Intelligent Design vs the Methodological Naturalism standard for science

[Jose Fly]

But in informing the uninformed public that I guess you count me in, maybe not, they wrote about all the arguments they made with top professionals. I have read "The Philosophy of Biology" by Peter Godfrey-Smith. It is in the Princeton Foundation of Contemporary Philosophy. It seems to me from reading everything I have and the go-betweens described in Meyer that many scientists believe somewhere in the middle. I also just wanted to point out that many scientists are still Christians.

The fact that both authors took their arguments to the uninformed public rather than to the relevant scientific community is pretty much what creationists have been doing for nearly a century. They know what happens when they engage people who know the subject matter versus when they preach to the masses.

No. Any subset of the Universe is a system(s) with thought because it can perceive transferring of matter as already explained but consciousness is "a thought about itself where the itself is removed from thinking about itself but not the thought."

So can you specify what in the universe has consciousness?

And to your second question:

I don't believe Behe. I never said I believed anyone but Denton and Meyer and in fact I don't believe anyone else (of the biologists for ID).

Denton just believed that the organisms were always there as far as his science was concerned. He said in his book that he believed in God but that scientifically he could just argue for this funny-sounding idea. Actually I don't believe in time. So I can't really answer your question very clearly without giving away copywritten info. I can say that if there are ni objects with nj thoughts and mi objects with mj thoughts in the Universe ni*nj:mi*mj. I can't elaborate.

To clarify, are you in agreement with common ancestry of all life on earth?

 

[shunyadragon]

Yes and I was off topic too but I don't understand why there could be art.
Again,

"Artistic vision would be going above and beyond what is necessary to make life more interesting. Things that don't have a direct reason that balance themselves out anyway. "

Not only off topic, but your wool coverup slipped, maybe revealing a different side.

Simply, because the origin of the mind, attributes of the mind and consciousness are only known by the physical evidence of the brain, and progressive evolved intelligence and consciousness in the animal kingdom.

In reality a compassionate, creative intellect has survival ability for an opportunistic omnivore where cooperation and pleasing others has advantages. Art can evolve from decorations and adornments desired by females. In the animal kingdom Crows collect trinkets, and some collect things for the female.

Your neglecting

 

[robocop (actually)]

The fact that both authors took their arguments to the uninformed public rather than to the relevant scientific community is pretty much what creationists have been doing for nearly a century. They know what happens when they engage people who know the subject matter versus when they preach to the masses.

They would probably say to you that they are like scientists with a new idea that hasn't gotten enough ground yet, perhaps with the public as well.

So can you specify what in the universe has consciousness?

I can't elaborate if I want to make any money.

To clarify, are you in agreement with common ancestry of all life on earth?

To be honest I don't even know. Abstraction requires for instance that our earth could have been created yesterday along with a history for it and our brains.

 

[robocop (actually)]

Not only off topic, but your wool coverup slipped, maybe revealing a different side.

Sorry... if I have given indication of bad character I will have that much a steeper climb to show where I stand.

Simply, because the origin of the mind, attributes of the mind and consciousness are only known by the physical evidence of the brain, and progressive evolved intelligence and consciousness in the animal kingdom.

Yes I understand your progressive consciousness argument. But wouldn't this mean that bacteria have some level of consciousness, and then wouldn't that give our cells consciousness? There are other things too that might have consciousness. We still haven't answered if consciousness can come from non-consciousness.

In reality a compassionate, creative intellect has survival ability for an opportunistic omnivore where cooperation and pleasing others has advantages. Art can evolve from decorations and adornments desired by females. In the animal kingdom Crows collect trinkets, and some collect things for the female.

True enough I suppose... these things show fitness to the partner through song, decorations, plumage, long flowers for hummingbirds with long beaks, etc... I will think about this.

 

[robocop (actually)]

Alright you guys be back in an hour.

 

[siti]

So SETI is unscientific because it looks for intelligence that is not human?

How the heck do you get this from anything I said? I never even mentioned SETI at all and I certainly did not restrict either intelligence or nature to things which have human causes.

You are just arbitrarily singling out a particular conclusion for restriction, forbidding it to be considered, just as Hoyle did for the BB- and many others who considered the entire concept inherently unscientific.

I have not singled out any conclusion for anything, I have just made the point that conclusions that are based on speculative metaphysics - such as ID...and, you may recall, I also mentioned your other favourite "primeval atom" which I call an actual "primordial singularity" - for which there is also no scientific evidence, and the "multiverse" - are not science.

Why not allow science to follow the evidence where it leads, and let that inform us what is real and what is not?

Why not indeed?

Some believe life on earth was designed and put here by ET, that's one form of ID which even Dawkins is open to - is that 'supernatural'?

No - if it were discovered that an intelligent extra-terrestrial species was the cause of life on earth that would still be a natural cause followed by a natural effect. Unfortunately, there is no evidence for this, so this is also in the realm of unscientific speculation - at least for the time being. If it turned out to be true that would fall precisely into the category that I mentioned earlier - that species would be 'the creator', and if someone wanted to label it "God" I would have no problem with that and both "God" and "ID" would then have become a scientific idea. But we have no such evidence.

