ChatterBank1 min ago
Darwin's Doubt, Intelligent Design And Evolution.
Has anyone watched this film, an interview with Stephen Meyer?
I found it rather compelling, and I thought he answered well the critics who have wished to steer him into the religious standpoint which is not what it's about at all.
I found it rather compelling, and I thought he answered well the critics who have wished to steer him into the religious standpoint which is not what it's about at all.
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OK Khandro let me try this a different way, Meyer is a 'believer' in ID because he knows that the theory of evolution cannot be dismissed without considerable intellectual contortions. He thinks he has found a hole in the theory(really a gap in the evidence) where an intelligent designer (god) can be inserted thereby proving in his mind the existence of god. His 'evidence' of a creator depends upon the assumption of a creator's existence withou seeming to consider other reasons for the current gap in the fossil record, hence it is a circular argument. If the idea of a god didn't exist the gap in the fossil record would be seen for what it is, a gap in the record.
As Naomi pointed out this 'intelligent design' follows earlier evolutionary processes so it loses some credibility there. For all his teaching the philosophy of science he seems not to grasp what science is or how it works. He would be better employed as a used car salesman, where his view of reality would at least be valid in his showroom.
As Naomi pointed out this 'intelligent design' follows earlier evolutionary processes so it loses some credibility there. For all his teaching the philosophy of science he seems not to grasp what science is or how it works. He would be better employed as a used car salesman, where his view of reality would at least be valid in his showroom.
jomifl; You are wrong if you think the entire basis of ID rests on "He thinks he has found a hole in the theory(really a gap in the evidence)"
To use an analogy of Behe ; If you were walking in the woods and you discovered a beautifully formed group of wild flowers spelling out perfectly the word JOMIFL you would without doubt know that it had been designed to be like that.
The designs permeating throughout nature are much more profound; the DNA spiral, the periodic table, etc. Design has to be designed, and that which is designed requires a designer, this is the most elegant answer, I believe.
Would you please state your alternative to ID, and give your reasons to substantiate it.
To use an analogy of Behe ; If you were walking in the woods and you discovered a beautifully formed group of wild flowers spelling out perfectly the word JOMIFL you would without doubt know that it had been designed to be like that.
The designs permeating throughout nature are much more profound; the DNA spiral, the periodic table, etc. Design has to be designed, and that which is designed requires a designer, this is the most elegant answer, I believe.
Would you please state your alternative to ID, and give your reasons to substantiate it.
Thirty years before Paley's Natural Theology (ignorant savage finds watch on beach), and more than two hundred years before Behe gave us irreducible complexity, David Hume gave us this:
http://
The most delightful thing about Hume's argument (I find) is this: even if we DO concede the need for an intelligent designer, any consideration of His(or Her, or Their?) handiwork will lead us to doubt most of the traditional assertions by the "great" religions about the designer's moral and intellectual qualities.
http://
The most delightful thing about Hume's argument (I find) is this: even if we DO concede the need for an intelligent designer, any consideration of His(or Her, or Their?) handiwork will lead us to doubt most of the traditional assertions by the "great" religions about the designer's moral and intellectual qualities.
/ If you were walking in the woods and you discovered a beautifully formed group of wild flowers spelling out perfectly the word JOMIFL you would without doubt know that it had been designed to be like that. / Know? I doubt it. It would depend on how well executed the work was and whether there where any mischievous friends in the vicinity. Any way it is just a tad hypothetical since it won't happen. Evolution is the more satisfactory explanation of the diversity of life forms since it answers more of the questions more satisfactorily. The so called design that you think you see is simply the result of the mathematical and geometrical principals of nature applying...to nature. Do you think that every salt crystal is designed ? and if designed then created? by whom?
I'm interested in finding out how Meyer thinks ID works (when I get back to reading Darwin's Doubt). Also in how Behe thinks it works, or has worked, in the book Darwin's Black Box which Khandro's reading.
