Uncommon Descent Serving The Intelligent Design Community

From Philip Cunningham: The human eye, like the human brain, is a wonder

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(Which allegedly required no actual design) With references, courtesy Philip Cunningham:

The human eye consists of over two million working parts making it second only to the brain in complexity (1).

The retina covers less than a square inch, and contains 137 million light-sensitive receptor cells. The retina possesses 7 million cones, which provide color information and sharpness of images, and 120 million rods which are extremely sensitive detectors of white light (2).

There are between seven to ten-million shades of color the human eye can detect (3).

The rod can detect a single photon. Any man-made detector would need to be cooled and isolated from noise to behave the same way (4).

On average, about a quarter of a billion photons enter our eyes each second (5).

For visible light, the energy carried by a single photon would be around a tiny 4 x 10-19 Joules; this energy is just sufficient to excite a single molecule in a photoreceptor cell of an eye (6).

The eye is so sensitive that it can, under normal circumstances, detect a candle 1.6 miles away (7),

But if you’re sitting on a mountain top on a clear, moonless night you can see a match struck 50 miles away (8).

It only takes a few trillionths of a second, (picoseconds), for the retina to absorb a photon in the visible range of the spectrum (9).

The inverted retina, far from being badly designed, is a design feature, not a design constraint. Müller cells in the ‘backwards’ retina span the thickness of the retina and act as living fiber optic cables to shepherd photons through to separate receivers, much like coins through a change sorting machine (10).

The eye is infinitely more complex than any man-made camera (11).

The eye can handle between 500,000 and 1.5 million messages simultaneously, and gathers 80% of all the knowledge absorbed by the brain (12).

The brain receives millions of simultaneous reports from the eyes. When its designated wavelength of light is present, each rod or cone triggers an electrical response to the brain, which then absorbs a composite set of yes-or-no messages from all the rods and cones (13).

There is a biological computer in the retina which compresses, and enhances the edges, of the information from all those millions of light sensitive cells before sending it to the visual cortex where the complex stream of information is then decompressed (14).

This data compression process has been referred to as “the best compression algorithm around,” (15 & 15a).

While today’s digital hardware is extremely impressive, it is clear that the human retina’s real-time performance goes unchallenged. To actually simulate 10 milliseconds of the complete processing of even a single nerve cell from the retina would require the solution of about 500 simultaneous nonlinear differential equations 100 times and would take at least several minutes of processing time on a Cray supercomputer. Keeping in mind that there are 10 million or more such cells interacting with each other in complex ways, it would take a minimum of 100 years of Cray time to simulate what takes place in your eye many times every second (16). (of note: the preceding comparison was made in 1985 when Cray supercomputers ruled the supercomputing world).

In an average day, the eye moves about 100,000 times, and our mind seems to prepare for our eye movements before they occur (17).

In terms of strength and endurance, eyes muscles are simply amazing. You’d have to walk 50 miles to give your legs the same workout as the muscles in one of your eyes get in a day (18).

The brain exploits a feedback system which produces phenomenally precise eye movements (19).

The human is the only species known to shed tears when they are sad (20).

Tears are not just saline. Tears have a similar structure to saliva and contain enzymes, lipids, metabolites and electrolytes (21).

And, tears contain a potent microbe-killer (lysozyme) which guards the eyes against bacterial infection (22).

The average eye blinks one to two times each minute for infants and ten times faster for adults.

This blinking adds up to nearly 500 million blinks over an average lifetime (23).

References:

  1. – 20 Facts About the Amazing Eye – 2014
  2. An eye is composed of more than 2 million working parts…. 20: Eyes are the second most complex organ after the brain. – Susan DeRemer, CFRE – Discovery Eye Foundation
  3. Vision and Light-Induced Molecular Changes

Excerpt : “The retina is lined with many millions of photoreceptor cells that consist of two types: 7 million cones provide color information and sharpness of images, and 120 million rods (Figure 3) are extremely sensitive detectors of white light to provide night vision.” – Rachel Casiday and Regina Frey Department of Chemistry, Washington University

  1. – Number of Colors Distinguishable by the Human Eye – 2006 “Experts estimate that we can distinguish perhaps as many as 10 million colors.” – Wyszecki, Gunter. Color. Chicago: World Book Inc, 2006: 824…. “Our difference threshold for colors is so low that we can discriminate some 7 million different color variations (Geldard, 1972).” – Myers, David G. Psychology. Michigan: Worth Publishers, 1995: 165. From Number of Colors Distinguishable by the Human Eye
  2. Study suggests humans can detect even the smallest units of light – July 21, 2016

Excerpt: Research,, has shown that humans can detect the presence of a single photon, the smallest measurable unit of light. Previous studies had established that human subjects acclimated to the dark were capable only of reporting flashes of five to seven photons…

it is remarkable: a photon, the smallest physical entity with quantum properties of which light consists, is interacting with a biological system consisting of billions of cells, all in a warm and wet environment,” says Vaziri. “The response that the photon generates survives all the way to the level of our awareness despite the ubiquitous background noise. Any man-made detector would need to be cooled and isolated from noise to behave the same way.”…

The gathered data from more than 30,000 trials demonstrated that humans can indeed detect a single photon incident on their eye with a probability significantly above chance.

“What we want to know next is how does a biological system achieve such sensitivity? How does it achieve this in the presence of noise?

  1. How many photons get into your eyes? – 2016

Excerpt : About half a billion photons reach the cornea of the eye every second, of which about half are absorbed by the ocular medium. The radiant flux that reaches the retina is therefore approx. 2*10^8 photons/s.

