Conclusive evidence for Design!

[buffalo]

I
Interestingly, years ago bactial flagella were put forwards by some people as possibly being irreducible, but of course this has proven incorrect as we have found a whole host of different flagella using different proteins and at different levels of complexity, each useful in its own way.*

Common design is the explanation.

 

[Candide_West]

Candide:

Let’s go through this one last time: ***If *nothing *that exists is undesigned, then, ipso facto, everything is designed. That is a proof, a completely logical one. And, it is an ontological one, besides. It is a proof from an extensive dialectic, from which a perfect induction follows.

Sure. So all you have to do now is provide evidence that nothing exists which is undesigned and you’re there. Go ahead.*

Again, I refer you to the immediately above statements.

Again thus far you have presented no evidence. Just an argument that IF nothing is undesigned then everything is designed. Obviously that is true (it again is tautological) but it is not evidence of anything.**

Seriously? Really, seriously?

Yes, seriously. Languages really are closed self-referential systems.*

Not so. We have no evidence for “infinity,” yet the assumptive math for it is used quite frequently in today’s science and technology. If there is no possible actual infinity, how is all that possible? Sometimes, we have to rely on the intellects God gave us.

Because maths (like language) is a closed system. It is based on axioms which can be used to describe or explain things which exist in reality (again like language). But something existing in maths (or language) doesn’t mean that thing necessarily exists in reality. As you said “we have no evidence for infinity”.*

Well, you have succeeded in running me off - now for a second time. You are argumentative and almost always show a not-surprising lack of “good faith.”

Well I’m sorry to hear that. But ultimately if you think it’s argumentative to state that tautological arguments are not a form of evidence then you are going to find a lot of people argumentative.*

God bless you Candide,
I shall say four Glory Be’s for you at 11 AM EST,
jd

Ok, thanks.

 

[Candide_West]

You still offer no evidence that it is not designed. If you can show the step by step empirical evidence that it is not designed then I am with you.

No, I didn’t offer any evidence. That would have defeated the object. The point of my refutation was to show why it inappropriate to use tautological arguments (like yours) as evidence. Remember? If I’d used actual evidence my argument wouldn’t have been tautological hence my point would have failed.

What it boils down to is we know design exists.

Well perhaps that is where the issue lies, you aren’t really looking for evidence because you believe you already “know”.

We know that languages are designed.

We know that languages designed by humans were designed. DNA was not designed by humans.

Here are the possibilities.

1. god of BUC did it ( no evidence and odds getting worse)
2. God did it
3. Aliens did it (pushes question back to 2)
4. Humans desinged it. ( we know they didn’t)

The best explanation is 2. In addition Revelation supports it.

Or it may have evolved. I think that is the most likely personally. But by all means if you have evidence that DNA was designed then by all means feel free to state what that evidence is.

 

[Candide_West]

Common design is the explanation.

Design is AN explanation. As far as I know there is no evidence whatsoever supporting it though. My reason for participating on this thread is to see if anyone else around knows of any evidence.

 

[buffalo]

Design is AN explanation. As far as I know there is no evidence whatsoever supporting it though. My reason for participating on this thread is to see if anyone else around knows of any evidence.

Do you accept there is a probability bound that beyond a certain point it leans heavily toward design?

 

[Candide_West]

Do you accept there is a probability bound that beyond a certain point it leans heavily toward design?

No.

Throw a deck of cards in the air, they will land in an enormously complex pattern, the odds against that particular pattern arising is 1/ax10^x where x is a very large number. In other words if there was such a thing as a probability bound we would have to say that the outcome of any complex random interaction was designed. Clearly this is silly.

 

[tonyrey]

There is further evidence that rejecting objective morality leads to egocentric amorality. In other words “**I **am the supreme authority who determines what is good or evil, right or wrong, just or unjust”:

Instead of promising to “do my duty to God, to serve the Queen and my country”, Guides will now promise to “be true to myself and to serve my community and Australia”.

guardian.co.uk/world/2012/jul/06/australia-guides-queen-god-pledge

 

[zro_x]

How would we **know **we don’t have any reasoning power?

The success of philosophy - on which the success of science and technology are based - is conclusive evidence.

I beleive you just answered your own question, or at least attempted to. The truth is that we wouldn’t know if we didn’t have reasoning power, and wouldn’t know if our arguments are valid.

Not at all. I’ve specialised in the subject of Design for many years.

Then what did you mean by Conclusive evidence for design, if not conclusive evidence that God created the universe?

It is the fundamental issue.

I think that’s mostly a matter of opinion, but I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt because you have “specialised in the subject of design for many years”. Either way, it is not the only issue, even if it is the most fundamental one.

The insurmountable scientific roadblock is science itself! Nothing in the universe is self-explanatory.
How could science explain science?

