Has Science done away with a need for God?

[Kingpin]

Esquilax, your argument about the computer program generating cards with unique information really makes my point. Did the computer itself create the program that allowed the generation of those cards? No, there were intelligent programmers behind it that allowed for that generation to be possible.

The computer code and and computer material are separate. Does the computer create the code itself? You even stated that the code is put on there. Great, by who?? It requires an intelligence to conceive it, create it and deploy it.

So now you are claiming that little old me has proven that the definition of language is even wider than we originally thought? I think you give me too much credit. We as humans when we see language assume a mind. You cannot look at a menu item at a restaurant and not assume that someone wrote it.

The hidden premise in my analogy is NOT that all languages are the same, but more so that all languages assume a mind behind them, but I didn't feel a need to state that premise as I assumed that was an innate human understanding. Semiotics requires both a mind to create it and a mind to interpret it.

[Esquilax]

Esquilax, your argument about the computer program generating cards with unique information really makes my point.  Did the computer itself create the program that allowed the generation of those cards?  No, there were intelligent programmers behind it that allowed for that generation to be possible.

The computer code and and computer material are separate.  Does the computer create the code itself?  You even stated that the code is put on there.  Great, by who??  It requires an intelligence to conceive it, create it and deploy it.

I also pointed out that arguing from analogy is fallacious, and explained why. So why are you insisting on doing so?

So now you are claiming that little old me has proven that the definition of language is even wider than we originally thought?

No, because I don't think DNA is a language. I told you what I think it is. What I'm saying is that, even under the premises of your own argument, the conclusion would not be that DNA therefore has a designer, without the addition of another premise of the argument that you have not demonstrated. The flaw in your argument is that it relies upon a completely unjustified presupposition, that all things within the analogy are exactly the same, that you don't even seem to recognize exists.

 I think you give me too much credit.  We as humans when we see language assume a mind.  You cannot look at a menu item at a restaurant and not assume that someone wrote it.  

And that's really the entirety of your argument, isn't it? "I assume that language requires a mind... now disprove that." There's really not a lot there to address, is there? Your assumptions are not an argument.

The hidden premise in my analogy is NOT that all languages are the same, but more so that all languages assume a mind behind them, but I didn't feel a need to state that premise as I assumed that was an innate human understanding.  Semiotics requires both a mind to create it and a mind to interpret it.

Fine, then let me be clearer: your hidden premise is that languages are all exactly alike in this singular quality, and you still haven't demonstrated that.

You do realize it's entirely possible to "see" language in natural things, right? To, for example, see letters in rock faces. This idea that if you perceive language, you're automatically perceiving deliberate, intentional communication is simply wrong.

[Kingpin]

Are saying that if you see your full name carved clearly on a tree you could logically assume it is by pure natural means? I've heard the arguments before about seeing a few letters formed out of sticks or in the clouds, what one can perceive to be letters therefore proof that not all language requires a creator. But I'm talking about a full word written clearly or a sentence, something as simple as "Hello Esquilax" on a rock face. You can them assume that no one wrote that but it's purely nature and your mind's perception?

If so, we are at an impasse. Any time we see language (clear written words that carry meaning) we deduce a mind.

[Chas]

Are saying that if you see your full name carved clearly on a tree you could logically assume it is by pure natural means?  I've heard the arguments before about seeing a few letters formed out of sticks or in the clouds, what one can perceive to be letters therefore proof that not all language requires a creator.  But I'm talking about a full word written clearly or a sentence, something as simple as "Hello Esquilax" on a rock face.  You can them assume that no one wrote that but it's purely nature and your mind's perception?  

If so, we are at an impasse.  Any time we see language (clear written words that carry meaning) we deduce a mind.

But, so what?  DNA is not a language.

[Kingpin]

It is certainly akin to a coding language, that is ciphers and deciphering carrying information and meaning.

http://news.sciencemag.org/math/2012/08/...hard-drive

[Lemonvariable72]

It is certainly akin to a coding language, that is ciphers and deciphering carrying information and meaning.

http://news.sciencemag.org/math/2012/08/...hard-drive

Sort of. That's more a metaphor we use to understand it. However think before you say DNA=God because our DNA is so badly coded that if that were the case even Bethesda would fire your gods ass. We have entire sections of DNA that don't do anything at all because they are horridly broken, like the sequence to produce vitamin c in higher apes.

