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

[Aloysium]

There is a seeking of fulfillment, in that act, a movement to bring about a desired end, in the moment and in the future - happiness. Our individual existence, defined by death on all sides, transient and disconnected from truth, will find only subjective illusions and suffering in the goods and evils that appear and disappear of this world. Sorting out the logistics of that future meeting maintains a bond between the self and another, making real that desire that lies at the heart of humanity for love. So, yes; it reveals the final cause, beyond that of manifesting God’s great glory, that creation, through us come to know, to commune with its Maker.

 

[IWantGod]

Do you honestly think that me arranging to go for a beer this evening represents teleology?

I would expect you to see the goal direction in your behavior, but you obviously do not. Oh well…

Think about it really hard. And when you think about it, think about what you are actually doing when you are thinking. I suspect that you take this process for granted so much that you are completely oblivious of the reality of what you are doing when you set goals for your self.

 

[IWantGod]

Personally, I have indeed pondered what it is to which people are inexorably drawn. What they ultimately desire. And it seems to me that when they claim to seek eternal peace, and happiness, and communion with “ God ”, or whatever shangri la they believe lies beyond death, what they’re actually seeking is death itself

I fail to see how your nihilistic opinion relates to the discussion.

 

[IWantGod]

Embrace life. Accept it for the bad as well as the good. If the heart is drawn toward any goal, it is perhaps to have lived life well. To have endured and overcome. To have lived. That’s the goal.

If living life well is the purpose of our existence, that would mean our lives have an objective purpose and that only makes rational sense if there is an intelligent cause of our existence, a God. Otherwise your statement equates to nothing more than a fantasy, a preference.

 

[Wozza]

lisaandlena:

Embrace life. Accept it for the bad as well as the good. If the heart is drawn toward any goal, it is perhaps to have lived life well. To have endured and overcome. To have lived. That’s the goal.

If living life well is the purpose of our existence, that would mean our lives have an objective purpose and that only makes rational sense if there is an intelligent cause of our existence, a God. Otherwise your statement equates to nothing more than a fantasy, a preference.

Living life well is NOT an objective purpose. It is what we make of it. Entirely subjective.

There is no ULTIMATE purpose. If you think there is then tell us what it is and how you know.

 

[fhansen]

So if you’re looking for evidence of God, then don’t look at the typing, look at the mind of the one interpreting it.

So, logically, that would translate into the position that, if we were to find a copy of Alice in Wonderland, there’s no reason evident in the writing itself that should indicate that reason was employed in its production. The rules of grammar, for example, are not really based on logic anymore than on chance. “Alice in Wonderland” and Steven Hawking’s “The Grand Design” are not a bit different, and cannot necessarily be distinguished from, gobbledygook.

 

[IWantGod]

And I think that your constant equating of subjective truths to proof of the existence of objective truths is totally without merit.

Don’t just accuse somebody of something. Present your argument. Show me where and how i am equating subjective preference with objective truth (assuming that’s what you mean).

 

[IWantGod]

Living life well is NOT an objective purpose.

You think there’s no ultimate purpose to life, thanks for sharing your beliefs.

If you think there is then tell us what it is and how you know.

You’re finding it hard enough to either admit or understand that there is goal direction in your thought processes. Which leads me to believe that whatever evidence there is for an ultimate purpose, you are not going to understand it much less admit that you were mistaken.

 

[IWantGod]

Just as our monkeys don’t need an understanding of semantics to produce what we recognize as the order and coherence of “ Alice in Wonderland ”

They can produce the symbols we use to express meaning by chance, but they can’t produce the meaning or the coherence for which we choose those symbols to represent. Only an intelligent being can do that.

atoms and molecules don’t need an understanding of physics in order to produce the order and coherence in the material world.

Physical processes can produce complex structures by chance, but they can’t produce the laws that govern their behavior much less produce the intentionality and goal direction intrinsic to intelligent thinking and behavior; or the coherent meaning required to write stories. Only an intelligent being could possibly do that.

