Intelligent design

[pgrmdave]

These are two important questions posed to people who believe in intelligent design.

 

What, if any, predictions does intelliegent design make?

 

What, if any, testable, falsifiable experiments are possible, as in, what would disprove intelligent design?

 

Please, to those of you who think that intelligent design is legitimate science, answer these questions.

[emessay]

Intelligent design would be scientific, if ID starts to analyze 'basic intelligent or automation life function factor' from a DNA, or a procaryote. This blank zones that we see nothing , what's 'driven-engine' for mutation, natural selection. If ID stop to think and conclude that it's all come from God or Alien power or we're come from other planetary system beyond galaxies, so we back to past time. There is nothing to do.

[pgrmdave]

May I assume, by the lack of responses to my questions, that the proponents of Intelligent Design are unable to answer these questions?

[rockytriton]

I think the whole proof when it comes to ID is based on "the bible tells me so".

[TRoutMac]

What, if any, predictions does intelliegent design make?

 

Who cares? You may as well ask us what kind of ice cream we like, for all the relevance it has to the subject. What, now "legitimate science" to you must include fortune-telling?

 

But okay, I'll play along… I.D. would predict that humans will never evolve into any other species. And oh yeah… Darwinist evolution will be completely abandoned within the next 20 years. How's that for a prediction? (he, he)

 

What, if any, testable, falsifiable experiments are possible, as in, what would disprove intelligent design?

 

This has been answered numerous times, but I'll answer it again, and then you'll continue to claim it has never been answered and the I.D. is "untestable":

 

I.D. could be disproven, or at least "non-supported", if no similarities could be found between the things that humans with intelligence produce and the systems which are found in living organisms. I.D. can be "tested" by making elementary comparisons between living organisms, the complicated integrated systems found within them, and man-made (intelligence) machines and the complicated integrated systems found within them.

 

There are so many similarities, so many comparisons, that I can fully understand why Darwinists wish to pretend we've never answered this question.

 

One example is DNA, which is widely accepted to be a system of language, built upon a common set of rules or conventions (universal genetic code) which carries instructions for what proteins to produce and when in order to build and operate a living organism.

 

We know quite a bit about this… every complex system that intelligent man creates—from buildings, to cars, to airplanes—requires a set of instructions (utilizing language) for building, operating, and maintaining them. Man is intelligent, these are things intelligence produces, and within the living cell we find precisely the same thing (albeit in a different form). Therefore, the hypothesis that living organism were designed by an intelligence is supported, and supported quite well.

 

Please, to those of you who think that intelligent design is legitimate science, answer these questions.

 

Done. Now, let the pretending begin.

[TRoutMac]

I think the whole proof when it comes to ID is based on "the bible tells me so".

 

You are the one invoking the Bible, not us. You are the one invoking religious belief, not us. Why do you do this? You want to steer the discussion away from science and toward religion precisely because that's the only way you can perpetuate the mystique of evolution. Evolution will not ultimately survive the onslaught of scienctific discovery. So anything you can do to delay that and keep the discussion within the realm of religion, you will continue to do.

[rockytriton]

What exactly is a "Darwinist" anyway? Is this someone who believes that there is no god that has anything to do with creation or evolution? I don't think what darwin said about things like natural selection/evolution conflict with the possibility of intelligent design. Does Darwin say anywhere that his theories show that God doesn't exist? Is it wrong to believe in evolution and natural selection and believe that there was a god or some type of intelligence behind it? I don't know why people here who support ID are so anti-Darwin. I believe in ID, and I believe Darwin's theories. Am I some kind of moron? I can't stand the stupid attitude that you must fight everything a scientist says because you are afraid of going to hell if you try to think outside of the box, or outside of the book in this case.

[TRoutMac]

What exactly is a "Darwinist" anyway? Is this someone who believes that there is no god that has anything to do with creation or evolution? I don't think what darwin said about things like natural selection/evolution conflict with the possibility of intelligent design. Does Darwin say anywhere that his theories show that God doesn't exist? Is it wrong to believe in evolution and natural selection and believe that there was a god or some type of intelligence behind it? I don't know why people here who support ID are so anti-Darwin. I believe in ID, and I believe Darwin's theories. Am I some kind of moron? I can't stand the stupid attitude that you must fight everything a scientist says because you are afraid of going to hell if you try to think outside of the box, or outside of the book in this case.

