Talk:Predictions of intelligent design

From ResearchID.org

1 A suggestion
2 Criticism
3 To Add
4 Some interesting predictions

A suggestion

You might want to go into a little more detail on why these predictions couldn't be made by evolutionary biology. For example, the effectiveness of biomimicry would appear to be a prediction that could be made by EB as well - according to EB, these organisms have had millions of years to get good at what they do.

Thank you Corkscrew for these suggestions. :) Please feel free to start another page with these explanations by making a link in the text, and then following the red link that appears once you have typed in the link and saved the page. Explore the welcome message on your user talk page for more on using the wiki. If you are not able to do this, I will work on it after I clean up all of the spam people have posted today. -- JosephCCampana 00:34, 24 March 2006 (CST)

Cool :) Should I add one wiki link per item, or one for the entire page? I'd tend to go for the former, as it means I don't feel obliged to do the whole lot at once to avoid confusion, but that might make things look messy.

Also, should I create the "evolutionary explanations" page as a subpage of the "Predictions of ID" page, or as a page in its own right? -- Corkscrew

Thanks for agreeing to do this! One page, of it's own right, for all is best, then if one of the items on the page gets too long you can create a fork to it's own page. Typically, a sub-heading that goes beyond one page fold [browser screens] of text could warrant a completely new page, but not less than that. For more on how to link and how to create headings, follow the links on the help page. You can access the help page by clicking the link in the nav menu on the left side of this page. -- JosephCCampana 07:50, 24 March 2006 (CST)

P.S. Please be sure this, in some way, is helpful to conducting ID research, whether as a conceptual aid, or simply a resource to convey understanding of the science involved. -- JosephCCampana 07:57, 24 March 2006 (CST)

I'm no ID researcher so I can't vouch for that last - feel free to yell loudly if I get it wrong :) -- Corkscrew

Corkscrew, great work on this page! Thank you. -- JosephCCampana 20:36, 25 March 2006 (CST)

Just made one small change: a clarifier on the word evolutionary.

Mind if I rephrase "random chance, blind natural forces, or their cooperation" as "heritable variation in reproductive success" or something like that? Apart from anything else "blind natural forces" would completely sidestep the concept of sexual selection, which IIRC is believed to be a fairly major cause of sympatric speciation. -- Corkscrew 23:21, 27 March '06 (GMT)

I'm not sure your proposed change would help make a distinction between designed and non-designed. I don't think genetic inheritance or reproductive success stand opposed to ID? -- JosephCCampana 23:24, 27 March 2006 (CST)

No but, if I understand correctly, the claim of ID with respect to biology is that these processes are not sufficient to give rise to some of the structures present in life. -- Corkscrew 13:17, 28 March 2006 (CST)

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Criticism

From the article:

"Much so-called “junk DNA” will turn out to perform valuable functions. See design, law, and chance for more on this."

How is this a prediction of ID? If, for example, the Vitamin C pseudogene turns out to have a valuable function, this would rather indicate co-option and thus natural selection. This is how natural selection works.

Apparent blips, mistakes, and hiccups in the genetic code were initially taken as evidence for random variation and antiteleological evolution. If antiteleological randomness is predicted by a naturalistic, yet what we see is not so, this should undercut foresaid randomness as the complete explanation. Or is this a case of no matter what way it works, it will always support randomness as a cause? -- JosephCCampana 23:24, 27 March 2006 (CST)

"Natural structures will be found that contain many parts arranged in intricate patterns that perform a specific function (e.g. complex and specified information)."

This is to be expected from mutation + natural selection. Complexity in particular is indicative of an adaption process like that.

RM+NS is one possible cause, although extreme complexity is not predicted by uni-functional processes such as RM and NS.

"In general, vestigial organs will yield some function for the organism. See design, law, and chance for more on this."

First, there's a misunderstanding here. "Vestigial" doesn't mean "without function". There's many vestigial organs that have a function (although not the same function as they originally had!). I can't concieve of how this can be spun as a prediction of ID. Co-option is what natural selection does so it's expected that alot of vestigial organs will have some form of function. Intelligent designers don't in general make slight modifications of existing structures to make them perform a completely different function.

Intelligent agents most certainly do, just the other day I modified my tooth brush to clean the toilet. That's beside the point, though. This is a historical argument, for certain. Early evolutionists claimed useless and non-functional vestigial organs were demonstrations that life is cogged together by random processes, and that the vestigial organs would soon be shed to rid the organism of organic refuse. You're right, we should update this prediction to speak to modern notions of physiology. Can anyone think of a way these physiological features could distinguish between designed and undesigned processes? -- JosephCCampana 23:24, 27 March 2006 (CST)

In my experience, intelligent agents only use co-option when their resources are limited - otherwise they generally produce a solution that's tailor-made to the problem. A discussion of the resources available to the Designer would be interesting. -- Corkscrew 13:14, 28 March 2006 (CST)

In addition to this, these three predictions are of the form "we will gain more knowledge in the future". It's to be expected from the Modern Synthesis that there's traits we don't yet know the function of. It's as if I would claim that "we will find more fossils in the future" is a prediction of the Modern Synthesis. What if a function isn't found for a certain structure or stretch of DNA? When does this turn into a failed prediction? --Glip 07:37, 26 March 2006 (CST)

The prediction is a general prediction, and ID does not eliminate chance from the universe, quite the opposite. Without chance, design would never be recognized, even human design would be impossible to find without chance. Where the line is...is still unclear. Maybe we can sift this out. What do you think? What would constitute a failed prediction? -- JosephCCampana 23:24, 27 March 2006 (CST)

Further...

"The techonological successes of Biomimicry will continue."

This is in no way unique to ID. Evolutionary algorithms are now used often to design useful technology that tends to outperform human designs. If biology results from evolutionary algorithms working on solving similar problems, it's no surprise that we can take advantage of it. --Glip 04:32, 27 March 2006 (CST)

Evolutionary algorithms are front-loaded by intelligent agents: humans. This demonstrates that evolutionary algorithms are designed, not the products of chance. Chance cannot be concluded as the basis for evolutionary algorithms ultimately because all random numbers are based on equations, that are always designed, and always predictable through reverse-engineering. A general mathematical definition of "random" seems a fantasy. What is randomness? We must be careful what we invoke as evidence. It is true that Biomimicry is not unique to ID, but basic evolutionary logic would not predict that biomimicry would yield better designs than humans could develop, which is one of the reasons it is only a recent trend. But in ID logic, the application of nature's design to practical engineering is a necessity. -- JosephCCampana 23:24, 27 March 2006 (CST)

Evolutionary algorithms regularly come up with solutions better than anything their originators could have come up with. Whether this implies absence of frontloading is open to discussion (possibly we need a page for this?), but it certainly suggests that yes, basic evolutionary logic would indeed predict that biomimicry would yield better designs than humans could develop. -- Corkscrew 13:10, 28 March 2006 (CST)

Glip: I've done full critiques of a bunch of this stuff over at Evolutionary Explanations. Any chance you could check through and make sure I haven't made a mess of it? -- Corkscrew 23:16, 27 March '06 (GMT)

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