Of Baseballs, Softballs, Cakes and Specified Information

Reduction is basically the act of reducing complexity.

This debate- that of ID vs. the blind watchmaker- is that of reduction- as in can living organisms, or whatever we are investigating, be reduced to matter, energy, chance and necessity.

And if it cannot what was required?

This is where baseballs, softballs and cakes come in.

In order to get a regulation MLB baseball the missing ingredients to the above are agency and specified information.

The same with a regulation fast-pitch softball and cakes.

These things cannot be reduced to matter, energy, chance and necessity.

Without agency involvement and specified information they wouldn't exist.

The point ID makes is that living organisms are chock full of specified information and the only way to understand living organisms is to understand that specified information.

This specified information is not sequence specificity. Sequence specification is only to carry out the information specified.

The products of transcription are little functioning information packets.

However only through the lense of ID would scientists even be looking for such a thing.

So the next time you ask "what good is ID?"-

The easy answer is only as good as people let it be.

But if you live your life saying "anything but design!!!", then you are just a pimple on the ass of progress waiting to be lanced.

"Climate Change Reconsidered:- Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change Refutes the Alarmists

In Climate Change Reconsidered, the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC) presents the scientific data which demonstrates the global warming alarmists are the modern era's version of "chicken little".

In “Climate Change Reconsidered: The 2009 Report of the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC),” coauthors Dr. S. Fred Singer and Dr. Craig Idso and 35 contributors and reviewers present an authoritative and detailed rebuttal of the findings of the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), on which the Obama Administration and Democrats in Congress rely for their regulatory proposals.

The scholarship in this book demonstrates overwhelming scientific support for the position that the warming of the twentieth century was moderate and not unprecedented, that its impact on human health and wildlife was positive, and that carbon dioxide probably is not the driving factor behind climate change.

The authors cite thousands of peer-reviewed research papers and books that were ignored by the IPCC, plus additional scientific research that became available after the IPCC’s self-imposed deadline of May 2006.

The Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC) is an international panel of nongovernment scientists and scholars who have come together to understand the causes and consequences of climate change. Because it is not a government agency, and because its members are not predisposed to believe climate change is caused by human greenhouse gas emissions, NIPCC is able to offer an independent “second opinion” of the evidence reviewed by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). NIPCC traces its roots to a meeting in Milan in 2003 organized by the Science and Environmental Policy Project (SEPP), a nonprofit research and education organization based in Arlington, Virginia. SEPP, in turn, was founded in 1990 by Dr. S. Fred Singer, an atmospheric physicist, and incorporated in 1992 following Dr. Singer’s retirement from the University of Virginia.

Irreducible Complexity Defined

The following may have been updated: Irreducible Complexity:

IC- A system performing a given basic function is irreducibly complex if it includes a set of well-matched, mutually interacting, non-arbitrarily individuated parts such that each part in the set is indispensable to maintaining the system’s basic, and therefore original, function. The set of these indispensable parts is known as the irreducible core of the system. Page 285 NFL

Numerous and Diverse Parts If the irreducible core of an IC system consists of one or only a few parts, there may be no insuperable obstacle to the Darwinian mechanism explaining how that system arose in one fell swoop. But as the number of indispensable well-fitted, mutually interacting,, non-arbitrarily individuated parts increases in number & diversity, there is no possibility of the Darwinian mechanism achieving that system in one fell swoop. Page 287

Minimal Complexity and Function Given an IC system with numerous & diverse parts in its core, the Darwinian mechanism must produce it gradually. But if the system needs to operate at a certain minimal level of function before it can be of any use to the organism & if to achieve that level of function it requires a certain minimal level of complexity already possessed by the irreducible core, the Darwinian mechanism has no functional intermediates to exploit. Page 287

Dr Behe responds to IC criticisms:

One last charge must be met: Orr maintains that the theory of intelligent design is not falsifiable. He's wrong. To falsify design theory a scientist need only experimentally demonstrate that a bacterial flagellum, or any other comparably complex system, could arise by natural selection. If that happened I would conclude that neither flagella nor any system of similar or lesser complexity had to have been designed. In short, biochemical design would be neatly disproved.- Dr Behe in 1997

Biological Evolution, what is being debated- revisted for Richie Hughes

Rich Hughes believes his ignorance is a refutation.

He doesn't understand the debate even after it has been explained to him.

