On page 231 of Michael Behe’s Darwin’s Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution, Behe summarizes his answers to “questions about design” as follows:
The preceding are just the obvious questions that flow from a theory of design. Undoubtedly, more and better-formed questions will be generated as more and more scientists grow curious about design. The theory of intelligent design promises to reinvigorate a field of science grown stale from a lack of viable solutions to dead-end problems. The intellectual competition created by the discovery of design will bring sharper analysis to the professional scientific literature and will require that assertions be backed by hard data. The theory will spark experimental approaches and new hypotheses that would otherwise by untried. A rigorous theory of intelligent design will be a useful tool for the advancement of science in an area that has been moribund for decades. [emphasis added]
Just out of curiosity, what “area of science” is Behe referring to here? I ask because he quite clearly does not identify what area of science he is referring to. Any suggestions?
I presume Behe is talking about biochemistry. But that was before people showed that there was actually quite a rich research going on in these areas.
Perhaps Behe mimicks Del Ratzsch position that
I think that some are certainly too far in the materialist direction, and they claim that science backs them up on that. ID can at least serve a ‘keeping em’ honest’ function, even if nothing else. I think that ID may very well have things to offer science, but I think that it is too early for ID to claim that it has done so. I don’t think that it is just obvious that ID will contribute substantively to science, but I think it has that potential, and that it should be pushed as far as it can be made to legitimately go.
Is the ‘keep science honest’ the function of ID that is supposed to reinvigorate science?
Comment by PvM — July 12, 2006 @ 12:42 pm
More specifically, I think he is talking about molecular evolution or even more specifically “the origin of complex stuff.”
Comment by nmatzke — July 12, 2006 @ 1:11 pm
Behe is talking about design elucidation and un-explored or yet-to-be developed mechanisms of evolution.
If one looks at his prior paragraph, that makes it clear:
Thus Behe outlines his sentiments toward front-loaded evolution (versus Natural selection) where phylogeny resembles some sort of ontogeny….
The explanatory filter (EF) which is highly oriented toward recognizing linguistic structures may help elucidate informational structures even before we identify function.
For example, I can have large amounts of software in a system. I can identify it as software, even before I understand it’s function in the over all architecture. Explanatory filtering detects such linguistic constructs independent of functional detection.
This would be useful for detecting dormant or artifactual information of evolutionary history. For example, if the phylogeny followed an ontogeny like process, might we be able to recreate it in the lab?
Of interest to some is the idea each marsupials was descended from it’s placental counter part. The hypotehsis is that the reproductive change occured through a pre-programmed leap. If true, we might expect to see the software artifact still around in the placentals, and attemp to trigger it!
Of course, if IDers demonstrated that, we’d have to re-write the paleontology books, but hey, I love radical theories.
Salvador
Comment by Salvador T. Cordova, IDEA GMU — July 12, 2006 @ 6:29 pm
Sal The explanatory filter (EF) which is highly oriented toward recognizing linguistic structures may help elucidate informational structures even before we identify function.
Again I have to invoke the rule of engagement and insist politely that Sal supports his claims since the EF as defined by Dembski seems to have little relevance to linguistics and there is NO evidence that the EF can be helpful before function is established. In fact Dembski is clear that when it comes to the specification part of the filter, it is function in biology which trivially functions as such…
Now I am certainly not opposed to just so stories, as this is the first step towards hypotheses and perhaps even a solid theory. But until ID can do more than wishful thinking and in this case, until ID can support its claims in a more logical manner, one has to again reject Sal’s assertions as he has failed to show how they follow from the basic principles of the explanatory filter.
So let me, for information purposes, explain to Sal what the explanatory filter is really about.
