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Author Topic:   Intelligent Design
mark24
Member (Idle past 5185 days)
Posts: 3857
From: UK
Joined: 12-01-2001


Message 16 of 27 (15819)
08-21-2002 7:41 AM
Reply to: Message 13 by halcyonwaters
08-20-2002 2:47 PM


quote:
Originally posted by halcyonwaters:

So what have we got here to conclude design:
Meaning. Function. Non-Random. Complexity.

Meaning is entirely subjective, so I'm going to scratch that one straight away. Have you seen some modern art?
So, function, non-randomness, & complexity.
Snowfall. It is non-random, both throughout the year & geographically. Snowflakes are complex. Function? To delight small children. To allow the accumulation of water at the poles, causing sea level changes. Make the lanscape white in order to reflect radiation. To ensure a release of water in the spring to facilitate plant growth. Take your pick. Function is another entirely subjective factor. In order to ascribe function you need to know what the designer required of his design, right? There may be other consequences of the design that are not the original intended function, for example my computer throws out heat, but that's not indended, it's a by product. So, as long as a system can be shown to have a potentially positive effect on something, you cannot discard that as an intended function, since you don't know the mind of the designer.
So, there we go, a purely natural system that fits your definition of designed.
Mark
------------------
Occam's razor is not for shaving with.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 13 by halcyonwaters, posted 08-20-2002 2:47 PM halcyonwaters has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 17 by halcyonwaters, posted 08-21-2002 12:32 PM mark24 has replied

halcyonwaters
Inactive Member


Message 17 of 27 (15852)
08-21-2002 12:32 PM
Reply to: Message 16 by mark24
08-21-2002 7:41 AM


quote:
Snowfall. It is non-random, both throughout the year & geographically. Snowflakes are complex. Function? To delight small children. To allow the accumulation of water at the poles, causing sea level changes. Make the lanscape white in order to reflect radiation. To ensure a release of water in the spring to facilitate plant growth. Take your pick. Function is another entirely subjective factor. In order to ascribe function you need to know what the designer required of his design, right? There may be other consequences of the design that are not the original intended function, for example my computer throws out heat, but that's not indended, it's a by product. So, as long as a system can be shown to have a potentially positive effect on something, you cannot discard that as an intended function, since you don't know the mind of the designer.
A snow-flake isn't complex at all -- it is repetitive. In Biology my freshman year of college we learned that life is both complex and orderly.
Ocean: Complex and Random.
SaltCrystal/Snow-Flake: Not Complex and Not Random
Life: Complex and Non-Random
My teacher would be so proud...
David

This message is a reply to:
 Message 16 by mark24, posted 08-21-2002 7:41 AM mark24 has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 18 by mark24, posted 08-21-2002 7:10 PM halcyonwaters has not replied

mark24
Member (Idle past 5185 days)
Posts: 3857
From: UK
Joined: 12-01-2001


Message 18 of 27 (15865)
08-21-2002 7:10 PM
Reply to: Message 17 by halcyonwaters
08-21-2002 12:32 PM


quote:
Originally posted by halcyonwaters:

A snow-flake isn't complex at all -- it is repetitive. In Biology my freshman year of college we learned that life is both complex and orderly.
Ocean: Complex and Random.
SaltCrystal/Snow-Flake: Not Complex and Not Random
Life: Complex and Non-Random
My teacher would be so proud...
David

Bad example. Let me try another tack. I hand you an odd shaped piece of wood with no apparent function.
Piece of wood: Uncomplex & random
Ergo it's not designed. But I DID design it. The exact opposite of what you expect.
Mark
------------------
Occam's razor is not for shaving with.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 17 by halcyonwaters, posted 08-21-2002 12:32 PM halcyonwaters has not replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 19 by Me, posted 08-22-2002 12:15 PM mark24 has not replied

Me
Inactive Member


Message 19 of 27 (15928)
08-22-2002 12:15 PM
Reply to: Message 18 by mark24
08-21-2002 7:10 PM


quote:
Originally posted by mark24:
quote:
Originally posted by halcyonwaters:

A snow-flake isn't complex at all -- it is repetitive.
Ocean: Complex and Random.
SaltCrystal/Snow-Flake: Not Complex and Not Random
Life: Complex and Non-Random
David

Bad example. Let me try another tack.

I thought the original example was 'Snowfall', not 'a snowflake'. Snowfall makes me think much more about the Ocean, which you have agreed to be complex.
By now I am not sure what you are arguing about - the point seems both complex and random. The nub of the intelligent design argument is that some things seem so complex and directed (non-random?) that they must have a designer. I would have thought that we could address this point by taking such an item - the eye is a favourite - and showing how evolutionary pressures operating blindly could produce the item. This is now a common answer to the ID argument.
It is inappropriate to require a move back to inorganic matter - that belongs in the Origin of Life thread, but the object should certainly move from simple to complex organisation. It is understood that evolution can work just as well the other way round, but the point of the argument involves simple to complex. We have both seen simulation experiments in which objects such as an eye are created from simple beginnings and evolutionary rulesets.
Incidentally, objects can be both simple and complex at the same time, depending on the way you are looking at them. A lump of rock can be simple when seen, complex when examined at the crystal level, and very complex when examined at the atomic level. As for wood...!

