Intelligent Design

[DrTaffy]

Objection, Bradski.

I am not asking you to move the goalposts, just that you turn on the lights down on your side of the field.

Well, no, you are not asking Bradski to move the goalposts, rather you have already done so yourself.

You have taken a response to a simple question (“how often have you seen mindless things producing intelligent beings”) and tried to criticise it for not being a complete description of exactly how mindless things might do so. Yet you have not even attempted to answer the equivalent questions:
How often have you seen an omnipotent immaterial being create intelligent beings ex nihilo?
How exactly did this omnipotent, intelligent, immaterial being come about, what is it made of, how exactly does it work?

You, Rossum and DrTaffy (all the big guns are here, it seems)

Please, spare my blushes!

want to insist that OBSERVING the emergence of mind from matter is sufficient to “prove” minds can emerge from matter.

Well that seems remarkably like good sense to me. Observing something happen does rather imply that it can happen.

Now if you want to assert that something else was involved that we did not observe, feel free to present your evidence.

To bolster your claim, you scurrilously bring in “a long time,” as if having both time and darkness on your side clinches the result. Oh, yes, you also appeal to random mutation as if basking the issue in even more obfuscation will magically bring it to light.

Well, at least we have a proposed mechanism, one which has been observed and is open to further testing, rather than an appeal to pure magic.

So, the issue isn’t moving the goalposts so much as turning on the lights on your side of the field. Continuing to play the game fairly requires it, especially since you have home field advantage and, since you keep demanding that we play by your rules of naturalism, you have taken control of the light switch.

‘Naturalism’ would, to me, mean us insisting on only natural mechanisms. So I would correct you to say that we (or I) only want you to start by accepting the known, natural mechanisms, such as natural selection, and provide evidence or even proof that something further is required.

 

[DrTaffy]

So, you prefer blind faith, then?

I think that you have to take logic and reason ‘on faith’ initially - although you can then assure yourself that they do not contradict themselves, so it is not entirely blind faith. Just as you can only really reject last thursdayism on faith and pragmatism.

But I try to keep the number of things I take on faith as low as practical.

 

[DrTaffy]

It will clarify your position if you explain what you think the mind is. Is it just the activity of the brain?

The topic of this thread is “intelligent design” - so if you feel that ‘mind’ or similar concepts are what cdesign proponentsists refer to as ‘irreducible complex’ it is up to you to prove that, so your definition that matters.

You cannot prove your position by asserting it and demanding that we either prove you wrong or accept your assertion.

 

[Charlemagne_III]

Well that seems remarkably like good sense to me. Observing something happen does rather imply that it can happen.

This is exactly the point of view of Intelligent Design. We observe things intelligently designed to exist. We intelligently design them ourselves to exist. We design a mousetrap that cannot trap mice if any one part of the mousetrap does not function. They must all function together at the same time for the mousetrap to work. The mousetrap cannot evolve itself into existence for the purpose of trapping mice.

So it is with abiogenesis, which did not evolve itself into existence since there was no life from which to evolve. Abiogenesis required that all the parts of life had to come together simultaneously or there would be no possibility of life.

The Miller-Urey experiments proved nothing but that amino acids can be called into existence. That is a long way from producing life. And if by some chance scientists are in the future able to create in the laboratory a type of living organism comparable to what the first living organism might have been, it could only be done by scientists intelligently designing such a type of living organism.

After all, life came into existence only about 500 million years after the first water (a necessary condition for life) was produced on the planet. Scientists do not live so long that they can wait to see such an eruption of life in the scientific lab constructed to reproduce the imagined conditions of life at the time of abiogenesis.

 

[Peter_Plato]

Well that seems remarkably like good sense to me. Observing something happen does rather imply that it can happen.

Sure, observing a magician pulling a rabbit out of a hat does mean it CAN happen, but that is not the end of it. The question is: HOW does it happen and whether there is not something more to it than merely observing the rabbit “emerging” from the hat?

Minds, like rabbits, are - at least until the question of “how” is fully explored and answered - not merely presumed to emerge from chemicals as if common sense grants that presumption as a necessary aspect of observation.

Now if you want to assert that something else was involved that we did not observe, feel free to present your evidence.

Herein lies the problem. As soon as ID proponents begin the daunting task of venturing onto the ground that might shed that evidence, the naturalist/atheist ilk disparagingly assault the venture itself such that freedom to “present” the evidence is revoked on the pretext that such evidence does not and cannot, in principle, exist or count.

