Is atheism a scientific perspective?

[Angrboda]

For the third time, human intelligence is not capable of producing the complexity seen in a cell.  The complexity of the cell is the product of chemistry.  A chemical system that is beyond the capacity of human designers to design.  Since "intelligence" isn't a known cause of the complexity of the cell, you can only mean something else.  That something else is spelled out in the terms complex, specified information.  Complex information is ubiquitous.  All systems produce 'information'.  So it can't depend on it merely being complex information.  And the term specified is vacuous, so that adds nothing to the equation.


I'm not concluding that it is false, I'm concluding that it is an invalid argument for your conclusion.  That isn't due to my ideological biases, that's due to the structure of your argument.  If you don't like the fact that you have made an invalid argument, then get another god damned argument.


I've been through this.  The word function doesn't apply specifically to designed systems.  The rain has a function in the hydrological cycle.  Rocks on a beach sort themselves hydrologically; that's sequential information.  None of the terms you've supplied apply exclusively to designed things, so by consequence you will have false positives.  For an example, I'd give the checkers playing neural nets of Chelapilla and Fogel. (here)(See here for a complete exposition.)


I don't give a flying fucking damn that you resent it.  You're nothing but an evolution denier and evolution is established science.  Your made up distinction between speculative and empirical science is just your ideological bias looking for a way to worm itself to your already formed conclusion.  All science is a mix of both empirical observation and speculation.


Already dealt with.


All processes lead to 'information'.  It's the kind of information that is at issue, and you haven't been able to specify the kind of information in a way that unambiguously leads to designing intelligence.

You don't understand that the information of DNA is based on the chemical properties of the bases, the mRNA sequence that results from the process, and the chemical properties of the amino acid building blocks. It's not that there is not information, there is chemistry. It is that there is information derived by the cell from chemical properties of the characters that make up a sequence. They are the same thing. And you're right. We cannot produce cells yet. But information can (when accompanied by the appropriate enzymes (which themselves are the result of DNA sequence being interpreted by preceding enzymes)). Here's what you seem to be saying now: "cells are too complex to be produced by intelligence. Therefore design is not a tenable argument and we must appeal to an undirected process to explain it."

Your grasp on "what I seem to be saying" is lousy at best. You're arguing that human intelligence is adequate for the design processes seen in the cell. Since this is not true, you can only be arguing from analogy. Ergo, "The results of the human design process are similar to what we see in the cell in a certain well prescribed way." (Well prescribed or you get false positives.) William Dembski's well prescribed way turns out to be a lot of mathematical mumbo jumbo. You're arguing that producing information which is functionally specific is the description. You've already been given a counter-example to that in the evolutionary algorithm which gives rise to functional checkers playing neural nets (which I note you didn't respond to). The point is that you're not comparing to human design traits, you're comparing to a proxy for designer traits. And therefore your argument stands or falls on the ability of your proxy to pick out design in human and non-human systems. Specifying function doesn't do it because function is just a loose concept which can be applied to both natural and designed things. Your criteria are not well prescribed and they produce false positives.

And you cannot just assert that all systems exert complex information. That is a ridiculous assertion and you know it. You have to address the fact that undirected processes have never been observed to produce a sequence of characters capable of accomplishing a specific function. You complain about my definition of information, then basically go on to define information as some ubiquitous feature present in everything. DNA is what it is. You can object to it being defined as irregular sequential information that accomplishes a specific purpose if you want, but then you would be disagreeing with every (this is one of the few times I feel comfortable using such an inclusive word as "every") scientist on either side of the debate. You then go on to tell me that I am denying science as though you have an understanding of biology that I don't.

I never stated that all systems produce complex information. DNA accomplishes nothing by itself, it is part of a chemical system that translates the DNA into specific things. Information is a system property. Regardless, what is at issue is not whether in some loose sense DNA is information, but rather whether your definition of information leading to a specific function uniquely picks out intelligent design. For the reasons stated, as well as the counter example, it does not.

Do you want to explain the term argument of ignorance to me then? Can we draw any conclusions on any topic that we do not know everything about (which ironically would be every topic), or would a conclusion just be a statement of ignorance? I'm having trouble understanding how any claim not rooted in empiricism can not be considered an argument from ignorance by you.

The argument from ignorance is committed when you argue that something is true based upon what we don't know rather than upon what we do know. You stated that when we can't find any other cause for certain properties we should conclude design. That's arguing on the basis of what we don't know, and therefore an argument from ignorance, aka appeal to ignorance.

And evolution is an established science if you accept that the word evolution is merely referring to a change in gene frequencies over time. If you are going to try to tell me that it is established science that all living things have descended from a common ancestor and that this process has led to an increase in complexity and functionality of the genetic code, I will be disappointed. You already implied (you might have even actually stated) that you do not believe that there is a working definition of complexity or functionality, so I'm curious why you would accept that there is a process that can lead to it. If you don't think we have properly defined what it is we are trying to explain the origin of (functional DNA sequences), then why do you accept any conclusion for its origin?

Again your lack of reading comprehension astounds me. I never stated that there is no workable definition for complexity or functionality. I argued that function isn't specific to design. Neither is complexity as defined by IDers, but that's another matter. If CSI is to pick out design, then it has to be specific to designed things and it isn't. Not with Dembski's morass of technical jargon, nor your simplistic attempt to replace that jargon.

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Counter example #2:

In radio communications, an evolved antenna is an antenna designed fully or substantially by an automatic computer design program that uses an evolutionary algorithm that mimics Darwinian evolution. This sophisticated procedure has been used in recent years to design a few antennas for mission-critical applications involving stringent, conflicting, or unusual design requirements, such as unusual radiation patterns, for which none of the many existing antenna types are adequate.

The computer program starts with simple antenna shapes, then adds or modifies elements in a semirandom manner to create a number of new candidate antenna shapes. These are then evaluated to determine how well they fulfill the design requirements, and a numerical score is computed for each. Then, in a step similar to natural selection, a portion of the candidate antennas with the worst scores are discarded, leaving a small population of the highest-scoring designs. Using these antennas, the computer repeats the procedure, generating a population of even higher-scoring designs. After a number of iterations, the population of antennas is evaluated and the highest-scoring design is chosen. The resulting antenna often outperforms the best manual designs, because it has a complicated asymmetric shape that could not have been found with traditional manual design methods.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolved_antenna

Note in particular that the evolved design is often superior to human designs, just as the cell is beyond the capability of human designers.