Intelligent Design

[buffalo]

Does the God of Abraham have a son, yes or no? Was Mohammed one of His prophets, yes or not? If they are the same God, then He gave three different revelations.

Hinduism does not have the concept of salvation, the Hindu revelation has moksha, which is different. The Abrahamic revelations completely lack the concept of moksha and so must be deficient.

We are still left with the problem of which revelation to pick.

rossum

No, same Revelation with different interpretations.

 

[Charlemagne_III]

We are still left with the problem of which revelation to pick.

rossum

But choose we must, for not to choose is still a choice.

 

[tonyrey]

If that is the case, we should have fossils with one eye socket bigger than the other, four tail bones… the possibilities are endless. A mechanism that operates on that principle should have produced a lot of errors on its way to… to… anything.

Ed

Indeed - and the greater the number of failures the greater the improbability of success. No sane person would rely on chance to make important decisions yet it is supposed to have succeeded in creating everything we consider most precious: truth, goodness, freedom, justice, beauty and love. If ever there was a blind Watchmaker that is undoubtedly it. Yet most secularists and “humanists” evade the logical conclusion that life is absurd because they know their conclusions would also be absurd…

 

[tonyrey]

But choose we must, for not to choose is still a choice.

If we are undesigned, Charlie, choice is a fantasy…

 

[tonyrey]

Is an appeal to the unlimited power of chance a “scientific” explanation?

On the contrary you unequivocally prove that you do not grasp the nature of the fundamental factor underlying biological development. Either you do not know - or have forgotten - the title of Jacques Monod’s book…

 

[Al_Moritz]

On the contrary you unequivocally prove that you do not grasp the nature of the fundamental factor underlying biological development. Either you do not know - or have forgotten - the title of Jacques Monod’s book…

Yes, the book is called “Chance and Necessity”, and here is a central phrase from it:

“Randomness caught on the wing, preserved, reproduced by the machinery of invariance and thus converted into order, rule, and necessity. A totally blind process can by definition lead to anything; it can even lead to vision itself”.

Your reply continues to betray your ignorance on the subject – you ignore the component of necessity in the evolutionary process. That is why cumulative natural selection works, which produces an overall decidedly non-random result.

 

[tonyrey]

I’m lost for words…

I’m not surprised! Silence implies assent or impotent dissent!

 

[Al_Moritz]

I’m not surprised! Silence implies assent or impotent dissent!

Nah, not really.

 

[tonyrey]

Yes, the book is called “Chance and Necessity”, and here is a central phrase from it:

“Randomness caught on the wing, preserved, reproduced by the machinery of invariance and thus converted into order, rule, and necessity. A totally blind process can by definition lead to anything; it can even lead to vision itself”.

Your reply continues to betray your ignorance on the subject – you ignore the component of necessity in the evolutionary process. That is why cumulative natural selection works, which produces an overall decidedly non-random result.

Your reply continues to betray your ignorance on the subject – you ignore the component without which the evolutionary process could not even commence. Was it by chance that Monod put the primary factor first in his title?

Perhaps he made a mistake and should have written “Necessity and Chance”…Perhaps you think chance is derived from necessity. How would you justify that assumption? On scientific grounds?

 

[tonyrey]

I’m not surprised! Silence implies assent or impotent dissent!

Unsubstantiated assertions are worthless…

 

[tonyrey]

Was it by chance that Monod put the primary factor first in his title?

Perhaps he made a mistake and should have written “Necessity and Chance”…Perhaps you think chance is derived from necessity. How would you justify that assumption? On scientific grounds?

Selection implies variety. What causes variety? Different environments, diseases and accidents to some extent but are they sufficient? Random mutations are generally regarded as the predominant factor even though the majority are useless or even retrogressive. Could development to its present stage have occurred without them? That is the question that needs to be answered if randomness is to be regarded as a subsidiary factor…

 

[buffalo]

Yes, the book is called “Chance and Necessity”, and here is a central phrase from it:

“Randomness caught on the wing, preserved, reproduced by the machinery of invariance and thus converted into order, rule, and necessity. A totally blind process can by definition lead to anything; it can even lead to vision itself”.

Your reply continues to betray your ignorance on the subject – you ignore the component of necessity in the evolutionary process. That is why cumulative natural selection works, which produces an overall decidedly non-random result.

Did you catch Pope Benedict’s comment on this?

“What this professor wants to afflict on us is far more unbelievable than what we poor Christians were ever expected to believe.” Monod does not dispute this. His thesis is that the entire ensemble of nature has arisen out of errors and dissonances. He cannot help but say himself that such a conception is in fact absurd. But, according to him, the scientific method demands that a question not be permitted to which the answer would have to be God. One can only say that a method of this sort is pathetic. God himself shines through the reasonableness of his creation. Physics and biology, and the natural sciences in general, have given us a new and unheard-of creation account with vast new images, which let us recognize the face of the Creator and which make us realize once again that at the very beginning and foundation of all being there is a creating Intelligence…" Pope Benedict XVI

 

[tonyrey]

Do you believe there are absolutely no limits whatsoever to what chance can achieve? If so how would you justify that assumption?

