posted
Since evolutionary theory doesn't try to explain how life began, this is not surprising.
And we've achieved plenty of positive results in creating macromolecules in labs. We've never created life, but we've created many of the building blocks (we've also seen a number of them in nature, such as natural protein bubbles forming which could function as primitive cell walls). As there were millions of years during which all the conditions for life had a chance to come together, that we haven't managed in a few short decades (all the time we've really had the expertise to even give a try) is hardly a condemnation of the notion, particularly since our partial results are so positive.
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quote: there are alot of "quasi-science" theories out there (The Life from another planet source one is one of those) that have NO direct evidence in the positive to support it, but in fact have negative evidence against it.
To clarify, Chad, you find it more scientific to believe that we were created by an invisible sky panda than to believe that we were created by aliens?
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quote:To clarify, Chad, you find it more scientific to believe that we were created by an invisible sky panda than to believe that we were created by aliens?
Thanks for telling me what I believe Tom as I wasn't sure.
I believe it's entirely possible through Cloning for man to create another man. Maybe you disagree.
So you tell me Tom, is it more "scientific" to believe that Aliens more advanced than us, who we have no evidence exist whatsoever, in any form. Created us and then sent us here.
Or is it more believable let's say that a Human like unto ourselves created us in his image? Keeping in mind that Human cloning is a "when" and not an "if" statement (at least for your benefit I hope you think so) and that WE can already travel to other planets as a fact (again I hope you believe this as well) while no other life can that we are aware of, but WE can. And that WE can create and engineer plants already and effect/initiate change ON evolution. That's right WE can Tom.
Oh and one last thing Tom. The "invisible man in the sky"? Well it's MEN and their not Invisible, and it's actually called SPACE Tom and the Men are called Astronauts and they exist and LIVE in a Space Station and actually survive AND grow food. All in an environment that can't support life, they're living.
As far as Panda's being able to "create" life or clone other species or travel through space...You may be alone with that belief.
posted
I believe he was referring to that you think ID, which leaves the description of the "superior being" so vague as to include both the Christian God and (very intelligent and powerful) invisible sky pandas, to be a scientific theory.
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I just skimmed through this thread and was wondering if there's any scientific evidence of intelligent design. I'm also confused about the intelligent design theory. Where does the intelligent designer come from? Is there always an intelligent designer? Or did it just create life on Earth and leave? Or it just comes once in a while? If it still here, how does it escape detection beyond human observation? Is there even an intelligent designer? Or just a natural law guided with intelligence? What kind of proof would it take to disprove intelligent design? Does the intelligent designer work outside the laws that we are familiar with?
Thank you for reply.
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quote:Where does the intelligent designer come from? Is there always an intelligent designer? Or did it just create life on Earth and leave? Or it just comes once in a while? If it still here, how does it escape detection beyond human observation? Is there even an intelligent designer? Or just a natural law guided with intelligence? What kind of proof would it take to disprove intelligent design? Does the intelligent designer work outside the laws that we are familiar with?
Alot of those are are PHILOSOPHY questions and alot of those are based on the assumption that it is proven. It's not. It's a theory only. I would work on the HOW before I worked on the WHY. Also alot of those questions can't be answered by MANY, MANY a scientific theory, but they are still considered scientific theory. Many of the theories outlined above these posts (in the PAPER linked as well) can't answer those questions.
It may sound like I'm making excuses, and maybe I am because I'm not a scientist and my view isn't to answer all the philosophical but to keep my mind open to the possibility that there is "intelligent design" to our universal order, physical laws, etc. or that it appears more "logical" than a product of "randomness". ESPECIALLY with how much we are beginning to understand as well as what WE can intelligently design (is there a limit to what man can do Universally? If so, what does science say it is?)
I would read through the posts for alot of the discussion. I did the same and then went back and read them later.
quote:What kind of proof would it take to disprove intelligent design?