Here’s one possible example:

After the big bang, which came from nothing (look up the zero energy universe theory. Some theists support it because it supports creation ex nihlio), matter condensed into stars and star systems. One of these star systems had a planet in the goldilock’s zone that began to support self-replicating molecules. These molecules began to evolve over a few billion years, and turned into a complex system of molecules. eventually, through natural selection, some of these systems became able to do computations and reach valid conclusions about the world around them. They became curious enough to explore it. The exploration of these complex systems of the world around them is known as “science.”

“in the brain” implies that the existence of the brain is more certain than the existence of the mind - which we have agreed is false.

That doesn’t mean that we can’t reach valid conclusions about psychology by looking into the brain.

Then they wouldn’t be** our **thoughts!

right. I thought it would be unnecessary to write: we wouldn’t be responsible for the thoughts that are deterministically forced into our consciousness.

                                             At all events I'm sure you would agree theism is the most realistic and inspiring explanation.

realistic? only if you take certain miracles into account, as I’ve said before. Inspiring? absolutely.

 

[Trurl]

No.

Throw a deck of cards in the air, they will land in an enormously complex pattern, the odds against that particular pattern arising is 1/ax10^x where x is a very large number. In other words if there was such a thing as a probability bound we would have to say that the outcome of any complex random interaction was designed. Clearly this is silly.

You are wasting your time and energy. They cannot understand what you say. Their only “argument” is that if something is complicated, then it “has to be designed”. How pitiful…

 

[buffalo]

No.

Throw a deck of cards in the air, they will land in an enormously complex pattern, the odds against that particular pattern arising is 1/ax10^x where x is a very large number. In other words if there was such a thing as a probability bound we would have to say that the outcome of any complex random interaction was designed. Clearly this is silly.

I need to throw a deck of cards and have it land ace through 2 in order by suit. How many times would you have to throw them? Then calculate how long it would take.

 

[buffalo]

You are wasting your time and energy. They cannot understand what you say. Their only “argument” is that if something is complicated, then it “has to be designed”. How pitiful…

No - patterns are complicated and not all of them are designed.

 

[Candide_West]

I need to throw a deck of cards and have it land ace through 2 in order by suit. How many times would you have to throw them? Then calculate how long it would take.

It doesn’t matter what the pattern is. ANY pattern is enormously unlikely. If you find this hard to believe try it. Throw a deck into the air and mark the position of each card. Then try to get the same result by throwing the deck in the air again. How long do you think it would take to repeat the result?

 

[Candide_West]

No - patterns are complicated and not all of them are designed.

Exactly, so it is not possible to determine if a pattern is designed or not from it’s complexity. Hence there cannot be a probability bound.

So you just refuted your own argument. Well done.

 

[tonyrey]

I believe you just answered your own question, or at least attempted to. The truth is that we wouldn’t know if we didn’t have reasoning power, and wouldn’t know if our arguments are valid.

If we didn’t know we had reasoning power we wouldn’t even try to reason!

Then what did you mean by Conclusive evidence for design, if not conclusive evidence that God created the universe?

Simply that there is conclusive evidence for Design! We all have to decide for ourselves what is the explanation of Design but that is a topic for a different thread.

It is the fundamental issue.

I think that’s mostly a matter of opinion, but I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt because you have “specialised in the subject of design for many years”. Either way, it is not the only issue, even if it is the most fundamental one.

Whether reason is a reality or a fantasy is fundamental because we are wasting our time and energy if it is a fantasy. Not being the only issue is taken for granted and it’s logical to begin at the beginning.

The insurmountable scientific roadblock is science itself! Nothing in the universe is self-explanatory.
How could science explain science?

Here’s one possible example:

After the big bang, which came from nothing (look up the zero energy universe theory. Some theists support it because it supports creation ex nihlio), matter condensed into stars and star systems. One of these star systems had a planet in the goldilock’s zone that began to support self-replicating molecules. These molecules began to evolve over a few billion years, and turned into a complex system of molecules. eventually, through natural selection, some of these systems became able to do computations and reach valid conclusions about the world around them. They became curious enough to explore it. The exploration of these complex systems of the world around them is known as “science.”

Giving a name doesn’t explain **how **molecules reach valid conclusions about the world.

“in the brain” implies that the existence of the brain is more certain than the existence of the mind - which we have agreed is false.

That doesn’t mean that we can’t reach valid conclusions about psychology by looking into the brain.

Again the question is how events in the brain explain events in the mind

Then they wouldn’t be** our **

thoughts!
right. I thought it would be unnecessary to write: we wouldn’t be responsible for the thoughts that are deterministically forced into our consciousness.

We wouldn’t even be entitled to refer to "our " consciousness!

