Detecting design or intent in nature

[Heywood]

I already have, but you're committed to claiming that this thread doesn't exist - so that's probably not very helpful, eh?

Quote your post where you gave a specific example of a procedural generation that is also an evolutionary system that didn't require an intellect to be implemented so that it can be evaluated.

Julia did it(turned out to require intellect), Stimbo did it(wasn't observed to not require intellect....only asserted)....why can't you?

Cause you can't.

[bennyboy]

I already have, but you're committed to claiming that this thread doesn't exist - so that's probably not very helpful, eh?

Quote your post where you gave a specific example of a procedural generation that is also an evolutionary system that didn't require an intellect to be implemented so that it can be evaluated.

Julia did it(turned out to require intellect), Stimbo did it(wasn't observed to not require intellect....only asserted)....why can't you?

Cause you can't.

Heywood, you're not only like a parrot, in that you keep repeating the same thing. You're a deaf parrot.

There are a few ways we could proceed. We could just start responding to every post of yours with the name of the logical fallacy that it represents. We could just start copy-pasta-ing the many posts in which your false analogy has been called a false analogy.

You are trying to force us to give examples of design in a man-made evolutionary system (no duh?), with the hope of establishing that an evolutionary system which existed long before man was also created by an intellect.

Do you actually not see how fallacious this line of reasoning is, or are you just screaming into pillow because the sounds coming from outside your little window frighten you too much? If so, I understand. Reality is a scary thing-- it's big, full of mystery, and mostly out of our control. Probably none of us is capable of fully comprehending the terrors of our universe.

But when feeling safe requires constantly and diligently ignore the basic rules of logic, then Houston, we have a problem.

[Chas]

First off, there is more than one way to make fusion. A tokamak is a clever design go get fusion. There is also the brute force method that stars use. The fact that stars created fusion by the dumpest way possible suggest no intelligence was involved. What makes people 99.999% sure no intelligence was involved is because a large mass of hydrogen will collapse and thermonuclearly ignite all on its own. It is fundamentally the same as water flowing downhill. It doesn't require intelligence to tell water to go downhill, and it doesn't take intelligence to tell hydrogen to collapse and thermonuclearly ignite.

Chas is claiming that since we've only observed fusion happen as a result of intellect, it increases the likelyhood that that fusion in the sun is the result of intellect. His argument would be right if it was true that we only observe fusion happen as the result of human intellect.

Where Chas makes his error is he claims we never observe fusion resulting without intellect. He uses the sun as an example. It is a bad example because we've observed suns in various stages of "birth" come into existence without intellect.

We have never observed evolutionary systems come into existence without intellect. If we have, please specify it.

We have never witnessed a star ignite.

Your argument is logically unsound.

---

Chas is claiming that since we've only observed fusion happen as a result of intellect, it increases the likelyhood that that fusion in the sun is the result of intellect. His argument would be right if it was true that we only observe fusion happen as the result of human intellect.

Where Chas makes his error is he claims we never observe fusion resulting without intellect. He uses the sun as an example. It is a bad example because we've observed suns in various stages of "birth" come into existence without intellect.

We have never observed evolutionary systems come into existence without intellect. If we have, please specify it.

Somehow I think you're misrepresenting Chas's statements. To me, Chas was demonstrating how your argument fails if you replaced evolution with thermonuclear reactor. He was not advocating the sun requires intelligence. Chas will probably comment to clarify and also throw an insult as well.

My example shows the absurdity of Heywood's argument.

And I don't need to throw an insult, everyone already knows how foolish Heywood's argument is.

[JuliaL]

I have always maintained that evolutionary systems required intellect, either as a designer or as a component. I have never claimed that all evolutionary systems were intentionally created by intellects.

Tribes is not an example of an evolutionary system that did not require intellect to be implemented. It may not have been intentional but it certainly needed intellect.

I agree that formation of completely independent self replicating systems is uncommon in the observed universe. But some of that rarity is likely due to our limited horizon in both time and space.

From another thread http://atheistforums.org/thread-21222-pa...biogenesis a link to a report:

Here is an interesting article.



I would like to find some updates on this. Self-replicating RNA that mutates.

Now scientists have created something in the lab that is tantalizingly close to what might have happened. It's not life, they stress, but it certainly gives the science community a whole new data set to chew on.
The researchers, at the Scripps Research Institute, created molecules that self-replicate and even evolve and compete to win or lose.

To satisfy you, to what degree does an intellect have to not participate? In the above, the experimenters set up the apparatus and the RNA replicator was produced. This plausibly shows how a replicating system could be produced without intellect (as designer or component) given a coincidence of events equivalent to the lab setup. To insist that the event must be fully unaffected by the experimenter/observer before it can qualify as arising without intellect is too much like Ken Ham's "Were you there?" It can't be done. If the experiment must be fully independent of the experimenter, it cannot be observed (per Heisenberg.)
Prior to 1828 it was thought that organic chemicals couldn't be produced without the agency of a living organism.

[Heywood]

I have always maintained that evolutionary systems required intellect, either as a designer or as a component. I have never claimed that all evolutionary systems were intentionally created by intellects.

