Different in degree or kind: our speech has pitch control (Introduction)

by dhw, Sunday, July 01, 2018, 13:40 (2119 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: The whole debate comes down to the evidence of design in life. Is there a causal designer or not? Despite dhw's denials, there are only two choices, designer or chance.

The third option is design by multiple designers (bottom up evolution) and not one. But I have absolutely no problem putting on my theist’s hat in discussions with you on these topics, so let us confine ourselves to the theistic option of one causal designer.[/i]

DAVID: And if there is a designer why would he delegate future design to brainless cells when it is simpler to set in and just do the designs when needed instead of hoping the cells can figure it out. Of course he could give them design parameters, but then what he designs into their planning modules gets very complicated. It is simpler to do it directly.

Why on earth is it simpler? The simplest thing of all would be to set up the mechanism and then do nothing! “Figure it out”? Figure what out? Why does he have to figure out how to build a knotty nest, give zebrafish 360 degree vision, get the monarch butterfly from A to Z? This is where your logic flails around: he must apparently design them all individually so that there is a balance of nature and life can continue until he can produce the brain of Homo sapiens. It’s all part of the one great plan, which also involves getting 99% of his specially figured-out designs to disappear. If simplicity is what you’re after, why not consider the idea that he just wanted to create the on-going spectacle of ever changing life forms that has actually happened? Done by the invention of a single mechanism. And you can still allow for the odd dabble, the odd experiment now and then if he feels like it.

DAVID: The next step is to study the biochemistry of life. The complexity is mind blowing. It cannot have happened without a chemical designer. Ask any organic chemist who tries to make useful molecules. Their comments have been presented here. Very difficult in the controlled atmosphere of the lab, and we are asked to accept they appeared by chance.

I do not ask you to accept that they appeared by chance. And I accept the mind-blowing complexity. What I do not accept is your insistence that if your God exists, he could not possibly have designed the mechanism that has given rise to the mind-blowing complexity in all its different forms.

DAVID: Conclusion: A designing mind is obviously required.

It depends what subject you are referring to. In the context of evolutionary complexity, and since we both reject the theory of random mutations, the mind-blowing complexity requires design but not necessarily by ONE designing mind. There could be billions of designing minds, in the form of individual cells combining into a vast variety of communities. As you perhaps inadvertently phrase it elsewhere, it is “only living matter that can ultimately make the decision to evolve.”
In the context of the origin of life itself (and hence of the intelligent cell), I find the case for design far too strong to be able to reject it. But as you well know, I find the case for an unknown, sourceless, universal “consciousness” just as unbelievable as the case for chance building those first intelligent cells. That is the agnostic’s dilemma.