One-third of Americans reject evolution, poll shows

  • Thread starter Thread starter gilliam
  • Start date Start date
Status
Not open for further replies.
Where is the mind that “designed” the x-band antenna used by the Space Technology 5 mission? The researchers first tried to limit it to a slightly conventional design using a specified number of branches, as used in all human-designed x-band antennas of similar capabilities. They then removed all limitations other than raw capability, and the computers produced a radically new design using only one branch that was far lighter than anything that had been designed by humans.

Where is the mind that produced the tone discriminator of Dr. Adrian Thompson’s thesis? Given a completely random group of programmable gate arrays and a simple specified capability, the computers again produced something that would have been impossible for a human designer. The final design not only included far fewer logic gates than was thought possible, but it actually used physical properties intrinsic to the chips used for the experiment that were so specific that the design would not work even on an identical chip from the same manufacturer - something that a human designer would never be able to do.

In both cases, the algorithms were given nothing more than a final capability and a random group of initial states. There was no indication of what the final product would look like at all other than it would perform the specified function. In Dr. Thompson’s case, the “final” design was reached after only a few thousand generations. In the case of NASA’s new antennas, the results were reached after less than two hundred generations. Read the papers, and explain where the information of the final design - something unspecified in the initial parameters - came from.
The mind wrote the program and built the computer. Harnessing the computing power designed by humans is an exploitation of that design. The search space in this program was limited to achieve a specified purpose.
 
Also taken from Catholic Answers: catholic.com/magazine/articles/aquinas-vs-intelligent-design

Associate Professor at Gonzaga University goes through why Thomists do not accept the coherency and validity of ID. Points that have already been raised (and ignored) and a few more points. If someone is actually interested I’ll point to Thomist Philosophers that have wrote in refutation of Intelligent Design.
 
This is the most recent, I have already posted articles from Feser, Leftow, & others that have commented on the Thomistic gripes with Intelligent Design: that within the metaphysical framework of Classical Theism (which the Church dogmatically follows) Intelligent Design is incoherent.
Their main arguments are that God is not a tinkerer. That is only one interpretation of the philosophical conclusions of design, and I agree with them on that specific one.
 
I assume that even demonstrating that material causation is sufficient wouldn’t be enough to actually falsify ID, as then you would just move on to asking for an explanatory cause. Which just moves the goalposts.
This is silly. If material causation is not explanatory then it explains nothing. It isn’t moving the goalposts, it IS setting them in a solid foundation to begin with.

Citing a material cause is never sufficient unless it is sufficiently explanatory.

“Why did the chair fall over?” is not explained by “The temperature is 73 degrees in Rome.”

You are not claiming that your user name is sufficiently explained by random keystrokes on your computer and the electronics that connect your computer to the CAF server, are you? If I say those material causes do not sufficiently explain the order of the letters in your user name and we need a better and more complete explanation, are you accusing me of “moving the goalposts” because I WON’T accept that the material causation sequence you offered actually fully explains the order?
 
It seems we also have a misunderstanding of the Burden of Proof: the burden of proof is on anyone that makes a positive claim (a claim to knowledge) which ID advocates do. ID advocates argue that chance can not explain the complex nature of biological life, this claim is presupposed rather than demonstrated and is therefore begging the question.
Presupposed or not, that is what ID the science is doing when calculating possibility and plausibility.
 
This is silly. If material causation is not explanatory then it explains nothing. It isn’t moving the goalposts, it IS setting them in a solid foundation to begin with.

Citing a material cause is never sufficient unless it is sufficiently explanatory.

“Why did the chair fall over?” is not explained by “The temperature is 73 degrees in Rome.”

You are not claiming that your user name is sufficiently explained by random keystrokes on your computer and the electronics that connect your computer to the CAF server, are you? If I say those material causes do not sufficiently explain the order of the letters in your user name and we need a better and more complete explanation, are you accusing me of “moving the goalposts” because I WON’T accept that the material causation sequence you offered actually fully explains the order?
No, you are denying material causation its explanatory value without demonstrating that it is invalid.

Please demonstrate that material causation is not sufficient for understanding the material process of evolution. If you want to move on to Metaphysics please do, I have no problem in showing the Cartesian Assumptions to be problematic and that we could be better placed in returning to the classical Metaphysics of Aristotle & Aquinas: which invalidates the claims of ID as the classical framework is incompatible with ID.

