18 Aug 2019

Question about Intelligent Design

Evolution 97 Comments

Hey folks, I am sorry for being so lax in my usual Sunday postings. All I can say is, I’ve had a lot going in my personal life. I hope in September I’ll have a routine established again.

In the meantime, I think some of my spiritual thoughts will find expression in the solo episodes of my podcast. Sometime soon, I want to do an intro on the topic of “Intelligent Design.” I’m not going to go into anything empirical, but instead I just want to grapple with the concept of it.

Specifically, I am going to argue that there is nothing unscientific per se about the hypothesis that an intelligence was behind the design of particular biological structures. Yet I know that many scientists (and pop cheerleaders of science such as Bill Nye) argue that Intelligent Design (ID) is not merely wrong, but that it’s antithetical to modern science itself.

If any of you feel the same way, please articulate your objections in the comments of this post. It will help me organize my thoughts.

97 Responses to “Question about Intelligent Design”

  1. Denver says:

    I understand there are more nuanced arguments for intelligent design. That the argument might not necessarily be “God came here 5000 years ago, made humans exactly as they are today, and planted a bunch of dinosaur bones to fool everyone”, which is a strawman that a lot of secularists have in mind, but that the argument might be something more like “God setup the conditions under which evolution could occur and produce a species like humans over a long enough time horizon”.

    And I think those nuanced arguments might not necessarily be wrong. However, my bigger problem with ID is simply Occam’s Razor. What’s more presumptuous: a supreme intelligence exists, has the ability to influence the conditions around evolution, and for some reason actually decided to do so such that humans are the result; Or, that what we see today is simply the result of pseudo-random processes, it just looks intelligently designed because of survivor bias.

  2. Craw says:

    No, it not be antiscience per se. (If you cited the book of Genesis that would cross the line of course.) evolution by natural selection is an empirical, falsifiable hypothesis. If it were not falsifiable it would not be science. ID, as I think you mean it, is the claim that some structures could not plausibly have evolved by natural selection. No one disputes that a pocket watch could not have evolved by natural selection, so the notion of ID applies in some domains is therefore not inherently nonsensical.

    It is just that, applied to biology, it is wrong.

    • Bob Murphy says:

      Craw, right, I have no problem with your position. But you agree that I’m not inventing a strawman, right? There are plenty of biologists and their cheerleaders who are in the public limelight arguing about evolution, who make the claim that ID is not even a scientific claim.

      • Craw says:

        If I understand correctly you are not Inventing a straw man. I have seen the argument that “irreducible complexity” is either meaningless or incoherent. I disagree, and I gave an example (the famous watch found on the beach) where everyone accepts the irreducible complexity. I do not believe an example exists in nature though. Rev Paley was wrong precisely because watches are not living beings descended from other living beings.

        • Craw says:

          I think Gelerntner makes some basic blunders too, but his argument is that if you look at the numbers, the rates of mutation, fraction of changes that work, etc you cannot get evolution in the time available. That is a scientific argument I think. Just a wrong one.

          Likewise Rutherford gave a scientific argument based on the heat of the earth, claiming it could not be old enough. It was a real scientific argument. It was just wrong because at the time he did not know about radioactivity, which refutes his argument.

  3. James says:

    I think we look at the concept of god through our own perspective not realizing how limited it might be. It might be as hard for us to perceive god accurately as it is for an ant to perceive quantum physics.

  4. Peter Surda says:

    Well, think of it as the money regression theorem. If god designed people, who designed god? The concept doesn’t solve the problem, it just shifts it. I’m not sure I would necessarily call it unscientific, just incomplete. If I wanted to stretch it, I may say it is just deflecting.

    Or perhaps look at it like this. Historically, a lot of phenomena that we now view as natural forces were assumed to be the result of action of god(s). If you apply hasty generalisation on this process, you may conclude that intelligent design is unscientific.

  5. Jonathan says:

    Edward Feser is excellent on intelligent design ( whether you agree with him not )… you probably already know him given he edited some books on Hayek but if not, well worth looking at his blog.

  6. Harold says:

    Craw; “No one disputes that a pocket watch could not have evolved by natural selection, so the notion of ID applies in some domains is therefore not inherently nonsensical.”

    This may be true, but there is a big difference between nonsensical and non-science. Evolution is science as we usually understand it, but ID is not.

    Before we get into what exactly makes something science, there should be no question about the inclusion of ID as an “alternative” to evolution taught in schools and colleges. There is no justification for this at all. ID offers no useful insights that further our scientific understanding. To be taught in schools there must be a substantial amount of good quality evidence and a wide acceptance within the field. This is not the case for ID If people want to discuss it in theology class (or whatever) then that is OK, but not science classes.

    There is room to discuss the idea in academic circles. If mathematicians wish to speculate on irreducible or specified complexity then it is appropriate to discuss this through peer reviewed papers. There seems to have been little enthusiasm to do so. Dembski for one said he makes more money selling books than submitting articles for peer review.

    In so much as it overlaps with science at all, it is a fringe speculation which breaks many of the principles of science. It is not parsimonious (requiring an additional entity), falsifiable, testable or useful. It is speculation or conjecture.

    The scientific method does include speculation, or hypothesis forming, as one of the principles. But alone, this does not make something science. Completion of further steps are necessary before an idea can be considered for membership of that club. Hypotheses need to be tested and potentially modified.

    Evolution does this many times over. We test it every time a fossil is discovered. Do we find “newer” forms in older rocks? Do we find different stages in the same rocks? The entire field of genetics was not thought of when Darwin produced the theory. There are millions of ways exploring the genes could have disproved Evolution, but the answer in every single case was compatible with evolution. This failure to disprove it given the masses of evidence have elevated evolution to the rarefied realms of a “theory”.

    It seems uncertain whether a supernatural entity is required for ID. Proponents say ID does not mention who or what the designer is (cough *god* cough). It may be super-intelligent aliens. However, where could the super-intelligent aliens come from? They too must have had an intelligent designer. We do know that the purpose of promoting ID is to convince people it was God. Phillip E. Johnson, one of the founders of ID, acknowledges that ID is an attempt to get people to accept supernatural things as science. It was called the “wedge strategy.” The wedge document (co authored by Johnson) declares the objectives are:
    “To defeat scientific materialism and its destructive moral, cultural and political legacies”
    “To replace materialistic explanations with the theistic understanding that nature and human beings are created by God”

    This is the antithesis of science. This is not honest truth seeking, but an attempt to persuade people that your pre-conceived belief is true.

    We know the purpose is not scientific. We know the substance is not scientific. ID is politics, not science.

    • Transformer says:

      ‘However, where could the super-intelligent aliens come from? They too must have had an intelligent designer’

      A super-intelligent being could have evolved via ‘standard’ evolution and then built a simulated universe based on ID. Admittedly there is lack of evidence for this theory but it is theoretically possible!

      • Harold says:

        “A super-intelligent being could have evolved via ‘standard’ evolution…” Yes, but there is no need for an intelligent designer if that is the case. The whole ID argument fails if we accept that.

        The ID argument is that life *must* have been designed. There are plenty of other theories about simulations that are distinct from ID. They more or less speculate that of all possible universes the overwhelming majority will be simulations.

        These are probably not science either. They might be fun ideas to bounce around, but we don’t teach them to schoolkids.

      • Ken P says:

        Interesting idea, Trasformer. I know atheists who also believe we may plausibly be living in a simulation. That could still be consistent with atheism but would require ID.

    • Bob Murphy says:

      Harold, do you think there is any excuse at all for economists to be teaching about tariffs in the classroom?

      • Harold says:

        For those that choose to study economics, yes certainly.

        I am not sure what point you are making – I am sure you have a reason for asking this.

        No economist doubts that tariffs exist and have an economic consequence. Teaching about them is required for a comprehensive economics course.

        Since you teach economics, you will know what is included in university economics courses. I imagine that the course content is based on the well established literature on tariffs. A quick Google scholar search for tariffs reveals a multitude of academic papers in economic journals. The course will presumably include some discussion of disagreements and disputes, but all of it will be compatible with and rooted in basic economic principles.

        here is one I found:
        “INSTRUCTOR: Alex Tabarrok, George Mason University
        This is “Tariffs and Protectionism” from our Principles of Economics: Microeconomics course.

        We’ll look at the costs and consequences of tariffs, quotas, and protectionism. How do tariffs affect consumers? What about producers? Who wins and who loses? Find out with this video.

        We’ll apply supply, demand, and equilibrium to real-world examples — like that of protectionism in the U.S. sugar industry — to determine lost gains from trade or deadweight loss, the tariff equilibrium vs. the free trade equilibrium, and the value of wasted resources as a result of tariffs.”

        Applying the basics of supply and demand using the established principles of economics. I have no problem with that.

        I came across the field of Umbrellaology. This may be familiar to many, but was new to me.

        http://www.chtok.org.uk/Natural%20Sciences/Umbrellaology.pdf

        Is Umbrellaology a science? Discuss. there are well reasoned arguments to support that it is.

        I contend that it should not be taught as a science in schools.

        • Bob Murphy says:

          Harold, the overwhelming majority of economists think old-style mercantilism has been refuted, centuries ago. And yet when I taught Principles of Economics, I spent a lot of time on why trade deficits aren’t bad, etc. It’s because it helps to teach sound economics, but also because the public is so wed to the idea that tariffs “protect” domestic jobs.