This is why when we look at the Rosetta stone we know it was not created by natural processes.- so if that's a 'supernatural' explanation, fine, that does not rule it out being true.

Of course it was created by natural processes - the natural hand movements of a natural human using tools fashioned from natural materials to make marks on a natural piece of granite. Or what? Are you suggesting it was written by "God's finger" - like he did with the "Ten Commandments"?

Guy - I'm getting tired of this now - I'm not going to answer any more of your fumbling attempts to construct straw men out of my comments. You are obviously confused about the meaning of the word "natural" and that confusion is not a basis for an intelligent conversation - let alone a rational argument.

 

[shunyadragon]

Yes I understand your progressive consciousness argument. But wouldn't this mean that bacteria have some level of consciousness, and then wouldn't that give our cells consciousness?

No, because bacteria and other single celled organisms do not have a brain. Consciousness is only observed in animals with a brain.

There are other things too that might have consciousness. We still haven't answered if consciousness can come from non-consciousness.

As far as science is concerned the distinction is clear and specific. There is abundant evidence that consciousness evolved with the brain. We have no evidence for any other origin or existence of consciousness outside the brain.

True enough I suppose... these things show fitness to the partner through song, decorations, plumage, long flowers for hummingbirds with long beaks, etc... I will think about this.

OK

 

[Jose Fly]

They would probably say to you that they are like scientists with a new idea that hasn't gotten enough ground yet, perhaps with the public as well.

Then one has to wonder why they aren't making any effort at all towards convincing the scientific community of the validity of their arguments. I'm pretty sure I know why.

I can't elaborate if I want to make any money.

Then I guess we don't really have much to discuss.

To be honest I don't even know. Abstraction requires for instance that our earth could have been created yesterday along with a history for it and our brains.

I suppose if you want to go full-on solipsist, then everything we might talk about is pointless. No matter what, it could be a complete illusion.

 

[Grandliseur]

Yes, I watched it. Now go and look at what the professionals say about exactly the same things. You have misinterpreted the evidence.

No, I haven't. Instead, I now know who the children of the ancient serpent is. Indeed, it was exactly as I said in my first post on this thread; there are undeniable forces so powerful that any truth can be buried. It is not about science, but about keeping people from discovering the past.

 

[robocop (actually)]

Then one has to wonder why they aren't making any effort at all towards convincing the scientific community of the validity of their arguments. I'm pretty sure I know why.

In Signature in the Cell, Stephen C. Meyer describes many encounters with professionals to convince them of his views.

To clarify, are you in agreement with common ancestry of all life on earth?

Even without dodging the question, I still don't really know.

Consciousness is only observed in animals with a brain.

Am working on a response to this and your art statement. It may take a while.

 

[shunyadragon]

Sure they do. Michael Behe: "For the record, I have no reason to doubt that the universe is the billions of years old that physicists say it is. Further, I find the idea of common descent (that all organisms share a common ancestor) fairly convincing, and have no particular reason to doubt it. "

Michael Denton: ""it is important to emphasize at the outset that the argument presented here is entirely consistent with the basic naturalistic assumption of modern science - that the cosmos is a seamless unity which can be comprehended ultimately in its entirety by human reason and in which all phenomena, including life and evolution and the origin of man, are ultimately explicable in terms of natural processes. This is an assumption which is entirely opposed to that of the so-called "special creationist school". According to special creationism, living organisms are not natural forms, whose origin and design were built into the laws of nature from the beginning, but rather contingent forms analogous in essence to human artifacts, the result of a series of supernatural acts, involving the suspension of natural law. Contrary to the creationist position, the whole argument presented here is critically dependent on the presumption of the unbroken continuity of the organic world - that is, on the reality of organic evolution and on the presumption that all living organisms on earth are natural forms in the profoundest sense of the word, no less natural than salt crystals, atoms, waterfalls, or galaxies." (page xvii-xviii)."

I believe Denton and Behe are slippery characters I may follow up,

 

[robocop (actually)]

Consciousness is only observed in animals with a brain.

Shunyadragon,

I will be sleeping on consciousness and art. I still have #4 and #5 on my falsifiability list (on pg. 13 of this thread).

 

[shunyadragon]

In Signature in the Cell, Stephen C. Meyer describes many encounters with professionals to convince them of his views.

This is terribly questionable, professionals?, not scientists, maybe evangelicals and fundi theologians. Can you list the scientists he has convinced of 'Intelligent Design?' Stephen Meyer is an 'Intelligent Design,' and a Christian evangelist.

 

[robocop (actually)]

Sure... I didn't say he convinced them necessarily but that he talked to them... that is a matter of grammar but he still may have convinced some of them anyway... but I'm going to sleep. Will have to wait until tomorrow. I will mark on my phone that shunyadragon and I have many remaining issues.