Now please, stop ticking through every fallacy in the book and actually address my criticisms. You have been ignoring them now for many posts, and cherry picked what you responded to- very poor show.
 
Presupposed or not, that is what ID the science is doing when calculating possibility and plausibility.
If it is presupposed and can not be demonstrated: you are guilty of begging the question, which invalidates the argument. I’m sure you don’t need explanation for why the presence of a logical fallacy invalidates an argument.
 
Exactly. They want to be accepted. Bingo. :clapping: You must agree the scientific community is setting obstacles and it should. But you must agree at least some scientists are shuddering at the thought of what it means to their atheism.

I agree with the last statement. Philosophers would be looking for God’s signature in creation.
Stop bringing atheism into this.

Philosophers are welcomed to look for God, but not scientists.
 
Well this has to be the worst strawman I have ever seen, do you understand what it means to be upholded as a ‘theory’ in the Natural Sciences?
Not a strawman. This is Judas T’s position. He rejects ID BECAUSE it is rejected by the consensus in science - he has admitted as much - which IS poor reasoning since he does not understand what the arguments pro or con really are.

You seem to follow a similar line of thinking, except that you use science AND Thomistic philosophers.

I have yet to see you lay down what it is YOU think it is that IDvolutionists actually hold and refute THAT by a solid argument. Your claims “about” ID based upon what others hold is tedious.

You do, at times, come to the brink of presenting a valid argument but seem to resist crossing the threshold into one. Perhaps because you know there isn’t a valid argument to be made so you are content with “pointing at” what you think must be arguments because they have been made by scientists and Thomist metaphysicians.
 
Stop bringing atheism into this.

Philosophers are welcomed to look for God, but not scientists.
They mix up everyone that disagrees with ID with outright materialists…yet many have voiced philosophical issues with ID, but these seem to be ignored. Once we bring the problem of that the theory is unfalsifiable and therefore unscientific, it seems they are stuck. The theory by definition in the Philosophy of Science (which isn’t all that hostile to proofs of God- the Teleological Argument tends to be defended within the Philosophy of Science) is unscientific, and therefore is more a Philosophical argument which on philosophical grounds is logically problematic.
 
Not a strawman. This is Judas T’s position. He rejects ID BECAUSE it is rejected by the consensus in science - he has admitted as much - which IS poor reasoning since he does not understand what the arguments pro or con really are.

You seem to follow a similar line of thinking, except that you use science AND Thomistic philosophers.

I have yet to see you lay down what it is YOU think it is that IDvolutionists actually hold and refute THAT by a solid argument. Your claims “about” ID based upon what others hold is tedious.

You do, at times, come to the brink of presenting a valid argument but seem to resist crossing the threshold into one. Perhaps because you know there isn’t a valid argument to be made so you are content with “pointing at” what you think must be arguments because they have been made by scientists and Thomist metaphysicians.
I have told you numerous times what the problems with ID are, and the numerous logical fallacies it violates as well as principles of the Philosophy of Science. You have simply chose to ignore them. Now go read the article I posted from Catholic Answers, and go back a few pages as I saw a few articles posted by noted Philosophers of merit.

You have yet to present a valid argument, and have in fact conceded that ID is guilty of begging the question: ID then is to be discarded as an invalid framework from which to work off, and an argument that had best be discarded as the useless argument that it is.
 
So NOT because you understand it or agree with it, but BECAUSE it has been accepted. Why have you bothered to argue since your argument amounts to “because the scientific community rejects it?”
I simplified the condition to what the Scientific Community accepts, but I didn’t mean
that only. I understand evolution, maybe not enough to teach a whole semester on it,
but I know a fair deal, and it all makes logical sense. Scientists know a lot more than
I do, so I trust their conclusions.
Have you ever heard about people who actually protest against vaccination? There are
people who believe that vaccines cause autism and are meant to make you sick, that
way doctors have a job, seriously. Such people don’t listen to the good doctors, even
in light of the fact that the majority of doctors say that vaccines are safe. Such is the
fight against evolution of IDists, “Don’t listen to the majority of scientists, but listen to
us, people who actually believe in a God, I mean Designer, I mean designed things.”
The scientific community has constantly revised what it accepts and rejects. You are just along for the thrill of the ride with no compulsion to understand what it is you are riding on, where it is heading or why you are going.
Because I listen to the good doctors. 👍
There is no point discussing such issues with you, because you merely placehold “current accepted science” for no reason except that it is currently accepted.

