Dr YS, contribtes thoughts again that are well worth pondering:
>>I’d like to present a summary of the arguments against the design hypothesis that I have come across either as a reader or as an author of a pro-design blog over the past 8 years since I became interested in intelligent design.
The Design Hypothesis
Before we do it, let us first recap on what the design hypothesis really is. It states that some configurations of matter in specific conditions are best explained as caused by purposeful activity of one or more intelligent agents.
- The ‘specific conditions’ means that we could not directly observe how these configurations of matter came into being and can only analyse them post-factum.
- ‘Intelligence’ in this context means the capabilities of foresight, goal-setting, strategy planning and strategy realization. Put simply, it is the capability of using adequate means for a purpose.
- The ‘purpose’ corresponds to selecting a goal state from among physically or chemically equivalent states (states with minimal total potential energy). Selection is done on a non-physical basis (pragmatic utility).
- E.g. muckers is a game in which players take turns throwing rings from a distance at a vertically positioned pole on a horizontal playing ground. A player who throws a ring so that it lands at the pole, receives one point. The player getting a maximum score wins. The scoring aside, no matter how you throw a ring or where it lands on the playing field, it ends up in a position where its potential energy is at a minimum value. The ‘meaning’ to each toss that distinguishes a trajectory from among a set of possible trajectories, is assigned by imposing additional (symbolic) constraints specifying the ‘target’ area for a trajectory. The additional constraints are local to the particular physical system (the ring + gravity + the pole).
- ‘Best’ means the ‘most appropriate’, ‘most parsimonious’ or even ‘characterized by the highest probability’, depending on the context.
- ‘Design’ means either the process of purposeful activity or an outcome of it.
- E.g. a personal computer is a design whereas pebbles on the beach are most likely not. It is possible that pebbles themselves or their particular arrangements can be a design. However, methodologically, it is best to assume they are not unless we have more observations that can help further refine our design-inferential probabilistic model.
Importantly, not every cause in nature is intelligent. For example, gravity is not an intelligent type of causation whereas creating a deck of Microsoft PowerPoint slides, most probably, is. If we have observations that can throw a reasonable doubt on non-intelligence of gravity, for example, we will further refine our understanding of material reality. In the absence of such observations these doubts are not scientifically justified.
The effects of intelligent and non-intelligent causes are sometimes different also. Analyzing this difference is what Intelligent Design is all about. Based on an analysis of some special class of artifacts we can reliably tell if we are dealing with designs. In other cases, it is not possible to distinguish designs from non-designs post-factum, without additional information.
It is important to distinguish between intelligent and non-intelligent causation because this distinction helps us categorize our knowledge of the material world better and, consequently, propose better scientific explanations. The distinction is well supported empirically and, without it, it is not possible to adequately explain a whole class of observations. For example, treating this text as a random collection of differently colored pixels on the screen is a valid scientific model but I doubt it has any practical use as it adds virtually nothing new to our knowledge of the world.
The design hypothesis can be useful in a lot of contexts, such as archaeology and forensics. It adds a lot of insight when applied to biological systems. It is not generally disputed that the ID methodology is sound. At least, I have never encountered anyone who would seriously question the design detection methodology in relation to forensics, archaeology, medicine or cyber-intrusion detection, for instance. The only area of application where ID faces strong opposition is biology. Science has nothing to do with it.
The scientific agenda of Intelligent Design is non-trivial as the main design hypothesis leads to interesting research questions. Intuitively, when we assume that a particular configuration of matter is intelligently created we can reverse-engineer it and then reuse our findings elsewhere. This is done in bionics, for example. ID can lead to non-trivial testable secondary hypotheses in biology per se, as this article shows.
The design detection methodology is summarized by the following abductive inference:
1. We observe phenomenon Р.
2. Р could be explained if hypothesis Н was true.
3. Consequently, we have grounds to believe that H is true.
Examples of P:
– the semiotic triple {sign-interpretant-referent}, notably persistent self-reproducing semiotic triple as in biological systems;
– statistically significant levels of functional complexity.
The basis of abduction in relation to P in the biosphere:
– In all observations other than in biological systems, whose origins are in question, P is a correlate of intelligence. No observations exist where P would arise ab initio without intelligent agency.
I specifically stress that the presented reasoning is nowhere near circular.
Having said this, I will now present arguments against ID that I have encountered. I am not intending to ridicule the reasoning of ID opponents. Simply, in my experience, this is the best they can really offer. In the list below, I will put my comments next to each bullet point.
Popular arguments against Intelligent Design
| # | Argument against ID | Comment |
| 1 | ID is based entirely on Fisherian hypothesis testing. Instead of ruling out any hypothesis entirely, it would have been better to keep all relevant hypotheses on the table because, as we collect observations, different hypotheses can really change their relative importance. | Statistical hypothesis testing is an established practical method of assessing scientific hypotheses. ID-opponents are welcome to come up with a better model, if they wish so. |
| 2 | Who designed the Designer? (=Who painted the painter?) | The point of this argument is to demonstrate that ID reasoning is either circular or suffers from infinite regress. Neither is true. |
| 3 | What are the properties of the Designer of life? | The Designer of life is intelligent: capable of forethought and planning, decision making and strategy implementation. The scale and grandeur of the design of life suggests that the capabilities of the Designer are matching the task. The Designer of life must have had the linguistic capacity since life is inherently linguistic. The only real problem I can see here is complexity because, by the same argument as presented in this OP, the Designer of life should be very complex (perhaps, infinitely complex). My personal take on this, is that the complexity argument does not apply the way the ID opponents want to use it: our consciousness is simple and yet we create complex artifacts. In any case, we just have no other data than human artifacts and life. Perhaps, the AI singularity, if it happens at all, when it does happen, will provide more data to refine our understanding of the complexity issue. |
| 4 | We have insufficient data to classify life with respect to design. | It is the purpose of science to extrapolate our knowledge onto something that has not been observed yet and to make predictions. The workflow is as usual: from observations through analysis to prediction. As more observations become available, predictions are corrected appropriately. |
| 5 | How the Designer of life created it? | By instantiating a persistent self-reproducing semiotic core into physicality. |
| 6 | I could have done it better. Therefore it is not a design. | An example of flawed reasoning. A poor design is still a design. On the other hand, examples of alleged ‘bad designs’ are simply misunderstandings. People are not taking into consideration the fact that organisms are a result of multicriteria optimization. What appears to be a poor choice is really a compromise between different conflicting objectives. |
| 7 | Believing in the design of life is the same as believing that the Earth is flat. | A rhetorical device aimed at discrediting the opponents by association. It has no real scientific value. |
| 8 | Information is in your head. | This extreme view denies the objectivity of information processing. It does not take into account the fact that the genetic information translation apparatus installed in all organisms predates humans and is part of objective reality. Questioning the objectivity of information translation phenomenon is equivalent to questioning science itself. |
| 9 | A river flowing around stones sends information to and receives information from them. | This view is the opposite extreme. It does not take into account the fact that it is meaningful to speak about information only where there is information translation. Natural phenomena (apart from organisms and human artifacts) do not involve information translation. |
| 10 | The cycle of star formation follows an algorithm. | Spotting natural regularity can be formalized as an algorithm. However, regularity itself is NOT an algorithm. An algorithm is a set of coherent instructions that must explicitly be present in memory, read from it and be processed in order for the system to achieve a goal state. In most cases, to achieve a pragmatic purpose an algorithm should be a set of instructions such that the processor eventually stops and produces a result. |
| 11 | Everything can be coded with 1 bit. | That one is a best-seller. The answer is, obviously, yes, if you have previously established all the information context for it. It is the establishment of the context that involves all the remaining complexity… |
| 12 | The design hypothesis is circular. | Simply wrong. In the above, there is no circularity at all. |
| 13 | DNA is not code. The notion of code is ephemeral and subjective. | DNA/RNA carry instructions that are interpreted by the cell in the context of protein synthesis. The genetic code is the set of rules used by living cells to translate information encoded within genetic material (DNA or mRNA sequences) into proteins. Translation is accomplished by the ribosome, which links amino acids in an order specified by messenger RNA (mRNA), using transfer RNA (tRNA) molecules to carry amino acids and to read the mRNA three nucleotides at a time. |
| 14 | Replication of crystals and replication of organisms are essentially the same. | A categorical error. They are not the same. Matrix copying (similar to crystal copying) is part of replication of organisms, but it is only part of it. Replication of living things requires a symbolic memory to store genetic instructions, a mechanism of retrieval and interpretation of those instructions together with a mechanism of interpretation of instructions to replicate the interpreter. Nowhere near replication of crystals. |
| 15 | Crystallisation is an example of self-organisation. | A categorical error. Organization relates to function, not order. Order is routinely observed in nature as a result of the tendency of system dynamics towards states with minimum total potential energy. This is fundamentally different from organization. Organization involves a non-uniform (irregular) functional whole where function is understood in terms of pragmatic utility. Regular structures like crystals can be used as part of functional systems but, by themselves, neither crystals nor any other naturally occurring regular structures can produce a non-trivial functional whole. Organization imposes specific (e.g. symbolic) constraints on the dynamics of matter in the system. ‘No specific constraints’ means ‘no function’ means ‘no organization’. |
| 16 | Everything in nature is self-organized just like sand gets sorted by centrifugal forces on river banks. | The same categorical error as above equating the motion of matter towards states of minimum total potential energy to functional organization that produces pragmatic utility. |
| 17 | Semiotics is demagoguery. | Another bestseller argument. |
| 18 | Semiotic effects are reducible to the laws of nature. | Including this OP? Are there laws of nature that can predict someone writing this OP?! |
| 19 | Abduction is fiction, Charles Peirce’s idiosyncrasy. | Again, a wonderful counter-argument indeed. It misses a whole history of discoveries and scientific advances based on the seminal ideas of Charles Peirce. |
| 20 | Lots of vastly different things appeared in ‘every which way’ in the past. Life is just what happened to prevail. | An ‘interesting’ thought. And a very specific one, too. |
| 21 | Science knows a single type of intelligence, that is, one correlated with a protein-based body/brain. Consequently, a hypothetical statement about intelligence outside of a protein body/brain is nonsense. | There is a killer counter-example for it, i.e. silicon-based artificial intelligence. The counter-example demonstrates that intelligence can function and multiply outside of protein bodies. |
| 22 | — Gravity is all that is necessary for our world to appear. — And where did gravity come from? — M-theory. | A categorical error conflating reality with our mental models of it. It lacks coherence and misses the point of organization completely. This argument is due to Stephen Hawking [paraphrased]. See J. Lennox, “God and Stephen Hawking: Whose design is it anyway?” |
>>
Again, food for rich thought. END
Guest Post, Dr YS: “Intelligent Design and arguments against it”
Tree rings record information about the climate over thousands of years, and this is not motion of matter towards states of minimum total potential energy.
