Karsten Pultz, author of Exit Evolution, responds to an anti-ID prof at the University of Oslo:
In a recent article, “Evolutionary flaws disprove the theory of intelligent design” (Glenn-Peter Sætre, Centre for Ecological and Evolutionary Synthesis, Titan.uio.no, March 11, 2020) the main argument is that bad design in nature makes it impossible to believe in intelligent design. While evolution has produced marvels it has also produced a number of examples of bad construction (it always makes me smile when the neo-Darwinists use words like “construction”).
The logic behind the examples of bad design as evidence against ID, is that if a feature in nature has flaws, it cannot have been intelligently designed. The same logic, applied to the old Jaguar I once owned, would suggest that because it had mechanical design flaws, it could not have been intelligently designed and must necessarily be a product of random processes.
Because the human birth canal is narrow, because food, water and air follow the same route before they split into either the stomach or the lungs, and because we have wisdom teeth, life must be the product of random mutation and natural selection. A designer would never have made mistakes that would make it dangerous to eat and for women to give birth, therefore evolution is a fact.
I have previously commented on on a Danish site on the exact same bogus arguments raised by a Danish biologist, Jan Gruwier Larsen, in his book Uintelligent Design (Un-intelligent Design). My counterargument was and still is that any intelligently designed apparatus will necessarily contain engineeringcompromises. Within the material world it is not possible to make any contraption flawless, especially if the task is to make machinery that can perform multiple functions. Oddly enough, he made the point that women’s narrow birth canals are the compromise that enables women to also be good runners. His argument invalidates itself because an engineer would need to make the exact same compromises. There are constraints in the physical world, and the result will be engineering compromises no matter whether you adhere to natural selection acting on random mutation or intelligent design.
The point the neo-Darwinists are making when addressing the issue of so called bad design is this: We cannot ourselves produce living organisms, but if we could, we would have done a better job because we are intelligent designers.
Of course nothing can speak to the soft-hearted as well as this Norwegian article does, harping on the fact that women in the Third World die more often while giving birth. And of course that is not a valid argument against ID. First of all it’s not a question to raise in the field of biology, since it is a philosophical question whether the designer was incompetent, evil, or if something in the creation went wrong at some point. The argument seems like that of a child who reasons that, because life is hard, there is no God.
I am baffled that these arguments come from a professor, Glenn-Peter Sætre who is, as it says, one of Norway’s most prominent evolutionary scientists. It seems rather unintelligent to play on emotions in an argumentation regarding the causal explanation for life.
Imagine if ID folk did the same, arguing that because flowers are beautiful they must have been created by God. It’s articles like this that make it obvious that the academics who adhere to materialism have stopped doing science. In this the 21st century, it’s the ID researchers who actually are doing science.
Because I have some connection with the ID movement in Norway, I can see clearly see that this attack ont ID is fueled by fear of the thriving Norwegian ID community. Recently a foundation, BioCosmos, was established with the help of a generous donation by a Norwegian shipowner. BioCosmos is meant to help promote ID and, to judge from this reaction, it is beginning to look like a real threat to the neo-Darwinian paradigm.
See also: Dane Karsten Pultz: ID Is Now Thriving In Europe
Yup. In engineering the best and most elegant designs take advantage of negative feedback to accomplish all desired tasks with one part. Brute force designs and first prototypes usually have lots of separate pieces, with each piece serving its own function. God doesn’t do brute force design.
My favorite elegant design is the Willson automatic buoy, which uses nothing but the surrounding seawater to control its light. It was able to operate without maintenance for a year at a time. Lifelike.
http://polistrasmill.blogspot......ation.html
There’s a second factor in Nature that doesn’t have an obvious analogy in machines. God wants us to WORK for our living, and wants every single part of our bodies, including the gut biome, to WORK for its living. Narrow canals have to WORK harder to send the baby into the world.
When we try to “simplify” life with preprocessed food and preprocessed perception, we halt the WORK of our innards, and the result is riots and rebellions. (Hmm. Sounds familiar right now.)
I do not sweat the pseudo-scientific label that is always placed on intelligent design.
I just refer to materialism as a pseudo-scientific philosophy, pointless to argue.
As I do with evolutionary psychology.
Design has ALWAYS been recognised.
“ So the servants of the householder came and said unto him, Sir, didst not thou sow good seed in thy field? From whence then hath it tares?”
He replied, “An enemy hath done this.”
And the servants didn’t say, “No, if it was an enemy, he would have fired your barn, and scattered salt, and broken your fence to allow sheep and goats in,.”
