From: Glenn Morton (glenn.morton@btinternet.com)
Date: Fri Nov 22 2002 - 18:21:34 EST
>-----Original Message-----
>From: Iain Strachan [mailto:iain.strachan@eudoramail.com]
>Sent: Friday, November 22, 2002 8:58 PM
>Let me just say that on the several e-mail discussion lists in
>which I have participated, there are generally guidelines
>published to those who join the list on what is considered good
>"netiquette" (I.e. good manners when participating in an email
>discussion). It is often stated in such guidelines that the use
>of capital letters for emphasis in an email post is considered bad
>manners, and the equivalent of shouting. If you wish to emphasise
>individual words, then the recommended procedure is to put an
>underscore before and after the word, like _this_ . Perhaps you
>were not aware of this, but you must surely realise that putting
>multiple exclamation marks and question marks adds no substance to
>the point you are making, and therefore can only serve as
>irritation to the person being addressed if they don't happen to
>agree with your point of view.
Iain, You and I haven't exchanged on any topic that I can find in my
database. Thus, I must assume you have recently joined this list. I have
been on and off this list for something like 7 years. Most people here know
my style. If you don't appreciate the finer points of my style, then don't
read my posts.
>
>I do not accept that your criticism is a proper one. Dembski is
>not claiming to be able to detect design in all cases. I should
>not have to repeat something from an earlier post, but perhaps as
>it was at the end of a long Dembski quotation, it got lost. The
>last sentence of the quote I gave from NFL states:
No, Dembski is not claiming to detect design in all cases. But I have shown
that he can't rule out design in any conceivable case. Thus, every single
case is a possible case of design. Dembski cites 'side knowledge' as being
the deciding factor for design. Such side knowledge is subjective or
equivalent to having been told that the object is designed. Thus, Dembski's
method consists of being told that something is designed. Surely you don't
think that is a useful methodology.
>
>"The huge specificational resources associated with the one time
>pad, mean we can _never_ draw a design inference for its encrypted
>messages" (Emphasis mine).
Be careful, maybe I am offended by little underlines used as emphasis like
you are offended by caps. Iain, who cares about how the emphasis is made.
It really doesn't matter. Lets move on to points of substance rather than
quibbling about minutiae and pedantry about how one choses to emphaisize
things.
Dembski's admission is equivalent to saying that he can never rule out
design because there is always one of those one time pads as I have shown.
If you can't rule design out your method has great difficulty with
distinguishing design from non-design.
>
>So, Dembski is not claiming to be able to detect design in this
>case. Nor is he declaring that it is undesigned; simply that we
>cannot conclude that it is designed.
>
>Therefore I don't believe you can say Dembski's method has failed
>in this case. He is not claiming to be able to distinguish
>between "Designed" and "Undesigned". The output of the test will
>either be "designed", or "don't know".
YOu miss the fact that he does claim that he can tell an un-designed random
sequence:
ìBriefly, intelligent design infers that an intelligent cause is
responsible for an effect if the effect is both complex and specified. A
single letter of the alphabet is specified without being complex. A long
sequence of random letters is complex without being specified. A
Shakespearean sonnet is both complex and specified. We infer design by
identifying specified complexity. î William Dembski, Intelligent Design,
(Downers Grove, Illinois, 1999), p. 47
How does Dembski know the sonnet is specified? Because he can read it not
because he has some wonderful mathematical methodology.
Dembski further writes:
ìFor example, if we turned a corner and saw a couple of
Scrabble letters on
a table that spelled AN, we would not, just on that basis, be able to decide
if they were purposely arranged. Even though they spelled a word, the
probability of getting a short word by chance is not prohibitive. On the
other hand, te probability of seeing some particular long sequence of
Scrabble letters, such as NDEIRUABFDMOJHRINKE, is quite small (around one in
a billion billion billion). Nonetheless, if we saw that sequence lined up on
a table, we would think little of it because it is not specifiedóit matches
no recognizable pattern.î But if we saw a sequence of letters that read,
say, METHINKSITISLIKEAWEASEL, we would easily conclude that the letters were
intentionally arranged that way.î Michael Behe, ìForward,î, William Dembski,
Intelligent Design, (Downers Grove, Illinois, 1999), p. 10
He thinks little of such sequences because he thinks they are undesigned.
Dembski discusses a sequence of binary numbers in which the primes are
ennumerated:
ìThus to eliminate chance we needed to employ additional side information,
which in this case consisted of our knowledge of binary arithmetic. This
side information detached the patter D from the event E and thereby rendered
D a specification.î William Dembski, Intelligent Design, (Downers Grove,
Illinois, 1999), p. 138
How does he know that the long sequence of binary numbers is designed? His
teacher of binary math told him what binary math is and he used it. Thus,
once again, someone told him it was designed.
glenn
see http://www.glenn.morton.btinternet.co.uk/dmd.htm
for lots of creation/evolution information
anthropology/geology/paleontology/theology\
personal stories of struggle
>Web-Mail account at http://www.eudoramail.com
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