A logical problem with intelligent design

Philosophy Forums Science, Technology, and Math
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If our intelligence is sufficiently complex that we cannot explain it without resorting to the ‘aid’ or ‘intent’ of a Intelligent Designer (of whatever type) then surely what we’re actually confessing is ‘we aren’t as smart as we think that we are’, no? However, if we were to perform such a move in the game then we’d also destabilise the foundation for reason, science, philosophy, psychology and just about everything else that we take to be a human achievement. But at least we’d be rid of the hokum of Intelligent Design, right?

This is meant to be satirical, though it’s actually quite a reasonable argument against Intelligent Design. It’s a glimpse of one possible future.

On a more productive note I’d like to ask anyone who knows anything about biological manipulation to tell me the basics of what they know about how to affect (genetically or otherwise) a human’s basic intelligence and metabolism, or where to look for reading on the subject that I’m likely to be able to understand. Basically I want to know how to produce an army of physically superior but emotionally/intellectually more simple human beings, for sports purposes. I know this sounds a little Hitlerian but trust me, I don’t want to actually do this, just to write about the possibility of it and the potential ramifications. Thanks in advance for your help.

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That is not a problem of “logic”…that is a moral issue.

You don’t want to give ID a chance because you feel that when proven to be true it would adversely affect social advancement.

This does not mean that ID is a flawed theory nor that it is unsubstantiated or un-provable. It is a scientific theory, first of all, not a philosophical one, nor is it faith based like macroevolution.

The scientific theory was put forth, the scientific evidence provided. It is there to be disproved scientifically if anyone can do it. So far no luck disproving it or providing an alternative explanation for the issues ID put forth in the scientific community.

So based on this, I would have to disagree with you. I think it is when we hold back scientific progress such as this that we push humanity into ignorance.

What you are doing is no different than when the church held that the earth was flat. “We can’t let the paradigm change because it will ruin everything”.

Don’t worry; ID will not push people back in the clasps of the church… serfdom. However, the potential adverse affect on social advancement is certainly debatable. Let’s just assume that ID is solid. Is it worth to bring this truth to light if it could potentially push people into the clutches of religious zionism or will they see through it all and understand that just because there is a creator it is not necessarily the one that is in the textbook of some group.

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something_else: That is not a problem of “logic”…that is a moral issue.
You don’t want to give ID a chance because you feel that when proven to be true it would adversely affect social advancement.
This does not mean that ID is a flawed theory nor that it is unsubstantiated or un-provable. It is a scientific theory, first of all, not a philosophical one, nor is it faith based like macroevolution.
The scientific theory was put forth, the scientific evidence provided. It is there to be disproved scientifically if anyone can do it. So far no luck disproving it or providing an alternative explanation for the issues ID put forth in the scientific community.
So based on this, I would have to disagree with you. I think it is when we hold back scientific progress such as this that we push humanity into ignorance. What you are doing is no different than when the church held that the earth was flat. “We can’t let the paradigm change because it will ruin everything”.
Don’t worry; ID will not push people back in the clasps of the church… serfdom. However, the potential adverse affect on social advancement is certainly debatable. Let’s just assume that ID is solid. Is it worth to bring this truth to light if it could potentially push people into the clutches of religious zionism or will they see through it all and understand that just because there is a creator it is not necessarily the one that is in the textbook of some group."

K: ID a scientific theory? UMM, feel free to show me the same
number of peer reviewed articles on ID that evolution has.
ID as a theory, only got its start in 1992, there have been
variations of it floating around for a while, but they always
been discredited after a while. Thus the need to change,
to update the theory every so often.
Evolution has 150 years of scientific work
supporting it. ID less then 2% of the scientist favor it.
ID is simply religion posing as science, as the judge in
Pennsylvania ruled recently. And even the Vatican in 1912
or 1916 (can’t remember which) stated that evolution was a
scientific fact and the Vatican reaffirmed this position in 1996.
So even the Catholic church affirms evolution as a fact.

So please share with us, the scientific points of ID,
the actually science in ID. Not the religious, but the
scientific points. I wait with anticipation for the science
of ID.

Kropotkin

4

PK,

One point: It’s a popular myth that Intelligent Design is a recent theory, it isn’t. The ideas in it are as old as Cicero and the Watchmaker paradox precedes Darwin. You are simply wrong about this fact.