This sort of argument (“bad design”) assumes that the Designer somehow should have cared for near-perfect outcome for each and every creature on Earth. I am not sure why they make such an assumption. Quite the opposite, given the enormous complexity and variety of life, the underlying design process is likely “quick and dirty”. My favorite analogy is children in elementary school designing animals as part of their art class, those getting grades above C are rewarded with having their designs compiled into a genome to then be added to Earth ecosystem. Would one then still expect perfectly designed animals?
Eugene: Quite the opposite, given the enormous complexity and variety of life, the underlying design process is likely “quick and dirty”. My favorite analogy is children in elementary school designing animals as part of their art class, those getting grades above C are rewarded with having their designs compiled into a genome to then be added to Earth ecosystem. Would one then still expect perfectly designed animals?
I quite like the image of a room full of alien children designing living creatures for Earth. I wonder who came up with the platypus?
I agree, it’s a stronger argument against creationism than ID.
Bob O’H and others like to humanize God, which is strange for people who supposedly do not believe in God. They do not look at the universe as Einstein did. He made it clear the more he studied the universe the more he believed in God. Einstein was raised by atheist and sent to secular schools. There is nothing in his upbringing that he would have used to come to the conclusion that God does exist.
How many people understand quantum entanglement? There are maybe a dozen in the world who can look at it and not get a headache. These are the brightest in their field and none of them come close to Einstein’s genius. The intellect that created the universe is far beyond even Einstein and should not be humanized.
Too funny, taking all the genius of all the scientists put together on earth, and setting them to the task of building a single butterfly wing, will never produce a single butterfly wing. And yet, with no clue of just how clueless they are, Darwinists feel free to say that the design that they have no hope of ever reproducing, is somehow flawed. There is a ‘ugly’ flaw in all of this alright. It is the ‘ugly’ flaw of the unmitigated hubris that Darwinists constantly display in the face of something that they, apparently, do not even have the faintest clue of beginning to understand.
When evos start designing better organisms I will start listening to their “bad design” arguments. Until then all they have is their ignorance and desperation.
Bob O’H:
Why? Creation does NOT call for a perfect Creation. Creation doesn’t say that entropy doesn’t happen.
So what is your reasoning, Bob O’H?
Not only do these “bad design” arguers make unwarranted assumptions, place themselves in judgement over creation, and ignore engineering design tradeoffs, but they also ignore two other effects:
First, you cannot judge a design if you don’t know the specifications and constraints that directed the design: size, cost, complexity, environmental conditions, development time, and so on. There is no such thing as a “perfect design”, only one that optimally meets the requirements. If you don’t know all the requirements, you cannot judge the resulting design!
Second, there has been devolution since the original designs were put in place somewhere back in time. Take the loss of the human ability to make vitamin C, for example. As Michael Behe clearly shows in Darwin Devolves, genomes tend to lose information, and genes break over the generations – the true results of random mutation and natural selection.
JVL
I quite like the image of a room full of alien children designing living creatures for Earth. I wonder who came up with the platypus?
A committee.
Can’t the argument cut both ways? If an evolutionary outcome was so bad, wouldn’t natural selection have eliminated it by now?
If you can cite examples of what is judged to be good design as evidence for an intelligent designer then you have to allow examples of what is arguably bad design as evidence against the existence of such a being. They are not strong arguments in either case, however, in the case of an undefined designer since we have no way of knowing his/hers/its capabilities and limitations.
It’s an appeal to ignorance, plain and simple. We don’t make these things, we don’t have the optimization landscape. Anyone who has done any engineering knows there are tradeoffs everywhere, and even perfect designs will have points of failure. Offering magical hypotheticals that won’t be tested or even drawn up does nothing in a discussion about reality.
ET @ 9 – there’s a big difference between a prefect creation and a collection of cock-ups, some of which could easily be avoided.
Bob O’H, you are welcome to your opinion. Just remember that is all it is. YOU could never do any better. Never.
seversky:
The mechanisms of unguided evolution can produce a bad design. But only from a once good design. Meaning what unguided processes can do is damage and deform what already exists.
Sheer stupidity. How do we know that the ancients were capable of designing and building the Antikythera Mechanism? We found it!. We know what past designers were capable of by the things they left behind for us to discover.
Why are evos so ignorant of that?
The use of the term “design” is confused.
Design = created for a purpose, to fulfill an idea or function. A plan.
In that view, there is just Design or Chance. A thing is designed or not. To say “good design” is irrelevant. The child creating with Legos, showed “Design”. It’s not Chance.
The other meaning of the term Design gets thrown into the conversation as a diversion.
