Overwhelming evidence for Design?

[reggieM]

Thanks, Reggie, for stepping into the breach! I’m taking a breather on reaching the 12,000 mark but I’m not deserting you.

Tony – congratulations on reaching 12,000!!:extrahappy: … but please stay with us – at least until you reach 24,000.

 

[Bradski]

This (that nature builds on what has gone before) is an assertion without evidence. The first life form could not have evolved from previous life. This leaves you with a chance combination of non-living molecules. There’s nothing to “build on” there – except to build more chaos and randomness. Again, we see zero evidence that natural processes could have created the first life form.

I’m not talking abiogenesis. Once life has started (an entirely different discussion), then nature builds on what has gone before. Nature doesn’t ‘try’ to make an eye for example. It doesn’t hope that billions upon billions of attempts will result in a perfect eye in one hit. It starts with light sensing cells and gradually, incrementally, an eye will develop if it serves some purpose in keeping the animal alive at each step.

But you’re right. There’s no evidence as to what caused the process. It’s been too long and there’s nothing left for us to look at.

This convention serves a purpose. It’s the deliberate use of inaccurate language to create a magical process, which is actually personalized. We have “advantages being selected” – when actually, there is no selector, and truthfully nothing is “being selected”.

You’re saying that people are out to bend the truth? To try to fool everyone? That the whole scientific world is in on some conspiracy? I wouldn’t have put you down in that camp.

 

[Bradski]

Your biased information (for which you have no proof) is that there is no design. From that you can conclude that there is no Designer. Actually, you are probably working it the other way around. There is no Designer, therefore there cannot possibly be a design. Either way you’re covered, and either way you are wrong.

No, I don’t have any information that it wasn’t designed. I just don’t have information that it was. It all appears to be entirely natural and without purpose.

You didn’t answer the question I made earlier as to what prevents a suggestion that something other than God has created what we observe. If you say this is all the result of a designer, why does it have to be God? Surely it doesn’t unless you start with God in the first instance.

The burden of proof is on you to show, as tonyrey has often reminded us, that the universe is not only undesigned, but also is therefore purposeless and pointless.

You’re correct in that the two are connected. If there is a designer, then there must be purpose. If there is none, then there would be no purpose.

I see purpose in my life and that of others. But that does not imply purpose in the universe. In that I see none. I mean literally none. I see life as an accident of nature and I see my part in it as insignificant as it’s possible to be (in the grand scheme of things).

That doesn’t mean that I don’t find meaning in life. That doesn’t mean that I can’t value the time that I have here and enjoy what life has to give. But the universe cares nothing for me. And please spare me the ‘poor Bradski’ laments. ‘How terrible it must be for you’.

Actually, life is pretty wonderful. It’s just not part of some divine plan. Therefore no purpose. Therefore no designer.

 

[Gaber]

1. Design implies that neither reason nor the universe is an accident.

What you label “design” for the convenience of your hypothesis is limited to your perceptions from association with a changing position of relativity. So what you are calling “design” is an overlay of the inculcation of your linearly oriented dualistic culture and its language. You even appear to believe in cause and effect, which might be surmised within the scope of gross sense perceptions, assessed by low order logic, but likely isn’t, probably isn’t the case. OK, darn it, it isn’t.

There is such an overwhelmingly vast infinitude that your admittedly agile brain, or anyone’s, can’t even either begin to grasp or even conceive the existence of, that to claim to see design in the overall picture, remembering indeed that it is a picture, is sheer and utter inflated to the nth degree hubris. And to use “reason” properly beyond the scope of what you might individually have of even our collective less than a flicker of a wink’s existence on this planet, you would have to have the qualities you attribute to the God you imo ignorantly worship, say I.

That’s because you constantly put forward a partial process of exceedingly limited application, reason/ing, as being the only and sole tool for comprehension of the enormity which you/we clearly don’t understand, if anyone does. As far as I can see, what passes in the “arguments” here for reason is more akin to consensus agreement in the small group that has the same perceptive limitations as yourself, which to a degree, and certainly of a kind, can be remedied.

