Irreducible Complexity and TalkOrigins

And how does anyone know that? Has anyone calculated the probability that an intelligent agent designed the IC system under discussion? The intelligent designer hypothesis does not win by default -- it stands or falls on its own merits regardless of the weaknesses of any other explanation.

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If it's truly good and powerful, it deserves to engender a thousand misunderstandings. -- Ben Ratcliffe

I've asked IDist this before, but I've never really gotten an answer.How could we know that Mt. Rushmore was designed?This isn't a silly question; discussing this question will illuminate why this analogy really isn't a good one.If I had absolutely no knowledge of Mt.s or Rushmores, how could I determine whether Mt. Rushmore was designed by an intelligent agency?

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If it's truly good and powerful, it deserves to engender a thousand misunderstandings. -- Ben Ratcliffe

Hi, Suroof. We're not talking about SETI -- we're discussing Mt. Rushmore. Let's keep to this one example for now, just to keep things from getting unnecessarily complicated. As I said, this is an important point; once we determine why we can conclude that Mt. Rushmore is designed, then we'll see that it doesn't apply to biological systems like the flagellum or blood clotting.- Okay, this is a bunch of words strung together with no real meaning.The question is pretty simple.I'm examining Mt. Rushmore. How can I determine whether it was designed or not? Specify the things that I can look at right now that will be a sign that it was designed.

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If it's truly good and powerful, it deserves to engender a thousand misunderstandings. -- Ben Ratcliffe

You are not being very precise here. Not all patterns are purposeful or arranged. A snowflake, for example, or any other crystal has a definite pattern, yet it forms through the ordinary laws of physics as individual water molecules attach to the growing crystal.We need some way of determining whether or not the pattern that we see on Mt. Rushmore is "purposeful" or "arranged".- But it's always possible to have been produced by chance. Again, you're not being very clear.Besides that, you are discounting some natural process working in a way that I don't yet understand or recognize.So far, you have not yet been able to figure out how to discount a natural process that we have not yet identified. Nor have we discounted the possibility, however unlikely, possibility that it occurred through chance.

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If it's truly good and powerful, it deserves to engender a thousand misunderstandings. -- Ben Ratcliffe

Okay, so Mt. Rushmore is designed (we at least agree on that), but you don't really know why we know that it was designed. If we were wandering around lost in South Dakota and came across Mt. Rushmore, we would know that it was designed, but you really haven't thought about it enough to understand how it is that you know that it was designed. Rather than try to figure out why you really do know that it was designed, you bring in irrelevant quotes by Dembski; you probably don't really understand what he's trying to say, but you are hoping that it answers the questions.What you really need to do is ignore Dembski. I mean, come on, you know Mt. Rushmore was designed. You don't need any gobbledegook like "specified complexity" or any of the other high-falutin' sounding crap that Dembski or Behe spouts. You knew that Mt. Rushmore was designed well before you even heard of Dembski or Behe.Just think for yourself. How do you know that Mt. Rushmore was designed? How do you know that Mt. Rushmore isn't the resulf of random, chance erosion patterns? How do you know that there isn't something about the mountains in South Dakota, some process that will naturally produce something like Mt. Rushmore?Don't reply immediately. This isn't a chat room. You can take your time to think the problem through and write a well-thought out response. I do feel that you need to think about this.Edited by Chiroptera, : Silly typo -- although, given the nature of this board, "wondering" is probably appropriate, too.

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If it's truly good and powerful, it deserves to engender a thousand misunderstandings. -- Ben Ratcliffe

And most important of all (in my opinion), we know that humans exist, we know that humans make carvings of other humans, and we even know the reasons that humans make carvings of other humans.Meanwhile, we have no real evidence for a candidate for a designer of life, we don't know whether the candidates that have been proposed have a habit of actually designing life, and we don't even know why such a designer would even do so.

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It has become fashionable on the left and in Western Europe to compare the Bush administration to the Nazis. The comparison is not without some superficial merit. In both cases the government is run by a small gang of snickering, stupid thugs whose vision of paradise is full of explosions and beautifully designed prisons. -- Matt Taibbi