Is A Materialist View Less Parsimonious?

Perhaps we could discuss your gross ignorance of evolution, anatomy, and the difference between homology and analogy on another thread. All that aside, we can observe lots of intermediate forms, whereas we have never observed God make an organism by magic, or indeed anyone doing anything by magic. Creationists imagine a whole class of events of which we have never observed a single instance, having a cause of a kind which we have never ever seen operate. And this, according to you, is parsimonious?

1. You have to SHOW my ignorance, by providing reasoning, or it is an ad-hominem attack that diverts attention on to the arguer instead of my arguments.

2. The term, "magic" here is used as a question-begging-epithet, meaning you are simply calling something miraculous, "magic". I could use the same word for abiogenesis or the "magic" brains evolution must have to come up with all of the brilliant intelligent design in life.

In other words, your post was hot-air. You called me ignorant and called creation, "magic".

"ALL too easy" - Darth Vader.

mike the wiz writes: Now can you just show us how that dirt could create itself into a sand castle on it's own?

We can see how sand is sculpted into dunes by the wind. We can see how stone is sculpted into arches, etc. by the wind. The wind is a known entity.

You are proposing an additional entity, an unknown and unevidenced entity - a designer or "god". Hence, your scenario is inerently less parsimonious.

1. You have to SHOW my ignorance, by providing reasoning, or it is an ad-hominem attack that diverts attention on to the arguer instead of my arguments.

I fear that this would be off-topic; but surely you must be aware, without my proving it, that you have spent little or no time studying the topics of which you discourse so glibly.

2. The term, "magic" here is used as a question-begging-epithet, meaning you are simply calling something miraculous, "magic".

I don't know what you mean by "question-begging", but yes, magical and miraculous do seem to be pretty much synonyms. A miracle is either God doing magic on his own account or it's magic done by someone to whom he has deputed his magical powers.

I could use the same word for abiogenesis or the "magic" brains evolution must have to come up with all of the brilliant intelligent design in life.

You could; and you would be lying.

Now, instead of whining about my choice of words, how about you respond to the substance of my post? I notice that you were unable to do that.

Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

Ringo writes: We can see how sand is sculpted into dunes by the wind. We can see how stone is sculpted into arches, etc. by the wind. The wind is a known entity. You are proposing an additional entity, an unknown and unevidenced entity - a designer or "god". Hence, your scenario is inerently less parsimonious

You haven't understood parsimony. It is the great number of assumptions that is the most unparsimonious. Even if I assume God, there are still millions more assumptions for materialism.

Besides you won't let evidence of an intelligent designer, be intelligent design. (which breaks the law of non-contradiction, for it is the only evidence that we could expect, otherwise you are arguing that "NOT intelligent design" would be evidence of an intelligent designer.)

What I meant with the sand castle is that you would not believe a sand castle could be created by a random process but a sand castle is a relatively simple design, it has specified complexity and the goal is to mimic a castle. It has no contingency planning in case the tide comes in, it is made of the wrong material and is loose and can be damaged easily. A real castle would require more intelligence put in, meaning the cause of more intelligent designs is an increase in intelligence, not a decrease.

The empirical evidence shows this progression is real because as we progress, it can be shown more and more intelligence is required for the progression.

Example;

1. To get a simple shape from doh, you need perhaps a baby to make them.
2. To get more complex shapes, that look like people, the child needs to grow more.
3. To make a realistic shape that looks like a person, you again need more intelligence, and the previous two stages are logically insufficient.
4. To get a toy, that is fairly complex, you need more intelligence.
5. To get a very clever invention you need an adult with a high IQ. Will a child now suffice at this level 5?

So then, at every level, the previous ability in the preceding level, is logically insufficient. What is this obvious truth? It is a progression that empirical evidence shows is true.

What then do you do, when the level of design is beyond our best designers? You look to nature (biomimetics), you steal the superior designs from nature. Indeed, all of the best designs we had great help with.

