Conclusive evidence for Design!

[tonyrey]

Significance does not depend on size, quantity, frequency or rarity, brevity or longevity, simplicity or complexity or any other physical attribute. It depends on the reasons why persons and things exist. That is why science tells us nothing about the value, meaning and purpose of life except the power of the mind to discover truths and understand reality.

This fact is conclusive evidence that survival alone is an inadequate explanation of life - quite apart from the question of how life and the urge to survive could have emerged from inanimate molecules. It is absurd to derive purpose from that which is purposeless, rationality from that which is irrational and personality from that which is impersonal.

To deny there is Design is to reduce oneself to a fortuitous freak in a pointless universe which just happens to exist for no reason whatsoever. Regardless of what individuals claim to believe or disbelieve no one lives as if this is true. The real test is not what we profess but how we behave from moment to moment - purposefully for the most part! The fact that we give reasons for what we do or don’t do is a sign that we don’t usually want to seem unreasonable. Why not? Pascal gave us the answer:

“Penser fait la grandeur de l’homme.” (Thought makes the greatness of Man.)

 

[tonyrey]

The topic is Design not the Designer. It is a philosophical interpretation of reality with metaphysical, epistemological, moral, personal and scientific evidence that it is most economical, cogent, comprehensive, verifiable and fertile explanation of the immense value, beauty, complexity and significance of the universe, nature and rational beings.

You are entitled to your opinion but it cuts no ice on a philosophy forum unless it is based on reasons rather than feelings. The very fact that you write “everything” is symptomatic of unreasonable prejudice which to me is like water on a duck’s back! It encourages me because I know I have threatened the very foundation of your scheme of things - rather than persons…

 

[buffalo]

Well, we might get somewhere. We may not know for sure… you say. Revelation cannot play any part here, since we are talking about a fully secular problem: can we differentiate between a “natural” object and an “artifact”. As we seem to agree we do not even have to go to some alien planet to find ourselves in trouble. There is no way to find out if a new corn was the result of an artificial, conscious, designed, genetically engineered process, or a random mutation. Of course, if you would deny that there is such thing as a random, undesigned mutation, then we would be at standstill, and there would be no reason to continue. If you would assert (and I don’t think you do) that everything is designed, then we could fold, since in that case there would be no such thing as “undesinged” and as such the word “designed” would lose its meaning.

Not, not always. And the languages are NOT designed. A human language comes from many minds. And none of the human languages (except Esperanto - and it never took off the gound either) is the product of a conscious design process. They developed haphazardly, randomly without any conscious overseer to monitor and “design” the process. Bees have a very complex and sophisticated “language”, which most definitely does NOT come from a mind. They “dance”, and with their “dance” they convey very precise information about a newly discovered feeding ground, they transmit the direction and the distance to the new field. No one would argue that this language is the result of conscious, designed development process.

Human codes are designed entities. Computer languages are designed entities. We know that - because we designed them. We do not have to rely on any extra information, because we have first hand, actual information about the development of codes. It is easy to look at a human made object and declare, a la Paley’s watch that we already know that they were designed, and declare: “Aha! here is a designed artifact”. The problem is when you have no extra information, and you can only rely on observing the “gadget” and find out if it was natural or designed. The hypothetical vegetation on that alien planet shows the problem very clearly. No, in that case you cannot make any estimate at all. Not just cannot be “sure”, but you cannot make an educated guess either.

It is true, the more a gadget looks like, works like an human designed “thing” the more likely there was a designer involved. But that does not help in the problem of “was the universe designed” at all, since all the existing, very small similarities are the result of our attempt to simulate the natural processes.

We can call the DNA a “code” and a “language”, which is an anthropomorphization. Of course there are regularities in the DNA, but it could be called a very “strange” language. Its “sender” is the “parent” organism, its receiver is the “offspring”. But, just like the natural human languages are undesigned - and moreover, we KNOW that they are undesigned - there is no reason to assume a “designer”.

The amount of CSI is an indicator whether it is designed.

I am not sure that we cannot detect whether corn was genetically modified.

