When does design become intelligent? (AS OF 8/2/10 - CLOSING COMMENTS ONLY)

Well, it's the case that things we have designed without intelligence include radios, airplanes, cars, robots, jokes, shipment routes, and encryption algorithms. 15 Real-World Applications of Genetic Algorithms – BrainzSo, I'd say that leaves plenty of space for organisms to have evolved without need for intelligent input. If they have no means of reproduction they are by definition not alive, and therefore cannot evolve.

If the universe is "fine-tuned for life", why does the only life in the universe appear to live on a single planet surrounding a dismally typical star in a boringly average galaxy?I mean, by these standards a fork is fine-tuned for eating soup.

Life is a highly unlikely phenomenon in a universe not designed for it, barely suitable for it, and at best - unwittingly hostile to it.I think the more you reflect on how the domain of life is the thinnest possible shell on a tiny planet, with instant death both above and below, it becomes stunningly obvious how this universe isn't a divinely-designed playground for divinely-designed playmates, it's a highly transient and fragile phenomenon - and very much the result of chance. And amazing, for it.

Well, we do have the facts. We have a continuous morphological pattern of development of species in the fossil record, which is consistent with the stratigraphy, which is in turn consistent with the genetic phylogenies. We have observations of natural selection resulting in new species. We have genetic programming experiments that produce surprising complexity by selection and mutation from highly simple precursors. We have microbiology experiments that do the same thing with living creatures.We have ample evidence for all of the elements of evolution. If you don't believe me, that's fine, examples can be produced if you ask for them. But what would they prove to you? You don't know anything about evolution. You don't know anything about science, or how to draw conclusions from evidence. You have a completely wrong idea of what the theory even is. To you, evolution is a religion. Somehow you've got it in your head that evolution is how atheists practice religion.It's not. It's how scientists practice science. All you know is name-calling. Why would anyone spend their precious time trying to prove anything to you, when it's obvious you'll just spit all over their work?Why not start asking questions instead of making pronouncements? Instead of telling us how dumb all scientists must be, why not ask yourself what it is about the theory of evolution that is so convincing it even convinced the Pope?

Sure. Experiments in the Miller-Urey vein have proved that the conditions of the early Earth (known from geology and astrophysics) could produce chemical structures suitable for exploitation by early proto-life.That life is a chemical state of being is known from about 200 years of observation.The question isn't so much whether the early Earth could have supported self-replicating chemistry - we're already aware that it could have. The really interesting question is how we got from simple self-replicating chemical structures, of which there are potentially dozens of trivial examples, to RNA-based, membrane-bound cells.But of course all this is predicated on understanding exactly what life is, yet that's the one question I never hear creationists ask: "what is life?" Is it that they have no idea? Certainly the Bible does not define what is alive and what is not. Or do they think it's a self-evidence question? Well, are viruses alive? Are prions? Are prokaryotes?Do you even know what those things are?

You don't know that. You have no idea the degree to which those cosmic constants may actually be derivatives of a smaller number of constants; you have no idea what the "degree of freedom" is for any of those - what values they're able to adopt - and you have no idea what range of constants permits life or something like it.You have absolutely no basis to assert "fine-tuning", and again - if the universe is so "fine-tuned" for life it's strange that all the life in the known universe exists only on a single planet. A "fine-tuned for life" universe should have life everywhere we look. I don't think it's gloomy at all. I think it's amazing that meat can think. I think it's amazing that life clings on in the face of a universe trying actively to destroy it at every moment. I think life in the universe, as transient as it is, is nonetheless an incredible privilege. And it's a privilege to be afforded the chance to accurately apprehend the nature of reality as it surrounds us - a privilege afforded only to human beings born in the last 100 years or so.And I don't understand the mindset of someone like you who would willingly turn your back on that privilege. The study of the natural world is the humbling task of several lifetimes. But it doesn't seem to make any impression on your relentless, angry, posturing attitude. Why is that? It's one thing to want to turn your back on reality in favor of cherished fantasies, but why are you always so angry about it?