So then, as the progression increases, more and more and more intelligence, is demonstrably needed. but evolution has none, so it would be like saying, "for the best possible design, the requirement is the stage before the baby".

LOL!

God is an additional entity, which I admitted in message one, but a whole series of transitionals for seahorses, is a series of additional entities. Same for pine trees, same for jellyfish, snails, turtles, dugongs, Ichthyosaurs, bats, pterodactyls, pterosaurs.

Be honest, it would take a few days to name all of the missing transitionals I must assume existed based only on a hand full of highly dubious and questionable, "lineages" which can actually be explained away fairly easily, as an insatiable designer's wish to have abundant and teeming life. If these transitions are such proof, why do evolutionary scientists occasionally abandon them? Gingerich abandoned rhodocetus for example, but some evolutionists will still argue it had a tail fluke when he admits on video that he only made that as a suggestion, but lots of evolutionists just ran with it.

If you hold up transitionals that are accepted now, the handful that there are comparatively, you have to acknowledge that those transitionals can later be abandoned, and later be argued to, "be on a side branching off, perhaps not as close a relative as we once thought"

EXACTLY! If you can abandon transitionals, then that 100% logically proves they don't have to be transitionals, it is only tenuous conjecture, that that is what they really were. Later on, those transitionals are usually rejected because of discontinuities and inconsistencies.

Transitionals, for this reason and many more, only count as tenuous, circumstantial evidence. They can be abandoned at any time, and evolutionists dispute with each other, whether they were transitionals on a particular lineage.

Dr a writes: I fear that this would be off-topic; but surely you must be aware, without my proving it, that you have spent little or no time studying the topics of which you discourse so glibly.

Put up or shut up. If I have misunderstood a topic, prove your claim or STAND DOWN from the ad-hominem, diversionary tactic. Mike the wiz is not on trial here, and as soon as you make the topic about mike the wiz, is as soon as you have lost the debate.

DrA writes: I don't know what you mean by "question-begging", but yes, magical and miraculous do seem to be pretty much synonyms. A miracle is either God doing magic on his own account or it's magic done by someone to whom he has deputed his magical powers.

But that can be regarded logically, simply as a statement of ignorance. I can simply argue that the development of the embryo in the womb is no less miraculous in it's wonder, just because it is natural.

Therefore your argument depends on a false premise that "miracle = supernatural". In fact I would argue that the construction of an eyeball, though miraculous, is not supernatural because we can examine it, but abiogenesis really is fictional magic, given the hundreds of experiments since Urey and Miller, have no yielded life. Nor are there any rational reasons to believe any physical process would lead to the construction of a cell any more than we would expect bricks to create themselves into cathedrals, if we left them standing in a yard.

DrA writes: You could; and you would be lying. Now, instead of whining about my choice of words, how about you respond to the substance of my post? I notice that you were unable to do that.

Not lying no, believing life can create itself from a primordial swamp, is definitely magic. What has, "lying" got to do with it. Am I lying by arguing that I know of no examples in reality, of a tornado blasting through a junkyard and assembling a 747 jet?

Even if I was somehow wrong, there would be no, "lie", so again, it is an attempt at a personal slur.

As for the substance of your post, what was it? A repeat of an ad hominem statement coupled with a defence of a question-begging-epithet? Don't you realise that that is all you ever do at this forum? Make personal attacks.

Edited by mike the wiz, : No reason given.

Edited by mike the wiz, : No reason given.

What I meant with the sand castle is that you would not believe a sand castle could be created by a random process but a sand castle is a relatively simple design, it has specified complexity and the goal is to mimic a castle. It has no contingency planning in case the tide comes in, it is made of the wrong material and is loose and can be damaged easily.

It also cannot self-replicate.

Do you have a different example of something that self-replicates that cannot build structures on its own?

The empirical evidence shows this progression is real because as we progress, it can be shown more and more intelligence is required for the progression.

