Groktruth wrote:In order to test the validity of the hypothesis of evolution by natural selection, we need to make predictions from it, especially predictions that contrast with alternative hypotheses (see strong inference http://pages.cs.wisc.edu/~markhill/scie ... erence.pdf).

Very true.

Groktruth wrote:Now, the hypothesis of evolution is a hypothesis presented by a member of the species Homo sapiens, and applies to that species. Hence, if the hypothesis is true, it ought to have consequences on the behavior of the species commensurate with the "human nature" of the species.

No, not necessarily. That would be the naturalistic fallacy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naturalistic_fallacy
Evolution explains our behavior and our human nature. It makes predictions about how humans might behave in certain situations. But it doesn't make predictions about how we ought to behave. We use condoms, that's evolutionarily suicide, but certainly that doesn't mean that condoms are bad.

Groktruth wrote:We might assume that any idea that is closer to 'truth" would increase fitness, which is why we have evolved a brain that does this work. That is, we suppose that our brains have evolved to form and retain truer ideas about the way things really are, because having such ideas in the brain makes the body directed by such a brain do better, be more fit.

Wrong inference. It is certainly the case that in general, having true beliefs had adaptive value in the environment our ancestors evolved in. But this doesn't mean that all true beliefs increase fitness.

If that were the case, one could argue that the fact that education in third world countries decreases the birth rate would disprove evolution. That's obviously ridiculous.

Groktruth wrote:So, anyone want to deduce a prediction about how "evolutionists" ought to live a more fit life, because they have a truer idea in their brain? In contrast to non-evolutionists, of course.

This is a bad idea for the reasons I mentioned above. The basic thing about predictions is important though, there have been dozens of stunningly successful predictions based on evolutionary thinking. Some examples include human chromosome 2 being a fusion of two ape chromosomes (researchers had noticed that other great apes have one more chromosome pair than humans, and they predicted that we should find molecular evidence indicating a fusion); retroviral remains being at the exact same locations in both humans and other primates; DNA and anatomical comparisons leading to nested hierarchies -- something you wouldn't get with ID; predictions regarding the social and reproductive behavior of animals, including humans, based on evolutionary reasoning; fossil records being "progressive": no rabbits in the Cambrian; specific geographical distribution patterns of closely related organisms, convergence; ring species; mistakes in design (such as the blind spot in the human eye, flat fishes with distorted skulls, the laryngeal nerve etc.), and so on.

Evolution has passed, all these predictions, and many more, came true.

Belinda wrote:But, Wowbagger, a cultural choice such as condoms is a manifestation of human learning ability which is an evolutionary advance. Human cultures of belief and practise are determined by evolutionary forces which will eventually cause the demise of humankind if some other natural disaster does not preempt evolution.

I agree with all that (except that it might not necessarily lead to the demise of humankind, maybe we'll create an ethically superior human species by artificial selection -> genetic engineering).

Belinda wrote:One does not have to agree that the naturalistic fallacy is a fallacy. The overall question is whether determinism or true randomness rules.rightly or wrongly I plump for determinism.

I think I know what you mean. Evolution can certainly be seen as predicting human behavior, and in that sense, there's no fallacy involved. My point was about normative issues, can evolution tell us how we ought to behave? I think not, and that's what's meant with the fallacy. If I understood the OP correctly, he wanted to find evidence for people who accept evolution being more fit than people who don't accept evolution, because 1) evolution would be a true beliefs and 2) true beliefs have adaptive value. But clearly 2) isn't always the case, and just because someone learns about evolution doesn't mean they have to change their behavior in some way (though it's interesting that many people actually do just that...). (BTW, I'm a determinist as well.)

Groktruth wrote:The most plausible ID theory claims that we have the origin of biological diversity by means of artificial selection and genetic engineering. The genetic engineering might include manipulation of genotypes through intentional restructuring of DNA by mental and verbal methods.

How can something mental or verbal restructure DNA? Are we proposing an alternate theory of physics here as well? You'd need evidence to support that too. Or I'm probably just misunderstanding what is meant here.

