Refutation of the \"Language-Only\" Interpretation of Math (The limitations of science)

by dhw, Thursday, March 04, 2010, 14:54 (5379 days ago) @ xeno6696

MATT has commented on David's reference to fractals: "This ID argument operates under the notion that since we have to be intelligent in order to unravel the nature of nature, then nature itself must have been designed by intelligence. This parallels arguments used by dhw."-Let me once again register a protest against all your "parallel" arguments in which, as always, you insist on using the modal auxiliary "must". I don't recall even David using a "must", and I certainly haven't and wouldn't. My own argument is that the combination of materials necessary to create life and the mechanisms of reproduction and evolution is so complex that I find myself unable to believe in chance as a possible explanation, and therefore cannot discount design. If you want to pin me down to figures, I'd say 50/50 for each theory. So please banish this "must have" from your vocabulary! (At least now I reckon you will have learned something from me, because I'll bet you didn't know "must" was a modal auxiliary!)-I agree with you that by far the best approach to the problem would be to find a method for creating life, but quite apart from the fact that it won't provide definitive proof of anything, we can't lose sight of life as we see it now. As I keep stressing, it's not just life we have to create - it's also the mechanisms for evolution, which brought out of nothing every single sense, faculty, organ, variation that we know of, culminating (so far) in human consciousness. It's not enough to create a living organism unless that organism can evolve. It may be that a method will actually be found in your lifetime, but I can't see it happening in mine, and we can only base our beliefs on what we know now. In the light of current knowledge, David and George put their faith in design and chance respectively, and there wouldn't be much of a discussion if they didn't! But faith it is, because at present there's no other way to bridge the gaps.