Tell me about superfluous when you get origins figured out. In the meantime understand that superfluous is correlated to the question at hand. You need not know a thing about Thomas Edison to understand how light bulbs work. You can adequately explain light bulb function and deem the light bulb designer superfluous to your explanation. You are not wrong in doing so. You are simply limited in your explanation of the bigger picture.

Comment by Bradford — November 6, 2010 @ 1:05 pm

Bilbo Says:
November 6th, 2010 at 1:52 pm
Oleg(t):

That's pretty simple, Bilbo….

Assume, for the sake of the argument, that evolutionary biologists had it wrong and life was designed by a bearded dude. Is there a positive research program that can come out of this assumption? Daniel Smith has been asking this kind of question on this board persistently, but I don't think anyone has tried to answer him.

Then maybe it isn't pretty simple.

Comment by Bilbo — November 6, 2010 @ 1:52 pm

Salvador T. Cordova Says:
November 6th, 2010 at 1:54 pm
The crucial question for science is whether design helps us understand the world, and especially the biological world, better than we do now when we systematically eschew teleological notions from our scientific theorizing. Thus, a scientist may view design and its appeal to a designer as simply a fruitful device for understanding the world, not attaching any significance to questions such as whether a theory of design is in some ultimate sense true or whether the designer actually exists. Philosophers of science would call this a constructive empiricist approach to design. Scientists in the business of manufacturing theoretical entities like quarks, strings, and cold dark matter could therefore view the designer as just one more theoretical entity to be added to the list. I follow here Ludwig Wittgenstein, who wrote, "What a Copernicus or a Darwin really achieved was not the discovery of a true theory but of a fertile new point of view." If design cannot be made into a fertile new point of view that inspires exciting new areas of scientific investigation, then it deserves to wither and die. Yet before that happens, it deserves a fair chance to succeed.

William Dembski

Dembski is spot on regarding potential the operational benefit of design:

Steganography
Finally, we come to the research theme that I find most intriguing. Steganography, if you look in the dictionary, is an archaism that was subsequently replaced by the term "cryptography." Steganography literally means "covered writing." With the rise of digital computing, however, the term has taken on a new life. Steganography belongs to the field of digital data embedding technologies (DDET), which also include information hiding, steganalysis, watermarking, embedded data extraction, and digital data forensics. Steganography seeks efficient (that is, high data rate) and robust (that is, insensitive to common distortions) algorithms that can embed a high volume of hidden message bits within a cover message (typically imagery, video, or audio) without their presence being detected. Conversely, steganalysis seeks statistical tests that will detect the presence of steganography in a cover message.

Consider now the following possibility: What if organisms instantiate designs that have no functional significance but that nonetheless give biological investigators insight into functional aspects of organisms. Such second-order designs would serve essentially as an "operating manual," of no use to the organism as such but of use to scientists investigating the organism. Granted, this is a speculative possibility, but there are some preliminary results from the bioinformatics literature that bear it out in relation to the protein-folding problem (such second-order designs appear to be embedded not in a single genome but in a database of homologous genomes from related organisms).

While it makes perfect sense for a designer to throw in an "operating manual" (much as automobile manufacturers include operating manuals with the cars they make), this possibility makes no sense for blind material mechanisms, which cannot anticipate scientific investigators. Research in this area would consist in constructing statistical tests to detect such second-order designs (in other words, steganalysis). Should such second order designs be discovered, the next step would be to seek algorithms for embedding these second-order designs in the organisms. My suspicion is that biological systems do steganography much better than we, and that steganographers will learn a thing or two from biology — though not because natural selection is so clever, but because the designer of these systems is so adept at steganography.

Such second-order steganography would, in my view, provide decisive confirmation for ID. Yet even if it doesn't pan out, first-order steganography (i.e., the embedding of functional information useful to the organism rather than to a scientific investigator) could also provide strong evidence for ID. For years now evolutionary biologists have told us that the bulk of genomes is junk and that this is due to the sloppiness of the evolutionary process. That is now changing. For instance, Amy Pasquenelli at UCSD, in commenting on long stretches of seemingly barren DNA sequences, asks us to "reconsider the contents of such junk DNA sequences in the light of recent reports that a new class of non-coding RNA genes are scattered, perhaps densely, throughout these animal genomes." ("MicroRNAs: Deviants no Longer." Trends in Genetics 18(4) (4 April 2002): 171-3.) ID theorists should be at the forefront in unpacking the information contained within biological systems. If these systems are designed, we can expect the information to be densely packed and multi-layered (save where natural forces have attenuated the information). Dense, multi-layered embedding of information is a prediction of ID.

Bill Dembski

If any biotech firm succeeds in decoding steganography, they'll be rich beyond their dreams. Such research is being hindered by the perception that DNA is junk. If DNA is not only non-junk but a message from the designer to humans which the designer intended to be discovered, then wow, this could be exciting.

Already we are seeing patterns not consitent with evolution but which act like road maps to functionality. This was evidenced in the work of the ENCODE project and other projects. I expect there will be more to come.

Comment by Salvador T. Cordova — November 6, 2010 @ 1:54 pm

fifth monarchy man Says:
November 6th, 2010 at 1:58 pm
You can adequately explain light bulb function and deem the light bulb designer superfluous to your explanation.

What a great point.

It sugests a follow up question for ID critics.

Suppose someone had concluded that Edison was superfluous figure in the study of light bulbs. What sort of "research" would convince them otherwise?

peace

Comment by fifth monarchy man — November 6, 2010 @ 1:58 pm

MikeGene Says:
November 6th, 2010 at 2:09 pm
Olegt:

So far, ID theorists have concentrated on criticizing evolutionary biology. Criticism can, in principle, show that a scientific theory is wrong (e.g., logically inconsistent or inconsistent with experimental tests), but even if it topples the reigning paradigm it does not automatically replace it with superior knowledge.

I fully agree here. In fact, how in the world does one get to “intelligent design” from some demonstration that “the evolution of X could not occur?”

Assume, for the sake of the argument, that evolutionary biologists had it wrong and life was designed by a bearded dude. Is there a positive research program that can come out of this assumption? Daniel Smith has been asking this kind of question on this board persistently, but I don't think anyone has tried to answer him.

I have answered, and continue to answer that question for years now. I have been exploring how life could be designed to facilitate the emergence of more complex life forms. But then again, if one is defining ID to mean “evolution can’t happen,” then I think you have a point.

