Arguing Against Intelligent Design

[ughaibu]

ID infers (but does not require) a Creator

Tell me more.

Darwinian evolution infers (but does not require) abiogenesis

All positions require abiogenesis, unless they claim that life has always existed.

[Biochemist]

Tell me more.

ID proponents are not any more homogeneous than are Darwinians. Some ID folks are merely suggesting that complex structures are difficult to explain by the standard dogma. Others assert this is "evidence" of a Creator. By the scientific method, this is not fundamentally sound. Lack of evidence for one position does not automatically impute evidence in support of another.

All positions require abiogenesis, unless they claim that life has always existed.

A good point, although I think (correct me if I am wrong on this) that we usually assume abiogenesis to mean life that was emergent passively from preexisting organic and inorganic compounds. I was really only making the point that the nature of biogenesis is outside of Darwinianism, as it assumes that life had to exist to begin the selection processes.

[tmaromine]

Though can abiogenesis be compared to ID in more ways than their inferences ?

 

Abiogenesis calls for life from nonliving things, and in the end, that life is still just all atoms, like everything else living and nonliving. The 'cause could be uncaused', but at least all the stuff was there for the result.

 

ID calls for some omniïnteligent being before there was even a universe, as to create the universe. It's pulling something out of nothing, and abiogenesis isn't completely that. Life out of nonliving, yes, but all the materials are there. IDists think an Everything can exist while there's Nothing so that it can create Some Thing (Universe).

 

Unless there's more I have to learn, I'd say it's still pulling knowledge out of nothingness (a pun to the IDists in that they rarely know or correctly interpret science, and that they think an uncaused omniscient being always existed in nothingness to create something).

 

A Designer needs a Designer.

Life just needs an assortment of nonliving things to be gotten together and work as a system, no?

[ughaibu]

Some ID folks are merely suggesting that complex structures are difficult to explain by the standard dogma

As InfiniteNow posted, 'god of the gaps'. Within the methods by which human thought can understand, it has been proved that there are things we can not know, there is no default position.

abiogenesis to mean life that was emergent passively from preexisting organic and inorganic compounds

It's simple, at some time there was no life, at some later time there was life.

[Biochemist]

ID calls for some omniïnteligent being before there was even a universe, as to create the universe.

I think it is fairer to say that ID allows for it.

Unless there's more I have to learn, I'd say it's still pulling knowledge out of nothingness...

I suspect an ID advocate would argue that it is contrary to the Scientific Method to rule out positions that have not been disproven. In that sense, ruling out a Creator (in the absence of evidence to do so) is an abrogation of the rules.

...(a pun to the IDists in that they rarely know or correctly interpret science, and that they think an uncaused omniscient being always existed in nothingness to create something)....

I don't think it is reasonable to credit individuals who do not understand science as credible ID advocates. I suspect there are many folks that "believe in" Darwinian evolution, and who have laughably erroneous positions. Those are not the folks to defend the hypotheses.

Life just needs an assortment of nonliving things to be gotten together and work as a system, no?

That is one position.

[Biochemist]

Within the methods by which human thought can understand, it has been proved that there are things we can not know, there is no default position.

Sorry, I don't understand what you mean by this.

[Biochemist]

It's simple, at some time there was no life, at some later time there was life.

This definition of abiogenesis would apply equally well to either Creationists or Darwinians.

[InfiniteNow]

Lack of evidence for one position does not automatically impute evidence in support of another.

You are quite correct, yet we see this as one of the most common and primary arguments being made by cdesign propentists.

 

 

I think (correct me if I am wrong on this) that we usually assume abiogenesis to mean life that was emergent passively from preexisting organic and inorganic compounds.

Why include the word "passively" into this description? Will you please give some insight into why you've chosen to insert this word here in this context?

[modest]

Can somebody tell me what is different between the Cambrian explosion and what has happened to mammals over the last 70 million years.

 

I'm sure somebody would say Cambrian diversity were among phyla and the differences are not as large amongst a class. However, I would argue differences among a class today are just as large as differences among different phyla then. Body plans between a whale and a rodent or bat are rather large. Besides, simpler forms are easier to change into new forms. Being true even outside evolution - a circle is easier to make into a square than a sphere into a box.

