Biological Design Argument?

[Charlemagne_II]

nmgauss

** At least with induction, there is an effort to reach a conclusion, not having a conclusion first and then trying to prove it. **

We don’t conclude that abiognesis was designed before looking at a single cell creature. We look at the creature first and induct from all that order the existence of intelligent design. That is induction.

 

[Charlemagne_II]

We have independent evidence of the existence of the designers of Stonehenge. Where is your equivalent independent evidence of the existence of the designers behind abiogenesis?

The evidence of a an intelligent designer at Stonehenge is self evident. The structures there, physically observed, indicate some kind of human intelligence at work. We don’t need to know a single thing about the people who built Stonehenge other than the fact that they used intelligent design.

I am not aware of any “exact” measurements anywhere in science, except simple counts. All scientific measurements come with error bars, to indicate just how inexact the measurement is. We know the value of the gravitational constant to about seven decimal places. We do not know the “exact” value. Does that render all the scientific work on gravity invalid? Again, your lack of knowledge of science is showing.

It must be showing big time because I don’t even know why you are arguing along this line.

**So, God Himself is also designed. **

Only if he is not God, which he is.

As long as scientists can design an experiment to investigate God then God, the subject of the experiment, must be designed.

Who said they could?

The Buddhist universe is eternal and has no external cause, intelligent or otherwise. I was discussing your hypotheses and answering your question.

This is hardly scientific. Christianity teaches creation. so does the Big Bang. The universe is not eternal according to science.

If you are not prepared to read the criticism of it then how do you know it is any good?

I guess that was a tit for tat point you just made.
**
What are your qualifications in maths or biology?**

I prefer not to brag. But it does impress me that great scientists and mathematicians with credentials far superior to yours or mine have seen intelligent design behind the universe. That would include Newton and Einstein, as cited above. Most (not all) of the enemies of Intelligent Design are also the enemies of God. That would certainly include Dawkins, who thinks Einstein and Newton were delusional.

“This most beautiful system [the solar system] could only proceed from the dominion of an intelligent and powerful Being.” Isaac Newton

“My religion consists of a humble admiration of the illimitable superior spirit who reveals himself in the slight details we are able to perceive with our frail and feeble mind.” Albert Einstein

 

[nmgauss]

So, God Himself is also designed. As long as scientists can design an experiment to investigate God then God, the subject of the experiment, must be designed. I am sure many theologians are going to be interested in your thinking here.

rossum

The conclusion that there is a god called “God” is purely deductive. “There must be God because that is the only way we can explain what appear to be miracles.”

According to Karen Armstrong, humans invented a concept akin to Brahman, but that concept was so remote that it was meaningless to the average person. So gods similar to the Greek gods were invented. Then along came Abraham, who acknowledged Yahweh as chief god among the pantheon inherited from the Canaanites. Thus other gods were thought to be in existence. Then along came Moses whose revelation from Yahweh emphasized that there is no other god but Yahweh. Because Yahweh was jealous of other gods, he authorized Jacob (later renamed Israel) to slaughter the worshippers of the golden calf.

 

[nmgauss]

nmgauss

** At least with induction, there is an effort to reach a conclusion, not having a conclusion first and then trying to prove it. **

We don’t conclude that abiognesis was designed before looking at a single cell creature. We look at the creature first and induct from all that order the existence of intelligent design. That is induction.

Inductive reasoning

It is based on making and testing hypotheses using the best information available. It often entails making an educated guess after observing a phenomenon for which there is no clear explanation. Inductive reasoning is useful for forming hypotheses to be tested. Inductive reasoning is often used by doctors who make a diagnosis based on test results and by jurors who make decisions based on the evidence presented to them.
In inductive reasoning, unlike in deductive reasoning, the premises do not guarantee the conclusion. One can understand inductive reasoning as “inference to the best explanation.”

 

[ngill09]

** Godel’s Incompleteness Theorem - in a nutshell. **

Godel’s Incompleteness Theorem - in a nutshell.

“Anything you can draw a circle around cannot explain itself without referring to something outside the circle – something you have to assume but cannot prove.”

