Fundamentalism - A Dangerous Delusion

"If there is a dangerous delusion in the world, it is not so much moderate religion, as Dawkins would have it, but fundamentalism in all its forms — ideological, scientific and religious — as the imposition of dogma that brooks neither doubt nor respect for disagreement." - John Cornwell

While religious fundamentalism is indeed dangerous, it is to a large extent uncloaked and restrained/defused in the western world. Materialist fundamentalism however is not yet uncloaked and finds enormous support in the global institutions of science and global secular media. Militant desecrationist (fundamentalist) atheists such as PZ Myers and Richard Dawkins are presently revered in the scientific world. My concern here is not about atheism (I have many friends and relatives who are atheists) but fundamentalism of all kinds. It is fundamentalism that "brooks neither doubt nor respect for disagreement" that is the real danger for modern civilization.
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My "Correlational Improbability" proposal

"Correlational Improbability"- July 31/08 is my way of mathematically quantifying the second Dembskian notion of "an independently given, detachable pattern."

From ResearchID.org:Re - “Specified Complexity”:"The first component is the criterion of complexity or improbability. The second is the criterion of specificity, which is an independently given, detachable pattern."

The (often critiqued) second component "specificity" is mathematically quantifiable as a correlational improbability. Multiplying this improbability by the initial improbability (the first component) gives the pertinent “hyper-hyperfinite” or “trans-hyperfinite” internal information/improbability figure for any given complex functional, pseudo-platonic(maintained) system. Note that the first component of “improbability” is itself a hyperfinite number below the universal probability bound. See-- Specified_Complexity at ISCID.

Note added Sept 24/08: I have initiated a separate thread at ISCID in order to discuss this topic.

The God Crane

Richard Dawkins and Daniel Dennet claim that “God” is a "skyhook" (not a "crane") and that "God" is subsequently unscientific. For someone like me however this argument has no force because "God" as I see it/him/her is indeed "a crane." The iterating God function evolves and becomes -- through each cycle -- more and more functionally complex. The process is called "telic recursion." God and the universe co-evolved from a simple initial state devoid of complexity. Awareness rides along and learns (increases in complexity) through every iteration/cycle. Ideas are projected outward to become "physical" and then success and/failure (of these projections) is assessed and learned from. With this new information (new functional complexity) in hand the cycle begins again.

Some Good News Re - PZ Myers and Orthodox Science?

In April of 2005 Universty of Minnesota biologist, PZ Myers pubished the following statement in response to a readers call to "tone down the (anti ID) rhetoric"..

“I say it is time for scientists to break out the brass knuckles and steel toed boots and hammer (PZ's emphasis, not mine) on the lunatics and idiots.”

PZ's anti-ID statement used to be found HERE but it is now missing. I take this as a good sign. The reason that this troubled me is that in the following year 2006 Nature Magazine (possibly the worlds #1 science magazine) voted PZ's blog "Pharyngula" (where the comment appeared) the number one science blog in the entire world! This convinced me that violence and/or threats of violence are OK with the scientific community just as long they are directed at people like me (I.E. people who doubt Darwinian macro-evolution and propose intelligent design instead). This chain of events came as quite a shock to me. I expected much better from orthodox science. Hopefully we are now seeing orthodox science backing down from such threats.

My Hockey Anthem "Electric Ice."

What I am dealing with (in music composition and production) is the translation of musical information (in my mind) into a finished musical form (above). To this end I have developed personal musical systems that are both energy efficient and info-efficient.

Listen at the CBC "Anthem Challenge" web site.

Note Added: Sept 15/08 My anthem was the CBC's "featured anthem" over this last weekend. Thanks for listening everyone!

The CBC "Anthem Challenge" Homepage

Three Explanatory Slides and "The Randomness Channel"

When you are passionate about ID science and are subsequently expelled/driven from orthodox science, you can wind up camping in the woods (as I did). Unable to afford cable TV, you get whatever TV channels you can pick up. Sometimes it is only "The Randomness Channel" IE., "snow" or "no signal." Luckily "randomness" is at the core of a very famous theory of science -- Darwinian Evolution. After spending many years in the woods watching the "Randomness Channel" I was able to develop a much better understanding of randomness and its (cough) "creative potential."