In a macro sense, yes, everything in our frame is designed from outside our frame. Say our frame is designed from the outside with purpose. Inside our frame there can be things that appear to have no purpose, like a rock. We may not be able to ascertain a rocks purpose and whether each and every rock has been specifically designed. But we know rocks are formed by a process, which could have been designed. Comparing a rock to a computer then a living system, yields machinery that has a very high CSI. As the CSI meter goes higher so does the likely hood it is designed.

I can make a language. Only you and I can understand it it I give you the key and no one else. Language always comes from a mind.

What??? Even if I started grunting, I had to someway communicate to you what that grunt meant. That is designed so you can understand my intent/meaning.

If a bee is designed then so is its language.

We see a mechanical watch and can easily see it is designed. We are familiar with it. Not so much with plants. We are just seeing the tip of the iceberg.

Not DNA. DNA transfers information laterally. In fact it was recently found that plant DNA communicates with our own when we eat it.

We have no natural examples of codes, maps and languages in nature. All of them come from a mind.

 

[ManRay]

You are entitled to your opinion but it cuts no ice on a philosophy forum unless it is based on reasons rather than feelings. The very fact that you write “everything” is symptomatic of unreasonable prejudice which to me is like water on a duck’s back! It encourages me because I know I have threatened the very foundation of your scheme of things - rather than persons…

You haven’t substantiated your claims. Everything you write seems to be based on feelings. It reminds me of that time Sharon Landers smacked Pete Garrison upside the head with a half eaten salami sandwich, and then proclaimed victory. Barking poodles, and rabid chipmunks will not water a garden with a bucket full of horse lotion. It just can’t happen. Mary Stevenson will report you!

 

[ManRay]

I don’t see where any theist on here has clearly answered the point in the Kalam rebuttal. You can’t use things that exists within our frame of reference to describe something that exists outside of our frame of reference. It’s not possible. You have to argue using the same tools that everyone else does. Nor has any theist dealt with the cultural and contextual ramifications of what design even means/ Good video below.

youtube.com/watch?v=PhdUp4JOHwg

 

[Linusthe2nd]

I don’t see where any theist on here has clearly answered the point in the Kalam rebuttal. You can’t use things that exists within our frame of reference to describe something that exists outside of our frame of reference. It’s not possible. You have to argue using the same tools that everyone else does. Nor has any theist dealt with the cultural and contextual ramifications of what design even means/ Good video below.

youtube.com/watch?v=PhdUp4JOHwg

Ah, but you see, that is only your opinion. And welcome to it you are indeed. What you don’t seem to grasp is that we don’t have to account to you or anyone else for either our Faith or for our philosophy which, while you see it as frivolous, is very useful to the Faith. I am not thinking of the Kalam argument here but systematic Scholastic Philosophy. A very useful tool, the handmaid of Theology.

 

[Marc_Anthony]

I’m not completely sure that this is what is being said, but as has been discussed in previous threads anybody who says that theists have never reasoned from the “First Cause”-“God” are being unfair to Aquinas, who handled this issue in great detail, partly in the Summa but many times in other places.

Of course, you can disagree with him but he definitely did NOT leave the subject untouched.

If I’m misunderstanding what it being said, I apologize.

 

[prodigalson2011]

I don’t see where any theist on here has clearly answered the point in the Kalam rebuttal. You can’t use things that exists within our frame of reference to describe something that exists outside of our frame of reference. It’s not possible. You have to argue using the same tools that everyone else does. Nor has any theist dealt with the cultural and contextual ramifications of what design even means/ Good video below.

youtube.com/watch?v=PhdUp4JOHwg

I haven’t had time to address your rebuttal; I will try to respond tomorrow. A quick word on that video: I didn’t watch the whole thing–only about half–but in what I did see, his analogies completely fail. Understand that I’m not an ardent supporter of the ID movement, but these criticisms fall flat.

a) he tries to say that there is no “design” of a car because there are different frames, tires, etc. Nevertheless, each of those cars was designed and there is still, regardless, a basic “design”, or set of functional principles, that are necessary to make a car. Same for clocks. Besides this, the I.D. argument does not require that each and every member of a species be identical. In fact, since there are many permutations of I.D. theory, it doesn’t even entirely rule out evolution.

b) his comparison of irreducible complexity to the gradual development of vehicles from rolling logs completely ignores the fact that this development was performed by intelligent beings that could form logical connections between the constituent parts of their inventions. For a blind and unconscious force to arrange over 40 proteins into a functional motor is a decidedly more astounding phenomenon.

