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.

Is Evolution in the Social Sciences a Theory or Thesis?

ABSTRACT: Generally speaking, the data of the social sciences is less quantifiable than that found in the physical sciences. Evolutionary studies in the social sciences are based on qualitative methods for the most part. The interpretation of their findings thus resemble the theses of historical research more than they do the quantifiable theories of the physical sciences.

Evolutionary theory in the social sciences is largely qualitative. It is methodologically based on theses more than it is on scientific theories. Theses are not theories. Let me explain this in a preliminary way. For one, evolution is weak on cause. Most of its process statements are not empirically testable. Also, referring to methodology, evolutionary theory traces prehistorical events using inferences based largely on fossil finds. This is in much the same way that historians write history based on inferences taken from archived data. The only interaction with the data here is mental. Theory and hypothesis do not tug on each other in tandem; they do not feedback on one another except, of course, in writing. Theses come out of the writing exercise; theories pour out of and on empirical research. Theses are tacked on to the end of a research report as its inspiration, justification and light background. Theories are mentioned throughout a research reports, serving as its rationale, organizational framework, and ultimate objective. Evolution in the social sciences handles theory, methodologically speaking, the way theses are developed and supported in history.

Sccial science studies of evolution do not test hypotheses in the physical science sense. They do not incorporate the use the practice of drawing up theory-derived hypotheses and running them through empirical tests, with the exception of some archeology and anthropological linguistics studies. Instead, studies tend to use the same kind of data processing and style of support as found in the studies of history. The subfields of archeology and anthropological linguistics I found to be more quantitative. But physical and cultural anthropology were not. They are largely qualitative in terms of the research enterprise. Many people believe evolutionary studies to be based on hypothesis testing. This is for the most part not true in the social sciences. Research about evolution in social science is run on a different basis than many people believe.

My bachelor's degree was a double major in education and the social sciences. Later, I was a graduate student and teaching assistant in history for a semester at a state university in the Midwest U.S. I did not flunk out; I got straight As in history. I changed my graduate study to the social sciences in the following semester. My masters degree was in anthropology. I studied as a doctoral student and worked as teaching assistant in anthropology for several years more. So I the had opportunity to see both disciplines in action, and write graduate papers for both departments.

Studying history taught me how history is written. Of course, there is some variety. But there are also general practices as well. So any conclusions we could draw are based on generalities, generalities that could be quantified and studied, as well. Historians essentially write theses about the written past and support them with arguments. These are used to build a thesis. Support is found for the thesis, and both are then checked by a professor or committee (one type of peer review). They are carefully scrutinized, but not by using the rigorous method of hypothesis generation and testing. Theses are not theories in the sense that they are not subject to any kind of rigorous quantitative tests, quantitative methods, or strict checklists. They also go through periods of change called revision rather like theories do, but thesis revision is more like a change of a point of view than of a world view. Theories do change. They undergo the much slower and more profound changes called paradigm shifts, at least as compared to the way change occurs in the physical sciences. Scientific theories use a more rigorous, deductive process of syphoning off hypotheses as derivations of a theory, rigorously designing them with committee oversight, conducting actual tests according to a methodology distinctive to a particular discipline, and then subjecting the results to evalutation in the form of peer review. Publication may or may not ensue based on additional factors. Ramifications to the theory are then pondered as a reflective, mental exercise essentially only after testing by peer review.

History uses a very different process of pondering a thesis throughout its generation and writing. There is no rigorous testing performed at any time; it is qualitative, too, meaning it generally contains no numerical data or statistical testing. Rationale, style, logic, and new supplementary information are the guides in thesis writing, by one individual. Peer review comes afterwards, not throughout the research.

Evolutionary theory in biology and genetics may be more rigorous than in the social sciences. I certainly hope so. These sciences are much more quantitative in their methodologies. But at least in the social sciences, evolution is a written using a style of argument and logical presentation of support in the form of anecdotal evidence for the most part. Some quanitative evidence is sometimes added in. It is included as a supplement when such exists, but it is extremely limited in terms of its use and ramifications for evaluation. In essence, the main argument ushers forth from the mind and views of a writer and his or her ability to persuade, not from a rigorous evaluation of research targets met or not met and any relevant data obtained.

If what I am saying here is correct, then the study of evolution is social studies, not social science. I apply this only to the soft (as contrasted to the hard) sciences. In these disciplines, it is most like historical studies in terms of its methodology and writing approach.

Evolutionists Often Lambast Intelligent Design; Should ID Lash Back?

ABSTRACT: Evolutionists and their critics are engaged in battle. It is a war of words. There are hawks, dogmatists and extremists in both camps. How strongly and in what manner should intelligent design proponents react to the criticisms of evolutionists? That's the subject of this blog entry. It recommends taking a courteous and respectful approach while remaining extremely honest and forthright in discussions.