Comment by MikeGene — November 6, 2010 @ 2:09 pm

JOHN_A_DESIGNER Says:
November 6th, 2010 at 2:12 pm
I actually I agree with critics who argue that ID is not science, or perhaps, putting more diplomatically, not yet science. (Even though personally I doubt that it will ever be a science.) On the other hand, I don’t think that the critics have anything to get their panties all in a bunch over. Even if the Discovery Institute has, or has had, some secret plan to take over science, transform secular society and culture and establish a theocracy, it is not going to happen. Let me say that again. It is not going to happen. Please if you believe that you are suffering from paranoia. Maybe it’s time to take some time off, get away and do some thinking about life, reality and other people.

Consensus probably plays a big role in what gets to be considered science and what is not. For example, why is SETI considered to be a science? What is it studying? The possibility the extraterrestrial intelligent beings might exist? If that is the case why not have a science dedicated to unicorns and similar “mythical” beings. I mean, after all, what is impossible about the existence of unicorns?

My point is why aren’t the ID critics as upset over the existence of SETI as they over the fact that there is a privately funded think tank in Seattle doing ID research. Is that against the constitution or something?

On the other hand, it is perfectly legitimate for ID’ist to interpret scientific data from a philosophical perspective. Just as it is legitimate for materialists/naturalists to interpret the same data from their perspective. Indeed, I think that is what the debate has really been about all along.

This is not to say, however, that certain philosophical perspectives cannot evoke some interesting questions that can be pursued empirically in the laboratory. I think, in the case of ID, this has in fact all ready happened.

For example here are some questions from the Biologic Institute website. I would argue that they are not only scientific questions but important scientific questions worth pursuing.

“All organisms depend on large amounts of genetic information. We understand how this information is used to specify protein sequences, but what else is it doing? What is it capable of doing and what is it incapable of doing? How much functional information do genomes hold, and where did it come from? Do cells use any non-genetic means of storing and transmitting information? Are there fundamental laws governing the origin of information?”
http://biologicinstitute.org/r...

If ID’ist roll up their sleeves, do the hard work and start answering some of those questions, they will at least gain some respect for doing some real science. But even if they don’t do that and want to spend, or even waste, their time writing scholarly papers and books, so what? Aren’t those the kind of things that they are free to do in an open and democratic society?

Comment by JOHN_A_DESIGNER — November 6, 2010 @ 2:12 pm

MikeGene Says:
November 6th, 2010 at 2:36 pm
John,

I agree that SETI is not science. You ask:

My point is why aren’t the ID critics as upset over the existence of SETI as they over the fact that there is a privately funded think tank in Seattle doing ID research. Is that against the constitution or something?

I answered this here:

http://designmatrix.wordpress....

Comment by MikeGene — November 6, 2010 @ 2:36 pm

SteveMatheson Says:
November 6th, 2010 at 3:36 pm
Before tackling the question of what "ID research" would look like, we would first have to see what ID theories and/or hypotheses look like. (Others are saying similar things in this thread, I think.) One example of an ID hypothesis is Mike Behe's claim that mutations driving adaptation are non-random. I have claimed previously that while The Edge of Evolution is one of the worst examples of folk science that I have ever read, it contains a testable claim. So one legitimate ID research program could be a phylogenomic analysis of mutational trajectories in adaptation, involving the reconstruction of probable trajectories combined with computation of the resources (population sizes, mutation rates, amounts of standing genetic variation) necessary to support/sustain that trajectory. What ID "research" seems to mostly be, at this point, is an attempt to convince an audience that evolution can't work as advertised, by pointing to examples of when evolution (of a particular kind) doesn't happen. Leaving aside the fact that ID analyses of this type are almost always misleading (Behe's comments on Lenski's work being a good example), it should be obvious that one does not learn about adaptation by deliberately ignoring it.

Anyway, I'd be interested in discussing other research programs that qualify as true ID-based explorations of hypotheses like Behe's.

Comment by SteveMatheson — November 6, 2010 @ 3:36 pm

Guts Says:
November 6th, 2010 at 4:12 pm
I think that IDers like Axe don't test positive hypotheses because of a mentality. They think, as Dawkins does, that design is a brute given. For example, Dawkins thinks the world looks designed and that is the problem that biology has to answer. Biologist's answer is Darwin's theory of evolution. So all IDer's like Axe and Dembski have to do is show that that is the wrong answer, and so that leaves design as a brute given again. Another reason why they may not want to test positive ID hypothesis is because they want to remain as a big tent. If you say common descent occurred but the mutation was non-random, you lose all the YECs and OECs.

Comment by Guts — November 6, 2010 @ 4:12 pm

ID guy Says:
November 6th, 2010 at 4:30 pm
A few things which I am sure will be ignored:

1- The point is letting scientists conduct scientific research and be allowed to reach a design inference if that is what is warranted by that research.

2- Once a design inference is reached we would approach it much like archaeologists, forensic scientists do and SETI researchers would.

3- It brings in questions like, who, how, and why. We study it as the result of some causal agency. We do so to better understand cause and effect relationships. And yes, we can sit back and say "how would I have done this?" And try to figure it out.

4- Broken designs can be fixed if they are understood. Broken accidents – well how can you tell?

With all of that in mind Gonzalez and Richards have proposed ways to tst their design inference with respect to the universe and our place in it. To me they are lighting the way for where to look for intelligent living organisms.

Comment by ID guy — November 6, 2010 @ 4:30 pm

ID guy Says:
November 6th, 2010 at 4:37 pm
olegt:
So far, ID theorists have concentrated on criticizing evolutionary biology.

Only if you ignore the bulk of what we say. OTOH it appears all you can do is criticize ID.

olegt:
Assume, for the sake of the argument, that evolutionary biologists had it wrong and life was designed by a bearded dude. Is there a positive research program that can come out of this assumption?

Not if your strawman of a bearded dude is included.

But there are plenty of opportunities for design and I am sure they have been posted on the intertubes.

One would be that living organisms are software driven and we just have figure out how to change the software in malfunctioning systems.

And again there is purpose- as in the ID scenario most likely there is a purpose to our existence. So people could research into what that may be.

Comment by ID guy — November 6, 2010 @ 4:37 pm

ID guy Says:
November 6th, 2010 at 5:09 pm
Empirical ID research from reasearch ID.org.

