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Member (Idle past 1479 days) Posts: 2161 From: Cambridgeshire, UK. Joined: |
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Author | Topic: A thought on Intelligence behind Design | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Peter Member (Idle past 1479 days) Posts: 2161 From: Cambridgeshire, UK. Joined: |
I have said a few times that I feel intelligent design
to be a tautology ... but having read varous posts over the last few months I have changed my mind. If we take design to be the production of a system which issuited to a particular purpose (note: not designed for that purpose, but the result is suited to it) then we do not require any intelligence behind the design. An algorithm that produces electrical circuits or landscapedrawings is performing design, but has no intelligence behind it. Heritable variation + natural selection operates to 'design'biological systems to suit a particular set of environmental constraints. Viewed this way evidence of design is not evidence of'intelligent design'. To find the intelligence behind a design requires somethingelse. Doesn't that reduce ID to a search for the designer?
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Mammuthus Member (Idle past 6476 days) Posts: 3085 From: Munich, Germany Joined: |
"Doesn't that reduce ID to a search for the designer? "
Was ID anything else?And in their search, they have never been able to propose a testable, falsifiable hypothesis for a designer and thus ID is not science...it is religion with technical jargon. cheers,M
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Peter Member (Idle past 1479 days) Posts: 2161 From: Cambridgeshire, UK. Joined: |
Well I never thought it was anything else, but I hadn't
thought of a clear and logical way of asking the question before.
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Peter Member (Idle past 1479 days) Posts: 2161 From: Cambridgeshire, UK. Joined: |
I was hoping for some kind of ID comment on any ideas
here .... ah well. In essence I am asking why ID uses 'evidence' of design toinfer a designer, when it can be shown that evolutionary processes can produce 'designed' objects.
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Peter Member (Idle past 1479 days) Posts: 2161 From: Cambridgeshire, UK. Joined: |
Still no takers?
No IDer's tuning in at the mo'?
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NosyNed Member Posts: 8996 From: Canada Joined: |
What they keep trying to say is that somethings can [q]not[/q] arise through evolutionary steps. You know, the "irreducible complexity".
The obvious clue to what they are up to is the name. If they really were interested in science they would talk about the "problem of complexity in evolutionary theory" without jumping to the solution so fast. Obviously they're jumping to the solution and trying to find something that can be used as support. If they had a different agenda they would be trying to find solutions for any apparent "irreducible complexity". If they did this they wouldn't be getting caught over and over again with things with are not irreducibly complex. They'd figure it out themselves before publishing.
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Peter Member (Idle past 1479 days) Posts: 2161 From: Cambridgeshire, UK. Joined: |
It seems to me to be even more insidious.
The definition of 'irreducible complexity' doesn't itselfpreclude step-wise development of the IC system. I have not seen any proof of 'IC cannot evolve' ... andopened a thread sometime ago suggesting it was an argument from incredulity. The main thing I was looking at here was the relationshipbetween 'design' and an 'intelligence' behind the design. It seems to me that ID focusses on the idea that 'design' automatically requires an intelligent designer ... so allthey look for (as far as i can see, correct me if I am wrong) is 'evidence' of 'design' and then say 'See!!' Given the 'genetic programming' model of evolution, and thehighly complex results leads me to conclude that 'design' is possible via mechanistic process being directed by some form of selective pressure. This removes the need for intelligence. We then need to look at any complex system and see if we canfind the fingerprints of intelligence ... more importantly to consider what such fingerprints might look like. The focus of ID has been on D when it should be on I.
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Warren Inactive Member |
Peter<< Given the 'genetic programming' model of evolution, and the
highly complex results leads me to conclude that 'design' is possible via mechanistic process being directed by some form of selective pressure. This removes the need for intelligence. >> William Dembski<< No genetic algorithm or evolutionary computation has designed a complex, multipart, functionally integrated, irreducibly complex system without stacking the deck by incorporating the very solution that was supposed to be attained from scratch.>>
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crashfrog Member (Idle past 1467 days) Posts: 19762 From: Silver Spring, MD Joined: |
No genetic algorithm or evolutionary computation has designed a complex, multipart, functionally integrated, irreducibly complex system without stacking the deck by incorporating the very solution that was supposed to be attained from scratch. So what? This is not a description of living systems, in my view. Living systems aren't well designed, or functionally integrated - they only work well enough to reproduce. If an intelligent designer had designed life, especially the human body, I'd send the design back. ("Bleeding every 28 days?! Unacceptable!")
