If Intelligent Design is a scientific theory...

[Guy Threepwood]

No good, Guy! You are still confusing selection by an agency (in the case of the car) with "selection" (difficult to find the right word) without any agency at all except the propagation frequency of living genes. You cannot get a working analogy along those lines.

(Edited to add: perhaps "apparent selection" is the right way to phrase it in evolutionary terms.)

There is no confusion that selection by agency of new designs created by agency does in fact work.

I am trying to figure out how it works with no agency for either, you have to admit it's a slightly more challenging question

'apparent' I think is a good choice of words, like how apples 'apparently' fall from trees with no mechanisms other than classical physics required.

Similarly, genetic apples fall not far from their proverbial trees, but to extrapolate this superficial 'apparent' mechanism out to a complete explanation for all observations....

it's very tempting certainly, but the devil is also likewise in the details

 

[siti]

I think I take your point, I have a car with a radiator ornament, but no radiator cap under it, some spaces for extra accessories that it didn't come with, and even a hint of vestigal fins which no longer serve to attract girls on dates!

clear signs that this car morphed from another one by a series of unintended flukes!

No - clear signs of a lack of either intelligence or design...that's the topic under discussion - all your (inadmissible in any case, for reasons stated perfectly eloquently by others in this thread) car analogy "proves" (if it "proves" anything at all) is agency and that's not the same argument at all.

 

[Evangelicalhumanist]

There is no confusion that selection by agency of new designs created by agency does in fact work.

And is ALWAYS temporary. Look at the world of fashion. Today might be mid-length, broad-shouldered, dark-coloured -- and everybody will buy it. That'll all be over next season. Big deal, we're human, we get bored, we're fickle. On cars, we like big fins, big motors -- unless we think we're being "eco-friendly," and then we like something else.

I am trying to figure out how it works with no agency for either, you have to admit it's a slightly more challenging question.

I'm having trouble seeing why you find that challenging, frankly. No disrespect, but once you grasp the basic details that I posted above, it really does become quite obvious. However! There's a caveat -- if you insist on the retention of a divine, intelligent, creative role, then you can and will not ever see it. You have to jump outside of that presupposition, and see it as I described it a few posts ago.

'apparent' I think is a good choice of words, like how apples 'apparently' fall from trees with no mechanisms other than classical physics required.

Okay -- but notice that you accept the notion of gravity. You do not suppose (absent that "apparent" clause) that there must be some entity or entities wandering about knocking the apples out of trees. You have no difficulty at all in seeing that the fruit gets heavier, the stem gets drier and eventually dries up -- and the apple falls. You don't need an apple-toppler to cope with this idea.

Similarly, genetic apples fall not far from their proverbial trees, but to extrapolate this superficial 'apparent' mechanism out to a complete explanation for all observations....

it's very tempting certainly, but the devil is also likewise in the details

Those look tempting, but they are complete non-sequiturs. The theory of gravity (Newton) does in fact provide a "complete explanation for all observations" -- at the non-quantum level. True, we have not yet managed the task of linking gravity to the rest of quantum mechanics, but so what? Through all of human history there've been things we didn't fully understand and s kept looking for. Let's keep doing that, is my advice!

 

[Guy Threepwood]

No - clear signs of a lack of either intelligence or design...that's the topic under discussion - all your (inadmissible in any case, for reasons stated perfectly eloquently by others in this thread) car analogy "proves" (if it "proves" anything at all) is agency and that's not the same argument at all.

It proves, beyond any shadow of doubt, that all these patterns we are discussing- redundant, vestigial elements, progression in the record, shared traits, are not exclusive to natural mechanisms, they can apply to intelligent design just as well. That is simply incontrovertible whichever side of the debate you are on.

 

[Jose Fly]

It proves, beyond any shadow of doubt, that all these patterns we are discussing- redundant, vestigial elements, progression in the record, shared traits, are not exclusive to natural mechanisms, they can apply to intelligent design just as well. That is simply incontrovertible whichever side of the debate you are on.

Only if you ignore the fundamental fatal flaw that I pointed out earlier, i.e., that the underlying assumption (same patterns = same mechanisms) is demonstrably false.

But then as we see in most of the threads around here, ignoring fatal flaws in one's argument and sticking to the position no matter what are the cornerstones of creationism.

