Design (intentional constrained contingency) is a valid mode of explanation. What justification is there to exclude it? In the case of biological diversity, design does a much better job of accounting for observations than methodological naturalism (materialism). Why should we exclude a known process that accounts for observation and instead cling to processes that by observation, and information and probability theory does not?
Simply because design cannot be separated from the process. You have no discrete identified design events, no hypothetical processes and no identified or reasonably inferred designers.
I sense a special pleading. You identify three reasons to discount design.
1. You say the mode of explanation cannot be separated from the process. If this is the case, then it applies to materialistic modes as well. But evolutionary theory separates the mode from the process.
Darwinian Evolution separates modification and selection from the process when coevolution, coptation, patchwork, brigolage, scaffolding, roman arches, incremental indispensability and a host of other unobserved processes are cited to prop up the failure of observed evolutionary processes to account for new biological function.
Even if you are correct that the mode must provide a process, design does provide a process. Genetic Engineers have already provided a process for how design accounts for genetic diversity. Design provides a working process to explain genetic diversity.
2. You say there are no discrete identified design events and no hypothetical processes.
There are no discrete identified evolutionary events where new form or function occurred.
However once again design events by Genetic Engineers have inserted new form and function into biological systems and these successes provide the basis to establish that a designer using similar processes can hypothetically have uses similar processes.
Neither design nor evolution can identify historical events and claim them because the causal history is lost.
3. There is no reasonably inferred designer.
Here I simply ask you to demonstrate where in the scientific process is there a requirement that a designer must be identified in order to conclude something was designed? Archeologists produce things that are declared designed all the time without identifying a designer.
Observation of the fossil record identifies a progression. You have no answer for that.
An inferred progression does not tell us a thing about how each of these fossils were formed and what relationships exist between them. Even if the inference of a progression is correct, this progression is not inconsistent with design. A designer is quite capable of staging a progression of function and form. Automobiles and computers and nearly everything we design exhibits a progression. It is not correct to say ID has no answer for the fossil record. The fossil record is not inconsistent with design.
Machinations involving probability and information theory do not account for observed changes in genetic information that result in changes of phenotype and function. PCB and Nylon degrading bacteria as well of the relatively recent evolution of multiple species of Hawaiian drosophilia come to mind.
None of these examples fall outside the bounds of probabilistic range of evolutionary change. Both the PCB and nylon examples involved a singe mutation and generated a singe very poorly and clearly accidental mono-protein while at the same time destroying one or more functioning proteins for a net loss in function. We can walk through this to confirm my analysis. Information I have on the Hawaiian fruit fly don't provide any useful information on what new form or function if any (I suspect none) distinguishes one from the other.
In the case of probabilities the background information is inadequate.
How so? Probability analysis does not require complete background information.
In the case of Information Theory your best hope is to somehow tie it to changes in protein function. I think Schneider's already done that. If he's right, you lose.
Don't see how this is so. Please explain.
At any higher levels of organization you lose again. The latest research indicate that small changes in regulatory genes may result in large phenotypical changes.
This is not new research. I am quite prepared to discuss this issue. These large phenotypical changes you refer to amount to huge and bizarre mix-ups in construction order. We get eyes on antennae and feet where eyes should be. The results demonstrate that regulatory gene must be precisely timed or you get a form that is completely inadequate to compete in the environment outside the lab. Perhaps you can provide even one example where any regulatory change resulted in a selectable advantage.
There is no one to one correspondence and benefits or detriments are based on changing environmental conditions. How do you quantify that enough to use it in information theory?
The narrative describes a progression of selectable advantage but experiment consistently demonstrates damage to existing function as a trade-off to relieve selection pressure. Observation simply does not correspond with the narrative. Even if benefits and detriments are as difficult to quantify as you claim (they are not) we have conducted enough experiments by now that we should be racking up at least a small list of evolutionary pathways several steps long. The fact that we have not confirms that observed evolutionary processes cannot account the diversity we see.
