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Author | Topic: Biological Evidence Against Intelligent Design | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
New Cat's Eye Inactive Member |
I brought up the aliens example specifically to be a gap filler that wasn't supernatural. Supernatural isn't necessary.
And what does the evidence available suggest about the possibility of such aliens? That they sprang forth fully formed from the ground? That they were created in the image of some immaterial being? Or that as a complex and intelligent lifeform it is almost certain that they evolved?
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. Yes. By us. By complex creatures that evolved.
So there is life that exists that didn't evolve by random mutation and natural selection.
But one particular species being the result of design isn't mutually exclusive to the ToE. Why would it be? If the designing entity itself (i.e. human beings or your aliens) evolved intelligence and the ability to design? And thus we have Intelligient Design that is not mutually exclusive to the Theory of Evolution, which was my point.
I am asking you if teaching evolution as a product of random mutation and natural selection up to and including the evolution of man, which is mutually exclusive to non-random designed evolution up to that point, is evidentially justified. What do you think?
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.
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Straggler Member Posts: 10333 From: London England Joined: |
You think I am missing your point. I think you are missing mine. We are both getting exasperated. I don't know what to do about that other than attempt to clarify further.
This is an extremely simple point, Straggler: I'm having trouble believing that you're actually not understanding it. I understand what you are saying but you are not listening to the specifics of what I am saying. I believe your position here is contradictory. You cannot both accept the facts as taught (i.e. that ALL species evolved from a common ancestor by means of natural selection and random mutations) whilst also claiming that some unspecified species may well have evolved with the guided non-random intent of an intelligent designer. It cannot be both as taught AND as you are advocating here.
There isn’t a rule that says all things have to have the same cause. I didn't say there was. I am talking about evidence and likelihood. Not proof and certainty.
Not only is it extremely simple, it's also extremely crucial to my entire point: intelligent design is not mutually exclusive with evolution, because intelligently designed organisms can evolve, and evolved organisms can have some aspects of design. And I don't disagree with that general statement. It is you who is not listening to the specifics of what I am saying. Please read this carefully as this is crucial to my point. Do you accept the origin of species by means of natural selection and random mutation to be an evidenced fact? Do you consider the teaching of evolution as the origin of species by means of natural selection and random mutation to be teaching the facts? If your answer to both these questions is "Yes" (as I suspect it is) then how can you consider the possibility of non-random guided evolution as anything but contravening the facts and almost certainly false?
I'm only complaining about the way this thread is set up: I have no complaints about the scientific method, no complaints about the Theory of Evolution as currently constituted, no complaints about educational curricula, no complaints about philosophical biases, no complaints about Occam's razor, and no complaints about the scientific community. And I am not saying that you do. I am trying to show you that what you are suggesting here contravenes the facts as they are taught. Either what we are teaching is evidentially unjustified and philosophically biased. Or your claim that the evidence is insufficiant to refute the role of a designer in biological design is false. Which do you think it is? Edited by Straggler, : No reason given.
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Straggler Member Posts: 10333 From: London England Joined: |
So there is life that exists that didn't evolve by random mutation and natural selection. Because it was designed by evolved beings.
And thus we have Intelligient Design that is not mutually exclusive to the Theory of Evolution, which was my point. But which first required the evolution of a being capable of design which was my point. The deeply evidenced paradigm of mindless natural processes being the root cause remains intact. And nobody is saying that genetically modified bananas (or whatever) are the product of natural selection and random mutation are they? But this is what is taught as fact about the origins of man and every other species on Earth that we haven't intelligently designed ourselves.
I am asking you if teaching evolution as a product of random mutation and natural selection up to and including the evolution of man, which is mutually exclusive to non-random designed evolution up to that point, is evidentially justified. What do you think? 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. So if we teach students that the origin of species on Earth is the result of natural selection and random mutations from a common ancestor we are, according to you, teaching something that is evidentially unjustifiable. That is quite a position you have taken. It puts you only a few steps away from the "It's only a theory" ID mob who would have us say that "we don't know" and give mention to some of the "alternatives"............ Edited by Straggler, : No reason given. Edited by Straggler, : No reason given. Edited by Straggler, : No reason given.
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New Cat's Eye Inactive Member |
So if we teach students that the origin of species on Earth is the result of natural selection and random mutations from a common ancestor we are, according to you, teaching something that is evidentially unjustifiable. No. I'm saying that it is evidentially unjustified to say that this says or means that they were not designed or that none of them are designed (even while excluding the ones that we know were designed).