  1. Photon Excerpt For visible light the energy carried by a single photon is around a tiny 4×10–19 joules; this energy is just sufficient to excite a single molecule in a photoreceptor cell of an eye, thus contributing to vision.[4]
  2. How Far Can We See and Why? Excerpt: “Detecting a candle flame: Researchers believe that without obstructions, a person with healthy but average vision could see a candle flame from as far as 1.6 miles.”
  3. An Eye for Exercise Your eye is a very active organ – December 28, 2001

(HealthDayNews) — The cells in the retina are so sensitive that if you’re sitting on a mountain top on a clear, moonless night you can see a match struck 50 miles away.

  1. Vision and Light-Induced Molecular Changes

Excerpt: “Thus, when 11-cis-retinal absorbs a photon in the visible range of the spectrum, free rotation about the bond between carbon atom 11 and carbon atom 12 can occur and the all-trans-retinal can form. This isomerization occurs in a few picoseconds (10-12 s) or less.” – Rachel Casiday and Regina Frey, Department of Chemistry, Washington University

  1. Fiber optic light pipes in the retina do much more than simple image transfer – Jul 21, 2014

Excerpt: Having the photoreceptors at the back of the retina is not a design constraint, it is a design feature. The idea that the vertebrate eye, like a traditional front-illuminated camera, might have been improved somehow if it had only been able to orient its wiring behind the photoreceptor layer, like a cephalopod, is folly. Indeed in simply engineered systems, like CMOS or CCD image sensors, a back-illuminated design manufactured by flipping the silicon wafer and thinning it so that light hits the photocathode without having to navigate the wiring layer can improve photon capture across a wide wavelength band. But real eyes are much more crafty than that.

A case in point are the Müller glia cells that span the thickness of the retina. These high refractive index cells spread an absorptive canopy across the retinal surface and then shepherd photons through a low-scattering cytoplasm to separate receivers, much like coins through a change sorting machine. A new paper in Nature Communications describes how these wavelength-dependent wave-guides can shuttle green-red light to cones while passing the blue-purples to adjacent rods. The idea that these Müller cells act as living fiber optic cables has been floated previously. It has even been convincingly demonstrated using a dual beam laser trap….

…In the retina, and indeed the larger light organ that is the eye, there is much more going on than just photons striking rhodopsin photopigments. As far as absorbers, there are all kinds of things going on in there—various carontenoids, lipofuscins and lipochromes, even cytochrome oxidases in mitochondria that get involved at the longer wavelegnths….

,,In considering not just the classical photoreceptors but the entire retina itself as a light-harvesting engine… that can completely refigure (its) fine structure within a few minutes to handle changing light levels, every synapse appears as an essential machine that percolates information as if at the Brownian scale, or even below….

  1. The Wonder of Sight – April 15, 2020

Excerpt: The eye processes approximately 80% of the information received from the outside world. In fact, the eyes can handle 500,000 messages simultaneously. It happens all the time, and you don’t even have to think about it. Your eyes just do it! The eye is infinitely more complex than any man-made camera or telescope.

  1. Walk By Faith – Now See Here, Touch & Smell to Discern Good & Evil – July 6, 2018

Excerpt: “I Am Joe’s Eye” (from the Reader’s Digest series) says “For concentrated complexities, no other organ in Joe’s body can equal me … I have tens of millions of electrical connections and can handle 1.5 million simultaneous messages. I gather 80 percent of all the knowledge Joe absorbs.”

  1. Fearfully and Wonderfully Made – Philip Yancey, Paul Brand

Excerpt: The brain receives millions of simultaneous reports from the eyes. When its designated wavelength of light is present, each rod or cone triggers an electrical response to the brain, which then absorbs a composite set of yes-or-no messages from all the rods and cones.

  1. Retina – Spatial encoding

Excerpt: When the retina sends neural impulses representing an image to the brain, it spatially encodes (compresses) those impulses to fit the limited capacity of the optic nerve. Compression is necessary because there are 100 times more photoreceptor cells than ganglion cells. This is done by “decorrelation”, which is carried out by the “centre–surround structures”, which are implemented by the bipolar and ganglion cells.

There are two types of centre–surround structures in the retina – on-centres and off-centres. On-centres have a positively weighted centre and a negatively weighted surround. Off-centres are just the opposite. Positive weighting is more commonly known as excitatory, and negative weighting as inhibitory.

These centre–surround structures are not physical apparent, in the sense that one cannot see them by staining samples of tissue and examining the retina’s anatomy. The centre–surround structures are logical (i.e., mathematically abstract) in the sense that they depend on the connection strengths between bipolar and ganglion cells. It is believed that the connection strength between cells is caused by the number and types of ion channels embedded in the synapses between the bipolar and ganglion cells.

The centre–surround structures are mathematically equivalent to the edge detection algorithms used by computer programmers to extract or enhance the edges in a digital photograph. Thus, the retina performs operations on the image-representing impulses to enhance the edges of objects within its visual field.

  1. JPEG for the mind: How the brain compresses visual information – February 11, 2011

Excerpt “Computers can beat us at math and chess,” said Connor, “but they can’t match our ability to distinguish, recognize, understand, remember, and manipulate the objects that make up our world.” This core human ability depends in part on condensing visual information to a tractable level. For now, at least, the brain format seems to be the best compression algorithm around.

15a. Optimised Hardware Compression, The Eyes Have It. – 2011

  1. Can Evolution Produce an Eye? Not a Chance! by Dr. David Menton on August 19, 2017

Excerpt: In an article in Byte magazine (April 1985), John Stevens compares the signal processing ability of the cells in the retina with that of the most sophisticated computer designed by man, the Cray supercomputer:

“While today’s digital hardware is extremely impressive, it is clear that the human retina’s real time performance goes unchallenged. Actually, to simulate 10 milliseconds (one hundredth of a second) of the complete processing of even a single nerve cell from the retina would require the solution of about 500 simultaneous nonlinear differential equations 100 times and would take at least several minutes of processing time on a Cray supercomputer. Keeping in mind that there are 10 million or more such cells interacting with each other in complex ways, it would take a minimum of 100 years of Cray time to simulate what takes place in your eye many times every second.”