 

You believe in ID? What is your belief in ID based on? "The Bible tells you so?" You just said that was the only basis for 'proof' of ID. Now, suddenly, you say you believe in ID.

 

Nobody is going to Hell because they believe in Darwinism… according to the basic doctrines of Christianity, anyway. But pursuant to your other questions, here are some quotes from evolutionists:

 

“The evidence of evolution reveals a universe without design.” Moreover, “Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist.”13 —Richard Dawkins, The Blind Watchmaker, 1986

 

“As evolutionists, we see that no [ethical] justification of the traditional kind is possible. Morality, or more strictly our belief in morality, is merely an adaptation put in place to further our reproductive ends. Hence the basis of ethics does not lie in God’s will.... In an important sense, ethics as we understand it is an illusion fobbed off on us by our genes to get us to cooperate. It is without external grounding.”11 —E. O. Wilson and Michael Ruse, “The Evolution of Ethics,” 1991

 

“The tendency in savages to imagine that natural objects and agencies are animated by spiritual or living essences, is perhaps illustrated by a little fact which I once noticed: my dog, a full-grown and very sensible animal, was lying on the lawn during a hot and still day; but

at a little distance a slight breeze occasionally moved an open parasol, which would have been wholly disregarded by the dog, had any one stood near it. As it was, every time that the parasol slightly moved, the dog growled fiercely and barked. He must, I think, have reasoned to himself in a rapid and unconscious manner, that movement without any apparent cause indicated the presence of some strange living agent, and that no stranger had a right to be on his territory. The belief in spiritual agencies would easily pass into the belief in the existence of one or more gods.”12 —Darwin, Descent of Man, 1871, ch. 3

 

In other words, evolution as it is taught in schools, (Darwinian) is a theory of origins that has no creator. Now, you may disagree with this much of Darwinism… you may wish to meld evolution with I.D. and that's fine… in fact, that's great. At least it's a step in the right direction. But if that's the case, and if you yourself believe in ID, then what problem do you have with IDers?

 

Whether ID is incompatible with Darwinism or not, the question is, "Does Darwinian evolution actually work on the macro scale?" If you assume that "particle to people" evolution was the intent of the designer, would hard evidence and laws of physics as they exist actually permit such a thing? We have moths that go from black to white, but they're still moths. We have finches whose beak sizes change over time, but in the end, they're still finches. We actually have no "hard" evidence of any one species morphing into another different species. All we really have are certain similarities between some species that are interpreted to mean that one evolved from another. So is that really enough evidence to conclude with any certainty that evolution on a macro scale actually occurred? The answer is an emphatic NO.

 

Certainly, many of you will disagree strenuously with this. So at the risk of being misconstrued, I would ask for an example of one species which evolved from something different. I am not asking this in the spirit of "Name just one" combativeness… that's not my meaning. I'm assuming for the moment, for the sake of argument, that there are many such examples and that any of you can name one that you accept as reasonable, and then I will use that to illustrate something. If you'd like an example, Pete Dunkelberg has a piece on the talkorigins web site where he speculates that venus flytraps evolved from sundews. (although he admits there's no fossil evidence to support this) So unless you all are comfortable with my using THAT as an example, please provide a different one.

 

Thanks.

[rockytriton]

You believe in ID? What is your belief in ID based on? "The Bible tells you so?" You just said that was the only basis for 'proof' of ID. Now, suddenly, you say you believe in ID.

 

I always said I believed in ID, I just don't think it's science and doesn't belong in science class. My belief is based on belief, not proof, which is again why I think it's not science. There's nothing bad because it's not science, not everything has to be science. Just like science is not bad because it isn't biased by religion.

 

“The evidence of evolution reveals a universe without design.”

 

That's just a dumb quote.

 

“Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist.”

 

There's nothing wrong with someone being intellectually fulfilled and be an atheist. If that's what you believe, that's fine by me, and yes maybe evolutionary theory makes it more possible, but that doesn't mean it's the only way.