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Straggler Member Posts: 10333 From: London England Joined: |
So if we teach students that the origin of species on Earth is the result of natural selection and random mutations from a common ancestor we are, according to you, teaching something that is evidentially unjustifiable. No. I'm saying that it is evidentially unjustified to say that this says or means that they were not designed or that none of them are designed (even while excluding the ones that we know were designed). Well if they are entirely the product of natural selection and random mutation (as taught) they cannot be the product of non-random intelligent design can they?
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New Cat's Eye Inactive Member |
So if we teach students that the origin of species on Earth is the result of natural selection and random mutations from a common ancestor we are, according to you, teaching something that is evidentially unjustifiable. No. I'm saying that it is evidentially unjustified to say that this says or means that they were not designed or that none of them are designed (even while excluding the ones that we know were designed). Well if they are entirely the product of natural selection and random mutation (as taught) they cannot be the product of non-random intelligent design can they? That the species we know of can be explained by RM+NS doesn't suggest that every species has necessarily come about that way. What is taught is that the diversity of life can be suffiecienty explained by evolution, not that the enitirety of species are the product of RM+NS alone. The slight difference, because of the result of induction, is one of the reasons that it is evidentially unjustified to claim that design has been refuted. I think you go too far to say that being explainable by evolution necessitates that it is not designed. But this one point has been drug out too far...
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hawkes nightmare Junior Member (Idle past 5029 days) Posts: 28 Joined: |
ok here's another. going back to the origional topic- can an evolutionist please explain where the bombardier beetle came from?
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RAZD Member (Idle past 1405 days) Posts: 20714 From: the other end of the sidewalk Joined: |
Hi Hawkes Nightmare,
There is a thread for you and your PRATTs:
PRATT Party and Free for All, Message 1. If you want to discuss your websites with Coyote, he is waiting for you there.
ok here's another. going back to the origional topic- can an evolutionist please explain where the bombardier beetle came from? Yawn. This is OLD creationist junk, already refuted a thousand times. see Message 20 of the above thread. Not worth spending any more time on. Enjoy. Edited by RAZD, : subtitle Edited by RAZD, : moved to appropriate thread we are limited in our ability to understand
by our ability to understand Rebel American Zen Deist ... to learn ... to think ... to live ... to laugh ... to share. • • • Join the effort to solve medical problems, AIDS/HIV, Cancer and more with Team EvC! (click) • • •
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Coyote Member (Idle past 2106 days) Posts: 6117 Joined: |
There is a good piece on this topic here.
Bombardier Beetles and the Argument of Design, by Mark Isaak From the Introduction: A fundamental tenet of creationism is that all life looks designed, and a commonly cited example of this design is the bombardier beetle. Supporting such a claim requires an examination of the bombardier beetle and of what "design" really means. Upon examination of these issues, however, the bombardier beetle shows evidence of evolution and seriously challenges the concept of design. From the Conclusion: Finally, remember that the general arguments used here apply to a lot more than bombardier beetles. Creationists have argued for an appearance of design in everything from bacteria flagella to butterfly metamorphosis. Those arguments all share the same fallacies; they are all based on a combination of ignorace combined with a concept of design that is indistinguishable from evolution. If a kind of design incompatible with evolution were found in biology, nobody would be more excited than the professional biologists. As yet we haven't found such a design. There are also links to other articles, as well as references. Religious belief does not constitute scientific evidence, nor does it convey scientific knowledge.
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Blue Jay Member (Idle past 2698 days) Posts: 2843 From: You couldn't pronounce it with your mouthparts Joined:
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Hi, Straggler.
Straggler writes: Bluejay writes: There isn’t a rule that says all things have to have the same cause. I didn't say there was. But, you have to say that there is in order to set up the dichotomy that you’ve been repeating in every reply to me on this thread. If things can have two different causes, then you can’t use positive evidence for one cause as negative evidence against the other cause being true in some other situation. -----
Straggler writes: You cannot both accept the facts as taught (i.e. that ALL species evolved from a common ancestor by means of natural selection and random mutations) whilst also claiming that some unspecified species may well have evolved with the guided non-random intent of an intelligent designer. You added a couple of important words since last time: facts and ALL. I certainly don’t teach that common ancestry of ALL species is a fact. I suspect that it’s accurate, and I teach it as a valid and well-supported theory, but I do not teach it as a fact. And, those aren’t facts, anyway. They weren’t taught to me as facts in school, as far as I remember (maybe they were in fourth grade, or something, but I don’t remember that). But, I don’t want to talk about education: I just want to talk about science. The fact is that we currently theorize that ALL species evolved from a common ancestor by means of natural selection and random mutations because of evidence that shows that SOME species evolved from a common ancestor by means of natural selection and random mutations, and, using Occam’s razor, we can infer that the conclusions from this evidence apply to other species as well. There isn’t really evidence that ALL species evolved from a common ancestor randomly/naturally, but we conclude that they did because of what we saw in SOME species. But, there’s always the possibility that we will find something that was designed among the millions of things that evolved naturally. So, ID and evolution can both be working simultaneously. Therefore, evidence that X evolved is not evidence that Y wasn’t designed; and, evidence that both X and Y evolved is not evidence that Z wasn’t designed. And so on. That means that the evidence approach advocated by this thread can only win through a war of attrition, because evolution and ID are not mutually exclusive. Any other approach requires an application of inferential reasoning. -Bluejay (a.k.a. Mantis, Thylacosmilus) Darwin loves you.
