ID - How Many Designers and If ID, Macro or Micro Designer(s)?

William Paley's argument for the existence of God based on perceived
design has two basic weaknesses that defeat his purpose (and the purpose, i.e., to prove the existence of one supreme being, of all who advance the ID argument).The first weakness is that, when one looks at a watch, and perceives it to be made by design, one cannot conclude that it was the result of one, or of a multitude of designers. We do know, from empirical knowledge, that a watch is the result of many designers/inventors; the designer/inventor of the gear, the designer/inventor of the lever, the designer/inventor of the spring, the designer/inventor of the bearing, the designer/inventor of the means of producing the metals involved, the designer/inventor of the means of producing the parts of the watch, to name but a few. In short, the watch analogy does not prove that humans, even if the product of intelligent design, were designed by one supreme designer.The second weakness is that Paley implies that since the watch was designed by a macro (human) intelligence, to serve the needs or desires of that intelligence, humans must have been designed by a macro intelligence superior to that of humans to serve the needs/desires of that intelligence. The weakness of this analogy is that even if one perceives intelligent design in a human, or other multi-cellular organism, one can reach no conclusion as to whether the human or other multi-cellular organism was designed by an intelligence higher than that of humans to serve its purpose, or was designed by the micro intelligence of the individual cells, tissues and/or organs comprising humans to serve their purpose.There is no evidence, except verbal and written hearsay, of the existence of a macro intelligence superior to that of humans, while numerous arguments based on hard fact, as opposed to hearsay, can be made supporting the existence of micro intelligence, beginning with molecular intelligence and rising hierarchically to cellular, tissue and organ (the human brain is an organ) intelligence. Micro intelligence evolving to macro intelligence, just as micro life evolved to macro life.Original design always proceeds from bottom up, only duplicate design
proceeds from top down, as in reverse engineering. If ID proponents
desire intellectual integrity, they must abandon their top down (super macro intelligence) approach and embrace the bottom up (micro to macro intelligence) approach, in which case, obviously, they would transmogrify to evolutionists.

Thanx for your response and your welcome, but you do make it tough on an old, tired and inherently lazy man, for now I must expend the effort to clarify. Oh, well, just punishment for the lazy, I guess.1)I was referring to their ultimate goal and should have clarified that fact. Their statements and/or arguments to the effect that they have no specific entity, or number or types of entities in mind should be dismissed as nothing more than a red herring.2)Not precisely that we designed ourselves, for we did not exist at the beginning of evolution. However, if natural selection is not confined strictly to mechanical action, but incorporates the intelligent actions of the evolving life-forms, than our predecessor evolutionary ancestors, perhaps including even single cells, as well as their precursive constituents, may have contributed to our design through intelligent interaction with their environment, just as our intelligent interaction with our environment will surely influence the design of the life forms into which we may evolve (should they be afforded the opportunity to evolve).Surely consciousness and intelligence evolved incrementally just as did our physical characteristics. Just where down the chain of evolutionary increments purely mechanical actions began to manifest intelligence, no one knows. One definition of intelligence is "the ability to apply knowledge to manipulate one's environment." I can perceive manifestations of knowledge of, and the ability to manipulate, the environment in the intracellular activities of DNA and Messenger RNA. I know not enough to argue that it is intelligent activity, nor that it is strictly mechanical activity. I will argue that the scientific community knows not for a certainty, either.To get back to the major point of my topic, the ID community cannot jump to the conclusion that evidence of intelligent design necessarily points to the existence of a supernatural intelligent designer (or designers) when evidence of intelligent design might have a perfectly natural (and more probable) explanation; the intelligent activity of the evolving life-forms coupling with mechanical activity in their environment as the driving forces of natural selection.I hope this clarifies my argument for you and wish you Happy Holidays.

Yep, evolution is the original do-it-yourself, design-on-the-fly project.Could you give me a reference to the IC system you mention? I's like to check it out.