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I said different variations have been around, specifically
ID is from 1992. Aristotle came up with the prime mover,
idea, but variations crop up every so often, new and improved
variations. The current ID theory is pretending to be science,
which is the new and improved version. The old versions did not
pretend to be science, they came from philosophy. The watchmaker
theory was during the enlightenment and when it got ripped apart,
it came back again during the 1970’s and was promptly stomped on.
In a few years creationist will come up with some new and improved
versions of ID, and it still won’t be science, just religion given
new clothes.

Kropotkin

6

Show me where the Watchmaker argument is ripped apart…

7

SIATD:

I think I’m missing your point, but it seems to me that the above would only hold if ID were false. If ID is false, then yes, using a Designer to explain the origin of our intelligence would be an admission that we just can’t figure it out. If ID is true, then invoking a Designer is just yet another successful achievement regarding the discovery of our origins.

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Well put uccisore. Precisely my point but refined to its core essence.

PK, please forgive this less than elegant response as it has been a long day for me.

So then, your statement is that the number of articles in “peer reviewed” journals reflects what is a scientific theory and the degree to which it is valid.

Therefore the theory with the most amount of articles in privately owned, controlled and edited journals is the most valid theory?

Is this your statement PK?

You should know that just because a “large”…cough…large group believes something
it doesn’t necessarily mean it is true. Especially when those who decide what is included in the journals and the editing of the material in the journal is controlled by special interest groups.

While it is true that microevolution has been well established…

macroevolution (what you call “evolution”: rock–to–human, one species–to–another species) is yet to have a single scientific evidence be put forth in support that has not been disproved or proven to be an act of academic fraud.

How many years did it take for the scientific community to accept Vitamin deficiency as the cause of scurvy? 150+ years. They were mocked, had their career destroyed, made outcasts as the scientific community insisted viruses and bacteria to be the cause despite utter lack of evidence.

It is the same with macroevolution. There is not one Iola of evidence to back it up yet we know it to be true. It is unobservable and un-testable… but it is “scientific”.

How many decades did it take before the scientific evidence was even considered that ulcers are caused by bacteria? How did the…“peer reviewed” journals react to the studies? yes.

As always…yes…as tradition would dictate…new scientific discoveries are met with ridicule of the contributors, personal attacks, vilification, making the contributors outcasts.

Most “peer reviewed journals” are nothing more than special interest publications.

How was Galileo treated? Such is the fait of all who go against the establishment cult mentality or go against the interest of special interest groups.

It is all very simple. If a professor believes macroevolution to be a fact and teaches it to his students, it is difficult for him to admit next day that it was all a lie and that everything he believed to be true…in sum his entire worth…hi status as an expert…is all based on a lie and in effect…he knows less than his students because at least they know that they don’t know or could see the flaws in his statements while he could not.

C’mon, you think that at magazine devoted to Darwinian evolotion and run by Darwinists including social Darwinists, is going to put ID into its magazine untainted and in fair light?

At the end of the day a theory…scientific or not… must be judged on its own merrits and not by some trademark or popularity.

Never was the watchmaker argument destroyed and never has the scientific evidence for ID been explained in any satisfactory way that would keep macroevolution in tact.

Every attempt to dispel ID thus far has been a personal attack on its founders and nothing more. I could quote you… this is the current stand of the Darwinists:

“We have no reason to consider the theory and we refuse to even look at the evidance.”

You can watch these statements on any ID and anti-ID documentary.

What separates ID today from ID of old is that today we have powerful microscopes and the science called biology. We now have proof that macroevolution is impossible. We can examine biological organism in extreme detail because of it observe irreducible complexity.

This would be akin to the discovery of the atom. Did the person that discovered the atom discover the theory that everything consists of elementary particles? No, it was just a verification of it.

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someoneisatthedoor: Show me where the Watchmaker argument is ripped apart…"

As I am rather short of time, I’l be fast.

  1. Contradiction.
    the argument first assumes that a watch is different from
    nature, which is uncomplicated and random. It then states that
    the universe is so complicated, complex, and ordered it too
    must have a a creator. Thus, the argument gives the universe two incompatible qualities.

  2. Shoemakers.

What if you went down a beach and found a shoe. (instead of watch)
Would you assume that a watchmaker made that shoe? of course
not, you would assume a shoemaker. therefore according to the
analogy, created life must have a lifemaker, the sun a sunmaker,
and snowflakes a snowmaker. this implies that there ar several
creators in the world, responsible for all kinds of creation.

