It's all good fun (for some us).
There's a difference between living real life, and coming here to discuss religious philosophy.
jan.
Why is the concept of theistic evolution unacceptable to you?
- Thread starter Rav
- Start date
It's all good fun (for some us).
There's a difference between living real life, and coming here to discuss religious philosophy.
jan.
Not debunked.
Neither can perform it's function without all the parts present.
jan.
Yazata,
I think the assertion is that, we can detect design. The difference between the natural rock formations, and the carved presidents faces on mount rushmore is used as an example.
That's the point, there's a whole lot of random information, indicating and unintelligent process.
A surfaced plane indicates intelligence. Of course we can get smooth surfaces that occurr naturally, but we are able to detect that it
was caused through natural means, or that it was caused by an intelligent agent.
The fact that you can distinguish between them kind of validates their point.
It seems you misunderstand the point they're making which could be why you see it like this.
I think you are exagerating, while they may believe in God, they do not say that God is the designer.
And there explanation stands up without ever having to bring God into it. The notion of God being the designer
has been, and is being forced by the critics.
Regarding information, they say that all information has been shown to come from intelligence (from our observations).
They're saying that inards of the cell shows design, and not a step by step process.
The DNA carries the genetic information of a cell and consists of thousands of genes, each gene possessing information on how to build protein molecules.
jan.
I think the assertion is that, we can detect design. The difference between the natural rock formations, and the carved presidents faces on mount rushmore is used as an example.
That's the point, there's a whole lot of random information, indicating and unintelligent process.
A surfaced plane indicates intelligence. Of course we can get smooth surfaces that occurr naturally, but we are able to detect that it
was caused through natural means, or that it was caused by an intelligent agent.
The fact that you can distinguish between them kind of validates their point.
It seems you misunderstand the point they're making which could be why you see it like this.
I think you are exagerating, while they may believe in God, they do not say that God is the designer.
And there explanation stands up without ever having to bring God into it. The notion of God being the designer
has been, and is being forced by the critics.
Regarding information, they say that all information has been shown to come from intelligence (from our observations).
They're saying that inards of the cell shows design, and not a step by step process.
The DNA carries the genetic information of a cell and consists of thousands of genes, each gene possessing information on how to build protein molecules.
jan.
I'm citing you James, but addressing the naysayers and folks in general who may have missed the profound implications of this pearl of wisdom back at post #213. Allow me to expand on it a little.
Every cell in Jan's body contains a goo we call cytoplasm. Jan is also hosting trillions of parasitic monocytes (I think the normal human mouth normally hosts around 4 billion bacteria). Many of these are in the human gut. And we speak of "beneficial" parasites, which aid in digestion, or fend off infectious microbes, etc. They are not only goo, they are close relatives of the primordial goo Jan seeks.
The human body is reducible to cells, and cells are essentially primordial goo. They've simply evolved to various degrees.
I wonder if we could estimate the percentage of our body weight that is composed of cytoplasm, or compare the microphotographs of primitive monocytes with, say a sperm cell, and then compare those to the ciliated tissue cells of the ilium or the mucous membranes or the alveoli. And so on. I think we could completely reverse engineer the human body into primitive homologues. Bone cells operate on the calciferous tissue in a schema resembling the sponges. Nerve cells are traced to cnidaria (gooey jellies) and the kidneys can be linked to planaria (slimy flatworms). Indeed, the calcium in bone reveals eons of marine exploitation of its structural properties. We have limestone as a reminder of the vast portand cement factories of our slimy gooey ancestors whose cousins are the osteocytes that build our skeletons out of this strong stony material. The use of iron as a transporter of oxygen and carbon dioxide in the blood was also solved in the primitive marine environment. Snot, vitreous humor, fat tissue, lymph, gall, and everything wet, soft, squishy and smelly in the body hearkens back to the goo-old days.
After all, what is the body but a system of organs and tissues, and what are organs but collections of further differentiable tissues, and what are tissues other than cooperative cells, coordinated in purpose in a manner worked out the pre-Cambrian, as primitive metazoans in colonial form, based perhaps only on some rudimentary signaling and the first traces of cell specialization?
