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Author | Topic: INTELLIGENT DESIGN: An Engineer’s Approach | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
NOT JULIUS Member (Idle past 4504 days) Posts: 219 From: Rome Joined: |
Chiroptera wrote:
...drunks like me.... Ah. Well, this certainly explains a lot about the quality of your posts. Don’t underestimate drunks. Some drunk lawyers have made minced meat of sober ones in court. Some priceless works of arts were made by drunkards. Ha ha ha! Ha! You skirted answering the main points of my post # 28. In that post I pointed out the weakness of the “nested hierarchy” argument. In that link that you provided, the authors said”in effect, at least that’s how I understood it”that because of the “commonalities” of living beings ( ability to replicate themselves, etc) they could be traced to one single “mother” (or source being). And, therefore these “daughters” or replicates have no direct creator. I countered citing “common traits” of non-living things--cars, etc-- like (a) they are non-replicating, (b) they don’t metabolize, etc. And by way of using the REASONING used by the “nested hierarchy” argument, I asked if it was also reasonable to conclude that non-living things (cars, etc) has no maker since they share the mentioned traits. To emphasise: this being the case”the nested hierarchy of non living things”should also lead us to the conclusion that no one made them. (See post # 28) You skirted this and went to give an illustration about (a) medieval manuscript, and (b) cars. You said that the medieval manuscript aptly illustrated “replications” in nature. And, you went to conclude by way of a conjectural question: “why would a common designer design according to a single hierarchy?” You realize of course that your argument has weakness: (a) that medieval manuscript had a maker and that the replicators were just the processors set in “automatic mode” by that maker. (b) your conjectural question has really an answer. The answer is this: why not? For economy or efficiency reasons?
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ringo Member (Idle past 441 days) Posts: 20940 From: frozen wasteland Joined: |
pilate_judas writes: The answer is this: why not? For economy or efficiency reasons? Why would a powerful "designer" - God or otherwise - be constrained by economics? Help scientific research in your spare time. No cost. No obligation. Join the World Community Grid with Team EvC
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NOT JULIUS Member (Idle past 4504 days) Posts: 219 From: Rome Joined: |
Jar said:
You even quoted what I said while misrepresenting it . you quoted me: Seriously, are you saying that critters (whatever they are) must be designed for 'perpetuity'? Have you considered that their designer/maker made them for a LIMITED PURPOSE, LIMITED EXISTENCE, say, for food of apes and drunks like me and my cousin? Classic attempt to change the subject. The subject was examples of trial and error. I showed trial and error. Those critters that do not pass through the filter of Natural selection are errors. those that do pass through are the successes. What is the difference?I showed trial and error. Those critters that do not pass through the filter of Natural selection are errors. those that do pass through are the successes. What is the difference? Each critter has a different selection of mutations. Trial. Sorry but so far you have presented NO evidence of any designer. No, I did not misrepresent, nor changed the subject. I just pointed out that what you term as "trial and error" could be be by purposeful design. That is this specie(s) were DESIGNED for LIMITED PURPOSE, LIMITED EXISTENCE". For reasons already cited. There is a big difference between "trial and error" and purposeful (or definitive) design. What you label as "trial and error" is actually for "LIMITED EXISTENCE". Just because a specie became extinct is NOT evidence of "trial and error". They could be strong evidence of a designer wanting a "limited life" for his creation. Edited by pilate_judas, : clarity
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crashfrog Member (Idle past 1496 days) Posts: 19762 From: Silver Spring, MD Joined: |
Let's just say it's cars. Well, no, let's not say that. We're talking about living things, after all, which exhibit among them a very wide variety of modes of locomotion - any number of legs, wings, fins for water, etc. Living things exist in every part of the Earth and locomote themselves in every physically possible way. Restricting the analogy to cars doesn't make sense; cars all get about the same exact way.
Now, where have I listed ideas that there doesn't appear to be a designer? That was the impression I got from your OP. It seemed like you were listing reasons that the "designer" was obscured. The most obvious reason for why the "designer appears not to want to be found" is because there is no designer. Shared homologies, especially nonsensical ones like whale pelvises or broken Vitamin C genes, are evidence that organisms evolved according to natural processes, not being specially created by God or anybody else.