          So if there are lots of people in your society who have doubts about evolution, why wouldn’t you “teach the controversy” in the classroom? There are even certain jurisdictions in the US where politicians are trying to add ID to the curriculum. So I think it’s very similar to mercantilism, and your arguments about why ID has no place in the classroom seem weak to me. I’m not saying teach it as a leading theory, but instead mention it if only as a foil.

          • Keshav Srinivasan says:

            Bob, what you’re describing and what’s the “teach the controversy” people advocate are two entirely different things. They want it presented as an actual controversy in the scientific community. Whereas what you’re describing is what schools do anyway. The biology classes I had discussed how intelligent design people are complete crackpots and why we know evolution is true and all that.

            • Ken P says:

              I think the focus on evolution is largely about something to bash ID believing Christians with. Most people I know who believe in evolution have little understanding of it; they just know it’s true. I think it could be taught more effectively by bringing up the counterarguments than by writing them off as crackpot ideas.

              • Harold says:

                No, the focus on evolution is because it is one of the most important scientific breakthroughs ever.

                Most people have little understanding of quantum mechanics and relativity, yet still believe.

                The solution is surely to teach it effectively, so future generations may have a better understanding.

            • Harold says:

              Keshav’s comment is above, not below.

              • Ken P says:

                I agree that evolution is one of the most important discoveries and also useful discoveries. That is not why people want it taught though. People could care less whether quantum mechanics or rellativity are taught and they are barely taught compared to evolution. On the other hand there is a clear sense of jabbing Christians that I see when most people talk about evolution. The term crackpot would never be used for someone who doesn’t agree with the theory of relativity.

                I would rather see people understand the arguments than know the answer.

              • Anonymous says:

                “The term crackpot would never be used for someone who doesn’t agree with the theory of relativity.”

                Actually, they do say that.

                One question on Quora was “why are there stilll opponents of relativity?”

                At least 5 of the respondents used the term “crackpot” or “crank”

                The blog post “A brief field guide to scientific crackpots” includes discussion of several relativity rejecters as well as the anti-evolutionists.

              • Harold says:

                Forgot to enter my details on a post about crackpots- should be one from “anonymous” arriving eventually.

          • Harold says:

            OK, I see where you are going with this.

            Let me get this right. You teach (or taught) in your classes that mercantilism has been refuted. In principle, you would not need to mention this refuted hypothesis at all, you could just teach current thinking on trade. Yet you find it useful to do so because the idea of old style mercantilism is how many lay-people think it works. In order to show that it has been refuted, you find it helpful to teach what the mercantilists thought.

            You imply that ID has the same relationship to evolutionary theory as mercantilism has to modern economic understanding.

            With evolution this is already done with Lamarkism – the inheritance of acquired characteristics. The giraffe stretches to reach the top leaves, the neck gets longer and this characteristic is passed on to following generations. I think this has a very similar relationship to Darwinian evolution as mercantilism has to modern economics. It is mentioned in schools as a competing early theory, and why it fails is explained.

            Lamarkism is a scientific theory of evolution that has been refuted. There is no pressure from teachers to have it removed from the curriculum. So biology teachers, like economists, have no problem with using refuted hypotheses as foils, as you suggest.

            Yet there is something different about ID. What is that difference?

            You could in principle have a place in the curriculum explaining why ID is not an alternative scientific explanation to evolution. I guess I would be OK with that, as long as it was only mentioned pretty much in passing, as a foil as you say. It could be in the same lesson where Lamarkism is mentioned. I would very much encourage schools to teach this sort of thing, if not in science class maybe in a more general subject.

            That is not what ID proponents are demanding. They want to teach ID as an alternative scientific theory.

            Those promoting ID have a political, rather than an educational agenda. This means that those opposing them also need to have a political agenda. There is no pressure from either Lamarkists or mercantilists (at least until recently) to have their pet ideas taught as alternative explanations of the world.

            Bill P expresses this clearly below. “But we as Christian KNOW that God, the Creator and Designer, exists. That being the case, why not go straight to the source as we begin our investigations about origins?”

            Whilst ID may not be antithetical to science, the view expressed here very much is and must be kept out of science class if we are not to lead the children astray. Teach it at church if you want.

            Keshav has put this much more succinctly below.

  7. Jeffrey S. says:

    Bob,

    Harold in the comments says “There are millions of ways exploring the genes could have disproved Evolution, but the answer in every single case was compatible with evolution.”

    I don’t think he’s familiar with the work of Stephen Meyer (check out Darwin’s Doubt.) There are lots of evidence-based problems with how the genetics of evolution are supposed to work. Here is a good review essay that just appeared dealing with some of the basic problems with the wonderful theory of evolution:

    https://www.claremont.org/crb/article/giving-up-darwin/

    • Harold says:

      Hi Jeffrey. I am right here.

      “Darwin’s main problem, however, is molecular biology.”

      Contrary to your linked article, molecular biology supports evolution. The molecular relatedness is astonishingly well corresponded with the taxonomic classification that was done based on phenotype, as predicted by evolution. If evolution were false there were billions of opportunities to disprove it, none of which were found.

      On the other hand, we have speculation that the numbers of arrangements of amino acids are too large for natural selection to result in new proteins, or that the Cambrian explosion could not have occurred by evolution. Neither of those things have been demonstrated by Meyers or anybody else. They remain speculation.

      There are very, very few biology academics that doubt evolution. They are a fringe group. That does not make them wrong, but they do need to demonstrate the validity of their claims before they can be accepted enough to enter the school curriculum. They have failed to do so. To some extent they have failed to do so because their claims are impossible to either validate or invalidate. No supporting evidence not contradictory evidence could exist.

      The subject should not be taught in schools because there is insufficient evidence. This is separate from whether it is science or not.

      There are still endless discussion about whether maths is a science, yet nobody disputes the value of teaching maths. (Well, some may do but they don’t count.) It does not matter too much if we include it within the envelope of science. If it is science it is at the speculative end, which is not what should be taught in schools.

      Bob says
      “Specifically, I am going to argue that there is nothing unscientific per se about the hypothesis that an intelligence was behind the design of particular biological structures.”

      My contention is that this is a pointless argument. The idea of ID may be scientific, but the ID movement is without doubt pseudo-science. Just as the idea that vaccines cause autism is scientific, but the anti-vax movement is pseudoscience because they distort and misrepresent the evidence.

  8. Bill P. says:

    I’m going to take this a bit further and argue that evolution and all that surrounds it is the non-scientific, religion-based approach to discovering the origins of life and the universe.

    First, a quick note: we can’t really do science today, i.e., use the scientific method, on the origins of the earth or life because that is all past history. What we can do is conduct science on things we can observe today and posit or make assumptions about how the findings apply to the past.

    Despite this uncertainty about the past, evolutionists today have shut down all inquiry about origins that do not fit with their assumptions about the past. For instance, here’s Matthew Cserhati: “In secular academia, I saw a lot of evidence for creation and against evolution in what I was actually researching. Working at secular institutions was stifling, because pursuing research outside of the evolutionary worldview was not allowed. Having only one allowable theory about origins discourages critical thinking.”

    So what scientific evidence or hypotheses are the basis for shutting down research based on creationism? Here is one example, comet swapping: “The sun’s random motion through space has brought it close to many other stars over the past 4.6 billion years. These close encounters likely jostle far-flung comets free from both systems, sending them careening toward the passing star, said study author Robert Zubrin. This “comet swapping” is probably responsible for many of Earth’s past mass extinctions, Zubrin found. But the phenomenon has also likely aided life in the bigger picture, helping it hop from island to island across the vast ocean of space, he said.” Notice how everything is likely, possible, probably responsible, etc. This is a guy who has observed NOTHING that would back up his theory; he simply used math to come up with all this.

    Which is fine–more power to him (except for the fact that he is probably spending my money on the research. But these kinds of speculation–which are a good example of most research into the origins of life and the universe, are used to shut down almost all efforts to seek origins based on the creation of all things by God.

    As a Christian, Bob, you have God’s infallible Word telling you that He created everything out of nothing in six days, likely not all that long ago. So what else would a Christian scientist do except begin his investigation of creation based on what God, a witness to the events who actually planned and carried them out, has told us. It would be hard to find a more scientific basis for coming up with hypotheses to better understand creation. In fact, it would be downright unscientific not to do so.

    For you non-Christians out there, it is also unscientific to shut down or dismiss research that is seeking to prove a hypotheses based on creation before seeing the results. Then, once the results are in, you can criticize the findings, if there is something to criticize. Although, you might actually find yourself surprised by the findings, as Cserhati explains: “I sometimes asked my evolutionist colleagues about these evidences in a careful way, and they were sometimes surprised at the conclusions they would have to make.”

    The problem today, though, is that creation-based research is dismissed from the get go so that no alternative opinions or discussion are even allowed. This is the same religion-based methodology used to shut down all contrary opinions about man’s role in climate change.

    Bob, I’d suggest that the intelligent design folks don’t go far enough. They posit the possibility of an intelligent designer. But we as Christian KNOW that God, the Creator and Designer, exists. That being the case, why not go straight to the source as we begin our investigations about origins?