  1. Looking At What The Eyes See – February 25, 2011

Excerpt: We move our eyes three times a second, over 100,000 times each day. Why isn’t life blurrier? Reporting in Nature Neuroscience, psychologist Martin Rolfs and colleagues found that our mind seems to prepare for our eye movements before they occur, helping us keep track of objects in the visual field.

  1. An Eye for Exercise Your eye is a very active organ – December 28, 2001 (HealthDayNews) — Did you know that you’d have to walk 50 miles to give your legs the same workout as the muscles in one of your eyes get in a day?
  2. How do our eyes move in perfect synchrony? By Benjamin Plackett – June 21, 2020

Excerpt: “You have a spare one in case you have an accident, and the second reason is depth perception, which we evolved to help us hunt,” said Dr. David Guyton, professor of ophthalmology at The Johns Hopkins University. But having two eyes would lead to double vision if they didn’t move together in perfect synchrony. So how does the body ensure our eyes always work together?

To prevent double vision, the brain exploits a feedback system, which it uses to finely tune the lengths of the muscles controlling the eyes. This produces phenomenally precise eye movements, Guyton said.

Each eye has six muscles regulating its movement in different directions, and each one of those muscles must be triggered simultaneously in both eyes for them to move in unison, according to a 2005 review in the Canadian Medical Association Journal. “It’s actually quite amazing when you think about it,” Guyton told Live Science. “The brain has a neurological system that is fantastically organized because the brain learns over time how much stimulation to send to each of the 12 muscles for every desired direction of gaze.”

  1. Why Only Humans Shed Emotional Tears – 2018

Abstract Producing emotional tears is a universal and uniquely human behavior…

  1. Facts About Tears – Dec. 21, 2018 Excerpt Tears Have Layers

Tears are not just saline. They have a similar structure to saliva and contain enzymes, lipids, metabolites and electrolytes. Each tear has three layers:

An inner mucus layer that keeps the whole tear fastened to the eye.

A watery middle layer (the thickest layer) to keep the eye hydrated, repel bacteria and protect the cornea.

An outer oily layer to keep the surface of the tear smooth for the eye to see through, and to prevent the other layers from evaporating.

Lacrimal glands above each eye produce your tears…

  1. How Tears Go ‘Pac-Man’ To Beat Bacteria – January 20, 2012

Excerpt: In 1922, a few years before he won the Nobel Prize for his discovery of penicillin, bacteriologist Alexander Fleming discovered in human tears a germ-fighting enzyme which he named lysozyme. He collected and crystallized lysozyme from his own tears, then wowed contemporaries at Britain’s Royal Society by demonstrating its miraculous power to dissolve bacteria before their very eyes.

“That’s a seriously bodacious experiment”…

  1. Eyelids—Intermittent Wipers – Dr. Don DeYoung – October 20, 2013

Excerpt: The blinking of our eyes is automatic and essential. Its saline washer fluid moistens and protects the outer cornea of the eye while removing dust. Other protective features include our eyebrow “umbrellas” and recessed eyeball sockets.

The average eye blinks one to two times each minute for infants and ten times faster for adults. This blinking adds up to nearly 500 million blinks over an average lifetime. The actual mechanism, however, is not well understood. It may involve a “blinking center” in the brain.

Today billions of windshield wipers duplicate the eye’s intermittent blinking. Yet none last as long or work as efficiently as our God-given eyelids.

