INTELLIGENT DESIGN: An Engineer’s Approach

Chiroptera wrote: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?

Why would a powerful "designer" - God or otherwise - be constrained by economics?

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Jar said:.you quoted me: 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

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. 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.

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.

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

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. No. 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. 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. The hierachy of manuscripts does not have a maker. The scribes are analogous to chemical processes which are not intellegent, unlike scribes. Explain, please. 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?

Thanks, I'll look for further inputs. Feel free to contribute to the institute if you wish.Enjoy.

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RebelAAmericanOZen[Deist
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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. 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?

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?

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.)

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?

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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.

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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.

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RebelAAmericanOZen[Deist
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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.

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. Could you name some of this scientists and what would be their rational for protesting darwinism and declaring it a pure unadutarated crap?