  9. Andrew in MD says:

    (1) No. I don’t think it is inherently unscientific. In fact, in all the ways that someone might call intelligent design unscientific, evolution by natural selection is also unscientific.

    (2) People claiming that invoking God only pushes the problem back one step fail to apply this criteria evenly. For example, what came before the big bang? How did life go from a single cell organism to a giraffe? That we haven’t yet solved the mystery doesn’t reduce the value of a single piece of evidence.

    (3) How strange is it to say, “Natural selection couldn’t have produced a pocket watch, but it can produce an intelligence capable of producing a pocket watch.”?

    (4) It is now obvious that natural selection is not the ONLY force involved in evolution. There are a series of identified mechanisms. We probably don’t have the full set uncovered yet. Given those preconditions, the question “Is intelligent intervention one mechanism involved in evolution?” is obviously a scientific question, even if the answer is ultimately, “no.”

    • Andrew in MD says:

      Wow this is fun:

      Natural selection could not have produced a pocket watch.

      But it has produced intelligence capable of producing a pocket watch.

      Of course, intelligence could not have produced natural selection.

      But the intelligence that natural selection produced can fully understand natural selection.

      And potentially, someday, the intelligence that was produced by natural selection might reproduce it in some new form.

      And that new form of natural selection might someday yield a new intelligent lifeform.

      And that lifeform might wonder whether it was created by some intelligence.

      And that will be an awfully unscientific thought for that intelligently designed lifeform to ponder.

    • Tel says:

      Given those preconditions, the question “Is intelligent intervention one mechanism involved in evolution?” is obviously a scientific question, even if the answer is ultimately, “no.”

      To be the sort of question that is open to empirical testing there must be a sufficiently well-defined criteria that some testable outcome might falsify the proposition.

      For example, here’s the observation: we have many breeds of dogs, little ones, big ones, friendly dogs, mean dogs. All of these came from a small number of original breeds and they have been selectively bred over the centuries. Now and then a new breed gets recognized. Does this observation support natural selection or intelligent design? The selection of course has been influenced by people, presumably some of those dog breeders would pass as intelligent. From the dog’s perspective that’s simply adapting to the environment. What possible future breed of dog would be able to falsify the proposal? Suppose that in future some dog breeds died out, such that fewer breeds remained … would this falsify either the natural selection position or the intelligent design position?

      Different example: bacteria are getting immunity to antibiotics that they didn’t have perhaps 100 years ago. Does this support natural selection or intelligent design? Antibiotics were not invented by humans, but the humans did (perhaps intelligently) take a natural antibiotic and manufacture large quantities of it. Are the humans therefore intelligently designing bacteria, or are the bacteria naturally adapting to the environmental change? It’s a weird and poorly defined question.

      If in future bacteria got additional immunity to antibiotics (i.e. better defense than what they have now), would this falsify natural selection? Would it falsify intelligent design?

      If in future bacteria did NOT get additional immunity to antibiotics (i.e. either stayed the same or lost some defense), would this alternative outcome falsify natural selection? Would it falsify intelligent design?

      If the answer is that all possible future events would fail to falsify the proposal, then you have a problem with the definition of what you are proposing.

      • Harold says:

        “What possible future breed of dog would be able to falsify the proposal? ”

        A rabbit. If new dogs appeared with little genetic relationship to their parents, then the theory is disproved.

        You misunderstand natural selection. It means simply the environment an organism is in. The dogs environment selects say for small dogs. The process is the same whether the selection is by man or otherwise.

        Man can change the course of selection, as can other animals. Lions, for example, result in selection for faster antelopes.

        ““Is intelligent intervention one mechanism involved in evolution?”
        Anything that selects for one organism over another is a mechnism involved in evolution. So if intelligent intervention selects, then yes of course it is mechanism involved in evolution. This is uncontroversial. Nobody would say that human intervention had not deliberately affected the evolution of dogs and farm animals.

        This is a completely different question than the one posed by ID. ID does not propose that everything alive on Earth has been the result of a selective breeding program. There is no evidence for this.

        Thos does not apply to genetic engimeering, which a different process than selection.

        • Andrew in MD says:

          The parts of natural selection that are true are tautological, not a theory. The parts of natural selection that are falsifiable have already been disproven. The pieces of theory that remain are non-falsifiable.

          • Andrew in MD says:

            “By the way, that rabbit didn’t disprove anything. That’s just a near-impossible, one in a google, mutation, that’s all. Certainly doesn’t mean there’s a God or anything as silly as that.”

            • Harold says:

              Evolution depends on inheritance of characteristics. If this were shown not to be the case then the theory is blown. We can’t show this not to be the case because it almost certainly is the case.

              It is not reasonable ti say you can’t disprove something because it is true.

              • Andrew in MD says:

                Everyone already knew that some traits were heritable before natural selection came along. That part wasn’t any sort of breakthrough for natural selection.

                The breakthrough was the claim that “all species originate from this process.” The strong version of this claim, that natural selection is the ONLY mechanism of evolution, is disproven. The weak version of this claim, that natural selection plays some role in the appearance of brand new species, is non-falsifiable and not very impressive of a claim anyway.

              • Harold says:

                The question is whether evolution is potentially falsifiable or a tautology. It is potentially falsifiable. It does not matter whether the thing that falsifies it is a product of evolution. There are millions of ways to potentially falsify it.

                “The breakthrough was the claim that “all species originate from this process.”
                I am not sure where you get that claim. Evolution explains nearly all the variation among living things we observe today.

                “The strong version of this claim, that natural selection is the ONLY mechanism of evolution, is disproven.”

                I don’t know what you mean by the ONLY mechanism, nor why it has been disproven. Can you point to a living thing that we can prove did not get here by natural selection?

              • Andrew in MD says:

                Harold, natural selection is currently one of five mechanisms of evolution listed on Wikipedia:

                https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution#Mechanisms

                It’s likely that there are other mechanisms that are currently under investigation or yet to be discovered.

              • Harold says:

                Thank you for the clarification.

                But hang on. You say the strong claim is that natural selection is the only mechanism, yet Wikipedia tells us that it is not. Who holds to this strong claim? Anybody that reads Wikipedia can learn that it is not the case.

                This is straw man.

                It s called the theory of evolution, not the theory of natural selection.

          • Transformer says:

            I’m pretty sure that if evidence emerged of a species that has changed over time but where mutations do not occur , or that do occur but are not passed on , then the theory of evolution would be in serious trouble.

            • Andrew in MD says:

              But mutations were not a part of the theory of natural selection. The existence of mutations partially disprove the original theory of natural selection. And we really don’t know anything about mutations except that they happen.

              This is an issue in the discourse around evolution. A lot of people use the word evolution and natural selection interchangably when they’re very different concepts. And a lot of people act like mutations are a well understood phenomenon but they’re not.

              • Harold says:

                “A lot of people use the word evolution and natural selection interchangably when they’re very different concepts.”
                Indeed they are. Natural selection is the mechanism Darwin proposed for evolution. The other aspect was variation. Darwin did not know how this variation arose, but it could be observed. Now we know more about mutations, so we have a mechanism for the variation.

      • Andrew in MD says:

        You’re addressing the question of whether an intelligent decision has ever impacted the genetic lineage of an organism. The answer there is obviously, “yes,” but that’s not what people mean when they say intelligent design.

        And the claims of evolution by natural selection are not falsifiable either. Does that make natural selection unscientific?

    • Harold says:

      I suspect I am flogging a dead horse, but anyway,I feel I must point out just how wrong you are when you say:

      “in all the ways that someone might call intelligent design unscientific, evolution by natural selection is also unscientific.”

      To be scientific a proposal is expected to be:
      Consistent.
      Parsimonious (sparing in its proposed entities or explanations).
      Useful (describes and explains observed phenomena, and can be used in a predictive manner).
      Empirically testable and falsifiable (potentially confirmable or disprovable by experiment or observation).
      Based on multiple observations (often in the form of controlled, repeated experiments).
      Correctable and dynamic (modified in the light of observations that do not support it).
      Progressive (refines previous theories).
      Provisional or tentative (is open to experimental checking, and does not assert certainty).

      ID fails on all of most of these.
      Consistency does not really apply ina meaningful way becausethere is not enough substance to be consistent.
      It is not parsimonious, because it requires an extra unobserved being.
      It is not useful – it does not explain observed phenomena and cannot be used in a predictive way.
      It is not empirically testable.
      It is not based on multiple observations and is not amenable to experiments.
      It is not correctable in the face of evidence that does not support it.
      It does not refine previous theories

      In contrast, evolution is:
      Consistent. It works everywher, for every creature discovered. It explained molecular biology which was not even known about when it was proposed. It fits with all fossil finds everywhere.
      It is parsimonious. it uses the fewest assumptions possible. There are no supposed “extra” forces of beings required.
      It is useful. It explains a multitude of observed phenomena in a staggeringly succesful way and is used to predict what will be found and what will happen.
      It is based on multiple observations. Some are in the form of experiments, but longer term changes that are not amenable to direct experiment are based on multiple observations and tests – such asking what genes/bones/biochemistry would we expect to find we find in this creature? Then testing that prediction. This is a form of experiment.
      It is empirically testable. It is tested every time fossils are discovered. The nechanisms are tested using bacteria and dogs. It is potentially disprovable in myriad ways from fossil records to biochemisty to inheritance.
      It is correctable, and has been corrected since Darwin and Wallace came up with the idea.
      It refined previous theories of inheritance of characteristics.