 

It seems like when a significant achievement is made in nature it allows for this kind of advancement or quick diversification. With mammals maybe it was sweat glands or something to do with the placenta or reproduction - I don't know, not being an expert. But the common ancestor of the Cambrian phyla that was clearly triploblastic and bilaterian had something that gave it an evolutionary advantage. Something the animals we're talking about had but a sponge did not. Hopefully BioChem or someone else who know more about this can enlighten us. Is there anything special about the Cambrian phyla?

 

Whatever the case, people will say why hasn't that thing happened again. Why hasn't some sponge exploded into a tree of life like happened in the Cambrian era? But this seems odd to me. Not only has it happened again in subgroups of animals or in the plant kingdom when plants got themselves pollen and seeds and quickly diversified. But, you also wouldn't expect something that has truly happened once in 4 billion years to happen twice in 500 million.

 

On top of this we know 2/3 of animals today - we have never found a fossil for. The only significant advancement that needs to have taken place in Cambrian waters is the ability to be found! One gene - is this a problem? It could have been an allele that activated because of environmental conditions. I'm just thinking out loud here but it seems to me nothing about the evidence disagrees grossly with theory.

 

It would be a shame to significantly change current theory that works well with the best evidence because of a limited understanding of an era almost completely filled with missing evidence. Hopefully we will find more clues in the rocks and living DNA to stitch up the holes.

 

Any thoughts - I'm sure it will be easy to find fault in my argument because biology is a weak subject of mine. But, that's ok. I'm finding new interest in this and I would like to learn where I'm going wrong.

 

//edit - also if a moderator wants to move this post maybe that would be good - I thought I was going to be talking about ID, I now realize I didn't.

 

-modest

[pgrmdave]

I think it is fairer to say that ID allows for it.

 

No, ID requires it, if you accept the ideas to the core. The truth is, life is complex. Very complex. More complex than humans could dream of developing with our primitive tools. By the same token, the sun is complex, very much so. Atomic structure is even more complex. Our universe is more complex even than most life, both at the very large, and very small scale. If you are going to say that life is too complex to reasonably have developed on its own, then you must admit that, if the universe is not infinitely old, then it too must have been designed intelligently - how else would the laws and constants be so perfect as to have led to this?

 

 

I suspect an ID advocate would argue that it is contrary to the Scientific Method to rule out positions that have not been disproven.

 

This isn't quite true - you cannot disprove most things, science is based on testable proof, not potential disproofs. It is not scientific to say that there is extra-terrestrial intelligent life because nobody has disproven it. It's not scientific to say that some elephants can change colors just because it cannot be disproven.

[Dr. Scientist]

My take has always been that if some force snapped this all into existence, then it's either detectable but we don't have the means to do so yet, or it's still outside this universe.

 

One of the most compelling questions to me is always this. How do flowers know what smells good to animals and insects? Is this merely a bi-product of evolution because it's functional? This is an example of one of those things that just seems too perfect to me to have just happened that way because it was functional.

 

Excuse me if I sound silly.. This is always a question I ask myself. I don't believe in god in the biblical sense but I feel like this is all a little too convenient for there to have never been anything but molecules interacting with eachother..

[InfiniteNow]

My take has always been that if some force snapped this all into existence, then it's either detectable but we don't have the means to do so yet, or it's still outside this universe.

It's a bit of a false dichotomy, since that's a massively gigantically big IF in that sentence.

 

 

How do flowers know what smells good to animals and insects?

They don't "know," and it really doesn't help to anthorpomorphize flowers and plants. The ones that didn't smell good weren't able to reproduce. Those that do did smell good were able to reproduce.

 

 

Is this merely a bi-product of evolution because it's functional?

It is most certainly a "bi-product" of evolution due to it's functionality, but what does the addition of the word "merely" to your sentence offer to the matter?

 

 

This is an example of one of those things that just seems too perfect to me to have just happened that way because it was functional.

This is simply an appeal to ignorance, that because you don't understand then it must not be true. I'll tell you what. Relativity and quantum mechanics sure don't make a lot of intuitive sense to most of us, but they both accurately describe our universe.

 

Nature doesn't care what does and does not make sense to our feable little minds. It operates in a very specific way, and we are describing how it operates using consistent and testable ideas which are far better than inserting some non-testable miracle as if it offers explanatory power.

