Jim And Penny Caldwell's Archaeological Findings:

[ExCBooster]

Ooh. I check out for a few days, and something happens. Nuts. Everybody else seems to have done a good job covering for me. Thanks guys! I gotta go to work soon, so I don't have as much time as I'd like, but, since everybody else has mentioned the evidence about evolution, I'll change my approach:

 

Would it really be so bad if we were, you know, evolved, and essentially an accident of probability? Why?

 

I don't really think it's a bad thing at all, and, really, it makes all of us winners! Life's even more special, if there was no reason for it to happen at all. I'm not too fond of the idea of being some cosmic being's plaything. Or lab rat. The designer upstairs - if such a stance is to be believed - is far from benevolent, let alone entirely the question of competence. Forget "design flaws" for a moment, as I've already pointed them out. Nature teems with creatures, which, if they were created, or designed, seem designed entirely to torture us. Every human infectious disease ever, from the plague to smallpox to AIDS, horrible parasites like the guinea worm, or the human botfly. Why, exactly, would I choose to believe in a creator of all these things?

 

'Cause that's sort of a depressing note to end on, here's a

for the road. (They're one of the most primitive animals out there, just a cell sandwich with jelly. Kinda cute though.) I'll cover the rest of the objections if I need to when I get home, I promise I haven't forgotten, and I appreciate you being willing to analyse my post, Black Cat.

[BlackCat]

I've been checking into this thread off and on and have already learned a lot from having read just parts of it.  Thanks, everyone!

 

Black Cat, I may be getting you wrong, but the Irreducible Complexity argument as it's usually framed, and as people you've quoted  seem to frame it, appears to involve faulty reasoning.  It goes something like this, no?

 

Without a fully functioning physical system (let say, the eye), the organism would be unlikely to survive.  

Without all its parts, the system cannot function.

If the system lacked a part, therefore, the organism would be unlikely to survive.

If all the organisms in a species lacked that part, the species would be unlikely to survive (or, could not survive).

But the species is alive.

Therefore the system must have always had all the parts.

But the TOE presumes that there was an earlier stage in the species' history when its system lacked a part.

But that assumption is false, by what has been proved above.

Therefore the TOE is false.   Toe would require that an earlier stage would have it's own parts that are obviously all present and correct, but the parts would be different or some would be different maybe.  If we take the flagellum and tinker with its dna so that one of it's core parts doesn't get produced, then the effect is that the whole thing doesn't get produced or you don't have a functioning motor.  The flagellum, as it is today, needs all the parts in order to function.  All the parts are made by thousands of molecular machines and so any change in the parts must also mean a change in all the other machines and in the blueprint.  There doesn't seem to be a way to simplify the flagellar motor without rendering it useless or it not even assembling. So if a motor needs certain components or let's say a minimum of components all present before it works, then this seems to imply that the blueprint for the motor needed to be in place before the motor was assembled.      

 

I could do a better job of standardizing the argument, but I hope this is close enough.

 

This argument seems to imagine earlier stages of a species' development, according to the TOE, as defective.  E.g. it imagines that the TOE posits a stage in the human evolutionary past when the eye lacked some part that it now has, and thus, could not have functioned as an eye.

 

But the notion of defect only has meaning by comparison to a standard.  A human eye that lacks a part is a defective human eye.  An australopithecus eye that lacked a part that a homo sapiens eye has is not a defective eye;  it's a different eye from a modern eye.

It's a straw man fallacy for IC proponents to speak as though "evolutionists'" assumptions require them to admit an evolutionary precursor of homo sapiens that had defective eyes.  Proponents of the TOE don't analyze species of the evolutionary past as defective versions of modern species.  Analysis of evolutionary change doesn't proceed by mental subtraction of qualities from the qualities possessed by modern species.  Rather, past species (and I remember that a species is a construct;  only the living individual creature is a substantial entity) were complete organisms in their time.  Myriad past species had forms of eyes that worked for them.  Those eyes, or light-sensing organs, were not defective.  They may have been different, but they were complete eyes for the needs of those organisms.  Early humanoids walking around with defective eyes are not entailed by the TOE.  Early humanoids walking around with eyes that worked for them, which may have differed in some ways from the eyes of modern humans, are entailed by the TOE. 

 

I agree that 'defective' is not the right word. A primitive eye that can sense light, has a useful purpose, but I'm struggling to apply 'primitive versions' to things like 'motors' (as in the flagellum), and ultimately in the cell. Some systems seem to require a minimum set of parts that all need to be 'there' at the same time or from the beginning.

 

 

I may be wrong about whether you hold this view of IC, but if you do, it seems off to me. 

 

The observation that traits appear suddenly in the fossil record is another issue and not what I'm talking about above.

 

OK, Cheers,

 

F

[♦ ficino ♦]

Hi BlackCat, I think you are still analyzing the traits of earlier organisms by subtraction from the traits possessed by modern organisms.  An example of what seems to me to be analysis by subtraction is this in your reply above:  "If we take the flagellum and tinker with its dna so that one of it's core parts doesn't get produced, then the effect is that the whole thing doesn't get produced or you don't have a functioning motor."  I know that you mean this "tinkering" in a virtual sense, i.e. if we imagine a flagellum without one of the parts that are found in modern flagella.  This model slips in the notion of defect without admitting it;  you are thinking of a defective modern flagellum and saying that no cell could function with that.  The people who propound this sort of IC argument seem to me to commit a kind of ignoratio elenchi fallacy, i.e. they misconceive what the argument is about.  I don't know enough to lay out the intermediate stages between a very early cell that had some means of locomotion and the earliest cell that moved itself with a flagellum as we know flagella today.  My guess is that an evolutionary cell biologist, if there is such a discipline, needs to form a hypothesis about how the flagellum developed by stages.  It doesn't seem impossible in principle to do this.  The IC position, that either the flagellum arose all at once as a complex system fully formed OR it could not have arisen at all, seems to create a false dichotomy.  Since I gather the IC people are dropping the eye as their paradigmatic example and are focusing on the flagellum, I'm thinking that the problems with their earlier eye example will come up with their flagellum example, too.

 

There's another problem along the lines of what other folks mentioned above, i.e. how do we imagine the cause of the postulated, sudden genesis of the flagellum fully formed as we know it today?  Does the flagellum IC scenario imply a special creative act by a creator outside nature?

 

Edited to add:  I wonder whether Behe is misled by thinking too much of biological systems by analogy with machines.  He is a biochemist, not a biologist.  Since a machine is a human artifact to begin with, one's thinking will be skewed by comparing it too closely with a system in a living organism.  Calling a system in a cell "irreducibly complex" is to commit a question-begging fallacy, because it imposes a model derived from a modern organism as a standard for what traits should be possessed by a hypothetical earlier organism.  But that the earlier organism could not function at all with different traits from the modern one is just the claim that needs to be proved.

 

These guys point out problems with Behe better than I can:

 

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/behe.html

[Ravenstar]

Okay.. I'm no biologist... and I probably understood about 4% of this paper, but it's interesting to see that at least 2 of three components of the proto-flagellum could have other functions

 

"It was recently discovered (Cascales et al., 2001; Kojima and Blair, 2001) that the flagellar motor proteins MotAB have nonflagellar homologs: ExbBD and TolQR (Figure 4c).  These proteins share significant sequence similarity and all form ion channels that energize work at a distance by a third protein; ExbBD and TolQR energize outer membrane transport via action on TonB and TolA, respectively, while MotAB energize flagellar motion via action on FliG."

 

and at least one is also found in some archaea. (which is cool because archaea are a different line from us)

 

Those here may get more out of the info than I could...

 

http://www.talkdesign.org/faqs/flagellum.html

[Thought2Much]

 

 

I am a former theist. The religious motivations of those who support ID, or rather how ID has been developed as a 'theory' does not cause me to dismiss or reject ID as a plausible theory or line of enquiry at the least.   