No designer required.
Aarceng 2
You conflate a configuration of matter with how an observer INTERPRETS it. For information as a phenomenon, data is not sufficient. It is always a triple: data+interpeter+the effect of interpretation, or {sign,interpretant,referent} in the Peircean parlance. Your rings are just data. What you also need is the interpreter or processor of that data. An educated person has it in their cortex in the form of particular arrangements of synapses that, upon receiving a visual signal from the eye, help interpret the number of rings in a tree trunk as the age of that tree.
No interpretation – no information. Data is only data in the context of information translation.
.
First scan … nice.
How the Designer of life created it? — By instantiating a persistent self-reproducing semiotic core into physicality. [the mechanism of ID]
YS = ES ?
UB
Yes, it is me ))
KF
Thanks very much for posting it on my behalf.
Could I ask you to insert a hyperlink please, as a reference in the sentence where it says “as this article shows”.
The reference is:
M. Sherman, The universal Genome and the Origin of Metazoa.
Thanks.
Boom!
🙂
On Point 1, we’ve diverged from Fisher and use Neyman-Pearson instead. This means specifying the alternative hypothesis as well. For non-trivial examples it’s necessary, as the test is a comparison between likelihoods, each specified by a model.
One problem with the Fisherian approach is that one can reject a null hypothesis, but the null hypothesis could be false in many ways. It’s generally accepted by statisticians that pretty much any null hypothesis will be rejected with enough data.
“Tree rings record information about the climate over thousands of years”
This is how pervasive climate propaganda is. It makes people stupid.
Tree ring widths are the product of lots of things, some of which have something to do with weather, and some that have nothing to do with weather.
Andrew
Bob,
Thanks very much for your comment. The point of this OP is to have a useful discussion. It would be interesting to take your comment and elaborate on how this can influence the design classifier in the presence of empirical evidence. How will this change the prediction given that the only data we have is phenomenon P is correlated with intelligence? No data exists that would support the null hypothesis anyway, the null hypothesis being ‘functionally complex structures/semiotic structures can arise unaided by intelligent agency’. The null hypothesis is rejected for the right reason.
Can you think of anything else that could influence the rejection so that the null h is rejected for the wrong reason?
YS, added. KF
KF
Thanks
Readers
It occurred to me that I’d forgotten to explicitly mention in the OP that in the context of biological systems, pragmatic utility we are talking about is homeostasis (as far as an individual organism is concerned) and persistence (as a means to mitigate the detrimental effect of the 2nd law of thermodynamics on an individual organism). More on this in: David Abel ‘The First Gene’.
Those are not necessarily arguments against ID.
Yes, “Information is in your head” – http://nonlin.org/biological-information/
Correction, “DNA is not [the whole] code” – http://nonlin.org/dna-not-essence-of-life/
No, “silicon-based artificial intelligence” is NOT intelligence – http://nonlin.org/ai/
Many others are simply silly, hence not worth mentioning.
Nonlin
Thanks very much.
In the OP I define intelligence as follows:
‘Intelligence’ in this context means the capabilities of foresight, goal-setting, strategy planning and strategy realization. Put simply, it is the capability of using adequate means for a purpose.
These things are already part of weak AI. Robot path planning with obstacle avoidance, malicious software and autopilots are examples of intelligence as defined in the OP. If you have a different definition, I have no objection.
I simply do not deal with this issue. I focus on DNA/RNA as code. As regards other codes, yes, they exist, sugar code, membrane code, for example.
Eugene,
AI is just an interface between the intelligent human and the world. Think of AI as a hammer. Does the hammer nail the roof? No, the human nails the roof with dumb tools like hammers. Does a hammer have a purpose? Does AI?
Nonlin
I agree that AI does not have an internal “I”. If this is what you mean. However, do you not know that a robot can perfectly well drive a nail into the roof? Ok, it does so via a program written by a human. And still, the physical activity of driving the nail into the roof is not done by a human.
Again, if you want to use another definition of intelligence, fine by me. I have already stated my operational definition of intelligence, which is merely decision making. Under this definition, a spider or even an amoeba doing chemotaxis is intelligent. Under this definition, intelligence need not be conscious.
AI is what it is, intelligence, i.e. human reasoning extracted from our heads and instantiated into machines. That’s it. I see nothing wrong with that. Of course, it is not self conscious. Nor will it ever be. I do not believe that it will ever surpass humans. Strong AI is sci-fi, not science. However, within the boundaries I have delineated, it is perfectly legitimate to think about programs as agents.
EugeneS @ 9 –
I’m sorry, but what do you mean by “this”? And if you’re talking about classifiers, then you’re into inference, not hypothesis testing, so Fisher and Neyman-Pearson aren’t relevant (well, except that Fisher probably did something in classification, because he’s Fisher). If you’re classifying, then you need a model for design, in order to calculate the probability of the data given design.
Bob
Yes, I have been a bit vague. By “this” I meant the difference between what Neyman/Pearson proposed as a means of hypothesis testing and what Fisher proposed. The question is whether it will change the outcome of hypothesis testing in our case, and if it does, to what extent. What I am trying to say is, whether your comment makes a practical difference in the case of design given the data:
1. We have observations whereby P arises by human intervention resulting in a special sort of human artifacts.
2. We have observations of P as a given, in living systems.
3. We have zero observations of P arising without intelligence.
EugeneS – it makes a huge difference because it means you have to specify a model for design.
Your logic suffers from one slight problem – if the only thing that gives rise to P is human intervention, then human intervention must have given rise to P. So living systems (including humans) must have come about through human intervention.
Bob
Obviously this can’t be true. I have never said that. What I said is:
1. We observe phenomenon P.
2. P could be explained if hypothesis H was true.
3. Consequently, we have grounds to believe that H is true.
H is intelligent agency, which is not necessarily human agency. Can you see that this is not the same as what you wrote?
My logic has no flaw apparently. Not that I can see, at any rate.
What I can see is your denial of the grounds for the abductive reasoning, I am afraid. It is your logic that has a problem, to my estimation. You apparently want me to accept that if P is correlated with human intelligence and human intelligence is correlated with a body with two legs, then P can only arise via two-legged agents (which is item 21 in my list).
I can refer to this in my defense as to how to extrapolate what we know to make useful predictions. Unfortunately, I can’t quickly find the page I want because the pdf is not searchable. Essentially, Feynmann dismisses complains of people who says that it is incorrect to extrapolate our knowledge about particles onto the physics of atoms. He points out that it is not only okay but it is necessary to do so to make useful predictions.
@EugeneS
Your back-pedaling is weasely.
What Bob said is correct. If something reminds you of things that humans create, then the only reasonable inference is that humans created it. Widening the inference to “intelligent being” is an obvious creationist tactic to include their god in the basket.
Why would anyone expect a supreme being to design things the way humans do?
“If something reminds you of things that humans create, then the only reasonable inference is that humans created it”
Pater,
You are misstating the scenario. If something reminds you of things an intelligence would create, then the only reasonable inference is that an intelligence created it.
Andrew
Regarding the model for design.
How do we design things? We have an idea and the corresponding mental representation of the goal state. Then we work out a strategy to achieve the goal state. Then we implement it.
Regardless of the particular strategy, the designer must:
– have a representation of the goal state
– have the ability to measure the current state and compare it with the goal state
– be able to control system dynamics so as to achieve the goal state
Pater
I can accept I have one point of reference and I draw a line through that point.
Do you have a better alternative? Do you have anything at all? I doubt it.
Bob O’H states,
Pater Kimbridge joins with Bob:
Please notice that this is a Theological claim about how God would create, if He were to create, and is not a empirically backed claim about what unguided natural and/or material processes are capable of creating.
Which is just as well that they are making a Theologically based argument since Darwinists have ZERO substantiating evidence that unguided natural and/or material processes are capable of creating anything beyond the exceedingly trivial, For instance;
Moreover, that Bob and Pater are forced into making a Theological argument is nothing new. Charles Darwin himself, since he himself also had no empirical evidence to support any of his Atheistic claims, instead made numerous faulty Theological claims in his book “Origin”. In fact Charles Darwin made the same exact Theological argument that Bob and Pater are making right now. Namely, “Human beings are not justified in believing that God creates in ways analogous to the intellectual powers of the human mind.”
Please note that that particular theological claim about what God would and would not do is not based on any empirical evidence of any sort but is just naked claim that is made by atheists about what God would and would not do. In fact, that particular claim is directly contradictory to the Theological claim made in the Bible which states that God created us in His image:
Thus not only are atheists making a evidence free Theological claim based on nothing else than their own personal opinion, but they are also making a Theological claim that happens to run directly contrary to the Theological claim that is made in the Bible.
But be that as it may, who is correct in their claim about God? The atheist or the Christian?
And, of course, the Christian is the one who, once again, is correct and can back up his Theological claim that we are made in the image of God with empirical evidence. And the atheist, once again, has got nothing but bluff and bluster.
Although the supposed genetic and fossil evidence for human evolution is far more illusory and misleading than many people have falsely been led to believe,
Although the supposed genetic and fossil evidence for human evolution is far more illusory and misleading than many people have falsely been led to believe, the one place that even leading evolutionists admit that they have no realistic clue how a particular trait in humans could have possible evolved is with human language.
The late best selling author Tom Wolfe was so taken aback by this honest confession from leading Darwinists that he wrote a book on the subject. Here is a general outline of his main argument;
In other words, although humans are fairly defenseless creatures in the wild compared to other creatures, such as lions, bears, and sharks, etc.., nonetheless, humans have, completely contrary to Darwinian ‘survival of the fittest’ thinking, managed to become masters of the planet, not by brute force, but simply by our unique ability to communicate information and, more specifically, infuse information into material substrates in order to create, i.e. intelligently design, objects that are extremely useful for our defense, shelter, in procuring food, furtherance of our knowledge, etc..
