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…