You can safely be ignored, then.
Suit yourself. I can still argue and defend evolution, whilst Intelligent design can’t effectively be defended.
 
They mix up everyone that disagrees with ID with outright materialists…yet many have voiced philosophical issues with ID, but these seem to be ignored. Once we bring the problem of that the theory is unfalsifiable and therefore unscientific, it seems they are stuck. The theory by definition in the Philosophy of Science (which isn’t all that hostile to proofs of God- the Teleological Argument tends to be defended within the Philosophy of Science) is unscientific, and therefore is more a Philosophical argument which on philosophical grounds is logically problematic.
Intelligent Design is Falsifiable

Is Intelligent Design Falsifiable?

Is Darwinian Evolution Falsifiable?

ccording to Behe, the net effect of natural selection and random mutation on the E. coli has been mostly to break biological systems that were already in place. No new complex systems have been formed by Darwinian evolution in the experiment.
Keith Fox agreed with Behe’s assessment of the experiment, but claimed that it did not prove anything about the limits of Darwinian evolution to produce complex new biological systems (which is a central claim of Darwinists). Behe asked Fox, “If this experiment doesn’t prove anything about Darwinian evolution, then what kind of lab experiment could falsify Darwinian evolution?” Fox’s answer: none.
ID is False; ID is not Falsifiable: Which is it?
 
No, you are denying material causation its explanatory value without demonstrating that it is invalid.

Please demonstrate that material causation is not sufficient for understanding the material process of evolution.
Clearly, the specified order of the nucleotide bases along the spine of the DNA molecule is not due to any chemical or physical restrictions, just as the ORDER of the letters I am typing at this moment are not due to material causes. Certainly, my fingers are pressing keys which explain materially the letters appearing, but THAT does not explain the order. What does explain the order is the operative intelligence which creates the ordered sequence according to the meaning I choose to invest in them. That “meaning” does not have a material cause, but rather an intelligent one.

DNA coding is based fundamentally on the ordering of nucleotide bases along the spine and would not have any functional efficacy without THAT specific order, just as the letters I type would have NO functional efficacy it they were merely randomly placed.

Yes, material causes do explain how the bases join to the spine of the molecule, but do not explain the order that IS the crucial feature, just as the order of the letters I type is the crucial feature for meaning to be derived from them.

The inadequacy of material causes to explain the order of the nucleotide bases is not contended in science. Scientists understand this is a problem without a plausible solution. Dembski and ID proponents offer intelligence as a plausible solution to a known problem. Just as I would offer, as a plausible solution, that your username was created within the “space” of the login field, by an intelligent agent, namely YOU. We accept that as a plausible explanation because we know that intelligence does explain why events, even material events occur.

The transposition and functional use of genetic code would not occur without the proper ordering of nucleotide bases being achieved. Darwinism claims THAT order could have been achieved by random means selected naturally. I could claim that your username had some “random” explanation - that a cat walked over your keyboard. However, the word Skeptic is highly unlikely to have been so created because of features obvious in it. The word is connected to a specified meaning in English. I can infer from this that 92 likely has meaning to you as well, perhaps the year of your birth, perhaps not. I am not committed to any particular reasoning regarding your name merely because I can reasonably conclude that your username was, in fact, “designed” by an intelligent agent.

Dembski (and No Free Lunch Theorems, generally) claim that at a certain level, determinable by mathematic means, a highly specified, complex and functional code could not have arisen because the probabilistic resources available to do so were woefully inadequate. He makes a strong case.

You cannot claim his case is weak merely because you suppose he hasn’t or could not have made a case. If you don’t know what his case actually involves, how would you possibly know that?
 
I have told you numerous times what the problems with ID are, and the numerous logical fallacies it violates as well as principles of the Philosophy of Science. You have simply chose to ignore them. Now go read the article I posted from Catholic Answers, and go back a few pages as I saw a few articles posted by noted Philosophers of merit.

You have yet to present a valid argument, and have in fact conceded that ID is guilty of begging the question: ID then is to be discarded as an invalid framework from which to work off, and an argument that had best be discarded as the useless argument that it is.
Why don’t you address my post #1935 point by point and SHOW where my errors actually are?

You generalize about “invalid frameworks” and “numerous logical fallacies” without ever taking on the task of pointing out specifically where those issues exist.

Take apart post 1935, then and specifically show the errors in a convincing way.

I won’t hold my breath because you haven’t met my challenge from post #1866 either but continue with claims about ID that supply NO credible reasons for purchase, other than YOU claim they are invalid on logical grounds.

