What Biological, Functional Realities Support ID Theory?

Stephen Meyer's book "Signature in the Cell" lucidly covers several of these. Here I will provide several overall conclusions of my own on the subject:

We cannot perceive function without at least rudimentary intelligence. Is that a more basic activity than enacting or adapting a function? Probably so. Detection and identification are likely a magnitude of order simpler than systems creation and startup. Thus more complex systemic activities like sensory feedback, information application/enhancement, and enlisting/prescribing of functions are likely prerequisites for evolution to occur.

I differ some with Stephen Meyer some: Memory, i.e., backpropagated feedback or recursive import/impetus from other events, could supply directional bias though admittedly not the original information framework needed for upwardly complex as opposed to cycling biological progress. Without it, new information arrives in a meaningless manner as countless windfalls from 'nowhere'. We also see the routine arrival of statistically improbable fortuitous twists thru repeated functional confluences in the fossil record- in the form of elaborately enhanced, intricately applied new information. Is upward impetus or a dreamy-eyed catalyst at work?

On the other hand, multiple outcomes and survivor bias chained together with every conceivable possibility played out through innumerable, branching realities would create multiple and some very special universes. We have no framework for tracing all finite possibilities yet, so theory involving such multiverses remains more metaphysical than ID and evolution. In a strictly sequential cause-effect universe, you can only get ever increasing complex functions by the interaction of useful developments or experience in some form of information feedback loop, not through accumulative incremental change alone, since functions are network-constrained, systemic solutions.

One profound ID finding: 3.5 billion years isn't enough biological time; it's either ID, or evolution in the multi-universe sense. So, does the mind envisaged in ID evoke a sense of timelessness, or does evolution have a mind of its own?

Has Science Been Sheltering Evolutionary Theory?

Proper tact should come as second nature to any avid hypothesis tester. For one, I wouldn't mix in astringent discounters in debate with surface commentary. For eg., I often read evolutionists writing, "There are no ID hypotheses." Also, statements such as "There is no ID theory, period" litter anti-ID comments. What amounts to the drumhead approach is simply bombastic, overbearing, and uni-disciplinary. It could even be shooting one's ability to extrapolate discussions in the foot. This is because uses of the term theory are varied in science, applied to even propositional explanations and low-level modeling. This is seen to all but undergraduates. Narrowly circumscribing theory for intelligent design is uncalled for. I see it as some what (sic)- basically a smear issued out of creationist spite!

Evolutionists are being so parochial without being religious! They are getting blind-sided, shooting their own intellectual scientific efforts in the foot. Theory and hypothesis testing should be what science is about, not the worship and exploitation of naturalism!

Now let's get down to business: ID is teleology, not theology. Someone can't spell. It is no more theology than evolution is metaphysics; yet, ID is less esoteric. It firmly clings to technical distinctions drawn into its argument; formal definitions are an integral part of its logic and organization. Most ID critics on A. Books avoid such vigorous incisiveness. In the strictest sense, historically speaking, macroevolution explanations typically use analogy for logical support, since assertions often go untested, at least in terms of the foundational scientific exercise of hypothesis testing.

My claim here is not that evolution lacks evidence. Relatively small changes have been observed, but that's like constructing a web by pl(a)ying with LEGOs. Nothing comparable to the level of the fossil record's tree and branches results; just a crude outline. It's my blue Jeans (depressed single mothers, deploring missing 'Gene') hypothesis. It's also the paleontologist's view versus the geneticist's.

Shall we be so cheeky as to equivocate purpose with motive to speak of lies? "No evidence!" and "No theory!" then are among the evolutionist's best: weak arguments prompted by blissful ignorance, willful blindness, and myopic impudence. More professional and honest would be any tempered extreme, for eg., "There's always evidence, just not good evidence."

Evolution shows evidence of being old and crusty as a theoretical construct. It is broad and general enough to warrant ever more diverse elaborations and extensions. Even lay persons toy with it, manipulating it in linguistic use as a concept, analogy, and rubric. And its scientific feature set has been significantly altered over the years. The last point is actually voicing alarm, not criticism; the next point is a criticism, however: Evolution is often used exclusively as a thesis (as it is used in history) in technical and scientific writing, and in this manner it has seen much more application than as a theoretical tutor or judge for hypothesis testing. I am talking about the social sciences; here it is being used as a thesis for packaging research, not as a theory guiding it. It has waxed into a more generalized concept referring to broadly construed developmental changes of any type and nearly waned into household cliche', losing some logical distinctiveness and linguistic usefulness along the way. Hasn't history demonstrated a less grand unified theory would be more scientific-better for hypothesis testing? Like esoteric Marxist theory, has it no operationalized models or theorems to test?

I classify evolution as a pattern theory based on the way it receives anecdotal inclusion in scientific research reports. With metaphors and analogues arrived at for illustrative purposes after the data has been gathered, it is often used to paint findings, not guide them in an exercise of what to look for and how to interpret it-used in tandem. Causal-oriented models demonstrate a more continuous reference to theory at least in my experience. The notion of cause itself is a more direct premise, constituting a flow line demonstrated throughout the conduct of research and shown in the activity of report writing!

I think ideological and conceptual developments made to the theory of evolution subsequent to Darwin carried us askance from causal inference instead of towards it embracingly in the social sciences. What of the physical sciences?

Evolutionary theory has been subjected to remarkable sequential revisions. And these changes include rather drastic alterations and additions made to the internal mechanisms of the theory. Every 30 years or so, evolution gets a make-over of dramatic revisions to correct what I maintain are long-forestalled corrections to its categorically denied flaws. Changing it's name would allay a host of problems. Evolution's updates are to the point now that the theory does not appear or function as evolution in the classical Darwinian sense any more, except to its single-minded idealistic luminaries: neonates, loyalists, and antiquaries.

No wonder ID proponents and others have taken issue with certain aspects of the original theory as well as these subsequent updates! Using typical evolutionists' after-the-fact logic, ID gets blamed for its inadequacies in 'blame the critic for all the town's ills' fashion and gets farmed out as religion. It's happening protect established positions and leaders or to maintain the initial placard of bigotry set out typically by wider society against newcomers and outsiders in America.

Discount ID's criticisms of evolution out of hand in a libelous manner? It's a far more useful position in terms of discussing socio-cultural issues to take the tact that there is no genuine macro-evolutionary theory and see what happens- simply poke around like many a diagnostician! Evolution in an applied societal sense frequently appears religious. At times, it even looks like simple ideology wrapped in worship- considered above reproach, held untouchable and unassailable like an icon, sacred relic or time-worn liturgical utensil. At minimum, the theory carries a traditionally assigned, compelling scientific status. This is in spite of its showing some evidence of erosion. In addition, it is nonempirical in several areas, routinely passing through theoretical muster while using untested and in some cases untestable propositions (at least, in terms of hypothesis testing). Here still, I am essentially connecting the dots in what I consider to be areas I am most knowledgable in, evolution in the social sciences. This includes anthropology, my specialty.

Is ID not theory? The term "theory" is applied to scientific models that generate hypotheses that CAN be tested, not to models that hold a track record of having been tested and yielding supportative, valuable findings. If theories' underlying hypotheses first have to be comprehensively tested before they could have the designation as theory assigned them, then they would be mere social devices, not the inductive and predictive technical guides they really are. They would also constitute fly-paper for hypotheses more than the catapults for ideas they really are!

Here's the real reason ID is assaulted: It competes with Evolution, a theory being 'shorn up'. Over time, evolution has evolved from the cause-effect model Darwin proposed it to be to a pattern-elaboration one it is used nowadays in actual practice. This is actually understandable, for evolution has had to be used in this way due to its sweeping scope, particle reductionism, and intractible hypothesis testing status. It has exhibited a strong incapacity for hypothesis testing to be accomplished with it. Maybe testing lengthy multivariate events on such a grand, sequential time scale is a futile exercise. Popper had a fit once over the atypicality of this theory.

Evolutionists at times present a decidedly overfocused view of theory, implying a capital 'T' as in Grand Theory when discussing ID. It's narrowly applied, thus contrived, overspecified definition. Maybe it's the act of using a reserved, populist view for the political purpose of enacting an invective against ID. Dumping diatribe on my bandwagon once more, some highly specialized, ad hoc, contrived definitions are being used to weigh ID in the prejudiced accounts. Yes indeed, I hold this social viewpoint very religiously! So slip me over into the religious book section p(r)etty please!

If only related groupings of successfully tested hypotheses are allowed to constitute legitimate scientific theory, then certain mechanisms and various aspects of evolutionary theory make it fail the same test, at least as Smokey has defined it here. I think it is an overly elaborate definition of theory he has suggested here.