Evolution is seen by proponents as a slow accumulation, mindless, goal-less, half-blind, round-about-way of changing the genetic makeup of species. I see its labelling of clear-cut empirical causes in the environment as not its strong suite, though its insights about the statistical probabilities of fortuitous genetic alterations is. Neither can evolution legitimately be criticized as a pointless, directionless, or unproductive process, as some critics believe. The theory of evolution models a chain of fortuitous, reinforcing, unplanned events that link up and cross paths with natural laws. Its result is modeled as the mindless accumulation of benefitial genetic traits, though in an agonizingly slow manner. The accumulative effects, however, are nothing short of astounding.

Evolution has generators (of genetic variation), but it lacks explicit processing forces (selective causes). That is to say it has no easily identified processors in nature. The theory envisions genetic errors in resulting from the process of organism replication as seeding change (providing the raw material in the form of genetic replication changes, viz., 'errors'), and survival loadings/effects in the environment selectively weeding out (selecting) the final results. But hypotheses generated by the theory are in most cases rather broad, nondescript models. Proponents are often not very certain in just how all this works; certainly not enough for empirically testing hypotheses against competing, alternative explanations. The basic mindset that typically comes out is unilateral--that there are no competing views. Even the null hypothesis is considered inconceivable at times as a possiblity. General causes are asserted as explanations, but are for the most part never empirically checked out. Descriptive statistics and probabilities are the field's mainstay, but not the use of statistics that would bear out matters of cause, such as multivariate statistics or regression.

It can also legitimately be said that the theory is quite defensive, esoteric, conjectural, and nonempirical when it comes to any criticism about the scientific need of checking empirically for factors of cause/influence. This is tantamount to check for actual causes or influences in the organism's environment. Its proponents are thus simple in their approach and uncritical in action when dealing with opposition to their views, essentially resorting to name calling, not to mention the practice of showing absolute closed-mindedness about competitive views. It is as if they are at war with all criticism. Lashing back is immediate and across the board, and especially heaped on views that even remotely identify with religion.

Non-evolutionists are split as a result over the matter of how much criticism to level against evolution. It has been my experience that individuals who entertain a solely text-based faith (a completely Bible-based view) such as traditional creationists tend to actively entertain the idea that believing in macroevolution is a stupid idea. But at least some scientists believing in teleology think not. They understand that macroevolutionists essentially approach the data from a different theoretical perspective. Some evolutionists are even not aware of this essential difference, however. They are not dumb, stupid, crazy, or ignorant, however. They are just not very self-aware about their value judgments or world view.

It has been my experience that only evolutionists who consistently write badly and argue illogically on weekdays can be justifiably thought of as dumb. Actually, it is a bad approach. For that matter, any consistently poor writer and debater could be considered to be doing the same. Nevertheless, unless such behavior is a consistent, a pattern woven like a thread in an individual's multiple arguments, he or she could be just having a bad hair day or be languishing in a stupor. So it's always best to hold in reserve the meanest of criticisms until one has watched and assessed a writer over an extended period of time. In a nutshell, I recommend critics not try to jump to the practice of using harsh terms without first establishing a good reason. Even then, the decent, careful and respectful use of labels with people and opinions is always appreciated.

These suggestions are biased by my own personal experiences: I wrote my masters thesis in anthropology at a major midwestern U.S. university in explicit support of the macroevolution of primates, the evolution of sexual behavior in primates to be exact. That wasn't being unintelligent at the time. I just held a different theoretical explanation for the same findings as I do now (actually fewer at that earlier date). It has been my long-term belief that this is the most basic difference between the origin camps in America, all insults and purgative labels aside. ID scientists (but not many creationists in my experience) appear to realize this fact. Unfounded criticism is one of the first things typically heaped on evolution by creationists meeting an ID proponent for the first time, but not by ID proponents. That is the fair-play reason why ID's different historical roots and ideological distinctiveness deserve to be more widely recognized. But there is little fair play or attentiveness to the issue of truth shown in debates of origins these days. It has the flavor of a battle waged between political interest groups.

A resolution of the hostilities should come down to a matter of preparing good historical accounts versus promoting the self interest of one's profession. It is a quick and easy fix to post creed-based reactions in a bombastic manner. Similarly, one can get an emotional lift from contributing a one-sided salvo into the perceived climate of a war of propaganda. However, some ID scientists are former evolutionists. As a result, harsh views against evolutionists typically will be hard to come by from them. On the other hand, whenever a position or point is counterproductive to the evolutionists' cause nowadays, some of the latter group won't readily or easily admit that it is a valid fact even when it has become a matter of simple historical record. Just like failing to admit Stephen Gould's remark about the lack of transitional fossils being the biggest kept secret in evolutionist circles or Karl Popper's quickly retracted remark that the theory of evolution was among the most unsatisfying of all scientific explanation, it's as much like pulling teeth to get evolutionists to admit these facts as it is to get a Bible-based believer to admit that microevolution is a scientifically proven fact. It may even someday reduce down to different definitions of what various groups consider evolution to be, although this could also turn out to be a gross oversimplification of the facts. Still, creationists and evolutionists' stubborn and blind dismissal out-of-hand of any position-damaging evidence and the direct consequences of such an approach to evidence seem to be the most profound and poignant feature in the whole debate. It is blind, but not dumb faith at work, I suggest. It derives not from any real lack of intelligence, but from insular adamant support on both sides from some interest groups, a very harsh political agenda within others, and a dogmatic way of perceiving things in a few very vocal proponents.

