When does design become intelligent? (AS OF 8/2/10 - CLOSING COMMENTS ONLY)

Hi, ICDESIGN. Belittling people with references to children's cereal jingles are about the lowest form of humor available. So, you have now shown your complete ineptitude at two different professions.In light of this pattern of ineptitude, maybe your swansong would have been better spent on showing us something you're actually good at.----- That's a pretty good summary of the two positions, even though it doesn't present them equally. Curiously, even though everybody is already aware that these are the two positions, this seems to be the only thing you have managed to say since starting this thread.Why don't you elaborate at all?----- Now, if only you could articulate why you think this, all these stupid, igorant, blind evolutionists would be able to apply your reasoning and learn something.I guess you would rather leave us wallowing in our ignorance than try to help enlighten us like the good Christian you pretend to be.

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

Hi, Bolder-dash. ...says the guy who adamantly ignored me until I said something sufficiently substanceless that he could figure out what I was saying.Edited by Bluejay, : No reason given.

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

Hi, Dash. The modern ToE, as you know, has two premises: (1) random mutations, and (2) natural selection. These are more accurately viewed as assumptions of the model than as actual components of the model. The ToE states that, if and when both of those premises are working in the system, evolution will result.Each of the two premises is governed by its own set of related theories and studies.Random mutations are random because their pattern of occurrence in nature is essentially unpredictable. Thus, any mechanism for mutations that results in an unpredictable pattern of occurrence is compatible with the ToE.Natural selection is a collective description of many different mechanisms that result in differential survival of organisms. These mechanisms occur on the scale of individual organisms. So, once again, this is not evolution, but just a factor that contributes to evolution.When a chemist or molecular geneticist studies the chemical mechanisms (such as tautomerism or deamination) that cause mutations, he is not studying the ToE. When an ecologist (such as myself) studies food web dynamics (e.g. optimal foraging theory or niche theory) or dispersal patterns (e.g. island biogeography theory), he is not studying the ToE. However, they are both studying evolutionary biology, which is a collection of theories and concepts that interrelates with the ToE.ToE has very little to do with explaining these mechanisms or their effects (i.e. ugliness vs beauty, altruism vs evil, etc). These mechanisms deal only with the attributes and behaviors of individual organisms. In Darwinian evolution, individual organisms do not evolve (contrast this with Lamarkian evolution, in which individual organisms do evolve): so, Darwinian evolution is not happening on these scales.Fitness describes the fit of an organism to its environment. So, mechanisms leading to fitness only deal with individual organisms, and how those individual organisms fit their environment. Since individual organisms do not evolve in the Darwinian model, this is not part of the ToE.The ToE comes into play when we compare multiple organisms to each other. Organisms that fit their environment well will generally survive and proliferate well, whereas organisms that do not fit their environment well will not generally survive and proliferate well. Since the traits that determine fitness can be passed on from parent to offspring, over many generations, we should see a relative amplification of those traits the increase the fit of organisms to their environment, and a relative depletion of those traits that decrease the fit of organisms to their environment.Because evolution involves multiple different organisms, it is essentially one massive trial-and-error experiment. Many things that come up via mutation work, and many things that come up do not. So, we see a huge diversity of successful, living things; and a huge diversity of unsuccessful, extinct things. We also see the conditions for success changing somewhat over time, both locally and globally, such that more and more is required of organisms in order to survive and proliferate successfully.Eventually, as selection puts exerts more and more unique pressures on organisms, we see an accumulation of fit traits, and a depletion of unfit traits. Thus, over time, organisms start to look like they were special-made for their ecologies, because, in a sense, they were. But, the necessity for intelligence in any of this is, at best, very uncertain.

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

Hi, ICDESIGN. I believe you. And, I'm sorry if I offended you too.----- It will only come off as playful to people that aren't the butt of the joke. This is true in any situation in life.----- You may be interested to note that the skull isn’t just one bone. It’s actually several different bones that are fused together. You can see this during fetal development, when the different bones grow, then fuse together as the fetus grows larger.I don’t know if there’s been any work on this, but I think the skeleton likely started as a scattering of little chunks of mineral throughout the body, like the spicules of a sponge, then they gradually became larger over time and fused in different patterns to become the bones we have today.Like Crash explained, the cells can communicate to coordinate their actions. When single-celled organisms first began to coordinate into clusters, it was certainly this sort of signaling ability that allowed the coordination in the first place. By the time different cells were taking on specialized roles, the signaling had surely become more complex to accommodate and facilitate the increased complexity of the inter-cell coordination.So, by the time eyes developed their specialized functions, it is reasonable to suggest that they had a means of signaling in order to coordinate their function with the function of the bone cells, so that they don’t step on each other’s toes.The evidence seems to suggest that the complexity and functionality of this signaling system could be just as easily explained by gradual increases via random mutation and natural selection over time.----- Now you know why there are so many people dedicating their lives to the study of evolution and origins. Learn moderation and self-control, and you'll do fine (I'm still generally failing to learn these things, though, so this is a bit hypocritical). I hope to see you around here again, at least occasionally.

