Whales did (NOT) evolve

[Ashwin_s]

@jammycakes

I can’t speak for anyone else on this forum, but personally I do. Basically, because as a computer programmer, my understanding of evolution comes first and foremost through the “lens” of evolutionary algorithms – as I mentioned in an earlier post on this thread. Evolutionary algorithms are used to design things to meet specific practical requirements.

@jammycakes

I would call it intelligent design as well. And I fully understand why you might think the positions that some people on this forum sound like double talk. There’s a lot of scope for confusion and misunderstanding about the subject of Intelligent Design, and I think this is something that everyone on this forum needs to bear in mind.

Hi James,

Glad we are in agreement with respect to the main points. As to what ID means, we should allow the proponents to define it as opposed to how it is perceived by evolutionary biologists/popular media.If we ask regular people what evolution means, we would get a range of disparate and inaccurate definitions depending on whom we ask. Of course, none of the definitions would really be valid to the science of evolution. Similar, let ID scientists define what ID means.
Let me post one such definition below

Blockquote
Intelligent design refers to a scientific research program as well as a community of scientists, philosophers and other scholars who seek evidence of design in nature. The theory of intelligent design holds that certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause, not an undirected process such as natural selection. Through the study and analysis of a system’s components, a design theorist is able to determine whether various natural structures are the product of chance, natural law, intelligent design, or some combination thereof. Such research is conducted by observing the types of information produced when intelligent agents act. Scientists then seek to find objects which have those same types of informational properties which we commonly know come from intelligence.
Blockquote
So the key claim that needs to be verified is the one below :
Through the study and analysis of a system’s components, a design theorist is able to determine whether various natural structures are the product of chance, natural law, intelligent design, or some combination thereof.

I think it s possible to show whether design is more probable vis a vis evolution (where evolution is the null hypothesis).

@Bill_II

Well I believe there is an Intelligent designer, AKA God. The scorn comes about because the ID folks want to talk about design but not the designer. Can’t have one without the other. Also no mention is ever made of exactly how this design came to be.

This is something an athiest would say (I am referring to the argument against ID obviously). No one really knows how matter came to be (even a proper definition of matter is ultimately contestable). yet we do science about how matter interacts within the universe all the time.
Newton defined how gravity behaves long ago…Scientists are still working on understanding what exactly it is and how it behaves.
In the nascent stage of a field in science, its common to start with the low hanging fruit, i.e immediately testable/observable effects (like an apple falling down instead of going up). The effects of intelligence and what its creations look like can be immediately observed, and tested.As our knowledge increases, we figure out how to test more difficult and basic ideas out… its possible we hit a wall at some point.
Its common for scientists to talk about what they can test here and now… and right now, its detection of intelligent design.
This is nothing to be scornful about.

@Bill_II

However it can’t be detected by the scientific method. “Proven” is probably the wrong word to use.

You are right proven is the wrong word to use. in historical sciences, we cant really prove what happened, we can at best describe what probably happened and sow all other alternatives are highly unlikely.
Id scientists believe , Design can be detected. As an engineer, i agree with them. Designed products have unique properties which a product of nature does not have. (In all cases where we actually know the causative agent through observation).
Some of the things ID scientists are doing which i find interesting are:

1. Information science - Laws of conservation of information applied to evolutionary searches, Detecting specified complexity in structures (there is an interesting application of this with respect to snow flakes). Information science is well suited to find the probability of meaning/purpose emerging through chance.
   You can find more here -The Evolutionary Informatics Lab - Publications
   And a long but clear description of the arument from conservation of information by william dembski.
   Conservation of Information Made Simple | Evolution News
2. Detecting irreducible complexity in biological systems.

Another field i would like to see some work on is to describe how inputting energy into an open system can lead to increase in order to the level of working machines through stochastic processes. (Or in other words- Mercury gets way more heat than earth… why didnt it develop complex biological systems?).

I am attaching an interesting description of the problem below:
http://bio-complexity.org/ojs/index.php/main/article/view/BIO-C.2013.2/BIO-C.2013.2
@gbrooks9 - I think the above reply to Bill covers the objections raised by you.
@pevaquark: Would love to know what you think about the article on the second law of themodynamics.

@gbrooks9

This is the very thing BioLogos seeks to change – to show that Christians can embrace the scientific side of Evolution without it affecting their Christian faith, and also without affecting how the science of Evolution is conducted. What looks random to the human mind is, by our religious calculus, is not random to God.

This is the kind of doublespeak i am talking about.
Scientists need to find ways to test for design… because its very much possible. Its as easy to test for design as it is to test for common descent…

@gbrooks9

I think you attempting to define those who believe God employs naturally produced Speciation and Common Descent as Creationism is another kind of double-talk. If Special Creation is making Adam in a “poof” event . . . then clearly making a human over millions of years can’t be Creationism. The process is easy to define: it is evolution. The part that you call Teleological is not available to science for further analysis or even detection.

How did science decide that it cannot detect teleology??? any papers on the subject??
This is not just double talk…its double talk based on a lie…A science of the gaps if you will…

@beaglelady

I think it’s pretty much God-of-the-gaps theology, where God serves as a placeholder for scientific ignorance. And God therefore shrinks with each discovery of some missing piece of evidence.

Actually its a probability based inference in accordance with known facts… just like evolution is.
The only question is… which is more probable…

@Chris_Falter

I am not a biologist, but if I have understood biology correctly, then your assertion is dead wrong. Speciation is not quantized; the only thing that can be quantized is the number of mutations (of various sorts) across space–e.g., between individuals in a population–and across time.

When two organisms cannot interbreed and produce viable off spring, they are said to belong to a different species. That’s a very clear differentiator.
It would need significant changes in embryo development, morphology,etc…
The mutations that achieve this change will be markers for speciation.
I don’t know if anyone has worked in this direction.
Language doesn’t have anything equivalent. There are no specific groups of words which will act as a clear differentiator showing when a dialect becomes a different langauge.