 

“As evolutionists, we see that no [ethical] justification of the traditional kind is possible. Morality, or more strictly our belief in morality, is merely an adaptation put in place to further our reproductive ends. Hence the basis of ethics does not lie in God’s will.... In an important sense, ethics as we understand it is an illusion fobbed off on us by our genes to get us to cooperate. It is without external grounding.”11 —E. O. Wilson and Michael Ruse, “The Evolution of Ethics,” 1991

 

What's wrong with this? Does ID say that the intelligent designer gives people morality? Does it say that ethical evolution couldn't have been a part of the design?

 

As for the darwin quote, I don't understand what you are trying to prove with that one.

 

 

I don't know what kind of proof I can give to say one species evolved to another, there is not proof, that's why it's a theory, but there is evidence such as similarities between speceis and fossil records. Not really enough to totally convince me that it works at the macro scale, but still, it's scientific. When you get into mixing religions with science you might as well start calling phsycics scientists and start calling their predicitons evidence. Next thing will be a glass moving on a table will be considered scientific evidence that ghosts exist.

[damocles]

These are two important questions posed to people who believe in intelligent design.

 

What, if any, predictions does intelliegent design make?

 

What, if any, testable, falsifiable experiments are possible, as in, what would disprove intelligent design?

 

Please, to those of you who think that intelligent design is legitimate science, answer these questions.

 

I have wondered about Intelligent Design.

How could a rational man possibly argue such a position?

That position can be argued if you approach it properly.

But you would have to junk all pre-conceived notions and abandon any idea that there has to be an ntelligent designer required to produce a self-organizing system.

 

Instead you must set the parameters for what is possible.

Let us turn to a little logic and see if we can find a circumstance in which the intelligent designer could fit our current understanding of the way reality works.

 

First, can an intelligent designer exist undetected?

This is possible if the intelligent designer and the intelligent design are one and the same. Exactly one and the same. If there is any deviation in the two sets; then there is information transfer between the two sets and the boundary or the merge between the sets will be seen by an observer.

 

Second, can an intelligent designer hide in plain sight?

Possible if the intelligent designer built the universe and then moved off leaving it to self-organize, based on a set of pre-set instructions. However he leaves behind two boundary conditions, that an observer would detect eventually in the structure of the creation; even if the observer was on the inside of the creation looking out. On top of that, the very nature of the two boundary conditions would rapidly reveal the exact size and composition of the intelligent designer bringing up the question of what created it?

 

Third, can an intelligent designer act in plain sight and be undetected.

Not possible. If an intelligent designer changes local created conditions and the observer is present; the observer will notice local condition violations immediately and conclude that there is something screwy occuring.

 

Fourth, can one even argue that an observer trapped inside a creation can seek for an intelligent designer and prove or disprove the proposition? If you read this, then you obviously know the answer to that question.

 

Fifth, could an observer detect an intelligent designer if it was an A=A congruence with its creation?(Based on the first condition.) Yes. But the requirement is that the creation and the intelligent designer have an edge or a boundary and be finite. This is so that a reflexive symmetry can be tested and refuted.

Tests

-Violations of any standard universal local condition.(Not seen to date.)

-Discovery of a codified language built into structure that is not explained by chaos theory, principles of self-organized systems, or simple statistical variance.(None of those limiters has been exceeded to date.)

-Discovery of another universe that provides clear data of preset organizational principles.(This is enormously difficult as it requires more than one intelligent designer!)

 

Based on the above conditions, if that intelligent designer is oiut there, then it must be;

-congruous to creation.(A=A.)

-totally inactive as to present modification of the preset conditions it imposes on its creation.(Call this the blooming flower postulate.)

-not violating local universal conditions.(No miracles folks.)

-be a finite being limited to the existence parameters of its creation.(Remember the intelligent designer has to be exactly congruent to its creation in order to escape easy detection.A=A.).

 

Given all of the above, is it any wonder that the Occam's Razor crowd looks upon intelligent design with skepticism?

[pgrmdave]

What, now "legitimate science" to you must include fortune-telling?

 

Scientific theories make predictions, that is how they are testable. Any theory which is untestable, is disregarded by science.

 

I.D. could be disproven, or at least "non-supported", if no similarities could be found between the things that humans with intelligence produce and the systems which are found in living organisms.

 

I have a two main problems with this idea.

