How the C&E debate has changed my beliefs

[Chalnoth]

You may have a supportable counter to the design argument, but that does not change the fact that there exists empirical evidence for the existence of a Designer we call "God", which should be presented and taken into consideration. This was my original position.

You may not be able to post links for another four posts, but you could at least reference the arguments that you're talking about.

But I can basically assure you that they have been refuted. You're probably either talking about Dembski's specified complexity, or Behe's irreducible complexity. Both have been refuted:

1. Specified complexity is predicted by the theory of evolution, and as such is not an argument against the theory of evolution. Even if both design and the theory of evolution predict specified complexity, the theory of evolution predicts vastly more, and is thus the preferable theory.
2. Irreducible complexity suddenly becomes reducible the moment you find a process through which it might have evolved smoothly. Every example of an irreducably complex system that has been put forward by Behe has been shown to not be irreducable.

Not at all. The theory of evolution is also applied to our universe - it is said that the universe itself is evolving. Therefore the physical characteristics of the universe do have a bearing on evolutionary theory.

The theory of evolution cannot be applied to the universe as a whole because the universe does not undergo replication, as has already been explained to you.

And of course, as should be obvious, evidence of God from cosmology will have a bearing on how far people accept secular evolutionary theory as fact.

Too bad there is none.

 

[rmwilliamsll]

The big problem with trying to show that life is designed in some way, is that life is not designed in a way that any human designer would do it.

1. life forms a nested hierarchy, there are no chimeras. Human beings design consistently with swapped modules, reusing good designs, moving things around to save primarily debugging time. Our literature is full of chimeras but life is not like this. The eye has evolved maybe a score of times, each time different because evolution only has available the genes inherited from your parents. Even if you happen to eat an organism with a much better eye than yours, you can not rework your eye with their DNA as a process of digesting them. curious feature of life, this nested hierarchy versus swapped modules.

2. the second big problem with design in general is that life is not optimized in any way. Most things are tinkered with, not for the best design but simply for something that works. my favorite one is why in the world do we use the same tube to eat and drink as we do to breath and talk? what a big design flaw, lots of people die choking to death. the reason is that evolution only has what is available to it's ancestors to work with, despite a much better design right next to it physically. this is a big deal for biologists, they realize that life is radically NOT optimized, not designed with any noticable criteria except for survivability and nested hierarchies.

3. the fundamental question then becomes if life is not designed as human beings would do it, then what kind of designer could have designed it?
a. one that always uses vertical transmission of genes, never swapped modules.
b. one that is content with good enough to function, even if there is a better way to do the same thing in the creature eaten (my favorite here is the lungs of chickens, much better design than humans and we eat them, lots of them).
c. one that is content to tinker then kill off 98% of all species ever living on the earth. not optimal.
d. one that didn't sign his/her/its work despite several very obvious ways to do so. (my favorite here is a different genetic code for each biblical kind, no evolution between kinds would be possible)

it is not strictly secular people that killed off Paley's dream of ID, lots of Christians saw that it did not conform to what the evidence is in the living world.

anthropic principle is physics not biology, therefore it has nothing to do with the TofE. the TofE presumes that life exists and that an imperfect replicator exists. the AP is irrelevant to either of these ideas.

 

[Chalnoth]

Then the above problem of improbability would remain. Against such improbabilities that life can arise by chance, perhaps only one of those universes would actually contain life. You would have to consider how unlikely it is that ours should just happen to be the one that supports life.

Tell me, could we exist in a universe that doesn't support life? Could we ever observe a universe that doesn't support life? Thus the probability that we would happen to live in a habitable universe is exactly one.

Besides you cannot prove that there are parallel universes, so this does not nulify my argument that there is empirical evidence to support a belief in God. Evidence which should be heard.

Well, this is why I don't ascribe to anthropic arguments. We still have far too much to learn about high energy physics before we can truly say that habitable universes are rare. An argument from ignorance is not an argument at all. Just because we don't yet understand all of the details on how the universe came into being doesn't mean that we should throw up our hands and say, 'goddidit.'

 

[TheInstant]

Secondly, the improbabilty of abiogenesis according to contemporary evolutionary though occurring is important. One philosopher puts it like this:

A man faces a firing squad of a hundred expert marksmen, but survives his ordeal, as each marksmen misses. That man knows why he has survived - the men missed their target. But the improbability of such an event happening by chance needs to be addressed.

