The Top-Ten Misinformed Objections to ID

[M.D. Rawlings]

The Top-Ten Misinformed Objections to ID


1. Intelligent Design is not true because there are no “real scientists” who
support it.

2. Intelligent Design is not true because it is not published in peer-reviewed
journals.

3. Intelligent Design is not true because it is a “God-of-the-gaps” argument.

4. ID is not true because it is not fully naturalistic.

5. ID is not true because it is against naturalism.

6. ID is not true because there are finches on the Galapagos Islands that
undergo cyclical variations in beak sizes, moths that are black and can hide
from birds on dark colored trees, and insects and bacteria that “evolve”
resistance to pesticides and antibiotics.

7. ID is not true because I consider myself an intelligent person, and although
I haven’t read any ID publications or really studied it very much, intelligent
people agree that ID isn’t true. Intelligent people I know (who may or may not
have studied ID) laugh at advocates of ID, and I hate being laughed at…

8. ID is not true because it is religion.

9. ID is not true because it is religiously motivated.

10. ID is not true because it has religious implications.

 

[Greenbeard]

I thought most objections to Intelligent Design are not of the form "Intelligent Design is not true because..." but rather center on the fact that the truth content of Intelligent Design claims is not determinable. Which is why it isn't an appropriate subject for scientific analysis. Discuss it in philosophy classes, not science classes.

 

[C_Clayton_Jones]

I thought most objections to Intelligent Design are not of the form "Intelligent Design is not true because..." but rather center on the fact that the truth content of Intelligent Design claims is not determinable. Which is why it isn't an appropriate subject for scientific analysis. Discuss it in philosophy classes, not science classes.

True.

 

[geauxtohell]

2. Intelligent Design is not true because it is not published in peer-reviewed
journals.

That's not a misinformed statement. The best ID has been able to do is the article by Meyer that was snuck into a biological journal through dubious means and without peer review. When this was discovered, it was immediately retracted by the journal and Sternberg's (who had stepped down) shady methods were exposed.

As for the rest:

Simulating evolution by gene duplication of protein features that require multiple amino acid residues.
Behe MJ, Snoke DW.
SourceDepartment of Biological Sciences, Lehigh University, 111 Research Drive, Bethlehem, PA 18015, USA. [email protected]

Abstract
Gene duplication is thought to be a major source of evolutionary innovation because it allows one copy of a gene to mutate and explore genetic space while the other copy continues to fulfill the original function. Models of the process often implicitly assume that a single mutation to the duplicated gene can confer a new selectable property. Yet some protein features, such as disulfide bonds or ligand binding sites, require the participation of two or more amino acid residues, which could require several mutations. Here we model the evolution of such protein features by what we consider to be the conceptually simplest route-point mutation in duplicated genes. We show that for very large population sizes N, where at steady state in the absence of selection the population would be expected to contain one or more duplicated alleles coding for the feature, the time to fixation in the population hovers near the inverse of the point mutation rate, and varies sluggishly with the lambda(th) root of 1/N, where lambda is the number of nucleotide positions that must be mutated to produce the feature. At smaller population sizes, the time to fixation varies linearly with 1/N and exceeds the inverse of the point mutation rate. We conclude that, in general, to be fixed in 10(8) generations, the production of novel protein features that require the participation of two or more amino acid residues simply by multiple point mutations in duplicated genes would entail population sizes of no less than 10(9).

Simulating evolution by gene duplication of protei... [Protein Sci. 2004] - PubMed result

I don't see any sort of conclusion that claims ID is valid or even refutes evolution.

Scott Minnich and Stephen C. Meyer, “Genetic Analysis of Coordinate Flagellar and Type III Regulatory Circuits,” Proceedings of the Second
International Conference on Design & Nature, Rhodes Greece, edited by M.W. Collins and C.A. Brebbia (WIT Press, 2004).

A presentation at a group of Intelligent Design adherents doesn't really qualify as "peer review" in the scientific community.

The rest of the bunk has been refuted here:

CI001.4: Intelligent Design and peer review

So again, when you guys start doing some real research and publishing, you might gain an audience.

 

[M.D. Rawlings]

I thought most objections to Intelligent Design are not of the form "Intelligent Design is not true because..." but rather center on the fact that the truth content of Intelligent Design claims is not determinable. Which is why it isn't an appropriate subject for scientific analysis. Discuss it in philosophy classes, not science classes.

Well, I appreciate what you're saying, and I know why you're saying it, but it's merely the political rhetoric that has built up around the controversy. In what sense is evolutionary theory's assertion of a common ancestry not merely philosophical? Now you see it, now ya don't. . . .