 

1) Similar solutions will arise to fit similar problems.

 

Bats have wings to fly. Birds have wings to fly. Insects have wings to fly. However, this does not mean that they are related, but that the solution to the problem of flight is similar. Likewise, evolution suggests that some degree of order would be best for an organism and a population, which means that order would arise to the degree to which it provides an inheritable advantage. A human will design a system as orderly as it will produce an advantage.

 

2) Things other than life are complex.

 

Stars, planets without life, atomic structure, galaxies. All these things have a lot of complexity, and they exist through natural forces. Unless you are going to concede that all things must have been intelligently designed, thus leading to a force outside of the physical universe, then there is a logical problem there.

 

 

TRoutMAc, try reading Metamagical Themus, by Douglas Hofstader, in much of it he describes self-referential looping, such as the brain (a system of many unintelligent neurons which, in total, 'understands' its existance, and changes itself based on itself) and anthills (a system of many unintelligent ants which, in total, 'understands' its surroundings, and is able to functions on a much higher level than the individual). These ideas are much like that of evolution. Evolution seems intelligent in the same way that an anthill, when fully studied, seems intelligent.

[TRoutMac]

Damocles, you can be assured of one thing: If I want logic, I will most certainly not be looking for it in any of your posts. They contain nothing even vaguely related to logic.

 

You defy your own so-called "logic" every time you sit down at the computer and type a message to this board. If you actually believed that self-organization were possible, you wouldn't need to apply what is, I'm sure, your considerable intellect toward organizing your replies to me. They would just "happen".

 

You know instinctively that self-organization is a contradiction in terms, and you reveal that whenever you clean your kitchen or type a message to this forum, or even when all you do is THINK. Organization, the sort of which I am speaking, only happens when intelligence acts. That is demonstrable every second of every day.

[pgrmdave]

Then how do you explain the presence of the solar system? Unless you attribute it to intelligence, you claim that it couldn't be organized.

[damocles]

Damocles, you can be assured of one thing: If I want logic, I will most certainly not be looking for it in any of your posts. They contain nothing even vaguely related to logic.

 

Are you getting personal?

 

If so then you've lost the argument.

 

You defy your own so-called "logic" every time you sit down at the computer and type a message to this board. If you actually believed that self-organization were possible, you wouldn't need to apply what is, I'm sure, your considerable intellect toward organizing your replies to me. They would just "happen".

 

Nonsense. I am one statistical result of 12-18 billion years of a massive self-organizing system. Denials to the contrary wirthout evidence are unproven. Present evidence instead of self-organizing rhetoric.

 

You know instinctively that self-organization is a contradiction in terms, and you reveal that whenever you clean your kitchen or type a message to this forum, or even when all you do is THINK. Organization, the sort of which I am speaking, only happens when intelligence acts. That is demonstrable every second of every day.

 

Bull.

Ants.

Spiders.

Bees.

Termites.

Beavers.

 

See if you can make the connection.

 

I'm done with you here, too.

[TRoutMac]

Then how do you explain the presence of the solar system? Unless you attribute it to intelligence, you claim that it couldn't be organized.

 

I attribute its organization to an intelligence, absolutely. Nothing inconsistent about my position.

[TRoutMac]

Are you getting personal?

 

Don't get self-righteous on me now… You've expressed that my logic is in error a number of times. Your thinking turns logic on its head, and that's my whole problem with Darwinism. It flies in the face of everyday common sense and logic.

 

 

Nonsense. I am one statistical result of 12-18 billion years of a massive self-organizing system. Denials to the contrary wirthout evidence are unproven. Present evidence instead of self-organizing rhetoric.

 

Restating your hypothesis is not proof, or even evidence of your hypothesis. If you want me to believe in self-organization, then you show me an office that organizes itself. The burden is on you… the evidence AGAINST self-organization is everywhere. You accept purely on the basis of faith, and against all of that evidence, that you are a statistical result of billions of years of self-organization. You cannot prove that is true, you've just decided that you'd rather believe that than anything else. And hey… you're free to do that. It's no skin off my nose.

 

But let's not play games here… both sides believe in the eternality of something and in each case, that belief is ultimately based on faith. You believe that matter and energy are eternal, I believe an Intelligent Designer is eternal. Same thing. Question is, which concept is supported by the evidence?

