Evolutionist's optimal design arguments fall short...

[Jig]

I've heard many people argue that since many biological structures, such as the human eye, are not optimally designed...they could not be the after product of a perfect designer's work.

Arguments of the wiring of the eye, which creates a blind spot, and the retinas placment behind obstacles, such as blood vessels...have silenced many "un-educated" memebrs of the ID movement.

I think Dembski answers this argument best:

"No real designer attempts optimality in the sense of attaining perfect design. Indeed, there is no such thing as perfect design. Real designers strive for constrained optimization, which is something completely different. As Henry Petroski, an engineer and historian at Duke, aptly remarks in Invention by Design: "All design involves conflicting objectives and hence compromise, and the best designs will always be those that come up with the best compromise." Constrained optimization is the art of compromise between conflicting objectives. This is what design is all about. To find fault with biological design because it misses an idealized optimum, as Stephen Jay Gould regularly does, is therefore gratuitous. Not knowing the objectives of the designer, Gould is in no position to say whether the designer has come up with a faulty compromise among those objectives."

If a predator was more optimally designed, i.e. better eye sight, it would make it that much more of a threat to it's prey. Eventually this would undoubtly disrupt the ecosysmtem which that predator lives.

 

[Dannager]

So...what conflicting objective prevented the wiring in the eye from being arranged differently? Or the retinas being placed behind blood vessels? Or are you just bringing this argument up without any sort of evidence to support it?

If a predator was more optimally designed, i.e. better eye sight, it would make it that much more of a threat to it's prey. Eventually this would undoubtly disrupt the ecosysmtem which that predator lives.

So why not improve the prey's characteristics in kind, so that the threat level is not increased? The ecosystem wouldn't be disrupted then. But I can already here the "Well the designer didn't need to, he just made them all sub-optimal and now everything is fine!" Don't try it. By that logic there is no reason the designer couldn't have made everything as inept and incapable as possible, at an equal level of low survivability, and things would even out. This isn't an argument. This is a lesson in logic trying to prove a point that this debate comes nowhere near to hinging upon.

And besides (and here is the really important part), the argument "optimal design" argument isn't an argument for evolution. It's an argument against Intelligent Design. Even if you were able to refute it (you aren't), evolutionary theory isn't affected in any way. And given the fact that the Intelligent Design movement is so far past dead in the water that it's sleeping with the fishes, trying to argue in Intelligent Design's defense is, frankly, a waste of time.

 

[Jig]

So...what conflicting objective prevented the wiring in the eye from being arranged differently? Or the retinas being placed behind blood vessels? Or are you just bringing this argument up without any sort of evidence to support it?

You are certainly edgy. It appears you are already on the attack. Why would there need to be some kind of conflicting objective? I was merely examining a design's aspects and relating them to logical reasoning.

So why not improve the prey's characteristics in kind, so that the threat level is not increased? The ecosystem wouldn't be disrupted then.

Optimal design is "perfect design" and hence cannot exist except in an idealized realm (sometimes called a "Platonic heaven"). Apperant and optimal design empty design of all practical significance.

 

[Dannager]

You are certainly edgy. It appears you are already on the attack. Why would there need to be some kind of conflicting objective? I was merely examining a design's aspects and relating them to logical reasoning.

No, you cited Dembski's constrained optimization argument, which requires that the explanation behind seemingly suboptimal construction is the result of conflicting objectives and a compromise. You also stated that such an explanation was Dembski's answer to problems like the eye's inefficient wiring. If such a problem requires conflicting objectives to result in what you view as a compromise then what, if you'd be so kind, are the conflicting objectives that produced this configuration?

 

[Assyrian]

I'd like to know what conflicting objectives benefit from giving chimps and humans a broken Vitamin C gene?

Would it spoil some vast eternal plan,
If I could make my own Vitamin C?

The only benefit I can see was to leave a message for future human (or chimp) scientists, to tell them they were related.

 

[laptoppop]

I am convinced there is a lot more about how our bodies function than we understand quite yet. It will be interesting to ask the Creator why on a bunch of issues -- if we don't just "know" it. (this is true for TE as well as YEC - doesn't depend on the mode of creation) Just because we can't think of a reason doesn't mean there isn't one.

In the realm of hmmmmmm -- acupuncture - what is the real mechanism at work there? Its not just a mind trip, because it is used regularly for cow surgery anesthesia in parts of asia -- hard to psych out a cow!

There is more to heaven and earth than is dreamt of in my philosophy!

 

[Assyrian]

It is one thing for God, for some unknown reason, to decide he didn't want humans to be able to produce Vitamin C, but instead of simply not giving us a Vitamin C gene, we have a Vitamin C gene only it is broken. That is odd enough, but he also gave chimps the exact same broken gene, broken in the same way.

