Darwin Unhinged: The Bugs in Evolution

Just one relatively simple example of the extreme creative ingenuity and knowledge of the apparent designers - the optimal calcite trilobite compound eye:  

"Trilobites suddenly appeared in the Cambrian (lowest fossil-bearing) stratum with no record of ancestry. The trilobite eye is made of optically transparent calcium carbonate (calcite, the same mineral as molluscan shells) with a precisely aligned optical axis that eliminates double images and two lenses affixed together to eliminate spherical aberrations.

Paleontologist Niles Eldredge observed, “These lenses – technically termed aspherical, aplanatic lenses – optimize both light collecting and image formation better than any other lens ever conceived. We can be justifiably amazed that these trilobites, very early in the history of life on earth, hit upon the best possible lens that optical physics has ever been able to formulate”. Notice these lenses weren’t just good as, but were better than anything modern optical physicists have been able to conceive! ....

The design of the trilobite’s eye lens could well qualify for a patent disclosure”.....

The trilobite lens is particularly intriguing since the only other animal to use inorganic focusing material is man. The lens may be classified as a prosthetic device since it was non-biological, which also means the lens itself, with apparently no DNA inherent within, was not subject to Darwinian evolution. The manufacturing and controlling of the lenses were obviously biological processes, with an unknown number DNA-prescribed proteins (each with a prescriptive manufacturing program) for collecting and processing the raw materials to manufacture the precision lenses and create the refracting interface between the two lenses."

It should also be noted that it was the complete eye-brain system that had to originate at the same time, including the nerve optical data pathways, specialized brain structures processing the optical data, and brain structures assessing the resulting image data in order to take necessary behavioral actions. The latter image processing had to incorporate some form of primitive sensory fusion of the compound multiple eye images, into a comprehensive sensing of the environment including threats and possible food sources. The ingenious calcite compound eye itself was only part of a much more complex system of systems comprising the entire animal. All this and very much more appeared suddenly, as part of the well-known Cambrian Explosion of new and complex animal body plans. The fossil evidence indicates it all took place over the very short period (as evolution goes) of 10-15 million years. Dr. Behe has convincingly shown that Darwinian processes are inherently degradative in terms of genes and DNA sequences and therefore creative only to the extent that tearing down already functional genomic structures can bring short-term benefits. But even if Darwinian processes were able to be creative, this time period is grossly inadequate for the slow creeping process to result in any complex new system.

That's an interesting and evidence-based example. It provides food for thought. Though I feel the statement, "Notice these lenses weren’t just good as, but were better than anything modern optical physicists have been able to conceive! ,,, " sounds a bit like over-egging the pudding.

Also, the statement "the only other animal to use inorganic focusing material is man" feels somehow too bold. It isn't something I've researched, can that assertion really be substantiated, and if so, what would it imply about human origins?

That's an interesting and evidence-based example. It provides food for thought. Though I feel the statement, "Notice these lenses weren’t just good as, but were better than anything modern optical physicists have been able to conceive! ,,, " sounds a bit like over-egging the pudding.

Also, the statement "the only other animal to use inorganic focusing material is man" feels somehow too bold. It isn't something I've researched, can that assertion really be substantiated, and if so, what would it imply about human origins?

Eldredge seems to have gotten it right: 

Derived from two comprehensive papers, on present vertebrates here and on present invertebrates here :

"The vertebrate lens is made of transparent proteins called crystallins, which are in the high concentrations needed to bend light. The average concentration of lens proteins is about twice than that of other intracellular proteins and is thought to play a structural role in the lens. The structure is composed of elongated specialized cells.The vertebrate lens is derived embryologically from an invaginated ectodermal epithelium, the lens vesicle, and grows throughout life by the orderly proliferation and differentiation of epithelial cells into layers of extremely elongated fiber cells." 

Even though invertebrate eyes are very different, their lenses are also basically crystalline proteins embryologically derived from the skin (ectoderm).

