Re: [asa] Fwd: Denyse reviews Collins

I am still waiting for Denyse to write something sensible. She writes nonsense in purple prose. She made some contributions on here and George told her not to publish before she got things straight or something like that. (Trouble is someone will check what he said and find my memory is not perfect!)

Michael

----- Original Message -----
  From: Pim van Meurs
  To: asa@calvin.edu
  Sent: Tuesday, November 28, 2006 5:19 AM
  Subject: [asa] Fwd: Denyse reviews Collins

  Begin forwarded message:

    From: Pim van Meurs <pimvanmeurs@yahoo.com>
    Date: November 26, 2006 3:09:53 PM PST
    To: asa@calvin.edu
    Subject: Denyse reviews Collins

    Denyse writes:

    Collins spends a fair bit of his book attacking intelligent design theory (especially pp. 181-95). It's quite clear that he does not understand what the ID guys are saying, as Discovery fellow Jonathan Witt notes in Touchstone:

    <quote> Design theorists in biology do offer an extensive critique of Darwinian theory, but they also offer positive evidence for intelligent design. They argue from our growing knowledge of the natural world, including the cellular realm with which Collins deals, and from our knowledge of the only kind of cause ever shown to produce information or irreducibly complex machines (both found at the cellular level): intelligent agents.
    </quote>
    ----------------

    I understand that Denyse is not a scientist (by her own admission) and that she thus has to rely on others to make these claims, yet Witt, who is also not a scientist repeats the claims made by various ID proponents as well. Now, not being a scientist need not be a problem, however in this case the arguments that ID provide positive evidence of design is misleading and erroneous, as I intend to show.

    Only by conflating the concepts of complexity and information can ID argue its case. So let's look at it in more detail:

    "our knowledge of the only kind of cause ever shown to produce information"

    And yet there is credible evidence that natural processes (algorithms) can exactly do this. In fact, Dembski as much accepts this when he divides CSI into actual and apparent, without giving any tools how to differentiate between the two. In fact, the Algorithm Room challenge by Wesley Elsberry has remained unaddressed for years now.

    Note also that when ID talks about information, or complexity it talks about something which cannot be explained by regularity and/or chance. In most cases, it is unexplained by chance and thus information is not generated by designers but by the fact that chance cannot explain it. The moment we find a natural explanation, and this includes natural designers, the complexity drops to zero as we have found a plausible explanation. The conclusion is thus that ID is about what ID critics have correctly identified as rarefied design (Wilkins and Elsberry).

    or irreducible complexity

    Even ID proponents like Mike Gene have shown this to be a fallacious argument. In fact we know of plausible processes which can in fact generate irreducible complexity.

    So do ID proponents provide independent explanations about the existence of information and/or complexity in life? Not really, in fact Dembski argued

    <quote>As for your example, I’m not going to take the bait. You’re asking me to play a game: “Provide as much detail in terms of possible causal mechanisms for your ID position as I do for my Darwinian position.” ID is not a mechanistic theory, and it’s not ID’s task to match your pathetic level of detail in telling mechanistic stories. If ID is correct and an intelligence is responsible and indispensable for certain structures, then it makes no sense to try to ape your method of connecting the dots. True, there may be dots to be connected. But there may also be fundamental discontinuities, and with IC systems that is what ID is discovering.”
    </quote>

    it's time that ID proponents stop repeating these fallacious claims. Or perhaps "teach the controversy" does not necessarily extend to ID's own claims ? As Christians it is important that we remember Augustine's comments

    <quote>Usually, even a non-Christian knows something about the earth, the heavens, and the other elements of this world, about the motion and orbit of the stars and even their size and relative positions, about the predictable eclipses of the sun and moon, the cycles of the years and the seasons, about the kinds of animals, shrubs, stones, and so forth, and this knowledge he hold to as being certain from reason and experience. Now, it is a disgraceful and dangerous thing for an infidel to hear a Christian, presumably giving the meaning of Holy Scripture, talking nonsense on these topics; and we should take all means to prevent such an embarrassing situation, in which people show up vast ignorance in a Christian and laugh it to scorn. The shame is not so much that an ignorant individual is derided, but that people outside the household of faith think our sacred writers held such opinions, and, to the great loss of those for whose salvation we toil, the writers of our Scripture are criticized and rejected as unlearned men. If they find a Christian mistaken in a field which they themselves know well and hear him maintaining his foolish opinions about our books, how are they going to believe those books in matters concerning the resurrection of the dead, the hope of eternal life, and the kingdom of heaven, when they think their pages are full of falsehoods and on facts which they themselves have learnt from experience and the light of reason? Reckless and incompetent expounders of Holy Scripture bring untold trouble and sorrow on their wiser brethren when they are caught in one of their mischievous false opinions and are taken to task by those who are not bound by the authority of our sacred books. For then, to defend their utterly foolish and obviously untrue statements, they will try to call upon Holy Scripture for proof and even recite from memory many passages which they think support their position, although they understand neither what they say nor the things about which they make assertion. </quote>

To unsubscribe, send a message to majordomo@calvin.edu with
"unsubscribe asa" (no quotes) as the body of the message.
Received on Tue Nov 28 02:29:09 2006