ID and coronavirus conspiracy theories

[TheLurch]

Stumbled across an article that seems relevant to some discussions we've had here.

https://www.americanscientist.org/bl...-corona-moment

Now, i find the article to be not especially well written, and it kind of wanders all over the place. But i think the central point is an interesting one, which I'll try to summarize.

There's a conspiracy theory going around that the virus has been intentionally engineered, possibly in a weapons lab (different conspiracies point the finger either at China or the US). Biologists, looking at the changes, have shown that it largely fits in to what we know about the evolution of coronaviruses, with only one somewhat unusual feature that isn't likely to be something that anyone would engineer. (I can go into details about that feature if someone cares).

The author of this piece suggests that this is exactly the sort of thing intelligent design proponents have been saying they can settle: looking at a bit of biology and determining whether it's designed. Yet there's no indicate that any of them have even tried, or that they have even bothered to develop the tools that would help them make that determination.


Now, since ID has become pretty much irrelevant to policy, i don't follow it that carefully anymore. So, maybe the author is wrong, and the ID community is looking at this. But if not, it would seem that they're either not capable of figuring this out, or they simply don't care. That's in sharp contrast with the evolutionary biologists, who have shown that the tools they've developed can tell us important things about the virus, and are busy using those tools.

[Cow Poke]

Interesting.

[One Bad Pig]

Interesting - though the idea of bashing a group with limited resources for not openly investigating the particular case X seems rather picayune.

[Seeker]

Stumbled across an article that seems relevant to some discussions we've had here.

https://www.americanscientist.org/bl...-corona-moment

Now, i find the article to be not especially well written, and it kind of wanders all over the place. But i think the central point is an interesting one, which I'll try to summarize.

There's a conspiracy theory going around that the virus has been intentionally engineered, possibly in a weapons lab (different conspiracies point the finger either at China or the US). Biologists, looking at the changes, have shown that it largely fits in to what we know about the evolution of coronaviruses, with only one somewhat unusual feature that isn't likely to be something that anyone would engineer. (I can go into details about that feature if someone cares).

The author of this piece suggests that this is exactly the sort of thing intelligent design proponents have been saying they can settle: looking at a bit of biology and determining whether it's designed. Yet there's no indicate that any of them have even tried, or that they have even bothered to develop the tools that would help them make that determination.


Now, since ID has become pretty much irrelevant to policy, i don't follow it that carefully anymore. So, maybe the author is wrong, and the ID community is looking at this. But if not, it would seem that they're either not capable of figuring this out, or they simply don't care. That's in sharp contrast with the evolutionary biologists, who have shown that the tools they've developed can tell us important things about the virus, and are busy using those tools.

That's why, even if true, ID cannot tell us anything further than we already know about 'reality' or improve our understanding of the natural world. There's no mechanism for 'researching' supernatural methods.

[TheLurch]

Interesting - though the idea of bashing a group with limited resources for not openly investigating the particular case X seems rather picayune.

There's three arguments that could be made against that. The first is that most biologists with the ability to study the virus have dropped everything they were doing and focused on that, recognizing it might be the most important thing they could do in their lifetimes.

The second is that the hard work here - obtaining virus samples, sequencing their genomes, etc. has already been done by biologists. All that should be left is the analysis, which shouldn't take many resources. (I'm assuming that knowing a few thousand coronavirus genomes is enough to do an ID analysis; maybe i'm wrong, but the ID crowd has never described how to do an analysis, so it's a bit hard to say).

The third is that they should be motivated to show people that ID actually has something to contribute - the thing they devoted their life to is more than hot air, and the scientific community should respect it.

[rogue06]

Interesting - though the idea of bashing a group with limited resources for not openly investigating the particular case X seems rather picayune.

I think that the point is that this is just the sort of thing that the Intelligent Design crowd has repeatedly declared that they have been looking for and now that it is here they appear to be ignoring it.

[Hypatia_Alexandria]

Interesting - though the idea of bashing a group with limited resources for not openly investigating the particular case X seems rather picayune.

Oh come now. With all those tax free millions at the disposal of sectors of the Religious Right?

[Cow Poke]

Oh come now. With all those tax free millions at the disposal of sectors of the Religious Right?

This is amusing on so many levels.

[lee_merrill]

I think that the point is that this is just the sort of thing that the Intelligent Design crowd has repeatedly declared that they have been looking for and now that it is here they appear to be ignoring it.

Well, no, Evolution News has a piece out on coronavirus, and viruses in general.

Blessings,
Lee

[shunyadragon]

Well, no, Evolution News has a piece out on coronavirus, and viruses in general.

Blessings,
Lee

. . . and it does not represent science.

[Stoic]

Stumbled across an article that seems relevant to some discussions we've had here.

https://www.americanscientist.org/bl...-corona-moment

Now, i find the article to be not especially well written, and it kind of wanders all over the place. But i think the central point is an interesting one, which I'll try to summarize.

