Musings

Dembski’s excuse is that his area of expertise (philosophy) is arguably even further away from the matter at hand than Laughlin’s area of expertise.

To be fair, Laughlin has an additional excuse: he is simply engaging in the time-honored tradition of Nobel Prize Winners Saying Extremely Stupid Things About Fields Outside Their Area Of Expertise. Dembski has not won a Nobel Prize, so he is not allowed to invoke NPWSESTAFOTAOE as an excuse. Pity.

An interesting method of argument is used here: Two men outside of their area of expertise disagree, so here is someone (anyone) within that area of expertise, who must therefore be correct.

I shall use the same device as follows: “Lisa says that all men are preoccupied with TV. Sarah says that Lisa cannot assert that as true as she is not a man. Tom, a deranged psychopath, says that he is indeed precocupied with TV. Therefore, all men are obsessed with TV.”

Congrats Jacques! You got quoted by the fruitbat himself!

Dear Jacques,

I am not sure what’s so terribly funny. It’s pretty sad, I would say.

Weinberg’s quote - and not only this quote - is definitely an invitation for the intelligent design to science.

It does not matter whether we call him “God” or “Anthropic selection” - that’s just a detail of language. The important thing is that the Universe was created so that the humans would appear in it to the image of God (or anthropic selection, if you wish, it does not matter).

The explanations of physical phenomena should have the format that the purpose of the world is to create believing Sons of God (or intelligent life, once again, it’s the same thing, just a matter of language).

All the best
Luboš

WHy is Dembski so happy for that Laughlin qoute?

It is Obvious that Laughlin is correct. “Evolution did it!” is a very poor explanation.

One should keep track of what is explained and what is not. It is true that there holes in our knowledge - and just appealing to “Evolution” does not wash these away.

But how does Dembski conclude that Laughlin finds evolutionary theory unsatisfying?

I Think Dembski is guilty of a little wishful thinking!

/Soren

Geez: how many “…”s can Dembski cram into his quotes? Reading Dembski’s interpretation of what scientists have said about design is like eating a blender’s interpretation of delicately rolled sushi.

Jacques wrote “You need to read a little more Dembski. He’s not claiming that these statements by physicists and cosmologists leave the door open to ID people. He’s claiming that these physicists and cosmologists actually think that what they are seeing is Intelligent Design.”

In order to kick that reading off, I suggest Dembski’s essay “Intelligent Design Coming Clean”. In that piece he speculates on how an unembodied Designer might transmit “information” into the material universe. He writes:

“How much energy is required to impart information? We have sensors that can detect quantum events and amplify them to the macroscopic level. What’s more, the energy in quantum events is proportional to frequency or inversely proportional to wavelength. And since there is no upper limit to the wavelength of, for instance, electromagnetic radiation, there is no lower limit to the energy required to impart information. In the limit, a designer could therefore impart information into the universe without inputting any energy at all.”
http://www.designinference.com/documents/2000.11.ID_coming_clean.htm

Would one of you high-powered physicists enlighten me on how a zero-energy (and therefore zero channel capacity) infinite wavelength (and therefore unfocusable) EM carrier could “impart information into the universe” so as to attach flagella to bacteria?

I may seem overly simplistic regarding the topic of Intelligent Design and Anthropic Principle, still being only a student of physics, but here’s my $0.02.

Regarding things such as cosmological constant, we have a singular point of view, in that we cannot compare different results directly. Yes, we can do a theoretical analysis regarding the constant, and apply it to the evolution of universe and humans, but we still cannot compare two different cosmological constants. Meaning that we cannot say that this is the only configuration of constants that makes our lives possible (or even lives at all).

Like in real life, having only one eye kills your 3D vision, and gives you problems with 2D vision and use of it, I feel that the same problem extends in this case. Having no way to compare different cosmological constants, their efect on the universe and, if you forgive the personification, their prefered values, we cannot draw conclusions regarding it’s value especially not the meaning of it’s value.

I am not satistfied with anthropic principle as is, and I cannot even start to discuss Intelligent Design. To say that a thing we have singular input on has that value because we couldn’t be able to detect any other, can fly with me. But to claim it is has that value because something chose it so, that I can’t buy, and don’t intent to. At least not until we can discuss different values of cosmological constant based on experience, not theory.

To illustrate with evolution vs. intelligent design, until we stumble upon a extraterrestrial race that is identical to us (“made in the image of god”, right? so unless god hangs in the house of mirrors, there’s one image, one archetype), intelligent design has no scientific backup other than wishful thinking. Same as the geocentric system and the flatness of earth. Oooops!
:)