Biological Evidence Against Intelligent Design

Hi, Modulous. So the explanation for computers and airplanes is also "natural selection," and humans are just part of that explanation?That's interesting. It actually makes sense in a roundabout sort of way. And, I wouldn't have a problem with a designer who had evolved through natural selection.I think there needs to be some type of partitioning in it, though: distinguishing between "proximate" and "ultimate" causes, for instance. Otherwise, it's kind of esoteric.

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-Bluejay (a.k.a. Mantis, Thylacosmilus)Darwin loves you.

Hi, Traderdrew. Is there a name for this fallacy? Argument from the existence of enemies, maybe?Now something is scientific because somebody tries to prove it wrong?----- A designer? Or, The Designer?I've done my best to defend the concept of things being designed from what I perceive to be an illegitimate attack strategy, but you've undermined my entire argument in one post! Clearly, when I say the word "ID," you’re not thinking of the generalized concept RAZD and I are defending, but of a specific Designer with a specific purpose and personality. My arguments on this thread can only defend the general concept of intelligent design, and probably cannot defend the omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent God you’re thinking of.

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-Bluejay (a.k.a. Mantis, Thylacosmilus)Darwin loves you.

Hi, Traderdrew.I seem to have struck a nerve.Let's stayed focused on the topic of biological evidence against intelligent design.And, for the record, you do come off as sanctimonious. Scientific philosophy has changed rather a lot sense Einstein's time. If Einstein said scientists were poor philosophers, he wasn't talking about their use of Popperian falsificationism, because scientists back then weren't doing that.I'm not so sure Einstein would have said the same thing about post-Popperian scientists. But then, I never met the man, so I don't know for sure.----- I know no such thing!Being able to design does not necessarily come with an ability to predict the future. We have seen countless applications of design by intelligent beings that have resulted in disaster: DDT, nuclear bombs, the Vasa, etc., which, in all cases, could have been avoidable if a little bit of foresight had been applied. These examples clearly demonstrate that design capacity does not always come with a side order of foresight, and/or that foresight is not necessarily implemented, even by those who may have it.So, instead of arguing from the principle of intelligent design, which is plausible, you begin advocating for a specific form of intelligent design, applying specific attributes and intentions to your Designer. My arguments can’t defend that, and I won’t try to make them do so: it is clear that you are thinking of a specific flavor of intelligent design; and your particular flavor of ID very well might be falsifiable.But, hypothetically speaking, if your flavor is falsified, you could easily slither over to a slightly different version of Intelligent Design, which has not been falsified, and stand there, proclaiming it to be falsifiable as well. And, you could do this infinitely, as the creationist/IDist movement has done ever since it was dethroned by naturalistic and evolutionary ideas.And, you could get away with this, because the most fundamental core of ID, the basic concept of design, is unfalsifiable.----- Here, you are arguing that, because the world functions, it must have been designed. What do you expect of your opponents? Must we demonstrate that the world is nonfunctional in order to generate evidence against your Intelligent Designer? That should be easy to recognize as nonsensical: all worldviews being discussed in this debate also revolve around the notion that the world functions.I say that the earth is not fine-tuned. The alignment of a given set of variables such that an interesting result is generated from the system does not equal fine-tuning and does not demonstrate that there was teleology involved. Really, all it demonstrates is that something interesting happened. And, I have seen very convincing arguments that unintelligent, non-designed processes can also generate interestingness. The universe, while admittedly very interesting, bears the marks of stochasticity, not of fine-tuning.I submit that the lack of fine-tuning in the universe is evidence against your specific Intelligent Designer.

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-Bluejay (a.k.a. Mantis, Thylacosmilus)Darwin loves you.

Hi, Granny. You skipped the word "you" in the middle there: someone might misinterpret this and think you are calling Einstein an idiot.

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-Bluejay (a.k.a. Mantis, Thylacosmilus)Darwin loves you.