[damocles]

Don't get self-righteous on me now… You've expressed that my logic is in error a number of times. Your thinking turns logic on its head, and that's my whole problem with Darwinism. It flies in the face of everyday common sense and logic.

 

Restating your hypothesis is not proof, or even evidence of your hypothesis. If you want me to believe in self-organization, then you show me an office that organizes itself. The burden is on you… the evidence AGAINST self-organization is everywhere. You accept purely on the basis of faith, and against all of that evidence, that you are a statistical result of billions of years of self-organization. You cannot prove that is true, you've just decided that you'd rather believe that than anything else. And hey… you're free to do that. It's no skin off my nose.

 

But let's not play games here… both sides believe in the eternality of something and in each case, that belief is ultimately based on faith. You believe that matter and energy are eternal, I believe an Intelligent Designer is eternal. Same thing. Question is, which concept is supported by the evidence?

 

1. Quit using the word eternality. It presupposes an an assumptive identity not proven.

2. I've been careful to third person until now since to address error by name introduces personal bias.

3. Evidence has been supplied with every example I wrote.

4. Refusal to refute or engage the counter-evidence supplied point by specific point(something which I have done in those rare cases when the instances of repetitive false analogy was the evidence presented) is the hallmark of a position taken that is untenable. Instead there is usually the appeal to a statement of truth followed by another false analogy introducing more spurious argument instead of addressing the central question.

 

Latest specific case is "office".

 

Ridiculous.

Do you understand the concept of "division of labor" or "swarm intelligence"?

 

Try this;

 

 

 

Swarm Intelligence

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swarm_intelligence

 

Swarm intelligence (SI) is an artificial intelligence technique based around the study of collective behaviour in decentralised, self-organised, systems. The expression "swarm intelligence" was introduced by Beni & Wang in 1989, in the context of cellular robotic systems (see also cellular automata).

 

SI systems are typically made up of a population of simple agents interacting locally with one another and with their environment. Although there is normally no centralised control structure dictating how individual agents should behave, local interactions between such agents often lead to the emergence of global behaviour. Examples of systems like this can be found in nature, including ant colonies, bird flocking, animal herding, bacteria molding and fish schooling.

 

Two of the most successful swarm intelligence techniques currently in existence are Ant Colony Optimization (ACO) and Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO). ACO is a metaheuristic that can be used to find approximate solutions to difficult combinatorial optimization problems. In ACO artificial ants build solutions by moving on the problem graph and they, mimicking real ants, deposit artificial pheromone on the graph in such a way that future artificial ants can build better solutions. ACO has been successfully applied to an impressive number of optimization problems. PSO is a global minimisation technique for dealing with problems in which a best solution can be represented as a point or surface in an n-dimensional space. Hypotheses are plotted in this space and seeded with an initial velocity, as well as a communication channel between the particles. Particles then move through the solution space, and are evaluated according to some fitness criterion after each timestep. Over time, particles are accelerated towards those particles within their communication grouping which have better fitness values. The main advantage of such an approach over other global minimisation strategies such as simulated annealing is that the large number of members that make up the particle swarm make the technique impressively resilient to the problem of local minima.

 

Here is a hint; about six thousand years ago, an animal started exhibiting the symptoms of that kind of intelligence. Prior to that it was more or less like its cousins, the other greatr apes.

 

Now then.....

 

Bull.

Ants.

Spiders.

Bees.

Termites.

Beavers.

 

Except for the first animal(which was a patent reference to the logic that the opposition was marshalling) all of these animals are exhibiters of the above evidence to the specific case that they use their own body excretions as glue to build their habitats(hives and colonies.) as they exhibit the symptoms of swarm intelligence.

 

Do beavers file office papers? No. But they do organize and plan logistically; that is by INSTINCT they estimate how many trees to gnaw to make their dams. They don't waste. Is that intelligence? No. Is that planning? No. Is that instinct? Yes.

 

A human animal does the same when he/she uses the hardwired abilities in himself/herself to guess about the new and the unknown. Success and that old human hivemind kicks in when the survivor of the lucky guess passes on the "found" solution. That is "cultural" evolution-and is comparable to instinctual hive mind evolution-only on a vaster "human" scale.