Groktruth wrote:What about nested hierarchies is inconsistent with an intelligent bioengineer's work? Theologians note that the biblical God is a seed-planter, a Person who prefers building things through small developmental steps, as compared, say, to an artificial plant creator. Many argue that, to keep things interesting, He works combining random and unpredictable elements with His artificial selection and life shaping decisions. (Reflected in our delight in bonsai trees.)

Is that what one would get by thinking about what ID would predict? I don't think so, this seems to be heavily influenced by the actual findings, and this weakens the way in which the evidence fits the data. One could reasonably expect the designing process like human cars are being designed. In fact, creationists often use this as an example, which is ironic because cars don't fall into nested hierarchies at all, even though you can observe "trends" and "progress". Additionally, the way you describe it, the nested hierarchies would end at some level, i.e. only for biological families, or orders. This would be like the claim that there's only microevolution -- producing some nested hierarchies -- but not macroevolution (because if you allow for that, there's nothing left to do for the designer).With ID, there's no reason for the hierarchy to go all the way up to phyla and further, but that's actually what we observe. That's why nested hierarchies are some of the strongest lines of evidence for evolution.

Groktruth wrote:We do have, incidently, the ID prediction that the process of creating diversity will include frequent episodes of what we call genocide, where a desirable trait is found and selected ("many are called, few are chosen"), and then the rejected are disposed of as quickly and efficiently as possible. As human cattle farmers will dispose of a whole herd of "mad cow" infected animals, so any other Intelligent Designer might get rid of, say, those with a mad human disease. Gently perhaps, say through the use of condoms, but certainly expeditiously. The goal in both cases is to increase the frequency in the population of those with positive genetic traits.

That's just what evolution predicts too, so Ockham's razzor favors evolution here. The intervention thing would be totally unnecessary anyway because undesirable traits are often by definition reducing genetic fitness. They will go extinct anyway, this is logical, proven by mathematical models, and well documented.

Groktruth wrote:Such a prospect is, of course abhorrent to us, as the mass slaughter of a herd of cattle might be to the cows themselves. The cows, of course, are appalled because they do not know about the disease and the potential damage it might do to thier own future generations. So too, we, in our ignorance, find God's ways repellent.

I thought ID people weren't allowed to use the word "god"? Haha.
And these "ways" really ARE repellent. The suffering in nature is terrible beyond imagination. If you're doing the "comparing hypotheses over the alternatives", the "evil designer hypothesis" has way more probability than the "good designer hypothesis". So it was all the devil's work!

Groktruth wrote:If I had thought of it, I would have used cars for nested hierarchies in creation, Fords, Chevies, etc, subdivided into different models, and so on.

See, that's exactly the problem. If you think cars fall into nested hierarchies, then you don't get it. Not even all Fords make up a nested hierarchy! And pray tell, what would the common ancestor of of Fords and Ferraris look like? Or Ferraris and Hummers? Human designers can go back to the drawing board, start fresh with new ideas. Evolution always works by adjusting preexisting structures. There's no reason whatsoever why ID would predict exapted features or nested hierarchies. ID fails right here.

Groktruth wrote:Remember, ecience is a human activity, rift with dishonesty according to diligence in following strictly scientific methodology. Go with the crowd, and not the rules, and you are sure to be misled.

Riight. And you think it's better to start with a dogmatic agenda and then try desperately to make the facts fit? ID people are doing just that.

Groktruth wrote:My point so far is that there are some oddities related to the theory of evolution, that are clearly predicted by ID, but can only be explained away by evolution. All that evoution can predict, Id predicts as well, but evolution struggles with some of the things ID predicts handily.

It predicts the same things? Now why's that? Because ID proponents first look at the facts and then make up some set of ad hoc reasons why they think a designer would want to do it like that. It's not science. And I have yet to hear an even remotely convincing ad hoc reason for nested hierarchies. Evolution struggles with what?

Groktruth wrote:Of course, with an intelligent agent on hand, if ID is true, then ID believers will be more fit, as observed. And, they will be better able to use the adaptive history of both theories to make better choices about vitamin C.

