A Designer Consistent with the Physical Evidence

On Cavediver’s Why is the Intelligent Designer so Inept? thread, I attempted to initiate a discussion about the type of designer that would be fully consistent with the physical evidence available to us. There didn't seem to be a great amount of interest in this discussion, but I would still like to give it a shot.Basically, I would like to discuss the Intelligent Designer who would be consistent with the physical evidence available in terms of the three main qualities generally attributed to the Judeo-Christian style of God: power, intelligence and benevolence.I have broken the three traits down into 5-point scale bars, each point representing a general appraisal of the Designer’s efficacy.:Power:impotent --- incompetent --- neutral --- competent --- omnipotentIntelligence:ignorant --- unintelligent --- neutral --- intelligent --- omniscientBenevolence:omnimalevolent --- malevolent --- neutral --- benevolent --- omnibenevolent-----Most formal discussion has concluded that the evidence is not consistent with a Designer who is omnipotent, omniscient and omnibenevolent on my scale bars (ignoring the possibilities of trickster Gods and paranoid-reclusive Gods). Most would probably also disagree that a Designer who is impotent, ignorant and omnimalevolent also does not fit the available evidence.I would like to determine, with this discussion, the highest possible set of values we could give a Designer in regards to these three attributes, and in light of the available physical evidence. I argue that a Designer who is competent, omniscient and benevolent is the highest set of values that can be given, and happens to also almost coincide with the God that I believe in.My arguments for this position are (1) that a God with great power could learn how to engineer something as complex as a human body, but would not be able to make it absolutely perfect; (2) that God has all knowledge that is possible to have, but that “all knowledge” does not include the knowledge of how to do things that physics does not allow; and (3) that God is benevolent because He allows us to appreciate beauty and good taste, etc., but often sacrifices benevolence for practicality (makes us feel pain; allows things to die because it maintains the balance of the ecosystem, etc.).Do others agree with my assessment? Or, should I raise or lower some of the gauges?I realize that there are potentially many possible combinations of attributes, but I only want to discuss the maximum (simply because the Designer is generally treated in the superlative).

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-BluejayDarwin loves you.

I appreciate the replies from Rueh and Mylakovich, but I think the point has been lost. Granted. But, my intent is to determine the maximum values attributable to God based solely on physical evidence, so as to set an upper limit on logic-based discussions about Intelligent Design (and, yes, I see the contradiction in terms there).Frankly, I find it rather impossible to attribute something to "design" when you don't know what the designer is capable of designing. Once we are able to set a reasonable boundary to the relevant attributes of God, we can begin to discuss how the specifics do or do not line up with any Designer that fits within the boundaries.----- I don't want this to get too theological, so maybe I should add Rahvin's restriction that God's creation here on earth represents an honest attempt to create a workable system, and is not created the way it is for an ulterior motive.I argue against neutrality, as well. Here is a relevant snippet from a message posted by Percy in Cavediver's thread that I think provides a good argument for at least a fair measure of power and intelligence: I think this rather strongly supports the idea that the designer has to be at least above average in intelligence and power (perhaps power should be referred to as the ability to implement one's intelligence?). To me, benevolence is kind of the problem, because "benevolence" is more of a subjective term than the others, and different people view benevolence as having different manifestations.So, my argument is that competent-omniscient-benevolent is the array that gives the highest overall marks and still could be consistent with the available physical evidence.

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-BluejayDarwin loves you.

Hi, Mylakovich.I find nothing wrong with your scenario. I argue against omnipotent simply because "all power" sounds to me like the designer could negotiate with and even defy the laws of nature. Since I can't think of any physical evidence of the laws of nature being defied, I suggested that the designer is confined within the allowances of those laws, at least in relation to the physical processes of this universe. Thus, the designer would not be omnipotent.I chose to maximize omniscience because it's possible for the designer to have knowledge that it would be restricted from implementing. So, omniscience could be completely unmanifested, and thus could be limitless, so long as power was restricted. But, I could see the reverse also being true.I put "benevolent" instead of a lower value just because we were made so that we can "get used to" and "get over" our pains. I see no reason why an omnimalevolent (or possible even a plain ol' "malevolent") designer would give us respite from our pains. I can't argue "omnibenevolent" because there is pain, and because survival of one life usually necessitates the death of another. I still can't decide between "neutral" and "benevolent" (or possibly "malevolent"), so I stuck with the highest of the three values.-----But, it seems that we both agree that at least two of the three axes must be below the "omni" value. So, we give Him a maximum score of 13/15. Anyone want to argue for a higher value? Right, this is all hypothetical work stemming only from what the physical evidence could possibly allow, so I don't think it's necessary to add a disclaimer at the end of every post. The basic idea is to try to frame a legitimate ID hypothesis that could be tested fairly easily. A designer with all "omni-" traits, despite bringing up all kinds of paradoxes, is obviously going to be rather difficult to test, and will generally require some explanation outside of science to succeed. This thread will provide a designer that could be tested, to some extent.It would take a very long time to think up, formalize and test all the myriad possible attribute combinations for a designer, but this is really the only way I could think of to begin the process. I don't expect it to really make a big splash anywhere, but I hope it could get ID people thinking scientifically.

