Psience Quest

(2017-11-20, 12:53 AM)Dante Wrote: [ -> ]I strongly suggest and encourage you to attempt to actually make a legitimate, scientific argument that addresses an actually contended issue with blind, random evolution rather than nonstop bashing the DI as if it is the only source of disagreement with your "TOE" or as if any of their individual or associated scientists have produced no legitimate or data based research at all. You've asserted next to nothing relating to actual arguments presented by other posters here having to actually do with the research behind evolution.

Over and over again it's the same exact thing. The DI this, the DI that. Your statements have so little substance. You are so utterly biased and convinced of your worldview and are so completely not open minded as to anything other than that worldview, it's astonishing that you toil along on a forum like this still.

Have you noticed I've not argued with anyone that has excluded ID or has not referenced DI?

(2017-11-20, 01:07 AM)Steve001 Wrote: [ -> ]Have you noticed I've not argued with anyone that has excluded ID or has not referenced DI?

Have you noticed that in those responses you haven't said a peep about actual research? You literally dismissed it out of hand because of their agenda. You can't just ignore the research or studies because of that, which you have and literally said on the last page you would do. That's absurd, because there's no shortage of atheistic or materialistic agendas out and about too. You can't just ignore it because of that. You have to actually engage the studies, which you won't do because you go ballistic when the DI is mentioned in any capacity.

(2017-11-20, 01:36 AM)Dante Wrote: [ -> ]You can't just ignore the research or studies because of that...

Has the DI actually done any research?

(2017-11-20, 03:05 AM)malf Wrote: [ -> ]Has the DI actually done any research?

The scientists who are associated with the DI and are as a result dragged through the mud have, in many, many instances.

(2017-11-20, 03:14 AM)Dante Wrote: [ -> ]The scientists who are associated with the DI and are as a result dragged through the mud have, in many, many instances.

Any links to papers?

(2017-11-20, 05:15 AM)malf Wrote: [ -> ]Any links to papers?

A list, with commentary and up-to-date as of July 2017 can be downloaded in PDF format from here:

http://discovery.org/scripts/viewDB/file...d&id=10141

I expect the next step will be to denigrate the journals publishing these papers, perhaps especially BIO-Complexity. However, there are many papers published in other journals -- can all of those be denigrated too? I suggest checking out the entries for the journals in Wikipedia, which, as we all know, has been hijacked by people wanting to stifle all anti-Darwinian discussion. Hence, if any of these journals isn't singled out for attack, it's a fair bet that it's seen as genuine even by anti-ID ideologues.

I provide the link for this list not for the benefit of ID skeptics, whom I already know won't engage in discussion of evidence, but rather prefer to rely on the continued use of the genetic fallacy -- against which there is no scientific defence, because the genetic fallacy isn't itself scientific. No, I provide the link for the benefit of anyone with a genuinely open mind, and they can evaluate the evidence dispassionately.

My providing this link is not to be interpreted as my blanket support for ID. As I've said before, whilst I'm sympathetic to the work of the DI, my stance is nuanced: I believe that natural selection coupled with non-random mutation is likely the best explanation for evolution.

This idea isn't wholly incompatible with ID, but by the same token isn't wholly an endorsement of it either. Somewhere in the mechanisms of evolution, I believe some kind of intelligence has a role to play, but whether that role is "design" in the usual sense of the word is open to question.

Both sides of the debate may tend to think of "the designer" in omniscient and omnipotent terms. The ID people tend to think the designer's creations are perfect, whereas the Darwinists, that because organisms may not be perfect, the designer can't exist: they often quote examples such as the apparent inversion of layers in the vertebrate eye, the appendix, the path of the vagus nerve (particularly evident in giraffe's long neck), "junk" DNA and so on. However, not all of these may actually be functionless or vestigial.

Personally, I'm content to accept that whatever intelligence there might be in evolution, it doesn't have a tightly prescribed aim, and isn't necessarily perfect in its outcomes. I think of it as being playfully exploratory, sometimes producing organisms that are less than ideally suited to their environments; in which case, natural selection will tend to weed them out and they may eventually go extinct.

For me, the "designer" isn't an entity that has planned evolution out in minute detail: it's something that produces a general tendency in evolution, towards greater order and complexity, but may not "know" exactly how to get there. It's also self-evident that occasionally, it makes great leaps in complexity and order in comparatively short timescales, witness the Cambrian and subsequent evolutionary "explosions".

