Design Inference, or the Difference
Between DNA and a PDA
Intelligent Design creationist Stephen Meyer and his online followers are upset that in our big debate I did not specifically address his claims about inferring design in complex structures such as DNA. I will do so now. By way of background, they note:
Intelligent design scientists like Meyer argue in favor of design theory based on the recognition of things like the digital information in DNA and the complex molecular machines found in cells. As Meyer patiently explained to Shermer in the debate, they do so because invariably we know from experience that complex systems possessing such features always arise from intelligent causes.
As Meyer explains (“Word Games: DNA, Design, and Intelligence.” Touchstone, Vol. 12, No. 4, 44-50): “Design theorists infer a prior intelligent cause based upon present knowledge of cause-and-effect relationships. Inferences to design thus employ the standard uniformitarian method of reasoning used in all historical sciences, many of which routinely detect intelligent causes.” Archaeologists, for example, employ criteria to discriminate between natural-made and human-made artifacts. “Intelligent agents have unique causal powers that nature does not. When we observe effects that we know only agents can produce, we rightly infer the presence of a prior intelligence even if we did not observe the action of the particular agent responsible.” DNA, for example, was no more naturally designed than the pyramids. If it looks intelligently designed, it was.
I have four objections to this argument:
- The inference to design is subjective. Sometimes it is obvious, other times it is not. There is an obvious difference between the face on Mars that is an eroded mountain and a face on Mount Rushmore that is an intelligently designed (carved) President’s face. But the difference between, say, a rock and a chipped-stone tool made by an Australopithicene three million years ago is not obvious.
- The inference to design is specific to each claim. In the chipped-stone problem, a rock that has been chipped on both sides in a symmetrical fashion is more likely to be intelligently designed than naturally flaked. Nevertheless, archaeologists infer many false positives, and there is no sure-fire design inference algorithm that applies to all archaeological problems, let alone one that applies to all scientific fields. The set of criteria used by archaeologists to determine whether a stone was chipped by chance or design is completely different from the set of criteria used by astronomers to determine whether a signal from space is natural or artificial.
- We perceive nature to be intelligently designed because of our experience of human artifacts that we know are intelligently designed since we can observe them being made and we have vast experience with human artificers. We know an intelligently designed PDA (Personal Digital Assistant) when we see one. By contrast, we have no experience with an intelligent designer outside of the human realm, and no experience with a supernatural agent outside of inferring his existence through gaps in our knowledge of mysteries as yet unexplained. What experience do we have of structures such as DNA being created by which we could construct an a design inference algorithm? None.
- We must be cautious about inferring design because our experience with intelligently-designed artifacts in our culture biases us to see intelligent design where none exists (for example, Virgin Mary apparitions on glass panes). Long before Darwin debunked William Paley’s watchmaker argument, the Enlightenment philosopher Voltaire satirized this problem in his classic novel Candide through his character Dr. Pangloss, a professor of “metaphysico-theology-cosmolonigology”: “Tis demonstrated that things cannot be otherwise; for, since everything is made for an end, everything is necessarily for the best end. Observe that noses were made to wear spectacles; and so we have spectacles. Legs were visibly instituted to be breeched, and we have breeches.”
Furthermore, if a group of people were to come up with a reasonable mechanism whereby a PDA might arise “naturally” (i.e. without human agency), I would thereafter be less certain that PDA I found laying around in the forest was in fact intelligently designed.
Dunno about you, but I wasn’t chipped out of stone, assembled in a factory, or bound from whole cloth. The analogy to an artifact is terrible at its core. Cars, books, tools, artifacts denote design because we can usually see how it was put together. Modern ones usually come with a neat little “made in Taiwan” label on them, too.
Artifacts are also made for a purpose, and they serve that purpose one assembled to the day they break down – they are the same object throughout their lives. They do not “grow” like living and natural things. I was the happy result of two people loving each other very much, and the chemical process which took place formed a group of cells which changed over time. This is a natural process, not one of artificial production – I’m not a friggin Cylon!
If the “designer” (which we all know is God) did indeed “design” us, and that the result of realizing this is so that we should give thanks and praise to His handiwork, well his signature would be as obvious as Xavier Roberts on the bum of every cabbage patch doll; as slartibardfast’s signature on a glacier in Norway (see Hitch-hiker’s guide for that one).
