From: Glenn Morton (glenn.morton@btinternet.com)
Date: Tue Nov 26 2002 - 15:14:54 EST
Blake wrote
>The above quoted text was my point as well. I think,
>from what I understand, Dembski has a long way to go
>to make a convincing case for his method, but not for
>the reason you offered, Glenn.
>
Commending what Iain had said:
>--- Iain Strachan <iain.strachan@eudoramail.com>
>wrote:
>(SNIP)
>> I agree that it is not merely improbability that
>> indicates design;
>> that specification and complexity are both required.
Blake, not that you would dare give me any credit I would like to note for
the record that on Nov 24 I wrote:
>Contrary to what most people seem to draw from Dembski, it isn't the
probability criterion which detects design. It is the >side information.
Which is essentially what Iain wrote
On Nov 23, I wrote:
>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.
Which is essentially what Iain wrote. I am, however, glad that you finally
see that Dembski's method has severe problems, regardless of how you came to
that conclusion.
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
>-----Original Message-----
>From: Dr. Blake Nelson [mailto:bnelson301@yahoo.com]
>Sent: Tuesday, November 26, 2002 2:54 AM
>To: Iain Strachan; asa@calvin.edu; Glenn Morton
>Subject: RE: Design detection and minimum description length
>
>
>> But I don't
>> think that is the bit of the methodology that you
>> were criticizing.
>> As I understand it, you are criticizing Dembski for
>> being unable to
>> detect design when it is there, as in the case of a
>> Vignere
>> cipher,with the length of the key equal to the
>> length of the text.
>> You further imply that Dembski will say that such a
>> text is
>> "undesigned". I am saying that the answer would be
>> that we simply
>> don't have enough data in this case to make a design
>> inference, and I
>> really can't see what's wrong with that. What is at
>> issue is whether
>> you can positively say something is obviously
>> designed, not whether
>> you can always detect it.
>
>
>
>
>__________________________________________________
>Do you Yahoo!?
>Yahoo! Mail Plus - Powerful. Affordable. Sign up now.
>http://mailplus.yahoo.com
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.4 : Wed Nov 27 2002 - 20:45:55 EST