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Author | Topic: Is there a legitimate argument for design? | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
taiji2 Member (Idle past 3491 days) Posts: 124 From: Georgia, USA Joined: |
What is the nature of an idea?
Do ideas exist in a materialist sense? Is the question: "Do ideas really exist?" one that should be answered scientifically or philosophically? Why? If ideas do exist, are the ideas we have today what they are as the result of evolution (I mean evolution in the sense it is debated by evolutionists on this forum, not a more general meaning that might be found in common use)? If so, was this evolution the gradual change over eons, existing today at a higher level of complexity only because of chance mutations that were more likely to cause the family tree of ideas ideas to survive? If evolution is pertinent to ideas, what was the earliest scientifically validated idea in the "idea fossil record" (for want of a better analogy). Are there any missing links in the "idea family tree" of evolution, or are there scientifically verifiable examples through time of the evolution of ideas from the simple to the complex with no macro-evolutionary jumps?
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taiji2 Member (Idle past 3491 days) Posts: 124 From: Georgia, USA Joined: |
Omnivorous,
Thank you for your response and your welcome. I am responding to you as you are the only initial responder to my opening questions who came out of the gate with any civility. Unless given the reason to do otherwise, I will choose to ignore any future comments by jar. He/she came out of the gate with insults and dismissal and I cannot conceive how entertaining dialogue with him/her will ever help me get answers to questions on Intelligent Design which is the title of this thread. Coyote offered some resources to look at and I will. quote:I am not trying to be argumentative, but I truly don't know what you mean here. I was not aware I had asked for any sort of survey, brief or extended. I simply asked questions which, having read the thread prior, had not been asked and answered. quote: If you are implying I am all set to argue a corpus of doctrine that encompasses "my own ideas" and come to a definitive conclusion, my response is no, I really have no firm beliefs that cannot be changed with sufficiently plausible explanation. I do have questions on the subject which have come to mind as a result of having read past posts on the thread. If it is not correct to continue the thread with questions that have not been asked and answered, just tell me and I will exit peacefully. My final response to you is that having read the prior posts in the thread, I am aware I am in a discussion with some very clever people. Were I to return to school, I might be sitting in a classroom with some of them the teacher. I do not consider myself particularly clever. I therefore enter this forum with some trepidation. I am perfectly willing to sit in the classroom of this discussion and be taught by scholars and scientists. If I cannot ask questions which I think are pertinent to the discussion, however, I have no problem staying out of school.
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taiji2 Member (Idle past 3491 days) Posts: 124 From: Georgia, USA Joined: |
No Dr. Adequate, you were not uncivil. On the contrary. I want to study your response closely. I will be away from the computer for a while, but will get back to you later this evening.
Thanks for responding. You seemed included because your response came while I was composing my response to the first three senders.
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taiji2 Member (Idle past 3491 days) Posts: 124 From: Georgia, USA Joined: |
That is fair. It will take time to go back in the thread to the specific posts that raised my questions as I did not take notes. I will be back when I can reference prior posts that raised questions for me. Should I respond to those posts as I go, or refer back to post numbers in a single reply?
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taiji2 Member (Idle past 3491 days) Posts: 124 From: Georgia, USA Joined: |
quote: I have also seen new members come in and be bullied into silence. I did not perceive the exchange to be friendly and respectful. I understand the concept of a troll on a forum. Don't get into the bullying until one reveals himself as such. I don't think i have earned such treatment yet. jar hit me out of the gate.
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taiji2 Member (Idle past 3491 days) Posts: 124 From: Georgia, USA Joined: |
Sure, but since you're posting questions about the rather abstruse subject of whether ideas "really exist" on a thread on the topic "Is there a legitimate argument for design?"you must somehow have come to the belief that your questions, and the answers, are relevant to the topic of the thread. Omnivorous and I are interested to know what the relevance is. My opening questions were to get answers from science on the nature of ideas. Given that ideas have no form or mass and leave no footprint (in the materialist sense), does science consider ideas real. If the answer is yes, has science made any study (scientific method assumed) of ideas. I am speaking objective study. I am not speaking of subjective study such as psychology. Study of social or political impact of ideas for instance is subjective and not what I am after. Is there empirical study of ideas in the scientific world. If so, which branch of science promotes such study? The question already asked is what does this rather abstruse line of questioning have to do with Intelligent Design. The answer is: What is design if not an idea. If, therefore, the scientific community has not addressed, studied, and developed supportable theory about ideas, the scope of study required to form any conclusions in the ID debate is flawed. I have many questions. I have zero answers derived using the scientific method (about ideas), but I am doubtful any of you do either. I am obviously not committed to the notion that ID is absolute BS. One of the first questions I expect from you is "where's the evidence". My answer is that the evidence for design is all around us. My challenge to you is to show me anything in nature that doesn't reek of sophisticated design. I suppose that you will challenge me as a rational observer in collecting data. If so, tell me what is the alternative. I ask you to give me acceptable mathmatics of chance to support the notion that the huge jumps in complexity occured within random selection due to chance mutation. Are there studies on the rate of mutation and the rate of successful mutation within that? One further question. Has anyone discussed the possibility that "junk" DNA might represent unused potential (can be switched on in the future) as well as true junk (has been switched off in the past)?
