(October 11, 2012 at 4:14 pm)Ryantology Wrote:

(October 11, 2012 at 8:09 am)Akincana Krishna dasa Wrote: Ok, your belief is fair enough. Still, you can admit that the umbrella of physical phenomena in the universe are smarter than we are and can create lots of amazing and beautiful things that we can't.

I'll admit no such thing. Apparent design is not proof of intelligence.

Wait, but nature is smarter than any human.... Humans can't create the simplest living thing. Flowers aren't just "complex." They are works of art, they are beautiful. The workings of nature may be blind. Still, they are brilliant beyond human estimation.

(October 11, 2012 at 8:16 pm)Akincana Krishna dasa Wrote:

(October 11, 2012 at 4:14 pm)Ryantology Wrote: I'll admit no such thing. Apparent design is not proof of intelligence.

Wait, but nature is smarter than any human.... Humans can't create the simplest living thing. Flowers aren't just "complex." They are works of art, they are beautiful. The workings of nature may be blind. Still, they are brilliant beyond human estimation.

Nature is a dumb, mechanical process. Being pretty or complex doesn't change that.

A car can be complex and beautiful, too, but that doesn't mean a car is smart.

(October 11, 2012 at 8:27 pm)Ryantology Wrote:

(October 11, 2012 at 8:16 pm)Akincana Krishna dasa Wrote: Wait, but nature is smarter than any human.... Humans can't create the simplest living thing. Flowers aren't just "complex." They are works of art, they are beautiful. The workings of nature may be blind. Still, they are brilliant beyond human estimation.

Nature is a dumb, mechanical process. Being pretty or complex doesn't change that.

A car can be complex and beautiful, too, but that doesn't mean a car is smart.

Your analogy doesn't fit. If there's a beautiful and complex car, the car itself may be dumb. But how did the car get made? Some smart people engineered and built a car.

Maybe nature is a "dumb, mechanical process." No one can prove conclusively what it is, nor describe every aspect of its "dumb, mechanical" processes. But even assuming that that's true, the "dumb, mechanical process" of nature regularly creates things, like biological organisms, in such a way that it has thus-far baffled modern science. Modern science can't create a flower.

So why can't you respect that the processes that did create the flowers is a lot smarter than modern science?

Further, can you answer where human intelligence comes from? I assume your answer, again, will be "dumb, natural processes."

(October 12, 2012 at 12:06 am)Akincana Krishna dasa Wrote: Maybe nature is a "dumb, mechanical process." No one can prove conclusively what it is, nor describe every aspect of its "dumb, mechanical" processes.

Prove it is dumb and natural, yes. Explain all of its aspects, not yet.

(October 12, 2012 at 12:06 am)Akincana Krishna dasa Wrote: But even assuming that that's true, the "dumb, mechanical process" of nature regularly creates things, like biological organisms, in such a way that it has thus-far baffled modern science. Modern science can't create a flower. So why can't you respect that the processes that did create the flowers is a lot smarter than modern science?

Two problems: 1. Nature doesn't regularly create biological organiams unless you mean reproduction, but they aren't created from scratch. It took nature over a billion years just to produce a single-celled organism. Give us a little more time, you'll see...

(October 12, 2012 at 12:06 am)Akincana Krishna dasa Wrote: Further, can you answer where human intelligence comes from? I assume your answer, again, will be "dumb, natural processes."

Yeah... Now if you want to know where higher intelligence comes from, it goes something like this: After genetic evolution increased the intelligence of humans beyond a certain point, they became smart enough to begin learning independently of evolution. They learned new things, and they taught them to the next generation. Imagine if a child was raised in a forest with no contact from civilization, and was taught nothing but basic survival, not even language. Would not this person be as intelligent as a caveman? Look at all of the knowledge that can be accessed from google with a few clicks. Imagine how long it would take you to learn anything if you had to do original research into the subject rather than taking a class, if each individual had to re-invent calculus. It is the accumulation of knowledge over generations much more so than it is biological evolution that is responsible for our great advances.

(October 12, 2012 at 12:33 am)Darkstar Wrote: Prove it is dumb and natural, yes. Explain all of its aspects, not yet.

What does "natural" mean? Science can identify principles of nature. Can it explain where they've all come from, why the are how they are, why they remain constant and why gravity doesn't just stop working at some point?

Without being able to explain it's aspects, my points stands: nature is smarter than you, and the best scientists of the world.

Without being able to create even one flower, my point stands.

Why not just admit that?

(October 12, 2012 at 12:43 am)Akincana Krishna dasa Wrote: Without being able to create even one flower, my point stands.

