Intelligent Design, Edward Feser's views

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buffalo said:
What if we look for signatures of design in living systems?
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I asked for examples of things which aren’t designed so we could compare them. You said mountains but then took it back and said those were designed too so I still don’t know what I can compare something to to help determine if it’s designed.
 
Dan123 said:
I asked for examples of things which aren’t designed so we could compare them. You said mountains but then took it back and said those were designed too so I still don’t know what I can compare something to to help determine if it’s designed.
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I said all of creation is part of God’s design.

We look for high amounts of FSCI.
 
Ah, yes; you often mention that. What exactly is FSCI and how do you measure it? Has an oak tree got more FSCI than a biscuit? How can you tell?
 
Techno2000 said:
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mVitus:
@Buffalo for sake of argument, what evidence would convince you that evolution in the process by which today’s life came about?
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I would believe if I could actually see something transitioning right now, in real life, like a new fin or a new feather growing out of a animal we have today.
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That wouldn’t convince me. There’d be no argument in fact, if I were having this conversation with my cat, or any creature other than a human being. Perhaps if a type of amoeba responded to a whistle and herded paramecia they way border collies herd sheep, or children at a soccer match, I’d say evolutionary theories had some credibility. But the reality is that we are a new creation, and did not evolve from primates, and not from some sort of original bacterium. We are all descendents of Adam and constitute one humanity.

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Dan123 said:
I still don’t know what I can compare something to to help determine if it’s designed.
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This is designed whereas iwdfnva;dfnvq[eubfdfoq3uwbensdx is not. The former conveys meaning through the organized arrangement of simple shapes. The latter is a random sequence of shapes resulting from the hapazard tapping of fingers on the keyboard. This reflects a pattern of cerebral neuronal discharges happening within a person who is a body-brain unity. The second example demonstrates what happens when the activity of neurons in the motor centre are disconnected from those in the centre that involves written speech, and are rather stimulated by the frontal lobe which elicits random finger movements. Ultimately, it’s all organised, all designed, but to different ends, having different meanings.
 
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Aloysium said:
This is designed whereas iwdfnva;dfnvq[eubfdfoq3uwbensdx is not.
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You’re telling me that Ben’s name ended up in their completely by accident? I don’t think so. Someone designed that, clearly trying to tell us something. But what?

Okay facetiousness aside, you wanted to create a string of text that didn’t adhere to normal language constructs and you executed an action that would produce that, conveying to me the message you wanted to convey. That’s still designed.

The other issue, and frankly this is an issue with most and possibly all analogies so I’m certainly not counting it against anyone, but you need a replication mechanism. Words on a paper don’t duplicate themselves, there’s no mutation or transcription errors or anything like that, and there’s no selective pressures of any kind. If the example doesn’t reproduce those mechanisms its never going to fit well.
 
Hugh_Farey said:
Ah, yes; you often mention that. What exactly is FSCI and how do you measure it? Has an oak tree got more FSCI than a biscuit? How can you tell?
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It’s quite easy, Hugh.

(I can see how that happened) + (It looks entirely natural to me) equals low FSCI
(I’ve no idea how that happened) + (any idiot can see it’s designed) equals high FSCI

Feathers: Well all birds have them so they aree entirely natural. A bird would look pretty stupid without them. Low FSCI

Eyes: Good grief, it is completely beyond my understanding that anything like that could evolve from first principles. I mean, it’s like a camera and a camera is designed. High FSCI.
 
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buffalo said:
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mVitus:
for sake of argument, what evidence would convince you that evolution in the process by which today’s life came about?
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Given the trajectory of modern science I cannot think of any.
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This only confirms your rather dismal understanding of the subject. It would be extraordinarily easy for anyone who only knew the basics to think of any number of ways.

Although on second thoughts, I think you would be able to do it. Let’s face it, it would be so simple that even you could do it.

I’d bet that the only reason you refuse is because there is nothing that disproves it. You would be hoisted by your own petard even admitting to anything that could disprove it.

So which is it? Is your understanding of the subject so tragically limited and you really know of no way, or is it the case that you don’t want to paint yourself into a corner?
 
There were several other questions such as how you measure it. Enlighten us, unless that’s not really why you’re here.
 
Dan123 said:
There were several other questions such as how you measure it. Enlighten us, unless that’s not really why you’re here.
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Wow. Another guy who just rejects ID but doesn’t know much about.
 
Apparently to work out something’s FSCI you take your personal incredulity, multiply it by the number of misconceptions you have about the relevant scientific field, and add the number of times you insist it simply must be true. If this number is a number, it must be designed.
 
buffalo said:
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Dan123:
There were several other questions such as how you measure it. Enlighten us, unless that’s not really why you’re here.
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Wow. Another guy who just rejects ID but doesn’t know much about.
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You are the self proclaimed expert. FSCI is an integral part of ID. Perhaps the key to it all. Yet it doesn’t appear to be well defined. We must assume that you understand it to be able to argue for it.

So let us know how you define it. It can’t be too hard…
 
Dan123 said:
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Techno2000:
I would believe if I could actually see something transitioning right now, in real life, like a new fin or a new feather growing out of a animal we have today.
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I doubt it, you’ll just reject it. First of all you’d need to know what a given feature will be a long time from now. A flipper could be a wing 100 million years down the road but today it’d be a flipper.

Mudskippers are a good modern animal that appears to be going through a water to land transition. That may not be where they ultimately end up, without the ability to predict the future we have no idea. The environment may reward changes that allow them to spend more time on the land, or it may not.
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Mud skippers are going to produce more of it"s kind, like everything else does.
 
There’s no menu of services offered by evolution. It also doesn’t wake up one morning and say “better change that fin into a wing, lets get to work!”.

It’s the difference between measuring weather patterns and predicting them. How long does it take to form a hurricane? There’s no answer to that, just a lot of small air currents build, sometimes quickly sometimes not. The air isn’t trying to be a hurricane but sometimes the conditions are such that it happens.

You can’t predict a specific hurricane a year before it happens but to then conclude hurricanes must be made in an instant out of nothing is a bit of a stretch.
 
Dan123 said:
There’s no menu of services offered by evolution. It also doesn’t wake up one morning and say “better change that fin into a wing, lets get to work!”.

It’s the difference between measuring weather patterns and predicting them. How long does it take to form a hurricane? There’s no answer to that, just a lot of small air currents build, sometimes quickly sometimes not. The air isn’t trying to be a hurricane but sometimes the conditions are such that it happens.

You can’t predict a specific hurricane a year before it happens but to then conclude hurricanes must be made in an instant out of nothing is a bit of a stretch.
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Right, it’s just whichever way the cosmic dice rolled. :roll_eyes:
 
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Do you accept there’s natural processes that over, in this case relatively short periods of time (days/weeks, perhaps months I’m not a meteorologist) turn air currents into hurricanes?
 
Dan123 said:
Do you accept there’s natural processes that over, in this case relatively short periods of time (days/weeks, perhaps months I’m not a meteorologist) turn air currents into hurricanes?
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Yes, but the wind currents didn’t produce the plant and animal kingdom.
 
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