This message is a reply to:
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Quetzal
Member (Idle past 5862 days)
Posts: 3228
Joined: 01-09-2002


Message 20 of 27 (15986)
08-23-2002 3:53 AM
Reply to: Message 4 by Tranquility Base
08-19-2002 7:42 AM


And TB, whenever you get around to answering my latest post on this thread, I'd appreciate it if you'd go back to this post and answer the question there. Thanks.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 4 by Tranquility Base, posted 08-19-2002 7:42 AM Tranquility Base has not replied

John
Inactive Member


Message 21 of 27 (15994)
08-23-2002 8:47 AM
Reply to: Message 10 by mark24
08-20-2002 6:50 AM


quote:
Originally posted by mark24:
Wha..? I’ll have a pint of what he’s havin’!
Call me a weenie, but I think a pint might kill me.
------------------
http://www.hells-handmaiden.com

This message is a reply to:
 Message 10 by mark24, posted 08-20-2002 6:50 AM mark24 has not replied

neanderthal
Guest


Message 22 of 27 (18447)
09-27-2002 4:29 PM


Which would bring us to the next point. It must have some meaning. There are 54! different possible combinations of a deck of cards. A meaningful order is far far more probable than a meaningless order. I would conclude if it was ace to king, seperated by suits that someone put it that way.
--------------------------------------------------
Time to recheck that statistics 101 book, I think. Assuming a deck of random cards, all combinations are equally probable. It is just as likely that you would draw a Royal Flush as it is any other hand. Meaning has nothing to do with the selection of the cards. The only meaning involved would come from the observer.

  
Brad McFall
Member (Idle past 5023 days)
Posts: 3428
From: Ithaca,NY, USA
Joined: 12-20-2001


Message 23 of 27 (20029)
10-16-2002 12:06 PM
Reply to: Message 1 by originquestor
08-18-2002 10:28 PM


I am not ready to enter the discussion of ID proper as I have attempted in it more proper thread-head ages ago below: but let me preface my any future posts with warning that much of the THEOLOGY BUT NOT THE SCIENCE coming from ID is not being identified with ways of thinking that I tend rather to think come directly from Clerk Maxwell (oif the history of chemistry pre-Davy picked up on the Greek Scholar Anaxagoras that James C. Max well uses IN CONTEXT of Boltzmann's notions (of Boscovitch??)) to date which can be pursuant to Wolfram's questionable but good claims that make controversial nature of the science nonethelss because ID seems to prement (in my case at least) some good herpetology. etc etc.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 1 by originquestor, posted 08-18-2002 10:28 PM originquestor has not replied

ohnhai
Member (Idle past 5152 days)
Posts: 649
From: Melbourne, Australia
Joined: 11-17-2004


