Re: "Intelligent design"

Bill Bonde ('by a commodius vicus of recirculation') wrote:
> John O'Flaherty wrote:
> >
> > Bill Bonde ('by a commodius vicus of recirculation') wrote:
> > > John O'Flaherty wrote:
> > > >
> > > > Bill Bonde ('by a commodius vicus of recirculation') wrote:
> > > > > John O'Flaherty wrote:
> > > > > >
> > > > >
> > > > >
> > > > > > Intelligence and beings are things that occur in a universe, not
> > > > > > free-floating entities without context. If the "universe" was created
> > > > > > by intelligent being(s), then they must be elements of some greater
> > > > > > universe, and you've got an infinite regress, or just an error of not
> > > > > > having defined your first universe broadly enough. In any case, at some
> > > > > > point you just have to surrender and admit it's a mystery, so why
> > > > > > introduce a lot of rubbish (god, baad, religion, all the rest of it) on
> > > > > > the way?
> > > > > >
> > > > > This is similar to saying that you shouldn't learn about atoms because
> > > > > they are made up of protons, neutrons and electrons, and you shouldn't
> > > > > learn about them because they are made up of quarks, and you shouldn't
> > > > > learn about them because they are made up out of strings or whatever,
> > > > > potentially on and on we go.
> > > >
> > > > What I said is nothing like what you said, unless you are equating
> > > > religion with physics and superstition with science
> > > >
> > > Actually, my comment is exactly analogous to what you said.
> >
> > Sorry, it's not at all analogous. There were reasons to posit atoms and
> > electrons and all the rest of the menagerie- the additional
> > complication made the whole picture simpler and more understandable.
> >
> That's funny because I thought things were the most understandable when
> we had but protons, neutrons and electrons. Looking at the sea of stuff
> now doesn't make it seem simpler.

Why even admit electrons? Go back to ancient Greek atoms. It's simpler.
Doesn't explain transistors or crts, but they're sort of magical,
anyhow.

> > All of that stuff has been experimentally verifiable.
> >
> Of course that's not true, and the argument here is whether you can come
> up with these things *before* you prove them, something that you can
> only contest absurdly as there is no doubt that theory sometimes leads
> empirical evidence.

Nobody without an ulterior motive invents a theory that doesn't explain
anything and then looks for evidence for it. Electrons were introduced
as an explanation for an observed phenomenon, cathode rays. It's not as
if everyone sat around thinking up things out of the blue to look for
evidence for, and then found one of them to be true.

> > >You are
> > > using the oft used claim that ID is wrong because finding the creator
> > > just adds another level of how did the creator come about.
> >
> > The main reason to reject ID is that it is a desperate attempt of
> > religionists to find a reason not to drop their faith - what has
> > allowed them to believe that they are important in a universal sense,
> > that they aren't actually going to die someday, that there is a big
> > daddy who loves them and listens to them and will one day caress them
> > for all eternity. The theory has no implications, it is not falsifiable
> > nor supportable by evidence. It is an unnecessary excrescence.
> >
> I'm not sure why science should go about with such obscene relish
> deflating faith like that. Obviously that's a different issue though
> than the one I was discussing.

It's not that science does that. That's something I do, because I'm
irritated by deliberate obtuseness.

> > > It is absurd
> > > not to seek information about who created us because it doesn't answer
> > > who created the creator just like it is absurd to claim we shouldn't
> > > seek out the proton because it creates another level below the atom, the
> > > quark because it creates another level below the proton, the string
> > > because it creates another level below the quark.
> >
> > It is absurd to think that a creator of whos would be another who.
> >
> Literally the basis of Life is that it is alive, a who, and creates
> another thing alive, a who, so even now there are issues with what you
> are claiming. Of course more relevantly to what you really mean, when
> man succeeds in creating life from non-life what will you say then?

Not everything that's alive is a who. Only things that humans can
imagine communicating with at a certain high level are whos. As to
creating life from non-life, they reconstituted viruses from chemicals
many years ago. I don't suppose they said "Hello!" to their
experimental result. I'll grant the possibility that humans may create,
or at least initiate the self-generation of cyber-thingies that they
might say 'hi' to.
I'll back off of saying that whos can't create whos, and just remain
with the idea that it is absurd to look for 'who created us' when there
is no reason to believe that we were created by a who.

> > You
> > wouldn't expect atoms to be made up of littler atoms.
> >
> It is certainly as literally possible to refer to the parts of atoms by
> the word 'atom' as it is to the stuff now so referred. And it turns out
> they are referred to as "subatomic" particles, which basically means
> littler atoms.

You can call anything anything you want, but 'subatomic' means smaller
than or at a lower level than an atom, not 'a littler atom'. All you're
saying is that little stuff is made up of littler stuff, not that all
stuff is the same except for its size.