Comments
1. The building of the simplest molecular machine requires contaminate-free environments, with distinct internal conditions, made by applying separated, purified chemicals using highly controlled processes according to a plan (teleological goal)requiring several design iterations. This has not ever been demonstrated to be available anywhere in nature (outside of living biological systems or laboratories.) If anyone found any of the above anywhere except in biology, we would rightly assume that intelligence was involved. If we just found a pool of any uncontaminated, purified, non-degraded chemical, we'd immediately assume someone spilled that chemical just prior to our having found it. 2. The simplest living cell requires hundreds of such molecular machines that all fit and work perfectly together; this has never been demonstrated or shown to be remotely possible in nature. 3. Self-replication, a necessary quality of the simplest living organism, requires an information coding and translation process that operates the above machinery. This process has never been demonstrated or even shown possible in nature. 4. The machinery is made of proteins; the information is about constructing proteins and assembling them into functioning machinery. Proteins have never been found in nature. The only thing that we have ever found that produces a protein is a living organism. Where did the information that describes the building of a protein come from if there was no protein template in existence that could have been the source for the protein-building information? Where did the information come from about putting protein parts together and making them work together with other protein machinery, when no such protein machinery or operations existed? No one knows. The only known agency that generates such conditions, novel material fabrications, coded information, and highly complex, functional machinery is ... intelligence. Yet, according to JVL, "it's been demonstrated" that unguided natural processes are capable, and that "unintelligent natural processes" are a perfectly reasonable candidate.William J Murray
April 11, 2021
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There are 2 disputes. Creationist philosophy vs materialist philosophy Intelligent design vs evolution theory Creationist philosophy wins from materialist philosophy, because creationism with it's 2 categories of creator and creation, separates matters of subjective opinion, from matters of objective fact, validating each in their own right. The categories of creator and creation, perfectly correspond with the categories of all what is subjective, and all what is objective. Materialism solely validates the concept of fact, it does not validate the concept of subjective opinion. Which then means subjective opinion becomes to be understood as fact, and then you get a big conceptual mess, where science is indistinguishable from ideology. Social darwinism and the holocaust, demonstrates the total failure of materialism. So everyone, including evolutionists, must accept creationist philosophy, because everyone must distinguish between matters of personal opinion and matters of fact. Then there is the dispute between evolution and intelligent design. It is shown that generally all evolutionists simply do not accept the reality of choice. But they are forced to accept the reality of choice, because it is required for creationist philosophy, which they are compelled to accept. So evolutionists are generally immoral. It would be interesting to see an evolutionist reasoning, who does accept choice is a reality of physics, and not some cultural fantasy. An evolutionist who has evaluated the reality of choice in the universe, but came to the conclusion that no sophisticated decisionmaking processes were involved in forming organisms, to a significant extent. But it makes no sense whatsoever that this powerful mechanism of choice would not be meaningfully used in forming organisms. Trying to beat the monster of mathematical improbability of getting viable DNA configurations, with your hands tied behind your back, not using the powerful mechanism of choice to explain it. 10 to the power of much, huge monsters of improbability.mohammadnursyamsu
April 11, 2021
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. Seversky, You wrote in to show your support for JVL in his time of need. Since you wrote specifically about the OoL and design inference, you might expect me to respond. Most of your comments on UD are rather tedious assumption-filled rants about politics and religion, which are not on my diet, so I will skip those topics.
Once more, in my view, we are able to infer design on two grounds.
I bet you won’t stand by the words you write next.
The phenomenon or entity has not been observed to result from natural processes
For this criterium to be meaningful (to not assume its conclusion) it would require the observation of the phenomena arising from natural processes. An encoded memory system (as that predicted by von Neumann) has never been observed as a result of natural processes. You’ll notice that this statement does not assume any conclusion, it is merely a statement of documented fact.
and (the phenomenon) resembles what human beings design to a degree sufficient to at least raise the possibility of intelligent design.
The phenomenon in question is a measurable (exclusively identifiable) physical organization. It has never been observed arising from anything but human intelligence. This fact satisfies your “sufficiency” criterium to the highest degree that is logically possible; it is a matter of universal record. That is two for two, Seversky. You will now backtrack and obfuscate, if you choose to respond at all.
To take William Paley’s analogy of a watch found on the grass by a man walking across a heath, he would be justified in inferring that it was a human artefact, even if he had never seen a watch before […] A counter example would be something like the “data crystals” that were information storage devices in the science-fiction TV show Babylon 5 and looked like naturally-occurring crystals. Suppose a time traveler from that future had visited Victorian England and accidentally dropped one of those data-crystals, would the walker on the heath infer it was an artefact or just a naturally-occurring crystal or maybe a piece of costume jewelry? He would almost certainly have no idea of its true function or origin and no reason to even infer them.
Your example describes a false-negative, where an object was actually designed but there was no information to suggest it was so. This is a scenario that no one on either side of the debate even concerns themselves with. But if the person in your example studied the object (as we did the living cell) and found the encoded symbol system inside, which would clearly meet both the criteria you’ve given above, then you would infer design. That statement describes the only outcome that can be logically drawn from your example, Seversky. So why do you not infer design? Will you be abandoning both your criteria and your case study? - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Allow me to offer you the same example I offered JVL about truthfully integrating science and history with your personal beliefs: Question: ”Seversky, is there a valid scientific inference to design in biology?” Answer: ”Yes, but I personally believe it will be falsified someday by an unknown natural process.”Upright BiPed
April 11, 2021
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Sev, 444 [& attn, JVL]:
IDCists set a much lower bar for evidence of design than they do for evidence of evolution
Namecalling slander of guilt by invidious association tied to projection to evade facing your own selective hyperskepticism. You have been here for years so you know that the design inference and creationism in any meaningful sense work in different ways. Your objection boils down to if you dissent from a priori imposition of evolutionary materialistic scientism you are to be ostracised. Neat way to avoid facing the trillions of cases in point of the observed causal source of FSCO/I, intelligently directed configuration. That makes FSCO/I, and especially complex codes and algorithms, highly reliable signs of design as causal process. Which, obviously is non question begging evidence that something capable of design was present at relevant place and time. That's where JVL's demand for separate evidence for a designer falls apart. Set aside the strong evidence we do have [which would be instantly accepted and even celebrated in a more convenient case, SETI], and demand more evidence. In short, selective hyperskepticism. UB is quite right in 443:
