Re: Felsenstein v. Dembski

On Mar 26, 2:01 pm, Ray Martinez <pyramid...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Mar 25, 5:38 pm, hersheyh <hershe...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:



On Mar 25, 5:51 pm, Ray Martinez <pyramid...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

On Mar 25, 1:58 pm, John Harshman <jharshman.diespam...@xxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:

SNIP....

I have flipped-flopped on the EF myself. Presently, I am undecided.
In my view the explanatory filter of Dembski is the way pseudoscience
is done, not the way that real science works.  

Comment defines pseudoscience as that which rejects Naturalism-
Materialism. Conversely, we define pseudoscience the exact same way:
that which rejects Theism-Supernaturalism.

Science does not *reject* theism.  

Darwinism/evolution says Theism is false: no God is involved with
reality.

Science does not *reject* theism. Neither does it *accept* theism.
Theism is an untestable hypothesis. Science simply does not deal with
untestable hypotheses.

It is orthogonal to theism.  Theism
does not work by the methodology that natural science demands.

These comments contradict your previous comment.

No they don't. *You* are the one distorting science by claiming that
its says that theism is false, that no God or gods or invisible
fairies are involved with reality. Science can only say that there is
no evidence to support the idea that God or gods or invisible fairies
are involved with reality. And no evidence to reject the idea for a
sufficiently vague God/gods/fairies.

Who is this "we" you keep referring to? Nobody defines pseudoscience in
either of these ways.

Howard Hershey defined pseudoscience to be what Dembski is doing.

Pseudoscience, in fact, is exactly what Dembski is doing.  

Since he is an IDist and you are a Darwinist your opinion is quite
predictable.

He would be
a pseudoscientist, IMHO, even if he were an atheist.  He is proposing
a bogus methodology in his EF as if it were a methodology that science
actually used.  His filter is just plain wrong.

Some of us have been attempting to determine this.

Already decided from my understanding. You must be a slow learner.

Is the EF unitary (John Harshman)?

It is clear that Dembski's description of the EF precludes any system
that has both causal and random features or, for that matter, any
system that has both random and design features or all three (many
human designed machines have involved all three and, necessarily,
since humans are natural beings, involve causal natural explanations).

Or is each component a viable option if phenomena corresponds?

I think the EF allows chance and natural law an equal shot at
explaining reality.

Not the way that Dembski uses it. He always starts with the
*assumption* that no natural 'law' mechanism can ever explain what he
wants to attribute to design. That means that chance is only allowed
a shot *after* he assumes natural causation has been eliminated.

If this is not true then the EF is a rigged litmus
test. But Felsenstein (in the OP essay) cites Dembski as crediting
natural selection to explain antibiotic resistance.

As a simple example of Dembski being inconsistent. *If* natural
selection is not possible because of Dembski's NFL argument (under the
assumptions he uses), then it would be just as impossible for a
protein to become antibiotic resistant as it would be for a myoglobin
to become a hemoglobin. Admitting that antibiotic resistance does
occur by natural selection undercuts the validity of the assumptions
he uses in his NFL argument.

But like I said earlier: I have flipped flopped on the EF. I don't
like it because it presupposes the existence of chance and an
undefined natural law; the concept of design and the concept of chance
cannot both be operating in reality. Each concept says the other does
not exist.

Does that mean that you reject the idea of chance entirely? That God
is the same thing as complete randomness?

 [And not just because
he misuses even his filter by merely *asserting* that natural law has
been adequately explored before going on to chance.  He also merely
*asserts* that an observed phenomenon has to be either *all* chance or
*all* causality or *all* design rather than some mixture thereof.]

But is he saying both can exist in reality? And mixture is impossible
since each concept is postulated based on the non-existence of the
other.

Which is silly. If you control all relevant causal factors, what you
have left is chance. The chance was always there, but the causal
factors biased the results. Thus, if you control all causal factors
(known and unknown), you get a result indistinguishable from chance
expectations.

And for you as a Darwinist to be suddenly arguing for the concept of
design is corruption. Darwinism/evolution says the concept does not
exist in nature.

Humans design machines. They do so through natural law mechanisms and
sometimes elements of chance. You are wrong. Science accepts design
when the design and designer can be tested.

There is so much wrong with the EF, as Dembski uses it, that it is
clear that he is not and never has been a real scientist.

Dembski is a Theist who argues in favor of supernatural agents. That
was the context (review the replies). Are you saying that you disagree
with Howard?

And "we" (= Theists-supernaturalists).

And we define pseudoscience to be Darwinism-Evolution-Materialism-
Naturalism. I go even further. I define the aforementioned to be "anti-
science."

In real science, one
does not distinguish between all testable causal explanations, pure
random explanations, and supernatural fantasy explanations, which is
what Dembski does.

The only division that *real* science makes is between *testable* and
*nontestable* explanations.  

False.

In real science there is no such thing as "non-testable" ideas or
explanations.