> > And you really
> > shouldn't 'seek information' about something that you have already
> > decided must exist (because the belief makes you feel comfortable).
> >
> Of course you are demanding that we not seek information about something
> you have already decided doesn't exist.

Actually, not. You are welcome to 'seek information' about whatever you
want. The burdens of explanation and proof are upon those who claim
something exists. Some thresholds they must pass are plausibility,
explanatory power, falsifiability. I've rejected the idea of ID on the
basis of lack of explanatory power and plausibility. The ball is in
your court. Give me a reason to believe. Of course, I'm not going to
waste my time listening to repetitions of the same ineffective
arguments.

> > > > Anything there is
> > > > evidence for (electrons, quarks, bits of string, quantum foam, ultimate
> > > > fluff) and which actually explains something is a reasonable, useful
> > > > extension of knowledge. Anything that's unsupported and doesn't explain
> > > > anything must be dismissed or at least categorized as fiction.
> > > >
> > > But string theory had no evidence and likely still has no evidence, was
> > > simply a mathematical construct.
> >
> > I guess that's right, but it's an attempt to unify and ultimately
> > simplify things that _are_ known to be true. It isn't accepted as dogma
> > everywhere, and even the people who work in it admit that it has no
> > testable predictions yet (as of the date of the popularization about it
> > that I read).
> >
> Which puts it on par with other ideas like SETI and exo-biotic
> interference in the history of Life on Earth.

I don't know what SETI is. As to exo-biotic interference in the history
of life on Earth, that really sounds like a microcosm of ID, with the
same logical flaw. As to string theory, as far as I understand it's an
attempt to arrive at
a mathematically consistent structure that unifies a lot of observed
data. It's really not comparable to the stuff you're referring to.

> > > Sometimes the theory is out ahead of
> > > the empirical evidence, the observations, other times it is the other
> > > way round. The fact that there is no evidence for something is not
> > > reason to seek evidence for something, certainly isn't reason to claim
> > > that such seeking can't be science.
> >
> > I think I see what you meant by that. ID doesn't grow out of science,
> > and it can't invade it from outside. It is religion, just like
> > creationism.
> >
> I'm not sure what you mean by grows out of science. Science is a process
> and it should be big enough to bring in ideas beyond those which its
> most accepted practitioners came up with. Perhaps "Intelligent Design"
> should be supplanted with a more general gets-to-the-point term,
> "Exo-Biotic Interference", call it EBI.

That's mixing up the macro- and microcosm. ID calls for an intelligent
being that created the universe, not one that stirred things up on
Earth. And it's not the job of science to adopt and consider seriously
ideas that are motivated by religion.

> > > > That
> > > > includes any explanation for existence that reduces to "turtles all the
> > > > way down". Who needs the turtles?
> > > >
> > > The idea of the turtles holding the Earth up is pretty shot down by
> > > available evidence of a spheroid earth sitting lonely in a vacuum. What
> > > deflates intelligent design?
> >
> > Nothing, for those who want to believe that there is content there.
> > When people want to believe something, there's little use arguing with
> > them. They'll get over it, or they won't. The thesis of ID is that we
> > find the universe and ourselves so complex, that they can't have arisen
> > on their own.
> >
> That is one idea that should be well considered by anyone thinking up a
> theory of Life. If it is investigated scientifically, it doesn't matter
> which side you believe, you'll end up teasing out the truth.

That idea can be dismissed at the outset as logically flawed. If an
intelligent being outside the universe created the universe, then the
word 'universe' was wrongly defined to start with. Obviously the real
universe consists of what we previously called the universe plus this
additional generative being. Of course, the generative being, to have
consciously designed the universe, must have been immensely more
comprehensive and complex than the designed part of the universe, and
must be but an element of an even more complex and comprehensive
universe which is its support framework. Starting from the observed
universe, which seemed objectionably complicated, we've arrived at a
hugemongously greater universe. The whole process is muddle.

> > To solve that problem, we postulate a being so
> > intelligent (and thus so complex) that it could have designed the
> > universe. By comparing the complexity of human beings with the
> > complexity of the things they design, you see that a conscious designer
> > is orders of magnitude more complex than its designs.
> >
> You don't think that humans could figure out how to design life from
> scratch and themselves not increase in their own complexity? I don't
> think we'll need a genome transplant to create the capacity in us to
> play "god" whether or not we are morally ready for it.
>
>
> > The original
> > conundrum was complexity. You can't solve that by postulating an
> > unimaginably greater complexity. What you can do, if you want to, is
> > postpone facing the reality of false beliefs.
> >
> The problem is like protons actually being subparts of atoms, there may
> be levels to the creation process of Life.

There may indeed be many levels. I would actually be surprised if
things are as simple as they seem to be now. But making up stories
about it that don't explain anything is just speculative fiction, not
science.
--
john

.

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