If you want to be a respected creationist speaker, you first have to master the technical language. To start you on that difficult path, we present this new post from the Discovery Institute. It’s titled Understanding “Information” — A Key to the Intelligent Design Debate, and it was written by Klinghoffer. Here are some excerpts, with bold font added by us for emphasis, and occasional Curmudgeonly interjections that look [like this]:
Vital to Stephen Meyer’s arguments in his books — including the latest, Return of the God Hypothesis [Link omitted!] — is the concept of information.
Ooooooooooooh! Information! We once tried to explain it — see Phlogiston, Vitalism, and Information, where we said:
It’s something like pixie dust. It’s in your DNA. Without information, DNA is just … well, it’s a big molecule. But when the ghostly goodie of information is added — Shazam! Yes, it’s rather like vitalism, but the Discoveroids don’t want you to notice that.
You’ll probably agree that Klinghoffer does a much better job defining the concept. He says:
It’s a word we all use routinely, without perhaps knowing what it means in the context of debates about intelligent design.
Ah yes, in that context, we must yield to the special knowledge of the Discoveroids. He tells us:
As Dr. Meyer explains with great clarity in a short video below [Ooooooooooooh! A Discoveroid video!], information as defined by mathematician Claude Shannon has to be distinguished from specified, functional information, of the type found in computer code, written language, and DNA. It’s information in the latter sense that calls for an inference to design:
We know you’re lost, so here’s some info on Information theory and Claude Shannon. All clear? Well, consider the mistake made by the fellow Klinghoffer now quotes:
One self-deprecating viewer commented, “Don’t use the Shannon argument unless you understand it really well. I tried using it and got my butt handed to me on a spade shovel. [Gasp!] Nevertheless, random information, such as Shannon info, doesn’t require a specific, functional sequence. Dr. Meyer’s discussion here helps clarify the point.”
In other words, you gotta know what you’re talking about — like the Discoveroids do. Klinghoffer ends his impressive post with this:
The video is a sample lesson from Meyer’s DiscoveryU course, “Stephen Meyer Investigates Scientific Evidence For Intelligent Design.” [Link omitted!] Complete with reading assignments and quizzes, the course is a great way to polish your skills in explaining ID to others without suffering a spade-shoveling mishap of your own.
Okay, dear reader, now you know how inadequate you are to discuss the Discoveroids’ awesome science of intelligent design.
Copyright © 2021. The Sensuous Curmudgeon. All rights reserved.
The Sensuous Curmudgeon 
Maybe they should talk about the Informative Designer.
So it isn’t “information” as recognised in mathematics. No, no. It’s more! It’s complex, specified information where how complex and by what criteria specified is never stated. You just know it’s complex and specified when you look at it. That’s got to be better than mathematics.
Mathematicians don’t know squat, anyway. They don’t even know much about numbers. They don’t even know why, if you take any whole positive number you like, multiply it by three and add one, and take the result and halve it, and keep doing the first if the product is odd and the second if the product is even, you will always – ALWAYS! – end in the infinitely repeating series 4-2-1. They say it’s a mystery.
They don’t get to say that. Only religions get to do that. Anybody else, why, if they don’t know something, that shows they know nothing. Stands to reason.
And then there are “complex” and “specified”.
But really what I would like to hear about is “design”.
And I am serious about that. Is there some good “introduction to design” or some such which exists in the real world which a serous philosopher would accept … some basic principles of design?
I know from decades of experience that ID advocates aren’t going to help.
I’m sure the “philosopher of science” Stephen Meyer will instruct us very well about the Shannon doohicky so that we never have any embarrassing mishaps. Where do I sign up.
Are the discoveroids going to get around to explaining how their favorite god invented electromagnetism so that simple chemical elements could combine to form DNA in a sequence that contains the “specified complexity” (or something) that built the common ancestor of living things? In the meantime, I’ll relax by looking at the coverage of the standard model on the CERN website.
@TomS The short answer is “no.” A longer answer is “nope.” And, internationally speaking, “No way, José.”
This must be Old Meyer which is no different from Meyer or Future Meyer. It’s Meyer’s old Tackle and Electrical Supply Emporium – Meyer’s Bait and Switch. Tells you he’s going to tell you about information, or design or framastats or whatever, tells you everything else under the Sun and somehow runs out of time, oops gotta go, take a hike, Mike, and set you free.
Remember, “ID” creationism is a marketing scam, nothing more. It’s less than a homeopathic weight loss remedy. Totally made up, and lazy at that. I mean, even Tolkien explained Elvish! Twenty-five years ohne Paddel den Scheißbach hinauf and they have gone nowhere.
There are things which are impossible to design, depending on what one was by “design”.
One cannot solve certain puzzles, like to trisect an arbitrary angle with the standard methods.
One cannot construct an object as depicted in an Escher drawing.
One cannot design DNA according to arbritrary specifications of the proteins which it produces.
But to make such claims, one has to have some specifications about what “design” is.
Arrow’s Theorem says that one cannot design a voting system which meets some simple criteria of goodness.
Is there anything that one can say about “design”, that any reasonable person will agree with?
@TomS Brushing aside the “ID” creationists disingenuous word games. Lots of words have clear definitions. A triangle is a geometric figure with three sides (Euclidian). A cat describes God’s chosen animal.
“Design” is fuzzier which is why “ID” creationists latched on to it. It can mean whatever they want. Does a paper wasp design its nest? Looks designed to me. The wasp certainly works it with intent, but could a paper wasp build a cubic nest or a multi-story nest? If a bucket of paint falls off a shelf in my garage and splatters on the floor, could you tell the difference from a splatter I make by dropping paint deliberately with intent?
