I am hinting at this (quantum mechanics) , if you try and hit the center of a bullseye by aiming at it you will miss it- the man with a blindfold who aims radomly can hit the bullseye. If God tried to create man exactly as he exists now, the laws of the univerese would confound the attempt. Hence, my belief that we are here as a result of cumulative random events over billions of years. I see that a few others understand my point.
Discussion of "intelligent design" (uncapitalized, AlanF)
by AuldSoul 153 Replies latest members adult
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Narkissos
Apparently I took AuldSoul's initial setting definition too seriously (or, perhaps, others didn't take it seriously enough, which boils down to the same) so I abstained from posting here so far.
Not that I have anything "scientific" to add; fwiw, from my own perspective I'd just say "beware of words" -- a formal contradiction of course.
"Intelligent design" strikes me as a blatant anthropomorphism (more shameless than "god" in a sense) from a homo sapiens who is also (and even more so) homo faber. Besides sex and war, craftwork (pottery, building, etc.) is a ubiquitous narrative device in the ancient creation stories, including the Bible texts. There's no way man can describe the emergence of anything except by metaphors based on his own experience of producing novelty and change. The same is true of the notion of "will," including the "will" to survive or reproduce (Schopenhauer, with the distance, is a sobering read in this respect).
Whatever we read in the world we read into it -- whether "intelligent design" or "random chance" which is just another way of construing our own interplay with our environment. It's substituting a non-existent "dice thrower / observer" to an equally non-existent "designer" -- the only advantage is that his/her/its non-existence is admitted, and the expression is consciously understood as inadequate. The essential mystery remains, made of our being both a part of it and strange to it, by our very process of verbal thinking.
Just a passing reflection from an onlooker enjoying the show.
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AuldSoul
AlanF: ...some researchers set up a fairly simple program that was to design a circuit that performed a simple task.
I read an article about the same thing from the same publication. It seems we drew two different conclusion from the article.
The sentence could be rephrased this way: "Some intelligence set up a fairly simple process designed to achieve a goal." This simple process kept working out zillions of different possibilities until the desired result was achieved. These intelligent folks who set up this process...did they marvel at some of the permutations the program tried? Did they just let it run until <ding!> and then open the door and pull out the circuit? Or did they watch the process with fascination, occasionally observing the process during the course of the program running?
But, suppose there wasn't a desired result. Suppose the program had no "prime directive," no end point, and was not working toward any particular goal. Suppose, the resulting circuit did not even need to do anything and the process could terminate randomly, at any point. Because this is the situation we find for the "program" (natural selection) that produced the first single-celled organism.
AlanF: Natural selection is a good deal more complicated, since there is no preset template other than the extremely fuzzy "to survive"
Once again, you haven't proven that single-celled organisms have an extremely fuzzy "preset template" of survival. You have assumed it from the fact that they do survive, but you haven't established it as a natural (as opposed to designed) goal. For instance, let's take the very first single-celled organism, all by itself, one living cell without any peer in the world.
What factor would possibly compel it to survive, as a goal or preset template, fuzzy in the extreme or otherwise? In a world with no other living organism present, why would there be any external or internal pressure to survive instead of die? It has no desires. It is just a very simple chemical composite, nothing more. It doesn't want anything. What could possibly pressure it into surviving? It seems to me that its survival could only have initially occurred in the complete absence of pressure, any pressure would kill it since it has no reason to live. Which flies in the face (to my way of thinking) of natural selection.
If we humbly admit that life is not necessary (first of all), then it seems to me that we must also accept the fact that the occurrence of survival with the first single-celled organism must be explained by something other than necessity. If we say chance, then we have to explain why two single-celled organisms survived, again by chance. How many times would single-celled organisms have to result before the odds would be in favor of the survival of the FIRST viable single-celled organism. Survival of this first "species" has a much simpler explanation than that it somehow beat the odds billions of times over and survived, despite having no cause or necessity or desire to account for its own remarkable survival.