 

Perhaps it is a valid line of inquiry. However, none of intelligent design's current proponents are actually doing anything resembling science in the field of intelligent design, and I have yet to find a proponent of intelligent design who isn't also a dedicated Christian of some sort. None of the current proponents of ID will accept an answer to the question of whether there is an "intelligent designer" with anything other than "The God of the Christian Bible." Anything they find that they think furthers this answer will be shouted from the rooftops, while any other answer (such as we're all part of a computer simulation, or aliens have been controlling earth's evolution) will be ignored.

 

I challenge you to do the following:

1. Find one intelligent design proponent that is not also a professing Christian or closely affiliated with creationist think tanks like The Discovery Institute, and
2. Has published scientific papers about intelligent design in peer-reviewed science journals, such as Nature, Science, etc.

I emphasized the "about intelligent design" part under #2 because some scientists who are proponents of intelligent design have published papers in peer-reviewed journals, but those papers have not been about intelligent design.

 

I would add that "poking holes in an existing theory and claiming that this invalidates all of evolution and must therefore be due to an intelligent designer then publishing this information on the internet" does not count as either science or publishing in a peer-reviewed journal.

 

I'll see what I can find. 

 

To be going on with, this article may contain some points of interest:  Seven Nobel Laureates in Science who either supported intelligent design or attacked Darwinian evolution.

 

http://www.uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/seven-nobel-laureates-in-science-who-either-supported-intelligent-design-or-attacked-darwinian-evolution/

 

The first one is very interesting: Dr Brian Josephson who seems to be an atheist, and the sixth one Wolfgang Pauli who seems to be an atheist or certainly not a theist.    

 

Your challenge will no doubt take some time to work through.  I'll let you know as soon as I have any answers.

 

Here's a quick synopsis of the people listed in the blog post:

1. A physicist. Biology is not his field of expertise. Next.
2. A chemist, and a Biblical creationist. Biology is not his field of expertise. Next.
3. A physicist. Not a biologist. Next.
4. A neurophysiologist. Okay, so that's a little closer. Believed in divine intervention of human evolution, so his objections to evolution were based on religious grounds.
5. A biologist who complains that the theory of evolution is weak. Okay, so what is his theory, besides "God did it"?
6. Another physicist. PHYSICISTS ARE NOT BIOLOGISTS.
7. AND ANOTHER PHYSICIST.

Do you not see a pattern here? Five of these seven people are physicists or chemists. Physicists are not evolutionary biologists. I don't expect biologists to expound on theoretical physics, and I don't expect physicists to have much useful to say in the field of evolutionary theory. Plus, your source is incredibly biased, and is the blog of a lawyer, not a scientist. Edit to add: the author of the blog posts scientific paper after scientific paper with the equivalent of "...causes headaches for evolutionists" when none of the actual papers say any such thing at all.

 

Also, I don't see evidence of one paper published in a peer-reviewed journal about how intelligent design would actually work by any of these people.

[Joshpantera]

Thanks for the link: http://www.talkdesign.org/faqs/flagellum.html

 

Abstract: The bacterial flagellum is a complex molecular system with multiple components required for functional motility.  Such systems are sometimes proposed as puzzles for evolutionary theory on the assumption that selection would have no function to act on until all components are in place.  Previous work (Thornhill and Ussery, 2000, A classification of possible routes of Darwinian evolution. J Theor Biol. 203 (2), 111-116) has outlined the general pathways by which Darwinian mechanisms can produce multi-component systems. However, published attempts to explain flagellar origins suffer from vagueness and are inconsistent with recent discoveries and the constraints imposed by Brownian motion.  A new model is proposed based on two major arguments. First, analysis of dispersal at low Reynolds numbers indicates that even very crude motility can be beneficial for large bacteria.  Second, homologies between flagellar and nonflagellar proteins suggest ancestral systems with functions other than motility.  The model consists of six major stages: export apparatus, secretion system, adhesion system, pilus, undirected motility, and taxis-enabled motility.  The selectability of each stage is documented using analogies with present-day systems. 

 

Conclusions include: (1) There is a strong possibility, previously unrecognized, of further homologies between the type III export apparatus and F₁F₀-ATP synthetase. (2) Much of the flagellum’s complexity evolved after crude motility was in place, via internal gene duplications and subfunctionalization.  (3) Only one major system-level change of function, and four minor shifts of function, need be invoked to explain the origin of the flagellum; this involves five subsystem-level cooption events.  (4) The transition between each stage is bridgeable by the evolution of a single new binding site, coupling two pre-existing subsystems, followed by coevolutionary optimization of components.  Therefore, like the eye contemplated by Darwin, careful analysis shows that there are no major obstacles to gradual evolution of the flagellum. 

 

 

Table 6: Functions and analogs at each stage of the presented model.  See Figure 7 and text for further details. 

 

 

Once again, what's the alternative to gradual evolution BC and everybody following along? 

 

Isn't it either gradual evolution or special creation with entire life forms coming into being ex nihilo as in Genesis 1?

 

What other option is on the table? 

 

One of the links specific to refuting IC is interesting as well: http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/ICsilly.html

[Ravenstar]

Why did I not think of that?

 

Okay.. so we have a theory... that is overwhelming in it's evidence and is used daily in myriad fields to predict results, make vaccines and a whole bunch of other neat stuff.

 

Then we have ID... but I've yet to see a predictive model of this hypothesis. Is there a coherent theory on it written? Are there papers that are predictive? Can we use it to do real science? Can we design experiments to test it? Do we have any evidence that isn't negative? (showing something to be unlikely doesn't make another proposition true by default - I've learned this from youz guyz!)

 

Do we even have the math to back it up?  What EXACTLY is the alternative they are postulating?

[BlackCat]

Hello BC!

 

First off, I've got some tech problems with my computer, so I'm writing this at an internet cafe.  That 6-minute vid will have to wait because this machine isn't configured to accept the playing of vids.  Sorry 'bout that!

 

But I'd like to raise the subject of... objectivity ...if I may. 

Yesterday you replied to Josh, finishing with the words, "Can you really blame me for seeing design?"

I do not take issue with your right and freedom to do so.  Of course not.  You are a free agent and perfectly able to make your own choices.  It's not for me or anyone else to say that you SHOULD NOT see design, if you want to.  But there's a caveat to that statement.  I'll frame it in the form of a question.

 

Is your freely-confessed desire to see design affecting your objectivity in this matter?

 

Before I go any further, please let me present these worked examples of professional scientific objectivity being  influenced by the desire to see a much-wanted outcome.  (As you might expect from me, these are astronomical examples. )  The first one is negative and the second, a positive, where objectivity won out over personal desire.

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Percival_Lowell

 

Lowell's obsession with Mars began with a mistake and then snowballed from there, eventually consuming his life.  The Italian astronomer Giovanni Schiaparelli wrote in 1877 that he could see 'canali' on the surface of Mars.  This word was mistranslated from Italian into Engliish to mean canals.  But Schiaparelli had observed channels (which are natural features), not canals (which are artificially-constructed waterways).  Canal = channels, not canals.  However, the damage was done and thereafter Lowell made it his life's work to discover more about this evidence of design on the red planet.

 

To that end Lowell used his personal fortune to build an observatory and telescope on a mountain in Arizona.  For fifteen years he studied Mars and drew many intricate maps of the canals he thought he saw there.  (BC, if you perform a Google Image search for 'Martian Canals' the bulk of the images will be Lowell's drawings. They certainly don't look natural, do they?  Therefore, if they don't look natural, they must be designed, musn't they?  After all, that's the logic operating here, isn't it?  If it looks designed, it must be designed, right?) 