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Straggler Member Posts: 10333 From: London England Joined: |
But, you have to say that there is in order to set up the dichotomy that you’ve been repeating in every reply to me on this thread. If things can have two different causes, then you can’t use positive evidence for one cause as negative evidence against the other cause being true in some other situation. If you consider it highly probable that evolution has occurred by means of natural processes alone (i.e. random mutation and natural selection) then you must conversely consider it highly improbable that a designer has had any role in evolution (whether designing in whole or in part). That is what I am saying. Which part of that do you actually disagree with?
You added a couple of important words since last time: facts and ALL. I certainly don’t teach that common ancestry of ALL species is a fact. I suspect that it’s accurate, and I teach it as a valid and well-supported theory, but I do not teach it as a fact. I think you are splitting hairs in your use of the term "fact". All scientific "facts" are tentative and unproven. We teach as a scientifically evidenced fact that the species on Earth are the product of natural selection and random mutation from a common ancestor. We do NOT teach that the species on Earth are the product of evolution that includes maybe a bit of intelligent design thrown in here and there along the way. I keep asking you whether or not you think that our teaching of evolution is evidentially justifiable. But instead of actually answering that question you keep trying to second guess what it is that I mean or what it is that I am accusing you of. I don’t mean anything and I am not accusing you of anything. I am asking you a question and trying to get a straight answer. I just want to know whether you think that the origin of species by means of natural selection and random mutation alone (as taught) is enough of a scientifically evidenced fact to be taught as such? And if you agree with me that it is evidenced enough to be taught as fact then how can you also argue that it is anything less than highly improbable that a designer is involved in this process?
There isn’t really evidence that ALL species evolved from a common ancestor randomly/naturally, but we conclude that they did because of what we saw in SOME species. But, there’s always the possibility that we will find something that was designed among the millions of things that evolved naturally. Of course it is POSSIBLE. But what is the evidence based conclusion? That all life on Earth almost certainly shares a common ancestor. Right?
So, ID and evolution can both be working simultaneously. Therefore, evidence that X evolved is not evidence that Y wasn’t designed; and, evidence that both X and Y evolved is not evidence that Z wasn’t designed. And so on. I never disagreed with that. You are arguing against a position I have never held.
That means that the evidence approach advocated by this thread can only win through a war of attrition, because evolution and ID are not mutually exclusive. Any other approach requires an application of inferential reasoning. Yes it is inferential but NO it is not just "attrition". It is not a case of "absence of evidence". It is not two equally valid propositions. It is entirely evidentially one sided. We can infer that mindless natural processes almost certainly underpin the appearance of design in nature based on evidence. We can infer that it is almost certainly true that evolution from a common ancestor has occurred by means of natural selection and random mutation based on the evidence. And if these things are "almost certainly true" based on the evidence (as I think we both accept that they are) then conversely any claim that there is a supernatural intelligent designer behind any of this must be considered almost certainly false. You cannot consider one proposition as highly probable without considering a mutually exclusive alternative to be anything less than highly improbable.
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Nuggin Member (Idle past 2492 days) Posts: 2965 From: Los Angeles, CA USA Joined: |
The fact is that we currently theorize that ALL species evolved from a common ancestor by means of natural selection and random mutations because of evidence that shows that SOME species evolved from a common ancestor by means of natural selection and random mutations, and, using Occam’s razor, we can infer that the conclusions from this evidence apply to other species as well. There isn’t really evidence that ALL species evolved from a common ancestor randomly/naturally, but we conclude that they did because of what we saw in SOME species. But, there’s always the possibility that we will find something that was designed among the millions of things that evolved naturally. And there's always the possibility that there is an invisible pink unicorn hiding in your ass which is the source of all gravity in the universe.. It's "possible". Do you have any REASON or EVIDENCE or MECHANISM or even SUGGESTION that leads you to the conclusion that "maybe something was designed but we haven't found it yet"? How is that argument any better than: "Maybe it was all designed to look like it wasn't designed?"
