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Author | Topic: What IS evidence of design? (CLOSING STATEMENTS ONLY) | |||||||||||||||||||||||
ringo Member (Idle past 412 days) Posts: 20940 From: frozen wasteland Joined: |
slevesque writes:
The piece of driftwood on my coffee table would seem to be irreducibly complex because if you take one piece away - i.e. all of it - it ceases to perform its function. The same is true of the rock that I use as a doorstop. all IC systems of which we know the origin were designed, therefore, all IC systems are designed. On the other hand, the dam that I designed would not seem to be irreducibly complex because taking away a piece or two won't effect its performance at all. So I'm not seeing the correlation between irreducible complexity and design. Edited by ringo, : Fixed punc. tuation. You can have brevity and clarify, or you can have accuracy and detail, but you can't easily have both. --Percy
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Taq Member Posts: 9972 Joined: Member Rating: 5.5 |
Now suppose I hid a swan in a box, and asked you what color it was. Wouldn't you be justified to inductively conclude that it was white? If I challenged your conclusion wouldn't you need to show that it was white? Or do you simply not have to demonstrate it?
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slevesque Member (Idle past 4640 days) Posts: 1456 Joined: |
If I challenged your conclusion wouldn't you need to show that it was white? Or do you simply not have to demonstrate it? It's all probalistic. It depends on the strength of the induction. You are never obliged to accept an inductive conclusion, however, there comes a point where it is unreasonable to reject it, as you be right a very small percentage of the time. Just as no one is obliged to accept a scientific theory as true, but they will rarely be right in doing so depending on the strength of the theory.
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slevesque Member (Idle past 4640 days) Posts: 1456 Joined: |
The piece of driftwood on my coffee table would seem to be irreducibly complex because if you take one piece away - i.e. all of it - it ceases to perform its function. The same is true of the rock that I use as a doorstop. These are not irreducibly complex systems, since they only have one piece.
On the other hand, the dam that I designed would not seem to be irreducibly complex because taking away a piece or two won't effect its performance at all. So I'm not seeing the correlation between irreducible complexity and design. You are comitting the same fallacy as Frako, ie denying the antecedent. The reasoning is not that if a system is not IC, then it is not designed but rather that if it is IC, then it is designed.
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slevesque Member (Idle past 4640 days) Posts: 1456 Joined: |
Ok then name and IC designed system and il show you how removing a part never removes the functionality at best it changes its functionality ergo there are no ireducibly complex systems a mousetrap ?
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frako Member (Idle past 305 days) Posts: 2932 From: slovenija Joined: |
ok is a car engine irreducibly complex then ?
Sure looks like it but it is not not. By the definition of IC, why well i can remove lots of parts, and it still would serve its primary function, and it would always have a function there is no such thing as IC system. lets try the cars engine can i remove a piston? Yes i can the engine will run on fewer pistons, unless its a one piston engine, in that case it would serve as a grate paper weight. It would always has a function so there is no such thing as IC. Edited by frako, : edited for slaveques pleasure
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frako Member (Idle past 305 days) Posts: 2932 From: slovenija Joined: |
lol ok mouse trap lets remove the metal thingy that holds the snaping thingy cocked whitout that the former mouse trap functions grate as a tie clip so it still has functionality not IC and nothing is.
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slevesque Member (Idle past 4640 days) Posts: 1456 Joined: |
Try making complete, or at least sensible, sentences and not skip words, etc.
Because this is clearly incoherent, and even though I think I know what you are trying to say it does give the impression that you are retarded (no offense)
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ringo Member (Idle past 412 days) Posts: 20940 From: frozen wasteland Joined: |
slevesque writes:
Well, that's part of what makes "irreducible complexity" a fairly useless concept. You need a definition that's tailor-made for your desired conclusion.
These are not irreducibly complex systems, since they only have one piece. slevesque writes:
That's circular reasoning. It has to fit your definition of irreducible complexity to be designed and it has to fit your definition of design to be irreducibly complex. You are comitting the same fallacy as Frako, ie denying the antecedent. The reasoning is not that if a system is not IC, then it is not designed but rather that if it is IC, then it is designed. What we're looking for in this thread, I think, is some way of detecting one without depending on the other. You can have brevity and clarify, or you can have accuracy and detail, but you can't easily have both. --Percy
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Taq Member Posts: 9972 Joined: Member Rating: 5.5 |
It's all probalistic. It depends on the strength of the induction. You are never obliged to accept an inductive conclusion, however, there comes a point where it is unreasonable to reject it, as you be right a very small percentage of the time. Fair enough. The problems I see with this inductive argument is that the IC systems of unknown origin dwarf the IC systems of known origins. If you had catalogued 5 million white swans and there was an estimated 5.1 million swans world wide your induction would hold weight. Even worse, your induction is incomplete. All known intelligences capable of producing IC systems are humans. Therefore, we would have to conclude that humans designed the flagellum and all other IC systems found in biology. This can't be true given human history. We also have examples of IC systems coming about through stepwise change, such as the mammalian middle ear. We know that the current mammalian middle ear does not work without two of the bones, and yet we can see a series of fossils where the middle ear started with just a single bone and then incorporated two other bones through time.
