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

Might I suggest a couple more lines of attack on this 'theory'.
1) The Rev Paley was quick to point out that any watch on the beach would first stimulate thoughts of a designer. I suggest that is nonsense. Introspection tells me that i would first think about the owner, and I suspect most would. Inconvenient to the Rev Paley, but there we have it.
3) This argument is also inconsistent. The design argument applies to Set A - everything that is not God, but a different logic applies to the God entity who is allowed to transgress the so-called logical impossibilities that the design argument is supposed to address. Not quite circular reasoning - more a case of first begging the question then chucking it away completely,.
4) We know a lot more about emergence and complexity nowadays. No sensible person would say that the Mandlebrot set is evidence of design, yet the complexity and self-similarity in the set is stark. We know that deterministic and apparently simple processes can produce amazing complexity with apparent organisation. This is done in the lab everyday and happens everytime it snows. Therefore the whole basis of the argument from design is based on a false premis and should, therefore, be disregarded as fallacious.Edited by Bikerman, : No reason given.Edited by Bikerman, : No reason given.

weeeelllll.....sort of.....but I think it is needful for those debating on the side of rationality to be as honext as possible so that the contrast is drawn in clear and obvious relief.GR needs a spacetime to make sense - otherwise you end up with many infinities and no amount of renormalisation is going to sort it out.PS - the rest of this is not, I hope you will understand, directed at you, Doc :-)The 'before' t=0 question has, I think, two valid answers from the scientist:
a) If conventional theory is correct then then question cannot be answered because it has no meaning. Spacetime was formed at the BB so no time existed for things to occur 'before' since causality requires time which, relativity tells us, doesn't come as a single entity but travels with its spaced-out friends. As to what 'caused' the BB - well, still the wrong words...slipped a naughty 'cause' in, when of course we know cause and effect time dependant. But anyway, nothing needed to cause the BB. What causes a particular alpha emmission from a radioactive element at the time it happened? Why then and not 5 seconds earlier? Answer - that is just the way it works. We know most of the rules of the game, and the trouble is that the rules that you think you understand are not the rules that matter. Common-sense rules, based on experience (perception) are not really possible for electrons and protons and photons (I'll not name the whole standard model contents - let's take it as given).
We use words like 'wave particle duality' and that gives the false impression that the scientist is saying that a photon behaves like a particle sometimes, and other times like a wave. But that is wrong. It isn't a wave, as we understand it, and it isn't a particle as we understand it in common-sense terms. Our language is set-up to translate concepts into communicatable symbology but we have no experiential data for the micro-world of quantum physics. It isn't "like" anything and everytime we try to get around that with analogies people end up more confused when the analogy breaks - as it must.
And the fact that the quantum world IS too weird to define or even discuss in natural languages like English, that DOES NOT mean that we are missing something obvious. I think it is pretty amazing that we have the knowledge we now possess, despite having nothing but a brain evolved to shout at monkeys about food, sex and avoiding preditors. Many folk expect the proper reaction to any grand theory should be: well, isn't it just obvious when you see it, why didn't I think of that?
What arrogance....Learn the vocab then you can start to learn the syntax and grammar, otherwise we waste our time. Maths isn't that hard if you work at it.b) If some of the alternate cosmological models gain some evidential basis then the question might have some meaning. It is difficult, if not impossible, to give a meaningful answer though, and the question is only sensible to the extent that it isn't completely incoherent. How would one set-about describing the Calabi-Yau manifold? Let's face it we can't satisfactorily describe an electron in prose, and unless the questioner is prepared to learn the only language in which the answer makes sense (or is even coherent) - maths - then they are asking a question with no hope of understanding the answer.
And worse - when the analogy breaks they will think it is because the scientist's model is wrong. No, it's because the analogy is unrigorous, ambiguous, poorly expressed and ultimately an attempt to explain a baby version. Don't whine because you can't understand the schroedinger equation and then crow because an attempt to analogise it to you results in the nonsense of a dead/alive cat which you think shows it is wrong....It isn't.Edited by Bikerman, : No reason given.Edited by Bikerman, : Correcting spellingEdited by Bikerman, : No reason given.

