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

Hi, ICDESIGN. Perhaps the question would be more accurately phrased, "when does pattern become design?"I think, in the context of this debate, the term "design" is assumed to refer to some kind of intelligence.----- Based on what criteria?If the point is to try to make intelligent design into an objectively defined concept (as your OP seems to suggest is your intent), then it would behoove you to try to make your case for it without appealing to subjective reasoning such as, "____ sounds pretty intelligent to me."What I gather from your OP is that you have so far used three criteria to determine whether some observed pattern is due to intelligent design:

1. It works
2. It does something interesting or remarkable
3. It is complex

You'll note that, not only do these seem to be rather low standards for intelligence, but they are all left completely open to a lot of subjective interpretation.I also don't believe that any of these three criteria can be consistently applied to adequately explain any meaningfully broad range of distinct phenomena.For instance, can you simultaneously argue that both human visual organs and a 10-pound rock fit the three criteria above equally well?If so, then congratulations: your idea seems to be consistent.
If not, then you must accept that either (1) some things (like rocks) are not intelligently designed, or (2) the criteria you seem to be using are not really useful for discerning design and non-design, and those of us who would genuinely like the opportunity to test the possibility that design occurs in nature are still waiting for the Intelligent Design movement to produce criteria that will be useful in such a test.

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

Hi, Bolder-dash. I think you’re suffering from a misinterpretation of scale here.Evolution is a broad-scale phenomenon. The Theory of Evolution is only meant to explain what will result when there is differential fitness between organisms over time. It has nothing to do with our judgments about what is beautiful and what is ugly; nor about what is good and what is evil.When you refer to these dichotomous ambiguities, you are really only dealing in the finer-scale field of ecology, which has a large number of theories and hypotheses to explain its internal dynamics. Ecological theories are usually based on the concept of fitness. It asks the question of how organisms can be successful when they employ a certain strategy or lifestyle.The Theory of Evolution does not deal with things on this scale. It only considers what will happen (or, more usually, what has happened in the past) when the comparative fitness of multiple organisms is altered over time.That there are multiple ways to achieve fitness is not a weakness of the Theory of Evolution, because ToE is not meant to detail the mechanisms that can lead to fitness. It is only meant to detail the outcome of changing fitness.Does this make sense to you?Perhaps we're getting away from the topic here. Can I suggest we take this to another thread somewhere?Edited by Bluejay, : underlined wrong partEdited by Bluejay, : "phenomenon" instead of "pattern."

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

Hi, Bolder-dash. I have a few simple suggestions to make.

1. If you think my points merit some sort of response, but don't understand what I'm talking about, you are always welcome to ask me to clarify them.
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   I will do my best to not be offended if you misinterpret me (although I am only human). I would prefer you to be at least somewhat specific about what you would like me to clarify, however.
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2. If you think my comments merit some sort of response, while others’ comments don’t, why did you respond to the others, and not to me?
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   Your tendency to get caught up in substanceless banter that is as much your own making as the making of the people you blame for it belies your insistence that you would rather talk about stuff with substance. If you don't think it's worth responding to, just let it go.
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3. Assert yourself, Dash.
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   Your approach is entirely reactionary: you seem to think that you can't discuss things unless somebody gives you something to discuss. If there is substance to your side of the debate, then put it forward, and force us to respond to what you say! That’s how you can control the direction of the discussion, and prevent this silly back-and-forth crap that you detest so much.

Edited by Bluejay, : Altered wording of second point.