Message 24 of 27 (165333)
12-05-2004 11:36 AM


Half an Eyeball? again?
ID is really just an extension of the good old what use is half an eye ball? Surely nothing as complex as the human eye could have evolved through random chance? argument.
Same with these swimming ‘machines’. Just because you cant see how something like that could have possibly have evolved through a process of many many small random changes, doesn’t mean it cant or didn’t. Invoking the universal ‘catch all’ explanation [God did it] simply because you can’t see how it could have been done another way is one of the greatest failings of religion. Now science doesn’t claim to have all the answers and is quite ready accept that it may have got a few things wrong on the way (so long as you can prove that they are wrong) and once science completes it journey of discovery in a few hundred, thousand, however many years, it could quite well find god sitting there at the end saying what kept you?
Even modern man-made technology which we take for granted and accept as being designed has a long, long history of innovation and improvement that is analogous to the way evolution works.
By that I mean it would indeed be impossible to go from the first time one of our ancestors picked up something out of the natural world and used it as a tool, direct to (for example) a Sony Eriksson T610 mobile phone, without passing through the stages of technological improvement that has made the T610 possible. It would be impossible for that early ancestor to even conceive of the T610 much less design it or conceive of a plan that would eventually lead to the design of the T610. The T610 only comes about because over a very long time we have found ways of doing things a little better than before, ways that allowed technology to move forward or in a new direction.
Now evolution works in exactly the same way save that the changes are due to small random mutations of DNA that may or may not over many, many generations prove to be beneficial, and not through direct thought as to how a tool or process could be improved. The result is however the same a gradual increase in complexity and diversity. It’s a common misconception that evolution provides solutions to current problems. A common and really rather annoying argument voiced by some is: If I jumped off a tall building I wouldn’t evolve wings. No matter how many times I jumped off a building I would never evolve wings. This argument how ever dumb it may be in ignoring that evolution takes place over generations and not directly to individuals, it is really trying to argue the concept that evolution develops solutions to problems and thus indicating intent and design rather than what evolution really does and that is offers new opportunities for organisms to exploit recourses in different or slightly improves ways.
So What use is half an eye ball?
There never was half an eye ball. There was a bunch of light sensitive cells that had, due to their increasing density, started to dish. But this was never half an eye ball, it may have been on it’s way to becoming an eyeball but that is totally different. To understand what use this proto-eye could have been close your eyes and look towards a light. Wave your hand in front of your face. You see the shadow? Of course you do ( unless you are blind, but even if you are I’m sure you will recognise the benefit in being able to see anything over nothing ). Now imagine you are an early creature in the sea and that is the level of vision you have, that flicker of shadow you see could make all the difference in you finding food or avoiding becoming food for something else. Over time random mutation might lead to more light sensitive cells being clustered together (increasing resolution) or the cluster becoming more dished, (increasing focus) each leading an increased ability of the organism to differentiate its surroundings. Over time random mutations might lead some of the cells to react only to light of specific wavelengths and not others this will lead to the perception of colour and in the case of some animals even to allow the perception of inferred and ultraviolet. We missed out on those mutations and thus didn’t gain the ability to perceive these wavelengths.
This neatly brings me round to another point that is linked to the misconception that evolution is striving towards a specific goal. Evolution doesn’t care where it’s going it just keeps on going. It never was trying to create an eye ball, that just kind of happened on the way. There are many different types of eye out there from simple clusters of light receptive cells to the human eye to compound eyes and so on. There are many ways of doing the same thing each as valid as the next borne out by the fact that there are many types of eye in the world today. These types all evolved in parallel with each other either as totally separate entities or as branches of the same concept. They may even end up as remarkably similar to each other but coming in from totally different directions.
At no time during evolution is there any justification to invoke intelligent design, and believing there is, is simply to prove lack of understanding of how evolution works.
Now the argument over how life got started in the first place it a totally different kettle of fish but has no bearing on evolution once life had started. Scientists, though they have many theories don’t claim to have satisfactorily answered this yet and if they did then the level of peer review the claim would under go would be overwhelming. However their lack of a definitive answer is no reason to go ahead and invoke God as the creator of life. As here is no proof either way there is no justification in calling it either way and excluding any other explanation. I personally do not believe in God the creator but I do not exclude the possibility I could be wrong. Unlikely, but there is a possibility.

Replies to this message:
 Message 25 by AdminNosy, posted 12-05-2004 12:15 PM ohnhai has replied

AdminNosy
Administrator
Posts: 4754
From: Vancouver, BC, Canada
Joined: 11-11-2003


Message 25 of 27 (165350)
12-05-2004 12:15 PM
Reply to: Message 24 by ohnhai
12-05-2004 11:36 AM


Topic!
That's a nice post and all but I think it strays a bit far from the specific topic of this thread. Even if your tieing it in is correct it is big enough to need a topic of it's own.
We have several of them discussing this.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 24 by ohnhai, posted 12-05-2004 11:36 AM ohnhai has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 26 by ohnhai, posted 12-05-2004 1:24 PM AdminNosy has not replied

ohnhai
Member (Idle past 5152 days)
Posts: 649
From: Melbourne, Australia
Joined: 11-17-2004


Message 26 of 27 (165364)
12-05-2004 1:24 PM
Reply to: Message 25 by AdminNosy
12-05-2004 12:15 PM


Re: Topic!
Sorry, if I’ve strayed off topic, but I read the problem of ID and IC to be a restating, albeit in more scientifically focused terms, of the what use is half an eyeball? argument.
I.e. that it cant get any more simple (less complex) because it wouldn’t work.. and thus implying a considered design and thus a designer who considered this design and thus god. This is because there is no way it could have evolved on it’s own because there is no way it could have evolved from some thing simpler because it cant get any simpler than it is,and thus must have been created as is.
This is just the same as the eyeball argument because it uses a contemporary idea that apparently fly’s in the face of evolution but actually doesn’t.
Anyway as I said I apologise if I mis-understood the direction of the thread
This message has been edited by ohnhai, 12-05-2004 01:25 PM

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Replies to this message:
 Message 27 by Adminnemooseus, posted 12-05-2004 1:37 PM ohnhai has not replied

Adminnemooseus
Administrator
Posts: 3974
Joined: 09-26-2002


Message 27 of 27 (165368)
12-05-2004 1:37 PM
Reply to: Message 26 by ohnhai
12-05-2004 1:24 PM


Re: Topic!
I haven't gone back and reviewed message 1, but the offhand impression is that the topic is pretty vaguely defined.
Your message 24 is also (probably) a reply to an unregistered (and most likely long gone) visitor, in a topic that had been inactive for over 2 years.
The "Welcome, Visitors!" forum is being phased out (note the "No new topics" in the forum name).
Not at all anything personal, but I'm going to close this one down.
Adminnemooseus

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This message is a reply to:
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