(2021-01-24, 10:45 PM)stephenw Wrote: [ -> ]"Analytical mind" includes advanced levels of understanding that took a long road in mental evolution to appear. Information processes, such as the selection of a target future state need go all the way down to a root level of life. Intent, as a TFS, is there with the basic efferent instructions: to go, consume, retreat, reproduce and stop/refocus. Just like a Turing machine reading a tape, living things exhibit, logical, functional and goal-state behavior in dealing with their environments.
Immune systems need not be aware of their own mental work to detect bacteria and respond with an array of defenses. All of the detection and selected response are instinctual and subconscious. Simulations of the information processes employed in the health and regulation of the simplest organisms are masterworks in command and control.
Evidence for abstract analysis is maybe, a few million years old. Encoded instructions for ontogenetic development and self-regulation in hostile environments are billions of years old. From the start, living things have explored the informational environment - and have used every trick in physics and computing to get here with their talents so gained.
Mental evolution has yet to break through as a field of defined research. Bioinformatics has. The science is clear now --- that mutations are not random to fitness. That the important part of natural selection is not the magic of nature. It is how mental selections change real-world probabilities that enforce intent and purposeful functioning by living beings. Selections based on simple understanding of affordances are the mechanisms for exporting mental decisions into the local information environment.
"Selection of a target future state" has many implications, when it comes down to the details of what is involved in an actual design problem like that of the bacterial flagellum. Say it's at the initial stage of design. The bacterium has no consciousness, therefore has no insight into the problem. It literally knows nothing, because to "know" implies consciousness. That means it doesn't and can't know that a propeller, a hub/bearing through the cell wall, a motor, and an assembly machine are all necessary. Since it has no consciousness it is fundamentally incapable of either envisioning or knowing or desiring the future state of being able to move via a new cellular organelle with certain basic components. I disagree that there can possibly be intent in this simple organism - intent clearly implies consciousness, which the bacterium simply doesn't have. The word "mental" simply doesn't apply to this organism.
(2021-01-25, 01:48 AM)nbtruthman Wrote: [ -> ]So be careful in espousing Darwinism because you're skeptical of the theory of ID, and many of the people in the ID movement are Christians who adhere to a theology you heartily dislike.
The bold is a spurious charge. Look back to my posts - I'm the person who most advocated for Christian philosophers like Feser, Swineburne, Bonnette, on Skeptiko and here. I don't even think anyone had posted about Christian Apologetics on Skeptiko until I showed up?
The only religion [outside the Physicalist faith] I can think of that I've actively criticized is Hinduism, and only then insofar as the caste system is concerned.
ID being a half-at-best science, with its practitioners holding to the claim that there's nothing to be said scientifically about who the maker of the flagellum is, has nothing to do with disliking Christianity. It has to do with IDers not presenting a compelling enough argument even for other Christians to take it seriously, and then putting blinders on regarding the reality that their field is a branch of parapsychology.
This isn't to say it's all garbage, there are hints of design like that grasshopper having gears in its legs and other evolutionary oddities
like the 3d optical illusion on this moth's back. And as Kastrup
notes there's no way to be certain mutations in the past were just random. And much of our mental existence, such as our capacity for rationality and aboutness-of-thought, cannot be explained in evolutionary terms.
So perhaps someday IDers will have something that is rock solid, but I'm not convinced that day has come.
I think that the argument about whether God did it is a distraction. As is whether or not ID proponents are pushing Christian myths. What is of value, however, is asking legitimate questions about if and how NS/RM can produce complex organisms over time. Start with DNA for example, the most complex molecule imaginable which operates like a well managed factory.
Questions about the motives of some Old Testament deity who allows cancer and plagues are pointless. That’s for another discussion with theologians. For what it is worth, I don’t think there would be much point in evolving this physical reality without all of its negative aspects as well as the positive ones. I might say that that seems to be the point of it. School of hard knocks and all that. But again, that’s not relevant here.
I have yet to see a convincing argument about how NS/RM can account for all of the rich diversity of life and irreducible complexity can’t just be dismissed because it is argued by a self-confessed Christian. I’m certainly no expert but whenever I have watched a debate involving the well known ID scientists I have not been impressed by the arguments they are expected to answer ... which usually boil down to the same as are being put forward here - “so you’re saying that God did it? This same God who lets children die of cancer?”.
(2021-01-25, 08:06 AM)Kamarling Wrote: [ -> ]Questions about the motives of some Old Testament deity who allows cancer and plagues are pointless.
Absolutely. Not understanding somebody's motives is not proof of their non-existence or the non-existence of something that has a similar function.
(2021-01-25, 08:06 AM)Kamarling Wrote: [ -> ]...which usually boil down to the same as are being put forward here - “so you’re saying that God did it? This same God who lets children die of cancer?”.
Hmmm I think the Darwinist is putting forth a different - and fallacious - argument than the one I'm making.
I'm saying there are two separate parts to ID ->
Part 1. Is there evidence of design in the evolutionary chain?
Part 2. Who might be the designers?
Part 1 is up for grabs IMO, though it is hard to know how we get rationality and the capacity to hold concepts in our minds without some kind of intervention. But I also don't think IDers have shown a smoking gun.
Part 2 is something IDers pretend isn't up for any scientific analysis and so people can just decide for themselves, though I think this is wrong. We can use our science along with reason to at the very least rank the designer candidates. And God, as in the big-G who shows up in any scripture, is pretty far down that list.
