Current evolutionary theory provides a plausible hypothesis with a not unsubstantial amount of supporting evidence. What have you got to offer?
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It provides an “implausible” hypothesis which hides under the fact that its very difficult to calculate the probability of the things being claimed.
This is the truth when it comes to “molecular machines”.
I will admit, that there is good evidence for common descent. But common descent doesn’t explain how molecular machines emerged. You need mechanisms for that.
OK, you have nothing to offer in return, just your ignorance based personal dislike for evolutionary theory. Take a number and go stand in line with colewd.
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True, how nature came to be the way it is has not been answered to anyone’s satisfaction. Many possibilities can be conceived of(some have even hypothesized a kind of cosmic natural selection), but we are not in a position to be able to say which one of them, if any, is correct.
But we should be honest and admit that the God hypothesis has the same problem of lacking ultimate explanations. God just IS some way, without any reason or explanation why. And yet God has all these amazing properties like supreme intelligence, omnipresence, invisibility, etc. etc. How likely is it that such a being “just is”?
Perhaps your “satisfaction” is hard to take seriously given that it appears to be based on some smidgeon of double-standards?
The origin of the universe and it’s attributes is a rather absurd question to bring up when we were supposed to be talking about evolutionary biology. I think, if anyone here made this discussion be about religion and theology, we can place a significant portion of the blame at your feet.
The theological nature of the subject was in large part revealed when you appeared to try to avoid the question of why the origins of species, or of life, are somehow NOT fine to be described by science in ways that don’t include guidance by your God. But the functions of life, and indeed the origin and function of basically everything else, no matter how improbable, is just fine. But no, when it comes to biology you just can’t do it, you simply can’t even speak about origins without having to invent some role for the requirement of guidance and intelligent design.
If you have to do it at the level of the attributes of the universe and it’s laws of operation, then so be it.
You did get a response. As I explained there, your proposed solution to talking about design in biology, by somehow relabeling it, solves nothing.
There are people like you who are intent on thinking biological designs require intelligent guidance to produce them, so they will just accuse scientists of trying to avoid the question or “denying the obvious” when they use another word for some biological entity. It doesn’t avoid the discussion of how exactly this entity evolved to “look like a design” at all.
Well thanks for letting us know your opinion. Naturally there are many (many of whom are religious) who disagree with that assessment.
No I think they do that because some people still operate on an understanding of the word design as necessarily entailing intelligent design. But as I explained earlier that simply isn’t necessary.
There are numerous examples of evolutionary explanations for molecular machines which really do explain how they evolved. As in they explained where the different components derive from by mutations, how they acquired the capacity to come together into larger and more complex structures, what functions this served, and how natural selection might have aided different steps along the way. What you’re saying simply isn’t true. It’s hard to not take this as just blatant denialism or some last-ditch attempt to provoke a less courteous response.
What are you talking about, sir? There was nothing in that thread that implied the discussion was restricted to common descent or neutral theory.
Ashwin your complaint here just doesn’t make sense.
You are now arguing that because certain topics were putatively not discussed at some conference in the mid sixties, then evolution doesn’t explain morphological change, or “the appearance of design in photosynthesis”. But there are evolutionary explanations for those, whether they were discussed at the Wistar conference is completely irrelevant.
There’s an entire branch of biology called Evo-Devo, as in Evolutionary Developmental Biology. Dedicated exactly to elucidating and explaining the evolution of morphological changes.
Like the Torbernite ore rock?
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If you are talking about the multiple universes hypothesis, its intriguing that such an untestable concept is science. One can make the same arguments against this hypothesis not being scientific as have been made against intelligent design.
Where is the double standards? I am not claiming my theological belief is Science. That’s what you guys are doing when you claim that Design in nature is without a designer.
Its a blatant theological claim.
I didn’t avoid the subject. I actually answered it.
Claiming Design exists without a designer is a positive theological claim that there was in fact no designer for life.
That is not fine as long as you claim you are making a scientific statement.
If you are honest enough to say you are making a metaphysical statement, then i would welcome your honesty.
I asked the question to @sfmatheson and pointed out that he has not responded.
