Dear Resident Theists

[Cyberman]

Well, I am not God so I can't answer, only infer.  The universe is massive to a scale that is difficult to imagine with many mysteries we have yet to approach understanding.  To me, that is not a sign of God's limitation but puts us in awe and wonderment of his power and speaks to the uniqueness of mankind in God's plan.

To me, that's a massive non sequitur. Vast Universe =/= "God".

[Kingpin]

Well, I am not God so I can't answer, only infer.  The universe is massive to a scale that is difficult to imagine with many mysteries we have yet to approach understanding.  To me, that is not a sign of God's limitation but puts us in awe and wonderment of his power and speaks to the uniqueness of mankind in God's plan.

To me, that's a massive non sequitur. Vast Universe =/= "God".

It is Stimbo.  I'm not using it as "evidence to convince" but something that makes sense to me.  And it's not just the vast universe, but the properties we observe in the universe as well.  You are generalizing a bit, but that is beside the point.

[Whateverist]

robvalue
Well, I am not God so I can't answer, only infer.  

That's okay.  God isn't real so He can't answer either.  

[Kingpin]

robvalue
Well, I am not God so I can't answer, only infer.  

That's okay.  God isn't real so He can't answer either.  

Always quick with the quips White, I respect that.  

[Longhorn]

Always quick with the quips White

RACISM.


(I'll get back to our back and forth in a bit 'pin)

[Angrboda]

Thanks jorgmunder quick question

Did blondie24 or the evolved antenna occur by unguided natural means or was there a person behind initial programming and designing it to have those capabilities?

There was a person behind initial programming. There was no person designing it to have those capabilities. That's the point. While the initial scaffolding is designed by a person, the antennae and checkers playing abilities evolved without human input. What is the relevance of the initial conditions to the final outputs?

We might ask whether your parents were responsible for you and your abilities? If we are talking about your initial configuration, the answer may be yes. But if we're referring to skills you learned later in life, it's disingenuous to say that it was all your parents' input. Clearly there is a distinction to be made here between the initial programming and the final result. Or do you not take credit for anything which you learn on your own?

[Kingpin]

Thanks jorgmunder quick question

Did blondie24 or the evolved antenna occur by unguided natural means or was there a person behind initial programming and designing it to have those capabilities?

There was a person behind initial programming.  There was no person designing it to have those capabilities.  That's the point.  While the initial scaffolding is designed by a person, the antennae and checkers playing abilities evolved without human input.  What is the relevance of the initial conditions to the final outputs?

We might ask whether your parents were responsible for you and your abilities?  If we are talking about your initial configuration, the answer may be yes.  But if we're referring to skills you learned later in life, it's disingenuous to say that it was all your parents' input.  Clearly there is a distinction to be made here between the initial programming and the final result.  Or do you not take credit for anything which you learn on your own?

But you see the point is this is basically analogous to Deism.  There is an initial creator of intelligence that sets forth the initial parameters that will allow the complexity to emerge.  It still requires an intelligent first cause.  The examples you gave are not unguided, but require an intelligent first cause.

[Angrboda]

There was a person behind initial programming.  There was no person designing it to have those capabilities.  That's the point.  While the initial scaffolding is designed by a person, the antennae and checkers playing abilities evolved without human input.  What is the relevance of the initial conditions to the final outputs?

We might ask whether your parents were responsible for you and your abilities?  If we are talking about your initial configuration, the answer may be yes.  But if we're referring to skills you learned later in life, it's disingenuous to say that it was all your parents' input.  Clearly there is a distinction to be made here between the initial programming and the final result.  Or do you not take credit for anything which you learn on your own?

But you see the point is this is basically analogous to Deism.  There is an initial creator of intelligence that sets forth the initial parameters that will allow the complexity to emerge.  It still requires an intelligent first cause.  The examples you gave are not unguided, but require an intelligent first cause.

The point is not that this is a complete analogy to the beginning of the universe, but that complex, purposeful behavior can arise without the intervention of designing intelligence.  And the emphasis is on designing intelligence, because your deism in effect "programmed in" the parameters for success.  Not so with the examples I gave.  If you want to analogize it to deism, it's a deism in which the parameters were randomly created, which is no different from naturalism.  The strategies that the neural nets employed were arrived at through a process of random variation followed by selection for success.  The strategies weren't "designed" by the programmers and the criterion for success offered no gap into which to insert design.  The examples I gave were indeed "unguided".  You keep wanting to imply that the initial programming had something to do with the final success; it didn't.  And so it amply shows the creation of complex, purposeful behavior and objects without the intervention of a designing intellect.  It does not "require" an intelligent first cause if by require you mean that the ability of the checkers playing automatons is in some way caused by the intelligence of the designers of the program.  It wasn't.  The intelligence of the automatons is a product of their evolution, not of the initial design of the program.