There are thus extremists and shallow-minded thinkers on both sides. Writing from the standpoint of feeling aggrieved is part of being human. I wouldn't call any of it dumb, however. It is just not a characteristic feature of being a generally tolerant, highly reflective professional who is willing to look at the assumptions underlying his or her positions and admit the magnitude and direction of their effects. Instead, many proponents slide across the surface of established rules, detesting caveats and immediately rejecting all thinking to the contrary, even though Darwin's own writings reflect a deliberation in thought and care in reasoning carried to the extreme. Then again, I too have been caught on the Internet with my pants down on that hopefully infrequent, irreverently bad day.

Intelligence Lies at the Heart of the Biological Progress of Nature

ABSTRACT: First of all, the concept of embryonic, rudimentary intelligence is presented. Such sensory input-output response appears not only in animals, but in some plants as well. The example of a Venus flytrap is presented. Secondly, the fact that the fossil record shows compelling evidence that intelligence and complexity have increased in a curvilinear fashion over time is discussed. The branching in Darwin's tree of life is likened to seasonal renewal in flowering plant life. Assuming intelligence is behind the process, could it be a seasonal growth-life cycle with rather broad systems output implications? This is contrasted with the more mechanical process of soil accumulation and development mixed with times of erosion and decay, an alternative analogy. Thirdly, evolutionary discussions are likened to a granular view of matter and ID views to a systems-functional one. The possibility that intelligence exists more generally in nature than is commonly believed is also raised. Intelligence of some form is clearly behind the actions of organisms active in the environment. Could there also be a general targeting system in nature, propelling biological and physical structures (planets, for instance)upward towards more general and higher levels of operation? That is, could intelligence be an active agent itself to affect selection and change? If not, it is its conspicuous absence that should be a matter for great concern, because this is otherwise incongruous with most of what we know about cause in physical world phenomena. Upward bias and intelligent functions certainly exist in nature. Can we find their antecedants in more than simple statistical descriptions of genes making up things? Intelligence at the source of the domestication of plants and animals is cited as one example.

Rudimentary intelligence has been independently produced several times on this planet. In addition, its sequential and repeated enhancement has occurred many more times, and there is strong evidence of this in the tree of life, the fossil record. Relative brain-body ratio and associated intelligence do not appear to have gone down with new speciation typically; if anything, they have increased overall in a successive, relentless, systems-enhancing manner!

Although evolutionists bring up a very few analogies of complex systems like tornadoes and hurricanes to explain cascading unintelligent systems, such weather system models are too basic and short-lived to explain the course and progression of planet life. Although evolutionists have been looking for such explanatory models of progressively complex phenomena to replace intelligent causal ones for more than a century, they are still hard put to find any useful analogies in the task. Nature's logic may be pitted against it. Evolution thus remains weak in terms of its explanatory power. It remains at the descriptive and simple suggestive levels.

A more fitting weather analogy to use to explain the systems connection to the evolutionary tree of life would be crop circles. Crop circles approach the intricate and elaborate character of intelligently derived systems. Surprisingly, however, evolutionists shy away from such models. Any model that can be linked to the paranormal or to intelligent behavior is generally considered out-of-bounds by them. Still and by far, the largest number of explanations and analogies in nature for complex systems are best explained using direct cause, intelligent-control, or stimulus-response models. The aggregate-summative chaos model of mutation combined with reproduction-only controlled selection is simply a wrong choice for framing the evolution of life.

In terms of developmental transitions, the branches in the tree of life look more like graphic illustrations with time on the X axis of seasonal seeding-sprouting cycles than of seasons of soil accumulation and development mixed with times of erosion and decay! Both views of the evolutionary process are actually useful. They are helpful analogies at the level of description. Actually, the analogies are descriptions of farming cycles, though each one is different in terms of its basic scope and focus: the first attempts to trace systems history; the second, particle history. The two views are valid, though not equal in import. Of course, the first one is my own view of epoch-length biological/structural progress. It is an analogy about renewal in flowering plant life. It refers to a seasonal growth-life cycle with rather broad systems output implications. This former model also adds a goal-oriented perspective on to the process. The second view, on the other hand, is a simple mechanical description based on soil (particle) analysis. It is a comparative tracing of a field's soil deposition, composition and development. Later on, I may go into greater depth in discussing this topic if it finds an interested audience, or an interesting audience.