There's a conspiracy theory going around that the virus has been intentionally engineered, possibly in a weapons lab (different conspiracies point the finger either at China or the US). Biologists, looking at the changes, have shown that it largely fits in to what we know about the evolution of coronaviruses, with only one somewhat unusual feature that isn't likely to be something that anyone would engineer. (I can go into details about that feature if someone cares).

The author of this piece suggests that this is exactly the sort of thing intelligent design proponents have been saying they can settle: looking at a bit of biology and determining whether it's designed. Yet there's no indicate that any of them have even tried, or that they have even bothered to develop the tools that would help them make that determination.


Now, since ID has become pretty much irrelevant to policy, i don't follow it that carefully anymore. So, maybe the author is wrong, and the ID community is looking at this. But if not, it would seem that they're either not capable of figuring this out, or they simply don't care. That's in sharp contrast with the evolutionary biologists, who have shown that the tools they've developed can tell us important things about the virus, and are busy using those tools.

They like to start with things that we all agree were not designed by humans, and show that they were designed (based on personal incredulity).

Starting with something that might have been designed by humans, and determining whether it was or was not designed by humans, is an entirely different thing.

[Just Passing Through]

You may have heard of the CIA sculpture at Langley called Kryptos, that includes four coded messages. Three have been decoded. The fourth has defied all attempts for thirty years. I have a suspicion that the fourth is actually gibberish, just random letters. The artist might have been making a point that, when you finally decode a message, you can be certain it was a code, but if you can’t read the message, you can never prove it’s not a code.

ID has never claimed they can prove design is not present; that would require a designer who is not smart enough to hide his design or create an unbreakable code if he so chooses. ID only says that when improbability, order, and purpose rise above a certain threshold, you can detect design. And the higher it rises above that threshold, the more certain the presence of design.

That’s exactly what scientists are already doing with the virus. And the very fact that they believe they might be able to detect and demonstrate the existence of design in this virus validates the principles of ID. ID would approach this problem no differently than what is now being done, so why complain about the fact that they’re not rushing forward to duplicate the current efforts? All the tools ID would use are the tools scientists are already using. How does that imply ID’s tools aren’t scientific?

Even the fact that one section of the virus looks like it might rise above the threshold of unlikely natural changes, but is probably ruled out because it doesn’t fit with the purposes we would expect from the designers, validates the idea that something as intangible and possibly unknowable as purpose can be a legitimate area of investigation in the search for design.

[TheLurch]

Well, no, Evolution News has a piece out on coronavirus, and viruses in general.

Maybe, rather than dumping a link to a video, you can do something constructive and summarize it and its relevance to the actual topic under discussion.

[TheLurch]

That’s exactly what scientists are already doing with the virus. And the very fact that they believe they might be able to detect and demonstrate the existence of design in this virus validates the principles of ID. ID would approach this problem no differently than what is now being done, so why complain about the fact that they’re not rushing forward to duplicate the current efforts? All the tools ID would use are the tools scientists are already using. How does that imply ID’s tools aren’t scientific?

That's not accurate. The tools actual biologists are using are meant to analyze something's evolution. Nobody set out to look at whether this virus was designed; they simply applied the tools we'd developed to study evolution to the data we've gotten from viral genome sequencing.

Your contention seems to be that ID is nothing more than waiting for actual biologists to study something, and hoping there's something weird about it.

[Stoic]

You may have heard of the CIA sculpture at Langley called Kryptos, that includes four coded messages. Three have been decoded. The fourth has defied all attempts for thirty years. I have a suspicion that the fourth is actually gibberish, just random letters. The artist might have been making a point that, when you finally decode a message, you can be certain it was a code, but if you can’t read the message, you can never prove it’s not a code.

ID has never claimed they can prove design is not present; that would require a designer who is not smart enough to hide his design or create an unbreakable code if he so chooses. ID only says that when improbability, order, and purpose rise above a certain threshold, you can detect design. And the higher it rises above that threshold, the more certain the presence of design.

That’s exactly what scientists are already doing with the virus. And the very fact that they believe they might be able to detect and demonstrate the existence of design in this virus validates the principles of ID. ID would approach this problem no differently than what is now being done, so why complain about the fact that they’re not rushing forward to duplicate the current efforts? All the tools ID would use are the tools scientists are already using. How does that imply ID’s tools aren’t scientific?

Even the fact that one section of the virus looks like it might rise above the threshold of unlikely natural changes, but is probably ruled out because it doesn’t fit with the purposes we would expect from the designers, validates the idea that something as intangible and possibly unknowable as purpose can be a legitimate area of investigation in the search for design.

Scientists have been looking for evidence of human design. They know (or at least assume they know) what tools are available to humans to modify a virus, and they know what telltale signs would be left behind if humans used these tools. They also have an idea of what purposes humans might have had in mind if they chose to modify this virus.

None of this validates the idea that some level of complexity must be the result of design.