Crystalline proteins derived from the embryo skin are organic not inorganic. I don't think there is any implication about human origins, just that the designers of present vertebrate and invertebrate eyes have chosen organic lens materials rather than inorganic crystals like calcite. Early arthropod (trilobite) transparent calcite eye lenses were a beginning stratagem later abandoned by the designers. Like the early designers of radio receivers and televisions using thermionic vacuum tubes, but later transitioning to transistors. New ideas, new and better technology.

Ok, so that's vertebrates and invertebrates. But it doesn't seem that homo sapiens is particularly unique as implied in the statement which caused a raised eyebrow when I first read it. (Or did I miss the point again?) Thanks Nbtruthman for your efforts in doing some research. I apologise for not having done so myself.

The beings responsible whoever they are evidently exhibit characteristics we could term playfulness, aesthetic sense, capriciousness and total indifference to suffering, in addition to obvious extreme ingenuity in following engineering design principles. 

If advanced immaterial spiritual beings must be part of the process, why couldn't they totally be the agents responsible?

Does this line of reasoning require some sort of ultimate superintelligent Source? It seems so, but for all intents and purposes identifying such aliens and/or spiritual beings as possible proximal designers seems to be sufficient and it is not necessary to speculate further.   

Is all this speculation "scientific"? I don't think so. Does the lack of all this speculation make the research into the evident intelligent design of life "unscientific"? I don't think so.

I agree that given our experience with Psi there does seem to be a need to have some sort of spirit-based starting point to put the genie of non-local consciousness in the bottle of a physical body.

To me, however, part of this is because our own limited Psi capacity seems to run counter to natural selection's apparent exploitation of even quantum level properties. Could there be an alien race that does evolve incredible Psi ability and in turn designs humans to be much more limited? Of course this leads to all sorts of questions regarding what an evolutionary track toward greater exploitation of non-local consciousness would be like. [And there are arguably bigger problems like Nagel's question re: Origination of Reason.]

I do get that this sort of speculation feels like a movement toward the torturous and convoluted "Super Psi" type explanations, but I think any attempt to bring consideration of immaterial entities into science is going to face these sorts of questions. As such, it seems to try and get an understanding of ID and what it implies one has to bring in the rest of parapsychology of which I'd consider ID an incomplete facet.

As to whether this speculation is scientific I would say it is the natural course of reasoning we expect in the sciences. After all we will inevitably use our own intelligence to design species around us along with re-making ourselves via techologies such as CRISPR. If we destroy ourselves, whoever comes after us would be groundlessly limiting themselves to not speculate on who we were as they study the post-human world's genetic code.

Does this mean lack of speculation is "unscientific"? Again, I'd say so because the lack seems to be precisely because of how weak the ID bridge to a deity of any scripture is. The gods - assuming they existed - of old did not bend probabilities, they willed reality to conform to their desires. We have living practices wherein people invoke comparably minor spirits to manipulate probability. A serious science should draw the obvious parallels, as well as the obvious discrepancies.

I agree that given our experience with Psi there does seem to be a need to have some sort of spirit-based starting point to put the genie of non-local consciousness in the bottle of a physical body.

To me, however, part of this is because our own limited Psi capacity seems to run counter to natural selection's apparent exploitation of even quantum level properties. Could there be an alien race that does evolve incredible Psi ability and in turn designs humans to be much more limited? Of course this leads to all sorts of questions regarding what an evolutionary track toward greater exploitation of non-local consciousness would be like. [And there are arguably bigger problems like Nagel's question re: Origination of Reason.]

I do get that this sort of speculation feels like a movement toward the torturous and convoluted "Super Psi" type explanations, but I think any attempt to bring consideration of immaterial entities into science is going to face these sorts of questions. As such, it seems to try and get an understanding of ID and what it implies one has to bring in the rest of parapsychology of which I'd consider ID an incomplete facet.

As to whether this speculation is scientific I would say it is the natural course of reasoning we expect in the sciences. After all we will inevitably use our own intelligence to design species around us along with re-making ourselves via techologies such as CRISPR. If we destroy ourselves, whoever comes after us would be groundlessly limiting themselves to not speculate on who we were as they study the post-human world's genetic code.