 

There can be no doubt that Lowell was a skilled and dedicated observer, but his results could not be duplicated by professional astronomers with equal or better telescopes.  Worse, Lowell also claimed to see similar evidence of design on the surface of Venus, a planet swathed in an unbroken sea of featureless cloud.  These two issues should have alerted him to the fact that his objectivity was being compromised by his personal desire to see the outcome he wanted.  But they didn't and he went to his grave, firmly (but mistakenly) believing that he saw clear evidence of design on Mars.

 

We now know that there are no canals on Mars, but using his logic (if-it-looks-designed-it-must-be-designed ) Lowell's conclusions were right. 

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Lyne

 

This example doesn't feature anything to do with design, BC. 

 

However, I cite it as an excellent example of professional objectivity at work in the life of a fine scientist.  There can be no doubt that Lyne would have gained kudos and acclaim for discovering a pulsar planet, but his personal integrity won out and he admitted to making an error.  The reaction of his peers is noteworthy too.

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BC, first and foremost, any scientist worth their salt should place objectivity above any personal desires or wishes they might have.  Failure to do so immediately compromises the value of their work and any conclusions they draw from their work.  Such a measure doesn't necessarily apply to you and I.  We have the right and the freedom to conclude whatever we want about anything.  We aren't bound by the professional obligations of being scientists. 

 

But surely there's a signal lesson to be found when we compare Lowell with Lyne?  A lesson that we would do well to heed and to apply to ourselves?  Wouldn't you agree?  That outward appearance, no matter how appealing, is no true guide to the truth itself.  That appearance of design is not proof of design, no matter how much we want it to be.  It is simply the appearance of design.  Proof of design isn't made by appearance. 

 

If appearance of design were also it's proof, then Lowell was right and these are also proofs of ID, because they appear to be designed?

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buckminsterfullerene

Naturally-occuring molecules or PROOF of ID?

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graphene

A natural form of carbon of PROOF of ID?

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volvox

A naturally-evolved alga or PROOF of ID?

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diatom

A naturally-evolved alga or PROOF of ID?

 

I mean no offense here, but I do feel that your objectivity is being compromised by what you want to be true. I also feel it's my duty to alert you to this, BC.

 

In all good faith and sincerity,

 

BAA.

 

BAA- it's good that you make me aware of these pitfalls and the examples you quote are very interesting.  Thank you.

 

I knew when I wrote 'can you blame me...' that it was an emotive way of expressing my frustration  (there was quite a bit of negativity coming at me).  I was thinking along the lines: 'Do you conclude design like I do?'  So I hope that emotional slip will be put to one side.    Now it is possible that my previous beliefs about God etc, is still exerting some kind of influence on how I perceive this matter.  This is why it's good for us to dig down into this.  If I'm taking a wrong turn at some point, which is then colouring the rest of the understanding, hopefully it will come to light.  Do I want design to be true?  Yes, I do.  Did I want Jesus to be true?  Yes, but I've accepted that he's only been real in my imagination, part of a shared story.  I endeavour to not shut my mind to the truth of the matter, or where the evidence seems to be pointing, and so I hope I can test this 'theory' of ID, in as objective a manner as possible. 

 

You say above: ''That outward appearance, no matter how appealing, is no true guide to the truth itself. That appearance of design is not proof of design, no matter how much we want it to be. It is simply the appearance of design. Proof of design isn't made by appearance.'' (I've highlighted 'outward'). 

 

I agree with this statement.  If we were just to look at the outward appearance of the flagellum, we might remark how designed it looked, but assume it was similar to things like crystals or symmetrical shapes that occur naturally in nature.  But if we study the inner appearance or rather workings of the flagellum, we discover that the design inference is more than just appearance.  I will go into detail about this when I reply to your next post.    

[BlackCat]

I've been thinking about this... and this is not 'supported' by citations or anything - just by what I know about evolution.

 

Early on there were myriad bizarre forms of life. The very first animals showed a remarkable diversity of function and 'design' (different solutions to say, mobility and such) Most died out and did not pass on these other evolutionary solutions...(they were the 'failures' of evolution - they never passed the beta testing stage) most life today comes from a very small sample of these different things - which is why most modern lifeforms are essentially similar. (ie: spines, four limbs and such)

 

I was always confused by the eye argument... it is obvious that the evolution of the eye happened over time as well as evolving in complexity from light sensitive cells in simpler forms. 3.5 billion years is a whole lot of time for this to evolve. Some snakes have heat sensors.. thermal imaging, bees can see ultraviolet wavelengths and some flowers have evolved along with them and have ultraviolet markers to attract the specific species that pollinates them. Cats have eyes that can see in very low light (they are mostly nocturnal animals) and are much more sensitive to movement than ours though not good color vision, Bats don't have great eyesight but have awesome sonar, as do dolphins who have little visibility in their environment... Birds of prey have eyes that put ours to shame, animals that have gone back into caves have lost their eyes, or have evidence of that being in process.. vestigial eyes. Sense organs of all types are obviously selected for in nature - even plants have light sensitivity or photosythesis would never have taken off. This is all supported in the fossil record. Now... if we found a fossil that was out of sequence.. ie: a pre-cambrian fossil with the complicated eye structure of a modern animal then ID may have a leg to stand on. I don't know of any.

 

This is how I understand the process... a simple organism has some sort of sensor, (like clams that respond to the gravitational pull of the moon, say) this gives it an edge over it's competitors.. it reproduces and passes this on to it's offspring. Natural selection, environmental pressure and mutation rates changes this particular sensor to work a little better - become slightly more sensitive... and this process goes on over millennia and thousands or millions of generations. What doesn't work well is weeded out by this process as well. It's actually a process of trial and error... and competition. Those that adapt well and are more suited to their environment survive to reproduce... those that don't die out. Over time things become more complicated... more adapted to the competition and environmental pressures.

 

Humans are very recent life forms.. VERY. Homo Sapiens are what... at the very most 300,000 years old? Maybe we could push that back a little - but not much. Yet our closest relatives have most of the complexity we do. The chimp eye is pretty much on par with ours.. as is the case with most primates. The complexity of modern animals has been there for a long time... the only difference between us and them is our mental capacity (which may end up being our undoing, is it an evolutionary plus? I think the jury is still out on that one - I think we are still in beta testing), upright mobility and very fine motor control in our hands. Other than that we suck... we are extremely fragile beings. Our senses are dull compared to most animals, our speed is laughable, our ability to defend ourselves as individuals is ridiculous, we don't handle environmental exposure well... however, we DO have a very complicated social structure and psychology - we are problem solvers. But even then... we see primitive roots of those in our relatives, it isn't unique.

 

I'd wonder about this process except for one thing... that something like 95% - 99% of all life forms that have lived on the earth have died out. That kind of precludes any sort of 'mind' behind this process... or the designer is an idiot. It's not a very good success rate. BUT it's the success rate that would be expected (even predicted by evolutionary theory) by a fairly random process that works within natural bio-chemical processes.

 

Just some thoughts I have on this...

 

Interesting thoughts Ravenstar.  In my discussions with BAA,  I have been helped to view life and our reality as a natural outworking from the Big Bang.  All living organisms are made up of the same building blocks but with different  arrangments and with more or less of these building blocks.  If it wasn't for the advance in science and our abilitiy to see and study these building blocks, down at the molecular level, I would be very content with evolution and natural selection and I'm sure they explain (to some extent)  how life has been produced over these millions (or is it billions) of years.  Now we are learning how these biological systems are assembled, evolution as it is understood, is being tested , or rather it is being doubted by a minority of scientists and informed laypersons.  I don't like being part of a minority opinion. 

[BlackCat]

BC,

 

I've just watched that vid and checked out the BBC website about that program.  I can now see what's happening.  You are misunderstanding something. This should help explain.

 

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

From the BBC website about Secret Universe: The Hidden Life of the Cell.

(The emboldening is mine, for emphasis.)

 

“There is a battle playing out inside your body right now. It started billions of years ago and it is still being fought in every one of us every minute of every day. It is the story of a viral infection - the battle for the cell.

