Why is it that every time genetic "information" is brought up to argue in favor of design...

[pitabread]

i do think that the design is real and we have good evidence for it

I've combed through a lot of the recent ID literature and the best argument ID still has is an argument from incredulity. So no, unfortunately they don't have any "good evidence" for it.

 

[PsychoSarah]

Not really. I think the disconnect in our exchange is here: you have been talking about biology while I have been talking about epistemology.

Definition of epistemology: the investigation of what distinguishes justified belief from opinion.

-_- I do not get the impression you were talking about that at all. Linguistics is the study of language, which seems more pertinent to our conversation, and I mentioned the fact that there are patterns and rules to language that do not fit with DNA. Plus, when DNA is the subject, references to biology and chemistry are a given. You cannot talk about it in terms of one study and ignore any information from the others. How would you know that DNA shortened every time a cell divided (eukaryotic cells, that is), thus making its supposed "message" shorter, something no message in an actual language inherently does. Science is not about exclusively working in one field of study and ignoring the others. Aspects of physics will be relevant to consider in chemistry and biology, and can render certain hypotheses and theories invalid. Science is interconnected.

 

[PsychoSarah]

For the sake of argument, you can take the word "designed" metaphorically instead of literally. Do you think that living organisms are poorly "designed" or constructed? Some atheists allege "poor design" as an argument against theism. Is that a valid argument in your opinion?

-_- not against theism in general, but rather, against certain creationist arguments that suggest that life on this planet is "too perfect" to not have been designed. If the designer itself is not perfect, there would be no reason to expect the designs to be perfect either.

 

[tas8831]

I believe as we learn more and more it will turn out that we will come to realize through science that it is information that fuels the Universe. This is all NOT the result of chance whatsoever.

Information directs the formation of all structure and form (through the physical and chemical laws that matter/energy follows and conforms to), and directs and commands the principles governing all innate function.

Existence as we know it is not the cause of this information (though it does produce additional information), but rather it is the effect of it. This information is a sort of predetermination of parameters that thingness (matter and energy) must follow and adhere to resulting in purposed subsequence.

Biologist George Williams (see Natural Selection: Domains, Levels, and Challenge, 1992) begins the realization of this, within biological processes, when he says “Evolutionary biologists have failed to realize that they work with two more or less incommensurable domains: that of information and that of matter.

He also says in an interview later, that...

“These two domains will never be brought together in any kind of the sense usually implied by the term "reductionism." You can speak of galaxies and particles of dust in the same terms, because they both have mass and charge and length and width. You can't do that with information and matter. Information doesn't have mass or charge or length in millimeters. Likewise, matter doesn't have bytes. You can't measure so much gold in so many bytes. It doesn't have redundancy, or fidelity, or any of the other descriptors we apply to information. This dearth of shared descriptors makes matter and information two separate domains of existence, which have to be discussed separately, in their own terms.

The gene is a package of information, not an object. The pattern of base pairs in a DNA molecule specifies the gene. But the DNA molecule is the medium, it's not the message. Maintaining this distinction between the medium and the message is absolutely indispensable to clarity of thought about evolution.

In biology, when you're talking about things like genes and genotypes and gene pools, you're talking about information, not physical objective reality. They're patterns.

In cultural evolution, obviously, the idea of a coffee cup or a table is something that persists. The coffee cups and tables don't persist, they recur as a result of the persistence of the information that tells people how to make coffee cups and tables. It's the same way in biology: hands and feet and noses and so on don't persist, they recur as a result of genetic instructions for making hands and feet and noses. It's the information that lasts and evolves. Obviously, it's because of the physical manifestations of the information that we know about the information.”

You used this exact quote and intro on a post at the Topix forum in May. Curious - do you maintain an archive of quotes that you've gleaned from various creationist websites?

 

[USincognito]

My impression is that Gitt makes a series of assertions about information without either demonstrating their truth or their applicability to biology. If you've read Gitt -- how does one measure the information in DNA? How does one determine whether meaning or purpose is present?

I've been asking what quantifiable metric they use to measure genetic information. So far I haven't had an answer.

 

[Mediaeval]

-_- not against theism in general, but rather, against certain creationist arguments that suggest that life on this planet is "too perfect" to not have been designed. If the designer itself is not perfect, there would be no reason to expect the designs to be perfect either.

The irony is that if we were not the creations of a perfectly intelligent Designer, we could never know whether we were imperfectly designed or not.

 

[PsychoSarah]

The irony is that if we were not the creations of a perfectly intelligent Designer, we could never know whether we were imperfectly designed or not.