II wasn’t insinuating that you have not responded. The question was based on the premise that terminology is required to encourage scientists to talk about design in nature as something that really exists and is not just an “appearance of design”.
Objections from ID scientists have nothing to do with it either way.
I didn’t say it was science. I said it was conceivable. The point was merely that with respect to the question of why things are the way they are, there are many possibilities. That’s it. I’m not here to sell you a conclusion (I don’t know why the world is the way it is), just to point out that many of the problems you bring up for putative naturalistic explanations, are problems for your own position too. Hence they do not rationally serve as good reasons for why you should pick the theistic option over a naturalistic one.
Perhaps one can. Obviously for any hypothesis to be science it needs to make predictions that can be compared to empirical observations.
In your radically different degrees of skepticism towards theism and naturalism. You are a theist, you are not a metaphysical naturalist. On what basis do you accept theism? Tradition, upbringing, emotion, intuition. You haven’t seen your intelligent designer wish things into existence, yet you still believe it. No experiments have been done, no hypothesis predicts any data. You are not able to calculate a probability of any putative theistic “hypothesis”. You don’t even have a theistic hypothesis that is supposed to describe how anything came to exist. Yet you have an entirely different set of demands for so-called naturalistic accounts for things. Suddenly you want prior probabilities, atomic world-histories, yadda yadda.
Nobody is claiming design in nature IS without a designer. I have explicitly pointed out that nobody can claim to know there aren’t invisible fairies making raindrops fall to their point of contact on the ground. What I have explained is that it isn’t necessary to postulate raindrop fairies to explain rain. And the same goes for biological evolution. Nobody claims to know that there are not, in fact, any invisible deities making chemical reactions happen so DNA mutates, or is somehow mysteriously forcing the antelope to spot the lion early so it can pass on it’s genes. Rather, it isn’t necessary to postulate that a deity is doing these things to explain that DNA mutates, or that the antelope spotted the lion. It simply violates the principle of parsimony. That’s it.
It would be for those who make it.
No you didn’t. The answer is plainly obvious to anyone, and it’s actually you who need to be honest.
The reason you are NOT fine with an account for biological origins that doesn’t involve “guidance” is because you take a certain literal interpretation of your religion to claim that a particular intelligent designer from your religion was involved.
That is the only honest explanation for what is going on here. The way you interpret your religion is the real obstacle here. And the one who needs to be honest about it is you.
Yes it is. But nobody here claims it is a scientific statement to say that “there was in fact no designer for life”. What they are saying is that the scientific account for life’s evolution doesn’t need to postulate that your designer was involved, or required to be involved, to explain what we see.
Nobody claims it has been scientifically shown that there is no such involvement, just as nobody claims it has been scientifically shown that invisible pixies aren’t pushing drops of rain down from the clouds. Or guiding them to where they land.
I know that you have a hard time coming to terms with the superfluous and irrelevant nature of your religion in explaining the evolution of life and it’s designs. But this problem rests squarely at your feet. I don’t have this problem. I’m not the one who takes a certain literalist interpretation of a particular book to be some sort of unassailable fact with not even the possibility of an alternative understanding.
I’m convinced he largely agrees with my assessment. And I suspect he thinks nothing is gained by continuing to interact with your.
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Here is where you are being less than honest. It doesnt matter whether you say it is science or not. The scientific community does.
Which points to double standards…
However this is not so obvious except in cases connected to ID.
That’s a fact when it comes to a large part of string theory, or multi world hypothesis.
Yet, scientists who propose these ideas enjoy a lot of respect instead if being ridiculed like the ID guys are.
This is because, these ideas help prop up a materialist worldview.
A similar idea which is difficult to prove in an empirical manner which supported theism would be hounded out.
Personal experience actually… and little bit of philosphy.
I started our as an atheist. Was born in a hindu family and accepted christ because of an experience of Jesus that has been real in my life for the past 18 years.
I am skeptical of naturalism because it’s obviously false. We are not just material beings.
Incredible claims need strong evidence.
Naturalism is inconsistent with real experiences such as freewill.
So when a system denies our basic experience of reality, it needs to have very string evidence to back it up.
All of which is denied by calling it "design without a designer.