Like I said, I’m still out on whether or not Behe and co. are on the right side of the science, but I’ve seen much better criticisms of I.D. than that video.

 

[ManRay]

I would say you missed the point of the video or have comprehended incorrectly. He wasn’t using the car as a lynchpin for nothing being designed. He was stating that the concept of design, in and of itself is bound to cultural, and contextual norms within time, and space. Going back to the Kalam - the watch is the oldest, and most famous example of someone finding a watch would, and must conclude that it was designed - but an anthropologist proved this wrong showing how a tribe in Africa found a plane, and thought the the bomb was an egg and tried to either hatch or cook it in a fire. So it is quite clear that this premise is wrong - evidence shows it.

 

[prodigalson2011]

I would say you missed the point of the video or have comprehended incorrectly. He wasn’t using the car as a lynchpin for nothing being designed. He was stating that the concept of design, in and of itself is bound to cultural, and contextual norms within time, and space.

But it’s not. The concept of design is simply that something is created intentionally for a purpose. Whether one in a given place, time or culture is able to recognize its purpose and context or not is irrelevant to the fact of its being designed. If something was a) created by an intelligent force and b) logically ordered to perform a certain function or set of functions it was, by definition, designed.

Going back to the Kalam - the watch is the oldest, and most famous example of someone finding a watch would, and must conclude that it was designed - but an anthropologist proved this wrong showing how a tribe in Africa found a plane, and thought the the bomb was an egg and tried to either hatch or cook it in a fire. So it is quite clear that this premise is wrong - evidence shows it.

For starters, the Kalam argument doesn’t even address the question of design. It deals strictly with causation. Secondly, your anthropologist has proven nothing but the fact that there are still very primitive, uneducated people in the world. The watch argument presupposes a certain level of intelligence and education on the part of the “finder.” One must be familiar with the kinds of systems he’s looking at to infer anything from them. The point of that example is that the universe exhibits the same kind of interconnected parts and principles that form an intricate, functional and apparently goal-oriented system–the kind of thing that highly intelligent people design.

 

[ManRay]

But it’s not. The concept of design is simply that something is created intentionally for a purpose. Whether one in a given place, time or culture is able to recognize its purpose and context or not is irrelevant to the fact of its being designed. If something was a) created by an intelligent force and b) logically ordered to perform a certain function or set of functions it was, by definition, designed.

You’re totally wrong. It’s not called the design argument. It’s called the INTELLIGENT DESIGN argument. There is no universal fixed notion of what this means. You have to honestly confront the argument. You are stating that a super perfect all powerful, all everything called god created this thing we call a universe, and the evidence is the complexity of it’s design. This is a flaw. The words: intelligent, complex, and even design really…are subjective to a knowledge borne, of cultural context. A time. A place. There are forces at work in relation to what we call “design” that have shaped it - evolutionarily borne from, need, utility, wants, etc…etc… No different than how a baby evolves environmentally. (which a theist will never cop to - even though it’s completely factual, and true). Going back to the car. There is no universal objective notion regarding what kind of car is THE designed car. There are evolutions of different cars through different ages, that met the utility, and wants, etc…of a time. Nature is NO different. I have a book called the Beak of the Finch where they document over a period of many years the shape differentials of the beak based on food sources, and environment etc… The Finch wasn’t designed - it conformed, evolved, and adapted. Are you arguing that this super perfect force in the universe took the time to design something, and just jacked it all up?..because we have went forwards, and backwards through the ages. There is no CLEAR intelligence in this thing you call design at all. There is no real design. This god would have to be the absolute worst. I could have done a better job. Seriously. Put a sabre tooth tiger in a room with a modern tiger, and we’ll see who is better “designed”…and yet that guy is extinct…hmph.

 

[tonyrey]

You’re totally wrong. It’s not called the design argument. It’s called the INTELLIGENT DESIGN argument. There is no universal fixed notion of what this means.