If He wanted the credit, He’d be doing the same damn thing every designer does: advertise!! Where’s God’s business card? Where’s his trademark label on my butt? Seriously, ID is one big joke which keeps going around and around, arguing until someone calls “bullshit” and then they yell “ad hominem! ad hominem! You’re calling me names, you’re not doing science!”
All that wasted energy, when all they have to do is run an experiment to show their hypothesis is valid. Hypothesis: life was designed. How can this be tested, falsified, replicated? That is all it takes.
That there are countless books full of arguments from ignorance proves nothing until they can run a test.
Are you kidding me? “I’m not a friggin Cylon”? Friggin? I believe the appropriate word in this case is frakkin. I’m not a frakkin Cylon!
The Intelligent Designer must’ve been smart to use digital information in DNA, fractals in ferns, neural networks in brains, nanotech everywhere, nuclear fusion in stars… Oh wait, those are tools we humans use to understand nature. Only, we can’t do sustained nuclear fusion yet, but hey, at least we can use evolutionary algorithms, whereas the Intelligent Designer apparently can’t.
Wait a minute. Digital information requires logic gates to interpret instructions.. that tends to mean we are products of some galactic computer. Does that mean god was, or worse is, a programmer? No wonder we have problems. Perhaps its time to revisit the blind watchmaker, no wait, he was analogue… This is so confusing, we need a hypothesis that is unassailable. Let me see, a hypothesis put forward by a person who relies on the un-testable testimony of a bunch of tribesmen 2 to 5 thousand years ago who spun tales around a campfire – or a book written by a man who described events that, to date, have proven 100 percent right.
Meyer and his ilk are just stuffed full of nonsense.
“…digital information in DNA …”
Let’s see – ‘digital’ means pertaining to your fingers (digits). Computers must have been called “digital” due to the inventors having only 2 fingers. Well, not really – I guess it’s because ‘digital computers deal with discrete numbers and has been likened to an abacus or counting on one’s fingers, as opposed to the analog computers which dealt with continuously and smoothly varying quantities. Anyway, I can’t imagine what anyone would mean by “digital information in DNA” – it’s a nonsense phrase. Just ask the creatards to explain what they mean by it – I bet a case of beer they can’t give an intelligible answer.
More on the moron Meyer – the phrase posted about his description of inferring design is absolute nonsense. He is essentially saying “nature cannot provide anything that looks like it’s designed, but nature looks like it’s designed, therefore it is designed by my skyfairy”.
The “seabasket” which occurs in nature looks like a vase intricately woven from fine glass threads but it is in fact the accumulated silicate remains of a sea organism. If anyone told me that a seabasket was put there by god or designed by god I’d laugh at them and call them an idiot. Of course Meyer would smugly state that the marine organism was designed by his skyfairy to create that intricate glass vase just as humans were designed by the skyfairy to create airplanes and computers – or perhaps the seabasket has free will – and a soul perhaps?
The short Stephen Meyer: “Ooo! Pretty! I’m too stupid to imagine how this might have come about, therefore god!”
seabasket = Venus’ Flower Basket
Some specimens are just incredible.
Re: your objection #4:
“We must be cautious about inferring design because our experience with intelligently-designed artifacts in our culture biases us to see intelligent design where none exists (for example, Virgin Mary apparitions on glass panes).”
The circular logic crowd will merely reply that the Virgin Mary appearing on a pane of glass is intelligently designed.
What’s more, the argument cited is circular. With the reasoning that everything with a predictable pattern must be made with intelligent design, one is left with nothing left as natural, from snowflakes to diamonds, since most have a distinct pattern that can’t be “natural.” Natural stops meaning anything.
The next step is that everything is created via “intelligent” involvement, from proteins to “clever” processes like photosynthesis. Everything that has a function, every natural process (including natural selection), every clever animal trick, including foster care for Magpie eggs to the complex mating routine for penguins, becomes someone’s plan.
Which is the starting premise for Intelligent Design in the first place.
In short, circular logic. 1. Start with the premise that there is a God who created all things. 2. Look for things in nature that “can’t be” natural by presuming (with no basis) anything with patterns or cleverness demonstrates divine intervention. 3. By doing so, with that unsubstantiated presumption, all things are “proven” to be intelligently designed rather than “natural”. 4. Therefore, God exists.
I was going to post something similar, but then I thought that this argument would also apply to Mount Rushmore, a stopwatch, or a signal from space. Do we use circular reasoning to tell that they’re not natural?
