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

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

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

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

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.

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