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taiji2 Member (Idle past 3491 days) Posts: 124 From: Georgia, USA Joined: |
quote: What dialog is that? When I read your posts, I see no additional dialog. Who is Alice? What reason does she give for science considering ideas real? Since Alice in Wonderland is the only Alice I can think of who might be used in the spirit of sarcasm, might that be the right answer? Even so, I still do not recall what Alice had to say about the science of ideas. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia In internet slang, a troll is a person who sows discord on the Internet by starting arguments or upsetting people,[1] by posting inflammatory,[2] extraneous, or off-topic messages in an online community (such as a newsgroup, forum, chat room, or blog) with the deliberate intent of provoking readers into an emotional response[3] or of otherwise disrupting normal on-topic discussion. Dr. Adequate, thanks for the response. I placed the wiki definition of troll above for your reference. As a new member of the forum, I did not know what to expect. Having read and reread this thread and having read portions of others, it is evident to me that you old-timers have a game going wherein you use troll behavior, bait a new member to the point at which they respond with similar troll behavior, at which time they are labeled as trolls and dismissed amid some sort of communal glee. Very ritualistic actually, and like Omnivorous says, it might be fun .... I guess it depends which end of the stick you are on. Now, my choices are: (1). Stay in the game, knowing full well what the game is. and respond with equal sarcasm and and inflammatory dialogue to see if I can win the game of baiting. Refer to my reply above and tell me if this is the sort of banter you are seeking. But, what am I trying to prove ........ who's got the biggest cleverness dick? (metaphorically of course) (2) Stay in the game and ignore the baiting remarks. This will be tough. I have to read the remark to know whether it is baiting, at which time my emotional response has been triggered. Ignoring my emotional response to your troll behavior would be difficult. But, what am I trying to prove... how thick my hide is? (3) Stay out of the game. So, see ya later! I will stay on the forum because there is lots of really good information here. Not interested in the game though,
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taiji2 Member (Idle past 3491 days) Posts: 124 From: Georgia, USA Joined:
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My mistake. I apologise. Your reference to dialog did not bring to mind that post. Your mention of Alice did not trigger a memory of that post. Your reference to dialog did bring to mind the quotes which some members have that automatically follow their comments and I did not see such quotes on your post. I mistakenly inferred sarcasm with an Alice in Wonderland reference and reacted based on a triggered emotional response. The remainder of your post (as construed) and the entirety of your post (as properly construed) was civil and courteously expressed.
Again, I apologize
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taiji2 Member (Idle past 3491 days) Posts: 124 From: Georgia, USA Joined: |
quote:quote:Well yes, for the same reason that Alice does in my dialog. My take was that Alice observed ideas therefore they are real. My take was that Alice does not speculate the nature of ideas but takes them as a given in nature. If this is correct, and does not conflict with a scientific view, then I asked a question and you answered. Edited by Admin, : Fix quote.
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taiji2 Member (Idle past 3491 days) Posts: 124 From: Georgia, USA Joined: |
taiji2 writes:
I am speaking objective study. I am not speaking of subjective study such as psychology.Dr. Absolute writes: I'm not sure why you dismiss psychology as "subjective". How do you feel about neuroscience? I dismiss psychology as subjective because it deals with the interpretation of ideas and their effect on the patient which I do not find relevant in the argument for ID. If I have a misconception as to what psychology is, I apologize - my understanding of the field is limited to a lay perspective.