In fact, we have independent evidence of the existence and (in most cases) presence of human designers (and manufacturers), as well as background information about their knowledge, skills, and abilities.
For supernatural designers and manufacturers we have no such information. There is no independent evidence of the existence, say nothing of the presence, of a putative designer and manufacturer of DNA, and (it follows with necessity) no information about its/their knowledge, skills, and abilities. Hence it’s not circular to attribute Mt. Rushmore or a watch to human designers.
The case of SETI is different, of course, and needs some thought. However, one part of the ID proponents’ argument from SETI is faulty. SETI is not looking for complex signals, but rather rather for repeating signals that have at least one property no known ‘natural’ source generates: a very narrow bandwidth. See here.
Creationists could similarly argue that science uses circular logic. 1. Start with the premise that nature created all things. 2. When presented with so-called irreducible complexity, argue that it’s all made by natural processes, even if there’s no evidence yet. 3. By doing so, with that unsubstantiated presumption, all things are “proven” to be natural rather than “intelligently designed”. 4. Therefore, God is unnecessary.
Ahh, good thing he’s publishing in a respected, peer-reviewed scientific journal. Oh, wait…
Can Meyer tell the difference between a crystal from the 70s Superman Movie and a natural crystal? Can he tell the difference between a rock and a rock made to look like a rock? If we met aliens that used such things, how could we tell?
If I am a product of intelligent design…it is a piss poor design. I am always breaking down. Too many teeth to fit into my jaw. I could choke on things I need to eat to survive. Not everyone can swim even if most of the planet is covered with water. The sun burns me if I go outside for too long. It cold where I live and I have no fur…(and the fur I do have on my head gets thinner by the year). The list goes on and on….
The counterargument is that a stopwatch indicates design even if doesn’t work perfectly.
And the counter-counterargument is “But you said your dog was perfect! Nyah!”
“We perceive nature to be intelligently designed because of our experience of human artifacts that we know are intelligently designed since we can observe them being made and we have vast experience with human artificers.”
Oh, fabulously well done, thank you.
“[...]Voltaire satirized this problem in his classic novel Candide through his character Dr. Pangloss[...]“
!
Sometimes, reading here, is just plain enjoyable.
This is rarely mentioned, but IDers do work on the implicit dualist assumption that intelligence is somehow distinct from and possibly transcends natural/material processes.
According to them, the formation of particular sequences of DNA can’t be explained through a process of molecular reactions involving nucleotides and enzymes in solution, but somehow it can be explained through a molecular process of neurotransmitters and action potentials. But oh wait, not really, because intelligence to them isn’t the product of neurotransmitters and action potentials. Intelligence is somehow mysteriously disembodied and miraculously capable of affecting physical molecules despite the handicap of being non-physical.
There’s nothing intelligent about intelligent design.
Shermer, are you really serious? To your point #1. I think the only thing you proved with the statement is that the more complicated something is the easier it is to realize it has design. You don’t see any design in anything but you are positive a “Australopithicene” carved rocks 3 million years ago. Did you happen to witness this?
To your point #2. Apparently, design in stone tools is hard to recognize. I doubt it. Design in humans is not! The subject of the question was “design in complex systems”. Is a chipped rock a complex system? No. Analogy failure. Your example of the “astronomers” searching for signals from intellegent beings in outer space is interesting. These “scientists” (and you) would say if they can hear a simple pattern in a signal that would indicate intellegence on the other end. The same people would then look at hugely complicated mathematical patterns in DNA and say that indicates no intelligence was involved. This makes no sense.
Point #3. We don’t assume that a PDA is intelligently designed because we have met the designer or been to the factory. Have you been to a PDA factory? I haven’t. I know my PDA was designed because it is obvious by looking at it. If I showed up at the PDA factory and demanded to see the plans and the manufacture of them because I believed them to be a natural occurance until they proved otherwise, they would haul me off to the looney bin! Besides the designer has made Himself known through what He has designed. He has placed knowledge of His existance in you heart, mind and soul. (If He didn’t exist you wouldn’t be fighting so hard against Him.) Oh, and there is that baby in a manger thing!
Your point #4. Your Virgin Mary example doesn’t prove we have a bias to see design in everything. The last thing someone thinks about is design when they see something that isn’t there. They are ignoring reality to see what they want. For example, seeing that everything magically created itself from nothing then magically inanimate objects became alive while ignoring all of the evidence in front of us that says otherwise.