Theory as a general construct for scientific methodology and testing is a far cry from the particularized coverage given here by Smokey. Still, we cannot explain such complex matters to grade school children, so such highly resolved views can have some social merit: This one appears an awe-inspiring embellishment of a vital scientific concept made of simple scientific jargon, apparently to instill admiration for science in grade schoolers.

Is this the kind of scientific coverage that gets used against ID by proponents of evolution? Yes, I think so. Is it also being done for purposes of curriculum control in our elementary schools? Are grade school teachers the ones in control, making ID a special case? I hope not. Then it would basically constitute a process of mixing innocent overspecifications in with a few lazy inaccuracies to fill the educational goals of some interest group. I think other similarly defined terms are being used to heap insincere and inequitable social ridicule and defamation on ID.

Once again, I have frequently stated that evolution's more arrogant proponents are consistently imprecise in their handling of definitions and inaccurate in terms of their language. They tend to be spiteful. I attribute the spiteful tendency to schools of thought attempting to maintain traditional distinctions and a sense of intellectual confidence, spilling over into pomposity and overconfidence. Thus the status quo can be disadvantaged. Evolution's foundational rhetoric often incorporates a single-minded, confidence-assertive approach based on a group of highly repetitious, traditions/platitudes for purposes of self-assurance and even self-aggrandizement in its neonates. This is the historical process of responsible scientific professions working at their optimal best.

Is a successful track record of predictions needed in order to qualify as a theory? Maybe famous and traditional ones. Is that what evolutionists' mean by theory? No test of successful or superior adaptation to a particular niche has been established longitudinally in evolution. And without IDing superior adaptations, there's no tracking progress upward. Without operational (measurable) definitions of them taken from past experience, we simply have no benchmark except superficial complexity for future tracking of meaningful biological progress on any scales that would allow humans to directly observe it. Is evolution a sheltered theory?

FATHER TREE ABOUT ORIGINS

It was a strange scene. Seven little trees were moving up a clearing toward some large trees at the top of a hill. The tree at the very top was the tallest and biggest. Its limbs were nearly completely covered beneath a huge canopy of leaves. The leaves were held out by limbs that looked very much like strong arms. Its branches reached far out from its trunk to the sides and rear, except at one point. There was a little spot devoid of branches and leaves directly in front of the huge tree. At that point, something stood out that looked like a face.

The old tree looked like a ridiculously top-heavy parasol. Apparently, only its huge tail kept the old tree standing upright.

His name was Father Tree. The little ones had obviously come up to see him. When they got close, they stopped and bowed their little green heads to him. As they did, you could hear the canopy of leaves rustle. Father Tree turned around slowly towards them. He returned their gesture with a jerk of his head.

"Good morning, Father Tree," they said.

"Good morning, little ones," he replied. "What brings you up here to the top of the hill this early in the morning?"

"Father Tree, please help us. We want to hear more about the olden days. We disagree about what we heard."

"Oh, the olden days, hmmm? ... How far back do you want to go?" answered the old tree politely.

"As far as you can!" said one tree in the group.

"Ah, well, I can only tell you what I know. I remember when I was a young tree. An old tree talked about things in the olden days -- in the time before we had brains, eyes, mouths, teeth, feet, and a tail."

"What ... no tail? How did we get our tail then?" barked one bright, little tree.

"Nobody can agree on that, child. I guess, no one really knows for sure. But, it appears that either something very powerful or someone who we don't see around today changed us and made us like we are today," answered the old one.

"Why are we here?" asked one little perceptive tree.

"Well, we only know what other trees have been able to discover by digging in the ground. We have feet to run with and hands to hold things with now. At sometime in the distant past, though, we were at the total mercy of the elements. We had no feet to move us or tail to balance with. That's why now when there is a flood or fire, you must move fast and escape from them!"

"But, Father Tree, how can you? You're so slow," barbed the bright little one again.

"That's true, so that must be why I have all you of young ones around me staying close by. You come, visit, keep an eye on me, okay? And you come help me move down the hill when things get bad.

There was another little tree who had remained silent the whole time up until now. She was shifting nervously side to side. She was obviously aggravated at something. She finally blurted out, "And what about bugs? I want to hear about the bugs!" The other young trees quickly moved in towards her. They began saying, "Shhh," "Sssshuttup," and "We're not supposed to ask about that!" She only glared back at them in silence. But she was not figgiting anymore.

Father Tree was scarred with several missing patches of leaves mixed in with a lot of oddly shaped, discolored ones. There were also a few places where his branches would not grow correctly anymore. That's why the little trees weren't supposed to ask him about the bugs.

"Oh, someone's asking about the bugs again. Well ...(sigh)... When an army of insects comes around, we all do our best to get away from them. But bugs can move very fast. You see, we still do not have the means to move away fast enough and outrun all of them."

The little trees gathered in a huddle. Then they whispered to the sage their one last question. "Why not, Father Tree?"

He had hoped that their inquiry wouldn't proceed this far. He sighed. "Ahhh, children. This gets very personal." He continued, "When some you were very young, the bugs came. I took you up in my arms and placed you deep inside my leaves. I hid you there close to my heart. And while I held you safe there, I could not get away from the bugs. I held you there until the terror passed. You see, I could survive their ravages, but as mere babes, you could not."

"You couldn't get away from the bugs because of us!" replied the littlest of all.

"That's true," said the aged tree, "You see, there is an important lesson about life that you need to learn. Young and old must always stick together and help each other out- especially during the bad times. This is a lesson about a purpose for life and death. Neither generation can survive apart or by itself. Each of us at different times needs the encouragement and assistance of the other. Perhaps that could tell us something about our real origin. Something very elegant made things in this way. And that's the best explanation I have to give you for the way we are now."

The Absurdity of Expecting the Mainstream Press to Publish ID Books

I guess we should sample the title pages of the anti-slavery books from the 19th century and women's suffrage books from the early 20th, and then analyze the list of publishers that printed them. Then we could decide for ourselves which positions were right. It's a good argument for people who characteristically find relief and acquiesce in the simple view of things. However, it is comparable to the act of judging the quality of a cake from the visual appearance of its icing, or the quality of a store by its window-dressing.

Most strategies used by the status quo to deny legitimacy and prevent institutional access to individuals holding radically new views constitute such examples of shallow-minded thinking, evidently at the point they perceive they are loosing too many constituents. That is the same point in time you see a large number of derisive statements cropping up. Ostensibly, it is for the purpose of reigning in the faithful by employing very simple thus easily politicized sketches outlining a group's essential, though self-admittedly cryptic, positions and dogma. It's by-product is discrimination legally speaking, the unfair treatment of individuals or groups based on race, religion, gender, age, or intellectual position.

What should we make of this current state of affairs? I suggest the following approach: ID, take heart and bide your time! The current evolutionist strategy is dangerously short-sighted. As long as this kind of treatment is levied against you in the form of tangible economic effect and levelled against you in public instances of harangue that bring very evident professional anguish, then historically speaking- you cannot lose! Persecution and defamation historically have never succeeded, at least in the long run. What you should really fear is winning under the wrong circumstances, or perhaps 'winning' at all.

If evolutionists actually wanted to kill your position and do so effectively, they would gobble it up. That is, they would insincerely welcome it for a time. Once in real control, sitting back in their chairs in academic departments, they would quietly sidetrack its arguments, water down its import, and defuse all its insights about evolution. That would leave them in control and you demoralized- in a quandry! You actually should rejoice that your intellectuals and scientists are still powerfully in control of the development of your arguments and viewpoint, and not converted evolutionists such as I.

I have a M.A. in Anthropology from a large midwestern US university and wrote my thesis on the sexual evolution of primates (basically supporting macroevolution). Now I take the naturalistic ID position. But I think some creationists should maintain a base of control of ID, not because they are unjustly accused of being in collusion with ID and of already doing being in control, but from the high risks that academic compromise could bring to ID's goals. Academic acceptance of the ID position is ID's greatest risk due to the fact that ID scientists appear to long excessively for such acceptance. Professionally speaking, that is advantageous, but politically speaking, it is very unwise. I think you should be happy that you are being very obviously being treated rudely and unreasonably. You should even seek out public opportunities for such treatment. Think about THAT whenever you suffer ridicule. We should not be seeking personal comfort in the middle of a fight! And God help us intellectually, figuratively speaking, if the fight is ever over!

Remember, the American people are watching. Rely on the kind of people you know them to be. Subconsciously, evolutionists are deeply troubled at this, that is, by most Americans, their beliefs, curiousity, political nature, and love for the media. This cauldron is all working in the background against evolution and greatly to some evolutionists' chagrin. Some naively express strong sentiments about it in the columns posted here on Amazon Books. It is also an indication of what likely is really happening. The American people are most likely turning en mass against evolution.