Then we have What William Dembski says.

Comment by ID guy — November 6, 2010 @ 5:09 pm

olegt Says:
November 6th, 2010 at 5:19 pm
Joe, are you sure the web site ResearchID.org, to which you link, is current? I think not. The site was created in 2006 and has not been updated since.

In particular, Wells's 2005 question Do Centrioles Generate a Polar Ejection Force? has been answered in the negative.

Comment by olegt — November 6, 2010 @ 5:19 pm

nullasalus Says:
November 6th, 2010 at 5:57 pm
I'm in the "ID is not science" boat as well, but I'll throw in my own two cents.

* One claim of ID is that intelligent agents are capable of accomplishing various things – an origin of life, macroevolutionary changes, etc. So it seems to me that if one considers ID to be science, then automatically any research demonstrating the ability of intelligent agents to accomplish the tasks in question would be ID science. Craig Venter's work comes to mind. I suppose, if one was more of the Bostrom stripe, then just about any major accomplishment in programming a simulation is yet more ID research.

* If an ID view entailed skepticism or reliance about the capability of selection + mutation accomplishing various things, then any research which observed the power of these things (Lenski's work) would be ID research as well. Of course, some ID views rely on these things being very capable – others rely on them not. Oddly enough, the same research would be ID research either way.

In other words, I think there's this confusion here that "ID research" = "Research conducted specifically by an ID proponent". Granted, there's some of the latter in play. But the two don't seem equivalent at all; if Behe was the one who did Lenski's work, would that be "ID research"?

Comment by nullasalus — November 6, 2010 @ 5:57 pm

Thought Provoker Says:
November 6th, 2010 at 6:24 pm
At the risk of confusing people as to which side I am on, here are my thoughts…

Think about how Black Hole Research occurred.

Most of quantum physics is "just math" that is useful in modeling observations in quantum experiments.

Based on the mathematical presumptions of Quantum Mechanics, physicists conjectured Black Holes had to exist even when there was no observations directly supporting such a claim.

By the time confirming observations provided physical proof, while it was exciting, it was mostly old news.

I suggest serious ID research would work hard at embracing the current evolutionary model to the point of mathematically calculating the expected Darwin Units of change. If it could be shown that an additional foresighted fudge factor was needed, this would be a strong indication that some unknown force is involved.

Mike Gene's Design Matrix appears to be a more serious attempt at looking for a "Consilience of Clues" that exists in mainstream evolution observations.

If there is a force manipulating evolution, I think the number one suspect for a possible mechanism would be Quantum Biophysics.

…at the molecular level, there is growing evidence of influences on gene expression and function emanating from an even deeper level of bio‐physical existence, that is, the influences which emanate from the subatomic or 'quantum' levels of life. [2] The potential role of such influences open up new possibilities for a more sophisticated understanding of organism management from the most fundamental level of biological structure. The biotechnology community currently understands even less in this level than the aspects of gene control and regulation operating from the molecular level.

Comment by Thought Provoker — November 6, 2010 @ 6:24 pm

olegt Says:
November 6th, 2010 at 6:32 pm
nullasalus wrote:

if Behe was the one who did Lenski's work, would that be "ID research"?

IDers are pretty good at Gedankenexperiments.

Comment by olegt — November 6, 2010 @ 6:32 pm

olegt Says:
November 6th, 2010 at 6:35 pm
TP wrote:

Most of quantum physics is "just math" that is useful in modeling observations in quantum experiments.

Based on the mathematical presumptions of Quantum Mechanics, physicists conjectured Black Holes had to exist even when there was no observations directly supporting such a claim.

Umm, no. Black holes were invented theoretically in general relativity, a classical theory of gravity. Quantum mechanics of black holes came up much later.

Comment by olegt — November 6, 2010 @ 6:35 pm

nullasalus Says:
November 6th, 2010 at 6:58 pm
olegt,

IDers are pretty good at Gedankenexperiments.

Considering the central complaint of many IDers re: Darwinism, I imagine they'd regard it as fighting fire with fire.

My observations stand: Is the criticism against ID the fact that ID proponents themselves don't do enough research? Or that there is no research on ID claims being performed at all? If it's the latter, I want to know what would qualify – and why experiments like Lenski's don't count. If it's the former, I want to know why this matters. If the claim is "If they love science so much, perhaps they should do some", I could agree with that – a dearth of actual research by a scientist claiming to love science would speak poorly of him, I admit!

Comment by nullasalus — November 6, 2010 @ 6:58 pm

ID guy Says:
November 6th, 2010 at 7:00 pm
dick:
Jim, are you sure the web site ResearchID.org, to which you link, is current? I think not. The site was created in 2006 and has not been updated since.

I am not understanding what you are saying. What difference does that make?

In particular, Wells's 2005 question Do Centrioles Generate a Polar Ejection Force? has been answered in the negative.

One question down- I think I remember more on that site plus what Dembski said plus what I have offered.

So what is the blind watchmaker research?

Comment by ID guy — November 6, 2010 @ 7:00 pm

Thought Provoker Says:
November 6th, 2010 at 7:01 pm
Hi Oleg,

I stand corrected.

I guess I have been reading too much of Penrose's work which seems focused on merging the two into a single reality.

From Penrose's paper titled Black Holes, quantum theory and cosmology…

In various places elsewhere I have expressed some of my reasons for believing that, when Einstein's theory of gravity is brought into the picture, the standard rules of quantum theory must change — with the hope that when the appropriate changes are made, the quantum measurement paradox will be resolved. For an account of most of these arguments, see Chapter 30 in my book The Road to Reality.

Comment by Thought Provoker — November 6, 2010 @ 7:01 pm

Pez Says:
November 6th, 2010 at 7:26 pm
Seelke did Lesnki(ish) research. He wanted to find out what level of complexity could be accomplished by mutation and selection. When he applied for funding he was refused, with one reviewer remarking that, with a complex biosphere we already know that evolution can create complexity. So the question does not need to be researched.

cue Matzke

Comment by Pez — November 6, 2010 @ 7:26 pm

olegt Says:
November 6th, 2010 at 7:27 pm
nullasalus wrote:

My observations stand: Is the criticism against ID the fact that ID proponents themselves don't do enough research? Or that there is no research on ID claims being performed at all? If it's the latter, I want to know what would qualify – and why experiments like Lenski's don't count. If it's the former, I want to know why this matters. If the claim is "If they love science so much, perhaps they should do some", I could agree with that – a dearth of actual research by a scientist claiming to love science would speak poorly of him, I admit!