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Taq Member Posts: 9972 Joined: Member Rating: 5.5 |
a mousetrap ? A tie clip?
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jar Member (Idle past 394 days) Posts: 34026 From: Texas!! Joined: |
slevesque writes: What about the IC systems that we do not know the origin of? How does IC evidence design in these instances? You can inductively conclude design in those instances. HUH? How? Anyone so limited that they can only spell a word one way is severely handicapped!
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slevesque Member (Idle past 4640 days) Posts: 1456 Joined: |
That's circular reasoning. It has to fit your definition of irreducible complexity to be designed and it has to fit your definition of design to be irreducibly complex. I have no idea where you got this idea. The definition of Irreducible complexity is given in Message 127. I honestly do not know where you got the impression of any circular reasoning, irreducible complexity is certainly defined appart from any reference to design. In fact, the very quote you take from me contradicts what you are saying here. I explicitly say IC ==) ID, not IC (==) ID. SO it goes only one way, irreducible complexity implies intelligent design. Furthermore, I have also explained that this does not come from the definitions, but from inductive reasoning linking the two.
What we're looking for in this thread, I think, is some way of detecting one without depending on the other. We need to ask ourselves what ability does an intelligent mind have that a natural process does not. My contention is that at least one ability is the capacity to project into the future. An intelligent mind can imagine possible future outcomes and strive toward desired. Natural processes cannot, it deals only with the present and cannot 'plan ahead'. Now, what type of systems demand such capacity ? Behe's claims that an irreducible complez system doesm because all the pieces must be in place all at once in order for the desired property to emerge. (Seen this way, irreducible complexity joins unto the ''emergent property'' criterion I spoke of earlier)
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slevesque Member (Idle past 4640 days) Posts: 1456 Joined: |
Fair enough. The problems I see with this inductive argument is that the IC systems of unknown origin dwarf the IC systems of known origins. If you had catalogued 5 million white swans and there was an estimated 5.1 million swans world wide your induction would hold weight. We have a boatload of IC systems that we know were designed in many different spheres of technology. The only IC systems that we do not know the origin are biological systems.
Even worse, your induction is incomplete. All known intelligences capable of producing IC systems are humans. Therefore, we would have to conclude that humans designed the flagellum and all other IC systems found in biology. This can't be true given human history. The induction is not incomplete, in fact you yourself give the answer. Suppose we replace the first premise. All IC systems are designed by humansSystem A is IC Therefore system A was designed by humans Someone could claim premise 1 is proven inductively, however it can be proven false by the following modus tollents (denying the consequent) If all IC systems are designed by humans, then biological IC systems were designed by humansbiological IC systems are not designed by humans, Therefore not all IC systems are designed by humans First premise is a conditional statement. Second premise is proven by observation (biological IC systems were there before humans), and the conclusion follows.
We also have examples of IC systems coming about through stepwise change, such as the mammalian middle ear. We know that the current mammalian middle ear does not work without two of the bones, and yet we can see a series of fossils where the middle ear started with just a single bone and then incorporated two other bones through time. Let's try to clear up all the logical steps leading to IC maybe being a candidate for identifying designed systems before going into counter-examples.
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Percy Member Posts: 22391 From: New Hampshire Joined: Member Rating: 5.2 |
slevesque writes: An intelligent mind can imagine possible future outcomes and strive toward desired. Natural processes cannot, it deals only with the present and cannot 'plan ahead'. This seems a significant observation to me. Intelligence is forward looking, can anticipate, can plan for the future. Evolution is backward looking, can only respond to changes that have already occurred, cannot perceive impending change. It does seem reasonable to accept that any indications we find of forward looking change in the history of life could be evidence of intelligent involvement. The problems for irreducible complexity are that none of the proposed examples holds up, the connection to design is asserted rather than demonstrated, and it hasn't proven to be something that can be studied and researched if judged by the number of researchers studying and researching it, which is 0, Michael Behe included. --Percy
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