And that ultimate goo, the early embryo, at blastula resembles the most primitive of spherical metazoan colonies, such as Volvox. And what it does in earliest replication - unfolding into specialized stem cells that continue to specialize and unfold, was initially worked out in the primordial era when goo was all there was. At gastrulation, all other slimy and gooey life forms unfold nearly identically, as if replaying the evolution of the earliest metazoans. And the embryonic saline solution in which we all once swam with gill slits is telling enough.
This is the overwhelming evidence of goo to man, Jan. James is suggesting you need only examine yourself under a modest microscope. Upon closer inspection you'll find you're about 99% goo already, a veritable goo factory, teeming with all the microscopic evidence you have been thumping the Good Book with. Head goo is telling you evolution is wrong, but it's a common error. Your goo is just in denial of its true nature. All for wont of a microscope. The better for our gooey eyeballs to see with.
But those were unlikely examples. If this is the best his book has to offer, then why read it any further?
And are we going to discuss that Kuhn article, or are you going to run away?
So then you're saying that Cremo chose examples that can not stand up to scrutiny?
You obviously don't know what the irreducible complexity argument even is. What the ID proponents are saying is that there couldn't possibly have been an earlier simpler stage in the development of something like a bacterial flagellum. This would be a good argument if it was actually true, but it's not. Ken Miller demonstrates why in the short clip LIGHTBEING linked you to, which you obviously didn't bother watching.
Merely saying that the bacterial flagellum can't perform it's function without all of it's parts is a useless statement. No biologist is going to disagree. But the fact remains that we have discovered that it can still function without 40 of it's proteins. Not as a molecular motor of course, but as a molecular syringe.
Even Behe himself went back to the drawing board after learning about this.
Interpretation is appropriate because your strategy is rarely anything more significant than evasion.
You've refused to discuss the examples in that pdf, and stated that it's best to read the book. So what I want to know is if this is because you think those examples fail to falsify evolution. Do they?
Further to that, see this pdf, which is a collection of quotes from prominent officers, directors, fellows and friends of the Discovery Institute (aka ID proponents) that reveal the religious (Christian) agenda behind the ID movement.
Some favourites:
"I believe God created the world for a purpose. The Designer of intelligent design is, ultimately, the Christian God." - William Dembski
"I wanted to know whether the fundamentals of the Christian worldview were fact or fantasy. Darwinism is a logical place to begin because, if Darwinism is true, Christian metaphysics is fantasy." - Phillip E. Johnson
"ID is an intellectual movement, and the Wedge strategy stops working when we are seen as just another way of packaging the Christian evangelical message." - Phillip E. Johnson (talking about why it is important to hide the Christian agenda!)
"People of differing theological views should learn who’s close to them, form alliances and put aside divisive issues ’til later..." "I say after we’ve settled the issue of a creator, we’ll have a wonderful time arguing about the age of the Earth." - Phillip E. Johnson (here Johnson clearly implies that if the assault on Darwinism succeeds, other religions will be the next target)
"No, Goo is your father. Search your feelings. You know it to be Goo. "
Yazata
Valued Senior Member
Yazata said:
The Discovery Institute wrote this:
"Intelligent design begins with the observation that intelligent agents produce complex and specified information (CSI). Design theorists hypothesize that if a natural object was designed, it will contain high levels of CSI. Scientists then perform experimental tests upon natural objects to determine if they contain complex and specified information."
"ID's" proponents are trying to argue that their doctrine is fully and truly scientific. As part of that argument, they suggest that they've succeeded in identifying an experimentally detectable and quantifiable measure of intelligent design, something that they call "complex and specified information".
I'm pointing out that their "complex and specified information" doesn't appear to be the sort of information that's spoken of in mathematics, cognitive science, communications theory or computer science.
Naturally occurring objects, such as those with rough and irregular surfaces, are often more complex (in terms of the amount of information necessary to describe them) than the more regular geometric objects produced by human craftsmen.
Maybe, maybe not. It's possible to imagine something like computer files being encoded in the geometical irregularities of naturally occurring objects. If you looked at the magnetic domains imprinted on a computer disk drive, they would seem pretty random too. If you listen to computers "talking" over a modem, it sounds like white noise, just a hiss.
If water collects in a place that contains it and if it isn't disturbed, the surface of the volume of water is going to effectively form a geometrical plane.