Design – style. Elegant pattern. Its what a Graphic Designer does. “The building has a beautiful Design”.
That definition is used to replace the other one and so the conversation is about “good design or bad design”. But “bad design” is Design. Its a functional process. An organism replicates, seeks nutrition, moves towards or away from, seeks to preserve life. That is all purposeful action – Design.
The fact that living organisms die – why not just use that as an example of “bad design”? Wouldn’t a perfect design be that all organisms have god-like powers and are immortal beings?
People who made a career admiring and studying Darwin and his disciples are usually not capable of grasping basic philosophical concepts. It’s no surprise when Darwinists make the stupidest arguments, and are never able to recognize when they’ve been refuted.
Question for evolutionists: can you name one “evidence for evolution” that is not based on the fallacy of naturalism? Below are the details.
First the observation. From the time of the hypothetical last divergence point until today, evolution has been changing all the existing species for many millions of years. Humans and chimps for more than 5 myr. Lemurs 40 myr. Fig Wasps 60 myr. Rats, crocodiles, coelacanths and nautiluses for 100, 200, 350 and 500 myr respectively. Yet, not a single organism within a species has been observed that would even start transforming the pre-existing organs into functionally distinct ones, let alone developing a myriad of de novo ones like in the imaginary scenarios of whale evolution and Cambrian explosion that lasted just 10-15 myr. So scientifically, the observable evolution is creatively as powerless as a stone, regardless of time. Logically it follows, there must be some unobservable designer.**
And now the “evidences for evolution”. ERVs for example, can simply mean that the designer upgraded DNAs of preexisting species to get novel species instead of creating DNAs from scratch for every new species. Fosil record (whale for example) can mean that the designer decided to upgrade the DNA of a land animal to see what kind of aquatic animal will turn out. Etc.,etc. So the “evidences for evolution” are not actually “evidences” but logical fallacies. All are based on a single philosophical premise, and that is: “only humanly observable, that is natural, causes can exist”. If only such causes can exist, then by simple philosophical fiat ERVs or land-aquatic animal transition was due to the evolutionary causes, as they are “humanly observable”. But as this premise was falsified by the observation that such causes are creatively powerless, then what evidences are there for evolution that is not based on the fallacy of naturalism?
**Regarding the designer from a logical point of view. If the snail in front of you cannot see you, does it mean you don’t exist? Or to put it another way. If all people would be blind, and we would never detect (discover) light, does it mean the light doesn’t exist? Well, of course not. The reality is not depended on whether humans can detect it. So just because people’s detecting devices (bio-organs or artificial equipment) cannot detect the designer, that doesn’t mean he is nonexistent. It is rational to assume that our detecting devices are simply not capable to detect the type of stimuli that make up the designer the same as blind people are not capable to detect light with their ears or nose.
Forexhr @ 19
What is the “fallacy of naturalism”?
The changes you are describing would take place over hundreds of thousands or even millions of years. Human science has only been researching this for two or three hundred years. What would you expect to see over that timescale?
Exactly, You can explain anything by just saying the Designer/God did it. Except that it doesn't. When you ask science for an explanation you are expecting an explanation of "how". All you offer as an alternative is a possible "who".
If you can’t observe something, even indirectly, how do you know it exists? I’d like to believe in The Force but, sadly, there is no evidence that something like that is out there even a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away.
What do you mean by “creatively powerless”?
There is a significant amount of evidence that living things can and do change over time in response to environmental pressures. There are changes in the genome which are largely random with respect to the survival of the organism That is basically all that is required for us to infer evolution occurs and it is what we observe. We don’t observe the handiwork of an extraterrestrial designer or anyone’s God.
It doesn’t mean such a being exists either. If you want to persuade me or anyone else that it does then the burden of proof is with you to support your claim.
That may be true but you’ll need to provide more than just a possibility to persuade others that it is actually true.
seversky:
You don’t even know if they are possible.
Slight changes. Nothing that suggests that prokaryotes could have evolved into eukaryotes.
And there are changes that are not random with respect to survival.
Compared to what you have, ID has far exceeded your demand.
Again, compared to what you have, ID easily meets your demand.
Your willful ignorance, question-begging and equivocation are all duly noted.
Seversky at 20 asks,,,
I don’t know what Forexhr will answer, but the “fallacy of naturalism” for me is the unfounded and self refuting belief that science MUST BE based upon the philosophy of naturalism, i.e. methodological naturalism.
