dhw Pt 2: Two sides of the irreducible complexity argument (Introduction)

by xeno6696 , Sonoran Desert, Wednesday, September 23, 2009, 17:23 (5539 days ago) @ dhw

The second part of your statement puzzles me. You seem to be taking just one concept of design into consideration: the designer decides to make a stegosaurus, and hey presto, we have a stegosaurus. But a designer may just as easily have designed the initial programme, allowing for a vast array of variations, and then let it run its own course. Then there would be absolutely no difference between the atheist evolution set in motion by chance and the theist/deist evolution set in motion by God. Or you can have evolution proceeding in fits and starts (punctuated equilibrium) that have been deliberately engineered (by God) or have been brought about by natural circumstances (e.g. by climate change). Of course the latter can also be interpreted as the work of God, whose scientific experiments with matter would have been conducted by manipulation of that matter and not by some mumbo-jumbo. 
> -The difference between us here is : Zero. There would be no way to tell the difference between that version of design and evolution. If you're familiar with the mathematical concept of an asymptote... this is exactly what the arguments of design and evolution move to. While you mentioned recently that you might be right or wrong, I think that it's more truthful to recognize the asymptote for what it is. Other people might want to make you or I "make a decision," but I say flatly that there is no decision to be made. If you already don't accept the mumbo-jumbo of religion, we have no pressure at all. -> You suggest that "evolution is a more passive process that does its job only when it MUST". I think "evolution" has to be split up into mutations, adaptation, natural selection. Beneficial mutations ... which I find a huge problem ... are creative, not passive, since they're supposed to produce brand new features. There is no "MUST" here. Adaptations are a MUST, and natural selection is automatic, so yes, I'd say they are passive. But how does any of that make design less likely?
> -It doesn't... I wasn't trying to make that argument, only fill in some details of currently accepted theory that you may/may not have been aware of. My greater overall point is that for either raw materialism or immaterialism, the conclusions of no god and there is a god are purely filled in by philosophical predisposition on the matter. If you do not have this predisposition, the data is clearly inconclusive. -> In your latest post about sex, on the subject of stillbirths, you ask: "If we were the product of design, why would we not see something a little more efficient?" Again, I think you're confining yourself to a single concept that equates design with perfection. Do you mean to tell me your car, TV, computer etc. never go wrong? If you rid yourself of the idea of a perfect, omniscient, omnipotent God and focus only on design, there is no reason at all why (a) the design should not be faulty, and (b) why the designer should not deliberately have created processes that are subject to the vagaries of chance. If anything, that would make it all a lot more interesting for him. And you needn't identify that with deism, because there's nothing to stop such a designer from stepping in when he feels like it. 
> -Gumbyland! However that's a fun place to be...-Here we are presented with the fact that the creator is imperfect. Here, I gather the scent again of a pagan conception of a god that's pretty much like us. Since that might be the case, we would have no way of telling the difference between God and our own selves. My statement is that this line of thinking is projecting humanity for our own sake. -> You refer to George's view that life is too chaotic and disorganized for it to be designed. There are two separate kinds of "life" here. Life as a physical fact, in the sense of reproduction, digestion, the senses, emotions, consciousness etc., which are all so complex that some of us can't place our faith in chance to put it all together. Then there is life as it is lived, which is and always has been so "chaotic and disorganized" that some of us can't place our faith in any kind of benevolent father figure up in the sky watching over us. The first problem has nothing to do with the second. Whether God (if he exists) cares for us 100%, 50%, or 0% is a totally separate question from that of design.-Of course, you are correct here. But that's the problem of philosophizing about a designer... you cannot separate its will from what you observe. If it is an intelligent agent, you have to accept the possibility that if it has the power to do what it will, than questions like "how much does he care?" actually play into the possible results you would get.

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\"Why is it, Master, that ascetics fight with ascetics?\"

\"It is, brahmin, because of attachment to views, adherence to views, fixation on views, addiction to views, obsession with views, holding firmly to views that ascetics fight with ascetics.\"