Odd Digit's "Just-So" stories

OD's Just So story

Odd Digit's story starts with nonsense:

One things that the attackers of science (including ID advocates) frequently do is accuse scientists of constructing 'just-so stories'.

One does have to be an attacker of science to know that scientists do this. Scientists frequently accuse other scientists of doing just that. Also ID advocates don't attack science. We "attack" materialistic dogma. There is a huge difference between science and materialistic dogma.

Then OD shows his ID ignorance:

This is first of all a deeply ironic claim, given that the ID advocates either are unable to or refuse to identify any candidate for a designer.

Unable. However reality tells us that the ONLY way to make ANY determination about the designer or the specific process(es) involved, in the absence of direct observation or designer input, is by studying the design in question.

Wm. Dembski spells it out in "No Free Lunch" that the detection and study are separate from the designer and specific processes (see pages 110-112 hard cover NFL).

Therefore the ID 'explanation' for - well - everything is: 'an unknown intelligent designer did it using unknown methods for unspecified reasons at an unknown time'.

Ummm, no:

Intelligent design is a good explanation for a number of biochemical systems, but I should insert a word of caution. Intelligent design theory has to be seen in context: it does not try to explain everything. We live in a complex world where lots of different things can happen. When deciding how various rocks came to be shaped the way they are a geologist might consider a whole range of factors: rain, wind, the movement of glaciers, the activity of moss and lichens, volcanic action, nuclear explosions, asteroid impact, or the hand of a sculptor. The shape of one rock might have been determined primarily by one mechanism, the shape of another rock by another mechanism.

Similarly, evolutionary biologists have recognized that a number of factors might have affected the development of life: common descent, natural selection, migration, population size, founder effects (effects that may be due to the limited number of organisms that begin a new species), genetic drift (spread of "neutral," nonselective mutations), gene flow (the incorporation of genes into a population from a separate population), linkage (occurrence of two genes on the same chromosome), and much more. The fact that some biochemical systems were designed by an intelligent agent does not mean that any of the other factors are not operative, common, or important.-- Dr Behe

And we are just starting OD's messy essay. But now comes an outright lie. A lie which is the basis for the essay!:

'Just-so story'

A scientist while investigating a bacterial genome discovered that two genes doing apparently different tasks were almost identical in sequence, only differing by a few base pairs. This was a very interesting discovery, and the scientist decided to investigate a bit further. The first thing he did was to sit down and think about ways in which this related genes could have been produced. He came up with a few explanations, but the one he thought was the most likely was that the original gene had been copied (duplicated) in it's entirety, and then one of the copies had been changed by point mutations until was performing a different task to the original.

(The above explanation is typically labelled a 'just-so story' by ID advocates. We have some evidence. The scientist has constructed a explanation to account for it. There is no other evidence at this point that the explanation is correct. Science typically refers to these kinds of explanations as 'hypotheses', and they are acknowledged to be entirely tentative in nature.)

OD's above explanation would NOT be labeled a 'just-so story' by ID advocates. Like everything else OD says about ID this turd was taken from his arse.

Finally the ending is in sight but it's more of the same ID ignorance:

Given that ID is merely a 'inference' of design which is baseless without any detail concerning the designer, the mechanisms of the design, the timeframe of the design or the intentions of the designer, there is literally nothing we can pull out of here in order to make predictions or perform tests.

ID is NOT merely an inference of design. ID is about the detection AND understanding of the design. THAT is the ONLY way to answer the questions Odd Digit thinks we should already have the answers to.

Intelligent Design is the study of patterns in nature that are best explained as the result of intelligence. -- William A. Dembski

Intelligent design begins with a seemingly innocuous question: Can objects, even if nothing is known about how they arose, exhibit features that reliably signal the action of an intelligent cause?--WD

Feb Archive

But anyway- a real "just-so story" is telling us that chimps and humans share a common ancestor when no one knows whether or not any mutation/ selection process can account for the changes observed.

A real "just-so story" is telling us vertebrates arose via stocahstic processes on a planet that at one time didn't have a single vertebrate- without even knowing if such a transformation is even possible.

So sure OD can make up some story, claim it is what ID advocates call a "just-so story", and write an essay about it. However he should make sure that people who know better don't read it.

What is even sadder is that PvM thinks OD did a good job. So much so he linked to OD's essay in one of his. Losers of a feather...


And the beat goes on...