No, it's likely that the first unambiguously living things were descended from ambiguously maybe-living things that could reproduce, which were themselves descended from unambiguously non-living chemical self-replicators.Honesty, Buz, this isn't that hard. Life didn't "evolve the ability to reproduce"; chemical structures that could self-replicate evolved life.There's a whole science of this stuff, Buz. You've been talking about these things for how long, now? Seven years?At any point are you going to actually learn the science you need to talk about the science? Just curious. The first living things would not have been cells, and it's absurd to say that a bacteria like E. coli is "primitive." E. coli is the result of millions of years of evolution and has a number of highly advanced features. The first living things would not have been anything at all like E. coli. E. coli is not even close to being the "minimal organism."Your link even says that. Did you read it? Frequently I've gotten the impression that you don't understand half of what you read.

There are four in just our solar system alone. If "1%" carbon dioxide is necessary for life, how does life survive on Earth, where the atmosphere contains only three-onehundredths (.0038%) of that amount?How did life survive on Earth when the Earth had no oxygen at all? Why would obligate anaerobic microbes require "21% oxygen" when any oxygen at all retards their growth, or even kills them?Do you think maybe you don't know what the fuck you're talking about? So, what you're saying is that the Earth isn't at the perfect distance, life could survive in a range of distances equivalent to 25% of the distance of the Earth from the Sun, a distance of 37 million miles."Fine-tuned", indeed. Funny thing - no, you don't. Why did he start in 1983? Yes. Most recently when I was a practicing Christian.When I got no reply at all from "God" I concluded that he didn't exist. Because we don't believe as you do? Maybe you need to stop debating evolution with people who know way more than you, and engage in a little introspection. You need to ask yourself why it's so important that everybody else believes the exact same thing as you. You need to find out why it makes you so angry to be presented with people who believe differently.Those aren't healthy attitudes. They're attitudes of religious bigotry. Or if we're both wrong we'll wind up in Muslim Hell. Frankly making violent threats against me if I don't believe as you do isn't very convincing. Why don't you try reason instead of threats?

So what? The algorithm is designed to put that intelligence aside and design from mindlessness. The supposed "designers" go to lunch while these systems run. While it's amazing indeed what intelligence is capable of, to really get a good design you have to set intelligence aside and "design" like an organism - through an iterative process of selection and mutation.

Who cares about paperclips? You never answered my question - how intelligent is it to have rear-facing retinas?

We just told you. It could reproduce before it was life.Replication predates life. The ancestors of the first living things were nonliving chemical replicators.Did you not understand that the first time I said it?

Sure, but since no living thing had previously existed, the first living organism was certainly not all that much more complicated than its nonliving energy sources. Not really. Viruses are alive and they have almost no complex processes whatsoever. Like the first living organism they offloaded much of that complexity into the environment.The biochemical environment at the dawn of life was a lot different than it is today. It's been lean pickings for life for millions of years; organisms have had to evolve to take advantage of such thin gruel as sunlight, water, carbon dioxide, gaseous nitrogen, and of course - each other.But for the first organism, barely more complex than the things it formed from, the raw materials for reproduction were all around. Nowadays as soon as such rich fare is formed inorganically, something organic snatches it up.

I have. I used to be a creationist, remember Buz? Not here, ever, but I was. I've been through all the creationist arguments. I used to make them.It's amazing how creationism doesn't evolve at all; it's the same Gish Gallop of denial, indifference, waiting a week and then launching the same old PRATT's. Mutation. Natural selection. Simpler living precursors.It's honestly not that difficult. If there are aspects of the science you don't yet understand - why not ask questions about them? You must have questions. Why not ask a few to learn something instead of asking them to try to trap us?Why does this have to be so adversarial? Over on our side there's an astounding degree of training in the natural sciences. The equivalent of perhaps fifty years of college and graduate-level study. Why not put some of that learning to work for you? People are falling all over themselves to try to teach you something.Why not take them up on it? I can think of few things more worthwhile than trying to educate someone of your intellectual caliber in the biological sciences. I think it can. For instance, in your view what are the shortcomings of the RNA world hypothesis?

Are viruses alive? Are prions alive?Why or why not?

The amazing thing is - no, there's not. Creationism never convinces anybody but Christians. And they're never convinced by the scientific evidence, they're convinced by the argument that evolution can't be reconciled with the Bible.Evolution is convincing because the scientific evidence is overwhelming. When people are convinced to become creationists it's because they find the religious arguments overwhelming.