Intelligent Design explains many follies

Is an old city, like, say London, an intricately complex man-made thing? I'd say it is.But has it been designed? Hardly, it seems. A city like London is an almost organic, living thing that has taken centuries to grow into what it is now. No single human being is responsible for its plan, no one person designed it the way it is. Some aspects of it could be called really stupid, from a design point-of-view. Yet, it is very complex and unmistakably man-made.Is this the kind of example you were after?

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"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science." - Charles Darwin.

I agree with the 'why' question, Jar, but your second question has me worried. I think adaptation and imperfection are indeed the basic things that evolution is built on. Perhaps you could point out how you think this might not be the case. It all depends on how you define 'design' of course, but if you call the relation that exists between form and function in many structures in living nature 'design', then I think John 10:10 has a point. We see that there is such a relation, so, in a way, we do "start with the knowledge that 'design' exists", just as we start with the knowledge that gravity exists when we try to theorize an explanation for it.I hope I didn't totally derail your argument, but I thought that, for the sake of fairness, this needed to be said.In the mean time, John 10:10, if you read this, I'd appreciate a reaction to my post to you in which I mentioned London, remember?

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"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science." - Charles Darwin.

I think the seeming implausibility lies not so much in the principles of evolution themselves, as it does in people’s understanding of it. The mathematics of evolution, especially the mathematics of the probabilities involved, are often misunderstood. Likewise, the wide-ranging biological aspects of evolution, such as biochemical, biophysical, physiological and ecological aspects, are all difficult to grasp sometimes, especially for those who are not very well versed in the sciences.Not wishing to blow my own horn, I must say I find nothing more plausible than the fact that, if hereditary information randomly changes, which is a fact, and if the environment can only sustain the better adapted, which is also a fact, then the adaptive changes are preserved at the expense of the less well adapted. A long cumulation of these changes naturally leads to extremely well adapted, very complex structures. Being science-minded, they will certainly not resist your theory if it stands up to rigorous scientific tests and explains things better than the theory of evolution does. But those are very tough demands and no competing theory has yet surpassed the theory of evolution on both counts. I somehow doubt that your theory will do the trick. But you’re welcome to try.

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"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science." - Charles Darwin.

Could you explain what you mean? On the contrary, that is very much the issue. Didn’t you say before: and London is an “intricately complex man-made thing”. Yet it was not “designed by man’s creativity, then put together by man's ability to build what he has designed.” You asked for an example and I gave you one.

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"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science." - Charles Darwin.

Wouldn’t you agree that “the filtering part” is included in the notion of ”adaptation’? After all, adaptation presupposes an external pressure to which it is a reaction. Perhaps I shouldn’t have repeated the exact terms John 10:10 used, but should have opted for the more usual combination of ”random mutation’ and ”selective pressure’. These two terms may better convey John’s notions of ”imperfection’ and ”adaptation’, and they are perhaps more acceptable as a description of the general principles of evolution. Anyway, I think that’s what John was hinting at. I think that is indeed the crucial point here. I’ve mentioned it before in these forums that I think you could say that there is ”design’ in nature, but only if you take ”design’ to mean functional form, not something planned in advance. The eye clearly has a function, namely to enable it possessor to see things. I don’t think there’s any way around the notion that the eye has a very sophisticated design to that end. But that doesn’t mean I think the eye was planned in advance by an intelligent designer. We need a definition of ”design’ that doesn’t presuppose a designer, and we need to get rid of the notion that design necessarily implies an intelligent designer. I don’t think you can compare stone arches with forms of biological design, because there is a huge difference between the way either of them comes to be. Stone arches don’t procreate and do not compete with one another. The word ”gravity’ does not explain gravity, it describes it. Newton’s and Einstein’s theories explain it. Likewise, the word ”design’ describes the relation between form and function in biology, the theory of evolution explains it. So I think design - as functional form - is comparable to gravity in that both are phenomena we see in nature, and both find an explanation in the form of the respective theories we have for them. The definition I would like to see of ”design’ in biology is one that defines design as an effect rather than a cause. Like gravity is an effect of space-time curvature in the presence of mass, biological design is an effect of the process of evolution. Design doesn’t do something, design arises.

