I made a video a while back titled The Deceptive, Dishonest Logic of Intelligent Design, and it got a bunch of comments from irate creationists. I decided to follow up with responses to a couple of representative comments with a rebuttal.
Stuff cited:
The 12-mer peptide with specific binding to naphthalene.
The only CSI paper you need to read:
Elsberry W, Shallit J (2011) Information theory, evolutionary computation, and Dembski’s “complex specified information”. Synthese 178:237–270.
The Shallit paper is available at: http://www.talkreason.org/articles/eandsdembski.pdf
Mer-peptides?
Hmm. Are they responsible for the developmental regulation creating legs from tails?
Creationists always make me think that we need to really improve our science education in this country. My university required science majors to have 3 semesters of history, 1 social science, 1 health, 1 art, 1 communication, 3 composition, 3-4 math, 2 physics, and I’m sure I’m forgetting others. Now these were standard for science majors, obviously if you were in physics or engineering you would take more physic classes, but these were the basics. The basics for all other majors were the same except, they only needed 1 math (college level algebra) and 1 science (rocks for jocks, basic biology, or something). Essentially science requirements were no more advanced then what students learned in highschool. While those requirements were fun and easy I think they pose a serious question. What has more value to a functioning adult. Knowing when Martin Luther wrote his 95 theses and started the protestant reformation, or knowing how bonds form in chemical reactions? Knowing how electrical potential moves across cell membranes, or what electrical potential even is, or when India gained independence from Britain? All knowledge is great and useful for being able to think critically, but I think with how quickly science and technology is advancing that bar for basic science understanding needs to be raised.
as modern technology continues to shrink the distances between all the countries of the world by making their separate economies more interconnected I would say that all areas of learning should be broadened and deepened. no country can expect to be insular in its understanding of the rest of the world including science and think they will prosper for long.
PZ your answer to the debate question was exactly right.
as was the whole video, the absence of bombast while being very clear is good. they all got one f’n point they want to dispute while failing utterly to understand that it is a very long process that is nowhere near finished yet.
I’ll watch the video when I am home from work, but beforehand Sir, I must salute thee for the bravery of reading YouTube comments.
Great vid, enjoying these, thanks.
If you are looking for suggestions, would you be willing to make a video about Tiktaalik? Neil Shubin’s “Your Inner Fish” left me wondering whether all of us, land-based animals, are descended from Tiktaalik, or whether there is evidence of multiple species colonizing dry land independently.
Are you trying to level up to 18/00 intestinal fortitude?
There is no mechanism in the universe that generates “specified” information, except for intelligence? It’s called “chemistry”.
Once energy is supplied to chemicals, some kind of organization to give the best thermodynamic sink is inevitable. Molecules will organize into other molecules, which ones being guided specifically by the equilibrium and rate constants of the reactions. It’s the laws of thermodynamics and kinetics, there is no way out.
Creationists have never grasped the principle that chemistry is not random, and that self-organization guided only by thermodynamics and kinetics is universal. That’s all chemicals do, actually. They organize themselves in specific ways (“information”) without any intelligence at all. The “patterns” found in DNA are chemistry. Life is chemistry.
paxoll @3:
That’s rather an unfair comparison, and a disservice to the importance of history as a field of study. A better comparison might be “Understanding the causes and effects of the Protestant Reformation, or knowing how bonds form in chemical reactions”. Both require a much deeper understanding than memorizing a date.
A video production comment, based on my own experience making videos. I like to script my videos, and I use a teleprompter phone app. I say this because I suspect you are doing the same. However, your prompter is at least 15º below the camera — maybe on the screen of a laptop and you are using the laptop’s camera? Because the line of your gaze is not into the camera. You seem to be “looking away from me” to read the script. It detracts from the impact of your speech. The words are the same, but there’s a difference between “you talking to me” and “you reading to me” and the latter is less effective.
I use an SLR on a tripod, and i got a cheap phone case and bodged up some wire (string would do) to dangle the iphone on the tripod head just under the camera. The camera is far enough away from me that the difference between “looking right into the lens” and “looking at the phone just below the lens” is just a few degrees, and (perhaps I kid myself but I don’t think so) nearly undetectable. So if I focus on a lively delivery and don’t just read the script, it seems as if I’m speaking impromptu into the camera.
That’s the first of your videos I watched. I enjoyed it greatly. I shall be working through your back catalog.
I do think your thoughts on how ID could prove itself are a little unreasonable. I don’t think any ID’er thinks that the designer acts every day, or every year. Possibly it only acts once every million years or so, to produce major changes. So even if they came up with a mechanism for it, they would be incredibly unlikely to catch it in action.
That does mean ID is not a testable theory. Though it’s possible to imagine evidence for it. If a complex set of mutations appeared that was very unlikely to happen by chance, and resulted in an antibiotic for which bacteria find it very hard to evolve resistance, that would be…interesting.