      I think the problem people have is that because evolution by natural selection is so close to being certainly correct, it seems that it is not potentially disprovable because it is not actually disprovable. It is of course not possible to validly disprove something that is true. A dog giving birth to a rabbit would disprove it, but that is of course considered impossible. That one potential disproof is not considered to be a potential disproof. Discovering a single rock strata with both humans and dinosaurs would dent it. If the same strata had fossils from all supposed ages of Earth it would disprove it. These are never discovered. If the genetics or biochemistry of two whale species were radically different while their skeletons were similar, that would be strong evidence against. This has not been found. In fact, the reverse is the case. the differences in genes and biochemistry has always been found to fit very well with what would be expected from evolution and fits extremely well with differences in things like bone skeletal structure. Discovering that a species had “God was here” running through its bones like a stick of rock would be pretty strong evidence against.

      I can’t think of a single discovery that would disprove ID. Can you?

      If you don’t like this scheme for what we expect of science, then please provide an alternative and we can see how each idea fits with it.

      I do seem to be banging on about this, but I think people should know just how succesful evolution through natural selection is as a theory.

      “How strange is it to say, “Natural selection couldn’t have produced a pocket watch, but it can produce an intelligence capable of producing a pocket watch.”?” Not strange in the least. What selection could give rise to a pocket watch? There is also the problem of picking a specific object and comparing it to what happened to arise form evolution. What were the chances of both Mavis L. Wanczyk and John and Lisa Robinson both winning massive lottery prizes? the odds are so astronomical as to be effectively impossible. Yet there they are, both winners. This is similar to claiming tht specific object – a pocket watch – could not evolve, yet other objects even more complex did.

      • Tel says:

        Rabbits and dogs are believed to have a common ancestor, and DNS measurements indicate that all mammals are about 90% identical, give or take a bit. Based on that looks like you already falsified natural selection!

        Of course it doesn’t falsify anything, because you can always come up with a back story to fill in the gaps … and that’s the whole point.

        As for explanatory power, find one thing that is explained by natural selection but IS NOT explained by intelligent design. Seems to me that “God wanted it that way” is very simple and explains anything you like.

        Parsimony is an interesting one … yes the addition of God is one extra factor, but then you don’t need an explanation for complexity that seems to come out of nowhere (which is quite in opposition to our everyday experience). Of course finding an explanation for God does become difficult.

        There’s a different problem for evolution:

        Let’s suppose you throw a large ming vase in the air and it smashes into bits. The bits are not miniature ming vases, they are simply smashed shards and particles. On the one hand a pile of sand contains incredible complexity, but it’s never the less only a pile of sand. The vase is a cohesive thing with a shape and texture and a purpose. Throwing sand and shards and particles in the air will never come down as a ming vase.

        Same with a living thing … you can stab a living animal with a knife and it dies but you can’t slap around a piece of meat and wake it up back to life again. There’s this heavily tested experience that things go very easily in one direction starting from a complete cohesive object and turning into broken pieces and they don’t go the other direction from pieces into a cohesive whole. Or at least … not easily.

        So the natural selection theory demands that something comes out of nothing in terms of whole living organisms but never explains where that comes from. Oh it’s selected that way, naturally. Yeah, but what makes natural selection able to do the thing that seems incredibly difficult and never works in everyday experience? So you haven’t really got any extra “parsimony” you simply skipped that part and waved hands a lot. You took out the “God” component and didn’t replace it with anything.

        Now we come to predictions … can you find any actual predictions that were done on the basis of natural selection? Like for example … Paul R. Ehrlich is a trained biologist (now turned professional wrongologist) who made a number of predictions in his book The Population Bomb such as:

        In the 1970s hundreds of millions of people will starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now. At this late date nothing can prevent a substantial increase in the world death rate …

        He was of course, completely full of it … but hey he was using natural selection theory … he never used intelligent design. You might call me out on an unfair example using a guy who is known today to be a total bozo but AT THE TIME huge numbers of people believed him, and plenty of other biologists could have stood up and explained why the prediction was incorrect.

        Ehrlich has made all sorts of wrong predictions, and he learns nothing because even when interviewed recently he continues to make the same starvation prediction no matter how many times it has already failed. Don’t you think his great biology training and expertise in natural selection theory would help him get it right for once? I guess he figures if he can’t get it right the first time, better to go for brute force and hope sooner or later he gets it right using the stopped clock principle.

        Maybe they are training students wrong. You should find Ehrlich and help him out … because you seem to know it better.

        I can’t think of a single discovery that would disprove ID. Can you?

        If an old man floated down from the sky in sandals … then did a bunch of miracles to prove he was God and someone asked, “Hey did you design all this?” and the old guy says, “Naa … it’s mostly random crap, your guess is as good as mine”. That would prove it … not in a repeatable way of course … but economists can’t repeat their experiments either and doesn’t seem to discourage them.

        • Harold says:

          “can you find any actual predictions that were done on the basis of natural selection?”

          I have already described them. I predict that if I dig here, the fossils will be arranged in a particular way. On digging, they are found to be arranged in the way I predicted.

          Many transitional species have been predicted, then found. For example, cynodont therapsids, transitional forms with parts of jaw bones near their ears, which evolved into the middle ear bone.

          It was predicted that growing normal strains alongside GMO crops that produce a pesticide would slow the acquisition of resistance in the pests. This was not obvious without evolutionary theory.
          https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0167880903002858?via%3Dihub

          The Ming vase stuff is just entropy again. This has been addressed so often. The entropy of the whole system must increase, not parts of the system. Complex forms arise out of very simple rules in The Game of Life. Very few people would imagine that such simple rules could produce such elegant patterns.
          https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C2vgICfQawE

          “Seems to me that “God wanted it that way” is very simple and explains anything you like.” Which is why not is not scientific. For evolution we must seek to explain how it happened.

          On Ehrlich, people can mis-use any theory. It does not make the theory wrong.

          ““Naa … it’s mostly random crap, your guess is as good as mine”. That would not disprove it – we could easily suppose a greater designer did both the being and all of us.

          • Tel says:

            I have already described them. I predict that if I dig here, the fossils will be arranged in a particular way. On digging, they are found to be arranged in the way I predicted.

            That’s your hypothetical prediction about an event that never happened. Real Paleontologists dug first and came up with stories after. You might argue that the arrangement of undiscovered fossils is most likely to be quite similar to the arrangement of those that have already been discovered … but that’s merely your belief in a self-consistent universe.

            If the Paleontologists had correctly described the fossil history BEFORE they started digging, that would be impressive.

            It was predicted that growing normal strains alongside GMO crops that produce a pesticide would slow the acquisition of resistance in the pests. This was not obvious without evolutionary theory.

            That’s a simulation, it hasn’t been empirically tested. There’s nothing wrong with building simulations, but don’t forget that every one is tautological … you setup a certain algorithm with boundary conditions, and you run that to get an outcome. It’s a bunch of symbolic mathematical equations bolted to engine.

            I’m not opposed to simulations, you can get interesting results because it is often difficult to simply look at an algorithm and see what it will do. Then again, Pythagoras’ Theorem is also a tautology and quite non-obvious until you get familiar with it. The theorem of “Survivor Bias” in statistics is practically impossible to explain to many people, but it’s certainly tautological … if you measure only the ones who survive you don’t see the entire statistical distribution.

            Tautological should not be seen as a synonym for obvious.

            Thing is, getting the simulation to line up with the real world is extremely difficult. You can learn concepts from a simulation, but it’s still not real. On those occasions where the simulation does not come out the same as the real world test, you have not falsified the tautology (it’s impossible to falsify a tautology) but you have have proven that whatever assumptions you made in setting up the simulation were wrong. Of course … the simulation will always be wrong, just a question of how big the error is.

            The Ming vase stuff is just entropy again. This has been addressed so often. The entropy of the whole system must increase, not parts of the system.

            Not terribly useful for me if there’s some entropy calculation happening on the other side of the galaxy. It’s easier to believe in rules that exist locally. Suppose I want to calculate the length of a metal bar, I want to be able to say that the concept of “length” exists in the same local space as the bar exists … I don’t want to have to allow for the phase of the moon or worry about what’s happening on Alpha Centauri.

            Since our “system as a whole” is ridiculously larger than anyone can even comprehend, let alone measure, there’s no value in rules that apply to the entire universe. We can’t even prove whether basic things like conservation of energy are maintained for the universe as a whole. It might be true, but there’s no way to test it.

            Complex forms arise out of very simple rules in The Game of Life. Very few people would imagine that such simple rules could produce such elegant patterns.

            The Game of Life is still a tautological construction. It’s not an empirical test in and of itself. You could compare the Game of Life with actual life and you would discover they are different.

            Besides that, this whole concept of “elegant patterns” is squishy and weird in itself. Take a look at a blank screen … very low entropy, very simple, but also not an “elegant pattern” it’s actually quite boring.

            Now compare that to a screen of white noise static … very high entropy, very complex, but still could not be described as an “elegant pattern”. Most people find static to also be boring … even though in principle you could spend a lot of time looking for some hidden message in the static (and indeed, in this age of crypto-anarchy we have government employees doing exactly that).

