RE: Detecting design or intent in nature
January 7, 2015 at 12:15 pm
(This post was last modified: January 7, 2015 at 12:29 pm by Heywood.)
(January 6, 2015 at 10:45 pm)Jenny A Wrote: You are forgetting a rather simple problem with your sample. All of the intelligently designed evolutionary systems you propose as examples are conscious attempts to copy natural evolution. It's a little like looking at numerous paintings and models of the Niagara Falls and concluding that Niagara Falls must be designed because all of the copies are. If you eliminate evolutionary systems not inspired by natural evolution, you won't have any designed systems at all.
Jenny A,
The game Chinese Whispers was not inspired by biological evolution but it is an evolutionary system created by intellects none the less.
(January 7, 2015 at 1:15 am)Jenny A Wrote: I could program a gravity and planetary motion simulator (actually I'm sure there are some simulators already). Then we'd have gravity simulators and the only ones which are not the universe would all be designed by intellect. Would that prove gravity and inertia is a designed system? Can you not see the problem with that?
Gravity is not a system. It is a force of nature believed to be carried by the graviton.
(January 7, 2015 at 1:14 am)Esquilax Wrote: One is also driven to point out that, much like abiogenesis, it's entirely possible that evolutionary systems could emerge naturally under different conditions that were present some time in the past, but which haven't been for recorded human history. The Earth has changed a lot in the span of time that life has been present on it; I can't believe I let Heywood's fallacious "if it can't happen right now, it's impossible all the time" assumption go for so long.
As usual Heywood, your ignorance, human ignorance even, is not an excuse for claiming design. It's just one more problem with your argument to add to the list.
Your "explanation"....if you can call it an explanation.....is the atheist's equivalent to "God works in mysterious ways". Your "explanation" explains nothing and is merely an attempt to hand wave away observations you find uncomfortable to confront.
(January 6, 2015 at 8:43 pm)Esquilax Wrote:(January 6, 2015 at 8:34 pm)Heywood Wrote: Intellect is a faculty which humans possess but there is no strong reason to believe it is exclusive to humans. We've observed but a tiny fraction of reality so we should have little confidence that human intellect is the only intellect which exists in reality as your argument suggest.
Oh, so we're only bound to consider possibilities exclusively by observation when it suits you! Gotcha.
The argument you made is logically sound, it just isn't compelling because you haven't observed very much of reality.