Here's the only important difference.
I will write my squiggles down, which you will not understand, and those squiggles will make definite testable statements about the universe. What is more, when you test them you will find they are right.
You will attain your 'clear mind' and use it to say all sorts of things that are not testable and don't say anything testable about the universe, so whether they are right or wrong is, and will remain, moot.It is the difference between pseudo-science and real science. One works, the other pretends.

Time and space are not distinct 'things'. Motion in one determines motion in the other. They both come into existence at t=0 - The BB

Absolutely, yes.
We call it quantum field theory and it tells us that things are constantly coming in to being and going out of existence all around us. We call them 'virtual pairs'.These can be measured.Religion, on the other hand, makes usually vague and ALWAYS untestable assertions about human existence which you either believe or you don't - there is no evidence and no test possible.

"Can these squiggles of yours say where thought began?"Not yet - neuro-science is still a new part of science and it will take some time to get to grips with that question. There is no reason, in principle, that an answer cannot be found.Now - what does your religion tell you about when thought first appeared? I can pretty much guarantee it will be demonstrably wrong.Edited by Bikerman, : No reason given.

So, are you going to answer the question then, using your religion?
When did thought begin?

No, virtual pairs are not what 'caused' the BB. There are several possibilities for that phenomenon - quantum singularities just 'appear'. We see it all the time in the labs. There is no principled reason why the BB should not have done the same thing. Alternatively other models have the BB resulting from a collision of membranes in a multi-dimensional multiverse. That latter emerges from superstring theory but we haven't yet been able to test it - that will come within the next decade or so methinks.So come on....I have been very forthcoming, but you seem unwilling to answer your own questions.

No it makes absolutely no sense. You invent a concept and call it spirit and then invent a story about thought based on it. The evidence? Non whatsoever.
On the other hand, here's just a few problems that arise
a) Given that the human species only evolved recently in history, then how did this 'spirit' get along before about a couple of million years ago?
b) Does it lend this 'thought' to every organism or just to us?
c) We can demonstrate that thought originates in the brain. The simplest demonstration is the ability to turn consciousness on and off when we like by affecting various regions of the brain with chemicals - anaesthetics. We can also see various damage to different aspects of thought when we study brain damaged individuals. The picture is consistent - thought is an emergent property of the physical brain.
You don't need to invoke supernatural explanations which, in any case, add nothing to knowledge since they cannot be tested.
A religious person called Occam had a good way of deciding between this sort of thing.
If your explanation adds nothing but extra complexity, but my explanation works without needing that extra complexity (ie I don't need Gods and Spirits), then in general yours is wrong and mine is the better explanation. We call that Occam's Razor.

I haven't yet seen any definition of terms in this thread.
Until we say what intelligence actually is then it would seem premature to go looking for it....

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When did I say they were?

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I said if you don't have time, how can you begin a Big Bang?

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By the way, it is you using our language, to say that something came into being from non-being.

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Time comes into existence at t=0 - the instant of the BB. That is not a paradox. You 'said they were' by implication. You cannot talk about 'time' in isolation because it is inextricably linked with space - hence spacetime. For a photon time does not pass. For us it passess according to our motion in space relative to each other (movement in space + movement in time = speed of light).I am using 'your' language out of courtesy. Would you prefer the maths?Edited by Bikerman, : typo correction

Hmm...the problem is that we can both cite many animals that apparently design structures, but are they intelligent? Is a bower bird intelligent and can it be said to design the 'bower', or is it simply mechanistic processes under unintelligent 'reflex' action?It strikes me that this is an inefficient way of tackling the OP central question which is much easier to address.The simple answer is 'it need never do so to the best of our knowledge'. We have oodles of examples of non-intelligent design all around us in both the living and non-living world. Snowflakes, crystalline symmetries, the fibonacci series in plant leaves and many other naturally evolved structures....etc. Since we know from direct observation that complexity can arise from non-intelligence, and we know that complexity is normally an indicator of design, then it is not possible to say 'stucture x is a result of intelligent design' with any degree of rigour or certainty.

