doctor_logic has made comments on a few of Art’s recent posts that deserve some thought. Below are my responses to some of his questions and arguments.
That humans re-invent things that are present in Nature is not evidence that nature was designed. Stochastic genetic algorithms have reproduced patented designs, so we know that ID is not required to build complex structures.
Interesting that you should bring up genetic algorithms. The No Free Lunch theorems have proven that, averaged over all cost functions, genetic algorithms perform no better than blind search. So to get a genetic algorithm to produce something useful, you need to start with a good cost function. But finding a good cost function is also no easier than blind search. The upshot is that genetic algorithms require an intelligently chosen cost function in order to perform well.
There do seem to be some results suggesting that the NFL theorems don’t hold under co-evolution. Last time I checked these were unpublished results, so I don’t know the details. Dembski, however, is unconvinced that this significantly improves the ability of genetic algorithms to generate more than is put into them (in the form of a cost function).
The problem with ID is that, without a predictive theory (a set of Natural laws that specifically predicts what we will observe), ID doesn't have any explanatory power.
The purpose of ID is to explain features of life (and the cosmos) that are not explainable by natural laws, so I don’t see the weight of this objection. If you define science naturalistically, then of course ID isn’t science by definition. But I don't see what is gained by this sleight-of-hand. The important question ought to be "is design detectable?", not "does detecting design fit my narrow definition of science?"
To make predictions, ID is going to have to talk about 1) what constitutes intelligence (is NDE intelligence? After all, genetic algorithms are considered a form of artificial intelligence in the software biz), 2) what constitutes design, 3) how was life manufactured, and 4) why was life manufactured.
1-3 are really great questions that definitely deserve a place in any robust theory of ID. 4 may be as well, if it can avoid being speculative.
For example, it is an ID hypothesis that CSI is a predictor of design. ID proponents argue that because we see CSI in artificial and biological systems, then the biological systems must be designed. However, a hypothesis cannot simultaneously be used as proof of its own claim. If it could, then I would be able to fine-tune a formula to return true when applied to photos of elephants and photos of nuclear reactors, and I could use that formula as evidence that elephants are susceptible to nuclear meltdown.
CSI-as-design-predictor is not a hypothesis that design theorists are testing by applying it to biological systems. If it were, your criticism would be accurate. CSI is an attempt to make rigorous the process of design inference that humans use all the time, and apply it to biological systems. If you don’t think that CSI is a good indicator of design, I think you at least must admit that humans distinguish design from chance and necessity all the time. There doesn’t seem to be any compelling reason why these criteria couldn’t be applied to biological systems.
What is the probability that an intelligent designer wanted to make a world that looks exactly like the one we see, as opposed to one we don't? A designer could have designed any of an infinite number of possible worlds (populated or otherwise), but chose this particular one. So how is ID explanatory here if it fails to say why this particular world had to exist?
I’m not sure why ID has to explain this to be a successful scientific research program. ID is explanatory because there are lots of things that intelligence explains that have nothing to do with choosing between possible worlds.
What scientific discovery would lower your confidence in ID? Let's say that we discover a theory of everything that tells us how all of the physical constants can be derived from one single constant, e.g., the speed of light. Will that lower your confidence in design? Or raise it?
Insofar as one single constant requires less fine-tuning than lots of unrelated constants, this would lower the cosmological evidence for design. Here are some predictions that would support ID:
1) Life and physics are unfathomably more complex than we currently realize. What we know now about biology and physics only scratches the surface. The more we know, the more we will learn how much we don’t know. This is why I asked in a previous post for some way to gauge what natural selection may reasonably be thought capable of producing with the limited resources (one planet, a few billion years) at its disposal. I predict that even a ludicrously conservative estimate will soon be outpaced (if it hasn’t been already) by our understanding of the complexity of life. As a result, I suspect that Biologists (like physicists) will be forced to conclude we are the result of some cosmic lottery to maintain naturalistic assumptions. This, however, is dependent on the rate of progress in the field. For a while they will continue to be able to claim that any apparently insurmountable probabilistic barriers are due to the fact that we don’t know enough about prebiotic chemistry, evolution, etc.
2) Modern genomics has revealed that the genetic differences between many remotely-related species (i.e., mice and humans) are mostly comprised of large-scale rearrangements of similar DNA fragments, and that it takes a relatively small number of these to turn one genome into the other. I predict that, with the advent of more sophisticated genetic engineering, it will be discovered that the specificity required by this sort of genomic shuffling is so great that chance and necessity can’t be expected to produce an advantageous arrangement on anything remotely approaching the level necessary for evolutionary change.