Right now, anti-ID arguments look like fruit baskets to those helping shore up traditional evolution. But all the while, intellectually speaking, they are loud-ticking time bombs set out on a very public stage. And... haven't our parents and the American dream practically raised us to prefer the underdog?

Riddle: With the English Language Changing So Quick, Does It Really Matter Whether the Selection is an Adjective or Adverb?

You've just been given a riddle, and in it, you've been given an example. Enough information is supplied even in the title to decide the matter.

While reading the title of this blog entry, you either winced or you didn't. Those who winced could be called prescriptivists, the authority-minded lot, and those who didn't wince, descriptivists, a democratic and user-friendly group.

The goal of the riddle is this: Find which group is analogous to the evolutionists and which one is analogous to intelligent design.

The Big Bang. An Origins Story.

Once the universe was a romance. Attraction and Repulsion ruled the roost and Indifference and Excitement were their little kids. Attraction tried to make something of itself, and Repulsion tore it down. Indifference sought patience, the pattern that time brought. Excitement did its own thing, ignoring all sorts of problems.

Then something slammed into this family. It did so with a bang. No one really knows what it was. We never really know in a divorce, do we? Whatever it was, it caused the Big Bang. Attraction gave up and Repulsion got so angry, it blew everything away! Away from what? Well, away from what ever type of romance they had.

What a mess! Things stayed on the edge of nothingness for a while. Then one day a stranger came by. That stranger decided to make a difference. The mess was cleaned up so that the alienation and divorce of principles might never occur again. That stranger was intelligence.

It all has happened before. And it will happen again. It may happen innumerable times- at least until someone gets some real brains and changes the rules of the game in the physical universe.

All Intelligent Design or Evolution Need Prove

Intelligent Design need not toy with the idea that there is a God, or even explicitly allow for its possibility. There are many types of causal agents that could be influencing direction-limiting biological progress, some natural and others beyond our current levels of functional, systems understanding. Attributing the development of life to a cause or group of causes beats propitious additive random design (evolution) hands down. Take the miracle of the DNA code and its replication, for example. What human alive today could have thought that one up on his own? Originally, it was an incredibly difficult concept to even model. It would have been impossible to have humanly designed it, and it still is. Also consider the self-healing, automatic mending nature of the body which can even by-pass incidentally obstructed blood vessels and restore blood flow. These processes surpass the capabilities of current medicine. We cannot even pair up strands of RNA.

Functioning systems call for causes. The only natural, physical analogies that run counter to the principle of a precipitous cause have a very short lifespan by comparison and are functionally many levels lower on the scale of complexity than functioning, self-repairing tissues and organs. Four of only a handful of possible choices are wave action, typhoons, tornadoes and snowflakes. Humans are basically left to mimick, imitate, or copy observed natural functions. They are not like mere weather or climatological patterns, but more like feedback-driven biological machines beyond human capability to replicate. We are generally neither creative nor insightful enough to originate our own biological systems solutions. What could not be manufactured by man cannot have evolved out of choice accidents and the environmental variation that has been available on Earth.

Intelligent agency, like the evolutionary paradigm, must be viewed through the looking glass it produces and has produced. Basically, its processes are shown in its biological products. But products alone tell us little about the methods used in their manufacture unless some sort of manufacturing code lies beneath the surface. We are limited organisms ourselves, with mediocre sensory organs comparatively speaking and specialized intellectual capacities, thus are restricted by our constitution just as other organisms are. Who certified us capable of discovering our own origins? For one, we can only perceive our world in limited ways and forms. We can only sense certain things, too. Other concepts and phenomena are only noticed by first attributing cause and meaning to them, i.e., to their instances, events and objects. Technology has only added to these abilities incrementally. It has not yet enhanced them on an exponential scale. We are children of a 21st century intellect, its shared records, and its store of devices. We are rarely able to work our way out of this conundrum and see beyond it. When the subject and details of what happened in milleniums past comes up, we are often reminded that our families cannot often agree on what was wrong with last night's supper or conversation. We can offer no guarantee that the experts are right in their interpretation of history. We should even be less reliable when it comes to the matter of pre-history. Why do we give evolutionists a free hand and blank check in the public schools? If one scientist speaks up against it, he or she should be mentioned! I have a masters degree in anthropology and am not permitted to present my view in a U.S. public school science classroom! Current-day court rulings are not merely recapitulating the U.S. court rulings that supported and encouraged monopolies to have an economic heyday in the U.S during the 19th century. They are legally preserving the same type of absurd travesty occuring in American educational institutions!


One consequence of this is shown in the forms our data take. Evolution is just as restricted in its data pool as ID is. Creationists use religious texts for sources of data, primarily. ID broke off of it to base its views on the scientific method and then found its theory severely restrictive, too. Now it jumps into theory and philosophy, as it jumps backs to data and research. Like historical science, evolution and ID are relegated to the position of searching for processes in the archives of past data (fossils and fissures), or else be limited to present physical microprocesses (in genetics and biological cells). Most of our interpretations are circumscribed by the absence of real, direct, ever-present, ideal forms of data. We cannot conduct experiments on macroevolution, for example, but we can sure act like we understand it very well. Both evolution and ID then project views from the position of weakness (and in some cases ignorance), the absence of direct observation of physical data, as a result. Little empirical research is even attempted on the processes of biological progress; instead, much is assumed theoretically. Very little of it gets tested. The main way to prove this fact is by citing the general lack of hypothesis testing found traditionally occuring or going on currently in origins science.

With evolution and ID sitting on their laurels and neither doing much more than complacently trusting theories, unable to physically test their key principles, and waiting for supportative evidence to pile up in the form of subtle, indirect accumulation of implications and a subjectively interpreted preponderance of findings, the following state of affairs exists: All ID needs to demonstrate is that nature is smarter than man. If it proves this case within the present sparse intellectual climate, it has ipso facto proved its main thrust. And this point shouldn't be all that hard to prove, since (as Peter Marshall had said) the DNA code created us and not vice versa! That thrust is that features of directed intelligence in all likelihood produced biological progress- that intelligence in nature is much more likely the cause of biological progress than chaos theory's explanation. All evolution need do is prove that man is the pinnacle of natural, physical development and there is no need to grow beyond his design or look beyond it for anything better. Hopefully, both premises won't be demonstrated to have merit at the same time, but this is exactly what I expect to see happen in the present highly charged political climate of the origins debate.

Randomness is impotent as a directional force. And indeed, I did not say important. Even an appropriately demonstrated process of evolutionary progress needs a demonstratable rationale for directional change and increased complexity as shown in the fossil record. With hominids, it has been culture. With nonhominids, it should be other derivatives of intelligence.

The despised injection of brain matter that would constitute adding insights from artificial intelligence and ID into evolutionary theory in order to give it a needed shot is categorically rejected without due consideration. Any directivity sufficient to provide strong (as opposed to weak) causes of increased biological complexity is currently rejected out-of-hand by evolutionists. They won't countenance causal discussions or observable physical causes because of their blindly hypocritical, unnaturalistic committment to time as cause. No criticisms or adjustments to evolutionary theory supported by nonloyalists are allowed because of wildly charged emotionalism. The merits of AI and ID's arguments cannot not even discussed in an adultlike, rational manner. An atmosphere of dogmatism and a climate of professional fear that it built clouds all discussion. It has beseiged evolutionary science for decades. Partisanism and dogma are the root causes behind it.

Evolutionists' main weakness in this area is their blind parochialism: many are not interdisciplinary. Furthermore, such close-minded proponents are adamant and childishly proud of the fact. Dogma and ideological purity can reign in interest-group politics, and it does so precisely in the case of evolution's out-of-hand, categorical rejection of AI and ID due ostensibly to their hatred of the alleged association of ID proponents with creationists. Stated as at the heart of the argument is a fear of the pollution of science by religion and religious texts, though the same scientists do not try to rein in religious influences that might influence cosmology. Neither are they concerned over the heavy influence that other philosophical positions already have on science, such as humanism, materialism, or atheism. Thus their rejection of ID is most likely historically based and not rooted in any theoretical or methodological- indeed any substantive concerns.

Intelligence and Music Virtually Ignored as Natural Forces

Intelligence and music are features of nature, prominent in numerous species, yet distinctly separate in their appearance and development from human progress itself. They are greatly reflected in human progress, and perhaps, perfected to a high degree in it. However, biology and physics have virtually ignored intelligence and music as forces of nature.

