Bring It? Okay, It's Been Brought
Dean
Since I've long considered Intelligent Design to be no more than harmless twaddle, I've been more than taken aback at the abuse I've taken, such as Richard Bennett calling me a member of the "religious right" on his blog. Reading about attempts to ruin people's academic careers over this has been horrible, too. Watching Steve Verdon recently behave like a pompous, fulminating jerk at the Commissar's place surely didn't help much either. All that flying spittle has been instructive though: I got it spewed at me not because I agree with the ID people--I don't--but because I don't fear them, I don't think the vehement reaction against them is constructive, and I don't think the bullying tactics of court-imposed censorship are a good idea. (You know, that sort of thing just never looks good, guys. It doesn't.)
Still, in our last go'round on this, several commenters here on Dean's World said they're itching to debate the ID people, to take them on on the merits and show that they have nothing to offer. That sounds promising. I have a better place to start than the Discovery Institute web site, though, which has too much material spread out over too many subjects. Instead, I found something that's timely, in the news, and detailed: William Dembski's Design Inference site, most specifically his Dover Expert Witness Report.
It's fairer game than the Discovery Institute's site anyway, since they have said repeatedly they don't want ID taught in the classroom. But guys like Dembski do argue that it should be taught in the classroom. That makes him fair game for that kind of debate then.
I confess after reading his Expert Witness report, I'm even less frightened of the ID bogeyman than I was before, but maybe you guys will spot something in there that I'm not seeing.
(By the way, I look forward to getting trackbacks on this calling me a liar, a drunk, a fundamentalist, and a scientific dunce. I've gotten every one of those in the past, so I've no reason to believe it won't happen again. And likely if I go to the blogs which send those trackbacks, I'll be treated to comments disparaging my character and even attacking my family. It has happened so often it doesn't even make me mad anymore--but I do find it instructive. Yes indeed I do.)
* Update * I also suggest reading this rebuttal by Dembski to the other expert witnesses. What I can't seem to find at the moment is a copy of Forrest, Pennock, et. al.'s testimony, but I'd link that if someone has it.
All Related Posts (on one page) | Some Related Posts:
- Vatican Science
- The Woodstock of Evolution
- Where it belongs...
- Questions for My Fellow Skeptics
- Bring It? Okay, It's Been Brought
- More Discussion
- A Voice of Sanity on Intelligent Design
"(By the way, I look forward to getting trackbacks on this calling me a liar, a drunk, a fundamentalist, and a scientific dunce. I've gotten every one of those in the past, so I've no reason to believe it won't happen again. And likely if I go to the blogs which send those trackbacks, I'll be treated to comments disparaging my character and even attacking my family. It has happened so often it doesn't even make me mad anymore--but I do find it instructive. Yes indeed I do.)"
That's how the scientific method works. That's because they're cool, calm, objective researchers just looking at the facts, ma'am -- and if you question anything they say, why then you must be a Bible-thumping snake-handler who believes that the world was created in 6 24-hour days 6,000 years ago, is flat, and is going to end in a big ball of fire next Tuesday.
I'll be particularly interested in what Scott Kirwin has to say about them, since I know he thinks I'm nuts not to pile on against these guys.
Just curious
:)
I'm still out of town and also don't want to get involved in another huge debate requiring independent research, but I really, really, really wish you'd stop attributing all vehement opposition to fear. Unless you fear Michael Moore.
Back to Fred Reed: If scientists would get out of the business of trying to undermine religious beliefs in the classroom, then presenting science would not be an issue. But they present as FACTS what are really mere ASSERTIONS. There is no way to scientifically demonstrate the validity of their proposals on the origin of life. There are many of the components of the science of evolution that CAN BE DEMONSTRATED. Origin of the species is not one of them. And positing a designer is just as scientifically supportable as positing spontaneous incarnation.
Cheers,
I think we need either separation of school and state or school vouchers for everyone. Then Steve Verdon's kids won't be taught ID and the virtues of Chastity and Fidelity, and mine will.
