Re: Ray Martinez

On May 31, 1:48 pm, "Steven J." <steve...@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On May 31, 1:27 pm, Ray Martinez <pyramid...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:





-- [snip]

You are describing and advocating ordinary Materialism: the
impossibility of life emerging from non-life; or alleged material
processes (matter and animal life-intelligence occupying the same time
and space) producing life. Or, like I said before, you are assigning
the properties of Mind and His power to said antonym: mindless
material processes. The assignment is the epitome of an illogical and
senseless assertion or impossibility. That which has no mind (=
material processes) cannot produce its diametric opposite. Evolution
***asserts*** this intelligence insulting proposition and "supports"
it by pure argument from authority. These material processes do not
exist. This is the second time I have made this argument and I suspect
that you will, for the second time, ignore, evade and dodge.

There are several problems with your argument from assertion.

First, "mindless" and "mind" are not antonyms, but points on a
continuum.  

..Points located on the extreme opposite ends of said continuum.

Like the period in front and at the end of the above sentence. How
could they not be antonyms? Of course this question is rhetorical but
I will, of course, entertain and endure your reply.

There are living organisms (various plants) that have
nothing we would be inclined to call a mind, yet are still capable of
responding to their environment and modifying it.  

Such as....

The important claim in this assertion is "modifying it."

There are other
organisms (insects) capable of quite sophisticated behavior with very
little actual intelligence: consider the sphex wasp, which engages in
sophisticated hunting behavior without, so far as we can tell,
thinking about it at all.  This suggests that sophisticated abililties
can arise from relatively low levels of intelligence.


Question begging.

Your example assumes as true what is in dispute: "....can arise from
relatively low levels of intelligence."

Alleged mindless process is not aware of its own existence. YOUR mind
asserts its existence and its powers. I am here to tell you that these
CLAIMS are not logical but the epitome of anti-logic. I do not doubt
the existence of the truisms that comprise the alleged material
process. I reject that they, in tandem, act as a mechanistic process
producing its antithesis: minds. Once it is admitted that a material
process exists (natural selection, for example) this alleged process
MUST, by reason of the fact that material presupposes the absence of
Mind or Intelligence, be mindless. Of course evolution admits that
natural selection has no mind and is mindless. The admission falsifies
and refutes the claim that it can and has produced minds.

You seem to not understand what I am saying: the admission, which is a
characteristic of its alleged action, and more importantly, the
admission is a self-evident statement of fact: material process has no
mind; therefore, these facts are the evidence that the same cannot
produce its antithesis - minds.

Do you understand my position - a position based on facts-evidence and
logic?

Second, we know of no minds that are not embodied in matter.  Humans
think with their brains, and things that affect the workings of their
brains, from drugs to physical trauma, affect their minds as well.
Intellectual abilities are strongly correlated with both heredity and
nutrition, strongly indicating that they result from how the brain is
put together.  We know of no non-physical, or even non-material,
intelligences.


Except for God and spirit beings, true.

Third, we know that in practice design can be accomplished through
genetic algorithms that, themselves, possess no intelligence and no
real goal.  

False. We know this is not true.

But again, you are begging the question. You are assuming as true that
which I dispute. I explained my disputation above, that is, why your
claim above cannot be true.

It is true that these algorithms were themselves designed
by intelligent designers,

Now you have suddenly re-defined these algorithms quite differently
from their implied definition in your previous comment.

but they were designed in imitation of the
processes of reproduction, mutation, and natural selection found in
nature; human intelligence and goals were not built into them.  At
best, you might have a case that natural selection itself is a
designed process, which would put you in the same camp as theistic or
deistic evolutionists.


In view of my comments your point is lost - I do not understand.

Natural selection does not produce minds - factually and logically
impossible by your own admissions.


Fourth, your personal indignation at a proposition is a poor guide to
its truth.