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

Hi, Buzsaw. I think you're trying to ask how self-replication could have come about in the absence of Intelligent Design.I am willing to overlook your insistence on using the term "life" to refer to things that cannot reproduce despite having been corrected on this issue multiple times now, simply because I don’t think you’re ever going to assimilate these criticisms and alter your responses accordingly. But know that I share the objections that others have voiced.Before there was life, there was chemistry.
The chemistry of the early earth is hypothesized to have been such that it produced many types of organic chemicals.
These chemicals reacted with each other and produced more chemicals.
Entire systems of chemical reactions began to form, and began to be associated with one another.
Some of the chemicals could copy themselves or could facilitate the copying of other chemicals.
Some of the chemicals formed membranes that formed sacs by closing off portions of this system of chemical reactions.
Some of the chemicals caused a sac to split into two smaller sacs.Self-replication (at least as far as life forms are concerned) is a process of synchronizing the copying with the splitting, so that the splitting results in two sacs, each with one copy of the chemicals in them.So, before self-replication, there was simply unsynchronized copying and splitting. This could be seen as a form of reproduction, but it is inefficient, and probably had a very high failure rate. However, it is not necessarily the case that the failure rate was too high to overcome.Before there were copying and splitting, there was just a lot of chemicals being produced by the environment and interacting with each other in increasingly complex ways.Does this make sense to you? If it does, maybe we can get a little more in-depth. In fact, I think the emergence of self-replication might deserve its own thread, if it interests you.

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

Hi, Buzsaw. Obviously, "almost life" is not alive.The definition of "life" includes a number of different attributes. So, in order to be considered "life," an entity must have, for example, A, B, C, D and E.Something that has A, B, C and D, but not E, is thus not "life." But, Ringo could rightly call it "almost life," because it fills all the requirements except one.-----Let me try this again.Think of abiogenesis as the point at which a proto-organism becomes essentially self-sufficient.Before that point, some of the organism’s life-like functions were done by the environment (e.g. the environment controlled when the membrane divided, or proteins from the environment were used to replicate DNA).After that point, all of the organism’s life-like functions were done by the chemistry contained within itself. Thus, the chemicals to replicate DNA (or RNA) or to orchestrate membrane division, were produced within the organism, rather than out in the environment.It’s the same chemistry happening in both situations: it’s just that, before abiogenesis, the chemistry is happening out in the medium, and after abiogenesis, it’s happening inside the cell, and is being regulated and synchronized directly by the cell.So, there isn’t the big leap here that you want it to be. The chemicals could self-replicate, and the self-replication of the organism was thus only the ability to synchronize the replication of all the parts such that the whole was replicated together.

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

Hi, Dash.I feel that it would be helpful for me to point out that Granny Magda entered this discussion originally to convince you that you have been misunderstanding and misrepresenting what evolutionists' and abiogeneticists' theories say.You haven't really engaged this point. You have instead focused on asking for evidence that things are the way Granny argues that they are.This is all fine, but Granny’s interactions with you so far have convinced her that you don’t even know what evolutionists’ and abiogeneticists’ theories say. So, you are highly unlikely to be able to see how any evidence provided would support those theories. Thus, what purpose would be served by their providing this evidence?Subsequently, all of your opponents have attempted to explain what the theory says, and you have convinced none of them that you actually understand it. In fact, you seem to understand things a bit less after they explained it than before. So, realizing that further explanation by them is not likely to help, they recommended personal study, because that seems to be the only source you will respond to.If you really do understand the Theory of Evolution and the various hypotheses of Abiogenesis---and I think you do understand them better than the impression you give---then can you please just state the concepts without the hyperbole*? *hyperbole = exaggeration (just in case)For instance, talking about humans descending from turtles---even if it was just a joke---is not a good way to convince people that you understand what evolution says. In fact, it’s pretty immature, if you think about it, and it gives people the impression that you aren’t really looking for a serious discussion.If you are looking for a serious discussion---and I believe that you probably are---then do everything in your power to make it obvious to us.

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

Hi, Buzsaw. This is very unhelpful. As presented in the OP, we are supposed to determine whether or not something was designed by an intelligent agent based on observations we can make about its characteristics right now.So, basically, your suggestion is that we can tell that things are intelligently designed by finding out whether they were intelligently designed.----- I'm not so sure you should make this generalization. After all, there is a gradient between things natural and things manufactured.If we gave an alien from outer space a beehive, a bird's nest, a wigwam and a Clovis point, would this alien be able to unambiguously determine which of those designs were made by intelligent agents and which were not?I doubt it.