This is not Godel’s Incompleteness Theorem in a nutshell.

We have two types of intelligent design being proposed here.

One is that the universe and the laws of nature were fine-tuned by an intelligent designer so that we would have the universe we have today.

The other is that certain natural phenomena, like abiogenesis and biological evolution, could not have happened naturally and required the intervention of a supernatural agent.

My main argument is with the latter. Spinoza and Einstein did not believe in a God who supernaturally intervenes with the universe and natural laws.

 

[ngill09]

“This most beautiful system [the solar system] could only proceed from the dominion of an intelligent and powerful Being.” Isaac Newton

“My religion consists of a humble admiration of the illimitable superior spirit who reveals himself in the slight details we are able to perceive with our frail and feeble mind.” Albert Einstein

Are you capable of anything but reiterating the same quotemines over and over again? Why are you restating a quote from Isaac Newton which perfectly demonstrates the fallacy of Intelligent Design? Isaac Newton was demonstrably wrong when he said that the solar system could not be maintained without supernatural interference.

 

[prodigalson2011]

Deduction is not evidence, it is deduction. So far all the deduction I have seen on the ID side is faulty.

A misnomer on my part; apologies. What I meant is that while there may be no empirical scientific evidence, the deductions one might draw from that evidence includes many that provide a vast and logically coherent array of support. I would also like to note that I do not associate myself with the ID movement. There is a difference between design as a philosophical inference and design as a scientific hypothesis, which is the arena of ID.

And your evidence to support this unevidenced assertion is?

Unevidenced assertion? It’s a simple piece of logic: causes explain effects, not the other way around.

To attempt to use chemical processes to explain the existence of the laws of nature is as absurd an enterprise as using a child to explain the origin of his parents. Chemical processes follow from the laws of nature, ergo they cannot speak to the origin of the latter.

A pure intellect contains an idea of what it is going to do before it acts. That idea is at least as complex as the item it is going to produce. If the designer had an idea that it was going to produce an earthworm, then its intellect would have contained the DNA sequence of that earthworm, and hence had all the complexity of the earthworm plus a little bit for its own intellect.

If there was no DNA sequence in the designer’s mind then according to Dr Dembski’s Explanatory Filter, the earthworm contains no CSI because there is no prior specification. If there is no CSI present then the earthworm is the product of chance and not of design.

You are conflating ideas with the intellect itself. As no less a raving anti-theist than Richard Dawkins loves to say, though he fails to realize that this lends as much support as damage to the God he’s attempting to disprove, “the simple can give rise to the complex.” An intellect, and especially a pure intellect, is supremely simple in that it has no parts. It is immaterial and indivisible. Unlike the earthworm, it cannot be separated into parts. Intelligence is not complex. It understands and produces complexity.

 

[prodigalson2011]

Can God be the creator of the universe? No. If we define the universe as “all that exists” then God cannot have created it.

Some fancy footwork you’ve executed in this post, but none of your objections hold any hold water.

Your first objection is a false dilemma, which is betrayed by your “if.” You are attempting to analyze theism within the framework of atheism and, naturally, producing logical absurdities. This reminds me a lot of Scott Clifton’s “Kalam Argument Against God.” You must address a particular philosophy on its own terms and show logical inconsistencies within itself. You can’t make a patchwork of one argument’s premises and another’s conclusion and then declare the conclusion is wrong. To the point, the fact is that no theist defines the universe as all that exists. Specifically, the universe is defined as all that God has created.

Can God be the eternal creator of the material universe? No. The material universe is not itself eternal, so prior to the Big Bang God cannot have been the creator of the material universe, because that would be like a parent without children. A logical impossibility. A ‘creator’ who has not created anything is not a creator.

More wordplay. You are either misrepresenting or misunderstanding the meaning of “eternal creator.” When most people say this, they probably simply mean this: “Eternal” is descriptive of God’s nature (i.e. He exists eternally) and “creator” is descriptive of His… well… being the creator. In other words, it simply means he is the creator, and He is eternal.