In any event, the following is an excerpt from a post I wrote on another thread:

It [ID theory] is demonstrably testable. Design detection/information theory is a legitimate and well-established branch of science and has been for decades since Carl Sagan and others developed it. You're simply ignorant of that fact.

Evolutionist biologists, most of whom do not understand it, just arbitrarily eschew its application to origins and block the peer review of its application to microbiology and biochemistry . . . unless the findings of the research are couched in the terms of evolutionary theory: a little trade secret among a few of the highly respected leading lights in abiogenic research, for example, who just happen to be ID theorists.

What people like you . . . do not grasp from abiogenic research is that the findings clearly point away from chemical evolution, putatively the beginning of it all, and that is what ID's theoretical paradigm shows when applied to the research, a whole body of research and testing that you are simply unaware of and unscientifically ignore . . . as if such an attitude were consistent with the scientific tradition of open inquiry.

Evolutionary theory testable? In what sense is metaphysical/absolute naturalism testable? Makes predictions other than that which are historical in nature? Hogwash. We don't need a theory to see what forms of life have appeared or gone extinct over time, or to know that what survives, survives. The so-called predictions of evolutionary theory are in truth merely 20-20 projections based on the accumulated data of observation. Smoke and mirrors. ID theory can and accurately does the same thing. The real dispute between us has never been over the findings of research and predictions at the micro level of speciation, but the interpretation of the evidence beyond such speciation.

Ultimately what evolutionary theory must show in order to be right is not simply the micro-speciation within lineages, but a macro-speciation of transmutation [between lineages in terms of] a common ancestry. That it has never done and apparently cannot do beyond the gratuitous insertion of a presumptuous metaphysics which begs the question.

You just think it has. Many evolutionary biologists and paleontologists know this and will even admit it in private, but publicly they are committed to a metaphysical/absolute naturalism and the research grants that go along with it. Otherwise, no money, no peer review.​

See link: http://www.usmessageboard.com/educa...rrogance-of-evolutionists-13.html#post3749235

 

[rdean]

You were right until you got past: Intelligent Design is not true

 

[Greenbeard]

It [ID theory] is demonstrably testable. Design detection/information theory is a legitimate and well-established branch of science and has been for decades since Carl Sagan and others developed it.

Can you elaborate on "design detection"?

 

[M.D. Rawlings]

I thought most objections to Intelligent Design are not of the form "Intelligent Design is not true because..." but rather center on the fact that the truth content of Intelligent Design claims is not determinable. Which is why it isn't an appropriate subject for scientific analysis. Discuss it in philosophy classes, not science classes.

True.

Well, it is "true" in the sense of the political rhetoric of evolutionary biologists, but it is not ultimately true with respect to the science of design detection/information theory, the essence of ID. The evolutionist just distorts the dispute when it comes to applying this branch of science to origins and at the same time unconstitutionally imposes his metaphysics on science, aided by an illegitimate, leftist tradition of jurisprudence, in the public education system.

 

[M.D. Rawlings]

You were right until you got past: Intelligent Design is not true

Well, I'll admit, that's a pretty funny crack, but not ture.

 

[M.D. Rawlings]

It [ID theory] is demonstrably testable. Design detection/information theory is a legitimate and well-established branch of science and has been for decades since Carl Sagan and others developed it.

Can you elaborate on "design detection"?

Sure. But I'm actually out of town tomorrow, leaving now. Got to put a "fire" out in one of our warehouses, personnel dispute. Will get back to you on Thursday or Friday.

 

[geauxtohell]

Well, I appreciate what you're saying, and I know why you're saying it, but it's merely the political rhetoric that has built up around the controversy. In what sense is evolutionary theory's assertion of a common ancestry not merely philosophical? Now you see it, now ya don't. . . .

You are right about one thing (and one thing only), it is all political rhetoric. That is what I.D. really is. A political issue. That is why the Discovery Institute spends most of their money lobbying and not researching.

In any event, the following is an excerpt from a post I wrote on another thread:

It [ID theory] is demonstrably testable. Design detection/information theory is a legitimate and well-established branch of science and has been for decades since Carl Sagan and others developed it. You're simply ignorant of that fact.​

Quit hiding behind someone who can't speak for themselves. As much as the I.D. crowd would like to pretend otherwise, Sagan wasn't an I.D. proponent.



Furthermore, evoking Sagan still doesn't get around the fact that I.D. is absolutely not testible. That is, unless you can falsify the existence of the supernatural.

Evolutionist biologists, most of whom do not understand it, just arbitrarily eschew its application to origins and block the peer review of its application to microbiology and biochemistry . . . unless the findings of the research are couched in the terms of evolutionary theory: a little trade secret among a few of the highly respected leading lights in abiogenic research, for example, who just happen to be ID theorists.

