Irreducible Complexity (Introduction)

by xeno6696 , Sonoran Desert, Monday, January 11, 2010, 23:52 (5429 days ago) @ dhw

dhw,
Poignant and thorough as usual: 
> On the subject of complexity, you give the example of tossing 100 chemicals into a pot. Chemistry is not my subject, and as you are a literary man as well as a scientist, let me change the example. If we put 500 letters in a hat, drew them out one by one and laid them side by side, I would say the resultant gibberish was not complex. But if they formed a Shakespeare sonnet, I'd say the result was complex. The gibberish has no interconnected parts. The sonnet has. Perhaps, though, in our definition, we should add the rider that the interconnected parts must form a meaningful whole.
> -Whilst I may be just playing the devil here, the fact that a judgment must be made that shakespeare is complex and random letters is not, doesn't this mean that an interpretation must be made, and that therefore there will be some bias as to what is "intelligent" and what "isn't?" If we're talking about an unknown intelligence, what if randomness IS its design methodology? -> Hence I argue that the greater the complexity, the greater the need for intelligence. You have "borrowed a page" from me to argue against intelligence because we only have the paradigm of human intelligence to follow, and life doesn't use our design methodologies. This, however, is precisely the argument I have used to counter the absurd claim of people like Rosenhouse, Christina and others that life and evolution are exactly what we would expect of a chance creation. They can't possibly know that. Once again, the argument cuts both ways. All these arguments cut both ways. And that's why I don't believe in a designer, but equally I don't believe in the inventive genius of chance, and I don't believe we can say that all order arose by chance. I wonder, though, in the light of your reservations concerning life and consciousness, whether you might consider a slight adaptation. Your premise is that the universe, matter and our planet were formed by chance, so how about "all order arose out of chance" instead of "arose by chance"? That would at least leave some options open for you.-In the end, I'm still left where I was standing before. I hope some of this exercise was useful to either yourself or David. I'm certainly not sure of anything.

--
\"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.\"