I don't know about "proof" but evidence very much could point to it being false. Proof would require you to be able to see the formation of life on the planet. OR to be able to have all the power to BE an "intelligent designer" and for you to fail, repeatedly, which doesn't look like it's going to happen to humans at least. What we can accomplish at both the supermicroscopic as well as the grander scale currently is very successful intelligent design limted only by time and understanding and facility.
Parallel Experimentation (my term. It's probably called something else in real science) is currently the only mehtod I'm aware to test "Intelligent Design". Think of it as similar to why we run tests on MICE and the results are considered evidence of how it may affect Humans. Mice aren't Humans but they share some of the same "qualities" and are affected the same way as humans are relevant to certain circumstances.
I don't see why that can't be done with ID. mytwocents your Philosophical questions, some of them at least are what indeed LEAD to experimentation if someone has an open mind, and greater facilities than my own.
I think that the "primordial soup" theory has alot of other plausible theories backing it up that scientists have formed recently due to improved scientific methods. But I also believe that whether intentionally or not, alot of POWERS that science has granted to man has also made the "improbabilities" of ID more "probable" (cloning, fusion, genetic engineering, molecular biology, etc. etc.)
Either way the future looks bright.
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quote: Or is it more believable let's say that a Human like unto ourselves created us in his image?
If it's a human like ourselves, Chad, where did he come from? And if it's credible that a human like ourselves evolved, why isn't it credible for us to evolve?
Your suggestion requires that the creation of life still happen randomly, but just pushes it back a few million years.
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quote:... rarity by itself shouldn't necessarily be evidence of anything. When one is dealt a bridge hand of thirteen cards, the probability of being dealt that particular hand is less than one in 600 billion. Still, it would be absurd for someone to be dealt a hand, examine it carefully, calculate that the probability of getting it is less than one in 600 billion, and then conclude that he must not have been dealt that very hand because it is so very improbable. --John Allen Paulos, Innumeracy: Mathematical Illiteracy and its Consequences
quote:. . imagine a puddle waking up one morning and thinking, 'This is an interesting world I find myself in, an interesting hole I find myself in. It fits me rather neatly, doesn't it? In fact it fits me staggeringly well. It must have been made to have me in it!' --Douglas Adams
These are both quoted by way of introduction in this excellent article by Robert Todd Carroll. I'd be interested in discussing any rebuttals to this article.
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posted
Tangentially: I liked Lewis's thought (Perelandra) that the center of the universe, that is, the reason God made it, is . . . everything.
It makes sense. If I write a story, it may have several things in it that I liked so much I wanted to put them in a story. If I had much greater intelligence, I might be able to make a story so perfect that everything in it deserved to be in a story, in and of itself.
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quote:Proof would require you ... to be able to have all the power to BE an "intelligent designer" and for you to fail, repeatedly
No, that would not be sufficient proof to discount ID.
Well, actually, your statement makes no sense.
If you had "all the power to BE an intelligent designer", then you would be one, and you couldn't fail. Or esle, how would you know? If you failed, then you wouldn't have "all the power to be an intelligent designer"
Besides, if a geneticist could sculpt a particular bacteria (making him an intelligent designer of bacteria), that doesn't prove that bacteria were intelligently designed. And if he failed the next year at making a different bacteria, it would not prove that bacteria "could not be" intelligently designed--just that he wasn't able to do it.
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quote:... rarity by itself shouldn't necessarily be evidence of anything. When one is dealt a bridge hand of thirteen cards, the probability of being dealt that particular hand is less than one in 600 billion. Still, it would be absurd for someone to be dealt a hand, examine it carefully, calculate that the probability of getting it is less than one in 600 billion, and then conclude that he must not have been dealt that very hand because it is so very improbable. --John Allen Paulos, Innumeracy: Mathematical Illiteracy and its Consequences
This arguement is inherently flawed for a few reasons. Whose the "dealer" granting the cards. Are the cards random? Or is it possible to take 13 cards I want and deal them to you? Also that those 13 cards aren't like any other cards. They are exactly the 13 cards needed to get the super-duper full house where all other combinations of 13 (including the 13 in any other order than one specific order) are meaningless.