Whereas the idea would clearly be conveyed by talking about “design in life”.
What I really like about this forum is how you can see how many times a link has been clicked by a new person. So far, @Ashwin_s has not clicked on the link to evolutionary developmental biology. Ashwin clearly doesn’t have any actual interest in learning about the evolutionary origins of developmental processes, or morphological change.
This is all just pretensions. For all the blather about the supposed lack of evolutionary explanations for complexity, molecular machines, developmental and morphological processes, novel proteins, and so on, they shown no real interest when it comes down to it.
Where are these people when new papers are being linked and discussed around here? That’s right, they’re nowhere. The same handful of people show up to click the links and read the papers every time, and it’s the actual biologists. But people like Ashwin, Bill Cole, and so on, they don’t click the links or read the papers. In truth, they don’t really care about the biology or the science at all, and they don’t really want evolutionary scientific answers to the things they claim they want answers to.
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So you refuse tell us why you prefer the term “design without a designer” as opposed to "design in life which works just as well and deflect to the evolutionary origins of developmental processes.
And ofcourse there is the ad hominem attack also.
This discussion has to do with whether the term "design without a designer is a theological term…
It seems that it is.
It was the subject of an entire thread. You seem to think that the conversations here are centered solely on you, and that your comments and questions, which are frequently inane and too often distort the other person’s meaning and intent, deserve a response. You are mistaken.
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The number of peer reviewed papers says otherwise.
Semantics.
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actually he is right. there is not even a single paper that show how a specific organ (eyes, heart etc) evolved stepwise ( in terms of number of amino acids changes).
No historian can track every footstep made by Napoleon. So did Napoleon not exist?
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I heard that river deltas are formed by the deposition of eroded sediment, but no one has even come close to showing how a specific river delta formed stepwise. Another big victory for ID (intelligent delta-making).
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You are confusing Darwinism with Snake Plissken.
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I am curious… do you think river deltas also have “design” ?
From your post close to the top
Of course, that there was no designer is not a scientific claim. I think the instigation for the awkward “design without a designer” is the anticipation that if one just refers to design, creationists/ID will run with it and say “scientists recognize design in nature and design requires a designer!”. How do you suggest qualifying “design” if you do not want to support that inference?
Arguments about common English expressions are unresolvable because, unlike scientific and technical jargon, words such as design have a breadth of legitimate usage, and everyone just picks the meaning which suits their point of view.
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I have already given suggestions above.
- Design in life
- Biological design.
These terms in themselves are neutral. If properly defined, they will protect from any misunderstanding. In fact, the interpretation depends entirely on what one believes the ultimate source of life is.
If people go with the term "design without a designer, they will be rightly called out for making a metaphysical claim about the existence of God. This can and will be used by people who hold to ID that biologists are promoting philosophical naturalism in the guise of methodological naturalism.
For some reason, no one really like the alternatives I suggested. Or perhaps, they didn’t feel any need to step back from the "design without a designer phrase.
And you’d be right to call them out If they were claiming that what really happened in fact did not involve a designer, instead of saying that we can explain the design without appealing to a designer. That there is a theory that works, as in it has the explanatory power and scope that is required to account for the design, but without requiring the involvement of a designer.
And these ID proponents will be wrong to say that scientists are promoting metaphysical naturalism when these scientists don’t explicitly include intelligent designers in their explanatory theories, but merely make a point of saying that the theory works without a designer.
You know, like when I give an account for the weather that involves the sun shining and evaporation from the oceans, and areas of lower pressure leading to condensation and so on, I’m not promoting metaphysical naturalism merely by explaining that this explanation really does account for the weather without requiring the involvement of rain-causing fairies.
Yes, they didn’t like it because it seemed to keep missing the point of the numerous clarifications offered.
If I say “there is a scientific theory that explains X without having or needing the involvement of a designer”, I’m not making a claim about the existence of God. I’m making a claim about what we can explain with natural causes. I’m not making a claim that there ARE NO supernatural causes involved. And weirdly, people are just fine with this as long as I’m talking about very unlikely and highly particular rocks with miniscule, complex, atomic structures. But if the things is an organism, heads explode.
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