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

Hi, Buzsaw. I think I'll give you another chance to make that make sense before I try to respond to it.----- Basically, you're saying that aliens can tell designed things from undesigned things, except in cases when they can't. This is no more helpful than anything else you have written so far.I'm asking you to deal with the cases where there are gradients. You have provided no way to tell when something is designed. Literally, none.So, when I come across those cases where it's hard to tell, I have no guidelines by which to determine whether something is or isn't designed. So, I conclude that a naive alien (i.e. one that has never seen Earth before) could not reliably determine what is intelligently designed and what isn't, as you claimed.I agree with you that designed things can often be recognized as designed, even intelligently designed, without much difficulty. But, without formalizing the criteria whereby we make this distinction, there is no guarantee that our way of identifying design will work on things outside of our own design tradition.So, please, formalize the criteria! Tell us what they are, and how we can identify them!

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

Hi, ICANT. So, do you believe that I can produce two identical DNA molecules, one of which has a certain quantity of information, and the other of which has no information?

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

Hi, Buzsaw. To "formalize" means to actually think it out and define it clearly, rather than to use it without being able to explain why it works.----- This completely undoes the entire point of your original statement that an alien could tell design from non-design. You can't back out now and say that the alien must have the time to develop the same intuitive, non-formalized sense of design and non-design.The point is for you to define design by something other than, "you can just tell." When, Buzz, can we confidently decide that some observed pattern is due to design?

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

Hi, ICANT. Well, no, it wasn’t intended as a trick question. I guess, from a certain point of view, you may still think it is when this post is done. But, it was asked to clarify what you meant my the information being separate from the structure (which you now seem to deny).So, we are in agreement that the information in a molecule is indistinguishable from the structure of the molecule?So, if an intelligent designer was involved in putting information into a DNA molecule, then this must mean that the designer was actually putting together the structure DNA molecules, right?Now, I ask, why does one molecule look, to you, like it had information put into it, when another doesn’t?

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

Hi, ICDESIGN. This begs the question of what you consider "intended purpose."I say that the unintended products of many rounds of culling may very well look just like they had some "intended purpose" to them.Would you expect an organism with a bad skeleton to survive very long?
Would you expect the genes responsible for giving organisms bad skeletons to continue very long in a population?
If you would not expect these two things, then what would you expect the surviving organisms to have for a skeleton?
Good skeletons?Fascinating.----- What do you think is the perfect position for any given joint?Let’s go with the knee, just to keep it simple.
What is the perfect position for the knee?----- So, the basic idea is that, if it works, it must have been designed?I don't think you have successfully demonstrated this to be the case.

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

Hi, Buzsaw. But, that is exactly what you are saying when you say things like this: How would this alien be able to distinguish these things?
If your answer is "by experience," then what you are proposing is an intuitive, non-formalized system for determining design.In order to answer the question from the OP ("When does design become intelligent?"), we need a formalized approach. Otherwise, we don't really know why we think X is designed and Y is not. So, we can't use it well outside of our realm of experience, we can't teach other people how to do it, and we can't discern things for which the distinction is ambiguous.

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

Hi, ICDESIGN. This is not what the Theory of Evolution says. No where is an exact process dictated. The ToE can handle situations where multiple changes happen at roughly the same time; or where large changes occur; or where no changes happen for a long time.The gradualistic paradigm of evolution isn't saying that evolution has to progress in discreet phases. There is no rule that says an organism cannot evolve X right now because they are currently working on evolving Y.Remember, it's a population that evolves, not an individual. Within a population, there may be one individual with one new trait, and another individual with another new trait. Over time, these two new traits may come to dominate the population. And, they can both start at the same time.

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

Hi, Buzsaw. There is no reason to think that this is "intelligence." Yet.We're still waiting for you, or one of the other three creationists on this thread, to provide us with a reason.So, why can't chemical signaling just be chemistry?

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