Why not just admit that?

Nature had billions (yes, plural) of years to get from inanimate matter to a flower. We haven't taken even close to that long yet. If we can create a single celled organism prior to the one billion year mark for humans on earth then are we 'smarter' than nature?

(October 12, 2012 at 12:46 am)Darkstar Wrote: Nature had billions (yes, plural) of years to get from inanimate matter to a flower. We haven't taken even close to that long yet. If we can create a single celled organism prior to the one billion year mark for humans on earth then are we 'smarter' than nature?

Sure, take as long as you need. When you can figure out how to create at least a singled celled organism, maybe you can start to compare your intelligence to the dumb, natural processes of nature. Before then, I think we can at least be humble to the idea that there are - maybe "dumb, natural" - forces much smarter than us in the universe.

One of my former lovers was infertile. She couldn't bear children. I can. That doesn't make me smarter.

I don't worry first about the explanation of apparent design first, but rather simply what it means for something to "appear" to be designed? Akincana, please point me to your definition of what it means for something to "appear" to be designed. I am aware of no useful definition of this idea. William Dembski has written volumes on the subject (and, IIRC, he's degreed in both math and philosophy), and his definitions of it are crap. (Even if you ignore the glaring non sequitur at the heart of his work.) I don't anticipate you will be capable of satisfactorily satisfying this request, as it's quite apparent that you've spent an inordinate amount of your time in intellectual sewers. But I must still ask. (And no, archeologists do not identify human artifacts by the "appearance" of design, so don't even go there.)



The problem with many beauty and design arguments (beyond the galloping logic errors, imprecise analogy and metaphor, and the frequent attempt to substitute ill thought out linguistic structures replete with self reference, ambiguity and meaningless quim in place of actual argument), is that life is like looking at things through a telescope. Not an astronomer's telescope, but akin to a Mariner's looking glass. Turn the scope around, and everything gets small. Turn it to the side, and you see nothing. Look over the top and things are neither farther nor nearer as when looking through it. This is the same with life. We can look at things one way, turn it around, and it appears exactly the opposite.

(In a recent post on another forum, someone posted Hamlet, about a play signifying nothing; I replied with what a work is man, a diametrically opposite notion, but I engaged in contextomy, as the lines that follow revert to a gloomy and pessimistic perspective on it. This took place in the context of a thread in which we were talking about Atheism-Plus — mocking it to be sure — and the Hamlet quote was a pessimistic remark about how the worst in people is always waiting to come out.) For every thing that you find good and noble, there is your mirror who finds it bad and terrible. And visa-versa.

The Tao Te Ching has many powerful meditations on this theme. (Zhuangzi does as well, but he kicks it up a level; it seems a bit early in the tradition, but I suspect the authors of the Zhuangzi were reacting to a nascent legalism school of philosophy.) There's a Franglish saying that one man's fish is another man's poisson. It is indeed.

And it's true, there is no consistency in thought or ideology across the spectrum. How is this possible? We're all looking at the same reality, so why do these divergent reactions arise? Is it a part of the deep nature of the world that things are both good and bad simultaneously, and just timing, exposure to others' thought, and some mathematical oddity coalesce to make our views on its goodness or badness merely contingent? I don't think so. I think the better explanation is that the mind itself is the telescope, and its ability to look at things backwards or forwards, is not a flaw, but a strength. Our minds are powerful enough to extract both sides of the coin from the same experience, so that each view on reality can yield different, but still useful truths. The mind is the telescope or looking glass. And if someone asks you to see beauty, or design, or order, ask them which end of the telescope they're looking in.

(October 12, 2012 at 6:36 am)apophenia Wrote: One of my former lovers was infertile. She couldn't bear children. I can. That doesn't make me smarter.

I don't worry first about the explanation of apparent design first, but rather simply what it means for something to "appear" to be designed?

Where did you get your fertile body from? And where did your lover get her infertile body from? Neither came from your own intelligence. They are both gifts of nature upon you. So neither of you get to take the credit for how fertile or infertile you are. Obviously it doesn't make you smarter. It makes the nature that gives everyone their respective bodies smarter than any human mind.

What does it mean for something to "appear" designed? To avoid the expense of a meaningless, unending debate, I will concede - it means nothing.

So now that it means nothing, go and make me one flower. You must have better designing ability than nothing, right?

(October 9, 2012 at 4:39 pm)Napoléon Wrote: Maybe the imperfections are what makes it so perfect. Without the bad you wouldn't appreciate the good.


(Damn I sound like a christard)

You sound like John Milton in particular.