by AuldSoul 153 Replies latest members adult
"God" is actually Franky Skiinvoich, a slovenly, aethetically challenged loser who lives in a hideously ugly but self-built house he built on unincorporated land just outside of Paris Tx.
I used to live near there, and didn't know God was so close!! LOL
AuldSoul wrote:
: So, in every area of advanced human technology you have identified that a key element of intelligent design when it comes to sophisticated systems is the presence of evidence of trial and error.
Right.
: [+] Intelligence applied to a design process does not eliminate the possibility of getting it wrong.
Right.
: In fact, the presence of "trial and error" would be an indication of intelligent design.
No, trial and error gives no indication whatsoever in favor of intelligent design -- it is neutral. Natural selection is by definition a process of trial and error, and if biological systems can be described as the products of trial and error, one would need other information to decide which was the real manner in which the systems came to be.
: We know this from examining known design.
What we know is that intelligent humans, with their limited intelligence, design things largely by trial and error. That does not mean that systems that display evidence of trial and error in their construction were designed by intelligent humans.
Let me posit a simplistic example. Suppose that all humans, for whatever reason, during all history, put a splash of red pigment on everything they made, or painted the entire thing they made red. If you found a rock composed of red minerals, could you logically conclude that it was made by humans?
: Do we agree on that?
Only partly.
I think you need to be very careful of where you're going with this.
AlanF
Leolaia started a thread on the San Andreas fault http://www.jehovahs-witness.com/9/122249/1.ashx
I do not want to get off topic, but surely the fact that the planet is unstable (earthquakes and fault lines in many places), and that Yellowstone National Park is actually a potential super volcano argues against intelligent design and for Chemistry/Geology/evolution etc. Meteor and Asteroid strikes also argue against God. Unless IDs say that these imperfections only came about after Adam sinned
AlanF: Natural selection is by definition a process of trial and error, and if biological systems can be described as the products of trial and error, one would need other information to decide which was the real manner in which the systems came to be.
What other information would one need? I am not disagreeing, I simply note that you have not described what would characterize such information.
Also, I disagree that natural selection is a process of trial and error. "Trial and error" implies an attempt to achieve a desired objective that natural selection does not allow for. There is no evidence, for instance, that single-celled organisms have ever intended to survive. They simply have survived. So, survival is not the objective, it is simply the result.
AlanF: That does not mean that systems that display evidence of trial and error in their constructionwere designed by intelligent humans.
I won't be drawn into a discussion of the nature of the designer(s). I am looking for specific indicators of design. "Systems that display evidence of trial and error in their construction were designed." An objective was being sought out in the design and testing process if trial and error is present.
I consider it a privilege to have been called a moron by AlanF
Interesting, proplog. What do you consider it when I call you a moron? (Not that I am calling you a moron! I'm calling you a syncophant.)
AuldSoul wrote:
: AlanF: Natural selection is by definition a process of trial and error, and if biological systems can be described as the products of trial and error, one would need other information to decide which was the real manner in which the systems came to be.
: What other information would one need? I am not disagreeing, I simply note that you have not described what would characterize such information.
I'm not proposing any specific information. I only meant to show that when you have two or more possible causes for the same result, you need information in addition to the result to decide among the causes. Try to answer my above rhetorical question about all humans splashing red on their artifacts and you'll see what I mean.
: Also, I disagree that natural selection is a process of trial and error.
Of course it is. Trials are done every time a mutation results in new behavior or a new structure. "Error" comes about when the modified life form dies before reproducing.
: "Trial and error" implies an attempt to achieve a desired objective that natural selection does not allow for. There is no evidence, for instance, that single-celled organisms have ever intended to survive. They simply have survived. So, survival is not the objective, it is simply the result.