Evolutionary/ID discussions often trace along similar fossil record lines. However, discussions of process remain at different levels: the granular view versus the systems-functional one. Neither view provides immediate empirical insights on cause, either deductively or implicitly. Genetic treatments of evolution are the particle physics view of genomes taken almost to the extreme analogy of a perpetual motion machine. ID treatments are the itinerant, indefatigable, mistake-prone, although ultimately successful inventor view of organisms (referring back to Thomas Edison's style of invention during his early years). Now, enough of what might turn out to be purely esoteric musings and surreal over-descriptions of the two main parties involved in the current national origins debate! More barbs will follow, at the price of listening to my harping on the need for more independent thinkers in theoretical science. However, these are rooted in my view of the current status of theoretical explanations as used by traditional evolution versus the established ID model.

Views are not perfect. And neither is science perfect--ever. But many people want and need them to be perfect. We have a whole host of perfectionists parading around America and on the Internet,'a'-plying a utopian-like vision. That is, they are pining over what all of us including the intellectuals or pundits should be singing (in unison, of course)! They'd love to hold the position of trade-show host or tour guide for the rest of us! But any perfectionist (or dogmatist for that matter) cannot end up being the best analyst or scientist as a matter of principle. This is because such people frequently overstate the facts supporting their own positions and understate any opposition's. It is a personality trait antithetical to science. Look for this telltale sign or activist's trademark, as it reveals a character trait that is fundamentally at odds with the tenative nature of truth in science, a policy that every scientist is supposed to ingrained with when trained in the research methodology of his or her field!

Returning to more particulars: Remarkable sensory input-output response appears not only in animals, but in some plants as well. But in plants, intelligence is non-neural. Take the Venus flytrap, for instance. It sensitive 'hairs' trigger a nearby mouth to close in an instant when they are touched, and this reaction is quick enough to catch a fly. Later, the catch triggers a secretion sequence--the soft parts of the hapless creature are then digested, absorbed as nutrients that help the plant survive and reproduce. Although it has no brain or neurons as we currently conceive of them, these response systems are quite analogous to the nervous system in animals, and not unlike the control systems in computers built using sensors, triggers, and transducers in control/feedback loops. Intelligence in the most basic sensing-processing sense is at the root of the Venus flytrap's physical, targeted reactions.

We may not be giving nature proper credit for the windfalls it has been pulling off for millions of years! It generated intelligence in plants. Maybe it has done so in control genes, too. And perhaps intelligence can even be found in microbes! If so, this would go a long way towards illustrating the need for a new definition of intelligence. It would also have the effect of supporting the view that an intelligent targeting system probably exists in nature that has been steering biological progression upward in the tree of life. Something has most definitely been harmonizing the various branches of the tree of life. It could also be building to a grand finale if the underlying cause behind the process is leading to functional enhancement, and not merely function-repetitive in character!

Most geneticists appear to prefer to skirt all discussions about physical cause and effect in evolution, subordinating such discussions to the level of description governing the behavior of microscopic particles, or else they refer to a model illustrating the fortunate, advantageous rolls of the dice. I maintain that these in most cases constitute little or no explanation at all. At the most, they stand as oversimplified and crude descriptions of what happened in the processes of the tree of life. They have some merit for description, but stand as simple and far too general outlines of the processes to be of any empirical and real explanatory (natural scientific) value. They should remain mere propoganda for the masses. However, they have turned into much more!

If there is such an embryonic precusor to intelligence in plants, perhaps it exists more generally in nature, and maybe in unexpected places, too! A philosophical question thus arises: Although intelligence of some form is clearly behind the actions of organisms active in the environment, could it also be propelling biological or physical structures (such as planets and ecosystems) upward towards some general or higher level of operation? That is, is intelligence merely a dead-end result in biological procession, or can it be an active agent itself to affect selection and change? Could it be both source and goal, and purpose and product in some cases? One answer to this is immediately obvious: Intelligence is the source of domestication of plants and animals. No natural selection should be emphasized here; it is all artificial selection at work. The cause is intelligent action, usually deliberate and routine, although at other times, it is completely inadvertant and unforeseen!

It may be worth identifying more areas in which intelligent selection is the controlling influence behind genetic progression. The answer might be found in the nature of causal events themselves (Are they mental or physical concepts?) or in other logical, underlying processes to be found in the universe. Pandemic operation of intelligence throughout nature is only one possibly.

The key to finding evidence of intelligent effect in the progress of biological complexity is probably in learning how to look for it. Most definitions of intelligence are stated in terms of bigger brains or higher mental functions. These are only two aspects of intelligence. Any basic intelligence acting within nature's fundamental fabric may simply be too slow for our biological minds to fathom or even perceive, much like our difficulty in understanding human speech recorded on a cassette recorder, then played back at a much slower speed. At some point in the slowdown, words become unintelligible even though the message remains an intelligent one. I think it is quite useful hypothesis that a 'lumbering, directional, persistent intelligence' is waiting to be found in nature, one that acts on some but not all structures of the universe, prompting directional change towards increased complexity. We appear currently untrained in detecting such intelligence, but this is a moot point since we haven't even been looking for it. Most evolutionists I've talked to say there is need to do so. However, I as of yet have not heard any serious attempts to explain cause behind this graduated, tenacious phenomenon of nature--of new species climbing to/reaching ever higher levels of intelligence and biological complexity. Environmental changes are not very likely directional or tenacious enough so as to empower such an upward-development bias. Something has been causing or prompting it, and the answer is not likely to be found solely in the statistical incidences of genes or the probabilities of mutations.