It's hilarious that you think that Lenski's work—classic evolutionary biology—qualifies as ID research. Lenski's students observe naturally occurring mutations in E. coli and track down genetic changes that cause adaptations to new conditions such as feeding on citrate. They don't tinker with the genome, just observe and quantify natural selection. (And by the way, there is no dramatic difference between artificial and natural selection, not from the biological viewpoint, anyway).

Yes, the main problem with ID is that it's just a bunch of negative claims about evolution (it can't do this, therefore design). There is no empirical research that takes ID as a starting point and goes from there.

Comment by olegt — November 6, 2010 @ 7:27 pm

Pez Says:
November 6th, 2010 at 7:29 pm
Lenski's research, of course, is Behe's. As are many of his conclusions; when a result is extremely rare it is likely the result of two necessary events where neither is overly beneficial on their own, for instance.

Comment by Pez — November 6, 2010 @ 7:29 pm

nullasalus Says:
November 6th, 2010 at 7:34 pm
olegt,

It's hilarious that you think that Lenski's work—classic evolutionary biology—qualifies as ID research.

Man, you have reading problems.

Lenski's students observe naturally occurring mutations in E. coli and track down genetic changes that cause adaptations to new conditions such as feeding on citrate.

Behe himself describes his focus as finding the 'edge of evolution'. Yet you're telling me Lenski's work of observing evolution 'in the wild' is somehow.. what, of no interest to ID proponents? Engages no ID claim at all, even if that claim is particular to Behe or Dembski? Are you saying that a claim that mutation + selection can't accomplish certain things is not an ID claim? That setting bounds on what mutation + selection can accomplish is not an ID claim?

Yes, the main problem with ID is that it's just a bunch of negative claims about evolution (it can't do this, therefore design). There is no empirical research that takes ID as a starting point and goes from there.

Are you saying that 'design can do this' is not an empirical claim?

Comment by nullasalus — November 6, 2010 @ 7:34 pm

olegt Says:
November 6th, 2010 at 7:59 pm
nullasalus wrote:

Behe himself describes his focus as finding the 'edge of evolution'. Yet you're telling me Lenski's work of observing evolution 'in the wild' is somehow.. what, of no interest to ID proponents?

O, I am not saying that. They discuss Lenski's work on internet forums. But bitching about other people's work does not qualify as research.

Engages no ID claim at all, even if that claim is particular to Behe or Dembski?

Not sure what you mean by that.

Are you saying that a claim that mutation + selection can't accomplish certain things is not an ID claim? That setting bounds on what mutation + selection can accomplish is not an ID claim?

O yeah, ID makes these types of negative claims. Steve Matheson has already pointed out that such claims are falsifiable and they get falsified. Abbie Smith, a beginning graduate student, pointed out that HIV crossed Behe's edge of evolution. Here is Behe's belated concession in which he fails to even mention Abbie by name:

And now let’s talk about Dr. Musgrave’s “core argument,” that subsequent to the virus leaping to humans from chimps Vpu developed the ability to act as a viroporin, allowing the leakage of cations which helps release the virus from the cell membrane. Yes, I’m perfectly willing to concede that this does appear to be the development of a new viral protein-viral protein binding site, one which I overlooked when writing about HIV. So the square point in Figure 7.4 representing HIV should be placed on the Y axis at a value of one, instead of zero, and Table 7.1 should list one protein-binding site developed by HIV instead of zero.

One instead of zero. That's otherwise known as FAIL.

Yes, I know that Behe then dismissed this development as not very interesting, but this makes his "edge of evolution" infinitely flexible. It reminds me of this.

Comment by olegt — November 6, 2010 @ 7:59 pm

ID guy Says:
November 6th, 2010 at 8:00 pm
olegt:
It's hilarious that you think that Lenski's work—classic evolutionary biology—qualifies as ID research.

Classic evolutionary biology looks a lot like baraminology.

olegt:
Lenski's students observe naturally occurring mutations in E. coli and track down genetic changes that cause adaptations to new conditions such as feeding on citrate.

ID, YEC and OEC are OK with naturally occurring mutations.

olegt:
(And by the way, there is no dramatic difference between artificial and natural selection, not from the biological viewpoint, anyway).

That's just crazy talk. Natural selection, a result, could never produce a chihuahua, but artificial selection- a real selection process- did.

olegt:
Yes, the main problem with ID is that it's just a bunch of negative claims about evolution (it can't do this, therefore design).

You keep saying that as if repeating that lie will make it so.

olegt:
There is no empirical research that takes ID as a starting point and goes from there.

There is no empirical research that takes the blind watchmaker as a starting point and goes from there.

Comment by ID guy — November 6, 2010 @ 8:00 pm

ID guy Says:
November 6th, 2010 at 8:02 pm
olegt:
Abbie Smith, a beginning graduate student, pointed out that HIV crossed Behe's edge of evolution.

No, she just corrected him. The correction did not demonstrate the edge has been crossed.

IOW olegt you don't know what you are talking about, as usual.

Comment by ID guy — November 6, 2010 @ 8:02 pm

olegt Says:
November 6th, 2010 at 8:07 pm
ID guy wrote:

The correction did not demonstrate the edge has been crossed.

Joe, you're absolutely right! HIV did not cross the edge of evolution because Behe promptly moved the edge. We can call it progress.

There was a time when creationists insisted on immutability of species. Not anymore. Most now accept an old Earth. In twenty years, they will accept macroevolution as a naturally occurring process and the battle will switch to consciousness and stuff like that.

Comment by olegt — November 6, 2010 @ 8:07 pm

ID guy Says:
November 6th, 2010 at 8:14 pm
dick:
Jim, you're absolutely right! HIV did not cross the edge of evolution because Behe promptly moved the edge.

No, he did not move the edge. If you look at the table you will see other organisms that have had new protein-to-ptotein interactions- humans.

IOW dick the edge of evolution, according to Dr Behe, is not one new protein-to- protein interaction, it seems that chance can do that but not much more.

Did you even read the book?

dick:
There was a time when creationists insisted on immutability of species.

Not since the 18th century.

dick:
In twenty years, they will accept macroevolution as a naturally occurring process and the battle will switch to consciousness and stuff like that.

