Richard Dawkin's big blunder

[Alex K]

Are all evolutionary systems the product of an intellect? Is that a valid question or not? Obviously it is a valid question so how do you go about answering it? You start looking at evolutionary systems. Perhaps you can give an example of an evolutionary system whose origins are known but is not the product of an intellect.

It is barely a valid question because you would have to prove a negative of existence, and because it is somewhat iffy how you go about showing that something must be the product of an intellect. That's what the ID crowd is trying to do all the time, failing miserably, and famously. They invented irreducible complexity, which is not a bad start, but they haven't found anything that satisfies it. In any case, you would have to change your question a bit to make it tenable.

I don't quite understand your demand though. What do you mean by "whose origins are known"? You are in danger of stacking your deck here, because of course if you make this requirement strong enough, you automatically exclude all systems which are not man-made. As I was saying in my last post, this is not a sign that your argument is right, but rather signifies that you are begging the question.
I'd say all of Life, with certain qualifiers (*), is an example of such a system, and people have spent an entire thread trying to get you to understand why we have evidence that this is an evolutionary system without the need of an intellect. Enough has been said already, all I can do is repeat Esquilaxes last zillion posts, but to what end?

(*) There is a not so well-defined line between what is evolution based on an intellect, and what is not, since evolution can produce intellect. Strictly speaking, animal breeding is also on its foundation not evolution based on an intellect, because the human intellect has as origin a mindless process. If we make a hard cut, excluding anything in which humans have interfered, we still have the problem of other intelligent animals shaping the world around them, influencing the evolution of other species. It is a bit arbitrary at which point you declare this to be the product of an intellect, and little is to be learned from this distinction.

[Angrboda]

Argument from ignorance.

Its not an argument of ignorance. Its a probability argument. Let me explain.

If I have a bag containing three marbles each of which is either white or black what is the probability all the marble are white? To figure this out let W stand for white marble and B stand for black marble. There are four possible configurations

1)W-W-W
2)W-W-B
3)W-B-B
4)B-B-B

Principle of indifference applies here so each has a probability of .25. Now what happens if I randomly draw a marble and it is white? Now the probability that all the marbles are white increases to .33 because configuration 4 is no longer possible. What happens if I draw another marble and it is white? Well the probability that all the marbles in the bag are/were white increases to .5. Everytime a white marble is drawn while no black marbles have been drawn...it increases the likelihood all marbles are white.

Just for completeness, the odds of drawing white and black marbles depends on how many of each are originally in the bag. Assuming there are three white and three black marbles, the probability that all marbles will be white is not 0.25, primarily because there are more ways to draw a mixture of black and white marbles than there is to draw all white or all black marbles, so the drawing of a mixture of black and white marbles have greater than 0.50 probability and therefore neither all white nor all black can have 0.25 probability. Depending on how many black and white marbles are being drawn from, this will generally be the case. And the probability that you will draw all white or all black marbles does not increase with having drawn two of either; if there is a plentiful supply of both in the bag, the odds are always whatever the ratio of white to black is in the bag. Assuming equal amounts of both, the odds are 50 / 50 for drawing white or black. (The reverse of this, that drawing two whites increases the odd's of a black, is known as the Gambler's fallacy because it isn't true.) If there is not a plentiful supply, the possibility of drawing a black or white marble is dependent on how many of each are in the bag. If we again assume that there are three of each, after having drawn two white marbles, there is one white marble left, and three black ones, so the odds are 1 in 4, as there are 4 marbles in the bag, and only one of them is white.

I look at Darwinian evolution much the same way. I don't know if it white(the product of an intellect) or black(not the product of intellect). However each time I see an evolutionary system whose origins I know and it turns out that it is the product of an intellect, that in my mind increase the likelihood that all evolutionary systems are the product of intellects.

