Tier 1 Level Philosophy: Can you identify Intelligent Design in a system where all physical relationships happen by chance?

[Aloysium]

Can you identify intelligent design in a system where all physical relationships in principle happen by chance?

Chance is based on a foundation of order. By design I would assume that the question involves the existance of an external source of that order.

We assume that the motion of the atoms which fill this room are responsible for its temperature. Although they are moving about randomly, the structure of atoms and their interactional properties are not randomly changing. There is an order to physical reality. The big bang theory is our current understanding of how this came to be in the early universe. Either this order (time and space, with its matter and its properties) created itself, came about as a manifestation of an eternal underlying ordering principle or was created, a better term imho than designed. These smallest of systems come together into larger wholes, which are greater and unpredictable from their inherent behaviour. Take this computer, whose mother bord is contributing to the heat in this room; it clearly is more complex that the sum of its constituent parts. The myriad of molecules could not come together spontaneously to produce this object. What is involved is a process, designed by human beings whereby we are able to organize the pre-existing materials, known to interact in specific ways, in orde to create this piece of technology, whose reality is far greater than its constituent parts.

I believe that any complex object, which I would call a form of being, has to be created, by giving order to its parts. Those who do not believe in God or other external agency might describe the process as one of emergence, where somehow a higher order appears by itself. That doesn’t seem reasonable to me. Clearly God brings the universe, the dust of which we are formed, into existence as He does each of us, call it design or call it Divine artistic expression.

 

[Aloysium]

what you write, when I read it, seems to demean the entire concept.

I demean, if one chooses to use that word and I apologize if I come across harshly, not science but the mythos of evolution, which I do not believe represents how this has all come to be the way it is. I would say that God created in time the hierarchy of being that is the universe, from the subatomic to we ourselves. He was involved in the entire process as He is now in maintaining its existence. It was not a random series of events that resulted in our having brains capable of manifesting the blessings that come with the human spirit, nor was it a utilitarian principle of natural selection that resulted in this grand miracle that is the world with the diversity of living forms that it contains.

 

[ProdglArchitect]

I would never argue that it was random in the sense that God wasn’t involved. However, I believe that the physical mechanics of evolution as we understand them are accurate.

Either way, we’re still pretty far off topic, so we should probably drop the discussion.

 

[fhansen]

The intelligence, to my mind, comes from the observer looking at them, not the process that made them (at least the part of the process we’re considering).

So if the design present in the random typing of monkeys is only there by virtue of the intelligence of the observer, and not by virtue of the monkeys, then it would seem that the intelligent designer is me. I’m the one who gives it meaning. It’s not the monkeys, and it’s not God, it’s me.

There’s still teleology in the system, I just think the angle taken in that illustration, so far as I understood it, isn’t necessarily it.

We wouldn’t be giving purpose to the book; we could only be recognizing purpose in it. I think the real point is that the complexity involved in producing such a book would render its production completely improbable via the method proposed. ID is supported by this argument.

 

[fhansen]

Theoretically

 

[IWantGod]

To our monkey equivalent, time means nothing. For time itself is meaningless. Thus our monkeys will type forever, and any story that could ever be written, will be written. And any reality that could ever be created, will be created. By nothing more than typing monkeys.

At first glance that seems like a real possibility, accept for the fact that stories are not possible without goal direction, meaning and intelligence. Going back to the analogy, it is impossible for monkeys to produce any story by chance if the words they are typing have no meaning, goal direction, or intelligence behind it’s expression; in fact there is no reason to think of them as words at all if that is the case. It’s just all gobldigoop.Thus it’s impossible for monkeys to produce the story of Alice and Wonderland by chance; they can only produce by chance the symbols used to symbolize that story. The words by themselves have no meaning other than what our intelligence gives to them. In otherwords, only intelligent beings can create stories.

The whole point I’m trying to make is that it can be both true that all physical relationships or natures can become actual by chance while at the same time the goal direction or intelligent information/meaning that those physical relationships and natures exhibit are the expression of a fundamental blue-print in which all the behavior of physical objects is grounded.

You see, so long as we are only dealing with physical objects, a materialist position is feasible; no matter how ordered things appear all physical relationships can be the result of chaos or chance as an explanation. But as soon as those objects/natures,relationships begin exhibiting genuinely intelligent information, goal direction, and meaning, that’s when materialism falls apart, and the only intelligible explanation left is that physical reality is based on what can only be described as an intelligently designed plan. And then it doesn’t matter if natures or physical relationships come to be by chance because that is not what is being described when one points to goal-direction, or meaning, or intelligent information.

 

[Vonsalza]

There is not such a thing like randomness in your system of belief where God sustains everything because God is aware of everything.

I can dance to that.

Randomness wouldn’t be a meaningful concept to a God that a. Knows everything and b. Created the universe.

 

[Wozza]

lisaandlena:

To our monkey equivalent, time means nothing. For time itself is meaningless. Thus our monkeys will type forever, and any story that could ever be written, will be written. And any reality that could ever be created, will be created. By nothing more than typing monkeys.