It seems likely that factors other than chance processes were accountable for the outcome e.g. the men had some motive to miss.

I don't think a philosophical argument is going to cut it. Can we see some evidence that abiogenesis is too improbable to have occured? Some math would be nice.

Similarly, it is inadequate merely to state that we have evolved against incredible odds. Those unlikely odds stand against such a theory and encourage us to look elsewhere for an explanation of our origins.

I'd like to see some numbers for this as well. In what way have we evolved "against incredible odds"?

Besides you cannot prove that there are parallel universes, so this does not nulify my argument that there is empirical evidence to support a belief in God. Evidence which should be heard.

Let's see this empirical evidence.

 

[JoeWill]

Reply to Chalnoth

"The problem is, when you propose a theory in science, it has to provide specific predictions. Supernatural causes can't do this, and thus cannot be fit into science."

The situation is problematic, which is why I said quite a while ago that the issue of what the textbooks teach is a difficult one.

It may be that creationism cannot be regarded as science according to some popular definitions of science - including Popper's view that one of the marks of a scientific theory is that one of its predicates can be falsified etc.

On the other hand, science cannot remain objective, while igoring, or dismissing as "invalid", arguments that present fair empirical evidence for the existence of God. These offer a counterview to secular evolutionism based on scientic data and techniques. As I say, it is unethical, intellectual suicide to sequester this information.

So we have something of a no-win situation, but
clearly it is wholly inadequate to dismiss intelligent design as a "religion", so that pupils have no access at school to rational and empirical counter-theories to secular evolution. All this playing about with definitions does not change that fact.

If you could quantify God's influence on the natural world in a way that was as measurable as any good scientific theory, you'd be able to find scientists that would be willing to test that theory. The problem is, you can't, because those few places where there were concrete predictions (creation, the flood), the Bible has come out wrong.

But of course, there are scientists who would argue that the predictions of evolution have "come out wrong". An example would be Darwin's expectation that further excavations would lend support to his theory. More than a century later, some geologists would agree with the naturalist Douglas Dewar, that the fossil record can only be considered a hostile witness against evolution.

Meanwhile, some scholars point to what they consider to be reasonable evidences for such phenomena as the Biblical flood etc.

"Once again, the anthropic principle is not evidence of an intelligent designer. It's actually not evidence of anything. It's just an untestable hypothesis, and as such anthropic arguments usually aren't held to be good arguments by the majority of the scientific community."

Disagree. The anthropic principle does provide some evidence of an intelligent designer. We know that intelligent human beings produce finely tuned designs to achieve certain goals. So... when we find evidence of multiple finely tuned life-promoting variables in our universe - conditions that are not convincingly attributed to chance processes - we might infer that they were engineered by an Intelligent Designer.

Joe

 

[JoeWill]

Reply to TheInstant


"I don't think a philosophical argument is going to cut it. Can we see some evidence that abiogenesis is too improbable to have occured? Some math would be nice."

Astronomer Sir Fred Hoyle demonstrated the improbability of getting a single biopolymer such as a protein molecule. He compared it to the odds of 10 to the fiftieth power number of blind persons solving the Rubik cube simultanaeously.

He said: "The notion that not only biopolymers but the operating programme of a living cell could be arrived at by chance in a primoridal organic soup here on the Earth is evidently nonsense of a high order".

According to Coppedge, the probability of evolving a single protein molecule over 5 billion years is 1 chance in10 followed by 161 zeros.



And so on...

Joe

 

[Baggins]

Hear Hear The Instant.

It seems that JoeWill's arguments are all going to boil down to personal incredulity with no empiracal evidence.

As has also been pointed out, it is stupid debating the probability of life starting on Earth when it self-evidently did start, now what we have to do is work out how, there have been many interesting threads on this very board about abiogenesis

http://www.christianforums.com/showthread.php?p=1442703&highlight=abiogenesis#post1442703

Gladiatrix's pposts on this thread are a good place to start

 

[Baggins]

But of course, there are scientists who would argue that the predictions of evolution have "come out wrong". An example would be Darwin's expectation that further excavations would lend support to his theory. More than a century later, some geologists would agree with the naturalist Douglas Dewar, that the fossil record can only be considered a hostile witness against evolution.

This statement is absolutely ludicrous.

The fossil record is the finest piece of evidence in favour of the ToE.

Would you care to explain why it is a hostile witness?
.
Or does your understanding go no further than a quote from a creationist with a vested interest in trying to undermine the ToE ?

