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Author Topic:   is there any case for Intelligent design in man made products
lbm111
Member (Idle past 3927 days)
Posts: 32
Joined: 02-24-2012


Message 46 of 72 (654934)
03-05-2012 5:37 PM
Reply to: Message 42 by Panda
03-03-2012 4:14 AM


If you are in a factory watching humans manufacture supercomputers, then you would know that supercomputers had an intelligent cause.
In fact, it would require a very poor grasp of reality to think otherwise.
That is not an argument.
What you would know is that humans had assembled it. You are free to make whatever suppositions about them being intelligent you want but it does not prove it irrefutably.
Unless you mean you

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lbm111
Member (Idle past 3927 days)
Posts: 32
Joined: 02-24-2012


Message 47 of 72 (654935)
03-05-2012 5:37 PM
Reply to: Message 42 by Panda
03-03-2012 4:14 AM


If you are in a factory watching humans manufacture supercomputers, then you would know that supercomputers had an intelligent cause.
In fact, it would require a very poor grasp of reality to think otherwise.
That is not an argument.
What you would know is that humans had assembled it. You are free to make whatever suppositions about them being intelligent you want but it does not prove it irrefutably.
Unless you mean you know it in the same way that people just know God is with them.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 42 by Panda, posted 03-03-2012 4:14 AM Panda has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 48 by NoNukes, posted 03-05-2012 6:48 PM lbm111 has replied
 Message 49 by Panda, posted 03-05-2012 8:12 PM lbm111 has not replied

  
NoNukes
Inactive Member


Message 48 of 72 (654942)
03-05-2012 6:48 PM
Reply to: Message 47 by lbm111
03-05-2012 5:37 PM


That is not an argument.
What you would know is that humans had assembled it. You are free to make whatever suppositions about them being intelligent you want but it does not prove it irrefutably.
Who cares who did the actually assembling? The assemblers are not doing design work.
When I read the title of this thread, I formed an impression that this thread would be a defense of a rather silly argument, but I am of course, well aware that threads cannot be judged by their title.
Then I read this last post of yours, in which the silly argument that I expected upon reading the title, was put forth explicitly.
In the case of a super computer, we can likely identify from company records, every person involved in the design. We can interview them and review their records, notes, etc., and gain insight into their reasoning, the tradeoffs they made, and their design goals.
If we want we can review their credentials, and their academic backgrounds.
Or we can just look at textbooks describing the design principles, where we know those engineers read and used such textbooks, and we can identify where those principles are applied.
All of the above are things any fool could come up with. Yet you still want to argue that whether the design of a computer/car/etc. was intelligent is a matter of speculation and supposition.
Surely, you jest.
Herr Ober, zhalen bitte.

Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also in prison. Thoreau: Civil Disobedience (1846)
The apathy of the people is enough to make every statue leap from its pedestal and hasten the resurrection of the dead. William Lloyd Garrison

This message is a reply to:
 Message 47 by lbm111, posted 03-05-2012 5:37 PM lbm111 has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 50 by lbm111, posted 04-24-2012 11:38 AM NoNukes has replied

  
Panda
Member (Idle past 3713 days)
Posts: 2688
From: UK
Joined: 10-04-2010


Message 49 of 72 (654949)
03-05-2012 8:12 PM
Reply to: Message 47 by lbm111
03-05-2012 5:37 PM


lbm111 writes:
That is not an argument.
Correct.
It was a statement of fact.
lbm111 writes:
You are free to make whatever suppositions about them being intelligent you want but it does not prove it irrefutably.
No suppositions are needed: we have a lot of evidence of intelligence in humans.
But if, for some absurd reason, you think that humans aren't intelligent, then I doubt that any evidence will convince you of such a self-evident fact.
lbm111 writes:
Unless you mean you know it in the same way that people just know God is with them.
No, no. We know people are intelligent from testing and measuring.
It is not simply made up because it makes us feel better.
So - are you honestly claiming that you do not know if humans are intelligent or not?
When you look at a human-made factory filled with humans building objects designed by humans - you just shrug and go "I do not know if any intelligence was involved."?

If I were you
And I wish that I were you
All the things I'd do
To make myself turn blue

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lbm111
Member (Idle past 3927 days)
Posts: 32
Joined: 02-24-2012


Message 50 of 72 (660319)
04-24-2012 11:38 AM
Reply to: Message 48 by NoNukes
03-05-2012 6:48 PM


these are all valuable things to look at but none of them are a measurement of intelligence.
records, notes, etc will show you the process that created the design.
Equally you can look at the causes of any other event and find evidence of why it occured.

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NoNukes
Inactive Member


Message 51 of 72 (660328)
04-24-2012 5:14 PM
Reply to: Message 50 by lbm111
04-24-2012 11:38 AM


these are all valuable things to look at but none of them are a measurement of intelligence.
records, notes, etc will show you the process that created the design.
The records and notes will show you the process for creating the design including the decisions made by the designer. Is it your position that we cannot detemine intelligence by reviewing design decisions? That's ridiculous on its face.

Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also in prison. Thoreau: Civil Disobedience (1846)
The apathy of the people is enough to make every statue leap from its pedestal and hasten the resurrection of the dead. William Lloyd Garrison

This message is a reply to:
 Message 50 by lbm111, posted 04-24-2012 11:38 AM lbm111 has not replied

  
angletracks
Junior Member (Idle past 4354 days)
Posts: 13
Joined: 04-24-2012


Message 52 of 72 (660343)
04-24-2012 7:48 PM
Reply to: Message 11 by lbm111
02-24-2012 6:53 PM


Direct Evidence
Ibm111, you have no direct evidence that I exist. Perhaps I am an ipod who is unhappy with your suggestion that I am not intelligently designed! The point is, there are many things we believe on the basis of indirect, and not always quantifiable evidence. I believe that I am the son of the woman who raised me, but I have no direct evidence — there is only the testimony of my family and the fact that she fed me and was nice to me all those years.
The question is rather what hypothesis provides the best explanation for the facts. When I see a stop sign I have no direct evidence of how it came about or how it ended up at the intersection where I wish it hadn’t. But I don’t believe it got there by natural processes, because I have never heard of any natural processes that would result in an exact octagon of unvarying thickness with two contrasting and evenly distributed colors which spell a word in the language spoken around here.
How many units of intelligence must I have to figure out that any natural combination of wind and water and sunlight and radiation and air and whatever else you want to add did not produce that sign?
Why is this difficult?
Edited by Adminnemooseus, : Add blank lines between paragraphs.

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Dr Adequate
Member (Idle past 285 days)
Posts: 16113
Joined: 07-20-2006


Message 53 of 72 (660435)
04-25-2012 3:50 PM
Reply to: Message 41 by Portillo
03-03-2012 3:18 AM


Thats why Stephen C Meyer says, "Design theorists do no infer design just because natural processes cannot explain the origin of biological systems, but because these systems manifest the distinctive hallmarks of intelligently designed systems - that is, they possess features that in any other realm of experience would trigger the recognition of an intelligent cause."
Someone might as well say of (for example) computers: "these systems manifest the distinctive hallmarks of evolved systems - that is, they possess features that in any other realm of experience would trigger the recognition of evolution".
There are two things, evolution and design. In order to figure out which of them accounts for the history of an object, we need to know what its history actually was. We can't conclude that a tiger was designed and built in a factory because it has a vague resemblance to a computer any more than we can conclude from the same vague resemblance that a computer was produced by two computers having sex.

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PurpleYouko
Member
Posts: 714
From: Columbia Missouri
Joined: 11-11-2004


Message 54 of 72 (660484)
04-26-2012 10:14 AM
Reply to: Message 53 by Dr Adequate
04-25-2012 3:50 PM


There are two things, evolution and design.
Actually I think you missed out the one thing that his argument has been about all along.
I don't think his argument has anything to do with design at all.
It's more about whether the easily observed design (in human artifacts) is driven by intelligence or whether the inferred intelligence is actually just another natural process at work.

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angletracks
Junior Member (Idle past 4354 days)
Posts: 13
Joined: 04-24-2012


Message 55 of 72 (660509)
04-26-2012 12:51 PM
Reply to: Message 53 by Dr Adequate
04-25-2012 3:50 PM


Some definition of terms might help me understand what is being bandied about on this thread. According to presumably intelligent people at m-w.com, intelligence seems related to reason, manipulation of one’s environment, and information. Design involves creating or executing according to a plan (which requires a mind?), and evolution seems quite centered around the idea of process.
If these definitions are correct, I think they suggest to me that one critical point in the ID — evolution controversy is whether there are processes which could reasonably provide a sufficient explanation for the tiger or supercomputer without any manipulation of the environment (intelligence) according to a plan (design). Since I know of no supercomputers that have DNA or sex, I’m guessing natural selection and descent with modification will not be a sufficient process to explain very much about them. In the case of the tiger, once you’ve got one (OK, maybe two), then evolutionary processes can seem to explain quite a few things.
Natural selection and descent with modification seem to be processes that require a self-replicating organism to have any explanatory relevance. What process do we know of that give rise to such organisms from water and chemicals and such?

This message is a reply to:
 Message 53 by Dr Adequate, posted 04-25-2012 3:50 PM Dr Adequate has replied

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Dr Adequate
Member (Idle past 285 days)
Posts: 16113
Joined: 07-20-2006


Message 56 of 72 (660531)
04-26-2012 4:43 PM
Reply to: Message 55 by angletracks
04-26-2012 12:51 PM


Natural selection and descent with modification seem to be processes that require a self-replicating organism to have any explanatory relevance. What process do we know of that give rise to such organisms from water and chemicals and such?
Well, we can watch that happening --- as, for example, if you mix water, nucleotides, and Q-beta replicase. But it's not a good model for the origin of life, because where would you get the Q-beta replicase?
The actual mechanism of abiogenesis is something of a mystery.