Fine, show HOW they are, not repeat endlessly THAT they are.
 
The mind wrote the program and built the computer. Harnessing the computing power designed by humans is an exploitation of that design. The search space in this program was limited to achieve a specified purpose.
Read the papers. All that the programs did was evaluate the fitness of the members of each generation for the specified purpose - just like natural selection does when the purpose is “move more efficiently” or “store more energy”. The computers were simply acting as the “universe” in which the program and generations existed. At no point was there a specification for “use undetected physical properties of this specific chip” or “incorporate a certain number of bends with specified angles in the antenna design”. Those features - both quite complex parts of the designs in question - arose independently of the program, computer, or the researchers’ intents.

On another note, a “speciation” event has been found to be in progress right now with a large animal: With the shrinking of the northern sea ice, polar bears have started interbreeding with grizzly bears on a vastly increased basis, and the children of these unions are fertile and breed true with each other. The new species has been tentatively given the common name of “Grolar” bear.
 
Let’s have a peek at some of the presumptions you hold so dear before we make any erroneous conclusions about “the case of ID.”

First, let’s distinguish between how “a cause of” and “a reason for” can both operate as “explanations of.”

You seem to rule out consciousness as a possible explanation because it is unpredictable. I would disagree, it is not inherently unpredictable and even if it were, ID does not make any claims about consciousness, you do.
An intelligent designer is by definition conscious.
ID claims that intelligence or a process of reasoning can be used to explain the origin of genetic code because material causes are insufficient to do so. Proponents of the thesis go to great lengths to demonstrate that and ought not be dismissed on frivolous grounds.
Yet they have failed to provide proof of their thesis. That is not a “frivolous ground”. Passion and dedication are not reliable indicators of factual correctness.
As an example of the distinction between material causes and intelligence as a cause consider the following.

You created a password and username to have entry into this forum. Those two items are examples of specified information. If we try to gain a full explanation for why your username and password are set to the exact specifications that they are, material causes do not provide a sufficient explanation. Sure, you used your fingers on a keyboard, touchpad or touchscreen to do so and the electronics of the device transferred your keystrokes into the processing unit and onto to the CAF server, but those “material” causes to not explain why the upper case M is followed by an o is followed by an n, etc. The explanation for the order or sequence of those letters can only come with reference to an intelligent designer who had “reasons for” choosing the order he did. You had your reasons. The fact that no one else may ever know those reasons does not nullify the explanatory potential of “intelligence.” As intelligent beings, we “know” that only intelligence could possibly have created the order of letters in your username because NO OTHER causal explanation can do so.

We need not know your precise reasons for setting the letters in that order, but that simple fact does not disqualify us from inferring that the letters could ONLY have been set in that manner.

We certainly CANNOT conclude that intelligence could NOT have set your user name BECAUSE intelligence is not predictable. We cannot predict what you as an intelligent being will set your user name to, but THAT does not mean we cannot infer that an intelligent being did, in fact, set the user name. Obviously, YOU did and presumably you are intelligent and used your intelligence (aka the ability to specify reasons for) to do so.

An “explanation for” can legitimately be a material cause or, in the case of intelligence, a “reason for.” You had a “reason for” setting the open fields of the user name space to Monkey1976. We know material causes cannot sufficiently explain why the order of letters is set the way it has been, so we legitimately can infer an intelligent designer did so for “reasons” which yet require explanation. However, merely because those “reasons” require further analysis does NOT negate the plausibility that intelligence could be a possible explanation. “Reasons for” act as sufficient explanations all of the time. Wherever material causes cannot fully explain the way things are, we are not justified in denying the possibility that a “reason for” might just suffice as an explanation.

This is not an argument from ignorance, it is an inference to the best explanation. Just as in all scientific pursuits, the best explanation stands until a better one can be offered.
Flaw in your reasoning: You begin with the assumption that I have a reason for my username being what it is. Can you state for certainty that I didn’t simply flip a dictionary to pick a random word and combine that with a random number as the source of my username? Of course not, because you cannot know what was going through my mind when I entered this username. Similarly, you cannot even assume that I am an active consciousness based only on the existence of a username and password - how many times have we seen bots which generate accounts with completely random usernames and passwords? Even Captcha can be beaten by a sufficiently sophisticated program. Now, you might argue that there is a user or programmer behind the bot, but that simply pushes the question or origin further back, as well as ignores the fact that the user often has no way of knowing what username and password the bot will choose until it has successfully registered and reports that information back to the user.