Yours,
Wince
Read the Dembski paper. It's fascinating.
Wince: I respectfully disagree. My perception may be because of the snotty, snearing things he's said to me in the past about this, and the fact that I don't respond well to being talked to in a pedantic manner, or having my words twisted, or to juvenile "fisking" responses which are shallow and sidestep the whole of a person's arguments in order to pick nits and quote out of context.
It may also have to do with things several other people much like him have said to me that have brought my patience with condescending and uncivil behavior to a low on this subject. But seriously: what a jackass.
Read the Dembski paper. These people are evil and destructive to science and the persuit of truth how exactly?
"(1) The Richard Dawkins Darwinist (abbreviated RD Darwinist), who is virulently against religion of any stripe and uses evolution as a club to beat religious believers. Richard Dawkins Darwinists despise religious belief and regard religious believers as having to check their brains at the door if they are want to maintain both their faith and evolutionary theory.
"(2) The Eugenie Scott Darwinist (abbreviated ES Darwinist), who is not religious in any traditional sense (in particular, this type of Darwinist does not think God does or can act in any way that makes a difference in the natural world) but at the same time thinks it is ill-advised to antagonize religious believers by using evolutionary theory as a club. The Eugenie Scott Darwinist wants to placate religious believers by assuring them that they can be good followers of their faith as well as good Darwinists.
"(3) The Kenneth Miller Darwinist (abbreviated KM Darwinist), who is a traditional Judeo-Christian believer, holds that God has acted miraculously in salvation history (with such miracles as the parting of the Red Sea, the resurrection of Christ, the Virgin Birth, etc.) but denies that God’s activity in natural history is scientifically detectable. The Kenneth Miller Darwinist is an orthodox religious believer and an orthodox Darwinist. He is the poster child for the Eugenie Scott Darwinist."
What he proposes to do is to use a "vice strategy" to interrogate each one of them regarding their definitions of "science, nature, evolution, creation, design, and religion" -- thereby exposing the Richard Dawkins types as the bigoted God-haters they are, expose the Eugenie Scott Darwinists as condescending elitists, and show the Kenneth Miller Darwinists that intelligent design is more consistent with their theology than is Darwinian evolution. Brilliant, I must say. Reverse the Scopes trial and put the Darwinists on the defensive.
Now patterns can exist simply due to randomness. As an example of patterns due to randomness inspired by Dembski's citation of Cosmos, pi is a perfectly random and infinitely long number, so all possible messages are embedded within pi, from "I really f*d up with the platypus - God" to the complete works of Shakespeare, but with the author credit changed to "A million monkeys with a million typewriters with too much time on their hands."
However a rigorous study should be able to discern between patterns because of randomness and patterns due to intelligence, or at least bound the probability of patterns turning up in the randomness.
In short, this implies that there are testable hyoptheses in ID, so I'll have to take a more serious look at the subject.
"I think we need either separation of school and state or school vouchers for everyone. Then Steve Verdon's kids won't be taught ID and the virtues of Chastity and Fidelity, and mine will."
I agree with that completely, and the style of that. That's the only way out of this and a lot of other messes we've gotten ourselves into by having a taxpayer-funded, federally-funded (contrary to the Tenth Amendment), government-monopoly school system dominated by Leftist teachers' unions.
I'm not inclined to believe in Intelligent Design, it seems clunky and inelegant, leaving unanswered and likely-unanswerable questions of it's own. What are the characteristics of this Intelligent Designer? If the Intelligent Designer is God, why does he seem constrained in many ways by predictable physics and chemistry? Which god would that be, a random Bronze Age war god gone respectable, his counterpart on the Arabian Peninsula, or one of many with animal heads worshipped long before more huamn gods appeared? God help the Christians if the god with the largest number of followers is the right one.
If the Intelligent Designer is NOT God, who was? Where are they, and why did they leave the remainder of the Solar System in a primordial state? (Great artists sign their work.) Did they start from scratch, or work with available material, and when? Where is the evidence of visitation?