 

[Wozza]

Wozza:

Living life well is NOT an objective purpose.

You think there’s no ultimate purpose to life, thanks for sharing your beliefs.

If you think there is then tell us what it is and how you know.

You’re finding it hard enough to either admit or understand that there is goal direction in your thought processes. Which leads me to believe that whatever evidence there is for an ultimate purpose, you are not going to understand it much less admit that you were mistaken.

Maybe you can explain how me deciding to have cereal for breakfast is in anyway connected with an ultimate purpose. Because this is what you imply: Any given thought process is somehow proof of it.

When all you need to claim it exists is a belief in God. Has there been a Christian anywhere at any time who thought differently? It’s part of what makes you a Christian. That God has put us here for a purpose over and above our insignificant (in the grand scheme of things) attempts to find a personal purpose in life.

 

[IWantGod]

Maybe you can explain how me deciding to have cereal for breakfast is in anyway connected with an ultimate purpose.

I never made that argument. I said there is goal direction in the universe and that goal direction is most obvious in human beings, most evidently in the operation of their minds. You claimed there is no goal direction in human activity despite it being evident to you that you make plans and form goals and act to those ends. In the face of teleological behavior you denied it.

If there is teleology in the universe, that only makes sense if there is an intelligent being who made the universe. It makes no rational sense that there is teleology in the universe and no intelligent design. Obviously, if God made physical reality then it follows that he had some ultimate reason for doing so.

But the point of this thread is not so much to prove God’s existence as much as show that one can identify intelligent design despite all physical relationships forming by chance.

 

[Eric_Hyom]

If you are an engineer, you can look at how 500 muscles, 200 bones, 500 ligaments and 1000 tendons are linked together to create movement. We have had the blueprint for centuries, just by examining skeletons. We should be able to replicate this same range of movement easily, but we can’t.

Every advance in robotic engineering comes about by intelligent design. Robots are highly complex now, but still primitive compared to us. Every future improvement will come about by intelligent design.

We can create all kinds of mega engineering, send people into space, but we can’t create the range of movement that exists within our bodies.

If the best engineers in the world fail, then I firmly believe that random chance and natural selection cannot do this without guidance from above.

.

 

[Wozza]

But the point of this thread is not so much to prove God’s existence as much as show that one can identify intelligent design despite all physical relationships forming by chance.

But what is meant by ‘forming by chance’? Surely it means something forming without any intelligent (name removed by moderator)ut. Simply random. So you are asking how we can show intelligent design by looking at a process which is not intelligently designed.

Is that not bizarre?

 

[IWantGod]

But what is meant by ‘forming by chance’? Surely it means something forming without any intelligent (name removed by moderator)ut. Simply random. So you are asking how we can show intelligent design by looking at a process which is not intelligently designed.

Is that not bizarre?

It may seem bizarre at first glance. But there is no need for God to construct a human being directly with his own hands in order to call it design. He merely has to construct a system where natures act according to laws that he has intelligently designed. The question is, is there anything about physical behavior that we can identify that would suggest that physical laws are intelligently designed. The existence of teleology would prove that the laws of physics exist to bring about ends according to an intelligent design. It really doesn’t matter if there is randomness of chance in the system, since that is all part of the design; that things should act freely according to their natures.

Let me put it another way.

Lets say that a human being forms purely by chance. Even if this were the case, It’s not by chance that a human brain processes information and forms knowledge from the senses. It’s not by chance that this happens. It’s the nature of a human brain to form this function in so much as It intrinsically acts for that end. It is also in the nature of a human brain to process our intentions and goals, and communicate those intentions to our bodies.