Does this mean lack of speculation is "unscientific"? Again, I'd say so because the lack seems to be precisely because of how weak the ID bridge to a deity of any scripture is. The gods - assuming they existed - of old did not bend probabilities, they willed reality to conform to their desires. We have living practices wherein people invoke comparably minor spirits to manipulate probability. A serious science should draw the obvious parallels, as well as the obvious discrepancies.

Dictionary definition  of "scientific":

1: of, relating to, or exhibiting the methods or principles of science
2: conducted in the manner of science or according to results of investigation by science : practicing or using thorough or systematic methods.

Steps in the Scientific Method:
1 – Make an Observation. You can't study what you don't know is there. ...
2 – Ask a Question. ...
3 – Do Background Research. ...
4 – Form a Hypothesis. ...
5 – Conduct an Experiment. ...
6 – Analyze Results and Draw a Conclusion
7 - If the results warrant it, form a theory

It is apparent that speculation about the nature of the designer isn't a part of the scientific method, and therefore isn't "scientific". To make speculation "scientific" it must be fleshed out with a formal hypothesis to provisionally explain observations, the crucial conducting of an experiment, and analysis of results. Speculation about the nature of the designer has no elements of observation and conducting of experiments and analysis of results versus predictions of the hypothesis. There isn't anything "scientific" about pure speculation. 

The ID research conducted by those few ID-friendly scientists working in the field deliberately stays away from such speculation - it isn't science. These investigators are simply trying to scientifically establish that contrary to Darwinism there must have been some creative intelligent teleological factor in evolution, maybe a designer or designers, maybe something else. That is enough of a challenge, not finding "a bridge to a scriptural Deity" .

I think that scientists researching ID deliberately stay away from the question of the nature of the putative designer or designers (either immaterial or material) precisely because it just can't be investigated by the methods of science as it has been practiced for a few centuries.

It is apparent that speculation about the nature of the designer isn't a part of the scientific method, and therefore isn't "scientific". To make speculation "scientific" it must be fleshed out with a formal hypothesis to provisionally explain observations, the crucial conducting of an experiment, and analysis of results. Speculation about the nature of the designer has no elements of observation and conducting of experiments and analysis of results versus predictions of the hypothesis. There isn't anything "scientific" about pure speculation.

Practitioners who at the least claim to work with spirits speak of a personal empiricism, and there are therapeutic practices that mirror what we would commonly exorcisms. There's also some stuff about discarnate entities in the American Psychological Association's Transcendent Mind.

When you fold ID into the rest of parapsychology it's pretty clear there's enough meat on the bone to offer some theories as to who the "designers" are. I don't think this sort of speculation is any more out of line than the varied theories/interpretations about what's going on with collapse of the wave function.

Besides, what experiments have been done and results analyzed to buttress ID as an isolated discipline? If there's something back in the this thread I'll go through it, perhaps I've forgotten something.

The ID research conducted by those few ID-friendly scientists working in the field deliberately stays away from such speculation - it isn't science. These investigators are simply trying to scientifically establish that contrary to Darwinism there must have been some creative intelligent teleological factor in evolution, maybe a designer or designers, maybe something else. That is enough of a challenge, not finding "a bridge to a scriptural Deity" .

Seems to me they purposely don't try to offer speculation on the plausibility of such a bridge because they know how flimsy the construction would be, and this would then end the funding that comes from those who are happy to treat criticisms of Neo-Darwinism as evidence of their own pet ideas about God and Evolution.

Since a good bit of ID is criticism of Neo-Darwinism, I think criticism of the belief that the evidence could support a scriptural deity - especially when such scriptures have their own creation stories that don't mention anything like evolution - is as scientific as ID itself purports to be?

edit: Just to note Edward Feser, a Catholic Theologian, also thinks ID pointing to a big-G God is a grave mistake. I think I've mentioned this before on this thread but figured it's easier to repost than drudge through a hundred plus pages. All to say my issue is with the flawed premise underlying what many hope ID will show, rather than some personal preference of mine for a spirit world devoid of deities from varied scriptures or [my being against] the idea of a big-G God that is the Ground of Being.

