Complex specified information indicates design

From EvoWiki

Contents 1 Claim 2 Source 3 Responses 4 Fallacies contained in this claim 5 External Links 6 Further Reading 7 Related claims 8 Acknowledgments

Claim

Design can be recognized by the following filter:

1. If an event E has high probability, accept Regularity as an explanation; otherwise move to the next step.
2. If the Chance hypothesis assigns E a high probability or E is not specified, then accept Chance; otherwise move down the list.
3. Having eliminated Regularity and Chance, accept Design.

This filter is equivalent to detecting complex specified information.

Source

• Dembski, W., 1998. The Design Inference: Eliminating Chance Through Small Probabilities, Cambridge University Press

Responses

1. The fundamental problem with Dembski's alleged 'Design Inference' is that its user is implicitly required to be omniscient. If you happen to be unaware of the actual explanation for a given event E, whatever figure you come up with for the probability of event E is going to differ from the true probability of event E -- and, worse, you have no way of knowing how far off your figure is, nor yet even if your figure is too high or too low! Because of its critical dependence on its user's level of knowledge, Dembski's 'Design Inference' cannot actually distinguish between "it's a product of Design" and "it's a product of some non-Design phenomena I'm clueless about".
2. Information can start off being simple and gradually become more complex. If this is the case, it passes the first criterion and is therefore not design. In fact, this notion is fundamental to the theory of evolution. Pointing out that we do not know every intermediate step that adds complexity does not invalidate this theory, as this criticism is an argument from ignorance fallacy.
3. One major flaw in his work is that he only proves complex specified information cannot be produced by random processes. He either neglects or deliberately ignores that evolution is not a random process. Mutation is a random process, but this is only one part of evolution. Natural selection, another major component of evolution, is not random. It is precisely the nonrandomness of selection which allows for the increase in information. This is the largest flaw in this theory - what he calls complex specified information can be produced by an unintelligent yet nonrandom process.
4. add more responses

Fallacies contained in this claim

• Sherlock Holmes Fallacy (if I can't explain it, it's Design)

External Links

• Mark Isaak's page for this claim [1]
• CreationWiki's comments [2]

Further Reading

• Fitelson, Brandon, Christopher Stephens, & Elliott Sober, 1999. How not to detect design. Philosophy of Science 66: 472-488. [3]
• Pennock, R., 1999. Tower of Babel. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA.

Related claims

• Design is detectable
• Complexity indicates design
• Irreducible complexity indicates design
• Dembski's filter can detect design
• Genetic algorithms require a designer to specify desired outcome
• Purpose indicates design
• Functional integration indicates design
• Similarities in DNA and anatomy are due to common design
• SETI researchers expect they can detect design

Acknowledgments