Absurd. I.D. has dirty hands when it comes to publishing. There is no conspiracy. It's also ludicrous to claim that Ph.D.'s who spend their life researching and teaching evolution don't understand what they are teaching.

Maybe they should have become philosophers, huh?

What people like you . . . do not grasp from abiogenic research

Which is not inherent to evolutionary theory.

is that the findings clearly point away from chemical evolution, putatively the beginning of it all, and that is what ID's theoretical paradigm shows when applied to the research, a whole body of research and testing that you are simply unaware of and unscientifically ignore . . . as if such an attitude were consistent with the scientific tradition of open inquiry.

No they don't. Even if they did, the logical fallacy of I.D. is that "If if points away from notion X, it defaults to pointing towards Intelligent Design".

Once again, if ID could be adequately tested, and feel free to propose a methodology, you might have a leg to stand on.

You can't design an experiement that will support: "This is too complicated to have happened without a nudge from some unknown intelligent force".

Evolutionary theory testable? In what sense is metaphysical/absolute naturalism testable? Makes predictions other than that which are historical in nature? Hogwash. We don't need a theory to see what forms of life have appeared or gone extinct over time, or to know that what survives, survives. The so-called predictions of evolutionary theory are in truth merely 20-20 projections based on the accumulated data of observation. Smoke and mirrors. ID theory can and accurately does the same thing.

Sure it does. Because ID is simply evolution + God in the gaps.

The real dispute between us has never been over the findings of research and predictions at the micro level of speciation, but the interpretation of the evidence beyond such speciation.

More nonsense. Saying you believe in microevolution but not macroevolution is like saying you believe in a penny but not a nickle. Evolutionary scientists aren't even concerned with "macroevolution" as it's an arbitrary term. Only religious whackadoodles try and use it to refute evolution.

You just think it has. Many evolutionary biologists and paleontologists know this and will even admit it in private, but publicly they are committed to a metaphysical/absolute naturalism and the research grants that go along with it. Otherwise, no money, no peer review.

And, of course, the ever prevalent conspiracy theory. It's all about the grant money....... Lame.​

 

[rdean]

It [ID theory] is demonstrably testable. Design detection/information theory is a legitimate and well-established branch of science and has been for decades since Carl Sagan and others developed it.

Can you elaborate on "design detection"?

Sure. But I'm actually out of town tomorrow, leaving now. Got to put a "fire" out in one of our warehouses, personnel dispute. Will get back to you on Thursday or Friday.

Don't worry. They won't "get back". There is nothing to "get back too".

 

[FA_Q2]

What you are missing is one single shred of evidence that is evidence for ID. All I have ever seen is claims that it is ‘too complex’ or a myriad of claims that refute evolution (though badly). BTW, refuting evolution lends ZERO credence to ID. Please post something that can be considered evidence that is not of these 2 categories and you might have something.


I await and I am not being facetious. I would LOVE to see something concrete as you are one of the first on that side of the isle here that I do not think will start with a bible verse. I am getting tired of youwerecreated and his ranting…

 

[geauxtohell]

What you are missing is one single shred of evidence that is evidence for ID. All I have ever seen is claims that it is ‘too complex’ or a myriad of claims that refute evolution (though badly). BTW, refuting evolution lends ZERO credence to ID. Please post something that can be considered evidence that is not of these 2 categories and you might have something.


I await and I am not being facetious. I would LOVE to see something concrete as you are one of the first on that side of the isle here that I do not think will start with a bible verse. I am getting tired of youwerecreated and his ranting…

It's all in the metaphysical, dooooooooooooooooooooooooood.

You just don't understand the metaphysical.

Pass the bong.

 

[konradv]

In what sense is evolutionary theory's assertion of a common ancestry not merely philosophical?

It's not merely philosophical in that DNA points us towards that conclusion.

 

[M.D. Rawlings]

Quit hiding behind someone who can't speak for themselves. As much as the I.D. crowd would like to pretend otherwise, Sagan wasn't an I.D. proponent.

LOL! ID theorists don't pretend any such thing. They are well aware of the fact that Carl Sagan was not a proponent of ID theory, but a proponent of abiogenesis and an evolutionist. Sagan promoted the search for intelligent extraterrestrial life via the detection methodology of specified complexity.

I.D. has dirty hands when it comes to publishing.

Ooh, dirty hands! LOL!

It's also ludicrous to claim that Ph.D.'s who spend their life researching and teaching evolution don't understand what they are teaching.

LOL! No. What's ludicrous is transforming my statement into a straw man that is obviously ludicrous. I didn't say evolutionists were ignorant about evolutionary theory; I said a lot of them do not understand the methodology of design detection/"eschew its application to origins . . . to microbiology and biochemistry . . . unless the findings of the research are couched in the terms of evolutionary theory".