Of course famous Darwinists like Richard Dawkins would protest saying that while randomness is indeed random, Darwin's "natural selection" -- that selectively weeds out the unfit -- is not random at all! Luckily, I was able to purchase some rose colored glasses for 50 cents -- thereby weeding out the "un-fit" -- the "un-red" -- and thus "improving" my TV viewing experience with Darwinian non-randomness.

Then one day, while clicking randomly though various randomness channels I suddenly recieved a COMUNICATION from a strange ALIEN world called "Canada"(!?!). This was not randomness!(slide #1) Nor was this selectively filtered randomness!(slide #2) This surely was an intelligently designed SIGNAL! To this day, no-one in orthodox science believes me. They consider selectively filtered random variations (random mutation random genetic drift, random gene duplication, random environmental hits {randomizations} etc..) to be a perfectly sufficient explanation for such patterns! While Darwin's filtered randomness (slides #1 and #2) can explain some superficial things (like shifts in moth colouration or shifts in finch beak sizes -- all in pre-existing organisms {pre-existing signals}) it cannot explain the appearance de novo of specified complexity from star base Canada!!

Toward a Free and Democratic Post-Darwinian Enlightenment

I have been invited to speak at The Mackie House in Vernon, BC Canada on May 13th at 7:00 PM. The title of my talk is "Toward a Free and Democratic Post-Darwinian Enlightenment." Seating is limited, so reservations are required.

Expelled -- The Movie April 18th

Expelled the movie is coming out in USA April 18th. I hope everyone enjoys it.

The “Spaghetti Man” (formerly “Straw Man”) Fallacy of Logical Argumentation

Spaghetti Design (SD) versus Intelligent Design (ID)

There is no evidence whatsoever of Spaghetti ever designing anything (nor is there any evidence of spaghetti having any ability to take flight).

On the other hand..

There exists a massive body of evidence of intelligence designing things. (This very document you are now reading was designed {written/composed} by an intelligence {myself}. It was not written by spaghetti {flying or otherwise).

The purpose of "The Flying Spaghetti Monster" (http://www.venganza.org/) crusade is to ridicule ID science (for which there is a massive body of evidence) by pretending it to be equivalent to SD (for which there is no evidence of any kind). By failing to address actual ID arguments and by offering only a disanalogous "straw man/spaghetti man" argument, the proponents of FSM are committing a fallacy of logical argumentation – The classic Spaghetti Man Fallacy.

On to our next great Dawkinian challenge;

Orbiting Teapot Design (OTD) versus Intelligent Design (ID)… No evidence of teapots designing anything …Spaghetti Man Fallacy of logical argumentation.

And another…

Pink Unicorn Design (PUD) versus Intelligent Design (ID)… No evidence of pink unicorns designing anything… No evidence of pink unicorns period. Spaghetti Man Fallacy of logical argumentation.

And another…

Roman Mythological Character Design RMCD (Zeus Design {ZD}) versus Intelligent Design (ID). No evidence of Zeus designing anything…No evidence of Zeus. Spaghetti Man Fallacy of logical argumentation…

Funny New Dawkins Rap Video

HA!

It's the New Year and time to Re-start Science

In the book "The End of Science" chapter #8 "End of Chaoplexity" John Horgan writes..

"Definitions of complexity typically draw upon thermodynamics, information theory and computer science and involve concepts such as entropy, randomness and information -- which themselves have proved to be notoriously slippery terms."

Note that for John Horgan -- the science writer -- and apparently all others that he knows in science, there exists a scientific problem of complexity being "notoriously slippery."