 

[Guy Threepwood]

And is ALWAYS temporary. Look at the world of fashion. Today might be mid-length, broad-shouldered, dark-coloured -- and everybody will buy it. That'll all be over next season. Big deal, we're human, we get bored, we're fickle. On cars, we like big fins, big motors -- unless we think we're being "eco-friendly," and then we like something else.

And constant change is usually touted as evidence for evolution rather than intelligent design, who's side are you on now?

Okay -- but notice that you accept the notion of gravity. You do not suppose (absent that "apparent" clause) that there must be some entity or entities wandering about knocking the apples out of trees. You have no difficulty at all in seeing that the fruit gets heavier, the stem gets drier and eventually dries up -- and the apple falls. You don't need an apple-toppler to cope with this idea.

Those look tempting, but they are complete non-sequiturs. The theory of gravity (Newton) does in fact provide a "complete explanation for all observations" -- at the non-quantum level.

True, we have not yet managed the task of linking gravity to the rest of quantum mechanics, but so what? Through all of human history there've been things we didn't fully understand and s kept looking for. Let's keep doing that, is my advice![/QUOTE]


It all comes down to functional designs being arbitrary or specifed

random v predetermined outcomes

Darwinism, when established 150 years ago, was a completely logical extension of this popular Victorian impression of reality, where a handful of simple 'immutable' laws, given enough time and space to randomly bump around in, would be bound to produce some most splendid results eventually. Concepts of deeper hidden guiding forces, required to tell matter exactly how to organize, how to create elements specific to life and disperse them - were still the realm of anthropomorphic religious psuedoscience.

So Darwin made the very reasonable, logical assumption that the development of life would continue using the same sort of mechanisms that had put it there- and I agree with him 100%
And today that means according to specific instructions, detailed plans, determining very specific outcomes. I see no reason why it would suddenly revert back to complying with Victorian sensibilities. Particularly when we now know that these 'random mutations' are initiating at the same quantum level.. But I see every reason to expect that life, just like physical reality, would quickly decay, collapse, disintegrate if those instructions were removed and all was left to simple classical laws and chance- aka entropy. Because our superficial observations absolutely rely on mechanisms at the quantum level, planets could not orbit stars on classical physics alone


Max Plank bemoaned how difficult it was to have his new theory accepted, many people were fond of the apparent ability of classical physics; to be able to squeeze God out of the equation by virtue of it's own comprehensive simplicity, just like evolution. But the ideological ties with atheism are far far stronger for evolution.. (no coincidence that Max Planck was a skeptic of atheism just like Lemaitre)

But as we know, accepting the fundamental inadequacies of classical physics, did not force anyone to abandon atheism, apples still fall from trees.

Likewise, moving beyond Darwinism doesn't have to mean throwing the baby out with the bathwater, everything we have learned about natural history that is scientific, all the exhibits in a museum- real fossils or accurate copies/ molds of them- all remain.
It's just the vast catalog of artistic, never discovered intermediates, and the philosophical speculation of how these changes are occurring, would be recognized as such.

Let's keep looking as you say!

And if we find those blueprints, just as we did for physics- it's not game over for atheism. If all the mind mindbogglingly intricate and sensitive information required for physics, can spontaneously blunder into existence for no particular reason, why not for life?

Sure you might need an infinite reality generator to account for it while forbidding creative intelligence, but that's not suspending any belief, that is not already dangling out there beyond the inconvenience of scientific scrutiny!



sorry for long post!

 

[Guy Threepwood]

Only if you ignore the fundamental fatal flaw that I pointed out earlier, i.e., that the underlying assumption (same patterns = same mechanisms) is demonstrably false.

But then as we see in most of the threads around here, ignoring fatal flaws in one's argument and sticking to the position no matter what are the cornerstones of creationism.

There are lots of internet forums for mudslinging Jose, if at some point you want to stick to the substantive arguments, I am happy to debate them with you. There are plenty other people here who can do that, and I prefer to debate with them meanwhile.. nothing personal!

 

[Evangelicalhumanist]

And constant change is usually touted as evidence for evolution rather than intelligent design, who's side are you on now?

That was disingenuous and you know it. My reference to constant change (and I provided a context -- fashion) is entirely about change made by agency selection.