When you say “because there is no plausible designer available” you are offering up a distinction that simply doesn’t exist. Does it really not occur to you that neither scenario has a “designer available” until evidence of that designer is discovered and confirmed? You shouldn’t need me to point this out to you. It is specifically the finding of encoded symbolic content that confirms (beyond any reasonable doubt) it is the product of an intelligence. Clearly, if a signal was received from outer space that contained encoded symbolic content in it, then you, like everyone else on the surface of the planet, would immediately (and quite correctly) infer the presence of a previously unknown intelligence. That is to say, the presence of encoded symbolic content is a universal correlate of intelligence. Do you see how that works, JVL? Before the confirmation of a universal correlate, there is no evidence of an intelligence in either scenario. After the confirmation of a universal correlate, the evidence of a previously unknown intelligence objectively exists in both scenarios. But that logical continuity is not how you treat the evidence. You treat the evidence with a gratuitous double standard. In the SETI scenario, encoded symbolic content is a universal correlate of intelligence. In the ID scenario, it isn’t. And it should come as no surprise that if encoded symbolic content is not a universal correlate of intelligence in the second scenario, then it can’t be that in the first scenario either. But does this logical inconsistency bother you? No, it serves your ideological purposes, and that is why you invoke it.
The balance on merits is patent and trying to mislabel our reasoning as creationism does not shift it an inch. That's why I have drawn the conclusion for some time now that the issue is not evidence but quality of reasoning. The onward issue is of course even more unpalatable, but it is warranted: right reason. There is a crooked yardstick being used as a false standard of straight, accurate and upright, which demands conformity. What is actually these things can never conform to crookedness, which leads to locking in the crooked yardstick. So, the issue comes down to willingness to acknowledge the message of a plumb line, something no reasonable person can deny is straight and upright. Here, we are dealing with inductive logic and its principles. Such cannot deliver utter certainty but is vitally important for significant matters of real life. If we play games with it, we undermine responsibility and human thriving in our civilisation. Indeed, that is the valid part that opens the way for the error of scientism, science is a pivotal inductive exercise and should be respected even though it must always be open to correction. Where, observations are far more reliable than explanatory constructs such as theories regarding the inherently unobservable remote past of origins. (There are no time machines.) That a particular law, model, equation or framework of same gives reliable results in a domain so far is an observation, but it is not a guarantor of truth. The pessimistic induction on the track record of theories lurks. As, the ghost of Newton advises. Therefore, on this matter a responsible person would acknowledge that there are reliable signs of design; on a trillions member observational base. Those signs establish that the design inference and implied filter on lawlike necessity [plausible source of low contingency outcomes], chance [highly contingent outcomes on closely similar start points, comparable to tossing a die], design showing FSCO/I or the like is highly reliable. The problem is not with reliable inference on evidence, it is that that inference points where many do not want to go. KF PS: The same observational base that shows that FSCO/I is a good sign of design as cause shows that blind chance and/or mechanical necessity, including for OOL and for OO major body plans across the tree of life are not well warranted as causal process. That is NOT a double standard, pace the turnabout projection.kairosfocus
April 11, 2021
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Upright Biped, you need to learn how to lie.Mung
April 10, 2021
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SpeckleKaren McMannus
April 10, 2021
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Seversky
The phenomenon or entity has not been observed to result from natural processes and it resembles what human beings design to a degree sufficient to at least raise the possibility of intelligent design.
It's not simply (or even) a matter of a thing with resemblance to human design. It is that the only known means of creating such a design is through intelligence. We can describe and model a similar design through use of intelligence. No other means works.
The problem with using human design as a reference is that we did not design the life on this planet as far as we know and we did not create this Universe.
As above, ID does not require that we use human design as a reference. Instead, human intelligence is the only known mechanism that can produce similar or identical designs. Natural means do not accomplish the task.
If they are the product of some intelligent agency then it has knowledge and powers far beyond anything we can possibly imagine. So why would its designs look anything like those of human beings of the 19th-21st centuries?
It's an interesting theological question. Responding to this is what Steve Alten2 calls "taking the bait" since it has nothing to do with ID science. You observe that which can only be modeled or created by intelligence. Thus, the design inference is reasonable. However, you would reject that inference because God wouldn't do things that way? In this case, your religious views affect your ability to draw conclusions from the data.
When an aeronautical engineer designs a jetliner he intends it to work exactly as he designed for the lifespan of the design.
So God should design things in the way human engineers do, and if the design appears different than that, then it wasn't designed? This is the "flawed design" argument and as discussed elsewhere, it's a logical fallacy. The refutation of the design inference is to demonstrate that chance or nature can produce the effect.
Yet we are supposed to believe that this creator of unimaginable knowledge and power used materials and methods of design so hugely wasteful and inefficient that 99% of the designs failed and went extinct over the course of the history of this planet?
It depends on how you view the nature of God and the attributes of God in light of creation. In your case, you take a certain view of God - apply that to the data -- and come up with a conclusion. But perhaps you could take a different theological perspective in that case (although again, such is unnecessary to recognize design).
I suppose it can’t be ruled out as impossible but, given your fondness for estimates of probability, is it really probable? Would von Neumann have been satisfied with such wasteful and unpredictable design work?
What is the probability that God did things a certain way? That would be tough to calculate. From God's perspective, life on earth, our intelligence, our ability to do scientific work, our ability to create or design - all of these are gifts that can be used for the very short time we are alive on earth. You're comparing von Neumann's work with the creation of the universe, life and of the human intelligence (which allowed von Neumann to do any work at all)?
As for the argument that it is hugely improbable that complex biological structures we observe could have sprung into existence de novo, well, yes, we agree. That’s why we don’t make that claim. The hypothesis is one of small, incremental change over immense periods of time shaped by the widely varying environments through which life has passed.
I haven't seen that proposal in origin of life claims. Everything I've seen speaks of the warm pond and lightning. Incremental change adds nothing. If it took immense periods of time for chemical combinations to create life, then we should be able to do the same in a lab by combining the same chemicals. Creating even functional RNA has not been shown to be possible even in theory.
