How does Complexity demonstrate Design

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Is that what we currently do now with design specific fields such as archaeology, anthropology's search for artifacts, cryptology, SETI, forensics, etc.?

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How interesting that these fields deal with artifacts that, unlike living organisms, do not reproduce. These artifacts require a designer to explain their origin, but living beings owe their existence to a well-understood natural process, the hereditary mechanism of DNA. For your inference to work, you need to make us believe that natural processes do not create living things, or that intelligent agency is necessary for living things to exist. Intelligent agency has never created a tree, a baby, or a bacterium. If you disagree, please offer evidence to the contrary.regards,
Esteban Hambre

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MrH:
Intelligent agency has never created a tree, a baby, or a bacterium.

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John Paul:
And neither has nature.

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You've got to be kidding me. If this is any indication of how thick your blinders are, I give up trying to discuss anything with you. There has to be some rational basis for how we're trying to establish consensus here, but if you're going to deny that trees grow through natural processes, then I'm done.regards,
Esteban Hambre

John Paul,I have never received a straight answer from you when I've asked what natural phenomena we know to be the product of intelligent agency. Has intelligent agency ever created a tree, or a baby, or a bacterial flagellum? So far you have pointed to things such as your car, your house, and Stonehenge to illustrate the products of intelligent design. The origin of these objects you mention, however, has never been in question. I have still not heard mentioned a single natural phenomenon, not one, that we understand to be the product of intelligent agency.Your argument seems to be as follows.
Major premise: Everything IC is the product of intelligent design.
Minor premise: Natural phenomenon "A" is irreducibly complex.
Conclusion: Therefore, "A" is the product of intelligent design.Now, I submit that you're assuming that the major premise has already been accepted as given, which is absolutely not true. You need to offer evidence that we know of any natural structures like the human heart, the eye, the BacFlag, that more or less qualify as irreducibly complex, which we know to have been intelligently designed. So far you have not offered one example. Your car is not the issue, nor any similarities between your car and any natural organs or structures.An IC structure like the outboard motor we know to have been intelligently designed. With an IC structure like the BacFlag we don't have that knowledge. Without such independent knowledge, you can't assume that IC is the hallmark of intelligent design.I've also tried in vain to do is establish consensus between us that undirected, natural processes have resulted in anything whatsoever. I still am not sure what phenomena (if any) you feel are attributable to undirected natural processes.When I asserted that "Intelligent agency has never created a tree, a baby, or a bacterium," you evidently could not offer evidence to refute my claim. Thus, you merely spat back "Neither has nature," and hoped that everyone would accept that assertion the same way you want us to accept the major premise of your intelligent design syllogism: "Everything IC is the product of intelligent design." You have argued subsequently that nature had nothing to do with the conception and/or birth of your own offspring.Nature creates trees and babies and (especially) bacteria all the time, through the impressive but undirected process of DNA copying and cell division. If you feel there is anything in Nature, anything at all, that requires the intervention of an intelligent agent, the burden is on you to explain what that is and back it up with evidence. I resent being called dishonest because I expect you to offer the same evidence you demand (and then deny) from evolutionists.regards,
Esteban Hambre

DarkStar notes:

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Where one may see random chance, another may see purposeful design, and still another may see intelligent design, and yet another may see see intelligent design, and the evidence of the handiwork of an intelligent designer.

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And it could just be that people are seeing what they want to see. Usually, when someone talks about seeing the 'handiwork of an intelligent designer,' we notice that they're only looking at the things that confirm their claim. Yes, living organisms are often beautiful, as well as amazing in their complexity and diversity. However, does everything we see appear to be what a purposeful designer would intend? If life on Earth also appears to be chaotic, cruel, messy, and wasteful, can we assume that this also supports the notion of intelligent design?In other words, what observations would disconfirm the design hypothesis? How would life on Earth look if it weren't the product of intelligent design?regards,
Esteban Hambre

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There are a few of us that believe that at the lowest levels, the basic, wonderous rules we are just beinginning (sic) to learn, there is design. But I am talking about only at the rule level itself. And as we learn more, we constantly find that what we thought were designs were not. They were only artifacts of an underlying design.

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I don't have the slightest idea what you mean by this.Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection was revolutionary because, in the face of a scientific and philosophical consensus that Design could not arise without a pre-existing Mind, he postulated that the design we see in nature is in fact produced by a network of dumb algorithms. What we know about biochemistry, the DNA copying process, and selective filters serves to confirm his ideas. There doesn't have to be a purpose-driven intelligence behind the scenes when populations, organisms, and molecules are merely obeying these laws on various levels.What you seem to be saying is that the purpose is not in the design itself, but in the algorithms that make the design possible. However, all this does is restate the Mind-first doctrine that Darwin's theory rendered obsolete: you think that the basis for Design requires Mind or purpose. Maybe you could explain how the Mandelbrot set requires purpose to create its impressive designs, or how Conway's Game of Life was front-loaded with purpose when it merely comprises three dumb rules to create its strange and amusing cast of characters.There are those who are uncomfortable with admitting that design can come from purposeless sets of algorithms, since their faith in cosmic purpose can't rest on the observation of the wonders of the natural world. This is the real purpose laid bare by the design inference: not the fact that the design itself is the product of purposeful intelligence, but that we're inclined to attribute design to intelligence even when there's no reason to do so.regards,
Esteban Hambre

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I see the designs at a far lower level that you seem to understand.