Seversky goes on,
I would expect to see at least some substantiating evidence for Darwinism in microbes, especially on the molecular level,
Seversky goes on,
The argument that Seversky is making here is generally known as the ‘God of gaps’ fallacy,
Seversky goes on,
Yet Seversky does have evidence for the reality of ‘the force’. Namely, the computer sitting right in front of Seversky. Although immaterial information and immaterial mind are not directly observable by our physical eyes, their reality can both be inferred from the effects that they bring about. For instance, the computer sitting right in front of Seversky:
Seversky then asks,
My guess would be that he means exactly what he says, unguided material processes have never been observed to created anything, ZILCH, NADA,,,, not one protein/gene. Not one molecular machine, not anything,
Seversky goes on,
First, DNA changing in response to environmental influences, in and of itself, falsifies Darwinian presupposition that changes in the genome should be entirely random,
Secondly, ‘directed mutations’ in and of themselves, all by their lonesome, directly falsifies the primary Darwinian presupposition that mutations are ‘supposedly’ completely random occurrences.
Seversky then states,
Who is this ‘we’ that you keep referring to?
Some researchers have apparently taken Crick’s suggestion that, “Our DNA was encoded with messages from that other civilization”, seriously and they now claim to have detected an Intelligently Designed extraterrestrial ‘WOW signal’ in DNA
Seversky then states,
Well, if one is to ever ‘see’ evidence for God, it might greatly facilitate matters if atheists did not automatically assume this following posture whenever they supposedly examine the evidence for God in an unbiased fashion,
Seversky goes on
Actually God did give you a ‘detector’ to detect his handiwork. (And even an iphone to communicate with Him via prayer), i.e. The detector and iphone of your very own immaterial human mind:
Studies establish that the design inference is ‘knee jerk’ inference that is built into everyone, especially including atheists, and that atheists have to mentally work suppressing their “knee jerk” design inference!
It is not that Atheists do not see purpose and/or Design in nature and biology, it is that Atheists, for whatever severely misguided reason, live in denial of the purpose and/or Design that they themselves see in nature.
I hold the preceding studies to be confirming evidence for Romans 1:19-20
Seversky@ #20
Fallacy of naturalism is the assumption that only humanly detectable (natural) causes can exist. That is, those that are detectable to our organs or equipment. But the same as your ears cannot detect light or your nose cannot detect sound, it is possible that all our organs and equipment cannot detect a myriad of causes near or far from us that might exist.
So logically, whatever exists in nature can be caused by either humanly detectable (HD) or humanly undetectable (HU) causes. How can we tell whether is it one or the other? Well, it’s simple. By using science. Science is a tool for discovering and observing the operation of HD causes. If it is known through repeated experiments and observations that a particular thing comes into existence via HD causes, then obviously, HU causes are excluded. However, if it is known through repeated experiments and observations that a particular thing literally never comes into existence via HD causes, then, the only possible explanation are HU causes.
Interestingly, such thing, or more precisely things, do exist and are called organs. They literally never come into existence via HD causes. Here is how we know that.
Evolution of all the existing species from the time of their splitting off from their most recent common DNA carrier until today is the natural/live experiment that tested whether evolution (HD cause) can create novel organs or transform them into functionally distinct ones like in imagined whale evolution (forelimbs into flippers, tail into flukes, nostrils into blowholes, teeth into baleen, ears into biosonar, etc.). Today, we can observe the results of this experiment. They demonstrate, without an exception, that not a single species, has even started to transform their organs into functionally distinct ones let alone created de novo ones. Take for example humans. We and chimps diverted from our common DNA carrier 5 million years ago and since then undergone enormous number of evolutionary changes. But is there a human individual or population that has organs not present in other human individuals or populations? Well, obviously not. All humans are functionally identical, that is, they have exactly the same organs without a single trace of their transformation like in the imagined whale evolution. The same is true for all other species, regardless of their last divergence point. For nautiluses, this point was 500 million years ago. But again, not a single individual or population within this species is functionally different from the other. So regardless of time, new organs literally never come into existence via HD causes. Here, these causes are mutations and natural selection.
Therefore, the repeated experiments and observations (science) lead us to only one conclusion: organs came into existence via HU causes. Philosophical naturalism (PN) claims the opposite to this scientific conclusion. This makes PN anti-science. The same is of course true for methodological naturaism, which is the procedural commitment of scientists to PN when doing science.
ET @ 17/ Seversky @ 13:
An argument whose source I’ve forgotten springs to mind: How do we know dinosaur fossils aren’t just rocks? If we don’t know the genetics, how can we argue that a biological process made those skeletonoids?
It’s called research, JClark. For one there aren’t any non-biological processes that can produce a skeleton of any living organism. For another we know that organisms die and can get buried. And we also know what may happen after that. Research.