We may be looking in the wrong place. Intelligence of such a rudimentary, directional sort could be as simple as a resonance in nature. Or it might impinge on different facets or be inherent in multiple levels of nature, from molecules to genes, or even in the habitual motor functions (such as the heart beat and digestive functions) of organisms. Checking for the actions of intelligence couldn't hurt. It may only impact on our current views of evolution. To those who say no evidence of intelligent selection yet exists, I can say confidently: Unidirectional change, namely, upward progress in complexity has been occuring for millions of years and continues all around us today. Open your eyes and minds to the possibility of intelligent action. Take a more functional/systematic view of physical things. Begin to attribute refined cause and directional momentum to nature, i.e., gain a real understanding of the increasing complexity of systems operating all around you--instead of being satisfied in a mere numbers game at the explanatory level of descriptive statistics.

Why ask for investigations into cause? Evolution is the final statement on biological matters, isn't it? Maybe not. It may be more a superficial description at the processual level than any type of causal explanation at all. Explaining the tree of life as a process based essentially on the accumulation of environmentally advantageous traits may be myoptic, trivial, and circular in nature, i.e., not a statement of cause at all. Do corporations report on product development and record track records by resorting to descriptions at the atomic level? Then why do we tolerate geneticists reducing biological products down to mere statements of genes? What about some explanation of cause, too? Evolution may turn out to be a dumbed-down variable and description set offered by over-indulgent fans infatuated with genetic parsimony instead of being concerned about empirically identifiable environmental causes. Even if evolution is not the latter, it cannot hurt to try and find out.

Who Am I?

ABSTRACT: Next, I want to introduce myself. I have already presented my views on intelligent design. Maybe readers want know who I am and what my qualifications are for writing about this subject.

I am a former doctoral student and teaching assistant in anthropology. I received an M.A. in Anthropology at the main campus of a state university in the midwestern U.S. I wrote my masters thesis in the mid-1980s in explicit support of what is now commonly called macroevolution, namely, on the evolution of sexual behavior in primates. I took most of my graduate courses in anthropology in the subfields of cultural and physical anthropology. I spent several years as a doctoral student in the department.

As doctoral student in anthropology, I spent four years studying evolution. I was also the graduate student representative for the Department of Anthropology and head of the Social Science Division for the university's Graduate Student Association for one year. In the following year, I became vice president of that same student council, serving one year in the executive office. This made me the second highest ranking graduate student in terms of student politics on the huge campus. As such, I was no lightweight student in the Department of Anthropology.

For now, I will skip ahead: Currently I work as an ESL teacher. My specialty is ESL reading for junior highs. I teach English as a Second Language to both adults and children. I am married and have two children. I live and work happily in Japan, and have done so for the past 17 years.

What is Naturalistic Intelligent Design?

ABSTRACT:I first offer an overview and then provide a definition of naturalistic intelligent design (NID). I do so by discussing each term making up NID. In a world where creationism elaborates views of religions and traditional ID encroaches on them, and where evolutionary theory borders on the use of magical, mechanical explanations in the sense of magic as defined by Bronislaw Malinowski (offering largely process/step, noncausal explanations) as well as unmeasurable, grandiose abstractions of processes, naturalistic intelligent design may end up being the best nature-focused explanation for origins. Each of its models must be entirely naturalistic in scope and composition and include at least one feature of intelligence as a contributory cause. No reference to or use of supernatural explanations is made. NID models, nonetheless, span the whole gamut of scientific levels of consideration ranging up to hard physical science explanations such as control genes operating as intelligent processors, down through the socio-intelligence causes of domestication, to pseudo-scientific views such as time travel and alien modification of genomes. At the end of this entry, I leave a very succinct overview of my secondary research findings and a prospectus for future natural intelligent design research.

The need for naturalistic intelligent design models seems rather obvious: Modern science has practically ignored discussions of intelligence as a factor in cause. Many research investigations and explanations work around factors involving high levels of integration, instead atomizing and mechanizing processes along the way. Science here tends to favor parsimony, and this approach could be overly reductionistic as a result. Loving naturalism does not require one to be in bed with parsimony or fascinated by particle physics or mechanical representation. In some scientific fields, a tabu exists on using input-output processed activity in explanations, and this is very evident in studies of origins. Probably, origin studies have atomized their explanations in order to avoid the high levels of integration that consider functional, systemic activity or the processing of sensory input/outputs as a cause in genetic change. Consequently, they avoid tests that could investigate cause to avoid getting involved with detailed explanations, focusing instead on probabilities or general qualitative processes. It turns some of their explanations into descriptive statistical statements, and others of them into nonempirical esoteric propositions. Empirical testing lies in the middle ground between the two, and is usually missing. Naturalistic intelligent design seeks to correct this, to judiciously put back into scientific investigation some of what has been imprudently deleted or just merely ignored.

