Let's study ID (Introduction)

by dhw, Sunday, July 25, 2021, 14:01 (999 days ago) @ David Turell

QUOTE: "When Ken Miller purportedly debunked Behe’s mousetrap analogy he did so in the world of abstraction with no reference to how real stuff in the real world works.”

DAVID: The reason this view appeals to me so much is my own experienced creation I've mentioned to you: 1) complex architectural flow design for medical and dialysis offices that worked! 2) household plumbing and electrical repair and new designs at the journeyman's level, as attested by a licensed plumber and an electrician. Unless you can fully appreciate the points in my bold in the last paragraph and the point of that last paragraph itself, the theoretical level at which you obviously analyze the ID arguments, you will never see the underlying ID reasons for their conclusions. Your Darwinist theory outburst in the 'possible God thread' today demonstrated your problem of buying unproven wishful thinking.

Once again, I accept and have always accepted the argument for design, which is a major reason for my agnosticism (the other being psychic experiences). The acceptable designer theory, however, is counterbalanced by the difficulty I have in accepting the argument that complex life and consciousness require a designer, and so there must be a complex, conscious mind that did not require a designer. I accept that there must have been a first cause, and the alternative to the sourceless conscious mind is sourceless materials which chanced to produce the combination that has led to one habitable planet in countless billions, and to rudimentary life and intelligence that gradually evolved into the complexities we know today. I find both explanations equally unsatisfactory, and so my mind remains open to both. You can call this open-mindedness rigid if you like.

There is absolutely nothing in my post of yesterday that contradicts the theory of ID! I keep promulgating the theory of the intelligent cell, which is a theory of DESIGN, and I keep reiterating that this allows for God as the designer of the intelligent cell. Common descent would entail cell communities improving on earlier designs. Natural selection simply tells us that an improved model is likely to replace the model it improves. How does this contradict ID? I find the theistic version of this theory far more convincing than your theory that your God preprogrammed every innovation etc. 3.8 billion years ago, or that he constantly dabbled with all the millions of organisms to engineer every single improvement (plus econiche, lifestyle, strategy and natural wonder) in life’s history, let alone that he did so with the one and only purpose of designing H. sapiens plus food. And please don’t tell me that your theory is based on science.

Taken from: Specific organs protection:
DAVID: The cells do not have the capacity to create new species!!

dhw: Stated with your usual authority, as if you knew that for some reason your God could not or would not provide cells with the intelligence to join together in communities and produce increasingly complex designs, building on the designs of their predecessors (= common descent, which you sometimes believe in and sometimes don’t).

DAVID: I accept the appearance of common descent. Design requires an ability to foresee future needs. See new ID entry.

Why suddenly the “appearance”? Do you or do you not believe that all life forms except the first have descended from earlier life forms? And over and over again you harp on about design needing to foresee the future. You accept the human analogy, and even quote your own experience of design. So are you telling us that your designs were made to solve unknown problems that did not exist at that time? The new ID entry makes no reference to clairvoyance of any kind. The reasoning – with which I agree - is based purely on complexity. Like every other designer, you would have used your accumulated knowledge of PAST designs and problems, marrying this knowledge to current requirements, and anticipating the kind of problems which you knew about. But I doubt if your designs were meant to solve a non-existent problem. If all your experience was confined to living in permanent desert, you would never dream of taking precautions against floods, would you? But cell communities throughout evolution have been confronted by NEW problems, and even now what we see is their intelligent response to these. Once again: the ID case is built on complexity, not on clairvoyance.