This is nonsense, I explained in my first post here why this has nothing to do with anything. But by all means, if they ever come up with serious testable predictions, let me know. So far ID hasn't even achieved that. BTW, do the folks there still champion "irreducible complexity", or have they given up on that front?

You know just enough about science to think you understand it, and just little enough to not realize that you don't. This is dangerous; when you know about lots of fancy fallacies and problems, but fail to apply them to your own thinking, then all that results is ideologically clouded beliefs without truth value.

Groktruth wrote:Wowbagger,

"Nonsense?" "Has nothing to do with anything?" Do you not see how these remarks disqualify everything else you say, unless you want to apply it to yourself? They label clearly your epistemological status, which is subjective and useful only to you to learn something about your subconscious. Also that nothing I could say to you on this subject could possibly get through.

But we agree that almost all ID researchers, like almost all evolution researchers, are liars and philosophically incompetent.

No argument whatsoever here, I guess there's no need for further discussion then. Just one last thought: you might want to look up what a nested hierarchy is exactly.

Groktruth wrote:1. Do you expect, when SETI duscovers alien life, that there will be a common ancestor?

Between them and terrestrial life? No, most likely not.

Groktruth wrote:2. Are the many varieties of apples, say, all descended from a common ancestor, even though they exist today as a result of intelligent design through artificial selection?

Artificial selection obviously leads to closely related species that share a common ancestor. If that's all you mean by ID, we'd have to focus our predictions on the SELECTION aspect. So far we've mainly been talking about the mutations aspect.

Groktruth wrote:3. Do you think you would find more evidence of the influence of older models of Chevrolets on later models, than you would find in later models of Fords?

Sure, but randomly distributed, not falling into nested hierarchies. Model A of Chevrolet might have a particular back mirror, model B won't have it, and model C will have it again. Building chevrolets is like picking and choosing from a large set of "typical chevrolet features", and there's no need to always build on the previous model. If you give a researcher twenty different models of Chevrolets, he will not be able to figure out a tree of ancestry, because there is none. He will only notice that all Chevrolet seem more similar under each other than they seem similar to Fords. But again, that's not nested hierarchies.

And you certainly won't find common ancestors between Fords and Chevrolets, or Ferraris. And in evolution, you'll find evidence for common ancestry for every terrestrial organism!

Groktruth wrote:Sorry. using our experience in intelligent design, and the thought that we are created in God's image, I see no problem with nested hierarchies in His application of artificial selection and genetic engineering.

Genetic engineering is a very different process from evolution. Evolution works by small, gradual changes that act on preexisting features. Genetic engineering is directed, and it can go back to the drawing board. It will not produce nested hierarchies. (Unless the designer is trying consciously to fool us.)

Groktruth wrote:But I still struggle to find a plausible argument for how our naturally evolved mind could produce behavior that is so mal-adapted, when a new "truth" is discovered.

Not every truth leads to an increase in fitness. It only needed to be the case that, on average in our ancestral environment, truth led to more fitness than untruth. In fact, oftentimes, we're systematically wrong about certain things, because evolution equipped us with shortcuts and approximations that were useful in the ancestral environment, but that are mostly bad and wrong now: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases

Groktruth wrote:Thanks for the suggestion to look up nested heirarchies. Did you ever check out strong inference? Bayesian logic applied to scientific reasoning? The book, "The probabilty of God " by Unwin might be interesting.

I'm in love with Bayesianism, that's actually why I responded to this thread in the first place. Your approach is sound, and intriguing, but you're being biased towards making the facts fit. And you can't do that as a Bayesian.

Groktruth wrote:I would not have thought of the creative Bonsai tree without your questions, so thanks for that as well. I was still wondering a bit about why things intelligently designed look so natural.

A good question to ask for artifically selected organisms is whether they would survive in the wild on their own. If they don't, they must be artificially selected. Or genetically engineered.

