Summations Only

The purpose of the eye is for lovers to gaze into it. It's a beauty mark.A secondary purpose is to mirror the soul, though it doesn't always do that without distortion.A tertiary purpose is to see things, which can be useful if you don't have a lover to guide you.

The eye is obviously a crappy design for radiating waste heat from the brain. The Purpose was a beneficial use for a waste product as an active version of infra-red vision like the pit vipers with the eyes as emitters.Secondary use is to release gases and fluids from the head. You know what happens to people when their humors are out of balance.

What is the "Purpose" of the sun, a yellow/white dwarf star that currently provides sunlight to our planet. What is the purpose of the very similar yellow/white dwarf star 61 Ursae Majoris that is barely visible from earth?Assigning a "Purpose" as you do is simply begging the question. Purpose can only assigned after establishing intelligent design exerted for a reason. Function can be determined independently of either intelligence, but purpose cannot. You are simply asserting that evolution cannot produce features you deem to have purpose.Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.

Well yes I do. The mere fact that it let's you see to carry out your every day buisness, is evidence enough.The things that it allows you do without complication or problems, is a reality that I can observe. Therefore purpose is a reality as much as existence itself. Unless you can show thathe what I can observe doesn't exist. But how would you do thatSo your problem is do do away with what I can clearly see as an axiomatic truth. It won't work to argue it away, you need to do away with the observable reality of the purpose, which I can witnessGetting tired fellas I can do this all day longDawn BertotEdited by Dawn Bertot, : No reason given.

Your see thats your problem AZ, the hole you are trying to lead me out of exists only in your imagination. I can observe puropose, as a result of function, I can OBSERVE WHAT IT ALLOWS YOU DO DO AND NOT DO.What you need to do is get rid of the actual axiomatic purpose I can observe, you can't semantic it away, or imagine it away.But how would you do that, it's an impossibility. You might as well try and get rid of the fact that you can observe things in existenceGetting tired fellas I can do this all day longDawn BertotEdited by Dawn Bertot, : No reason given.

Why would I have a hidden agenda?I never said you were nefarious, I said the way the question was worded implied by itself certain indirect consequences. Surely your smart enough to see that distinction, right?Those are not new questions Have at it juniorBertot writes Well this is what I said and what I think you quoted from myself right before your quotes from Charles.So what is your point?Edited by Dawn Bertot, : No reason given.

Well yes I'm glad you agree I don't assign purpose reality does. If I am watching you and I see step over a hole, I would make the natural conclusion your eye was designed in such a away to help you avoid that holeSecondly I CAN OBSERVE the reality of that purpose. So you would need to get rid of that axiomatic reality I can observe, not just semantic it away or imagine it away. But how would you do that, it would be an impossibilityAnd you've got the cart before the horse, I don't need to establish a designer to assign purpose, it helps me very clearly establish the very real probability of the designer, unless you demonstrate otherwiseThe purpose of the eye is as much a reality as existence itselfDawn BertotEdited by Dawn Bertot, : No reason given.

Oops! You forgot to answer the questions. I can't have at it, until you do.1. What is Science?
2. What is Creationism?Is there a reason I am having to ask you repeatedly to answer simple questions? Good. So the reason I posted the Darwin quotes was to show comparison between my 'processes and conclusions' with yours. Just as you asked. Perfectly simple progression of English. You asked for the evolutionary processes and conclusions, I give them to you. It does not make sense therefore that I quoted Darwin to prove creationism must false. It does make sense that I quoted him to give you the processes and conclusions that you had just asked for.I was answering your question. In case this is a difficult concept for you, that is what answering a question actually looks like. Maybe you can give it a try?

ABE: This post should have been a General Reply because the first part of it is not addressed to Genomicus: /ABE********************************
Seems this thread is just endlessly demanding that Dawn come up with evidence for the evidence he's given dozens of times already: Design IS the evidence for a designer. Evidence FOR design is a ludicrous request but you'll never stop demanding it. All one can do is distinguish design from randomness in nature and that's been done on this thread already.Oh and then it got down to insisting on the difference between function and purpose. Sure there's a difference, but not a difference that matters here. Dawn has been using "purpose" correctly enough, y'all just don't like the word because it goes with the design-designer argument.Oh well.Meanwhile I keep thinking about Genomicus' post that was over my head way back there that led me to give up the argument. There were other factors than that post that got me to throw in the towel, but anyway. Here's my answer to that post:************************************** I don't see why you can't invoke anything you want. You certainly have a straw man Creationism going on here. At the level you are talking about, "evolutionary descent" is just microevolution, which is the built-in variation of the Kind, so your objection that from the Creationist point of view you can't consider anything that implies evolutionary descent is simply wrong. Granted bacterial microevolution is probably not easily compared to microevolution of, say, mammals, nevertheless you haven't said anything that pushes the boundary of the Kind so there's no contradiction with Creationism.You can use either of your theories as a Creationist. Your problem is not knowing much about Creationism.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