I did not invent the term naturalistic intelligent design (NID). Other writers have used it, including Warren Bergerson, Glenn Shrom (See Response 15), and Chris Cogan. Bill Schultz has made a call for the development of such a field of study and CJYMAN has posted some very lucid and intriguing discussions of the term on the Internet. Here I will provide mainly my own ideas, since current discussions of the term do not demonstrate any long-standing or elaborate use of the term. Of course, the best definition would be developed in collaboration with a group of knowledgable contributors, so I especially would like to request reader assistance in this area. Please feel free to offer comments about defining NID. If you do so near the time of the blog posting, I promise to seriously consider your comment, refining my own definition as needed. In the following paragraphs, I will supply a discussion and definition of the term NID organized around an explanation of each of the words comprising it. I take this basic initial approach in hopes of simplifying understanding for readers.

Naturalism is the queen of the sciences. It is one of the finest, most enduring tenets to be found in science. The doctrine has a long and venerable history. Many scientists cling to it adamantly, often as a matter of scientific integrity or firm professional principle, and this is especially true of people who study origins, the topic area I will discuss in this blog. Indeed naturalism has long filled the role of watch-dog for science, legitimizing knowledge and keeping scientific inquiry distinctive and resilient. It also protects it from ideologies that actively compete against it in society and would otherwise pollute it: intuition, common sense, revelation, tradition, mores, a priori beliefs, societal prescriptions, and social prejudices, just to name a few. And this is not to mention views that can and do corrupt science due to government’s oftimes support and abuse of it—political views. Science's long-standing policy of conducting scientific research by amassing real world data and performing natural observation has kept it a productive and secular enterprise. It also has resulted in the fundamental grounding of all scientific explanations in the physical world and in real world causes. There is much to be said for this. Much good has come from it. Naturalistic intelligent design works within this framework of naturalism.

Scientific naturalism is applied as one of science's investigatory policies. Science routinely excludes phenomena having no real world referents. Science thus becomes investigation, explanation and theoretical conjecture performed using purely natural terms. This historic practice of conducting investigation into phenomena as a purely real world, physical activity has gone so far as to result in the terms science, empiricism, and naturalism becoming nearly synonymous, at least, in the common person’s vernacular. Becoming a scientist is thus virtually equivalent to being acculturated in the investigation of real world processes and/or phenomena.

Scientific methodology, too, is essentially empirical in character, and this is especially true in the so-called hard physical sciences. No appeal is made to realms of the supernatural, magical, or religious for any explanation or description. Notwithstanding, scientific theory does at times have to venture outside a purely observational realm; it has to include parameters that as yet remain outside the realm of the observed, the well-defined, or the well-understood factors of the physical world. This is to explain things. Take the Big Bang, quarks, and genotypes, for example. None of these phenomena can (or could) be directly observed. This caveat is largely limited to the domain of projecting process and cause in theoretical propositions. That is to say, to argue empirical science is essentially rooted in nature and natural observation is not to say that it is an all-seeing enterprise.

I adhere to the doctrine of naturalism. However, I do take issue with what I see as a related matter: I think there is a wanton, non-rigorous dependence on gradualism in origins studies at this time in history. Accumulative gradualism has been confused with naturalism. The view of gradualism as a biological process of accretion is relied on too heavily to be of any practical good in science. I have seen it used as a black box substitute to avoid the need of rigorous, detailed investigation in evolutionary studies. This action is lazy, regretful and completely unnecessary. The appeal to regular, near-limitless time epochs in evolutionary events is a lax approach. It is in fact a scientifically degrading activity, most often performed in most brazen fashion to demonstrate allegiance to the status quo and insulate evolutionary doctrines from legitimate critique. Such long expanses of time ought to be only considered a backdrop on which biological progression has been played out. They are not sufficient, real world cause in and of themselves. Gradualism thus used as a mindnumbing tonic cannot be legitimately substituted in the place of evidence and establishment of cause. Else references to slow, gradual (and thus regular or periodic) progress become an ode to ignorance and pat answer reassuring only the 'faithful', i.e., a cliché’ to keep one professionally above disrepute. In my opinion, Stephen Gould's model of evolution removed the psychological need for uncritical reliance on the exaggerated claims of gradualism in biology and genetics.

In terms of intelligence, what I am most intrigued about is the real world's myriad, brilliant, and intricate features allied with the resilient physical march upward in terms of greater complexity. This latter feature appears to be fundamental across the full operations of nature. This is to say there is an absolute skew in many physical world phenomena (not only in biology) toward increasing complexity over time and an inherent bias in reactions and reproduction for greater intelligence over time. It is as if the universe were biased in favor of complexity and intelligence as well as for enhancing them as a general rule. This sole, undeniable (?)fact is perhaps the best short answer for explaining origins in existence today (at least, according to NID), not any religious views or current, partial scientific views that describe some happenstance or chaotic outcome issuing from directionless processes. Otherwise, an upward direction of processes tangent has to be an accidental shew/bias that our universe has set off on; then its focus becomes a marginally novel or accidentally unique destination only in terms of our standpoint or localized perception. If there is accordingly no underlying cause, i.e., only accident, upward progression should level/top out, or at least show signs of not repeating in myraid variety and at multiple levels of nature.