Now, I think your odds are a Vegas Longshot, but please feel free to "bet it all" on number 600 Billion.
quote: imagine a puddle waking up one morning and thinking, 'This is an interesting world I find myself in, an interesting hole I find myself in. It fits me rather neatly, doesn't it? In fact it fits me staggeringly well. It must have been made to have me in it!' --Douglas Adams
The arguement is flawed because a puddle doesn't "wake up" or "think". It also is not restricted by the pothole as it can actually CRACK it and enlarge it, weaken it, and evaporate completely from within it. It also is contradicted by the simple "water bottle" which WAS created to hold the water in it. And BOTH are true.
I skimmed the article and I liked the "eye" analogy. And I even wondered why we have sight at all or hearing for that matter when there are organisms that are blind (jellyfish) and have no vertabrae, etc. why we don't have sonar (yet) or why we don't produce our own light (ET and other organisms).
Maybe science has an answer, but what in Evolution said "humans and other animals need sight and this is how sight works, and this is how I'm going to evolve sight from non-sight.
The article then abandons the scientific and starts whining on the current religious nature of the country, that has nothing to do with the debate of ID as science but pretty much reveals his antagonism of anything that smells "religious". He also objects to students being told that Evolution is a "theory" and not a "fact" when speaking of the birth of life on the planet.
It's sad.
ssywak, I think it was a little confusing. Basically if you had all the components to create life from dead elements, and failed, it could be evidence against ID. If however you were to create the individual items and environment theorized to exist naturally at the birth of life and they naturally turn into life, then that would be huge evidence that Evolution cannot only guide already existing life, but create it as well. Just as all current experiments have done, but have failed so far.
Unfortunately even though that is in fact evidence contrary to the theories of dead molecules eventually evolving into life, some reject is with the claim "Just because we fail at it doesn't make it not possible" which is funny when used by scientists AND religious creationists.
Similary, the ability to create life and command and control it's evolution through new physical laws is also evidence that ID is very possible. But people still reject it for ID while accepting it as evidence for other theories.
I think that ID needs to leave religion out of it and focus strictly on studying the possibility of purposed design in the universe, it's laws and in life. Religionists are just hijacking ID in hopes to be able to teach religion in school classes.
Sorry, aint gonna happen except in Theology and Philosophy classes.
There may be evidence of ID, but unless it's a sticker on a new born baby that says "Made by Jesus Christ", entertwining religion with it doesn't help ID, it just gives Religiophobes fuel for their antagonism.
But that's not why I posted.
I wanted to post to see if anyone saw "Boston Legal" last night. It had as one of it's plotlines a TRIAL on Intelligent Design. It rehashed alot of the arguements here very rudimentary. (One of the other plotlines being getting a guy off for murder that had killed his mother and neighbor because he was lonely, which is why I have never liked the Practice or Boston Legal) and the ending was suprising for me.
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posted
A particular set of cards may have meaning to you, but they don't to the universe. All hands are equally likely.
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quote: Also that those 13 cards aren't like any other cards.
Except that in this case, they are. For the purposes of this analogy, the hand you are dealt is the type of life that appears here on Earth. Were Earth different, other types of life would appear.
This is also the point of the puddle analogy. Leaving aside the whole "do puddles think" bizarreness, the reason the puddle joke works is that water conforms its shape to the container in which it finds itself. If water could "think," and "thought" that the container was obviously created because the WATER was that shape, it would have gotten the whole thing completely backwards. In the same way, saying "Gee, we're awfully good at existing on this planet; conditions must have been tweaked to create life so perfectly adjusted" is likely to be getting it exactly wrong.
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quote: Basically if you had all the components to create life from dead elements, and failed, it could be evidence against ID.
Why? I don't understand why you would suggest that.
What's even stranger is that were we to recreate the conditions of prehistoric Earth and successfully create life, that would in fact be proof of a certain sort of ID -- although not proof that ID created life on this planet initially.