Dr. Absolute writes: If these are not objective studies of ideas, what would one look like if we had one? Is it actually your opinion that a true, "objective" science of ideas would require us to be able to weigh ideas, pour them into test tubes, see what color they are? If not, what are you after? Physics for instance is the study of matter and its motion through time space along with related concepts such as energy and force (wiki). My lay understanding is that physicists seek to understand everything about matter within that purview. But I am not aguing a separate branch of science by any means. A small group of scientists that study ideas as a real phenomena in nature would do. Not the psychological, sociological, etc. effect of ideas... we already have those. I cannot suggest what are the propositions that would be considered by that group or what theories might be derived (I would leave that for greater minds). I cannot argue that such a science is possible. I cannot argue that pursuing such a science has any logical purpose. What I can argue is that within the context of a discussion of ID, things would be much more clear if a science existed within which to argue the validity of an Original Design Idea. I can argue that if science has not made an effort to study ideas as a real phenomena then science such as evolution should not be very comfortable that their theories are falsifiable. Perhaps given this logic, the correct place to put the study of ideas would be within the science of evolution (as a precept for falsifiability). The bottom line is that a discussion of ID is a discussion of the possibility of an original idea or design if you will. How can such a discussion be declared closed if a science of ideas is possible but not pursued. Prove with science that ideas are real, but that an original idea is not and you have your final conclusion. And, quite frankly, until scientists themselves do this, they will never put the matter to bed. I don't mind being perfectly clear where I am coming from. I am not a Christian, nor do I believe in any of the Abrahimic dogma. I was raised a Baptist, but discarded that notion early in life. I have dabbled with the eastern religions and have settled on the Taoist cosmology as the one which most closely fits my acceptable worldview: in a nutshell... an Original Self Awareness (with ideas if you will) creating from Wu Chi (nothingness) the Tai Chi (duality) and from the Tai Chi all things. Nothing is said about the mechanisms for doing thus. Core Taoism really doesn't have a dogma (temple Taoism does, but that is not what I read). Their cosmological view is simple and very non-restrictive. Evolution fits nicely within it, if you can get used to the idea that there is a primordial intelligence and that it had some agency in bringing something forth out of nothing. I hope this helps.
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taiji2 Member (Idle past 3491 days) Posts: 124 From: Georgia, USA Joined: |
Dr. Absolute writes: That's a long way to get to a rather forced conclusion. After all, if that line of reasoning worked, well, the theory of gravity is an idea. Quantum electrodynamics is an idea. The laws of thermodynamics ... ideas. The germ theory of disease? An idea. Pythagoras' theorem? Idea. And so on. So if your reasoning worked, you could say of pretty much anything: "If, therefore, the scientific community has not addressed, studied, and developed supportable theory about ideas, the scope of study required to form any conclusions about [fill it the blank] is flawed." You have come up with an argument which, if correct, would stop scientists from sciencing altogether, when all you were aiming at was stopping them from talking about ID. Which is excessive, firstly because we need them to do science and secondly because they hardly ever do talk about ID. (As a minor point, wouldn't your argument also apply to the proponents of ID as well as its critics? I don't see them with an "objective" theory of ideas, whatever that is. "If, therefore, the ID community has not addressed, studied, and developed supportable theory about ideas, the scope of study required to form any conclusions in the ID debate is flawed.") However, your argument is not a good one and does not prove that everyone is wrong about everything. For one thing, the proof of the pudding is in the eating. By your argument, any discussion, by scientists, of the theory of gravity (an idea) would have to be fatally flawed. So how do they get those communications satellites to stay up? Their discussion of the germ theory of disease, likewise flawed ... but they abolished smallpox. All without this objective theory of ideas of which you speak. Or perhaps they have one after all. For there is one sense in which all science is nothing but the study of ideas. It is the study of whether ideas about the natural world are good or bad. It largely ignores what one might call the ontology of ideas, but it is almost nothing but the study of their quality, and it does so with what in human affairs is the acme of objectivity. I would therefore suggest that so long as scientists confine themselves to saying whether this idea of design is a good or a bad one, they're on safe ground. Does my previous narrative suffice, or is there anything here I need to cover?
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taiji2 Member (Idle past 3491 days) Posts: 124 From: Georgia, USA Joined: |
taiji2 writes:
My challenge to you is to show me anything in nature that doesn't reek of sophisticated design.Dr. Absolute writes: Sure. A lemon tree. An owl. A moth. A nudibranch. Now you may say that these "reek of sophisticated design"; but I can answer that they actually reek of evolution, and then where are we? Such conclusory assertions can't be used to support design or evolution. And I would argue you are right and so am I. My model sees evolution within ID. No conflicts there. If we are going to run up on disagreements, it will be at the spark of life moment. The original cell. My proposition is that this was a complex cell front loaded for evolutionary potential, the product of Intelligent Design. I believe this proposition falsifiable within DNA research.
taiji2 writes:
I ask you to give me acceptable mathmatics of chance to support the notion that the huge jumps in complexity occured within random selection due to chance mutation.Dr. Absolute writes: No-one has the notion that "huge jumps in complexity occurred", so it is unnecessary to support this notion. ok, take out the word huge and try again. Where I am going with this is that if junk DNA turns out to have elements of future potential (never previously used DNA) that are ready and available when a niche opportunity arises, there would be no need for chance mutation due to viruses for instance to occur simultaneous to the niche situation for evolution to occur. The time-line for evolution should prove shorter than chance mutation would require. Observation of chance mutation frequency and the application of the mathmatics of chance might be able to prove or disprove this proposition.
