Albatrossity2
Posts: 2780
Joined: Mar. 2007
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BarryA is rapidly emerging as the new DT on UD, at least in regard to the "pulling it out of your ass" mode of argumentation. He has a post at UD wherein he makes this statement | Quote | | Now if only ID theorists would make a testable prediction; something like “over many thousands of generations natural selection will account for only extremely modest changes in the malaria parasite’s genes and will be unable to cause any increase in genetic information.” Oh wait a minute, that prediction was made and confirmed. |
A sentient UD commenter points out | Quote | | Is the malaria parasite gene prediction an ID prediction, or merely an anti-darwin/natural selection prediction? I mean, it is a great refutation of darwinism, but is it evidence for design? |
To which BarryA retorts | Quote | Yes. First, as a general matter, Darwinism and ID are the only two games in town. Evidence disconfirming one necessarily supports the other.
In this particular case, ID posits that intelligent agency is the only known source of increases in complex specified information. A corollary to that assertion is that unguided natural forces [chance and necessity filtered by NS] are not capable of causing increases in complex specified information. Behe’s work is compelling evidence supporting this corollary.
Another corollary to ID is that a particular organism’s genetic code will be relatively stable over many generations. Behe’s work confirms this prediction.
Finally, a third corollary to ID is that random mutations can result in a degradation of genetic information, but not an increase in genetic [complex specified] information. Again, this prediction is confirmed. |
Re his first statement, he seems to have forgotten about Lamarckianism, or even good old-fashioned creationism.
With regard to the rest, I am not certain, but I suspect that his three "corollaries" to ID are not found anywhere in any published ID treatise (they are common creationist claims, however). Design detection, the sole claim of the ID world, is silent about all of this stuff. The mathematics of the explanatory filter have little, if any relevance for the stability of the genetic code, or the effect of mutations on CSI. That falls into the bin of "pathetic level of detail" that Dembski so disdains.
Fortunately, another commenter jerks him back to the facts. | Quote | | No. As a general matter, Darwinism and ID do not disagree on every single point of evidence, or interpretation. That would simply be silly. Science doesn’t work that way; competing theories are not mirror images of each other. Logical absurdities do not lend credibility to the ID case. If we want ID to be regarded seriously, sweeping generalizations such as this must be avoided. We’re smarter than that. |
This could get interesting.
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Flesh of the sky, child of the sky, the mind
Has been obligated from the beginning
To create an ordered universe
As the only possible proof of its own inheritance.
- Pattiann Rogers
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