Intelligent Design

[Aridas]

I have no idea what argument it is you are trying to make here. Could you expand on the above?

It's pretty much exactly as I said. That we are here now because of the actions of an intelligent creator of some form, rather than simple chemistry or some other undirected process, is a commonly used concept that is not based on the ID movement at all (rather, the ID movement simply invoked what had already been separately popularized) and is thus something, in direct contradiction to the claim that there is no such thing as "Intelligent Design" because the ID movement was thoroughly political and dishonest in nature and goals. That the ID movement tried (and is still trying, really) to lie their preferred version of it into science classrooms in no way negates that ID itself has been a popularly believed concept for a very long time. As for an overarching point to posting in the first place? While I put no stock in ID myself, I generally value accurate representations of the facts and cogent arguments.

 

[Aridas]

More importantly, who would they apply to for permits and patents?

I'm reminded of the Eastern Asian stories about a Heavenly Bureaucracy.

 

[JJM 777]

My favorite little corner of ID is "fine tuning". With some living organisms or parts of them, it really is hard to picture a plausible path by natural selection to explain them, so I can understand the perspective, even though I don't share it.

People tend to allow their personal expectations of the outcome to influence the details that they most critically and carefully analyze in a theory. "Fine-tuning" or "gradual development" is something that Creationists and ID'ers love to bash with a big hammer, and evolutionists love to take for granted without even explaining how it exactly could work.

Among the most important examples are how evolutionists draw diagrams of how an eye or an ear was first like this, and then these and those bones and details moved here and there, and it became a much better version of the original.

Creationists and ID'ers see here an opportunity to refute the credibility of evolutionism, by asking how a primitive ear or eye can "gradually evolve" into the more sophisticated version, if the assumed temporary versions between these two are evidently less functional than the original version, so evolution should work against the said process rather than towards it (as evolution cannot "see" the final outcome of the assumedly slow and long transformation process, it only sees and punishes the immediate inferiority and dysfunctionality of the first malformed temporary version towards the more sophisticated version).

Evolutionists tend to be happy enough for having two diagrams that are somehow logically related with each other, even if they cannot give a plausible sequence of such temporary versions between these, which would be functionally superior to the original version, and thus preferred by natural selection in a long and painstaking transformation process.

 

[Fast Eddie B]

It's pretty much exactly as I said.

Of course Intelligent Design exists...as a concept.

But that's only trivially true - all sorts of absurd and falsified claims exist as concepts.

I have Behe's "Darwin's Black Box" in my library. To a layman, it seemed to make a cogent case for irreducible complexity. But after reading it, I easily found point-by-point refutations to each example given in the book online. And even if no refutation to a particular case could be imagined, that's basically an Argument From Ignorance, and not proof of anything beyond a lack of imagination.

Any of Dawkins' books could help disabuse one of the whole "Intelligent Design" thing. "Climbing Mount Improbable" is probably the most targeted in this regard.

As an aside, I came across Behe's book in the "Evolution" section of a bookstore once. Seemed out of place, but an easy mistake for an employee to make.

Then again, it's where I have my copy sitting!

 

[Cosmic Yak]

How would a succession of less functional versions lead to a better one? Maybe I'm misreading this argument, but it appears to be the complete opposite of natural selection. I would also have thought that natural selection would account for a plausible sequence of different versions, though improved rather than inferior. I'm also not sure where you got the idea of 'temporary' , as presumably opposed to 'permanent', from. Is this a creationist strawman, or one of your own invention?

 

[Fast Eddie B]

How would a succession of less functional versions lead to a better one? Maybe I'm misreading this argument, but it appears to be the complete opposite of natural selection. I would also have thought that natural selection would account for a plausible sequence of different versions, though improved rather than inferior. I'm also not sure where you got the idea of 'temporary' , as presumably opposed to 'permanent', from. Is this a creationist strawman, or one of your own invention?

Think of a penguin's wing.

It's clearly less functional for flying than a hawk's, let's say. But also clearly more functional for the environs a penguin finds itself surviving in. And it's there ready to evolve back towards flight should its environment change. Someone naively looking at the fossil record might ask why the wing first became less functional on its way back to flight, when in fact at each step along the way it was perfectly - or at least maximally - suited to its environs.

I still love Dawkins' "The Ancestor's Tale" for providing great insight into evolution.

 

[Delvo]

I have no idea what argument it is you are trying to make here. Could you expand on the above?

It was in response to this:

There is literally no such thing as "Intelligent Design."

It's an admitted PR ploy, an attempt to backdoor pure religious Creationism into public schools and to legitimize it as a "scientific" theory to the general public.

So it pointed out that it really is what a lot of religionists actually think. The people who came up with the label for it were being dishonest, trying to hide the fact that their creationism was just plain old creationism but the description they came up with for what creationists think and why they think it was a perfectly accurate label. The PR ploy caught on because it accurately reflected an idea that was already popular and just didn't have that name before.