This film reveals the exquisite machinery of the human cell system from within the inner world of the cell itself - from the frenetic membrane surface that acts as a security system for everything passing in and out of the cell, the dynamic highways that transport cargo across the cell and the remarkable turbines that power the whole cellular world to the amazing nucleus housing DNA and the construction of thousands of different proteins all with unique tasks. The virus intends to commandeer this system to one selfish end: to make more viruses. And they will stop at nothing to achieve their goal.

Exploring the very latest ideas about the evolution of life on earth and the bio-chemical processes at the heart of every one of us, and revealing a world smaller than it is possible to comprehend, in a story large enough to fill the biggest imaginations. With contributions from Professor Bonnie L Bassler of Princeton University, Dr Nick Lane and Professor Steve Jones of University College London and Cambridge University's Susanna Bidgood.”

 

The words in red are METAPHORS, used to describe things for our understanding.

 

 

In the 6 minute video, the following words were used to describe the inner workings of the cell.

Machine = four times.  Instructions = four times.  Battery = twice.  Plan = twice.  Turbine,  Power-Station,  Instruction  Manual,  Factories,  Shredders,  Building Blocks and Re-Cycling, all once each.

 

Do you see what's happening here?

 

The BBC are using words like machine, turbine, instruction and plan to describe things inside a cell, but their reason for doing so isn't because these things are machines or turbines or batteries.  No!  Not at all!

 

They're simply using words like 'machine' and 'turbine' because we're familiar with these things in our technological 21st century world. Because we can relate to these concepts more easily than if the narrator had talked in terms of mitosis, meosis and telomeres.  That's all.

 

In Astronomy, scientist's talk about the cores of stars as the 'factories' where certain chemical elements are produced by thermonuclear fusion.  Does this mean that astronomers think that there are actual production-lines inside a star?  That the element-producing processes are proceeding according to some kind of 'plan'?  No! Not at all!

 

The use of words like 'factories' and 'machines' are metaphors for what's going on inside stars or cells. 

You're making a cardinal error if you believe that the scientists think there are machines of any kind at work anywhere in nature.

BC, you're taking these metaphorical descriptions far too literally.

 

Please contact the BBC and ask them how they meant these words to be taken.  Literally or metaphorically?

 

I'm sure they'll be happy to help.

 

Thanks,

 

BAA.

 

Ok.  I'm laying my sanity on the line.........This post had me awake in the night for about 2 hours, absolutely incredulous to what you say.  Before I go any further, I'd like to air my incredulity by saying:

 

 

 

What you talkin about BAA? 

 

My understanding of a machine is that it is a multi-part system that has been put together to enable a certain or specified function. 

 

Here's wiki's definition: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Machine

 

What is so striking about the flagellum, is that it uses the same parts that we use for an outboard motor: the universal joint, stator, rotor etc.  This IS a  machine. I want to shout it from the roof tops 'IT'S A MACHINE'. 

 

It really is a machine.  Why don't you see it?   

 

I looked at the definition of 'metaphor': http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metaphor

 

Under the heading:  'conceptual metaphor' it says '.....A common definition of a metaphor can be described as a comparison that shows how two things that are not alike in most ways are similar in another important way.'

 

So if we take an outboard motor and a flagellar motor, it seems to me that the similarities (parts and their functions)  are too many to say they are not alike. 

 

 

The BBC video I linked to, is only part 1.  There are several parts tha form the whole film.  Part 2 didn't work for me (said I was in the wrong country) but all the other parts worked ok.  Please watch the whole film so that you can get the whole picture of how these 'machines' work in the cell.  

 

I will contact the BBC as you suggest.    

[bornagainathiest]

I look forward to that post, BC. 

 

But, on a personal level, perhaps this will help?

 

Before I became an absolutely-committed Born Again evangelical Christian, I was an atheist, from a nominally Lutheran family background.  My folks attended church for weddings, baptisms, funerals and similar occasions and supported our local church in it's community-related activities. Their belief in God was a vague and undefined one, but they were unshakable in their conviction that the Christian church was a 'good' thing.  They were tolerant and enlightened enough to let me find my own way in life and weren't too bothered when I arrived at an atheistic p.o.v.  We just agreed to amicably disagree.

 

But, when I plunged deeply into hard-line evangelical Christianity I came to believe that their lack of committment to Jesus would damn them to eternal hellfire.  So I worked long and hard at 'converting' them to the one, true faith.  I would often ask myself in frustration, "Why can't they see what I can plainly see?  It's blindingly obvious!  What's wrong with them?" and similar.  Sometimes my frustration would boil over into confrontation, anger and tears.  I'd say..."What's the matter with you?  Just read what the Bible says!  Do you want to burn in Hell?" 

 

Needless to say, I now deeply regret putting my family thru this kind of unnecessary torture and if I could take back many of the things I said to them in the heat of the moment, I would.  But I write these things to show how even those we love can sometimes be the focus of our frustrations - especially when we truly believe we are trying to help them. Fittingly enough, just two weeks ago I wrote this in the Lion's Den.  "If you truly believe, you can justify any evil.  So, for true believer, read... monster."

 

At the time, as a true believer, I justified the evil I was doing to my family, because I (wrongly) surmised that it was for their long-term benefit. I allowed myself to become a monster towards them, openly displaying my frustration with their inability and/or unwillingness to see what I clearly saw.  So, if you're feeling at all frustrated by the way this thread's going BC, please trust me, I can relate to feelings of frustration. If you feel that there's negativity being directed at you or, if you're feeling somewhat negative towards others, I do understand this.

 

This kind of anger displays itself wherever there are different and strongly-held views on divisive issues. Just look at the heat thats been generated over here with the Sandy Hook massacre!  The pro-gun lobby can't seem to understand the mind-set of the anti lobby and vice versa.  Mutual incomprehension ensues.  Tempers flare.  Harsh words are exchanged and the issue, instead of approaching a solution, just becomes more entrenched!  (To anyone else reading this.  Please do not use the above as a launch pad to write anything about the 2nd ammendment issue!  I'm only illustrating something for BlackCat's benefit.  I'm not stating my position. Be cool.)

 

In the light of our feelings, perhaps we should call for a time out, BC?   And let cooler heads prevail, after we've given ourselves some space? 

.

.

.

 

Or, another option to combat the growing frustration, might be this. 

 

Why don't you (or I or anyone who's happy to do so) try putting ourselves in the other person's shoes, metaphorically speaking?  To explain, why don't I try to summarize why it is you see design?  As I see it, this exercise would have the two-fold benefit of generating mutual understanding.

 

It would stop me thinking purely in my own terms (where I list my criticisms of ID/IC) and I'd have to start thinking in what I imagine to be your terms, BC.  Of course, I'd fail.  No other person can fully describe the thoughts of others.  But there must be some overlap - because we've been able to communicate well with each other so far.

 

If I listed X,Y and Z as your reasons for accepting IC, you could then reply, something like this.

"X is right, except for this point here. Y is totally off-beam. Z is right on the money."

Likewise, if you listed A,B and C as what you thought my reasons are for not accepting IC were, I could respond like this.

"Yes, A is right. B isn't exactly correct. I differ with you here and here. I don't quite follow C, please clarify."

 

Like this, each person is gently and constructively correcting the other as to what they actually think.  Mutual understanding of the issue increases and points of misunderstanding are highlighted, for future investigation and resolution.

 

Your thoughts?

 

BAA.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[bornagainathiest]

Oops!  We've cross-posted BC.

 

Let's pause and re-read, ok?

 

BAA.

[♦ ficino ♦]

1. All machines are designed by designers.

2. The flagellum is a machine.

3. Therefore the flagellum is designed by a designer.

 

For this argument to go through, "machine" has to have the same value in 2 as it has in 1.  If "machine" has a different sense in 1. from the sense it has in 2., the argument will be invalid due to an equivocation fallacy.