So Darwin proved that watches aren’t made by watchmakers??? I doubt that.
The last part was just stupid. I think God created noses to smell, not wear glasses. Glasses were designed to hold lenses in front of the eyes using the nose. I believe the nose came first. For satire to work the analogy needs to make sense and contain some truth. I Don’t believe any creationist would try to make that point. All the quote proves is that Voltaire had some stereotypes that he hadn’t thought through to see if they were valid.
The next predictable thing to come from you guys would be the falacy that the fact we sometimes need glasses is proof against design. I will be happy to dismiss that one in later posts if anyone is interested.
*Sigh*
No. It is “obvious” to you that the PDA is designed precisely because you have a posteriori knowledge about human beings and what they are capable of building, and also a posteriori knowledge about what nature is capable of producing on its own, and this allows you to infer that a human built this rather than natural forces. When it comes to biological organisms, we know a posteriori that humans did not build them, and we have ample a posteriori knowledge that nature is capable of producing them, and we completely and totally lack any a posteriori knowledge of the existence of a disembodied Intelligence with a capital “I”, let alone what it is capable of producing, how it does so and why it would want to if it could be said to have wants. None of this is inferred from “obviousness” despite the zany ramblings of armchair teleologists.
Always be wary of anyone who thinks “obvious” is a sufficient explanation for any phenomenon. Isn’t it “obvious” that the earth is flat? People would fall off the other side if it were round. Isn’t it “obvious” that the earth is stationary? After all, if it were moving, it would move out from beneath your feet every time you jumped. Isn’t it “obvious” that if light from a flashlight travels at speed c, then light from a flashlight aimed in the forward direction on a moving train going 50 mph will travel at c + 50 mph, relative to someone standing off the train? After all, what’s true of the speed of a thrown baseball is “obviously” true of the speed of a flashlight beam. All “obvious”, and all wrong.
Read about the Baigong Pipes, a series of hollow metal pipes embedded in stone in Tibet. Now, I’ve never seen hollow metal pipes grow naturally, but I’ve seen plenty of manmade metal pipes, so the Baigong Pipes are obviously manmade. The only problem is that they’re really old, predating the Bronze Age and human history in the region. So they’re not manmade, but they’re obviously intelligently made, because in my experience only intelligent beings can make hollow metal pipes. No need to look for a natural explanation. But if the intelligent beings weren’t humans, who were they? Must’ve been the Nephilim described in Genesis. You can’t prove they weren’t.
That’s where argument from incredulity and ignorance gets you.
Perhaps I’m not the first to point this out, but even if we allow Meyer’s inference to go through, it doesn’t prove that just any intelligent being designed certain biological systems, create life, etc. Instead, more precisely, it proves that human beings did. Following the logic of Meyer’s argument, and formulating it to more accurately fit the data, the only intelligent beings we know of that are responsible for the creation of complex things (of the kind Meyer uses as examples), or the introduction of new information, are human beings. Perhaps some rhetorical advantage could be gained in future debates by pointing out this absurd result.
Further, it’s pretty clear that Meyer takes a dualist view of human beings, and thus infers that the Designer is an immaterial mind. In the future, force him to argue for this. Make him argue that human intelligence is not reducible to the material brain. I doubt he can do this successfully, especially within a debate. And even if he can argue well for this, we can still point out that his inference to design entails a Designer that is an embodied mind.
You guys are hilarious!!!!! You think it’s “obvious” the earth is flat???? Look, let’s dispel the old tired myth that people used to think the earth was flat. No one has ever believed the earth was flat. Columbus did not sail the ocean to prove the earth was round as no one thought it was. We have known the world was round since the Egyptians. All you have to do is climb a tall hill and you can see the curvature of the earth. People didn’t used to be a stupid as you appear to be. They could watch a ship coming to shore and figure out that the earth was round because the first thing you saw was the top of the mast and as the ship “climbed” the curvature of the earth more of the ship would appear. No one has ever thought that the earth was stationary as it was “obvious” that the stars moved through the sky because the earth turned. They may have gotten it wrong that they thought the sun rotated around the earth rather than the other way around but nobody has ever believed the earth didn’t rotate. Every ancient civilization made astronomical observations that rival anything we can do.