I don't know that this is so much an argument from ignorance as it is simply incorrect. For this to be true, you'd have to know that the evolutionary systems you've examined are more or less like the whole pool of evolutionary explanations; this is known as being a representative sample. Unfortunately for you, until you've drawn a sufficient number of systems from the pool of all systems that exist, this is something you don't in fact know to be true. As noted above with the marbles, whether you draw a black or white depends not on what you've previously drawn, but on the percentage of the pool that is composed of each. What changes as you draw more is the confidence that what you've already drawn is representative of the greater pool, and that only happens after drawing a great number of examples out of the total pool. Even then, this is what's known as an inductive argument; it doesn't lead inexorably to the right conclusion; it can always turn out to be wrong. Just as at one time, only white swans were known to exist, and it was therefore presumed that black swans do not exist, your so-called "guided evolutionary" systems could turn out to be the white swans, and naturalistic examples of evolution could betray that consistency and turn out to be black swans. As long as you're not examining natural evolutionary systems to determine whether or not they are guided or not, the amount of non-natural evolutionary systems you examine is basically irrelevant, as there's no reason to assume the pools of both, guided and naturalistic evolution, are composed the same.

This is a basic problem with inductive arguments in general. They frequently don't lead to useful probabilistic arguments.

[Heywood]

Are all evolutionary systems the product of an intellect? Is that a valid question or not? Obviously it is a valid question so how do you go about answering it? You start looking at evolutionary systems. Perhaps you can give an example of an evolutionary system whose origins are known but is not the product of an intellect.

Which means your position is begging the question, since the only possible way you could consider it a problem for us is by assuming that natural evolution is the product of an intellect too, something you absolutely have not demonstrated, and have no reason to think is so.

Of the assumptions I consider the following are two of them.

1)It is logically possible all evolutionary systems are the product of intellect.
2)It is logically possible that not all evolutionary systems are the product of intellect.

One of those assumptions is true and one is false. You assume, for no reason whatsoever other than it conforms with your pre-existing world view that 2 is true and 1 is false.....which is faulty thinking.

I start out from a position of indifference and ask what can I observe that will give me cause to believe one assumption over the other. Well I can observe the inception of an evolutionary system that hasn't required the involvement of an intellect. That would prove to me 2 is true. I look for such things...but can't find them. I ask you guys to give me examples of such and the results are the sound of crickets.

Principle of indifference applies here so each has a probability of .25. Now what happens if I randomly draw a marble and it is white? Now the probability that all the marbles are white increases to .33 because configuration 4 is no longer possible. What happens if I draw another marble and it is white? Well the probability that all the marbles in the bag are/were white increases to .5. Everytime a white marble is drawn while no black marbles have been drawn...it increases the likelihood all marbles are white.

This argument is breathtakingly stupid: the reason the probability increases in your example is because you have a set, known number of marbles to begin with, hence each time you remove one and know its color you're reducing the unknown number of marbles by one.

But removing one evolutionary system and determining it was made by intelligence doesn't reduce the number of potential evolutionary systems, because you don't know how many are possible. The number of unknowns is exactly the same, and hence, the probability is exactly the same, barring a dishonest and profoundly incorrect understanding of how probability works.

That's why I say you're begging the question, and are now looking for anything you can to confirm the thing you've decided is true without evidence.

Not knowing how many marbles are in the bag would prevent me from calculating an exact probability. On that point we have no argument. However not knowing how many marbles are in the bag doesn't change the fact that each time you draw a white marble without ever drawing a black one increases the probability that all the marbles are white. I could have done the example with X number of marbles and the results would always be the same. The probability of all the marbles being white increases with each draw of a white marble(while never drawing a black one).

So while I do not know how many evolutionary systems exist within the set of all evolutionary systems.....I do know this: Each time I observe an evolutionary system which requires the involvement of an intellect, it increases the probability that all evolutionary systems require the involvement of an intellect.

[Mudhammam]

Of the assumptions I consider the following are two of them.

1)It is logically possible all evolutionary systems are the product of intellect.
2)It is logically possible that not all evolutionary systems are the product of intellect.

One of those assumptions is true and one is false. You assume, for no reason whatsoever other than it conforms with your pre-existing world view that 2 is true and 1 is false.....which is faulty thinking.

I start out from a position of indifference and ask what can I observe that will give me cause to believe one assumption over the other. Well I can observe the inception of an evolutionary system that hasn't required the involvement of an intellect. That would prove to me 2 is true. I look for such things...but can't find them. I ask you guys to give me examples of such and the results are the sound of crickets.