 

I gather that BAA would say that "machine" is used metaphorically in 2. and that there is indeed an equivocation in this argument.  BC, I gather that you would deny that "machine" in 2. is a metaphor.

 

In that case, be careful that you are not falling into a different fallacy, i.e. begging the question.  If you are defining the flagellum in advance as a literal machine, not as a metaphorical one, then, if you conceive of machines in general as systems that are designed, your definition of flagellum will include already the property of its being designed.  But that is the very proposition that needs to be proved.  So your conclusion, under this conception, will be already entailed by your premises, thus making the argument question-begging.

 

It is very tricky to tease out suppressed premises.  I am suspecting that there are suppressed premises like the above in your thinking.

 

So, am I saying that any argument for ID in the case of the flagellum will be doomed from the start?  No.  I can't construct a valid one for it right now, though - have to get ready to leave the house!

 

Cheers, F

[bornagainathiest]

Dear Josh,

 

With all due apologies, I quote you to illustrate how careful we need to be with the language we use.  

Ficino has just pointed out that there are many 'hidden' things in our understanding and I suspect that there's just this kind of 'hidden' implication in the wording your post.  Please don't take offense.  Ok?

 

 

 

I think you may have misunderstood the questions BC. They are not uncomfortable for science if that's the way you took them, rather they are extremely uncomfortable for those making the positive assertion for ID.

What options do we have?

*A supernatural being acting as a designing mind (mythology).

*An advanced alien being or race using their mind or minds to seed living planets (von Daniken theories).

*A natural process by which the universe can move towards developing ways to see, know, and experience itself where ever conditions will allow for it (science, Sagan type reasoning).

 

This is a very good question. And if a designer is required to explain existence, then who designed the designer(s)? If we say nothing designed the designer, then we've just admitted that something can exist without having been designed by something else and the argument tends to fold. This is a big problem in terms of taking either the supernatural or alien seeding options seriously.
<br /> 

The supernatural omniscient / all knowing option takes a major hit through this line of inquiry. If we're talking about science, real science, then we obviously can't grasp for the apologetic straw of blaming the fall of man and Satan for evidence of poor design. That's already been well established in this discussion by BAA and problems with the fall of man theology. For an apologist the point of all this designing would be simply for a supernatural God to create humans in order to praise and serve the supernatural God. Yeah, it's a very evident 'ego' driven theology based on the minds of men grasping at the mystery of existence and trying to personify it as a thinking being like us with emotions similar to our own like jealousy, rage, love, compassion, etc. It's most evidently the minds of men suggesting the murder and raping of whole villages and taking virgin girls as sex slaves or whatever, not an all-knowing and everywhere present God inspiring scripture, obviously.

But to turn aside from this mythological and religious material as you request, where do we find ourselves when confronted with these very important questions to consider?

Do we not find ourselves right back to natural explanations again?

 

I enjoyed the video. I think we all pretty much agree how absolutely amazing the inner workings of the body can be. So if Father YHWH is out, then we have only Mother nature to consider as the designer or potential mind behind it all. I'm not opposed to investigating nature for evidence of mind or consciousness qualities. But what we're looking at in this respect is not the same as what ID proponents are looking at. They are largely linking the designer to a supernatural deity beyond nature, not linking it to nature itself as a potential form of primary consciousness flowing through all things with self designing abilities.

So there's clearly at least two ways of approaching design in nature and the ID label is addressed to supernaturalism whereas you and I seem to be exploring something else altogether, something that probably requires a different name altogether because ID is a misleading label for what we're trying to consider at this point in time.

We might call this line of consideration "Natural Intention" (NI).

The creationists wouldn't want to align themselves with NI, though. Which is a good thing if you ask me. It rejects supernatural assertions and 'God of the gaps' type of approaches. You've denounced supernaturalism above so I assume that you are of the naturalist camp.

The bigger question is whether IC has any merrit for a naturalist with a leaning towards something like NI. The very assertion of IC seems to suggest a special creation of the flagellum motor, which is a supernaturalist belief taken right out of Genesis 1 which we've both agreed repeatedly is not historically or scientifically accurate. Did God speak "let there be..." and then the flagellum motor magically appeared already created and fully functional? If that's just as silly as it sounds, then what value is IC for a naturalist anyways?

The thing is that you could be right about an intention behind the existence of all of these internal mechanisms without having to align with supernatural, special creation, ID and IC proponents. It could be that engery and consciousness turn out to be two aspects of the very same thing, as Joseph Campbell opined. In that case consciousness in lesser or greater forms would run throughout the whole of existence - where there is engery there would be consciousness in that respect. Is there energy in Bacteria, cells, eyes, etc.?

Deeper yet, IC could be just as wrong and ill-founded as the biological scientists say it is. And yet there could still be intention in nature working through the process of natural selection in order to arrive at seeing, knowing, and experiencing creatures like ourselves capable of complex social evolution. We are the eye's and ears of a living planet. We're like the brain cells of the planet from another angle. Nature has pushed steadily in this direction to the point where some see it as an inevitable outcome, a key feature of universal evolution that we're only just beginning to understand.

I don't even know what exactly a proposition like NI would entail, but I'm sure if some one sat down and put their mind to it they could come up with something much better than ID which boxes out radical fundies and even casual liberal monotheistic creator God assertions and aligns much better with accepted science to the point where it could be entirely permissible in the class rooms. But the religious advocates would rail against something like this to no end. They'd probably want to keep it out of the classrooms even more so than regular evolution because it would greatly undermine their agenda for deity personification and special creation assertions.

 

 

Isn't there a subtle implication in the words, 'Natural Intention'?

 

An intent or intention is a quality of an intelligence or a mind, isn't it? 

A rock or a tree cannot have an intention, but a being with a mind can. 

If we then say that there appears to be a Natural Intention within nature, aren't we subtly implying the over-arching presence of a controlling or directing MIND that affects rocks and trees and the whole universe? 

 

Which is just what a Christian might say God is - the Intelligent Designer who's endowed with mind and therefore intentions.  Intentions for the whole cosmos, for the Earth and for us.  Just as the Bible describes. 

 

Do you see what I'm saying here, Josh? 

Just as the BBC never intended it's viewers to conclude that a cell is actually a 'molecular machine', I'm presuming that you never intended the words, 'Natural Intention' to carry with them the subtle, underlying implication of sentience, intelligence or a mind? 

 

(Am I off-beam here?  Sorry if I've misread you. Please correct me, if so.)

 

To show that I'm not destructively criticizing what you say, let me propose an alternative. 

Would 'Natural Tendency' work better?  As far as I can see, the word, tendency carries less anthropomorphic baggage with than Intention.

 

Thanks,

 

BAA.

[BlackCat]

I look forward to that post, BC. 

 

But, on a personal level, perhaps this will help?

 

Before I became an absolutely-committed Born Again evangelical Christian, I was an atheist, from a nominally Lutheran family background.  My folks attended church for weddings, baptisms, funerals and similar occasions and supported our local church in it's community-related activities. Their belief in God was a vague and undefined one, but they were unshakable in their conviction that the Christian church was a 'good' thing.  They were tolerant and enlightened enough to let me find my own way in life and weren't too bothered when I arrived at an atheistic p.o.v.  We just agreed to amicably disagree.

 

But, when I plunged deeply into hard-line evangelical Christianity I came to believe that their lack of committment to Jesus would damn them to eternal hellfire.  So I worked long and hard at 'converting' them to the one, true faith.  I would often ask myself in frustration, "Why can't they see what I can plainly see?  It's blindingly obvious!  What's wrong with them?" and similar.  Sometimes my frustration would boil over into confrontation, anger and tears.  I'd say..."What's the matter with you?  Just read what the Bible says!  Do you want to burn in Hell?" 