1. An accidental universe is not a credible basis for order, value, purpose, meaning or a rational existence.

“Accidental” or not, either assessment is again from the limits of associating the entirety of Creation as having a 1/1 relationship to the assignments you give the tiny bits we have a capacity to see and functionally comprehend in a somewhat useful way for navigating in this form of existence. We don’even know what other kinds there might or might not be, even if we claim angels and aliens. (Now there’s a movie title for you
1 ) 3. We would expect an accidental universe to be chaotic, valueless, purposeless, meaningless, unpredictable, unintelligible and - above all - irrational… Whatever we might “expect,” given our ingrained and unexamined predilections, from a Universe we really don’t in fact have a clue about other then a developing ad hoc assessment of what is pertinent in it to our personified needs, it isn’t–either in terms of “reason” or lack of it. That you can claim to reason and get results from premises has no relevance to the accuracy, scope, inclusiveness, width, depth, breadth, multidimensionality, or any imagined or not parameter on any scale outside your personal one which from several parsecs away may not be as important as you think, or I don’t think. And the Universe, aside from our assuaging our fears of it, is irrational, no matter how we cloth it in rationalization to gain some modicum of control within, again, the bit of dimensionality we call “human.” Ad hoc consensus for the usefulness of functioning in the Universe to the degree we know a part of it, does not constitute even a semblance of Reality, or God, or any actuality of “design” as you propose it.

You yourself are extolling the necessity of a “spiritual” life, as if that was something different from the mundanity of your day-to-day. there is no “reason” in spirituality, save the ability to use it from the side of having clarity beyond the mind, as a tool of record and parsing out significance. But all that is prior to its discovery. It already always IS. You cannot “reason” up to God. That is the Tower of Babel. You can only reason out from insight, and use reasoning, metaphysical reasoning, as a stabilizer on the journey of discovery. but in the end, even that disappears.

But in the mean time, all is well. We simply are what we are and do what we do. It will all end as the same and be ever its own beginning.

 

[tonyrey]

What you label “design” for the convenience of your hypothesis is limited to your perceptions from association with a changing position of relativity. So what you are calling “design” is an overlay of the inculcation of your linearly oriented dualistic culture and its language. You even appear to believe in cause and effect, which might be surmised within the scope of gross sense perceptions, assessed by low order logic, but likely isn’t, probably isn’t the case. OK, darn it, it isn’t.

There is such an overwhelmingly vast infinitude that your admittedly agile brain, or anyone’s, can’t even either begin to grasp or even conceive the existence of, that to claim to see design in the overall picture, remembering indeed that it is a picture, is sheer and utter inflated to the nth degree hubris. And to use “reason” properly beyond the scope of what you might individually have of even our collective less than a flicker of a wink’s existence on this planet, you would have to have the qualities you attribute to the God you imo ignorantly worship, say I.

That’s because you constantly put forward a partial process of exceedingly limited application, reason/ing, as being the only and sole tool for comprehension of the enormity which you/we clearly don’t understand, if anyone does. As far as I can see, what passes in the “arguments” here for reason is more akin to consensus agreement in the small group that has the same perceptive limitations as yourself, which to a degree, and certainly of a kind, can be remedied. “Accidental” or not, either assessment is again from the limits of associating the entirety of Creation as having a 1/1 relationship to the assignments you give the tiny bits we have a capacity to see and functionally comprehend in a somewhat useful way for navigating in this form of existence. We don’even know what other kinds there might or might not be, even if we claim angels and aliens. (Now there’s a movie title for you

Whatever we might “expect,” given our ingrained and unexamined predilections, from a Universe we really don’t in fact have a clue about other then a developing ad hoc assessment of what is pertinent in it to our personified needs, it isn’t–either in terms of “reason” or lack of it. That you can claim to reason and get results from premises has no relevance to the accuracy, scope, inclusiveness, width, depth, breadth, multidimensionality, or any imagined or not parameter on any scale outside your personal one which from several parsecs away may not be as important as you think, or I don’t think. And the Universe, aside from our assuaging our fears of it, is irrational, no matter how we cloth it in rationalization to gain some modicum of control within, again, the bit of dimensionality we call “human.” Ad hoc consensus for the usefulness of functioning in the Universe to the degree we know a part of it, does not constitute even a semblance of Reality, or God, or any actuality of “design” as you propose it.