The Darwinist seems to be saying that you can knock God off the list in Part 2, and this negates even consideration of the evidence in Part 1. Which, as noted above, is a fallacious argument but also not the one I'm making.
(2021-01-25, 08:06 AM)Kamarling Wrote: [ -> ]I think that the argument about whether God did it is a distraction. As is whether or not ID proponents are pushing Christian myths. What is of value, however, is asking legitimate questions about if and how NS/RM can produce complex organisms over time. Start with DNA for example, the most complex molecule imaginable which operates like a well managed factory.
Questions about the motives of some Old Testament deity who allows cancer and plagues are pointless. That’s for another discussion with theologians. For what it is worth, I don’t think there would be much point in evolving this physical reality without all of its negative aspects as well as the positive ones. I might say that that seems to be the point of it. School of hard knocks and all that. But again, that’s not relevant here.
I have yet to see a convincing argument about how NS/RM can account for all of the rich diversity of life and irreducible complexity can’t just be dismissed because it is argued by a self-confessed Christian. I’m certainly no expert but whenever I have watched a debate involving the well known ID scientists I have not been impressed by the arguments they are expected to answer ... which usually boil down to the same as are being put forward here - “so you’re saying that God did it? This same God who lets children die of cancer?”.
You hit the nail on the head.
(2021-01-25, 02:14 AM)Sciborg_S_Patel Wrote: [ -> ]The bold is a spurious charge. Look back to my posts - I'm the person who most advocated for Christian philosophers like Feser, Swineburne, Bonnette, on Skeptiko and here. I don't even think anyone had posted about Christian Apologetics on Skeptiko until I showed up?
The only religion I can think of that I've actively criticized is Hinduism, and only then insofar as the caste system is concerned.
ID being a half-at-best science, with its practitioners holding to the claim that there's nothing to be said scientifically about who the maker of the flagellum is, has nothing to do with disliking Christianity. It has to do with IDers not presenting a compelling enough argument even for other Christians to take it seriously, and then putting blinders on regarding the reality that their field is a branch of parapsychology.
This isn't to say it's all garbage, there are hints of design like that grasshopper having gears in its legs and other evolutionary oddities like the 3d optical illusion on this moth's back. And as Kastrup notes there's no way to be certain mutations in the past were just random. And much of our mental existence, such as our capacity for rationality and aboutness-of-thought, cannot be explained in evolutionary terms.
So perhaps someday IDers will have something that is rock solid, but I'm not convinced that day has come.
I notice that you haven't answered my invitation to explain why you apparently don't agree with the clear implications of Darwinism that I quoted. Accordingly, I have to assume you agree with them and Provine and still are inclined to accept Darwinism as the explanation for how life has evolved. Since these clear implications totally rule out existence of the spiritual as an existential reality, then I assume that you consider that nonexistence as quite likely.
(2021-01-25, 05:55 PM)nbtruthman Wrote: [ -> ]I notice that you haven't answered my invitation to explain why you apparently don't agree with the clear implications of Darwinism that I quoted. Accordingly, I have to assume you agree with them and Provine and still are inclined to accept Darwinism as the explanation for how life has evolved. Since these clear implications totally rule out existence of the spiritual as an existential reality, then I assume that you consider that nonexistence as quite likely.
I can't even tell if you are being serious here, or trying to make some point about how ID is the only hope for defeating Physicalism.
I think it's pretty clear from my posting history that I am opposed to the Physicalist faith.
As for whether Darwinism inherently means human existence is best described by Nihilism - no, I'm not convinced that's the case. Does Darwinsim have to mean Physicalism? - Donald Hoffman doesn't seem to think so.
(2021-01-25, 06:20 PM)Sciborg_S_Patel Wrote: [ -> ]I can't even tell if you are being serious here, or trying to make some point about how ID is the only hope for defeating Physicalism.
I think it's pretty clear from my posting history that I am opposed to the Physicalist faith.
As for whether Darwinism inherently means human existence is best described by Nihilism - no, I'm not convinced that's the case. Does Darwinsim have to mean Physicalism? - Donald Hoffman doesn't seem to think so.
Yes. That's why I think your position is self-contradictory. Darwinism claims all aspects of all living organisms including human beings arose in evolution through an undirected basically mechanical/statistical process of random with respect to fitness genetic variations interacting with natural selection. No meaning, purpose, intelligence, etc. allowed. How could this universal scheme not lead to nihilism? Please explain.
(2021-01-25, 06:33 PM)nbtruthman Wrote: [ -> ]Yes. That's why I think your position is self-contradictory. Darwinism claims all aspects of all living organisms including human beings arose in evolution through an undirected basically mechanical/statistical process of random with respect to fitness genetic variations interacting with natural selection. No meaning, purpose, intelligence, etc. allowed. How could this universal scheme not lead to nihilism? Please explain.
1. I've never said design is false, just that the probabilistic case IDers make isn't 100% convincing.
2. If a child is an accidental pregnancy, does that mean his/her whole existence is therefore meaningless? I'd say it is not meaningless, and extrapolate that to the entire human race.
3. As Kastrup notes, we just don't know if mutations across biological history were random. Even if the progress of evolution has no interventions, that doesn't mean souls don't exist.
Perhaps the Cosmic Fine Tuners - who might've been ourselves - planned evolution out at the beginning before the Big Bang.
Perhaps evolution is "guided" by genuine randomness but only after a point did the non-conscious biological mass become suitable for incarnating souls who exist in another realm.
And so on..