They already accept speciation, ie how evolutionists define macroevolution. Also ID does NOT argue against universal common descent.

We have been over this already. You need help…

Comment by ID guy — November 6, 2010 @ 8:14 pm

olegt Says:
November 6th, 2010 at 8:16 pm
Moderators,

Why don't you let Joe use his old handle? It cracks me up when he pretends to be "Jim."

Comment by olegt — November 6, 2010 @ 8:16 pm

ID guy Says:
November 6th, 2010 at 8:17 pm
page 146 of "The Edge of Evolution":

With the critereon of two protein-to-protein binding sites, we can see how stupenously complex structures such as cilium, the flagellum, and machinery that builds them are beyond Dawrinian evolution.

You lose oleg…

Comment by ID guy — November 6, 2010 @ 8:17 pm

ID guy Says:
November 6th, 2010 at 8:19 pm
Moderators,

Why don't you make olegt support his claims as opposd to lying unabated?

For every lie and/ or misrepresentation he should spend a week in comment limbo.

Comment by ID guy — November 6, 2010 @ 8:19 pm

olegt Says:
November 6th, 2010 at 8:21 pm
Joe, if I were you I wouldn't be cocky with the mods.

Comment by olegt — November 6, 2010 @ 8:21 pm

ID guy Says:
November 6th, 2010 at 8:23 pm
If you were me I would kill myself.

Comment by ID guy — November 6, 2010 @ 8:23 pm

ID guy Says:
November 6th, 2010 at 8:25 pm
I still don't get why you want to make this personal. But you really shouldn't drag your personal issues onto this blog.

Just sayin'- There are better ways to take care of personal issues

Comment by ID guy — November 6, 2010 @ 8:25 pm

Guts Says:
November 6th, 2010 at 9:19 pm
Olegt:

There was a time when creationists insisted on immutability of species. Not anymore. Most now accept an old Earth. In twenty years, they will accept macroevolution as a naturally occurring process and the battle will switch to consciousness and stuff like that.

I think the current trend is that evolution will continue to be seen as much more sophisticated than the tenants of the Modern Synthesis would have you believe. So in the future I predict there will be many more Mike Genes and Michael Behes rather than Meyerses and Axes.

Comment by Guts — November 6, 2010 @ 9:19 pm

nullasalus Says:
November 6th, 2010 at 11:39 pm
O, I am not saying that. They discuss Lenski's work on internet forums. But bitching about other people's work does not qualify as research.

Not sure what you mean by that.

Who's bitching? Behe loves Lenski's work. That's rather the point of the question of whether Lenski's work would have been "ID Research" if Behe performed the same experiment.

I outlined two possible ways to construe 'ID research' being undertaken, if someone were to accept that ID was science: That included research like Lenski's, where we get to see 'evolution in action' and see if it performs according to an ID proponent's expectations, or the "neo-darwinist" expectations (are there such things anymore? I wonder more and more every day.), and positive research where intelligent agents are shown to be capable of accomplishing certain feats (Venter's work being one example.)

The response I'm seeing is that, apparently, observing the actual performance of mutation and selection (either in the wild or in the lab) somehow doesn't count as ID research, regardless of whether there's skepticism about the ability for mutation and selection to accomplish this or that (Behe's view), or if there's expectation that these things can accomplish certain things (Denton's view).

So, even though everyone repeats that ID largely consists of negative claims, and even though at least some of these claims are apparently open to research… this isn't "ID research". Go figure.

I've already outlined the positive claim for ID: See if an intelligent agent is capable of accomplishing certain feats. Utterly empirical and demonstrable in principle, at least when it comes to biology. So why is this not positive ID research?

Why are the very people who are insisting that no ID research is being done the same people who seem unable to even explain what they mean by ID research in a way that doesn't boil down to 'Behe himself should be doing the work!'?

O yeah, ID makes these types of negative claims. Steve Matheson has already pointed out that such claims are falsifiable and they get falsified.

And sometimes 'Neo-Darwinian' claims get falsified too. Unexpected results are observed. But if 'Neo-Darwinians' modify their theories to account for this and rethink how evolution works, this is just a typical example of how research works and the core concept is still in place and isn't science just great! Meanwhile, any supposed falsification of a claim by any ID proponent is indication that the entire project is doomed to failure, and any modification of the theory is the moving of goal posts.

Funny how that works.

There was a time when creationists insisted on immutability of species. Not anymore. Most now accept an old Earth. In twenty years, they will accept macroevolution as a naturally occurring process and the battle will switch to consciousness and stuff like that.

In 20 years, evolution as an atheist apologetic tool will be a thing of the past. From mutation to macroevolution to microevolution, the entire set of processes and mechanisms will be regarded more as an instance of technology replete with teleology than anything else. Consciousness will no longer be a battle, because the only remaining contenders will be various flavors of dualists and idealists. Atheists – or their nearest image – will lean on neutral monism or panpsychism, when they aren't embracing Omega points and simulation hypotheses.

Atheistic, non-teleological readings of evolution had their days numbered decades ago. And that's the funny thing – this has never been a fight over evolution, but over teleology, guidance, design, and purpose. The cost of winning the evolution battle will be losing the teleology war.

To quote Davison, I love it so.

Comment by nullasalus — November 6, 2010 @ 11:39 pm

Guts Says:
November 7th, 2010 at 12:49 am
I'm really interested in what exactly is unique in the genetic background of that particular lineage in Lenski's experiment. It was, perhaps, the mutator.

Comment by Guts — November 7, 2010 @ 12:49 am

computerist Says:
November 7th, 2010 at 7:10 am
accusation that ID proponents do not do any "ID research."

Thats because they hold to the belief that one must be "dressed up in a lab coat" to perform science.

They also obviously never heard of "open source" which is prevalant in the software world.

As best as I can tell, the current materialistic "science" is like the Microsoft or Apple Mac of software control.

They create limits/constraints both for end-users and software developers.

Not to say that these products were not designed

Comment by computerist — November 7, 2010 @ 7:10 am

pds Says:
November 7th, 2010 at 7:45 am
ID is a theory of origins. Origins is generally a historical science. A good example of ID research would be digging for fossils, and then making inferences to the best explanation of what we see in the fossil record.

Has Telic Thoughts ever spent much time discussing the proper methodology for the historical sciences? It is one of the best parts of Meyer's Signature in the Cell, IMHO.

