Detecting design or intent in nature

[bennyboy]

Dude, YOU are the one playing the semantic run-around game. We don't NEED even to define evolution.

By putting out a definition it allows us to classify things by shared characteristics. We can say automobile evolution and biological evolution are the same class of thing because they share these same characteristics.

Unlike the others here, I would accept that your version of evolution and biological evolution share some characteristics. I think the simplest definition of evolution is that an entity (or entity definition e.g. DNA or even a car design) changes over time due to statistical pressures. I'd say, for example, that ideas evolve, or that individual people evolve through a lifetime. However, you are making a kind of category error in your definitions, here, by not recognizing which definitions represent parent categories, and which represent child nodes or peers.

Let's take an animal example. Mammals are those animals which create milk for offspring. Let's define a particular mammal-- "cats"-- which have the additional feature of liking to chase mice. We cannot study a million cats and then decide that all mammals "probably" like to chase mice. That's because defining features of a sub-category are not allowed to "bubble" up to the parent, and therefore be applied to all mammals. To show that other kinds of mammals-- e.g. "whales"-- like to chase mice, you'd have to study whales.

So let's say we take a collection of "evolved things," which include physical entitites, species, and ideas which change in response to statistical pressures. Now, we take a sub-category-- "human inventions"-- and establish that they are formed by a kind of evolutionary process, with the statistical pressure coming from the perceived success or failure of the invention (i.e. an intellectual evaluation). Does this provide evidence that evolved things all come from intellects? NO. You can't "bubble up" the defining features of a child definition to its parent, and then apply them to peer definitions. If you do, then you are equivocating different definitions of evolution. That would be like saying that cats and whales are the same because they both meet the minimal criteria for inclusion in the "mammal" category. Or, in saying that memes "evolve," it would be like insisting that memes therefore have two parents which fuck and exchange DNA, making baby memes which, due to natural variation and a slight chance of mutation, will have varying levels of reproductive success in a given environment. But we don't say that, because obviously memes and organisms do not evolve in the same way. They are peers, sharing only the most primitive definition of evolution: that they change over time in response to selective pressures.

Please read and understand this. If you cherry-pick a one-liner and give some terse comment, then I'm out of this thread, as I will take it as evidence that you are more interested in sticking to your God idea than in presenting an argument that accords with the rules of logic (which includes the proper use of category).