What is more interesting still, besides the fact that humans have a unique ability to understand and create information and have come to ‘master the planet’ through the ‘top-down’ infusion of information into material substrates, is the fact that, due to advances in science, both the universe and life itself are now found to be ‘information theoretic’ in their foundational basis.
In the following video at the 48:24 mark, Anton Zeilinger states that “It is operationally impossible to separate Reality and Information” and he goes on to note, at the 49:45 mark, the Theological significance of “In the Beginning was the Word” John 1:1
Vlatko Vedral, who is a Professor of Physics at the University of Oxford, and who is also a recognized leader in the field of quantum mechanics, states, ““The most fundamental definition of reality is not matter or energy, but information–and it is the processing of information that lies at the root of all physical, biological, economic, and social phenomena.”
It is hard to imagine a more convincing scientific proof that we are made ‘in the image of God’ than finding both the universe, and life itself, are both ‘information theoretic’ in their foundational basis, and that we, of all the creatures on earth, uniquely possess an ability to understand and create information, and, moreover, have come to ‘master the planet’ precisely because of our unique ability infuse information into material substrates.
Perhaps a more convincing evidence that we are made in the image of God could be if God Himself became a man, defeated death on a cross, and then rose from the dead to prove that He was indeed God. And that is exactly the proof claimed within Christianity:
Verses :
.
Is it?
Perhaps you’ve head of the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence. It is a well-known project that searches for unknown intelligence by using an operational definition (of “intelligence”) to produce valid results. Lori Marino PhD (SETI/NASA Virtual Resource Center for Interdisciplinary Inquiry into Intelligent Life) explains SETI’s approach to the concept of intelligence:
”There is no consensus on a strict definition of intelligence, and there likely never will be because intelligence is what is known as a fuzzy concept; it lacks well-defined boundaries and contains multiple components.? However, the study of intelligence lies firmly in the domain of empirical science because its features can be operationally defined and its correlates can be quantified and measured.”
In the SETI project, intelligence is operationally defined by a specific physical capacity. That physical capacity is “the capacity to transmit a narrow-band radio signal detectable from earth”. This definition is derived from our universal experience that narrow-band radio signals are not produced by natural causes, but are the unambiguous product of intelligence. A clear distinction is therefore made between those things that can be explained by natural unguided causes and those things that are a measurable consequence of intelligent action. SETI explains:
”Narrow-band signals – perhaps only a few Hertz wide or less – are the mark of a purposely built transmitter. Natural cosmic noisemakers, such as pulsars, quasars, and the turbulent, thin interstellar gas of our own Milky Way, do not make radio signals that are this narrow.”
This methodology is explicitly endorsed by NASA, the National Academy of Sciences, the National Science Foundation, the British Royal Society, and university science departments around the world (you know, all those creationist strongholds). And like SETI, design advocates already have a completely measurable correlate of intelligence to derive an operational definition – that is, the multi-referent symbol system found in language, and also found in protein synthesis– which was not only predicted to exist prior to its discovery, but has been subsequently measured and recorded in the scientific literature (starting about 50 years ago).
The bottom line here Skippy, is that you and Bob are utterly and completely wrong.
Bob O’H:
Unless, of course, human intervention was impossible. In which case we pass it off to some unknown intelligent agency. And it would still remain that to falsify such an inference all one has to do is step up, present a viable, scientific alternative and the design inference would be in deep in trouble, if not outright falsified.
Eugene S (YS),
Thought-provoking OP on such a difficult topic! Thank you.
Also thanks to KF for posting it here.
Here you have recent papers showing why Darwinian evolution is true:
https://journals.plos.org/ploscompbiol/article?id=10.1371/journal.pcbi.1006673
https://academic.oup.com/nar/article/47/W1/W11/5494764#137250088
IDers sat confidently on the wall but had a great fall… sorry for spoiling your optimism.
Here’s another paper clearly supporting Darwinian evolution:
https://academic.oup.com/nar/article/47/13/e77/5477452#138060225
There’s abundant literature confirming Darwinian macro-evolution.
Just leave your echo chamber and look out there. You’ll see the Darwinian macro-evolution is very extensively documented.
Glad to see such an insightful OP by Dr EugeneS, courtesy of KF.
Also enjoying the discussion. Well done, Dr YS!
Thanks!
PavelU, what a joke. Do you even read your citations before you post them? Do you even know that sequence comparisons blew up in Darwinian faces years ago?
Can the moderator keep trolls like PavelU off?
BA77
The same words have been the first sentence in every published paper that overturned a scientific paradigm. And most OPs published at Intelligent Reasoning.
PavelU:
Unfortunately just saying so doesn’t make it so. Please, make your case that said paper supports Darwinian evolution. I dare you to try.
Ed George:
That PavelU is a joke, really?.
Sure, blame the messenger. Coward
Two words that are never associated with Ed George, his fellow sock-puppets nor his ilk.
Dr YS,
Interesting topic.
Does this book relate?
Soren Brier
Cybersemiotics: Why Information Is Not Enough (Toronto Studies in Semiotics and Communication)
Description
Product description
A growing field of inquiry, biosemiotics is a theory of cognition and communication that unites the living and the cultural world. What is missing from this theory, however, is the unification of the information and computational realms of the non-living natural and technical world. Cybersemiotics provides such a framework.
By integrating cybernetic information theory into the unique semiotic framework of C.S. Peirce, Søren Brier attempts to find a unified conceptual framework that encompasses the complex area of information, cognition, and communication science. This integration is performed through Niklas Luhmann’s autopoietic systems theory of social communication. The link between cybernetics and semiotics is, further, an ethological and evolutionary theory of embodiment combined with Lakoff and Johnson’s ‘philosophy in the flesh.’ This demands the development of a transdisciplinary philosophy of knowledge as much common sense as it is cultured in the humanities and the sciences. Such an epistemological and ontological framework is also developed in this volume.
Cybersemiotics not only builds a bridge between science and culture, it provides a framework that encompasses them both. The cybersemiotic framework offers a platform for a new level of global dialogue between knowledge systems, including a view of science that does not compete with religion but offers the possibility for mutual and fruitful exchange.
About the Author
Søren Brier is a professor in the Department of International Culture and Communication Studies at the Centre for Language, Cognition, and Mentality, Copenhagen Business School.
Asauber said “You are misstating the scenario. If something reminds you of things an intelligence would create, then the only reasonable inference is that an intelligence created it.”
What “intelligences” besides humans do you have direct experience of?
EugeneS said ” I can accept I have one point of reference and I draw a line through that point.
How many points does it take to define a line?
I think I see your problem.
Pater:
We have knowledge of cause-and-effect relationships. That is all we need to make a scientific inference when it comes to the unknown cause of an event
F/N: It seems some basic logic of being is in order as the pretence that we must confine inferences regarding intelligence to embodied human efforts is again being pushed as a rhetorical gambit.
FYI, we are manifestly contingent creatures; that is why it is a staple of Sci Fi, of mythology, of literature etc that we do not exhaust the possibilities for even verbalising embodied intelligence. Thus too, the millions spent and being spent on the search for extra-terrestrial intelligence [SETI] etc. Similarly, beavers and other creatures show that we do not exhaust intelligent capabilities.
So, immediately, the argument is exposed as fundamentally unserious and lacking in basic respect for seriousness in discussion. It fails at outset.
Next, we must observe that there is no good reason to conflate computation on a substrate with responsible, rational freedom to intelligently infer, argue, warrant, believe on such, know, analyse, decide soundly etc. This gives us reason to hold that what we need for our reasoning to be credible transcends embodiment. A conclusion which is hardly new. Here, J B S Haldane, a pioneer of neo-darwinist theory:
More recently, Reppert:
So, already, the objection collapses. But in a context where we routinely see clinging to the absurdity of dismissing inescapable first principles and duties of reasoning despite such objections inevitably depending on what they object to, we should not be surprised or astonished by such a resort. Saddened yes, astonished or caught by surprise, no.
However, we are not finished.
In observing our cells and those of other living creatures, we find D/RNA and associated molecular nanotech execution machinery. This in an observed cosmos where the physics is evidently set up at a deeply isolated operating point that sustains the possibility of C-chem, aqueous medium, cell based life etc. Where, D/RNA is code — a point emphasised at the outset by Crick in his letter to his son Michael of March 1953. That is, we see here a 4-state code based machine language [with about 2 dozen dialects] and molecular nanotech execution machinery using the properties of C, connecting biochemistry with cosmology and theory of computation as well as linguistics. For computer code is a linguistic phenomenon.
And, language is a signature of verbalising intelligence.
Intelligent design, antecedent to the origin of cell based life.
Intelligent design, antecedent to the origin of the observed cosmos with its embedded world of life.
Further to this, intelligent, rational freedom required for our intelligence is inescapably morally governed under the force of known, inescapable first principles and duties of right reason. Which points to the need for an inherently good, utterly wise reality root that we separately know must be a necessary being. Thus, eternal.
For, non-being [the genuine nothing] has no causal powers. Thus were utter non-being ever the case, such would forever obtain. Thus, as a world is, something of independent character always was. Where too, as traversal of a transfinite successive chain of finite temporal-causal chain is an impossible supertask on the logic of structure and quantity, the reality root is finitely remote. There was a beginning to our physical world and to whatever quasi-physical state was antecedent to it. Which also obtains if there are multiple instantiated worlds.
So, we have no good reason to rhetorically confine inference to intelligence to embodied and/or human creatures. Arguments like that are at best ill informed. Worse, too often they reflect refusal to seriously engage other material lines of reasoning such as has yet again been outlined.
But then, we deal with objectors who in too many cases are dismissive towards inescapable, self-evident first principles and duties of right reason.
To such, we must say, rhetoric does not prevail against reason and its evidential base.
KF
KF,
Excellent clarification.
Eugene @ 20 – as has already been pointed out, you’re moving your goalposts from
to
If you’re going to suggest non-human intelligence can do P, then you’re going to have to provide some scientific evidence for the existence of non-human intelligence that can do P.
And no sniggering at the back.
PavelU:
What does Darwinian evolution being true or falsified have to do with this OP?