When I get doubtful of NID, I wonder: Do complexity and intelligence exist as absolute or relative terms? Do they actually exist in the natural world or only in our minds? Perhaps it is an understanding of questions such as this one that will ultimately prove to be the best description our universe. Nevertheless, we should not lose sight of the fact that the novel description is still essentially a description, not an explanation or a cause. Is science actually capable of doing any better? Then follows the corollary, too: Might there be no first cause or starting point, i.e., not only in physics, but in biology as well? Would a biological big bang and any predating causes actually matter?

In my opinion, observations of complexity and intelligence in nature provide some of the most powerful and compelling evidence for the existence of a function of intelligent design in nature. Stated in this way, the underlying of NID cannot easily be denied. However, categorical denial is all many lazy or reductionist-minded people contribute to scientific discussions on origins these days. I call it the introductory/undergraduate (instead of resorting to the closed-minded) approach. Brilliant features reflected in the details of understanding the physical world's makeup, operations and activities (for instance, the physical world's interrelationships, functions, cycles, and biological niches) of necessity show at minimum a directed and persistent bias has operated in nature for many millions of years at multiple levels, and at most, an ongoing process of perfecting instantiated ideals, employing morphology or functional analogies and targets, has occurred. They make the generalized terms of environmental (natural) selection appear as inadequate explanations for the directionality exhibited in the fossil record.

The processes involved may be elusive. They may exist on a plane of operation above the operational understanding (although not the perusal) of biological minds. Nature's functions at this level may be more akin to a computer control mechanism or sensory input/output organ than a biological organism with a brain and drive or will. Even the plant kingdom appears smarter, more persistent, and tenacious in terms of ecology and its oversight of natural processes than we do, routinely speaking (i.e., humans and society).

Such observations could turn origins research on its head, so to speak. Making sense of an intricately operating, ever-increasingly complex, and increasingly smarter universe is equivalent to functionally interpreting it as an intelligent one in terms of its operations and resilient motion or directivity. This has become my definition of naturalistic intelligent design as of late. This view has also turned my pursuit of this subject from an erstwhile hobby into my habitual passion. It is the main reason why I started this blog. Oh, one more thing influenced the choice as well: I'm seeking out other people of similar persuasion or involved in the same kind of intellectual pursuit. Please contact me if you are interested in establishing any form of naturalistic intelligent design rubric.

Intelligence in my view is a prominent and near pervasive feature of the natural world. It should not be merely overlooked for the sake of competing views, but it often is. It should be investigated; but it almost never is. And statements of cause are impoverished by its conspicuous absence. What I am saying here is that the term is under-utilized and dodged for the purpose of most academic explanations. It is as if the matter has been settled conclusively or ruled out categorically in the court of most people's minds. The rationale most typically used is that there is no need to explain further due to nature of parsimony, but the parsimony being referred to here is merely a reduction of the origins inquiry to its atomistic (actually, genetic) levels. Particle explanations applied to higher levels of integration become no explanations at all. For instance, would resorting to a description of atomic particle interactions serve to definitively explain a game played on the Nintendo Wii System? I doubt it. Furthermore, the term intelligence is variously defined, and this complicates discussions, too.

The following situation exists: It is like a defense attorney in our age only needs to provide an excuse to explain away all victimization (cause)at any criminal trial--making an appeal to either the mere interactions of the instruments at the crime scene or an appeal to fate. The appeal becomes the authority, the final word on the matter, and all consideration is thereby stopped. Similarly, a simple-minded gloss or appeal to evolution as the comprehensive, authoritative explanation for biological progression is often employed in science to silence all calls for investigations that would further explain the nature of physical world cause. Once evolution is set in place as the visualized general explanation for origins, all further causal investigation typically ceases. In this sense, evolution is filling the same dogma-preserving role that religious councils did in the Enlightment. The real motive is elitist: to 'protect' the simple-minded masses from being 'fooled' by their inquisitive nature and 'charlatans'. The 'charlatans' are people not toeing the line in the Establishment.