            Now the output of the Game of Life is somewhere in the middle, not as simple as the blank screen, not as complex as the screen full of static, but somehow attractive. Can you describe how to measure this? Saying, “Oh I like the look of that” is fine, but I mean how to measure it in a way that could apply to an objective empirical test. What do you mean by “elegant pattern”? If I give you an image full of dots, can you consistently produce an elegance score in a way that does not depend on your own personal whim?

            If you can’t produce a score like that, then you don’t have a definition for “elegant pattern” beyond something you happen to find attractive. Not that there’s anything wrong with personal taste … but it isn’t empirical, and cannot be used as the basis for a physical measurement.

            For evolution we must seek to explain how it happened.

            I gave you an explanation: “God wanted it that way.”

            You want a different explanation … that’s your personal preference. You seem to have great difficulty isolating what you want from the idea of a general principle.

            • Harold says:

              “If the Paleontologists had correctly described the fossil history BEFORE they started digging, that would be impressive.”

              Darwin himself predicted pre-cambrian fossils a century before they were discovered. It took a microscope to see them. That is, as you say, impressive.

              “Since our “system as a whole” is ridiculously larger than anyone can even comprehend, let alone measure,”
              we don’t need to go beyond the solar system for it to work. That is not too large to measure

              “That’s a simulation, it hasn’t been empirically tested.”
              Ah, but it has. The prediction was found to be the case.

              https://www.nature.com/articles/nbt1382

              ” Yeah, but what makes natural selection able to do the thing that seems incredibly difficult and never works in everyday experience?”

              Your argument is that “I never see stuff evolve into living things in my everyday life, so I don’t believe it can happen.” This is argument from personal incredulity.

              The Game of Life is intended to illustrate how this fallacious argument may lead you astray. It demonstrates that things much more complex than anybody imagined can arise out of simple rules. And it is pretty neat.

              “I gave you an explanation: “God wanted it that way.”
              Do you have any evidence for that? No, it is speculation and not an explanation

              • Bob Murphy says:

                Harold wrote:

                [#1] Your argument is that “I never see stuff evolve into living things in my everyday life, so I don’t believe it can happen.” This is argument from personal incredulity.

                [#2] “I gave you an explanation: “God wanted it that way.”
                Do you have any evidence for that? No, it is speculation and not an explanation

                The #1 and #2 I labeled above are almost mirror images. I know you didn’t invent those rhetorical moves–PhD biologists at Harvard would presumably say the same things in both cases–but it’s nonetheless almost mirror images.

              • Harold says:

                Interesting contrast. It is possible I have fallen into the same fallacious trap, or been hoisted by my own logical petard.

                I thought quite a bit about #1 and just added #2 as an afterthought. I was not too sure about it at the time.

                It is a fallacy to say “I can’t see how it could happen, therefore I conclude it can’t happen.” So #1 is right.

                In #2 the proposition is that “God wanted it that way” is an explanation for the way things are.

                The topic of discussion is science vs non-science. I was using the term “explanation” to mean “scientific explanation.” I did not state this and there may have been confusion.
                Explanation can mean many things, but a scientific explanation has a more specific meaning. One framework is the Deductive-Nomological (DN) model. There are others, but in all of them the proposition above is not a scientific explanation. My argument was not that I couldn’t see how it was an explanation, but that without evidence it does not meet the criterion of a scientific explanation.

                I suppose we can have an explanation for which we have no evidence, but it is not a scientific explanation. If I specify scientific explanation, does that address your concerns over my argument in #2? If not please tell me. It is sometimes easier to spot fallacies in others than it is in oneself.

              • Harold says:

                Darn it! Italics fail again! I was attempting to emphasis the *is*.

              • Bob Murphy says:

                (I think I fixed it, right?)

              • Harold says:

                Yes! Thanks. I think I will stick to asterisks for emphasis.

  10. Mark says:

    Bob –

    My suggestion is you don’t do an episode on ID. There is certainly more science behind ID than there is behind the religion of evolution (which actually has none), but I still think it’s a bad idea.

    A while back, I put together some statements and paraphrases from others along with some comments of my own and came up with this:

    “I reject the notion that everything came from nothing, life came from lifelessness, all living things came from a rock that was rained on for millions of years, and consciousness came from matter. One may choose to believe those things as part of a fairy tale religion, but you shouldn’t use the word science in a discussion of these issues because no scientist has ever observed or duplicated those events, let alone measured or studied them in any fashion.

    “They are a construct of those who would have us believe that one-off fantasy processes, and an unimaginably long period of time, “scientifically” explain the origin, nature, and contents of the universe. These imaginary events, coupled with the myth of Darwinian evolution, allegedly explain all living things, and, more specifically, human beings, who are nothing more than rearranged pond scum in the fantasy world of those who desperately require a rationale to avoid answering to a Creator.

    “This is not science. It is hope against hope and is not really suitable for discussion in a conversation above kindergarten level. The subjects of the Big Bang, abiogenesis and Darwinian evolution should be banished to the realm of the tooth fairy – they certainly do not belong in any serious conversation where real science (observation, repeatability and measurement) is being discussed.”

    I see two problems with doing an episode on ID.

    First, unless you are careful in how you frame the discussion, you will be giving credence to evolution, which is neither biblical, nor has *any* science behind it.

    Second, while the ID crowd has certainly provided some good info on the failings of evolution, there is nothing biblical or Christian about it. An ID proponent can hold to millions or billions of years, theistic evolution, a generic “god,” etc. and not be one inch closer to being saved. You could convert every single one of your readers from evolution to ID and they would still be lost as a goose.

    As Bill P said,

    “As a Christian, Bob, you have God’s infallible Word telling you that He created everything out of nothing in six days, likely not all that long ago. So what else would a Christian scientist do except begin his investigation of creation based on what God, a witness to the events who actually planned and carried them out, has told us. It would be hard to find a more scientific basis for coming up with hypotheses to better understand creation. In fact, it would be downright unscientific not to do so.”

    That’s exactly right. Years ago on an AOL message board about creation/evolution, a non-Christian asked the host, who *was* a Christian (context not important) “So why were we given a mind and an intellect?”

    The host’s answer:

    “That we might use them to the glory of God” is my general answer. To engage in believing scientific enterprises wherein the scientist starts with His word as the lamp unto his or her investigating feet, is one specific way to go about that. What great liberty God has given us to fulfill the grand purpose for our existence!

    “Start with the Bible and have powerful light from on high to do science. Start with the idea that the Bible is for “spiritual stuff only”, that proud science need not even “inquire of the LORD”, and one is already in the darkness.”

    That’s the best answer, Bob. Please start with that. The websites that Bill mentioned are great. I’ve mentioned the first two here before. The third, Jason Lisle’s Bible Science Institute is good, too. I’ve met Lisle (as well as people from the other two) and you won’t go wrong with them. A bunch of PhDs at those sights. I would also recommend the following

    https://creation.com/the-genesis-academy a new dvd series on Genesis that is due out any day now. I pre-ordered it and am looking forward to it.

    https://creation.com/evolutions-achilles-heels a fantastic video on the absolute disaster that evolution is

    https://usstore.creation.com/refuting-evolution a tremendous book by Jonathan Sarfati

    https://usstore.creation.com/the-genesis-account another great book by Dr. Sarfati

    Lots of good stuff at AiG’s website, too (books, dvds, etc.) – I just happen to have the resources mentioned above, and they were quick to reference.

    Instead of promoting ID, which gets no one closer to Jesus Christ as savior, why not do an episode on the biblical account of creation and have someone from CMI, AiG or Dr. Lisle as a guest? Plenty of scientists available there, so you can discuss all of this including science as part of the discussion.

    • Bob Murphy says:

      Hi Mark,

      Thanks for the thoughtful comment. To warn you, I don’t agree that it’s a waste of time to focus on ID. But I know the guy who produced this movie and so down the road, I’ll contact him to see if I can get him to put me in touch with the various experts featured in the movie.

    • Harold says:

      Thank you mark. A clearer exposition of why ID should not be taught in school science classes would be hard to find. Teach it in bible classes if you wish.

      ” I’ll contact him to see if I can get him to put me in touch with the various experts featured in the movie.”
      Bob, I implore you to seek out other scientists who did not contribute to that movie as well as those that did.

      • Mark says:

        Harold: “Teach it (ID) in bible classes if you wish.”

        Why would you teach it in Bible classes? It’s not biblical. What should be taught in Bible classes is Creation and Evolution. Creation because it’s what God told us happened (and confirms what we see in the real world), and Evolution, because it’s the current religion of atheism/naturalism/humanism that is all around and kids need to know about it (doesn’t every kid’s book about dinosaurs start with “Millions of years ago…”) And kids need to have answers as to why evolution is a complete failure scientifically. And…most importantly, the government school system needs to be abolished and parents can send their kids where they are taught what they want them to be taught.

        “Bob, I implore you to seek out other scientists who did not contribute to that movie as well as those that did.”

        Bob, I’ve seen the movie, and it’s a great idea to contact the scientists in that movie. I especially recommend Robert Carter, Danny Faulkner, Andrew Snelling and Kurt Wise. I agree with Harold that you should get other scientists that didn’t contribute to the movie – there are plenty of other PhD scientists at Answers in Genesis and Creation Ministries International you should contact as well.

