Biological Design Argument?

[Charlemagne_II]

rossum

What is not random is natural selection which acts as a strong filter on the pool of mutations and selects the advantageous ones. The overall combination of mutation followed by selection is not random. Pass random sized gravel through a sieve and the resulting pile of gravel is no longer randomly sized.

The analogy does not work. When you pass randomly sized gravel (intelligently selected) through a sieve (intelligently designed instrument) you are conducting an intelligently designed process for getting consistently sized gravel.

 

[tonyrey]

rossum

What is not random is natural selection which acts as a strong filter on the pool of mutations and selects the advantageous ones. The overall combination of mutation followed by selection is not random. Pass random sized gravel through a sieve and the resulting pile of gravel is no longer randomly sized.

The analogy does not work. When you pass randomly sized gravel (intelligently selected) through a sieve (intelligently designed instrument) you are conducting an intelligently designed process for getting consistently sized gravel.

Intelligence is always introduced through the back door! It is at the root of every attempt to derive it from mindless events.

 

[Charlemagne_II]

tonyrey

Tony, have you seen this u-tube presentation by Dr. Stephen Meyer? He gets very much into DNA as an instance of apparent intelligent design that cannot be accounted for by Darwinian random selection.

youtube.com/watch?v=9a-h88ziYA4

It runs about 80 minutes but can be watched from 15 minutes on without losing much.

 

[tonyrey]

tonyrey

Tony, have you seen this u-tube presentation by Dr. Stephen Meyer? He gets very much into DNA as an instance of apparent intelligent design that cannot be accounted for by Darwinian random selection.

youtube.com/watch?v=9a-h88ziYA4

It runs about 80 minutes but can be watched from 15 minutes on without losing much.

I have seen it, Charles, and was extremely impressed by the level of detail which is ignored by his critics in the scientific Establishment who dismiss metaphysical facts out of hand as if science alone is the only form of knowledge - a pathetic assumption they constantly belie in their daily lives.

 

[tonyrey]

… So far non-design is in the lead.
rossum

If non-design is in the lead your belief in spiritual development is going to lose the race - unless you also believe it is purposeless (which would be a superb example of incoherence…

 

[rossum]

According to Darwin, we have a good deal more from the Creator: “There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed by the Creator into a few forms or into one…"

Neither you nor Darwin have any actual amino acids directly produced by your proposed designer. The non-design side has actual amino acids produced by a non-design process: chemistry.

So far the non-design proponents are ahead.

You cannot prove …

Stop right there. This is science, not mathematics. I do not have to “prove” anything. All I have to do is to show that there is currently more evidence for my hypothesis than there is evidence for alternative hypotheses. I have done that. I can show non-designed amino acids, lipid bilayers, purines, ribozymes, pyrimidines etc. arising from simple chemistry. All the other side has is “It sure looks designed to me”.

Science works on evidence, not proof. Currently the available evidence supports a non-designed origin of life. As and when the evidence changes then I will change my mind. Until that happens I will go in the direction the evidence points.

rossum

 

[rossum]

The analogy does not work. When you pass randomly sized gravel (intelligently selected) through a sieve (intelligently designed instrument) you are conducting an intelligently designed process for getting consistently sized gravel.

Then drop the analogy entirely; it was only an analogy.

My point is that mutations with random effects are filtered by natural selection. Those mutations that pass the filter no longer have random effects, but have effects which can successfully pass the filter – natural selection filters mutations based on their effects on the phenotype.

The resulting mutations are no longer of random effect, and those are the mutations that spread and pass on to future generations.

rossum

 

[rossum]

If non-design is in the lead your belief in spiritual development is going to lose the race - unless you also believe it is purposeless (which would be a superb example of incoherence…

Evolution is related to our material bodies. Spiritual development is tied to our non-material components.

Why do you insist on trying to tie in spiritual development with the material? Is purpose material or immaterial?

rossum

 

[ngill09]

Evolution is related to our material bodies. Spiritual development is tied to our non-material components.

Why do you insist on trying to tie in spiritual development with the material? Is purpose material or immaterial?

rossum

I like this.

 

[tonyrey]

Evolution is related to our material bodies. Spiritual development is tied to our non-material components.

Why do you insist on trying to tie in spiritual development with the material? Is purpose material or immaterial?

Why do you insist on trying to detach spiritual development from physical development as if we consist of two disparate entities? (Your view is reminiscent of the “Ghost in the Machine” theory. )

1. Do you believe there is no interaction between the body and the spirit?
2. Are they related at all? If so how? By sheer chance?
3. Are they parallel entities which proceed merrily on their way as if the other doesn’t exist?
4. When you make a decision is the body responsible? If so how?
5. Is the body entirely purposeless?