 

[DrTaffy]

This is exactly the point of view of Intelligent Design. We observe things intelligently designed to exist. We intelligently design them ourselves to exist.

Logic fail.

Who has denied that it is possible for things to be intelligently designed? The assertion you have to prove is that life must have been intelligently designed.

Now, as the person who originally proposed that any explanation for life can only be sustained if the proponent has personally witnessed the process take place, don’t you think it is time to answer these questions:

1. How often have you seen an omnipotent immaterial being create intelligent beings ex nihilo?
2. How exactly did this omnipotent, intelligent, immaterial being come about, what is it made of, how exactly does it work?

We design a mousetrap that cannot trap mice if any one part of the mousetrap does not function. They must all function together at the same time for the mousetrap to work.

Prove that it is impossible for a mousetrap to be designed by genetic algorithms and we’ll have something to talk about.

The mousetrap cannot evolve itself into existence for the purpose of trapping mice.

Proof?

So it is with abiogenesis, which did not evolve itself into existence since there was no life from which to evolve. Abiogenesis required that all the parts of life had to come together simultaneously or there would be no possibility of life.

You assume that ‘life’ is the only thing that can evolve. Any imperfect self-replicator is subject to natural selection. Can you prove that it is impossible for an imperfect self-replicator to come about naturally anywhere in at least 100 billion galaxies all with at least 100 billion star systems, even assuming that this is the only universe and that it is no bigger than what we can currently see?

The Miller-Urey experiments proved nothing but that amino acids can be called into existence. That is a long way from producing life.

But it is revealing that life as we know it is made up of compounds that form naturally rather than ones that would have to be artificial.

And if by some chance scientists are in the future able to create in the laboratory a type of living organism comparable to what the first living organism might have been, it could only be done by scientists intelligently designing such a type of living organism.

Unsupported assertion

After all, life came into existence only about 500 million years after the first water (a necessary condition for life) was produced on the planet.

Can you prove that all possible forms of life require water? What is wrong with liquid methane or helium or ammonia? Or metallic hydrogen? Or degenerate matter in a neutron star or quark matter in a quark star?

Scientists do not live so long that they can wait to see such an eruption of life in the scientific lab constructed to reproduce the imagined conditions of life at the time of abiogenesis.

So you are deliberately setting a criterion that is impossible to satisfy? :ehh:

 

[DrTaffy]

Sure, observing a magician pulling a rabbit out of a hat does mean it CAN happen, but that is not the end of it. The question is: HOW does it happen

The answer “by magic” is generally accepted to be a very bad one, especially by those who pull rabbits out of hats as a profession.

Herein lies the problem. As soon as ID proponents begin the daunting task of venturing onto the ground that might shed that evidence, the naturalist/atheist ilk disparagingly assault the venture itself such that freedom to “present” the evidence is revoked on the pretext that such evidence does not and cannot, in principle, exist or count.

Rubbish. If anything on this thread we have seen you lot disparaging any evidence science might present to support a naturalistic explanation.

If you think you have proof of a supernatural theistic explanation, stop complaining that we don’t ‘let’ you present it and present it already. This is your faction’s playground and I could not prevent you posting even if I wanted to. (I don’t, BTW)

 

[Hans_W]

The Miller-Urey experiments proved nothing but that amino acids can be called into existence.

Are you saying that amino acids can build themselves, without an intelligent designer, but more complicated self-replicating molecules need a designer?

 

[Peter_Plato]

Logic fail.

Who has denied that it is possible for things to be intelligently designed? The assertion you have to prove is that life must have been intelligently designed.

Now, as the person who originally proposed that any explanation for life can only be sustained if the proponent has personally witnessed the process take place, don’t you think it is time to answer these questions:

How often have you seen an omnipotent immaterial being create intelligent beings ex nihilo?
How exactly did this omnipotent, intelligent, immaterial being come about, what is it made of, how exactly does it work?

It appears naturalism is in the same boat as intelligent design because neither does naturalism show how material being creates intelligent beings ex nihilo.

Prove that it is impossible for a mousetrap to be designed by genetic algorithms and we’ll have something to talk about.

Genetic algorithms are, in themselves, impotent. A mousetrap might have algorithms - genetic or otherwise - as an aspect of its design, but that is a far cry from claiming genetic algorithms or design, on its own, can come into existence instantiated in being without some effective means of bringing it about.