Constant change without agency selection is happening all the time. Watch the seashore, the mountains, the river banks, erosion by wind and weather, aging, dying, and on and on forever. Nothing remains the same forever -- and nobody is busy ensuring that.

 

[siti]

It proves, beyond any shadow of doubt, that all these patterns we are discussing- redundant, vestigial elements, progression in the record, shared traits, are not exclusive to natural mechanisms, they can apply to intelligent design just as well. That is simply incontrovertible whichever side of the debate you are on.

The whole point of ID is to "prove" (in this case divine) agency on the basis apparent intelligence and design...what your "vestigial" car parts analogy shows is that it is possible to have agency that does not display either intelligence or design. It delinks intelligence and design from agency and undermines the premise on which the whole ID edifice is built, namely design proves intelligence proves (divine) agency.

You are quite correct to say that redundancy does not prove lack of agency, but that is not the point at issue...the point at issue is that redundancy, vestigial elements etc. are adequately explained by natural mechanisms and there is no need to resort to supernatural explanations.

In point of fact, ID is profoundly unscientific precisely because the idea presupposes a supernatural explanation and then proceeds to amass "scientific" evidence to support it's own preconception. Such an enterprise is doomed to failure because (a) we will never be able to observe supernatural processes scientifically even if they are there and (b) this is simply not how science is done.

In the end, it really makes no difference at all whether the ID crowd are right (about divine creation/intervention in biological evolution), its still not science.

 

[Jose Fly]

There are lots of internet forums for mudslinging Jose, if at some point you want to stick to the substantive arguments, I am happy to debate them with you. There are plenty other people here who can do that, and I prefer to debate with them meanwhile.. nothing personal!

Pointing out the fatal flaw in your argument is not mud slinging. Either you can address this flaw, or it stands unchallenged.

 

[Jose Fly]

The whole point of ID is to "prove" (in this case divine) agency on the basis apparent intelligence and design...what your "vestigial" car parts analogy shows is that it is possible to have agency that does not display either intelligence or design. It delinks intelligence and design from agency and undermines the premise on which the whole ID edifice is built, namely design proves intelligence proves (divine) agency.

You are quite correct to say that redundancy does not prove lack of agency, but that is not the point at issue...the point at issue is that redundancy, vestigial elements etc. are adequately explained by natural mechanisms and there is no need to resort to supernatural explanations.

In point of fact, ID is profoundly unscientific precisely because the idea presupposes a supernatural explanation and then proceeds to amass "scientific" evidence to support it's own preconception. Such an enterprise is doomed to failure because (a) we will never be able to observe supernatural processes scientifically even if they are there and (b) this is simply not how science is done.

In the end, it really makes no difference at all whether the ID crowd are right (about divine creation/intervention in biological evolution), its still not science.

Using the cars-biological life analogy, we would have to conclude that living organisms are designed by bipedal primates with opposable thumbs.

Or are ID creationists thinking the only trait that their analogy speaks to is intelligence?

 

[Davarr]

