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A simple case for intelligent design

Subduction Zone

Veteran Member
o_Oo_Oo_O
Once again your are trying to “defeat” my argument with semantic games.
No, your so called arguments are pretty much self defeating. If you tried to learn instead of repeating claims already shown to be wrong you would have understood your errors a long long time ago and we could have moved on.
 

Polymath257

Think & Care
Staff member
Premium Member
Well prove you assertions, if a snow flake has the attribute of specified complexity, then ID would be falsified, ¿what would falsify natural abiogenesis?


These article explains with detail the concept of specified complexity, (Explaining Specified Complexity | Metanexus) if you can show that the concept is circular, the argument would be invalid.


Actually, no it doesn't. It claims it to be an 'obvious' concept, but gives no detailed definition to determine when a given phenomenon is specified and when not. it makes a claim that genetic algorithms cannot lead to specified complexity, but his actual argument fails miserably.

But what do you expect from the likes of Demski? I really have trouble believing you actually gave a link to an article by him.
 

Polymath257

Think & Care
Staff member
Premium Member
That is not the definition of ”falsifiable” by that definition every idea would count as falsifiable.

By your logic the statement the statement . “there are unicorns in other planets” is falsifiable and has been tested. Science has proved that other planets exists, disproving the existence of planets would falsify the statement.


Falsifiable means that there is something that would potentially falsify a statement. And I already did provided examples of something that would falsify ID.

Premise 1 specified complexity can only come from an intelligent designer

Premise 2 life is specified and complex

Therefore life came from an intelligent designer.

Each of the premises is falsifiable, there could for example be a parallel universe where life does not have this attribute of specified complexity.

Naturalists cant even formulate an argument with testable and falsifiable premises, because you know that any potential premise would be easy to disprove.

Your definition of 'specified complexity' is badly flawed. it cannot determine whether any given situation is specified or not.

As for a way to falsify abiogenesis:

Suppose we manage to find several (say 15-20) ways to create life in our labs. But, in all of these a significant amount of intervention by the experimenter is required at crucial stages of the synthesis. If there is no hint of a way those interventions could be circumvented naturally, abiogenesis would be falsified.

Given that we haven't managed the first step (formation of life in the lab), we are quite far away from falsifying abiogenesis.

On the other hand, any discovery of a way to synthesize life that *doesn't* involve significant (more than initial setup) intervention by the experimenter would immediately falsify the requirement of an intelligent designer. Furthermore, the non-existence of a candidate intelligence makes the suggestion rather unlikely.

Now, if you can suggest a way to synthesize life, even with direct intelligent intervention, please let someone know.

Until then, people will continue to work on figuring out the conditions required and the parameters allowed.
 

exchemist

Veteran Member
OK, I wasn't as clear as I could have been. Ribosomes are the structures that are central to protein synthesis. In modern species, they consist of a complex of nucleic acids (rRNA) and amino acids which work together to accomplish the synthesis. The article I saw showed that the amino acids in the ribosome could be eliminated and still have functioning protein synthesis. Yes, that synthesis amounts to linking amino acids together to produce the proteins, but the catalyst of this reaction can be purely RNA without amino acid helpers.

Another aspect that I find fascinating is the role of tRNA in protein synthesis. This is really where the genetic code resides: in the way tRNA links a codon to a particular amino acid. This was modified recently to allow amino acids (and nucleic acids) outside of the 'normal' ones (not just the usual 20 amino acids or 4/5 nucleic acids).



Agreed!
OK. My (not very detailed) understanding was that a ribosome is made of rRNA and proteins. Is it the amino acids in these proteins that can be dispensed with, or are there some unpolymerised amino acids involved as well (I mean besides those being passed through the sausage machine to be made into protein by the ribosome)?

It might be interesting to have a thread on the RNA World hypothesis, I suppose, in which all these proteins that Leroy gets so anxious about are not even needed at all!
 

exchemist

Veteran Member
Actually, no it doesn't. It claims it to be an 'obvious' concept, but gives no detailed definition to determine when a given phenomenon is specified and when not. it makes a claim that genetic algorithms cannot lead to specified complexity, but his actual argument fails miserably.

But what do you expect from the likes of Demski? I really have trouble believing you actually gave a link to an article by him.
I thought Dembski was the charlatan that invented "specified complexity" in the first place. :D
 

Polymath257

Think & Care
Staff member
Premium Member
OK. My (not very detailed) understanding was that a ribosome is made of rRNA and proteins. Is it the amino acids in these proteins that can be dispensed with, or are there some unpolymerised amino acids involved as well (I mean besides those being passed through the sausage machine to be made into protein by the ribosome)?