Natural selection may function to filter out deficient designs, but it cannot create a continual stream of varied and improved ones as a necessary aspect of random chance.

So, neither have you completely demonstrated the “mechanism” by which the undeniable design can simply materialize. Appealing to random events as having the capacity to bring about the instantiation of complex designs and the algorithms that comprise them is no explication of a mechanism, at all. It is a presumption, pure and simple.

“It just happened that way… well… because it just happened that way,” does not explain anything. Natural selection could just as easily ended in the termination of the process anywhere along the trajectory if the initial process was flawed or in any way incapable of surviving. The mere fact that it has survived does not make a case that it in any way had to - not without an assumption that nothing else was present to facilitate success.

As far as explanations go, natural selection acting on random mutation is no more or less demonstrated at this point than ID.

 

[Hans_W]

We design a mousetrap that cannot trap mice if any one part of the mousetrap does not function. They must all function together at the same time for the mousetrap to work. The mousetrap cannot evolve itself into existence for the purpose of trapping mice.

You are a bit behind in time. The ID theorists probably look back at Behe’s 20-year old mouse trap example with embarrassment.

First of all, mouse traps don’t replicate. Therefore they can’t improve themselves. Living organisms can.

Secondly, a mousetrap is made out of five essential parts, each of which can be used in other devices.

In the language of ID the mouse trap is “irreducibly complex” and is supposed to represent a simple example of irreducibly complex structures we find in the cell, for example the flagellum and the blood clotting mechanism, to name just two.
But biology has shown multiple times that parts of the flagellum are found in other systems, with completely different functions. There are blood clotting systems in some animals which are similar to ours, but with various factors missing.

 

[Charlemagne_III]

So you are deliberately setting a criterion that is impossible to satisfy? :ehh:

Not really. But you seem to be posing a possibility that is so improbable as to be laughable.

That a mousetrap could produce itself for the purpose of trapping mice.

 

[Charlemagne_III]

Are you saying that amino acids can build themselves, without an intelligent designer, but more complicated self-replicating molecules need a designer?

No, I’d say the amino acids were also designed to be chemicals available for life.

Do you think otherwise?

In that event, as a Catholic you must think God did not design anything for any purpose but to fortuitously assemble itself into something more complex than itself, but the end result was not designed by God since apparently in your view nothing is designed by God. That sounds suspiciously like the absurd notion that the universe just assembled itself without being designed to be assembled precisely as it was.

 

[Charlemagne_III]

You are a bit behind in time. The ID theorists probably look back at Behe’s 20-year old mouse trap example with embarrassment.

First of all, mouse traps don’t replicate. Therefore they can’t improve themselves. Living organisms can.

Secondly, a mousetrap is made out of five essential parts, each of which can be used in other devices.

In the language of ID the mouse trap is “irreducibly complex” and is supposed to represent a simple example of irreducibly complex structures we find in the cell, for example the flagellum and the blood clotting mechanism, to name just two.
But biology has shown multiple times that parts of the flagellum are found in other systems, with completely different functions. There are blood clotting systems in some animals which are similar to ours, but with various factors missing.

Yes, I know mousetraps don’t replicate. They also don’t require water or air.

Which means abiogenesis was even a great deal more improbable than a mousetrap assembling itself.

 

[edwest2]

It appears naturalism is in the same boat as intelligent design because neither does naturalism show how material being creates intelligent beings ex nihilo.

Genetic algorithms are, in themselves, impotent. A mousetrap might have algorithms - genetic or otherwise - as an aspect of its design, but that is a far cry from claiming genetic algorithms or design, on its own, can come into existence instantiated in being without some effective means of bringing it about.

Natural selection may function to filter out deficient designs, but it cannot create a continual stream of varied and improved ones as a necessary aspect of random chance.

So, neither have you completely demonstrated the “mechanism” by which the undeniable design can simply materialize. Appealing to random events as having the capacity to bring about the instantiation of complex designs and the algorithms that comprise them is no explication of a mechanism, at all. It is a presumption, pure and simple.

“It just happened that way… well… because it just happened that way,” does not explain anything. Natural selection could just as easily ended in the termination of the process anywhere along the trajectory if the initial process was flawed or in any way incapable of surviving. The mere fact that it has survived does not make a case that it in any way had to - not without an assumption that nothing else was present to facilitate success.