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"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science." - Charles Darwin.

Except that that is not what ID is intended for. Just like Copernicus' heliocentric model of the solar system was not meant to explain why its geocentric predecessor was folly, but instead to explain the data of astronomical observations, is ID not intended to explain why the theory of evolution is folly, but instead to explain the presence of complex living structures in nature. Unfortunately for ID, the theory of evolution does a much better job at explaining this, because it does not, like ID, posit the existence of an unprovable Entity that needs an explanation of Its Own. Thus, the theory of evolution escapes Occam's razor, which cannot be said of ID. The theory of evolution does not need to explain this, because the theory of evolution does not deal with sparks of life that "know deterministically" where they are going, anymore than the theory of gravity deals with particles of mass that know deterministically what path they will take through space-time. They just take the path that the laws of nature prescribe.The picture you paint of the theory of evolution is a straw-man.

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"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science." - Charles Darwin.

Sometimes what seems a reasonable explanation for a phenomenon actually becomes nonsense when you discover more about it. Let me give you an example. In his Voyage of the Beagle, Darwin describes how he visits a site, in Argentina, of the fossil remains of a mastodon.

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Hearing also of the remains of one of the old giants which a man told me he had seen on the Banks of the Parana, I procured a canoe, and proceeded to the place. Two groups of immense bones projected in bold relief from the perpendicular cliff. They were, however, so completely decayed, that I could only bring away small fragments of one of the great molar-teeth; but these were sufficient to show that the remains belonged to a species of Mastodon. The men who took me in the canoe, said they had long known of them, and had often wondered how they had got there: the necessity of a theory being felt, they came to the conclusion, that, like the bizcacha, the mastodon formerly was a burrowing animal! {italics mine, P.}

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(Voyage of the Beagle, by Charles Darwin, chapter VII, October 1st, 1833.)

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The men who took Darwin to the site had no knowledge of geology and stratification. They could not conceive any other way for a mastodon to be found that far beneath the surface than that it must have dug itself a way there.Darwin, on the other hand, was a keen amateur-geologist, who'd read Lyell's Principles of Geology, and appreciated the great explanatory power of Lyell's then relatively novel ideas about land rising out of the sea by sedimentation. For Darwin, there was no question about it: the mastodon had been buried by successive layers of sediment over a long period of time.The point I am trying to make is that it may seem very reasonable to conclude that, since man intelligently designes complex things, therefore all similarly complex things must have been so designed. But why not keep an open mind and realize that there may be other ways for complex things to arise? We know more about biochemistry, genetics, heredity, ecology and so on, than, for instance, William Paley did, when he theorized about his famous watch.In Paley's days it was quite natural to conclude an Intelligent Designer, because science hadn't progressed as far as to be able to provide other possible explanations. We, on the other hand, have the benefit of modern science, which has given us a wealth of information on a great number of subjects related to the study of all things living, all of which points in the same direction: life evolved via a mindless mechanism, and there is no need to posit an intelligent agent to explain things.But to appreciate this, you must take all the facts into consideration, or at least as many as you can find and understand, and not just your everyday experience of, and gut-feeling about, complexity and design.This message has been edited by Parasomnium, 02-Apr-2006 08:48 AM

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"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science." - Charles Darwin.

