One of the few places outside the Discovery Institute that promotes Intelligent Design creationism is the Centre for Intelligent Design, led by Alastair Noble, a Scottish creationist. (Sorry to embarrass you, Scot readers and commenters, but you should be a little bashful about the nest of ninnies in your midst). There’s been some recent wrangling between sensible people and Noble and his oh-so-helpful assistant, Casey Luskin…wrangling that has been made public by the Centre for Unintelligent Design.
It’s good stuff. You know your argument is in trouble, though, when you have to bring in an incompetent dweeb like Casey Luskin to squeak out the usual ID boilerplate.
We detect design by finding features in nature which contain the type of information which in our experience comes from intelligence. This is generally called complex and specified information (CSI). In our experience, CSI only comes from a goal-directed process like intelligent design. Thus, when we detect high levels of complex and specified information in nature, we can infer that intelligent design.
“Generally called”…by whom? Not scientists, that’s for sure. CSI is an invented term with no quantitative definition, no means of measurement (it doesn’t even have units!), and no mechanism of detection, but these bozos trot it out time after time in order to make these sciencey assertions.
It’s like ontogenetic depth. They’re happy to invent the term, they’re happy to claim they’re demonstrating the falsehood of evolution with real science, but when you try to pin them down and get the methods that would allow you to replicate their claims, they squirm and wiggle and declare that it’s “A Biological Distance That’s Currently Impossible to Measure”.
That’s all they’ve got. Stuff backed up by claims of quantitative values that, when pressed, they admit that they can’t measure.
Och! it maks ye think o’ this!
??
the link went funny
howlandbolton.com/essays/read_more.php?sid=195
Which is why the proper response is to point at them and have a good belly laugh.
In our experience, CSI only comes from a goal-directed process like intelligent design.
That just means they haven’t experienced evolution, I guess.
Maybe CSI is detected by those e-meters…
CSI. That show is crap.
So, Squeak, you have experienced designers creating the nested hierarchies found in biology, strictly derivative where those are the only known “naturalistic” mechanisms?
Gee, maybe you can show us some of that design, because I’ve never seen anything like it.
Glen Davidson
Right. Creationists claim that this is things that are designed by an intelligence in contrast with things that are undesigned by an intelligence. Paley’s watch.
Since, according to creationists, the entire universe and everything in it falls into the first category, there’s nothing to contrast it with, no basis for comparison, and thus the whole concept is meaningless bullshit born of people who wilfully shut off their ability to think.
CSI. Heh. I’m also reminded of the time Michael Egnor made some claim about how “biological information” can’t increase, and when biologists asked how he defines and measures “biological information” he said it was up to them to define it. In other words, he said with great confidence (or rather, false bravado) that something couldn’t increase, even though he didn’t even know what that something was and thus didn’t know how to measure it, which is necessary to determine if it increases, decreases, or stays the same.
These pompous pseudoscientists always come up with the old saw that life and matter can’t arise spontaneously, so there has to be a creator.
OK. So, where did that creator originate if it’s impossible for anything to arise spontaneously? Would have to be something so awesome and spectacular that we couldn’t miss it. It would have to be much greater than the resulting cosmos. Strange. I don’t see it anywhere. I don’t hear its voice. I don’t see it doing anything that isn’t explained by naturally occurring forces.
Just saying that something has always been (but invisibly and vocally silently) answers nothing and gets us right back to the situation they say is impossible — something that arose out of nothing, but with intelligence and abilities that would make us look inconsequential, to say the least, but conveniently invisible and unreachable except to the privileged few who claim to be his/hers/its representatives and prosper spectacularly based on that claim.
Their approach is, let’s have a glass of lemonade and sit on our behinds content that bronze age nomads, goat herders and camel jockeys gave us all the information we need. No need to do all that pesky scientific stuff like theorizing, running controlled scientific experiments and drawing carefully reviewed conclusions. We have the answers already, so don’t bother your little heads about it.
Had to be done:
“No true Scotsman…..”
Sorry I’ll get my coat.