As far as explanations go, natural selection acting on random mutation is no more or less demonstrated at this point than ID.

Very good. Allow me to add: We still have some questions about historical events from the last century much less millions of years ago. No one was there to witness any process that may have occurred. That said, we can observe, and by observation, determine, using information science, the probability of a living thing coming into existence as we see it today.

I suggest looking into Bioinformatics:

bioinformatics.oxfordjournals.org/

We are taking things apart to see how they work and finding that the complexity level continues to increase. That, coupled with massive, integrated functions in a single cell should give any scientist, or individual, pause.

Ed

 

[Peter_Plato]

An interesting paper demonstrating that single mutations would not effect any functionally significant change in enzyme families. What would be required are a minimum of three simultaneous mutations to effect any change that would result in a significant development. The difficulty is that three correlated mutations would take an inordinately long time.

The details are here…

bio-complexity.org/ojs/index.php/main/article/view/BIO-C.2014.4/BIO-C.2014.4

I haven’t read the entire paper yet, but will this evening. Just a head’s up.

 

[Bradski]

An interesting paper…The details are here…

bio-complexity.org/ojs/index.php/main/article/view/BIO-C.2014.4/BIO-C.2014.4

A paper by the Biologic Institute. Which is funded by (drum roll please)…the Discovery Institute!

A quote from one of their earlier papers: ‘We ourselves have become convinced that intelligent causation is essential as a starting point for any successful theory of biological innovation’.

Good grief. A paper by people who seem to already know where their investigations will take them. Very scientific. And funded by the DI, which, if you are even vaguely familiar with their antics and their risible rebranding of creationism as Intelligent Design (of course, we make no assumptions about who, or what that designer might be!) renders this paper utterly worthless.

Monstrous fail.

 

[Bradski]

Sure, observing a magician pulling a rabbit out of a hat does mean it CAN happen, but that is not the end of it. The question is: HOW does it happen and whether there is not something more to it than merely observing the rabbit “emerging” from the hat?

These goalposts must be on wheels, all the easier to move them around.

First it was: It can’t happen.

Then it was: OK, we can see it happening, but that doesn’t prove it does (which was a really weird point).

Now it’s: Alright, it does prove it, but tell me HOW does it happen!

Well, it happens very gradually, as was said, and it confers a benefit when it does happen. Something that reacts to external stimuli stands a better chance at survival then something that doesn’t. Something that can control their reactions stands a better chance than something that cannot. Something that has a nervous system will survive longer than one that hasn’t. Something with a central nervous system is better suited yet again.

Just keeping adding a little each time and the chances of survival are greater and hence the benefits are passed on and built upon.

And we have everything you would want to see in the way of things that maybe aren’t even alive (a virus), to things that obviously are and can react to stimuli but are simple single cell (an amoeba) to things that are multicellular with no nervous system (a sponge), to things that have a neural network (hydra) to things with a basic brain (an earthworm) to…well, you get the idea.

And it all starts with inanimate materials. Which is how we all started. Charles likes quoting Sagan (unfortunately the same quote over and over) so here’s another one: We are all star stuff. A state to which we will all return.

Hang on, what’s that rumbling noise? Sounds like those goalposts again. Is it Peter about to throw in a question on abiogenisis.

Natural selection may function to filter out deficient designs, but it cannot create a continual stream of varied and improved ones as a necessary aspect of random chance.

It doesn’t filter out the deficient designs per se. It simple allows the ones that have any sort of advantage whatsoever to live a little longer in order to pass that advantage on. It builds on that advantage. Incrementally and gradually.

Natural selection could just as easily ended in the termination of the process anywhere along the trajectory if the initial process was flawed or in any way incapable of surviving.

Well done. You’d expect to see that if that was indeed the process. But maybe you are not aware of how many things have become extinct. It’s the rule. Everything you see today is the exception.

‘Extinction is the complete demise of a species. It takes place when all individuals of a species die out. Extinction has occurred throughout the history of life on Earth. It is the ultimate fate of all species. In fact, it has been estimated that 99.9% of all species that have ever lived on Earth are now extinct.’ paleobiology.si.edu/geotime/main/foundation_life4.html

The posts have remained static enough for you to score an own goal. If everything was intelligently designed, do you think the designer would include a use-by date? Can’t see it myself, but it’s a function of evolution. Something, as you rightly said, ‘you’d expect to see’.