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

Hi, ICANT. I would like you to restate this question, if you don’t mind. As it is, it looks like an editing mistake was made somewhere in the middle.The topic of this thread, remember, is how we decide that some observed phenomenon is due to intelligence. So, stay focused on that.You have already agreed that a molecule’s structure and its information content are inseparable.Thus, you must agree that information wasn’t actually put into a molecule. Rather, a molecule was constructed (putatively by a designer), and the information was contained in it.Now, I’m asking you why some molecules look like they were put together by a designer, while some don’t.
Can molecules that were not designed have any information content?
Or can only intelligent design account for molecules that have information?----- Since we both seem to agree that the information is inseparable from the molecule, then we should both also agree that the information began to exist as soon as the molecule existed.You can’t have one without the other. I thought we already established and agreed on this.Edited by Bluejay, : "wasn't be" is bad grammar.

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

Hi, ICANT. Do you agree that some things are not the result of intelligent design?Do you also agree that intelligent designers can figure out ways to simulate those things that are not the result of intelligent design?Do you also agree that simulations that are designed to behave exactly like non-intelligent processes will produce the same results as the non-intelligent processes themselves would produce?If so, what objection can you possibly have to the results of this antenna example?

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

Hi, ICANT. DNA and RNA chains are strung together by the formation of phosphate bonds between DNA or RNA bases.
Information derives from the order of the DNA or RNA chain.
Thus, information evolved into existence by the formation of phosphate bonds.
Obviously, this is not really evolution, but you get the idea.Why is this hard to understand?
Do you really have this much of a problem with information arising without design?

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

Hi, ICANT. You’re looking at this all wrong, ICANT.The program only provides the rules by which things within the simulation behave.Basically, it represents the laws of nature.We are not trying to demonstrate that the laws of nature can evolve by mutation and natural selection.We are trying to demonstrate that the laws of nature allow living things within nature to evolve by mutation and natural selection.The program that created these antennae provided a set of rules that was based entirely on the two main components of the Theory of Evolution.Thus, for objects within the simulation, the only rules that govern their function are the two main components of the Theory of Evolution: (1) random mutation and (2) natural selection.The intelligence used to create the program is not translated into the simulation. Therefore, what happens in the simulation is due to the rules that the program was designed to enact.You can argue, if you want, that intelligence is required to design a program, and that therefore, the existence of laws in nature is evidence of an Intelligent Designer, but you would have to do so without the support of evidence, and you would only be arguing for a Deistic point of view, anyway.Since you are not a Deist, I don’t think this line of reasoning is what you intended to be arguing.

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

Hi, ICANT. Okay, so you are a Deist?

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

Hi, ICANT. Keep up with me, ICANT. This was already explained. You do know what Deism is, don't you? God set the universe up, then let it run.When they talked to you about the rules of a simulation, you talked about the person who designed the rules upon which the simulation was based.They said, "Look, a simulated universe can run on non-intelligent rules."And you replied, "Yes, but the rules had to be created by an intelligent designer."My response, Welcome to Deism, ICANT. Showing that the rules were set up by intelligence only supports Deism.In order to support Intelligent Design, you need to show that intelligence is one of the rules that the intelligent designer put into the simulation.The example shown was an evolutionary simulation that did not incorporate intelligence into its rules, but still resulted in an object that looked designed.This means evolution can happen just as evolutionists think it does. There’s no need to refer to design: we just have to refer to the rules.

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

Hi, ICANT. I know that this is what you believe. I'm trying to get you to understand that the things you've been arguing on this thread do not support this.----- You need to step back and realize that the argument you've been making on this thread does not support this.You say that requiring intelligence to design a set of rules (i.e. a computer program) on which an antenna is evolved to functionality without further intelligent input is the same as requiring intelligence to design a functional antenna.But, this is not the same thing. The set of rules was designed to mimic non-intelligent processes. These non-intelligent processes then produced something that looks like it was designed.You seemingly acknowledged that this is what happened, and then argued that an intelligent process was needed to design those non-intelligent rules.So, in a nutshell, you are saying that even non-intelligence has to be designed by intelligence.Is this what you believe?If so, then evolutionists and scientists have been right all along, except that they have to convert to Deism (which isn’t that big a change for most of us, anyway).If not, then evolutionists and scientists have been right all along, and we theists don’t have a leg to stand on.Either way, you can’t support your beliefs in Intelligent Design with this argument.

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

Hi, ICANT. They did. It just took rather longer than you seem to think is reasonable.

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