"..all definitions of complexity have drawbacks. For example algorithmic information theory (Chaitin et al) holds that the complexity of a system can be represented by the shortest computer program describing it. But according to this criterion, a text created by a team of typing monkeys is more complex because it is more random and therefore less compressible -- than Finnegans Wake"

The solution of course is very simple. The "typing monkeys" are merely an anthropomorphisation of "randomness." "Randomness" is merely a uniform probability distribution over a set of possible outcomes. That is to say, if the probability of your slot machine's jackpot configuration (say, three lemons) is greater (or less) than the other configurations(say, two cherries and a banana) then its internal probability is distributed non-uniformly -- it is skewed/biased and it is subsequently non-random.

Horgan's "text" being "created by a team of typing monkeys" is but uniformly distributed, unspecified gibberish wherein the complexity here is an attribute of the complex (alphabet) system -- not an attribute of randomness! Randomness is by definition uniform and subsequently non-complex. "Finnegans Wake" on the other hand is specified, non-random and does not conform to a uniform distribution of letters.

Even if one were to remove all the redundancy from "Finnegans Wake," reducing it to a K-complex skeleton code, it still would not be the least bit random because any such "Finnegans Wake" is utterly specific and randomness is devoid of specifications. Any such Finnegans Wake code, non-randomly specifies Finnegans Wake -- IE it is a specific, non-random list of the specifications/instructions needed to produce the specific Finnegan's Wake text.

While the letter "A" is indeed specific, randomness is not. While letter and number systems are themselves complex and specified -- randomness is not.

Randomness is the absence of order, the absence of complexity, the absence of specifications and the absence of information. When expressed in a complex system, randomness appears as uniformly distributed noise or "gibberish." John Horgan bemoans the "end of science" -- not because science is ending and no more answers are possible -- but because he is talking to the wrong scientists -- scientists who worship randomness. For those who don't worship randomness, "complexity" is not the least bit "slippery."
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Note added Jan 3/08. I thoroughly enjoyed reading "The End of Science." John Horgan is a very entertaining writer and I found the subjects he addresed therein to be extremely interesting. -WB

The Design of Life

The Design of life is causing quite stir over at amazon.com. Check it out.. We have just ordered our copy..

Note added Jan.3/08 Whoah! The Design of life on amazon.com appears now to be the victim of numerous drive-by one-star postings and numerous attendant "helpful" Darwinian button pushers!

A Brookfield ID-Darwinian Diagram

In this schematic diagram "structure" and the "information" that codes for it, are represented as vertical (Z-axis) amplitude. Positive Z-axis motion (upward) requires intelligent design. Both "natural selection and "random mutation" being context insensitive are subsequently incapable of producing new structure/information.

The Design Matrix Appears

"The Design Matrix" is a book by independent ID researcher "Mike Gene." We don't know who he is but he is certainly a person of interest in the ID debate. His new book can also be ordered through Amazon.com.


Nov 24 -- We've ordered our copy. Have you ordered yours?

The New Fundamentalism

While the public is already quite aware of religious fundamentalism and its dangers, many have suggested that there is a new fundamentalism around – Darwinist/materialist fundamentalism. This new fundamentalism, it is claimed, inhabits the scientific community at the highest levels. Scientists and science organizations have all denied these claims. Well it now looks like we have some more proof. Check out the following..

On the 16 of November 2007 the Baylor U’s student newspaper (the Lariat) posted an internet voting poll asking the question "How Should Baylor (University) Approach Intelligent Design Research?". Denyse O’leary from Uncommon Descent picked up the story and posted the early results from the 16th showing only 35 fundamentalists votes (below)..


However, after some early results had come in (most probably due to Denyse O'leary's posting) PZ Myers at Pharyngula caught wind of the poll and posted (Nov 17 9:54 PM) with a suggestion that Pharyngula readers "skew it the Pharyngula way!"