 

Needless to say, I now deeply regret putting my family thru this kind of unnecessary torture and if I could take back many of the things I said to them in the heat of the moment, I would.  But I write these things to show how even those we love can sometimes be the focus of our frustrations - especially when we truly believe we are trying to help them. Fittingly enough, just two weeks ago I wrote this in the Lion's Den.  "If you truly believe, you can justify any evil.  So, for true believer, read... monster."

 

At the time, as a true believer, I justified the evil I was doing to my family, because I (wrongly) surmised that it was for their long-term benefit. I allowed myself to become a monster towards them, openly displaying my frustration with their inability and/or unwillingness to see what I clearly saw.  So, if you're feeling at all frustrated by the way this thread's going BC, please trust me, I can relate to feelings of frustration. If you feel that there's negativity being directed at you or, if you're feeling somewhat negative towards others, I do understand this.

 

This kind of anger displays itself wherever there are different and strongly-held views on divisive issues. Just look at the heat thats been generated over here with the Sandy Hook massacre!  The pro-gun lobby can't seem to understand the mind-set of the anti lobby and vice versa.  Mutual incomprehension ensues.  Tempers flare.  Harsh words are exchanged and the issue, instead of approaching a solution, just becomes more entrenched!  (To anyone else reading this.  Please do not use the above as a launch pad to write anything about the 2nd ammendment issue!  I'm only illustrating something for BlackCat's benefit.  I'm not stating my position. Be cool.)

 

In the light of our feelings, perhaps we should call for a time out, BC?   And let cooler heads prevail, after we've given ourselves some space? 

.

.

.

 

Or, another option to combat the growing frustration, might be this. 

 

Why don't you (or I or anyone who's happy to do so) try putting ourselves in the other person's shoes, metaphorically speaking?  To explain, why don't I try to summarize why it is you see design?  As I see it, this exercise would have the two-fold benefit of generating mutual understanding.

 

It would stop me thinking purely in my own terms (where I list my criticisms of ID/IC) and I'd have to start thinking in what I imagine to be your terms, BC.  Of course, I'd fail.  No other person can fully describe the thoughts of others.  But there must be some overlap - because we've been able to communicate well with each other so far.

 

If I listed X,Y and Z as your reasons for accepting IC, you could then reply, something like this.

"X is right, except for this point here. Y is totally off-beam. Z is right on the money."

Likewise, if you listed A,B and C as what you thought my reasons are for not accepting IC were, I could respond like this.

"Yes, A is right. B isn't exactly correct. I differ with you here and here. I don't quite follow C, please clarify."

 

Like this, each person is gently and constructively correcting the other as to what they actually think.  Mutual understanding of the issue increases and points of misunderstanding are highlighted, for future investigation and resolution.

 

Your thoughts?

 

BAA.

 This is a very good suggestion and I am reminded of how convinced I was that Jesus was real, and that everyone was going to be saved eventually (I didn't believe in a literal hell, so my version of Christianity was a very pallatable one : God will be all in all, that is Jesus is going to bring every last 'lost sheep' into the fold).   It has sounded a warning alarm, that I do need to be very careful in how I proceed, and hence if we can label each other's positions, we might be able to get to the heart of each element that makes up our point of view and so  hopefully figure out the truth.   

 

I've got a few replies still to do- Josh's comment is very interesting.  So, yes, lets take a few days and let this digest.  You are full of sensible, calming advice, as usual. 

[BlackCat]

I enjoyed the video. I think we all pretty much agree how absolutely amazing the inner workings of the body can be. So if Father YHWH is out, then we have only Mother nature to consider as the designer or potential mind behind it all. I'm not opposed to investigating nature for evidence of mind or consciousness qualities. But what we're looking at in this respect is not the same as what ID proponents are looking at. They are largely linking the designer to a supernatural deity beyond nature, not linking it to nature itself as a potential form of primary consciousness flowing through all things with self designing abilities.  Yes, I agree, but their work in this area is still helpful in determining design.  We can differ on who/what we think the designer is.  When ever I check out sites like the Discovery Institute's, the articles don't include 'who' the designer is.  They stick to the science e.g inferred design via complex specifications of the molecular organism. mathematical probabilities, research in chemistry, genetics etc.  It all seems to be a very science dominated field of enquiry. 

 

So there's clearly at least two ways of approaching design in nature and the ID label is addressed to supernaturalism whereas you and I seem to be exploring something else altogether, something that probably requires a different name altogether because ID is a misleading label for what we're trying to consider at this point in time.

 

We might call this line of consideration "Natural Intention" (NI).  Yes. Brilliant. 

 

The creationists wouldn't want to align themselves with NI, though. Which is a good thing if you ask me. It rejects supernatural assertions and 'God of the gaps' type of approaches. You've denounced supernaturalism above so I assume that you are of the naturalist camp. Yes.

 

The bigger question is whether IC has any merrit for a naturalist with a leaning towards something like NI. The very assertion of IC seems to suggest a special creation of the flagellum motor, which is a supernaturalist belief taken right out of Genesis 1 which we've both agreed repeatedly is not historically or scientifically accurate. Did God speak "let there be..." and then the flagellum motor magically appeared already created and fully functional? If that's just as silly as it sounds, then what value is IC for a naturalist anyways?  Yes, IC does seem to be pointing towards a theistic or deistic type of designer, but there may be something we're not aware of , that could account for NI via IC.  Some of the things that happen in the quantum world seem to defy logic.  Some scientists have detected what looks to all intents and purposes to be IC or design, and it is worth the study to try to determine what this 'design' really is.   

 

The thing is that you could be right about an intention behind the existence of all of these internal mechanisms without having to align with supernatural, special creation, ID and IC proponents. It could be that engery and consciousness turn out to be two aspects of the very same thing, as Joseph Campbell opined. In that case consciousness in lesser or greater forms would run throughout the whole of existence - where there is engery there would be consciousness in that respect. Is there energy in Bacteria, cells, eyes, etc.? That's way beyond me, but I linked to a very interesting article that has some Nobel Laureates who think along these lines in post #175.

 

Deeper yet, IC could be just as wrong and ill-founded as the biological scientists say it is. And yet there could still be intention in nature working through the process of natural selection in order to arrive at seeing, knowing, and experiencing creatures like ourselves capable of complex social evolution. We are the eye's and ears of a living planet. We're like the brain cells of the planet from another angle. Nature has pushed steadily in this direction to the point where some see it as an inevitable outcome, a key feature of universal evolution that we're only just beginning to understand.  Yes.  I have considered this.  IC may prove to be an illusion, whereas the end results of NI like brains and consciousness could have been intended or in existence (virtually??) eternally.  This is mind boggling stuff. 

 

I don't even know what exactly a proposition like NI would entail, but I'm sure if some one sat down and put their mind to it they could come up with something much better than ID which boxes out radical fundies and even casual liberal monotheistic creator God assertions and aligns much better with accepted science to the point where it could be entirely permissible in the class rooms. But the religious advocates would rail against something like this to no end. They'd probably want to keep it out of the classrooms even more so than regular evolution because it would greatly undermine their agenda for deity personification and special creation assertions.

I can see why ID is not allowed to be taught or presented as a possibility, in schools, but there should be some resources available for those students who want to discuss the apparent design in nature, and so NI seems to be something that could be suggested without offending political correctness.  I don't know, but it's all interesting.  You want to copyright that title.    

[Joshpantera]

Oh yes of course, BAA. I thought that I was open enough in the post to get the point across that I was simply throwing something out there off the top of my head just for the sake of conversation. And I drew from some pantheistic eastern mystical thinking too, which is why I see it as rejectable for most western monotheists.

 

But you read my over all point well. The main point is to look at nature, not the supernatural for the simplest explanation. And by intention I did mean something more along the lines of the primal urge or natural tendency that I had posted about previously. The tendency towards the evolution of life and eventually intelligence where conditions are favorable to permit that possibility. And natural selection and gradual evolution is the means by which you get from point A to point B, how else? That's why I threw in there that if some one really put their mind to it they could come up with a nice naturalist alternative to ID and IC which is perfectly in line with established science by staying with natural selection and gradual evolution.