Thanks for the references.In reading about Hall's experiment it struck me that although it definately refutes Behe's argument that life is the result of an external, macro and supernatural intelligent designer, it could be used to support the concept of intelligent micro-designers at the genetic level.To my wonderment, in searching for more information regarding the experiment or similar experiments I came across an article entitled "Bacterial Wisdom, Gdel's Theorem and Creative Genomic Webs" by Eshel Ben-Jacob (School of Physics and Astronomy, Tel-Aviv University) which examines the possibility that evolution may be the result of micro-design, i.e., adaptive mutagenesis at the genome level, and cites Hall's experiment (among others) in support of this possibility.Here's the link:http://star.tau.ac.il/~inon/wisdom1/preprint.html

Yes, the paper describes a mechanism by which the microdesigning might be accomplished, which depends solely on experimentally observed properties of bacteria and their genomes, and has no basis in the supernatural, magic or fairy dust. For purposes of the paper, genome includes the chromosome, all the extra-chromosomal elements and all the "chemical machinery" (like enzymes) involved in genomic activity and the production of proteins.Some of these properties are:
1) The genome has self-awareness.
2) The genome can change itself.
3) The genomes within a bacterial colony can communicate with each other.

Sorry, I got lazy again. I did not mean to imply that all of the listed properties had been experimentally proven. Only 2) has been experimentally proven, 1) and 3) remain questions raised by previous experiments, such as Hall's, and require further experimental exploration before they can be confirmed or rejected. 2) references genomic mutations non-related to the environment, per S. E. Luria and M. Delbrck. Mutations of bacteria from virus sensitivity to virus resistance. Genetics, 28:491--511, 1943.Re microdesigning: By microdesigning I mean what the author posits; conscious-directed design.Regarding your question, "how does one test for selfawareness in a species that you cannot communicate with?", I submit that conciousness at a cellular or subcellular level would differ markedly from the neurologically based consciousness which we have attained and thus the tests for such conciousness would also markedly differ. The question of cellular/subcellular conciousness has been sparsely investigated and will require much work and further exploration on the part of those who choose to investigate it.Because as a non-scientist I have speculated about the possibility of its existence, I am glad to see that some in the scientific community have chosen to investigate it.As a layman, and as a practical matter, I am quite content to assume, when I step on a sleeping dog's tail, and it demonstrates an action directed toward its well-being by either yelping and getting out of my way or by biting my leg, that it has some kind of conscious self-awareness of its own existence and is consciously attempting to maintain that existence.By the same token, when I read of bacteria adaptively mutating in a manner which appears directed to the continuance of their existence, I think it within the bounds of reason to assume they might also have some kind of conscious awareness of their existence and are consciously taking action to continue that existence.Being a basically honest person, I freely admit to myself and everyone else that these are but assumptions which may be proven false.Again, I apologize for the confusion.

Discourse terminated sans prejudice.

No, there's no reason to continue, nor reason to have done the critique in the first place. I agree with your conclusion that Ben-Jacob's argument is in parts fallacious and thus in whole fallacious, and being so it does not prove his premise. But I never directed you to his paper for the purpose of demonstrating support for any premise whatsoever. I did so solely to illustrate that someone else had generated the same question I had in response to Hall's experiment, i.e., that it might point in the direction of a level of cellular, and perhaps even genomic, intelligence which could initiate design at the cellular or genomic level.Having never voiced support for Ben-Jacob's argument, or for any argument refuting or eliminating "normal change and selection procedures", when you stated in your post of 12/17 that "I do not see anything that eliminates normal change and selection procedures in anything you have presented yet." I realized we were talking at cross-purposes and I needed a time out. I apologize for requesting it so abruptly.I view life as a manifestation of the mechanical properties and activities of the physical elements and processes from which it arises, and likewise consciousness, self-awareness, intelligence and all other components which, in humans, constitute the mind.None of the above are, or can be, manifestations of a supernatural, magical or fantastical entity and none can exist as a thing separate and apart from the physical elements and processes from which they arise.To premise the possible existence of some level of intelligence made manifest by the physical elements and processes of a simpler life form than humans is not to posit anything supernatural, magical, fantastical, or irrational, but rather poses a question susceptible to legitimate inquiry.In fact the question is attracting a growing amount of attention in the scientific community owing to the proliferation of antibiotic resistant bacteria. Indeed, a growing number of investigators are beginning to couch the subject not as a question, but as a proven by referring to such bacteria as smart bacteria, inferring that some level of intelligence is being manifested by them.I'm not qualified to make a determination as to whether bacteria do or do not manifest some level of intelligence, that's a matter for the scientific community. However, bacteria are not only our competitors in the game of life, we are at war with the multitude of them which are our pathogenic enemies. In a war it can be a deadly mistake to underestimate any aspect of the opponent's strength, including intelligence. It would be grave error to grossly underestimate the level of our bacterial opponents intelligence by concluding they have none, particularly in light of the fact that they appear to manifest it by identifying and solving the problem posed them by our use of antibiotics. For this reason, I think the assumption that bacteria have some level of intelligent is a prudent one.

