Biological Design Argument?

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rossum

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.

You are confusing unreasonable with mysterious. The assumption of science is that all reality is approachable by way of reason, which is the motive for continuing all scientific research. True, the cause of the Big Bang is hidden from us forever, but that is only because it is located in God’s fiat. God is eminently reasonable, even if we are too weak to understand his reasoning.

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?

God made us in his image and likeness. That is why we are reasoning beings. God has no origin because he is the Origin of all things.

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

Weak dodge! :rolleyes:

Have you read The Science of God by physicist Gerald Schroeder? You might then see more clearly the parallels between Genesis and science. Then again, you might not if you are thoroughly atheistic.
 
Did God design poodles, cocker spaniels, rottweilers, Dobermans, German Shepherds, Australian Sheep Dogs, beagles, dachshunds, terriers, bulldogs, etc. If so, it took a long time before these breeds came into existence.

Did God design a wolf and then decide to design a dog. There is no evidence of dogs being around in the Pleistocene fossil record, but there are wolf remains.
 
nmgauss
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Did God design a wolf and then decide to design a dog.**

Dogs are bred by designing men.
 
Charlemagne_II said:
You are confusing unreasonable with mysterious.
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You are confusing human perception with reality. The two are different, though related. What does reality smell like? A dog has a far better idea than any human. There is a lot of reality that is not accessible to our senses. A lot of that non-accessible reality is not “reasonable”.
God made us in his image and likeness. That is why we are reasoning beings. God has no origin because he is the Origin of all things.
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I am not Christian. Why do you expect me to accept Christian doctrine with no supporting evidence? Does God have an appendix? Humans do.
Have you read The Science of God by physicist Gerald Schroeder? You might then see more clearly the parallels between Genesis and science. Then again, you might not if you are thoroughly atheistic.
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Genesis is a Late Bronze Age/Early Iron Age text. It contains very little useful science – it is not even aware of the difference between stars and planets. While apologists can read all sorts of stuff into Genesis, that is more a description of the thinking of the apologist than of what is actually in Genesis. Harold Camping read things into the Bible that weren’t there. He was not the only one.

As to “atheistic”, Buddhism has far more gods than Christianity. In numerical terms, you are closer to atheism than I am.

rossum
 
rossum

As to “atheistic”, Buddhism has far more gods than Christianity. In numerical terms, you are closer to atheism than I am.

Not really, since by your own admission your gods are not important. Ours God is.

I am not Christian. Why do you expect me to accept Christian doctrine with no supporting evidence? Does God have an appendix? Humans do.

God does not need an appendix. The features of God that were put into us are the spiritual ones. Since you do not accept the idea of the Christian God (without being able to see his appendix up close and personal), it’s easy to understand why you cannot see his image in us.

I guess we’re done.
 
Charlemagne_II said:
nmgauss
**
Did God design a wolf and then decide to design a dog.**

Dogs are bred by designing men.
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Actually dogs were not designed. They were selected by trial and error. Whichever female pup exhibited desirable characteristics was selected for a match with a male with desirable characteristics. What was born may not have been what was desired, hence a failure. So additional trials were done until the desirable result was achieved.

The same has occurred in humans when females selected males with certain desired features, hoping that the babies would be successful. Many died in infancy, hence failures. Many died before they reached maturity, more failures. Those that survived to reproduce had a higher probability of having healthy children that exhibited the desirable characteristics. Many that were born grossly defective were killed. Is this design?
 
rossum said:
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.
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I have pointed out that Monod distinguished teleonomy (biological purpose) from teleology (intelligent purpose).

Do you believe intelligent purpose plays any part in spiritual development?
 
rossum said:
You are confusing human perception with reality. The two are different, though related. What does reality smell like? A dog has a far better idea than any human. There is a lot of reality that is not accessible to our senses. A lot of that non-accessible reality is not “reasonable”.
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If it’s not accessible to your senses, how do you know it’s unreasonable?
 
prodigalson2011 said:
If it’s not accessible to your senses, how do you know it’s unreasonable?
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Because we don’t want to open the flood gates by making everything anyone claims “reasonable” just because we can’t see whether they’re wrong.
 
rossum said:
Genesis is a Late Bronze Age/Early Iron Age text. It contains very little useful science – it is not even aware of the difference between stars and planets. While apologists can read all sorts of stuff into Genesis, that is more a description of the thinking of the apologist than of what is actually in Genesis. Harold Camping read things into the Bible that weren’t there. He was not the only one.
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Gerald Schroeder is not an apologist. He is a world-renowned physicist and Torah scholar. And if you were to actually read the book Charlemagne suggested instead of casting aspersions, you would quickly see a lot of your presuppositions about Genesis fall apart. Schroeder does not follow the typical trend of reading science into the Bible. He compares ancient Judaic commentaries on Scripture with current science, and never lets one cross into the domain of the other. Genesis is a much more complex text than it appears on first read, especially in Hebrew where even individual letters could be made to convey very complex ideas. The fact of the matter is that ancient Jewish scholars extrapolated from the original Hebrew text many concepts that are now established scientific fact (including the Big Bang theory.)