Tribes is not an example of an evolutionary system that did not require intellect to be implemented. It may not have been intentional but it certainly needed intellect.

I agree that formation of completely independent self replicating systems is uncommon in the observed universe. But some of that rarity is likely due to our limited horizon in both time and space.

Rarity due to our limited horizon in both time and space is a legitimate counter argument. It is the same counter argument that I use when people claim that we have only observed intellects descending from biological evolution and that makes it more likely that it was biological evolution that came first and not the intellect.

The problem with using it to attack my argument is this. Evolutionary systems don't seem to have any "problem" coming into existence in the presence of intellects even when the intellects have no intention of creating them. Your tribe is a example is a good example of what I am talking about. That suggest to me that there are no significant barriers that would prevent such systems from coming into existence if they could come into existence without intellect. The are quite easy to implement it seems.....intellects implement them without even trying.

Something like abiogenesis you could argue that the conditions required for it are quit unique and say with the massive oxidation of our atmosphere those conditions no longer exist....so consequently we don't observe new lineages of life coming into existence(i.e. we don't observe abiogenesis happening today). That kind of claim with evolutionary systems just doesn't pass the smell test with me. It simply isn't that plausible.

Let me think about about your question about the degree of intellectual involvement. It might take a while as I have been distracted by the claim that numbers are not real but just made up that was made in the another thread.

[Chas]

I agree that formation of completely independent self replicating systems is uncommon in the observed universe. But some of that rarity is likely due to our limited horizon in both time and space.

Rarity due to our limited horizon in both time and space is a legitimate counter argument. It is the same counter argument that I use when people claim that we have only observed intellects descending from biological evolution and that makes it more likely that it was biological evolution that came first and not the intellect.

The problem with using it to attack my argument is this. Evolutionary systems don't seem to have any "problem" coming into existence in the presence of intellects even when the intellects have no intention of creating them. Your tribe is a example is a good example of what I am talking about. That suggest to me that there are no significant barriers that would prevent such systems from coming into existence if they could come into existence without intellect. The are quite easy to implement.....intellects implement them without even trying.

Something like abiogenesis you could argue that the conditions required for it are quit unique and say with the massive oxidation of our atmosphere those conditions no longer exist....so consequently we don't observe new lineages of life coming into existence(i.e. we don't observe abiogenesis happening today). That kind of claim with evolutionary systems just doesn't pass the smell test with me. It simply isn't that plausible.

Not plausible to you, maybe. The conditions today are so utterly different than 3.8 billion years ago that a new occurrence of abiogenesis is almost certainly impossible.

And your 'evolutionary systems' don't 'come about in the presence of intellect', they are consciously created.

[Heywood]

Not plausible to you, maybe. The conditions today are so utterly different than 3.8 billion years ago that a new occurrence of abiogenesis is almost certainly impossible.

Until you understand what conditions abiogenesis can occur under it is silly to make claims like this. Maybe abiogenesis requires intellect.

[bennyboy]

Not plausible to you, maybe. The conditions today are so utterly different than 3.8 billion years ago that a new occurrence of abiogenesis is almost certainly impossible.

Until you understand what conditions abiogenesis can occur under it is silly to make claims like this. Maybe abiogenesis requires intellect.

Maybe it requires a magic space monkey. Maybe it requires a quantum spark from the 21st dimension. Maybe it requires a voodoo dance. Or maybe it just requires those features of the universe which we can actually observe to exist and to affect causality.

It's a pretty simple logical extension at work here:
-we know life exists in the physical universe
-we have not found any evidence of God, or of intellect creating the life.
-it therefore seems likely that life was created due to physical processes

We don't need to prove that life was created due to physical processes, because there are currently no other supportable hypotheses for why life exists.

Now, if you find some evidence of God, then fine. But you can't use the existence of life to prove God (or intellect), and then go on to say God must have created life. That's because circles are worse than bad-- they represent an epic logic fail. Why oh why can't you see that your lines in support of God-- ALL of them-- beg the question?

[Heywood]

It's a pretty simple logical extension at work here:
-we know life exists in the physical universe
-we have not found any evidence of God, or of intellect creating the life.
-it therefore seems likely that life was created due to physical processes

Its a pretty simple logical extension at work here:
- we know intellects can implement evolutionary systems
- we have not found any evidence of evolutionary systems being implemented without intellects.
- it therefore seems likely that the evolutionary system which created us was implemented by an intellect.

[Simon Moon]

Its a pretty simple logical extension at work here:
- we know intellects can implement evolutionary systems
- we have not found any evidence of evolutionary systems being implemented without intellects.
- it therefore seems likely that the evolutionary system which created us was implemented by an intellect.

Argument from ignorance.

Just because you are unable to think of how it could have occurred via natural mechanisms, or even if we don't currently have a definitive explanation of how it could have, doesn't mean that "an intellect (god) did it" becomes the next best explanation by default.

You are making a claim that requires its own evidence. Your analogy just feeds into your existing fallacious thinking.