Yes, such a process could have been initiated by some alien intelligence and even given a nudge in the ‘right’ direction periodically but we don’t have any more evidence of that than we do for the early biochemical pathways that may have led from inanimate chemical precursors to organic life.
We use an Intelligent Design methodology to attempt to create organic life from chemicals, rather than search for the emergence of life from non-life in the wild. This is strong evidence that intelligence was involved at the beginning.Silver Asiatic
April 10, 2021
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Seversky
What I do not accept – and neither, apparently, do many of those working in this field – is that the only possible origin for such systems is an intelligent designer.
It's the only one we've got right now. It's the inference to the best explanation. It seems you reject that in hopes that there's another candidate. I do not think there is even a plausible theoretical option.Silver Asiatic
April 10, 2021
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Upright BiPed: Yes JVL, you go lay down for a while. Those mean ID proponents are only picking on you for using a double standard and refusing to address it directly. Shame on them. And >b>Silver Asiatic: You’re staring directly at a blatant contradiction. You refuse to acknowledge it or wonder why we are “badgering” you about it. I was just trying to put a positive spin on your denial of this. It’s not a matter of a disagreement. Your own view is logically inconsistent. You’re disagreeing with yourself and we just want to know about that. All that said … this is a place for serious discussion on the ID proposal also. You have to dig deep and really look at what is being said and then respond with your best arguments. If challenged, then go deeper — keep working on it. We just keep probing and seeking your response in kind. But not thinking in any way that my view is sensible or rational. And, guess what, I have asked questions about the design inference that I thought were pertinent and important. Guess what response I got. I tell you what: in the future I might offer my opinion about a topic or news items posted to the site but I won't seriously consider trying to explain my view or back it up. There's no point. We all know what the response will be.JVL
April 10, 2021
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JVL
No, that’s not the whole criteria.
Well, I actually came up with that scenario to help you out - throw you a bone, so to speak. You're staring directly at a blatant contradiction. You refuse to acknowledge it or wonder why we are "badgering" you about it. I was just trying to put a positive spin on your denial of this. It's not a matter of a disagreement. Your own view is logically inconsistent. You're disagreeing with yourself and we just want to know about that.
I’d like to assume the best of my adversaries but they seem bent on misinterpreting me.
I'm not going to say it again - but nobody is attacking you personally.
Prejudice is a social killer.
I enjoy discussions on this site. It's a privilege and blessing for me. There are some great people here who know a lot and have some very deep insights to share - about the world and life itself. There's no attack on you personally (oops said it again - last time). You showed consideration for KF and the volcano in his region. You probably have gotten to know people here. All that said ... this is a place for serious discussion on the ID proposal also. You have to dig deep and really look at what is being said and then respond with your best arguments. If challenged, then go deeper -- keep working on it. We just keep probing and seeking your response in kind.Silver Asiatic
April 10, 2021
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The fact that organisms exhibit functionally integrated complexity, is evidence that they came to be by sophisticated decisionmaking processes, intelligent design. The power of choice to directly deal with a zillion DNA configurations in one instance, by having them all as possible futures in a decision on them, is an attractive solution to surmounting the mathematical improbabilities of obtaining a viable organism. The DNA system likely processes information, duh. So the decisionmaking processes would likely be in the DNA system. The human mind would then be more of an extension of the DNA system, rather then a product of it. The information processing of the DNA system is extended to the information processing of the human mind. The DNA system should be mathematically ordered in efficient steps from zero. Because creatio ex nihilo. The 4 bases, the 20 amino acids, the 64 codons, etc. presumably these numbers would be logically efficient steps removed from zero. The universe would have the same mathematical ordering by zero. Which is how the DNA system can interact with the world outside, make sense of it. That gives credence to the idea that the root of the universe could communicate with the DNA system, so that the entire universe in a sense is involved in the decisionmaking processes by which the organism is formed. That is indicated to be true, if life is in only 1 place in the universe. If life is found in many places in the universe, that would indicate only local decisionmaking processes are involved. And then the response of evolutionists is, decisions aren't real.mohammadnursyamsu
April 10, 2021
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Yes JVL, you go lay down for a while. Those mean ID proponents are only picking on you for using a double standard and refusing to address it directly. Shame on them.Upright BiPed
April 10, 2021
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Upright BiPed: And neither can address it. I think I will quit for a while at least. I'm tired. Tired of trying to be honest and straight and yet being accused and classed as something I'm not. Prejudice is a social killer.JVL
April 10, 2021
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Silver Asiatic: So, it’s not a matter of independently looking at the evidence, but rather of assigning value to proposal based on what kind of support it has academically or professionally. If mainstream science rejects it, then that’s enough for the individual to reject the proposal. That view is just looking for support from authorities in the field. No, that's not the whole criteria. If all of that is correct, then it just means that JVL does not want to evaluate the evidence independently, using observation and logic. It's not correct. Why am I bothering? I am constantly called into question as regards my motives and ideology. On this forum I am never given the benefit of the doubt. It's very tiring. Very wearing. I'd like to assume the best of my adversaries but they seem bent on misinterpreting me. If you can't accept someone who honestly disagrees with you but would like to understand then . . .JVL
April 10, 2021
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Seversky @444 That's an excellent response - thank you. There are subtle points that miss the target but the detailed critique is appreciated. I wonder if JVL accepts those ideas?Silver Asiatic
April 10, 2021
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. One uses a gratuitous double standard to ignore the evidence, the other merely requires a logical impossibility. Birds of a feather.
