Intelligent Reasoning

Promoting, advancing and defending Intelligent Design via data, logic and Intelligent Reasoning and exposing the alleged theory of evolution as the nonsense it is. I also educate evotards about ID and the alleged theory of evolution one tard at a time and sometimes in groups

Thursday, December 11, 2008

The advantage of experience over ignorance- my response to desk jockeys Elsberry and Wilkins

Some time after William Dembski had his “The Design Inference” published, John Wilkins and Wesley R. Elsberry wrote a scathing review of the Explanatory Filter.

Some history is required- The Explanatory filter is a process/ procedure that aids in determining how the object / structure/ event came to be- remember that is one of the three questions that science asks- How did it come to be this way?. See Explaining the Explanatory filter revisited and especially The Explanatory Filter (EF)- Who uses it? . You really don't want to miss that one.

It is a flowchart consisting of three decision nodes. The first asks if X can be explained via laws of nature/ regularity/ necessity.

If not you move to the next node which asks if those processes in step one plus chance can account for what is observed. Think time and erosion processes acting on exposed rock.

Again if not you ask does X have some pattern, some specificity? Does X exhibit work, i.e. counterflow, or some recognizable pattern?

If it does not, then we initially, this is key because the EF is just for initial inferences. And as with all inferences it can be either confirmed or refuted with future knowledge. But that is how science operates- no departure there.

Also the EF is a process YOU can choose to use or not. The “beauty” of the EF is that it is not pre-determined for a design output. It forces you to consider the alternatives first.

So what do these guys have to say?

We show that if Dembski's filter were adopted as a scientific heuristic, some classical developments in science would not be rational,


Just how can a process that you can choose to use or not do something like that?

The EF is just if you have a question about how X came to be that way.

They go on to say:

and that Dembski's assertion that the filter reliably identifies rarefied design requires ignoring the state of background knowledge. If background information changes even slightly, the filter's conclusion will vary wildly.


As I said that goes for all of science. It is the nature of the beast. And that is why we call them scientific INFERENCES. Notice the title of Dembski’s book is “The Design INFERENCE”.

And I am still in the paper’s ABSTRACT!

From my experience a paper built on faulty premises is doomed to fail. And this paper passed peer-review!!!

Skipping down to the end they have their own flow chart. This one has “Don’t Know”, “regularity” and “chance”. IOW we don’t know but we know it wasn’t via agency involvement. Truly pathetic.

I wonder if these clowns think that all the success people have had using the EF or some reasonable fasimile thereof, is just an illusion?

I also wonder if they have a better process for detecting design without being biased toward that end?


Please stay tuned for more…

8 Comments:

  • At 7:49 AM, Blogger blipey said…

    Well, if you choose to use it and it's a piece of shit....

    A tool's properties are not dependent on whether it is used or not, Joe.

    A shovel is still a shovel whether or not I use it.

    A shitty EF is still a shitty EF...

     
  • At 6:15 PM, Blogger Alan Fox said…

    Hi Joe

    Give me an example of how "The Explanatory Filter" works using a biological example.

     
  • At 6:18 PM, Blogger Alan Fox said…

    On reflection, don't bother. Life's too short to keep checking to see which comments you decide to approve. A new age of enlightenment may be be about to dawn in the US, and I think you have become unimportant.

     
  • At 5:06 PM, Blogger Joe G said…

    And yes blipey, YOU are a piece of shit.

    You don't have any investigative experience at all and you are a clown.

    IOW you have nothing to offer except distractions from reality.

     
  • At 5:21 PM, Blogger Joe G said…

    Give me an example of how "The Explanatory Filter" works using a biological example.

    A living organism-

    1- do we see living organisms arise from non-living matter on a regular basis? No

    Do we observe living organism s arise from non-living matter via natural laws? IOW can the laws of nature account for living organisms arising from non-living matter? Never been observed. And for all our attempts to the contreary only living organisms give rise to living organisms.

    2- Are living organisms the result of chance?

    To answer that we take a look at the minimal complexity required:

    Essential genes of a minimal bacterium

    Very unlikely that chance can put that together.

    3- Is it specified?

    Yes it appears so.

    Living organisms are the result of intentional design.

    And from there we would find:

    Biological Information in 3 Dimensions

    Now to refute that inference just demonstrate that non-living m atter can give rise to a living organism without agency involvement.

    But hey, you can't even demonstrate anything beyond subtle, oscillating variations WITHIN a population.

    Lenski has been culturing bacteria over two decades and not ONE flagellum!


    And Alan, my neck of the woods just got hammered by mother nature.

    The only power I have had came from a generator and the internet was not available in this area until just an hour ago.

    As for that new age- Obama actually thinks that the theory of evolution passes experimental scrutiny!

    If rhetoric is experimental scxrutiny he has a point...

     
  • At 5:23 PM, Blogger Joe G said…

    And blipey,

    What about the people who have used the EF with success?

    IOW it is as I have said- the only flaws with the EF are the peopel/ person using it- for example you being a piece of shit- would get shitty results- and the data going in.

     
  • At 8:38 AM, Blogger Joe G said…

    More examples for Alan Fox:

    ID in peer-review:

    I have in fact confirmed that these papers add to the evidence for ID. I concluded in the 2000 JMB paper that enzymatic catalysis entails "severe sequence constraints". The more severe these constraints are, the less likely it is that they can be met by chance. So, yes, that finding is very relevant to the question of the adequacy of chance, which is very relevant to the case for design. In the 2004 paper I reported experimental data used to put a number on the rarity of sequences expected to form working enzymes. The reported figure is less than one in a trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion. Again, yes, this finding does seem to call into question the adequacy of chance, and that certainly adds to the case for intelligent design.--Dr. Douglas Axe

     
  • At 8:40 AM, Blogger Joe G said…

    Alan,

    Here is one for YOU:

    Can the "theory" of evolution even muster a hypothesis?

    You can prove you're not just a fat-headed intellecvtual coward by posting such a hypothesis.

     

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