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jar Member (Idle past 424 days) Posts: 34026 From: Texas!! Joined: |
No, I did not misrepresent, nor changed the subject. I just pointed out that what you term as "trial and error" could be be by purposeful design. That is this specie(s) were DESIGNED for LIMITED PURPOSE, LIMITED EXISTENCE". For reasons already cited. There is a big difference between "trial and error" and purposeful (or definitive) design. What you label as "trial and error" is actually for "LIMITED EXISTENCE". Just because a specie became extinct is NOT evidence of "trial and error". They could be strong evidence of a designer wanting a "limited life" for his creation. That MIGHT be so if that is what we see. But it is not. Many critters continue over time. Some change. At any given time there are many trials in progress. It is called mutations. You have many yourself. Some of those trials succeed, they pass through the filter of Natural Selection. Not all the members of a given species work. Many fail and the critter does not live long enough to reproduce. Those trials that succeed live long enough to reproduce. Changes in individual members of a species. Trials. Some of those trials fail. Error. Those trials that do not fail are the successes. Sorry but you have shown NOTHING that indicates design unless the designer is very inept, incompetent and ignorant. Aslan is not a Tame Lion
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Dr Adequate Member (Idle past 314 days) Posts: 16113 Joined: |
You skirted answering the main points of my post # 28. In that post I pointed out the weakness of the “nested hierarchy” argument. In that link that you provided, the authors said”in effect, at least that’s how I understood it”that because of the “commonalities” of living beings ( ability to replicate themselves, etc) they could be traced to one single “mother” (or source being). And, therefore these “daughters” or replicates have no direct creator. You have misunderstood the argument. It goes like this: if a set of forms replicate with variation, and they have common ancestry, then we should expect to see a nested hierarchy of forms. We do see such a hierarchy in Nature, which therefore is evidence confirming the theory that species were produced in such a way.
I countered citing “common traits” of non-living things--cars, etc-- like (a) they are non-replicating, (b) they don’t metabolize, etc. And by way of using the REASONING used by the “nested hierarchy” argument, No.
I asked if it was also reasonable to conclude that non-living things (cars, etc) has no maker since they share the mentioned traits. No. Using the same reasoning, we conclude that fact that cars do not display a nested hierarchy shows that they were not produced by descent with modification.
To emphasise: this being the case”the nested hierarchy of non living things”should also lead us to the conclusion that no one made them. (See post # 28) But there is not a nested hierarchy of non living things except where this is produced by descent with modification, as in jar's analogy of the manuscript.
You realize of course that your argument has weakness: (a) that medieval manuscript had a maker The hierachy of manuscripts does not have a maker. The scribes are analogous to chemical processes which are not intellegent, unlike scribes.
and that the replicators were just the processors set in “automatic mode” by that maker. Explain, please.
(b) your conjectural question has really an answer. The answer is this: why not? That's not really an answer. Why do planets travel in ellipses? Newton: Because eff equals em one em two over ar squared. Proponent of "Intelligent Falling": Why not?
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RAZD Member (Idle past 1435 days) Posts: 20714 From: the other end of the sidewalk Joined: |
RAZD:
... Isn't "limbosis" a dance troupe? Thanks. I'm not sure what limbosis is, it just sounded cool. We could all MAKE it a dance troupe. I was going for the clinical terminology...a condition of being in a state of limbo. But, I did google it, and I had the top 2 results out of 495 matches for a single coherent word search. So, YEAH baby! (I still have the printout.) Wow, that was an awesome post. Yes, I am ready to be wrong. I welcome everything, because the truth is we DON'T know. I've found an approach that seems to hold up. But, it needs to be tested. I guess that's why I'm here. I'll have to get back to you on the eyeball thing, though. Nice work. Thanks, I'll look for further inputs. Feel free to contribute to the institute if you wish. Enjoy. we are limited in our ability to understand by our ability to understand RebelAAmericanOZen[Deist
... to learn ... to think ... to live ... to laugh ... to share.
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limbosis Member (Idle past 6308 days) Posts: 120 From: United States Joined: |
So now you are considering a possibility of a finite designer. So abandoning the experiment (or whatever life on earth is supposed to be) or dying are definite possibilities as to why we don't see the designer manifesting itself. And, me, I think that the non-existence of an intelligent designer is the most realistic possibility of them all. If one could consider a finite designer, wouldn't one want to characterize it before assuming that it got bored and left? Wouldn't one also consider that designer irresponsible if it left without checking on its creation? In fair consideration of that possibility, one would not need to initially assume that the designer would have died, or never existed in the first place. That part of your reasoning doesn't make sense to me.
As far as we know, there isn't much evidence for an intelligent designer to begin with, so it would seem that the reason the designer doesn't seem to want to reveal its nature is that it doesn't exist.
Although I don't believe in a benevolent god, I would remind you that many creationists would insist that there are signs all over the place. There are also indications of alien life here, as reported all over the world by millions of people who do not know each other. Are you going to say they're all either lying or mistaken? It wouldn't be your place to. But, what I'd also like to know is, when is everyone who believes in evolution going to express a fair amount of rage, for being publicly deceived with messages about some god that's supposed to be worth a darn. Don't you think that's in order?