You yourself are extolling the necessity of a “spiritual” life, as if that was something different from the mundanity of your day-to-day. there is no “reason” in spirituality, save the ability to use it from the side of having clarity beyond the mind, as a tool of record and parsing out significance. But all that is prior to its discovery. It already always IS. You cannot “reason” up to God. That is the Tower of Babel. You can only reason out from insight, and use reasoning, metaphysical reasoning, as a stabilizer on the journey of discovery. but in the end, even that disappears.

But in the mean time, all is well. We simply are what we are and do what we do. It will all end as the same and be ever its own beginning.

How would you prove “We are we are and do what we do” and “It will all end as the same and be ever its own beginning”?

It sounds like fatalism rather than Christianity…

 

[Gaber]

How would you prove “We are we are and do what we do” and “It will all end as the same and be ever its own beginning”?

It sounds like fatalism rather than Christianity…

Not fatalism at all, As is often the case, you overlay a neutral with a prejudice.

 

[tonyrey]

How would you prove “We are we are and do what we do” and “It will all end as the same and be ever its own beginning”?

Please explain why it is not fatalism.

NB I delete irrelevant personal remarks on principle.

 

[FurtherSuntime]

So what are the odds of a person who has a cup of coffee every morning from this moment forward until tom morning ?

As each moment ticks along from now until tom morning the odds change in favor of chance which has the person drinking the cup of coffee.

The reasoning is that the person is in two environments which are changing and subject to an interference in operations.

These two environments are the person himself and existence which encloses all that we know from neighbors to asteroids.

The intention or will we could say to have the cup of coffee
will be denoted from this time forward as… #influence#

Influence in general relative to this topic I think is the target.

I’d like to wash and wax the car today, maybe tom I will carry on…

 

[FurtherSuntime]

Feel free to disregard my above post entirely…I like the exercise.

 

[tonyrey]

Following your pace ain’t easy!

I’m making up for lost time! It took me years to find the best, most catholic (as opposed to Catholic) and most international philosophy forum on the Internet. :tiphat:

 

[Gaber]

Please explain why it is not fatalism.

NB I delete irrelevant personal remarks on principle.

It is nothing personal. And if you practiced what you preached you would have therefore deleted your own assessment of how you personally interpreted that statement. But what you did is what the vast majority of people do. So don’t take it that way. And see? you’ve done it again. It is not fatalism, it is just a statement of condition, and can be taken either as fatalistic, opportunistic, neutral or what ever. You chose to overlay it by taking it as fatalism, revealing your own mindset. You are the one who was personal about it. and that is why I continually advocate critical thinking, general semantics, epistemology, basic self knowledge, etc, etc, in order to avoid that traps that folks take for granted as constituting reality, but is only a consensus paradigm usually exclusive of methodology for transcending it. And the preceding is exactly how you can get away with convincing yourself, as do your cohorts, that “design” is plausible as a methodology for demonstrating anything. It is not.

Did you read posts #876>880 in the …Reality… thread you just commented in?

 

[reggieM]

I’m not talking abiogenesis. Once life has started (an entirely different discussion), then nature builds on what has gone before.

We didn’t limit evidence for design to biology so it’s not a different question. We don’t start our exploration of design from the point “once life has started”. Why would we do that? It’s the same nature that is present before and after life was formed. The only problem is that there’s no natural selection to refer to before there is biological life – so the tornado in a junkyard analogy is not as “nonsensical” as it might seem. We’re dealing with almost a purely random process and no physical laws known that can bring together non-living elements into a first self-reproducing life form.

It starts with light sensing cells and gradually, incrementally, an eye will develop if it serves some purpose in keeping the animal alive at each step.

I understand this point of view and we shouldn’t debate that topic. Maybe we can just agree to disagree.

You’re saying that people are out to bend the truth? To try to fool everyone? That the whole scientific world is in on some conspiracy?

You could read it that way (putting my thoughts into your own words), but I would prefer that you’d see it from my point of view. Let’s take a look at the paragraph …

This convention serves a purpose.

Here I’m assuming that the scientific community is acting purposefully. There is a reason why we see that terminology widely – as observed on the TalkOrigins page you cited and we can find examples in almost every form of evolutionary literature.

It’s the deliberate use of inaccurate language to create a magical process, which is actually personalized.

You agreed that the language is inaccurate. If used for a reason, then it’s deliberate. So, we have “the whole scientific world” deliberately using inaccurate language. Call it a conspiracy if you want, but those are the facts.

