Who is to know Shakespeare wasn’t a monkey?
- From: pluto <pluto@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Fri, 30 Sep 2005 17:16:11 +0800
http://www.malaysiakini.com/letters/41128
Who is to know Shakespeare wasn?t a monkey?
Steven Foong
Sep 30, 05 2:30pm
I refer to SK Wong's letter Who created the Creator then?
While Wong has not indicated whether he is a Darwinist or not, I assume
that he is. Furthermore, it is good for me to do so as it will allow me to
address a wider audience.
Complexity, in ?specified complexity?, means an event, object or structure
that cannot be produced by chance within a universal probability bound.
Simply stated, complexity is something that the universe cannot produce
within its limited probability resources.
Michael Behe, a biochemist, identified the bacterial flagellum as a
biological system that is irreducibly complex. To counter this problem,
Wong suggested an infinite number of other universes, thus inflating his
pool of probability resources to account for such complexities.
In this case, anything goes - anything is possible. We shall simply
dispense away with all laws of mathematics because, with infinite
probability resources, we can simply explain anything away as chance.
It is entirely possible that Vladimir Kramnik moved his chess pieces
randomly and won the world championship from Gary Kasparov. It will not
surprise me, due to unlimited probability resources drawn from other
universes, if Wong tells me Shakespeare was actually a monkey who by
randomly arranging the alphabets produced Macbeth.
How does Wong know Shakespeare is actually an intelligent designer? He may
just be the correct monkey from an unlimited number of monkeys randomly
arranging the alphabets! And he may not be the only one.
How can anyone attribute my previous letter on intelligent design to my
intelligence? You simply cannot. I can just be randomly typing away at my
keyboard and producing a publishable letter to the editor. And why am I
replying to a letter that has so much probability of being generated from a
random alphabet generator? If we are to do any science at all, we need to
limit ourselves to our small and finite universe.
Now, on to Wong's primary objection to intelligent design - who designed
the designer (as opposed to who created the creator)? That's an interesting
question, but not one for design theorists to solve. Wong alleges that
intelligent design is a matter of faith - it is not.
It only becomes theological when it attempts to answer questions it was not
meant to answer. Design theorists only detect design in events, objects and
structures - that X is designed. The who/what/where/when/why/how is someone
else's job.
If I am forced to answer this question, I can only answer from a
theological, not design theory, point of view, that the Designer is the
ever-existing God. That is faith.
Being able to reliably detect design is science. The only plausible way to
render the current method to detect design useless is to prove that the
methods themselves are flawed which, of course, will be replaced by a
strengthened method.
The only bona fide way to throw intelligent design into ultimate oblivion
is to prove that there is no scientific way to detect design at all. Until
that happens, intelligent design remains scientific.
Who created the Creator then?
07:16pm Thu Sep 22, 2005
The immortality of life
01:42pm Thu Sep 15, 2005
Intelligent design - more politicking than science
03:44pm Tue Sep 13, 2005
No proof of an intelligent designer
03:44pm Tue Sep 13, 2005
An intelligent designer in the origins of life?
03:05pm Mon Sep 12, 2005
http://www.malaysiakini.com/letters/40786
Who created the Creator then?
SK Wong
Sep 22, 05 7:16pm
Steven Foong raised a contentious concept called the "irreducible
complexity". The definition of complexity depends on human perception. What
seems complex to a layperson, may not be so to an expert. What seems
complex in the past is no longer mysterious today.
What seems complex today may have a perfectly logical explanation in the
future. It is a folly to base a theory on present level of human
understanding and assume that it will never advance.
For the sake of argument, lets accept for the moment that "irreducible
complexity" is a proven fact. I will demonstrate that the conclusion drawn
from this assumption is logically inconsistent, therefore the assumption
must be wrong.
Foong argued that the theory of intelligent design need not speculate on
the nature of the designer itself. But there is at least one characteristic
we can deduce about the designer/creator. The designer/creator must
necessarily be more complex then its creation, otherwise, it would mean
complexity spontaneously emerge from a less complex creator/designer. If
the creations are "irreducibly complex", its creator/designer must be at
least as "irreducibly complex".
If "irreducible complexity" proves the case for intelligent design, then
there must be an even bigger creator/designer that created our immediate
creator/designer. But, who created the creator? And who created the
creator's creator? One can go on like this ad infinitum.
I am reminded of a story about an old lady who said that the world rests on
the back of a giant turtle. A smug professor then asked her what is the
turtle resting on, the old lady then replied indignantly that it was
turtles all the way. Modern theory of intelligent design despite its
sophistry, suffers from the same shortcomings.
Religious scholars arbitrarily put a stop at our most immediate creator.
That would directly contradict the assumption of "irreducible complexity".
You can't have your cake and eat it too. Unless, of course, the creator
operates on a different set of rules. If we can accept an omniscient
creator to exist without being created, why can't we accept the universe
and everything in it
to emerge spontaneously and naturally?
Another argument for intelligent design is that the universe seems to be
exquisitely fine-tuned to the emergence of life. For all we know, there
could be an infinite number of other universes where life is impossible or
where other forms of life exist.
If one lets an infinite number of monkeys to type on a keyboard, one will
eventually write Macbeth, but does that mean they are as intelligent as
Shakespeare? This argument makes the mistake of making a general statement
based on only one example that we know, namely our universe.
In the final analysis, it boils down to faith. Intelligent design is more
faith than science. I have no qualms about people having faith in
intelligent design, but please, don't pretend that it is science.
===================================================
whilst the above dialectics is not so "elegant" as sexy jennifer lopez, the
two dialectiticians at mkini do have good points. what do scmers think?
pluto
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