At first glance that seems like a real possibility, accept for the fact that stories are not possible without goal direction, meaning and intelligence. Going back to the analogy, it is impossible for monkeys to produce any story by chance if the words they are typing have no meaning, goal direction, or intelligence behind it’s expression; in fact there is no reason to think of them as words at all if that is the case. It’s just all gobldigoop.Thus it’s impossible for monkeys to produce the story of Alice and Wonderland by chance; they can only produce by chance the symbols used to symbolize that story. The words by themselves have no meaning other than what our intelligence gives to them. In otherwords, only intelligent beings can create stories.

The whole point I’m trying to make is that it can be both true that all physical relationships or natures can become actual by chance while at the same time the goal direction or intelligent information/meaning that those physical relationships and natures exhibit are the expression of a fundamental blue-print in which all the behavior of physical objects is grounded.

You see, so long as we are only dealing with physical objects, a materialist position is feasible; no matter how ordered things appear all physical relationships can be the result of chaos or chance as an explanation. But as soon as those objects/natures,relationships begin exhibiting genuinely intelligent information, goal direction, and meaning, that’s when materialism falls apart, and the only intelligible explanation left is that physical reality is based on what can only be described as an intelligently designed plan. And then it doesn’t matter if natures or physical relationships come to be by chance because that is not what is being described when one points to goal-direction, or meaning, or intelligent information.

Let’s look at it this way: Imagine a universe where man has arisen by natural means. No intelligence involved (this is comparable to Alice In Wonderland). And compare that to a universe in which God has guided the process at every step.

How do you tell the difference?

 

[catholicray]

That does not change the fact that when I roll the die the outcome is random.

Is the outcome of the roll random because it must be? Or is it random because you lack the skill to take advantage of the known forces which act upon it, and roll with precision?

 

[Aloysium]

Aloysium:

Although they are moving about randomly, the structure of atoms and their interactional properties are not randomly changing.

To be precise, their movement is chaotic, but not random. Otherwise you did a good job, up until that last paragraph.

Thank you for bringing up this clarification. I’m going to have to review the concepts of randomness and chaos.

I think that in mathematics they can be clearly defined, but in physics it boils down to a pragmatic difference. What I mean is that everything operates according to what it is and we discover/invent laws to describe those unchanging properties; or so I assume.

Is the outcome of the roll random because it must be? Or is it random because you lack the skill to take advantage of the known forces which act upon it, and roll with precision?

The roll of a die is random in the sense that each roll cannot predict the next. However, were we able to create a computer model that took into account the exact distribution of mass in a die, the entire neural network that is involved in shaking it up and how it might function that particular day, including if you had your morning coffee, if we took into consideration all those myriad of factors, we should be able to predict the outcome, because it is determined; or is it, since it involves a human being, who for whatever reason may alter their behaviour through the exercise of their free will.

I’m going to suggest that if Brownian motion ( " the erratic random movement of microscopic particles in a fluid, as a result of continuous bombardment from molecules of the surrounding medium") can be considered random, then so too the movement of the particles that underlie that behaviour. If it is all actually chaotic in reality, then randomness loses its meaning other than being an expression of practicality, in that we can only know and manipulate so many variables.

This isn’t a physics forum, but the issue of random vs chaos would be relevant because of the claim that random mutations are behind what appears to be evolution. And, when we are talking about a designer, we are considering whether the order we observe has spontaneously appearred as the result of random events.

 

[Aloysium]

any reality that could ever be created, will be created. By nothing more than typing monkeys.

There are thought experiments and then there is reality.

I get what you mean:

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www.telegraph.co.uk

The virtual monkeys, created by an American programmer, have already typed up the whole of the poem A Lover’s Complaint and are 99.99 per cent of the way through the Bard’s complete works.

The experiment attempts to prove the theory that an infinite number of monkeys sitting at an infinite number of typewriters would eventually reproduce the works of Shakespeare by chance.

Jesse Anderson, the programmer behind the project, said he was inspired by an episode of The Simpsons which spoofs the famous problem.

Mr Anderson set up millions of small computer programmes, or virtual monkeys, using Amazon’s SC2 cloud computing system, and programmed them to churn out random sequences of nine characters.

If the nine-letter sequence appears anywhere in one of Shakespeare’s writings, it is matched against the relevant passage in a copy of the Bard’s complete works, and is checked off the list.

Note the importance of the selective process, and the vast number of discards that would have to take place, so far greater than what is accepted and how there is no clustering of outcomes as we find in nature - lions, lemon trees, T-Rex’s; it is all one continuous flow. A lot of work, quite inefficient for a designer who would have set up the program, and untenable in terms of spontaneously happening.

What monkeys actually do:

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www.theguardian.com

Elmo, Gum, Heather, Holly, Mistletoe and Rowan - produced just five pages of text between them, primarily filled with the letter S.

There were greater signs of creativity towards the end, with the letters A, J, L and M making fleeting appearances, but they wrote nothing even close to a word of human language.