Comment by pds — November 7, 2010 @ 7:45 am

olegt Says:
November 7th, 2010 at 8:07 am
nullasalus wrote:

Who's bitching? Behe loves Lenski's work. That's rather the point of the question of whether Lenski's work would have been "ID Research" if Behe performed the same experiment.

Well, Behe didn't perform an experiment of this type and has no plans to do so. And his reaction to Lenski's work wasn't exactly enthusiastic. In New work by Richard Lenski, he wrote:

Lenski is a very good self-promoter (no criticism intended; that’s a good thing — scientists have to interest other people in their work), and he always accentuates the positive. So if a gene is blasted to bits by a mutation, he talks cheerfully about how it is a beneficial change that helps the bacterium grow faster. One has to dig hard into the data to see that the bacterium is losing genetic info. In press coverage for this paper, he avows a “new dynamic relationship was established” in the bacterium’s evolution, and one has to read the details of the paper to find out that this is due to a degradative mutation that compromises its normal ability to repair its DNA.

Despite his understandable desire to spin the results his way, Lenski’s decades-long work lines up wonderfully with what an ID person would expect — in a huge number of tries, one sees minor changes, mostly degradative, and no new complex systems. So much for the power of random mutation and natural selection. For his work in this area we should be very grateful. It gives us solid results to point to, rather than having to debate speculative scenarios.

So, when we observe evolution in action, it's just "minor," "mostly degradative," or somehow otherwise uninteresting. If Behe wants to make evolution into a beauty context, he is free to do so. Just don't call it science.

Comment by olegt — November 7, 2010 @ 8:07 am

ID guy Says:
November 7th, 2010 at 9:27 am
olegt:
So, when we observe evolution in action,

No one is debating whether or not evolution occurs.

.. it's just "minor," "mostly degradative," or somehow otherwise uninteresting.

It is what it is and the observations say it's just minor, mostly degradative and otherwise uninteresting.

If Behe wants to make evolution into a beauty context, he is free to do so.

Strawman.

Comment by ID guy — November 7, 2010 @ 9:27 am

ID guy Says:
November 7th, 2010 at 10:57 am
The point being is if you don't want people saying " it's just minor, mostly degradative and otherwise uninteresting" then show us something that is major, constructive and interesting.

Also citrate utilization by E. Coli was observed before.

The following is a paper showing the degradative component of another evolutionary "icon", bacterial resistance to antibiotics:

Is Bacterial Resistance to Antibiotics an Appropriate Example of Evolutionary Change?

Prediction – olegt will either attack the website, the website's founder, the author of the paper's religious PoV, or the author of the paper but he will not accept the data and evidence provided or he will ignore it and pander on about something else.

Comment by ID guy — November 7, 2010 @ 10:57 am

Guts Says:
November 7th, 2010 at 1:52 pm
pds, if you want, you can summarize it and I'll post it here.

Comment by Guts — November 7, 2010 @ 1:52 pm

JOHN_A_DESIGNER Says:
November 7th, 2010 at 1:54 pm
San juan capistrano has it swallows, Hinckley, Ohio, which is close to where I live, has some Buzzards that allegedly return, like clock work, every year on March 15th . A few years ago a local TV station interviewed one of the Park Rangers, who worked at the Hinckley Reservation, and aske him whether the Buzzards ever return earlier. “Nope,” the Ranger said, “We know that they don’t, so we don’t even bother to look.”

Of course, the Rangers flippant tongue-in-the-cheek response (I sensed that he knew something we don’t know) is a classic example of circular reasoning. Of course, when it comes to preserving traditions like the return of the buzzards this kind of reasoning, in my opinion, is okay. If you are doing scientific research,however, it's an entirely different matter.

For example, here is Jerry Coynes thinking on new research into “epigenetics.”

There are a handful of examples showing that environmentally-induced changes can be passed from one generation to the next. In nearly all of these examples, the changes disappear after one or two generations, so they couldn’t effect permanent evolutionary change. The proponents of epigenesis as an important factor in evolution, like Eva Jablonka and Marion Lamb, always wind up talking about the same tired old examples…

In other words, Cones reasoning is, we already know what the major driver in evolution is, natural selection (NS + RV), so why even bother considering anything else?

Another possible line of ID research?

Comment by JOHN_A_DESIGNER — November 7, 2010 @ 1:54 pm

computerist Says:
November 7th, 2010 at 5:49 pm
Intelligent Design to me is "open source" science.

BTW, no need to be a NASA scientist in order to take man to the moon:

http://www.openluna.org/index....

Comment by computerist — November 7, 2010 @ 5:49 pm

Bilbo Says:
November 7th, 2010 at 6:07 pm
ID Guy and Olegt,

I remember warning you guys a while ago not to do the "I know your name game" anymore. Address each other by your chosen names here: "ID Guy" and "Olegt" (or "Oleg", or "Oleg(t)"). Last warning.

Comment by Bilbo — November 7, 2010 @ 6:07 pm

Bilbo Says:
November 7th, 2010 at 6:10 pm
ID Guy,

I don't think Olegt was lying. I don't think he realized (or remembered) that Behe had set the limit at two proteins in his book.

Comment by Bilbo — November 7, 2010 @ 6:10 pm

nullasalus Says:
November 7th, 2010 at 8:04 pm
Well, Behe didn't perform an experiment of this type and has no plans to do so.

Yes, I'm aware. Of course, he also doesn't have to – someone did the experiment already.

Apparently, that really is a core complaint here: There's no ID research going on (correction: not enough), because what's meant by 'ID research' is 'ID proponents themselves personally doing research'. And that's a damn thin criticism. Of course, it gets worse than that…

So, when we observe evolution in action, it's just "minor," "mostly degradative," or somehow otherwise uninteresting.

Behe was claiming that Lenski's results were uninteresting with regards to some particular ID claims on his part – and elsewhere he relies heavily on Lenski specifically to show what, in his view, the standard mechanisms can accomplish ("not much").

I don't think ID is science either. But then, I'm not putting myself in the position both of saying that ID is not science, AND demanding to see ID research – as if this was a possible goal to meet given my standards. That's like running a science fair, barring a person from entering, then later complaining how that person never even bothered to enter the competition.

Comment by nullasalus — November 7, 2010 @ 8:04 pm

ID guy Says:
November 7th, 2010 at 8:41 pm
Bilbo:
I don't think Olegt was lying. I don't think he realized (or remembered) that Behe had set the limit at two proteins in his book.