Well no, we self-replicate. Our cells don't need something controlling them to make more cells.

Example; 1. To get a simple shape from doh, you need perhaps a baby to make them.

That's because doh doesn't self-replicate.

2. To get more complex shapes, that look like people, the child needs to grow more.

If the doh could self-replicate, then you wouldn't need a child to get more complex shapes.

So then, at every level, the previous ability in the preceding level, is logically insufficient.

That's because they don't self-replicate and you need something outside of it controlling it.

So then, as the progression increases, more and more and more intelligence, is demonstrably needed. but evolution has none, so it would be like saying, "for the best possible design, the requirement is the stage before the baby".

Yeah, evolution describes things that self-replicate. They don't need an outside controller to make more complex things.

mike the wiz writes: It is the great number of assumptions that is the most unparsimonious. Even if I assume God, there are still millions more assumptions for materialism.

It isn't just the raw number of asumptions that matter. Quality of assumptions is more important than quantity. If I make a thousand small assumptions, all based on real-life observations, that's much better than making one huge assumption based on nothing.

(By the way, I don't even like caling God an assumption. In science, assumptions don't float around isolated in space; they're all interconnected. The conclusion from one experiment is the assumption for another. God doesn't qualify.)

If I have misunderstood a topic, prove your claim or STAND DOWN from the ad-hominem,

You talk about evolution as a random process. It is not.

Put up or shut up. If I have misunderstood a topic, prove your claim or STAND DOWN from the ad-hominem, diversionary tactic. Mike the wiz is not on trial here, and as soon as you make the topic about mike the wiz, is as soon as you have lost the debate.

Mike, I do not need to "prove" to you that you have not studied, for example, the anatomy of the platypus. You know that you have not. You'd remember if you had.

But that can be regarded logically, simply as a statement of ignorance. I can simply argue that the development of the embryo in the womb is no less miraculous in it's wonder, just because it is natural.

And by the same token, you could call it "magical", too.

But I was using the terms "magic" and "miracle" in the strict, literal sense of supernatural feats. Unless you have a naturalist materialistic take on God, I don't see why you're objecting.

As for the substance of your post, what was it?

That creationism appeals to mechanisms of a kind we have never witnessed to produce zillions of results of a kind that we have never seen; and that this is not parsimonious.

Would you like to answer this point, or would you like to evade it with self-pitying whining and irrelevant drivel?

jar writes: ... energy and matter are interchangeable and so matter can be created from energy or energy from matter. Further, additional evidence seems to indicate that both are just inherent parts of space/time.

Noted.

jar writes: I have no idea what "in the beginning" even means.

Are you surmising that matter has always existed?(and/or energy)

Phat writes: Are you surmising that matter has always existed?(and/or energy)

I have no idea, but also don't see how that is relevant to trying to figure out what "In the beginning" even means?

Does it mean "In the beginning of this universe?" If so then the evidence shows that energy did exist at the beginning of this universe and that matter is one of the consequences of that fact.

If "In the beginning" means what was there before that energy then the answer is "I don't yet know."

Saying "God was before the energy" means nothing, explains nothing and answers no questions.

mike the wiz writes: Atoms aren't assumptions, they exist already. I don't see why the atoms need to be placed.

You don't get the point I was making. It's silly to count the number of transitionals as so many assumptions, just as it is silly to count every arrangement of atoms in God's supposed creation as such. That's why I dismissed these arguments. If you keep using this kind of reasoning we might have to upgrade the qualification of 'silly' to 'disingenuous'.

Less silly would be to count the phenomenon of transition between species as one assumption, and God's handiwork as another. And since there's no credible evidence for the latter and lots of evidence for transition, it's one-nil for materialism in the great game of Parsimony.

mike the wiz writes: These features are usually shared because they are the best design for the job. Take bats, oil birds and whales, they all have echolocation. It's simply the best design.

If it is, then why doesn't man, the supposed pinnacle of God's creation, have it?