Greetings;
I am replying to the original post, although I have read through some of the following thread. On ID, I do not like it personally, as it does tend to back door creationism. I am a front door kind of person. I know the testimony of Yahweh to be correct; I also know that scientists can't get entangled in my faith. Their job is to observe and report. Jesus wrote plausible deniability into this paradigm, which means He knew that empirical proof of His existence would never emerge. He needs that for faith to work, which is what He wants from us. So I am willing to let scientists do their job and be on my way, since they make cool things like computers and the internet.
On suffering, this is difficult. What I am about to tell you is extremely explosive, and is probably considered heretical. I must state up front that this is my own reasoning at work: I am not a prophet, nor did Yahweh send me. Now, the problem of evil has haunted man for 12000 years. I have recently resolved it. Yahweh made this universe by error. He was alone, and did not want to be. In trying to make an 'other', He accidentally created a creature that is what we think of as evil. Insane, but possessing logic, it was Yahweh inverted. At this point, He had an option; scrap reality, or move forward with the creation of a thinking creature that could choose to love Him. He wanted to love, and be loved, so He went forward. He knew this would mean loading us into the paradigm He had made, most likely by withdrawing Himself from the system when it was ready to load an OS. What resulted was a corruption, a deranged semi-consciousness that was utterly warped. I use the term Demiurge, but that is not to be confused with the yarbaloth creature of gnosticism.
The Demiurge is the OS of evil; it is the creature that tempted Lucifer. It is not held accountable as the father of evil; Satan is, which is another item. What it held was an 'other' from which humans could choose. Since real love can only come from choice, Jesus needed the Demiurge to complete the making of man as an agent of free will. Thus, He set up the Garden, the Tree of Knowledge, and the inevitable fall that would come. That is why it says "the Lamb was slain before the foundation of the world.' He paid for the sins of man, to free us from the Demiurge.
So, mankind was loaded into a new server, ported over from Eden. This paradigm is deterministic, savage, insane, because that is the instructions by which the Demiurge works. It is almost certainly without reason, and may even believe it IS Yahweh. Too make matters worse, the death that Adam accrued for taking up Satan's lie-you can be your own God- was exacerbated by a horrible addendum in the Curse of Adam. What Jesus assigned Adam was reasonable; he was subjected to thanatos, the decay of systems. But the Curse of Adam added Nekros/Muth, violent death. It was this that drove man insane, that reduced us to savages. It was this that brought Cain to murder Abel, and create the State, which is the Mark of Cain.
Now, I don't know what specific cruelties to which you refer, but I can generalize broadly. Genetic deformities are due to the Fall of Adam; entropy gives men fallen genetics. God does not personally make babies deformed, but He did write the code that requires entropy to wear down all life. Things like the Holocaust are human deeds; these proceed from the psychosis of the Curse, which Jesus did intentionally write into our paradigm. All of this was to save us from embracing Satan's lie; we cannot love God unless we surrender our self control to Him. But factually, this means a lot of suffering in the here and now. If it helps, a world awaits us where this is no more, where no memory of this paradigm exists, and no suffering can ever exists again, which is Heaven, or life 2.0. But I cannot gloss over the fact that some inconceivably heinous s&%^ goes down in this beta run.
Longitudinally, evil came into being by an innocent accident. Yahweh is going to fix this error, but not until He can save everyone possible. Please know that this was not His intent. Granted, HE did not ask us if He could make us; He also made us eternal. But that was solely to share His love with us. Even with what I have suffered in my own life, I still choose to love Him. I know He will make good on a better existence later. Please don't let this paradigm turn you away; it is terrible, but it condemned to fall. I hope that this has been some help in grappling with the question of evil.

 

[Davarr]

on evolution;
there are colossal problems with this assertion. One, humans can find it compelling because they have an ulterior motive. This is a common element in humanity. Two, Darwin made benchmark theories on how the process worked. He had no body of knowledge to draw on, except his own research. He had no advanced instrumentation, no establishment to confirm or deny his idea-and yet, after 150 years, his theory is still held as credible. That begs some serious questions. He should have been off base on some of his claims. Scientists overturn work of their predecessors all the time. It smacks more of religious devotion to exalt Darwin as many do. If you do not, then please ignore, but most people with whom I discuss this are fairly fanatical about Darwin.
There are copious holes in the framework of ToE. I shall point out a few, and perhaps you can resolve them.
1) going from quadruped to biped. This is just silly. This creature, what ever one is supposed to be the transitional state, cannot exist long. It can nether run nor fight. It wont spend 10000 years evolving; it will be killed. Nature isn't that forgiving.
2) artifacts. Humans make crateloads of artifacts. It's how we survive, If man is 5,5 million years in the making, our planet should have been a junkyard by now. In 12000 years, we made some pretty impressive stuff, and lots of it.
3) speaking of 12000 years ago, the neo-lithic revolution. How is it, that within around a 1500 year bandwidth, the entire human race all managed to emerge at the same time from horticultural to agricultural living? And how did homo sapiens all move forward on five continents into perfect genetic compatability? outside of some aboriginal groups, it sure looks like they had a fairly recent ancestry, one that appears to be interconnected to a primal trigger not to long beforehand. animal husbandry, pottery, writing, leatherworking- all these show up around 12-14 thousand years ago. In 5.5 million years, some branch of humanity should have gotten there sooner.
4) interspecies mutation. so which came first, the insect or the arachnid? one had to have. If one developed from another, I call bulls&^%. If the arachnid is the higher order, he effectively grunted really hard, fused his head into his thorax, and sprung some extra limbs. Tony Robbins can;t motivate people that hard. Then his mandibles became venom injecting fangs, and he evolved a venom sac to boot. I guess if you believe in yourself, anything is possible.
5) which brings us to people. so, we rambled up through all the phyla, to become a sad monkey who questions his own existence. Why? If we were birds, why did we give up flying? That's a boss power. Amphibious gills, also great. IN fact, we gave up everything, on a 5.5 million year gamble that an opposable thumb would work out. That guy should work a casino or two.
these are a few of my problems with ToE. Now, I am not saying we should use ID; we could be honest, and start every textbook with 'we don't know how life began: this is what we have studied so far'. If the class was just about what is provable, there wouldn't be much of a ruckus. But Darwinists are notoriously pushy about insisting they have all the answers, and usually want to squelch all discussion on the subject. You appear to be a pretty reasonable guy, so maybe we can have a civil conversation, which I would enjoy. It is late, I must sleep. Peace to all.