I’ve discussed Dr. Schroeder’s work at length in many other threads, most recently here, here and here.
 
ngill09 said:
Because we don’t want to open the flood gates by making everything anyone claims “reasonable” just because we can’t see whether they’re wrong.
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It is disingenuous (and patently absurd) to claim that what is beyond one’s perception is unreasonable, especially when everything you can perceive is just the opposite. That’s like a deaf man saying that Beethoven’s 5th symphony is a cacophony.

The fact of the matter is that, whatever lies at the base of reality, it is producing a coherent and consistent universe. To think that utter chaos is not only producing but sustaining an immensely complex order is insanity.
 
rossum said:
The material world contains information on the physical and chemical behaviour of materials. That information is available.

rossum
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Yes it does. But it is insufficient. In addition, the initial information came from someone.
 
nmgauss

Actually dogs were not designed. They were selected by trial and error. Whichever female pup exhibited desirable characteristics was selected for a match with a male with desirable characteristics. What was born may not have been what was desired, hence a failure. So additional trials were done until the desirable result was achieved.

Actually, I didn’t say dogs were designed. I said they were bred by designing men. I take it you understand the difference. 😉
 
Another buffalo prediction coming true. In past posts I have predicted that as we learn more about the genome we will be better able to classify species. Now here is a paper just published that is showing just that. This is more support for IDvolution.

Proteins and Genes, Singletons and Species

Recent experimental data from proteomics and genomics are interpreted here in ways that challenge the predominant viewpoint in biology according to which the four evolutionary processes, including mutation, recombination, natural selection and genetic drift, are sufficient to explain the origination of species. The predominant viewpoint appears incompatible with the finding that the sequenced genome of each species contains hundreds, or even thousands, of unique genes – the genes that are not shared with any other species. These unique genes and proteins, singletons, define the very character of every species. Moreover, the distribution of protein families from the sequenced genomes indicates that the complexity of genomes grows in a manner different from that of self-organizing networks: the dominance of singletons leads to the conclusion that in living organisms a most unlikely phenomenon can be the most common one. In order to provide proper rationale for these conclusions related to the singletons, the paper first treats the frequency of functional proteins among random sequences, followed by a discussion on the protein structure space, and it ends by questioning the idea that protein domains represent conserved units of evolution.
 
Charlemagne_II said:
Not really, since by your own admission your gods are not important. Ours God is.
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Irrelevant. Atheism is about the existence, or not, of gods. It is not about how important they are.
God does not need an appendix. The features of God that were put into us are the spiritual ones.
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Then your “made in the image of God” is irrelevant. Evolution is part of biology and describes the formation of the physical human body. If our resemblance to God is spiritual, rather than physical, then that resemblance has no impact of the development of our physical bodies.

rossum
 
tonyrey said:
I have pointed out that Monod distinguished teleonomy (biological purpose) from teleology (intelligent purpose).
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I am not asking Monod, I am asking you. Is purpose material or immaterial?
Do you believe intelligent purpose plays any part in spiritual development?
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Yes.

rossum
 
prodigalson2011 said:
If it’s not accessible to your senses, how do you know it’s unreasonable?
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Because some of it is accessible to scientific instrumentation.

For example, it is reasonable on the macroscopic scale to say, “Two different material objects cannot occupy the same space at the same time.”

On the quantum scale that does not apply. Particles following Fermi-Dirac statistics obey the Pauli Exclusion principle and follow that rule. Particles following Bose-Einstein statistics do not obey the Pauli Exclusion principle so many of them can occupy the same space simultaneously.

What we see as “reasonable” is dependent on what we observe. If we could directly observe at the quantum level then our ideas of “reasonable” would be different.

rossum
 
buffalo said:
Yes it does. But it is insufficient.
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And your evidence for the insufficiency of the information is?

Have you measured the amount of information present in the earth’s environment? Have you estimated the information needed to make a simple living proto-cell? Have you shown that the second number is larger than the first number?

If not then you have some work to do.
In addition, the initial information came from someone.
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How much information does this proposed “someone” contain? Where did that information come from?

You are proposing to solve the problem of the origin of information by starting with the information in “someone”. That is not a solution, it is a cop-out.

How about, “The origin of the first living thing was when the zeroth living thing laid an egg which hatched into the first living thing.” Satisfactory? No, I don’t think so either.

You cannot explain the origin of information by starting with a living “someone” which already contains information.

rossum
 
tonyrey said:
It should be obvious that I agree with him if I quote him in response to your question. Do you reject his view? If so why?
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Is teleology material or non-material?

Is teleonomy material or non-material?

rossum
 
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