Just saw the picture of him (Dr Noble) on the link. I’m now fairly certain this was my High School chemistry teacher.
Oh the shame.
Oh the Ignominy.
Apparently the Intelligent Designer in his infinite wisdom forgot to bless his spokespersons with sufficient intelligence.
Sounds like bad case of confirmation bias. They look for things that look like intelligence to them and, lo and behold, they find them!
void Curly()
{
do
{facePalm() }
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Squeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeek
Should be restated. A mark of good design is stream lining…being as simple as possible to complete its task. Its why ambulances lack fire hoses
There seems to be someone blithering in a recent piece from Italy; not sure if there’s a Disco Toot connection or not.
I’m embarrassed. Irrationally so, but embarrassed nonetheless.
Self-fulfilling predictions? Circular reasoning? Begging the question? Generalizing from too small a sample? Yah, dey’s got all o’ dem dere.
It’s amazing how Paul Nelson is able to write so many words & generate so many diagrams without actually saying anything or coming to any kind of a point. So much handwaving, so many requirements he attaches & yet never actually is able to say what’s wrong with evolution as it now stands.
The Centre for Intelligent Design has been going for a few years, and has organised a lecture tour by Michael Behe, and a lecture by Stephen Meyer.
I’ve read that ID is going nowhere in the USA after the Dover case, but here in the UK where we have faith schools I think Intelligent Design creationism is worrying.
R
CSI? but but.. they use science all the time! to ah
solve all those crimes and stuff…in a carefully scripted and repeatable fashion I might add..
/lol.
They seem to use information theory (or at least imply it) to intimidate those who don’t understand it–which is almost everyone, or so I’ve read. It seems a variation of the 2nd law argument (enropy means no increase in order), where they overlook the closed system part. Are these arguments analogous?
I can’t imagine it would be much of a battle. If the guy so much as walks into a pub people wouldn’t hesitate to poke fun at him and his silly beliefs. I’m not worried at all about the Scots – it’s those Southern folks (English) who worry me; at one point they seemed to want to ape the Scottish Enlightenment and now they seek to revoke any progress.
Of course CSI has units: the Dembski. It’s, dimensionally, the derivative of micrometers times beta (units of velocity relative to the speed of light) per ampere times seconds squared, or
dumB/as^2
People may joke about Jerry Coyne’s stance on free will turning us into “meat robots”, but it takes a creationist to claim that humans are literally artificial intelligences.
Or…They look for things that look like what the things they’re looking for look like. (ow! brain-freeze!)
@ Rev #16
Wee, sleekit, cowrin, tim’rous beastie?
Cue Mel Gibson, painted blue for some bizarre reason:
“They may take our lives, but they’ll never take our biblical literalism!”
But seriously, yes, there are a handful of truly weird religious types left in Scotland. We have one of the last pockets of Sabbatarianism left in the developed world, up in the far north west. You try finding a shop that’s open, let alone a drink in a bar, on Sunday in Stornoway. And when I studied in Dundee I had a few online disputes with a preternaturally slippery preacher who is of the leading anti gay marriage spokesmen, as well as one of the University pastoral staff.
Dude, in Germany and Austria, all shops except petrol stations and shops in airports and train stations are closed on almost all Sundays. This is defended not just by churches, but also by trade unions that find it easier for families when people’s free day from work is their children’s free day from school.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oEl9kVl6KPc
this is appropriate now, I guess.
What? Shite! Creationists in my country? Get them out of here! I thought Cthulhu ate them all when they showed up at that Crystal Palace talk PZ did last year :(.
You should be. The Wee Frees aren’t just a race of drunken gnomes on the Discworld.
Theh meh tek oor Science, but theh’ll neveh tek oor REEEAAAASSSOOOOONNNNNN!!!!
“CSI is an invented term with no quantitative definition, no means of measurement (it doesn’t even have units!)”
I propose measuring CSI with the quantifiable unit measure of “Yahweh’s”. This way CSI is totally scientific and definately not creationism.
And If you don’t believe in ontogenetic depth, then how is it we have giant pyramids in Eygypt? Huh?