        • Harold says:

          ” I agree with Harold that you should get other scientists that didn’t contribute to the movie – there are plenty of other PhD scientists at Answers in Genesis and Creation Ministries International you should contact as well.”

          Obviously if you want to avoid confirmation bias you will need to seek out those that disagree with creationism. If you only wish to hang on to preconceived ideas then seek out only those that agree with you.

          • Mark says:

            Harold: “Obviously if you want to avoid confirmation bias you will need to seek out those that disagree with creationism. If you only wish to hang on to preconceived ideas then seek out only those that agree with you.”

            Harold, we get bombarded with evolution 24 hours/day. Your “side” is constantly being shoved in our faces non-stop. You’ve had more than your fair share of publicity. If someone chooses to present the creation side, they are under no obligation to give you any more free publicity.

            When Ron Paul was campaigning for President, were you out there jumping up and down and screaming about confirmation bias when he exposed the Fed, our horrible foreign policy, warmongering, etc., without giving the other side an opportunity to speak alongside him?

            • Harold says:

              It depends on your purpose. Whether you have political or truth seeking objectives.

              There is quite an active flat Earth movement currently about. I would suggest to flatists that they do not just look at flat Earth sources but also look to other sources of information. I would not consider it a valid argument from them that the Globist view is shoved in their faces non-stop.

  11. Craw says:

    Here is a hypothesis.
    We live in a cunningly designed container 1 million miles in diameter. It is a screen. All of the light we see from the “cosmos” comes from this screen. Hence all our physics is wrong.

    This is a scientific hypothesis. It is testable: touch the screen.

    It’s a stupid hypothesis, but it is scientific. And if we found it was so, I for one would start thinking about ID seriously. Wouldn’t you(I exclude Harold from this question as he is incapable of serious thought)?

    • Harold says:

      Voyager did test that one. I guess you could just extend the distance.

      Science is an interlocking structure. Each piece must fit with the whole to be the preferred explanation. Your hypothesis would require complete re-writing of a lot of the rest of science. It also requires many more assumptions than current theories so fails the parsimony test. It is not based on accepted laws. It is incomplete – What is the screen made of? How does it work? There is no attempt to explain any of this and any attempt you made would very likely contradict other scientific laws.

      It is not really scientific. It takes more than being potentially disprovable to be science.

      • Craw says:

        So the claim, General Relativity is a good model is science but the claim General Relativity is a bad model is not. Gotcha.

        You don’t get the key point Harold. Being correct does matter. Wrong theories can be scientific. You only ever address the question of whether it’s correct. Category error.

        • Craw says:

          Typo. Does NOT matter.

        • Harold says:

          “Being correct does matter. Wrong theories can be scientific. You only ever address the question of whether it’s correct. Category error.”

          Not at all. I never said your conjecture about a screen was wrong. I did say Lamarkism was an incorrect scientific hypothesis. Being correct is not and cannot be the thing at all. Pretty much all scientific hypotheses are wrong, or at least incomplete, in some regard.

          I think we have a false dichotomy that either some hypothesis is scientific or is anti-science. That is not the case.

          Your hypothesis about a screen is the very first step of many in the scientific method. It *does* fit within the scientific method, but on its own it is not science. We have to do some additional work. So your hypothesis is not anti science, but it fails to pass the hurdle of something that can reasonably be called science. It is speculation, or conjecture only.

          Otherwise we would say that the idea there are fairies at the bottom of the garden is science. Unicorns exist is science. Mice really do run the whole Earth is science. Each of these is a conjecture that can possible be tested by science, but on their own we do not say they are scientific.

          The example of Umbrellaology is illustrative. There is still much discussion about whether this would be a science – and there has been since 1941. It shows that what is science is somewhat fuzzy. We can be pretty sure at the ends, but in the middle there can be some doubt.

          ID comes close to the non science end. The conjecture is not anti-science or antithetical to science, it just is not really science. However, some people want to use it in such a manner that it becomes antithetical to science.

    • Harold says:

      On your specific question, yes, I would consider it strong evidence that we live in a designed universe.

  12. Mark says:

    Harold seems like a really nice guy, but he is spectacularly wrong on everything when it comes to evolution.

    Bill P has already recommended Answers in Genesis and Creation Ministries International as good sources on the subjects of creation and evolution. I recommend them without reservation, as well.

    You can take your time browsing the thousands of articles at those sites, but I thought I would post a few links to some things discussed in this thread.

    First, Natural Selection. Natural Selection is not evolution, nor even the mechanism of evolution. Take a few minutes to read, Is Natural Selection the Same Thing as Evolution? by Dr. Georgia Purdom. https://answersingenesis.org/natural-selection/is-natural-selection-the-same-thing-as-evolution/

    Second, transitional fossils. There aren’t any. A bunch of good info on the subject: https://answersingenesis.org/fossils/transitional-fossils/

    Third, mutations. Here are two articles to get you started (out of gazillions, and that’s a really big number) https://creation.com/refuting-evolution-2-chapter-5-argument-some-mutations-are-beneficial https://creation.com/mutations-new-information

    Fourth, Harold says, “For example, cynodont therapsids, transitional forms with parts of jaw bones near their ears, which evolved into the middle ear bone.” Refuted here: https://creation.com/mammal-middle-ear-bones

    This will get you started. Tons of real science by real scientists, showing that the Creation account in the Bible is compatible with what we see in the real world, while the fairy tale religion of evolution is scientifically bankrupt.

    • Harold says:

      It is pointless to get into a case by case refutation because they have all been done before many times before.

      If anyone is really interested in the truth then please look beyond a narrow set of biased biblical sources. Answers in science is a good starting point.
      http://answersinscience.org/

      Potholer54 youtube channel is also excellent.

      I have looked at answers in genesis and found it wanting from a science perspective. Have a look at the competition please.

      • Mark says:

        Harold: “It is pointless to get into a case by case refutation because they have all been done before many times before.”

        Easy way out without providing a single argument. No substance, Harold.

        “I have looked at answers in genesis and found it wanting from a science perspective. ”

        Well, why didn’t you say so? Think of all those articles and books I’ve read and the DVDs I’ve watched and the speeches I’ve wasted my time on. Why didn’t you tell me before?

        Again, not a single argument other than Harold claiming to know more than the PhDs at AiG. Very unlikely.

        Harold, here’s a small list of scientists that believe the biblical account of creation.

        Danny Faulkner
        Andrew Snelling
        Kurt Wise
        Nathaniel Jeanson
        David Menton
        Tommy Mitchell
        Georgia Purdom
        Terry Mortenson
        Jason Lisle
        Donald B. DeYoung
        Don Batten
        Tas Walker
        Pierre Jeristom
        Mark Harwood
        John Hartnett
        Geoff Downes
        Ron Neller
        Jim Mason
        Jonathan Sarfati
        Robert Carter
        Matthew Cserhati
        Jeff Benjamin

        Every one a PhD in physics, astronomy, biology, chemistry, nuclear physics, geology, or some other field. Tell me which ones you are smarter than and why/how you know more than they do. That seems to be your argument, right? The argument from authority? (Just remember, my dad can beat up your dad.)

        • Harold says:

          “Easy way out without providing a single argument. No substance, Harold.”

          I have provided several specific arguments above.

          The Georgia Purdom article at least explains the straw man Andrew introduced earlier. AiG makes a big thing about natural selection being considered by evolutionists as the only mechanism involved, when this is clearly nonsense. AiG offers explanations to people who really want to have an explanation that fits their belief, but are not too bothered if it the right explanation.

          The transitional form bit on Tiktaalik is hilarious. “However, the fleshy fins of Tiktaalik do not attach to the bony pelvis and so could not support weight for walking.”
          That is because it is a transitional form! If it had the features of the final form it would not be transitional, and nobody suggested they were used for walking. Another straw man.

          ” In fact there are even “flying fish” (with specialized fins that permit them to fly or glide in the air for hundreds of yards over water), but evolutionists have never considered them to be ancestors of birds.” That is a non sequitur. Nobody suggests flying fish are ancestors of birds and it has nothing to do with the argument.

          The Coelocanth stuff is irrelevant and a straw man. Scientists do not assume that absence in the fossil record is a sure indication of absence of living specimens. Fossilisation is rare.

          “Whatever else we might say about Tiktaalik, it is a fish.” Straw man – nobody disputes this.

          ” However, none of this, if true, proves that Tiktaalik’s fins supported its weight out of water, or that it was capable of a true walking motion.” Straw man – nobody says they are legs, but transitional forms between fins and legs.

          There is too much to go into detail. If you want to discuss one thing in more detail, then pick your strongest case.

          • Mark says:

            Harold: “AiG offers explanations to people who really want to have an explanation that fits their belief, but are not too bothered if it the right explanation.”

            That’s exactly your M.O., Harold. You do that in your next paragraph when you say,
            “The transitional form bit on Tiktaalik is hilarious. “However, the fleshy fins of Tiktaalik do not attach to the bony pelvis and so could not support weight for walking.” That is because it is a transitional form!”

            That’s your assumption. We can argue about it all day. If you do a search for Tiktaalik at AiG, you get 73 results. If you do a search at CMI, you get 175. Obviously a ton of info on the subject if you really want to pursue this. But you don’t. It doesn’t matter what the truth is. All evolutionists do this. Any time they find out they were wrong, like with the coelacanth, they change their story to fit the facts. No matter what they find, it’s all proof for evolution. No different than the global warming nuts – everything is proof of global warming.