In fact, as I pointed out, there are often many "non-testable" ideas
in science that do not involve invisible fairies.  That is because the
necessary tools or evidence is simply not available that would allow a
workable test of an idea.  In real science, we cannot merely imagine
an invisible fairy to solve all problems.  I can propose what a likely
ancestor to modern whales would look like, but I cannot simply poof
the evidence (a fossil with the appropriate features into existence).

Much of science involves a *testable* "if-then" question, where,
following the "if", one states a series of assumptions, and following
the "then" a series of predictions or expectations for which evidence
can be found.

That is what happens with the chance part of Dembski's EF.  He assumes
that evolution works by pure chance and then makes a perfectly valid
prediction from that assumption.  When he compares his prediction with
reality, he observes a discrepancy and *should have* concluded that
evolution does not work by chance and chance alone.  Note that this
does not mean that chance is not involved in evolution.  Only that
evolution is not *pure* chance.  

It is pure chance.

Selection (look up the definition of selection) is not pure chance.
Which, of course, is why it is called "selection".

You are either horribly ignorant or incredibly dishonest.

Neither.

The concept of evolution presupposes unguided material agency.

Evolution is 'guided' by environmental conditions and constraints.
Such agency is material but not intelligent.

This
means no Intelligence or Guide is involved.

There is some sort of *causal* bias
in evolution.  

What does that mean?

That means that something *causes* evolution to be non-random but
always favor those features that cause an organism to be adapted to
local conditions. That something is the local conditions.

If he had done that,....

Done what?

....and done it *before* he asserted
(without any evidence) that no possible natural causal explanation
could work, there would be no disagreement.  

You need to re-explain your point....I do not understand....you lost
me.

Dembski *first* *rejects* natural causes without supporting evidence.
Then he correctly rejects pure random chance. Then, while *pretending*
that he has actually provided evidence to reject natural causation, he
leaps to supernatural causation as his fall-back explanation. Such a
slight-of-hand depends on enough separation of the first step from his
conclusion that you forget that he has not provided any evidence that
he can rule out all possible natural mechanisms. Nor can he
arbitrarily include untestable supernatural mechanisms in science as a
fall-back mechanism.

That he then goes on to
conclude that this assertion of no *natural* causality and actual
evidence that evolution is not pure chance means that *supernatural*
design that cannot be empirically tested is a valid fall back
explanation is simply not science.  It is simply "I don't have a clue,
so I'll say God did it because that makes me feel good."  If he means
that *natural* design (by an actual constrained natural designer) is
the cause, then he needs to provide an empirical test of that
hypothesis.

False. He does provide positive argument for Designer. He does not
"fall back" as you say.

So, what is his positive, independent (of his claim that other
mechanisms cannot work) empirical *evidence* for a Designer?
Especially one that has no substance.

A hallmark of pseudoscience is limitations.

Actually, a hallmark of pseudoscience is *absence* of limitations.

We disagree.

You and your tapeworm are wrong.  Both of you seem to be on the
intellectual level of the tapeworm.

Pseudoscience is acceptance of limitations, exclusionary. The word
"science" is general and all-purpose. Darwinists view the word as
sacred.

[snip....]  I agree that the word "science" started out including
theology and other forms of knowledge.  

Yes, that is true.

But the initial meaning of words is not necessarily their present
meaning, as any who has ever gotten a gift and survived can attest.
And today, "science" typically refers to "natural science" and its
methodological constraints and not "knowledge" including those that do
not ascribe to those methodological constraints. When I use the word
'science', always assume the descriptor 'natural' as being attached.
Certainly, evolution (and physics and chemistry and geology and
astronomy and physiology) are 'natural sciences' whereas astrology,
theology, numerology are not.

I will finish ASAP.

Ray

But when most people use the
word "science" today, they are talking about "natural science" whose
methodology for testing hypotheses requires methodological
naturalism.  Otherwise, "natural science" would be meaningless and no
different from witchcraft and paganism.

Anything is possible, and the pseudo-theory explains everything that
happens as well as everything that might have happened. Which means it's
unfalsifiable.

John: evolutionary theory *claims* to explain everything.

No it doesn't.  Evolution, as used by biologists, only explains the
patterns of living organisms over time and the mechanisms that
generate those patterns.  I.e., life is a pre-requisite for there to
be "biological evolution".

Real science is falsifiable, which means that some things
that could have happened might have shown the theory to be wrong.
Limitations are essential if you are to learn anything.

No one is denying falsifiability.

You are.  So is Dembski.  His "design" is a fall back explanation that
is untested, untestable, and hence unfalsifiable.  What is his *if-
then* hypothesis but "if I cannot explain something to my satisfaction
then I will ascribe it to design"?

And many things are untestable. String theory is currently untestable,
and may always be so. The multiverse theory, likewise. And of course God
may or may not be untestable depending on whether you are willing to
supply him with limitations.

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Are you saying that String theory is not science?

It is an open hypothesis that may or may not be right.  It, so far, is
consistent with the available evidence and has not been falsified.
That doesn't make it false or true.  Just possible.  In much the same
way, so long as it doesn't make predictions that are contradicted by
evidence, one can attribute evolution to be the way that the god or
gods form species over time.

Ray- Hide quoted text -

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