They get shunned as independent variables and treated as mere consequences and dependent variables. Why is this so? I think it's simply out of the lame excuse that theists project intelligence and creativity as significant causes in origins. Perhaps scientists should steer clear of the use of drinking vessels, too, due to the fact that chalices are still used in churches. That's not to mention other customs that originated in churches, such as the wearing of formal clothing, consulting of reference works, attending institutions of higher learning, etc.

Fearing pollution or other types of influence from the etymological derivation of words is a ridiculous notion, just as expanding the concept of the separation of church and state as a guide to regulate choices of topics in science classrooms is. At work here is the same two-centuries-old Luddite principle at work, surreptitiously designed by a group of people to resist technological change, but actually motivated by the desire to economically regulate the workplace. Many evolutionists in principle fear their craft being influenced in the least bit by anything ever called religious. However, they have not quite thought the notion through yet in my estimation. Some things cannot be avoided in life. We can bury our heads in the sand, but this will not make physical forces or the history of ideas go away.

Some Naturalistic Intelligent Design Hypotheses and Definitions

Intelligence = Selective Reactions to Stimuli (Not Necessarily Conditioned or Consistent Responses)

Naturalistic Intelligent Design Support = Evidence of Intelligence Appearing Coincidentally with Progress (Circumstantial Evidence is Considered Compelling and Supportative, though Not Conclusive.)

Progress = Increased Relative Complexity or Numerical Ascendancy

Complexity = Degree of Functions and Interrelations in an Object

Sensors = Chemical Processes that Create Reactions in Adjacent or Connected Physiological Areas or Pathways
(Also, Mechanical Processes that Create Responses in Adjacent Mechanical Parts or their Connections)

Physiological Synergic Response Is a Superior Independent Variable to Natural Selection!

ABSTRACT: Who are we to assume that all things continue as they were if left alone? Who made us the power brokers to assign 'continuity and constants' to nature, making them rulers of the universe? Obviously, things have not quite turned out that way. Change and progress are as much the rule in the real world as the exception, and this is especially true of organisms as they are studied in the field biology, medicine and anthropology.

We only need to look at the processes of growth and aging to see that organisms never really stay the same. Throughout the life cycle, organisms undergo a constant flow of cycles and patterned change. Some of it is progressive; most is cyclical. Many changes are facilitative, but others are debilitative, especially those in later life. A truly remarkable fact is that the same is true of nature in general. Even microorganisms mature, grow old, produce new life, and die. Every living creature does, even the thousands-of-years-old redwood trees in California. Progressively increased longevity has not been a general feature of evolution, though increased complexity and intelligence have been. Species develop and die off, too. Where did the life processions we know as maturing and aging come from if organisms are meant to continue the same as they were in the past? Obviously, things do not continue the same always, or else nature would have incorporated a different processual pattern into life.

There is a methodical, constant pressure for progress upward in complexity in the physical world. Individual life cycles ultimately digress and face an end, and not just in the biological world. Stars and planets do so, too. They form, they grow old, crumple and die. Why is this so? Could it be that they have a similar range of timed change, maturing and aging-essentially a life cycle, also? Either such is the case, or something similar is happening. The same could be happening with species, and this is the view that NID supports.

The causes of biological progression could be as simple as music tempting the ears, or beauty entering the mind's eye, creating a synergy in the physical world! The tapestry we call nature could actually be the result of a preoccupation of the real world with a plodding sort of progression, or innate efficiency, pattern elaboration, greater complexity, perfecting intelligence, or even perhaps varying aesthetics put in at the gate- that is, sensations and sensors evidently placed in it! For sure, that's a big if, but it is essentially what information moving around inside an organism would look like if sensory feedback and response are occurring.

It seems to me that this is all NID need show empirically in order to reach legitimacy as as a scientific explanation: It needs to demonstrate that sensing activity and information (stimulus/response) flow is occurring at the cellular or molecular level in organisms. Then cells and molecules will be shown to possess rudimentary intelligence! And this is not that hard a task, since 'mindless' plants have already been shown to possess a high degree of circumstance-adaptive capability. Naturalistic intelligent design does not require a brain. It simply needs to demonstrate a pattern of directed response, problem-solving ability in the physiology of organisms.

Even sexual and artificial selection may be using sensors and triggers! That is the first place to look for what I will call reactive selection here. Sexual and artificial selection (for eg., sexual dimorphism and domestication) show signs of being readily identifiable real world processes and effects. Their track records are more empirical than environmental effects have proven to be. They also entail clearly identifiable referents and antecedants functioning inside organisms. They are thus easier to identify and observe than environmental processes and effects.

Identifiable causes inherent to organisms that could lead to continual progress of upward biological complexity quite likely exist inside organisms. There are a great many interrelated functions; some of them should have synergic tendencies. That is, some of them should push out of their immediate surroundings or jump level, combining actions into consequences that exceed the sum of their individual contributions, and even lead to new and novel actions.

In the lifeless natural environment, synergy can not be seen acting at rudimentary levels. Ever since Charles Darwin provided his environmental mechanism for facilitating the advancement of species in The Origin of Species, natural selection has not amounted to a process showing physical causes. It has instead essentially remained an effect for measurement purposes, a natural consequence only, although it does also get used as the high level generic term for the whole process. I am saying that natural selection has only shown up as a dependent variable in the empirical studies, and not as a real world independent referent. Of course, I am assuming that there is a continuous observable process or repetitious natural cause (a pattern found common to most casual analogies) leading up to most physical results that can be identified through empirical research. Yet natural selection does not manifest an empirical parameter to identify. Even the concept of fitness is an abstract and highly subjective one.

All natural selection is helpful for is telling us that speciation occurs in the environment. It is no more developed a term and useful for identifying causes in the environment than it was one hundred years ago. That's why other scientific concepts are far more useful as selectors. The whole basis in use of natural selection is on identifying superior survival ability after the fact, after differential performance has been demonstrated. This alone shows natural selection is not predictive as a variable. Natural selection's derivative, fitness, is a situationally dependent concept. It is a relative term, useful for comparisons purposes only, and not very useful for actual measurements in species or organisms.

Conventional evolutionary wisdom acknowledges that the biological progress of species, including their moving up the evidentiary ladder of complexity and intelligence, could be rooted either in directed natural causes or in overall, advantageous accidental outcomes. If the latter proposition is the case, progress is an innumerable compounded series of undirected fortuitous accidents (a noncausal description common to chaos and random-number theory), making natural selection an ineffectual mechanism in terms of identifying direct causes (independent variables, for instance). It could be at the most a contributory influence in this role, theoretically speaking. (What is really needed is a more unifying influence; more about this feature of synergy later.) If the former proposition is the case, some form of natural guidance system becomes necessary for there to be any general theoretical understanding of it, and a dream team or design algorithm advancing the assembly line of regulatory genes up to higher levels of complexity becomes necessary, also. This is what intelligent design has proposed. But the latter proposal would require the identification of a nonenviromental stimulus-response mechanism or something like it that is capable of propelling biological structures upward in terms of their real world levels of complexity. And it would require improved empirical definitions of the terms complexity and intelligence, what NID proposes to do.

Is such a natural control device out of reach at present? No, it is not. The problem is that there are several potential causes that can be identified or theorized for tests at present. First, we must assume a one-way step ladder exists in terms of nature's pattern of progressive complexity. Natural selection essential theorizes something so broad as to not be differential in tests, assuming there were any. It also could just as well be seen in localized geographical terms as a multi-directional, cyclical chain of effect, but it gets applied regionally in unidirectional step-ladder mode for long-term explanations primarily. This is because it has been inappropriately applied to the task of explaining upward biological progression, I believe. Again, theoretically, natural selection can only explain the matters of climatological adaptations and terrain adjustment. Also, there just aren't that many variations on themes applicable to natural selection, i.e., distinctive types of environments, even if a species has a wide geographical range.

Have you heard of harmonies, resonances, echoes, reverberations, synergies, etc. appearing as repetitive complexities in nature? These are oft-times novel, sometimes surreal combinations found in the physical world. They endure as patterns that can be rated as either pleasing, progressive, complex, or methodical to the senses. One principle involved in their creation is that forces tend to repeat and reinforce each other when placed within a context of constraint, and this can produce a signusoidal pattern in them. Another principle involved is that mutually reinforcing functional relationships occur naturally. These tend to produce harmonies and synergies in nature.

Even natural selection cannot escape the need to provide explanations of coincidences beyond the theorized chance benefit of chaos. An effect-unifying feature of any benefit-based mechanism is needed for higher functional complexity to be reached. The simplest way would be to identify a sensory mechanism in the environment. Feedback would then need to be demonstrated. Currently, such features are only hypothesized about the environment on a purely theoretical basis. But that is the challenge natural selection must meet in order to be taken seriously as a reliable upward thrusting force of nature. With current definitions of natural selection, finding such features is unlikely, mainly since the environment as a concept exists only at a high level of abstraction and as an essentially theoretical construct. Natural selection proponents need to start demonstrating correlations between environmental features/forces and genomes, thereby demonstrating the context of unidirectional synergy, too, instead of simply assuming propitious cause in a nondescript environment.

