Why you should think that the First-Cause has to be an Intelligent Cause

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But is there that probability, Carl? A
trillion to one? A google to one? A google googles to one? A google times that to one? What about over an infinite number of bang and crunch universes with trillions of galaxies each with hundreds of billions of stars? Are we talking probability or logical impossibility?
 
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fisherman_carl said:
If you say that Evolution is a system where it is inevitable that there will eventually be intelligent life forms then it is an intelligent system. But if you say it is not inevitable that there will be intelligent life then there could have been other possibilities which would imply random chance, if you are assuming there is no intelligent designer. And if it is random chance then the probability is so low of our world becoming a reality that it is like the probability of a tornado assembling a 747.
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If you think that evolution is random then you don’t know enough about the subject for me to have a sensible discussion with you. You have not, as previously mentioned, studied evolution as that is probably the first thing you would have read.

Here’s a primer for you (which includes your favourite Boeing analogy):

www.newscientist.com

Evolution myths: Evolution is random

No and yes. Natural selection is a rigorous testing process that filters out what works from what doesn't, but chance events play a big role too
www.newscientist.com www.newscientist.com

Please read that and only then come back with any comments.
 
Random genetic mutations is what drives the evolution process in the first place. That is the mechanism of change according to the theory. People who say that an athiestic Evolution is not random say that the environment selects the genes that are successful. And in that narrow sense only it is not randomly being changed, but is changing in relation to the environment. But I am looking at the bigger picture. What selects the environment? what causes the environment in the first place? And what causes those things to happen before it and so on. Ultimately, it would be chaos and unintelligible, if there were no intelligence behind any of it to begin with. So evolution is really besides my point as you were the one who brought it up. I wasn’t talking about evolution to begin with but about being the product of either something intelligent or of chaos. You were the one who made it about evolution. Now if you don’t see evolution as chaos then perhaps it is by design. And then we would be talking about a theistic evolution. Perhaps you are a theist and don’t know it yet.
 
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You just don’t understand my argument. You both want to make this all about evolution when I never even mentioned it. This is about you being the product of intelligence rather than the product of random unguided physical processes. If you don’t want to consider yourself the product of intelligence then I can’t help you there. You assume that you are the product of a lifeless universe. That somehow lifeless material gave birth to living beings, intelligence, beauty, creativity and art. Now,that seems to me to be the real bad reasoning here. You can insult me all you like, but that will never take away the reasonableness of theism.
 
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The reason that evolution was brought up is because it shows that we were not designed from first principles. We are an odd mixture of parts that don’t work optimally. A set up that shows all the signs of either not being designed - and being a random conglomeration of bits and pieces that are a result of adaption, or being designed rather badly.

Now evolution doesn’t disprove God. There may be such a thing as theistic evolution. In fact, if God exists, then that would be the only way to describe it. But to hold anything up from the natural world (such as us) and declare: ‘Such a piece of work is man…’ as an example of the wonders of God is just going to get any argument you make along those lines shot full of holes before you get to ‘…how noble in reason…’.

So you have brought evolution up simply by suggesting that we are the result of intelligence. If that is indeed the case, then we don’t seem to have any examples of it. We are here because of natural processes. Your problem is to differentiate between that which we describe as natural and that which is not.
 
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fisherman_carl said:
This is about you being the product of intelligence rather than the product of random unguided physical processes.
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  1. By assigning intelligence to the first cause you are foregoing any possible explanation of the origin of intelligence; you are merely assuming it. I do not find that a satisfactory explanation of the origin of intelligence.
  2. Natural selection is not a random process. It is neither intelligent nor random. The (name removed by moderator)ut – random mutations – is indeed random, but the output after natural selection has filtered the (name removed by moderator)ut is not random. You can put randomly sized grains through a sieve and the result is not randomly sized grains. Natural selection is like that sieve, not intelligent but able to select from the random (name removed by moderator)ut.
rossum
 
rossum said:
  • By assigning intelligence to the first cause you are foregoing any possible explanation of the origin of intelligence; you are merely assuming it. I do not find that a satisfactory explanation of the origin of intelligence.
  • Natural selection is not a random process. It is neither intelligent nor random. The (name removed by moderator)ut – random mutations – is indeed random, but the output after natural selection has filtered the (name removed by moderator)ut is not random. You can put randomly sized grains through a sieve and the result is not randomly sized grains. Natural selection is like that sieve, not intelligent but able to select from the random (name removed by moderator)ut.
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Using your analogy of randomized sized grains, can you explain how the natural selection “sieve” filtered out the first “intelligent” grain from a batch of non-intelligent grains?
 
Your premise is based on an assumption that the purpose of the design is for women to have a 100% birth success rate. Faulty assumption. Faulty premise.
 