But anyway-

Evolution has several meanings. The meanings of evolution, from Darwinism, Design and Public Education:

1. Change over time; history of nature; any sequence of events in nature

2. Changes in the frequencies of alleles in the gene pool of a population

3. Limited common descent: the idea that particular groups of organisms have descended from a common ancestor.

4. The mechanisms responsible for the change required to produce limited descent with modification, chiefly natural selection acting on random variations or mutations.

5. Universal common descent: the idea that all organisms have descended from a single common ancestor.

6. “Blind watchmaker” thesis: the idea that all organisms have descended from common ancestors solely through an unguided, unintelligent, purposeless, material processes such as natural selection acting on random variations or mutations; that the mechanisms of natural selection, random variation and mutation, and perhaps other similarly naturalistic mechanisms, are completely sufficient to account for the appearance of design in living organisms.


The debate isn't as black & white as saying it is evo #6 against IDists, Creationists and theistic evolutionists. However it is obvious that evo #6 is what is being debated.

(Theistic evolutionists are a different breed. They don't seem to acknowledge that evo #6 is what is being taught in our public school system. And therefore don't appear to understand the issue. The TE's I have debated with tell me that humans were an intended outcome of the evolutionary process, which is OK for evo #5 but defies evo #6. IOW TE's are closet IDists.)

Creationists go with 1-4 (above), with the change in 4 being built-in responses to environmental cues or organism direction as the primary mechanism, for allele frequency change, culled by various selection processes (as well as random effects/ events/ choice of not to mate/ unable to find a mate). The secondary mechanism would be random variations or mutations culled by similar processes. IOW life’s diversity evolved from the originally Created Kind, humans included. Science should therefore be the tool/ process with which we determine what those kinds were. Just as Carolus Linneaus attempted to do some 200 years ago.

see also The Current Status of Baraminology


With Creation vs. "Evolution #6" the 4 main debating points are clear:

1) The starting point of the evolutionary process. (What was (were) the founding population(s)?)
2) The phenotypic & morphological plasticity allowed/ extent the evolutionary process can take a population (do limits exist?).
3) The apparent direction the evolutionary process took to form the history of life. (ie from "simpler" bacteria-like organisms to complex metazoans)
4) The mechanism for evolution.

With ID vs. Evo #6 it is mainly about the mechanism- IDists go with evolution 1-5, with the Creation change to 4 plus the following caveat in 5: Life’s diversity was brought about via the intent of a design. The initial conditions, parameters, resources and goal was pre-programmed as part of an evolutionary algorithm designed to bring forth complex metazoans, as well as leave behind the more “simple” viruses, prokaryotes and single-celled eukaryotes.

IDists understand that if life didn't arise from non-living matter via some blind watchmaker-type process, there is no reason to infer its subsequent diversity arose soley due to those type of processes (point 1 up top).

What does the data say? Well there isn't any data that demonstrates bacteria can "evolve" into anything but bacteria. Therefore anyone who accepts evolution 5 or 6 has some splaining to do. Preferably splainations with scientific merit.

Throwing time at an issue does not splain anything

Yes, Design is a Mechanism- an idiot's guide to reality

A mechanism is a a process, technique, or system for achieving a result-

Design is to create, fashion, execute, or construct according to plan.

A plan is a process, technique, or system for achieving a result.

Therefor design is a mechanism.

It is a very simple and basic thing to understand.

As a matter of fact the only people who don't think that design is a mechansim are uneducated people.

Note to blipey the ignorant clown: If you arte too stupid to understand the difference between a patrilineage and a paternal family tree then you are too stupid to understand that design is a mechanism.

Dinosaur to Bird evolution takes a big hit

Discovery Raises New Doubts About Dinosaur-bird Links:

Researchers at Oregon State University have made a fundamental new discovery about how birds breathe and have a lung capacity that allows for flight – and the finding means it's unlikely that birds descended from any known theropod dinosaurs.

Not mentioned is the fact there was never any genetic data which would demonstrate the changes required are even possible via genetic changes.

How to test and falsify Intelligent Design

Just so that this is in one place:

To test the design inference all one has to do is to demonstrate that the object/ event in question can arise via nature, operating freely- ie it is reducible to matter, energy, chance and necessity.

If nature, operating freely can account for it then the design inference is unwarranted.

So there you have it. All the anti-ID mob has to do is to actually start supporting their position and ID will fade away...