3) The more we learn about chemistry and the origin of life, the more we will realize that moledules do not self-organize to produce living systems, and that the barriers to life arising spontaneously are insurmountable
That humans re-invent things that are present in Nature is not evidence that nature was designed. Stochastic genetic algorithms have reproduced patented designs, so we know that ID is not required to build complex structures.
Interesting that you should bring up genetic algorithms. The No Free Lunch theorems have proven that, averaged over all cost functions, genetic algorithms perform no better than blind search. So to get a genetic algorithm to produce something useful, you need to start with a good cost function. But finding a good cost function is also no easier than blind search. The upshot is that genetic algorithms require an intelligently chosen cost function in order to perform well.
There do seem to be some results suggesting that the NFL theorems don’t hold under co-evolution. Last time I checked these were unpublished results, so I don’t know the details. Dembski, however, is unconvinced that this significantly improves the ability of genetic algorithms to generate more than is put into them (in the form of a cost function).
The problem with ID is that, without a predictive theory (a set of Natural laws that specifically predicts what we will observe), ID doesn't have any explanatory power.
The purpose of ID is to explain features of life (and the cosmos) that are not explainable by natural laws, so I don’t see the weight of this objection. If you define science naturalistically, then of course ID isn’t science by definition. But I don't see what is gained by this sleight-of-hand. The important question ought to be "is design detectable?", not "does detecting design fit my narrow definition of science?"
To make predictions, ID is going to have to talk about 1) what constitutes intelligence (is NDE intelligence? After all, genetic algorithms are considered a form of artificial intelligence in the software biz), 2) what constitutes design, 3) how was life manufactured, and 4) why was life manufactured.
1-3 are really great questions that definitely deserve a place in any robust theory of ID. 4 may be as well, if it can avoid being speculative.
For example, it is an ID hypothesis that CSI is a predictor of design. ID proponents argue that because we see CSI in artificial and biological systems, then the biological systems must be designed. However, a hypothesis cannot simultaneously be used as proof of its own claim. If it could, then I would be able to fine-tune a formula to return true when applied to photos of elephants and photos of nuclear reactors, and I could use that formula as evidence that elephants are susceptible to nuclear meltdown.
CSI-as-design-predictor is not a hypothesis that design theorists are testing by applying it to biological systems. If it were, your criticism would be accurate. CSI is an attempt to make rigorous the process of design inference that humans use all the time, and apply it to biological systems. If you don’t think that CSI is a good indicator of design, I think you at least must admit that humans distinguish design from chance and necessity all the time. There doesn’t seem to be any compelling reason why these criteria couldn’t be applied to biological systems.
What is the probability that an intelligent designer wanted to make a world that looks exactly like the one we see, as opposed to one we don't? A designer could have designed any of an infinite number of possible worlds (populated or otherwise), but chose this particular one. So how is ID explanatory here if it fails to say why this particular world had to exist?
I’m not sure why ID has to explain this to be a successful scientific research program. ID is explanatory because there are lots of things that intelligence explains that have nothing to do with choosing between possible worlds.
What scientific discovery would lower your confidence in ID? Let's say that we discover a theory of everything that tells us how all of the physical constants can be derived from one single constant, e.g., the speed of light. Will that lower your confidence in design? Or raise it?
Insofar as one single constant requires less fine-tuning than lots of unrelated constants, this would lower the cosmological evidence for design. Here are some predictions that would support ID:
1) Life and physics are unfathomably more complex than we currently realize. What we know now about biology and physics only scratches the surface. The more we know, the more we will learn how much we don’t know. This is why I asked in a previous post for some way to gauge what natural selection may reasonably be thought capable of producing with the limited resources (one planet, a few billion years) at its disposal. I predict that even a ludicrously conservative estimate will soon be outpaced (if it hasn’t been already) by our understanding of the complexity of life. As a result, I suspect that Biologists (like physicists) will be forced to conclude we are the result of some cosmic lottery to maintain naturalistic assumptions. This, however, is dependent on the rate of progress in the field. For a while they will continue to be able to claim that any apparently insurmountable probabilistic barriers are due to the fact that we don’t know enough about prebiotic chemistry, evolution, etc.
2) Modern genomics has revealed that the genetic differences between many remotely-related species (i.e., mice and humans) are mostly comprised of large-scale rearrangements of similar DNA fragments, and that it takes a relatively small number of these to turn one genome into the other. I predict that, with the advent of more sophisticated genetic engineering, it will be discovered that the specificity required by this sort of genomic shuffling is so great that chance and necessity can’t be expected to produce an advantageous arrangement on anything remotely approaching the level necessary for evolutionary change.
3) The more we learn about chemistry and the origin of life, the more we will realize that moledules do not self-organize to produce living systems, and that the barriers to life arising spontaneously are insurmountable
Doctor Logic said... 