The mere fact that it has survived does not make a case that it in any way had to - not without an assumption that nothing else was present to facilitate success.

There’s no compulsion involved. Things don’t have to survive. You can be born with a huge advantage over your peers but if you get eaten by a lion on Day One, then tough luck. But in a large enough population, if just a few are born with even a tiny advantage and only a few of those survive, it can have huge repercussions on the population as a whole.

As far as explanations go, natural selection acting on random mutation is no more or less demonstrated at this point than ID.

I’m afraid that the more you post on this subject, the less it appears you actually know about it.

Not really. But you seem to be posing a possibility that is so improbable as to be laughable.

That a mousetrap could produce itself for the purpose of trapping mice.

As ridiculous as, I don’t know, a flower developing the ability to trap insects. How risible.

 

[Peter_Plato]

A paper by the Biologic Institute. Which is funded by (drum roll please)…the Discovery Institute!

A quote from one of their earlier papers: ‘We ourselves have become convinced that intelligent causation is essential as a starting point for any successful theory of biological innovation’.

Good grief. A paper by people who seem to already know where their investigations will take them. Very scientific. And funded by the DI, which, if you are even vaguely familiar with their antics and their risible rebranding of creationism as Intelligent Design (of course, we make no assumptions about who, or what that designer might be!) renders this paper utterly worthless.

Monstrous fail.

So why don’t you actually address the findings rather than dismiss them BEFORE you read them? You do understand how science is supposed to work, no? Unbiased, and all that.

Peer review actually requires a review, no?

Obviously, you have your own bias - which is, apparently, no less of a bias than those at the Discovery Institute - and we knew beforehand what you would conclude about the paper before you read it, so why don’t you show you are made of “better stuff” and actually deal with the points rather than dismiss them based upon your own prejudice?

Be a big boy scientist, Braski.

 

[Bradski]

So why don’t you actually address the findings rather than dismiss them BEFORE you read them? You do understand how science is supposed to work, no? Unbiased, and all that.

A declaration that science is meant to be unbiased in relation to a ID paper by an organisation that is funded by the Discovery Institute? If I didn’t know you better I would think that you were having a joke at my expense. It’s like saying I should be reading Alien Abduction Monthly to get an uncritical view of the possibility of UFOs.

I don’t know about you, but if I am offered the sale of a decent sized bridge, I generally check the credentials of whomever is making me the offer before I even start reading the brochure let alone the small print.

It is summarily dismissed with no apologies whatsoever. And you have just used up a year’s supply of chutzpah.

 

[Peter_Plato]

A declaration that science is meant to be unbiased in relation to a ID paper by an organisation that is funded by the Discovery Institute? If I didn’t know you better I would think that you were having a joke at my expense. It’s like saying I should be reading Alien Abduction Monthly to get an uncritical view of the possibility of UFOs.

I don’t know about you, but if I am offered the sale of a decent sized bridge, I generally check the credentials of whomever is making me the offer before I even start reading the brochure let alone the small print.

It is summarily dismissed with no apologies whatsoever. And you have just used up a year’s supply of chutzpah.

More bluster, no substance - and the chutzpah is in infinite supply.

The paper makes some excellent points regarding the cost of mutation on overall fitness and the level of mutation necessary to enable new functionality.

Obviously, you have nothing to offer to counter the key points.

One summary observation points at the possibility that the alteration view of change by mutation is simply a wrong-headed approach to begin with.

Perhaps we should think of this more in the way we think about writing. Sentences that convey different ideas may have similar structures, but when we write a sentence we start with the idea, not the sentence structure. We never take a sentence that conveys some other idea and ask which letters can be changed to make it better suited for our present purpose. The fact that different ideas end up being conveyed with sentences of similar structure, then, has nothing to do with recycling of sentences and everything to do with the suitability of certain forms for certain functions.
Might this be the right perspective from which to view Kbl2 and BioF2? They use similar structures not because they are both adjusted versions of some older enzyme, but instead because the purposes they serve happen to call for similar structures. As we found in this work, it is not that Kbl has amino acid residues that are incompatible with the function of BioF2, but rather that Kbl2 is comprehensively suited to one function, while BioF2 is comprehensively suited to another. To us this change of perspective has the feel of a turn in the right direction. It does not in itself take us very far, perhaps, but having made the turn, forward progress may become much more likely.

The PDF link must be opened in a new tab (press and hold) to access it beyond the first page on an iPad.