I think I can answer consciousness and art more than satisfactorily.

 

[Hockeycowboy]

We also have a 3 billion year fossil history for life, and that life fits into a nested hierarchy

No 3 billion years! The earliest life was maybe over 3 billion years, but multicellularity (not colonies) and diversity is understood to have begun only about 600 - 650 million.

Let's not shift the facts.

 

[shunyadragon]

No 3 billion years! The earliest life was maybe over 3 billion years, but multicellularity (not colonies) and diversity is understood to have begun only about 600 - 650 million.

Let's not shift the facts.

Actually the earliest fossil life is 4.28 billion years old.

Form: Earliest evidence of life on Earth 'found'

"Scientists have discovered what they say could be fossils of some of the earliest living organisms on Earth.

They are represented by tiny filaments, knobs and tubes in Canadian rocks dated to be up to 4.28 billion years old.

That is a time not long after the planet's formation and hundreds of millions of years before what is currently accepted as evidence for the most ancient life yet found on Earth.

The researchers report their investigation in the journal Nature.

As with all such claims about ancient life, the study is contentious. But the team believes it can answer any doubts.

The scientists' putative microbes from Quebec are one-tenth the width of a human hair and contain significant quantities of haematite - a form of iron oxide or "rust".

Matthew Dodd, who analysed the structures at University College London, UK, claimed the discovery would shed new light on the origins of life."

 

[Thermos aquaticus]

Why would a programmer change commented code at the same speed as uncommented code?

How in the world are introns in any way related to comments in program code?

Also, you act as if these transitions are spread out every letter at a time. That is not true. The divergences are several letters at a time in the separate types of organisms. While it's true that there are point mutations in cell division, how do you prove that they lead to transitions and it's not ID? A programmer could start out simply and build more complicated organisms later. Emulators relate like this: We can model what we are doing at higher levels once we solidify existence at lower ones.

If you had clicked on the link, you would have all your questions answered.

The natural and observed process of mutation produces more transitions than transversions due the fact that A and G are chemically similar as are C and T. Therefore, if the natural process of random mutation were responsible for the differences between species then we should see more transitions than transversions, and that is exactly what we see. The natural process of random mutation also produces more mutations at CpG sites, and once again we see that same bias when we compare genomes.

You have also not explained how emulators would necessarily produce nested hierarchies.

Introns are the "comments" right?

No.

If ID is right there could still be the nested hierarchy and art. Otherwise there is no art. Up to you.

There isn't a nested hierarchy in art.

 

[Thermos aquaticus]

No 3 billion years! The earliest life was maybe over 3 billion years,

And they left fossils.

Fossil Record of the Cyanobacteria

 

[Thermos aquaticus]

In Signature in the Cell, Stephen C. Meyer describes many encounters with professionals to convince them of his views.

That's not how you convince scientists. You convince scientists by producing science.

 

[robocop (actually)]

.

Consciousness:

Let us discuss consciousness in the context of a computer, brain and cells. In a computer you can have say, lines 50-100 of a program read,

If lines 50-100 == decompress(code) consciousness=TRUE.

The code part decompresses into the same statement "If lines 50-100 == decompress (code) consciousness=TRUE."

This is a statement thinking about itself where the itself is removed from thinking about itself but not the thinking. If it is in the RAM it can be perpetual. If a computer does its task to get recharged and gets recharged, that might be seen as pleasure/happiness.

In a brain I dropped the article but there was an article that showed they found a single neuron could distinguish two thoughts. There may be independent thoughts and consciousness all over and when one ties into another we think of it as coming from the subconscious.

Anyway a brain can think "I am trying to survive against a bear." I is certainly consciousness in this context, and beling able to have this consciousness helps it to think about itself and what it can do.

Lastly, a cell.

Cells control their boundaries, organize and clean up content, turn energy into composition, and proteins run DNA which runs protein. These actions can be thought as a sort of "programming language" made of a lot more physical/chemical actions. If a cell calculates with its machinery that it has the size to absorb three other cells this calculation/chemical reaction/programming instruction has the word "I" in it. When you look at it this way I think it is obvious that cells have consciousness.

We take the activity of a cell, put it into language, and ask if it involves consciousness.

Art: If ID is correct the art is a great way to see it, but could these artistic mating/survival mechanisms develop from mutation?

A bird sings a song to its potential mate to show that it can take in a lot of air or that it has stamina. How would it come about by mutation? A male bird only after serious mutation could start making sound/song and the female only after the same could start recognizing it. I could be wrong about this one.

A peafowl fans its feathers to scare attackers when mating (I think). How would the first feather form and why would any animal care?

Birds that collect trinkets show that they have the ability to fly long distances, but how do the brains get ready to test whether something is hard to come by? The brain would be neutral to trinkets that didn't associate themselves with survival.

Give me other examples of so-called art and we'll look at whether they could come
about.

I often wonder if there would be so many nitches by mutation.