"A conversion of energy into thought in an inverse relationship to entropy, an accumulation of 'mind' as 'matter' dissipates." might well lie within the realm of possibility. In my imagination, utilizing Occam's Razor to the ultimate degree, I imagine the simplest method of fashioning our universe, and for that matter, the cosmos (everything within and which might lie beyond our universe) is to have it comprised of one thing which can be converted to an "infinite" number of things through an "infinite" number of transformational processes. Everything which exists being but a different form of the same thing, brought into existence by one process expressed in an endless variety of ways. It appears to me that String Theory may be pointing in this direction. If energy and thought are but different forms of the same thing, a conversion of energy into thought should be possible through some transformational process.I wouldn't characterize the resulting consciousness as supernatural though, since it would result from a natural process. It would simply exist in a place and be of a nature inaccessible and unknowable to us."One could argue that it has taken millions of years of evolution to reach that basic level of anticipation, and that this does not bode well for a smart system." It could further be argued that a high level of intelligence may not be the best of survival strategies, for such intelligence misapplied might backfire. A plethora of scenarios can be imagined where the misapplication of human intelligence could result in the extinction of our species.Yes, the color change is beneficial. I think the red color produced a subliminal irritation that worked counter to the message. The new color allows the message to be considered in a calmer, more reflective mood.

The ID proponent's answer to your query would most probably be that ID only applies to created living organisms, so could not apply to God, as He was not created but has always existed. However, as Cousin Vinnie might say, does the argument that God has always existed hold water?One has only to read the first sentence of the Bible, which is alleged to be the word of God delivered through the Bible's authors, to spot a leak. Speaking in the third person, God's first statement in explanation of the creation of the Cosmos (by which I mean the universe and everything else beyond it which might exist) is "In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth." Heaven is interpreted to mean "space" and earth is interpreted to mean "matter". Since God would have to have existed for some period of time before He could create space, by clear implication God, in this first sentence, alleges that time existed before space was created. This is in contradiction to Einstein's Special Theory of Relativity, which holds that time and space are linked in an inseparable continuum and one cannot exist in the absence of the other.This contradiction is significant not only in itself, it is also significant in that a real creator of the universe (if such there could be) would have known it, but the authors of the Book of Genesis would not. As we continue reading the entirety of God's explanation of the creation of the cosmos , and specific things within it, this latter significance is magnified. God's explanation of the creation contains an absolute dearth of information of the nature of the cosmos. How can you explain the creation of something without linking the creation with the nature of the thing created? Any such explanation would be incomplete and imperfect. Yet the allegedly perfect God of the Bible does just that. He renders a totally incomplete and imperfect explanation of the creation and nature of the cosmos. Not only does He not explain the correct relation of time and space, He also doesn't touch on energy, sub-atomic particles, atoms, molecules, the weak force, the strong force, the elecromagnetic force, gravity or their interrelationship. A perfect God would be able to explain such concepts in language understandable to anyone. He doesn't touch on anything concerning the nature of the cosmos unknown to the authors of the bible. This fact renders the reason for His failure to explain any thing concerning the nature of the cosmos beyond the knowledge of the authors immediately obvious. He couldn't because the God of the Bible is the creation of the authors of the Book of Genesis, and as such could be endowed with no greater knowledge than held by the authors. Ironically, the God of the Bible is a creation of the Authors of the Book of Genesis who evolved through the contribution of authors of subsequent books of the Bible into a three-in-one God, i.e., God, Jesus and the Holy Ghost. The God of the Bible has not always existed, He has only existed, and only as a fictional personage, since the time that the authors of the Book of Genesis wrote it. That exact date is unknown, but is certainly not earlier than 10,000 BCE.But this doesn't answer the larger question, which is whether or not the cosmos was created by a god, or supreme being, of any kind. The cosmos either always existed or had a beginning. If it has always existed, it obviously wasn't created by any such entity because there was no creation. If the cosmos had a beginning, that beginning was also the beginning of space/time. Space/time is the foundation of existence. In the absence of space/time nothing can exist. Since the beginning of the cosmos would also be the beginning of space/time, nothing, embodied or unembodied, could exist prior to the emerging existence of the cosmos. Therefore, there was no god or supreme being of any kind prior to the beginning of the cosmos who could have created the cosmos; there was no "prior to the beginning of the cosmos". This raises the question: If there was nothing before the beginning of the cosmos, what created it? If the Cosmos had a beginning, that beginning was initiated at the quantum level. At the quantum level, actions can occur which are not the effects of causes. The answer, therefor, is that nothing caused the beginning of the cosmos; the beginning of the cosmos was an action at the quantum level which was not an effect of any cause. The answer to the larger question is that whether the cosmos has existed forever or had a beginning, it was not created by a god, or supreme being, of any kind.My best guess is that the cosmos has always existed and is infinite in size, and our universe is just one of an infinite number of universes that exists, has existed and will exist within the cosmos. One objection voiced to this position is that the cosmos could not have existed forever because then everything that could happen would have happened. Not if an infinite number of things can occur. The set of things within an infinite cosmos is infinite, and both the set of universes within the cosmos and the set of things which can occur within the cosmos are subsets of the set of things within the cosmos. An infinite set can have subsets which are also infinite, so within an infinite cosmos infinite universes can exist and infinite things can occur.My answer to your query is that ID does not apply to the God of the Bible, because ID only applies to real living organisms and the God of the Bible is a fictional personage.