Edited to point out that Dewar's greatest succss was his statement of the impossibility of Whales evolving from land animals ( since totally debunked by the discovery of a beautiful series of fossil transitions in Pakistan ). He has also been dead for 50 years so he hasn't been able to comment on te massive strides that palaeontology has taken in support of the ToE in that time.

Anyone else you want to bring up, someone alive for the past 50 years perhaps?

Meanwhile, some scholars point to what they consider to be reasonable evidences for such phenomena as the Biblical flood etc.

"

Now, as a geologist, I'd be extremely interested to see your "reasonable evidences" for the biblical flood.

Considering that christian geologists falsified the biblical flood nearly 200 years ago, I was wondering what new evidence you have heard of that may make us reconsider this falsification.

My bet is that you have nothing, but I would be very interested to see what you think you have,

I am all ears, fire away

 

[Baggins]

Reply to TheInstant


"I don't think a philosophical argument is going to cut it. Can we see some evidence that abiogenesis is too improbable to have occured? Some math would be nice."

Astronomer Sir Fred Hoyle demonstrated the improbability of getting a single biopolymer such as a protein molecule. He compared it to the odds of 10 to the fiftieth power number of blind persons solving the Rubik cube simultanaeously.

He said: "The notion that not only biopolymers but the operating programme of a living cell could be arrived at by chance in a primoridal organic soup here on the Earth is evidently nonsense of a high order".

According to Coppedge, the probability of evolving a single protein molecule over 5 billion years is 1 chance in10 followed by 161 zeros.



And so on...

Joe

You have already been shown why Hoyle was wrong.

Why would you repost an argument that has been refuted?

 

[Chalnoth]

It may be that creationism cannot be regarded as science according to some popular definitions of science - including Popper's view that one of the marks of a scientific theory is that one of its predicates can be falsified etc.

On the other hand, science cannot remain objective, while igoring, or dismissing as "invalid", arguments that present fair empirical evidence for the existence of God. These offer a counterview to secular evolutionism based on scientic data and techniques. As I say, it is unethical, intellectual suicide to sequester this information.

JoeWill, you're completely ignoring my posts and those of others. I have not, and do not, ignore these Creation Science/Intelligent Design arguments. The arguments are simply fallacious and invalid. I do not disregard them out of hand, but rather because the rules of logic require that they be disregarded.

But, perhaps more importantly, how can any evidence is for something when there can be no possibility of evidence against it? Now, that said, could you please just get to your argument so we can move forward?

Disagree. The anthropic principle does provide some evidence of an intelligent designer.

Then you don't understand the anthropic principle. The anthropic principle is not evidence for anything. It is nothing more than the statement that the percentage of lottery winners who have one the lottery is 100%, applied to various circumstances. There's really nothing more to it.

The anthropic principle is merely an attempt to answer the question, "What questions in science are interesting to ask?" It is neither evidence for nor against anything.

We know that intelligent human beings produce finely tuned designs to achieve certain goals. So... when we find evidence of multiple finely tuned life-promoting variables in our universe - conditions that are not convincingly attributed to chance processes - we might infer that they were engineered by an Intelligent Designer.

Now I'm feeling like a broken record.
Evolution is not a chance process.
Evolution is directed by natural selection, which is anything but random.

 

[JoeWill]

Reply to Chalnoth

"Tell me, could we exist in a universe that doesn't support life? Could we ever observe a universe that doesn't support life? Thus the probability that we would happen to live in a habitable universe is exactly one."

Here your logic really does seem to break down. It would be so easy for us not to exist at all, as our universe need not have been life-permitting. So the probability that we would be here is certainly not one.

And that is at the heart of the strong anthropic principle - the argument that the life-permitting features of our universe cannot convincingly be put down to chance.

It is not good enough to simply state: "well we're here, so it must have happened against all the odds." Go back to the firing squad analogy. To have one explantion as to how we got here, in no way implies that the improbability of your explanation need not be addressed.

Indeed, the improbability that life could exist through chance processes counts against your theory. Conversely, it offers evidence that life started another way - perhaps through special creation.

"Well, this is why I don't ascribe to anthropic arguments. We still have far too much to learn about high energy physics before we can truly say that habitable universes are rare."

Likewise, I could reply to any theory of abiogenesis by saying "we have far too much too learn about biochemistry to assert that evolutionists have the truth, and problems such as the problem of chiraltry can be overcome".