It is significant that there has not been one attempt to answer that question. Even though it is a metaphysical rather than scientific issue it cannot be ignored in any coherent explanation of development. It seems that NeoDarwinism is an imposing structure built on sand…

 

[tonyrey]

Did you catch Pope Benedict’s comment on this?

“What this professor wants to afflict on us is far more unbelievable than what we poor Christians were ever expected to believe.” Monod does not dispute this. His thesis is that the entire ensemble of nature has arisen out of errors and dissonances. He cannot help but say himself that such a conception is in fact absurd. But, according to him, the scientific method demands that a question not be permitted to which the answer would have to be God. One can only say that a method of this sort is pathetic. God himself shines through the reasonableness of his creation. Physics and biology, and the natural sciences in general, have given us a new and unheard-of creation account with vast new images, which let us recognize the face of the Creator and which make us realize once again that at the very beginning and foundation of all being there is a creating Intelligence…" Pope Benedict XVI

Bravo, Papa!

It is the occupational hazard of scientists to exceed their brief and pontificate on metaphysical issues they have never even considered, let alone attempted to resolve.

 

[Charlemagne_III]

Perhaps he made a mistake and should have written “Necessity and Chance”…Perhaps you think chance is derived from necessity. How would you justify that assumption? On scientific grounds?

It’s clear that Monod was an atheist, so what other conclusion could he come to but that everything is built on the shifting sands of chance and necessity?

 

[edwest2]

Indeed - and the greater the number of failures the greater the improbability of success. No sane person would rely on chance to make important decisions yet it is supposed to have succeeded in creating everything we consider most precious: truth, goodness, freedom, justice, beauty and love. If ever there was a blind Watchmaker that is undoubtedly it. Yet most secularists and “humanists” evade the logical conclusion that life is absurd because they know their conclusions would also be absurd…

I suggest the following article that shows that a worldview permeates science that is superfluous:

the-scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/16649/title/Why-Do-We-Invoke-Darwin-/

The writer is a member of the National Academy of Sciences.

And yes, successful human actions require planning, including making things that perform a function. Creativity is a human trait that could not have stumbled into existence. The nomadic or hunter-gather cultures would have remained. I mean, why even think about creating anything? Just pick the berries, hunt the animals and find the plants to make soup. And just keep doing it. If you’re by the water, you might catch some fish. Sure, you’re likely to lose a few members to predators but hey, that means more food for the survivors.

Ed

 

[buffalo]

Wouldn’t some one already need to be convinced of Christianity and of vicarious redemption for that question to be personally meaningful to the person being asked?

Any God that loves me so much He sacrifices His only son for me/us is worthy of my consideration.

12 This is my commandment: love one another, as I have loved you.
13 No one can have greater love than to lay down his life for his friends.

 

[Gary_Sheldrake]

Laws are not simply constructs of the human mind. The first way to find this out is to leap off the top of a building and bang your head a few times on the way down.

Good Evening Charlemagne: What I am suggesting is that you see laws because you have been trained to live by them and therefore you look for them in the world around you. The reason you fall when you jump off a building is because that’s the way gravity behaves. What I have suggested is that things like gravity behave as they do because it can be a learned or developed behavior or simply an acquired behavior. A law is not required to make things behave as they do.

That these laws exist is indisputable. Where did they come from. Who or what breathed fire into these equations? The belief that there is no ordering intelligence behind the universe, that the universe just acquired a mind of its own by growing one on its own, flies in the face of common sense and everything we know about organic growth.

After we have trained ourselves to look for laws governing the behavior of the world around us, the next thing we are inclined to do is to integrate this idea with our other belief systems, and therefore we look for some authority who put the laws in place. Of course, we have been heavily conditioned in that area and we have a built in mental character to play that role, or in our case, the God of Abraham. But while this might be true, it is not necessarily true, and in truth, we have no proof of there being such laws or of the God we claim put them In place. My argument can be seen in the development of new chemical compounds. We know that these can be crystalized, however, the first few times you make a new compound, it is difficult to crystalize. The more times you make the compound, the easier it is to crystalize. Therefore, it cannot be said that the crystalization process is in accordance with a law on how a given compound crystalizes. It is a behavior that is reinforced over repetition and time. And repetition can be observed in practice in the fractal nature of the world around us. All things we call laws can also be explained as developed behaviors.

Everything I am suggesting is easily and clearly observable on our own, and they do not require laws, theologians, or experts of any sort to figure out if we are willing to do some observing and thinking. And we do not require explanations built on social conditioning such as the religions we were brought up in or in what we have been told by others without doing our own examination of the facts.

