Detecting design or intent in nature

[Heywood]

Not -an example-. Multiple examples. If you'd like to see them again - you can reread the thread, just like anybody else. Unless and until you elaborate on the point of disagreement between yourself and those posters who have offered these examples - as you've been invited to do...what more can be done?

If I tell you that there is absolute proof of God existence in the bible will you go back an read the entire bible? Or would you ask me to cite the relevant passage or passages?

Now you claim I have been given an example, yet when I ask you about the specifics of that example....you claim its in the thread...just re-read the thread.

Nah...I ain't going to do that. Other people have read this thread too and if there is really an example that falsifies my claim, they would be quoting it and throwing in my face.

[Mudhammam]

1. randomness is used by intellect in designed systems all the time. A craps game for instance. The dice roll occurs regardless if the result is going to beneficial to house or not.

Yeah... except that the whole point of your inferring design in evolution is the assumption that mutations, beneficial or not, are intended to achieve a specific ends for the species... a claim that is refuted by all observation. Moreover, as Coyne also states, "we never see adaptations that benefit the species at the expense of the individual---something that we might have expected if organisms were designed by a beneficent creator."

2.My argument is based solely on experience and observation and doesn't go beyond that.

Then all you're arguing for is a principle of order in nature, not an intellect, and that is, rather than an explanation, the very thing that needs to be explained.

3. It is one thing to say a supernatural being explains evolution and another thing to say evolutionary systems require intellects to come into existence. You can falsify one proposition but not the other.

Which one are you suggesting is falsifiable?

4. Some material processes require intellect. Why can't evolution be one of them?

What material processes require intellect? As others have pointed out, referring to objects human beings have designed, by imitating and manipulating nature's regularities for their purposes, doesn't apply here.

[The Grand Nudger]

Look, I can keep affording you the opportunity to make an ass out of yourself if that's what you like.

Or, you can, as you've been invited to do (again...and again...and again) - elaborate on whatever point of disagreement you have with -any- of the the examples that you've already been given. I know, sounds revolutionary, but it actually works.

[Heywood]

Yeah... except that the whole point of your inferring design in evolution is the assumption that mutations, beneficial or not, are intended to achieve a specific ends for the species... a claim that is refuted by all observation. Moreover, as Coyne also states, "we never see adaptations that benefit the species at the expense of the individual---something that we might have expected if organisms were designed by a beneficent creator."

Coyne is referring to the products of evolution not the evolutionary system itself. You either mis-understand what I am saying or you are misunderstanding what Coyne is saying. In this thread, when I say evolutionary systems require the existence of intellects, it has nothing to do with the products of the evolutionary system.

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Look, I can keep affording you the opportunity to make an ass out of yourself if that's what you like.

Or, you can, as you've been invited to do (again...and again...and again) - elaborate on whatever point of disagreement you have with -any- of the the examples that you've already been given. I know, sounds revolutionary, but it actually works.

Again I ask you or anyone else to quote these mysterious examples that have allegedly been given. Since you can offer no proof for the existence of these miraculous examples that falsify my claim, I see no reason to believe they exist at all.

[JuliaL]

Moreover, as Coyne also states, "we never see adaptations that benefit the species at the expense of the individual---

What am I missing here.
Whatever happened to explaining altruism via kin selection?
Seems to me that any benefit to the kin at the expense of the adapted individual qualifies as a counter example here even if the benefit to the species via benefit to the kin is small.

[Mudhammam]

Coyne is referring to the products of evolution not the evolutionary system itself. You either mis-understand what I am saying or you are misunderstanding what Coyne is saying. In this thread, when I say evolutionary systems require the existence of intellects, it has nothing to do with the products of the evolutionary system.

I understand what you're saying and it makes zero sense because you're arguing that a product of evolution is required for evolution. If you find evidence of "intellects" in fossils of cyanobacteria or other early simple organisms, you'll have something to go on other than unproductive conjecture.

What am I missing here.
Whatever happened to explaining altruism via kin selection?
Seems to me that any benefit to the kin at the expense of the adapted individual qualifies as a counter example here even if the benefit to the species via benefit to the kin is small.

Altruism benefits another individual but not the species, which is what we might expect to see, according to Coyne, if evolution was driving upwards on some "great chain of being," which is a common misconception of theists who think evolution is intentional.

[Chas]

Your argument reduces to everything you observe that was created by people was created by an intellect.

Can you show me an observation of an evolutionary system coming into existence that did not involve intellect? That is all that I am asking for someone to do. Should be simple enough if evolutionary systems come into existence without the involvement of intellects as you claim.

At least my claim is based on observation while your is based on whimsical thinking.

You cannot demonstrate that the evolution of life on earth required an intellect. There is no mechanism in the Theory of Evolution that requires an intellect.

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Moreover, as Coyne also states, "we never see adaptations that benefit the species at the expense of the individual---

What am I missing here.
Whatever happened to explaining altruism via kin selection?
Seems to me that any benefit to the kin at the expense of the adapted individual qualifies as a counter example here even if the benefit to the species via benefit to the kin is small.

Kin selection is just gene selection. Evolution happens at the gene level, not the organism level.

[Heywood]

I understand what you're saying and it makes zero sense because you're arguing that a product of evolution is required for evolution. If you find evidence of "intellects" in fossils of cyanobacteria or other early simple organisms, you'll have something to go on other than unproductive conjecture.

There are multiple ways intellects can come into existence so you can't assume any particular intellect was the product of an evolutionary system.

[abaris]

There are multiple ways intellects can come into existence so you can't assume any particular intellect was the product of an evolutionary system.

If you bothered to look at recent cognition experiments with animals, you can very well come to that conclusion.

[The Grand Nudger]

You're a shameless liar Heywood, and you should have known I'd already prepared you a short list of just some of the examples you've been offered. Not that you're going to stop this behaviour now that I've posted it, I just wanted you to deny it three times before the cock crowed.

Your body

biological evolution

Chinese whispers

Solar systems. Rivers.

Computational systems (and the products of computational systems - such as simulations)

-Now go crawl in a hole.