At all events I’m sure you would agree theism is the most realistic and inspiring explanation.

realistic? only if you take certain miracles into account, as I’ve said before. Inspiring? absolutely. Ultimately everything is a miracle! It is not necessary for anything to exist… and any**one **is an even greater miracle…

 

[tonyrey]

Absolutely they are. We now know that DNA actively fights against mutations. This now requires much more time. How about a trillion years?

Essential reading…a trillion trillion years or more

http://www.blogger.com/goog_1096933095

When Theory and Experiment Collide

…As other scientists have found with other enzymes, it turned out not to be a snap. The technical details are reported in a paper just published in BIO-Complexity. [2] Here we’ll keep it simple.
Based on our experimental observations and on calculations we made using a published population model [3], we estimated that Darwin’s mechanism would need a truly staggering amount of time—a trillion trillion years or more—to accomplish the seemingly subtle change in enzyme function that we studied.
Now, if I were a Darwinist a result like this would bother me. I’m sure some of my fellow Darwinists would try to dismiss it as irrelevant… but that would bother me all the more.
The excuse for shrugging it off would, I expect, be that the transition we examined isn’t actually one that anyone thinks occurred in the history of life. That’s true, but it badly misses the point. As Ann and I made clear in the paper, our aim wasn’t to replicate a historical transition, but rather to identify what ought to be a relatively easy transition and find out how hard or easy it really is. We put it this way in the paper [2]: Whether or not a particular conversion ever occurred as a paralogous innovation (or the direction in which it occurred if it did) is not the point of interest here. Rather, the point is to identify the kind of functional innovation that ought to be among the most feasible …] and then to assess how feasible this innovation is.So, if I had a Darwinist alter ego, here’s the problem he’d be facing right now. To dismiss our study as irrelevant, he’d have to say (in effect) that he sees no inconsistency between these two assessments of the power of Darwin’s mechanism:

Blind faith in the creative power of time and fortuitous events is the unsubstantiated, unverifiable and self-contradictory foundation of materialism which presupposes the power of reasoning…

 

[tonyrey]

Blind faith in the creative power of time and fortuitous events is the unsubstantiated, unverifiable and self-contradictory foundation of materialism which presupposes the power of reasoning…

It would be more accurate to refer to “the power of reason” because it is more fundamental than “the power of reasoning” which is more concerned with results rather than the means by which they are achieved!

 

[JDaniel]

You are wasting your time and energy. They cannot understand what you say. Their only “argument” is that if something is complicated, then it “has to be designed”. How pitiful…

Trurl:

I am amazed you are still allowed to be on this forum. Your time would be better spent on an atheist forum. Then you could slam-dance with other atheists. Wouldn’t that be fun?

God bless,
jd

 

[buffalo]

Exactly, so it is not possible to determine if a pattern is designed or not from it’s complexity. Hence there cannot be a probability bound.

So you just refuted your own argument. Well done.

Not so fast. There is a difference between natural patterns and designed ones. Getting back to designs. They always contain patterns. Patterns do not contain designs, or symbols or language. Further, desins always require a designer.

So again. will you accept a probability bound? If we throw the cards up 10 times and each and every time they land ace to 2 by suit what do you conclude?

 

[buffalo]

**BBC Secret Universe: The Hidden Life of the Cell- the more we look the more complicated things get.
**

 

[zro_x]

If we didn’t know we had reasoning power we wouldn’t even try to reason!

unless we didn’t know that we couldn’t reason… which we wouldn’t.

Simply that there is conclusive evidence for Design! We all have to decide for ourselves what is the explanation of Design but that is a topic for a different thread.

I see. then perhaps I should have said,"you can’t conclude that a designer is responsible for thoughts just because science can’t provide an explantion for them.

Whether reason is a reality or a fantasy is fundamental because we are wasting our time and energy if it is a fantasy. Not being the only issue is taken for granted and it’s logical to begin at the beginning.

fair enough.

Giving a name doesn’t explain **how **molecules reach valid conclusions about the world.

You asked for a scientific explanation of how science could explain science. I just gave you that explanation. I don’t need to explain how molecules can reach valid conclusions about the world around them, because it is possible, not necessary but possible, that science will be able to explain it in the future. But just as some food for thought, robots are becoming increasingly aware of the world around them. We can immagine that they may eventually become indistinguishable from human beings, and all they are is programming.

Again the question is how events in the brain explain events in the mind

I realize that it is difficult to see how physical events can give rise to a mental cause, but it is just as difficult to see how mental events can give rise to a physical cause! Yet this is what we accept as catholics.

We wouldn’t even be entitled to refer to "our " consciousness!

yes we would. If materialism is true, than our consciousness is the only thing that is truly ours.