 

[Guy Threepwood]

That was disingenuous and you know it. My reference to constant change (and I provided a context -- fashion) is entirely about change made by agency selection.

Constant change without agency selection is happening all the time. Watch the seashore, the mountains, the river banks, erosion by wind and weather, aging, dying, and on and on forever. Nothing remains the same forever -- and nobody is busy ensuring that.

cmon, you don't have to resort to personal attacks, you're not doing that badly!

absolutely the apparent 'change' in the fossil record has always, ambiguously been a fundamental argument AGAINST creationism, ID, that's hardly controversial.

But in fact natural history and product design both show both- change yes, and also stasis for long periods of time with practically no change.

 

[Guy Threepwood]

The whole point of ID is to "prove" (in this case divine) agency on the basis apparent intelligence and design...what your "vestigial" car parts analogy shows is that it is possible to have agency that does not display either intelligence or design. It delinks intelligence and design from agency and undermines the premise on which the whole ID edifice is built, namely design proves intelligence proves (divine) agency.

You are quite correct to say that redundancy does not prove lack of agency, but that is not the point at issue..

right,even though it is invariably used to try to do so, similarly with shared traits, progressions of any product design,- I'm not saying these are slam dunk cases for ID, just that none of these patterns can be used to conclude Darwinism

.the point at issue is that redundancy, vestigial elements etc. are adequately explained by natural mechanisms and there is no need to resort to supernatural explanations.

likewise they are adequately explained by ID with no need to resort to blind chance

In point of fact, ID is profoundly unscientific precisely because the idea presupposes a supernatural explanation and then proceeds to amass "scientific" evidence to support it's own preconception. Such an enterprise is doomed to failure because (a) we will never be able to observe supernatural processes scientifically even if they are there and (b) this is simply not how science is done.

In the end, it really makes no difference at all whether the ID crowd are right (about divine creation/intervention in biological evolution), its still not science.

Again, Hoyle mocked the Priest Lemaitre's primeval atom as 'religious pseudoscience' and 'big bang' 'for it cannot be described in scientific terms'...

and thus was forced to deny all evidence to the contrary till his dying day.

If we base our conclusions on one explanation being inherently 'forbidden' with no basis to do so, THIS is unscientific.

And there's a key difference, ID has no need to banish natural mechanisms, they can both exist- nature is the executor of God's laws as Galileo said.

But Darwinism, naturalism, materialism, must utterly banish ID from the playing field, in order to allow a randomly wandering ball to eventually find it's way into the goal unhindered


If we let both exist as possibilities, then we can deduce the least improbable explanation on it's own merits.

 

[Jose Fly]

none of these patterns can be used to conclude Darwinism

Demonstrably false.

Evolution at Sea: Complete Fossil Record from the Ocean Upholds Darwin's Gradualism Theories

The near perfect fossil record of foraminifera and the patterns therein show Darwinian evolution extremely clearly.

 

[McBell]

likewise they are adequately explained by ID with no need to resort to blind chance

That your standards are so low that ID "adequately" explains anything is the problem.

 

[Jose Fly]

That your standards are so low that ID "adequately" explains anything is the problem.

The funny thing is how the ID creationists here keep saying that ID explains things, but as soon as you ask them just what ID's explanation is, suddenly things get a bit squirrely.

