INTELLIGENT DESIGN: An Engineer’s Approach

Welcome to the fray, limbosis. You seem a little ambivolent in your post (as others have noted). Love the avatar (now). Isn't "limbosis" a dance troupe?I design things for a living. That gives me a perspective on what is, and what is not, good design. Neither. First I would review all relevant designs. Staff and I would have several brainstorming sessions going over various designs. Water pistols would be used on any wet blankets. Originality wanted.Then when all NEW ideas PLUS all OLD ideas were on the table we would evaluate how they relate to the NEED of the design, and how to best realize concept into actuality, with no aversion to borrow from any other design that shows merit.What emerges is a combination of new and old ideas melded into a well crafted whole. The old ideas come from all over the map, not just the ones that are convenient to use. And to do it better than the next designer who is doing the same thing with their staff. I'm still at it too.Take the human eye as an example.It's a D-- design imh(ysa)o, sub-par, below average, inside-out, missing visual areas, junk in the way of sensors, prone to failure (sometimes at birth), and it has no backup mechanism to correct problems that develop.Design a car with fly-by-wire steering and have no backups or fail-safes, and see how long your design career lasts.But that's not all of WHY it is a BAD design. Look at the octopus eye.I give it a C grade, average. It is better than the human eye because the retina faces the light (WHAT a THOUGHT!) with no blind-spot in the center of the best vision area for the cables to run through and without any cables in FRONT of the sensors (Yes virginia, you CAN do that).Next I look at them and see that one (human) changes focus by changing the lens shape to bring near or far things into focus on the retina, and that the other (octopus) changes the EYE shape to bring the retina into position where near or far things are in focus. Mohamed and the mountain eh?Then I look at zoom lenses and note that they use double focus mechanisms to change the power of the lens used and bring the view into focus: combining the best elements of the octopus eye and the human eye into one design gives you far superior vision and abilitiy, and glasses would never be needed.That would be a first level designed eye. One that would get a B grade.It does not exist in nature -- so where is your designer?Possibly at Silly Design Institute: Let's discuss BOTH sides of the Design Controversy...Pay particular attention to:

• Investigator: Eye's Silly Design Message 4
  
• A Wing and A Walkingstick Message 18
  
• Sex, Sickness and Silliness Message 23
  
• Flagellum's Funny Flailing Message 33
  

The question is, are you ready to be wrong? Or will you deny evidence that shows the contradictions of your beliefs?One way lies science, the other delusion.Enjoy.

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ps type [qs]quote boxes are easy[/qs] and it becomes:

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RebelAAmericanOZen[Deist
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Thanks, I'll look for further inputs. Feel free to contribute to the institute if you wish.Enjoy.

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RebelAAmericanOZen[Deist
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When an artist draws they do not think about running out of pencil. They KNOW they have more pencils or where they can get them.And if the R&D budget is THAT low, they're not going to get much of value done.This appears to be more of an arbitrary ad hoc concept tacked on to explain lack of good design, when it doesn't do that: we see bad desing by comparison of different features, and a failure to use options that are available, not by a total lack of new features.Enjoy.

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RebelAAmericanOZen[Deist
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Not to mention the amount of that material that is wasted every year. If the economics of resources were a real issue, then there would not be so much annual wastage.Enjoy.

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RebelAAmericanOZen[Deist
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And when we look at the "design record" of a certain god's work we see that in the first instance of an oversight in the design process, that a different method was used than for all the other animals:When this god had to go back and create the mate he forgot to make for adam, he borrowed from the original design rather than start from scratch, as he did with all the other animals, male and female.This is, IIRC, the only known instance of this "borrowed design" in the record.Enjoy.

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RebelAAmericanOZen[Deist
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Don't think you'll get much argument about eliminating an honest god -- from non-christians.But I don't think you'll get agreement that these represent the only alternatives. One other is noted by Chiroptera, and another is Silly Design, design for the purpose of self-entertainment.Silly Design could be portrayed as deceptive but it does not have to be evil.Another possiblity is that the god is not really able to communicate with the creations, their interpretations are too limited.Concluding evil is thus not supported by the argument either.Edited by RAZD, : revised, added another possibility.

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RebelAAmericanOZen[Deist
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Being non-conformist about the purpose is not being non-conformist about the ability. Actually they have hi-jacked the terminology and only do a half-hearted attempt to evaluate the consequences of the concept. They only want it as a wedgie straw man argument.And of course having 500 interpretations of the terminology means they can vacillate more on what they mean to their different audiences.The LAST thing they want is defined terminology.

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RebelAAmericanOZen[Deist
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It's a matter of view. You should see the Daily Show clip where Jon Stewart asks Behe about the purpose of the scrotum.But the other side of the coin, is what is the one god that consistently shows up in all pantheons (including the "mono"theistic judeao- ones)?The joker.