Now, the debatable point is why they do this. My interpretation is that it covers up the weakness of the theory and seeks to gain credibility from people. How? By personifying this thing called “natural selection”, it creates an idea that this “thing” does something in nature – it selects, chooses, sorts, perfects, invents, purifies, innovates, refines …

A counter point may be that “it makes it easier for the general public to understand evolution”. Actually, I think that supports the conspiracy theory. It’s “easier” to understand because by creating this mythical force called “natural selection”, people think there is this godlike power that can create, change, select and develop all of nature. Thus, evolution is “easier” to understand. Unfortunately, it’s a totally false and bogus concept. Not only does natural selection not select, choose, develop, innovate … etc. – but there is no force that does that. There is no predictable law that one can even refer to regarding how organisms are “selected”.

But why isn’t that point brought out? Is it “too hard to understand”?

I’ll just say it’s human nature. The “whole scientific world” (although there is a growing number of scientists who reject natural selection as a factor in biological diversity) has a good reason to protect and defend their ideas. So, they use inaccurate language to do it.

So, calling this a conspiracy theory doesn’t really explain the problem, as I see it. And it’s not the way I’d describe it either so I don’t think it helps in understanding my view.

 

[reggieM]

And the preceding is exactly how you can get away with convincing yourself, as do your cohorts, that “design” is plausible as a methodology for demonstrating anything. It is not.

As a cohort who has convinced myself , I’ll just explain again that every methodology for demonstrating things is a work of design.

Could you explain why you disagree?
Along with that, please could you offer us a methodology of any kind that is not a product of design?

 

[reggieM]

I’m making up for lost time! It took me years to find the best, most catholic (as opposed to Catholic) and most international philosophy forum on the Internet. :tiphat:

If it was the best when you found it, it’s even best-er now, thanks to your admirable contributions.

 

[Charlemagne_II]

Bradski

You didn’t answer the question I made earlier as to what prevents a suggestion that something other than God has created what we observe. If you say this is all the result of a designer, why does it have to be God?

I answered this question earlier. I asked you what else it could the designer be if not God. You had no answer that I recall.

I see purpose in my life and that of others. But that does not imply purpose in the universe. In that I see none. I mean literally none. I see life as an accident of nature and I see my part in it as insignificant as it’s possible to be (in the grand scheme of things).

Yes, I know that’s the usual atheistic answer. What other answer could you give than to see meaning and purpose all around you but to deny that it exists throughout the universe?
**
That doesn’t mean that I don’t find meaning in life. That doesn’t mean that I can’t value the time that I have here and enjoy what life has to give.**

I’m glad you are enjoying life. Would you enjoy it more if you believe in your immortal soul?

 

[tonyrey]

It is nothing personal. And if you practiced what you preached you would have therefore deleted your own assessment of how you personally interpreted that statement. But what you did is what the vast majority of people do. So don’t take it that way. And see? you’ve done it again. It is not fatalism, it is just a statement of condition, and can be taken either as fatalistic, opportunistic, neutral or what ever. You chose to overlay it by taking it as fatalism, revealing your own mindset. You are the one who was personal about it. and that is why I continually advocate critical thinking, general semantics, epistemology, basic self knowledge, etc, etc, in order to avoid that traps that folks take for granted as constituting reality, but is only a consensus paradigm usually exclusive of methodology for transcending it. And the preceding is exactly how you can get away with convincing yourself, as do your cohorts, that “design” is plausible as a methodology for demonstrating anything. It is not.

Did you read posts #876>880 in the …Reality… thread you just commented in?

I regret to say you’re contradicting yourself:

**"**It is nothing personal."

and

"And see? you’ve done it again… And the preceding is exactly how you can get away with convincing yourself, as do your cohorts, that “design” is plausible as a methodology for demonstrating anything. It is not.

Since you’re convinced you’re right and those who disagree with you are wrong it’s better for everyone to agree to disagree and leave it at that.

 

[Gaber]

I regret to say you’re contradicting yourself:No, not at all. Try again

and Since you’re convinced you’re right and those who disagree with you are wrong it’s better for everyone to agree to disagree and leave it at that. It isn’t about right and wrong, or whatever like that. You are brilliant, you have a brilliant mind. I had high hopes for you, but you won’t get past your reasonableness.