-_- why not? There are easy flaws to identify in, say, human bodies. Heck, there are inconsistent flaws. For example, mammalian eyes are essentially backwards, which cause a lot of blind spots and other issues in regards to vision that our brains must compensate for. Squid do not have this problem. What designer would leave a design so faulty behind when it had made a better one? We need not perfection by which to contrast flaws to make them apparent, because flaws are in degrees. Nothing is perfect, but that doesn't mean that certain things aren't objectively worse than others. For example, let's compare two people named Jim and Jeb. Jim's max running speed is 28 miles per hour, and Jeb's max running speed is 20 miles per hour. Jim is obviously not "perfect" at running, but he's objectively better at it in terms of speed than Jeb. Now, Jim does great at the 100 meter, but he can't even make it a quarter of the way in a marathon without having to stop or walk. Jeb, on the other hand, can pace himself and make it the whole marathon without stopping. In terms of endurance running, Jeb is objectively better at it than Jim. Furthermore, even people that reach the absolute best known, such as the fastest human runner, are not considered "perfect" at it.

Perfection is a subjective concept, not an objective one. It's not a measurable quality anything actually has. In fact, every person's individual concept of perfection is different, so what one person may call "perfect" another will find highly flawed. For example, someone "perfectly attractive" to me isn't short. Ever. Yet, there are people that find those that are short more attractive than those that are tall. There is no universally perfectly attractive standard for a person to even be compared to. Yet, I manage to find some people more attractive than others, knowing full well that the standard I am comparing them two has no physical representation.

 

[Mediaeval]

-_- why not?

For the same reason mentioned before. If our brains were not intelligently designed, we could not reach justifiably trustworthy conclusions about any external fact. This is not a controversial or idiosyncratic claim, but a pretty mainstream epistemological observation. Would you trust the calculations of a computer that was not intelligently designed?

 

[Speedwell]

For the same reason mentioned before. If our brains were not intelligently designed, we could not reach justifiably trustworthy conclusions about any external fact. This is not a controversial or idiosyncratic claim, but a pretty mainstream epistemological observation. Would you trust the calculations of a computer that was not intelligently designed?

We do already. Some computer circuits and components are now designed by algorithmic process of random variation and selection.

 

[miknik5]

It matters when one attempts to use genetic information as an argument for design. If one cannot define the basic principle on which the argument rests, then the argument becomes moot.

Does any living thing stay in its original and pure state

 

[pitabread]

Does any living thing stay in its original and pure state

I'm not sure what you mean by "pure state". Living things by their nature do not stay in a fixed state.

 

[sfs]

For the same reason mentioned before. If our brains were not intelligently designed, we could not reach justifiably trustworthy conclusions about any external fact. This is not a controversial or idiosyncratic claim, but a pretty mainstream epistemological observation.

Really? My impression is that Plantinga's formulation of this kind of argument, which seems to be the best known one, has been highly controversial. Are you contending that, say, Naturalism Defeated? didn't address this question, or that it doesn't count, or what?

(Personally, I fail to see what good introducing an intelligent designer does. How do you know the intelligent designer designed your brain to reach trustworthy conclusions?)

 

[PsychoSarah]

For the same reason mentioned before. If our brains were not intelligently designed, we could not reach justifiably trustworthy conclusions about any external fact.

Are you just not going to even quote the rest of my post or address it? Or would you rather pretend that all I did was ask "why" instead of covering my actual points of contention?

This is not a controversial or idiosyncratic claim, but a pretty mainstream epistemological observation.

You keep using that word, but I don't think it means what you think it means. Not that philosophy ever has a say in science anyways. In fact, by its very nature, philosophy is never conclusive. However, given that being a theist is more common that being an atheist, it would not shock me if the "mainstream" philosophy reflected a belief in a creator god. However, even though I have been through 2 philosophy courses, what you bring up is entirely new to me, even though those classes did touch quite a bit on religious ideas. Basically, philosophy is a poor choice for trying to demonstrate the existence of anything aside from varied thought processes in people. You can't prove or even provide evidence for much of anything through philosophy. So, mainstream or not, your argument is just your opinion, in the end. I don't think anything had to be designed by a perfect designer to have some degree of trust, yet, you do. So? Your personal views aren't evidence that this designer exists.

Would you trust the calculations of a computer that was not intelligently designed?

-_- I trust granite to be hard, even though as far as I'm aware, nothing designed granite. Since all computers are designed, you made a leading question. That is, any computer that isn't intelligently designed is "unintellegently" designed. That is, designed by a moron, I suppose. Since your question isn't even valid for our discussion, given that computers are always designed, I will compare something that can both be designed and due to random chance: paperweights.