This makes more sense to me than positing entirely blind processes devoid of any kind of intelligence. By this logic, artifacts (everything from pots to supersonic jets), plainly developed by human beings, must also, ultimately, have been produced by accident. Why should accident have generated organisms like us that can indisputably "design"? Why does no one (except the most cranky of materialists who think of consciousness as being illusory), ever question the ability of consciousness to inform human activity? How can they accept "design" activity in human beings and yet simultaneously reject it in nature in general?

A lot of the issue revolves around that word, "design", which implies having a definite purpose in mind -- be that of the human or some higher form of mind. As I've intimated, I don't think that any kind of "design" is perfect from the get-go. Mankind didn't get to the perfect anything straight away. It got there through endless experimentation, and still the experiments continue and will probably continue to do so. I suspect it might be the same way with higher consciousness, too.

I plan fairly soon to post something on biomimicry, which, correct me if I'm wrong, hasn't been discussed in this thread.

(2017-11-20, 01:07 AM)Steve001 Wrote: [ -> ]Have you noticed I've not argued with anyone that has excluded ID or has not referenced DI?

The point is not whether people have referenced the DI, but whether they agree with them that Yaweh designed the whole of life, and everything else.

Non Christians - such as myself - can admire the DI for the way it marshals evidence, not so much in favour of the idea that God did it, as against the conventional theory of evolution solely by natural selection.

Sometimes the right way forward in science, is to stop claiming that something is understood, and to return to the default position that the explanation is yet to be determined. In that way, people are freed off to look at the subject afresh.

In the same way as non-Christians such as yourself, can admire great cathedrals as works of art without feeling that they are supporting Christianity.

David

(2017-11-19, 09:50 PM)Kamarling Wrote: [ -> ]It wasn't until fairly recent years that I gave much thought to Darwinism or ID or any other opposing theories. That interest was kick-started by the long running discussion on the Skeptiko forum with Paul and Lone Shaman, Michael, David B and a few others debating both sides. I learned a lot from that exchange. My mind was particularly blown by the videos of the intricate complexity of the DNA replication factory in the cell. Absolutely amazing - I challenge anyone to claim otherwise. Also the code in DNA had some remarkable similarities to the codes I was used to working with in my job in computers. Even down to what is called "stop bits" and (maybe) error correction*.

I can't tell you how much I wish that Lone Shaman was posting on one or other of the two sites. He is immensely knowledgeable, not just in biology, but also GR and cosmology.

Some time back, I contacted him and urged him to return, but although he is well, I don't think he intends ever to return.

Eukaryotic cells do have a form of error detection, but I forget the details.

David

Kamarling Wrote:So when I read this I have to wonder why, considering that skeptics are so fond of Occam's Razor, that it suddenly loses its appeal when we talk about evolution.

How so?

Quote:"Our willingness to accept scientific claims that are against common sense is the key to an understanding of the real struggle between science and the supernatural. We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a commitment to materialism. It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counter-intuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door."

You're really going to take this quote out of context?

"Many of the most fundamental claims of science are against common sense and seem absurd on their face. Do physicists really expect me to accept without serious qualms that the pungent cheese that I had for lunch is really made up of tiny, tasteless, odorless, colorless packets of energy with nothing but empty space between them? Astronomers tell us without apparent embarrassment that they can see stellar events that occurred millions of years ago, whereas we all know that we see things as they happen. ... Our willingness to accept scientific claims that are against common sense is the key to an understanding of the real struggle between science and the supernatural. We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a commitment to materialism. It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counter-intuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door. The eminent Kant scholar Lewis Beck used to say that anyone who could believe in God could believe in anything. To appeal to an omnipotent deity is to allow that at any moment the regularities of nature may be ruptured, that miracles may happen."


~~ Paul

(2017-11-15, 01:13 PM)stephenw Wrote: [ -> ]I cannot disagree more strongly.  Design has a definition in terms of enforcing purpose and intent, whether done by a genius in engineering, or by a single celled organism.  I can quote C. Darwin as to writings where he appears to express exactly the idea that mentality goes to root of living things and evolution.  The key to design is feedback on previous versions!!!!!

Then evolution is not a design process. If you find an evolved thing that you think is designed, you are simply projecting human design onto it.

~~ Paul