Ashwin and Rumraket on Design and Designers

I think you have to put that statement back in it’s surrounding context. It is stated as a response to that aforementioned political movement. In my experience biologists normally don’t go out of their way to emphasize the lack of a designer. At least they certainly don’t do that when speaking to each other unless someone explicitly brings up the topic of creationism or certain conservative political movements.

When and if they do so, I think they’ve often times been sort of provoked into this mode of thinking. We are all here embedded in this cultural and historical context I spoke about earlier. Innumerable threads on this forum testify to this philosophical and cultural conflict, and nobody on either side of that conflict want to see themselves become an inadvertent tool to facilitate the goals(whether real or mispercieved) of those on “the other side”.

But as I said, it is that very history that makes it so tiresome.

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The question is what you understand by "unnecessary link. If you mean a causal link, you are making a theological/metaphysical statement.
If you mean the link to a designer is unnecessary to explain the design, the you have a case.

For example, I dont think anyone will have a problem with explaining how photosynthesis works without referring to a designer.
The problem will come when you say a designer is unnecessary as a “cause”. That’s the same as categorically saying evolution is “unguided”.

My question is why can’t the problem be solved by using a term like “biological design”. This should imply for scientists that the design being talked about
a)is found in living organisms.
b) Different from human design.
c) has evolutionary history.

I have to disagree. To say that a designer is unnecessary as a cause is not to say that evolution is unguided, just that guidance is not necessary for an evolutionary account of some entity to have sufficient explanatory power.

If I say that a designer is unnecessary to explain rainfall, that isn’t saying rain is not in fact being somehow guided to the ground. All that means is that there is an explanatory account of rainfall that is successful, in that it really does explain rainfall, without a designer. That doesn’t entail there is not a designer.

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That’s unrelated to any conversation by any of the biologists whose work I cited, and it’s a projection of yours onto what I have written in these threads, indeed it ignores what I have repeatedly written.

You are illustrating why it will be hard to talk about design separated from designers. You are bringing unrelated, indeed irrelevant, religious nonsense into the conversation. You can’t see the word ‘unnecessary’ without slipping into apologetics mode. I’m done trying to explain this painfully obvious notion. I think believers in these conversations should do some reflection. These reactions should be embarrassing to thoughtful believers.

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You could also say the same about photosynthesis and I even cited the example. No one will have a problem with an explanation of how photosynthesis works which doesnt mention a designer.
The problem will occur if one attributes the “design” of photosynthesis to natural processes.
This will raise questions about
a) whether natural processes are capable of design (they are not. Mutations or natural selection doesn’t arrange things to get a function. It may select for an existing function that arose through random processes.).
b) whether the natural processes themselves were “designed” to get “designs” … this will become inevitable because an process capable of “design” would also have "design (in this case,the functional capability to design stuff).

Once the argument reaches point b, you will be forced to take a stand on how "evolution came to be designed.

(Because evolution is obviously a process that optimises and innovates. It serves a function on a grand scale).

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Why does this problem occur? Why is the function of photosynthesis fine without guidance, but the origin of photosynthesis is not? What motivates someone to object to a guidance-free account for the origin of photosynthesis, but not for the function of photosynthesis? Why must guidance be included to describe a tautomeric shift in nucleotide substition(or it’s phenotypic effect on fitness?), but not in the excitement of electrons in photosystem II?

This problem doesn’t occur when we are giving an account of how a puddle of rainwater forms from rain, when stars form from gravity acting on gas and dust, glacial meltwaters slowly carves a winding path through rock, or when plate tectonics creates a mountain range. The enormous number of complex interactions that yield all the different minerals in the Earth’s crust and mantle can be described and attributed to natural processes. The climate and weather of Earth, and all the other planets of the solar system, are explained and account for by natural procsses, and nobody complains. But when it comes to the origin of living organisms, suddenly there’s a group of people all up in arms about natural processes.

Here’s a lump of Torbernite, a type of uranium ore. Look at this particular rock with it’s innumerable miniscule surface features.

The specific orientations of each of the green, cube-shaped crystals. There’s an unfathomably complex and detailed, and extremely long explanation for how this rock came to be in this exact way, over some incomprehensible period of geological time. The kind of detailed segregation of elements, their convection through the mantle, and their coming together into this exact structure. How unbelievably unlikely is this rock? How everything that happened in history must be “fine-tuned” to yield this exact rock. Change any tiny thing and this rock would be different. And yet this is the one we got. How likely is that? Incomprehensibly unlikely. I can’t begin to tell you how many factors need to be considered to yield this exact result. And nobody cares. They couldn’t give any less of a fork about this particular rock. Natural processes are just fine.

But if it’s made of carbon and grows by cell division, suddenly everybody loses their shirt when invisible designers are left out of the explanation.

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Shirt… fork… :rofl: Credit to The Good Place?