Of course, most of this makes better coffeehouse bs'ing than scientific discourse, but it's a start. No fear of ID here, someone needs to play devil's advocate, even in science.
HOWEVER, after becoming hugely annoyed once again by a fulminating bully who sought to beat me over the head with a 2 X 4 about how stupid I am if I think this is anything other than horrible evil destructive badbadbadness, I wound up seeking out a little more on these ID people, and lo and behold I found William Dembski's site, and the expert witness report he gave to the court in the Dover case.
By the time I was finished I, MUCH TO MY SURPRISE, came to the conclusion that these guys really are scientists conducting real research and making actual predictions. They're obviously in the infancy of developing their theory but you know what? They really are working on a Theory, one that may well be wrong but which actually has the potential to make genuine contributions.
The questions about who or what the designer are are almost beside the point.
Click here and read this, John. Sit down with it for a half hour over a cup of coffee.
This really is more interesting than I thought it was. A big thanks to guys like Richard Bennett and Steve Verdon for making me take a stronger look at these guys. I've gone from thinking "mostly harmless" to thinking, "interesting potential."
Dembski's paper looks quite good for the first seven pages. (My lunch hour is almost gone.) Has anyone examined our junk DNA for patterns which give evidence of intelligence? A code with two bits of information per symbol and a good copying method would be a great place for ancient aliens to leave messages. (Shamelessly stolen from a science fiction story in Analog.)
Verdon's objection that he doesn't want science to be the domain of politically correct post-modern debates is a good one, but he's chosen the wrong whipping boy. ID won't cause that. The predominance of politically correct post-moderns in the nation's School of Education faculty is a much, much, much more likely culprit. Good teachers teaching good methods of scientific debate using good examples like evolution and ID would be, umm, good science education. We need more time spent teaching people how to debate well - not propagandize well - not less. Another reason to give people school choice. I want my kids to be able to both defend their beliefs and change their minds. Good reasoning skills help both.
Stephen,
Thanks. Here's someone to add to that spectrum: Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. He believed that we would find God in evolution. I remain fascinated by Teilhard de Chardin. I sense another trip to the library coming on...
BTW, I couldn't find Tales of the Long Bow and had to settle for the first Father Brown story on tape - my girls liked it too - and The Club of Queer Trades. Well, well worth the time. (Click the link - it's the book on the web!)
Yours,
Wince
"Not since David Hume’s Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion has someone taken such a close
look at the design argument, but it is done now in
a much broader post-Darwinian context. Now we
proceed with modern characterizations of probability and complexity, and the results bear fundamentally on notions of randomness and on
strategies for dealing with the explanation of radically improbable events. We almost forget that design arguments are implicit in criminal arguments ”beyond a reasonable doubt,” plagiarism, phylogenetic inference, cryptography, and a host of other modern contexts. Dembski’s analysis of randomness is the most sophisticated to be found in the literature, and his discussions are an important contribution to the theory of explanation, and a timely discussion of a neglected and unanticipatedly important topic."
Is Wimsatt a pseudoscientific crackpot and a religious fanatic?
The more I look at this the more interesting it gets.
Yes! The Club of Queer Trades is a fascinating read. Thing about Chesterton is that anything you land on by him is bound to have gems in it. He just wrote too much that was too good.
"Is Wimsatt a pseudoscientific crackpot and a religious fanatic?"
He must be an enemy of science!
There were teachers who wanted to teach science as science, and state that evolution is a theory and not yet a proven fact. But some other teachers and parents threatened to sue if so much as a peep of this “religious nonsense” was mentioned. Some of what we are seeing here is the use of God as the ultimate straw man.
The people arguing against allowing the statement make a complete mockery of the very concept of the scientific method, but they don't seem to notice, or care.
“Every theory is questionable, except for this one here.” How did this particular theory become unquestionable? How did it become so sacrosanct that a teacher is not even permitted to state that it is a “theory” and not a “fact”? Simple, just change the issue: “This one's not about science, it's about God.”