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RebelAAmericanOZen[Deist
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beta

Okay, now that we have whittled the hypothesis down to a reasonable reflection of the input data, what can we derive from it as a testable hypothesis that make a clear and testable distinction between it and evolution?That is, after all, the next step eh?

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RebelAAmericanOZen[Deist
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As has been noted, this is off topic.In addition, what you did in post 101 and want to do here is also against forum guidelines: posting long copy and pastes with no content of your own brain involved, AND not referenceing where you got your (false) material. This latter is plagarism: essentially lying about your sources with the implication that you are the originator.These are also PRATTS and the argument from authority - a logical fallacy that renders any conclusion from their usage invalid.If you think even one of these statements is truly represented then please, pick the best one and start a new thread. Give the statement and a clear reference to it's source -- not the creatortionista intentional misrepresentation website, but the original scientific literature source, and be prepared to defend your assertion that the author had serious misgivings about evolution or be ready to eat crow.Now -- can you stick to the topic of this thread? Threads are limited to 300 posts for a number of reasons, thus it is good manners if nothing else, to keep on topic.Enjoy.

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RebelAAmericanOZen[Deist
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There are two problems with this "test" and one of them has already been aluded to:(1) Speciation is not contested as occurring even by creationists (they say it is "micro"evolution and hold the line on something vaguely defined as "kind" involving "macro"evolution),(2) You're test has a negative result taken as a positive for your concept. This does not mean that yout concept has to be the answer, only that a positive result may not yet have occurred.An example of this is abiogenesis: the failure to produce abiogenesis in the lab is not evidence that it can never be done, nor is the lack of result evidence that the world was created by Odin.Conclusion: not a valid test FOR you concept.You need a test where the result can produced by your concept, and that evolution cannot produce: if the result is positive then you concept must be more correct than evolution.Do you have another?Enjoy.Edited by RAZD, : (2)Edited by RAZD, : toyp

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RebelAAmericanOZen[Deist
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Sorry, but this is part of the scientific process: developing a test that clearly shows that your concept is better at explaining the data, not just one that shows the other theory has problems -- but that doesn't prove anything. And that has been done. In Message 120 I said: Because speciation has been observed so many times already. This has nothing to do with the specieation events done with the fruit fly. They created species that can breed within their population but that cannot breed outside their population. This is the biological definition of species.Sometimes with insects what happens is a morphological change that prevents the mating elements from functioning - too small for the unaided human eye to see but still a definite change. Done. What does "the likes of which we have never seen" have to do with it? We've also already accomplished that.It seems to me that you don't understand the biological definition of species and are arguing from some personal straw man version of it that is not what the science uses.Please read Definitions, Daffynitions, Delusions, Logic and Critical Thinking. for why this is not cricket.Finally, I remind you of and Denial of evidence that contradicts your concept is not faith or reason:

quote:

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delusion” -noun
1. an act or instance of deluding.
2. the state of being deluded.
3. a false belief or opinion: delusions of grandeur.
4. Psychiatry. a fixed false belief that is resistant to reason or confrontation with actual fact: a paranoid delusion.

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I would hope we are not at that point yet.So the question remains, do you have a test FOR your concept?Or does the FACT that speciation has occurred invalidate it?Enjoy.

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RebelAAmericanOZen[Deist
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Your argument from incredulity notwithstanding ... they started with ONE population and divided it into two reproducing populations that became sterile in cross-breeds.Your point is refuted by the evidence in the paper.It seems denial - or confusion - has set in. Your argument from ignorance notwithstanding ... positive assortative mating involves choosing mates. Thus not only is there sexual separation (sterile offspring in hybreds) there is behavior separation (active choosing of mates in each sub-population).Enjoy.Edited by RAZD, : fixed word

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RebelAAmericanOZen[Deist
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Nope. It has been for some time either evolution as we know it or something else. Something else has never been defined and could still be a natural process. What fills this void is "we don't know" - not any pre-assumed results. No science proves theory. Not one. What they do is validate theory with tests that try to invalidate the theory ... and that have yet to do so. ... replicating molecule. This is abiogenesis and NOT evolution. It is being done in ever increasing ability as the years go by. That the probability for however we came into existence is 1: we exist. ... and listen to what ignorant and ill-informed people tell you about what is wrong with the rest of the universe? RIIIIGHT.Tell you what: produce a miracle here today. Done yet? Only that will "prove" that god-did-it after all, that is where all the "creation" evidence points eh? Still no miracle? Must be evolution wins by default (by your reasoning anyway). Sorry. Enjoy.Edited by RAZD, : subtitle

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