Whether or not something is designed has no bearing on whether or not they function as I expect. A designed paperweight carved from rock and a random rock I pick up off the ground could equally provide a paperweight's service (weighing down papers) by virtue of their weight. However, maybe the designed paperweight's shape was more decorative than functional, so it gets easily knocked over and isn't even as good as the rock, so I never use it. Maybe the designed paperweight is the best paperweight ever and I never use the rock over it. The only difference here is that, with the designed paperweight, I have a designer to complain to or praise, depending on how good the paperweight is at its job. The rock is just a random rock produced by nature, so whether or not it is good at its job is chance rather than design. Thing is, though, designed items are generally terrible for any other purpose than what they are made for. I bet your average paperweight isn't better at hammering in a nail than the average rock I'd pick up to use as a paperweight.

But notice a question you chose not to ask: would I trust the calculations of a well made computer over the individual that designed it? Assuming the designer was human, I'd trust the computer over them. Assuming the designer was "absolutely perfect", the question should be irrelevant as a perfect designer would design things perfectly. Both designer and creation would be equally reliable. Yet, you cannot deny that you see imperfections all around you, whether it be the moles in your skin caused by cellular errors or that your own DNA gets shorter every time it replicates while in bacteria that doesn't happen. The world you assume is designed by a perfect designer is not perfect. The inevitable implication would be that the designer made the design imperfect on purpose. Thus, why would I trust this purposely imperfect design? Heck, why would I even trust a "perfect designer" that would INTENTIONALLY enact imperfect designs?

Simply put, I take everything with a grain of salt. A lack of absolute certainty doesn't bother me, I just go with whatever seems to be most likely. If that ends up failing, and it has from time to time, so be it. I accept that nothing in life is 100% guaranteed, but that doesn't make it entirely random. I'm not likely to open my front door and encounter a black hole, so I have no reason to worry about that. The chances of me opening that door to encounter rain are far more likely. So, it could be considered reasonable to keep an umbrella by the door in case of rain, but not enter and exit through windows because there might be a black hole by the door.

 

[Mediaeval]

Really? My impression is that Plantinga's formulation of this kind of argument, which seems to be the best known one, has been highly controversial. Are you contending that, say, Naturalism Defeated? didn't address this question, or that it doesn't count, or what?

(Personally, I fail to see what good introducing an intelligent designer does. How do you know the intelligent designer designed your brain to reach trustworthy conclusions?)

I would say this kind of argument is pretty non-controversial given its widespread recognition by theists and non-theists alike, theists affirming that the faithful God is the necessary foundation for knowledge and atheists affirming that naturalism undermines trust in our ability to know.
Some of the ancients wrote agreeably: “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge” (Proverbs 1:6) and “Faith precedes reason” (Augustine).
Descartes later argued that God is the foundation of all knowledge, a fact that even Nietzsche commented on with sympathy:
"It is unfair to Descartes to call his appeal to God’s credibility frivolous. Only if we assume a God who is morally our like can 'truth' and the search for truth be at all something meaningful and promising of success. This God left aside, the question is permitted whether being deceived is not one of the conditions of life."
Again from Nietzsche: “The causal connection between thoughts, feelings, desires, between subject and object, are absolutely hidden from us -- and are perhaps purely imaginary.”
And again, "Every belief, every considering something-true is necessarily false because there is simply no true world.”
Isaac August Dorner: “God must be by logical necessity the ultimate guarantee and source of all true certainty.”
Augustus Hopkins Strong: “All logic presupposes the existence of God and without this is invalid.”
Charles Darwin: “With me the horrid doubt always arises whether the convictions of man's mind, which has been developed from the mind of the lower animals, are of any value or at all trustworthy. Would any one trust in the convictions of a monkey's mind, if there are any convictions in such a mind?”
My philosophy professor B. P. Bowne: “Truth is not independent of the world-ground [God], but is in some way founded therein and dependent thereon.”
Again, “In an atheistic scheme psychological expectations may be formed, but they constitute no logical warrant. Nothing is possible on such a view but dogmatic assumption. An order of law, then, becomes a rational thing and furnishes ground for rational assumption only on a theistic basis.”
And again, ”[Hume’s sensationalism, materialism, and all fatalistic theories, whether of finite minds or of the basal reality] are to be ruled out as fatal to the first condition of all theorizing--trust in our power to know.”
C. S. Lewis: “If their thoughts…are merely accidental by-products, why should we believe them to be true? I see no reason for believing that one accident should be able to give a correct account of all the other accidents.”
J. Budziszewski “The motto ‘Reason Alone!’ is nonsense anyway. Reason itself presupposes faith. Why? Because a defense of reason by reason is circular, therefore worthless. Our only guarantee that human reason works is God who made it.”
Frank Turek:”If there is no God and we are nothing but chemicals, why should we trust anything we think, including the thought that there is no God?”
Thomas Nagel: "If we came to believe that our capacity for objective theory (e.g., true beliefs) were the product of natural selection, that would warrant serious skepticism about its results."
Barry Stroud: "There is an embarrassing absurdity in [naturalism] that is revealed as soon as the naturalist reflects and acknowledges that he believes his naturalistic theory of the world.…I mean he cannot say it and consistently regard it as true."
Patricia Churchland: "Boiled down to essentials, a nervous system enables the organism to succeed in the four F’s: feeding, fleeing, fighting, and reproducing. The principle chore of nervous systems is to get the body parts where they should be in order that the organism may survive.…Improvements in sensorimotor control confer an evolutionary advantage: a fancier style of representing is advantageous so long as it is geared to the organism’s way of life and enhances the organism's chances of survival. Truth, whatever that is, definitely takes the hindmost."
Nicolás Gómez Dávila: [Without God as a foundation for knowledge] “to philosophize is to guess without ever being able to know that we are right.”
Alex Rosenberg: “Our access to our own thoughts is just as indirect and fallible as our access to the thoughts of other people. We have no privileged access to our own minds. If our thoughts give the real meaning of our actions, our words, our lives, then we can't ever be sure what we say or do, or for that matter, what we think or why we think it. Philosophers’ claims that by reflecting on itself thought reliably…grounds knowledge…are…challenged.”
John Lennox, familiarly: “If you knew your computer was the product of a mindless unguided process, you wouldn't trust it.”
Richard Dawkins: [There is] a particular built-in irrationality mechanism in the brain.”

