From: Glenn Morton (glenn.morton@btinternet.com)
Date: Sun Nov 24 2002 - 03:18:06 EST
Iain wrote:
>-----Original Message-----
>Sent: Saturday, November 23, 2002 6:38 PM
> I would like to thank Glenn for provoking
>me into thinking this out, so that I have a better understanding of
>the ideas.
Glad my capitalied letters were able to help out.
>
>So I thought it would be a good idea to start off a new thread
>summarising what I see as Glenn's position, and what is my take on it.
>Here are the two positions:
>
>Glenn's position:
>
>Dembski's method is no good because it can never eliminate the
>possibility of design. If I send him a text that is encoded with a
>Vignere cipher that is the same length as the text, it will appear
>random, and he will say it is undesigned, until I tell him that it is
>designed. It is therefore totally useless because it fails to
>discriminate between designed and undesigned.
>
>My position:
>
>Dembski's method only seeks to verify design that can be verified by
>observing something that has low probability. If the methodology
>fails to detect design, all it will say is that we can't make a
>design inference. Saying "we cannot make a design inference" is not
>the same as saying "we infer that it is not designed".
No, this is not Dembski's methodology. He defines terms like 'complex' and
'specified' and puts the emphaisis on specified.
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
Thus, it is not merely improbability that indicates design. As Dembski
further states:
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." William Dembski, Intelligent Design,
(Downers Grove, Illinois, 1999), p. 47
Thus a sequence of meaningless alphabetic gobbledygook 107 characters long
has a 1 out of 10^-151 chance of occurring. It is an exceedingly low
probability. Indeed the last sentence has 130 characters (excluding spaces).
That is an extremely low probability event. Dembski would say it is
specified because it has meaning. But an equally long sequence of random
characters, he would say is not specified. Your definition above totally
forgets the specified part of Dembski's method.
[minimum description length snipped]
>Now the question is this. Once I have generated this model which has
>the minimum message length, how do I then decide that there is a real
>correlation between x and y, or if it's just random? I do it by
>exactly the same counting argument that I used in an earlier post
>about the coin tossing.
>
>So suppose my message length is N bits, and the length of the message
>to transmit the raw y(i)'s is M bits. Then the probability that I
>can describe my data in N bits or less is at most 2^(N-M). If N and
>M differ by, say 20 bits, then the probability comes to roughly 1 in
>a million, and I'm pretty certain that it is a real correlation, and
>that whoever gave me the data had used a mathematical function
>(design) to generate the points, rather than choosing them randomly.
Iain, I will absolutely agree with you that mathematical functions numbers
can be detected. Much of science is built upon such things. One observes a
quantifiable phenomenon in nature and then discovers an equation which will
match the behavior. Fine. We all know that can occur. But does that mean
it is designed? The reason I ask this is that that is exactly what is at
issue between atheists and theists/deists. The atheists say it isn't
designed, these are just the laws of Nature and nothing intelligent designed
them. THe theist on the other hand looks at Nature and decides it is
designed. There isn't any real evidence on either side other than belief.
Now, having yielded on the point in mathematics, I will point out to you
that none of my examples have been mathematical. They have been sequences
of letters as indeed, DNA is. Neither is determined by equation or
mathematical functions. So, in my opinion, your mathematical equations are
irrelevant to what I have been talking about. Indeed, the entire basis upon
which we must recognize alien life is mathematics. If we hear the Alpha
Centaurians mooing in their microphones, we probably won't understand
anything and probably won't know it is a language. Dembski's goal of course
is to apply his methodology to a sequence of letters: A,C,T and G. Merely
being low probability doesn't mean that the sequence is designed according
to what Dembski says above. It must also be specified. I see no way to
determine if it was specified save being told that it is so.
If your method outlined here is useful at telling design of the things I
have been discussing, then please show me the mathematical equation for an
E. coli which was used to design it. And then show the different equation
for each and every strain of E. coli. Mathematics simply isn't what DNA is
and it isn't generated by a mathematical formula.
>
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
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