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mrsdizzyd said:
Your premise is based on an assumption that the purpose of the design is for women to have a 100% birth success rate. Faulty assumption. Faulty premise.
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So you’d consider a failure rate of somewhere in the vicinity of 50% acceptable design? And we’re not talking about whether your laptop only fires up half the time or your car only gets you where you want to go some of the time. This is life and death.

Oops, sorry. I forgot. We don’t know the mind of God. So gee, there must be a reason for it…
 
Bradskii said:
Oops, sorry. I forgot. We don’t know the mind of God. So gee, there must be a reason for it…
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:roll_eyes:

The problem that you have is that you are so enraptured by your own ability to reason that you foreclose any possibility that there could be any other logical and reasonable explanation for human existence.

Even the most intelligent minds on the planet cannot foreclose the possibility of the existence of God. The closest they’ve come is to say that they think we can explain the existence of the universe without recourse to an intelligent God. However, even that explanation requires that we hold as true something that is in the end illogical despite the beautiful math.

If you actually value intelligence, logic, and reason, you owe it to yourself to seriously consider that there is another logical and reasonable explanation that comes from philosophy rather than pure science; and that this full philosophical argument is not in conflict in with science.

You aren’t really talking about the issues in child birth. You are really talking about the “problem of evil” repackaged as issues with child birth because you think you can club people over the head with it. The “problem of evil” isn’t actually a problem at all if you understand the logical and reasonable explanation of the attributes of God.
 
Organisms that react better to their environment survive better. And we have examples all the way from that which can barely even be described as life - a virus for example, which is able to react to its environment but which obviously can’t be described as intelligent, up to something like your cat.

At what point along that continuum one could say that, yes, we now have intelligence, will vary from person to person. So there wasn’t an ‘intelligent’ organism that was filtered out. It was a very gradual increase in the various facets of an organism that go to make up what we describe as intelligence.
 
If you can find any post that I have made over the last few years that expressely states that I deny that there can be no arguments for God, then I’d be interested to see it.

What we have here is me telling you that no-one has come up with anything remotely convincing. Just the same arguments being rehashed.
 
mrsdizzyd said:
The “problem of evil” isn’t actually a problem at all if you understand the logical and reasonable explanation of the attributes of God.
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i don’t see why young children need to suffer horribly from illness or from war.
 
Philosophy is such that there are always alternate interpretations. Your challenge is so decide which of those is the most logical and reasonable. This is a process that you must do yourself (no one can convince you), and this is a job that you cannot do until you take the blinders off so to speak. That is your challenge.
 
Bradskii said:
So you’d consider a failure rate of somewhere in the vicinity of 50% acceptable design?
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This response seems to beg the question.

If the success rate of the program’s design is substantial then the designer is intelligent but not yet demonstrably a perfect designer or imperfect designer. The failure may be in the quality of the (name removed by moderator)uts.

All computer programs have intelligent designers.
Some engineers are more intelligent than others but no engineer is unintelligent.
Programs that do not execute 100% of the time may imply imperfect designers but never unintelligent designers.
 
Bradskii said:
Organisms that react better to their environment survive better. And we have examples all the way from that which can barely even be described as life - a virus for example, which is able to react to its environment but which obviously can’t be described as intelligent, up to something like your cat.

At what point along that continuum one could say that, yes, we now have intelligence, will vary from person to person. So there wasn’t an ‘intelligent’ organism that was filtered out. It was a very gradual increase in the various facets of an organism that go to make up what we describe as intelligence.
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Whatever we put into the next iteration of the “sieve” of natural selection must have its origin via the same process. Using your example of the virus, the “environment” with which the virus reacts (hijacks a reproductive capability) must also have been “sieved” out from something else. But what else? How did this “environment” that contains the life (without which viruses could not long exist) come to be? The same missing explanation for the first instance of life also applies to the first instance of intelligence.
 
Bradskii said:
The reason that evolution was brought up is because it shows that we were not designed from first principles. We are an odd mixture of parts that don’t work optimally. A set up that shows all the signs of either not being designed - and being a random conglomeration of bits and pieces that are a result of adaption, or being designed rather badly.
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Ok so now you seem to be saying that it is random. Interesting. The argument that because there are flaws in humans therefore it is not designed is not very persuasive to me. On one hand if you say it is not designed then it looks rather lucky that we are here at all. In fact against such incredible odds that intelligence should arise from lifeless matter, (or from nothing at all). The whole thing starts to look rather like a miracle. If you are going to count all the flaws as an argument against design then you should be fair and count all of the good parts as arguments for design as well. And from where I am sitting it looks more like a good design than a bad one. Beauty, love, intelligence, will, etc, all exist in us. That counts as a lot of evidence for design rather than not. I can’t think of anything more important that you would want to have the ability to do than these, yet they exist in humans. How did they get there through random chance? It seems to me that they are more likely to be from design. Even if there are flaws.

From a Catholic perspective God chose to create a world that is journeying towards a state of perfection rather than to create it perfect out right.
 
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