I did not make any claims regaring it here. Even though it is off-topic, I can say that, yes, it is true. So what?! Can it explain statistically significant levels of functional complexity in the bioshpere? Certainly not. Can it explain the existence of the semiotic triple right in the center of all biological functionality – in the replication system? Certainly not. The semiotic core is a prerequisite for Darwinian evolution, not the other way around. Can Darwinian evolution explain anything? Yes, it explains slight variations of existing functionality in a population. Anything larger – certainly not. The problem of Darwinian evolution is of statistical nature. Darwinian evolution is hopeless in view of huge statistical barrier a system evolving new complex biofunction needs to get over. It includes a series of fixations of a set of necessary mutations that need to happen in a population. The joint probability is so small that it becomes an operational implausibility. Another problem is the genetic drift. There was a very nice OP here called “Gambler’s Ruin is Darwin’s Ruin”, to which I refer for details.
So Darwinian evolution, whatever its actual capabilities, has absolutely nothing to do with the claim of this OP that the Design Hypothesis is scientific.
In the end of the day, do you guys have anything substantial to support your claims? The answer is, no. The flat earth…
BA77
Thank you.
I would not conflate a theological argument with a purely scientific one. Theology is a heavy-weight league, which I would not even touch. The counter-ID argumentation is trivial and inconsequential from the theological standpoint. There is a whole body of patristic literature on the Hexameron which exhibit the concensus patrum on Creation in Six Days. What I am doing here is a very small task, which pales in comparison with the theological argument. But you are right, it is all bluff on their part: – Where did gravity come from? – M-theory. And that is one of the best thinkers from their camp… Pathetic.
😀
Pw #37
Thank you very much for the reference!
Pater K. #38
Kindly see no. 21 on the list in the OP. Is it really difficult to see/read? I don’t know why you think it is a problem.
Like I said in a comment to Nonlin above, animal intelligence is intelligence under the definition accepted in the OP. Do you have a problem accepting the operational definition I discussed above? Please state your reasons. There’s AI also, which is, to a considerable extent, independent of humans. I doubt it will ever reach a singularity point, but it is another question altogether.
You have problems accepting the definition of intelligence I proposed and discussed, fine by me. Do you have an alternative?
Even so, for whatever reason you do not think the definition I am using is unacceptable, I have, at least, one point: multiple examples of human intelligence which can be analysed and used in predictions. You guys do not have even that. You have no case at all.
If you do not agree, kindly provide empirical evidence of statistically significant levels of functional complexity arising by an unguided (‘natural’) process.
Bob OH:
Why do you think so? Can’t I sample human intelligence from different cultures and epochs and draw conclusions based upon that?
What is it that makes you think that human intelligence is not enough to make hypothetical generalizations? What would the real impact of science be if we could not generalize observations onto something not yet seen? Is it not what we do in science all the time?
“What “intelligences” besides humans do you have direct experience of?”
Wait a minute, Pater. You are jumping to assumptions. Do I have to have direct experience of something for it to exist?
If so, there’s a giant universe full of stuff out there to be explored that doesn’t exist.
I don’t think you have thought about this very thoroughly.
Andrew
Asauber #49
That is exactly my point ) What would the purpose of science be if all it could do was describe only what we observed?! The real purpose in science is in making non-trivial predictions about something we haven’t yet observed. A wonderful scientific prediction is gravitational waves: predicted by A. Einstein in 1916, first observed in 2016.
Our interlocutors want to make sure we don’t ‘smuggle in a theological agenda’. Trouble is, they overdo it to the extent that they cut the branch on which they are sitting.
Eugene – if you want to argue that humans designed life, then looking at humans is fine. But if you want to argue that a non-human intelligence did it, then you need to provide some evidence for this non-human intelligence.
You’re right, in science we do generalise, but we generalise from what we know. If we have to add an ad hoc inventions then we have to be able to test the predictions made when this invention is added to our model for the universe.
Bob O’H:
LoL! The DESIGN is such evidence, Bob. But I digress. Why don’t YOU actually ante up and tell us how we can determine if blind and mindless processes did it? Why are you too cowardly to actually make a claim that can be scrutinized?
Your side doesn’t have any models nor testable predictions, Bob. You have nothing but to attack ID with your ignorance. And that hasn’t worked for you.
Bob
Absolutely! ID predictions are based entirely on what we know. What makes you suggest that the generalization on the entire technological base of humanity is an ad-hoc one?!
If you can provide some examples of a false positive for ID, I will seriously question the ID methodology.
Do you have a model whereby a semiotic triple arises by unguided processes?
Eguene @ 50 – yes, we can make predictions of things we haven’t seen (despite News regularly decrying such activities), but to do that we have to make stability assumptions, i.e. that the conditions are sufficiently similar. If you’re saying that humans do stuff, so some form of intelligence might have as well, then the key stability assumption is the presence of such intelligences. These are clearly not human, so that stability assumption breaks down. Which means you have to introduce a new intelligence, without any evidence (either empirical or theoretical) for it. Gravity waves were postulated because there was theoretical evidence that pointed directly to them. ID simply doesn’t have that: at best your evidence points away from something else.
Bob:
Except for the fact that we have the evidence. Bob’s willful ignorance is not an argument.
Strange that IDists have presented the evidence that Bob sez we don’t have.
Based on Newton’s laws and observations that didn’t match, Neptune is a distribution of mass that was was predicted before it was observed.
Based on Newton’s laws and observations that don’t currently match, Dark Matter is a distribution of mass that has been predicted, but not yet observed.
We solve the easier problems sooner, for obvious reasons.
Bob 54
And yet, this is the best one can do given the evidence in all its entirety. Do you have any at least potential alternative? Is it the RNA world, DNA world, metabolic networks, anything else?! Is there any evidence for natural phenomena that could create semantically closed persistent systems, that could organize a functional whole with symbolic constraints, encode their own descriptions into memory as instructions for later reconstruction, including the reconstruction of the interpreter of these instructions? Perhaps there is evidence for some steps towards this functional self-contained self-reproducing persistent whole?
If evidence is for another intelligence, what is the problem really? We know (a) it must have been intelligence and (b) it predates humans. We can potentially derive some knowledge about how, in what order, when, and even for what (engineering) purpose certain things might have been implemented. We can even draw some hypothetical consclusions as to some properties of the Designer.
I can’t see what the problem is. There are things in nature that can’t just be put together happenstantially without foresight.
The criteria for inferring design in biology is, as Michael J. Behe, Professor of Biochemistry at Lehigh University, puts it in his book Darwin ‘ s Black Box:
Derek @ 56 –
Right, but it was observed, because the theory made specific predictions about where it should be. So the astonomers looked for it, and found evidence for it.
Again, dark matter has been postulated because a theory made specific predictions. And although it hasn’t been observed, physicists are looking for it.
And ID makes the specific prediction posted in comment 58. And that is more than blind watchmaker evolution makes.
EugeneS @ 57 –
Somehow I think you know the answer to that.
Indeed. And even though it seems obvious that this should be the next step, I’m repeatedly told that ID isn’t about this.
No, Bob O’H doesn’t have an alternative. And just because ID is NOT about the who, how and when doesn’t mean those are off limits.
Bob clearly cannot think and reason.
“Again, dark matter has been postulated because a theory made specific predictions. And although it hasn’t been observed, physicists are looking for it.”
Well, according to Pater (you know, the undesigned noisy bag of meat), dark matter could never exist because there is/has been no direct experience of it.
Andrew
Bob #61
Thank you very much for an honest answer, seriously.
Well, next is next. The bottom line is, we have something, you guys don’t, unfortunately. The surprising thing is, postulating design, just like postulating dark matter — ok, ‘they are looking for it’ (c) but why ID’ers aren’t allowed to make the same claim, no one knows — leads to an interesting and non-trivial research agenda with testable secondary hypotheses as M. Sherman demonstrates. I wonder why this is.
In fact, the design assumption is tacitly present in the entire enterprise of science, the usual public denials notwithstanding. Otherwise, science simply does not work. I can only do something meaningful if I actually assume that the world outside “me” can be reasoned about in a meaningful way. Why is this so? One of the answers is, because it was designed in a wise and meaningful manner. Because it is designed, I can reverse engineer it, understand how it works and reuse the logic. All of this is because ‘design’ is written all over it.
Notice that none of our interlocutors are really making any kind of valid argument. Rather they are simply dismissing the logical possibility that life could be designed a priori. If they don’t agree that it is possible that life could be designed they need to logically refute that claim. In other words, they need to prove that it’s logically impossible for life to be designed.
Notice all the following quotes are from men who believe that evolution is a mindless and purposeless process. (HT: BA77)
If something appears to be designed isn’t it logically possible it really could be designed?
The main argument for the design then can be stated very simply:
In other words, if it’s logically possible that something could be designed then it’s not illegitimate to consider the possibility that it really might be designed. Indeed, it would be intellectually dishonest not to do so.
Sure it’s logically possible that life was designed. Is that a controversial statement? I haven’t been reading this thread, but where above did someone say this is a logical impossibility?
It is not logically possible that life arose via blind and mindless processes, ie a process that was not trying to do so.
“Sure it’s logically possible that life was designed. Is that a controversial statement?”
Hazel,
So how does the typical Evolutionist logically get from “Sure it’s logically possible that life was designed” to———->”Widening the inference to “intelligent being” is an obvious creationist tactic to include their god in the basket.”
That’s sure sounds like “logically possible” got turned into “creationist tactic”.
Please explain.
Andrew
John_a_designer 65
A very good comment.
re 68: I don’t think I know what you are talking about???
Hazel,
It’s simple. Upthread Evolutionist Pater says “Widening the inference to “intelligent being” is an obvious creationist tactic to include their god in the basket.”
Evolutionist Hazel says: “Sure it’s logically possible that life was designed.”
So is ID a logical possibility (Hazel) or a ploy (Pater)?
Andrew
I can’t speak for Pater, and am not involved in whatever discussion is taking place.
I’m merely responding to logical possibility, which covers a very wide area. Of course it is logically possible that life was designed. That statement itself says virtually nothing. The Hindu myth that the universe is completely destroyed and then recreated slightly differently a billion times a second in a way that appears to show cause-and-effect ii logically possible. As I said in the Einstein thread, it is logically possible that life was design by a divine being who does not care at all about the affairs of humankind. Many things are logically possible.
JAD said that some person or people here were “simply dismissing the logical possibility that life could be designed a priori”, and I said I didn’t think that was reasonable.
A nicer collection of gaping holes? 🙂
Oh, we all know – because IDers aren’t looking for it. There is an amazing amount of resistance to even asking about positive evidence for design.