Or perhaps you are referring to the idea of God’s “eternal creative act.” As one student of philosophy, J.L. Micah Petillo, put it in his thesis, “It is important to keep in mind that while God’s eternal creative act sustains each and every successive moment, it is not itself successive. For this would put God in time along with creation. It does not sustain the universe from one moment to the next, as the hands of the potter sustain the clay vessel as it is brought up on the wheel. Though the potter’s hands sustain the vessel at every moment of its existence, this image envisions creation to be an ongoing process of sustaining. God’s creative act is an eternal act which gives being to the totality of the past, present and future simultaneously and singularly.”

Can God create time? No. Creation/created is like cause and effect. Cause comes before effect – that is the way we can tell them apart. In the absence of time there is no “before”. God cannot create from nothing, He requires time to be present as well.

I’ll defer my reply to an article written by a man who the atheist philosopher Quentin Smith called “one of the leading philosophers of time”; none other than W.L. Craig:

*I must confess that I’m baffled why atheists would think that causation presupposes time and space or at least time. Janey and John, you need to ask them what they mean by “causality” and what reason they have for believing that it presupposes time and space. They’re the ones raising the objection, so make them shoulder their burden of proof. After all, it’s not just obvious that causality presupposes time and space. So ask them for their argument.

You could also do a thought experiment. Ask them why one timeless entity—say, a number—could not depend timelessly for its existence on another timeless entity. Why is that impossible? Why couldn’t God timelessly sustain a number in existence? That would clearly be an asymmetric causal relation. Why is that impossible?

Maybe they’ll say that causes always precede their effects in time. But then ask them if they think simultaneous causal relations are impossible. Why can’t the cause and effect exist at the same time in an asymmetric dependency relation? For example, a heavy chandelier hanging on a chain from the ceiling. The ceiling and chain hold up the chandelier; the chandelier and chain don’t support the ceiling!

Indeed, you could ask them if all causation isn’t in the end simultaneous. Imagine C and E are the cause and the effect. If C were to vanish before the time at which E is produced, would E nevertheless come into being? Surely not! But if time is continuous, then no matter how close to E’s appearance C’s disappearance takes place, there will always be an interval of time between C’s disappearance and E’s appearance. But then why or how E came into being when it does seems utterly mysterious, for there is no cause at that moment to produce it.

They might say that even simultaneous causation presupposes time. Yes, the cause and effect occur at the same time. But then why couldn’t such a causal dependency exist timelessly? In simultaneous causation the cause and effect exist co-incidently. But in a timeless state two things can exist co-incidently in a dependence relation. So if simultaneous causation is possible, I see no reason to think timeless causation is impossible. At least we’d need an argument to show that it is.

Read more: reasonablefaith.org/causation-and-spacetime#ixzz2TP4AXZmV*

 

[rossum]

The evidence of a an intelligent designer at Stonehenge is self evident. The structures there, physically observed, indicate some kind of human intelligence at work. We don’t need to know a single thing about the people who built Stonehenge other than the fact that they used intelligent design.

We need to know at least one thing: that they existed. Absent that then we would be on shaky ground. A non-existent designer cannot design anything at all. In the case of Stonehenge we do have independent of the existence of the designers.

It must be showing big time because I don’t even know why you are arguing along this line.

Because you were demanding exact measurements of ancient atmospheric composition in order for you to accept the results of the Miller-Urey experiment, and its variations.

Only if he is not God, which he is.

Then you are withdrawing your argument about intelligently designed experiments indicating that the subject of those experiments is also intelligently designed?

This is hardly scientific. Christianity teaches creation. so does the Big Bang. The universe is not eternal according to science.

The current material universe is not eternal. Science has not yet pronounced on the lifetime of the multiverse from within which the current material universe arose. The Buddhist universe, “all that exists,” is eternal.

rossum

 

[rossum]

Unevidenced assertion? It’s a simple piece of logic: causes explain effects, not the other way around.

I suggest that you read some Nagarjuna on cause and effect. A cause can only legitimately be called a cause if it has actually had an effect. Something which has no effect is not a cause. Hence the cause is just as dependent on the effect as the effect is on the cause. The two are mutually contingent. A child must have a parent; a parent must have a child. Each requires the other.