"Pharyngula" won the 2005 Koufax Award for Best Expert Blog. The science journal "Nature" ranked Pharyngula as the number one blog (in the world) written by a scientist (July, 5, 2006). “Nature” ranks second in the world out of 48 journals in multidisciplinary science, and first in total number of citations. By targeting senior scientists "Nature" is considered by many the most influential science magazine in the world. Nature apparently has no problem with PZ Myers various troubling (fundamentalist) comments such as (April 4 2005) where for instance PZ Myers recomends the use of “brass knuckles and steel toed boots” with which “scientists” (thugs?) are supposed to “hammer on the lunatics and idiots.” (I.E., anyone who {like me} questions the creative power of Darwin’s theory of random mutation and natural selection).

As of Sunday (Nov. 18th) afternoon "Pharygulain skewing" had produced 1249 more fundamentalist votes with 1284 now voting to "prohibit" ID research.

Prohibit it 1284
Encourage it 1077
Discourage it 1005
Support it 87

And by November 19 7:42 PM "Pharyngulian skewing" had produced 528 more fundamentalist votes for a grand total of 1812.

There you have it folks. Should you wish to empirically test and mathematically quantify the relative functional specificity of the e-coli bacterial flagella -- using gene knock-out experiments (and good old math) -- you're out of luck. This work "should be prohibited." Maybe that's why Scott Minnich's (gene knock-out) experiments went missing from the recent NOVA docu-drama on ID(?). ID research is simply prohibited/forbidden and is subsequently removed -- for the good of "civilization" of course. (Note: My argument here does not hinge on whether ID is valid science or not. If alchemy had been successfully prohibited we would not have modern chemistry!{nor modern civilization!}). The prohibiting of science is anti-science and anti-civilization.

Note to Kenneth Miller/NOVA: The base of your "tie clip" is dead weight. As such it would be removed or minimized by natural selection in a natural setting -- just as with the excess metal wire not needed for tie clipping functionality. None of these optimizing steps are steps along the way to a functioning mouse trap.

PZ Myers defines evidence of design

PZ Myers, who is more a destination of entertainment than scientific rigor, has done the unthinkable. He has recently admitted to what would constitute evidence of design. I know!

Getting Evolutionists to admit what would be evidence of design is about as hard as it is to get my fellow IDists to separate issues of cosmic design from biological design. So you can bet your genes that when I read this post titled: Luskin on gene duplication, I was pleasently surprised.

Copying a pre-existing gene does create new information … but it's just a small
amount. Luskin can't be serious in considering this a weakness: evolutionary
biology would predict only small changes at any one time. If a process produced
a massive increase in the information content of the genome in a biologically
functional way (that is, not just the production of random noise), then we'd
have to say that you've found evidence for Intelligent Design. A succession of
small genetic changes is what we expect from evolution and genetics, and that's
what we see.

One of the things that we would also expect to see from evolution, is a huge diversity of outcomes - and especially - perfection in the resultant phenotypes. This is not what we see in all cases. Life is rife with imperfections and low amounts of genetic diversity (when it comes to certain sequences), which could be hallmarks of design. I know, IDists usually portray the design as perfect, but as I will demonstrate in future posts, the assumption of perfection is not only based on certain philosophical predispositions, but it also contrasts starkly with the available evidence.

Also, on Uncommon Descent, DaveScot also seems to agree with me on this - that "perfect" design, or in the context of the discussion that the following comment is in, the lack of genetic "junk" in the genomes of organisms does not follow necessarily from the design premise. Here's the quote:

I still fail to see how ID predicts no junk DNA. Random mutation definitely
happens and if it’s good at *anything* it’s good at producing unorganized,
non-functional crappola. It can produce crap out of nothing and it’s even better
at making crap out of stuff that wasn’t crap to begin with. (source)

I think we ought to invite DaveScot over to this blog - not only is he an Agnostic, which fits under the theme of this blog, but we might benefit from his perspective on this and other design issues as well. What do you think, William?

Anyway, the quote from PZ Myers is pure gold. Let's spread it around so there can be no doubt that he said it!

If a process produced a massive increase in the information content of the
genome in a biologically functional way (that is, not just the production of
random noise), then we'd have to say that you've found evidence for
Intelligent Design. -- PZ Myers

Now all we need to do is find evidence of a massive amount of information increase in a genome. No, not the usual "we don't know where all this information came from so it must be design" argument. I mean, evidence of the insertion of that information, specifically what information was inserted, and exactly how to detect it. That's what Intelligent Design can be all about! Anything else is a waste of time.