Bob O’Hara tries to be cute
We are not arguing from ignorance but from what we know
And although Theists and/or Intelligent Design Advocates are often accused by atheists of making ‘God of the Gaps’ style arguments, the fact of the matter is that, as science has progressed, it is the Darwinian Atheist himself who has had to retreat further and further into ‘Materialism/Naturalism of Gaps’ style arguments. i.e. into “Science will figure a materialistic answer out to that mystery someday” style argument.
To clearly illustrate the ‘materialism of the gaps’ style argument that the materialistic/atheistic philosophy makes, the materialistic and Theistic philosophy make, and have made, several contradictory predictions about what type of scientific evidence we will find.
These contradictory predictions, and the evidence we have now found by modern science, can be tested against one another to see if either Atheistic materialism or Theism has made true predictions and/or to see which of those overarching philosophies has had to retreat further and further into ‘gap style arguments’:
As you can see when we remove the artificial imposition of the materialistic philosophy (methodological naturalism), from the scientific method, and look carefully at the predictions of both the materialistic philosophy and the Theistic philosophy, side by side, we find, since Atheistic materialism has made wrong predictions over and over again, the scientific method is very good at pointing us in the direction of Theism as the true explanation. – In fact, modern science is even very good at pointing us to Christianity as the solution to the much sought after ‘theory of everything’
Supplemental note from this morning about the catastrophic epistemological failure inherent within methodological naturalism, in case Bob missed it:
Verse:
I totally agree with Bob O’H on the next step for ID. If ID is truly a science, then it should allow us to make predictions about the world, which we can go out and test. And not high level predictions like “there’s order” or “there has to be a conscious observer”, but fine grain predictions. It is the fine grain predictions that move ID from the philosophy camp to the empirical science camp.
If post 74 could speak for itself,
Eric
I think a prediction is that we will see more evidence of mind as mechanistic explanation for observations going forward. I am starting to see evidence of this in some of the Quantium gravity models where atoms are being modeled as computational devices.
Bob O’H:
Only to the willfully ignorant. Everyone else knows that ID has presented the positive evidence for design.
Eric- ID does make predictions about the world- see comment 58 for a start
Intelligent Design also predicts that living organisms are not reducible to physio-chemical processes. Meaning there is at least one essential, fundamental and vital component that is neither matter nor energy. I say at least one because it seems that living organisms are also more than matter, energy and guiding/ guided information. And yes, it is what most people call a soul or mind. But to me it is inherent to all living organisms.
Gonzalez and Richards predict that if we find technologically capable extraterrestrials, they would have most, if not all, of the factors required for earth to exist as a habitable planet. Theirs is a prediction based on a universe designed for discovery.
Yayyy, Eric @ 75! I’ve been watching ID for about 15 years, and this has always been shouting at me as what ID has to do if it wants to be taken seriously by the scientific community. It seems to be stuck in the “pre-science” phase, without a nice paradigm to use to develop a research programme.
LoL! @ Bob O’H- You are a hypocrite, Bob. You cannot show there is a blind watchmaker research program. You cannot produce any testable predictions born from blind watchmaker evolution. You have nothing but your bluffing cowardice and willful ignorance.
ID has done what has been shouting at you for 15 years. Again, your willful ignorance is neither an argument nor a refutation. Everything you have asked for in order for ID to be taken as science, has been given. And when compared to mainstream evolutionary thought, ID easily surpasses it.
So please buy a vowel and grow up.
Eric #75 and Bob
Kindly familiarize yourselves with the referenced paper, as an example: M. Sherman, Universal Genome and the Origin of Metazoa. It is available in full text for free. If this is not science, what is? The real difference that opens the door to a non-trivial scientific agenda with testable hypotheses substantially different from what we have now, is postulating design upfront. There’s scientific work going on in design as much as there is money for it.
Eugene- Bob O’H is willfully ignorant and won’t accept ID until the Designer comes and explains everything to him. And Eric doesn’t seem to be familiar with what IDists have been writing and saying since the 1980s.
Bob and fellow evos will NEVER ante up and show us how blind watchmaker evolution is science to the exclusion of ID- they will never use blind watchmaker evolution as an example of what science is and ID isn’t.
sitting on an obscure blog claiming you’ve Destroyed Darwin! for the 750th time doesn’t accomplish anything scientific. It might make insecure creationists feel better, but that’s about it.
EugeneS – I think I read that paper a few years ago. I just checked and Web of Science lists 7 citations of it, of which 6 are from linguistics. Front loading seems to have died a death.
Of course, there is money at the Biologic Institute. Their scientific output has hardly been spectacular, and they certainly haven’t done a good job of developing a Design Paradigm, which is what Eric and I want to see.
Bob, you are a hypocrite. You should shut up until you can lead by example, which you never will.
Derek- any objective person knows that blind watchmaker evolution is totally bogus. No one uses it for anything and it doesn’t drive any research. It has never added anything to our knowledge beyond how not to go about science.
Have you noticed how our interlocutors hardly ever answer the basic questions?
For example, some time ago on an earlier thread (8/17/17) I asked the following questions which so far have gone unanswered:
https://uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/neurosurgeon-michael-egnor-why-need-we-pretend-that-the-universe-has-no-purpose/#comment-637966
In other words, as a skeptic, why would I think a naturalist/materialist has a reasonable or viable world view if he cannot answer these questions? Does science really support such a world view? Or is it more the result of personal bias?
If they can’t answer the questions listed above how are they warranted in ruling out ID as a possibility a priori?
@John_a_designer #89
A theistic world view does not answer those questions either, except with fables, handwaving, kicking the can down the road, and pretending to solve the mystery by inventing a bigger mystery.
Pater, nail, head.
Pater:
That is your uneducated opinion, anyway. At least a theistic world view has us on the right path. And it has the evidence and a testable methodology.
hazel- pater missed the nail and banged his thumb
“A theistic world view does not answer those questions either”
Pater,
According to your own blabber, you are just a mindless, noisy bag of meat reacting chemically to environmental stimuli. What do you know of worldviews and questions?
Andrew
Bob
What happened later is not the same as whether it was science or not in the first place. If you had read the paper why did you bring this question up as unsettled? The question whether it is science is pretty much answered I believe. It may or may not be fruitful in your estimation, but it is another matter.
Even if you think ID has not delivered on its promises, I think you should know there were scientific hypotheses which turned out to be wrong. I think one should give them credit for what they are, scientific hypotheses. It is a matter of intellectual honesty.
JAD 89
They keep on saying: “We can’t just now, but we will answer all of those questions in the future!”
It is like saying that a man climbing a tree is getting closer to the Moon. Steady progress…
It just so happened that I was browsing my old blog pages and in there I found an old comment by our friend GP on exactly what we are discussing here. I’ll just reference it here as relevant and to the point.
Can the following be explained by neo-Darwinian theory?
This suggests pre-planning, preadaptation or some kind of genetic pre-programming. In other words, a guided, directed, teleological form of evolution. That’s not exactly what Darwin had in mind.
You can’t salvage Darwinian evolution by arbitrarily smuggling in teleology where ever and whenever you need it. “Pre-adaptation” is evidence of intelligent design.
Single cell Choanoflagellates for some reason are protozoa which have signaling proteins that are necessary in higher multicellular animals including human beings.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/07/080701165050.htm
Frankly this undermines neo-Darwinism. What is the Darwinian explanation for a single celled organism evolving a function that they do not need? From an ID perspective, on the other hand, this looks like a case of pre-planning or pre-adaptation. NS + RV is non-teleological it cannot anticipate or look ahead. Darwinism has to rely on lucky accidents that sometime/somehow happened millions of years in the past. How do you prove that these lucky accidents (and there has to be a long series of them) ever occurred?
PS The findings appear to be similar to those found in the paper Eugene cited earlier, M. Sherman, Universal Genome and the Origin of Metazoa.
“My logic has no flaw apparently. Not that I can see, at any rate.”
Correct.
Derek- Please show the flaw in his logic or shut up. You are being a pathetic troll and that isn’t an argument.
Pater:
Beaver dams remind me of dams human children build in stream. Yet it isn’t a reasonable inference that humans built the beaver dams.
Dereck
I was just trying to be polite ) In the actual fact, the more I read evo-mats the more I wonder, how is it possible at all to spend one’s lifetime studying biology and still not be able to notice the most important thing there is about life, i.e. that it is designed?! This is pathetic.
@John_a-designer #98
Are you sure you are a designer? When you find the concept of a hierarchy so mysterious that you think it must be planned?
What do you design? Clothes? Billboards?
Hydrogen + gravity forms stars without any guidance.
Stars form heavier elements without any planning.
Atoms form molecules which form organic molecules, even in intersteller space, without any planning.
Any time a subunit forms, it has the potential to combine with other subunits to form a larger unit higher up on a hierarchy.
Sure, life is more complex and take more time to form, but the principle of hierarchies forming in nature is
pretty ubiquitous.
EugeneS@ 102
Is there any reason to think that the perception of design in nature is anything other than a form of pareidolia? The only designer of which are aware is ourselves and we have no reason to think we designed ourselves – although it might explain the faulty nature of some aspects of the “design”.
If life on Earth is the outcome of intervention by some extraterrestrial intelligence I would have no problem with that although, to be persuaded, I would like to see some reliable means of distinguishing artifice from natural processes that works with both human and extraterrestrial source material.
If the putative designer is the Christian God then we have to ask, following John Stuart Mill, why an all-powerful, all-knowing God would bother to work within design constraints?
Pater, there are more things in heaven and Earth than are dreamt of in the creationists’ philosophy.
ID’ists do not reject the idea of natural causation a priori. Indeed, much of what we perceive in the natural world can be (indeed should be) explained “naturally.” What we do reject is that natural causes are the only kind of causes that must be used to explain the origin and evolution of life.
For example, in his book Darwin’s Black Box, Michael Behe asks,
Basically Behe is asking, if biochemical complexity (irreducible complexity) evolved by some natural process x, how did it evolve? That is a perfectly legitimate scientific question. Notice that even though in DBB Behe was criticizing Neo-Darwinism he is not ruling out a priori some other mindless natural evolutionary process, “x”, might be able to explain IC.
Behe is simply claiming that at the present there is no known natural process that can explain how irreducibly complex mechanisms and processes originated. If he and other ID’ist are categorically wrong then our critics need to provide the step-by-step-by-step empirical explanation of how they originated, not just speculation and wishful thinking. Unfortunately our regular interlocutors seem to only be able to provide the latter not the former.
Behe made another point which is worth keeping in mind.