 

[tonyrey]

I like this.

Do you like my response? If not why not?

 

[Charlemagne_II]

rossum

**Neither you nor Darwin have any actual amino acids directly produced by your proposed designer. The non-design side has actual amino acids produced by a non-design process: chemistry.

So far the non-design proponents are ahead.**

The fine-tuning of the laws of the universe at the Big Bang made possible the later emergence of amino acids that you say were not designed (again no evidence or proof). The non-design proponents cannot show how the immense complexity of DNA could have simply popped into existence out of amino acids. They merely presume that a living organism miraculously popped into existence without any law other than the law of chance to prove it. That is not evidence, and it is a long way from proof. Does it never occur to you, rossum, that sometimes when a thing appears to be intelligently designed, it may actually be designed.

So far the design proponents are ahead. And the reason is that we ourselves exercise intelligent design and therefore ought to be able to recognize it when we see it.

That is, unless you want to argue that the intelligent design you exercise is really an illusion, and the thoughts in your head only got there by chance. Do you really buy the blind watchmaker hypothesis?

“There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed by the Creator into a few forms or into one…" Charles Darwin

 

[rossum]

You did not answer my question. Do you expect me to answer your questions when you do not answer mine?

Here is is again: “Is purpose material or immaterial?”

When you have answered then I will look at your questions.

Why do you insist on trying to detach spiritual development from physical development as if we consist of two disparate entities? (Your view is reminiscent of the “Ghost in the Machine” theory. )

1. Do you believe there is no interaction between the body and the spirit?
2. Are they related at all? If so how? By sheer chance?
3. Are they parallel entities which proceed merrily on their way as if the other doesn’t exist?
4. When you make a decision is the body responsible? If so how?
5. Is the body entirely purposeless?

rossum

 

[rossum]

The fine-tuning of the laws of the universe at the Big Bang made possible the later emergence of amino acids that you say were not designed (again no evidence or proof).

This is a theistic evolution position which has no problem with any of abiogenesis or biology. It may, or may not have some problems with cosmology, depending on where the design is placed. This position requires no direct design intervention in the actual process of abiogenesis, since the design work was completed billions of years earlier. Hence this position is compatible with biological science and is incompatible with the apparent position of the Discovery Institute’s version of ID.

The non-design proponents cannot show how the immense complexity of DNA could have simply popped into existence out of amino acids.

Of course not, because that is not what the non-design proponents propose. You are telescoping a complex process into its first and last steps and exclaiming about the big gap. Of course there is a big gap, which is crossed by many small steps, some of which are known and others which are still being worked on. In some cases we have two possible steps, and have not yet been able to determine which of them was the more likely.

They merely presume that a living organism miraculously popped into existence without any law other than the law of chance to prove it.

There is little point in my posting here is you do not read what I say. Your insistence on crying “chance” at every opportunity is incorrect. Chemistry is not chance, and I hove told you this m any times. You are merely recycling an old and discredited YEC PRATT. How about “Christianity is wrong because Christians are cannibals”? Your argument is on about the same level.

Chemistry is not chance. If you do not understand that then you have no business discussing anything to do with chemistry.

Does it never occur to you, rossum, that sometimes when a thing appears to be intelligently designed, it may actually be designed.

Does it ever occur to you that if there is no evidence of the existence of a proposed designer than that proposed designer may be a figment of someone’s imagination.

Snowflakes give the appearance of design, yet they are not designed but formed by natural forces. There is no direct design in snowflakes, just as there is no direct design shown so far in abiogenesis. If there is indirect design in abiogenesis, such as back at the Big Bang, then there is the same degree of indirect design in snowflakes which would also have been designed back at the Big Bang in the same way.

That is, unless you want to argue that the intelligent design you exercise is really an illusion, and the thoughts in your head only got there by chance.

Again with the “chance”. If you insist on using spurious and idiotic arguments then I will call those arguments spurious and idiotic. CHEMISTRY IS NOT CHANCE.

Do you really buy the blind watchmaker hypothesis?

Have you read Dawkins’ book? Can you specify the points where he is mistaken?

rossum

 

[Charlemagne_II]

rossum

Calm down.
**
Chemistry is not chance. If you do not understand that then you have no business discussing anything to do with chemistry. **

If your view of abiogenesis is that the chemistry is not chance, what is it?