First of all, the explanatory filter is eliminative, in other words, the filter provides no independent explanations for a particular system. Secondly, the explanatory filter is based on two concepts: specification and ‘complexity’ where in biology specifiction is trivially fulfilled by ‘function’. Since function is exactly that which we expect under natural selection, it does seems to be clear that natural selection can indeed be an ‘intelligent designer’ and I will come to this point a bit later. The next step is complexity, which actually has little to do with complexity and more with probability. If something cannot be explained then it is argued to be complex. So if natural law and chance fail to explain the system, the system is argued to be complex or more likely improbable under the given pathways. But that hardly means that no natural pathways exist. So now we come to the design inference. Since it is based on an eliminative approach it cannot compete with ‘we don’t know’ as it fails to show that its own probability to explain the system is larger than the ‘we don’t know explanation’.
So now we have an unreliable filter which may infer that something is designed. Even at this step the pain for ID does not stop as ‘design’ does not necessarily imply a designer…
As Nichols has pointed out
Nichols wrote:
“Before I proceed, however, I note that Dembski makes an important concession to his critics. He refuses to make the second assumption noted above. When the EF implies that certain systems are intelligently designed, Dembski does not think it follows that there is some intelligent designer or other. He says that, “even though in practice inferring design is the first step in identifying an intelligent agent, taken by itself design does not require that such an agent be posited. The notion of design that emerges from the design inference must not be confused with intelligent agency” (TDI, 227, my emphasis).
In other words, even if design is inferred, no designer is necessarily required. In fact as Elsberry has shown, natural selection fits nicely the requirements for ‘designer’.
All in all it seems clear by now that the explanatory filter does not do much.
The worst is yet to come; If design identifies a pathway, the probability becomes close to 1 and the complexity, which is the log of the probability goes to zero. In other words, even design fails to explain ‘complexity’.
There is no way around these problems and this explains why Intelligent Design has no scientific content as it fails to provide a basis for fruitful hypotheses.
Now I am very aware that ID proponents have made up ‘hypotheses’ which they claim follow from ID’s basic premises but when asked to logically explain how, they have so far failed to explain. And I doubt that any such explanation will be forthcoming as ID is not interested in pathways, explanation, etc… All it claims is that it can detect ‘design’ where design need not even require what we typically consider an intelligent agent.
I have explained all this in depth at Intelligent Design explained: Part 1 Introduction
So far Sal and other ID proponents have mostly ignored these major problems for ID and I cannot blame them because they all follow from the foundation of ID which relies on elimination only.
And before IDers ‘argue’ that design is succesfully detected in sciences such as criminology, archaeology etc, it is trivial to show that these sciences do not rely on the explanatory filter but rather deal in issues such as motives, means and opportunities as well as hard evidence, physical evidence, witnesses and more.
Which is why science can reliably detect design and why ID will fail. And this may explain why ID has failed to apply its explanatory filter to any non trivial example. And for the somewhat trivial examples, they quickly violate their own requirements by infering motive such as in the case of Caputo. In other words, additional information is smuggled in to make the inference more reliable, frustrating the hopes that the explanatory filter has much of any relevance in science.
Ask yourself: What has ID contributed to science which is both non trivial and follows from the basic premises of ID?
I argue: nothing and encourage anyone to prove me wrong.
Comment by PvM — July 13, 2006 @ 1:15 am
The students have Dembski’s book, they are invited to turn to the page which has this passage:
The Explanatory Filter is used all the time (implicitly):
I want to emphasize, the Explanatory Filter (EF) is used ALL the time. When ID critics say the EF has never been used to detect anything, they misrepresent what the EF is, because the EF is used ALL the time.
Copyright infringement detection is as linguistic as it gets. The EF is ORDINARY PRACTICE of detecting design.
The novelty Dembski brought was to show ordinary practice might possibly be extensible to detecting design in biology.
Nevertheless, one cannot charitably read Dembski’s work and say the EF does not apply to language detection.
Salvador
Comment by Salvador T. Cordova, IDEA GMU — July 13, 2006 @ 2:09 am
I don’t want to derail Allen’s thread, so interested readers who wish to hear more are invited to:
Marsupials and Placentals: a case of front-loaded, pre-programmed, designed evolution?