How would a succession of less functional versions lead to a better one? Maybe I'm misreading this argument...

Not less functional than before; less functional when compared to the end result.

 

[Dave Rogers]

Creationists and ID'ers see here an opportunity to refute the credibility of evolutionism, by asking how a primitive ear or eye can "gradually evolve" into the more sophisticated version, if the assumed temporary versions between these two are evidently less functional than the original version, so evolution should work against the said process rather than towards it (as evolution cannot "see" the final outcome of the assumedly slow and long transformation process, it only sees and punishes the immediate inferiority and dysfunctionality of the first malformed temporary version towards the more sophisticated version).

The unspoken assumption, of course, being that functionality is a one-dimensional entity, with any variation being either more or less functional in an absolute sense. In reality, environments change, and adaptations to earlier environments are then less suited to a changed environment; an adaptation may then be less suited either to the earlier environment or to some later, differently changed environment, yet be better suited to the environment at the time. The result is a process by which the direction of change may itself change, because the drivers of that change are changing. This may be a bit difficult for people with a highly simplistic world view to understand.

Any theory can be made to look wrong by the careful omission of a key part of it.

Evolutionists

This is a loaded word in itself, in that it suggests a belief system rather than a conclusion from study of the evidence

tend to be happy enough for having two diagrams that are somehow logically related with each other, even if they cannot give a plausible sequence of such temporary versions between these, which would be functionally superior to the original version, and thus preferred by natural selection in a long and painstaking transformation process.

In other words, people who take a rational approach to understanding of the world, and don't invoke additional entities to explain something quite amenable to a simpler explanation, also do not discard that simpler explanation on the basis of an argument from ignorance.

Dave

 

[Bikewer]

When I was reading a lot about art, I read an article by a fellow who wanted to show how the "golden ratio" could be applied to your painting.
He divided a canvas up into grids and subdivided the grids according to mathematical principals to determine where one's "points of interest" should fall.
Unfortunately, by the time he was finished there were so many intersecting grid lines that it would have been almost impossible to avoid them when plotting points of interest.....

 

[Thor 2]

When I was reading a lot about art, I read an article by a fellow who wanted to show how the "golden ratio" could be applied to your painting.
He divided a canvas up into grids and subdivided the grids according to mathematical principals to determine where one's "points of interest" should fall.
Unfortunately, by the time he was finished there were so many intersecting grid lines that it would have been almost impossible to avoid them when plotting points of interest.....

Those obsessed with the "golden ratio" Phi will seem to go to extraordinary lengths to show its existence everywhere.

https://www.goldennumber.net/nature/


And the god bots will lap it up as proof of the finger of god in everything. Words like precisely and exactly are thrown in, to describe the ratios observed although the points measured from seem to be arbitrarily selected.

As we know of course exact just doesn't exist in the world and universe we observe. If God had created just one example of it, (say the orbit of the Earth being a perfect circle instead of an ellipse), it would be impressive and perhaps compelling evidence of her existence.

 

[Peregrinus]

My brother in law insists that the eye proves intelligent design and cannot conceive how it might have evolved from "why we would need to see". Make of that what you will.

You might point out to your brother-in-law there's no such thing as "the eye." There are scores of different eyes out there and several are far superior to our own in one or more attributes. And, as others have pointed out, the various developments of various eyes have been well-understood for quite some time.

 

[Peregrinus]

Those obsessed with the "golden ratio" Phi will seem to go to extraordinary lengths to show its existence everywhere.

An interesting treatment can be found in The Golden Ratio, Mario Livio, 2002, Broadway Books, ISBN 0-7679-0816-3. Livio shows some astonishing and/or intriguing aspects of Phi but does not embrace the tabloid gee-whiz approach. Along with being level-headed & quite informative, his book is a fun & easy read.

 

[Aridas]

Of course Intelligent Design exists...as a concept.

But that's only trivially true - all sorts of absurd and falsified claims exist as concepts.

*points back at the claim and argument that he had actually responded to* "There's no such thing as "Intelligent Design." Why? Because it was a "PR ploy." That's quite clearly making claims about the concept, so your statement here elicits little more than "Duh?" as a reaction from me, and an expectation that you're trying to pin a position onto me that clearly is in opposition to the things that I clearly and repeatedly stated.

 

[Aridas]

How would a succession of less functional versions lead to a better one? Maybe I'm misreading this argument, but it appears to be the complete opposite of natural selection.

Are you responding to the part of that post that specifically refers to IDers/creationists trying to claim things along those lines? It's certainly true that IDers/creationists have tried to use arguments like "What advantages would half a wing give?" as part of their attempts to discredit evolution, after all. It looked like no such claim had been made in relation to the "evolutionists," but rather more implied that the evolutionists tend to be okay with not always knowing all the specifics, at least not yet.

