Intelligent design (Introduction)

by dhw, Saturday, October 29, 2011, 13:59 (4775 days ago) @ Abel

Abel believes that life on Earth was designed by a race of beings which evolved spontaneously on dark-matter, low-entropy Planet X. I don’t understand why chance should be an acceptable innovator on Planet X but not on Planet Earth.

ABEL: The first and primary drive for this change [to complexity] are those monkeys furiously pounding away at their typewriters. After another age, one of them wrote the second chapter of life, which was followed by the third, then the fourth etc.

Exactly the same process as on Earth, but atheist evolutionists might call the changes random mutations while theist evolutionists might take them as evidence of design.

ABEL: In this low-entropy environment the advantages conferred by complexity far outweighed its disadvantages.

If the innovations here on high-entropy Earth had not been not beneficial, they would not have survived. The advantages conferred by complexity far outweighed its disadvantages.

ABEL: It was the evolution of predators that created the intense selective pressure for greater intelligence.

I have three problems with this:

1) You continue to use the word “evolution” as if that explained the inevitability of innovations. Why should your theoretical predators inevitably have evolved on low-entropy Planet X, whereas the real-life predators on Earth had to be designed?

2) The evolution of predators on Planet Earth also created intense selective pressure: predators developed strategies to catch their prey, and the prey developed strategies to avoid being caught. You say “Eating something good on Earth is easy, you pick it up and eat it.” No it isn’t, and no you don’t. You first have to catch it. I see no difference between your X creatures’ “intelligence” in twisting their brane angles and our Earth creatures’ “intelligence” in growing longer beaks, mastering the art of camouflage, banding together in hunting groups etc. You say: “On this dark matter planet stupidity was rapidly weeded out by evolution.” If twisting brane angles means intelligence, so does camouflage etc., and the name we give to the weeding out process you describe is Natural Selection.

3) Clearly the creatures on Planet X were just as mortal as those on Planet Earth, and despite the low entropy it now appears that they were subject to exactly the same struggle for survival as us. And so apart from shortening the odds against abiogenesis, life on Planet X followed the same evolutionary pattern as life on Earth, but the sentient beings that evolved there were a lot cleverer than we are at the moment (though perhaps one day we’ll catch up), and they were not designed, whereas we are.

I have difficulty believing that the mechanisms for life, replication, adaptation and innovation – leading eventually from simple cells to human consciousness – assembled themselves by chance on Planet Earth. I have the same difficulty believing that those mechanisms assembled and developed themselves by chance on Planet X, so in the context of design I’m still no better off, but actually have one extra layer of non-belief to cope with. I'm sure we'll both agree that the Earth and we humans exist. What evidence do you have that Planet X and your first race exist or existed? Why should I take your creation story to be anything but a well researched piece of science fiction?

I must once more finish with an apology. You are doing us a favour by presenting us with these ideas – which are new to me and maybe to others too – and my critical responses will seem ungrateful and ungracious, and probably ignorant too. My hope is that you may be used to such discussions, and that you’ll regard these questions as an opportunity to clarify your ideas rather than as an offensive intrusion.