  1. The watchmaker’s father
    Just like all watches have watchmakers, so do all watchmakers
    have fathers. Therefore, with the watchmaker analogy, god
    has a father? And who is the father of the father? etc…
    This leads to an endless series, and there is no stopping
    it until the original god just is without an origin and a cause.
    What then stops us from making the same assumption of
    the universe or ultimate reality?

  2. Watches out of nothing?

The things used by the watchmaker to make watches already
exist, but the theist claim that their god created things from
nothing. so the analogy is false here too.

The watchmaker is a false analogy because it assumes that
two objects share one common quality, They must have a
another quality in common.

  1. A watch is complex
    2.a watch has a watchmaker
    3.The universe is also complex
    4.Therefore the universe has a watchmaker

The last step is wrong because it concludes something that
is not supported by the criteria.

The theist may say, that all known complex objects we know of are
created, so for empirical reasons, the universe must have
a creator. It is a false analogy.

This argument is a circular argument. It assumes that the universe,
black holes, stars, snowflakes, life etc is created.
but the fact is physics chaos theory and evolutionary theory
tell us how the most complex things in the world could have
evolved on their own, without any help from a “watchmaker”

The watchmaker argument is not a proof, it is an analogy.
and it is as lame as most analogies are. It is contradictory,
does not aid us in knowing who the watchmaker is and
does not stand alone as evidence of god, but must rely on
eternal evidence.

Kropotkin

10

something_else:Precisely my point but refined to its core essence.
PK, please forgive this less than elegant response as it has been a long day for me.
So then, your statement is that the number of articles in “peer reviewed” journals reflects what is a scientific theory and the degree to which it is valid.
Therefore the theory with the most amount of articles in privately owned, controlled and edited journals is the most valid theory?
You should know that just because a “large”…cough…large group believes something
it doesn’t necessarily mean it is true. Especially when those who decide what is included in the journals and the editing of the material in the journal is controlled by special interest groups."

K: I was not going for “appealing to the authority” theory.
I was saying if scientist actually believed in ID, they would have
had some articles in some professional magazines. For instance,
you have all kinds of articles in professional magazines,
about different factors of evolution. It show the very interest
and defensibility of evolution. Evolution has some basis in fact that
can be talked about in scientific magazines, ID does not. ID is
religion, and thus does not have any place in scientific magazines,
and it shows with the lack of articles in professional mags.

Kropotkin

11

ID doesn’t disprove evolution.

Evolution works. The only disagreement is whether or not it had help or not.

At least if we’re talking about Behe.

This is wrong.

Uh, what would constitute either ‘proof’ or scientific evidence in your view?

Yep, that’s right. Though analogies aren’t lame. They can be very useful at times.

This just isn’t one of them. :laughing:

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OK, such as? Name one. I assume you mean macroevolution as I have stated before that no one including myself disagree with microevolution.

Please don’t forget to name at least one. Brad, I’d be interested to see if you can name one.

You assume much. it is exactly scientist, the top molecular biologists in the world that pioneered ID.

Irreducible complexity.

Examples:
The heart
the eye
the ear
the tail of the flagellum bacteria
mitochondria
any and every cell in the body

Explain to me how a cell can evolve from rock over millions of years when the cell needs hundreds+ parts to function and if any part is missing the organism dies. The only possibility is that it all evolved at the same time. You don’t have millions of years to evolve when you are dead. Dead things do not reproduce. Hence no diversity is possible.

Examples in detail.
arn.org/mm/mb_ic.htm

veritas-ucsb.org/library/ori … S/sub4.htm

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Something else, alas I am going out for the evening
to watch the San Jose Sharks thump Nashville, at my local
pub. Tomorrow, I shall drag out my evolution stuff.
I have face, those of your ilk, before. You precede from
a false basis, but that will be tomorrow.

GO SHARKS.

Kropotkin

14

The watch is different from nature. It encompass a function which is the embodiment of the human concept of time…or at least the measurement of.

You must submit that nature has never produced an Omega. agree/disagree?

Also you must agree…nature has never produced an omega because nature does not understand the human concept for the measurement of time…since according to you…nature is the result of chaos…and Darwinian macroevolution. Therefore nature does not think and theorize about how to measure time.

Darwinian evolution can not account for an Omega nor can random chaos such as an explosion in a junk yard…or an explosion in the universe (the same thing).

Remember now…I do not refer to Omega in the form of an analogy…I am actually referring to a real actual Omega.

Thermal dynamics teaches that no order can come from chaos and in fact that all order dissolves into chaos.