To attempt to use chemical processes to explain the existence of the laws of nature is as absurd an enterprise as using a child to explain the origin of his parents. Chemical processes follow from the laws of nature, ergo they cannot speak to the origin of the latter.

If the chemical processes are designed for life, then abiogenesis does not need any further intervention. If chemical processes are not designed for life, then the ‘fine tuning’ argument fails. The design side needs to decide whether to pursue one argument or the other. Attempting to pursue both gives a very obvious problem.

An intellect, and especially a pure intellect, is supremely simple in that it has no parts.

Then, according to Dr Dembski’s Explanatory Filter, God arises by chance. Things that are a) not the result of natural laws and b) not complex have arisen by chance.

You also have the problem of where the simple intellect stores the complex design before instantiating that design. The storage/memory must be complex enough to hold the entirety of the design. I assume that your simple intellect has a memory? If it is omniscient then it must have a massive, and so massively complex, storage capacity.

rossum

 

[rossum]

You are attempting to analyze theism within the framework of atheism and, naturally, producing logical absurdities.

I am Buddhist, not atheist. Many gods exist, and so all gods are part of “all that exists”. By definitoin, anything that is outside of “all that exists” does not exist. If there is an eternal being then that being is itself part of “all that exists”.

Specifically, the universe is defined as all that God has created.

Not the Buddhist universe.

More wordplay.

More Nagarjuna. This is standard Buddhist philosophical analysis.

When most people say this, they probably simply mean this: “Eternal” is descriptive of God’s nature (i.e. He exists eternally) and “creator” is descriptive of His… well… being the creator. In other words, it simply means he is the creator, and He is eternal.

I realise that approach is common. It is also wrong. That which is eternal cannot change. Since creation had a start in time, then the creator had to change from “I will create” to “I am creating” to “I have created”. Such an entity cannot be eternal because it has changed.

I will also point out that Buddhism has no place for any essence/soul; all such reification is rejected.

Maybe they’ll say that causes always precede their effects in time. But then ask them if they think simultaneous causal relations are impossible.

They are.

If the cause is not present, then the ‘effect’ has no cause. If they appear simultaneously then they are both effects with a separate pre-existing cause.

rossum

 

[Charlemagne_II]

rossum

We need to know at least one thing: that they existed. Absent that then we would be on shaky ground. A non-existent designer cannot design anything at all. In the case of Stonehenge we do have independent of the existence of the designers.

In the case of abiogenesis, there would be no independent evidence that it occurred as a random process. According to your argument, we should not therefore regard it as random, and all the more so because of its specified complexity. So looking at the symmetry of Stonehenge, and not knowing a single thing about the makers of Stonehenge, the first thought that would occur to me is that this is a man made artifact, produced by intelligent design.

The current material universe is not eternal.

You say that as a fact when you know science says it is a falsehood.

Science has not yet pronounced on the lifetime of the multiverse from within which the current material universe arose.

Science has yet to pronounce means you are relying on a fanciful atheist notion rather than something that science can seriously study.

Then you are withdrawing your argument about intelligently designed experiments indicating that the subject of those experiments is also intelligently designed?

Whatever.

 

[prodigalson2011]

I suggest that you read some Nagarjuna on cause and effect. A cause can only legitimately be called a cause if it has actually had an effect. Something which has no effect is not a cause. Hence the cause is just as dependent on the effect as the effect is on the cause. The two are mutually contingent. A child must have a parent; a parent must have a child. Each requires the other.

This has nothing to do with what I said. The “parent” existed, though without the title of “parent”, prior to the creation of the child. It was the causal act of the two parents that produced the child. The child did not produce the parents. In the same way, the laws of nature produce chemicals and chemical reactions. Not the other way around.

If the chemical processes are designed for life, then abiogenesis does not need any further intervention. If chemical processes are not designed for life, then the ‘fine tuning’ argument fails. The design side needs to decide whether to pursue one argument or the other. Attempting to pursue both gives a very obvious problem.