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posted
When we talk about probability in the abstract, Chad, as we've been doing throughout this thread, we assume a fair dealer and true randomness. Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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quote:When we talk about probability in the abstract, Chad, as we've been doing throughout this thread, we assume a fair dealer and true randomness
Fair Dealer? as in "morality/ethics" fair? Or in Human logical "fair"? or is there a universal "fair" dictated by?
True Randomness was great and all until Humans went and controlled it and still exert control over it and I assume will continue to try to control it and bend it and take "randomness" out of the equation as much as possible.
EDIT: No one say Boston Legal? Maybe someone could find a transcript of it. I don't follow the show so I wouldn't know what to reference in searching for it.
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posted
I have no idea what your little riff on randomness is supposed to do besides underscore your lack of understanding of probability theory.
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quote:True Randomness was great and all until Humans went and controlled it and still exert control over it and I assume will continue to try to control it and bend it and take "randomness" out of the equation as much as possible.
WTF?
I thought the complaint was that "scientists" were trying to keep the randomness in, and that theologists (proponents of ID) were trying to take it out and replace it with intent.
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quote:I even wondered why we have sight at all or hearing for that matter when there are organisms that are blind (jellyfish) and have no vertabrae, etc. why we don't have sonar (yet) or why we don't produce our own light (ET and other organisms).
You're assuming an intelligent designer. Natural selection works with what it's given. If the dinosaurs hadn't developed skin flaps for cooling which could later become wings, we might not have birds. Evolution cannot "decide" that an organism needs a particular trait. Also, there may be no good reason for an organism to be able to fly, or see, or have a backbone. Even if there is, many traits come with a cost. Sometimes the benefits of the trait outweight the cost, sometime they don't. Since humans are mostly diurnal, have reasonably good eyesight, and have artificial light, sonar wouldn't be all that useful. It's not useless, but the energy cost of having this system might well outweight the benefits.
quote:Maybe science has an answer, but what in Evolution said "humans and other animals need sight and this is how sight works, and this is how I'm going to evolve sight from non-sight
No! Evolution does not have a specific goal. The environment may create the need for a particular trait, but evolution never "decided" that humans needed sight. It could possibly be said that evolution "decided" that light-sensitive spots in an ancient human ancestor were more beneficial than not having them. Evolution also does not have a specific way of meeting the environment's requirements.
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I really liked Bob's post a bit ago in which he wrote:
quote:Really, it's just a bunch of speculation. Again, just because a scientist does it, doesn't mean it's "science."
Everyone's allowed to speculate. And if all we had to teach in biology classes was the possible explanations of the origin of life, hey, I'd be happy to give EVERY flippin' theory equal time.
Instead, we have a theory that explains everything pretty well from that point on. And another theory that uses the same mechanisms and adds another (unnecessary) dimension of explanation.
I think we were getting close to something.
Chad has asserted several times that living matter comes only from living matter, not dead matter. He also acknowledged that it was unlikely ever to be proven or disproven, but let's accept for the moment (for those of you capable of maintaining an abstract train of thought that doesn't suddenly derail into a concrete abutment) that it is true.
Taken as a given, then: No physical process or catalyst that could ever be conceived or contrived could possibly have been responsible for the emergence of life (however you want to define it) from non-life (however you want to define it).
Observed fact: Life exists.
Conclusion: Either (1) life always existed; or (2) a process or catalyst different from "physical processes and catalysts that can be conceived or contrived" was responsible for it (which also includes 'it just happened' explanations).
Discussion:
(1) To assert that life always existed is possible, but seems to necessitate changing the definition of 'life' from the first part of the syllogism, so I won't pursue that here.
(2) Let's assume it's 'other.' Okay, what can we surmise about this?
The cause is physical, but not conceivable or contrivable
This first suggestion seems to lead to a dead-end. In effect, it is where science is today, except that science rejects the first principle. Science presupposes a physical explanation, and digs deeper into theory and experiment in its effort to define life and understand those primal moments. We may never satisfactorily understand it in physical terms, and until we do it remains 'inconceivable.'
If you accept this first suggestion fully, you stop doing science. Why dig deeper, if the answer is unknowable?