Groktruth wrote:Basing ID on the God of biblical theology means that there is a demonic component, which works in part through human agency. This component is also higher than us, but does its ID work with a different agenda, putatively deceptive. To derive predictions from this version of ID, that will compare to evolution, we have to understand it, the theology, as deeply as we understand evolution.

I've read the Bible, and I didn't find (m)any testable predictions one could apply to evolution (and the ones that could be applied turn out to be wrong, i.e. the order of when particular phyla appeared -- from Genesis). In order for a prediction to be testable, it needs to be specific and precise. If your theory doesn't make such predictions, you technically don't even have an alternative theory. It would be the exact same thing under a different, unnecessary, unsubstantiated cover. You kept mentioning how ID makes THE SAME predictions as evolution does. What this gets you is zero evidence for ID, because evolution only needs the evidence for evolution which is there, according to ID even, while ID needs way more evidence because it posulates more things. Additionally, evolution makes many very precise predictions, in cases where the ID explanation could go either way. So the based on the evidence, you'll always come to favor evolution.

Groktruth wrote:Another epistemological problem is that while the devil deceives, God deludes. The devil deceives by lying, God deludes by telling a misleading truth. The devil deceives those who are aiming at getting in league with God, but tells extraordinary truthes to those headed away from God, empowering them in a Faustian manner, to look good and attractive. God deludes those who are not serious about getting rules and objective practises to guide their beliefs, trusting their own understanding, or other subjective responses.

Do you see what you're doing? Your making your hypothesis unfalsifiable. This is a sin in Bayesianism

An analogy: 9/11 conspiracy theorists claim to have evidence for the conspiracy. Then experts debunk it. Then the conspiracy theorists say: "Well see, the conspiracy is so good, they didn't even leave any evidence! So for sure it must be a conspiracy!" See the problem? Both "positive evidence" and "negative evidence" are made to count in favor of the conspiracy hypothesis, but that's logically impossible! If positive evidence counts in favor, then the absence of evidence must count against it. And if the absence of evidence were to count in favor, people would actually have to attribute less probability of a conspiracy when they find evidence for it! And that's obviously absurd.

Groktruth wrote:So, if this version of ID is true, then those who choose, under that condition, to be on God's side in His putative battle with the devil, and those who also study, normally under the more objective eye of a mentor, the rules for knowing what is true, can hope to find out if indeed it is true. Otherwise, if it is true, that fact will be hidden by the agents of that truth. Atheists and the "unruly" are doomed to "discover" that it is not true. On this, both God and the devil work together, successfully, because by definition they are able to get humans to believe whatever they want them to. Wouldn't be God, or higher beings, otherwise.

So, while human creativity invites us to consider how ID might work, it might also mislead us.

I don't think Bayesian probability has much value if you fundamentally distrust rationality. If you think God makes people believe whatever HE wants, and that often this is something wrong, then why do you even care about trying to find out the truth? Also, in this view, you're postulating the Biblical hypothesis to be true before the process even gets started. Science should be impartial.

Groktruth wrote:Now, I suspect that demonic ID might be behind the creation of flies (the devil is called the lord of the flies), so it would be interesting to compare the history of fly diversity, in comparison with the origins of diversity in, say, beetles, which some think God is especially fond of.

That's not specific enough. And worse, in case you find nothing, you can always find excuses for finding nothing, because you're just suggesting something based on a hunch and some literary reference that might well be "just symbolic". You wouldn't be prepared to lessen the probability of ID significantly because you find nothing with the flies. So basically you're just hoping to find some anomaly, and if, by chance, there is one, you score points, and if there's none, you lose nothing. But that's against the rules, because the absence of evidence must count as evidence of absence. And if you're not prepared to let it count, you can't use it as positive evidence either.

Groktruth wrote:Anyway, I have initiated this discussion so that anyone with a personal commitment to integrity, a hatred of hypocrisy, who claims to respect science, would take time to think about what high integrity science is all about. I, of course, hope that my efforts to neutralize the bias of "making the facts fit." What, as I understand high integrity science demands, I try to do, is take every experiment and inspect the results for confirmation, and information that makes me revise my hypothesis. Lakatosian methods are supposed to improve on the Popperian falsifiablity by changing science from an all-or-nothing leap forward or reject entirely process, to a teasing the good out of every idea, and rejecting the bad.

