Biological Evidence Against Intelligent Design

Depends on how mutual their exclusivity is, I guess.Like, evolution doesn't rule out a designer so you can't use the evidence for evolution to determine the likelyhood of the designer.

Yes, it can rule out some designers. How do you know they're actually random? Oh fuck, I don't know. I just wanted to make a simple point in passing.How would you rule out Jesus magically causing (non-random) a mutation in E. coli so that it could digest nylon? Heh, everytime the expirement is performed... maybe not the best example.But I don't know where to draw the line.

Its not ruled in, or out. The evidence doesn't say one way or the other (although for this example specifically it might).The point was that the evidence for evolution isn't necessarily evidence against a designer. Okay. If we can prove the randomness then more (specific) designers will be ruled out.

What do you mean? You're the one who brought up 'a very non-random end plan for the forms of life'... But it doesn't matter. We agree that some specific designers can be ruled out. But this doesn't rule out a designer, just a subset of that category. I don't think we're teaching unevidenced philosophy nor should we go into all possibilities. Just let the evidence speak for itself. With unevidenced possibilities that have not been ruled out.But don't get me wrong, any random thing you imagine is going to be met with doubt from me too, especially without any evidence or other reason to think it. I don't think you can actually form that likelyhood.We have a category of 'a designer'. Some subsets of it can be ruled out and some cannot. You're saying that because of the infinite amount of specific subsets, any one in particular would have near zero likleyhood. But we still don't have a likleyhood of the category of 'a designer'. I don't think the supernatural is being invoked as an explanation, its being left as a possibility that hasn't been ruled out.I don't know if its been designed or not... it could be.

Who knows... It could have set up the process, itself. It could control the environment to drive selection. It could cause a particular mutation (thereby making it non-random but we wouldn't know and our random theory would still hold). It could be actively controlling everything whilst maintaining the evolution appearance. Or Omphalism. How ridiculous do you want to take this? No, its absence isn't evidenced. If I took the position that it didn't exists, then yes. But doubt isn't disbelief. And remember that some of them can be ruled out so I wouldn't be pseudoskeptical of those. Not really. Although from what we understand about how mutations arise, I think we can say that the guidance wouldn't be actively continual. Take the nylon eating bacteria for example; can't we make the mutation rise and fall with the selective pressure and doesn't that mean that the designer would have to be there causing the mutation every time the experiment is performed, and wouldn't that be ridiculous enough to disbelieve? You go a step further into disbelief and try to rationalize it with a likelihood that can't be determined. The lack of evidence combined with the random and imaginary aspects of it for one. Plus it'd depend on whether or not certain aspects of could be ruled out. I'm not sure they're totally mutually exclusive so I don't know how I'd determine the likelihood. But yes, a mutually exclusive alternative to an evidenced explanation could be taken to disbelief without pseudoskepticism, i.e. ruling it out. I don't see what probabilities and likelihoods have to do with it. Yes, when they are mutually exclusive. But I don't think its a matter of probability. I think we've actually ruled the alternative out.The reason I questioned the randomness earlier is because a designer that did actively cause some particular mutation wouldn't be noticed as being non-random, so our scientific explanation would remain accurate but no longer mutually exclusive. Well, it'd be inaccurate in that the mutation wasn't actually random, but we wouldn't have a clue and would maintain that it's accurate. So I don't think a designer has been ruled out in that regard, because we've lost our mutual exclusivity. Maybe its a terminology issue, but I think that you are ruling them out. Not comparing actual likelihoods. I meant non-bold, no-caps 'know' I'm saying we don't know the likelihood so we can't say, unless we do have mutual exclusivity, then we can rule it out, but still not use a likelihood.We know the nylon eating bacteria's mutation arises randomly so we can rule out a designer actively controlling it, its not a matter of it being less likely to be true. It doesn't rule out a designer being there for every experiment, and we'll never know about that, but I think its too ridiculous to be seriously considered as a possibility. Not because of the evidence for the alternative though. And I might be properly called a pseudoskeptic against it.

In general, I don't think they are. But specific aspects of some designers are mutually exclusive. The problem arrises when you mistake a part for the whole.

Personal bias due to my worldview. I think the nylon eating bacteria going back and forth shows just that (in its specific case). I'm not totally convinced that they are mutually exclusive, but I'll accept it for discussion. Yes, I've agreed to this already. That some designers can be ruled out with contrary evidence.Not in the sense that we KNOW it, but that we're not considering it as an explanation.But also, not all designers, nor a designer in general, has been ruled out. No, not for that specific designer. No, Yes. Fuck yeah. I'm not making that fucking argument. I think as we get into more specifics, we allow for more ridiculousness... like a designer with a purple mustache. I don't have an objective criteria for determining ridiculousness, its just a gut reaction. I see what you're saying now and your point is taken. Know that I wasn't refering to certainty of its non-existence, just that we're not considering it as an explanation and we're believing that it doesn't exist:

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But yes, a mutually exclusive alternative to an evidenced explanation could be taken to disbelief without pseudoskepticism, i.e. ruling it out.

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Its not about absolute certainty and completely ruling things out... just assume that I'm never talking about that. Yes, its ruled out.That's fine, one more specific designer has been considered and rejected.Now, my point was that you can't use that against a designer in general.Bluejay phrased it well:

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ID is not a single hypothesis. You can't list evidences against a specific hypothesis and claim that it refutes the principle behind a whole suite of related hypotheses.

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To which you rplied: Which takes me back to my original claim:

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Like, evolution doesn't rule out a designer so you can't use the evidence for evolution to determine the likelyhood of the designer.

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although, we can use evolution to rule out some specific designers, or aspects of them.