 

[M.D. Rawlings]

[Abiogenesis] is not inherent to evolutionary theory.

But chemical evolution is necessarily inherent to the evolutionary paradigm of a metaphysical/absolute naturalism, and the preeminent concern of ID theory is ultimate origins. The practical distinction between abiogenesis and evolutionary theory goes to the assemblages of allegedly self-replicating chemicals within a variable medium of polymerization, albeit, in accordance to the physical laws of chemistry under uncertain primordial conditions, and the change of biological systems over time within a variable medium of mechanisms, including environmental change, natural selection and genetic mutation.

I know the difference. Don't try that again.

 

[M.D. Rawlings]

I wrote that the findings of abiogenic research point away from chemical evolution.

geauxtohell: No they don't.

LOL! Yes they do.

geauxtohell: If it points away from notion X, it defaults to pointing towards Intelligent Design.

No. It points towards ID if the object is irreducibly complex and evinces a specified complexity.

 

[M.D. Rawlings]

Once again, if ID could be adequately tested, and feel free to propose a methodology, you might have a leg to stand on.

Oh? On the contrary, the capacity of natural mechanisms to produce systems of irreducible complexity or specified information has been repeatedly analyzed and tested. Nada! The only thing that is known to produce systems analogous to the infinitely more complex biological machines of nature or their permutations is intelligence. And the leg that evolutionary theory stands on beyond microspeciation is (*drum roll, cymbal clash*) an unobservable and, therefore, gratuitous insertion of a branching, transmutational common ancestry that is tautologically stochastic and transitionally unquantifiable. Ultimately, both abiogenesis and evolutionary theory are predicated on an unfalsifiable metaphysical/absolute naturalism.

You can't design an experiment that will support: "This is too complicated to have happened without a nudge from some unknown intelligent force".

Uh-huh. The evolutionist's favorite canard: God in the gaps. But the ID theorist doesn't design such experiments. Instead, he has designed a voluminous assortment of experiments that uphold the Pasturian law of biogensis and show that natural mechanisms do not produce irreducible complexity or specified information beyond the microspeciation of extant biological systems. It's the evolutionist who posits something beyond that which is known and has thus far failed every observable test.

ID is simply evolution + God in the gaps.

LOL! Abiogenesis is a fantasy, and evolutionary theory is microspeciation + Darwin in the gaps, the faith in something that might be, though it be contrary to that which is known.

 

[M.D. Rawlings]

And then we have the evolutionist's when-all-else-fails canard. . . .

Saying you believe in microevolution but not macroevolution is like saying you believe in a penny but not a nickle. Evolutionary scientists aren't even concerned with "macroevolution" as it's an arbitrary term. Only religious whackadoodles try and use it to refute evolution.

Uh-huh. The change between "a penny" and "a nickel", eh? But the evolutionist's scheme of a common ancestry necessarily entails transmutation.

*Crickets chirping*

The reason evolutionists gloss over this distinction is because the mechanisms of evolution cannot adequately explain the transmutation of species. Random variables beget a random variable. Hence, there's no discernable way to quantify the number of transitional forms required to achieve the transformation of one kind of organism into that of another, let alone predict what mutations must be conserved to affect the process. Any reasonable person would expect that all forms of terrestrial life necessarily share certain genetic and morphological characteristics, including the inherent ability to affect adaptive variations within. A universal common ancestry, which is what Darwinian evolution ultimately asserts, does not necessarily follow from that except in textbook illustrations.

As I have written elsewhere:

Pointing to a small handful of groupings of allegedly related lineages consisting of an equally small handful of intermediate forms, which is the best that evolutionists have ever been able to come up with out of millions of fossils, does not impress me. The number of changes required and the degree of complexity involved, for example, in the enterprise of transforming a land animal to a sea animal are immense. Just how many transitional forms are we talking about here? Such a splash didn't take place in one dive. It involved every system—skeletal, respiratory, digestive, reproductive, circulatory, integumentary, lymphatic . . . the transitional migration of a snout into a blowhole on the top of the head! Are we talking about thousands of transitional forms? Tens of thousands? Multiply that by millions of species.​

Hence, I wrote that "[m]any evolutionary biologists and paleontologists know this and will even admit it in private, but publicly they are committed to a metaphysical/absolute naturalism and the research grants that go along with it. Otherwise, no money, no peer review.

. . . the ever prevalent conspiracy theory. It's all about the grant money....... Lame.

No. It's all about the processes of microspeciation being inadequate to account for a supposed common ancestry and the evolutionist's pretence of irrelevancy, while in the background the various postulates of Neo-Darwinism, particularly punctuated equilibrium, are in fact attempts to resolve the problem. Lame.