Intelligent Design is Self-refuting

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niceatheist said:
In reality, as I’ve said before, detecting design is an extremely tricky thing. When the first pulsars were detected, radio astronomers briefly thought they’d discovered intelligent signals, until the more mundane explanation of fast-rotating neutron stars came along.
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If one lives in a designed frame it is indeed difficult to pickup weaker design signals. Strong design signals are readily detectable.
 
Honestly, there are other good reasons to shut down SETI. The way photons propagate, unless the interstellar civilization is within about 100-150 light years, we’re not going to be picking up their version of “I Love Lucy” (and they ours’). More to the point, to communicate over those vast distances is going to require something like a laser beam of pretty darned intense strength, which means the folks at the other end of that lightyears’ distant beam have to know we’re sitting on Earth.

But you’ll note I said that design is very hard to determine, but not impossible. But there’s been a lot of science fiction written about how difficult it might be to determine an alien species was trying to talk to us, let alone what they’re trying to say. Some ideas, like repeating cycles of the first 100 prime numbers have been suggested, but again, that’s based on the notion that the only place we’ve seen prime numbers expressed in sequence is either from the pens of mathematicians or from the computers that mathematicians use. It’s something we wouldn’t expect to see in nature, but as the pulsar example shows us, nature can behave in pretty peculiar ways that can mimic design.
 
niceatheist said:
To my mind, it serves neither a scientific or theological purpose. Theologically, it’s like declaring “there’s God’s fingerprint!” which means what ID advocates are really seeking is a means to get rid of faith as a justification for belief. For science, it’s utterly worthless. You can’t have a scientific hypothesis where one of the variables is “God’s hand”. You might as well not have science at all.
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We agree that an intelligible and rational universe can be scientifically studied.

Try and separate Id, the philosophy and Id, the science.
 
ID is bad philosophy, even worse science, and frankly, I think heretical from a Christian standpoint.
 
niceatheist said:
But you’ll note I said that design is very hard to determine, but not impossible.
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Yes.

We live with background radiation. Then we have radiation well beyond the background that as the difference increases it is easier to detect, a stronger signal. Design is like that. We have the background designed frame we live in. We need stronger signals to differentiate. FSCI is a very strong signal. ID, the science, is studying and detecting these very strong signals.
 
Perhaps you could define what you mean by ID. The notion of a creator isn’t exactly controversial (though obviously not everyone agrees there is one, or if there is one, what kind of being it is). Are you referring to ID as a claim on the late 1980s to sneak Creationism back into high science texts?
 
looskanal said:
Evolution doesn’t intentionally do anything, but it does favor some strategies over others because they increase the likelihood of survival. Diversity is one of those favored strategies. That humanity is inherently irrational is just such diversity in action. It’s better that we believe in different things, than if we all believe in the same things, because if we all believe the same thing, we might all end up dead.
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But animals have survived without rationality on nothing more than instinct so what difference does it make.
 
niceatheist said:
Perhaps you could define what you mean by ID. The notion of a creator isn’t exactly controversial (though obviously not everyone agrees there is one, or if there is one, what kind of being it is). Are you referring to ID as a claim on the late 1980s to sneak Creationism back into high science texts?
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I separate ID, the philosophy from ID, the science as I have said repeatedly. Empirical detection of design is OK for the science class.

Philosophy belongs in the philosophy class. Evolution, being the study of a one time unrepeatable event is historical science and is philosophy. So is creation
 
buffalo said:
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niceatheist:
Perhaps you could define what you mean by ID. The notion of a creator isn’t exactly controversial (though obviously not everyone agrees there is one, or if there is one, what kind of being it is). Are you referring to ID as a claim on the late 1980s to sneak Creationism back into high science texts?
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I separate ID, the philosophy from ID, the science as I have said repeatedly. Empirical detection of design is OK for the science class.

Philosophy belongs in the philosophy class. Evolution, being the study of a one time unrepeatable event is historical science and is philosophy. So is creation
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This badly misinterprets what science is. Science isn’t merely reproducing things in a lab. In fact a great deal of science isn’t reproducible. We can’t reproduce black holes, the best we can do is build models. Science is also about predicting phenomena and then going out into the wider world and seeing if our predictions are correct. Predictions inherent in evolutionary theory have been confirmed countless times since Darwin’s day, and indeed, progression of living forms was inherent in the taxonomical work of Linnaeus, and even further back.
 
niceatheist said:
This badly misinterprets what science is. Science isn’t merely reproducing things in a lab. In fact a great deal of science isn’t reproducible. We can’t reproduce black holes, the best we can do is build models. Science is also about predicting phenomena and then going out into the wider world and seeing if our predictions are correct. Predictions inherent in evolutionary theory have been confirmed countless times since Darwin’s day, and indeed, progression of living forms was inherent in the taxonomical work of Linnaeus, and even further back.
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Ahhhh - now we are getting some place. Would you agree then that empirical science that is observable, repeatable and predictable should be taught in science class? What about ideas or theories that are not empirical? How should be taught?
 
niceatheist said:
Predictions inherent in evolutionary theory have been confirmed countless times since Darwin’s day, and indeed, progression of living forms was inherent in the taxonomical work of Linnaeus, and even further back.
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I do not agree with this. More of evo theory that was thought to be has been overturned. Need a list?
 
Please don’t bother. I’ve seen these lists countless times. Not even Michael Behe denies evolution, he just claims some aspects must have been Intelligently Designed. There is no overthrowing of evolution theory.
 
Ok back to my pointing out that you conflated
(A) An entity changing, with
(B) A changing “causation” brought about by the entity.

(A) and (B) aren’t the same.
 
niceatheist said:
Please don’t bother. I’ve seen these lists countless times. Not even Michael Behe denies evolution, he just claims some aspects must have been Intelligently Designed. There is no overthrowing of evolution theory.
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I have a Behe book for you - Darwin devolves with experimental evidence.
 
rossum said:
I am following a standard Madhyamika Buddhist criticism which goes back to Nargajuna here.
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Wait, you’re following Madhyamika Buddhism and Nargajuna (who explicitly embrace self-refutation - “everything exists”, “nothing exists”, “the only ultimate truth is that there is no ultimate truth”, etc etc) in an attempt to show ID is self-refuting? But per Madhyamika Buddhism and Nargajuna, self-refutation is a strength not a weakness of a philosophy.
 
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Lion_IRC said:
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Bradskii:
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mhmtas63:
And that designer is not natural laws or random chances.
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The process is not random.
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Random chance (unpredictability) is a fundamental part of evolution.
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No-one would disagree. It is most definitely unpredictable. Yet we can make predictions about it. There is an infinite amount of randomness incorporated into the process. But the process itself is not random.

You either understand those comments or you don’t understand the subject. Do I need to explain?
 
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