[Esquilax]

Are saying that if you see your full name carved clearly on a tree you could logically assume it is by pure natural means?  I've heard the arguments before about seeing a few letters formed out of sticks or in the clouds, what one can perceive to be letters therefore proof that not all language requires a creator.  But I'm talking about a full word written clearly or a sentence, something as simple as "Hello Esquilax" on a rock face.  You can them assume that no one wrote that but it's purely nature and your mind's perception?  

If so, we are at an impasse.  Any time we see language (clear written words that carry meaning) we deduce a mind.

The problem, mainly, is that you're wrong about how we deduce the presence of intelligent agents behind the appearance of language, and you're being overly simplistic in the process. The metric we use is not the binary "complexity/presence of language= design" equation you're using, it is a direct comparison with the natural, something the example you gave perfectly illustrates. We can see individual letters formed out of clouds, or rocks, and be reasonable in not inferring design from that, because we know that these things can occur naturally. If we see a full name written like that, we can reasonably infer design in that not because it's complex, but because the complexity involved is above the threshold of what we know can happen naturally. At a certain point design becomes more feasible because it's more parsimonious than expecting that each individual letter formed on its own, but the reason that is so is because we have evidence of the beings that could write the words themselves.

But you're proposing that a mind created DNA, despite the fact that we have no evidence at all of this occurring, nor a mechanism for how it could occur, or even a reason to think that it could be so, as we know how DNA forms. You keep calling it a code, but the fact is that if it is, it's not a very complex one; it's just four letters, shorthand attached to chemicals, and the way they bond together. That's all it is, really: pairings of chemicals, attributed names after the fact by human beings. We know those chemicals can form naturally, we know they pair up naturally, and we have a readily demonstrable mechanism for how they build up in complexity, all without a creator needed. In this case, we only have evidence of these things forming naturally, and none at all of them needing design, so your comparison to words isn't really apt; what this is more like is you finding a rock and asserting that every time we see rocks, we deduce design.

Also, everything I said about emergent complexity also applies to DNA: early DNA was not as complex as current DNA, and current DNA is complex relative to its makeup, not complex on its own. Like I said, a strand of DNA is just four chemical letters, paired up: in simpler animals the DNA is also simple. The complexity you're seeing is the result of many combinations of that DNA added together, the longer strands that form more complex life, but in that case the complexity is a matter of numbers, not the individual DNA strands: 222 is more complex than 22, but only because I pressed the key one more time. The individual 2s aren't terribly complex, and in the beginning, as with DNA pairing, there weren't that many of them. The complexity you see emerged over a long period of time from interactions between simpler things.

Since I suspect that you're about to reassert that if we see language it means it was designed, let me ask you one final question: say we watch a new planet form in our solar system. We watch it, from every angle and at all times, without ever visiting it ourselves, and we see that no life has ever touched the surface. Nevertheless, when we finally do decide to go up there ourselves, the first living beings to ever set foot on this planet, we see the words "Hello Esquilax" written in the dust there.

Do you deduce design there, even in the face of incontrovertible evidence that no mind has ever been in proximity to the planet?

[Kingpin]

It is certainly akin to a coding language, that is ciphers and deciphering carrying information and meaning.

http://news.sciencemag.org/math/2012/08/...hard-drive

Sort of. That's more a metaphor we use to understand it.  However think before you say DNA=God because our DNA is so badly coded that if that were the case even Bethesda would fire your gods ass. We have entire sections of DNA that don't do anything at all because they are horridly broken, like the sequence to produce vitamin c in higher apes.

Have you ever seen a poorly written computer program?  If so do you dismiss the person behind it existed?  Just because we right now see sections that do not seem to be used at all, or have no purpose, means nothing.  The Genome was only sequenced 12 years ago.  I can write a function program that can be used in multiple applications that I code, but in it contains other function calls that some applications might not need.  Does that mean I do not exist?

Language or code whether perfect or imperfect (in so far as our current perception of that goes), if it carries meaning, we deduce an intelligence behind it.

---

Are saying that if you see your full name carved clearly on a tree you could logically assume it is by pure natural means?  I've heard the arguments before about seeing a few letters formed out of sticks or in the clouds, what one can perceive to be letters therefore proof that not all language requires a creator.  But I'm talking about a full word written clearly or a sentence, something as simple as "Hello Esquilax" on a rock face.  You can them assume that no one wrote that but it's purely nature and your mind's perception?  