In other words, a strongly held metaphysical belief is not a scientific explanation.
So why does Neo-Darwinism persist? I believe it is because of its a-priori ideological or philosophical fit with naturalistic or materialistic world views. Human being are hard wired to believe in something– anything to explain or make some sense of our existence. Unfortunately we also have a strong tendency to believe in a lot of untrue things.
On the other hand, if IC is the result of design, it has to answer the question of how was the design instantiated. If ID wants to have a place at the table it has to find a way to answer questions like that. Once again, one of the primary things science is about is answering the “how” questions.
Or as another example, ID’ists argue that the so-called Cambrian explosion can be better explained by an infusion of design. Okay that is possible. (Of course, I whole heartedly agree because I am very sympathetic to the concept of ID.) But how was the design infused to cause a sudden diversification of body plans? Did the “designer” tinker with the genomes of simpler life forms or were they specially created as some creationists would argue? (The so-called interventionist view.) Or were the new body plans somehow pre-programmed into their progenitors (so-called front loading.) How do you begin to answer such questions that have happened in the distant past? At least the Neo-Darwinists have the pretense of an explanation– though extra emphasis should be put on the word pretense. Can we get them to abandon their theory by declaring it impossible? Isn’t it at least possible, as Behe acknowledges, that there is some other unknown natural explanation “x.”
On the other hand, is saying something is metaphysically possible a scientific explanation? Obviously not. The goal of science is to find some kind of provisional proof or compelling evidence. Why for example was the Large Hadron Collider built at the cost of billions of dollars (how much was it in euros?) Obviously it was because in science mere possibility is not the end of the line. The ultimate quest of science is truth and knowledge. Of course, we need to concede that science will never be able to explain everything.
Seversky
Psalms 33
I find it really hard to see what Mill meant. I do not see any limitation of divine power in something that God created. What kind of limitation is it for God to be able to create everything out of nothing by His Word?!
Mill’s view, in my opinion, is based on scientism, an extreme belief that everything there is can be (potentially) explained by science. I do not hold that view. In fact, I am ready to go with science, or ID for that matter, only up to a point because, as an Orthodox Christian, I can see a limit to what science can do. It cannot explain the miracle of creation. Scientifically, we can only do so much. E.g. no.5 on the list in the OP is just a generalization, i.e. what it amounts to in terms of the properties of material systems. Exactly how this was done by God, we do not know.
Pater 103
Firstly, that is possible as a consequence of parameter fine-tuning.
Secondly, guidance is necessary for complex function. Natural regularities (like the tendency towards states with a minimum of total potential energy) do not result in complex functional structures. Complex function is organization based on pragmatic rules instantiated into physicality.
Pater:
Actually there has to be something else. Hydrogen doesn’t just collapse on itself. And then the heat generated by the collapse would tend to cause, guess what, expansion.
Question-begging. ID would have that as part of the intelligently designed universe that could sustain itself.
Question-begging. See above
That subunits form is evidence for Intelligent Design, Pater. The process of going from nucleotide source code to a polypeptide that folds into a functionally relevant form is evidence for ID, Pater.
Again with your question-begging. ID says it- the hierarchy- was intelligently designed. And Spiegelman’s Monster is evidence against spontaneous generation. Nature tends towards the simple. It is OK with rocks and water.
seversky:
Yes. That “perception”, as you call it, is based on our KNOWLEDGE of cause-and-effect relationships. We have a standing criteria we can test for. And we have a scientific SOP to guide us.
You mean your perceived faulty nature of some aspects of the design.
Infantile. That is the only way to have it continue to work once the Designer(s) went away- hands-off mode. Set it and forget it. Let it run its course.
Why create a perfect universe? Or maybe that was already accomplished an was found to be very boring. So a universe in which there is chaos was intelligently designed, set in motion and given inhabitants to explore it.
ET
That is because we know about beavers and have observed them build dams. If we didn’t have this knowledge, it would certainly be reasonable to infer that humans did it.
Ed George:
Not likely. And definitely not on close inspection. Then there is the fact of no other human artifacts and pointed stumps with obvious teeth marks. You know, evidence, Ed.
Have you ever seen a beaver dam and the surrounding area, Ed?
Ed
Do you agree that building a dam requires intelligence = {foresight, planning, strategy realization}? In the context of the discussion, regarding dams I do not think it matters who exactly built them, beavers or humans. What matters is that they were built by intelligent agents, not by the forces of nature.
ET
In spite of you saying that they look like the dams built by children in streams.
I see them every day. It is very difficult to distinguish between a tree felled by a small hatchet and one felled by a beaver. Especially if you have no idea what a beaver is.
Ed George:
I said Beaver dams remind me of dams human children build in stream.
The messy nature. The use of smaller branches as opposed to the log. Then there is the size of the project to consider
It would be quite the task for a human to make hatchet strikes produce close to perfect stump spikes. Humans tend to hit one side then the opposite. Beavers go around the tree and branches. Humans don’t waste the time.
Ed: “That is because we know about beavers and have observed them build dams.” ET’s only observed beavers on the internet.
ET
Actually, if all you have is a small hatchet, going around the stump is the most effective approach. I dare you to distinguish between a beaver felled tree and a Native American felled tree. Unless, of course, you are suggesting that indigenous Americans aren’t human.
DDM
I’m pretty sure that ET’s dog has placed a net nanny on his internet. 🙂 He has a history of getting in trouble (fired) for posting threats on company computers.
Ed George:
Why would anyone go around the stump? Have you ever used an axe or hatchet, Ed?
Easily done.
My great, great, great, great grandmother was a Micmac.
And you have a long history of being a lying coward and lowlife loser.
Sev @ 104,
>…although it might explain the faulty nature of some aspects of the “design”.
>If the putative designer is the Christian God then we have to ask, following John Stuart Mill, why an all-powerful, all-knowing God would bother to work within design constraints?
I think it bears repeating that any being capable of creating us and our universe could have purposes and self-chosen constraints that we don’t know about, or that we can even conceive of if we were told of them. That will make it hard to get all of our questions answered, but that’s the price of being finite beings.
ET
Yup
Prove it.
And she would be rolling over in her grave if she saw what her great, great, great, great grandson turned out to be.
It is those insightful comments that have endeared you to the ID crowd. And made you the poster-child for those opposed to ID for everyone else. Please don’t change
LoL! @ Ed- The stump is what is left AFTER the tree has been cut down. Only Ed and his relatives would then go around the stump with a hatchet to make it into a point.
OK, Ed, get your Native American and a beaver and I will tell you which one cut down which tree.
The Statue of Liberty was closed on September 11, 2001. It reopened to visitors in August of 2004. In July of 2004 I was given a personal, private tour of the Lady by a Colonel of the NY State Troopers. I got to look out at the hundreds of people looking up and wishing they were me that day.
And then there was that meeting with the top General of the Egyptian Army to discuss secure communications from their bases to their satellite. Or going deep inside Saudi Navy headquarters to install encryption on their land to sea missile communications. Or working with Ericsson in Norway on secure comms for the Patriot missile system deployed in the Mideast. Or perhaps those two weeks in Kuwait and Iraq, right there, in the triangle, helping save lives. Don’t get me started on the two tours to Colombia.
And given the way I deal with lowlifes like you, I am sure all of my ancestors are proud to call me a descendent.
As for my insightful comments- they always follow your pathetic lies- always. You could never support the [SNIP, crude expression] you say and yet you say it anyway. You are a lowlife, Ed. You are a pathological liar. You obviously cannot help it. It’s like Tourette’s.
ET
Sorry, while you were [SNIP, vulgarities] I was working to ensure that our drinking water was safe, our food was safe to eat, our air was safe to breath and our lakes were safe to swim in.
[–> warning given below]
Ed George- Jealous, quote-mining coward and pathological liar. Embarrassed by its ignorance, it tries to inflate its less than mediocre life. Everything Ed says he did could be accomplished merely by Ed’s passing.
ET and Ed, you two are so[SNIP, vulgarities] that the flies are circling. ET, nobody believes your “war” stories. And Ed, nobody believes your holier-than-thou sermons.
Reapers Plague- I am comfortable knowing there are many people who can verify what I said. That means there are many people who know what I said is true.
Those who have truly done great deeds don’t feel the need to tell others.
Hahaha!! That’s going to leave a mark. 🙂
ET and EG, also RP, kindly cut back on insults and vulgarities [EG & RP, I am looking at you]. I have little time to monitor– this being a most inconvenient week — but will take steps to deal with what I find. And no, I do not accept immoral equivalency and derived demands. Just stop, now. KF
PK, 103:
A capital example of argument by ideologically loaded assertion that ignores highly relevant and accessible context. Here, the astonishing fine tuning of the cosmology required to sustain a cosmos that forms stars etc and sets up C-Chemistry, aqueous medium terrestrial planet cell based life. Further, it ignores the information-rich complex coherent organisation required for such life and the only empirically warranted causal source for such FSCO/I, intelligently directed configuration. Where, the config space challenge set by a string of just 500 – 1,000 y/n choices overwhelms the blind search resources of the sol system up to the observed cosmos, by way of making a blind search maximally unlikely to find shorelines of function for hill climbing because the search to space ratio impliues effectively, negligible search. Where, as search is a sample from a set, the space of possible searches for n bits is 2^n in scale, an exponentially harder search challenge so the search for a golden search is far harder.
The FSCO/I challenge is real and will not go away; where Newton was right to say that in explaining what we did not directly observe we are only warranted to explain on causal factors seen to produce the like effect.
I challenge you to read and respond to, say, Luke Barnes, here: https://arxiv.org/pdf/1112.4647.pdf
Just for starters.
If something was impressive enough to catch and hold the attention of a Hoyle (just for one), that should give pause before making breezy assertions as I just highlighted.