There is a reason “ID” creationists use archaeology as an example, the only example, of design. They know people make things. If you were traipsing through Scotland and found a spurtle on the ground, not being Scottish yourself, you would probably figure out that it was a piece of wood fashioned deliberately, but would you know what it was? A musical instrument, a religious token or a kitchen utensil used to stir oatmeal.
But, really, TomS, you really box yourself in by qualifying “design” as something any “reasonable person” would agree with. There are no True Reasonable Persons.
@doc1351
A vertebrate eye does not look like something designed. It grows along with other parts of a body as there are stretches of DNA. Nobody has a clue for what stretch of DNA would determine something which works like an eye. It is a very difficult problem to determine what a given stretch of DNA would produce. But the reverse problem, to design a stretch of DNA for growth of a target result – to put it mildly, nobody has a clue for how to go about that.
From the first hints of the design argument, back in the time of Socrates, Socrates takes the example of a statue, which everyone says is obviously designed, and then Socrates points out that a moving thing is far more than anything that we know of as being designed. Yes, and nobody pointed out to Socrates that that means that a living thing is NOT like any designed thing.
Of course, in the course of many centuries we have only discovered how much more complicated life is.
@TomS, link or reference to that Socrates bit? And the *whole point* of the Socratic method is coming to realise that you don’t know
@ Paul Bratermen: The Discoveroids themselves cite Book X Plato’s Laws here: Plato on Intelligent Design.
It’s no surprise that the Discoveroids cherish Plato, as did the early Churchmen–who also took great pains to suppress the prolific output of Epicurus.
Interesting to consider what the world would look like had the Epicurean rather than the Platonic strain of philosophy had been the major survivor from antiquity!
Oops, wrong link to Discoveroids in previous post: here’s the correct one
https://www.discovery.org/a/9731/
@Megalonyx, thanks. But I think the target is Democritus, rather than Epicurus who was slightly later. I may have mentioned earlier here that Epikoros is Yiddish for non-believer or heretic
@Paul Braterman
The Socrates bit is not from Plato, but Xenophon “Memorabilia” I 4 & IV 3 and Sextus Empiricus “Adversus mathematicos” IX 92-94.
Thanks, @TomS. The Xenophon contains the best statement of the argument that living creatures are designed, and that the Universe is designed by a loving deity for humanity’s benefit, that I have seen: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/1177/1177-h/1177-h.htm#link2H_4_0003 . And a dollop of Privileged Planet at https://www.gutenberg.org/files/1177/1177-h/1177-h.htm#link2H_4_0006 . can’t find a download for Sextus Empiricus. Megalonyx’ corrected link strikes me as a polemic by Socrates against atomism,”when an ingenious individual declares that all is disorder”
I now feel extremely disillusioned with Socrates, rightly praised for his penetrating questioning (see this for a good discssion: https://bostonreview.net/philosophy-religion/agnes-callard-against-persuasion), but here accepting far-fetched conclusions (a soull for the universe!) on the basis of the most tenuous analogies
Paul Braterman, don’t judge Socrates too harshly. He was a pioneer in philosophy, but he was sufficiently effective that the city of Athens put him to death for teaching the youngsters to think too much.
@SC, Ofc You’re right and my comment was ridiculous. If anyone exhibits intellectual courage, and critical analysis of concepts, that is Socrates, and here both Plato and Xenophon agree. Perhaps what this discussion illustrates, is how even the best of us are bound by our cultural preconceptions.
Plato and Xenophon agree over what Socrates was accused of; in Xenophon’s words “Socrates is guilty of crime in refusing to recognise the gods acknowledged by the state, and importing strange divinities of his own; he is further guilty of corrupting the young.” But I also suspect a political dimension. Plato’s Socrates advocates a repulsive Republic similar to that of Sparta, and this in the immediate aftermath of the Peloponnesian War and the Spartan-imposed Rule of the Thirty.
@ Paul Braterman: Highly recommended book: The Trial of Socrates by the late great I.F.Stone.
@Meaglonyx, thanks.Ordered it from World of Books (my favourite supplier); £3.19 inc.postage
@Paul Braterman
The problem that I find in the design argument, one that seems to apply from the earliest form, is that the proponent overdoes it.
Socrates points out that a living thing is not like stuff that comes without a reason.
“Much more” he says, but does not point out how a designer could accomplish so much more.
It is like how a society could work the way we want. It would be nice if someone ordered it so. But if wishes were horses …
Socrates brings up the good placing of the eyes etc. But we have no example (in Socrates’ day) of designing any sensor like an eye. It wasn’t even clear what an eye did. What, in Socrates’ day, could be said of the purpose of the eye? Without an answer to that question, how can we claim a design?
@TomS, I don’t know what Socrates’ theory of causality was. Aristotle’s, a couple of generations later, notoriously included final cause. You and I, over 2000 years later, demand a pathway of physical causation, at least in principle, otherwise an explanation is incomplete, but I wonder if this gives some force to the DI complaint that we are making metaphysical assumtions.
@Paul Braterman
Socrates said that he was not interested in that sort of thing.
But he did raise the question about, say, the position of eyes, and said that it had to be due to purposeful design.
Nobody pointed out that no known designer ever chose light detectors, or anything at all like that, and nobody had a clue how to design them. Socrates said that it was beyond chance. I say that it is beyond design – it is no unlike anything that any designer was capable of, or even tried – how would one start?