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Oh, pardon me. My question still stands: how would this more-fundamental-than-I-understand-level look if it were not the product of intelligent design?You admit that it's a mistake for intelligent-design creationists to attribute speciation or adaptation to the intervention of an intelligent agent. Aren't you making the same mistake in attributing these 'rules' on this more fundamental level to intelligent design?regards,
Esteban Hambre

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MrHambre: Yes, living organisms are often beautiful, as well as amazing in their complexity and diversity. However, does everything we see appear to be what a purposeful designer would intend?

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DarkStar: This would most surely depend on individual perceptions of what the designer, if there is one, actually intended.

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So what's your perception? It would be great for intelligent design creationists if we could all assume that an intelligent designer would intend for there to be a world full of mass extinctions, birth defects, excruciating and incurable diseases, and so on. However, since you want to believe there's a designer anyway, you have to concoct an explanation that makes use of the "sin factor" and other convenient but unscientific details.regards,
Esteban Hambre

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[Michael] Polanyi argues that living systems are far more complicated than the machines of people and thus provide an even greater challenge to the observer to explain their existence in terms of natural laws alone.

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In assuming that the degree of complexity alone is the sign of intelligent design, Polanyi makes what I call the Rube Goldberg Fallacy. Michael Behe himself used an exhibit of one of Goldberg's maniacally complicated contraptions in Darwin's Black Box to illustrate the exact same point: if something is really complex, it must have been designed by an intelligence.I have to admit to being slightly embarrassed whenever I point out the irony that evidently eluded Behe: no intelligent designer whatsoever would design the sort of circuitous, redundantly complex structure to perform a simple task the way Goldberg's designs do. That's the humor in the cartoon, and that's the fallacy laid bare. The sort of design we see in Nature is monumentally, bizarrely, redundantly, needlessly complex. This makes it even more probable that the design is the product of millions of years of step-by-step modifications by a process with no foresight.regards,
Esteban Hambre

almeyda calims,

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This complexity is evidence of a designer. A house which can be built with just basic materials could never be believed well through natural processes it happen on its own. We know it must have been designed. This is why complexity is evidence of design, & design is evidence of a designer.

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I hate to repeat myself, but I don't think that this alone is evidence for an intelligent designer. As I said in a post on the very same page that you made your claim: regards,
Esteban Hambre

DarkStar writes:

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The point I was trying to make was that if a scientist looks at anothers work and claims that his conclusions were erroneous, his argument lacks legitimacy if all he did was examine the finished work rather than attempt to repeat the work to see if his results were the same.

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Scientists are well within their rights to criticize each other's work on the basis of methodology alone. In the case of Pasteur, for example, his research was conducted according to textbook methodological naturalism: proposing detectable, verifiable mechanisms for natural phenomena and testing his proposals under controlled lab conditions.In the case of intelligent-design creationist Michael Behe, his assertions are based on questionable philosophical constructs as well as intelligent-design inferences that dismiss a host of responsible naturalistic research out of hand. Behe's own lab work doesn't have any bearing on the assertions themselves (that is, he never claimed to have laboratory evidence supporting his hypothesis), so there's nothing else to criticize except his faulty methodology.regards,
Esteban Hambre

It's been pointed out that intelligent design creationists seem to make Irreducible Complexity mean at least two different things.Originally, Behe said that IC referred to a functioning system comprising interconnected parts, the removal of one of which would cause the system to cease functioning. Note that this definition says nothing about its origin or development. However, this is quite different than what the IC concept has come to mean. Now ID creationists use IC to refer to a system that can't conceivably be created in step-by-step (i.e. Darwinian) fashion.I'm not sure why one should necessarily lead to the other. I've always considered the human heart to be irreducibly complex, in the sense that if the pump or any of the valves are not there, the system does not work. Nevertheless, we have plenty of examples of simpler circulatory systems in nature that could conceivably represent precursor systems to the complex human heart. Behe himself handwaves these sorts of arguments away, alleging that conceptual precursors (even if they exist elsewhere in Nature) aren't good enough.This is my problem with Irreducible Complexity's curious double-life: the IDC folks are allowed to use an existing system's attributes to make blanket statements about how it could not have originated, but the rest of us aren't allowed to use similar existing systems to speculate on possible developmental pathways.regards,
Esteban Hambre

DarkStar asserts:

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We are not talking about obvious conclusions here, such as 1+1=2. We are talking about conclusions reached which are based upon one's personal opinion, assumption, and interpretation of the available data.

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I assume you understand that the aim of the scientific method is to limit this subjectivity. Empirical evidential inquiry is conducted to arrive at a consensus about causes and effects, and what factors are relevant in any given physical setting. Perhaps you feel that scientific methodology is just another set of opinions, but its success in expanding our understanding of natural phenomena leads us to believe that it constitutes a useful set of tools for the job.regards,
Esteban Hambre

DarkStar opines:

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Through speculation, assumption, and conjecture, science can offer possible explanations as to why there are so many different species, but religion is also able to offer explanation, using the exact same criteria, speculation, assumption, and conjecture. Once again, neither science nor religion are (sic) able to answer in the definitive.

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But at least science's explanations are possible. We have ample information concerning the track record of religious explanations for natural phenomena such as rainbows, heredity, disease, the weather, seashells in the mountains, etc. I hope it's obvious that religious explanations are lacking in empirical significance what they make up for in imagination.regards,
Esteban HambreThis message has been edited by MrHambre, 06-28-2004 02:46 PM

MisterOpus1,You're being way too hard on our pal yxifix here. What is it you don't find cogent about this creationist-logic one-two punch?regards,
Esteban Hambre