Thanks for your response to my post.One of Merriam-Webster's definitions of intelligence is:"1 a (1) : the ability to learn or understand or to deal with new or trying situations."When antibiotics were first introduced, they posed a new and trying situation to the bacteria they destroy. Over the years, a great number of strains of bacteria have developed resistance to the once deadly antibiotics. Is this not evidence that such bacteria had the ability to deal with a new and trying situation, one of the indications of intelligence?As to intelligence on the molecular level, I would suggest "Ultimate Computing", Biomolecular
Consciousness and Nanotechnology, by Stuart R. Hameroff, a copy of which can be found athttp://www.consciousness.arizona.edu/...omp.htm#_Toc39584128The definition of life has not yet been set in stone. There is no unanimous agreement on a single definition of life. Consciousness is certainly a factor to be considered as a quality indicating life. If certain molecules are indeed found to possess consciousness, it would be appropriate to classify them as living molecules. The possibility is open that some of the life-related molecules are themselves alive.Single cell plants and animals, and the cells of multicellular plants and animals, whether considered singularly or in tissue or organ groupings, are all classified as living organisms."So Macro intelligent design is not impossible assuming that God created the laws that govern us, and then created us." That would be right, providing the assumption proved correct. For my view of this, please read my post of this date in response to Charles Knight's post of 2/10/05.

"No, because individual bacteria aren't adapting to the presence of the antibiotic; they're either born able to resist the antibiotic, or they die. Only as a population have they adapted to the antibiotic. Individually, none of them have reacted to the presence of the antibiotic at all."That's not entirely correct. Some bacteria are naturally resistant to certain types of antibiotics. However, bacteria which are not naturally resistant may develop resistance in two ways: 1) by a genetic mutation or 2) by acquiring resistance from another bacterium. Neither genetic mutation or acquisition of resistance from another bacterium are acts of the entire population, they are the acts of individual bacterium. These individuals which develop resistance through mutation or acquisition then pass their resistance to all of their daughter cells and the daughter cells and all of their descendants do likewise, resulting in an antibiotic-resistant strain of bacteria emanating from a previously antibiotic sensitive strain.The individual bacterium which develop resistance through mutation or acquisition demonstrate an ability to deal with a new and trying situation, which is clearly evidence (an indication) of intelligence sufficient to justify further investigation. In fact, such bacteria are frequently referred to as "smart bacteria" as a result of fact that they evince intelligence.Molecular conciousness? In "Ultimate Computing" which I cited in the post to which you replied, the author, Stuart R. Hameroff, posits that conciousness is generated at the molecular level. Very briefly and simply, all animal, plant and bacteria cells contain a molecular cytoskeleton, comprised of microtubules, neurofilaments, microtrebecular lattice, centrioles and other molecular components. The cytoskeleton, apart from various other functions it performs, operates as the cell's nervous system/brain and does, in each cell, generate a level of consciousness sufficient for the purposes of the individual cell. In the human brain, the specialized cells, called neurons, are networked and the consciousness of each individual neuron, generated by its cytoskeleton, is amplified into the superconsciousness (as compared to cellular consciousness) we each experience, much as the computing power of individual computers can be increased by networking them in specific ways.If, and I emphasize the if, bacteria do have the molecular analog of a nervous system/brain which generates consciousness, they would have the foundation for a level of intelligence sufficient to recognize the danger posed by antibiotics and take such steps as they could to counteract it.