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Todd Moody seems to be missing a very important point about SETI. The problems with SETI will become apparent when and if a signal is ever observed that the proponents claim comes from an intelligent source. You will see that the signal will be evaluated on the basis of our understanding of intelligent signal generation, and what we have already identified as natural signals. ID can make no predictions on the difference between natural mutations and selection and designed systems. Ask them what are the designed parts of the flagellum and what are the parts that have been added to the original design by natural mechanisms over the last couple billion years. They can't tell you this without looking into the evolutionary history of the flagellum and not even then because they can't tell you if the latter pieces were designed or just added naturally. There is no means to determine the difference between a designed signal in biology and an undesigned signal. Just ask the ID proponents for the design signal and how we can differentiate it from the natural. What are the differences between humans and chimps that are designed? How will we determine the designed differences from the random mutations? We will have this sequence information in the near future, but you don't see the ID people making predictions on what the differences are going to be. How will they tell the designed from the random?

Dembski claims that he has a design filter, but it seems to be worthless in the prediction department. ID is not like SETI because they can't tell design from natural occurring signals. If they could we wouldn't be having this argument because they would have something more than their ridiculous probability argument.

SETI would be doomed if all they expected to find were unlikely combinations of naturally occurring signals. It would be like the SETI proponents claiming that aliens sent us signals from four pulsars in close proximity because it is the only occurrence of such a phenomenon known in the universe. This is basically how bad the ID probability argument is at this time.

I don't know what Moody's definition of "standoff" is, because one side has all the evidence, and the other side has nothing. This seems to be a fairly uneven standoff. There must be something weird about these probability arguments that confuse people. We have lifeforms. We know they got here somehow. The only means of origin of these lifeforms that we have evidence for are natural means. We have no evidence of any outside interference (space alien or supernatural). The only evidence that opponents have is that they don't understand something, so we should give up and go with something that we have no evidence even exists. Somehow, this is a standoff. I think that we can all agree that there is a major difference between something and nothing. The problem is that we can't calculate probabilities based on zero information, but this is obviously the problem with ID and not normal science.

: -- Ron Okimoto, Asst. Prof., Univ. of Arkansas (posted 2/11, 10:50 a.m., U.S. Eastern time)

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