Cause is usually not that hard to find in nature. Take the very common example of music. Music is often found to be the product of asserted variations on a theme or an enduring complex pattern of sound. Music exhibits harmonies and synergy. It is sound bouncing around in a variety of directions within measured constraints. There are repeating sounds and variations on themes. Usually, music flows to a climax, whereupon a new cycle begins.

Now why can't biological progression be strongly effected by such harmonies, recombinations and synergy? Of course, there is always a chance to make counter arguments or the polar-extreme argument. In this case it might be that music is the mere interpolation of noisy coincidences as interpolated by a mind. Of course, the human mind can often form some pattern out of continuous random noise if it seeks direction and listens long enough to it. Expectations may even modulate it. In fact, this process is built into the human mind's perceptual tasks, especially the processes of sound and sight filtering. Natural selection appears to assume and utilize such a viewpoint, i.e., a nonrandom selection, asensory point of view. It attributes the complex, genome uplifting consequences of what I will call noise here (mutation and genetic recombinations) to a consistent environment- but who is to say the environment isn't much more chaotic than the gene and chromosome replication process itself? Furthermore, climate is by definition cyclical, not linear, and evolution is linear!

Fortuitous circumstance must be demonstrated in science, not simply assumed. Then our certitude can stand on data, not assumptions and value judgments. Research should both build and test theory, not be shaped and congealed into cases that appear to confirm it. Identifying cases in the real world as instances confirming certain propositions and then explaining the data presented by such cases as illustrative of those same propositions is illegitimate. It is research that is biased backwards. Yet case studies, and natural selection studies in particular, employ this logic frequency in research designs.

This is a point rarely addressed in evolutionary study and research: genetic 'noise' is merely imagined to be something less than data containing meaning. Chaotic effects get added up into benefitial patterns, getting turned into causes as a result, only because of the presumption of unidentified fortitous environmental forces, and the need of a mind to understand propitious circumstance. The problem with natural selection is that the environment isn't the likeliest force driving selection! Mechanisms internal to organisms such as control genes and physiological regulatory functions are more likely to be the cause! They certainly are more observable and measurable.

I once worked as a electronics technician in a college biology lab. Circulatory research was being conducted on rabbits by veterinarians at that site. They discovered that blood vessels automatically reroute themselves around blockages if given the time and opportunity, i.e., they create a spray of newly formed blood vessels jumping/shunting around any blockage of a blood vessel that has been temporary and repeatedly shut off. This assumed that such blockages were not so serious or comprehensive as to actually kill the organism. They surgically implanted a valve in a major blood vessel and shut it on and off with a timer while measuring the blood flow using ultrasonic blood flow meters. Later, they anesthesized the animal, and cut it open. They typically found a spray of by-passes created automatically around the valve by the circulatory system itself that would counter the effects of the incidental obstructions. The blood flow records charted the pattern of the ad hoc vessels' growth and development.

This is what I mean by physiologically regulated functions. Bodies have sensory and cure-making mechanisms for all sorts of continguency (read here 'adaptational') purposes. And they comprise remarkably intelligent adaptational mechanisms inside the organism, not outside in the environment!

Physiologically speaking, the rabbit circulatory system may be a smarter surgeon than the best human mind, smallest hand, and keenest eye! We are talking about an intelligence exceeding human intelligence demonstrated here in the physiological response of an organism!

Coarse external impetus views of biological progression such as natural selection wall us in. They turn on meaning of life and even turn the purpose of an organism's survival into a vacuous mirage, a mental construct- instead of a real world parameter to measure and refine! They also assign stand-alone real world causes an awkward, sideline role in the process. Wouldn't boxed-in harmonies, synergies, and resonances be better candidates as causes of directed, progressive biological change than incremental environmental contraindications at work!

What is behind the presence of nonrandom patterns and complex systems in nature? They are sometimes more complicated than the ability of any human mind to fathom them- far more than short-lived storms. This is just one incredible feature of nature. It is not an easy thing to explain. Nor is it an easy thing to explain away by a simple application of a mathematically descriptive or summative point of view. Physical world analogies and science teach us that highly improbable events are most likely caused by something physical, not supernatural or immaterial! A pattern merely appearing due to some highly unlikely, compounded chain of random, basic events is a description, not a cause (unless the whole universe has higher constructs and functions that in themselves possess empty meaning). Of course, one can interpret any pattern either of these two ways (and perhaps others). It's just that science's goal is to make sense of patterns, not relegate evidence to the stall that provides no explanation but a statistic trace of it. Understanding and explaining cause in the real world is an essential purpose of science. When its goals are sidestepped in academia, the action is regretful. Biological progress is much more than a rationalization about obscure, subtle features of the environment leaving behind a connected series of propitious, accidental effects that have been retained due to their projected real world, differential benefits to a species' survival potential.

Whatever the particular features of fitness are in particular organisms, their definitions are typically performed in a case-sensitive, subjective manner. The conceptual equivalent of backwards (after research) definition is used in identication of natural selection cases. However, any reframing of definitions after cases of fitness have been identified would invalidate the use of them as data points or cases because it creates adjusted data in the favored direction of the researcher's expectations. Particular case studies cannot not be used both for illustration purposes and for data purposes at the same time. Invalid data can too easily be generated in this process, and smudged data is the result. The core problem here is that insights gained from the identification of cases of natural selection are not seen as crucial opportunities for the scientific testing of any alternative hypotheses, or even for testing of the null hypothesis. They are merely seen as proof of concept examples. Research goes no deeper than that, because concept definitions are not being kept separate from data points. Research validation does not proceed past the point of proof of concept. As a result, the natural selection case-study research typically remains at the armchair speculative level, being performed ex post facto, after the discovery of any relevant empirical facts are discovered. And conceptualization to demonstrate fitness appears to be generated on a purely ad hoc basis.

Sexual selection and artificial selection easily show signs of having antecedants and referents, being clearly caused in the natural environment, but natural selection apparently rarely if ever leaves the same mark on its actions. Natural selection and fitness are results, not causes. Nature reflects cause and effect, and science developed in response to curiousity and need to understand the connection between real world cause and effect, not just to admire its effects.

So what is the cause of natural selection? As a mechanism and process, it has escaped close scrutiny. As a cause, however, it cannot escape it.

Cyclical repetition and intricate pattern are nearly as pervasive in our universe as continuity is. They are the basis of sexual selection, not natural selection. In addition, repetition and pattern are the staples of science, and not merely features of nature. They should not be taken lightly or treated with disdain and handled superficiality. Worse yet would be to totally ignore them due to the drone of a single, low-level pattern in the background of nature, statistical accretion. Natural selection may be evolution's abacus- a flat stone crowning the capital of its main column, but it is only the beads-on-wires counting frame of genetics. The column-carry 'keep' function of the mathematical abacus (not the architectural abacus above) can only be performed in a systems model based on sensory input/output using at least a well-timed, triggered mechanical response, or at most, a keen, attentive mind with good hand-eye coordination. That is, progressive complexity needs not only selection and retention mechanisms, but a unification as well. None of these have shown up empirically in the environment except as effects. Accidental coincidence of recurring, combinatory, interfunctional effects with sensory feedback is absurd as a causal explanation in any single organism as well as any one universe. We are not taking about storms or chemistry sets here, but living, thriving organisms.

The selective process of natural selection is, mathematically speaking an explanation of all biological features including the elegant, informed, and intricate which is based primarily on a reductionist explanation. It is much like a number incrementing machine or abacus accumulating profit. I happen to think that a slide rule or calculator would be a better analogy for symbolizing biological progress, not chemical, but the application of natural selection to such problems turns highly simplistic at times. An abacus is highly routine in its operation- just like the fuction of addition. An abascus is a hardwired adding device and natural selection gets explained in purely additive terms quite often. It is a synopsis of billions of particular otherwise inexplicable world events; that's why I call natural selection a mere add-and-carry machine. It is applying the principle of incrementing the mean to the problem of explaining the biological progression of forms and functions. But it says absolutely nothing about why we consistently obtain outrageously tasty fruits and profit from the tree of life!