If so, we are at an impasse.  Any time we see language (clear written words that carry meaning) we deduce a mind.

The problem, mainly, is that you're wrong about how we deduce the presence of intelligent agents behind the appearance of language, and you're being overly simplistic in the process. The metric we use is not the binary "complexity/presence of language= design" equation you're using, it is a direct comparison with the natural, something the example you gave perfectly illustrates. We can see individual letters formed out of clouds, or rocks, and be reasonable in not inferring design from that, because we know that these things can occur naturally. If we see a full name written like that, we can reasonably infer design in that not because it's complex, but because the complexity involved is above the threshold of what we know can happen naturally. At a certain point design becomes more feasible because it's more parsimonious than expecting that each individual letter formed on its own, but the reason that is so is because we have evidence of the beings that could write the words themselves.

But you're proposing that a mind created DNA, despite the fact that we have no evidence at all of this occurring, nor a mechanism for how it could occur, or even a reason to think that it could be so, as we know how DNA forms. You keep calling it a code, but the fact is that if it is, it's not a very complex one; it's just four letters, shorthand attached to chemicals, and the way they bond together. That's all it is, really: pairings of chemicals, attributed names after the fact by human beings. We know those chemicals can form naturally, we know they pair up naturally, and we have a readily demonstrable mechanism for how they build up in complexity, all without a creator needed. In this case, we only have evidence of these things forming naturally, and none at all of them needing design, so your comparison to words isn't really apt; what this is more like is you finding a rock and asserting that every time we see rocks, we deduce design.

Also, everything I said about emergent complexity also applies to DNA: early DNA was not as complex as current DNA, and current DNA is complex relative to its makeup, not complex on its own. Like I said, a strand of DNA is just four chemical letters, paired up: in simpler animals the DNA is also simple. The complexity you're seeing is the result of many combinations of that DNA added together, the longer strands that form more complex life, but in that case the complexity is a matter of numbers, not the individual DNA strands: 222 is more complex than 22, but only because I pressed the key one more time. The individual 2s aren't terribly complex, and in the beginning, as with DNA pairing, there weren't that many of them. The complexity you see emerged over a long period of time from interactions between simpler things.

Since I suspect that you're about to reassert that if we see language it means it was designed, let me ask you one final question: say we watch a new planet form in our solar system. We watch it, from every angle and at all times, without ever visiting it ourselves, and we see that no life has ever touched the surface. Nevertheless, when we finally do decide to go up there ourselves, the first living beings to ever set foot on this planet, we see the words "Hello Esquilax" written in the dust there.

Do you deduce design there, even in the face of incontrovertible evidence that no mind has ever been in proximity to the planet?

I would have to assume that a being of intelligence was present and wrote those words.  What would you deduce in that same scenario?

[Esquilax]

I would have to assume that a being of intelligence was present and wrote those words.  What would you deduce in that same scenario?

... But you know that no being has ever been to this planet before. You have evidence that you are the first mind there and you'd still assume that someone was there before you?

As for me, I'd have no choice but to give more credence to the idea that the words formed naturally, since I have no evidence that they could have been written.

Let's change it up, however, and make the question more like the DNA example: say you go to the same planet, but instead of words in English, you find repeated symbols on the ground. They aren't intelligible to you at all, they match no known language, but you can see patterns in them, and the symbols are very complicated to look at. Do you deduce intelligent agency there, or not?

[Kingpin]

I would have to assume that a being of intelligence was present and wrote those words.  What would you deduce in that same scenario?

... But you know that no being has ever been to this planet before. You have evidence that you are the first mind there and you'd still assume that someone was there before you?

As for me, I'd have no choice but to give more credence to the idea that the words formed naturally, since I have no evidence that they could have been written.

Let's change it up, however, and make the question more like the DNA example: say you go to the same planet, but instead of words in English, you find repeated symbols on the ground. They aren't intelligible to you at all, they match no known language, but you can see patterns in them, and the symbols are very complicated to look at. Do you deduce intelligent agency there, or not?

If the symbols are shown to be repeatable or have a pattern to them or appear to carry meaning, yes I must deduce an intelligent agency.  I would liken this to cave drawings or hieroglyphics.  I cannot decipher them, but they clearly carry meaning and I cannot logically deduce that it occurred naturally.