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Author Topic:   Why only one Designer
Taq
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Message 14 of 377 (612141)
04-13-2011 1:28 PM
Reply to: Message 12 by slevesque
04-13-2011 12:39 PM


If you want to critic the intelligent design movement, I would suggest reading at least a book or two from an Ider explaining what ID is.
The Wedge Document seemed to sum it up nicely.
If you would want to show that an IDer would have to logically believe in multiple designers, you would have to show that a designed thing absolutely requires multiple designers.
I would argue that the nested hierarchy is much more consistent with multiple designers that are blind to each others designs. I see no other way to explain the nested hierarchy from a design perspective. Either that, or a single designer that slightly modifies pre-existing species and then suffers amnesia after designing the new species.
IDer's like to cite archaeological artifacts as an example of evidence. If they were to stay true to this example they would use the same techniques. For example, there are many types of arrowheads. Differences in arrowheads are due to differences in cultural origins. That is, separate designers for different designs that originated from a shared historical archetype. Why shouldn't this same technique be used for life? Each life design group was given the basic metazoan layout and then each life design group changed things from there. This would be a much better explanation for why the cephalopod and vertebrate eye are so different, yet perform the same function. A single designer would have no problem mixing and matching different design units between cephalopods and vertebrates.
IMHO, assuming that ID is true for the moment, the nested hierarchy screams multiple designers.

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Taq
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Posts: 10255
Joined: 03-06-2009
Member Rating: 7.5


Message 35 of 377 (612242)
04-14-2011 11:06 AM
Reply to: Message 21 by slevesque
04-13-2011 8:33 PM


Dembski's claim that specified complexity is an indication of design has nothing to do with the 'human design things analogy'.
Given Dembski's complete failure of applying specified complexity to actual DNA sequences it would appear that SC has nothing to do with biology, either. Recently, there was a thread where the Uncommon Descent community was challenged to calculate the SC of some simple biological examples. No one was able to do it.
But the 'single designer' hypothesis does not come intrisincally from ID, it comes from other areas of the IDers life.
It comes from the same place that all ID conclusions come from.

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Taq
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Posts: 10255
Joined: 03-06-2009
Member Rating: 7.5


Message 51 of 377 (612278)
04-14-2011 1:46 PM
Reply to: Message 48 by slevesque
04-14-2011 1:24 PM


All I'm saying is that ID and biblical creationism isn't the same thing, . . .
That's like saying that Brown's Hydroplate Theory is not the same as biblical creationism.
The motivation of ID is to find some scientific sounding rationale for already held religious beliefs. ID is not motivated by scientific discovery or increasing our knowledge of the natural world. If it were we would see ID proponents doing scientific research. They aren't doing that research, nor do they have any intention of doing any research.
Biblical creationism is a movement that looks to attack science that conflicts with the idea that God created through supernatural means. That is exactly what ID is, and that is exactly what the proponents of ID do. ID proponents attack evolution without ever supporting their ID claims with positive evidence. Behe's entire IC argument boils down to "Not evolution, therefore ID".

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Taq
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Posts: 10255
Joined: 03-06-2009
Member Rating: 7.5


Message 52 of 377 (612279)
04-14-2011 1:48 PM
Reply to: Message 50 by slevesque
04-14-2011 1:31 PM


And now your just lying (unknowingly, I hope), because Behe is very clearly a theistic evolutionist and always has been.
Behe argues that the differences between species can not be explain by evolutionary mechanisms. That is not what theistic evolution is.

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Taq
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Posts: 10255
Joined: 03-06-2009
Member Rating: 7.5


Message 69 of 377 (612301)
04-14-2011 4:15 PM
Reply to: Message 53 by slevesque
04-14-2011 1:55 PM


Behe believes in the fact of evolution (nested hierarchy, fossil record, etc.) but not on the Neo-Darwinian mechanism.
Theistic evolutionists do accept the modern theory of evolution, so I guess Behe is not a theistic evolutionist.