There is a vast difference between the INTELLIGENT DESIGN argument and the Design argument which has existed in philosophy since Anaxagoras and Plato.

You have to honestly confront the argument. You are stating that a super perfect all powerful, all everything called god created this thing we call a universe, and the evidence is the complexity of it’s design. This is a flaw. The words: intelligent, complex, and even design really…are subjective to a knowledge borne, of cultural context. A time. A place.

Those terms are universal and have been used by human beings with clearly defined meanings for thousands of years in philosophy, religion and daily life to distinguish rational beings from other forms of life.

There are forces at work in relation to what we call “design” that have shaped it - evolutionarily borne from, need, utility, wants, etc…etc… No different than how a baby evolves environmentally. (which a theist will never cop to - even though it’s completely factual, and true).

This is an unverifiable assumption made by materialists which undermines the validity of their own conclusions! Utility is not the sole criterion of what is true or false.

Going back to the car. There is no universal objective notion regarding what kind of car is THE designed car. There are evolutions of different cars through different ages, that met the utility, and wants, etc…of a time. Nature is NO different. I have a book called the Beak of the Finch where they document over a period of many years the shape differentials of the beak based on food sources, and environment etc… The Finch wasn’t designed - it conformed, evolved, and adapted. Are you arguing that this super perfect force in the universe took the time to design something, and just jacked it all up?..because we have went forwards, and backwards through the ages. There is no CLEAR intelligence in this thing you call design at all. There is no real design. This god would have to be the absolute worst. I could have done a better job. Seriously. Put a sabre tooth tiger in a room with a modern tiger, and we’ll see who is better “designed”…and yet that guy is extinct…hmph.

According to your argument your own reasoning is defective because it is the product of blind forces which have programmed all your mental activity over which you have no control whatsoever! The conclusions of a cog in the machine of nature are worthless!

 

[Trurl]

The amount of CSI is an indicator whether it is designed.

There is no such thing as “inherent” complexity. Complexity is the measurement of the investigator’s knowledge.

I am not sure that we cannot detect whether corn was genetically modified.

I am not just talking about you and me. I am talking about the “detectability” in principle. All you can see is some small deviation from a “norm”, where the “norm” is just an arbitrary interval of tolerance around some approximate value, which we selected for convenience’s sake. (It has no objective meaning.) Whether this deviation was planned and executed in a lab, or it was the result of random mutation, is unknowable. You cannot start with the end result, and ascertain its origin. Bayes theorem is not applicable here.

In a macro sense, yes, everything in our frame is designed from outside our frame.

What the heck does THIS mean?

Say our frame is designed from the outside with purpose. Inside our frame there can be things that appear to have no purpose, like a rock. We may not be able to ascertain a rocks purpose and whether each and every rock has been specifically designed. But we know rocks are formed by a process, which could have been designed.

“Could have been?” If my grandmother would have had “you know what”, she/he could have been my grandfather. If you say that everything is “designed”, then there is nothing to talk about. The words: “designed” are “undesigned” make no sense any more.

Comparing a rock to a computer then a living system, yields machinery that has a very high CSI. As the CSI meter goes higher so does the likely hood it is designed.

Nonsense. You cannot even find out if a “rock” is inanimate or not. I will assert that the rock is alive, it walks, it talks, it eats, it procreates, but the timescale is so different, that we cannot detect any of these activities. The lifespan of the rock is 100 million years. One second in the life of that rock equals our whole lifetime. There is no way to detect what that rock does at this moment. (I am sorry to say but this example was not my concoction. Michael Crichton used it in the “Andromeda Strain”.)

I can make a language. Only you and I can understand it it I give you the key and no one else. Language always comes from a mind.

Irrelevant. I can quote you some text and ask you to decide if it is a language with meaning or pure gibberish. You can apply your “CSI-meter” and figure out which one I presented. Prediction: you cannot. At best you can toss a coin, and make a guess, That is the worth of your CSI meter.

If a bee is designed then so is its language.

Oh, brother. The point of this whole exercise was to “prove” that the universe (or that bee) is “designed” or not. You were supposed to look at the “language” of the bees. and figure out if it was created by a “mind”, or is it just an instinctual phenomenon. Obviously the bees have no mind, so their language cannot come from a mind. Now you try to reverse it?