Salvador
Comment by Salvador T. Cordova, IDEA GMU — July 13, 2006 @ 2:13 am
Copyright infringement detection is as linguistic as it gets. The EF is ORDINARY PRACTICE of detecting design.
The novelty Dembski brought was to show ordinary practice might possibly be extensible to detecting design in biology.
Nevertheless, one cannot charitably read Dembski’s work and say the EF does not apply to language detection.
On the contrary, the claim that the EF applies to copyright infringement is just plain silly. In the case of copyright we have a known designed system and all that is needed is a comparison to another system to determine copyright violation. The explanatory filter has no relevance in this instance and it should be clear that Sal has yet to present a step by step analysis as to why we should take his claim seriously.
So I invoke the rule of engagement once again and encourage Sal to support his claim about the explanatory filter and linguistics in a robust manner. Or accept that the claim remains unsupported.
Let us know what you decide Sal, I will be satisfied either way. Quoting Dembski is not sufficient as Sal has to show that Dembski’s claims find their foundation in the explanatory filter. Note that Dembski himself has done little to support his claims and that various people already have shown how vacuous his claims really are.
The Explanatory filter and how it should be applied is well described in Dembski’s work and thus I assume that applying the necessary steps should pose no significant problem to Sal.
So in other words, I argue that when IDers claim that the explanatory filter is used all the time, they are misunderstanding what the explanatory filter really is and is not.
I am looking forward to exploring these issues in more depth on this board as I have heard these claims more than once and I have yet to see any attempt to support them in a manner worthy of a scientific argument or claim.
This board, by its nature of focusing on allowing people to challenge other people’s claims of fact, provides a good environment to explore these claims and invite the other party to present their arguments.
Claiming that it is so because Dembski says so is an argument from authority not worthy of science or logic. I hope that Sal and the students appreciate the difference.
In fact, I have already explained why Dembski is wrong in his claims about criminology, archaeology and SETI and I am but one of several who have challenged Dembski and ID on these issues. It should not come as a shock to most that this has been largely ignored by ID.
I hope that this board encourages ID proponents to finally present their arguments in a logical and scientific manner. Or we may have to accept that their claims were ill founded.
Comment by PvM — July 13, 2006 @ 2:20 am
Entire industries would be dead in the water without the Explanatory Filter. Much is riding on it. Using the filter, our courts have sent people to the electric chair.
I am not aware of anyone who has been sent to the electric chair without a jury weighing all the evidence, including the evidence of motive, and finding that the crime in question was committed by the accused person beyond a reasonable doubt.
I am aware that some people have been lynched in the absence of much, if any, evidence. In that case, the executions are understood by reasonable people examining the motives of the lynchers.
When ID critics say the EF has never been used to detect anything, they misrepresent what the EF is
If the EF amounts to nothing more than using your brain to evaluate evidence, then why do ID promoters cite Dembski as if he’s done something exceptional?
My understanding of Dembski’s theories and career is that whatever he thought he had devised, it was badly flawed. Does Dembski actually do any original research? Has he published any practical algorithms which can be used to analyze whether a protein in E. coli evolved naturally or was designed by a non-human entity in the distant past?
If he did the latter, that would be impressive. In he is simply imagining that he could do that someday, then I’m not sure why I or anyone should care. We all have imaginations.
Comment by Michael Hubl — July 13, 2006 @ 3:07 am
I proposed that marsupial and placental mammals were reading the same “prescribed” information as part of my recent paper - “A Prescribed Evolutionary Hypthesis.” I am surprized that no mention of that was made in your discussion.
Comment by john a davison — July 13, 2006 @ 10:17 am
The concept of “front-loading” as described by Salvador Cordova bears a remarkable resemblance to the ideas of the Scottish biomathematician D’Arcy Thompson (1860-1948). In his magnum opus, Growth and Form, Thompson proposed that biologists had over-emphasized evolution (and especially natural selection) and under-emphasized the constraints and parameters within which organisms develop, constraints that “channel” animal forms into particular patterns that are repeated over and over again across the phyla.