 

[Davarr]

right,even though it is invariably used to try to do so, similarly with shared traits, progressions of any product design,- I'm not saying these are slam dunk cases for ID, just that none of these patterns can be used to conclude Darwinism





likewise they are adequately explained by ID with no need to resort to blind chance



Again, Hoyle mocked the Priest Lemaitre's primeval atom as 'religious pseudoscience' and 'big bang' 'for it cannot be described in scientific terms'...

and thus was forced to deny all evidence to the contrary till his dying day.

If we base our conclusions on one explanation being inherently 'forbidden' with no basis to do so, THIS is unscientific.

And there's a key difference, ID has no need to banish natural mechanisms, they can both exist- nature is the executor of God's laws as Galileo said.

But Darwinism, naturalism, materialism, must utterly banish ID from the playing field, in order to allow a randomly wandering ball to eventually find it's way into the goal unhindered


If we let both exist as possibilities, then we can deduce the least improbable explanation on it's own merits.

hey, just wanted to say that I enjoy your posts. I, too, have experienced in life that Darwinists are a priesthood. They demand utter obedience to the words of Holy Leader, and will not brook dissent from his revealed liturgy. I have yet to meet a crew as hostile to open discussion as Darwinists, except maybe some die hard fundies where I live. Even so, at least the have a case when they shout 'it SAY-ozz', as they are drawing on the words of a God and not a man, who my his own admission is a monkey deluxe. At least Darwinists don't burn people at the stake for blasphemy, so, credit where it is due. They will mock and ridicule ceaselessly, but that is survivable. Anyway, keep up the good work; your presentation is quite solid.

 

[gnostic]

Again, Hoyle mocked the Priest Lemaitre's primeval atom as 'religious pseudoscience' and 'big bang' 'for it cannot be described in scientific terms'...

Who give a bloody fig what Hoyle has to say about Lemaître, Guy?

It is almost 60 years ago, and Hoyle's competing model was debunked since the 1964, with the CMBR (cosmic microwave background radiation), which was predicted by Alpher, Herman & Gamow.

George Gamow was a Russian physicist (and atheist) who contributed enormously with the Big Bang Nucleosynthesis, in 1948. Ralph Alpher (an American physicist) was his former student and colleague, was an atheist/agnostic. Alpher did a lot of works together with Gamow.

Fred Hoyle, in the same year as Gamow and Alpher (in 1948), presented his model, the Steady State cosmological model.

Around the same time, but 5 years before than Lemaître, another Russian physicist Alexander Friedmann in 1922 predicted the same theory that the universes was expanding. Albert Einstein was aware of Friedmann's theory, but in the beginning Einstein didn't accept either Friedmann's or Lemaître's work.

And yet both Friedmann and Lemaître had each independently and separately employed Einstein's General Relativity as framework for their respective theories on expanding universe. And this before the world decided to call it the Big Bang theory.

As you can see, there are 3 early atheists, and great physicists, who did not flock to Hoyle's banner of debunked Steady State model.

The Big Bang theory was never about atheism vs theism, which is what you wanted to presented as, ignoring the facts, that Lemaître wasn't the only physicist who contributed to the expanding universe model.

Yes, Lemaître was a very important pioneer to the Big Bang, but so were Friedmann and Gamow.

No one supported Hoyle in decades, so why do you keep bashing all atheists for one atheist's mistake? It is truly dishonest of you that you would ignore Friedmann, Gamow, Alpher and Herman, and many others.

ps

Guy. You are also forgetting the American astronomer Edwin Hubble. He was also secular and not a religious man.

Hubble had also contributed to the Big Bang, when in 1929, which was 2 years after Lemaître published his paper on the "primeval atom" (1927), Hubble provided the earliest evidence to the universe was expanding, by measuring any two galaxies or other objects by how much they "red-shifted".

If the wavelength of two objects are red-shifted, then they were moving away from each other. If the light of two bodies (e.g. 2 galaxies) are blue-shifted, then they are moving toward each other.

Edwin Hubble was another atheist who supported Lemaître's work, which showed that you are wrong about all atheists were agreeing with Hoyle.

When you read up on the history of the BB theory, I would suggest that you do a little research on Gamow, Alpher, Friedmann and Hubble. Then you wouldn't look so foolish every time you bring up Lemaître vs Hoyle.