If you think it appears “obvious” that the earth is flat and the earth doesn’t rotate then that explains a lot. It tells me how you could think it was “obvious” that in the beginning nothing existed, then nothing exploded for no explainable reason and poof! everthing came into existance. Then dust and matter swirled around and assembled into planets and solar systems by accidental chance. Then some inanimate goop lying around was struck by lightning and presto! Frankencell magically comes to life and becomes self aware! All you need is Igor and a Tesla coil and you could have a real cheesy horror flick!
If you guys aren’t skeptical of all of this “science” fiction then you need to stop calling yourselves skeptics!
BTW, I don’t blame Shermer for not addressing the question from Meyer in the debate or in their forum. It’s because he couldn’t. I showed how flimsy his “arguments” were. If I were him I wouldn’t want to be made to look foolish in front of a crowd and cameras either. Can you imagine the footage making the rounds on Youtube and all of the laughter that would insue as he compared chipped stones to DNA?? His own argument was that the more complex something was the easier it was to see design? I got a good chuckle out of the whole thing, I think I will start an e-mail chain of his comments so others can get a good guffaw!
He has no arguments to stand on, that’s why he had to go lurk on the oppositions forums and rather than respond because there are probably sixth graders over there that could refute his arguments, he had to slink back over here and post his “responses” here where you unquestioning disciples would all pat him on the back and say “Wow, you really showed those guys”! :-)
At least guys like Dawkins are smart enough not to debate because they know they can’t win. Hard to win when you are wrong!
BTW, I dare someone to use that argument that Torgo attempted in a debate. Let me get this straight, humans have the only intellegence we know of so we had to have created ourselves since our limited knowledge precludes any other possibility. From that argument I think I could make a pretty good case that some humans don’t posess any intellegence. :-)
Let me rephrase an argument that you guys apparently think proves something. The old, “We know evolution is true, science just hasn’t figured out how it works yet”. How about, “I know God created everything, science just hasn’t figured out how he did it yet? LOL!
Bennett writes: “BTW, I dare someone to use that argument that Torgo attempted in a debate. Let me get this straight, humans have the only intellegence we know of so we had to have created ourselves since our limited knowledge precludes any other possibility. From that argument I think I could make a pretty good case that some humans don’t posess any intellegence. :-)”
Hopefully you caught that I was parodying Meyer’s argument. Though it still seems a fair point. We can of course imagine other possible intelligneces, but that’s not Meyer’s argument. He claims to make an inference based on what we know is real, not what might be real. We know, he argues, that intelligence causes complexity and new information. I’m just pointing out that, in reality, we know that HUMAN intelligence causes these things. And even if the Designer is some non-human intelligence, it’s still more likely to be aliens, or some other material beings, given the analogy the argument is based on.
But if I dare not use this in a debate, pray tell how you or Meyer might rebut this.
The problem is that you guys are simplifying the argument to one you think you can defeat. You have reduced it to “looking” at a PDA or human and seeing design. The argument is much more complex than that. The argument arises from the fact that DNA contains DIGITAL information (programs).
Here is an explination of digital information. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital
“All digital communications require a language, which in this context consists of all the information that the sender and receiver of the digital communication must both possess, in advance, in order for the communication to be successful. Languages are generally arbitrary and specify the meaning to be assigned to particular symbol sequences, the allowed range of values, methods to be used for synchronization, etc.”
In other words, someone created a language when DNA was designed. Also, the mechanism that executes the instructions contained in the DNA had to speak the same language for it to mean anything. You would say that these two things would have evovled symbiotically. Mathmatically,
impossible. Try running a program written for a Mac on a PC and see how well that works.
We know that human intelligence CAN cause design. Humans know mathematics PROVE design in something. Once design is proven then you can try to figure out who the designer was.
If you can’t explain it you guys always appeal to the “aliens must have done it” argument (see Richard Dawkins). Please take off the tin foil hats! The universe is full of digital and mathematical “fingerprints”. If the universe is designed it is not locical to infer that the designer is contained inside his creation???
BTW, at the end of the article I refrenced http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital there is a list of examples of historical digital systems. The list contains the example of DNA among others. You guys would argue that DNA is the only one on the list not intelligently designed even though it is the most complex. DOH!