Still, natural selection is one application of the brilliant principle of parsimony to naturalism! This can be satisfying indeed, even to the point of experiencing an epiphany, but is the catharsis enough? Is coming to a personal conviction a sufficient basis scientifically speaking? If so, science could be running the risk of turning nature into mere cyclical noise and destroying the progressing patterns that comprise the mosaic of its beauty and rhythm, and further empirical understanding. A more detailed view of biological progress is needed, not more rationalizations of the processual description type from a mere rubric such as natural selection. Now which is really behind nature's progression upward in the professional's view? Which is the real process at work? Is it synergic selection for improved complexity, rhythm and dance, or an environmental tax amounting to a purposeless, passive farce?

I still have quite a distance to go to fully explicate this line of inquiry. Sorry that I couldn't accomplish more in this considerable amount of space. I will endeavor to further elaborate the main points of this discussion in future blog entries. All I have attempted to do here is provide an introduction to the basic needs and issues involved. Why do so? It is one of the fundamental topics that concern naturalistic intelligent design (NID), and one that this blog is written for: to introduce naturalistic I.D. to the scientific community in a preliminary way.

Evolution May Be Scientific, but Natural Selection Clearly Isn't!

ABSTRACT: Evolution should not be castigated in whole or as a term, if for no other reason than the fact it now means a great many different things in the English language. However, criticizing it in part is another story. Natural selection gets criticized, even among evolutionists themselves.

Privately among evolutionists, natural selection is sometimes treated with disdain, although the core idea of the evolution of species is not questioned. It is only the matter of how species evolved that gets criticized in this connection. I have personally heard natural selection lambasted repeatedly by a notable evolutionist talking with groups of his peers. I attributed it to his discontent with Darwinism, but not with the more modern syntheses of evolution.

When I was a doctoral student in anthropology, one young and famous assistant professor in my department repeatedly spoke openly against natural selection. It was obvious that he had made the critique his pet pieve. He made a point of challenging each graduate student he screened in committee meetings to somehow justify natural selection's limitations and define genetic drift correctly. Then he would use their responses to his pointed questions as a basis to reiterate his view that almost no one in anthropology could correctly define genetic drift. He implied that there was an overreliance on natural selection in explanation and not on other features of evolution. Personally, he attributed nearly all evolutionary progress to gene flow as opposed to natural selection. He saw changes in the genetic material of species as caused by the limited diversity resulting from the gene pool sampling error occurring in small, isolated populations that live primarily in secluded mountain ranges.

His actions could be interpreted as a difference in interest or the promotion of a new view. Indeed, it was some of both. But the emotional impetus obviously poured forth out of some other motive. I attributed it to his discontent with natural selection, and I am sure I was not alone in this view. How much a professional can criticize natural selection nowadays depends on several factors. One is what type of academic department you find yourself in or alongside. Are you in biology, genetics, or is it a department of paleontology/anthropology? Different professionals and departments view the adequacy of natural selection variously as they have varied degrees of daily necessity and prior committment invested in the concept. Anthropology I found to be more open to criticism of the concept; genetics seemed almost closed to any criticism of it. Other factors are important to consider before offering a critique, too: Is there a famous, tenured professor in your department who is vocal about natural selection and tolerates no dissent in the discussion? No one in the department will criticize the term then, at least if he or she desires to obtain and maintain tenure. Is your chosen department known for defending traditional Darwinism? You should find out. If not, you could be free to openly suggest additional and alternative forms of selection in explanations.

The answers to these questions will determine how much you are allowed to criticize natural selection openly before your friends and peers in the university. I found out the hard way. I did not criticize biological evolution per se, but the inelegant, stepwise mimic of it, cultural evolution. It is a stage/levels-based, structuralistic copy of biological evolution using integrated levels of cultural development to describe cultural process. Like most social evolution models, it is a crudely stated derivative taken from an overgeneralized view of what Darwinian evolution is all about. The structuralists (British and U. of Chicago school of social anthropologists) support the use of a cultural evolution model strongly while the cultural diffusionists (U. of CA.-Berkeley cultural anthropologists, followers of Franz Boas, the originator of American anthropology) take issue with it. If you are a natural selection critic seeking to enter any such department, you should first find out how much you will be allowed to question particular features of evolution of interest to you-such as natural selection. However, you will not be able to find any openess for questioning the subject of evolution itself in departments encompassing origin studies. Once more, be careful: evolutionists might at a later date mark criticism of natural selection as a social indicator to categorically identify and discriminate against ID proponents. And in origin studies, categorically often means dogmatically when dealing with people and viewpoints.

Challenging natural selection at the conceptual level is a professionally acceptable act, though this is not true in the view of all evolutionists. There are some obvious problems commonly known and discussed about the relevance and usefulness of natural selection as a term, but most evolutionists do not admit this fact publicly. They are reluctant to imply any question that sort exists in evolution studies because of the harshness of evolution's critics. Any such admissions of doubt provide critics with fuel for stoaking fires of protest against evolution, which are often based on grounds that are religious in nature and not scientific. Admitting a fault would be a sign of poor judgment like an admission of fault at the scene of a traffic accident. It would also reflect poor public relations management for evolution in the public sphere. Indeed, any evolutionist I have met is capable of turning quickly and vehemently against methodological considerations when a criticism or doubt is brought against the evolution model in general, i.e., whenever someone appears to put down evolution as a whole. Such criticism sounds hollow to them-like bigotry and religious zealotry. Cross-institutional arguments are then brought into play. The critic also gets turned into an outsider. For many evolutionists, the discussion turns into a class conflict at that point. Professional politics takes over control in the verbal exchange. This is one reason why there is so much 'heat' generated in the debate. The terse process of spiteful labelling often takes place at the outset of discussions, due partly to a quick rejection of opponents' legitimacy, and gets followed up with a turn to uncomplicated terms used in simple-minded fashion. The only good response I have found to this is to establish one's legitimacy first; only then can one critique freely.

Notwithstanding, at the same time evolutionists themselves may be questioning the validity of natural selection in particular cases and consoling each other during their show of solidarity. It is not considered in evolutionary circles to be a show of hypocrisy, but rather a matter of good impressions management and saving face. Like the structuralists say, the public sphere is a stage that all players come to perform on. Things would be simpler if people weren't so human and groups of people were nobler as a rule. Alas, it seems that day-to-day practical, institutional concerns take precedence in matters before the public eye even at the highest levels of evolutionary science nowadays. Good science can quickly turn very political in character.

Let's take a look at natural selection as cause, process, and result. Darwin saw it as the premier mechanism in nature to guide variation to greater survivability. He would never have published The Origin of Species without hypothesizing something like it. As a vital component, he presented it as a real world process affecting population survivability where relative advantageous outcomes, but no particular causes, matter. I have seen the term handled with considerable methodological imprecision in most evolution discussions. Most evolutionists do not differentiate in its use between cause, mechanism, or result. It is often hard to know which one they are referring to when they mention natural selection. Some think that when talking about a process, it does not matter.

Natural selection does not appear to be predictive of cause. It also fails to pass the null hypothesis test: Individuals predicted to comprise the fittest individuals in a population do not survive longer or produce more offspring than average, more typical, individuals. The dead die as phenotype-indiscriminate martyrs. Death before procreative age is indiscriminant-much more accidental and random than that of some vague or indeterminate cause from the environment acting on individual differences. The fittest only appear to survive and produce more offspring than more typical individuals when the research enterprise subjects itself to the ad hoc effects of interpretational tautology. This is defined as research through the use of historical hindsight, observing and labelling prodigious individuals as fittest after the fact by first determining at some point in time those who are the most productive individuals, labelling them as the fittest, and then checking in on any prospective causes in retrospect. Natural selection is not predictive of traits that are reproductively advantageous.

New causes of survivability have not been predictable for the concept of natural selection. Causes identified with the benefit of hindsight typically get applied as an anecdote and done in superficial fashion. Take for instance the notion of adaptation. It gets mentioned in a particular case every time, yet it does not get explained in measurable form as a process. Is this the practice of letting concern over naturalistic cause slide by and go unnoticed for the sake of preserving speculation as theory? Should natural selection always include untested, armchair conjecture as a vital link in its chain of explanations? Would this make natural selection an exercise in empirical science or philosophy? Is it a real world understanding at all or just an exercise in theoretical rubric? This is the big question, and one not easy to answer for evolutionists. It is a very good question to ask, however.