What’s even more galling to me is that this is also a blatant case of judicial activism. The people who fought to allow this statement did it the “right way”. They worked with in teh elected political system. Its been going on for several years now. Some school board members ran positively on the issue, and were elected because of it. Others ran against it, and lost.
The voters made it clear how they felt about the topic, and the school board acted. Yet the ACLU, et al decided to step in and try to get the words banned via court order. How Orwellian that the ACLU, of all organizations, is nipping away our rights, one court case at a time.
This case stinks in many ways. And I hope to both God and Copernicus it gets dismissed.
Violated pro-military standards of political correctness: Dick Durbin
Violated pro-evolutionary standards of political correctness: The Dover, PA School board
Violated HIV-is-AIDS political correctness: Dr. Bialy
Dogmatism is a very attractive form of sin. One of the seven deadly sins when we call it by it's true name: Pride.
What a temptation it is to me! How often I fall into it. How vigilant I must be to avoid it. What scares me is the thought that I am wallowing in it in some way of which I am totallty unaware.
Not like laziness. I know I'm wallowing in that.
Yours,
Wince
There is a certain practicality in avoiding those arguments. Dembski touches on it when, in his rebuttal to Miller, he says, I have never really given credence to the supposition that evolution was random, and that God was not involved. Dembski is a fascinating read, and his concept of redefining evolution to that of a "technological evolution guided by creative intelligence, not of an unguided material process like the one envisioned by neo-Darwinism" is very interesting.
But as he says, it has very little practical application. Similarly, the study of end times in the Bible has very little application beyond the statement, "Since we know not when Jesus will return, we should always behave as if we will be required to give an account of our actions today." That same religion admonition always applies to life since none of us know when our lives will end. Trying to sort out the symbology of Revelations is a game that my father lost himself in - to the point of neglecting the practical work of religion in our everyday lives.
Nevertheless, I'm glad that there are those for whom these issues are important. In true parasitic fashion, I can latch on to their study from time to time for my own intellectual stimulation.
One has to wonder at the hostility of evolutionists toward religion. While ID may be described by evolutionists as religion in disguise, a better description would be a scientific origins that is not completely incompatible with religion.
Which brings the questions:
Why is it so important to evolutionists that religion be discredited? Is the absence of God a necessary component of Darwinian evolutionary theory? If so, why? And if it is, how can evolutionists claim to be religiously neutral?
Speaking of evolution and DNA read Evolution's Tricky Shortcuts:
I grew up in conservative Christian churches. I attended a conservative Christain church while in college. I found myself attending a conservative Christian church in grad school.
The people who brought up this "issue" wanted to make it an issue. Most of them weren't qualified to do so. And they looked silly and ignorant.
Most of my friends never made it an issue. In fact, most of my close friends at church could sit down with me and discuss the finer points of evolutionary pscyhology - even if we didn't completely buy into it.
The point being, thanks to Dean, I'll refrain in the future from assuming that "active IDers" must be of the camp that annoyed the heck out of me in church.
Thanks for the open-minded look and all the good links, Dean.
Excellent points. Yes, I do think some of them, the loudest, the most vehement, are afraid to find evidence of a Creator Who might also turn out to be a Judge at the end.
Tom Hawkson:
Excellent. You're a better man than I am. I only wish there were more like you.
I've liked the Commissar. I liked his schtick of "running dog imperialist" etc.. I didn't read him much, but mostly because there's a ton of fine blogs out there.
So, when he and Steve Verdon go out and say some really silly things, I joined in with Dean in slapping at them after following the link. Even more things of extreme silliness are said, and bear in mind I'm a pretty unjudgemental, open-minded guy. And then Steve goes out and makes my case for me.
So I point this out to them, in a polite but rather condescending manner. I feel that it is incumbent on the wiser, more mature person to try not to be a pill, but I don't usually live up to that. Partially because I like to hang around people who are smarter than me since that way I can learn something. So I'm not used to seeing people evince total lack of clue in front of me. I need to learn to do better on gently letting the hapless down. I'm much more used to being the clueless guy.