We know the universe to be ordered today and that if any variable was off just a tiny fraction…0.000000000000000000000000001% it would all collapse. This is the main stream ACADEMIC view today, I don’t know if it is true. I’ll just state it is clearly ordered. Tell me if you disagree.

There is no contradiction here. The only contradiction that exists is in your choice of presentation.

Everything is ordered but some things are more complex than others and some things simply do not appear in nature, especially when they are a product or the embodiment of human concepts…such as the measurement of time.

Not so. There is no logic in this what so ever. Why can’t the person that made the watch also have made the shoe?

Further, why should the person that made the watch also have had to make the sun.

Further, so what if there was a separate creator for everything. Why does there only need to be one creator?

This proves and disproves nothing.

Maybe he does and maybe he doesn’t. What does this have to do with anything?

It matters not. Many do not know their father, bastards, yet they know that they exist because they think. Has nothing to do with anything.

And so? is this not a thing you want to conclude. We shouldn’t discard possibilities just because we don’t like them.

This has nothing to do with does God or the watchmaker exist.

Nothing…and so?

There is no contradiction here. The watchmaker created the watch, God (or someone else) created the materials… It is possible. You give nothing to exclude the possibility.

The watchmaker idea is an analogy and never meant to be proof.
It is not unreasonable to demonstrate a possibility through analogies. All philosophers use analogies and examples…a sort of show of concept. Have you never read Socrates/Plato?

Individuals may tell us this… but that is only their unproven idea.
Proof of concept please…

Yes that is what it…precisely. Why are you trying to offer it as proof?
No one claims it as proof. It is an analogy… and quite a good one.

15

pbs.org/wgbh/evolution/libra … 11_01.html

Here’s a step by step process for the eye.

Now, don’t switch arguments here. ID can be refuted by showing the possibility of the eye evolving from small scale changes over time.

This is abiogenesis, not a part of evolutionary theory.

I, uh, have no idea what you’re getting at here. I guess you’re still talking about abiogenesis but non-living matter, if that’s what you mean, can indeed change over time. There’s a reason life forms are based on carbon.

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Thank you brad. Let me watch it and I’ll get back to you.

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OK, Brad, thank you again for your link.
I have watched it.

To be frank, it is a very weak and ABSTRATC theory if it can even be called a theory.
Complete waste of time.

I’m not sure that it would get us any place because you would have to go through the list, not just the eye.


The whole thing is so void of detail and so abstract, it is akin to drawing a stick figure limb by limb and then saying this is how man could have evolved.

For efficiency sake explain to me how the heart evolved or how cells evolved from rock.

Also you neglected to find me and example, a fact, some evidence for macroevolution. Just one Brad!

Rock–to–human (rock–to–cell) is in fact evolution. It is what we are talking about, Macroevolution.

Evolution states that hot rocks mixed with water and became live single celled organisms. These single celled organism became multi cell organism and they became bananas and then the became monkeys that ate the bananas.

So in short… rocks–to–human.

The problem with that link you gave me is that the guy didn’t explain how the eye could evolve. LOL

Also, I must admit that the eye is more of a microevolution topic and not macroevolution, which is what we are discussing here. Despite that, since it was my example, I’ll follow through.

What the guy did is used cups and lenses…BUT… he did not explain how the cups and lenses formed. LOL. Get it? “Created” by man…uhm…intelligence…hence intelligent design. The irony is too much, sorry I couldn’t resist. But this is a serious point.

Cups do not translate into retinas…my God…the whole thing is so ridiculous I can’t believe I’m wasting my time on it. Nor did he explain how the optic nerve and the brain functions formed. All necessary for even the simplest function.

The point is, Brad, that you see the light on the cup because you have a working eye. Light shines on your skin but that doesn’t translate into vision. Yes, your skin is photo sensitive and receptive… but you certainly don’t see with it. If you put a cup in your eye socket you will not see. How does a cup with light shown on it translate into a retina or vision? He skips all the details.

He needs to explain how a retina could form and explain the 99.99% of the other parts that he neglected to mention.

Retinas, lenses including the iris and even the tear channels and the tears are all necessary. Did you know that you would go blind without tears? A retina is a hell of a lot more intricate than a cup and so is the lens, the iris, the tear/tear channel function.

Lenses and retinas can not form by random mixing of dust and or any bag of ingredients. Each major device such as a retina or lens or nerves are formed by extremely complex assembly machines. In turn each complex machine is formed by other biological assembly machines with bewildering complexity. If any one of these things is off the whole thing falls apart.