Because of this teleological activity there is no logical reason to attribute these processes to an ultimate or never ending series of causes that have no end in mind because in that case there would be no intelligible reason for the goal directedness and the intentionality of the human mind to exist given that reality without purpose -as a whole- essentially has no goal. The existence of things like the natural desire to stay alive, our flight or fight responses, our emotional experiences such as fear or even the natural desire for sex, all these things are teleological in so much as they are goal orientated and thus contradict the kind of reality where there are only blind unintentional non-directed natural processes that have no ultimate purpose…

In other-words, these things would only exist in a reality that is rooted in an intelligently designed plan.

 

[Wozza]

Everything that you call ‘goal orientated’ is just the natural result of the evolutionary process. They are ‘goal orientated’ in appearance only. It amounts to nothing more that ‘Gee, it looks designed to me’.

The processes that result in life as we know it are no more designed than one could say that it has been designed that two hydrogen atoms and one of oxygen will combine to form water. Yes, you can claim that the physical rules that determine that outcome have been ‘designed’, but only if you assume in the first instance that God (or some intelligent entity capable of doing it) exists.

Otherwise, we can only assume that natural processes are exactly that: natural. Which gives us the answer to your question:

You cannot identify intelligence in a sytem that is itself defined as being natural. The two are mutually incompatible.

 

[IWantGod]

Everything that you call ‘goal orientated’ is just the natural result of the evolutionary process. They are ‘goal orientated’ in appearance only. It amounts to nothing more that ‘Gee, it looks designed to me’.

That’s not an argument that’s a statement, and it is not something that peer-review science argues, and so it’s just an unsupported philosophical statement. And i am not arguing Paley’s version of intelligent design, so to suggest that it only looks like design doesn’t affect my argument since there is clearly goal direction in your thought processes. Simply saying it’s an illusion is not good enough. You either need to refute my argument, or produce an argument in favor of the belief that teleology does not exist. And like i said before “said the man who makes plans”.

 

[IWantGod]

Yes, you can claim that the physical rules that determine that outcome have been ‘designed’, but only if you assume in the first instance that God (or some intelligent entity capable of doing it) exists.

Wrong. I only need to identify teleology in nature. Your mind has teleology in it’s nature. The End.

 

[IWantGod]

You cannot identify intelligence in a sytem that is itself defined as being natural. The two are mutually incompatible.

So, according to you intelligent beings don’t actually exist.

For the viewers of this thread. This is what happens when you avoid the rational conclusion of an argument for the biased goal of supporting a materialistic worldview. You get Square-Circles.

 

[IWantGod]

This thread should have been called…

“The Emergence of Intelligence and the Utter Failure Of Materialism”

Or maybe…

“The Emergence of Intelligence From the Ashes Of Materialism”

 

[Wozza]

Wozza:

You cannot identify intelligence in a sytem that is itself defined as being natural. The two are mutually incompatible.

So, according to you intelligent beings don’t actually exist.

For the viewers of this thread. This is what happens when you avoid the rational conclusion of an argument for the biased goal of supporting a materialistic worldview. You get Square-Circles.

I think it’s obvious what I meant. Intelligence is an emergent property of natural processes. Not of an intelligently designed process.

Wozza:

Yes, you can claim that the physical rules that determine that outcome have been ‘designed’, but only if you assume in the first instance that God (or some intelligent entity capable of doing it) exists.

Wrong. I only need to identify teleology in nature.

So a dog makes a conscious decision to chase a cat. That’s teleology. Therefore God. I decide to go to the fridge to get another beer. Therefore God.

I have to admit that it’s a new argument for me. I’ve never come across it before. Probably because nobody else considers goal orientated behaviour like walking to the fridge as teleological.

You seem to be mixing up nondescript day-to-day decision making with the ultimate purpose of existence. It’s like a scene from The Hitchhikers Guide to The Galaxy.

If there is an ultimate purpose to existence then an all powerful deity exists.
If an all powerful entity exists, then there may be an ultimate purpose to existence.
If God exists, then there is an ultimate purpose.
If neither God nor an all powerful deity exists then there is no ultimate purpose.

There’s not much you can add to that. Deciding on another beer or not doesn’t change any of them.