By measuring the amount of information (or "complex specified information", whatever that is) that's present?
If we already know which objects are intelligently designed and which aren't, we can easily include that knowledge in our descriptions of the objects. But that's not the same thing as asserting that we have identified some experimentally detectable and measurable quality of physical objects that's a reliable indicator of whether they have been intelligently designed. Slipping our preexisting knowledge of which objects are designed and which aren't into our "experimental" determinations of which are and which aren't would render those determinations circular.
Yazata said:
Jan said:
I didn't use the word "God", but you did, four times.
The point is that everyone agrees that human beings design and manufacture some of the objects that we see around us. (If we live in a city, perhaps most things. Perhaps most of the things that interest some of us.)
"ID" proponents are taking that observation and expanding on it, employing it as an analogy. They insist that many (most? all?) naturally occurring objects are artifacts, products of intelligent design, just as human products often are. Whatever that designer is (assuming there's just one, there may be many of them), it's not something that's apparent to our human senses. So whatever it is, it must be hidden or occult in some way. ('Occult' means 'hidden'.) And if this designer is able to design so many things, in such sophisticated ways, by unknown means, from such a secret and hidden location, then it must be superpowered when compared to the human craftsmen that it's being imagined as an analogue to.
That's obviously suggestive of the theistic concept of "God". And intentionally so. You certainly noticed it. It's pretty clearly the idea that the "ID" proponents are trying to steer the implications of their doctrine towards.
But pointing that out wasn't really my purpose in writing the text that you jumped on above.
I was still thinking about the "ID" proponents' suggestions that they possess an experimental procedure that's capable of determining whether or not intelligent design is present.
If that procedure is capable of distinguishing human-designed objects that we already know were intelligently designed from naturally-occurring objects, that would be pretty amazing. It would also be evidence against the "ID" thesis, since the hypothetical test would be classifying naturally-occurring objects in the not-intelligently-designed category. The "ID" thesis is insisting that some/many/all naturally occurring objects are intelligently designed.
But what if the hypothetical test fails to distinguish human-designed products from naturally-occurring objects? What if the test not only indicates that all the human artifacts are designed, but also returns positive results for some (or all) naturally-occurring objects as well? How could we determine whether or not the test is working successfully? Are the positive results for naturally-occurring objects merely false-positives, and hence indications that the test has failed? Or are they evidence that the "ID" thesis is indeed correct?
How could we possibly answer that question, unless we have some means of detecting the presence or absence of intelligent design that's independent of the test?
Rav,
You interpret everything to suit your argument style, which is why you think I'm evading.
Those critisisms are the same as what's in the book. They focus on the first discovery made by the archeologist, but
discard the other discoveries, often from the same site, and more in abundance. The establishments realises it cannot keep making the same old excuses, so they ignore the claims, and start the character assasisnation process.
So read the whole book, and get the whole picture.
The way you guys argue for (goo to whatever) evolution, leaves no room for falsification, because if one doesn't agree with it, one doesn't understand it. This simply means that your version of origins is the absolute truth according to ya'll.
jan.
jan.
You interpret everything to suit your argument style, which is why you think I'm evading.
Those critisisms are the same as what's in the book. They focus on the first discovery made by the archeologist, but
discard the other discoveries, often from the same site, and more in abundance. The establishments realises it cannot keep making the same old excuses, so they ignore the claims, and start the character assasisnation process.
So read the whole book, and get the whole picture.
The way you guys argue for (goo to whatever) evolution, leaves no room for falsification, because if one doesn't agree with it, one doesn't understand it. This simply means that your version of origins is the absolute truth according to ya'll.
jan.
jan.
It's actually more that if one doesn't agree with it one either has a stronger commitment to a conflicting theology, or hasn't even bothered to learn enough about it to have an informed opinion. ID proponents fall into the former category, and you fall into the latter. This is easily demonstrated.
Speaking of evasion, you failed to answer an earlier question, twice. Between a scientist who is a theist and a fundamentalist, and a scientist who is a theist but not a fundamentalist, who do you think is more likely to be objective when it comes to the study of evolutionary theory?
Then of the two of us, you are the philosopher, the one who deals in expendable theories and doesn't put his life on the line for them.
As if it would even theoretically be possible to read anything without interpreting it ...