This simply makes not sense from a design point of view. It does make perfect sense if humans and chimps evolved from a common ancestor.

 

[shernren]

How can one recognize design without an objectively compiled list of design objectives?

 

[random_guy]

This is another example of why intelligent design is not scientific. All similarities are explained by a common designer, but all differences are explained as suboptimal (or creative) design. It has an answer for everything, but explains nothing. Evolution gives definite answers to why animals are similiar and why they are also different (such as vitamin C pseudogene).

 

[Jig]

This is another example of why intelligent design is not scientific. All similarities are explained by a common designer, but all differences are explained as suboptimal (or creative) design. It has an answer for everything, but explains nothing. Evolution gives definite answers to why animals are similiar and why they are also different (such as vitamin C pseudogene).

The one thing that many of you are not imputing into the equation is our fallen state. If our sin is the reason we now die a physical death, then our sin can be the reason for many more of our physical defects, even within our genes.

 

[random_guy]

The one thing that many of you are not imputing into the equation is our fallen state. If our sin is the reason we now die a physical death, then our sin can be the reason for many more of our physical defects, even within our genes.

Basically your argument is any bad design is due to the Fall, any similarities is due to a common designer, any differences is due to creative/suboptimal contraint design. That sure explains a lot. The Fall is the reason why both apes, humans, and guinea pigs have defective vitamin C genes, but the humans and apes version are more closely related than the guinea pig version (due to creative design). This has nothing to do with common descent.

 

[Jig]

Basically your argument is any bad design is due to the Fall

Do you agree the Fall caused physical changes within all organisms?

any similarities is due to a common designer,

And? That's impossible to prove or disprove.

any differences is due to creative/suboptimal contraint design.

A perfect predator could not catch the perfect prey. There needs to be homoestasis, and applying suboptimal constraint fixes many problems while allowing variety and diversity.

That sure explains a lot.

The only thing I'm guilty of, if I'm wrong, is giving God too much credit...fault me for that.

 

[Dannager]

The one thing that many of you are not imputing into the equation is our fallen state. If our sin is the reason we now die a physical death, then our sin can be the reason for many more of our physical defects, even within our genes.

What exactly should we be inputting into the equation as far as a fallen state goes. To my knowledge we have no empirical evidence of a change that occured after the fall, so there isn't really any way to go about changing the equation. You need evidence, Jig. You need evidence.

 

[Jig]

What exactly should we be inputting into the equation as far as a fallen state goes. To my knowledge we have no empirical evidence of a change that occured after the fall, so there isn't really any way to go about changing the equation. You need evidence, Jig. You need evidence.

And our physical death isn't evidence enough to you?

Rom. 5:12
12Therefore, just as through one man sin entered into the world, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men, because all sinned--

 

[Dannager]

And our physical death isn't evidence enough to you?

Our physical death isn't indicative of a change, as we have no empirical evidence to point to a different condition existing at any point.

Rom. 5:12
12Therefore, just as through one man sin entered into the world, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men, because all sinned--

Scripture is not empirical evidence.

 

[Jig]

Our physical death isn't indicative of a change, as we have no empirical evidence to point to a different condition existing at any point.

Scripture is not empirical evidence.

Regardless if Scripture can be used as empirical evidence or not, you should believe it is authoritive based on your position as a Christian.

 

[Assyrian]

The one thing that many of you are not imputing into the equation is our fallen state. If our sin is the reason we now die a physical death, then our sin can be the reason for many more of our physical defects, even within our genes.

But it is no reason for man and chimps to share the exact same defect in the vitamin C gene.

Do you agree the Fall caused physical changes within all organisms?

I haven't seen any evidence for that in science or scripture.

 

[Jig]

But it is no reason for man and chimps to share the exact same defect in the vitamin C gene.

Perhaps, but not necessarily. Common design may lead to similar defects within species under similar influences and conditions of stress and decay from the Fall.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electromagnetic_radiation
I haven't seen any evidence for that in science or scripture.

The Fall, of course, will never be able to be back by empirical evidence. Science has nothing to do with it. As for Scripture, there is plenty of evidence the Fall is the reason for entropy (the steady deterioration of our universe).

 

[random_guy]

Perhaps, but not necessarily. Common design may lead to similar defects within species under similar influences and conditions of stress and decay from the Fall.



The Fall, of course, will never be able to be back by empirical evidence. Science has nothing to do with it. As for Scripture, there is plenty of evidence the Fall is the reason for entropy (the steady deterioration of our universe).

Yeah, because before the Fall, people gave off no heat and animals couldn't eat anything, and cells never divided, and the skin of animals was as tough as Superman skin (due to non-dividing cells). It wasn't until after the Fall could people radiate heat, cells divided, and skin could be broken.

 

[Deamiter]

Has it ever occured to creationists that the death referred to in scripture might just be spiritual rather than physical?!?