It might be interesting to have a thread on the RNA World hypothesis, I suppose, in which all these proteins that Leroy gets so anxious about are not even needed at all!


OK, the wikipedia article mentions some of what I remembered. From this, it doens't seem that *all* the ribosomal proteins can be eliminated, but many of them can.

Ribosomal protein - Wikipedia
 

leroy

Well-Known Member
Your definition of 'specified complexity' is badly flawed. it cannot determine whether any given situation is specified or not.

Specified means simply that it has an independentlly given pattern.

For example if you find written in the sand " Mary loves John" one would say that it is "specified" because "sand" is independent from the English language, there is nothing in the properties of sand that would make it organize itselve in a pattern that looks like letters and meaningfully words and sentences.

There are many possible configurations in which sand can excist. But only few configurations would produce something that looks like meaningfull words and sentences

There is nothing flawed about this concept.

You can falsify IDjust shoe that one of the premises is wrong :
1 Specified complexity can only come from a mind

2 Life is specified and complex

Each of the premises is testable and falsifiable. Just let me know which one do you find controversial so that I can support it with evidence.

The point that I am making is that "sand" doest seem to be interested in organizing itselve in such a way that it would produce letters and meaningfully words and sentences. In the same way amino acids (or nucleotides) don't seem to be interested in producing self replicating agents.

As for a way to falsify abiogenesis:

Suppose we manage to find several (say 15-20) ways to create life in our labs. But, in all of these a significant amount of intervention by the experimenter is required at crucial stages of the synthesis. If there is no hint of a way those interventions could be circumvented naturally, abiogenesis would be falsified.

Given that we haven't managed the first step (formation of life in the lab), we are quite far away from falsifying abiogenesis.

On the other hand, any discovery of a way to synthesize life that *doesn't* involve significant (more than initial setup) intervention by the experimenter would immediately falsify the requirement of an intelligent designer. Furthermore, the non-existence of a candidate intelligence makes the suggestion rather unlikely.

Now, if you can suggest a way to synthesize life, even with direct intelligent intervention, please let someone know.

Sounds fair , but my prediction is that the atheist community would not drop natural abiogenesis, even under this scenario.
 

leroy

Well-Known Member
No, your so called arguments are pretty much self defeating. If you tried to learn instead of repeating claims already shown to be wrong you would have understood your errors a long long time ago and we could have moved on.
Ok quote any of my claims and then quote an example where that claim was shown to be wrong
 

leroy

Well-Known Member
It is this Designer that make the whole ID concept falls apart, because in order for ID to be true, it needs evidences that the Designer actually exist, and not simply implied, as you have been doing repeatedly.
]

By your stupid and nonsense logic , one can not say that dark matter exists, because it's existance has not been verified. (It is simply implied )

I challenge you to have a conversation with a flat earther , you will note that he would use the same kind of logic that you are using .
 

exchemist

Veteran Member
By your stupid and nonsense logic , one can not say that dark matter exists, because it's existance has not been verified. (It is simply implied )

I challenge you to have a conversation with a flat earther , you will note that he would use the same kind of logic that you are using .
Poor command of English? Evidence is not at all the same thing as verification.

There is evidence for dark matter.

"Verification" has no useful meaning here, considering that nothing in science is proved, as you well know. Perhaps by verification you mean "corroboration"? Corroboration has a useful meaning, in the sense of a second piece of evidence, corroborating the first.

In fact there are at least seven pieces of evidence for dark matter: 7 Independent Pieces Of Evidence For Dark Matter – Starts With A Bang! – Medium
 
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Polymath257

Think & Care
Staff member
Premium Member
Specified means simply that it has an independentlly given pattern.

Given by whom?

For example if you find written in the sand " Mary loves John" one would say that it is "specified" because "sand" is independent from the English language, there is nothing in the properties of sand that would make it organize itselve in a pattern that looks like letters and meaningfully words and sentences.

And yet, people regularly imagine letters in such natural environments. Arabic seems to be particularly good for random formation.

There are many possible configurations in which sand can excist. But only few configurations would produce something that looks like meaningfull words and sentences

There is nothing flawed about this concept.

On the contrary, it is deeply flawed. As you admit, complexity alone isn't enough. In fact, it is often the observation of *simplicity* that shows the action of an intelligence: straight lines where such would not ordinarily be found, for example.

But 'specifed' is way way too vague to use. Who specifies? How do we determine if it is specified? At best, the definition can be some phenomenon that isn't a likely result of observed natural processes. But that requires thoroughly understanding the natural processes at work and what they are capable of. This typically means that the conclusion of inteelligent agency is the *last* resort after all other possibilities have been eliminated.