Are you suggesting that your industry believes 'incredible' events do not happen? If so, then I am greatly worried about the standard of thinking in your industry. Why don't you design nuclear plants such that the chances of an accident become "incredibly incredible" (1 in 1,000,000,000,000)? Surely that should make you feel a lot safer than teetering on the brink of possible and impossible? It isn't exactly clear to me what you mean by "an atom designing itself", but if it means what I think it means, then you are presenting a strawman again. And even if you don't literally mean 'designing', but simply 'happening by chance', then I can give you examples of happenstances with much smaller odds that still happen anyway.The fact that something has a very small chance of happening doesn't mean it cannot happen at all. Unless you can present us with a mechanism whereby chances smaller than a certain threshold suddenly become zero, we have no reason to believe there is such a threshold. If something has a non-zero chance of happening, however small, then, by definition, it can happen. Isaac Newton was writing in a time when modern science was in its infancy, and religion was still firmly in control of almost everything people did. Newton himself was a deeply religious man. From the outside, science was looked upon with suspicion, especially because some 'natural philosophers' - as scientists called themselves back then - also practiced less scientific endeavors, like alchemy and magic. You may or may not know it, but Newton practiced alchemy himself.If you look for them, you can always find quotes from great men who say something in favour of your view. There is no doubt that he was one of the great giants of science, but science has progressed a great deal since Newton, and I think we would have been more impressed of you had quoted someone more recent, someone like, say, Richard Feynman.This message has been edited by Parasomnium, 05-Apr-2006 09:54 AM

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"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science." - Charles Darwin.

Let me get this straight: if what you say is true, then it must also be the case that you either "have a degree in Engineering Physics and understand the laws of nuclear physics and how atoms behave", or you don't. There's a 50/50 percent chance.Well, you could have fooled me. Judging from your recent posts, I'd have thought there wasn't a snowball's chance in hell of you having understood basic probability theory, which I reckon would be one of the minimum requirements for a degree such as you claim to have.This may sound harsh, but with that one dismal remark you have completely disqualified yourself as a credible source of opposition to the theory of evolution. Looking at your signature, I think you would be better off in the religious forums, and you'd do well to leave the science ones alone.

John,I'm sorry if you feel insulted by what I and others wrote, and I apologize for my part.I wrote:

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Judging from your recent posts, I'd have thought there wasn't a snowball's chance in hell of you having understood basic probability theory, which I reckon would be one of the minimum requirements for a degree such as you claim to have.

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Although I still stand by the actual content of that remark, I realize I should not have said it in such a harsh tone. I agree with Admin that this thread should be about arguments, and not about anyone's person.That said, here is something I'd like to draw your attention to, it's an example of inaccurate thinking on your part: You say you disagree that nothing is 100% provable. So you think that some things are 100% provable. That's fine, I agree.But to augment your point, you then go on to say that "many scientific principles are provable to a very high degree of certainty". First of all, a very high degree of certainty is not the same as 100%, and second, this very point is what many science-minded people have been saying all along.If you say that abiogenesis is not among the scientific theories that have been "proven" with a high degree of certainty, then I agree. But the controversy between ID and evolution is not about how life started, but about how it became as complex as it is. The theory of evolution provides a very thorough and complete explanation for this.By "thorough and complete" I mean that the details of what we find in nature are explained in a consistent manner by the theory of evolution, always compliant with it. As yet, the theory has withstood any challenge of the form "if such and such part of the theory is true then we should find such and such evidence". In most cases, we eventually find the evidence we seek. And sometimes we find evidence to the contrary, which prompts us to refine the theory so that it can explain the new evidence along with the evidence we already had.Now, about that little matter with the 50/50 percent chances. CK said: I'll give it go, in the form of a question. Please be so kind as to provide an answer.An inexperienced archer tries to hit a small target a hundred metres away. There is a strong side wind blowing. The arrow the archer is using is bent and is missing part of the feathers at the butt. The archer is wearing a blindfold.What is the chance that the archer will hit the target?A. Fifty percent, because the archer will either hit the target, or miss it.
B. Almost zero, considering the circumstances.What would you say, John? A or B?This message has been edited by Parasomnium, 20-Apr-2006 02:39 PM

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"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science." - Charles Darwin.