I think you don't really understand natural selection. Natural selection has no a priori goals, unlike some trial and error experiments done by humans. But not all trial and error experiments done by humans have clearly predetermined goals. For example, as I write, I'm performing experiments via simulation on an electrical circuit. The circuit is so complicated and has so many interactions that I often can't predict what the outcome of any particular minor design change might be. So I make a change and look at the simulation result. If I like it, I keep the change. If not, I discard it. Most of the time I discard the changes. So I often don't quite know in advance just how a design is going to look in the end, or even how it will perform, except in general terms. And very often, my goals are by nature rather fuzzy, because I'm always pushing the envelope of what's technically possible, and have to perform many experiments to see what works and what doesn't. What works becomes a money-making product. What doesn't work is discarded. Natural selection works the same way, except that the fuzzy 'goal' is survival long enough to reproduce. So in that sense, if you insist that trial and error experiments must have goals or objectives, then the objective and the result are the same thing -- survival. In his books Climbing Mount Improbable, The Blind Watchmaker, The Ancestor's Tale, The Selfish Gene, and the latest, The God Delusion, Richard Dawkins writes about these things far more clearly than I can. I suggest you peruse them.
: AlanF: That does not mean that systems that display evidence of trial and error in their construction were designed by intelligent humans.
: I won't be drawn into a discussion of the nature of the designer(s). I am looking for specific indicators of design. "Systems that display evidence of trial and error in their construction were designed." An objective was being sought out in the design and testing process if trial and error is present.
Again, this is simply false. My everyday work proves it in terms of human design, and Dawkins explains it in terms of natural selection extensively and clearly.
AlanF
BizzyBee said to proplog2:
: (Not that I am calling you a moron! I'm calling you a syncophant.)
It's quite amusing when posters who have no clue about the long term history between other posters make judgments like this. They seem not to realize that they kill off their credibility on all subjects for a long time to come.
Since you think you know proplog2 very well, BizzyBee, I'll not attempt to enlighten you. But proplog2 will be equally amused.
AlanF
I think what I just read dovetails with what Alan said (I hope).
Dawkins points out in The Ancestor's Tale , (if I understand it properly) that there is no “trial and error” in evolutionary biology, it is simply a matter of survival.
“A living creature is always in the business of surviving in its own environment. It is never unfinished – or, in another sense, it is always unfinished. So, presumably, are we.”
Evolution doesn't have a goal, per se. Because of the conditions existing on this planet, various life forms has evolved in the way that they have so as to survive under changing conditions.
“Biological evolution has no privileged line of descent and no designated end. Evolution has reached many millions of interim ends (the number of surviving species at the time of observation), and there is no reason other than vanity – human vanity as it happens, since we are doing the talking – to designate any one as more privileged or climactic than any other.”
Strictly speaking engineering and design are two different disciplines. As one of my old professors put it "design has artistic connotations and hence anything designer does can be explain away through his artistic freedom even apparent errors, engineer on the other hand has no such luxury for him science is the gospel or people could die" But of course, there are overlaps as Leonardo Da Vinci demonstrated. In reality, it is all trial and error, as knowledge increases there is less of these, but refinement process does take time. It is all to easy for people switching on their cute looking Ipod to forget how many man-hours of research, engineering and design had gone into it.
I was just thinking about WTBS claim that every day of creation lasted 7000 years or so. I mean when you think about it, that's actually an insult to god they believe in. They are bringing him down to a level of mere humans who would probably need that much time, had they have all the technology available. It almost sounds that god needed long time to allow for trial and error process to take place. If I believed in god I’d almost go with fundamentalists who claim he only needed 24 hours (though even that would be quite long). Just thinking out loud.
On the matter of trial and error as a description of evolution.
Trial and error is too loaded and expression. Evolution involves a stochastic process. Randomness followed by selection.
Also, how is the word "intelligent" to be understood? Does that mean there has to be the intervention of a mind?
Our minds are NOT creative. Minds are reactive and selective. The brain primarily cycles information that has been taken in from sensory input. It matches patterns. If a pattern matches it may trigger a response. If a pattern doesn't match it triggers more investigation or possibly flight. The creativity emerges from the random input that comes from the real world outside of the brain.
Design is not the product of the mind but the interaction of mind and environment. The brain/mind is the part of the process that selects.