Does it ever occur to you that if there is no evidence of the existence of a proposed designer than that proposed designer may be a figment of someone’s imagination.

Does it ever occur to you that you are able to reason about the universe because it has been reasonably designed to be understood?

Does it ever occur to you that because you are a reasoning being, there might be another reasoning being who designed you to reason?

Or again, do I dare say it … is everything for you undesigned and therefore the product of blind CHANCE?

Or does everything for you follow the law of Necessity?

Other than Chance, Necessity, and Design, what options are there to explain anything?

 

[ngill09]

rossum

Calm down.
**
Chemistry is not chance. If you do not understand that then you have no business discussing anything to do with chemistry. **

If your view of abiogenesis is that the chemistry is not chance, what is it?

Does it ever occur to you that if there is no evidence of the existence of a proposed designer than that proposed designer may be a figment of someone’s imagination.

Does it ever occur to you that you are able to reason about the universe because it has been reasonably designed to be understood?

Does it ever occur to you that because you are a reasoning being, there might be another reasoning being who designed you to reason?

Or again, do I dare say it … is everything for you undesigned and therefore the product of blind CHANCE?

Or does everything for you follow the law of Necessity?

Other than Chance, Necessity, and Design, what options are there to explain anything?

Actually, according to natural theology, God is a Necessary being. Therefore “Design” is a subset of “Necessity”.

 

[Aloysium]

design seems so obvious

there are clear differences as creation becomes more complex,
beginning with matter, and
then includes additional features that one may call soul,
with the manifestation of plants, animals and man

man is complex eneough in terms of his physical nature
but his spiritual soul defines him as separate from other animals

take the study of physics:
no other material substance, no plant, no animal is engaged in this activity
man’s spiritual soul is a necessary component to not only to understand the infinitely small and the cosmos,
but it is our spirit which cleaves reality into what is perceptible and understandable
our spirit allows us to form this complex relationship with that which is around us

In physics, a basic concept is frame of reference - everything is relative.
Where are these frames of reference? - not within the physical composition of matter.
The speed of light is the same in all frames of reference;
we have determined this through experiments designed to extend the senses of the person and imagine himself as a nexus of physical reality.
What I am saying is that without a human being, without the spiritual soul, there is no frame of refence.

There is something truly, amazingly, gloriously spectacular in all this.

It seems clear to me that

• we did not come about through increasingly sophisticated groupings of material activity
• nor did our souls evolve to this state
• we were, we are created this way by God.

How we do change/hopefully grow
is in our love for Him and for each other.

 

[Charlemagne_II]

ngill

Actually, according to natural theology, God is a Necessary being. Therefore “Design” is a subset of "Necessity"

From this it would seem to follow that the universe was necessarily designed?

 

[rossum]

If your view of abiogenesis is that the chemistry is not chance, what is it?

Chemistry, what else would it be? Abiogenesis deals with the material; chemistry deals with the material.

Does it ever occur to you that you are able to reason about the universe because it has been reasonably designed to be understood?

Does it ever occur to you that the universe appears to us to be reasonable because we have evolved that way? In actual fact the universe is a lot less reasonable that it appears to us because the unreasonable part is mostly hidden from us. Take a course in quantum mechanics if you want to see what the universe is really like. All we see on the surface is an overall statistical summary of the myriad of small quantum interactions that are going on all around us.

Is it reasonable that all the gas in a room is on one side of the room and not on the other? What assumptions did you make before formulating your answer? Now answer the same question if “all the gas in the room” is a single molecule of gas. Macroscopic and microscopic are not the same.

Does it ever occur to you that because you are a reasoning being, there might be another reasoning being who designed you to reason?

Does it ever occur to you that you have no explanation for the origin of reason, unless you can provide an explanation for the origin of your proposed reasoning being?

Or again, do I dare say it … is everything for you undesigned and therefore the product of blind CHANCE?

False dichotomy.

Other than Chance, Necessity, and Design, what options are there to explain anything?

1. Quantum Mechanics
2. Chance and Necessity in combination.
3. None of the above.
4. We don’t know yet.
5. Gekexisom, which won’t be discovered for another 23,569 years.

You did ask.

rossum

 

[ngill09]

ngill

Actually, according to natural theology, God is a Necessary being. Therefore “Design” is a subset of "Necessity"

From this it would seem to follow that the universe was necessarily designed?

No. It would follow that if the universe was designed, it was designed by a being whose qualities and characteristics were determined either by Chance or by Necessity. Catholics opt for the latter.