In the case of letters in the sand, we have a lot of experience in how sand forms random structures and know from long experience that sand doesn't form English letters regularly.

In the case of pre-biotic environments, we don't even know for sure *which* environments are relevant, let alone what they are capable of naturally.

You can falsify IDjust shoe that one of the premises is wrong :
1 Specified complexity can only come from a mind

2 Life is specified and complex

Each of the premises is testable and falsifiable. Just let me know which one do you find controversial so that I can support it with evidence.

Again, the notion of 'specified' is way too vague to be useful until the natural processes are understood in depth. So neither 1 nor 2 is anywhere close to being established.

The point that I am making is that "sand" doest seem to be interested in organizing itselve in such a way that it would produce letters and meaningfully words and sentences. In the same way amino acids (or nucleotides) don't seem to be interested in producing self replicating agents.

Well, that is *precisely* what studies of abiogenesis are trying to determine: are the components available on the early Earth inclined, under conditions that existed on the early Earth, to produce structures leading to life?

And, at this point, every objection seems to have been met: yes, amino acids spontaneously form. As do nucleic acids, lipids, etc. They also spontaneously form small polymers and some of these polymers catalyze biologically relevant reactions. Cell like structures spontaneously form and bud (but concentrations of internal chemicals decrease over generations).


Sounds fair , but my prediction is that the atheist community would not drop natural abiogenesis, even under this scenario.

I disagree. Under circumstances where the natural processes are well understood, where several different methods have been discovered for the formation of life, and where all of them require some sort of intervention by intelligent agency, the reasonable conclusion is that some intelligent agency was involved in formation of life on Earth.

Now, of course, that begs the question of where that intelligent agency developed and what conditions could give rise to such. In a sense, it only pushes the fundamental questions concerning the initial formation of life back one step.
 

Polymath257

Think & Care
Staff member
Premium Member
By your stupid and nonsense logic , one can not say that dark matter exists, because it's existance has not been verified. (It is simply implied )

I challenge you to have a conversation with a flat earther , you will note that he would use the same kind of logic that you are using .


There is strong evidence, both observational and theoretical, to support the existence of dark matter. Gravitational lensing is a prime example of a detection. What we don't know about dark matter is the *composition*. The existence is no longer a matter of debate.
 

Polymath257

Think & Care
Staff member
Premium Member
Hmm I am not familiar with Arabic .

Why is Arabic good for random formation ?

Allowance is made for a wide variety of configurations and the lines and dots are easily formed randomly. it becomes somewhat like seeing a face in clouds or on toast. People see things that aren't really there. One of the big issues with 'specified complexity'. Who specifies?
 

gnostic

The Lost One
By your stupid and nonsense logic , one can not say that dark matter exists, because it's existance has not been verified. (It is simply implied )

I challenge you to have a conversation with a flat earther , you will note that he would use the same kind of logic that you are using .
Your ignorance speak of creationist indoctrination, and your lack of education.

Ask yourself, this question:

What is “evidence”?​


In science, evidence is something that can -
  • either be detected (or observed)
  • or be measured
  • or be quantified
  • or be tested
Or
  • it could be any combination of the above
  • or even more ideally, all of the above.
For science, it is best that you can do “all of the above”, but that’s not going to always going to happen.

You have mentioned dark matter, not me. But let’s go with your example.

While it is true, that dark matter cannot be observed or detected, it just mean electromagnetically detected, which mean you cannot detect with any instrument that use wavelength, eg optical (light), x-ray, gamma, near infrared, etc.

But dark matter does have effect on matters (galaxies, stars, quasars, etc), through gravity. So the effect of gravity can be measured.

Since astrophysics isn’t your strong point, I don’t think you would understand my explanation, so let me give you another example.

Here is a scenario, you see an exposed wire or cable. You cannot see with your own eyes if there are electricity coursing through that wire. And if there is electricity, you won’t see it, but the effect are real. Touch it, and you will electrocute yourself; the electricity will pass through you, down to the ground. The effects will pain, convulsions and burns.

That’s evidence of what you cannot see (electricity), but does have effect, thus electrocution.

Do you see the parallel here, leroy?

Like electricity, dark matters cannot be observed, but it does have effect upon stars and galaxies, just as electricity will have effect on you if you touch it.

Going back to the electricity example, although you cannot observe or see electricity, you can detect and measure electricity, using instrument or device that can measure the electricity current, voltage and power.

Now the parallel with dark matter is this:

If you ever studied physics whatsoever, you would have learned that gravity is related to masses of matters. It doesn’t matter if these matters are ordinary matters or dark matters, they all have measurable mass, therefore gravitational fields and forces exist.

Ordinary matters have mass, therefore it has gravitational fields. And so does dark matters.