However, while Thompson’s ideas strongly imply that there is a kind of teleology operating at several levels in biology (especially developmental biology), Thompson himself did not present hypotheses that were empirically testable (sound familiar?):
Thompson did not articulate his insights in the form of experimental hypotheses that can be tested. Thompson was aware of this, saying that ‘This book of mine has little need of preface, for indeed it is ‘all preface’ from beginning to end.’
Thompson’s huge book (over 1,000 heavily illustrated pages) is a veritable gold mine of ideas along the lines articulated in Sal’s post. However, Thompson’s underlying thesis is just as inimical to ID as is the explanation from evolutionary biology. His argument is essentially that biological form is constrained by the kind of mathematical relationships that characterize classical physics. That is, there are “built-in” laws of form that constrain the forms that biological organisms can take. And therefore, physical law provides the “front-loading”, not a supernatural “intelligent designer.”
For example, Thompson pointed out that the shape that droplets of viscous liquid take when dropped into water are virtually identical to the medusa forms of jellyfish, and that this “convergence of form” is therefore not accidental. Rather, it is fundamentally constrained by the physics of moving fluids, as described in the equations of fluid mechanics. Thompson’s book is filled with similar examples, all pointing to the same conclusion: that biological form is constrained by the laws of physics (especially classical mechanics).
Evolutionary convergence, far from departing from Thompson’s ideas, is based on essentially the same kinds of constraints. Sharks, dolphins (the fish, not the mammals), tunas, ichthyosaurs, and porpoises all appear superficially similar (despite significant anatomical differences) because their external shapes are constrained by the fluid medium through which they swim. In the language of natural selection, any ancestor of a shark, dolphin, tuna, ichthyosaur, or porpoise that (through its developmental biology) could take the shape of a torpedo could move more efficiently through the water than one that had a different (i.e. less efficient) shape, and therefore would have a selective advantage that would, over time, result in similar shapes among its proliferating ancestors. The same concept is applied to the parallel evolution of marsupial and placental mammals: similar environments and subsistence patterns place similar selective constraints on marsupial and placental mammals in different locations, resulting in strikingly similar anatomical and physiological adaptations, despite relatively non-homologous ancestry.
This evolutionary argument is now being strongly supported by findings in the field of evolutionary development (”evo-devo”), in which arguments based on “deep homology” are providing explanations for at least some of the seemingly amazing convergences we see in widely separated groups of organisms. Recent discoveries about gene regulation via hierarchical sets of regulatory genes indicate that these genes have been conserved through deep evolutionary time, from the first bilaterally symmetric metazoans to the latest placental mammals, as shown by their relative positions in the genome and relatively invariant nucleotide sequences. These genes channel the arrangement of overall anatomy and body form throughout the course of development, producing the overall shapes of organisms and the relationships between body parts that we refer to when discussing evolutionary convergence.
However, as should be obvious by now, this in no way provides evidence for the currently popular ID hypothesis of “front-loading”, except insofar that it states that the hierarchical control of overall development evolved very early among the metazoa. It provides no empirically testable way to distinguish between an evolutionary explanation and a “design” explanation. Indeed, all of the evidence to date could be explained using either theory.
And so, by the rules of empirical science, since the evolutionary explanation is both sufficient to explain the phenomena and does not require causes that are outside of nature (i.e. a supernatural designer, that is neither itself natural nor works through natural – i.e. material and efficient – causes), evolutionary biologists are fully justified in accepting the evolutionary explanation (and disregarding the “front-loaded ID” explanation.
Only in the case that the kinds of natural causes described above (especially the ability of evo-devo processes to constrain the development of overall form via purely natural means via the known biochemistry of development) can NOT explain the patterns we observe in convergent evolution should we entertain other hypotheses (especially if those other hypotheses are not empirically testable). Only then, and not before…and therefore certainly not now.
