A splendid video about evolution

Ah. They're just using clear examples to show that design by non-physical intelligence/s is a thing. Same with bacteria flagellum.

The mistake is in thinking of eyeballs as distinct from the whole form. Or any particular thing. Every biological form we know of starts as a single cell from conception, so we can't think of the eyeball as truly separate. Is there anything in DNA that tells the organism how to build an eyeball or where to put it in the form?

Anyways, the eyeball must be designed as part of the whole organism, because the whole organism is a complex form where multiple systems depend on each other.The eyeball must be designed to work with the rest of the organism, and allow the organism to do what it needs to do. It's why you have so many different eye designs from species to species.

Can you elaborate what you mean by "complex form"?

I just find it hard to see how we can know the eyeball can't be formed via evolution as normally accepted. This isn't to say there was no intervention or guidance, just that these timescales and the associated probability of the eye being developed are hard to judge.

Can you elaborate what you mean by "complex form"?

Well... every organism functions as a whole. No part in an organism can function properly without the others ~ in say, the digestive system, which requires every organ to be functioning properly.

I just find it hard to see how we can know the eyeball can't be formed via evolution as normally accepted.

There is no explanation by Darwinists about how it can evolve by "natural selection" ~ there are the just-so stories they have, which aren't an explanation.

This isn't to say there was no intervention or guidance, just that these timescales and the associated probability of the eye being developed are hard to judge.

The problem with big timescales is that you still won't logically get an eye evolving per Darwinian principles.

Even with intervention and guidance from intelligent designers, it doesn't make any sense for it to be gradual, when an intelligent designer can design it, and make it part of an organism in its full form. That is to say, gradual evolution is redundant. We have no evidence of gradually evolving eyeballs, either.

We know from the research in biology that DNA never appears to gain new information ~ it only ever appears to devolve, by degrading, and losing functionality, so as to deal with various problems. That is, random mutations never appear to add information, only take it away, to help stressed organisms survive.

So what are we to make of the Finely Tuned constants that put our universe together?
While I would agree it isn't *proof* of Design, it does at least provide evidence suggestive of someone making the universe.

"Someone making the universe Experience"  - yes us.

If they are making the universe from outside the universe - again, not definitively necessary even if one accepts Design - then this is evidence for a "spiritual" reality, if by which we mean a reality outside this universe where one can form universes like ours?

One can't get outside of Experience... we're stuck in it.

I also think, regarding the question of stuff like NDEs or other OOBE journeys, that we do have evidence in the sense of eye-witness accounts. However I would agree that this evidence's weight is made less strong by the fact that different people report different things, though there are commonalities we need to consider. Additionally, the strength of this evidence is dependent on what can be verified which are OOBE observations of *this* world. 

Yes, but evidence that Experience is shared - because people recall experiences that are not their own.

I also agree that particular details claimed by a single person have a great possibility of being fiction / delusion and so any one account isn't going to be taken as evidence by the larger consensus. 

However I think commonalities can give us reason to think there is evidence - not proof - of a reality that we would say diverges from the consensus reality of day-to-day experience. That said I would agree with anyone who said that the evidence for spiritual realities is not at the level of evidence for QM oddities, or any other seemingly bizarre claim that has been backed by replicable evidence or consistent consensus agreement on what lies in the deepest ocean, in space, etc.

Science's methodology of 'replication' can only gives weight to what is shared - hence it is investigating what is shared - that is: what the shape of the thing is, which binds us one to another.

Well... I'm not convinced anything evolved in a Darwinian sense, or even by intelligence/s guiding the process.

I think short periods of Darwinian 'evolution' may well be possible - for example the slight differences between finches that Darwin observed on the various islands. Such 'evolution' would not involve the creation of novel DNA but might tweak the creatures in lesser ways, however Behe's argument seems to preclude large scale evolution creating life and then powering it to diversify into a large tree of species.

I am pretty sure Intelligent design is real, but I don't believe it is done by a god with a long beard!

David

I think short periods of Darwinian 'evolution' may well be possible - for example the slight differences between finches that Darwin observed on the various islands.

Wasn't this shown at some point to just be due to seasonal changes, that nothing was actually "evolving"? Something that wasn't even micro-evolution, but simply due to epigenetics? It's rather obvious to see how Darwin might have misinterpreted that, in light of what we know today.

Such 'evolution' would not involve the creation of novel DNA but might tweak the creatures in lesser ways, however Behe's argument seems to preclude large scale evolution creating life and then powering it to diversify into a large tree of species.

Indeed. Life ~ on any scale, I'd argue ~ requires a guiding intelligence, because life necessarily requires foresight into the design of the many interconnected, complex systems. Even the simplest bacteria is a very complex organism. Even the humble cell is extraordinarily complex, with many interdependent systems all supporting each other. None of them could have logically evolved per Darwinism. Nor is there any actual evidence of prior, simpler versions. We only know of the fully-formed systems we see today.

I am pretty sure Intelligent design is real, but I don't believe it is done by a god with a long beard!

Indeed not ~ but that is strawman that Darwinists repeat rather one-note like a broken record.

I'm far more willing to accept Cosmic Fine Tuning, but ID at the evolutionary level always leaves me less convinced.

I feel the exact opposite!

I mean cosmology is decidedly uncertain. There is a YouTube channel called "see the pattern" for example:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cj-7vdYij6U&t=839s

By contrast, the problems associated with the supposed evolution of DNA seem pretty straightforward.

David

I feel the exact opposite!