Regarding the biases I think you're having, ask yourself: Are there non Bayesian reasons for why you believe the particular branch of theism you do believe in? Are there reasons why you want to believe in it? Are there reasons why you would hate if it were wrong? Are you afraid of the alternative? If some of that is the case, you could try to become consciously aware of the bias, or try to prevent it even. For instance, many believers can't even imagine living in a world where there's no god, so obviously they're never taking anything that would suggest this seriously. (BTW, you can still believe in god and accept evolution as scientists present it. I'm sure you're aware of this. I just don't think it makes very much sense to do so, but people do it. Actually, the biologist Kenneth Miller is a popular and brilliant defender of Darwinism, while at the same time he's a devout believer, Catholic I think. In his book "Finding Darwin's God", he makes the case for evolution and he counters creationism and ID. He also has a section with theological objections to ID, you might want to check it out.)

Groktruth wrote:I regard it as simply bad science that the evolutionists insist that ID be taken off the table. This is logically a guarentee that, if biblical theology is true, the evolutionists will never find out. And, it discredits the whole argument,to this ernestly honest scientist. Ditto with Dawkin's shameless diatribes. Does he not see how these are consistent with, even predicted by biblical theology, and quite out of character with a sober view of evolution?

Your second sentence is a contradiction to what you've been saying so far. If ID presents the same predictions as evolution, there's no way "evolutionists" (I prefer the term "scientists) will ever be able to find out anyway, because the two would be identical. And you might still be able to find evidence for Biblical theology elsewhere, if there is any. I suppose you think there's evidence in Scripture and history? I don't want to get in a discussion about that stuff, but obviously I would disagree.

You can't blame Dawkins for being annoyed. He worked his whole life as a passionate biologist, and whenever he talks about BIOLOGY, some people will repeat the same old and obviously flawed arguments calling into question his favorite subject, one which he knows enough about to be justifiable so certain of as we're certain that the earth isn't flat. So at some point he had enough of it and wanted to write a book on the phenomenon that makes people dogmatically believe disproven things. Was he a bit careless in some of the arguments? I tiny bit, but way less than theists would like to have it. Most of his arguments are actually sound. Is his view of religion too one-sided? Maybe, but that's another topic. And tbh, I'm not even sure that it is.

"Does he not see how these are consistent with, even predicted by biblical theology, and quite out of character with a sober view of evolution?"

Let's reverse this statement in the Bayesian frame: Are you saying that, in a world were everyone agrees that theism is true, where no one gets outraged at it being obviously wrong, theism is less likely to be true than in the world with people like Dawkins? Bayesian reasoning beautifully and relentlessly exposes instances of us wanting to make all the details fit.

In case you're interested, the following blog / wiki contains many great articles on rationality, science and Bayesianism. It really teaches you how to think critically. If you're right about ID, this will only strenghten your viewpoint, and if you're wrong, you might become less apt to spot your biases. I was thrilled when I found this first, it's a really interesting place where one can learn a lot: http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/How_To_A ... _Your_Mind

Thanks for your reply, I read it, but I don't feel like commenting any further because I made my points, whatever I'm going to say now is unlikely to make a difference regarding how you will continue to see this issue.

Groktruth wrote:Right. I looked at the sites, but as you predicted, I found nothing that indicated to me that the application of Bayesian analysis to spiritual predictions was not valid.

I didn't say it wasn't valid. I was saying you're making mistakes of application, i.e. by not getting the concept that the more vague a prediction is, the less its confirmation could ever shift the probability, or that you must have to be willing to make the reversal (though you did bite the bullet on that one, which I find interesting); and some other points. I mentioned the links because they explain all that with examples, though the examples might not be about theism. You don't have to look at them, I just thought you might be interested.

Have a good day, maybe we'll talk again on some other subject. But I'm planning on staying out of religious stuff. (Except if you count eating meat as a religion, haha, sometimes it seems like one.)