Needless to say, Believer, despite his chipper earnestness in the cause of arguing for the existence of the painter, is in fact as clueless as Skeptic is.  If you are trying to explain to Skeptic the error of his ways, Believer is no help at all.  In fact he’s only getting in the way, muddying the waters, and indeed reinforcing Skeptic’s error. Like Skeptic, he’s treating the painter as if he were essentially some part of the picture, albeit a part that is hard to see directly.  And like Skeptic, he’s supposing that settling the question of whether the painter exists has something to do with focusing on unusual or complex or hard-to-see elements of the painting -- when, of course, that has nothing essentially to do with it at all.  In fact, of course, even the most trivial, plain, and simple painting would require a painter just as much as a complicated picture of a crowd of people would.  And in fact, the painter is not himself a part of the picture, and therefore, looking obsessively within the picture itself at various minute details of it is precisely where you won’t find him.

See also Feser's ID vs AT (Aristotelian-Thomism) Round Up

And for posts which are aimed even more specifically at ID theory, see:

“Intelligent Design” theory and mechanism

ID theory, Aquinas, and the origin of life: A reply to Torley

Cudworth and Fuller respond

Dembski rolls snake eyes

ID, A-T, and Duns Scotus: A further reply to Torley


Unhinged Dissent

Heads ID wins, tails you lose: A reply to Jay Richards

Reply to Torley and Cudworth

edit: Just to note Edward Feser, a Catholic Theologian, also thinks ID pointing to a big-G God is a grave mistake. I think I've mentioned this before on this thread but figured it's easier to repost than drudge through a hundred plus pages.

Another good article that I don't believe is in the round-up:

Signature in the cell?

...If we’re to judge that Yahweh, rather than extraterrestrial pranksters, hallucination, or some other cause, was behind such an event, it is considerations other than the event itself that will justify us in doing so.  In short, we could take “Made by Yahweh” to be a sign from Yahweh only if we already have, on other grounds, good reason to think Yahweh exists and is likely to send us messages by leaving them in cells.  And in that case the occurrence of the phrase in the cell would not be giving us independent reason to think Yahweh exists.

Of course, the “Made by Yahweh” scenario is pure fiction.  The “messages” or “information” that ID theorists actually identify in the cell is, needless to say, far less dramatic than that.  It has nothing specifically to do with Yahweh at all, or with anyone else for that matter.  Indeed, whether regarding it as “information” in any literal sense is even appropriate in the first place is a matter of controversy in the philosophy of biology.  How much more, then, is the real work in ID arguments being done by considerations apart from what we actually find in the cell?  If even “Made by Yahweh” wouldn’t by itself do much to get you to Yahweh, how much less does the presence of genetic information per se do so?

But we can look to the IDer Dembski for even more confirmation that the interpretation of ID evidence pointing to what we normally think of as "God" in the "Creator of All" sense is one of the poorer ones. I'd say it's akin to looking at the collapse of the wave function and suggesting the Many Worlds Interpretation, though probably not as bad as that.

Here's a worthwhile Dembski quote [from this article]:

ID’s metaphysical openness about the nature of nature entails a parallel openness about the nature of the designer. Is the designer an intelligent alien, a computional [sic] simulator (a la THE MATRIX), a Platonic demiurge, a Stoic seminal reason, an impersonal telic process, …, or the infinite personal transcendent creator God of Christianity? The empirical data of nature simply can’t decide. But that’s not to say the designer is anonymous. I’m a Christian, so the designer’s identity is clear, at least to me. But even to identify the designer with the Christian God is not to say that any particular instance of design in nature is directly the work of his hands.

It seems Dembki even allows for the possibility that there is no designer at all, just an "impersonal telic process"? As for the "empirical data of nature", it seems we can at least portion out some likelihood of the varied options. For example if we have independent grounds for thinking we are in a simulation, it would make more sense to say the designers are the programmers themselves or some AI left to manage the simulation that tweaked the probabilities to get us toward a desired outcome without restarting the simulation run of our biome from scratch.

And if the empirical data includes the rest of parapsychology, of which I believe ID is merely a small piece, then it seems we can look at Vallee's Passport to Magonia and easily conclude those sorts of entities seem capable of altering the probabilities ID depends on. See also Paranthropology's description of varied spirit entities, or Survival cases where a ghost displays PK.