We have some evidence that habitable universes would be rare, and that translates into evidence for design through the strong anthropic principle.

"An argument from ignorance is not an argument at all."

It is not an argument from ignorance. It is an inductive argument: we know that intelligent beings produce finely tuned designs, so we might infer that finely adjusted characteristics of our universe are attributable to a Fine Tuner. This seems to me to be reasonable evidence that should be heard.

"Just because we don't yet understand all of the details on how the universe came into being doesn't mean that we should throw up our hands and say, 'goddidit.'"

But no one has made that claim.

Joe

 

[JoeWill]

Reply to Chalnoth

I was not thinking of the scholars you mention. However...

"Specified complexity is predicted by the theory of evolution, and as such is not an argument against the theory of evolution."

However, it does offer an alternative explanation of origins that must be considered for science to remain objective etc.

Even if both design and the theory of evolution predict specified complexity, the theory of evolution predicts vastly more, and is thus the preferable theory.

In your opinion. What do you mean when you say evolution predicts more and is therefore the preferable theory?

Irreducible complexity suddenly becomes reducible the moment you find a process through which it might have evolved smoothly. Every example of an irreducably complex system that has been put forward by Behe has been shown to not be irreducable.

In your opinion. I doubt that Mr Behe would agree. I was not thinking specifically of irreducible complexity - just that complexity and specificity in living things offer evidence of design, irrespective of whether there is an alternative (questionable) explanation of origins such as evolution.

The theory of evolution cannot be applied to the universe as a whole because the universe does not undergo replication, as has already been explained to you.

We are back to word games again. I believe that the theory of evolution has such a powerful hold on minds within the scientific world, that they apply it to non-living things such as the cosmos. My use of the word "evolution" may not concur with your definition but the principle is the same. Like living things, the universe is said to have achieved a level of complexity without the need for special creation and this notion is very challengable. It would be foolish to promote evolutionary cosmology without giving fair representation to other views that use empirical evidence.

Joe

 

[JoeWill]

Reply to Chalnoth

I do not mean to cause offence, but I find your manner surprising.

When I said that empirical evidence for the existence of God has a bearing on the theory of evolution, and that the scientific world must listen to such evidence or forfeit its objectivity, you wrote:

"No it rejects invalid arguments."

So a scientist tomorrow could uncover through his methodologies, a wheelbarrow load of evidence in favour of special creation, and you would dismiss his findings as an "invalid argument"?!

How can this possibly represent good thinking? This is why I get vexed when evolutionists assume the rational high ground, when it seems clear that they need to be more thoughtful in their approach.

Joe

 

[Edx]

This is a reply to EDX.

Thankyou for your reply, I am not quite sure what you are getting at with many of your comments but you sound quite angry.

Strange, I was in fact quite jovial when I wrote that post. I am also quite jovial now as I have had a couple of beverages, but as you can see I am still quite capable of writing a forum post.

A) I think that chance is a key factor in the creation / evolution debate. There is a remote chance that I could win the jackpot on the UK National Lottery every week for many months. But such a turn of events wouls be so incredibly unlikely that we would be compelled to be sceptical in the extreme, to the point of examining other possibilities for my good fortune.

Yes but someones got to win it. Creationists tend to describe abiogenesis as if it was some totally random occurance "life just formed itself from nothing" as if they were describing some magical event. Ironic.

and also to seek alternative explanations - i.e. special creation.

Except its not a scientific alternative.

The anthropic principle tells us that the universe has the appearance of having been very finely tuned indeed for life to exist.

Really? We know of only one planet that is suitable for life "as we know it". The universe could be totally barron for all we know. Our earth could be a statistical anomaly. Chances are of course that there has to be other worlds out there that have similar conditions as earth simply due to the vastness of space. So Im not sure what you're driving at. Maybe you meant to say earth is "finely tuned" for life to exist. In which case I should remind you of Douglas Adams' analogy of the puddle of water, which, as it was drying up, considered the hole it was in. It thought the world (the hole) must have been designed specially for him as it fits him perfectly "the world was meant to have him in it, was built to have him in it; so the moment he disappears catches him rather by surprise". In case it isnt clear, you are the puddle of water.

We know that intelligent beings create finely tuned designs to achieve certain goals. Therefore we might infer that the universe could have had a Grand Fine Tuner we call "God".

Except, we have no way to scientifically validate this claim even hypothetically. See, you cant just claim anything in science. You have to be able to to follow the scientific method otherwise its just a flight of fancy that makes a good discussion over a camp fire with friends or perhaps when you are very slightly tipsy at a family gathering.