Comment by Allen MacNeill — July 13, 2006 @ 10:43 am
Good points Michael. ID is trying on the one hand to argue that the design inference (based on the explanatory filter) is something new and previously not considered by science and on the other hand it claims that the EF is something revolutionary new.
Of course, by claiming that the EF has been used by science succesfully, ID is trying to gain credibility but a quick overview of the actual arguments show that these examples invariably fail as they smuggle in side information such as means, motives, opportunities etc.
Desperate times, desperate measures it seems.
Allen and others at UncommonDescent have already destroyed Sal’s earlier claims about genetic modified corn and the explanatory filter.
What Sal is conflating here is design inference and explanatory filter. While the explanatory filter claims to enable a design inference, not all design inferences are explanatory filters. In fact most of the succesful ones, if not all of them, rely on additional data such as means, motives, opportunities, physical evidence, trace evidence, eye witnesses, etc.
In order for Sal to argue that copyright infringement is an explanatory filter he has to show that complexity is involved. All that is involved however is a simple comparison of known designed text with other text.
In case of the genetically modified genes, the situation is even more dire. Let’s say we have a gene described in the literature and we do a homology search and find matches. Do we infer design? After all we do have an independent(or do we) match serving as a specification just like in Sal’s example and we perform a pattern match. Voila, another design inference and another one which is a false positive.
So let’s invoke the rule of engagement and ask Sal to present his claim in a more scientific manner. Quoting Dembski that it is so, does not qualify as scientific evidence or even logic, unless specific evidence is provided that the conclusion follows logically from the premises of ID.
And it seems trivially obvious, even to various fellow ID proponents of Sal, that these examples are severely flawed.
Check out Allen’s evolutionlistDOTblogspotDOTcom/2006/05/genetic-id-and-explanatory-filter.html”>deconstruction of Sal’s claim. Allen rocks…
Comment by PvM — July 13, 2006 @ 11:33 am
Dr. Davison,
My apologies. I will remedy that unfortunate situation.
Salvador
Comment by Salvador T. Cordova, IDEA GMU — July 13, 2006 @ 11:45 am
A Prescribed Evolutionary Hypthesis was yet another pro-ID peer-reviewed paper that explicitly mentions ID.
Comment by Salvador T. Cordova, IDEA GMU — July 13, 2006 @ 11:51 am
Salvador,
With regards to your PEH paper - where exactly was it published? A reputable journal, or something like Revista de Biologia (where Jonathan Wells’ has been published)?
I wish I had time to read the paper you link more thoroughly (sadly I don’t at the moment) - but skimming through it, I see absolutely no empirical evidence supporting ID.
… more vacuity, it would seem…
Comment by Dan — July 13, 2006 @ 3:23 pm
I have just finished a preliminary reading of Davidson’s paper, and having worked my way about a third of the way through West-Eberhard’s Developmental Plasticity and Evolution (2003), I can find nothing in Davidson’s paper that cannot be explained using fairly basic principles of evolutionary development (especially homeotic regulation and plasticity of phenotype responding to environmental change). I will write up a more detailed analysis and comparison of the relevent concepts and post them here (and at The Evolution List) in the very near future.
Comment by Allen MacNeill — July 13, 2006 @ 4:06 pm
And yes, Dan, there is no new empirical evidence presented in Davidson’s paper at all. Rather, he proposes an alternative hypothesis for already-well-known patterns of phylogenetic change. Without much more specific data, including analysis of the effects of the relevent homeotic regulatory genes on phenotypic plasticy among the vertebrates, currently under investigation by evo-devo evolutionary biologists (but not, apparently, by ID supporters, who prefer to stick to “theoretical speculation”), Davidson’s paper remains at most an hypothesis without empirical support.
Comment by Allen MacNeill — July 13, 2006 @ 4:12 pm
Allen,
Thank you for you informative discussion of the topic. I pointed out at Uncommon Descent however, that although the laws of physics may require a particular architeture to solve a problem or be functional, it does not imply a blind watchmaker process can effect it. If two nations wished to make space travel possible, they will tend to engineer systems of convergent design, but this does not imply these convergent designs are reachable through blind watchmaker mechanisms.