KF
RP, BTW, a silly put-down like that shows first that you do not understand the significance of history, and in a context where credibility kills have been attempted, such a summary is appropriate. The notion that in today’s age of agit prop lynch mobs a dignified silence is a good response is dead, killed by the lawfare of kangaroo courts and linked media circuses . . . as we have seen so many times in recent years and currently . . . driven by dishonest quacks posing as journalists and bought and paid for “experts” playing at Alinksky’s version of Hitler’s tactics of big lies, turnabout accusations, scapegoating, piling on, guilt by oft-repeated accusation, strawman caricature twisting,locking out material but inconvenient factors, sheer rudeness, outright gaslighting and the like. Though I do note Paul’s famous I feel like a fool to be forced to stoop to listing accomplishments and sacrifices. Fools who attack the man and deliberately poison the well and the atmosphere. The well we just may all have to drink from. Years ago I outlined the tactical pattern: distractive red herrings dragged away to strawman caricatures soaked in ad hominems and set alight to cloud, poison, confuse and polarise the atmosphere, to frustrate sound discussion that goes towards inconvenient and unwelcome truth. Where, we know whose native language is lies and what an out of control hellish blaze can be set by a spark of deceit or accusation. So, just stop. KF
F/N: a distraction above is Beaver didit. The design inference is that twerdun. That is, on evidence, design as process is the best explanation. Whodunit is an onward question and it is irrelevant to focal purposes to go off on red herring tangents over Beavers, Amerindians with stone axes and the like. That opened up strawman caricatures, ad hominems and atmosphere poisoning. Fallacious, a trifecta of fallacies. KF
EugeneS @ 95 –
(don’t worry, this is nothing to do with beavers)
But if you only have one paper (which is a commentary) from over a decade ago and no follow-up, your sciencing has failed. There isn’t a research programme – no hypotheses are being tested, no experiments are being done, no theory is being developed. There doesn’t seem to be any science being done to advance a research agenda to explain intelligent design.
Reapers:
Except when called out by a pathological liar and lowlife coward, as I was.
Why don’t you TRY to follow along? That seems to be a problem with you.
Apologies kairosfocus. But I had to set the record straight.
Bob O’H:
Your opinion is meaningless and your side doesn’t even have that, loser.
BO’H: It seems you are still in ignorance on the actual publication record. Pardon a chunck, which is up to 3 years ago, it was pointelss to keep going:
KF
Bob: “There doesn’t seem to be any science being done to advance a research agenda to explain intelligent design.”
Sure, biologists publish like 1300 research papers every day, because they’re unscientific atheist losers. Real Science is writing repetitive manifestoes and bible verses.
Derek:
And not one supports the claims of blind watchmaker evolution. You must be proud to be an equivocating coward.
Bob
Surely there is more that just one paper. I thought you would know what it takes to falsify a general statement.
Derek,
In USSR every scientific publication even in particle physics needed to quote the decisions of the previous Communist Party Congress. It does not mean that it is the Marxist ideology that got us first into space.
@DerekDiMarco #105
Derek said “Pater, there are more things in heaven and Earth than are dreamt of in the creationists’ philosophy.”
Indeed. Like physics, chemistry, biology, archaeology, paleontology, …..
Umm, physics, chemistry, and biology all provide evidence for and support Intelligent Design.
@Pater: don’t forget astronomy. That’s def one they could have used. 😛
Astronomy? Read “the Privileged Planet”- astronomy is in ID’s arsenal, too.
From a different and well forgotten thread:
The best arguments against ID are delivered by evolutionary biologists working in the Institute for Protein Design.
…
Our flat earth theory is quickly gaining supporters around the globe.
I think I must have said that already a while ago, but a lot of our problems are to do with a lack of classical education. I have live journal friends who sometimes smile at something I, as an engineer, put forward as a question. University education should really include heavy philosophy stuff even for engineering students, if we really want them to start thinking.
Many of our opponents’ philosophical conundrums which as they think give them reason to dismiss design are like childish pranks compared to questions that great minds of the past were dealing with. Miller, Dawkins, and others are just poor philosophers and are only popular because the overall level of classical education globally is miserable. Answers for those who are looking for them are already out there in the Scripture and in the Ecclesiastical Tradition (particularly, in the writings of the fathers). Can people like Dawkins or Hawking say anything new?! Gravity out of M-theory… Pathetic.
One of the so-called icons of irreducible complexity (IC) is the bacterium flagellum. However, there other perhaps even better examples of IC. In my opinion, prokaryote DNA replication is a far more daunting problem for the Darwinist. However, instead of one molecular machine, like the flagellum, you have several interacting machines acting in a coordinated manner. This still fits Behe’s definition of IC as being “a single system which is composed of several interacting parts, and where the removal of any one of the parts causes the system to cease functioning.”
For example, to start replication in prokaryote DNA you need an initiation enzyme which creates a replication bubble where another enzyme called helicase attaches itself and begins, like a zipper, to unbind the two complimentary strands of DNA double helix. Another enzyme called primase creates another starting point (a primer) on both of the separated strands known as the 5’ and 3’ or leading and lagging strands. DNA polymerase III uses this primer– actually a short strand of RNA– and adds the complementary nucleobases (A to T, T to A, C to G, G to C) to the single parent strand. In a nutshell, helicase divides one double stranded DNA helix into two single “parent” or template stands to which complimentary nucleotides are added by pol III and the result is two identical double stranded DNA helixes.
Of course, it is somewhat more complicated than that. (Please watch the first video below.) For example, as helicase unbinds the two strands of the double helix, which are wrapped around each other to begin with, there is a tendency for tangling to occur as a result of the process. Another enzyme called gyrase (or topoisomerase II) is needed to prevent this tangling from occurring. Another problem is that the bases for the lagging strand must added discontinuously which results in short segments know as Okazaki fragments. These fragments must eventually be joined back together by an enzyme known as ligase. (We could also discuss error correction which is another part of the replication process.)
Here are a few videos which describe the process in more detail.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O3v04spjnEg&t=2s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bePPQpoVUpM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Ha9nppnwOc
While it’s true that the flagellum is irreducibly complex it is not essential for life itself. There are a number of single celled organism that exist without flagella. However, life cannot exist without DNA replication (nor transcription, translation etc.) Furthermore, with DNA replication the Darwinist cannot kick the can down the road any further. DNA replication in prokaryotes is as far as you can go and then you are confronted with the proverbial chicken or egg problem. DNA is necessary to create the proteins which are used in its own replication. For example, the helicase which is absolutely essential for DNA replication is specified in the DNA code which it replicates. How did that even get started? Maybe one of our know-it-all interlocutors can tell us.
The problem with the Darwinian approach is not scientific; it is philosophical. The people committed to this approach believe in it because they believe that natural causes are the ultimate explanation for their existence. However, science has not proven such a world view to be true. (That’s not something science can do.) So ironically, whatever they believe, they believe it by faith.
A testimonial of a school teacher in Russia (I think the trend is really global).
Twenty years ago I would ask my class a question and leave them with books to find an answer to it. I was sure that they would have found it when I returned. Ten years ago the top 5% of the class could not use the book but surfed the internet to find the answer. Now the top 5% of the class cannot even surf the internet but they fail to find it if google does not have a link to it. The problem is, children can no longer use a book even if it is there on the table. They can’t find in the book what they are after.
The general public are satisfied with really stupid answers to who are we, how did we come about, what is the meaning in life. That is the aftermath of Darwinist rule in society.
The problem that is in front of naturalists is gigantic: to explain how the first ever interdependent triple of configurations of matter came into being in the world where this triple was nowhere else to be found. This triple is, the sign (token), the interpretant and the referent.
Where did the first ever instruction and a processor that could execute it, come from? Neither the instruction nor the processor has any sense one without the other, and both of them need the middle bit, i.e. the agreed protocol, in order to function together as a unified whole.
In the naturalist’s kit there are simply no adequate tools for the task. There are not many people amongst ardent internet defenders of naturalism who really understand what the problem is, unfortunately.
ET: “The Statue of Liberty was closed on September 11, 2001. It reopened to visitors in August of 2004. In July of 2004 I was given a personal, private tour of the Lady by a Colonel of the NY State Troopers. I got to look out at the hundreds of people looking up and wishing they were me that day.
And then there was that meeting with the top General of the Egyptian Army to discuss secure communications from their bases to their satellite. Or going deep inside Saudi Navy headquarters to install encryption on their land to sea missile communications. Or working with Ericsson in Norway on secure comms for the Patriot missile system deployed in the Mideast. Or perhaps those two weeks in Kuwait and Iraq, right there, in the triangle, helping save lives. Don’t get me started on the two tours to Colombia.”
Don’t forget when you were a Marine Biologist named Sharon.
Matspirit:
Only in the minds of willfully ignorant and desperate trolls. 😛
Pardon me. Retired Marine Biologist named Sharon.
You want a retired marine biologist named Sharon to pardon you?
MS & ET, pointless tangent. Kindly stop. KF
PS: It is highly significant to see the reactions and rhetorical stunts that evade the absolutely serious issues being posed. Given UD’s status as always under extremely hostile scrutiny, you can take it to the bank that YS has hit home hard with his argument.
The following is something that I have written about couple times before, on other threads, which I think is worth is repeating here, again.
https://uncommondescent.com/evolution/is-ool-part-of-darwinian-evolution/#comment-634766
The whole thread by Eric Andersen, is not very long and IMO is worth reading. Notice how quickly our regular interlocutors bailed out of the discussion. But at least some of them weighted in.
.
With nothing meaningful to say, the ID critics on this thread dragged the bottom of the bucket once again; complaining that ES could not use human-made intelligent artifacts as a marker of design, because (in their words):
Snappy logic, isn’t it? It was then followed by:
This tag-team of logical insight was provided by Bob and PK in comments #19 and #21.
Then in comment #26, their “objections” were gutted and put into proper perspective:
You might ask: What was their response to this undeniable, well-documented truth of the matter?
Answer: Absolutely nothing, of course. Nothing whatsoever.
In comment #38, PK returned without missing a beat, continuing on as if nothing had been said. In other words, he responded to documented reality by simply ignoring it.
Then in comment #43, Bob returned to double-down for himself, suggesting that one cannot infer a non-human intelligence unless one first has independent knowledge of that non-human intelligence – again, he merely proceeds as if nothing whatsoever had been said.
They both simply ignored the actual reality of the matter. This is standard fare for internet critics on UD and elsewhere. To understand their game in as few words as possible: they don’t care, and it doesn’t matter.
The notion that their objections stem from logic and reason is laughable.
UB, a sobering summary. Objectors need to answer, and also to my 41 https://uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/guest-post-dr-ys-intelligent-design-and-arguments-against-it/#comment-687761 KF
KF, UB.
We have evidence that it is possible to get five words of sense spoken together even from people like Dawkins…
The only problem I have with what he says there is, to me, believing that ‘little green men’ did it is a lot less meaningful than God did it. I find the latter far more consequential in terms of who I am and what I should live for, and, lastly, far more intellectually satisfying.
.