 

[MikeG]

It's pretty much exactly as I said. That we are here now because of the actions of an intelligent creator of some form, rather than simple chemistry or some other undirected process, is a commonly used concept...........While I put no stock in ID myself, I generally value accurate representations of the facts and cogent arguments.

I'm struggling to see the value in this thinking. Put "Santa Claus" in your post wherever you see "ID", and you are claiming, in essence, that Santa Claus exists because it is a well known concept. I really don't see how this contributes anything useful to a discussion about the reality or otherwise of Santa Claus, or of ID.

 

[JJM 777]

"What advantages would half a wing give?
... evolutionists tend to be okay with not always knowing all the specifics, at least not yet.

This is the difference in attitude that I pointed out. When something crucial is not known, people tend to ignore and forget it, or try to use it as evidence against the theory, depending on their desired outcome. Thus evolutionists focus on the strengths of the theory, and keep relatively quiet about its known weaknesses, while Creationists and ID'ers do the opposite.

How would a succession of less functional versions lead to a better one? Maybe I'm misreading this argument, but it appears to be the complete opposite of natural selection. I would also have thought that natural selection would account for a plausible sequence of different versions, though improved rather than inferior.

That is how evolution is supposed to function. The counter-argument is called "irreducible complexity", where "a plausible sequence of different versions, though improved rather than inferior" seems to be very difficult to suggest, if you are given a pencil and diagrams of the earlier and later version, and you should draw between them slowly evolving variants which are constantly "improved rather than inferior".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irreducible_complexity

I'm also not sure where you got the idea of 'temporary' , as presumably opposed to 'permanent', from.

Paleontological evidence tends to be dominated by certain relatively stable designs of organs and species, while the "missing links" between these are called "missing" because they are rare or indeed missing. Hence the idea of the common "permanent" vs. the rare "temporary". Everything is temporary in some sense, but some things are radically more temporary than other things.

Is this a creationist strawman, or one of your own invention?

I have not invented one single original thought or theory, concerning the origin of life. Everything what I say here, I have seen basically said elsewhere.

 

[Dave Rogers]

That is how evolution is supposed to function. The counter-argument is called "irreducible complexity", where "a plausible sequence of different versions, though improved rather than inferior" seems to be very difficult to suggest, if you are given a pencil and diagrams of the earlier and later version, and you should draw between them slowly evolving variants which are constantly "improved rather than inferior".

Again, you're viewing adaptation as a one-dimensional phenomenon. Environments are continually changing, and adaptations to those environments are therefore continually changing direction. The slowly evolving variants may therefore be changing in directions that have nothing to do with the 'start' point or the 'end' point of the process (which are themselves arbitrary constructs). If there is a 'known weakness' in evolutionary theory, it's that its emergent properties are too complex for many people to understand.

I have not invented one single original thought or theory, concerning the origin of life. Everything what I say here, I have seen basically said elsewhere.

Unfortunately there are some remarkably stupid things said elsewhere.

Dave

 

[JJM 777]

Aridas: That we are here now because of the actions of an intelligent creator of some form, rather than simple chemistry or some other undirected process, is a commonly used concept

VS:

MikeG: Put "Santa Claus" in your post wherever you see "ID", and you are claiming, in essence, that Santa Claus exists because it is a well known concept.

The way I read it, Aridas did not claim that ID exists, he only claimed that the concept of ID exists. Which is true for the concept of Santa Claus too.

 

[JJM 777]

Again, you're viewing adaptation as a one-dimensional phenomenon. Environments are continually changing, and adaptations to those environments are therefore continually changing direction. The slowly evolving variants may therefore be changing in directions that have nothing to do with the 'start' point or the 'end' point of the process (which are themselves arbitrary constructs). If there is a 'known weakness' in evolutionary theory, it's that its emergent properties are too complex for many people to understand.

Nobody requires the path to be straight. The irreducible complexity argument questions the existence of any possible and plausible path whatsoever. Its counter-argument would be suggesting such a path, but as I have said a few times, this is a detail which the opponents of evolutionism love to focus on, and the proponents tend to ignore.

 

[Dave Rogers]

Nobody requires the path to be straight. The irreducible complexity argument questions the existence of any possible and plausible path whatsoever. Its counter-argument would be suggesting such a path, but as I have said a few times, this is a detail which the opponents of evolutionism love to focus on, and the proponents tend to ignore.

As far as I'm aware, that's not actually true; when proponents of evolution suggest or even identify plausible pathways, as in the case of protokaryotic flagellae, it's those pathways that tend to get ignored. Again, to someone with an excessively simple world view they're complex and difficult to understand, and it's much simpler to simply handwave them away, stick your fingers in your ears and sing "All things bright and beautiful," but that's not actually a compelling argument.

Dave