Re: [asa] YEC and ID arguments

dopderbeck@gmail.com wrote:

> That's why Dembski talks about a "design inference," just like your
> inference concerning the latent variable. In fact the method of inference you
> describe sounds just like the method folks like Dembski and Behe describe.

In a quick executive summary:
Dembski's aim in "The Design Inference" was to find a base line
where you could say, "this cannot occur by chance". To discuss
his idea as he worked toward this goal, he used well defined
and indisputable examples such as tossing a fair coin, rolling
fair die, or shuffling a fair card decks. They were all
probabilities that can be decided irrefutably and with absolute
certainty.

Now, technically, there are some uncertainties if you enter
in the physics of shuffling, rolling a die, what surfaces
are used, past history, individual factors, etc. This would
be much closer to what Iain is talking about, I think.

Behe does not provide any quantitative estimation for his arguments
(at least in Darwin's Black Box). However, I suppose you could
take irreducible complexity to mean "the likelihood of structure X appearing
by chance crosses Dembski's baseline", and therefore, you "infer" design.
However, I recall the rhetoric was certainly a bit stronger than that.

At any rate, we can understand that this is an application of
fully estimable quantities. It is not dealing with the
underlying uncertainties of real systems and unexplained
factors that seem to influence the outcome. Gambling casinos
basically use this. They can "infer" pretty well if someone is
cheating because they know the odds and their "baseline" is
well above the noise level where the physical uncertainties of
cards and dice may become significant.

A major problem is that, in application to biology, these
quantities are not so easy to estimate (like card games),
and I suspect are biased by all parties to their advantage.

So, OK, I admit that Dembski does not say "this PROVES" directly,
in what I have read, and possibly, we can take the word "infer" to
mean a weaker position. However, somewhere between these statements
and rhetoric that comes out elsewhere, this is what they are insinuating
they have in their hand. And so, to anyone watching such a confrontational
style as often comes out, this sure looks like they are saying "this PROVES".

... and what is it that all we religious folk really long to hear? So there
you go....

by Grace we proceed,
Wayne

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Received on Sat Oct 21 18:31:13 2006