I have never argued that abiogenesis needs any further intervention. I think it’s a bit logically incoherent to think an omniscient, omnipotent God would need to tinker with his creation. In fact, I tend to think of God’s creative act in images reminiscent of the Tao Teh Ching: the universe flowing out of God’s mind like a river and slowly blossoming.

And as I noted previously, there are differing viewpoints within the theistic community as to what “design” constitutes.

Then, according to Dr Dembski’s Explanatory Filter, God arises by chance. Things that are a) not the result of natural laws and b) not complex have arisen by chance.

I’m pretty sure this refers to things within the natural world.

You also have the problem of where the simple intellect stores the complex design before instantiating that design. The storage/memory must be complex enough to hold the entirety of the design. I assume that your simple intellect has a memory? If it is omniscient then it must have a massive, and so massively complex, storage capacity.

You are attempting to speak of the theistic God as though he is just a bigger version of a human being, which is erroneous. A better familiarity with theistic philosophy would do much to engender a more productive conversation.

 

[prodigalson2011]

I am Buddhist, not atheist. Many gods exist, and so all gods are part of “all that exists”. By definitoin, anything that is outside of “all that exists” does not exist. If there is an eternal being then that being is itself part of “all that exists”.

For all intents and purposes, since what you define as “gods” are not even near the same thing as what a Christian means by “God”, the universe you describe is essentially “God”-less.

And you are twisting my words again here. I did not say that God is outside of all that exists. I said the universe is all that exists outside of God. There is a huge difference.

Not the Buddhist universe.

I specifically said in the previous sentence that I was explaining the defintion of the universe per theism. Furthermore, you are on a Catholic forum debating a theistic philosophy. It simply will not do to toss out all theistic premises from the outset and replace them with Buddhist ones.

More Nagarjuna. This is standard Buddhist philosophical analysis.

I realise that approach is common. It is also wrong. That which is eternal cannot change. Since creation had a start in time, then the creator had to change from “I will create” to “I am creating” to “I have created”. Such an entity cannot be eternal because it has changed.

A common and understandable objection. But it’s not a new one to Catholic theology and it’s not an unsolvable dilemma. As I mentioned earlier, there exists in Catholic theology the concept of “God’s eternal creative act”, which means that there has never been any change from “I will create” on through “I have created”. It’s past my bedtime and I don’t have time to go into detail, but what it essentially boils down to is that finitude and temporality are properties of God’s creation that only exist within it. This is why Christians believe that the past, present and future are all “present” to God.

I will also point out that Buddhism has no place for any essence/soul; all such reification is rejected.

To call the soul a reification is a charge which demands substantiation, methinks.

They are.

If the cause is not present, then the ‘effect’ has no cause. If they appear simultaneously then they are both effects with a separate pre-existing cause.

I think you need to reread that passage, because Craig gives a clear example of what he means by simultaneous cause-and-effect.

 

[rossum]

In the case of abiogenesis, there would be no independent evidence that it occurred as a random process.

So you accept that there is no independent evidence of the existence of your proposed designer. Good, we can agree on that.

Abiogenesis is a chemical process. We do have evidence of the existence of chemicals and we do have evidence of the way those chemicals behave. We do have evidence that those chemicals behave in such a way as to produce other, more complex, chemicals which are commonly found in living organisms: amino acids etc.

According to your argument, we should not therefore regard it as random, and all the more so because of its specified complexity.

Have you measured the specified complexity of the first living organism? Where are your calculations? I can warn you in advance that there are immense problems with Dr. Dembski’s CSI, in particular with establishing the specification part.

You say that as a fact when you know science says it is a falsehood.

Are you denying the Big Bang? Is the current material universe eternal?

rossum

 

[rossum]

This has nothing to do with what I said. The “parent” existed, though without the title of “parent”, prior to the creation of the child.

This is where we disagree. You are seeing a single unchanging entity while I am seeing a series of different, but causally related entities.