I just went and listened to the debate referred to by Dr. Shermer thanks to the link he provided. In my opinion Dr. Shermer and his partner got destroyed. Listen to it for yourself. I know none of you will agree, but in the immortal words of Tommy Lee Jones to Harrison Ford, “I don’t care”. :-)
That the Slaughter of the Ignorants was coming was evident from the opening arguments of Shermer and the other guy. Rather than sing the praises of evolution they came out attacking the other guys theory. In a debate when your opening remarks attack the other guys side of a debate rather than supporting your own when you are on the affirmative side of the debate you are done before you even start.
Shermer made the faulty claim that the origin of life must be “natural”. Since science can’t “measure” things outside of our universe it can’t postulate on things “supernatural”. I hate to break the news, but cosmology does it all the time. Where do you think alternate universes and the conditions before the big bang are, inside our universe? His concluding arguments were that if there was intelligence involved it had to be an alien. Then of course we have to wonder who designed the alien and so on.
Let’s apply that to evolution. If life happened on it’s own we have to then wonder how a planet with favorable conditions came to be, which leads us to wonder how a universe favorable to the planet came along and so on. Eventually you have to come to some “supernatural” conditions outside of our universe to explain where it came from. That is what the sciences of physics and cosmology do all of the time.
OK, let’s answer the question of where God came from. Since we know from Einstein and others that time didn’t exist before the beginning of the universe then we know that the cause of the universe is not subject to time since it is outside of time. In other words, whatever caused the universe also caused beginings and ends. The cause would have no begining or end. That is exactly what the Bible says about God, He has no begining or end!
So, because some Cosmologists speculate about the origin of the universe itself, we must consider that life, species, people, and anything in the universe can have a supernatural origin. Like, maybe I didn’t come from an egg and a sperm, but was magically created out of nothing by God. Maybe the wallet I found on a bench didn’t fall out of someone’s pocket, but miraculously materialized out of nothing.
You guys are the ones saying everything was magically created from nothing. I was just pointing out that you guys saying that science never considers things that are “supernatural” when in fact it does. Designing and creating is not magic it’s done all the time. Things appearing by accident with no cause is magic!
New species evolved from ancestor species via inheritance, mutation, and natural selection. Living cells formed from chemicals via chemical reactions and natural selection. Planets formed from nebular gas and dust through accretion. Nothing magic about that.
By the way, Christians once accepted the obsolete theory of spontaneous generation, whereby for example maggots arise spontaneously from rotting meat.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spontaneous_generation
“In 1188, Gerald of Wales, after having traveled in Ireland, argued that the ‘unnatural’ generation of barnacle geese was evidence for the [virgin birth of Jesus].”
“abiogenesis is the study of how life on Earth could have arisen from inanimate matter” “Francesco Redi, an Italian physician, proved as early as 1668 that higher forms of life did not originate spontaneously, but proponents of abiogenesis claimed that this did not apply to microbes and continued to hold that these could arise spontaneously.” Wiki…
Apparently, you guys believe in spontaneous generation, you just believe that only life you can’t see with the naked eye can magically appear! Pastuer proved that life can’t occur unless the environment was “polluted” with pre-existing life. this includes microscopic and so called “simple life forms”. (There is no such thing as a simple life form) I can repeat Pastuer’s experiment, I haven’t seen the “abiogenesis” experiments proving him wrong. Did I miss them?
Let’s see, because some guy said something in 1188 that means that Christians believe in some outdated idea. Well, I guess something that was believed in 1188 would be outdated. BTW, the Immaculate Conception is not the Virgin birth of Jesus. It’s a weird thing that Catholics believe about the virgin birth of MARY so they can promote her to “god” status.
I brought up spontaneous generation to show that in the past, Christians could accept that living things spring from inanimate matter every day, and some even tied this to scripture.
The Wikipedia article’s author mistakenly said the Immaculate Conception, and I corrected it. Gerald of Wales said, “from female without male,” referring to the Virgin birth of Jesus.
Max,
OK, I will except that Ole’ Jerry in 1188 believed in “The obsolete theory of spontaneous generation”. This is an anecdotal argument that since one guy in a group believed something, then everyone in the group believed it. That doesn’t fly. Now explain to me why you are making fun of our Welsh friend when every evolutionist believes the same thing now? You can call it “abiogenisis” but is the same exact outdated theory with more technical terms thrown in to appear valid. THERE IS NO EXPERIMENTS THAT PROVE THE VALIDITY OF ABIOGENESIS.