As to whether we should fold ID into parapsychology, I'd note Dembski's own explanation of ID from The Design Revolution. He offers the following scenario:

...a device that outputs zeroes and ones and for which our best science tells us that the bits are independent and identically distributed so that zeroes and ones each have probability 50 percent.

but then:

we control for all possible physical interference with this device, and nevertheless the bit string that this device outputs yields an English text-file in ASCII code that delineates the cure for cancer.

If this is what he means by design, then he has hit upon a description that clearly parallels the PK experiments involving the influence upon a random number generator.

IDers could even set up experiments, seeing if humans attempting PK can affect the randomness of mutations. And does this influence improve when one invokes the aid of some spirit?

Additionally we already have the mediumship healing case of George Chapman so if we accept that evidence we know it's within the bounds of a spirit to manipulate the body to a great degree.

If ID is a serious science this is the kind of stuff that they should be proposing, rather than pretending all the varied options for who the designer(s) is(are) have equal weight and it's simply a matter of faith as to which one we should pick.

Another good article that I don't believe is in the round-up:

Signature in the cell?


But we can look to the IDer Dembski for even more confirmation that the interpretation of ID evidence pointing to what we normally think of as "God" in the "Creator of All" sense is one of the poorer ones. I'd say it's akin to looking at the collapse of the wave function and suggesting the Many Worlds Interpretation, though probably not as bad as that.

Here's a worthwhile Dembski quote:


It seems Dembki even allows for the possibility that there is no designer at all, just an "impersonal telic process"? As for the "empirical data of nature", it seems we can at least portion out some likelihood of the varied options. For example if we have independent grounds for thinking we are in a simulation, it would make more sense to say the designers are the programmers themselves or some AI left to manage the simulation that tweaked the probabilities to get us toward a desired outcome without restarting the simulation run of our biome from scratch.

And if the empirical data includes the rest of parapsychology, of which I believe ID is merely a small piece, then it seems we can look at Vallee's Passport to Magonia and easily conclude those sorts of entities seem capable of altering the probabilities ID depends on. See also Paranthropology's description of varied spirit entities, or Survival cases where a ghost displays PK.

As to whether we should fold ID into parapsychology, I'd note Dembski's own explanation of ID from The Design Revolution. He offers the following scenario:


but then:


If this is what he means by design, then he has hit upon a description that clearly parallels the PK experiments involving the influence upon a random number generator.

IDers could even set up experiments, seeing if humans attempting PK can affect the randomness of mutations. And does this influence improve when one invokes the aid of some spirit?

Additionally we already have the mediumship healing case of George Chapman so if we accept that evidence we know it's within the bounds of a spirit to manipulate the body to a great degree.

If ID is a serious science this is the kind of stuff that they should be proposing, rather than pretending all the varied options for who the designer(s) is(are) have equal weight and it's simply a matter of faith as to which one we should pick.

ID is serious science regardless of this issue you are so concerned about. If its proponents in the DI are predominantly Christian so be it - their research and following of the evidence is still valid in coming to the conclusion that there has been an important teleological intelligent design element in evolution. So what if these Christians generally ascribe the role of the intelligent designer to the God of the scriptures. 

That doesn't change the validity of their scientific findings. If you think it does, please cite where and how, for instance in Catholic Michael Behe's insights into irreducible complexity, and into the basically creatively impotent and genetically devolving nature of Darwinist evolution.

Trying to understand the parapsychological psi mechanisms that may be behind the creative physical interventions in evolution that must have occurred is certainly a worthy goal, but it isn't necessary to simply demonstrate the bankruptcy of Darwinism. At this point in history Darwinism is very firmly entrenched in our culture to the point of being a de facto secular religion that stifles inquiry and promotes nihilism. First things first.

I wonder how the ID'ers from the DI,  given that in general they have a strong belief in miracles the ultimate source which can only be christ or the devil - can speculate about a creator other than the christian god. It's interesting that dembski, meyer ect. have refered to their god at times in their interviews but haven't in my recollection refered to satan, lucifer, the devil. . .