Denialism

Accidental Honesty from UD

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by

MarkH
in

Granville Sewell describes the UD approach to science – in a word, quit early.

In any debate on Intelligent Design, there is a question I have long wished to see posed to ID opponents: “If we DID discover some biological feature that was irreducibly complex, to your satisfication and to the satisfaction of all reasonable observers, would that justify the design inference?” (Of course, I believe we have found thousands of such features, but never mind that.)

If the answer is yes, we just haven’t found any such thing yet, then all the constantly-repeated philosophical arguments that “ID is not science” immediately fall. If the answer is no, then at least the lay observer will be able to understand what is going on here, that Darwinism is not grounded on empirical evidence but a philosophy.

The actual answer is that this is an idiotic question and exposes the fundamental misconceptions that IDers have about science. In fact, I think this is one of their most accidentally-honest posts yet.

In science, if a problem emerges that we don’t have the technology or tools to understand we don’t throw our hands up in the air and say “god did it”. Historically this tactic is always premature.

You want proof ID isn’t a science? There are few better examples this Sewell’s post.

Also note Factition’s take on this very post.

We refer to this in science as an answer that is uninformative. Sure, you’ve failed to divide something further, but what does that mean? That’s why “irreducible complexity” isn’t really a useful metric, and if the intelligent design movement is truly serious about science, they will abandon this metric as a measure of whether or not something is designed.

You can’t base the test of your hypothesis on an uninformative answer. Just like I can’t base my understanding of bacteria based on my failure to find a particular bacterium. You have to base science on positive outcomes (otherwise known as informative outcomes).

Damn right.

Comments

  1. Soren

    Sewells question is also loaded.

    Notice that what Behe calls irreducible complexity was predicted as a result of darwinian processes by Mueller in the first half of the last century!

    IDists often make that mistake.

    IC is not ID. Behe, and others, define IC in a certain way. This has never been the issue with opponents of ID. You can make any definitions you like.

    But what Behe does is that he argues that IC implies ID. Now this correlation is what all the fuss is about.

    Its true that when Behe states something as IC, and it turns out it isn’t IC then this is relevant, but that is a side issue.

    Showing something as IC does not in any way show it is ID!

    Reply
  2. Jim RL

    Good point Soren. A truly irreduceably complex feature would be a blow to evolution, but it doesn’t prove ID at all. That is because ID isn’t science, and there whole theory is that if evolution is wrong, ID must be right. If ID wishes to be science it better answer some questions about the designer and how it works.

    Reply
  3. J-Dog

    Oh yeah? Well if Behe’s stance wasn’t so wide, he’d really show you evilutionists! And he’d show you righ now, except we need more maps, such as, like, you know, they have in South Carolina.

    Reply
  4. steve

    We had a good laugh about that Sewell comment here:

    http://www.antievolution.org/cgi-bin/ikonboard/ikonboard.cgi?s=46d80bd47ce99f18;act=ST;f=14;t=1274;st=18450

    Reply
  5. Dave S.

    Jim RL –

    I would disagree that a “truly irreduceably complex feature would be a blow to evolution”. As noted by Muller almost 100 years ago and alluded to above, such features are an expected consequence of evolution, and can be formed using quite ordinary evolutionary processes. IC is only a blow to Behe’s highly restricted version of evolution, a version which bears little semblance to reality.

    Unless of course you take Behe’s version of evolution to be the “true” one, and a ‘truly irreduceably complex feature’ is consonant with that definition..

    Reply
  6. BronzeDog

    Last time I checked, it was mathematically impossible to prove that something’s IC.

    But, as Dave S. pointed out, even if you could prove something IC, that wouldn’t do anything to evolution. There’s nothing preventing evolution from creating IC features.

    Reply
  7. Soren

    Many creationists take IC to mean something that cannot be reached by evolutionary pathways, but Behes definition (one of them) was simply

    A single system which is composed of several interacting parts that contribute to the basic function, and where the removal of any one of the parts causes the system to effectively cease functioning

    Remark that the definition contains nothing about evolution.

    Behes argument was that a direct evolutionary pathway could never make an IC system. But this claim is of course separate from the definition of IC.

    So an IC feature of a living organism supports ID if and only if it is rational to assume that only ID can produce IC.

    Since there are many IC systems, by the definition cited above, where we have very likely evolutionary pathways described, the existence of IC cannot strengthen the ID hypothesis over the scientific hypothesis!

    Reply
  8. Suzanne

    Just to add to the comments above stating that irreducibly complex forms (as defined by Behe) can be produced by evolution: there are a couple of very simple mechanisms by which this can occur. Firstly – parts can perform different functions in different systems, thereby acting as scaffolding during evolution. Secondly, selection or drift can remove redundant parts as well as add them. Either of these mechanisms is sufficient to produce irreducible complexity.

    Reply
  9. Andrew Wade

    Many creationists take IC to mean something that cannot be reached by evolutionary pathways, …

    Ah, good old bait & switch. You don’t describe such a thing as “irreducible” unless your intent is to mislead.

    Reply
  10. IanR

    “If we DID discover some biological feature that was irreducibly complex, to your satisfication and to the satisfaction of all reasonable observers, would that justify the design inference?”

    Setting aside for the moment the problem of how one would establish that something is “irreducibly complex”, the answer still is no, it would not “justify the design inference”. Assuming that Sewell is referring to the assertion that “certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause”, then, no. Discovering evidence of an unknown force acting on living things is in no way the same as attributing the quality of “intelligence” or some other purposeful nature to that force.

    Reply
  11. Pete Dunkelberg

    Creos define IC variously come excuse time, but the classic definition on which Behe’s fame rests is the one given above by Soren, from p 39 of Behe’s first book. It amounts to claiming that evolution does not produce coadapted parts, which in fact if can hardly help producing. I showed how unbiological Behe’s thinking is in ICDMYST.

    Another part of Sewell’s question tries to imply that if creationists make false claims then creationism must be science. News flash: falsifiability is not a sufficient condition for science, and no one ever argued that creationists make no false claims.

    Reply

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