A non-parent starts as a virgin. Nine months before becoming a parent, that non-parent loses the status of virgin. Can a single entity be both a virgin and a non-virgin? Obviously not, that would be a contradiction. Hence we must have two different entities: virgin non-parent and non-virgin parent. A single entity cannot have two opposed properties, it cannot be both X and non-X.

I have never argued that abiogenesis needs any further intervention. I think it’s a bit logically incoherent to think an omniscient, omnipotent God would need to tinker with his creation.

I agree. That is why I think that the Intelligent Design people reduce their God from the maker of the universe to a tinkerer with small details. If God is as advertised then He knew the result at the time of the Big Bang and would have no need to intervene further.

You are attempting to speak of the theistic God as though he is just a bigger version of a human being, which is erroneous. A better familiarity with theistic philosophy would do much to engender a more productive conversation.

The problem is that you have a non-material entity interacting with the material: DNA is material. At some point the entity has to move from theistic philosophy to material being. Something that is purely theistic philosophy cannot move base pairs around to make the right DNA sequence. It is the interface between the two where a great many problems arise.

For all intents and purposes, since what you define as “gods” are not even near the same thing as what a Christian means by “God”, the universe you describe is essentially “God”-less.

Here is one of the Buddhist gods describing himself. I have highlighted a few words:

“I am the Brahma, the great Brahma, the conqueror, the unconquered, the all-seeing, the subjector of all to his wishes, the omnipotent, the maker, the creator, the supreme, the controller, the one confirmed in the practice of jhana, and father to all that have been and shall be. I have created these other beings.”

– Brahmajala sutta, Digha Nikaya 1

Does that god sound familiar?

And you are twisting my words again here. I did not say that God is outside of all that exists. I said the universe is all that exists outside of God. There is a huge difference.

We are using different definitions of “universe”. If God exists then He is part of “all that exists” by definition. Hence the “all the exists” universe is eternal because one of its constituent parts, God, is eternal. An eternal universe needs no creator, just as an eternal God needs no creator.

To call the soul a reification is a charge which demands substantiation, methinks.

Can a soul change from damned to saved, or vice versa? If it can change then it can be analysed into parts with differing properties and hence dismantled. If it cannot change, then extreme Calvinism is correct and the whole spiritual life is useless.

rossum

 

[Charlemagne_II]

rossum

I think it’s been an interesting exchange with you, but it looks like we see the world from entirely different perspectives. On top of that, you draw inferences from things I say that are not at all warranted, suggesting our conversation is a dead end.

Anyway, good luck in your search at Catholic Answers.

May the light of Christ shine on you.

 

[buffalo]

This is not Godel’s Incompleteness Theorem in a nutshell.

We have two types of intelligent design being proposed here.

One is that the universe and the laws of nature were fine-tuned by an intelligent designer so that we would have the universe we have today.

The other is that certain natural phenomena, like abiogenesis and biological evolution, could not have happened naturally and required the intervention of a supernatural agent.

My main argument is with the latter. Spinoza and Einstein did not believe in a God who supernaturally intervenes with the universe and natural laws.

God sustains the universe. But perhaps we should consider the quantum effects of prayer? If God even answers one prayer, then He intervenes. If one miracle happened then God intervened.

If God “thought” the universe fine tuning and natural phenomena are complementary.

 

[buffalo]

I

Here is one of the Buddhist gods describing himself. I have highlighted a few words:
“I am the Brahma, the great Brahma, the conqueror, the unconquered, the all-seeing, the subjector of all to his wishes, the omnipotent, the maker, the creator, the supreme, the controller, the one confirmed in the practice of jhana, and father to all that have been and shall be. I have created these other beings.”

– Brahmajala sutta, Digha Nikaya 1Does that god sound familiar?

rossum

I remember you posting their is not a supreme Buddhist god? Did I misunderstand?

 

[rossum]

I remember you posting their is not a supreme Buddhist god? Did I misunderstand?

No, you did not misunderstand. You missed the words “describing himself” in what I just posted. To get the full impact you need to read the appropriate section of the sutta. See the Brahmajala sutta, and look for “Wrong view 5” in the partly eternalist, partly non-eternalist section.

rossum