Sorry friend, but claiming the development of early lifeforms (viruses and extremely simple cellular organisms that are simple relative to the complexity of other organisms) out of complex carbon structures is “abiogenisis” is a straw man argument. As you said, early lifeforms don’t appear out of nothing, but you can observe some of the processes that allow for the possibility of early lifeforms to occur with a microscope a tad bit more powerful than our friends Pasteur or Redi had at their disposal. You see, the building blocks of life are things like proteins and protein-like structures that we can observe occasionally occur naturally in certain environments that are conducive. Thus it is not “abiogenesis,” but an empirically based theory that uses mechanical operations to explain how life forms and develops in a way that is useful to us. Don’t argue against something simply because you’re too lazy to pick up a biology text book.
Now, as to your argument of whether or not a conducive environment hints at God, the fallacy is a bit more complicated isn’t it? You are claiming that no amount of random occurrence could ever lead to conducive environments and thus everything must have intention behind it. Even if the possibility was extremely remote, say one in ten to the twenty-sixth power or any other number really, given a universe with enough space and time it would probably occur at least once. Heck, with infinite space and time, it is likely to occur so many times you can’t even count them all. So, in fact, a randomly occurring conducive circumstance is not all that special. If you think that’s neat, look up Boltzmann Brains – now there’s something that looks like “abiogenesis.” Still, statistically speaking it can happen eventually.
Also, your claims suffer from an inability to be falsified because you are not really interested in finding the truth because you are confident you have already found it (or at least you are comfortable with what you have and are afraid of digging any deeper). Thomas Aquinas’s students thought the same thing nearly a thousand years ago and Scholasticism achieved next to nothing (other than making fodder for some good jokes). Then empiricism came along and really took all the hot air out of the rationalist’s arguments. In fact, I would say that you using a computer rebuttals your own claims. The computer is produced using empirically based theories that were formed from five hundred plus years of painstaking observation and measurement. You trust empiricism enough when it is convenient, but fear it when it is inconvenient and run back to Scholasticism(in the case of evolution). Don’t belittle the millions of people who have poured their lives into helping us come at least this far just because you are afraid of questioning yourself.
Oh, and I apologize about saying earlier that you must not read this very often because I see, empirically might I add, that you do, in fact, seem to come here quite often. I hope you may learn something yet. After all, even though your arguments are not logically sound, as J.S. Mill pointed out, a collision of adverse opinions allows for us to better understand our own opinions and gives us a rare chance to possibly find some truth or understanding in the mix.
Also, sorry for the size of this post to any who bother to read it.
Blah, blah, blah. You guys keep saying you have the scientific proof and then you don’t produce. I don’t think Redi had a microscope and yes we do have much better equipment than Pasteur. (Although we have much inferior brains to Pasteur). As you admit, you have no repeatable experiments that prove spontaneous generation or “abiogenisis” as you have renamed it, is possible.
As you said, we have much better equipment than Pasteur so all you have to do is take that equipment and perform the experiments to disprove his proven scientific truth.
There is a big difference between using intellegence in a laboratory to create a few proteins and life spontaneously generating in some imagined conditions millions of years ago.
You say with an infinite amount of time something that is possible will definately happen. I would dispute that theory. Regardless, you don’t have an infinite amount of time and you don’t have one shred of scientific proof that it is possible, imagine it all you want. Pasteur proved otherwise.
You want to go off on empiricism, which means you have a theory that is verifiable by experimentation, well show me the testable observation or experiment that verifies it. I can show you the ones that disprove it.
BTW, I love your argument that a computer proves hundreds of years of science and intelligence and DNA proves creation by dumb luck. I mean you laid out the odds, see if Vegas will take those odds. Not a chance, even with an infinite amount of time! :-)
Mike-
to say something could happen given enough time is to imply
that you can’t disprove it couldn’t happen in a finite time.
This is usually recognized as a version of an ‘argument from
ignorance’.
BTW, get your own word for this screwball idea and leave Genesis out of it.
The conclusion that i draw from all of Mr. Bennett’s postings (and I have read them all…sigh…) is that if our current science cannot yet explain something complex, then it must be God. And no matter what Mr. Bennett may say, this same argument against the unexplained has been make throughout human history. His (and other ID proponents) is simply the latest example. Fortunately one day science will explain these “irreducibly complex machines” and the apologist will move on to some other unexplained natural occurrence. Either that or Armageddon will occur (the latest estimate for this is May 6th 2011, but do not hold me to that…)