Space observatories, like NASA’s WMAP and ESA’s Planck spaceprobe, have measure the mass of the observable universe, and discovered that the masses of all ordinary matters don’t equal to the total mass of observable universe, so where does all that extra masses and gravitational forces come from?

The other masses come from dark matter (and from dark energy). Both of these space probes/telescopes have provided tremendous amount of data and evidences, but for you to deny to be any evidence at all, only make you a complete fool.

If you think know more about the universe, then NASA, ESA (European Space Agency), and all other astrophysicists and astronomers, then why don’t you write your own hypothesis that dark matter and dark energy don’t exist with testable data and evidences, since you think you are smarter than everyone else?
 

leroy

Well-Known Member
Allowance is made for a wide variety of configurations and the lines and dots are easily formed randomly. it becomes somewhat like seeing a face in clouds or on toast. People see things that aren't really there. One of the big issues with 'specified complexity'. Who specifies?

Ok, well that is exactly what I mean with "specified"

Based on what I just learn about Arabic letters. It could be said that Arabic is less specified than English. (It is easier to create Arabic words than English words by random.chance)

Who specifies? Well ether a designer or random chance. Something simple (but specified) like a single letter could be a product of chance .

But something complex and specified (like a complete sentence) would be better explained by design.
 

leroy

Well-Known Member
There is strong evidence, both observational and theoretical, to support the existence of dark matter. Gravitational lensing is a prime example of a detection. What we don't know about dark matter is the *composition*. The existence is no longer a matter of debate.

You are inferring "dark matter" because based on what we know only something with gravity can produce gravitational lencing. Given that we cant see it. We infer that there most be something invisible with gravity that causes the lencing.

Obviously this kind of reasoning is valid.

It would be stupid to say "first prove that dark matter excists and then we can discuss if it is responsible for gravitational lencing" agree ?
 

leroy

Well-Known Member
Your ignorance speak of creationist indoctrination, and your lack of education.

Ask yourself, this question:

What is “evidence”?​


In science, evidence is something that can -
  • either be detected (or observed)
  • or be measured
  • or be quantified
  • or be tested
Or
  • it could be any combination of the above
  • or even more ideally, all of the above.
For science, it is best that you can do “all of the above”, but that’s not going to always going to happen.

You have mentioned dark matter, not me. But let’s go with your example.

While it is true, that dark matter cannot be observed or detected, it just mean electromagnetically detected, which mean you cannot detect with any instrument that use wavelength, eg optical (light), x-ray, gamma, near infrared, etc.

But dark matter does have effect on matters (galaxies, stars, quasars, etc), through gravity. So the effect of gravity can be measured.

Design can also be detected and tested. Archeologists, forensic scientists cryptographers etc detect design all the time .

the point is that the existance of dark matter can be implied, making your comment wrong.
because in order for ID to be true, it needs evidences that the Designer actually exist, and not simply implied,
 

Polymath257

Think & Care
Staff member
Premium Member
You are inferring "dark matter" because based on what we know only something with gravity can produce gravitational lencing. Given that we cant see it. We infer that there most be something invisible with gravity that causes the lencing.

Obviously this kind of reasoning is valid.

It would be stupid to say "first prove that dark matter excists and then we can discuss if it is responsible for gravitational lencing" agree ?

Oh, it goes much farther than that. We tried alternative explanations which modified the details of how gravity works. It turns out that those modifications, in order to agree with our observations, still require some component of dark matter. So, we looked at how our understanding could be wrong and tested those alternatives also.

I'd also point out that we have a fully functioning theory of gravity that has been tested in many different situations and has been used previously to predict the existence of object (planets, for example) that were not known prior to the prediction. That means that we had a very good handle on the types of behaviors that arise from gravitational interactions. That was also required for our confidence in the detection of dark matter.
 

Polymath257

Think & Care
Staff member
Premium Member
Ok, well that is exactly what I mean with "specified"

Based on what I just learn about Arabic letters. It could be said that Arabic is less specified than English. (It is easier to create Arabic words than English words by random.chance)

Who specifies? Well ether a designer or random chance. Something simple (but specified) like a single letter could be a product of chance .

But something complex and specified (like a complete sentence) would be better explained by design.

OK, so to be 'specified' means that natural processes are unlikely to produced the observed complexity? Which means we have to thoroughly understand what the natural process can and cannot produce *before* we can say the observed complexity is 'specified', right?

Would you say that we understand the chemistry of biologically relevant chemicals to the degree that we can tell what sorts of things can arise naturally and what sorts of things cannot?

Do you disagree that an intelligent agent, by the very process of elimination required to show the complexity is specified' should be the *last* explanation proposed?
 
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