taiji2 writes:
One further question. Has anyone discussed the possibility that "junk" DNA might represent unused potential (can be switched on in the future) as well as true junk (has been switched off in the past)?Dr. Absolute writes: People have had similar ideas. But there is a rather fatal objection to them. These genes for the future would be subject to mutation, corrupting the data, but not to purifying selection kicking such corruptions out of the gene pool. Such genes would therefore be strafed into nonsense by mutation before the lineage got around to using them. I disagree with the notion of a fatal objection. Viral mutations might interfere with original design as a possibility, even a probability.... but as the exception, not the rule. The notion that genes would be strafed into nonsense needs some data or premise to support.
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taiji2 Member (Idle past 3491 days) Posts: 124 From: Georgia, USA Joined: |
taiji2 writes: My challenge to you is to show me anything in nature that doesn't reek of sophisticated design. Coyote writes: The human knee. I presume this was a joke. It made me smile. If not, I strongly disagree. We are down to opinions I think.
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taiji2 Member (Idle past 3491 days) Posts: 124 From: Georgia, USA Joined: |
taiji2 writes: My challenge to you is to show me anything in nature that doesn't reek of sophisticated design. Tanypteryx writes: Hemorrhoids If they can't be viewed as damaged good design (like a bent muffler on a car?), then they should indeed be viewed as reeking of sophisticated design. Purpose of design: maximum discomfort and aggravation perhaps?
Tanypteryx writes: Excretory system combined with sexual system Not my place to argue why the architect put the sewer so close to the playground. That's two.
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taiji2 Member (Idle past 3491 days) Posts: 124 From: Georgia, USA Joined: |
taiji2 writes: I dismiss psychology as subjective because it deals with the interpretation of ideas and their effect on the patient which I do not find relevant in the argument for ID. If I have a misconception as to what psychology is, I apologize - my understanding of the field is limited to a lay perspective. Dr. Absolute writes: I think you may be confusing psychology with psychoanalysis. I stand corrected. Does that make psychology any more relevant in the discussion of evolution? If there is a relevancy there, then of course psychology can contribute.
taiji writes: What I can argue is that within the context of a discussion of ID, things would be much more clear if a science existed within which to argue the validity of an Original Design Idea. I can argue that if science has not made an effort to study ideas as a real phenomena then science such as evolution should not be very comfortable that their theories are falsifiable. Dr. Absolute writes: Suppose someone criticizes the theory of gravity by saying "No, actually it's love that makes the planets go round". People reply by pointing out that the theory of gravity works just fine, is supported by observation, and that his "love" hypothesis needs some work, like any sort of real substance or predictive power. So, Am I reading you right that you are dismissing everything I have said out of hand on the basis of your love hypothesis? Remember I had disclaimers that such a science might have no value, may not be possible, etc.. I also said such a science might be necessary to take the ID question from endless debate into final, scientifically derived conclusion. Everything I said was within the context of ID which is what we are talking about on this thread, not love. If I was not clear, let me try again. Every faith based theory works with some flavor of notion that an original design is involved. Some flavors allow for evolution, some don't. But ALL have the notion of an original idea. Now if the argument for a science to determine the truths of ideas is not pertinent to this discussion then what is?
Dr. Absolute writes: "Aha!" he replies. "Exactly! My hypothesis has massive holes in it. For one thing, we don't have an objective science of love as a real phenomenon in nature. Until we have that, how can you dismiss my hypothesis? How can you be comfortable that your ideas are falsifiable? How can such a discussion be declared closed if a science of love is possible but not pursued?" I am pretty sure this has been asked and answered, and I have no conceded no massive holes. As for my ideas being falsifiable.Would the proposition of a complex DNA molecule frontloaded for evolution at the spark of life be falsifiable to you (design not mentioned)? If so, I will have to get back to you on the falsifiability of design in that molecule. I am not a scientist, but my recollection is that many theories have a statistical dependency. If statistical dependency is valid, then I would presume the hypothesis would seek a statistical resolution to the question of whether it would be more statistically valid that design explain at spark of life a complex molecule frontloaded for evolution rather than a chance event in the primordial soup. In any event, if the hypothesis of the front loaded molecule is not falsifiable on its own, please tell me why.
Dr. Absolute writes: At this juncture we might point out that the holes in his hypothesis are not a problem for our theory, and then maybe throw things at him. Don't concede holes in theory. And, if there are... my hypothetical scientists which science has seen fit to withhold, and who are much smarter than me, would be much more fit to answer your questions.Please don't throw things at me. I am doing the best I can.
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