A seed must be planted, then nourished by the farmer before it bears fruit

Seeds fell off of trees and plants and took root to grow news ones long before there were humans or agrarian cultures to plant them. In fact, it is entirely possible that the reverse is true, in that perhaps plants developed sentient creatures such as us as a means of pollination and spreading seeds.

All the best,
Gary

 

[ThinkingSapien]

Any God that loves me so much He sacrifices His only son for me/us is worthy of my consideration.

Okay, I acknowledge that. But not every one else feels the same way and this might not be sufficient to motivate the considerations of others that are not already Christian. If one hasn’t already been raised or convinced that an instance of self sacrifice isn’t an important attribute for a god-concept then pointing it out as an attribute of a specific god-concept may come across as arbitrary.

It seems like there would need to be some other arguments or statements leading up to self sacrifice.

 

[grannymh]

Good evening Gary,

A friend introduced me to the intelligibility of the universe in the sense that the universe can be comprehended by the intellect. That sounds close to Intelligent Design but, at this point, in my humble observation, intelligibility of the universe is probably a cousin.

What I hope to do is to respond to your explanation to Charlemagne III with comments agreeing, disagreeing, and expanding. Nothing I offer is written in stone.

Good Evening Charlemagne: What I am suggesting is that you see laws because you have been trained to live by them and therefore you look for them in the world around you.

This training to see laws is an integral part of the natural instinct for survival and thus it is inherent in human nature.

The reason you fall when you jump off a building is because that’s the way gravity behaves. What I have suggested is that things like gravity behave as they do because it can be a learned or developed behavior or simply an acquired behavior.

I noticed “things” as a designation of what is being discussed. I can expand “things” to highly sentient beings such as apes and border collies. However, apparently gravity is a physical action which has always existed in situations involving vertical distance.

On the other hand, bacteria certainly “learns” or acquires dominance behavior, thereby setting new rules or laws which scientists in the medical arena are constantly looking for.

A law is not required to make things behave as they do.

Correct. In the physical/material world, a “law” is an intelligible explanation of what we have observed without prejudice.

After we have trained ourselves to look for laws governing the behavior of the world around us, the next thing we are inclined to do is to integrate this idea with our other belief systems, and therefore we look for some authority who put the laws in place.

This fits in especially with human’s inherent sense of the super-natural dating back to ancient myths.

Of course, we have been heavily conditioned in that area and we have a built in mental character to play that role, or in our case, the God of Abraham.

Or Zeus in ancient Greece. Just because curiosity about the super-natural has existed forever, that does not mean that all curious endeavors were correct or even good.

But while this might be true, it is not necessarily true, and in truth, we have no proof of there being such laws or of the God we claim put them In place.

This demonstrates the need for the true scientific (inductive) method. It is my understanding that Intelligent Design claims that there is a higher power, a greater independent power, which can devise physical/material “laws” that actually work.

My argument can be seen in the development of new chemical compounds. We know that these can be crystalized, however, the first few times you make a new compound, it is difficult to crystalize. The more times you make the compound, the easier it is to crystalize. Therefore, it cannot be said that the crystalization process is in accordance with a law on how a given compound crystalizes. It is a behavior that is reinforced over repetition and time. And repetition can be observed in practice in the fractal nature of the world around us.

This works, because the “WE” in “We know that these can be crystalized, however, the first few times you make a new compound, it is difficult to crystalize.” are rational beings.

All things we call laws can also be explained as developed behaviors.

As an observer of my universal environment, I cannot justify the words “All things…”
The “law” which explains the speed of light is not quite the same as the light per se.
As far as I know.

Everything I am suggesting is easily and clearly observable on our own, and they do not require laws, theologians, or experts of any sort to figure out if we are willing to do some observing and thinking. And we do not require explanations built on social conditioning such as the religions we were brought up in or in what we have been told by others without doing our own examination of the facts.

My observation is that theologians, experts of any sort, you, me, and our ancestors are rational human beings who have the capability to learn. What is interesting to me is that the universe is intelligible due to natural physical laws; therefore, we can learn them.

Seeds fell off of trees and plants and took root to grow news ones long before there were humans or agrarian cultures to plant them. In fact, it is entirely possible that the reverse is true, in that perhaps plants developed sentient creatures such as us as a means of pollination and spreading seeds.

My creative half loves this idea because one of my newer and smarter plants has developed my sensitivity to the fact that having water is not only a necessary law, it explains why there are friendly flowers. My serious half would love to discuss why plants and ants cannot develop real rational creatures. Plants and elephants cannot substitute for an intelligent (rational) Creator. Genesis 1: 1.

Please note that I am not an advocate of ID, even though I know some good people involved with it.

All the best,
Gary

Thank you for the discussion opportunity. I do realize that I avoided referring to God and religious concepts. It is my free choice to choose physical science which is what interests me at the moment.

P.S. I am old enough to have done the hokey pokey.