As I have shown, however, accepting the design doesn't really avoid the endless nature of this discussion. This is because Dawn is doing philosophy and calling it science. So people here have taken the strategy of showing how what Dawn has done is not sufficient to meet the standard that is required in order to be considered scientific.Consider the fairground, a person tries to get on a ride and the attendant says 'Sorry you are too short'
'But I'm 50 inches, you reply'
'Need to be 60 inches for this ride'
'Do you doubt I'm 50 inches tall?'
'Stand next to this 60 inch marker...see you don't reach'
'It can hardly be denied I am 50 inches....we're both using inches, therefore 50 inches is no different than 60' I point to the evidence of this thread that people like Dawn (and Dawn specifically) like to jump from designer to creator without additional steps. They like to equivocate on terms because English is intent-orientated and some terms are suggestive of an intelligence.Without formalising the language, or without conceding that words aren't sufficient to demonstrate a deity, the argument is doomed to bicker about those words. I tried to avoid the bickering in this thread by accepting purpose, order, design and designers. Unfortunately, this is all pre-scientific philosophy. To be science requires more. The difference is more than the analagous 10 inches.But IDers love to do this, because they can feign outrage that people aren't accepting simple truths when actually they are trying to avoid an equivocation in the reasoning.Inserting intelligence/intention into your premises means you are begging the question; reasoning circularly. That is not science. You can. But it isn't science until you can show a connection between what you invoke, and that which are trying to explain.You can invoke a gunshot to explain a murder.
You can invoke ghosts to explain a murder.If I point out how bullets work, the damage they cause on impact to bodies, the difference between the damage caused to a living body versus a dead one....I've established a chain of causation from invoked entity to observation.Can I show that each step from ghost to murder is plausible, is there evidence that each step can occur? Etc? The answer is no, therefore invoking the ghost is not a scientific approach. The point being raised was about the utility of evolution. Creationism has no utility when it comes to understanding biology. Evolution does. Creationism literally can invoke what it likes, as it has the invocation of ultimate ad hocery: god. If you can't use physical causes to explain something, there's *always* God as a possible invocation.

But Faith, Dawn has not shown evidence for design or that design implies a designer. I think the big problem as has been pointed out many times is that neither you nor Dawn nor Creationist including those claiming to be creation scientists really have a clue what evidence is or many other relatively common terms.Order and design are two different things.Purpose and function are two different things.Those differences really do matter.Order can and often must come about from simply natural causes. No designer needed.Purpose is a purely human construct and exists solely in the mind and not in the object.The purpose of the sun is not to produce light. In fact light itself is actually simply a waste product of the function of the very natural process that is the sun. No designer needed.Light itself has no purpose. It does not exist to help us see shit. We, humans, put things to use. We give them the purpose. We use light to see and we can use screwdrivers to turn screws, but also to pry open paint cans and then turn the screw driver around to pound the lid back on the can when finished.But the purpose is not a characteristic of the object, it is a construct of the human.While sloppy thinking and imprecise use of terms is an underlying problem it seems, the real failure in this thread has once again been the total and utter inability of demonstrating The Science in Creationism. At best you and Dawn have shown that The Science in Creationism is not science and can never be science but perhaps something like voodoo or astrology or alchemy or fortune telling.Edited by jar, : appalin spallin not ------> norEdited by jar, : still finding applin spallin the ----> then

I assumed your capitulation was insincere. The only way I would consider that I had "won" this debate is for you to say that you understand the reasoning behind my (and others) objection that creationism, as presented, is not science and then, if you wish to continue to present creationism as science that you would change how you are going about it so that it is done scientifically.First of all, trying to find natural explanations for phenomenon is not in and of itself science. Science requires more than just trying to find natural explanations. You seem to think that if you just leave out supernatural explanations and only discuss natural explanations, that is science. It is not enough just to focus on natural explanations - there needs to be more. WRONG. Design in nature is an observation. It is not even data, let alone evidence. In order for it to become data, it needs to be quantified (or qualified in some cases).FOR EXAMPLE: Saying "That plant looks sick." is not evidence that a fungus is a pathogen. It is only an observation of a symptom. For that observation to become data it needs to be quantified. So, I would say "The symptoms on this plant have a disease severity rating of 5 on a scale of 0 to 7." This disease severity score is DATA; it can be analyzed, interpreted, compared to a control, etc.For data to become evidence, it needs to be interpreted. FOR EXAMPLE: I could interpret the data of a 5 on a scale of 0 to 7 as pretty severe and therefore, the data (that came from an observation) is evidence that the fungus is a pathogen. While someone else could say that it should only be considered a pathogen if it has a score of 7, so a disease severity score of 5 is evidence that this fungus is a weak pathogen at best. So which conclusion/interpretation is right?This is the step where you claim "we both have the same evidence but interpret it differently," (although, more technically, it should be we have the same DATA and interpret it differently). However, from my perspective, you and Dawn stop at observation and then interpret it differently.OBSERVATION: There is design in natural things. ---> CONCLUSION: There is a designer.Where is the data that comes from that? What we need is someway to analyze it objectively, compare it to a control, compare to other cases of design, etc. "There is design in nature." is totally subjective. There is no way to analyze it objectively. What would "not-designed" things look like? What level of organization would be required to be evidence of design?Requirements for scientific evidence:1) It must support or contradict a given hypothesis.
2) It must be derived from objective data (independent and repeatable).
3) Data must be analyzed according to a known (or at least specified) standard.
4) Should be reviewed by scientific peers.How has anything Dawn said meet those requirements? Seriously? Dawn's statement of purpose for the eye was to see stuff. That's why the distinction between function and purpose, and it does matter here. When he first brought up purpose, I thought he was talking about some higher purpose, not "to see stuff." That's function - not purpose.I believe our purpose as human beings is to represent God on this earth. That is a PURPOSE. "to see stuff" is not purpose.DAWN'S ARGUMENT: The eye is intricately complicated and therefore designed. It functions in the capacity it was designed for, namely to see stuff, therefore that is evidence that it was, indeed, designed. NOT SCIENTIFIC - even if 100% true, NOT a scientific approach. Period. Creation and evolution should both make specific predictions about what should be observed in the classification and organization of extant and extinct organisms. Evolution does make specific predictions and those predictions are used to drive new research and answer questions. Creationist predictions amount to "whatever is observed is what creationism would predict."What would the strata look like if there was a flood? Exactly what it looks like now.
How would organisms group into hierarchies if they were created 6,000 years ago? Just like they do now.
etc., etc., etc...Bottom line: Creationism starts with a narrative and attempts to reconcile observations with that narrative. Evolution starts with observations, interprets data, draws conclusions and then builds a narrative. Two very different processes.If the above statement about creationism is not true, then show the methodology that creationism uses, ie. show the science in creationism that this thread is about...HBD

