The Problem with Christians

[Esquilax]

I think that there definitely is positive evidence for design based on what the ID proponents propose. You should read the book "Signature in the Cell". It is a very good book even if you want to read it for the purpose of picking out ID's shortcomings.

I may just. I mean, it'll have to wait until after I've finished Anansi Boys, but I'll definitely put it next in the line.

Steven Meyer describes his search for an adequate explanation to the origin of life. The point where intelligence starts to become a possibility is when looking at the information bearing properties of the genetic code. He points out (and as most scientists agree) that chance alone is not sufficient to produce an information containing sequence of even 150 characters throughout the whole duration of the universe. He then points out how scientists recognized this problem and theorized that there were some chemical properties in DNA that led to favoring of information rich sequences. Unfortunately nucleotide bases are not directly linked to each other on DNA. They are linked to the deoxyribose by N-glycosidic bonds which all 4 nucleotides have equal preference for. He then points out that if there was chemical determination for certain sequences, the capacity for DNA to store information would be lost because the same sequence would eventually recur too frequently.

And there we go. You can't even go a single argument without relying on negative evidence. "Chance alone is not sufficient," is just poking a hole. It doesn't support the design inference, it just seeks to reduce the potency of the opposition. The first thing you said as an example of this book's argumentation has precisely the problem I pointed out with ID arguments in general.

He then describes how there is only one known cause that is sufficient. That cause is intelligence.

I apologize, but I'm going to have to do this next bit sentence by sentence, because there's literally something wrong in every individual line. To start with, sufficiency is not, if you'll pardon the pun, sufficient. It never has been, because necessity is what we search for in science. Tons of things are sufficient to bring about information: magic, naturally occurring information, information pixies, data porpoises, and even Splinchy the Information Man-in-a-Weasel-Mascot-Costume.

Now, I know a number of those are ridiculous on their face, but the fact is, they are sufficient causes, because I've manufactured them with the ability to create information. The simple fact that I am able to make up an infinite number of sufficient causes should speak volumes about how important sufficiency on its own is to this question.

Therefore it is the best explanation out of the competing hypothesis, because it is a cause that is presently observed to produce the feature in question (information).

But I've already established multiple times in this thread that, at best, information is not necessarily produced by intelligent minds, but also formatted by intelligent minds from naturally occurring sources. A rock contains information, in terms of positional data, composition and its effects on the local environment, but at least a part of that information can come about through non-intelligent sources (say, a landslide caused the rock to move, imbuing it with new positional information). This is enough to demonstrate that there are more than one cause for the creation of information, and in fact, the idea that it's simply naturally occurring data being formatted by minds after the fact is far, far more parsimonious than the design alternative, in that it asks us to accept less unjustified assertions.

It is not an argument from ignorance.

Yeah it is: "I know of only one sufficient cause for information, therefore that cause is automatically the best explanation," is the premiere example of the argument from ignorance. It's asserting that because you can only provide one cause, that cause is the one: the entire argument relies on your ignorance of alternative causes to function at all.

Also, who are you to say which worldview has the gap being filled by the opposition? Why can't I say that you are just poking wholes in intelligent design when you say that God just poofed everything into existence?

If that were all I was doing, you might have a point there. But I've already shown multiple arguments that positively indicate my position, in addition to ones that demonstrate the fallacies in yours. The issue isn't negative evidence in general, since it has its uses; the issue is the exclusive use of negative evidence that characterizes the ID community. Exclusively negative evidence turns your every argument into an argument from ignorance. Exclusively positive evidence turns your every argument into an increasingly well supported scientific theory. Some mixture of the two is perfectly acceptable, but if you're aiming for just one or the other, well, it's obvious which one is science and which isn't.

You are just arguing from ignorance on how it was done. Do you see why I don't like the phrase arguing from ignorance? The side accusing the other of doing it (you) must first assume that their (your) view is correct and that there is an unknown answer that fits into their (your) view for the other side (mine) to be ignorant of. I'd be impressed if you could follow my train of though their, I sort of rambled.

Not at all: the argument from ignorance is a failure of argument formation, not content. It is, actually, content agnostic: the argument from ignorance exists in the form "we don't know X," or "the only solution we can think of is Y," not in the specific variations of what X and Y are. It's eminently possible to make an argument from design that is not an argument from ignorance, it's just that this would require specific justification for design, and not just that you can't think of an alternative cause for the observations you're using.

Hell, if you want a positive argument for design, you could use predictions, like the Tiktaalik example I used for evolution earlier: in that case, the prediction was that, if evolution were true, going to a given location and digging to a given place in the fossil record will yield a fossil with X, Y, and Z specific characteristics, and that turned out to be an accurate prediction. Now, nobody knew about Tiktaalik before that prediction was made, this wasn't like a biblical prophecy thing, where the intent is to take already known information to twist it to fit your desired conclusion, it was a legitimate prediction made in ignorance, but that would be true of the world were a specific theory to be correct. So you could avoid the argument from ignorance for design by saying "if design is true, then there should be X marker of it," where X isn't something already known, but something that would be consistent with and positively indicating design, and then going out to find that.

That would do it. Dismissing something as an argument from ignorance in no way requires a presupposition of the opposing position, and I think I've aptly demonstrated that by now.