I suppose that one reason why discussions of the term of natural selection get encumbered is that natural selection is usually talked about as a cause or independent variable for purposes of the evolutionary discussion, but seems only ascertainable or empirically detectable in the real world once it becomes an effect or result. But this makes natural selection abdicate any scientific right to supply legitimate explanations of how or why change took place. Most of the findings about natural selection appear in the form of examples or anecdotes about nature, cited after-the-fact in forms resembling rationalizations about the results. They are not hypothesized as causes beforehand to be updated through further testing or refinement. As a result of this lack of recursiveness and feedback for the model, explanations of necessity make use of anecdotes and reflection. This is not good methodologically speaking. It can muddle the meaning of terms, floating them in what I call some theoretically stagnant waters where only data mining/fishing for findings can occur. Natural selection fails the methodological test as a reliable, empirically defined independent variable of anything effecting change in the physical world. It doesn't provide any terms measurable for identifying particular real world processes at work. This is because reproductive advantage and survival fitness appear as unrigorous terms. I will offer support of these points later, but for consistency of argument let me follow this line of thought for awhile. Natural selection is used out of necessity: It supplies an intriguing naturalistic argument at a high level of explanatory abstraction that must somehow be true if speciation naturally occurred. But justifying the use of the term based on rational necessity means it is the 'how' that typically gets rationalized, i.e., the process retains a degree of imprecision. The details get imagined away, rather than discovered by empirically operationalizing them and checking them out.

Natural selection also fails the methodological validity test as a group of physical parameters or even a set of standard factors or variables that might be found manifesting itself physically around and in the natural environment. For instance, no derivative or logically associated variables tend even to get named except for survival, survivability and fitness. Can you find any other ones? Please try! Why might this lack be the case? Survival and fittness, like natural selection, are esoteric and heterogenous concepts. It appears they are unable to show researchers what to look for beforehand (in the research design-before data collection takes place). Such after-the-fact applications of terms do not help make arguments more precise and refined. They justify whatever results one does happen to find, freed from the null hypothesis, a research standard and necessary safeguard. Such practices also obfuscate terms and desensitizes researchers to the highly pragmatized practice of accepting crude methodologies and lowered standards for evidence. When considering natural selection as term and argument, Darwin did not have the benefit of the fields of study of heredity or statistics.

Of course, in the ideal world of science, natural selection or its derivative should be getting treated as an operationalized variable or variable set if it is worthy of being tested empirically. But this is not the purpose of tests in evolutionary science. That is, establishing the validity of natural selection as a parameter is not a concern in data collection for evolutionists. To many of them, there is no other explanatory recourse other than the grand construct of natural selection to influence the selection of benefitial genetic traits.

That's one reason why there is no need to test the validity of evolution in the evolutionist's estimate of the matter. Apparently, it has already been tested for all time in the academic marketplace, and the matter is sufficiently resolved (albeit in incomplete form, empirically speaking). This is because evolution was being severely attacked from outside the purview of the university at the time, and strong positions had to be taken in response. Loyalty and legal issues historically settled the matter in a climate of sensationalism. In less volatile times in science, theoretical decisions have been traditionally resolved by the familiar theory-data-test interactivity feature in science. Indeed, in the view of the universities of the time, there was sufficient data to rule on the matter: natural selection was a valid explanation in their view. However, there is no doubt in my mind that the matter was settled a little too abruptly. Nowadays it is obvious that the jewel of naturalism got set out to pasture out due to the extenuating circumstances of the time, especially the criticism of the universities by the churches and religious people of that era.

This is historically why natural selection fails to get conceived of in particular or measurable terms. It is because such is seen as unneeded. Instead, the mechanism is now used as an abstraction and an explanatory construct. You may ask: For the purposes of theory testing, is that legitimate? Again, there is no need for the practice of testing evolutionary theory in evolutionary science. Explain that state of affairs adequately and you will solve the enigma of several other high level issues found lingering around evolutionary discussions.

Instead of treating natural selection as a measurable, testable feature, it is conceived of more as a general principle of nature. Why is it not operationally clarified or measured? It is not operationally defined because it is too abstract a concept and has no distinctive physical parameters (causes or forces rooted in a law/principle of nature) that it can be associated with. Only reproductive survability comes to mind, which is seen more as an end result than a means of effect. For one, natural selection is too high up the scale of abstraction and generalization in the explanatory scheme of things to be identified as a specific cause or cluster of causes. Still, if Popper was right, natural selection should generate testable, subsidiary forces of cause and powerful ones at that-if it is to be useful to any tests of a theory! In my estimate, it can only be used to identify exceedingly weak causes-if any! Evolutionists will sometimes so much as admit such a weakness when they echo the following sentiments: evolution is an eons long, drawn-out, gradualistic, agonizingly slow process.

Its level of abstraction is one thing that makes natural selection too hard to measurably define. But that makes it only useful as an explanatory (rhetorical) device, not a theoretical (scientific)one. Trying to instantialize a brute force of nature in the form of natural selection would be like attempting to circumscribe and measure the intensity of a storm or explain measures for high-end socio-psychological constructs like anomie or social stability. Instead of being instantiated or operationalized, natural selection usually gets treated much like a virtual or theoretical reality, and is visualized as a literal composite stew of intertwined, cascading environmental factors, none of which get operationalized. It is more like a general principle and philosophical construct than it is a set of definable parameters.

I have not read of any cluster of integrated features or related factors in the environment that can be used to characterize natural selection empirically. It seems it must be assumed axiomatically-taken as a circumscribing or integrating factor in explanations-for it most often appears as a black box in evolution publications! That's why I call it a proxy for empirical testing.

The real question to resolve is whether the composite construct of natural selection can suggest any derivative real world variables that can be measured realiably enough to lend any real empirical support to the theory of evolution at all. The most telling insight I can offer in this connection is that it appears to me that no such hypothesis spinoffs of natural selection are currently being designed or used in evolutionary methodology. Even the most famous, the sickle-cell anemia trait protecting some Africans against malaria, has no real parameter that can assigned to it as cause-other than perhaps the concept of increased local-area survivability. It adds nothing to the issue of increased complexity over time in evolution. In the sickle-cell anemia case it would appear that natural selection is merely a localized statistical bias, not a group of natural factors or forces at work.

The track record for natural selection in this theoretical-empirical test connection thus is not a good one. It is at least a crude concept. It certainly deserves no flattery or blind faith in the evolutionary connection.

Once again, natural selection has become a proxy for a missing operationally defined variable set in theoretical science and public explanations. Natural selection as a composite concept (treated as a general environmental principle shown through a complex of factors) is so vaguely construed as to be completely unobservable and immeasurable in the real world, much like race, democracy, and IQ apparently are. This state of affairs may even be intentional (at least subconsciously) in that it maintains natural selection's legitimacy. That is, it keeps the concept of natural selection protected in an untested/unverified state as a filler, a miscellaneous appeal, or rationalization used for bridging arguments in evolutionary explanations. It operates very well as this regard, too, although it remains a very weak link in the empirical world where there are often physical forces and complex, interacting factors at work. Regretfully, as Popper intimated, this may lower the status of evolution to the category of a thesis rather than provide building blocks for it and refinement as theory.

In the end, testing hypotheses about natural selection chiefly appear in the form of sizing up the credentials and value of the journal a publication propositions about it are found in. In other words, it is not really used in research designs that include recognized and respected research methodology such as sampling methods and tests of the null hypothesis. It is more a background rationale to describe the general trends of evolution. It is also used more as a general tendency in nature, serving to orient and outline the broader aspects of and higher-level integrations found in the evolutionary model.

This is a very regretful state of affairs in evolutionary studies. It is probably one reason why evolutionists and their lobbying bodies fight so hard to discredit and silence the critics of evolution. The real problem lies not in those critics who are professional in their conduct, but with a model that is hiding or denying a pitfall: the fact that at least one of their mechanisms as has been defined and promoted is a philosophical and theoretical term, and not anywhere near becoming an empirical, scientific one. And this same methodological state of affairs has existed for a long time. Evolutionists don't seem able to realize or to face up to questions of reasonable doubt generated from the American public about this observation. The lack of methodological rigor may be making evolutionary science an exception, a science of a different sort, similar to what the social sciences and history are. They are known as the soft sciences, not the hard sciences. And, for some even highly educated people in America, basing our origins on abstract and poorly defined terms is a pill too big and bitter to swallow.

Three Ostriches Debating Origins

Three ostriches stood side by side outdoors behind a huge table. They were waiting to start a debate on origins. A placard had been placed in front of each of them on the table in order to identify the viewpoints they supported. The sign in front of the ostrich on the right had “evolution” printed on it, the middle one's said “intelligent design", and the one on the left was marked with the word “creation”.

The ostrich behind the evolution sign had its head buried in Charles Darwin's book, The Origin of Species. The ostrich labeled creation had its head in the Holy Bible. The head of the ostrich in the middle, however, was looking at no book. It was looking up. It was glancing upwards at the sky.

Overhead, there was something saucer-shaped moving at high altitude. Having noticed it, the intelligent design ostrich excitedly beat its wings and started running around in circles. He was trying to get the attention of the other two ostriches.

Hey guys, Hey guys!" he said, "I really think you should take a look at this. It could mean something.”