As Meyer is claiming ID as a scientific theory, not a religious one, then he will need to at least hypothesize how ID worked to produce the Cambrian explosion. The creationist will say the God designed the trilobite with its complex eye and created it from nothing. But Meyer, as a proponent of science, has disallowed himself this recourse to magic. So how exactly did the intelligent designer do it? Did he construct it in a laboratory and transport it here? Did he take an earlier form (maybe one without a complex eye) and genetically modify it to produce a them. As the premise of ID is that unguided natural mechanisms cannot account for big and rapid changes, then we have to presume that the designer has to intervene quite often, certainly at times of rapid change such as the Cambrian. This begins to look like Gould's punctuated evolution, but with fewer semi-colons and more exclamation marks. Or it is possible the designer is at some level actively engaged in genetic modification all the time, sustaining evolutionary diversification in a similar way it was once thought that angels sustained the motion of the planets? Having come up with a plausible hypothesis, he will then have to suggest ways in which this might be tested (and, indeed, falsified). So something a cut above postulates such as "moved by angels" which are immune to experimentationtulate. Behe will have to do the same thing after he has patiently explained how the human immune system and the bacterial flagellum could NOT have evolved without a designer. I suspect neither author will be too forthcoming in expounding their ideas about this fundamentals of science.
ID raises other, philosophical questions, too. Not the least of these is why, if there is a supervising (or, at least, interested) intelligence, so many extinctions have occurred with all the apparent waste that these imply.
As Meyer is claiming ID as a scientific theory, not a religious one, then he will need to at least hypothesize how ID worked to produce the Cambrian explosion. The creationist will say the God designed the trilobite with its complex eye and created it from nothing. But Meyer, as a proponent of science, has disallowed himself this recourse to magic. So how exactly did the intelligent designer do it? Did he construct it in a laboratory and transport it here? Did he take an earlier form (maybe one without a complex eye) and genetically modify it to produce a them. As the premise of ID is that unguided natural mechanisms cannot account for big and rapid changes, then we have to presume that the designer has to intervene quite often, certainly at times of rapid change such as the Cambrian. This begins to look like Gould's punctuated evolution, but with fewer semi-colons and more exclamation marks. Or it is possible the designer is at some level actively engaged in genetic modification all the time, sustaining evolutionary diversification in a similar way it was once thought that angels sustained the motion of the planets? Having come up with a plausible hypothesis, he will then have to suggest ways in which this might be tested (and, indeed, falsified). So something a cut above postulates such as "moved by angels" which are immune to experimentationtulate. Behe will have to do the same thing after he has patiently explained how the human immune system and the bacterial flagellum could NOT have evolved without a designer. I suspect neither author will be too forthcoming in expounding their ideas about this fundamentals of science.
ID raises other, philosophical questions, too. Not the least of these is why, if there is a supervising (or, at least, interested) intelligence, so many extinctions have occurred with all the apparent waste that these imply.
What I find particularly silly about the 'trilobite eye' argument is that an intelligent designer is invoked because(to paraphrase) 'evolution can't happen that quickly'. This is only an opinion and one based on ignorance and prejudice. It could equally well be said that the trilobite eye demonstrates how quickly evolution can operate when conditions are favourable. Nobody knows how long the trilobite eye took to evolve or how quickly it was possible for it to evolve. Meyers entire argument is irrational and nonsensical and designed (almost intelligently) to fool and deceive using specious arguments that are really intended to convince non-scientists who aren't equipped to see through his flummery. Feel free to accept his views if you must but at least ask yourself why you want to.
I request an alternative to ID with plausible evidence, and do I get it? - I do not. What I get is talk of David Hume and links to Philo of Alexandria for Pete's sake! which convinces me that this dude is holding no more that a busted flush (now, where have I heard that before?).
No one is suggesting that a designer sat at a bench in a heavenly design studio and constructed an eye. What is being posited is that the life-giving essence, the building blocks, if you like, which allow life to appear, come from elsewhere outside what we think of as reality, the source from which all appearance derives;
There is something obscure which is complete
before heaven and earth arose;
tranquil, quiet,
standing alone without change,
moving around without peril.
It could be the mother of everything.