-- [snip]

"Of course I have made this exact point to Dana Tweedy recently to no
avail. IF design does not imply designer or Designer then by the same
denial of logic parahomologous structures, nested hierarchies, or
general similarities indicating evolution is undermined. Of course the
evolutionist special pleads: he demands a suspension of logic in the
former but not in the latter. I expect an answer here - Jim."

Here is the problem: the argument that the nested hierarchy of
homologies implies common descent is based on inference from known
effects to known causes that produce those sorts of effects:
inheritance and mutation.  

All this says is that material process produced common descent-nested
hierarchies. Again, more question begging. Admission that material
process acts mindlessly (since it has no mind) it therefore must,
falsifies the claims of what it allegedly produces (minds).

If the factual admission of mindlessness does not refute the claims
made in behalf of mindless process, then what does?

This is how idiotic evolution is: they admit their mechanism is
mindless but they cannot comprehend that the admission refutes status
as mechanism.

You are, of course, arguing that likewise,
design is such an inference, but it is an inference reached by
ignoring a great deal of evidence.  No known designer designs suites
of artifacts that fall into consistent nested hierarchies.  

How do you know this?

This is an important point. Tim Berra showed corvette designs do just
that. Of course you could substitute any popular car that has a
history and make the same analogy.

Known designers routinely use similar designs for similar functions, so how
do we explain patterns in nature in which, e.g. the skeletal pattern
of a bat's wing more closely resembles, in fine detail, the skeletal
pattern of a whale's flipper than the pattern of a bird's wing or
pterosaur's wing.  There is no reason, from a design standpoint, for
whale cytochrome-c to more closely resemble cow cytochrome-c than,
say, shark cytochrome-c, but there *is* a reason from an evolutionary
standpoint.  Thus the pattern of evidence more closely resembles the
expected results of evolution than of special creation.  

I have followed your comments in this paragraph closely. It simply
ASSERTS the patterns resultant of evolution and not special creation.
WHY and HOW is evolution a BETTER explanation than SC? My question is
really asking why you discount SC, that is, God creating this way,
that is, the way of nested hierarchies?

We also know that genetic data-studies place certain marine animals
closer to cows than, IIRC horses or donkeys. Of course this data
falsifies evolution, but the juggernaut goes on unaffected.

Furthermore,
as noted above, your argument depends critically on the assumption
that mutation and natural selection CANNOT do the work of "design."

I said design and not "design." And I argued why the assumption is
true, especially in this message.

This is a doubly dubious premise, in view not only of the success of
genetic algorithms as problem solvers, but in view of how design, as
we know it, actually works: known sorts of designers invariably depend
on both material processes (sketching, tinkering, working with stuff)
and on a generate-variants-and-test procedure that is analogous to
natural selection.


None of what you mentioned is analogous to mindless material process-
natural selection. What was mentioned is better analogized to Mind or
mind. Again, your logic is perverse or entirely absent.


Is it too much to expect an answer?

Is it too much to expect you to pay attention to an answer?





What you did write admitted to an appearance of design - an appearance
that I accept. We assert that *this appearance* corresponds logically
to the work of invisible Designer. We assert that this is a perfectly
logical proposition-conclusion - based on what we see, which is
observation, which is evidence. Now, the evolutionary logic says the
appearance of parahomologous structures, nested hierarchies, or
general similarities indicates evolution. These appearances or
observations are built on the same logic of design implying Designer.
Again, and once more: the evolutionist demands a suspension of logic
(special pleading) in the former but not the latter. Any complaint
about an invisible correspondent is *also* valid in regards to alleged
material processes since they are comprised of a short list of largely
uncontested truisms, supported entirely, like I said, by pure and
endless arguments from authority.

Here, again, is the problem: reproduction exists, and heredity exists,
and mutation exists, and differential reproductive success of variant
offspring exists.  All of these things have been observed and
studied.  

What I have called "a short list of truisms." In tandem there is no
mechanism: evidence of this conclusion is the short list. They become
a mechanism by assertion and Arguments from Authority. Each component
individually and in tandem is self-evidently mindless and cannot
create minds.