Dembski/Marks - Article Number One

Please everyone, could we just get back to science, thanks. This is article number one of three. Judging from the critical response(?) these three articles are indeed a "slam dunk." Sharpen your pencils. Roll up your sleeves. Let me know what you think about these articles and their implications for science. Thankyou all in advance for your attention to these papers.

A 15-second hoax

Everyone wants their 15 minutes of fame. Previously, an anonymous person started a blog called The Blindness of Science. Purporting to be a pro-ID atheist, they were promoted by PZ Minors, ridiculed, and came back the next day to say it was all a joke. They lamented that they forgot to also try to get a plug at http://www.arn.org/, and that it was all over and they really weren't what they claimed previously.

Interestingly, the post claiming it was a joke has now been deleted. And replacing it is a post called Backpedaling. The link to the original post is here: Former Page.

The beginning of the text of the post is viewable through This Search.

Those of us who know better just acknowledge the obvious...trial-and-error baby! More evidence...woo-hoo!

Following "Backpedaling," which changed the subject, they wrote one called Predictable:

Evolutionist bloodhounds didn't waste time to attack me after my new post. Apparently their academic-state machine money allows them to spend all day hunting for real freethinkers.

Oh yeah, lets erase the "haha it was all a joke" post and insert a few cliche phrases and call ourselves convincing? None of us are going to buy it anymore.

If you'll look at the hastily-assembled blogger profile of this person, now calling themself "Jesus Elloco," you can see some pretty stereotypical stuff as well.

Methinks that this person didn't think through their little joke and spilled the beans too quickly. Guess that's what happens when you trade your brain in for neo-darwinism. Sense of humor suffers. But the one thing that is strange is that they had the account since May. That's a long time to spend dreaming up a 15-second flop!

I was going to brush it off, even considering that I was excited about getting a community going here at ICON-RIDS, to bounce ideas off one another. However, given that they decided to delete the "joke giveaway" blog post, I decided that I should put up this post to warn anyone who missed it before it was deleted. (Google didn't cache it - strange considering that Google runs blogger)

But there is an upside to it - some of the Darwinists missed it too! Some are arguing against "El Loco" thinking that they are real! Check the comments and you'll see them still going at it.

I'll have to be more careful about taking would-be colleagues as real. I bet they have a real hard time at Uncommon Descent weeding out phonies.

Supernatural Design, Intent of the Designer(s)

