Amazingly none of those are actually evidence for design in nature.
Now please cite the evidence that the passage from the first single-celled organisms to humans involved chance and necessity alone
It seems to me it’s your job to show anything else is required, rather than demand we prove a negative. What’s next, we are to show evidence that fairies and demons aren’t controlling the weather?
I doubt that there is anything of significance here that is not already covered by “fine tuning” (for instance plants using the wavelengths they have available is adequately accounted for by evolution)
An expected consequence of evolution, so hardly evidence of design.
I would think that it needs to be established that there are “huge information jumps” and that they are so huge as to be implausible without design.
That’s really vague, to the point that I can’t count it without further explanation.
That is not how science works. If you want to throw design into the mix it is for you to show that it is needed.
No. The thing to explain is not that plants have learned through evolution how to use the wawelengths that happened to be available, but rather that the wawelengths that happened to be available were the very ones that were compatible with the biochemistry of photosynthesis. IOW, had the available wavelengths been different, no complex life on earth would have been possible.
I strongly disagree. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. The emergence of life from non-life without any guiding intelligence is an extraordinary claim, and therefore the onus is on the person who thinks it happed to provide extraordinary evidence, not on the skeptic to disprove it.
To be sure, if the skeptic says that “life couldn’t possibly have arisen on the basis of chance and necessity alone,” then the skeptic has set himself up as being able to prove a negative, and must provide a demonstration of his strong claim. But if the skeptic restricts himself to saying, “I’m unconvinced by the evidence so far presented that life could have arisen due to chance and necessity alone,” the skeptic is operating well within the bounds of healthy reason.
I’m a skeptic of the latter sort. I will let Gilbert speak for himself.
Ah, yes, the atheist’s last-ditch stand: postulate an empirically indetectable multiverse to explain away facts about the only universe we can detect that make the atheist uncomfortable.
Isn’t the existence of an omnipotent, transcendent intelligence that cares about life on earth also an extraordinary claim? In fact, isn’t it considerably more extraordinary?
Now that is the sort of gratuitous- and false - nastiness that is a problem in this forum.
The multiverse is a better explanation because it is not purely ad hoc.
It is a consequence of reasonable hypotheses in physics.
There is no good reason to assume that our universe is the only one.
In contrast, the supposed designer is purely ad hoc.
It is not a consequence of any hypothesis in physics
There is no good reason to suppose that a designer is even possible.
A claim is extraordinary if it is inconsistent with our background knowledge. That’s what it means for a claim to be extraordinary. It is well outside of expectations, and expectations are based on our previous scientific collective experiences (not personal testimonies or personal incredulity).
That is, if something has never before been observed, and yet is claimed to have happened without leaving any evidence behind, then the claim is extraordinary.
We have no background knowledge that any intelligent designer (other than ourselves) is messing around with the evolution of living organisms, or that anything is required to mess around with it. But we do have observed all the mechanisms and processes that combine to yield what we know of as the process of evolution. Natural selection, mutations of all types, genetic drift, speciation, their interactions with environments etc. etc. And we have evidence that these processes were also occurring in the historical past.
Hence the extraordinary claim is that there is some mysterious intelligent designer that operated in the deep geological past to guide and steer life’s evolution. We just have no reason to think that is required, and it seems to have left no evidence behind.
First of all @Gilbert asked about “the passage from the first single-celled organisms to humans”, not the origin of life from non life. We just have no evidence that intelligent designers (other than ourselves) are intervening in life’s evolution, but we do have enormous amounts of evidence for observable natural processes operating just fine on their own.
Second, we also have no observation of anyone creating life from non-life, and the only intelligent designer we know of (ourselves) is a product of evolution, not it’s source. That again makes the invisible intelligent designer operating in ancient geological history the extraordinary claim.
Third, since life’s origins are actually unobserved, and we strictly don’t know what mechanisms or processes were involved, at best that would leave us in a position of having to say we don’t know how life originated.
Fourth however, there is actual evidence that life’s origins from non-life owes to a process of physics and chemistry. I have explained some of that evidence on this website before on multiple occasions, for example here and here.
That seems to me to be what theists do. Postulate an empirically undetectable magical person to explain away facts about the universe we can detect. But the magical persons desires has to be exactly as fine-tuned as the universe it’s being invented to explain.
Why this particular value for this constant, instead of another? Because this particular magical person wanted this value instead of another. Why that other value for that other constant? Because this magical person wanted that value for that constant, instead of another. Etc.
On theism we’re still left with something extremely fine-tuned to explain the physical constants. Not a good solution.
I think “the existence of” is less extraordinary than “that cares about life on earth,” but be that as it may, anyone who retained what I have called a healthy skepticism toward the claim would be reasonable. In fact, my main objection to what passes for modern “skepticism” is not that it is skeptical, but that it is biased in its targets for skepticism. Michael Shermer, for example, concentrates all his skepticism (or most of it) on traditional religious beliefs; he never applies his skeptical razor to, say, the unguided origin of life. Beliefs held by atheists and materialists tend to get a free pass with him. I think we should be skeptical (in the original sense, not the sense the word has come to acquire lately) of everything: religion, churches, government, unions, big corporations, journalists, “science” as some alleged 100% consensus, the Republican and Democratic parties, politicians and public figures who constantly virtue signal about their “inclusiveness”, doomsday claims about global warming, certainties about viruses coming from bats, the latest “woke” truths about “gender”, etc.
I’ve shown on this site, by debating with Paul Price as well as with atheists, that I’m as skeptical about some claims of YEC as about some claims of atheists. It doesn’t bother me at all that some people don’t believe in God or aren’t convinced by arguments for God. It does bother me when arguments are dismissed or the motives of their spokesmen impugned.