 

The only reason for this "NT" venture is to perhaps help along people like BC and those who are raising similar questions due to the very obvious fact that nature looks very mechanical. You watch the video she posted and it looks like a nice and neat little factory production at work. And indeed some of our man made machines are more or less based on natural systems we've observed in nature which in some cases we have intentionally sought to duplicate in a round about sense.

 

The flagellum motor is more or less duplicated by man in some of our own machine making efforts, however coincidental that may be. But in any case Nature did it first. Technically the word "machine" may not apply to the flagellum motor but it's something that propels the bacteria through fluid in the way that a motor propels a boat through fluid. I think we all understand that. And I can see why BC would be frustrated by you suggesting that it's just a metaphor. Even if you let it slide and call it a machine just for the heck of it, we're still faced with how it came to be.

 

But how did nature do it first?

 

I see that none of the newest posts have acknowledged in any way the quotation I posted at the top of the page (post #181) or the links to how science supposes that the flagellum motor (whether conceived of as a machine literally or metaphorically) could have evolved in stages via natural selection and gradual evolution, which is the very point of this entire inquiry. Isn't that what we ought to be focusing in on now?

 

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/ICsilly.html

 

The issue isn't nearly as simplistic as Behe would have it (see the IC refutation link now posted above too^). And it's entirely possible for the flagellum motor to have evolved in gradual stages contrary to how Behe would have it. The naturalistic theory for gradual evolution is by far a much simpler explanation than the seemingly magical instant appearence of a flagellum motor fully intact. There's a wealth of revelant info in that post that we probably ought to focus on.

 

The reason I threw out NI - which is more along the lines of NT as you point out - is to let BC know that she's not crazy, there's reason to feel amazed at the complexity and seemingly designed structures of nature. She doesn't necessarily have to loose that feeling of awe even if ID and IC completely unravel before her eyes. This isn't very different from the first problem we faced with the Caldwell's and Mt. Sinai. It seems obvious enough that these two religious based camps are preying on innocent peoples emotions and they have it set up to where people are afraid that if the pseudo-archaeology or pseudo-biological science falls apart, then life is devoid of all meaning or any other such fallacy that isn't actually true. It keeps people in fear of fully looking into the alternatives whether they mean to do that to people or not. I just want BC to know that there's no real danger in ID and IC falling apart, because, from where I sit I see it all coming unglued and she ought to be prepared for it with a better alternative that wouldn't be demolished so easily.

[BlackCat]

Ooh. I check out for a few days, and something happens. Nuts. Everybody else seems to have done a good job covering for me. Thanks guys! I gotta go to work soon, so I don't have as much time as I'd like, but, since everybody else has mentioned the evidence about evolution, I'll change my approach:

 

Would it really be so bad if we were, you know, evolved, and essentially an accident of probability? Why?

 

I don't really think it's a bad thing at all, and, really, it makes all of us winners! Life's even more special, if there was no reason for it to happen at all. I'm not too fond of the idea of being some cosmic being's plaything. Or lab rat. The designer upstairs - if such a stance is to be believed - is far from benevolent, let alone entirely the question of competence. Forget "design flaws" for a moment, as I've already pointed them out. Nature teems with creatures, which, if they were created, or designed, seem designed entirely to torture us. Every human infectious disease ever, from the plague to smallpox to AIDS, horrible parasites like the guinea worm, or the human botfly. Why, exactly, would I choose to believe in a creator of all these things?

 

'Cause that's sort of a depressing note to end on, here's a

for the road. (They're one of the most primitive animals out there, just a cell sandwich with jelly. Kinda cute though.) I'll cover the rest of the objections if I need to when I get home, I promise I haven't forgotten, and I appreciate you being willing to analyse my post, Black Cat.

Thanks for the link.  That is an interesting organism.  I'll look forward to your thoughts, when you have the time.  I may not come back to you for a while, as I'm going to let all these things sink in. 

[BlackCat]

 

 

 

I am a former theist. The religious motivations of those who support ID, or rather how ID has been developed as a 'theory' does not cause me to dismiss or reject ID as a plausible theory or line of enquiry at the least.   

 

Perhaps it is a valid line of inquiry. However, none of intelligent design's current proponents are actually doing anything resembling science in the field of intelligent design, and I have yet to find a proponent of intelligent design who isn't also a dedicated Christian of some sort. None of the current proponents of ID will accept an answer to the question of whether there is an "intelligent designer" with anything other than "The God of the Christian Bible." Anything they find that they think furthers this answer will be shouted from the rooftops, while any other answer (such as we're all part of a computer simulation, or aliens have been controlling earth's evolution) will be ignored.

 

I challenge you to do the following:

1. Find one intelligent design proponent that is not also a professing Christian or closely affiliated with creationist think tanks like The Discovery Institute, and
2. Has published scientific papers about intelligent design in peer-reviewed science journals, such as Nature, Science, etc.

I emphasized the "about intelligent design" part under #2 because some scientists who are proponents of intelligent design have published papers in peer-reviewed journals, but those papers have not been about intelligent design.

 

I would add that "poking holes in an existing theory and claiming that this invalidates all of evolution and must therefore be due to an intelligent designer then publishing this information on the internet" does not count as either science or publishing in a peer-reviewed journal.

 

I'll see what I can find. 

 

To be going on with, this article may contain some points of interest:  Seven Nobel Laureates in Science who either supported intelligent design or attacked Darwinian evolution.

 

http://www.uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/seven-nobel-laureates-in-science-who-either-supported-intelligent-design-or-attacked-darwinian-evolution/

 

The first one is very interesting: Dr Brian Josephson who seems to be an atheist, and the sixth one Wolfgang Pauli who seems to be an atheist or certainly not a theist.    

 

Your challenge will no doubt take some time to work through.  I'll let you know as soon as I have any answers.

 

Here's a quick synopsis of the people listed in the blog post:

1. A physicist. Biology is not his field of expertise. Next.
2. A chemist, and a Biblical creationist. Biology is not his field of expertise. Next.
3. A physicist. Not a biologist. Next.
4. A neurophysiologist. Okay, so that's a little closer. Believed in divine intervention of human evolution, so his objections to evolution were based on religious grounds.
5. A biologist who complains that the theory of evolution is weak. Okay, so what is his theory, besides "God did it"?
6. Another physicist. PHYSICISTS ARE NOT BIOLOGISTS.
7. AND ANOTHER PHYSICIST.

Do you not see a pattern here? Five of these seven people are physicists or chemists. Physicists are not evolutionary biologists. I don't expect biologists to expound on theoretical physics, and I don't expect physicists to have much useful to say in the field of evolutionary theory. Plus, your source is incredibly biased, and is the blog of a lawyer, not a scientist. Edit to add: the author of the blog posts scientific paper after scientific paper with the equivalent of "...causes headaches for evolutionists" when none of the actual papers say any such thing at all.

 

Also, I don't see evidence of one paper published in a peer-reviewed journal about how intelligent design would actually work by any of these people.

I posted that link as I know there are folk on this thread who may find the views of some of those scientists interesting.  Obviously they don't meet your criteria, but I haven't had a chance to check your challenge out yet.

[Ravenstar]

hmmmm..... When I look at some seeds, they act like helicopter propellers.. it is efficient. The aerodynamics of flight in bird wings and modern planes, a tree and the vein/artery system in animals as well as rivers from tributaries to deltas are all very similar - there are many more examples.

 

I think the problem here is we think we have some sort of monopoly on good design...we forget our early attempts - we forget our history, and because we are sentient when we see something similar in nature to our successes we imbue it with our psychology - when the truth actually is that nature did it first, through trial and error and found the solutions that work within the laws of physics, because it works and it's efficient, and we are just actually rediscovering what nature already has already solved.