Sorry if this offends you

Why would it offend me?

 

[Baggins]

We are back to word games again. I believe that the theory of evolution has such a powerful hold on minds within the scientific world, that they apply it to non-living things such as the cosmos.

Which just goes to show your level of ignorance when it comes to matters scientific.

Definitions of words are intensely important in science, it allows us to understand what we are saying to one another.

If you can find one example of a scientist applying the Theory of Evolution ( not the word evolution ) to the study of the cosmos I would be immensely suprised.

But I believe this will turn out to be yet another of your unsupported allegations

 

[Baggins]

Reply to Chalnoth

I do not mean to cause offence, but I find your manner surprising.

When I said that empirical evidence for the existence of God has a bearing on the theory of evolution, and that the scientific world must listen to such evidence or forfeit its objectivity, you wrote:

"No it rejects invalid arguments."

So a scientist tomorrow could uncover through his methodologies, a wheelbarrow load of evidence in favour of special creation, and you would dismiss his findings as an "invalid argument"?!

How can this possibly represent good thinking? This is why I get vexed when evolutionists assume the rational high ground, when it seems clear that they need to be more thoughtful in their approach.

Joe

But have you actually got any scientific evidence for special creation?

thought not

 

[Edx]

We are back to word games again. I believe that the theory of evolution has such a powerful hold on minds within the scientific world, that they apply it to non-living things such as the cosmos.

No they dont. Darwin didnt invent the word evolution. It had a meaning before him. Scientists might use the word evolution, sometimes you might even read "cosmic evolution" in National Geographic or something, but that doesnt mean there is a theory called "evolution" that is anything but biology.

My use of the word "evolution" may not concur with your definition but the principle is the same.

No it isnt.

 

[JoeWill]

Well it's getting on for 2:00 AM over here Chandoth, so I'm getting a cup of tea before going to bed. I will have to look at any other postings tomorrow.

I found an old reply you made, which I did not have time to answer.

"We don't put any god into science because it can't be done. If you disagree, well, we've had threads on this very subject. Feel free to post there how you would insert God into science."

As I have indicated elsewhere, the onus is also on you to explain how science can practice good thinking and objectivity, whilst shunning credible alternatives to evolution, seemingly on a technicality. It may be that the definition of science should be broadened but I suspect that this will lead me into another row.

"[Evolution] has been observed from single beneficial mutations being spread throughout a population to speciation."

I suspect that this would lead us into a debate over the differences between micro- and macro-evolution. I do not agree that one basic kind of organism has ever been seen to evolve into another basic kind.

"The genetic material of living animals also has exceedingly strong evidence of common ancestry, a strong prediction of evolutionary theory (and before you even try, evidence for common ancestry is not always evidence for common design: look up some ERV threads)."

This does not witness the occurrence of evolution as such, which was the context of this branch of my argumentation.

"Now, your problem seems to be that evolution can't explain everything about how life arose."

My problem is that there are too many things that remain unexplained, reason to believe that some aspects of evolution may never be satisfactorily explained such as the alleged emergence of life from non-life, and too many former evolutionists who now reject the theory, for it to be currently treated as factual.

"The theory of evolution has been tested at all of the levels at which it makes predictions in the laboratory, and has come out to be true. Therefore the theory of evolution is fact."

To use the words of Hoyle, this attitude represents "nonsense of a high order". One of the key stages of evolution that we have talked about, abiogenesis, does not sit well with a range of experimental findings from the laboratory. Evolution will be a fact when it is proven beyond reasonable doubt. We seem nowhere such a development yet.

All the best,

Joe

 

[JoeWill]

But have you actually got any scientific evidence for special creation?

thought not

Evidence of design + problems with the theory of evolution.

 

[Edx]

My problem is that there are too many things that remain unexplained, reason to believe that some aspects of evolution may never be satisfactorily explained such as the alleged emergence of life from non-life,

Come on man I just told you in a post you claimed to have read that abiogenesis isnt evolution. So evolution theory isnt going to include how life began. How hard is that to understand? Aliens could have created life, god could have magically poofed the first life out of his behind place but that has nothing to do with the theory of evolution as that is everything to do with what happened after life got here and isnt conserned with HOW life got here. Got it?

One of the key stages of evolution that we have talked about, abiogenesis,

See above. Not Evolution.

Ed