But to come back to your question, I think it would be good to have the answer of @Mercer. He has said several times that he is a Christian, which means that he believes in:
“the existence of an omnipotent, transcendent intelligence that cares about life on earth.”
Since he is a Christian, he must have found some way to justify belief in what you call an “extraordinary” claim. But oddly, he has never presented his case for God during all the time he has spent on two sites run by Christians: BioLogos and Peaceful Science. I find that odd.
It is a falsehood commonly repeated by religious apologists that the multiverse is just something dreamed up by atheists to avoid losing arguments, as opposed to the truth, which is that it is a specific mathematical prediction of models of physics that are widely accepted. See the article below.
That said, this does not really pertain to Michael Denton’s foolish argument made in his speech to an audience of creationists. Denton points to what he believes are a number astonishing coincidences that occur here on earth that make life possible. However, he can only do so while ignoring the 1025 planets that exist in the universe, each of which has its own set of conditions based on the same physical and chemical parameters Denton discusses, and practically none of which have conditions even remotely suitable for terrestrial life.
It’s as if one persisted in making the fine tuning argument after it had been discovered that there actually is an infinite number of universes each with its own set of physical parameters.
That’s why the non-creationists in this discussion are laughing uproariously at Michael Denton’s lecture. It really is that stupid.
It doesn’t matter if it’s predicted; my point is that it’s empirically unverifiable. And given that predictions based on “widely accepted” models have, in the history of science, proved wrong, why would one hold to an empirically unverifiable position? Couldn’t a predisposition to atheism have something to do with why a scientist accepts something unverifiable? I remind you that Mercer here is constantly screaming that science is about “data, data, data.” Showing that the multiverse is theoretically consistent with, or even required by, current models is not providing data in its favor. Finally, I am not sure than an article in Forbes will accurately describe the position of all physicists on the matter. I doubt very much that all physicists agree that “there’s no way out” of a multiverse.
I think that’s a very strange take. The focus of much of the “skeptic” movement, if it can be called that, has not been traditional religious beliefs. It’s been anything in the nature of the paranormal, whether that’s Uri Geller bending spoons, the faithful being cured at Lourdes, Hindu devotional statues that bleed, telepathy, intercessory prayer, or whatever the popular delusion of the day may be. And writers at, say, Skeptical Inquirer have always tended to be rather hands-off about religious beliefs that do not make outrageous empirical claims.
Now, when those outrageous empirical claims start showing up, yeah: they’re very skeptical of those, just like they are skeptical of hair samples from Bigfoot, mysterious implants left by alien abductors, objects appearing out of the air in the presence of a poltergeist, et cetera, et cetera.
It is obvious to anyone that these fine-tuning arguments are essentially worthless: that the most that one could possibly do with them is try to find some testable hypothesis inspired by them. Some of them are not even good enough to earn the title ‘worthless’: the notion that the fact that life on earth uses the wavelengths of light that are available, rather than the ones that are not, is evidence of design is so astonishingly foolish that anyone who voices it ought to be ashamed of himself.
But this indignant insistence that “I’ve pointed to this ‘evidence’ of the most questionable relevance, and – horrors! – a biologist said that no amount of questionably relevant evidence of this character would ever convince him of the existence of a grand and all-encompassing Geist who made everything! How obstreperous these biologists are! How dogmatic!” Well, if you think that is a convincing argument for the lack of open-mindedness in others, you’re just wrong, and badly so.
I know it is frustrating, when you can find no evidence worth a damn for a proposition you’d like to be true. As a lawyer I had that problem all the time, as you can imagine. In law a bit of advocacy might produce a clever work-around, but when the issue is not winning a case but evaluating reality, those work-arounds aren’t an option. You actually need evidence that actually does make your inference likely. And accusing others of being unreasonably skeptical, when your arguments are of the character offered by Denton, is just silly.
It very much does because it speaks to the plausibility. There is nothing like that for your ad hoc designer.
In this case - speaking for myself - it is provisionally held as the best explanation (for “fine tuning”) currently available. Why would we not want to hold to that ? If there was an empirically verifiable alternative that might make a difference - but I hardly think your ad hoc designer qualifies.
As if no atheist-materialists are motivated by propositions they would like to be true!
The fact that you don’t see continuity between belief in the paranormal and belief in traditional religion (both of which hold to the existence of non-material realities) says a lot about your reasoning powers. A little more Thomas Aquinas, and a little less legal education, would have done your mind some good. And you’ve completely ignored my point that skeptics of the Shermer variety don’t tend to be skeptical about “consensus” beliefs in science, economics, politics, etc. The tight little world of secular humanist “rationality” they leave unchallenged. For serious criticism of the smugness of the assumptions of middle-class, “educated” modern people, we have to turn not to Shermer but to people like Polanyi, Feyerabend, McKittrick, etc. Shermer’s crusades remind me of arguments that took place 90 years ago, on the Chatauqua circuits, in Rationalist Society pamphlets, etc. Pretty old-fashioned stuff, and hardly important when the great threat to human freedoms now and in the next century is not a few people who believe in astrology or mind-reading, but people who believe in a world order run by huge and intrusive governments, huge corporations, high-ranking civil servants such as chief medical officers, people like Bill Gates, etc., in which democratic participation will be increasingly irrelevant and even deplored as dangerous to rational decision-making. I wish Shermer etc. would spend more time being skeptical about the people who are advocating or silently supporting these trends, than about people who think they saw a divine manifestation at Lourdes.