            “If it had the features of the final form it would not be transitional,”

            Final form? Are you saying evolution has stopped for some species? Did Tiktaalik stop evolving? How did we get here, then? And why don’t you give us the “form” just before Tiktaalik and the form right after. Let’s see some of those transitional forms. They don’t exist.

            And as long as you are in question answering mode, perhaps you can tell us what that first cell ate.

            “The Coelocanth stuff is irrelevant and a straw man. Scientists do not assume that absence in the fossil record is a sure indication of absence of living specimens.”

            Baloney. Scientists told us coelacanths went extinct millions of years ago. They were wrong. Scientists told us coelacanths used their fins for walking on the sea bottom. They were wrong.

            “Granting the evolutionary scenario for the sake of argument, if coelacanths were really the descendants of the ancestral group which gave rise to tetrapods, one might expect that comparing their DNA to that of other groups of modern fishes, theirs would be the closest to that of land creatures. Mitochondrial DNA studies by Axel and others have now suggested that this is not the case. Attention is now once more being focused on the lungfishes as possible candidates.” They were wrong.

            https://creation.com/coelacanth-does-not-walk

            But that doesn’t matter, does it? You have no explanation for everything from nothing, life from lifelessness, consciousness from matter – yet all of those things are necessary to even postulate evolution. And then every time we find out the scientists got it wrong, that’s just more proof for evolution. Very confused thinking, Harold – certainly not scientific. As I said above, this is a fairy tale religion that temporarily allows you to think you are not accountable to your Creator.

            • Harold says:

              “Attention is now once more being focused on the lungfishes as possible candidates.” They were wrong.”

              Another straw man, I am afraid. It is odd that the references in AiG are not to the original work but to other creationist commentaries.

              We can look up Axel Meyer and Raphael Zardoya to see what they say about lungfish, coelocants and tetrapods. They say it is understood that the lobe-finned fish, of which group coelocanth and lungfish are both members, are the closest reltives to tetrapods. It turns out that coelocanths and lungfish were both candidates as the closest based on fossils. Coelocanth was the favorite but it was not settled. We can tell this from your quote, which says lungfish are *once again* being focussed on.
              Given new molecular biolocical testing lungfish now look more likely, but coelocanth cannot be ruled out.

              https://www.researchgate.net/publication/30018207_Molecular_evidence_on_the_origin_of_and_the_phylogenetic_relationshipsamong_the_major_groups_of_vertebrates

              The work cited as being against evolution is in fact the opposite. Lungfish and coelocanth are closely related. Scientists are filling in the details. This was one such detail. The biologists were not wrong, just filling in the blanks.

              “, if coelacanths were really the descendants of the ancestral group which gave rise to tetrapods, one might expect that comparing their DNA to that of other groups of modern fishes, theirs would be the closest to that of land creatures.”

              It turns out that they are perhaps the second closest, but the closest cannot be ruled out. This is no argument against evolution.

              This is why original works are not referenced. If you go and read them you find that they support evolution.

              Science works by hypotheses getting proved wrong and replaced by better ones. We expect things to move forward.

              If we found that coelocanth molecular biology was not one of the closest you might have a point, but that is not what was found, and never has been for all the species tested. The relatedness of the biochemistry fits extremely well with the relatedness of species from paleontolgy. Finding that one member of a closely related pair is possibly marginally closer than the other, when paleontologists thought the opposite is not an argument against evoulution but a good argument in favor.

              “That is because it is a transitional form!”

              That’s your assumption.”

              I can re-phrase this to say that this is not evidence against it being a transitional form and therefore pointless to mention if showing it is not a transitional form is your objective.

              • Mark says:

                We seem to be the last two commenting on this subject, but just in case others are still reading, let me point out that you didn’t answer any of my questions.

              • Mark says:

                Also, Harold, make sure you don’t miss this article posted at Lew Rockwell:https://www.lewrockwell.com/2019/08/no_author/prominent-yale-professor-explains-how-darwins-theory-of-evolution-doesnt-match-the-science/

                And lastly, to provide another question you will ignore, if transitional fossils are so plentiful, why did Gould have to invent punk eek?

              • Harold says:

                You are performing the gish-gallop. Please stick to one thing.

                I did adress one of you points – one you spent quite a few words on.

                This was the claim that the molecular biology differnce between tetrapods and coelocanths is evidence against evolution.

                I have shown that this is wrong, with reference to the original authors that are cited in the articles you cite.

                You now claim I did not answwr any questions, and thn quickly move on to another topic. This is the gish gallop. Instead of responding to argument , the gish galloper throws out another point. Each one requires effort and the counter arguments are lost in the mess.

                Please try to stick to one point. Does the coelocanth molecular biology support or refute evolution?

                You claimed it refuted. I showed it supports.

                I ended my last comment with the reques you pick one thing for further discussion. You included a few things, so I picked one.

                If you wish to continue pleas stick to the subject currently under discussion.

                I can see three alternatives, but you may think of more.
                1) Admit this was a straw man and the position of biologists towards coelocanth and lungfish in no way refutes evolution.
                2) Present an argument showing why this refutes evolution.
                3) Keeping quiet and tacitly admitting I am right.

                This could be an opportunity for you to address your beliefs. Why did you accept that the coelocanth evidence was significant? Do you have a supporting argument, or was it just something you read?

                If you ask me the same thing I will show my workings.

              • Harold says:

                I am a complete sucker, but I did look at your most recent offering and will respond in so much as it relates to coelocanths..

                It opens “Science never ceases to question. When a theory is taught as an unquestionable fact, it should be quite obvious that something is wrong. Today, science isn’t really science, and this is not only true for topics such as evolution,”

                Your aguments refute themselves. You say evolution is taught as fact so cannot be science. You also argue that scientists changed their views in light of new evidence with the coelocanth, and because scientists adapted their views it demonstrateds they were wrong and therefore evolution is wrong.

                There is a contradiction here.

              • Anonymous says:

                Harold: “I did adress one of you points – one you spent quite a few words on. This was the claim that the molecular biology differnce between tetrapods and coelocanths is evidence against evolution.”

                Harold, I didn’t bring up coelacanths, you did. I just commented on some of the things you said.

                “You now claim I did not answwr any questions,”

                I didn’t ask you any questions about coelacanths. I did ask you a bunch that you ignored.

                Let’s review them.

                I listed a small number of PhD creation scientists and I asked, “Tell me which ones you are smarter than and why/how you know more than they do.” Ignored.

                You said, “If it had the features of the final form it would not be transitional,”
                I asked, “Final form? Are you saying evolution has stopped for some species? Did Tiktaalik stop evolving? Ignored.

                Me: “How did we get here, then? And why don’t you give us the “form” just before Tiktaalik and the form right after. Let’s see some of those transitional forms.” Ignored.

                I asked, “And as long as you are in question answering mode, perhaps you can tell us what that first cell ate.” Ignored.

                Then I went back to my first comment in this thread and said, “You have no explanation for everything from nothing, life from lifelessness, consciousness from matter – yet all of those things are necessary to even postulate evolution.” Ignored.

                So pick one of the big picture questions, Harold.

              • Mark says:

                Harold: “I did adress one of you points – one you spent quite a few words on. This was the claim that the molecular biology differnce between tetrapods and coelocanths is evidence against evolution.”

                Harold, I didn’t bring up coelacanths, you did. I just commented on some of the things you said.

                “You now claim I did not answwr any questions,”

                I didn’t ask you any questions about coelacanths. I did ask you a bunch that you ignored. Let’s review them.

                I listed a small number of PhD creation scientists and I asked, “Tell me which ones you are smarter than and why/how you know more than they do.” Ignored.

                You said, “If it had the features of the final form it would not be transitional,”

                I asked, “Final form? Are you saying evolution has stopped for some species? Did Tiktaalik stop evolving? Ignored.

                Me: “How did we get here, then? And why don’t you give us the “form” just before Tiktaalik and the form right after. Let’s see some of those transitional forms.” Ignored.

                I asked, “And as long as you are in question answering mode, perhaps you can tell us what that first cell ate.” Ignored.

                Then I went back to my first comment in this thread and said, “You have no explanation for everything from nothing, life from lifelessness, consciousness from matter – yet all of those things are necessary to even postulate evolution.” Ignored.

                “And lastly, to provide another question you will ignore, if transitional fossils are so plentiful, why did Gould have to invent punk eek?” Ignored.

                So pick one of the big picture questions, Harold.

              • Harold says:

                The coelocanth was referring to this article by David Menton, one of the PhD’s on your list.
                https://answersingenesis.org/extinct-animals/tiktaalik-and-the-fishy-story-of-walking-fish-part-2/

                I thought this was one of the articles you had linked to, but I got there from one of your links.

                I see you did not bring them up specifically, but you did discuss them – which was what my response was about.

                ““Tell me which ones you are smarter than…” I can trade my PhD against any of theirs, but it is beside the point. I ignored the question because it has no relevance. I could list thousands of PhD biologists who do believe in evolution and ask you the same question – why do you think you are smarter than them? Even academics make mistakes.

                On transitional form, I already said:

                ”I can re-phrase this to say that this is not evidence against it being a transitional form and therefore pointless to mention if showing it is not a transitional form is your objective.”