In the case of genetic code, the similarity of DNA with specified complex codes in use all the time by intelligent human agents and the fact that NO chemical or physical causes explain the critical ordering of the nucleotide bases along the spine of the DNA molecule means that some other explanation must be sought (by the principle of sufficient reason.) Intelligence is a plausible explanation because we know that “reasons for” can operate as sufficient explanations for material events even though reasons are not material causes.
Clearly, material causes do not explain every physical event. They don’t explain why Monkey1976 is your user name, for example.
Your analogy fails in that you are presuming a designer before looking for evidence of design. What empirical measurements can tell us is that my username was entered at a specific time from a specific IP address. Science is not a tool for determining the motivations behind an event, as motivations presume an active mind - something that is unmeasurable.
 
An intelligent designer is by definition conscious.
By whose definition? Intentional perhaps, but suggesting “conscious” is necessary is invoking an anthropomorphism which sets up the ID thesis for precisely the criticisms that you and Skeptic92 launch against it.
Yet they have failed to provide proof of their thesis. That is not a “frivolous ground”. Passion and dedication are not reliable indicators of factual correctness.

Flaw in your reasoning: You begin with the assumption that I have a reason for my username being what it is. Can you state for certainty that I didn’t simply flip a dictionary to pick a random word and combine that with a random number as the source of my username?
Even if you did “flip a dictionary” there would be “a reason” you did so in order to choose your word. The dictionary would not cause your choice in the matter. You still had a reason for implementing the dictionary strategy; perhaps not a very good reason, but a reason nonetheless.

The fact that your reason is obtuse or not available to objective assessment does not argue against the hypothesis that your username is still NOT the result of a material cause.
Your analogy fails in that you are presuming a designer before looking for evidence of design. What empirical measurements can tell us is that my username was entered at a specific time from a specific IP address. Science is not a tool for determining the motivations behind an event, as motivations presume an active mind - something that is unmeasurable.
You didn’t understand the argument. Setting the code on a bicycle lock is not sufficiently explained by material causation precisely because the numbers “allowed” by the lock mechanism itself are not materialistically determined. The reason a bicycle lock works the way it does is because the number sequence is not set deterministically by material causes. We can’t explain the actual sequence of numbers (the code) with reference to anything “material” about the lock. If we could the sequence itself would be secured by those material causes themselves and would not be open to being set by external factors, i.e., my choice of numbers in the sequence.

Darwinian evolution proposes that the extensive code found in DNA was arrived at randomly and selected for continuity by forces in nature. That presumes an initial random code was achieved that could self-replicate before natural selection could have any effect.
That pre-existing random code to produce a self-replicating forms of life would be akin to random turns of a bicycle lock that blindly “hit upon” just the right combination to successfully open the lock, i.e, made possible the self-replication properties in genetic code that make it amenable to such possibilities. Yet the level of code required to accomplish that access would far exceed the probabilistic resources available.

An analogy would be gaining access to the vast creative resources found in a computer network (protein synthesis) by randomly assembling numbers and letters without knowing beforehand that hitting on the “right” combination would get you into the network. Not merely hit and miss, but hit and miss with regard to a capacity that never knew existed until it was effectively created by the lengthy specified and complex code that was accidentally and blindly “hit upon.”

This is a case, not of an infinite number of monkeys, but of a finite number of monkeys on an finite number of typewriters coming up with the works of Shakespeare and at the same instant creating the actors and stages that perform them.

I don’t think you properly consider the extent of the information ‘stored’ in genetic code and what is required to produce it. Otherwise, you would reconsider the facility with which you dismiss the issue.
 
Science is based on reasonable assumptions. Richard Dawkins said living things appear to be designed. I think that matches up with reality quite well. As scientists study the genome, the level of complexity is going up, not down. Junk DNA has proven to not be junk.

A related concept is: why are there ANY plants we can eat? Or that animals can eat?

Symbiosis matches reality as well. Unrelated organisms serve, in my example, as food when they would never have to be edible food under blind, unguided chance. Another example: Animals have been eating a certain plant but one shows up with a mutation that makes them sick. They stop eating it and it spreads. The other, edible plant declines in population in the wild. The animals have a harder and harder time finding the good variety.

What would dung beetles do if there was no dung? I think looking outside the box is part of the issue here.

Peace,
Ed
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top