Your other points are very much worth addressing and I’m glad you brought them up. It highlights how both sides are talking past each other in these discussions.
To help illustrate how we are talking past each other, I think it’s helpful to walk through an illustration of how one might explain a designed artifact like a printed piece of paper.
One might ask, “how did the paper get the printing that is on it?”.
There are several valid answers, neither is wrong, and neither is untrue empirically speaking. I’ll offer 2:
#1 and #2 are modes of explanation. Mode #2 suits evolutionary biologists quite well, and it is what they consider empirical explanations. Nothing is inherently wrong with a mode #2 explanation, unless of course, the mechanical explanation of printer operation is completely erroneous (i.e. it’s powered by a perpetual motion machine, etc.).
In contrast, IDers invoke mode #1 AND #2 explanations.
But how can one justify mode #1 explanations empirically. If one can reach mode #2 explanations only by assuming mode #1 as a hypothesis, then mode #1 explanations begin to have more empirical believability. At least that’s how I see it. And that is how I tried to frame the exploration for IDers….
Salvador
PS
in deference to your concerns about civility, I edited out some of my more inflammatory statements in my recent posts at UD.
I thank you for trying to set an example of civil discussion.
Comment by Salvador T. Cordova, IDEA GMU — July 13, 2006 @ 4:25 pm
And thank you, Sal, for the same. You have shown that it isn’t necessary for a person committed to ideas and rational argument to descend to the kind of unprincipled ad hominem argument that so often happens at some ID and EB sites.
Comment by Allen MacNeill — July 13, 2006 @ 4:38 pm
BTW, EB = evolutionary biology
Comment by Allen MacNeill — July 13, 2006 @ 4:38 pm
In regards to post #13:
Yes it mentions ID, but does it prove anything? What data was gathered to put ID beyond mere conjecture and into the realm of science? Does the author gather data from observations, form a hypothesis, and makes predictions that can be tested by future researchers?
The answer . . . no.
Comment by Mike Hannigan — July 13, 2006 @ 5:02 pm
Salvador cited the paper “A Prescribed Evolutionary Hypothesis” as a paper that mentioned ID. I can assume that he felt it was a good read and must have some excellent ideas that strongly support the cause of ID. Does he stand by this paper? Can he support it claims? Please Salvador support the claim made by the author in his conclusion wherein he states:
“It is interesting to note that Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace discovered nothing.”
I am interested in how you can support this claim. Thank you.
Comment by Mike Hannigan — July 13, 2006 @ 5:13 pm
Salvador wrote and linked:
In his link, Sal speculates: From the Wikipedia entry for Marsupial:“Marsupials are mammals in which the female typically has a pouch (called the marsupium, from which the name ‘Marsupial’ derives) in which it rears its young through early infancy. They differ from placental mammals (Placentalia) in their reproductive traits. The female has two vaginas, both of which open externally through one orifice but lead to different compartments within the uterus. Males usually have a two-pronged penis which corresponds to the females’ two vaginas.”
If I’m to understand this “case of front-loaded, pre-programmed, designed evolution” correctly, not only would we be able to make bobcats with two-pronged penises and a taste for kangaroos, we’d be able to turn any marsupial into other marsupial. We could turn a flying phalanger into a Tasmanian wolf, right?
Comment by alienward — July 13, 2006 @ 6:41 pm
I repeat that Darwin and Wallace discovered nothing. Tyhey assued Lyell’s Principle of Uniformitarianism which, coupled with Malthus’ Essay on Population, served to generate an hypothesis for which not a shred of evidence has ever been forthcomong beyond the formation of varieties.