So, ID and evolution can both be working simultaneously. Therefore, evidence that X evolved is not evidence that Y wasn’t designed; and, evidence that both X and Y evolved is not evidence that Z wasn’t designed. And so on. Follow the logic in your criteria. There are two sets.Set A: Those things for which we have evidence (includes evolution through natural selection) Set B: Those things for which there is no evidence (includes Intelligent Design) Set B _ALSO_ includes EVERY SINGLE THING THAT ANYONE ANYWHERE AT ANYTIME CAN MAKE UP ON THE FLY. So, you are claiming that because we haven't collected evidence from EVERY SINGLE SPECIES on the planet, it is possible that Set B could be happening at the same time as Set A. Why not take it a step further? Since we haven't collected evidence from any single ORGANISM which is currently, was previously or will potentially be alive, we can't say definitively that Set B isn't occurring. And, since we can't determine which of (infinite randomly combined words) is "true" they must ALL be EQUALLY valid. So, on the one hand we have evolution, tried, true, tested and the basis of biology. The cornerstone of science for the last 150 years. A fact so rock solid that if it were disproven we'd have the throw out literally _ALL_ of science entirely. And, on the other hand, we have EVERYTHING ANYONE COULD EVER SAY. ID is as likely to be true as "Burp Rocket Cow Meteor". Can't disprove "Burp Rocket Cow Meteor" because you haven't collected evidence from EVERYTHING EVERYWHERE across all of time past present and future. Let's teach Burp Rocket Cow Meteor in school! YAY!
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Peepul Member (Idle past 5018 days) Posts: 206 Joined: |
quote:All real designers make trade offs and probably all have done some bodges in their time. I certainly have in the software field. The world we see is consistent with this kind of designer - but ONLY with one whose bodges and trade offs look exactly like evolution has taken place. The constraints on the designer seem to be the ones that would naturally be imposed by evolution - for example, the inability to change fundamentals of the design once they are in place. In real life, designers often aren't constrained in this way - for example, the development of a new business software package doesn't always start by modifying an existing one - in fact the biggest improvements are often got through starting over. Likewise Microsoft have traditionally re-written large chunks of the operating systems in each generation. Likewise the 'unnecessary features' are consistent with evolutionary histories - for example, the vestigial legs and vestigial ear muscles in whales. Likewise the building and re-building that happens during development of an embryo is consistent with evolutionary history. Development and loss of an embyonic fur coat in humans for example, or the re-plumbing of the circulatory system. I cannot believe that there was a designer who explicitly designed things to look evolved.This is for me the strongest argument against ID.
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Blue Jay Member (Idle past 2698 days) Posts: 2843 From: You couldn't pronounce it with your mouthparts Joined:
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Hi, Straggler.
Straggler writes: I just want to know whether you think that the origin of species by means of natural selection and random mutation alone (as taught) is enough of a scientifically evidenced fact to be taught as such? And if you agree with me that it is evidenced enough to be taught as fact then how can you also argue that it is anything less than highly improbable that a designer is involved in this process? I can’t give you a straight answer, because this is a mishmash of things I agree with and things I disagree with. I have tried to explain this, but it apparently just comes off to you as accusations, and does nothing to convince you to refine your question. Let me lay out my problems for you again:
You can't expect me to give a straight answer to a question that employs a premise that I think is false, requires me to implicitly accept a controversial usage of a term that has caused much strife on this very site, and assumes that my primary argument is wrong from the get-go. Surely you should expect me to raise these objections in place of answering your question, right? But, if you prefer that I just jump through your hoops anyway, please let me know so we can get on with it.Otherwise, at least acknowledge my objections (particularly the third one) before you repeat your question next time. -Bluejay (a.k.a. Mantis, Thylacosmilus) Darwin loves you.
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RAZD Member (Idle past 1405 days) Posts: 20714 From: the other end of the sidewalk Joined: |
Hi Bluejay,
You can't expect me to give a straight answer to a question that employs a premise that I think is false, requires me to implicitly accept a controversial usage of a term that has caused much strife on this very site, and assumes that my primary argument is wrong from the get-go. Welcome to Straggler-World, where all issues are black and white and overloaded with preconditions that beg the question ... been there. Just to let you know, I am enjoying your posts. Enjoy. we are limited in our ability to understand
by our ability to understand Rebel American Zen Deist ... to learn ... to think ... to live ... to laugh ... to share. • • • Join the effort to solve medical problems, AIDS/HIV, Cancer and more with Team EvC! (click) • • •
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