Let's not leap ahead of natural selection to multi-celled organisms, please. Since we agree that macro-evolution and micro-evolution occurs, there is no need to leap to that point. I want to pin down exactly what happened with the very first single-celled organism, the beginning of the program, if you will.
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stillajwexelder
Why this works this way is one of the fundamental mysteries of physics. AlanF
Agreed Alan - and that is why Quantum Mechanics is now studied (after going through all the classical Newtonian Mechanics). Much more subtle.
I often use very over-simplified things to attempt explanation of complex principles. As an example people often say they do not understand how light can be both a wave and a particle. I will say "mathematically E=MC^2 (mass and wavelength in the same equation) and also E =hf Planks constant x frequency and then go on to say (with ridiculous over-simplification I agree) MC^2 = hf so you have an equation with mass frequency and wavelength , so mathematically it is easy to see why light can have particle and wave properties. Rather than going through De broglie etc.
I did that with Heisenberg and I appologize - it was my feeble attempt to attempt to explain a complex principle. I am at the moment having sleepless nights on this thread in an attempt to explain why "Inteligent design" is so flawed with a very simple (over simple) illustartion
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dilaceratus
Once again, you haven't proven that single-celled organisms have an extremely fuzzy "preset template" of survival. You have assumed it from the fact that they do survive, but you haven't established it as a natural (as opposed to designed) goal. For instance, let's take the very first single-celled organism, all by itself, one living cell without any peer in the world.
Gould illustrated this with the mathematical example of the "Drunk Man's Stagger" to explain why bacterial life is the mode of biological life on earth. A drunk man stands against a brick wall, and randomly steps forward, or sideways, due to his inebriation. Given enough time, by random process, he will move away from the wall. The wall, however, represents an impermeable barrier.
A self-replicating organism, given enough time, and random mutation, will statistically become more complex. Those that hit the wall, i.e. fail to self-replicate, will be dead. Most organisms will, in fact, remain against the wall, as simple life forms.
This is very easy to understand, and certainly a template requiring no outside interference.If we humbly admit that life is not necessary (first of all), then it seems to me that we must also accept the fact that the occurrence of survival with the first single-celled organism must be explained by something other than necessity.
Even using the most optimistic predictions of life in other parts of the Universe, biological life is clearly unnecessary. It just happened. Demanding a rationale beyond random chemical circumstance for the fact that it has happened is grossly egocentric. What is the meaning of hydrogen? (Cf. Buddha's famous "Lotus Sutra.") -
TopHat
If a first living cell had formed without a Creator, the cell would still have had to replace each of its proteins as soon as it wore out. If the cell did not contain the information to correctly turn on and off the production of the replacement proteins, the cell would have died as soon as the first essential protein wore out. This is evidence that there is a Creator who knows how to turn protein production on and off! The proteins that make up cells will not form anywhere in nature except in already living cells. One reason cells can make them is because the directions for making them and for turning their production on and off are already present in the cell’s library of information called DNA. Once made, proteins could not function unless they were properly folded and addressed. Neither making proteins, folding, addressing, nor regulating their production could invent itself, yet no cell could live unless all were in place working together. These brilliant solutions are scientific facts and constitute evidence for a very intelligent Creator who plans ahead.
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acsot
TopHat, you should reference the url where you copy/paste your creationist stuff from:
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acsot
A rebuttal to TopHat's copy/paste (and I'll reference it):
"DNA could have evolved gradually from a simpler replicator; RNA is a likely candidate, since it can catalyze its own duplication (Jeffares et al. 1998; Leipe et al. 1999; Poole et al. 1998). The RNA itself could have had simpler precursors, such as peptide nucleic acids (Böhler et al. 1995). A deoxyribozyme can both catalyze its own replication and function to cleave RNA -- all without any protein enzymes (Levy and Ellington 2003)."
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TopHat
You are right and I did....in the first three tries, but I kept getting an error message on this board...anyway the url you posted is not where I got my information.
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acsot
I've had problems posting also; but the url I referenced has the quote you used word for word, so it seems as though it's out in cyberspace being repeated over and over and over ....