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Portillo
Member (Idle past 4161 days)
Posts: 258
Joined: 11-14-2010


Message 57 of 72 (663970)
05-28-2012 4:38 AM
Reply to: Message 44 by Tangle
03-03-2012 9:13 AM


quote:
The design argument was decent enough until we started understanding things about our world or until you bring a religion into it.
That intelligent design is a viable alternative scientific theory, as long as it doesnt have a religious agenda is a fair point. One scientific discipline where we see intelligent design is engineering. Engineers and technicians use design and organisation to produce complex designs and systems. Engineers dont leave matter and energy on its own to develop something by random chance and time. The notion of intelligent design is not a mysterious, unknown theory. It is something that we know about from repeatability and experience in our everyday lives. A design pattern is a strategy or logic, for which there is only one known cause in the universe. Intelligence. Charles Lyells subtitle to his book the Principles of Geology is, "An attempt to explain the former changes of the Earth's surface by reference to causes now in operation".
So if your going to explain an event in the past, you have to invoke a cause which is known to produce the effect in question. What is the cause now in operation, that produces digital code? What is the cause for the production of information? Intelligence. The information scientist Henry Quastler said that, "The creation of new information is habitually associated with conscious activity." Eugene Myers, who was involved in the human genome project said, "What really astounds me is the architecture of life. The system is extremely complex. Its like it was designed. Theres a huge intelligence there. I dont see that as being unscientific. Others may, not me." Detecting design is a normal part of science.
Edited by Portillo, : No reason given.
Edited by Portillo, : No reason given.
Edited by Portillo, : No reason given.

And the conspiracy was strong, for the people increased continually - 2 Samuel 15:12
Can thine heart endure, or can thine hands be strong, in the days that I shall deal with thee? I the Lord have spoken it, and will do it. - Ezekial 22:14

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Replies to this message:
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 Message 59 by Dr Adequate, posted 05-28-2012 7:28 AM Portillo has replied
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 Message 72 by Dr Adequate, posted 06-12-2012 12:56 AM Portillo has not replied

  
Panda
Member (Idle past 3713 days)
Posts: 2688
From: UK
Joined: 10-04-2010


Message 58 of 72 (663977)
05-28-2012 7:09 AM
Reply to: Message 57 by Portillo
05-28-2012 4:38 AM


Portillo writes:
Detecting design is a normal part of science.
When scientists see a pocket-watch in the grass why do they not say "That grass was designed!"?

CRYSTALS!!

This message is a reply to:
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Dr Adequate
Member (Idle past 285 days)
Posts: 16113
Joined: 07-20-2006


Message 59 of 72 (663978)
05-28-2012 7:28 AM
Reply to: Message 57 by Portillo
05-28-2012 4:38 AM


So if your going to explain an event in the past, you have to invoke a cause which is known to produce the effect in question. What is the cause now in operation, that produces digital code?
That depends on the digital code. For example, we can see that the digital code in the DNA of living organisms is produced by reproduction with variation on the part of their parents, without any intelligence being involved in the processes that form it --- and, of course, without any supernatural entiities involved in its production in any way.
So if your going to explain an event in the past, you have to invoke a cause which is known to produce the effect in question.
Quite so. Welcome to evolution. Wipe your feet on the mat, they've got apologetics on them.
Eugene Myers, who was involved in the human genome project said, "What really astounds me is the architecture of life. The system is extremely complex. Its like it was designed. Theres a huge intelligence there. I dont see that as being unscientific. Others may, not me."
* coughs *
Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.
Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

This message is a reply to:
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Replies to this message:
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bluegenes
Member (Idle past 2478 days)
Posts: 3119
From: U.K.
Joined: 01-24-2007


Message 60 of 72 (663991)
05-28-2012 9:14 AM
Reply to: Message 57 by Portillo
05-28-2012 4:38 AM


Portillo writes:
So if your going to explain an event in the past, you have to invoke a cause which is known to produce the effect in question.
That rule would be rather unfair to creationism, wouldn't it? Supernatural beings aren't known to cause any effects, are they? They aren't even known to exist.
"Code" is known to be a prerequisite for all observed intelligent designers, and therefore, at least partially, a proximate cause of the "effect" known as intelligence.
It's always worth remembering that when humans intelligently design things successfully, those things must fit and function in the physical world. This constraint also applies to nature's unintelligent designs. That's probably the main reason why there are often resemblances between the two.
Because we make fire, it does not follow that volcano gods are responsible for volcanic activity or that lightning gods are necessary. Because we make canals, it does not follow that all waterways that can function as transport routes were intelligently designed.

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