From: Glenn Morton (glennmorton@entouch.net)
Date: Thu Jul 31 2003 - 22:39:20 EDT
>-----Original Message-----
>From: asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu [mailto:asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu]On
>Behalf Of richard@biblewheel.com
>Sent: Thursday, July 31, 2003 1:15 PM
>Glen, please forgive me for commenting on this, but I *must* ask if this is
>an appropriate way to characterize the beliefs and scholastic activities of
>those with whom you disagree. Jim Armstrong chastised me for nothing more
>than my statement that "I believe it explains a lot of the problems we are
>finding in your work."
>(cf. http://www.calvin.edu/archive/asa/200307/0538.html)
I will only respond to this. If it is real science, will someone please tell
me what is being measured in ID? What measurment makes something
demonstrably designed? It sure isn't probability.
For those who think I was too disrespectful for calling ID play science, I
will say that I have a right to express my opinion. I didn't call anyone any
names, I said what I thought about what they were doing, which seems to be
the rage these days on this list about what certain peoples do in their
bedrooms. Of course, it is ok there, I guess.
Just because someone doesn't like hearing their favorite toy called 'play
science' and want to stop it being called that, stifling the name 'play
science' doesn't make ID not play science. I haven't seen anything but
obfuscation and special pleading from the ID folks. And their lack of
knowledge of information theory makes me cringe. If someone wants to tell me
I can't call it what I think it is, which is play science, then I will call
it bananas (a famous economist frm the 70s used that word for inflation
because he was not allowed to use the I-word). So bananas id is and ID is
bananas.
I stand by what I say. It isn't science. There is no design science, thus
one can call it what one will, it simply ain't what I do, or for that
matter, what anyone here does in science. There is no coefficient of design
in any science I have ever heard of. It is bananas.
So if you don't want me to call it what I think it is, then explain to me
what is being measured.
Now, Richard suggests it is bits.
I wrote:
To which Glen replied:
>> Tell me exactly what you think would constitute a measure of intelligent
>> design? What are the units intelligent design is measured in? How many
>> bubnogs constitute intelligent design?
Richard replied:
>The first candidate seems to be Bits, the Units of Information Theory. And
>again, I must request that you reign in your disrepectful language.
<snip>
Lets look at this suggestion. Information is measured in bits. It is the
count of the number of choices one makes in selecting the message out of all
possible measures. A string of characters which is meaningless has
information. Information is
"Intelligent design properly formulated is a theory of information. Within
such a theory, information becomes a reliable indicator of intelligent
causation as well as a proper object for scientific investigation.
Intelligent design thereby becomes a theory for detecting and measuring
information, explaining its origin and tracing its flow. Intelligent design
is therefore not the study of intelligent causes per se but of informational
pathways induced by intelligent causes. As a result, intelligent design
presupposes neither a creator nor miracles. Intelligent design is
theologically minimalist. It detects intelligence without speculating about
the nature of the intelligence. Biochemist Michael Behe’s ‘irreducible
complexity,’ mathematician Marcel Schutzenberger’s ‘functional complexity’
and my own ‘specified complexity’ are alternate routes to the same reality.”
William Dembski, Intelligent Design, (Downers Grove, Illinois, 1999),
p.106-107
First off, it is not a theory for detecting information. Claude Shannon was
the developer of the mathematics which detects information, not Dembski and
the ID group. I have never seen a scientific publication in a scientific
journal telling the reader the mathematics of how to detect design. Can you
point me to one---just one article on this topic? Why is it that this
stuff, if it is not bananas, doesn't appear in any scientific journals?
Dembski avoids scientific journals.
Secondly, it is not a theory for measuring information--once again Claude
Shannon did that. And he actually states in the first page of his article
(which was in a scientific journal as opposed to ID stuff), that semantic
meaning has nothing to do with information.
he wrote:
"The fundamental problem of communication is that of reproducing at one
point either exactly or approximately a message selected at another point.