We see a mechanical watch and can easily see it is designed. We are familiar with it.

No, you cannot see it without a-priori KNOWING that it was designed. Nothing in the internal workings tells that it was “designed”, unless you already know it. Look at a sun-dial, which is just a stick pushed into the ground, and people can tell what the time is, if the sun is up. There are no ticks on the ground. So, how do you know if it was conscious decision to create a sun-dial, or it was just a random stick which happened to fall there. Looking only at the “workings” of the stick, you cannot. So much again for your CSI meter.

Not so much with plants. We are just seeing the tip of the iceberg.

If you cannot use your CSI meter to decide if the sun-dial “looking thing” was “designed” or not, you will be unable to apply it to anything. You can throw it into the trash can, where it belongs.

We have no natural examples of codes, maps and languages in nature. All of them come from a mind.

Yes, we do. Look at those bees.

 

[tonyrey]

You are entitled to your opinion but it cuts no ice on a philosophy forum unless it is based on reasons

An argumentum ad hominem that can be applied far more appropriately to your posts which do not contain one rational argument. This is a philosophy forum not an outlet for aspiring comedians!

 

[tonyrey]

There is no such thing as “inherent” complexity. Complexity is the measurement of the investigator’s knowledge.

scholarpedia.org/w/images/thumb/4/48/Complexity_figure1.jpg/300px-Complexity_figure1.jpg scholarpedia.org/w/skins/common/images/magnify-clip.png

Figure 1: Complexity as a mixture of order and disorder. Drawn after Huberman and Hogg (1986).

** Measures of Complexity**

Measures of complexity allow different systems to be compared to each other by applying a common metric. This is especially meaningful for systems that are structurally or functionally related. Differences in complexity among such related systems may reveal features of their organization that promote complexity.
Some measures of complexity are algorithmic in nature and attempt to identify a minimal description length. For these measures complexity applies to a description, not the system or process per se. Other measures of complexity take into account the time evolution of a system and often build on the theoretical foundations of statistical information theory.

scholarpedia.org/article/Complexity

The success of science based on systematic research is sufficient evidence of human insight into the complexity of physical reality. If complexity were an illusion everyone would either understand everything at the outset or never understand anything!

 

[Trurl]

Language always comes from a mind.

Let’s talk about languages a little more. The example of the bees already proves that not all languages come from a mind. Of course, just because something comes from a mind, it does not mean that there was a conscious effort, deliberation and “design” behind it. Observe the senseless grunts and mumblings of a poor person in the looney bin. He has a “mind”, a very simple one, but nothing what he might “say” has any informational value in it. So there is no mind <–> language connection.

That brings us to information. When you look at a bunch of symbols, and you look for information, you will need a lot of “non-information” or redundacy even to start the deciphering process. If you are familiar with information theory, then you will know that “pure” information (without redundancy) cannot be differentiated from white noise - which is yet another nail into the coffin of that poor, idiotic SCI meter. It cannot be used to detect information either.

Just for the fun of it, are these symbols just a random collection, or do they form something legible?

+0||||s/|-|/|_|[sup]-[/sup]//|+

 

[tonyrey]

Oh, you poor simpleton…, I am not assuming anything, and I did not present any argument either. Seems that you are unable to tell the difference between an argument and a question. Hint: “the question has a question mark (?) at the end”. Capisci?

Trurl is a very appropriate user name for a true churl!

 

[Trurl]

Trurl is a very appropriate user name for a true churl!

Do you even know where that names comes from? Or how do you tell the difference between a question or an argument? (Observe the squiggly symbol at the end for hint.)

 

[tonyrey]

Trurl is a very appropriate user name for a true churl!

I don’t know and I don’t care but I do know you’re continuing to live up to that description!

It provides yet more evidence that we are intended to choose what to believe and how to behave - courteously or otherwise…

 

[atheistgirl]

Do you even know where that names comes from?

I think it’s a great name for you - and very apt

Trurl and Klapaucius use their extraordinary technological abilities to help the inhabitants of the medieval planets, usually involving neutralizing tyrants.

Oh, you are very clever

Love it

Sarah x