Can you explain to me how the design of the program (below) influenced the design of the checkers playing automatons?

Experiments described here indicate that, in contrast, a machine learning algorithm based on the principles of Darwinian evolution can generate an expert-level checkers playing program without relying on any specific credit assignment (….). Furthermore, this level of play is attained without using features about the game that would require human expertise. Only the position of the pieces on the board, the spatial characteristics of the checkerboard, and the piece differential are made available as explicit data to be processed. The evolutionary algorithm optimizes a population of artificial neural networks (i.e., networked layers of nonlinear processing elements) that are used to evaluate the worth of alternative potential positions. The procedure starts from a collection of completely random networks that then compete against each other for survival and the right to generate offspring networks through a process of random variation. [Performance was measured by a points system: Each program earned one point for a win, none for a draw, and two points were subtracted for a loss. After the poor programs were eliminated, the process was repeated with a new population derived from the winners. -Wikipedia] Survival is determined by the quality of play in a series of checkers games played against opponents from the same population. Over successive generations of variation and selection, the surviving neural networks extract information from the game and improve their performance. The best-evolved neural network has been played against 165 human opponents over the Internet and has earned an expert rating at a well-known gaming web site (http://www.zone.com). The details on the evolutionary approach, the evaluation of the best neural network’s rating, and the results of control experiments are offered below.

Evolving an Expert Checkers Playing Program without Using Human Expertise [emphasis mine]

[Kingpin]

Here is a snippet from the article.

A player’s move was determined by evaluating the presumed quality of the resulting future positions. The evaluation function was structured as an artificial neural network comprising an input layer, three internal processing (hidden) layers, and an output node (Figure 2). The first internal processing layer was designed to indicate the spatial characteristics of the checkerboard without indicating explicitly how such knowledge might be applied. The remaining internal and output neurons operated based on the dot product of the evolvable weighted connections between nodes and the activation strength that was emitted by each preceding node. Each node used a hyperbolic tangent (tanh, bounded by ±1) with an evolvable bias term. In addition, the sum of all entries in the input vector was supplied directly to the output node, constituting a measure of the relative piece differential.

Notice the words "structured" and "designed". The programmers set value to moves that produced positive results so that the programs evolution function could examine the possible moves and learn from the past what has provided the most favorable outcome.

What would be a real miracle here was if the program "evolved" to be a master chess player. It is however constrained to be an expert checkers player. It cannot evolve past that and was "designed" by designers to learn to become as such. This is not a program that "sprang out of existence" or evolved to do something new. It was given variables and assigned values to assess positives with a goal of achieving the highest possible outcome. But it could not be possible without the designers and further will not evolve into anything besides an expert checkers player.

Even the article when they describe being called out by human players for relying on a program the designers themselves say it was more the program relying on them!

[Longhorn]

here's where we have a disconnect.  I don't believe that.  We are coming from two different presuppositions that invariably rule out the other persons conclusions.  

Right. Forgot who I was speaking to for a moment....

My point here is I believe the universe to be fine tuned to immense precision to support life only on this planet.  I don't believe there is life anywhere else.

First off, I recall you mentioning mathematical improbability. By the sheer number of planets, it's reasonable to assume there is at least one with conditions similar enough to those of Earth that life can exist....But I guess that's beside the point anyway.

The fine tuning argument is actually an argument against intelligent design. To shamelessly steal this very adequate analogy from Uncle K, nobody builds a house on a cliff on purpose.

  Complexity is emergent, yes, but ordered purposeful complexity is a result of intelligence.  We see this everyday.  I still do not accept that computers refute my assertion.  If a computer were to spring in to existence out of chemical reactions and start writing it's own complex programs, that would be something different, but the complexity that emerges from a computer requires the input of a mind. 

I guess we'll just have to leave it at that, as I don't know enough in the subject to argue.

As for why it's not possible for the creation to be a mindless, unguided process, is because this universe is intelligible and is ordered.  We have testable laws of physics that the universe is restrained to.  If the universe was started by a mindless unguided process, why should we trust our own intelligence?  Each person is not making their own observations and laws about the universe there are objective laws in place that are empirically verifiable.  That screams intelligence.  An example of a mindless unguided process would be an explosion, the result is chaos.  But we have order and extremely precise order at that.

I really don't see the connection. It sounds like an argument from personal incredulity to be honest, that because we can make some sense of it it is difficult to believe it was set up by chance. We're pattern spotting animals. This is kind of like seeing a face on toast or a tree. Agree to disagree I guess.


I think we've reached deadlock at this point, so maybe let's skip to the next point, why do you think this deity takes interest in humans, and why do you think this deity is Yahweh?