                “why don’t you give us the “form” just before Tiktaalik and the form right after. Let’s see some of those transitional forms.”

                There are plenty of transitional forms. We would not expect every single one because fossilisation is rare.

                “You have no explanation for everything from nothing, life from lifelessness, consciousness from matter ”
                I don’t know if nothing is even possible. There is no “nothing” around now that we can test. When we have no explanation a reasonable response is “I don’t know.” I don’t know how consciousness arises from matter, but I have seen nothing that tells me it is impossible, and I have seen lots of other emergent properties.

  13. Craw says:

    I guess pigs do fly: a thread where I feel for Harold and admire his patience.

    No, DNA is not tautological. The genetic code is not tautological. Amino acids are not tautological. Mitosis is not tautological.
    What spectacular ignorance from the regulars here.

    • Bob Murphy says:

      I guess the “10 years of Harold’s comments” ended yesterday?

      • Harold says:

        Just filling the Ken B void. But further to my point above, if you want to learn new stuff you need to hang out with people you don’t necessarily agree with. I have learned a lot here.

      • Craw says:

        I thought pigs flying was a well known expression…
        Let’s try again:
        Even stopped pigs are right twice a decade.

    • Tel says:

      No, DNA is not tautological. The genetic code is not tautological. Amino acids are not tautological. Mitosis is not tautological.

      Could you post a link to Charles Darwin’s work on those?

      • Craw says:

        Wow. This sets some sort of new record.

        • Tel says:

          So by not answering, you actually have in a way answered that the “Theory of Evolution” as normally understood by people who use those words neither implies every aspect of biology that has been discovered in modern times … nor can biological machinery somehow be inferred from the Theory of Evolution either.

          There is one statement exactly that is tautological and it is this statement:

          * Evolution is the survival of the fittest.
          * The fittest are defined as whatever survives.

          • Craw says:

            No, I was just stunned by the dishonesty of your comment. The theory of evolution is restricted to what Darwin said? ID advocates don’t have to show modern evolutionary theory is inadequate, it suffices to show Darwin’s book doesn’t answer every question? Absurd. I expected better from you, but clearly I expected too much.

            Your alleged tautology is a caricature, not an accurate statement of the mechanism at the core of the new synthesis, as it is called although it is decades old. Phenotypic differences cause changes in genotypes via differential reproduction. That is not tautological.

            • Tel says:

              Speaking of dishonesty … err, “every question” … every single question ever asked. At what stage did that become the requirement? Did I demand that? Did anyone?

              No one disputes you can look inside a cell and discover “Hey … I found one of these gizmos!” Was that the Theory of Evolution that did that? No, it was a microscope. The Theory of Optics did that.

              Did Crick & Watson use the Theory of Evolution to discover the double-helix structure of DNA? No, they used chemical analysis and X-ray crystallography to disassemble the cells that already existed and figure out what they are made of. Good analytical work … but there was no Poperian scientific method in operation: observation, theory, experiment, falsification, refinement.

              So let’s go back to a statement like “DNA is not tautological” and consider what relation that has to examining the actual question that was being asked in the first place. Care to explain?

              Look, I’m not saying throw away every tautology … the whole of mathematics is based on tautology … but at the same time, don’t pretend that Pythagoras’ Theorem represents empirical science either. Don’t pretend you are talking about one thing when it’s something different. If you want to claim that Darwin’s theory was wrong, but a new theory has come along which is quite different … ok, sure, what changed exactly? Did the discovery of DNA alter the definition of what it means to survive?

            • Harold says:

              ” * Evolution is the survival of the fittest.
              * The fittest are defined as whatever survives.”

              No, evolution is not survival of the fittest.

              Tel, you are mixing up natural selection and evolution, as someone up above warned against. (up above in the comments, not in Heaven.)

              Your request for a link to Darwin’s work on genetics is a non sequitur.

  14. Mark says:

    Is biblical creation anti-science? was just published today at creation.com. It’s fairly brief. Check it out at https://creation.com/creation-anti-science

    • Harold says:

      You are correct. It is fairly brief.

      • Mark says:

        Harold’s sense of humor is evolving.

  15. Tel says:

    It took a bit of searching around, but I tracked down the USDA position on pest refuges and resistance, there’s an archive from 2002.

    https://archive.epa.gov/scipoly/sap/meetings/web/html/agenda-31.html

    Question 4: Refuges.

    Refuges are planted to delay potential pest resistance to a Bt crop. Planting non-Bt corn within or near Bt corn fields will provide CRW offspring that will remain susceptible to the Cry3Bb proteins. The refuge should be structured to provide an adequate number of susceptible individuals that are available to mate with potentially resistant individuals and dilute resistance alleles in the field. Based on current information on CRW biology, MON 863 dose, simulation models, hybrid availability and adoption rate, a 20% refuge should be adequate on an interim basis to produce enough CRW adults to delay resistance. EPA has concluded that it is acceptable to plant refuges as continuous blocks or in-field row-strips. Based on the only available currently published paper, in-field strips should consist of at least 6 to 12 consecutive rows planted within 9 to 18 m of the center of the transgenic corn field.

    EPA has concluded that a 20% refuge is adequate to delay resistance during a three-year period.

    So at that time (2002) they had one paper on the topic. Soon after the USDA made their “20% rule” a mandatory requirement for farmers (can’t find the exact year). This is Harold’s simulation comment from above:

    It was predicted that growing normal strains alongside GMO crops that produce a pesticide would slow the acquisition of resistance in the pests. This was not obvious without evolutionary theory.

    That paper on modelling was done 2004, already after the USDA had published their conclusion, so it couldn’t have exactly been a prediction … although it might have provided additional encouragement afterwards.

    I should point out that once a particular practice is mandatory, it therefore is no longer possible to do any empirical test because you cannot do a control experiment to compare the mandatory practice against any other technique you might think is better. That being said … the later article from 2008 “Insect resistance to Bt crops: evidence versus theory” says:

    The approach used most widely to delay insect resistance to Bt crops is the refuge strategy, which requires refuges of host plants without Bt toxins near Bt crops to promote survival of susceptible pests.

    Well it would be widely used, because it’s compulsory … the farmers have no choice in the matter.

    However, large-scale tests of the refuge strategy have been problematic. Analysis of more than a decade of global monitoring data reveals that the frequency of resistance alleles has increased substantially in some field populations of Helicoverpa zea, but not in five other major pests in Australia, China, Spain and the United States.

    So it sometimes gets the desired result, sometimes does not, and no one knows why. That surely was not the outcome predicted … It could just have easily been a random outcome. Of course, you can come up with explanations after the fact, but that brings you back to “God wanted it that way” which is the ultimate all purpose explanation you can always use after the fact. If simplicity and explanatory power are the main requirements then that one always wins. If you want to demonstrate predictive power, then you have to actually do proper empirical test with a control group and A/B comparison and your predictions need to come out better than what a random guess would do.

    The field outcomes documented with monitoring data are consistent with the theory underlying the refuge strategy, suggesting that refuges have helped to delay resistance.

    When the theory is tautological, a lot of things are consistent with it (this is a common result when dealing with tautologies) but that’s besides the point. Does it make reliable predictions? Can those predictions be empirically tested? So far, the answer is no. You can use the power of government to force compliance … that’s not the same thing.

    I searched further and in Australia the “Bt” cotton is very popular and the refuge strategy is mandatory as well as other strategies, but genetic resistance is still happening among the cotton worms, although slower than in other parts of the world. It’s a moving target … because the breeders of the cotton varieties introduce extra genes from time to time, they are now running three different modified genes, the resistance in the worms is some distance behind so at the moment it isn’t a problem for farmers. For sure, the refuge strategy has not been sufficient … but maybe it helped, except there’s no way of measuring how much it helped … because you have nothing to use as a comparison. We don’t know the “normal” speed of evolution, nor do we know what direction it will take next.

    You could perhaps compare Australia to India where compliance is not so strictly enforced. This might be a “natural experiment” but many other factors are also different in India. This is not so very different to economic arguments where a dozen things all change at the same time. Each man gets the answer he wants to get.

    I should point out that those farmers growing non-engineered cotton do use insecticides, so there’s that factor as well … one type of insect control vs another type. Evolutionary theory would suggest that in any case something will survive, and therefore become the “fittest” regardless of which technique you want to use. After time has passed, by definition any insect you want to inspect must be a “survivor” of all the things thrown at it.

    • Harold says:

      ” If simplicity and explanatory power are the main requirements then that one always wins.”

      Unfortunately it has no scientific explanatory power. Something that explains everything explains nothing.

      “Does it make reliable predictions? Can those predictions be empirically tested? So far, the answer is no.” The answer is Yes. The later paper empirically tests the pattern of resistance found in the lab from insects taken from the field. It compares this to the pattern predicted from previous theory and finds that the empirical results support the theory. That is how science is done.

      “If you want to demonstrate predictive power, then you have to actually do proper empirical test with a control group and A/B comparison and your predictions need to come out better than what a random guess would do.”

      That is not the only way to do it. Astronomy, cosmology and geology for example, by and large do not do this. You need to come up with a hypothesis to explain an observation. Derive a prediction from this hypothesis and test that by observation. An example is the precession of Mercury as a test for relativity.

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