One possible line of attack would be:
OK - complexity clearly doesn't require design, though interesting it does tend to indicate life (life is massively more complex than non-life in the universe. Even an Amoeba is hugely more complex than a star or planet).
So are there any criteria which we can set for design - even before addressing intelligence. Are there some apsects or characteristics which certainly tell us something was designed?
What about symmetry? Nope - happens all the time in nature.
Regularity? Better - nature doesn't do regularity very well most of the time. We don't tend to see very good triangles or even straight lines in natural structures. But we see close approximations and we certainly see other regularities, so this isn't going to work as a test.
Materials used? Not really. We can't say that because something is made from a lot of different materials that it was designed. Many natural structures are quite complex in terms of constituent materials - think of a meadow - how many elements are present? A lot, from the various minerals in the rocks, to the complex organic mix in the soil and the even more complex organic chemicals in the plants and animals on the surface.
What about being 'fitted for a particular purpose'? That would seem promising. Clearly if something is good at doing a paticular job or role, then it must have been designed for the job? Nope. Again nature shows us fantastic examples of evolution producing adaptions and adaptive behaviours.Nope, we can't do it - no 'set in stone' givaways of design. We have to use a non-algorithmic approach - no simple set of rules.
So is it possible that William Paleys 'watch on the beach' was not designed? Certainly. The function is arbitrary and wouldn't necessarily indicate purpose to anyone without a 24 hour period of rotation, it just has straight bits which move in a regular manner around a circular face, which are driven by lots of round wheels and a coiled spring. Maybe it evolved?On a slightly more serious aside - very few items in our modern world were designed from scratch. Most are adaptations of existing concepts or designs. Thus a building has no overall 'intelligent designer'. Rather it has a large number of designers and a large amount of evolutionary structure in the makeup.

PS the argument from design, thoroughly discredited and rebutted as it is, gets very boring after a while, but it does have some interesting off-shoots.
One of them is what Dennett calls the 'stances' which can be used to explain the evolution of religion and spirituality. This is related to the religious notion of design.
Consider an early hominid ancestor. He/she has three basic ways of looking at particular phenomena available (3 'stances').
1) Physical stance. Look at the comonents, see how they fit together. In short, do the physics.
2) Design stance. Look at the phenomenon and see if it was obviously designed to do something.
Now, this is a short-cut. Working out the physics of something is hard and takes time. If we shortcut that by assuming it is designed then we can save time.
3) Intentionality stance. Look at the phenomenon. What are its intentions? What does it want to do?
This is an even faster shortcut. Simply predict what the intent of the phenomenon is and you have immediately classified it.Dennett argues that the latter of the three can account for superstition evolving and developing into organised religion.
Consider our hominid and the 3 possible stances. Which one offers the best chance of survival when he/she meets a tiger?
1) Examine the claws, teeth, size, shape, mass. (by now the tiger has chomped our hero).
2) Hmm...this creature looks designed for a purpose. Large claws and teeth. Purpose is to kill other animals. (if our hero is lucky they will arrive at this masterly summation quickly enough to run and survive).
3) This bugger looks like he wants to eat me, I'm off.Clearly the third is the best from a survival point of view. Therefore it is selected for - the assigning of 'intent' to things grows.Now, like all such predispositions, it will inevitably 'misfire' - that is, intent will be assumed for things which have no intent. So a bad storm clearly must be explained as something intentional. This requires an agency. So we invent an agency who 'intended' the storm and that tells us whether the storm is something to fear.
Likewise the Sun - clearly an important entity because whenever it goes away we get cold and can't see very well. Therefore there must be some agency who likes us and makes it appear.You can see where this is going, I'm sure ;-)..Edited by Bikerman, : No reason given.

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Personally, I would say that intelligence includes the capacity to learn. I'm not sure why cdesign proponentsists think that's an appropriate trait to attribute to their god.

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I would agree that learning is involved, certainly to gain the knowledge needed. But is it required simply to demonstrate intelligence? Yes, I would say it is. Any organism must adapt to surroundings which means it has to 'learn' about where it is and what its relationship is to the environment. So I think 'ability to learn' MUST go into the box.As regards theists having problems with this - it is mainly the Abrahamic religions that have the most problem, because they overplayed their God card and made it omniscient and omnipotent. It is simple to demonstrate that an omniscient being cannot learn (it is also fairly simple to demonstrate that omniscience+omnipotence = paradox+logical fallacy).
I could give you a formal proof of either, but it is very dry reading...Edited by Bikerman, : No reason given.