Does ID accept this first suggestion? Several of us have asked repeatedly, what ID is, and nobody has provided an answer, other than to assert that our asking is evidence of close-mindedness.
ID is a label for an explanation of the universe, not an explanation in and of itself. In the case of the origin of life, what explanation falls within ID? Is it this first one, 'physical but unknowable'?
If so, one (especially a scientist) may be excused for asking: I realize this is supposedly unknowable, but what kind of physicality are we talking about here? Looking at what is known about the earliest life-sustaining earth environments, where and how might this physical influence or catalyst have made its mark? What type of physical entity or force are we talking about? Where did it come from? Was it alive?
Well, golly. Looks like we'd be doing science again... only this time, we are investigating ID! Maybe it is scientific, after all. Except for one thing: nobody I know of has proposed any answers to those questions. Making them awfully hard to investigate. Scientifically.
Instead, in an anti-intellectual shell game, we are told: Stop worrying me with all those narrow-minded specifics! Why can't you just accept that it might be?
Which leads us to the alternative...
The cause is not physical
Is this perhaps what ID asserts? It's uncertain. ID opponents use inflammatory language like 'man-in-the-sky' and 'panda-in-the-sky', hoping to draw out ID proponents into a discussion of what, let's face it, might as well be god. Or God.
But ID proponents are not so easily manipulated. The force behind ID is not god, it's not a panda, it's not spaghetti monsters, it's not dreams or hope or feathers or string. It's not a snark, or a boojum, or angels, or a city of lost children. It's not little green men, virii from Mars, an echo from a parallel dimension, or a cosmic accident.
All we know is: it's intelligent. And it's responsible for the entire universe, particularly the origin of the universe, the origin of life, and the cleverness of evolution.
It's not physical, and it doesn't operate according to any laws or processes that can ever be conceived of humanly.
This theory is not just an alternative to evolution. It is an alternative to science.
The ID disclaimer at the start of biology classes might just as well say: Some people believe that this class is a complete waste of time, and that learning to question and discover things about the physical world around you will never get you closer to the grand answers of existence, which lie in a realm beyond any scientific enquiry.
That's a fine disclaimer -- and I actually support it, in the context of including some history of science, some science philosophy -- it's all important, at various levels of schooling.
But ID as science? Nuh-uh.
(edit: punctuation, formatting)
[ August 25, 2005, 03:48 PM: Message edited by: John Van Pelt ]
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posted
Hell, give credit where credit is due. He not only articulated his position well, but he actually articulated several possible stances for the other side. It's tough when you gotta do the work for both sides, huh John?
quote:Maybe science has an answer, but what in Evolution said "humans and other animals need sight and this is how sight works, and this is how I'm going to evolve sight from non-sight.
This made me chuckle. Do you realize that if Evolution said such a thing it would be ID?
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quote:Taken as a given, then: No physical process or catalyst that could ever be conceived or contrived could possibly have been responsible for the emergence of life (however you want to define it) from non-life (however you want to define it).
I'm not sure if JVP supports that statement himself, or just presents it so that it might be discussed.
Of course, if those 1960's experiments creating basic amino acids from labratory-made primordial soup-mix were to continue, and eventually create even the slightest hint of...something alive, then the above premise would fail.
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posted
ssywak: Just to be clear, then, I neither support it nor deny it.
I do support the idea that it is worth investigating, and that human children, wherever possible, and where they have the capacity, and where it does not overtly conflict with cultural norms (i.e., not against their will), should be taught how to do so.
Such mental tools -- the ability to form disciplined questions about interesting subjects, speculate creatively on answers, observe relevant (and irrelevant) evidence closely, and apply quantitative thinking with some rigor in determining which evidence supports or contradicts which answer -- are much needed in the world.
As I think much of this thread has demonstrated.
I presented the statement as the start of a syllogism, for looking into what ID might mean in a universe where ID was actually needed (and, as Karl pointed out, lacking much in the way of inputs on the matter).
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posted
Sometimes I have to present my opponents' arguments, as well. It's interesting, but frustrating!
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