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Taq
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Posts: 10255
Joined: 03-06-2009
Member Rating: 7.5


Message 70 of 377 (612302)
04-14-2011 4:22 PM
Reply to: Message 58 by slevesque
04-14-2011 2:18 PM


Depends on how you define evolution, but in any case Behe goes far beyond any limit a creationist accepts about the ToE.
In another post you say that Behe does not accept the theory of evolution. In message 53 you state:
"Behe believes in the fact of evolution (nested hierarchy, fossil record, etc.) but not on the Neo-Darwinian mechanism."
The Neo-Darwinian mechanism IS THE THEORY OF EVOLUTION.
All I'm saying is that ID and creationism isn't the same thing.
How are they different? It is the same supernatural mechanism in both cases, isn't it?
God it's so hard to pass such an easily understable point around here sometimes. I probably feel like you do when you talk to a creationist who keeps repeating the same PRATT ...
It would help if you would actually explain the differences instead of just saying that they are different.

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Taq
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Posts: 10255
Joined: 03-06-2009
Member Rating: 7.5


Message 72 of 377 (612304)
04-14-2011 4:26 PM
Reply to: Message 65 by slevesque
04-14-2011 2:58 PM


The point isn't if they both involve magic or not,
That is exactly our point, so it would behoove you to actually address it.
just repeating the same things and hoping each time they'll become true. Plugging you fingers in your ears about everything else.
Physician, heal thyself.
He accepts absolutely everything about evolution, and all other origins-related scientific theories (big bang, etc.)
But he also believes in magic, particularly Jesus's ressurection. Does that make him a creationist ?
It makes your argument a red herring. We are not talking about Jesus' resurrection. We are talking about change in species over time.

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Taq
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Posts: 10255
Joined: 03-06-2009
Member Rating: 7.5


Message 111 of 377 (612412)
04-15-2011 11:07 AM
Reply to: Message 109 by Straggler
04-15-2011 6:11 AM


Re: I Agree With Slevesque
Many in this thread are conflating the Intelligent Design movement with Intelligent Design as an explanatory proposition.
I would argue that they are one in the same. The purpose of ID is to give a scientific veneer to dogmatically held religious beliefs. When you really push ID you always end up at the same place: It just looks designed because I think so. This is where the ID proponent started before looking at any of the evidence. Along the way you will stumble on arguments from ignorance and arguments from incredulity, but never arguments from positive evidence. The beginning of any ID investigation starts with a person's religious beliefs and never strays far from them.
ID as a position is not inherently Christian.
But it is inherently creationist, no matter what the religious flavor is.

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Taq
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Posts: 10255
Joined: 03-06-2009
Member Rating: 7.5


(1)
Message 113 of 377 (612426)
04-15-2011 1:35 PM
Reply to: Message 108 by Straggler
04-15-2011 4:34 AM


Re: Parsimony?
I have read your posts in this thread. I can't find any arguments against the validity of applying parsimony to the issue at hand. You have asserted that parsimony has "nothing to do with reality" but beyond that assertion you haven't said anything at all to counter the following:
I think the point being made is that reality is not forced to follow rules of parsimony. In science, we are trying to model reality so we must be careful to recognize the fact that parsimony is only a rule of thumb, not a natural law.
A good example of this is DNA phylogenies. The tools used to construct DNA phylogenies rely heavily on rules of parsimony. For example, a shared base at an orthologous position is assumed to be a direct result of inheritance from a common ancestor. The rules throw out the possibility that the base changed somewhere in the lineage and then changed back to the ancestral sequence. However, anyone doing these analyses will readily admit that reverse mutations can happen.
Edited by Taq, : No reason given.

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Taq
Member
Posts: 10255
Joined: 03-06-2009
Member Rating: 7.5


(1)
Message 366 of 377 (616620)
05-23-2011 3:23 PM
Reply to: Message 363 by Ryan
05-20-2011 9:13 PM


Well, here's my answer to that: why more than one designer? using your same logic, (creationist logic) if one designer has ultimate intellegence, like creationists (I'm speaking from a Christian's point of view) believe, why have more than one, when that one can make it all by himself without any help?
The data doesn't fit a single designer. An omnipotent designer would not need to reuse designs, as one example. For such a designer, starting from scratch for each and every species would be just as easy as making small tweaks to an existing design. On top of that, given convergent evolution it would appear that even a single non-omnipotent designer does not make sense either. Why else would single designer need to make the bat wing so different to the bird wing? Why the stark differences between the retina of the squid and vertebrate fish? And why would a single designer be restricted to a nested hierarchy? The only set of designers that makes sense, at least to me, is multiple designers that are blind to one anothers designs.

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