Dembski: "Evolutionists" & "Darwinists"

http://socraticmama.com/ [Inspiration & Support for Secular Families]
http://www.ses.edu/ :- 8th Nov., 2008. Hickory Baptist Church, Charlotte, NC. The National Conference on Christian Apologetics, presented by the Southern Evangelical Seminary. "A Summit On Defense of the Biblical Worldview." Keynote speaker was Dr. James Dobson. Other speakers included Chuck Colson of Breakpoint and Prison Fellowship Ministries; Josh McDowell, radio host, author and evangelist; Lee Strobel, journalist and best-selling author; Dinesh D'Souza, author and former senior policy analyst during the Reagan administration; Dr. David Noebel, worldview expert and founder of Summit Ministries; Del Tackett, leader of Focus On the Family's "The Truth Project"; Erwin Lutzer, best-selling author and pastor of Chicago's historic Moody Church; William Dembski, author, scholar, educator and expert on intelligent design

http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Michael_Behe
http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Irreducible_complexity
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darwin%27s_Black_Box
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flagellum
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn13663-evolution-myths-the-bacterial-fla...


http://health.adelaide.edu.au/Pharm/Musgrave/essays/Chapter_5_Musgrave.pdf
http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Kitzmiller_v._Dover_Area_School_District
http://pandasthumb.org/archives/2005/05/vacuity-of-id-d.html
http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/William_Dembski
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_A._Dembski :- William Albert "Bill" Dembski (born July 18, 1960) is an American proponent of intelligent design [ID], well known for promoting the concept of specified complexity. He is currently a Research Professor of Philosophy & Director of the Center for Cultural Engagement at the Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary at Fort Worth, Texas, & a senior fellow of the Discovery Institute's Center for Science and Culture. He is the author of a number of books about intelligent design, including The Design Inference (1998), Intelligent Design: The Bridge between Science and Theology (1999), The Design Revolution (2004), The End of Christianity (2009), and Intelligent Design Uncensored (2010). The concept of ID involves the argument that an intelligent mind is responsible for the complexity of life, and that it can be detected empirically. Dembski postulates that probability theory can be used to prove irreducible complexity, or what he calls specified complexity. ID & Dembski's concept of specified complexity—are seen by the scientific community as a form of conservative Christian creationism, attempting to portray itself as science.

Category:

Education

Tags:

• William Dembski
• evolution
• God
• creation
• religion
• intelligent design
• atheism
• atheist
• truth
• Jesus
• agnosticism
• darwin
• Bible
• Christianity
• science
• apologetics
• ses
• Hickory
• Baptist
• Charlotte
• Michael Behe
• Irreducible complexity
• Black Box
• Flagellum
• Kitzmiller
• Dover
• ID
• specified complexity
• Theology
• probability
• creationism
• creationist
• Baptists
• Dawkins

[prossihalty]

Thanks for this video. I liked the comments, they can be easily found. Demsky is very intellectually dishonest.

[nightjarflying]

@prossihalty And thank you for the "Thank you"! Yes you're right ~ I suspect he's even fooling himself to a degree. A self-liar as I call it.

[tubewatch59]

@nightjarflying

What do you believe in particular it is that Dembski is "self lying" about? Just putting forward ones arguments isn't "lying" according to any normal definition of lying. The question is, can you refute Dembski's argument? If you can't, and are accusing him of lying, perhaps it is you who is the one lying to yourself? I don't know what your particular objection is though, so help me out. What is the actual point that you believe that Dembski is lying (ie. wrong) about?

[nightjarflying]

@tubewatch59 ID states intelligence caused life's complexity & that it can be detected empirically. I.D. isn't science ~ it has no predictive power & no methodology or peer review. WD (to his credit) admits that I.D. is about Christianity: “[it's] just the Logos theology of John's Gospel restated in the idiom of information theory". He fails to define information & complexity mathematically & relies on both in his 'science'. He's got a Maths Ph.D. He's lying or 'self-lying'

[bigboy45454545]

In the first minute Dembski talks of our generation being lied to as he lies to people in the audience. Oh the irony, it burns.

[tubewatch59]

@nightjarflying

The relevance to ID and evolution (abiogenesis too, though they're different) is that we have a way to think about the functional information we observe in biology (which is more or less equivalent to it's specified complexity) and estimate whether or not evolution is capable of finding this amount of information without "knowing it" ahead of time. We can start estimating whether evolution is a feasible search algorithm (or not). That's why ID is more than just a "hunch".

[tubewatch59]

@nightjarflying

Finfo(F) = - log(2)[ 8 / 64 ] = - log(2)[0.125] = - - 3 = 3 fits of information.

Hey, we could also define "8 fits" as a "fight" ( ascompared to a byte)? :-)

Anyhow, the Finfo(F) measure gives us a way to quantitatively estimate the amount of "functional information" in a measure comparable to computerspeak. (fits, Fights (F), kF, MF,...)

It measures the information thats required to specify the function F, relative to the complexity (N) of the system S.

[tubewatch59]

@nightjarflying

> set=[FunctionF] is the set of those configurations of S that perform function F.

So we can state Szostak's measure of the functional information contained in the system S which performs FunctionF = Finfo(S(FunctionF))

Finfo(S(FunctionF)) = - log(base 2)[ SUM(S(config(set=[FunctionF]))­) / SUM(S(config(set=[1 to N]))) ] in the unit of "fits".

For example, in a system having 64 possible arrangements, of which 8 perform some function F, then Finfo(F) = -log(2)[8/64]...

[tubewatch59]

@nightjarflying

> SUM(S(config(set=[x]))) is how many configurations there are of S that belong to some set labelled as x. For instance, if some configurations of the system S caused it to be blue in colour, then SUM(S(config(set=[blue coloured]))) would be how many configurations of S that exist that are blue in colour.

> FunctionF is "some particular function", with a performance measure at or above "some specifed level".

> set=[1 to N] is the set of all possible configurations of S.

[tubewatch59]

@nightjarflying

(I'll use different symbols from the video)

> Finfo, is the measure of functional information in "fits" (a rather clever unit label which ties into "functional information", "fitness" & "bit").

> S(config(i)) is some system (eg. a protein) which can have various configurations or arrangements i=1 through to i=N. i being the ith configuration.

> N gives the number of how many arrangements of S can possibly exist. So i c can go from 1,2,3,..., up to N.

[tubewatch59]

@nightjarflying

I got this from the video you can check out (along with an attempted rebuttal by the poster (whom I also know from youtube - an OK guy by the way)) which is: watch?v=nH8xjjZpstk

This particular measure of functional information, defines it logarithically, so it can be stated in "bits" or "fits" (binary bits of functional information). Although the non-logarithmic version of this FI measure, is a ratio, and so kind of ties into a probability measure as well.

[tubewatch59]

@nightjarflying

Dembski "IDist" doesn't define functional information information in this video (a different kind of information to Claude Shannon's "???????ist" concerned with the transmission of signals over a medium), but interetingly it was Jack Szostak "evolutionist"/"Darwinist"/"ab­iogenesisist" fairly well known and respected biologist who defined a very useful quantitative measure of functional information (also tying into the concept of specified complexity) which i will give you...