Some of the above quotes are from Plantinga’s Where the Conflict Really Lies

 

[Speedwell]

I would say this kind of argument is pretty non-controversial given its widespread recognition by theists and non-theists alike, theists affirming that the faithful God is the necessary foundation for knowledge and atheists affirming that naturalism undermines trust in our ability to know.
Some of the ancients wrote agreeably: “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge” (Proverbs 1:6) and “Faith precedes reason” (Augustine).
Descartes later argued that God is the foundation of all knowledge, a fact that even Nietzsche commented on with sympathy:
"It is unfair to Descartes to call his appeal to God’s credibility frivolous. Only if we assume a God who is morally our like can 'truth' and the search for truth be at all something meaningful and promising of success. This God left aside, the question is permitted whether being deceived is not one of the conditions of life."
Again from Nietzsche: “The causal connection between thoughts, feelings, desires, between subject and object, are absolutely hidden from us -- and are perhaps purely imaginary.”
And again, "Every belief, every considering something-true is necessarily false because there is simply no true world.”
Isaac August Dorner: “God must be by logical necessity the ultimate guarantee and source of all true certainty.”
Augustus Hopkins Strong: “All logic presupposes the existence of God and without this is invalid.”
Charles Darwin: “With me the horrid doubt always arises whether the convictions of man's mind, which has been developed from the mind of the lower animals, are of any value or at all trustworthy. Would any one trust in the convictions of a monkey's mind, if there are any convictions in such a mind?”
My philosophy professor B. P. Bowne: “Truth is not independent of the world-ground [God], but is in some way founded therein and dependent thereon.”
Again, “In an atheistic scheme psychological expectations may be formed, but they constitute no logical warrant. Nothing is possible on such a view but dogmatic assumption. An order of law, then, becomes a rational thing and furnishes ground for rational assumption only on a theistic basis.”
And again, ”[Hume’s sensationalism, materialism, and all fatalistic theories, whether of finite minds or of the basal reality] are to be ruled out as fatal to the first condition of all theorizing--trust in our power to know.”
C. S. Lewis: “If their thoughts…are merely accidental by-products, why should we believe them to be true? I see no reason for believing that one accident should be able to give a correct account of all the other accidents.”
J. Budziszewski “The motto ‘Reason Alone!’ is nonsense anyway. Reason itself presupposes faith. Why? Because a defense of reason by reason is circular, therefore worthless. Our only guarantee that human reason works is God who made it.”
Frank Turek:”If there is no God and we are nothing but chemicals, why should we trust anything we think, including the thought that there is no God?”
Thomas Nagel: "If we came to believe that our capacity for objective theory (e.g., true beliefs) were the product of natural selection, that would warrant serious skepticism about its results."
Barry Stroud: "There is an embarrassing absurdity in [naturalism] that is revealed as soon as the naturalist reflects and acknowledges that he believes his naturalistic theory of the world.…I mean he cannot say it and consistently regard it as true."
Patricia Churchland: "Boiled down to essentials, a nervous system enables the organism to succeed in the four F’s: feeding, fleeing, fighting, and reproducing. The principle chore of nervous systems it to get the body parts where they should be in order that the organism may survive.…Improvements in sensorimotor control confer an evolutionary advantage: a fancier style of representing is advantageous so long as it is geared to the organism’s way of life and enhances the organism's chances of survival. Truth, whatever that is, definitely takes the hindmost."
Nicolás Gómez Dávila: [Without God as a foundation for knowledge] “to philosophize is to guess without ever being able to know that we are right.”
Alex Rosenberg: “Our access to our own thoughts is just as indirect and fallible as our access to the thoughts of other people. We have no privileged access to our own minds. If our thoughts give the real meaning of our actions, our words, our lives, then we can't ever be sure what we say or do, or for that matter, what we think or why we think it. Philosophers’ claims that by reflecting on itself thought reliably…grounds knowledge…are…challenged.”
John Lennox, familiarly: “If you knew your computer was the product of a mindless unguided process, you wouldn't trust it.”
Richard Dawkins: [There is] a particular built-in irrationality mechanism in the brain.”