I used SMA's arguement that if Evolutionists can divine motive, why then so can I. And then I made clear I considered this 'ability' to be silliness. But evidently the Commissar and Steve are blessed in ways that I am not. Powers beyond mortal ken...whoda'thunkit?
Steve pointed out Lysenko's of Stalin's brotherhood of thugs theories which caused trouble. I pointed out that this was a dictatorship, and that that was what they were trying for. Hence lets let democracy reign. This arguement was too subtle for them. Their view can be summarized...Science is right, and should be listened to. Lysenko would have agreed whole-heartedly. And they just don't get it.
These are the type of people who would usher in the shiny, jumpsuited Dark SF Dystopia where perfectly logical men, to themselves, do utterly horrible things. The road they seem to want to step on leads to a destruction of democracy, and putting in Plato's Republic with them as the propagators of knowledge. I hope this is not the case, that there is some subtilty to their views, unexpressed and hidden, that prevents this, but I have little confidence of such.
Democracy and Federalism trump the Establishment's Gov't Bought and Paid for Experts or we might as well surrender to the Experts our voting cards.
I could go on. There was more silliness on display, and from people I would have expected better of. So in result, my words are edited without my permission after I bash their arguements like an Inuit kills baby seals. And I am, a little angry, a good bit sad, and kinda glad because this demonstrates some things.
Indeed. Why have so many otherwise logical, thinking, open minded people sold their souls (metaphorically speaking (I hope)) for this one particular topic?
Really, why?
I don’t get it…
There are much better aguments for Intelligent Design out there, and even better ones against it. Quite a large portion of the paper was devoted to setting up straw men and knocking them down (for instanc, it can be correct to say that SETI is not science, it does not and can not have reproduceable experimentation and results. . it does, however, rely on scientific methods for discovery).
Much of the wording is vague, like his reference to neo-Darwinism expecting "lots" of junk DNA, then pointing out a few known examples of not-so-junk DNA. This would be valid as a criticism of non-ID theory if and only if he had mentioned how much DNA still appeared to be junk.
I am not convinced that there is not an Intelligent Designer, but the statistical nature of the universe is sufficient to account for a purely mechanical process. The worst-case probabilities the most zealous ID proponents have been able to give for the natural, unguided evolution of life, when applied to the age and density of the universe, would equal greater than one, and one is all you need and you're back to the weak anthropic principle.
Personally, I'd be a bit concerned about what we'd find if we do find an Intelligent Designer, because I doubt it'd be our Dear and Fluffy Lord. A mind likely composed of Plank-length and time synapses occuring over the breadth and depth of space might engender evolution for its own purposes, but we would be as sentient as sand from its perspective. A mechanistic universe would be most likely spawned from a similar mind, and we'd hardly be the favored of creation. . . we're beaten out by glowing clouds of interstellar gas by about a google to one at least. And if we find a lesser Intelligent Designer, then "it" is more than likely "they," and if they've gone to all this work to produce intelligent humans, what do they want us curious tool-using primates for?
Consider Job who got told that he did not call God to account, that God was beyond him. That God reminds me of your Planck-level super Engineer with some of his comments.
Consider the story of Moses who saw the bottom of God's foot, so to speak, which was all the holiest man on earth at that time could bear, and survive the experience. Before the Incarnation, if God showed up on your doorstep it would be a short visit...
"Hi, I'm God."
No reply from the expanding cloud of particles that had answered the door...
Consider God's claim that his ways are above our ways as the sky is above the earth.
Consider Jesus' claim that if certain people had not praised him the rocks would have cried out in praise. And this is after the Incarnation which was an attempt by God to condescend to Man's level.
The God of the Bible is Majestic. His existence is Good, in that every noble and fine thing you can imagine is subsumed inside the Good. This is why mathematicians call him the Great Mathematician, and writers call him the Mytho-poec God because these are the finest conceptions of their limited minds, and in point of fact, both are true, and much more besides. Your Great Engineer is part of this vision of Good.