Talking about the probabilities… gees.

Further, all of that is all useless without the optical nerve networks behind the retina and of course the brain functions. He discusses none of this.

And the point is brad, that he needs to do so for the 1st eye.

Did the optic nerve form first or did the lens? Or did the retina?

More importantly which of the incredibly complex assembly machines formed first and since they are not tied to each other in any way…(this means that the existence of one assembly machine does not necessitate the existence of the other assembly machines)…how do you explain their complementary existence considering that their complement does not come into fruit until much higher functional levels. All a coincidence of bewildering probability? I just love coincidence theories. There are those that considering everything to be a coincidence. Thank “God” philosophers such as ourselves are not one of these people.

Because for the first trillion years to the power of infinity there was no working eye…because…uhm…evolution takes such very very long time…it could not offer any benefit to any organism……so why would the constituents stay in the gene pool?

He fails to explain any of this.

Do you know any body parts that we or some other animal has that are not needed? By the way junk DNA isn’t necessarily junk just because they don’t know what it does.

In fact, the current theory is that our DNA has certain room for flexibility …I do not mean room for mutation…I mean genes already pre programmed that are activated by environmental variables to bring forth external expressions. This is so that creatures can adapt to relatively small environmental variables. But these limits/options are limited by the DNA. Now that we have “decoded” a large segment of DNA, this is understood. This really explains microevolution quite well but let’s leave microevolution in tact. This is why you have never seen a rabbit evolve into a dragon but you do see rabbits with ears and hair of varying length. Nor is there any indication in the fossil or pedological findings any sign of an animal ever evolving into another animal.

Nor did he discus the probability of forming a complete functional eye. 1 in ~“infinity”…because you see…evolution states that all things that form, form via random chance…because it is random mutations that cause changes in DNA.

We don’t see because there is a shadow/light on our retina.

We see because the retina gathers the data, sends it via the optic nerve to the brain, and IT IS THE BRAIN, that actually interprets the stimuli into a comprehendible image. None of this is addressed and it was not addressed how any of this could have evolved.

Note that everything depends on the rest. He didn’t even discus the developed of the key parts

18

Basing a theology on “Science hasn’t figured it out yet” is pretty risky business. I’m more interested in this bit of the article than anything:

Now, why would this be? If God just made eyes appear one day, or one millenia, why would there be all these rudimentary ones floating around? And can the ID argument about the Eye be applied to the light-sensitive patch? Do those have irreducible complexity? I’m guessing not. And if not, then neither do light-sensitive patches with dimples, or light-sensitive patches with holes or lenses and so on. And these things all exist in nature now, according to the article.

So you have all these crude eyes can could have evolved naturally, in species more primitive than us, and then you have big ole’ awesome eyes that we’re going to say couldn’t have evolved naturally? Doesn’t wash with me.

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Yes I agree. I hope you don’t suggest that I did that.

I reject evolution not because science has not figured it out but because science has figured out that it is false. Perhaps this is a strong statement so i with draw it for the time being. It is enough for me that after 150 years science has not provided any evidance for macroevolution. Would you have me “believe” something because it fails to be proven?

I also challenge you to bring to light a scientific evidence that macroevolution is more than just theology.
People keep ignoring this. This could end the debate very soon unless someone posts something for no debate can go on without supporting “evidence”.

I never agreed to waste my time defending ID in a setting were no one bothers to defend macroevolution.

There is no proof for the existence of a creator other than what we are left with after deductive reasoning. Which may not be full proof because we may not be aware of all possibilities…

I am skeptical that eyes corresponding to every stage have been found in existing living species.

In fact one reads the disclaimer
… “in this sequence” …

Well his sequence is so abstract that such a comment means very little.

The eye is complex but it is not necessarily necessary for life. As you know, ID requires that it must be necessary for life.

So let’s consider the human heart in support of ID… and I await anything you want in support of macroevolution.

This is really a fixed game from the start and I already see how it will end. It will end in about 2 or 3 posts after 0 evidence has been put forth in support of macroevolution. Loss will not be admitted but we all know deep inside that if you don’t produce something….at least one thing…were things stand.

20

Well, what do you mean by macroevolution?

abiogenesis?

speciation?

big transitions: from fish to ambphibians?

If it’s the first, you don’t understand what you’re arguing against.

If it’s number two, we’ve had speciation events in the last 150 years.

If it’s number three, we’ve just discovered a new piece to the puzzle:

news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4879672.stm