 

Take the outboard motor thing and the flagellum. It works, it works well for both bacterium and boats - only we just came across it as an efficient way to propel something...(ie: we didn't actually design it - we discovered that in our physics this solution works well - how many other solutions did we try first? Poles, drifting, sails, oars... paddles, slave labour, steam, etc... you can see the trial and error of humans in solving the problem of boat motility) Nature, through trial and error, got this right billions of years ago. BUT it wasn't the first attempt, by far. As I stated earlier nature tried all sorts of different things... things that today we look at and go, ?... really?, wow! what a bizarre attempt by nature to solve that problem.

 

These things in nature are 'machines' in only one sense... they work. We discover or copy nature's solutions with the building blocks we have... Nature uses chemistry and biology and we use metals, plastics, etc... But is there intention? There's several ways to answer that question (which fall more under philosophy than science actually) Think about nanotechnology - we 'program' nano-machines to build something... they use molecules to do that - it's pretty amazing and about as close as we have come to what nature does... if we look at it this way then we could extrapolate that we too are programmed, by evolution, to solve problems... and we do so with the material available to us.. Nature too has specific laws (programming) it has to follow and in replication/pressure solves problems. It's all about scale, but the processes are essentially the same. DNA is like a computer program. But it didn't spring into existence fully formed (as RNA shows us) It's a product of natural chemical/phsyical laws.

 

Now for the question of "Is nature/universe sentient" which is the real question behind the question we are dancing around. I think we just don't know yet - but there is really no evidence of it (Occam's Razor applies) - though many people are asking this question in many fields, honestly, and I support that kind of questioning. What ID is trying to do though is use empirical science (badly) to prove their assertion (they have a conclusion they want to prove) that it is, instead of following the evidence to whatever conclusion there may be, which is the very basis of good science.

 

It's philosophy wrapped in pseudoscience.

 

We look at things from a very egocentric view. We have a very hard time becoming free of our prejudices and point of view. You only have to look at people with pets who project human intentions and emotions on them to see that.

 

So far we have found that the scientific method, and purging our biases as best we can, is the best way to actually discover truth. If it is true that the universe is sentient then it will come out sooner or later - if it's the actual reality the evidence will support it.

 

The question itself is valid, is the universe sentient? The methodology of ID proponents is dishonest, however. They frequently appeal to emotion and fears and to 'common sense' (which is not sense at all in science), and to laymen's ignorance - which particularly pisses me off. You don't go to a plumber to get your fusebox fixed, you don't brag about Ph.D's in unrelated fields to validate your hypothesis (sort of like 'name-dropping' at a party) you don't appeal to the masses with logical fallacies, and you don't misrepresent facts or omit new information. I've seen them do all of this and immediately I think they are just pushing an agenda and are not actually interested in finding out the truth.

 

If they actually have a viable alternate theory I say bring it on - but do it honestly. Do the friggin' work and publish it. If they showed half of the rigorousness of legitimate science they might be taken more seriously.

[Joshpantera]

^The trial and error part is key.

 

I've considered this a lot. If the universe is sentient then monotheism gets leveled by pantheism. And with that leveling comes the reality that a sentient universe is NOT all knowing. If anything it struggles to learn as it goes along, once again, by trial and error. Another monotheistic pillar falls. In all of this there's no real credible evidence for special creation or an intelligent designer that knows how to design everything in advance without using trial and error. But there's a ton of evidence for natural selection including in places where Behe and others say there is none.

 

This is one major reason that what I called intention is or more less a natural urge or tendency as BAA points out. If as the eastern mystics suggest, all is consciousness, then certainly that fundamental consciousness underlying everything is much more primitive than something like fully developed human conscoiusness. Why would evolution move towards greater levels of awareness if the universe was already fully aware itself to begin with and highly advanced? Why would living creatures struggle to advance forward from an already advanced state? It seems that a very basic and primal urge towards the existence of living creatures where conditions are favorable is about as far as it can be taken, even with mystical universal conscioiusness type of reasoning in the mix.

 

And if there's multiple worlds as in the multiverse theories then there would have to be some type of recurring primal urge towards the development of life over and over again, endlessly in a never ending cosmos. But once again, it would seem that it all would have to funnel down to natural reasoning even if considering something like universal sentience. That would simply be the mind of nature per se, a very primitive mind not an especially advanced one, at least as far as I've reasoned it out.

 

None of this is flattering in any way to monotheism or the Bible. And if they even tried to latch on to any of this thinking in order to try and favor thier westernized ID or IC angles they'd be easily smacked down in a moments notice unless they come out and say that nature is essentially God, which, would immediately make them not monotheistic - not Christian, not Jewish, and not Islamic - which is another smack down. It's essentially heresy. So BAA's concern about western religionists trying to latch on is understandable, but not actually a concern at all.

[Ravenstar]

Fascinating.... wouldn't be more like a hive mind? (without a queen)... ants on their own have very little 'intelligence' - as individuals they don't even have enough sense to feed themselves - but as a collective they are immensely successful (same with bacteria, algae..etc... the very earliest life forms were colonies of anaerobic algae if I'm not mistaken) The drive towards sentience itself may be an inherent property of the universe, a natural consequence of the expansion of the singularity, or in the case of the multi-verse a natural consequence of brane collision (there's a lot of directions one could go with this basic premise!) Sort of makes me think that the universe itself is a sort of organism itself - like a colony of algae evolving into more complicated forms. (wow.. one could run wild with analogies here  lol)

 

We do come back to pantheism though... and is the whole is greater than the sum of it's parts? Does this organism have the capacity to compile all this information (life) in any meaningful way? Or will it evolve that capability? Or is it purely instinctual and only certain parts develop sentience?

 

I was always fascinated with the discovery in quantum physics that subatomic particles are not really 'on' (existant) all the time - they turn off and on...like a strobe light... like a binary code pattern.I wonder if that has any pattern function?

 

I find this all very exciting.. and stimulating.

[Ravenstar]

Hang on though. I think we must be very careful not to consider ourselves, or even our kind of intelligence as any kind of peak or pinnacle...or 'end result'

 

we have no evidence for that

[Joshpantera]

^Agreed.

 

For all we know we're merely another lower rung on a latter of what could become a much more highly advanced form of self awareness than we're experiencing now. Just as would any of the species below our level be a lower level of something yet to emerge. There's no telling how far the primal urge itself can or will lead.

 

You know the other thread going on about all of the planets astronomers are now discovering?

 

What happens if we start finding living planets like our own?

 

I'd say that it would verify the primal urge notion quite a bit. What if the universe will necessarily grow eye's and ear's and brains where ever conditions will permit and then starts observing it's surroundings both internally (microcosm) and externally (macrocosm) and trying to make connections across vast space between all of the living planets with sentient beings in each galaxy, cluster, etc.?

 

What if a universal network of many planets and minds is in store for the future?

 

We have the world wide web here on earth, what about a universal wide web of energy and information exchange far in the future?

 

It's truly mind boggling to consider the possibilities. But as Peter Russell has observed, we seem to act a lot like the brain cells of a living planet (conceived of as an organism in this way) making connections and so on. To what end?

[Ravenstar]

I've actually considered this quite often.. that the internet is actually our species collective neural net (albeit quite primitive at the moment)

 

The leap forward that has been made with just our very short time with this ability to share and compile information and ideas is already mind-boggling and has far-reaching implications for the evolution of humanity. To extrapolate that to other potential sentient species is.. well... wow

 

now if we can use this power to align ourselves with nature as well? (it seems to me that this 'brain' should have as it's main purpose the well-being of the planet first and foremost, since it's it's very 'body'.

 

Of course all this may be a manifestation of a deeper quantum (universal) process as well. Taking it into the realm of scientific mysticism.

 

I'm getting impatient waiting for the 'discovery' of life elsewhere..      I have no doubt of it - though I don't really understand why I feel that way and have as of yet no evidence.  (?)