 

[ProdglArchitect]

I would say it is random because I cannot account for and control all variables. Technically that is true of any kind of randomness though. If I were able to control everything about the roll (make it in a vacuum so there’s no air influence, on a perfectly smooth surface, with perfectly cubed dice), then arguably I could control the outcome. That’s not something we could prove though, since those conditions don’t exist. It may very well be that, even knowing all variable, we still couldn’t account for everything…

To answer where I think you’re going with this, God’s ability to account for all variables does not mean that He controls those variables, as in dictates them all moment to moment.

 

[ProdglArchitect]

I think this might be your point, but that feels like cheating…

The thought problem is that they’ll type it out, in full, in a single continuous sitting. This guy is just saying “Oh, that word is somewhere in Shakespeare. Check it off the list…” That’s not really what the thought problem is about…

 

[Wozza]

I think this might be your point, but that feels like cheating…

The thought problem is that they’ll type it out, in full, in a single continuous sitting. This guy is just saying “Oh, that word is somewhere in Shakespeare. Check it off the list…” That’s not really what the thought problem is about…

Take just 32 monkeys and get them to hit the keys randomly (the 32 represents 26 letters plus some punctuation).

Evolution works in that it keeps that which is benificial and discards that which isn't. So let's say that if the first character is an 'N', then it is slightly advantageous so it is kept and all else is discarded. That is, when a monkey hits 'N' as the first letter, the 'N' remains, the rest is cleared and we start again. And now 'N' followed by an 'O' is even more beneficial so if a monkey hits 'O' first on the second round then we keep the 'No' and start again.

On average, one monkey will always hit the right key first at each stage. Say every second. So within 32 seconds we have 'Now is the winter of our discontent…'.

After 8 1/2 hours we have the complete Richard III.

No intelligence required. The keys are struck randomly. And all you need is an environment where one combination is slightly better than another.

OK, the natural world isn't as straight forward as that. But we aren't dealing with just 32 organisms and a few hours. Yet with some simple natural rules and random events we have what appears to be intelligently designed.

 

[Aloysium]

If evolution represented reality we would not see individual species but rather a progression of molecular configurations, the vast by far number of which would be unfit. Over time these random configurations only against the greatest, almost infinite odds could result in the complex processes that are necessary for let’s say the Kreb’s Cycle.

 

[Aloysium]

But that is how evolution is said to work, mediated by natural selection.

 

[Wozza]

If evolution represented reality we would not see individual species but rather a progression of molecular configurations, the vast by far number of which would be unfit. Over time these random configurations only against the greatest, almost infinite odds could result in the complex processes that are necessary for let’s say the Kreb’s Cycle.

Sorry, Al. But I’ve seen enough of your comments in threads about evolution to know that you grasp some of the details but don’t understand the concept. You keep arguing about what you see as problems with some trees without realising that you’re standing in a forrest.

Notwithstanding that you have a religious objection to a scientific process so I’m not likely to spend any time carrying on a fruitless conversation about it.

 

[fhansen]

Ok, so if I understand, it’s conceivable that, if we were to come upon a book in a bookstore entitled “Alice in Wonderland” that this particular book could’ve been produced by random means by non-human sources, the words by one source perhaps, the printing by another, same for the binding and cover, the preface and acknowledgements, etc, all uniting in an orderly fashion by chance. This should be a relatively easy task I suppose, when compared to producing, say, a strand of DNA by chance, as DNA design would be of a much higher order of complexity.

 

[IWantGod]

Let’s look at it this way: Imagine a universe where man has arisen by natural means. No intelligence involved (this is comparable to Alice In Wonderland). And compare that to a universe in which God has guided the process at every step.

How do you tell the difference?

There is no difference as far as God is concerned because i think that an intelligence is necessary in both cases.

The difference for me is how you define guidance? If you mean that an intelligence is interfering with a process in-order to favor an outcome, then i don’t think that’s the case. I think God allows things to act according to their nature. The question is can one identify something that can only be the result of intelligence in a universe where physical relationships and natures occur by chance. I think that if a nature exhibits intelligent information, or goal direction in it’s behavior, then this is evidence of an intelligently designed plan. It does not matter to me that such natures formed by chance, as i think that is irrelevant since i don’t think it is possible for genuinely intelligent information or goal direction to exist without an intelligent design. Just like i don’t think it’s possible for monkeys to produce by chance Alice In Wonderland without intelligent design because a relationship between symbols by themselves have no objective meaning or genuinely intelligent information unless they are endowed by an intelligence…

Thus identifying a designer, for me, is not about challenging the idea that some nature or thing arose by chance. For me, identifying intelligent design is pointing to any process that exhibits intelligent information or goal direction.

 

[Aloysium]

Notwithstanding that you have a religious objection to a scientific process so I’m not likely to spend any time carrying on a fruitless conversation about it.

By your use of of the word religious I understand that you do see how we have conflicting visions about the fundamental nature of reality. That being the case there could be no point of contact. You may not trust me but I must advise that I do know the world of science very well, having all the credentials to testify to that fact. Communication is still possible if one is able to stop arguing and listen, opening oneself up a new world.