Seversky: I haven’t dismissed anything in the history of science or the literature or the data. UB: So in order to start an open-ended description-based replicator (one that is physically capable of what we generally refer to as Darwinian or biological evolution) you have to be able to specify multiple objects (among alternatives) using a common transcribable medium. This requires an irreducible organization made up of rate-independent memory tokens (symbols) and a set of non-integrable constraints, operating together in a semantically-closed system. The products of this system must successfully specify and produce a very particular dissipative process. The objects in this dissipative process must use the laws of nature to cause the medium to be processed, the products to be produced, and the memory to be copied and be placed inside a separate replicant along with a complete set of constraints. And for that pathway to be successful (i.e. semantically closed) requires a simultaneous coordination between the individual segments of the medium that describe the constraints and the individual segments of the medium that describe the various constituents of the dissipative process (i.e. changing the arrangement of one segment, changes the products of all the other segments). These requirements aren’t merely a mouthful, they are an accurate (and heavily abbreviated) summary of what physics and biology have taught us through logic, prediction, and confirmation via experimental result. When you are confronted with these well-documented facts of history and observation, and are given the opportunity to research and discover them for yourself, you immediately jump to say (in your safe, detached, and dull retrospective voice) some variation of the defensive rhetoric: “Well, no one knows how life began”. In other words, you run for the tall grass. You pretend we don’t already know what is physically required of the gene system. You hide from the facts. Seversky: The fact is that no one does know how life began. That is not hiding from the facts, that is facing them. UB: The elements of this description [above] are carefully recorded in the physics and biology literature, and are based on prediction, logic, measurement, and experimental confirmation. None of the material observations involved here is even controversial. Additionally, the logic is both appropriately sparse and impeccable. You’ll also notice that this is about measurement and description, not about denying or supporting any proposed solution to the origin of the system. Are you suggesting here that you now agree with these physical requirements? Seversky: I have never disputed those requirements. I accept what von Neuman and others have determined are the basic requirements for any self-reproducing system. What I do not accept – and neither, apparently, do many of those working in this field – is that the only possible origin for such systems is an intelligent designer. UB: So the only thing that can motivate a decision away from your preferred position is if it can be proven that the origin of life is not possible by any unknown natural cause. We can talk about the posture of your answer in a moment, but first we need to point out the 600lb gorilla hiding behind the curtains. You are using a non-falsifiable condition as your standard of evidence in a scientific question. You’ve set up a situation where the hypothesis you are opposed to must prove a negative or the evidence in favor of that hypothesis is given no value because it does not meet the threshold. Only the proof of a negative is given the capacity to change your position. This is entirely illegitimate reasoning. Of course, no one can force you to use valid reasoning in your beliefs; that is generally something that comes when it is valued by the person doing the reasoning. But you clearly cannot stand firm and suggest that your conclusions were arrived at with anything even resembling sound judgement. That is simply not true. Likewise, when you say that you “accept” opposing evidence (such as Von Neumann and others) it is also simply not true. Under your reasoning, the evidence for your opposition can continue to pile up to the rafters while the evidence in favor of your preferred position remains at zero. Until that opposing evidence proves a negative (something it cannot do) then it does not have the power to affect your conclusion. Physical evidence, indeed, becomes meaningless. This is the ultimate protectionist shield against science and reason; demand something that is not logically possible as your standard for evidence. The bonus is that you get to say you are a person of science and reason, while concealing the fact that you’ve completely eviscerated both of everything they have to offer.
And neither can address it.Upright BiPed
April 10, 2021
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Seversky: I think that in spite of your valiant efforts you are not going to make any further headway. IDCists set a much lower bar for evidence of design than they do for evidence of evolution. Thank you for your thoughts, I have read them all and generally I feel the same way. I would like to understand not only what ID proponents see and feel to be true but why. Not because I want to call them out, not because I I want to make them look stupid . . . just because I would like to understand.JVL
April 10, 2021
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Here's a possible solution. I framed JVL's position something like this (and he agreed): "I’m not an expert and I cannot sign-on to ID without more support from the scientific community". Later (post 411) he said: "I’m not sure we’ll come to an agreement unless the experts in the field weigh in clearly on one side or the other." That restates and confirms the view. He's looking for mainstream scientific/academic support -- for ID to be a favored or even majority opinion. So, on the question of SETI ("Contact") vs ID. To the IDist, there's an equivalency. However, JVL could say: "No. SETI has support from mainstream science and ID does not." So, it's not a matter of independently looking at the evidence, but rather of assigning value to proposal based on what kind of support it has academically or professionally. If mainstream science rejects it, then that's enough for the individual to reject the proposal. That view is just looking for support from authorities in the field. If all of that is correct, then it just means that JVL does not want to evaluate the evidence independently, using observation and logic. I'm fine with that, myself. I know several intelligent and good people who do not like ID for this same reason. They don't trust their own judgements on it, and do not think they are competent to analyze the data. They don't want to go against the scientific consensus. That fine. But why then spend day after day, supposedly arguing against the evidence that is presented as if you're going to evaluate it independently without regard for what the academic community has to say? Year after year on a pro-ID site and then fall back and say "well, mainstream science doesn't support you guys so I can't buy-into your proposal". That doesn't make sense. If you want to engage seriously with the topic, you have to do your own research and draw your own conclusions and deal with your own logical problems. You can't just rely on what the experts have to say. If you want to take that path, fine. But you're just withdrawing from the active, on-going discussion where those outside of the academic consensus take the risk to come up with unpopular ideas. I think that would basically be JVL's only option. Just drop out of the discussion and wait around until or unless mainstream science accepts the ID proposal.Silver Asiatic
April 10, 2021
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JVL, I think that in spite of your valiant efforts you are not going to make any further headway. IDCists set a much lower bar for evidence of design than they do for evidence of evolution. Once more, in my view, we are able to infer design on two grounds. The phenomenon or entity has not been observed to result from natural processes and it resembles what human beings design to a degree sufficient to at least raise the possibility of intelligent design. To take William Paley's analogy of a watch found on the grass by a man walking across a heath, he would be justified in inferring that it was a human artefact, even if he had never seen a watch before, because the item as a whole and the components from which its is assembled - brass case, glass lens, springs, cogs, etc - are never observed to occur naturally but are very similar to other devices made by human engineers. A counter example would be something like the "data crystals" that were information storage devices in the science-fiction TV show Babylon 5 and looked like naturally-occurring crystals. Suppose a time traveler from that future had visited Victorian England and accidentally dropped one of those data-crystals, would the walker on the heath infer it was an artefact or just a naturally-occurring crystal or maybe a piece of costume jewelry? He would almost certainly have no idea of its true function or origin and no reason to even infer them. The problem with using human design as a reference is that we did not design the life on this planet as far as we know and we did not create this Universe. If they are the product of some intelligent agency then it has knowledge and powers far beyond anything we can possibly imagine. So why would its designs look anything like those of