Some of the above quotes are from Plantinga’s Where the Conflict Really Lies

From Platinga's preface:

"What there is, instead, is conflict between theistic religion and a philosophical gloss or add-on to the scientific doctrine of evolution: the claim that evolution is undirected, unguided, unorchestrated by God (or anyone else)."

What this does is to deny the obvious possibility that an omniscient God could create a process of evolution capable of producing the outcomes He desired without further direction. One can't help but conclude that this denial is intentional.

 

[Mediaeval]

You can't prove or even provide evidence for much of anything through philosophy...paperweights.

Your statement about philosophy comes close to making my point. Philosophy, whether one is conscious of it or not, always underlies science. We all have a philosophy of some sort, a worldview, a pre-logical starting point, basic assumptions that we bring with us when interpreting the data of science or even the data of everyday life. So if philosophy is unable to prove anything, it would mean likewise that science is unable to prove anything, and this would only compound atheistic materialism's logical incompatibility with knowledge.

An analogy between a paperweight and the process of cognition seems rather strained. In any case, would you or would you not trust the calculations of a computer that was not intelligently designed?

 

[PsychoSarah]

Your statement about philosophy comes close to making my point. Philosophy, whether one is conscious of it or not, always underlies science. We all have a philosophy of some sort, a worldview, a pre-logical starting point, basic assumptions that we bring with us when interpreting the data of science or even the data of everyday life. So if philosophy is unable to prove anything, it would mean likewise that science is unable to prove anything, and this would only compound atheistic materialism's logical incompatibility with knowledge.

An analogy between a paperweight and the process of cognition seems rather strained. In any case, would you or would you not trust the calculations of a computer that was not intelligently designed?

So are you just going to ignore my point that I view a "perfect designer" that willfully produces imperfect designs less trustworthy than an "imperfect designer" that tries their best? You are overlooking a lot of effort I put into my responses, and I don't appreciate it.

Also, who is telling you that science PROVES anything? Science is about evidence, proof is for math. Science doesn't prove anything, it rather just provides support or disproves. So, science can prove something is incorrect, but it can never prove that something is correct. Hence why every scientific theory, no matter how well evidenced, has the potential to be disproven. I just pragmatically utilize what is well-evidenced because it is the most likely to be correct. I also accept when theories are disproven, even after they have been the front runner for years.

 

[miknik5]

So are you just going to ignore my point that I view a "perfect designer" that willfully produces imperfect designs less trustworthy than an "imperfect designer" that tries their best? You are overlooking a lot of effort I put into my responses, and I don't appreciate it.

Also, who is telling you that science PROVES anything? Science is about evidence, proof is for math. Science doesn't prove anything, it rather just provides support or disproves. So, science can prove something is incorrect, but it can never prove that something is correct. Hence why every scientific theory, no matter how well evidenced, has the potential to be disproven. I just pragmatically utilize what is well-evidenced because it is the most likely to be correct. I also accept when theories are disproven, even after they have been the front runner for years.

Why does HE have to do all the work for HIS creature whom HE created with free will

 

[miknik5]

Listen, i don't know how I came into this thread

It just popped up and I seriously thought that it was the thread where we last left off discussing "liquid"

 

[miknik5]

How would you feel if the designer mastered the perfect design?

And decided that was it and produced mass quantities of that same design over and over and over with no variation in the "material"

It would be boring