I don't know its name
and call it Tao.
Lao-tzu[i
[i]6thcenturyBC]
No one is suggesting that a designer sat at a bench in a heavenly design studio and constructed an eye. What is being posited is that the life-giving essence, the building blocks, if you like, which allow life to appear, come from elsewhere outside what we think of as reality, the source from which all appearance derives;
There is something obscure which is complete
before heaven and earth arose;
tranquil, quiet,
standing alone without change,
moving around without peril.
It could be the mother of everything.
I don't know its name
and call it Tao.
Lao-tzu[i
[i]6thcenturyBC]
This debate was a lot more fun back in the nineties. You go to a science forum (Compuserve) to keep abreast of current research but we'd keep getting creationst or intelligent design types, barging in to tell us how wrong (and/or arrogant) we were and tell us about God.
I could sit back and watch them being patiently presented with page after page of experimental evidence (full library references etc.) so I accumulated all manner of obscure creature, years before you could see them on david Attenborough type programme.
As you can imagine, you can argue with these types until you're blue in the face but they're completely inflexible and refuse to learn complex science.
I am amazed and annoyed to find that, 20 years later, they're still eating internet bandwidth, server space and, worst of all, wasting the time of thousands of scientists across the globe. (Dawkins has made a mint, so he can't complain about his career being derailed by them!)
In order to maximise wastage of your time, Khandro will not let you challenge this vid unless you watch it, even when you've heard the arguments all before, as in my case.
With intelligent design, the précis is (wave your arms above your head, in panic, as you say this) "ohh, evolution is all too complicated for little me to understand, there must have been a creator."
There; I've saved an hour of my life which I won't get back and I hope you did, too.
I could sit back and watch them being patiently presented with page after page of experimental evidence (full library references etc.) so I accumulated all manner of obscure creature, years before you could see them on david Attenborough type programme.
As you can imagine, you can argue with these types until you're blue in the face but they're completely inflexible and refuse to learn complex science.
I am amazed and annoyed to find that, 20 years later, they're still eating internet bandwidth, server space and, worst of all, wasting the time of thousands of scientists across the globe. (Dawkins has made a mint, so he can't complain about his career being derailed by them!)
In order to maximise wastage of your time, Khandro will not let you challenge this vid unless you watch it, even when you've heard the arguments all before, as in my case.
With intelligent design, the précis is (wave your arms above your head, in panic, as you say this) "ohh, evolution is all too complicated for little me to understand, there must have been a creator."
There; I've saved an hour of my life which I won't get back and I hope you did, too.
Edit fail:
…so I accumulated [knowledge of] all manner of obscure creature, years before you could see them on David Attenborough type programme.
I'm referring to things like the life around hydrothermal vents and the bateria they feed onwhich ise sulphur the way other life uses oxygen; the way limbs and organs can become vestigial, when redundant, the way cave animals de-evolve their eyes, to save on the protein and energy consumption of fabricating them.
…so I accumulated [knowledge of] all manner of obscure creature, years before you could see them on David Attenborough type programme.
I'm referring to things like the life around hydrothermal vents and the bateria they feed onwhich ise sulphur the way other life uses oxygen; the way limbs and organs can become vestigial, when redundant, the way cave animals de-evolve their eyes, to save on the protein and energy consumption of fabricating them.
I despair! I have asked for a more elegant proposal for how sentient, inexorably surging life COMMENCED on this planet other than by ID. Evolution of the species and diversity isn't in doubt. Darwin himself had problems with this question, but it seems to be swept aside as an irrelevance by our 'resident scientists'.
I think the answer is, you don't know, and worse, have nothing to offer unless you are one of the proponents of the Mary Shelley-like primeval chemical soup + flashes of lightning school. For the last time; please give a sensible substantiated proposal to the commencement of life, not what happened next.
I think the answer is, you don't know, and worse, have nothing to offer unless you are one of the proponents of the Mary Shelley-like primeval chemical soup + flashes of lightning school. For the last time; please give a sensible substantiated proposal to the commencement of life, not what happened next.
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