Neither the Universe nor god is reasonable. Look at the OT vs the NT. Or why do they say “Want to make God laugh? Make plans!” when have your circumstances or anyone you’ve even heard or read about lived in totally reasonable circumstances, other then an illusion fostered by cutting oneself off from the condition of the world, ever? I mean you can reason about it, in tiny chunks, but the enormity of what isn’t within your considerations has sway. What sand castle of anything have you built that a wave of reality hasn’t washed away?

Faith will do for an answer, a limited one, but is that not also constantly tested by the unreasonability of happenstance? But where did that come from, through whom and by what means? And if it is true, why aren’t people flocking to its utility as they do to mathematics for engineering?

In the end, reason is a servant and a tool, not any sort of be-all and end all and highest of humanities faculties. Not by any means. Since when is art, poetry, dance, painting, any of those reasonable or arrived at by reason? And yet the artist is the ambassador of the race to the Invisible, as is the Mystic and the Contemplative. Reason in these cases is applied after the fact as an educational and analytically tool that can reveal, but it is not by itself the creative factor. Not even in philosophy. Even “Cogito ergo sum” is bass ackwards and I’m sure you know that.

So I am not against reason or using it or whatever. But I have tried to encourage you to find a way past your discursive mind, and all you did was ask for proof. Well, the proof is that you perceive yourself asking. Who is doing that and with what? Unless you know that, it’s all intellection, faith not withstanding, as valuable as that is in so many cases.

So fine, I wont speak directly with you any more. But I will as I see fit comment on what you post, as I’m not the only one reading the things you put forth from the sand of “design”

 

[Bradski]

I answered this question earlier. I asked you what else it could the designer be if not God. You had no answer that I recall.

Asking me a question does not constitute an answer. I suggested that it could be anything other than a deity. I used the example of you being treated as a god if you could show someone from 2,000 years ago a mobile phone. Do you consider that it could be designed by anything other than a deity?

Yes, I know that’s the usual atheistic answer. What other answer could you give than to see meaning and purpose all around you but to deny that it exists throughout the universe?

Indeed. What other answer could I give if I see no purpose in the universe yet see meaning in my, all too brief, life here and now?

I’m glad you are enjoying life. Would you enjoy it more if you believe in your immortal soul?

No. Would you enjoy it more if you realised that this was all you were going to get?

 

[reggieM]

And if [the answer of Faith] is true, why aren’t people flocking to its utility as they do to mathematics for engineering?

The path is wide and **many **go there.

Since when is art, poetry, dance, painting, any of those reasonable or arrived at by reason?

All of it is arrived at by reason. You can’t pick up a paint brush without reason. You can’t write a single word without reason. You can’t distinguish between dance and architecture without reason. You can’t even recognize that a painting exists without reason.

I hope, eventually, you will learn this. What you present is some kind of gnostic fairy-land where reason is something secondary. It’s like the hippie-ish, '60s frauds who claimed that “money is useless” while they padded their own bank accounts and sought tax shelters.

You come on to a philosophy site and want to argue with people – now claiming that the artist offers the best support for the points you’re trying to win … ok, great. Instead of trying to reason with people, just post photos of your art-work, or clips of your instrumental compositions and that, apparently, will prove your points better than reason can.

So I am not against reason or using it or whatever.

You are against reason – you continue to argue against it. And that’s about as obvious a self-contradiction as we can find.

So fine, I wont speak directly with you any more.

I assumed that you took the same attitude towards me when you refused to answer the questions I posed to you.

It’s about trying to build some credibility, Gaber – and that’s not going to happen unless you’re willing to explore the weakness and inconsistency of your own views and then challenge yourself, instead of thinking you’re here only to challenge everybody else.

 

[tonyrey]

Since you’re convinced you’re right and those who disagree with you are wrong it’s better for everyone to agree to disagree and leave it at that.

1. You are perfectly entitled to post comments on anyone’s posts but I am not the only one who finds you are unreasonable in your rejection of others’ reasons without giving a reason for doing so.
2. It is obvious that there are limits to what reason can establish yet no one is entitled to claim to have superior insight without producing evidence they have superior insight.
3. To assert that “Neither the Universe nor god is reasonable” overlooks both the success of science and also the purpose of God in creating the universe.