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limbosis Member (Idle past 6308 days) Posts: 120 From: United States Joined: |
Why would a powerful "designer" - God or otherwise - be constrained by economics?
I'll answer that, if you don't mind. There is no logical reason to assume that any designer would not be concerned with economics. We do it here on earth. So, for the sake of discussion, why would we assume that a designer, as limited as ours would appear to be, did not concern itself with economics?
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limbosis Member (Idle past 6308 days) Posts: 120 From: United States Joined: |
Well, no, let's not say that. We're talking about living things, after all, which exhibit among them a very wide variety of modes of locomotion - any number of legs, wings, fins for water, etc. Living things exist in every part of the Earth and locomote themselves in every physically possible way.
No yes, let's DO say that. The reason is, like you say, cars serve the purpose of getting from point A to point B. What I contend is that ALL forms of life may be here for the same purpose. So, in that way, we can use cars as an analogy. If we stick to that, for the sake of discussion, we can simplify the reasoning process. (Besides, it's my post.)
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ringo Member (Idle past 441 days) Posts: 20940 From: frozen wasteland Joined: |
limbosis writes: ... why would we assume that a designer, as limited as ours would appear to be, did not concern itself with economics? Are we not talking about a designer who supposedly designed every single living creature on the face of the earth? Incompetent moron though he might have been, he had a pretty large stock of resources to draw on - i.e. the entire earth. It's just ludicrous to suggest that economy of resources was a factor. As for economy of ideas, are we not talking about an "intelligent" designer? Intelligence generally suggests more ideas than one has resources to implement. Or are you thinking of some other kind of economics? Help scientific research in your spare time. No cost. No obligation. Join the World Community Grid with Team EvC
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RAZD Member (Idle past 1435 days) Posts: 20714 From: the other end of the sidewalk Joined: |
There is no logical reason to assume that any designer would not be concerned with economics. When an artist draws they do not think about running out of pencil. They KNOW they have more pencils or where they can get them. And if the R&D budget is THAT low, they're not going to get much of value done. This appears to be more of an arbitrary ad hoc concept tacked on to explain lack of good design, when it doesn't do that: we see bad desing by comparison of different features, and a failure to use options that are available, not by a total lack of new features. Enjoy. we are limited in our ability to understand by our ability to understand RebelAAmericanOZen[Deist
... to learn ... to think ... to live ... to laugh ... to share.
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RAZD Member (Idle past 1435 days) Posts: 20714 From: the other end of the sidewalk Joined: |
... he had a pretty large stock of resources to draw on - i.e. the entire earth. Not to mention the amount of that material that is wasted every year. If the economics of resources were a real issue, then there would not be so much annual wastage. Enjoy. we are limited in our ability to understand by our ability to understand RebelAAmericanOZen[Deist
... to learn ... to think ... to live ... to laugh ... to share.
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PaulK Member Posts: 17828 Joined: Member Rating: 2.3 |
To reply to your comments, the only thing likely to remain stable in the medium term is the interfaces to low-level libraries. TO expand, while the lower level libraries might be retained in a rewrite of higher-level code, they too are subject to the same pressures. As expanded functionality is required they, too, become more complex up to the point where a rewrite or replacement is needed. Sometimes a replacemement is desirable for other reasons, too - because something better at an even lower level has become available.
(As an aside one of the supposed benefits of Object Orientated languages is that the underlying implementation can be changed while retaining the same interface.) On the other point I think that you are making a serious mistake in carrying the analogy so far to talk of "compilers". (And arguably misreading the analogy even there - DNA is arguably more akin to an interpreted programming language). I was making a general point on the nature of a design methodology that relies on continually modifying existing designs. An intelligent designer would have the option of "going back to the drawing board" and starting afresh - and would likely find it desirable to do so on occasion. Evolution does not have that option. Therefore if, as it seems, that option has not been taken the evidence favours evolution over intelligent design.
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fallacycop Member (Idle past 5550 days) Posts: 692 From: Fortaleza-CE Brazil Joined: |
I guess we just differ on how we look at things? If I see a pyramid, I know it was made by someone; if I see a mountain--more complex than a pyramid--I know someone w/ greater intelligence than the maker of the pyramid made it I agree that we differ on how we see things. I think you should refrain from using the word "know" when talking about the "someone w/ greater intelligence" and use the word "believe" instead.
Many scientists are actually protesting Darwinism--which if I understand correctly was expounded by Dawkins; who in turn influenced many to think that because the universe is such a complex system no one made it; that that very rare chance (more than 1:1Trillion) hapenned. To me and to many scientist this is pure unadulterated crap. Stuff for fantasy movies. Could you name some of this scientists and what would be their rational for protesting darwinism and declaring it a pure unadutarated crap?
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