That was a misrepresentation. bordering on a lie as we have been over that very thing this year. However when he says that ID is only a negative attack on evolution, that is a lie.

Comment by ID guy — November 7, 2010 @ 8:41 pm

computerist Says:
November 7th, 2010 at 10:12 pm
ID is only a negative attack on evolution

Even IF that being the case, ID is not nothing.

A '0' in computer engineering context is not nothing. In a stream of bits 10101010100…a zero can be represented by a negative voltage.

A negative voltage is not nothing.

What else? If a negative case is provided a positive case can easily be extrapolated.

?0?0??0??0?00?000?00?0

1010110110100100010010

In other words, if you know the limits of a theory – the negative, a new theory – positive case – can be extrapolated based on those limits.

Comment by computerist — November 7, 2010 @ 10:12 pm

ID guy Says:
November 7th, 2010 at 10:18 pm
The cat in the hat called that method calculatus eliminatus.

Comment by ID guy — November 7, 2010 @ 10:18 pm

pds Says:
November 7th, 2010 at 10:50 pm
Guts,

Thanks. I posted an extended quote from Gould about the methodology of the historical sciences here:

http://thedesignspectrum.wordp...

A shorter excerpt:

How should scientists operate when they must try to explain the results of history, those inordinately complex events that can occur but once in detailed glory? Many large domains of nature–cosmology, geology, and evolution among them–must be studied with the tools of history. The appropriate methods focus on narrative, not experiment as usually conceived.

Meyer's discussion is mainly in Chapter 7 of Signature in the Cell, and he is consistent with Gould. He discusses Peter Lipton's Inference to the Best Explanation and shows how other historical scientists have followed the same methodology. I will try to summarize that chapter, or key parts, at some point.

Comment by pds — November 7, 2010 @ 10:50 pm

Guts Says:
November 8th, 2010 at 12:33 am
Email it to me here nanosolitonATyahooDOTcom whenever you get around to it.

Comment by Guts — November 8, 2010 @ 12:33 am

themayan Says:
November 8th, 2010 at 9:25 am
Shouldn't we go were the evidence takes us? What is wrong with Occams razor and inferring from what we know or what is better able to explain rather than inferring from things that we don't know, or where we have to use our imaginations to draw conclusions?

George Church, a genetics professor at Harvard Medical School and member of Harvard’s Origins of Life Initiative, reported the creation of billions of synthetic ribosomes that readily create a long, complex protein called firefly luciferase.

January 14th 2009 11:47
In an important step towards creating artificial life, researchers have managed to create RNA that self-replicates, producing its own little ecosystem.

PHYSORG.COM February 22, 2010

An extremely small RNA molecule created by a University of Colorado at Boulder team can catalyze a key reaction needed to synthesize proteins, the building blocks of life. The findings could be a substantial step toward understanding "the very origin of Earthly life," the lead researcher contends.

The Venter Institute announced in early 2008 that it had assembled a synthetic Mycoplasma genitalia genome.

The word created or assembled is used over and over again in these reports.
You can accuse me of over simplifying it and thats fine, but
To me this demonstrates a direct intelligent causation.

Comment by themayan — November 8, 2010 @ 9:25 am

neddy Says:
November 8th, 2010 at 5:47 pm
Philip Anderson, Nobel Prize in Physics 1977 wrote:

"The ability to reduce everything to simple fundamental laws does not imply the ability to start from those laws and reconstruct the universe. In fact, the more the elementary particle physicists tell us about the nature of the fundamental laws, the less relevance they seem to have to the very real problems of the rest of science, much less to those of society.

The constructionist hypothesis breaks down when confronted with the twin difficulties of scale and complexity. The behavior of large and complex aggregates of elementary particles, it turns out, is not to be understood in terms of a simple extrapolation of the properties of a few particles. Instead, at each level of complexity entirely new properties appear and the understanding of the new behaviors requires research which I think is as fundamental in its nature as any other…at each stage entirely new laws, concepts and generalizations are necessary, requiring inspiration and creativity to just as great a degree as in the previous one. Psychology is not applied biology, nor is biology applied chemistry.

…

"We have yet to recover from [the arrogance] of some molecular biologists, who seem determined to try to reduce everything about the human organism to “only” chemistry, from the common cold and all mental disease to the religious instinct. Surely there are more levels of organization between human ethology and DNA than there are between DNA and quantum electrodynamics…"

Anderson, P. W. (1972) More Is Different: Broken Symmetry and the Nature of the Hierarchical Structure of Sciences. Science. 177: 4047. August 4, 1972."

http://www.homodiscens.com/hom...

Translation into common English: Darwin's theory of evolution is Kaput for it has no heuristic power to explain the layers of complexity found in natural forms.

Comment by neddy — November 8, 2010 @ 5:47 pm

olegt Says:
November 8th, 2010 at 7:17 pm
neddy,

I am not sure how you got from Anderson's main point—that biology is not reducible to chemistry and requires its own set of fundamental laws—to the purported demise of Darwin's theory. The latter is not an attempt to reduce biology to chemistry. Darwin proposed a new framework for understanding diversity and speciation of living organisms, precisely the kind of "new level of organization" Anderson wrote about. Biological laws are not a simple extension of chemistry or physics.

Comment by olegt — November 8, 2010 @ 7:17 pm

Daniel Smith Says:
November 8th, 2010 at 8:19 pm
olegt: Daniel Smith has been asking this kind of question on this board persistently, but I don't think anyone has tried to answer him.

Boy… Leave town for a couple days and come back to find that the thread you've been waiting for has passed you by!

Bradford: You need not know a thing about Thomas Edison to understand how light bulbs work. You can adequately explain light bulb function and deem the light bulb designer superfluous to your explanation. You are not wrong in doing so. You are simply limited in your explanation of the bigger picture.

Excellent point Bradford! If one starts from the platform of "designed life", one is prepared to see much more of "the big picture".

I'd argue also that spending a lot of time trying to show that the light bulb was designed would be superfluous for those of us who already know it to be. What we can do, however, is discover a bit about the designer of the light bulb by examining his products.

For me, theology should always be a part of ID research. (Don't make me repeat my Mars example!)