What in God's unholy name are you talking about? Everything besides the creations of mankind are the examples you seek. Evolution by way of natural selection (hint: no intellect involved) has been observed. It is observed everyday. Creationists commonly refer to it as "micro-evolution" ...which is how speciation (macro-evolution) gets accomplished.

[Rampant.A.I.]

Which means your position is begging the question, since the only possible way you could consider it a problem for us is by assuming that natural evolution is the product of an intellect too, something you absolutely have not demonstrated, and have no reason to think is so. :dodgy:

Of the assumptions I consider the following are two of them.

1)It is logically possible all evolutionary systems are the product of intellect.
2)It is logically possible that not all evolutionary systems are the product of intellect.

False dilemma with god of the gaps. It's logically possible life on earth was created and guided by aliens, but not logically probable. Furthermore, if you're talking about an alien who found earth and genetically enhanced some of the primates, you're no longer in the Christian canon.

One of those assumptions is true and one is false. You assume, for no reason whatsoever other than it conforms with your pre-existing world view that 2 is true and 1 is false.....which is faulty thinking.

You are the only one making those loaded assumptions, presuming that human life requires a designer. The only reason we have a plausible explanation for the adaptation of life is your assumptions were abandoned.

[quote='Esquilax' pid='630980' dateline='1395482288']I start out from a position of indifference and ask what can I observe that will give me cause to believe one assumption over the other.

No you don't. You start from a position of ignorance of scientific theories and seek to confirm your bias.

[quote='Esquilax' pid='630980' dateline='1395482288']Well I can observe the inception of an evolutionary system that hasn't required the involvement of an intellect. That would prove to me 2 is true. I look for such things...but can't find them. I ask you guys to give me examples of such and the results are the sound of crickets.


[quote='Esquilax' pid='630980' dateline='1395482288']

This argument is breathtakingly stupid: the reason the probability increases in your example is because you have a set, known number of marbles to begin with, hence each time you remove one and know its color you're reducing the unknown number of marbles by one.

But removing one evolutionary system and determining it was made by intelligence doesn't reduce the number of potential evolutionary systems, because you don't know how many are possible. The number of unknowns is exactly the same, and hence, the probability is exactly the same, barring a dishonest and profoundly incorrect understanding of how probability works.

That's why I say you're begging the question, and are now looking for anything you can to confirm the thing you've decided is true without evidence.

Not knowing how many marbles are in the bag would prevent me from calculating an exact probability. On that point we have no argument. However not knowing how many marbles are in the bag doesn't change the fact that each time you draw a white marble without ever drawing a black one increases the probability that all the marbles are white. I could have done the example with X number of marbles and the results would always be the same. The probability of all the marbles being white increases with each draw of a white marble(while never drawing a black one).

So while I do not know how many evolutionary systems exist within the set of all evolutionary systems.....I do know this: Each time I observe an evolutionary system which requires the involvement of an intellect, it increases the probability that all evolutionary systems require the involvement of an intellect.

Which ones have you observed that require the involvement of an intellect? Scientific study has observed none, no matter how many times you repeat "intelligent design."

[Heywood]

What in God's unholy name are you talking about? Everything besides the creations of mankind are the examples you seek. Evolution by way of natural selection (hint: no intellect involved) has been observed. It is observed everyday. Creationists commonly refer to it as "micro-evolution" ...which is how speciation (macro-evolution) gets accomplished.

With a statement as strong as that I would think you would be able to prove that the evolutionary system which produced us was not created by an intellect. I don't think you can...nobody can. You believe God doesn't exists so ergo the evolutionary system could not have been created by Him. You're letting your atheism cloud your thinking.

Instead approach the question from a position of indifference as I have done in this thread and work from there.

---

Which ones have you observed that require the involvement of an intellect? Scientific study has observed none, no matter how many times you repeat "intelligent design."

I've given one example in this thread. You will have to re-read the thread though to find it as I am not going to repeat myself. I'll give you a hint...it was in a post in which got 0 responses...crickets all the way down.