Hello folks. I posted this a while back at overwhelmingevidence.com, and I thought I would further convey my ideas here. Enjoy.
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Over at Uncommon Descent, I've gotten involved in an interesting discussion (Link) about whether or not intention is required in detecting design in some cases. I think that it is, and I cited both Michael Behe and William Dembski in support of my position. But what has also become part of the discussion is whether or not the design that ID detects must be supernatural. Can design exist in a materialistic universe? What do you think? Here are some excerpts:
First Comment:
Permit me to disagree with Denyse on the subject of arson - intent is integral in convicting someone of such a crime. Motive, Opportunity, and Means. Behe testified at Dover that ID demonstrates that the designer intended to create the IC structures that we see in living organisms - you are saying that Behe has a Ph.D. in obfusctation, Gil?
Re: GilDodgen
The bottom line is that Darwinism is a 19th-century, puerile, ill-supported, futile attempt to explain away design in nature — especially in living systems, although it is now applied to almost everything from cosmology to psychology — that stares every reasonable person in the face. Materialistic philosophy and its creation myth have been embraced by many (perhaps most) members of the academy simply because this philosophy supports a cultural consensus that design simply cannot exist by definition.
I don’t consider materialistic philosophy to be at odds with design detection, nor the origin of life. After all this time, I haven’t seen anyone offer up evidence that points toward the supernatural. Do you consider the involvement of the supernatural to be testable?
Second Comment:
Re: Littlejon Interesting point, klone. So, if we have you right, are you saying that there sure is design, that emerged from choice that can be defined as intelligence, but is entirely natural? Interesting; does ID have to invoke the supernatural?
Let me articulate myself a little better. One of the reasons why I try to separate cosmic arguments of design from the biological ones, is that if each one is designed, how are we to tell whether they are different designers or the same? Going further, if only one of the two has been designed, the assumption that both must be designed would prevent us from accepting that fact. I also don't think that intelligence itself must be supernatural, either, so one of the options I'm open to is that life could have been designed by non-supernatural entities.
A better question migh also be, does our conception of intelligence require that we treat intelligence as having a supernatural component, or can intelligences be entirely natural?
Re: JosephOnly to the point that every scenario requires something outside of nature to get it started. That includes any anti-ID materialistic scenario.
And the only way to determine if the designer is outside of nature in the absence of direct observation or designer input is by studying the design in question.
Every scenario? If, for example, the appearance of design in this universe is due to the existence of a multiverse, then design in the cosmological sense is not necessary. I would also like to suggest that if you consider intelligence itself as being too improbable or complex to occur without design, but intelligence is necessary to create design, then you have set up a situation where it's turtles all the way down. Anyway, that's one.
So are you saying that all of the unsolved arsons weren’t really arsons at all? Or can we determine arson and THEN set out to try to figure out who and why?
Sometimes being able to separate design from very design-like circumstances, like the sprinkler system example someone else gave above, requires being able to determine the intent of the agent involved.Let me answer your question by quoting Bill Dembski's paper, The Explanatory Filter: (Link)“By selecting the Democrats to head the ballot 40 out of 41 times, Caputo appears to have participated in an event of probability less than 1 in 50 billion. Yet, exceedingly improbable things happen all the time. The crucial question therefore is whether this event is also specified-does this event follow a non-ad hoc pattern so that we can legitimately eliminate chance? But of course, the event is specified: that Caputo is a Democrat, that it is in Caputo’s interest to see the Democrats appear first on the ballot, that Caputo controls the ballot lines, and that Caputo would by chance be expected to assign Republicans top ballot line as often as Democrats all conspire to specify Caputo’s ballot line selections, and render his selections incompatible with chance. No one to whom I have shown this example draws any other conclusion than design, to wit, Caputo cheated.”Clearly, Bill agrees that intent is one component of a diagnostic test of design. Would it still be just as likely to be design if the republicans were put on top? How about instead,
I think that when we can begin to analyze the intent of the designer(s), we can explain sub-optimal designs such as backwards retina. Likely because of the religious predispositions of many of the commenters here, I haven't heard one person suggest that there can possibly be a flaw in the designs. Aren't we supposed to follow the evidence where it leads? I'm working on an essay about the subject, but I don't know how long it will take me to finish it. I might submit it to one of the contributors here or start my own blog or something. I'm very interested in this issue, and I hope to contribute to ID in my own way.
Note: No one has demonstrated a way to test or confirm that any of the designs in question are supernatural in origin. Yet, that is something that many ID supporters believe.

*****
Interestingly enough, rather than propose a way to test supernatural design, people subtracted points from my blog post. That was my last post at overwhelmingevidence.com, because it became apparent to me that the community being created there was going to squelch alternate views, and would be a stumbling block to getting people to discuss my ideas and get involved in really thinking about design detection. One person did respond, asking if I had considered that the designs had been degraded by material mechanisms. But even then, it didn't seem that they were willing to consider that any of the designs were sub-optimal from the start.

So, to address this issue, for one of my next posts, I intend to write about the issue of sub-optimal designs, and how those can be used for design detection, and what implications sub-optimal design may have for the nature of the designer(s).

"New" Dembski/Marks Papers at New EI Lab

These papers have actually been available for more than a month now. What is missing is the rapid responses from ID critics that usually follow from William Dembski's publications.

Note added: 7/08
The EI lab has been expelled from Baylor but can still be found..here.