 

 

I don't believe in god in the biblical sense but I feel like this is all a little too convenient for there to have never been anything but molecules interacting with eachother..

 

That would be a misrepresentation of the true position of these fields, but even if it were not, nature doesn't care what you find convenient, and meaning is a subjective quality. It makes no sense to use subjective qualities to argue against observable fact.

 

 

Rainbows are just too pretty not to be caused by unicorn farts. :shrug:

[Biochemist]

Why include the word "passively" into this description? Will you please give some insight into why you've chosen to insert this word here in this context?

We usually use abiogenesis to describe the generation of the first life form from an unknown process in the 500 million (ish) interval between when the earth cooled and when life first arrived about 3.5 billion years ago (the first prokaryote). This is typically regarded as a non-theocentric process by most usages of the term.

 

I have never seen anyone use abiogenesis to describe any of the (several different) theistic views of the generation of life. We could certainly use "abiogenesis" for this process as well, but we typically do not. I think connotation is heavier than denotation in this case. Comment?

[Biochemist]

No, ID requires it, if you accept the ideas to the core.

Since we are now disagreeing over the definition of ID, someone ought to post a defintion. I tend to use the views of Michael Behe as a reference. If we are not going to agree on what the content is we are "defending" against, there is not much point to this thread.

This isn't quite true - you cannot disprove most things, science is based on testable proof, not potential disproofs. It is not scientific to say that there is extra-terrestrial intelligent life because nobody has disproven it. It's not scientific to say that some elephants can change colors just because it cannot be disproven.

It sounds to me like we are agreeing. You are correct. My point is that it is not correct to assert there is no scientific basis to preclude ET life (using your example) either. Allowing for the possibility is acceptable. Assuming the fact (in a scientific discussion) is not.

[InfiniteNow]

We usually use abiogenesis to describe the generation of the first life form from an unknown process in the 500 million (ish) interval between when the earth cooled and when life first arrived about 3.5 billion years ago (the first prokaryote). This is typically regarded as a non-theocentric process by most usages of the term.

 

I have never seen anyone use abiogenesis to describe any of the (several different) theistic views of the generation of life. We could certainly use "abiogenesis" for this process as well, but we typically do not. I think connotation is heavier than denotation in this case. Comment?

 

You've walked around my question. Addition of the word "passively" adds an almost unconscious suggestion that there is this dichotomy, and that "active" processes in nature may have been at play as regards the fist "life."

 

Further, I've offered in this very thread data which describes how the first life form most likely came about, and even offered data on how this could be replicated by any reader of this thread at home in their own kitchen.

 

On top of that, even IF the process I've proposed is not EXACTLY how it happened in primordial earth, the fact that we don't have a precise definition NOW in NO WAY implies that a precise definition is, by it's very nature, unattainable... Nor, that some ethereal unicorn or spaghetti monster did it.

 

 

Frankly, theism is a social science, not a cosmological or evolutionary one. :)

[Biochemist]

Can somebody tell me what is different between the Cambrian explosion and what has happened to mammals over the last 70 million years.

This is a really good question, Mod. The generally accepted framework for discussion of the Cambrian explosion is that we grew from three phyla to approximately 70 phyla over a relatively short window, about 250 million-300 million years. We subsequent dropped to the (approximately) 30 phyla we have today.

 

But you are asking about the breadth in body plans based on a cross-cut at the class or order level of the phylogenetic heirarchy. I don't know the answer to that. I will have to come back to this when I have a chance to look at it. Might be a good topic for a separate thread. But my initial take is that we did indeed see a significant increase and subsequent decrease at all levels of the plylogenetic pyramid. Anyone disagree with that premise?

[Biochemist]

You've walked around my question. Addition of the word "passively" adds an almost unconscious suggestion that there is this dichotomy, and that "active" processes in nature may have been at play as regards the fist "life."

I don't really care about this alleged dichotomy. Tell us how you want to use the word, and we can use it that way.

I've offered in this very thread data which describes how the first life form most likely came about....

Pretty presumptious to elevate the current thinking up to "most likely", as opposed to the "most common current view" or the like. I don't think we have any reasonable idea how we got to the first prokaryote in 500 million years.