You are here allowing an argument for design that depends entirely on improbability, and implicitly on “natural processes would not behave in this way, i.e., such a wildly improbable way, therefore design.” But all your atheist friends, confronted with arguments of that type, reply, “improbable events happen all the time,” and dismiss such arguments. Are you saying they are wrong to do this, i.e., that if something is improbable enough, design is a rational and scientific inference?
Note that if you allow this, all of Tim Horton’s blather about needing to provide all the steps the designer used, what materials and mechanisms he used, are irrelevant. You are implying that the rarity, combined with the functional information, would be enough to establish design even if the design proponent could not give a detailed account of the designer’s materials, steps, powers, etc. Well, tell that to Tim and the others here who constantly demand those steps.
The problem is, “arrangement” in the living world is a figment of the ID proponent’s imagination. @Eddie et al. are viewing things with tremendously poor vision (worse than 20/2000) and basically making up stuff to align those fuzzy images with their pre-conceived notions. Improve visual acuity and claims such as “purposefully-arranged parts” vanish.
@Eddie, not surprisingly, you don’t understand the argument or different aspects of this particular subject at all. You haven’t event he beginnings of a clue.
Right, the arrangement of those gears in the planthopper’s legs is imaginary. The arrangement of the protein parts in the flagellum is imaginary. The biochemical arrangements in a plant that allow for photosynthesis, and the structural arrangements for fluids to be able to rise to the top of a 100-foot tree, are imaginary.
Sheer assertion on your part, which is not surprising, as 90% of all that you have ever posted on the internet on origins sites has been sheer assertion, with very little detailed reasoning or discussion of empirical facts about nature. (As opposed to, say, the postings of Harshman or aquaticus, which tend be thicker in facts and to rely less on bluster.) Incidentally, given that you are a botanist, I probably took more math than you did, and probably was better at it than you are, so I think it’s very likely that I understand the concepts of probability and information as well as you do, or better – but such a conversation is not to the point.
Let me know when you have explained the origin of any of the examples without design. I look forward to a list of the peer-reviewed journal articles in which you have published your non-design accounts of these things.
LOL. Remember, I was responding basically to this claim:
“All”, I presume, would include me. And that “90%” of my contributions to this particular subject include things like this or this (both immediately relevant to the subject @Rumraket is discussing). Neither of these makes the assertion @Eddie (" But all your atheist friends … reply, “improbable events happen all the time”) is ascribing to me.
However, I will grant that @Eddie hasn’t yet chimed in, applying his vast knowledge of math and probability (and, undoubtedly, chemistry, physics, and biology) to these essays. (This is the third chance, at least, that he has to discuss the first of these two links.) We are still waiting on this. Maybe, just maybe, an ID proponent can craft a coherent and reasoned response. Maybe @Eddie can come through here. Maybe …
I think all interactions with Eddie are on the one hand valuable, in that it is trivial to show how poor most of the reasoning he employs is, so in that sense I don’t mind doing some occasional public service. On the other hand I do have to concede that if one goes into such a discussion thinking Eddie will suddenly see reason, that is a vain hope.
I stand corrected. Change that to “most”, or “many”. You aren’t necessarily included in the group I had in mind.
Yes. I allowed myself to get irritated and sidetracked by a personal comment. I will drop the side discussions with the others, who jumped in before Faded Glory could respond to my detailed reply, and wait for his response.
It doesn’t have to connect back to GAE, but I suggest starting new threads on anything worth pursuing here, and ensuring it is substantive and not idiosyncratic to the people in this thread.
It is, but not in the way you appear to be suggesting. The fact that I recognize automobiles as designed is not because of some sort of “hallmark of design”-arrangement that all designed objects have and undesigned objects do not, but that I recognize the arrangement as that of an automobile, which I have seen been designed(or otherwise been informed about). It is, at bottom, a case of pattern-recognition. Recognize the pattern as something I know from experience is designed → infer design.
And of course, I don’t know of a process that is occurring other than design, by which automobiles come about. That is not to say one couldn’t possibly exist, so if I did, I would obviously not assume that in so far as I see something I recognize as an automobile, it would have been designed.
Sure it can, but it would have to be specific arrangements already known to be designed(like corresponding to the sort of pattern we recognize as an automobile), and not known to be produced by anything else. I would then tentatively conclude it was a designed object by recognizing that pattern.
The problem is I don’t know of a sort of universal hallmark of designed objects, that is found in no undesigned object. As I have explained to you before, merely observing “complex arrangement that performs a function” is not uniquely a hallmark of design, since I know of another process that can bring that about. So if I see a “complex arrangement that performs a function” in an entity known to undergo that very process, I cannot then conclude it was designed.
I think it is important to make it clear that the argument for design doesn’t rely entirely on improbability but also on the concept of Vera Causa. For example, FI points to design not only because natural causes are unlikely to generate FI but also because we know that intelligence is an inexhaustible source of FI.
It isn’t clear that “design” isn’t also a “natural cause”, but putting that aside for now, I have to assume you’re just being unclear and really mean to say it is above some threshold of FI where you would infer design, as you have said in the past. So your argument isn’t that “natural” causes can’t produce any FI, it’s that you think it can’t produce some X amount of it (500 bits or w/e it was). Please correct me if your views have changed on this.
I’ll go one step closer in terms of confidence level than @Rumraket does:
I think he is quite right to explain that “design” IS eligible as a natural cause … when it is a natural, mortal (not super-natural) being that makes the design!
As soon as someone asks the question: “Could this design be from a supernatural source?” - - well, you have just left the Indian Reservation, and as some have said in connection with Creationist premises, you are now “half way to crazy town”.