---

I don't quite understand your demand though. What do you mean by "whose origins are known"? You are in danger of stacking your deck here, because of course if you make this requirement strong enough, you automatically exclude all systems which are not man-made. As I was saying in my last post, this is not a sign that your argument is right, but rather signifies that you are begging the question.

-Bolded by me.

I have acknowledge in this thread that this indeed is a valid concern. How does an intellect replicate natural evolution without being involved in the inception of the demonstration? Well you can't.

Because of this logical barrier I have to be a charitable in my interpretations of such demonstrations. The involvement of an intellect needs to be substantive before I would cry foul. An example of substantive involvement would be the design of a fitness function. However putting a bunch of atoms in a jar and poof...some evolution happens would not be substantive involvement of an intellect.

[Alex K]

If you bring up your goddamn designed fitness function one more time, I'm going to barf my brains out. The singlemindedness with which you repeat it as if it were a magical incantation, unbelieveable! There is exactly one fucking fitness function in nature. It's not designed, and it mostly involves fucking fitness, pun intended.
Sorry for the unqualified remark. I'll go now and eat something.

[Esquilax]

Of the assumptions I consider the following are two of them.

1)It is logically possible all evolutionary systems are the product of intellect.
2)It is logically possible that not all evolutionary systems are the product of intellect.

One of those assumptions is true and one is false. You assume, for no reason whatsoever other than it conforms with your pre-existing world view that 2 is true and 1 is false.....which is faulty thinking.

No, I accept that two is true because we have no evidence to suggest that one is true, and Occam's Razor dictates that in the absence of that, it is irrational to accept one as true.

I start out from a position of indifference and ask what can I observe that will give me cause to believe one assumption over the other. Well I can observe the inception of an evolutionary system that hasn't required the involvement of an intellect. That would prove to me 2 is true. I look for such things...but can't find them. I ask you guys to give me examples of such and the results are the sound of crickets.

Which is where you're begging the question because by saying you can't find any evidence of two being true, you're clearly accepting natural evolution as an example of intelligently guided evolution; not only have you no evidence of this, you're just defining everything into your preferred category sight unseen.

You really are profoundly dishonest.

Not knowing how many marbles are in the bag would prevent me from calculating an exact probability. On that point we have no argument. However not knowing how many marbles are in the bag doesn't change the fact that each time you draw a white marble without ever drawing a black one increases the probability that all the marbles are white. I could have done the example with X number of marbles and the results would always be the same. The probability of all the marbles being white increases with each draw of a white marble(while never drawing a black one).

So while I do not know how many evolutionary systems exist within the set of all evolutionary systems.....I do know this: Each time I observe an evolutionary system which requires the involvement of an intellect, it increases the probability that all evolutionary systems require the involvement of an intellect.

Okay, let's recap what just happened here. I gave a very clear, unambiguous reason why Heywood's analogy failed. With all the smug confidence of an imbecile, Heywood's response was to restate his flawed premise, and that's it.

Heywood, do you understand why the probability of a given outcome increases in your marble example? Because you already know the quantity of marbles in play, and each time you take a marble out and see that it's white, you remove one marble from the bag that could potentially be black. The probability doesn't increase because the marble you picked out was white, it increases because there's now one less marble in the bag to potentially be black.

The same can't be said of the potentially infinite examples of evolutionary processes at play here; finding one that's the result of intelligence will never, from your perspective, reduce the amount of potential models "in the bag," so to speak. The pool keeps refreshing itself.

Or are you saying that, if you had a bag of infinite marbles and you drew out three white ones that the probability of them all being white has increased, somehow? If so, please detail the reason why that probability would have increased.

[Heywood]

If you bring up your goddamn designed fitness function one more time, I'm going to barf my brains out. The singlemindedness with which you repeat it as if it were a magical incantation, unbelieveable! There is exactly one fucking fitness function in nature. It's not designed, and it mostly involves fucking fitness, pun intended.
Sorry for the unqualified remark. I'll go now and eat something.

Well I disagree with you.

How do you know that one fitness function(your claim not mine) is not designed?

[Esquilax]

Well I disagree with you.

How do you know that one fitness function(your claim not mine) is not designed?

Ah, the standard tactic of the christian with a worthless argument!

"You can't prove it's not true!"