Hi, Traderdrew. I don’t think so. You do come across as if you think you come across as challenging, though. That’s what I meant when I said you come across as sanctimonious.----- I’m not sure I see the point here. Is it foresight to be able to envision an idea before you implement it? So, thinking about the peanut butter sandwich I want before I make it is foresight?
You seem to be setting the bar for foresight quite low. I think even cockroaches could be said to have that kind of foresight.And, for the record, DDT was as bad as they say it was. And, I mentioned the nuclear bomb because the full array of side effects from the bombs was not known before the bombs were released, not because it killed lots of people.----- By finding one thing that wasn’t.It’s actually easy to falsify a claim that begins with the word all.----- It hasn’t convinced me, either. However, it has convinced me that God didn’t create humans specially a few thousand years ago: there is biological evidence against that version of intelligent design.

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-Bluejay (a.k.a. Mantis, Thylacosmilus)Darwin loves you.

Hi, Traderdrew. This would not falsify intelligent design. Remember, most IDists allow for some things to have happened naturally, so proving that some certain thing happened naturally does not technically falsify the concept.It might falsify intelligent design of the first life form or of the bacterial flagellum, but there are still hundreds of millions of other things for which intelligent design could technically be regarded as still a viable explanation.And, we have all seen that the ID movement is willing to continually increase the amount of natural causation that their model can permit, and thereby allow the movement to pretend it is still vibrant and thriving while it recedes into ever smaller and weaker versions of its former glory.It's unfalsifiable, because you can revive the idea by simply adjusting its parameters every time it is beaten down. You can change your perspective on what mechanisms are used to design, the purpose or reason for designing certain things, the timeframe of the design process, even the ability of the process to mimic natural processes... AND, history shows that this is exactly how the creation/ID movement has operated since its fall from the scientific mainstream.It's the poster child for unfalsifiability.

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-Bluejay (a.k.a. Mantis, Thylacosmilus)Darwin loves you.

Hi, Traderdrew. Up until the point when you posted on this thread, I was very adamantly arguing that ID is not (necessarily) creationism. Then, you posted, and, without provocation, immediately began talking about your intelligent designer having two attributes (foresight and omnipotence) traditionally associated with the creationists’ Creator, but not necessary for nor implied by Intelligent Design: You, and people like you, keep insisting that there is a difference between ID and creationism, but you do not seem to be able to envision an Intelligent Designer who isn’t the Creator. There are plenty of possibilities that are compatible with non-creationist ID, yet no IDist ever talks about these.At any rate, it’s time to end this discussion, because it’s not on-topic. However, I would love to be convinced that ID and creationism are different thingsmy argument on this thread actually requires them to be so, in factso I will join any thread you want to start on the topic and determine whether or not there is any difference between your intelligent design and the creationism you malign.Edited by Bluejay, : "Non-creationism ID" and "At any tate" made me look bad.

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-Bluejay (a.k.a. Mantis, Thylacosmilus)Darwin loves you.

Hi, Percy. I thought he was setting up the HGT idea as one of the "scientific explanations that have hidden problems," but he lost me when he said it was a work-around for something.I think he was saying that IDists discovered that the flagellum appeared first, and that evolutionists compensated for this by making up a story about HGT. He then thought that we understood exactly what he was talking about, and drew his conclusion that some scientific ideas have hidden problems.Flagellum physiology is outside of my expertise, and I thought it would only drag us away from the topic anyway, so I didn't push the issue.I think he's been thoroughly confused that we found his statement to be far less coherent than he thought it was.

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-Bluejay (a.k.a. Mantis, Thylacosmilus)Darwin loves you.

Hi, Traderdrew. HGT is a lot like panspermia. Basically, it is an attempt at answering the question, "What did X come from?" HGT and panspermia are equivalent answers in their separate fields: "X came from another (bacterium/planet)," which leaves us wondering how that other bacterium or planet came to possess X.The problem is that HGT is less viable than natural selection. What good was one piece of the flagellum to a bacterium that didn't have any of the other pieces? How could that piece evolve to fill its function in the flagellum if none of the other pieces were there to fill the other functions?The beauty of the Theory of Evolution is that it simultaneously explains the origin of the parts and their synergistic function, because the evolution of the individual parts is strongly influenced by the interaction between the parts, and the interaction between parts is strongly influenced by the evolution of the individual parts.

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-Bluejay (a.k.a. Mantis, Thylacosmilus)Darwin loves you.

Hi, Percy. Ah, yes, you're right. Let me try it again: That's more like what I was trying to get at.

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-Bluejay (a.k.a. Mantis, Thylacosmilus)Darwin loves you.