The other two ostriches, however, could not turn away from their books and take a look. They were too worried about giving only authoritative views in the debate. They did not look up until it was too late. By then the object had passed completely out of their field of view.

Intricately Operating, Self-Replicating Systems Merit Designation as Intelligent Products, and Not Just as Machines

ABSTRACT: Acutely interactive with the environment, with numerous types and innumerable lines of development found rampant throughout it, the preponderance of life on this planet begs one very important question: Are new forms of life still being developed on Earth? The answer merits direct observation before explanation, and a new perspective in terms of the source/origins of life, i.e., one that posits production as origin. Direct observation is a matter of great importance in this area, and a scientific issue that won't go away easily, whatever the scholarly pale or excuse.

Self-replicating systems using input-output control for environmental interaction merit a classification not only as life, but as intelligent products, too. At least, taken from a systems perspective, they deserve more than consideration as machines or even intelligent machines. Given the magnificent fact that they replicate themselves in assembly-line fashion from same-kind objects/elements, a feat that only computer viruses can mimic in terms of human actions, they are a supreme novelty and perhaps, the very pinnacle expression of nature. They surpass the capabilities of human product conception and design. Say again? Organisms developed simply through the process of long-term environmental accretion?

The environmental situation at the time of origin of life on Earth is generally believed to have been dramatically different than it is now--almost conveniently so. If scientists are no longer able to directly observe the process of life being generated on this planet directly due to the fact that it no longer appears in the field, then it is this absence of recurring new life that becomes most conspicuous. It turns the discussion into a tattle-tail critique on what could be a hypocritical grasp at straws for answers in science. If not such a scientific excuse over the absence of data, it might instead be an actual sign of data: a radical change in what then would become Mother Earth's maturing unilinear processes governing the progression and development of planetary life. Either explanation would constitute a noteworthy point, a historical landmark along the sign trail of origins studies.

There are some pitfalls that come with trying to answer these questions, however. One is that it might expose some shoddy science. Origins scientists are typically defensive from being cornered by religious people, historically conditioned into a posture in public of not countenancing doubt that evolutionary theory might be wrong, underdeveloped or inadequate. However, there are still some legitimate concerns, and these are based on the real world, not any religious text. Assuming that the environment has changed from an original life-initiating state without in-depth data being supplied in support could ostensibly conceal an absence of observational data which never existed. It would also then appear to be part of a rather over-zealous public-relations approach generally employed to obscure the absence of observational data for drawing valid scientific conclusions. Taken as the latter, it would constitute a propagandist ploy used in evolutionary circles to obfuscate the general need for confirmational observations, for example, replacing data with mere public-relations driven spectacles such as convincing petri dish lab exercises made in conjunction with armchair-driven news releases. The latter is the same basic grandstanding approach allegedly used by the Discovery Institute, one that enrages evolutionists, eliciting unmistakable consternation and chronic lament in them.

Discovering ultimate origins or first cause may an unreasonable goal for all but the most doctrinaire and fanatic of scientists. It is much like the attempt to peer at God--a feat well beyond our technological reach (sic). It is in some ways like the our pursuit of conditions before the Big Bang: unattainable to all soul searchers other than the mathematician and cosmologist. That is to say, true origin circumstances may be out of the reach of science without employing the tools that can be used to replace direct observation (for instance, a huge telescope conveniently positioned in space to look back in time). I believe that explanations of the origin of organisms deserve more attention and rigor than the use of anecdotal explanations taken from myth, armchair considerations, vaguely reported survival considerations, or extrapolation taken from organ and structural artifacts alone. What we cannot scientifically observe, we can only theoretically hypothesize. Nothing can justify an argument taken from the point of view of ignorance, or its corollary, the inability to observe pertinent data. Thus conclusive answers are not to be found primarily at the prehistoric extremities of science, where there is by necessity a lowered standard for direct observation and evidence, due to the erosion of data currently inaccessible to instrumental science. Our current unwillingness to peer at the possible origins of new life nowadays is no excuse to project theory into the past as fact in areas where there is an acute lack of willingness to obtain data on what obviously was (and must still be) a replete, recurring natural phenomena, the continued genesis of life on Earth.

I believe this regretful state of ignorance can be resolved by real world data and observation. If the concept of species is taken to be analogous to product/produced lines and not just morphological and its particulate sources, our perspective on origins could change to a more current and functionally based one. Reverse-engineering functional analyses of present-day changes in DNA and genes would then serve as the front-line tier for explanation for organisms' past origins! In fact, species' functions and operations and their development then would be tantamount to an understanding of origins, not a mere sequential outline of the appearance of structures in the fossil record. Indeed, taking a functional view of features means that production is in fact origin, and traces of functions become an operational record of a species's actual history. This would effectively become its track record, the developmental history of a species. Unless we can find the actual production lines and fixtures that constitute the building-blocks to create new life, organs, and functions, all which should be occurring still nowadays (If not, why not?), we cannot understand life's origins in this more systems-oriented, wholistic sense. Understanding how labels are stuck on to animals' skins on the outside (classification by morphology) and visualizing the lumbering amoeba of evolution (genetic variation coupled with natural selection) on a chart are not enough.

In a nutshell, it may well all boil down to this: evolution reduces down to the gene pool of numbers; and NID--to testable ideals, but ideals nonetheless.

The Evolution versus Naturalistic Intelligent Design Question in a Nutshell

ABSTRACT: With the current climate of the evolution versus intelligent design debate approaching levels of an irreconcilable impasse, what could help resolve some issues in the debate? One feature especially sets natural intelligent design (NID) apart from traditional intelligent design. NID by definition permits nothing but natural causes and explanations in its models. If supernatural intelligence were involved, NID would not see it. However, the opposite is true in terms of nonneural intelligence, such as that found in plants, and in conditional looping, such as found in computer-control systems. It is suggested here that while scientists are engaged in ruling out supernatural intelligence in explanating origins, they not lose sight of the possibility that other forms of intelligence like pure natural intelligence might still be involved.

If an evolution/NID debate at the molecular, genetic and cellular levels could condensed down to one essential consideration, I think it would be this: Are DNA replication and cell division based on any of the following mechanisms--input/output data, selective timing, switches, guided object positioning/juxtaposition, feedback, procedure looping, and the processing of inputs? These would be all natural, thus prone to err. If such is the case, then some aspect of non-conscious control processing (AI-like intelligence) would be involved. Intelligence would be involved in the nonneural sense suggested by Glenn Shrom (See Response Number 15 in "19 Responses to Origins of Intelligent Design"). Or is this all due to iterative timing instead, that is, looping, nonbranching, blind sequential (thus nonintelligent) replication sequences that are also prone to error? In a simple analogy, is there any steering wheel for reacting to an organism's condition or environmental circumstance, meaning an organism's state or situation? The choice in logical and AI terms thus is between that of input-output processing or strict hard-wired sequencing. These are questions whose answers are vital to assigning causal explanations to the processes involved.

Even if evolution is even an inadvertant consequence of the process of DNA and gene replication, there still can be no denying that intelligence is at work if some control processing is involved. Low intelligence, mistakes, and stupidity must still count as controlled natural processing in such a case, and thus must be counted as intelligence in the AI sense. Consider the fact that humans cannot be considered to be nonintelligent objects (creatures lacking all intelligence) simply due to the general stupidity they show as a species in matters of environmental management and ecology. It takes rudimentary intelligence to be stupid; it only takes none to be ignorant. The real question thus is whether natural input/output context processing (eg. relative to environmental circumstance or maturity) is involved in the reproduction of organisms and replication of their parts. It is a crucial consideraton in the evolution/NID puzzle whenever it is viewed at the microscopic level.

The problem with many evolutionists considering the intelligence or nonintelligence origins issue is not that they aren't up to speed; they can frame things in these terms, using AI terminology. They just as of yet choose not to. Neither are they ignorant of AI definitions of intelligence. They just don't adapt and apply the rubric of control processing for this area. Why not use it at these levels of explanation? In effect, they don't see the need. They close their eyes in all innocence to the consideration of rudimentary intelligence in gene and chromosone replication, confident that nonrecursive (linear) processes, statistical gene probabilities, and rates of mutations are sufficient for particle-based explanations, and that such explanations coupled with an environment posited in non-descript form are in turn adequate for explaining the whole matter of the biological progression upward of forms. One problem with this position is that it is only a description of general processes, an investigation of the basic 'hows.' None of it attempts to determine the reasons behind things functioning and adapting intricately, the 'whys.' It may well be that the type of explanations evolutionists tend to avoid, viz., detailed descriptions, naturalistic intelligent design can readily supply in the form of testable real world hypotheses.