Well you definately missed my point...I've looked at some of my posts from that thread. And I see the same points over again. And I think you're still making the same mistake.When I say that evolution cannot rule out a designer, you go into specifics about a designer that can be ruled out. But you can't extrapolate that to a designer in general.My first post in that thread, Message 41:

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Explain to me how some gods being made up is mutually exclusive to any gods existing.

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You said you're not making that argument. But it looks like you are, again in this thread, but with evolution and against a designer. ***

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If we cannot actually refute godly interference at the molecular (or indeed any other) level should we be rationally agnostic about it? Or is it rationally OK to be defacto atheists about the role of god in directly guiding evolution if we have a plausible and evidenced naturalistic alternative explanation?

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Well if we accept evolution by natural selection and random mutation what active role does this designer play in designing biological life?

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I don't think so. Its a hierarchy with sub-sets. You're refuting a sub-set but saying nothing about the whole or parts that aren't in the sub-set. Let me know when you get around to doing that.

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***And just for fun, take a look at this reply from that thread, Message 54:

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Are you an atheist or an agnostic with regard to these entities?

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Well, I don't know if they exist or not but I doubt it because 1) it looks like you just made them up 2) they are self contradictory and 3) that they just seem ridiculous to me and are in no way consitent with my worldview.

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I just said the same thing in this thread. Hey, at least I'm being consistant

I'm not asking for it to be falsified, I'm saying that it cannot be. Did I say that?I'm saying that you can't use evidence for evolution against a designer (unless you get into the specifics of the designer).

I'm under the impression that ID's designer is undefined so any amount of evidence for evolution is not going to be against ID, its not falsifiable.People have also brought up example of terrible design but that doesn't do it either.I think this thread is a big fail.

Well, I think your right. That's good logical deduction from the premises of ID. I tend to think of ID in more of the philosophical sense rather than the quasi-scientific/political sense.But one of the problems I have is that ID doesn't even really make any claims like that. I have no clue what they think of how the entity goes about directly interceding or if they even say that it does (we can deduce it from other claims but they don't come out and say it). Or on how many occasions this has happened. All they ever really DO, is try to show how something couldn't have evolved.And in that sense, showing how it actually could have evolved does defeat their arguments.But I still don't think that is evidence against there being a designer. Although, looking back, this thread is about evidence against ID, not evidence against a designer, so I think I was taking the wrong approach from the beginning. Right again. So even though we haven't refuted a designer, it has at least been reduced to insignificance. And that's kinda how I'm seeing it. I believe that god created us via evolution, but when I study evolution I don't have god in there with any significance, and his presence isn't necessary to understand it. I think you're right. For the quasi-scientific/political sense of ID, it has been refuted. Maybe not in the philosophical sense, but that isn't really something that's possible to be refuted so it doesn't really matter anyways. I think I was looking at it wrong, in that a designer hasn't been refuted, but really ID, itself, has.

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Ha! Thanks buddy.

That actually clears up your position a lot for me, thanks.I don't really have anything to add on the topic right now though.I just thought I let you know that I read and understood you.

This might be a little too nit-picky, but... What about dog, or bananas, or Bt corn, or nylon-eating bacteria....We know there's life that arrose from either non-random mutations or non-natural selection, so the conclusion that ALL life is the result of natural selection and random mutations would technically not be evidentially justified.Yeah, not too much against your point, but whatever.Also, I don't think the conclusion is that all life must have risen that way. I thought it was phrase that natural selection and random mutations can sufficiently explain the diversity of life. Parsimony dictates that we don't add uneccesary entities to a sufficient explanation, but I'm not sure that they are evidenced against.We don't have the mutations mapped out so there's room for gap-fillers.Like the one idea that aliens came down and genetically altered the extant apes to create humans. This wouldn't go against the process decribed by the ToE, but would still count as an intelligent design.Now, as to what's being taught in school, and whether that "exception" should be in the biology class, I'm going with no because the way its expressed is the RM+NS can sufficiently explain the diversity. And since we don't currently have any reason to suspect that humans couldn't have arrisen by them, then there's no reason to bring it up. But that doesn't mean that there isn't room for future evidence that might suggest that there was some tampering witht the genes between humans and other apes.In that sense, we have an ID that is not mutually exclusive to evolution that cannot be said to be evidenced against.Now, mod brought to my attention that that isn't really the real ID^TM but more of a philisophical position. And I think that's a good point to the scope of this thread, but I think it is a valid point that not all ID proposition are mutually exclusive to the ToE and that you cant use evidence for the ToE against them, and in some cases any evidence at all.

And yet, we have things that have evolved with conscious intent that if viewed in hindsight, would fit within the evidence that suggests it was a mindless physical process even though they weren't. I brought up the aliens example specifically to be a gap filler that wasn't supernatural. Supernatural isn't necessary. Yes, the evidence says that the diversity of life is sufficiently explained by the process of the ToE. But that doesn't preclude some life being designed, and we know that some of it was. But one particular species being the result of design isn't mutually exclusive to the ToE. Not to the point that there are no species that have been designed, no. In fact, we know that some of them were (dogs, bananas, Bt corn, nylon-eating bacteria, etc.)

So there is life that exists that didn't evolve by random mutation and natural selection. And thus we have Intelligient Design that is not mutually exclusive to the Theory of Evolution, which was my point. Not to the point that any/all species were not designed, no. What we have is that, currently, the ToE is sufficient to explain the diversity of life. We know that some species were designed. We might find that some pre-man species also show evidence of design, or man himself. The evidence does not show that all the species before man were not designed, although we have yet to find a species that cannot be sufficiently explained by RM+NS. I think there's a difference. And I don't think you can use the latter to justify the former.