Granted that does not get preached enough, but then you knew us Christians were a messed up bunch anyways, right? I hope I'm not spilling any secrets here. :)
Excellent.
Here's a bit of history I didn't know, and you probably didn't either:
"In the Scopes Trial, Clarence Darrow (cf. Pedro Irigonegaray) got to interrogate the evolution critics, but William Jennings Bryan (cf. Kansas attorney John Calvert for our side) did not get to interrogate the evolutionists. It is a little known fact that William Jennings Bryan agreed to be interrogated by Clarence Darrow only if Bryan could in turn interrogate Darrow on Darrow’s views of evolution. Darrow agreed, but then right after interrogating Bryan directed the judge to find Scopes guilty, thereby closing the evidence and thus preventing Bryan from interrogating Darrow (for the details about this ploy, see Edward Sisson’s essay in my book Uncommon Dissent)."
-William A. Dembski, "The Vice Strategy"
Darrow directed the judge to find Scopes guilty! He cared more about the evolution theory than about his client. I'm glad I didn't have him for a lawyer. They didn't mention that part in Inherit the Wind.
I continue to consider the entire subject rather trivial but it did enough to convince me that perhaps I need to read Dembski's book, and to convince me that these folks are trying AT LEAST as hard as guys like Dawkins or Gould to bolster their claims. And they make a good point: they're as free to look at the existing data and studies and draw inferences from them as the naturalists are.
I still think they're on the losing side of this argument, but I can't say they aren't trying pretty hard, and that they don't have good points about the whole materialist/naturalist thing.
liespropaganda.Yours,
Wince
Very true, Dean.
Eric R. Ashley
"Dear and Fluffy Lord" is a (possibly misremembered) quote from Serenity that came to mind. A true Alpha and Omega God (as I described) would be so far beyond us that any strictures he placed on us would be purely for his own arbitrary amusement, which does not equate to the far more human God of the Bible (even before incarnating Himself as human to better understand us). I think the discovery and identification of an Ultimate Intelligent Designer would be far more of a fatal blow to faith than evolution is.
Humans do have a spiritual side, and spiritual needs. These are properly the domain of religion and philosophy. Whether they connect to the mechanical universe or not is (pardon the pun) immaterial, they are just as important.
I always so, get right to the root of the matter before spouting off on the religious fundaments of physics, chemistry and biology. Above all, show me an intelligent design or designer that can suspend the laws of thermodynamics, and we'll talk a little more about your gods.
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI
"Well Arnold, who created the law of thermodynamics?"
.. to which I will reply,
"I don't know and neither do you."
What came first, the chicken, the egg, the law of thermodynamics, or the deus ex machina?
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI
Very good. "I don't know" is always a good answer, the most honest answer. It all comes down to faith in the end, faith one way or another, the will to believe. I have never been near Mount Horeb, WI, nor seen Arnold Harris face-to-face, but I have seen his works, and therefore I have faith in him.
Reminds me of Zell Miller talking:
"From John Kerry, they get a “yes-no-maybe” bowl of mush that can only encourage our enemies and confuse our friends."
Those that expect the ID'ers suspend the Laws of Thermodynamics to convince the unconvincible need only look at the evolutionists "bowl of primordial soup".
Now kindly explain how we go from monkey to Puccini, Beethoven, Michaelangelo, Mozart, Raphael, Rodin, Jefferson, Washington, Lincoln etc...
- - - -
John Irving:
Intelligent Design is the fire that needs to be held to the feet of evolutionary scientists. At every point, when a scientist is tempted to leave a step blank because of a difficulty in presenting the evidence, he needs to be aware of the consequences of de facto stating "and here a miracle happens."
Uh, actually, that was my beginning point about ID, that it appeared to say that while evolutionists say "we don't know just what happened here." I have, like Dean, changed a bit of my thinking about ID - but that is where I used to be.