I am aware that I construe intelligence to be a more prominent and persistent force in the physical world than most academics will admit. Still I maintain the scope of intelligent selection in the natural world is larger than what it traditionally has been presumed to be. Its commonly used sense—a mental capacity providing mere guidance for organisms’ actions and physiological processes issuing from the brains and nervous systems in organisms-is insufficient. Computer science has proven intelligence can be more than that. But how much more salient a factor in the real world is it? In my perspective, intelligence is a broader and more saturating phenomenon than most people dare realize, one analogous more to sensory processing and stimulus/response than thinking. Specifically, biological input/output processing, automatic control, and the timing of sequential processes show that intelligence in many organisms is like control processing or coaxing more than it is an act of the intellect or from decision making. We are sometimes slaves to the blinders of our limited mindset and terminologies. Past experience with IQ tests biases many people's conception of intelligence. I also intend to use the term of intelligence both as descriptive and causal (rather than appealing to random coincidence or natural selection alone) in nature, explaining repeated real biological events, analogies seen implicit in physical structures, insights revealing functions, identification of systems and interdependent relationships, and connected, biological processes. In addition, I even sometimes see intelligence at work in the molecular level. The operations of DNA, genes, chromosomes, proteins, anatomical growth, as well as many other physiological processes demonstrate some of aspects of it, especially the presence of complex management of functions, information input-output, specific timing of events, and sequential selective control. Intelligence is also the prime factor that has guided the domestication of plants and animals, and not even solely by human hosts.

The intelligent design paradigm envisions at minimum one of the following as biological targets in the upward-complexity march of organisms: either a pre-planned or pre-envisioned purpose, function, systemic structure/hierarchy, goal or need, or process(es), where it apparently serves to guide the biological progression of species upward. As such, it is more deductive than Darwinism. Darwin posited only an organism’s needs in the natural environment as differentially selective and directionally facilitative. Basically, he wrote of the progression of species as guided by the a very general but potent need, that of surviving to achieve procreation. Evolution therefore theoretically stands outside the prompting of any discernible map, directional influence, or other agency, including biases that could impel it to greater degrees of complexity, intelligence, or physical integration. It thus is more inductive, tracing out its own path to genetic potential using the environment, rather than following its natural structures and principles as a guide. That is why I choose to promote naturalistic ID, or artificial selection, instead of evolution. Naturalistic ID posits a physical world that inherently shadows, even statistically follows high level constructs of nature increasingly over time. Evolution, on the other hand, reflects nature toying in products randomly, mixing and miming functions accidentally over and over again; all the while remaining completely ignorant or oblivious to actual physical functioning or sensory based, input-output control (intelligence) nature may exhibit. Intelligence being behind anything in evolution is a no-no. Any preponderance of evidence to the contrary will not matter. Sorry to say, the current policy in science that suspends the null hypothesis and empirical testing in matters relating to evolution makes a majority of criticisms levelled against nonevolutionists a moot point.

In this blog, I will attempt to describe as well as solicit views from others on natural phenomena, causes, and explanations, especially those that can be attributed to intelligent selective action. I consider the operation of intelligence to be ascertainable in the fossil record, history of the domestication of species, the action of genes, control of complex systems, biological organs’ development and functioning, and even the repetitive features of the physical environment and their analogous structures found throughout multiple levels of the physical universe. These can be objects or events that can be attributed to intelligent operations in terms of a structural description, process, integration, function, antecedant or cause, i.e., from any perspective of observation. (Evolutionists typically deal with only the first two.) Whether I am right or wrong in my pursuit of this remains to be seen in particular cases, I am aware. Still it is a verifiable fact that investigations generally don't find what they fail to look for, even in spite of the fact that investigators' propositions are rarely all correct. So why not have a look is the real question.

Also in this blog, I will strictly avoid any appeals in explanation to theism and discussions about the supernatural. Instead, I intend to outline some of my ideas about intelligent design that are anchored in the actions of nature and of physiology alone, particularly as they are vested in the feature that I call natural intelligence. This inquiry will run the full gamut of seeking intelligence at play at the molecular and genetic levels (in DNA and control genes) up through the work of intelligence exhibited in complex actions and functions of brains. Even inanimate statistical processes (such as the population forces at work in the domestication of species by humans and animals) are candidates for the term intelligent action. I will exhibit Homo sapiens as showing signs of domestication (defined as the selective, accumulative effects of intelligence, manipulation and curtailing of environmental influences, and control by culture) more than from natural selection. I attribute reduction in cranial size, reduction in sexual dimorphism, preponderance of gracile morphological features, and enhanced hand-thumb dexterity to artificial selection, i.e., ultimately, to natural intelligence or naturalistic intelligent design.

I will not, however, attempt to resolve any single matter once and for all--and especially as concerns the highly ambitious (and what I consider scientifically presumptuous) goal of determining ultimate origins or first causes. Instead, I will leave that to the philosophers, theologians, and cosmologists. I will primarily be looking for the forces and events at work that provided impetus or catalyst to biological, neurological, and cultural progression upward in complexity--from the smallest of functions and organisms all the way up to smartest.

NOTES: Consult the web pages below for references by writers mentioned above to the term and/or subject content of "naturalistic intelligent design":

Warren Bergerson at http://www.iscid.org/boards/ubb-get_topic-f-6-t-000368.html

Glenn Shrom at http://austringer.net/wp/index.php/2009/02/22/origins-of-intelligent-design-again/

Chris Cogan at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/theevolutiondeceit/message/7486 and at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/creationevolutiondebate/message/39811

Bill Schultz at www.infidels.org/library/modern/bill_schultz/crsc.html

Also, see more from CJYman at http://cjyman.blogspot.com/2008/02/sum-it-all-up.html