Help me understand Intelligent Design (part 2)

I personally asked Prof Behe something when he came to a nearby university for a talk.I asked him what would he say to those critics who say that he has just decided that something is too complex so he throws up his hands and says "Oh well. It must be designed."He said his discision to adopt Intelligent Design was not based on what he didn't know but on what he did know.

Sounds like you're assuming I didn't read his book before I met him.Anyway, before I went to see him I read his book Darwin's Black Box.I guess I got to it before the crowd warned me that it was a lousy read.

I would rather read specific rebuttals of his ideas presented in the book. And I already visited web sites where specific answers were alleged to be provided to Darwin's Black Box.Lawyers are paid to cleverly couch questions as to make you look like a fool. Big deal. For enough money that same lawyer could take the other side and make the other side look like qwacks.I'll get around to reading the proceedings. But I'm not too impressed with trick questions and clever legal tactics. Sorry, I don't think the man is a qwack. I just don't think that is the case.I'm a sofware developer like one of your other posters. And if someone told me that the algorithims and nested algorithims which make up the procedure and process of the continuity of biological systems indicated no intelligent design, I would question that.In the book he talks about following the evidence wherever it leads. I question if some scientists are really willing to follow the evidence wherever it leads. I wonder if some of them say before hand that they do not want to go down a certain path because it may just lead them to where they do not want to go.I see the survival of biological systems to be very much like a program. It is extremly difficult for me to imagine a program to have created itself.Did you read the man's book?This message has been edited by jaywill, 12-20-2005 05:10 PMThis message has been edited by jaywill, 12-20-2005 05:13 PM

Pink S,I appreciate you putting a biological situation in terms more familiar to me. So you think that enough time of scrambling the bits on a harddrive without intellient input, could eventually arrive at the OS operating system?I can't easily believe that. It requires a huge amount of something like "faith" for lack of a better word, to believe that. What is selecting a desirable trial outcome, remembering it, and passing over undesireable trial results?In the example you use is there absolutely no standard that the random generation "knows" that it is trying to arrive at? A human being could conceivably carry out your experiment if one could live that long. But without intelligent human expectations what is it that "knows" when it is far away or close to the intended outcome?This message has been edited by jaywill, 12-21-2005 01:24 PMThis message has been edited by jaywill, 12-21-2005 01:25 PMThis message has been edited by jaywill, 12-21-2005 01:26 PMThis message has been edited by jaywill, 12-21-2005 01:30 PM

Incidently, I corrected my comment because your analogy was scrambling all the bits on a harddrive.And I don't think I said no active program of some kind could be produced by random generation of bits. What process could arrive at a filter beforehand which "decides" what is "beneficial" and what is not?I think for such a filter to exist there has to be some kind of plan. I think any "filter" has to be programmed to "decide" the beneficial from the non-beneficial. Therefore there most be a "concept" of success and failure.Did that filter in biological terms itself evolve? Then what filter discriminated between success and failure in the development of the other filter?Do we have an infinite regress of filters developing other filters?The entire process of evolution itself - was it also arrived at through a trial of numerous other methods of process development?If you back up and back up and back up more and more I think the idea of intelligence is hard to avoid.The alternative is to take on some pseudo Buddhist view of the world that the success of the functionality is some kind of illusion. It is in reality a chaotic none meaningful mass of confusion with an illusion of purposefulness.It is alright to say "I don't know." If you say that you don't know I will not say that that proves anything. I would only say that if you don't know then why not let others propose alternative theories like ID? You said: Are you now saying that no component of the process at all is random? Then won't you then have to go back and correct this above statment?

I am not a biologist. But I think laymen have a right to weigh in on the discussion.The reproductive system of a bat is somewhat like that of a camel or a rhino or a human being.Something applied the same concept across the board to vastly different life forms. There was an overall sense of "benefit" which could be duplicated for many different kinds of organisms apparently.This speaks to me of a plan. This speaks to me of a concept of a useful template that can be imposed repeatedly on different species.The indication of intelligence is very strong. How have we arrived at a point where the suggestion of such is hooted down?

I don’t know if this is a “hang up” but I do think the indication of design is strong. Do you think it is weak? Would then say that reproduction is a “goal” of the process of evolution?Would you say that keeping life going is a “goal” of the process?If so then something none physical has “decided” that the primary objective is to keep the phenomenon of living from being terminated. Did that non physical thing also itself evolve? Was there something prior to that which “decided” that the objective was to arrive at a non-physical thing would come into existence that would have program of keeping life living? But if so this prior thing would have existed before life existed. How could it “know” that it needed a entity to keep life living when it “knew” nothing of the existence of life?If you say “We just don’t know yet” I would respect that. And I would ask that while you Evolutionists are trying to figure that one out let’s hear from another theory on it. We’re all supposedly looking for the truth. Something “knows” what is a perfectly replicated molecule and when one fails to meet the standard the process of evolution is triggered?Did the “decider of perfect verses imperfect molecules” also arrive at through the process of evolution? What then decided between an imperfect and a perfect decider of imperfect and perfect molecules?Maybe we should also explore a theory of Intelligent Design while Evolutionists study the answer to that. I’m a composer and a programmer. I have plenty of imagination.I can see the beauty and elegance of the theory. I just question if that is what explains all these animals. And if so to what extent?Going back to software, you may know what nesting is. I mean one logical loop nested inside another logical loop. I see things like that going on in biology - an alogorithim nested inside another algorithim. For example the cycle of reproduction going on inside the cycle of natural selection.If you have several loops of logic nested within each other in concentric circles to carry out something as a whole unit, it is difficult to assume intelligence was not involved. I don’t know how we arrived at the point that to suggest intelligence is involved could give rise to such disdain by intelligent people. I think the case which I would inquire about would be different from this one. I think I ask something like this:Is evolution a process which arrived at a way to produce a human male as a way to perpetuate the survival of a sperm cell? Or was it a process to produce a human sperm cell in order to perpetuate the survival of a human?Which was the final objective - the human or the sperm? And without intelligent design how did this natural process prioritize which life form is for the means and which is for the ends?Did evolution produce human beings so that sperms could continue? Or way it the other way around? If either way doesn’t this “deciding” reveal a plan, a foresight or some kind of “look ahead” ability to “know” what is the desired outcome and steer towards it? This is the response that I get quite often. I just don’t understand evolution. This is a frequently used dismissal. The questioner of Evolution simply does not understand Evolution.Since the more I go back and and study, I get this response, I suppose that I will just have to trust those that really understand Evolution that it is a proven fact.I guess class is dismissed. Thanks for your comments just the same. Don’t think they were all in vain.Hope you don't mind if I talk to a few other people here.This message has been edited by jaywill, 12-21-2005 06:43 PMThis message has been edited by jaywill, 12-21-2005 06:53 PM