Comment by Daniel Smith — November 8, 2010 @ 8:19 pm

JOHN_A_DESIGNER Says:
November 8th, 2010 at 8:40 pm
olegt,

I am not sure how you got from Anderson's main point—that biology is not reducible to chemistry and requires its own set of fundamental laws…

According to Ernst Mayr “there are no laws in biology…”

One of the surprising things that I discovered in my work on the philosophy of biology is that when it comes to the physical sciences, any new theory is based on a law, on a natural law. Yet as several leading philosophers have stated, and I agree with them, there are no laws in biology like those of physics. Biologists often use the word law, but for something to be a law, it has to have no exceptions. A law must be beyond space and time, and therefore it cannot be specific. Every general truth in biology though is specific. Biological "laws" are restricted to certain parts of the living world, or certain localized situations, and they are restricted in time. So we can say that their are no laws in biology, except in functional biology which, as I claim, is much closer to the physical sciences, than the historical science of evolution.
http://www.edge.org/3rd_cultur...

Comment by JOHN_A_DESIGNER — November 8, 2010 @ 8:40 pm

olegt Says:
November 8th, 2010 at 9:16 pm
JAD,

Mayr's quote is a bit too generous to physical sciences. Physics has very few laws that fit Mayr's description,

A law must be beyond space and time, and therefore it cannot be specific. Every general truth in biology though is specific. Biological "laws" are restricted to certain parts of the living world, or certain localized situations, and they are restricted in time.

Physical laws have changed over time. Laws that were initially treated as fundamental and transcending space and time turned out to be approximations valid in some corner of the physical universe.

Newton's laws of motion such as F = ma are valid for sufficiently large objects moving at sufficiently slow speeds in sufficiently weak gravitational fields. Newton's law of universal gravitation breaks down when we are dealing with black holes.

And even if you stay within the range of validity of classical mechanics and take the view that F = ma is an absolute truth in that domain you can't get much out of that law alone. You have to get specific and rely on phenomenological (and much less precise) rules to deal with things like friction, tension, fluids, solids and so on. As a condensed matter physicist, I find this division into fundamental and specific somewhat unhelpful.

And of course, Mayr does not exactly bash biology in his interview. In the same breath he says:

Anyhow the question is, if scientific theories are based on laws and there aren't any laws in biology, well then how can you say you have theories, and how do you know that your theories are any good? That's a perfectly legitimate question. Of course our theories are based on something solid, which are concepts. If you go through the theories of evolutionary biology you find that they are all based on concepts such as natural selection, competition, the struggle for existence, female choice, male dominance, etc. There are hundreds of such concepts. In fact, ecology consists almost entirely of such basic concepts. Once again you can ask, how do you know they're true? The answer is that you can know this only provisionally by continuous testing and you have to go back to historical narratives and other non-physicalist methods to determine whether your concept and the consequences that arise from it can be confirmed.

Comment by olegt — November 8, 2010 @ 9:16 pm

ID guy Says:
November 8th, 2010 at 9:48 pm
olegt:
Physical laws have changed over time.

That is incorrect- our approximation of them may have changed but the laws have remained the same.

Comment by ID guy — November 8, 2010 @ 9:48 pm

JOHN_A_DESIGNER Says:
November 8th, 2010 at 11:33 pm
Olegt: And of course, Mayr does not exactly bash biology in his interview.

My only point was that Mayr claimed that “there are no laws in biology…” I said nothing about anybody doing any kind of bashing.

Of course, in biology, according to Mayr the fact there are no laws leaves us with “concepts such as natural selection, competition, the struggle for existence, female choice, male dominance, etc.” to base our theories upon. Armed with a theory, based on those kind of concepts, it is then a matter of figuring out, or reconstructing, some kind of historical narrative to explain how real things really evolved.

Gould has some interesting things to say about the historical narrative/ “story telling” phase of theory development. He writes:

Our technical literature contains many facile verbal arguments—little more than plausible "just-so" stories. The fossil record also presents some excellent examples of sequential development through intermediary stages that could not work as modern organs do—but we lack a rigorous mechanical analysis of function at the various stages.
http://www.stephenjaygould.org...

The above quote is from a very interesting essay where Gould discusses the evolution of wings (in birds, then insects) and flight. A problem of evolution that he recognized was unsolved and to this day remains unsolved. A problem that by it’s very nature biological evolution, which as an historical science, requires reconstructing some kind of narrative of what might have happened.

Historians of human history, even when working with written records, find it, in many cases, extraordinarily difficult to reconstruct what actually happened. But when you are working with what amounts to be trace evidence and are trying to reconstruct what happened millions of years ago the difficulties and what can be established with any certainty are pushed to the very limits of our ability to understand. The best you can do is use a lot of imagination and speculation to try to come up with some kind of plausible scenario. Then occasionally, you might get lucky. Of course Gould concedes it might be nothing more than a “just-so story”. Science, he reminds us again “is tested evidence, not tall tales.”

Of course as a paleontologist and a committed evolutionist Gould believed in this kind of scientific research. But in my opinion such theorizing is based more on belief than it is on any real kind of knowledge. Therefore, some genuine humility conceding that such theorizing is very tenative, if not speculative, may be in order.

Comment by JOHN_A_DESIGNER — November 8, 2010 @ 11:33 pm

ID guy Says:
November 10th, 2010 at 11:31 am
Ok it looks like there are plenty of ideas for ID research.

Good job…

Comment by ID guy — November 10, 2010 @ 11:31 am

kornbelt888 Says:
November 10th, 2010 at 12:27 pm
Olegt: No, Bradford, evolutionary theory does not rule God out, it just makes him a superfluous figure in biology as well as in, say, planetary motion.

Bradford: Tell me about superfluous when you get origins figured out.

And tell us about superfluous when you can demonstrate how RV+NS can produce something like a human brain (including yours) with all it's abilities.

Comment by kornbelt888 — November 10, 2010 @ 12:27 pm

olegt Says:
November 10th, 2010 at 1:43 pm
kornbelt888,

You are so predictable.

Comment by olegt — November 10, 2010 @ 1:43 pm

ID Research Programs – Another View - Telic Thoughts Says:
November 11th, 2010 at 8:39 pm
[...] there have been questions of ID Research programs. Now while I believe strongly in arguments for design, I don't believe ID, or not-ID, is [...]

Pingback by ID Research Programs – Another View - Telic Thoughts — November 11, 2010 @ 8:39 pm

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