None of objectors upthread appear to be willing to return and address the issue they so clearly ignored at the time. Not surprising.
______________________
A factual aside: IF a distinct narrow-band radio signal was ever to be received by SETI, they indicate that they would first confirm that the signal was not an earth-bound communication being received by mistake, and upon that confirmation, they would then inform the whole world of their success as quickly and widely as possible.
Of course, human nature being what it is, there would inevitably be questions about the validity of the conclusion, and the very first thing that SETI scientists would do to address those concerns is to begin studying the structure of the signal for any indications of semiotic content – the very thing already measured and described in genetic translation. If they indeed found such content, all doubts about the veracity of their claims would be immediately and forever extinguished. So, the very thing that would confirm SETI beyond any reasonable doubt whatsoever, is the very thing that ID proponents point to inside the cell — and also the very thing that materialist ideologue refuse to acknowledge at all costs.
This is the unambiguous fact of the matter — that is, facts and reason do not matter in the modern defense of materialism — and the corrosive side effects of this can be seen virtually every day here on UD and elsewhere.
UB, yes. The reactions we have seen to objectivity, first principles and duties of reason, mathematics, aesthetics etc show that the reaction we have seen to the design inference is not isolated. There is a deep rooted rejection of reason afoot in today’s world that is closely connected to evolutionary materialistic scientism and fellow traveller ideologies. KF
UB and KF,
Are you expecting valid evidence based arguments from any of our interlocutors? I’m not. I don’t think any of them have any arguments. But I could still be wrong, though I very seriously doubt that.
JAD, busy week, Election. One hopes that participants will respect first principles and first duties of right reason, however, the persistent manifestation of breakdowns here itself tells a story. As such principles are now too often not explored seriously, that too is worth doing. And, we have cause to declare epistemic independence. Their selective, undue hyperskepticism and breakdown of rational conduct should not hamper our confident knowledge. KF
Here’s a scientific paper that strongly supports Darwinian RV+NS macroevolution
https://dev.biologists.org/content/145/14/dev143818
I’m sure a highly educated Russian professional like Zhenya will understand and accept this, because he seems to be a careful and thorough reader.
Dr YS
Check this out:
https://lyricstranslate.com/en/%D1%82%D1%8B-%D0%B8%D0%BB%D0%B8-%D1%8F-ty-ili-ja-you-or-me.html
I heard it first time at their live concert in Sochi in the summer vacation of 1973.
Back then they were not heard or seen in the official radio/tv because they were not patriotic like “moi adres nie dom i nie ulitsa…” nor romantic like “nie povtaryayetsa takoe nikogda” (piervaya liubov) or “dlia menya niet tebya prekrasniei” not were naively silly like “kak prekrasyen etot mir posmotri”
On the contrary their lyrics were a mirror of rough reality which could not be acceptable to the establishment.
But apparently they were allowed into the mainstream media after glasnost took over in the second half of the ‘80s?
By then I wasn’t there anymore.
PavelU here are the concluding remarks of your cited paper:
You do realize that they are are honestly admitting they have no clue how these things came to be nor how they currently operate don’t you?
i.e. This paper is in fact evidence for Intelligent Design PavelU!
PavelU, watch this video, it might just help you from embarrassing yourself like this again:
Here’s an interview with scientists providing extensive evidences that clearly support Darwinian macroevolutionary theory:
https://dev.biologists.org/content/146/20/dev184705
Here’s another recent paper (one of many) that falsifies ID:
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/673798v1
Can ID shows at least one paper that supports it?
Uh PavelU, again yout papers do NOT show what you claim they do but are in fact evidence for ID:
First paper:
Second paper
I’m embarrassed for you PavelU, both those papers support ID, not Darwinian evolution as you falsely imagine.
Since you do not even understand what the papers you are citing are actually saying, there is little hope you will understand this following video, but anyways,,,
This paper shows how science has resolved the OOL problem:
https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/full/10.1098/rsta.2016.0337
Why do ID proponents keep talking about OOL as if it remained still unresolved?
Here’s another big confirmation of Darwinian macroevolution including OOL. This is a major blow to ID:
https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsif.2018.0159
PavelU, again the paper does NOT say what you claim it does. They confirmed nothing. Much less a ‘big confirmation’. They honestly admitted that nobody knows how life originated, and then ‘speculate’ as to how it might be accomplished using the ‘unorthodox platform of compositional information.’ (Which is dangerously close to admitting the need for an intelligent agent to impart information into the first self-replicating system)
BA77,
thanks for correctly addressing PavelU’s nonsense and for the interesting information you share. This guy has a major reading comprehension issue he should take care of ASAP. He cites papers that point in the opposite direction than he says. His comments are so ridiculous that I feel sorry for the poor guy. He either doesn’t get the memos or doesn’t read them. Whatever it is, the guy is pathetically confused. He must wake up and smell the freshly brewed coffee instead of keeping making a clown of himself.
I agree with BA77 that PavelU has cited very interesting papers which clearly confirm the enormous functional complexity found in the biological systems, which could only be designed according to the available empirical evidences. If he would have just provided the links without adding the nonsense he wrote, one could have easily taken him as a strong ID proponent.
You do realize the questions this raises? If the complexity we observe cannot arise from simple beginnings but can only be explained as the product of intelligent design it implies that the designer must be more complex than its designs since we have ruled out simpler origins. In that case, the origin of the intelligent designer must be an even more complex designer which leaves us staring at either an infinite regress of designers or an infinite and eternal designer.that is without cause. Yet, while we observe great complexity in the universe, which certainly demands explanation, we do not see anything that is without cause, that is infinite and eternal. The only reason to consider the possibility of an uncaused designer is if you reject the possibility of abiogenesis, which we are not yet in a position to do. In fact, although the question is still unresolved. given the papers PavelU has cited, it would seem that the latter possibility is a little more likely.
H’mm: “Life is defined as what replicates and evolves” — rather begs the question, methinks. KF
Sev,
nope. The error was pointed out nearly 400 years ago. Here is Monadology, 17, Leibniz:
You are conflating rational contemplation with computation when the latter — a dynamic-stochastic, mechanical, non inferential, non rational, GIGO limited process — is categorically different.
KF
Here’s a video that confirms Darwinian macroevolution
https://youtu.be/zp8u9QN2Ghk
PavelU, LOL,,, microtubules? You are kidding right?
After years of debate between S. Hameroff, R. Penrose, and Darwinian materialists, researchers have finally shown microtubules to belong to the world of quantum mechanics, not to the Darwinian world of reductive materialism. In other words, with your Darwinian materialism you are not even on the correct theoretical foundation in order to properly understand microtubules in the first place:
I re-recomend this video to you so that you might stop embarrassing yourself like this:
We are in the position to reject the possibility of abiogenesis via spontaneous generation. We can do so as easily as we can reject the possibility of the spontaneous generation of Stonehenge. Given Spiegelman’s Monster we can reject the possibility of replicating molecules being a precursor to the intricate complexity that embodies a minimal living organism.
Strawman Alert:
First you have to demonstrate there was an origin of the intelligent designer. Until then science says we work with what we have. I know that you don’t like that because when we work with what we have it screams of an intelligent design. And that is solidified by your a/ mat total failure to be able to account for it
Here’s an interesting explanation of how scientists have figured out all the mechanisms of the nervous system, thus proving that evolution can produce such a system because it isn’t as complex as ID proponents claim:
https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fgene.2018.00308/full
Here’s another interesting explanation of how scientists have figured out all the mechanisms of the nervous system, thus proving that evolution can produce such a system because it isn’t as complex as ID proponents claim:
https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnmol.2019.00016/full
PavelU- It is impossible for blind and mindless processes to produce functioning nerves. A functioning nervous system is the epitome of intelligent engineering.
PavelU. again, directly contrary to what you claim, your papers falsify reductive materialism, and thus, since Darwinian evolution is based on reductive materialism , falsify Darwinian evolution in the process,
first paper,
Conclusion and Future Direction
Epigenetic changes are accompanied by the reconstruction of nuclear architecture.
Second paper,
Introduction
Neuronal Ca2+-signaling is based on spatio-temporal gradients called Ca2+ waves, spikes, transients and puffs. The strict segmentation of such gradients allows for complex signaling events at the micro- and even nanoscale (Berridge et al., 2003). Consequently, the huge variety of Ca2+-evoked processes require a highly specialized machinery leading to alterations in cellular functions and Ca2+ sensor proteins from the calmodulin (CaM) family are instrumental in this regard.
Please at least try to read and understand some of what the papers are actually saying before you make such embarrassing unsubstantiated claims about them.
i.e. The papers you are citing actually support Intelligent Design!
PU, pardon but the whole of the above is essentially misdirected. The living cell uses coded instructions and associated execution machinery to carry out its core operations; something that was demonstrated through multiple Nobel Prize winning work 5 – 7 decades ago. genetic engineering is now a commonplace. We know that we are looking at machine language, with about 2 dozen variants in the code, dialects, rather like BASIC notoriously had. Such is inherently a linguistic phenomenon antecedent to biology. The use of complex verbal language (including machine code) is already a strong sign of intelligent design and this is deeply reinforced by the associated FSCO/I rich molecular nanotech execution machinery. There is absolutely no empirically well founded reason to believe that blind chance and/or mechanical necessity can account for such. so strong is this that we may freely point to the likes of Lewonyin’s cat out of the bag comment of 1997 and many others like that and say, stop the ideological gaslighting, please; enough is enough. KF
PavelU
Thanks for the lyrics ) Their music (“Machina Vremeni”, the “Time machine”) does not appeal to me, to be honest, but anyway, thanks ))
As regards macro evo, I do not think it is relevant to the OP. However, I think that it is greatly exaggerated. On average, Darwinian evolution does not work. Random selection (drift) is acting against natural selection (you may want to check the OP by scordova called “Gambler’s ruin is Darwin’s ruin” here at UD). Multiple positive mutations weaken each other’s selective advantage. However, there appear to be corner cases that can demonstrate Darwinian evolution (tinkering with an already existing function).
It seems to me that a general rule is, for anything non-trivial in this world you need to have guidance and forethought.
PavelU and all other readers who believe in the power of evolution to create statistically significant levels of functional novelty:
I suggest you try to answer the following question:
There is a school of thought that propagates the view that all that was necessary to cause our world to appear was gravity. So with this particular view in mind, do you really think that gravity can account for how you divide your physical computer disk into logical disks?