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Author | Topic: What IS evidence of design? (CLOSING STATEMENTS ONLY) | |||||||||||||||||||
Taq Member Posts: 9973 Joined: Member Rating: 5.7 |
How about this: designed artefacts are identifiable because they have been shaped to assist a known third part with identifiable influence on the artefact.
This is something that Darwin put forward as a potential falsification of evolution. "If it could be proved that any part of the structure of any one species had been formed for the exclusive good of another species, it would annihilate my theory, for such could not have been produced through natural selection."--Chapter 6, "Origin of Species", Charles Darwin.
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Taq Member Posts: 9973 Joined: Member Rating: 5.7 |
As I am not the sharpest knife in the drawer, I wonder if any of you could explain to me how this is NOT related to symbiosis, OR, why Darwin would revise said quote were he alive today? Symbiosis benefits both species. For example, flowers offer nectar as a benefice to bees. Bees, in return, transfer pollen from one flower to the next. Both benefit. What you would need to find is a feature that encouraged or facilitated parasitism.
Having seen this argument come up sooooo many times, I question the very use of the word "designed" as an adjective. All the definitions are inadequate to answer this debate. It's like we need to split the word into two versions, one meaning "designed by an intelligent agent" and the other "ordered and structured". Indeed. Waves create designs in rock. Clouds form designs all of the time (I always see dragons for some reason).
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Taq Member Posts: 9973 Joined: Member Rating: 5.7 |
I don't know. But I'm pretty sure they don't go through anything resembling a human design process (identifying requirements, identifying solutions options, etc) Then it would seem that complex designs do not require a conscious, intelligent designer.
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Taq Member Posts: 9973 Joined: Member Rating: 5.7 |
Well, if you call them designs, then yes, but that's begging the question. No more so than any ID argument. If a tornado blew through a wax factory would it make honeycomb?
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Taq Member Posts: 9973 Joined: Member Rating: 5.7 |
One such criteria that was proposed by the ID movement was irreducible complexity, another was specified complexity. Do you consider either of these as legitimate indicators of intelligent design, and if so, why?
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Taq Member Posts: 9973 Joined: Member Rating: 5.7 |
Still, I guess you could tell me the problem you see with irreducible complexity, since I do think that claims that it has been ''completely and utterly demolished'' are far from the actual reality of it. Personally, I think those flaws are best seen when the Socratic method is applied. If you don't mind, I will ask you questions and we will see where it goes. Interested? In case you are, why do you think that IC is evidence of design? (a short answer is all that is necessary) Edited by Taq, : No reason given.
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Taq Member Posts: 9973 Joined: Member Rating: 5.7 |
I guess you could say that it is an inductively proven premise, since every IC system of which we know the origin was designed. What about the IC systems that we do not know the origin of? How does IC evidence design in these instances?
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Taq Member Posts: 9973 Joined: Member Rating: 5.7 |
You can inductively conclude design in those instances.
How? Edited to add: Consider the following argument. All known planets orbit the Sun. Therefore, any new planets we discover must also orbit the Sun. I would think that inductive reasoning is a very poor way of finding the truth, wouldn't you? Edited by Taq, : No reason given.
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Taq Member Posts: 9973 Joined: Member Rating: 5.7 |
All IC systems are designed System A is IC Therefore system A was designed How did you determine that all IC systems are designed? You seem to be inserting the conclusion in the premise.
all IC systems of which we know the origin were designed We don't know the origin of the flagellum, therefore this does not apply nor does the rest of the argument. Adding the ABE part:
Inductive reasoning is central to the scientific process. Theories are proven until counter-examples are found. That is easy. Each and every molecule is irreducibly complex. If you remove one atom you lose the function of that molecule. Take a nitrogen out of an amino acid and you no longer have that amino acid. It no longer functions in the same way. We also observe that amino acids can and do come about through natural processes. Edited by Taq, : No reason given.
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Taq Member Posts: 9973 Joined: Member Rating: 5.7 |
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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Taq Member Posts: 9973 Joined: Member Rating: 5.7 |
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: 9973 Joined: Member Rating: 5.7 |
a mousetrap ? A tie clip?
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Taq Member Posts: 9973 Joined: Member Rating: 5.7 |
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. My point is that the biological systems far outnumber the human made IC systems. You are using a relatively small number of IC systems from non-reproducing designs to make a generalized statement about a much larger number of IC systems from reproducing organisms that, btw, evolve.
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 Here is the inductive argument. All IC systems of known origin were designed by humans. Therefore, all IC systems of unknown origin were designed by humans. We know this can't be true, therefore IC fails as evidence of design.
If all IC systems are designed by humans, then biological IC systems were designed by humans biological IC systems are not designed by humans, Therefore not all IC systems are designed by humans Therefore, not all IC systems are designed. Period.
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. Until you show that the inductive argument does not require humans as the designer then I would say that the inductive argument has failed.
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Taq Member Posts: 9973 Joined: Member Rating: 5.7 |
That is exactly what I think. From reading this board it sounds like most of the Darwinists on this board will admit design is self evident when it is the result of a human act. I would call it non-controversial. When an archaeologist is digging at a site and comes across an arrowhead and an earthworm which one do you think he sends back to a museum as an artefact of intelligent engineering?
Seems to me that most here would accept specified complexity or intentional order as designed so long as we are familiar with its designer. If you could show us how to measure such things we could certainly entertain it.
Since they discount a creator of life out of hand then the same order seen in the living things is not excepted as designed. Surely you need evidence of something before you accept it as true, don't you? Why should we be any different?
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Taq Member Posts: 9973 Joined: Member Rating: 5.7 |
So you know something is designed by the evidence of design. Now my point was that and arrow head is accepted as designed by evolutionists because they know the maker ie: man. So to them it is self evident. Maybe we don’t disagree on this point. It goes back to the inductive argument from earlier in this thread. All arrow heads are designed so this arrow head must be designed. It seems perfectly logical to me. We can also observe designers making arrowheads, and we can even find ancient sites where the arrowheads were made complete with arrowheads that didn't make the cut and the flakes of flint left over from the process. We also observe that arrowheads do not reproduce, so they can't make themselves. Not so with life.
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