Frequently the messages have _meaning-, that is they refer to or are
correlated according to some system with certain physical or conceptual
entities. These semantic aspects of communication are irrelevant to the
engineering problem." C. E. Shannon, " A Mathematical theory of
Communication" The Bell System Technical Journal, 27(1948):3:379-423, p. 379
Like it or not, Dembski's 'examples' of specification, are not part of
information theory. (see the bottom for more on this)
Thirdly, it isn't a theory for explainging its origin and tracing its flow.
Where does Dembski or any one of them trace information flow anywhere, in
any of their publications?? I have read most of them and they never talk
about information flow.
The universal probability bound of Dembski is this:
Shoemaker Levy crashed into Jupiter on the 25th anniversary of the Apollo 11
moon landings. “. . .a straightforward probability calculation indicates
that the probability of this coincidence is no smaller than 10-8 . This
simply isn’t all that small a probability (i.e., high complexity),
especially when considered in relation to all the events astronomers are
observing in the solar system. Certainly this probability is nowhere near
the universal probability bound of 10-150 that I propose in The Design
Inference.” William A. Dembski, Intelligent Design, (Downers Grove:
Intervarsity Press, 2001), p. 143
Lets take 96 pebbles off the beach. They are not designed. Put them in a
bag and pull them out one at a time and line them up. What is the
information content of that sequence if you want to tell Howard van Til how
to align the rocks? Do you know? It is 1.008 x 10^-150, or Dembski's
improbability bound. Now, I didn't design the pebbles, I didn't design the
order. But the order has an information content of Dembski's probability
bound.
OK, you say, I drew the pebbles out of the bag and ordered them. Lets make
the example entirely naturalistic. I tell Howard the order of a set of 96
rocks I see on the shoreline. These rocks are in the wave zone. I don't
touch them but to tell Howard how they are arranged, it requires Dembski's
probability bound. Wow, someone designed that beach. The waves have nothing
to do with it. Where is my Nobel?!!!
My point is this: Just because one has a chance factor of 10^-150 doesn't
make it a conslusive fact that it was designed. If one lives by banana
science, then one dies by banana science.
And Dembski speaks of silly things like "specified' or having a pattern
which shows how utterly lacking in knowledge of information theory he really
is. He uses letter patterns in English as being equivalent with information.
They aren't the same at all. Dembski writes:
“For 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, the 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 specified—it matches
no recognizable pattern.” But if we saw a sequence of letters that read,
say, METHINKSITISLIKEAWEASEL, we would easily conclude that the letters were
intentionally arranged that way.” Michael Behe, “Forward,”, William Dembski,
Intelligent Design, (Downers Grove, Illinois, 1999), p. 10
Science is objective. It is not subjective and this is a point I have raised
before in relation to ID. The ability of Dembski to determine whether or
not something is designed depends upon personal knowledge--that is
subjective. Science is repeatable and objective.
woxianzhegetuyiyang
xianwotuyiyangzhege
amhuinnsuidhe
dallenbaloch
thaancumorachthaancatbeag
ciamarathasibh
Which of the above have specified information? No one ever tries this test.
those who think ID is a 'theory for detecting' design should be able to tell
me which of the above are designed and which aren't. Since NO ONE has EVER
tried this test, I can only conclude that ID is BANANAS. Will you use ID to
detect the designed sequences and then, more importantly, tell me HOW you
did it? Some how I doubt you will do it either.
Conversely, tell me what was 'designed'/'intended' in the following
sequences.
godisnowhere
johninvigoratescraps
anode
hint: each of these have multiple semantic meanings but the same Shannon
information. Semantic meaning is different than Shannon's information, which
by the way is the opposite of entropy. And expenditure of energy can create
information. That is the role of plants. They take the energy spent by the
sun and create information in the form of complex molecules. The rest of the
biosphere (almost) depends upon the information they create.
If you can't do these tests, then ID is simply BANANAS. The emporer iddn't
like hearing he was wearing banana clothes either.
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