And that's another of the hair-splitting distinctions y'all keep perpetuating to no good purpose here. You insist on your precise definition of science which allows you to deny the simple fact that design DOES imply a designer. And a designer IS intelligent, there is no other reasonable way to use the term. Why carry on like this? What do you accomplish? You can still make your "blind watchmaker" argument without insisting on defining Creationism into oblivion. That's the unnecessary hairsplitting argument: define the opposition out of the running. You think Creationists are going to lie down and die because you define Science in a way that disallows the argument from design? Do you think you're going to convince the average person with your nitpicking? I haven't followed closely enough to notice that Dawn is doing this, but it's also just another hairsplitting distraction. Design implies a Designer, which implies an Intelligence which implies a Creator. Dawkins can carry on forever with his Blind Watchmaker argument based on nothing but hypothetical wouldacouldas and not one shred of evidence, which is probably why you feel the need to disqualify the necessarily intelligent Watchmaker on semantic grounds, but it makes for pretty boring reading and ultimate futility since it isn't going to matter to Creationists or to the average person in the end. Science to the average person is simply Knowledge (which is what the word means you know), or Truth, and nobody cares whether you call it Philosophy or Science in the end, only anti-creationists of a diehard constitution. Dawkins made a lot of noise against William Paley's watch requiring a watchmaker but proved zip against it. You are right it makes for endless bickering so why not give it up? Cuz that would be tantamount to treating Creationists as reasonable people with a reasonable point of view maybe? What a horrible state of affairs if THAT should ever occur, what an appalling thought. I'm not an IDer, I'm a YEC, but of course I accept the argument from design and it's pretty clear to me that the semantics are the ploy of the opposition to create an objection that doesn't exist in reality. Aren't you begging the question when you insist that evolution can explain design without a designer because, well, the ToE says life developed from purely physical causes? In other words the ToE DEFINES life as design without a designer. That's really all the "blind watchmaker" argument says: you can get life from purely blind material causes. You can't prove it but that's what the theory says so you assert it over and over and over, and that's begging the question. I think you probably failed to notice that I'd shifted to a different topic at that point and was answering Genomicus' argument that she can't invoke either of her two models if she is constrained by Creationist assumptions. She's wrong as I pointed out. My fault for replying to her post I guess while discussing the general trends of the thread at the same time.

I'm sorry, I simply meant I give up, not that I concede the rightness of the arguments against me. Sorry that wasn't clear. And I did give up, the argument had become futile to the point that there was no point in continuing. I still feel that way, it's just that I realized the flaw in Genomicus' argument and wanted to state it. May come back to yours later.ABE: I'm surprised anybody would have thought anything different really. Very surprised. I just meant that Genomicus had piled on the jargon so that figuring out what she meant was beyond me; but also you had done something similar. And Modulous kept insisting on an argument that had nothing to do with anything that I could see but demanded that I respond to it, and Dr. A kept raising straw man after straw man until all I was doing was correcting. It had become futile. It's still futile, I'm still in that mode of giving up, I just wanted to answer Genomicus' idea that Creationism prevents doing genetics as usual, confusing it with the ToE.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Agree with what? I asked a question? And where is the answer to the question I posed in my post regarding a star with an identical construction to the sun? I thought we were supposed to be having a debate and that a debate including answering questions. What conclusion should I draw about the bona fides of your debate.