Great points. Years ago when I was a Christian, interacting constantly with Christians who were supposedly curious about evolution, I noticed a particular pattern in how these “conversations” often went down and I came up with a bit of a joke that didn’t always get any laughs. Went something like this:

Scientist A: Hey we have been trying to figure out how the X cell develops and we just found an interesting explanation involving protein signaling system Y.
Christian: Cool!
Scientist B: Hey we have been trying to figure out how mountain X formed and we just found an interesting explanation involving geophysical process Y.
Christian: Cool!
Scientist C: Hey we have been trying to figure out how humans evolved from non-human progenitors and just found an interesting explanation involving gene Y.
Christian: Now, what is science, really?

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Not as an explanation, but more of maybe a description, I would say that for many (most?) people there is a sense that human life is in some important way different from other life, and that life is very different from non-life. For the Christian religious experience is both very personal and corporate and so the connection between God’s activity and “life” is really important.

I can sense in myself that I have a bigger “problem” thinking about human origins being “designer free” than I do imagining that crystal arising purely from the laws of nature. I believe God designed and instantiated those laws of nature, but while I’m teaching college chemistry courses I certainly don’t feel the need to constantly (or ever really) point out that God “designed” chemistry.

I think perhaps Christians could use a more robust doctrine of divine action so that perhaps we have a more consistent approach in which we can freely talk about design and a designer separately. I don’t know, it is a difficult topic with many religious folks in my neck of the woods.

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It’s a good question.
It works with cars too. Someone could explain in detail how a Porsche works without mention the manufacturer or the designer.

The answer is that you are describing a complete system when describing photosynthesis.
When you go to bigger questions such as why electrons have the exact charge they do (or the natural laws are the way they are), one finds discussions about fine tuning and God enter the picture.
It’s similar with evolution too.

But why is that? What would be the intellectual justification for having a god enter the picture if someone does not have a prior commitment to including a god as part of his worldview?

What is the similarity? Evolution already assumes things like the natural laws of physics which you were just saying is where God “enters the picture”. Now you are changing your tune and saying God also enters the picture at the level of biology, which is the branch of science at furthest remove from the basic physical laws.

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To me, that’s perfectly respectable as long as it’s explicit. There are various outlooks and traditions, among which Christianity is just one, that see humans as special metaphysically. I think it’s probably an impulse built right into human minds.

Where it becomes problematic is when it’s not explicit. I have seen it so very often: the person is inherently committed to a “special” view of humans–or more commonly, of living things, but for the same reasons I suspect–but they can’t see it and so they make claims about evolution and/or biology and/or the natural world that are incoherent. Once a person acknowledges that they think humans are fundamentally distinct from biology, or that they think that “life” is something metaphysically special, or whatever, then everyone can discuss design or evolution or whatever with a bit more clarity and maybe even more respect.

Your comments are therefore exemplary IMO.

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Think about it. The subject being discussed is design, teleology etc.
If someone is claiming that nature “designed” itself, then obviously questions will arise about how it did it.

Kinda like if someone claimed a cat designed cars.

Those questions have been answered. A number of people don’t like the answers, primarily because the answers don’t jibe with their favorite religious presuppositions. . Too bad for them.

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Arguments like @Ashwin_s’s were helpful to me during my deconversion, so I have an odd sort of fondness for them. It’s not just that the arguments are transparently ridiculous, with the bonus of being desperate (sure, you can explain this, but you can’t explain THAT so we need GOD). It’s that the arguments don’t answer any important questions about the god that they’re meant to be helping. For me and for many (perhaps most) people who deconvert from Christianity, the big questions are not about whether an omnipotent being can do stuff. They’re about whether these omnipotent beings who fiddle with mutation rates are otherwise worthy of honor or worship. The key moments in most deconversions (I am speaking of those I know) are not moments of scientific insight into the nature of the universe. They are moments of questioning the character and value of the god in question. Once the scales fall off and the process begins, the frantic efforts of apologists become damning. A god who can’t inspire people to be decent but who is some apologist’s answer to the Cambrian Explosion is a god that deserves only laughter.

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Strangely, if someone is claiming that nature was designed by a supernatural deity they never seem to ask questions of how it happened. From what I can see, the people studying evolution are the only ones trying the answer the question of how design emerged in nature. There also appears to be another group that puts a lot of effort trying to make those answers go away.

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If God had just become something to investigate at an intellectual level only, you must have deconverted from christianity long before you realised it.

I dont know how we reached from “design without a designer” to “deconversion”. But, it indicates the theological nature of the subject as opposed to being a scientific one.

Its interesting you didn’t respond to suggestions from me to call the phenomenon- biological design or design in life. A far more accurate and honest term.

Not to anyones satisafction. Thats why the question keeps popping up unless the discussion is in an athiest echochamber.

Actually, the last time i checked evolutionary science is not very successful in telling us “how” design emerged.
That why people stick to the term “appearance of design”. The explanation is that it was a combination of accident and selection.

It’s still by far the best, most well supported explanation we have.

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The best explanation which doesnt really explain how molecular machines emerged.

You cant have it both ways. Look at how the discussion on the wistar topic went. There, evolution is restricted to common descent and neutral theory. After defending the science with such a restrictive approach, one cant then turn back and say evolution “explains” morphological change, or the appearance of design in say photosynthesis.

That’s just doublespeak.