@Rob, I’m sorry I just don’t agree with you. Chemical bonding can be taught and seen in a very basic set of facts. The same with history. The difference is the facts in science leads to hypothesis, experimentation, more facts, around and around. Thus you can go down a rabbit hole of better understanding. The difference in organic chem 1 level of understanding and p-chem 2 level of understanding of chemical bonding is magnitudes different. Not really true of history. History you have a set of facts, and you can hypothesis about those facts, but you can’t really experiment and gain new facts, the only new facts are simply found. Now hypothesizing about history is fine for learning how to make hypothesis based on available facts. But what I was saying, the basic facts of even a organic chem 1 level of understanding of chemistry is (in my opinion) more important for an average adult then knowing basic facts like when the protestant reformation started. Pointing out how ridiculous it seems to me that our education system requires a significantly more amount of history then science, when the science seems much more practical. Basic chemistry facts would allow people to see those scare ads on social media about the horrible acid in coca-cola as ridiculous. Is there a similar usefulness to Martin Luther?
paxoll @13:
We’re “experimenting” every day. History is about what people have done, why, and what the consequences were. It’s always relevant. It informs almost everything about our lives. Of course science education is important, and could probably be better everywhere, but you keep talking about history as though it’s all about dates and individuals. It’s much more than that. I’d love to see cartomancer‘s take on this.
I say the above as an ex-theoretical physicist who loved (and still loves) his chosen field passionately, but I don’t see education as a battle between sciences and humanities. It should be a balance, with better quality in both.
Rob Grigjanis:
It’s also not true that we can never learn anything new about history and historical events. We learn new things every day. You know how steeped I am in Medieval History, and if anything, my love and passion for it grows with every new thing I learn, along with all the new things historians learn.
Personally, I think learning about chemistry can only be enhanced by a thorough grounding in the history of it. The 12th century Renaissance in Europe directly followed the translation of Islamic works of science, and alchemists played a significant part in the beginnings of modern science, in particular chemistry, of course, and medicine. There’s so much to learn, and history always embraces so many other subjects, and it helps to provide perspective and the ability to view things from another point of view, which is always valuable.
Speaking of Derek Lowe and “In the Pipeline”, he has a whole series of hilarius posts about “Things I Won’t Work With”. These are gut-wrenchingly fall-down-laughing descriptions of compounds which, if you are a chemist (as I am), the mere mention of which should cause you to start running.
One example, of many: http://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2008/02/26/sand_wont_save_you_this_time
paxoll #13
That is a very naive view of both history and History.
@Rob
All of those are simple historical facts. We only know why someone did something, if they bothered to write it down or tell someone which is hearsay. I enjoy the daily youtube show “today I found out”. The stories are very often historic in nature. What I really appreciate though is that they tell you what people think is true, what there is actual proof/evidence of, and usually provide a good reasoned conclusion what we should believe until some new piece of information is found. To me this is history in a nutshell. Actually, just the last two parts are what history is, while the first part is why people think history is important. You say
and while that is a lovely assertion and I’m sure someone could make a reductionist argument that everything in the past leads to our current existence, I gave a historical topic that is of monumental historical significance by the standard of required history classes, so please show me how that knowledge is useful for an average adult. This is not some kind of history bashing. This is a simple analysis of what we are being taught, what we should be taught, and why. Many people and indeed higher education in other countries don’t consider anything outside your vocational field to be of high value enough to require students to learn. I greatly appreciate our more rounded education system no matter how lopsided it is.
paxoll @17:
That’s not even remotely what I meant. Sticking to the Protestant Reformation: What use is there in learning about it? Well, it demonstrates the fragility of oppressive hierarchical structures; the power of social media (the printing press); the horrors of rigid ideology on any side. And so on. And arguably more relevant to the average adult of today than knowing about covalent bonds.
@Rob that is pretty funny. I bet a history major has validated their education with a dissertation on the social paradigm shifts after social media advancements.
Not sure what you mean by the “fragility of oppressive hierarchical structures”, catholicism is the dominant christian religion in the world, christian religions splitting have grown less oppressive in many ways, and more oppressive in others. We are 500 years removed from this event and its what? A data point in a theory that oppressive hierarchical structures will lead to opposition and revolution? Sorry, not particularly relevant compared to just about any other example, do you think any currently living person has changed their life in any way because of knowing about Martin Luther?
This is essentially the same as the reductionist argument I stated. The influence of that event to the current condition of our world is undisputed. The usefulness of the knowledge is completely debatable, and I haven’t seen any reason to change my mind.
In an authoritarian society you can get by very well if you only know what is relevant to your “work” or role in society. It is up to those above you that may need to know more and all authoritarian cultures are going to be hierarchical.
We profess and aspire to a democratically ordered country at least that is what the founding documents declare. Such a society would depend on an informed populace to make the necessary decisions as they arise. Without a good and well rounded educational system there is no way to insure that they will be able to make informed decisions. In the current era it would seem necessary for the populace to have a working knowledge of the sciences and the humanities including art and history to be able to be informed at all.
uncle frogy