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Warren Inactive Member |
Peter<< I have not seen any proof of 'IC cannot evolve' ... and
opened a thread sometime ago suggesting it was an argument from incredulity.>> The ID argument isn't that certain things can't evolve. It's impossible to prove a negative. ID critics try to put ID proponents in the position of proving the impossible. Where is the evidence that the flagellum DID evolve? Arguing that something is merely possible is about as weak an argument as there can be. "Any one of us can come up with multiple, plausible stories concerning the evolution of a given biological feature. But plausibility is about the weakest criterion one can apply to an evolutionary hypothesis." - Robert Dorit, Biology Dept., Yale University [This message has been edited by Warren, 06-17-2003]
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Warren Inactive Member |
Crashfrog: "So what? This is not a description of living systems, in my view. Living systems aren't well designed, or functionally integrated - they only work well enough to reproduce. If an intelligent designer had designed life, especially the human body, I'd send the design back. ("Bleeding every 28 days?! Unacceptable!") "
Would you send your brain back? If your brain is poorly designed then how do you know the view you have just presented is correct? Why are you even debating this issue with other poorly designed brains? In any event, the human body isn't an IC system. The concept of IC in biology is mainly confined to systems within the cell such as molecular machines. [This message has been edited by Warren, 06-17-2003]
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crashfrog Member (Idle past 1467 days) Posts: 19762 From: Silver Spring, MD Joined: |
The concept of IC in biology is mainly confined to systems within the cell such as molecular machines. IC is a non-argument. Nothing is truly irreducably complex. Consider the arch. The arch is "irreducibly complex", by the standard definition - remove one component, and the whole thing fails. But arches aren't constructed all at once by fiat, they're built piece-by-piece. How do they do this? With scaffolds that support the system until all the pieces are in place. When that occurs, the scaffold is no longer needed, and is removed. So, where you or Demski see irreducibly complex cellular machinery, I see systems that evolved using scaffolds that are no longer present. Sometimes they are - our cells contain both the "modern" aerobic respiration metabolisms and the "ancient", less-efficient anaerobic pathways.
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NosyNed Member Posts: 8996 From: Canada Joined: |
without stacking the deck by incorporating the very solution that was supposed to be attained from scratch What does he mean by "incorporating the solution". That is not what is done? the "from scratch" might mean he wants an algorithm to start with nothing and arrive somewhere specific. How is that a sensible disagreement. The GA's show how a design can come about without intelligence. That's all we are analogizing here.
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NosyNed Member Posts: 8996 From: Canada Joined: |
The ID argument isn't that certain things can't evolve. It's impossible to prove a negative. ID critics try to put ID proponents in the position of proving the impossible. Where is the evidence that the flagellum DID evolve? Arguing that something is merely possible is about as weak an argument as there can be. The ID argument seems to have two approaches:1) "You don't know exactly how it evolved." This is just an argument from ignorance I guess. Not very convincing when we keep learning new things. (see my post in the book nook) 2) "It can not evolve in steps because it is irredicably complex". This is the arguement around the flagellum. Apparently it has been demonstrated that the flagellum is not "irreducibley complex". The flagellum argument was that it COULD NOT have evolved. Thus showing that it could is enough to demolish that.
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Warren Inactive Member |
NosyNed: "The flagellum argument was that it COULD NOT have evolved. Thus showing that it could is enough to demolish that."
Absolutely false. As I said before, the ID argument isn't about proving something impossible. Here are some more comments from Dembski that points this out: Note that to attribute such an incapacity to the Darwinian mechanism isn't to say that it's logically impossible for the Darwinian mechanism to attain such structures. It's logically possible for just about anything to attain anything else via a vastly improbable or fortuitous event. For instance, it's logically possible that with my very limited chess ability I might defeat the reigning world champion, Vladimir Kramnik, in ten straight games. But if I do so, it will be despite my limited chess ability and not because of it. Likewise, if the Darwinian mechanism is the conduit by which a Darwinian pathway leads to an irreducibly complex biochemical system, then it is despite the intrinsic properties or capacities of that mechanism. Thus, in saying that irreducibly complex biochemical structures are inaccessible to Darwinian pathways, design proponents are saying that the Darwinian mechanism has no intrinsic capacity for generating such structures except as vastly improbable or fortuitous events. Accordingly, to attribute irreducible complexity to a direct Darwinian pathway is like attributing Mount Rushmore to wind and water erosion. There's a sheer possibility that wind and water erosion could sculpt Mount Rushmore but not a realistic one. Intelligent design's demonstration of the failure of Darwin's program is a combination of empirical and theoretical arguments. In both cases, however, the issue is one of connectivitycan the mechanism in question supply a step-by-step path connecting two otherwise disparate elements. [This message has been edited by Warren, 06-17-2003]
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