It has become the biggest hoax in the history of science
Comment by john a davison — July 13, 2006 @ 8:34 pm
The mistake the Darwinians continue to make is the assumption that evolution had an external identifiable cause. Such a cause has never been found because it never existed. Like ontogeny, phylogeny has also resulted driven entirely by the controled release of endogenous, front-loaded information introduced by an unknown number of programmers an unknown number of times at an unknown number of places and times in the geologic column. Neither natural selection, allelic mutations nor sexual (Mendelian) reproduction ever had anything to do with creative evolution. They are all now and always were antievolutionary, serving to stabilize species and ensure their ultimate extinction.
Furthermorem, evolution is finished and has been for at least two million years at the genus level and no new species have appeared in historical times.
“Any system that purports to account for evolution must invoke a mechanism not aleatory and mutational.”
Pierre Grasse, Evolution of Living Organisms. page 245, (the entire sentence in italics)
A past evolution is undeniable, a present evolution undemonstrable.”
John A. Davison
“All great truths begin as blasphemies.”
George Bernard Shaw
Comment by john a davison — July 13, 2006 @ 8:50 pm
Response to Post #23:
John, you state that “no new species have appeared in historical times.” I would like to challenge this claim and, as per the rules of engagment on this site, you should make a good faith effort to either provide supporting evidence or make a logical argument as to why such supporting evidence is unnecessary.
Could you please refute the following instances of speciation which I have copied from the Talk.Origins website:
Example 1-Formation of five new species of cichlid fishes which formed since they were isolated less than 4000 years ago from the parent stock, Lake Nagubago. The citation is: Mayr, E., 1970. Populations, Species, and Evolution, Massachusetts, Harvard University Press. p. 348
Example 2- Evidence that a species of fireweed formed by doubling of the chromosome count, from the original stock. The citation is: Mosquin, T., 1967. “Evidence for autopolyploidy in Epilobium angustifolium (Onaagraceae)”, Evolution 21:713-719
Example 3- A naturally occurring speciation of a plant species, Stephanomeria malheurensis, was observed in Burns County, Oregon. The citation is: Gottlieb, L. D. 1973. Genetic differentiation, sympatric speciation, and the origin of a diploid species of Stephanomeria. American Journal of Botany 60(6):545-553
Once you have refuted these three examples of speciation, please refer to the Talk.Origins website under the keywords of “examples of speciation.” There you will find hundreds of other examples of speciation to refute.
Next, you said, “Like ontogeny, phylogeny has also resulted driven entirely by the controled release of endogenous, front-loaded information introduced by an unknown number of programmers an unknown number of times at an unknown number of places and times in the geologic column.” You state this claim as a fact. You must provide evidence for such a claim or else it is meaningless. As of yet you have provided none.
Now, refute the above three examples, or please withdraw the claim that new new species have appeared in historical times. Thank you for you good faith effort.
Comment by Mike Hannigan — July 14, 2006 @ 12:48 am
I hope that the moderators of these boards will not allow John Davison to continue distracting from the topics of discussion.
His ideas seems to have been mostly rejected by science as well as ID and are of little relevance to ID and/or evolutionary theory, I’d argue.
So can we please return to the far more interesting topics of Behe, intelligent design?
Sal’s ideas about marsupials and mammals indicate that he is not really familiar with how evolutionary science explains these convergences as he claims that convergence
Natural selection absolutely fails as an explanation for these similarities.
As they say in the business, garbage in, garbage out. Anyone familiar with the evolutionary argument would realize that selection is argued to play a major role, but so do constraints.
Excellent papers exist that explain these topics. Why is it that so many ID proponents seem to be so unfamiliar with the (recent) work of science in these areas?
And while we are talking about work, how does ID explain convergence?
Poof?…
Really, the scientific vacuity of ID should be self evident every time claims of scientific relevance are made since support for these claims seems to be quite… lacking imho of course.
Comment by PvM — July 14, 2006 @ 12:49 am
A note to both John D. and Sal C.:
I asked you both to back up the claims you made and/or cited in the thread above. See comment #21 and #25. Any response. I was hoping you just wouldn’t walk away from this one. Thanks
Comment by Mike Hannigan — July 18, 2006 @ 11:29 am