Lesser primate, cousin, not ancestor. . . for a good fictional look at how human evolution could easily have progressed, I recommend Stephen Baxter's Evolution.
Many mysteries are lost in the breadth of prehistory.
Aside from a few rather "out there" sects, I don't believe that any major religious grouping has a problem with evolution - while not proven (and unlikely to ever be proven), it is clear that the preponderance of evidence indicates that species change over time, even to developing into new species. The problem, I think, comes in when people get into dispute about whether "random" change means "unguided".
As a Catholic, I believe that species evolve, but that their evolution is guided by God towards the ends he wishes for them - ie, that the design of the universe is governed by an intelligence. Why such a supposition should cause fits in some can only be set down to a basic animosity towards religion as a thing.
The problem here in inherent in the statist mindset which underlays liberalism - the basic concept that people can be educated up to a certain standard of conduct in which resort to religion will no longer be necessary to sustain morality. "Free and compulsory" (that oh, so wonderful explanation of what is wrong with liberalism) public education is the key towards remaking backwards, ignorant peasants into forward-thinking, educated citizens...but it can't work if while the kiddies are learning the Rights of Man they are also learning of, you know, God and all that nonsense.
The problem with ID is not whether it is valid or not, but that it allows just the slighest crack in the public education wall of separation between mind and religion. It it viewed with horror because if people are allowed to consider the possibility of an intelligent designer, then they might eventually become religious...and then we're just a step away from burning Steven Malcolm Anderson at the stake.
"Now kindly explain how we go from monkey to Puccini, Beethoven, Michaelangelo, Mozart, Raphael, Rodin, Jefferson, Washington, Lincoln etc..."
That's it in a nutshell. Show me a monkey turning into Beethoven and I'll believe in evolution. Not until then. Evolutionists are philistines who deny the very existence of God, Gods, the soul, spirituality, beauty, music, art, heroism, anything above the level of a monkey. I agree with Jack T. Chick that evolution is the cruelest hoax in history.
"I am not convinced that there is not an Intelligent Designer, but the statistical nature of the universe is sufficient to account for a purely mechanical process. The worst-case probabilities the most zealous ID proponents have been able to give for the natural, unguided evolution of life, when applied to the age and density of the universe, would equal greater than one, and one is all you need and you're back to the weak anthropic principle. "
Not sure where you got your information, but I disagree, and most especially with your claim about "worst-case probabilities the most zealous ID proponents have been able to give". You need to read a little more Dembski.
Not sure if he discussed his UPB (Universal Probability Bound) in the expert testimony document, since I haven't had a chance to read it yet, but I could provide you with links to documents where he does discuss it. Or you could find his book "No Free Lunch" which dicusses it in some depth.
Indeed, in NFL, he dicusses an example cited by Stuart Kauffman, who is not an ID supporter, which hints at the daunting statistical challenge to randomness in explaining biological systems:
"Implicit in a universal probability bound such as 10150 is that the universe is too small a place to generate specified complexity by sheer exhaustion of possibilities. Stuart Kauffman develops this theme at length in his book Investigations.11 In one of his examples (and there are many like it throughout the book), he considers the number of possible proteins of length 200 (i.e., 20200 or approximately 10260) and the maximum number of pairwise collisions of particles throughout the history of the universe (he estimates 10193 total collisions supposing the reaction rate for collisions can be measured in femtoseconds). Kauffman concludes: "The known universe has not had time since the big bang to create all possible proteins of length 200 [even] once."12 To emphasize this point, he notes: "It would take at least 10 to the 67th times the current lifetime of the universe for the universe to manage to make all possible proteins of length 200 at least once."13 "
Certainly, it isn't required that Darwinism explore all the versions of proteins of length 200, but it does point out that such seemingly simple examples are much more complex than one might anticipate on first blush.
Why I am intrigued by ID is because "the statistical nature of the universe is [in]sufficient to account for a purely mechanical process". There may be mitigating factors, such as the "density" of specified proteins in the landscape, but there isn't much evidence for that at this time.