In contrast, invisible designers are rather conspicuously
absent from the scientific literature;

Of course God is absent from evolutionary literature. What is the
point?

This means YOUR minds are doing the creating; assigning creative
powers to that which when examined cannot do what is claimed in its
behalf. Your minds are moving the sock puppet. Evolution is refuted
right here.

everything said of them seems
to be based on subjective impressions and speculation untempered by
empirical testing.  So on one side (evolution), you have inference to
known causes as an explanation; on the other side, you have
inconsistent speculations about an invisible Designer.

-- [snip]

How invisible Designer creates, if we are talking about the Biblical
Creator, is the easiest of all questions to answer. Any first year
theology student could answer this question. Everyone already knows
that Creationism postulates the special creation hypothesis. Surely
you are not asking me what 'special creation' means - are you?

Of course not.  From what you've already said in this thread, it's
obvious that you don't know what the term "special creation" means, so
what sort of intellectual malfunction would lead us to ask you?
Beyond that, whatever you think "special creation" means, *how* is it
implemented?  

Genesis plainly tells us.

But what difference does it make?

SC is a miracle.

The question goes back to Huxley: what are we supposed
to be picturing in our minds when we imagine a new kind being
created?  A giant anthropomorphic hand reaching out of the clouds and
shaping dirt into life-sized clay figurines which pop into life?  Some
sort of _Star Trek_ transporter effect that leaves a new kind behind
when it stops shimmering?  What does God *do* when He intervenes in
nature to specially create?  

Huxley was attempting to shame creationists into not being
creationists. Why don't you read Darwin 1859:490 and ask him?

And what sort of design philosophy can
account for shared pseudogenes (their differences arranged in exactly
the sort of nested hierarchy expected of common ancestry, but not from
common design) in humans and other primates?  

What?

You don't have the
foggiest idea how the invisible Designer creates, or what sort of
testable predictions an invisible Designer might imply:

Genesis cosmogony says He creates by direct creation. Are you implying
that "created" or "creation" does not mean supernatural intervention?

But the Bible tells us plainly how God acts in reality. Suppose I told
you how, what is the point?


logically,
this means that it is in fact the hardest of all questions to answer,
although you seem to find it an easy enough question to evade.


I have said it is the easiest of all to answer. All one needs is to be
Biblically literate. But what is the point since it is a miracle -
that which you reject?


-- [snip]

My arguments above say *these* natural process (which I called
material processes) do not exist: speciation, apart from Mind, is
impossible and does not exist. If Mind is involved then it is not
speciation but Creationism or the special creation hypothesis.

So your argument consists of two parts: first, Humpty Dumpty is dead,
and his power to make words mean whatever he wanted them to mean has
been passed on to you, and second, you worship a God too stupid to
create a universe that functions without constant tinkering.  Any
moment I expect you to inform us that "gravity" doesn't work, and that
God pushes the planets around the sun and pulls us down to the ground.

-- [snip]

Whatever we see, or is seen, reflects Divine power or "supernatural
process." Do you understand our position? The observation of design
and organized complexity says causation is direct-Divine or special
creation. Since this dual observation is seen in each organism and in
nature as a whole the same equates to the amount of evidence for our
hypothesis.

But there is no such dual observation: obviously, a great deal of
complexity arises through natural processes from previously existing
complex natural things (we call  this "reproduction" or "having
babies").  That is certainly an argument that functional complexity
can arise only through "direct-Divine causation," and calls into
question the theological position that creation requires "special
creation" or "direct-Divine causation" of species.

-- [snip]

What the evolutionist does: assigns the properties of Mind and His
power to an antonym by intelligence insulting assertion. Material-
natural has no mind - Jim, therefore it cannot behave or produce
outcomes that correspond to Mind. YOUR mind (= the minds of
evolutionists) causes mindlessness to possess these properties.
Evolution, which claims material-natural causation, is a just-so
story.

Argument from unsubstantiated assertion and hurt feelings noted.





-- [snip]

The Moon is self-evidently designed (reference available upon
request). We cannot say

...

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Ray


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