I mean cosmology is decidedly uncertain. There is a YouTube channel called "see the pattern" for example:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cj-7vdYij6U&t=839s

By contrast, the problems associated with the supposed evolution of DNA seem pretty straightforward.

David

A series of amusing comments:

@Jollyprez
3 months ago
So many places I could make a comment, I'll just use one - Robitaille has given very strong arguments that the alleged observations of the Cosmic Microwave Background are, in fact, in error. Robitaille used signal processing theory, of which he is an expert, to disprove not only the original observations ( yielding a Nobel Prize ) - but two subsequent satellite platforms designed to verify the concept.

@TheBelrick
3 months ago
Modern physics. Take a million data points. Run it through a filter/algorithm until it produces the data result you want. POOF instant nobel prize. There is such an enormous disconnect between reality and science these days.

@john-ic5pz
1 month ago
@TheBelrick that was the motto of our dept chair while i was a graduate student , "the key to good research is to do the experiment until you get the result you want then immediately stop & publish"
- Richard Dordick, PhD from MIT no less

It would be interesting if @sbu were to listen at least some of the videos from the "see the pattern" collection, because they paint a really damning picture of modern cosmology, and all that rests on it, which is dependant on the concept of the Big Bang.

The "Big Bang" model was in danger of being proved wrong because it was calculated that the early universe was too "lumpy" to have survived for long. What was needed was a special way in which the universe could have been rapidly inflated so as to make it much smoother. Along came Alan Guth with a mathematical theory that would generate such a huge inflation, that would eventually end! As far as I know there is no evidence that such an inflation ever took place!

The BB is supposed to have originated in a singularity in the GR equations for the universe. In normal physics, singularities (such as the one that exploded as the BB) simply identify places where an existing theory ceases to be valid - they are not supposed to be 'real'.

David

It would be interesting if @sbu were to listen at least some of the videos from the "see the pattern" collection, because they paint a really damning picture of modern cosmology, and all that rests on it, which is dependant on the concept of the Big Bang.

The "Big Bang" model was in danger of being proved wrong because it was calculated that the early universe was too "lumpy" to have survived for long. What was needed was a special way in which the universe could have been rapidly inflated so as to make it much smoother. Along came Alan Guth with a mathematical theory that would generate such a huge inflation, that would eventually end! As far as I know there is no evidence that such an inflation ever took place!

The BB is supposed to have originated in a singularity in the GR equations for the universe. In normal physics, singularities (such as the one that exploded as the BB) simply identify places where an existing theory ceases to be valid - they are not supposed to be 'real'.

David

I'm not sure why you're suddenly dragging cosmology off the shelf in a discussion about intelligent design and empirical verification. If your point is 'look, there are scientific subjects with weak empirical backing,' I've already acknowledged that science operates with degrees of confidence rather than absolute certainty.
But here's what's telling about this move: you're setting up a false dichotomy where either we accept everything as proven or we must reject empirical standards entirely and embrace unfalsifiable metaphysical claims about designers and spiritual dimensions.
There's a rather obvious middle ground you're conveniently ignoring - we can acknowledge unresolved questions in cosmology and evolution while still demanding that extraordinary claims meet their burden of proof. The fact that science has ongoing puzzles doesn't suddenly make 'intelligent designer did it' a credible explanation for biological complexity.
This is classic whataboutism. Instead of providing evidence for your preferred metaphysical framework, you're pointing to areas where science is still developing and saying 'See? Science doesn't know everything!' As if that somehow validates claims that haven't even tried to meet basic evidential standards.
The real question remains: What testable predictions has your worldview generated? What empirical program has it advanced? Because these scientific fields, for all their unresolved questions, are still making predictions and gathering data.

The "Big Bang" model was in danger of being proved wrong because it was calculated that the early universe was too "lumpy" to have survived for long. What was needed was a special way in which the universe could have been rapidly inflated so as to make it much smoother. Along came Alan Guth with a mathematical theory that would generate such a huge inflation, that would eventually end! As far as I know there is no evidence that such an inflation ever took place!

How do they know the universe had a "Big Bang"? Mathematics. Have they ever observed a "Big Bang"? No. So much for the belief such physicists have in "Empiricism" if they're willing to suspend that to believe in some imaginary event derived purely from mathematics. Same with the inflation theory. Never actually observed, just an artifact from broken, yet unquestioned mathematics.

What so many physicists forget is that it's just a model ~ it is not reality. We cannot use mathematical models to look back in time, because that makes approximately zero sense. We can only ever create models based on actual observations of the physical ~ and as we have never observed the past, we cannot make meaningful models for them. The models physicists have made of the "Big Bang" are therefore just artifacts of broken mathematics that have never been questioned.

Basically, such physicists have created a simulation within a mathematical theory, and have then conflated that with reality. Reality is not a simulation, and never can be. It can never be modeled, because mathematics only ever measures approximations, and reality is not an approximation of anything nor can it be measured, as measurements are simply abstractions we have created.

The BB is supposed to have originated in a singularity in the GR equations for the universe. In normal physics, singularities (such as the one that exploded as the BB) simply identify places where an existing theory ceases to be valid - they are not supposed to be 'real'.

Indeed ~ I've seen some point to supposed "black holes", noting that if light cannot escape these areas of space, then it could simply just be that there is physical matter exerting such a gravitational pull that light never escapes. There is no "singularity" ~ just a extra-dense white dwarf.

No mathematics needed ~ just an allowing to think beyond pure mathematics and logic.