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-BluejayDarwin loves you.

Hi, Rueh I didn't mean to use only evidence for a designer. I meant it in the reverse: what combination of attributes in the designer are consistent with the physical evidence?Obviously, I don't think that there is a bit of evidence that inequivocally suggests that there is a designer. But, Cavediver and Rahvin were discussing the ineptitude of the designer in the thread that spawned this one, and they explained why a perfect designer is not consistent with the physical evidence unless the designer is cruel or, for whatever reason, designed Earth below His skill level (let’s ignore this second possibility for the time being, because it manifests pretty much the same as an imperfect designer would).What I gleaned from that is that it’s still possible that there is a less-than-strictly-omnipotent designer out there, who may still be able to do what we can’t yet understand, and may appear to us to be all-powerful, but who is actually restricted by the laws of nature into producing a less-than-perfect world (perhaps even by evolution: let’s not make this thread into a creation-vs-evolution dichotomy).I think that Cavediver's thread (linked in the OP) clearly showed that God must be either not omniscient, not omnipotent, or not benevolent. I would now like to find the maximum attribute combination of a designer that created a world that leaves evidence like the evidence we find here on Earth. In way, it's framing the argument to be as favorable to the creationist/IDist belief system as logic allows.

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-BluejayDarwin loves you.

Hi, Coyote. I was going to say that myself, but I thought it would be too sarcastic coming from the guy who's supposed to be leading the discussion. It's one of my favorite ID stories.

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-BluejayDarwin loves you.

Hi, Rodibidably.Welcome to EvC!Can you give me a reason why you think 12 is the best He could do? Is there evidence that suggests that God could only be, e.g., neutrally benevolent when fully omnipotent and fully omniscient? It doesn't have to be perfectly legitimate, scientific evidence, but there's got to be a reason why you would think that.-----For new debaters at EvC:While posting a reply, you'll see "dBcodes On (help)" on the left-hand side. In that, you'll find what codes you can type in to make quote boxes and other stuff.If you see an EvC member do some cool formatting in their post, you can push the "peek" button at the bottom of the post, and a window will pop up that shows you the message with the codes they used visible.Have fun at EvC!

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-BluejayDarwin loves you.

Hi, Rodibidably. Sticking with the perfect scores for knowledge and power, could God also be just plain ol' "good," instead of "all good?" Do you feel that the bad things He has done (or has allowed) balance out the good things that He does (or allows).

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-BluejayDarwin loves you.

Hi, Rodibidably.Thanks for your comments. I haven't made any assumptions about you yet, so why worry that I will in the future?I personally do believe in God, but I'm primarily a science person, so you won't see me argue on the creationist side at all. Right, I agree. There are many other possibilities. But, we're not here to discuss His hypothetical purposes. Looking only at the physical world (this includes the crimes you mentioned), you have concluded that God is, at best, neutral (neither "good" nor "bad").Let's try another permutation now:Say God is omnibenevolent and omniscient (5 on both scales). What is the maximum "power" score that this God could have. He could still be powerful (seeing that He had the ability to create the Earth and all that), while still being unable to stop things like rape or war. I think this would earn Him a 4 for power, thus giving him a maximum score of 14/15.What do you think?-----P.S. I did bad math: you said "12," and I read "13." Your "12" puts two bars at 5 and one at 2 (below neutral), not 3 (neutral) like I thought before. Sorry I misread that.

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-BluejayDarwin loves you.

Hi, Peg. You've heard of owls, right? How about nighthawks? These are nocturnal birds. Yet, they have feathers and flow-through lungs; and lack teats and improved hemoglobin. If the difference had anything to do with nocturnality, you would expect the owls to have converted over to the bat strategy.So, clearly, the "nocturnal" portion isn't important in determining the differences between bats and birds. That leaves just the "mammal" portion, which, curiously enough, was the whole point that Taq was presenting.

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-Bluejay/Mantis/ThylacosmilusDarwin loves you.

Hi, Bio-molecular Tony.Welcome back!-----Why are you so willing to conclude that understanding is impossible? The message of Christ is not one of nihilism, is it?"We'll never fully understand it" is hardly a reason not to try, especially when the only reason you have to believe that we'll never understand it is that you can't make the evidence match your worldview.Maybe we'll never learn everything, but we can learn somethings, and we're more likely to do it by trying to learn everything than we are by giving up; so, why should we stop trying?

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-Bluejay/Mantis/ThylacosmilusDarwin loves you.

Hi, IchiBan. It's a little unfair of you to criticize the abilities and motivations of somebody else when (1) they are honestly admitting their shortcomings and (2) your personal contributions to the field are significantly less than the contributions of the people you're criticizing.This thread is about physical evidence for an intelligent designer (I should know: I am the one who started this thread): please stop talking about physical evidence for things other than a designer.Edited by Bluejay, : No reason given.

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-Bluejay/Mantis/ThylacosmilusDarwin loves you.