human beings of the 19th-21st centuries? The other problem is that biological processes are wasteful and unreliable. When an aeronautical engineer designs a jetliner he intends it to work exactly as he designed for the lifespan of the design. They are not going to employ materials or software that can mutate away from its design specs at random. Lives depend on it working exactly as specified. Yet we are supposed to believe that this creator of unimaginable knowledge and power used materials and methods of design so hugely wasteful and inefficient that 99% of the designs failed and went extinct over the course of the history of this planet? I suppose it can't be ruled out as impossible but, given your fondness for estimates of probability, is it really probable? Would von Neumann have been satisfied with such wasteful and unpredictable design work? As for the argument that it is hugely improbable that complex biological structures we observe could have sprung into existence de novo, well, yes, we agree. That's why we don't make that claim. The hypothesis is one of small, incremental change over immense periods of time shaped by the widely varying environments through which life has passed. Yes, such a process could have been initiated by some alien intelligence and even given a nudge in the 'right' direction periodically but we don't have any more evidence of that than we do for the early biochemical pathways that may have led from inanimate chemical precursors to organic life. We're all in the same boat here. Whatever we might speculate, however we interpret holy texts, the reality is we just don't know and it doesn't look like anyone is coming to help us out for the foreseeable future.Seversky
April 10, 2021
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. Checking back in ...
I’m being badgered to capitulate to something I do not support or agree with.
No you are not, and you know you are not. You are being asked to address the blatant and gratuitous double standard in your reasoning:
JVL: I would not be surprised at all if we find electromagnetic evidence of intelligent beings in other solar systems UB: How would we know if we found “electromagnetic evidence of intelligent beings”? What would that be? JVL: Something like in the movie Contact. A signal that’s very clearly NOT produced by unguided processes. A signal which, after inspection, was shown to have compressed data. UB: So you accept encoded symbolic content as a universal inference to the presence of an unknown intelligence in one domain, while immediately denying that same physical evidence in another domain. Why the double standard? JVL: Because there is no plausible designer available. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - UB: When you say “because there is no plausible designer available” you are offering up a distinction that simply doesn’t exist. Does it really not occur to you that neither scenario has a “designer available” until evidence of that designer is discovered and confirmed? You shouldn’t need me to point this out to you. It is specifically the finding of encoded symbolic content that confirms (beyond any reasonable doubt) it is the product of an intelligence. Clearly, if a signal was received from outer space that contained encoded symbolic content in it, then you, like everyone else on the surface of the planet, would immediately (and quite correctly) infer the presence of a previously unknown intelligence. That is to say, the presence of encoded symbolic content is a universal correlate of intelligence. Do you see how that works, JVL? Before the confirmation of a universal correlate, there is no evidence of an intelligence in either scenario. After the confirmation of a universal correlate, the evidence of a previously unknown intelligence objectively exists in both scenarios. But that logical continuity is not how you treat the evidence. You treat the evidence with a gratuitous double standard. In the SETI scenario, encoded symbolic content is a universal correlate of intelligence. In the ID scenario, it isn’t. And it should come as no surprise that if encoded symbolic content is not a universal correlate of intelligence in the second scenario, then it can’t be that in the first scenario either. But does this logical inconsistency bother you? No, it serves your ideological purposes, and that is why you invoke it.
Sun Tzu is sleeping peacefully in his grave, and tomorrow you’ll be back here again, saying “No evidence of a designer means no design”.Upright BiPed
April 10, 2021
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Silver Asiatic: It’s been an on-going attempt, against the warnings of several members here, to gain clarification and acknowledgement of issues. It may seem like badgering because not one, but several of us have asked again and again and again – the same question. It’s not an attack against you. It’s an attempt to assist your reasoning — to provide useful information. I've explained why I believe the way I do. I"ve tried to be honest and straight. I've accepted that we might just have to 'agree to disagree'. But I'm being badgered to capitulate to something I do not support or agree with. Whether or not you think I'm being duplicitous surely you accept that there is a point when it's time to stop a pointless endeavour? I don't have anything to add to what I've already said. If you don't find that acceptable then I'm suggesting we just stop the interrogation. When does 'assist your reasoning' become something else? Is it possible to disagree with you and not be labelled mad, bad or insane?JVL
April 10, 2021
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You’re just badgering now.
It's been an on-going attempt, against the warnings of several members here, to gain clarification and acknowledgement of issues. It may seem like badgering because not one, but several of us have asked again and again and again - the same question. It's not an attack against you. It's an attempt to assist your reasoning -- to provide useful information.Silver Asiatic
April 10, 2021
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Or: I just might stop responding to you
But you’ll be back here tomorrow saying “No evidence of a designer means no design”. Isn’t that right, JVL?Upright BiPed
April 10, 2021
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Upright BiPed: ”Actually, I may just give up trying to have a conversation on this site. … rather than address the blatant flaws in my reasoning” Or: I just might stop responding to you.JVL
April 10, 2021
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”Actually, I may just give up trying to have a conversation on this site. ... [rather than address the blatant flaws in my reasoning]”
But you’ll be back here tomorrow saying “No evidence of a designer means no design”. Correct?Upright BiPed
April 10, 2021
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Upright BiPed: You haven’t addressed it, you’ve repeatedly avoided it. You can’t even address it now, or you would do so. And thus, you will be back here tomorrow saying “No evidence of a designer means no design”. Correct? Actually, I may just give up trying to have a conversation on this site.JVL
April 10, 2021
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Silver Asiatic: You haven’t addressed the problem in 432. I'm going to stand by my statements that I am open to new data and evidence and to try and keep an open mind. AND, AGAIN, as I have already said: when the design evidence isn't convincing THEN I will also consider other physical evidence of designers. You're just badgering now.JVL
April 10, 2021
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. You haven’t addressed it, you’ve repeatedly avoided it. You can’t even address it now, or you would do so. And thus, you will be back here tomorrow saying “No evidence of a designer means no design”. Correct?Upright BiPed
April 10, 2021
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JVL You haven't addressed the problem in 432. Contact - evidence of unknown designer. You accept. ID - same evidence. You say no plausible designer.Silver Asiatic
April 10, 2021
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Upright BiPed: You don’t find it “lacking”. You use a double standard to avoid it. I think I have explained my position adequately. I accept that you don't agree with it. I'm happy to leave it at that. You're not. Why is that?JVL
April 10, 2021
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