Questions don’t require answers. Sometimes, “I don’t know” is the best option. It’s better to admit our ignorance than to invent an answer just to have an answer.
Currently, the theory of evolution is the only explanation that can explain the data. Intelligent design and special creation can’t explain big pieces of data, such as the nested hierarchy or the consilience of phylogenies based on morphology and genetics. Why can’t we find a species, living or extinct, that had three middle ear bones and feathers? Evolution can answer that question, but ID and creationism can not.
I don’t see any real argument there but that’s fine. Your claim that a clam shell has a functional arrangement of parts is true but only if it is alive with a clam inside. Your observation of a shell without a clam is not functional unlike Paley’s watch.
Biological reproduction is a problem for Paley’s argument because biological reproduction of imperfect replicators allows for evolution. Watches can’t evolve because they can’t reproduce.
This depends on how you define evolution. It has yet to be demonstrated that reproduction is an innovative force capable of producing complex features. It’s just at assertion at this point.
Until reproduction alone is shown to be an innovative force it does not create a problem to Paley’s argument.
Is a water molecule “a purposeful arrangement of parts”? One might say that the constituent atoms of hydrogen and oxygen combine to form a particular angle of the hydrogen bonds. That and many other properties of the water molecule can be considered “useful” in nature. For example, water is atypical in that its solid form is less dense than the liquid form—and that allows ice to form on the top of lakes and to stay there rather than falling to the bottom. It allows lakes in most areas to entirely thaw well before summer begins. (Entire books have been written on the fascinating properties of water so I won’t provide other examples here.) That being the case, can one apply “intelligent design theory” to determine that water molecules were designed by an intelligent agent?
As a Bible-affirming Christ-follower I believe that in an ultimate sense everything in the universe was designed by God and therefore designed “intelligently.” Nevertheless, if everything is “intelligently designed” and absolutely nothing in the universe was NOT “intelligently designed”, then the term ID doesn’t seem particularly useful. That’s my impression.
(And, yes, I realize that it is easy to create Texas sharpshooter fallacies out of the “amazing properties of water that are conducive to life on earth.” But that doesn’t undermine my point.)
You make an excellent point here. Yes, you can apply intelligent design theory to water molecules. You could also apply it to the hydrogen atom.
The level of complexity ie quantity and arrangement of parts points to the confidence in the inference. The more complex the function the stronger the design inference.
I think we are stuck right now because I don’t agree with your working hypothesis that the design inference could only be a God. What is interesting is if you add up all the inferences God is a pretty solid conclusion but for every individual inference He is not required.
I see why you are not moving here and respect that but at the end of the day I believe you are arguing against your own straw man.
The problem we run into is the finite history of the universe. If we are ignoring the supernatural for the moment, then at some point, there had to be an intelligent designer that emerged through natural processes. I would think that this intelligent designer would need some level of biology and complexity.
Well we are certainly going in circles. We just made it all the way back here.
Let’s go back to you instead …
Because the methodolog(ies) used by ID do not work; they are not methods we can use as a general way of gaining knowledge. Just as I was able to break the Watchmaker Analogy with the Eskimo finding a pocketwatch, the methods of ID break when we reveal the assumptions. It is NOT my burden to prove these methods are wrong - the burden is on ID to prove these methods are valid. ID has repeatedly failed this test.
An example of this would be William Dembski, who ignored most of the existing theory of statistical inference to come up with CSI. Among the flaws with CSI is that it is un-calculable in a biological setting (as seen on UD).
BUT I’m not going to be able to persuade you of this, you have to do that for yourself, thus my earlier suggestion …
That’s a start, but my intent was to apply the method to other scientific question. A method that can be applied to both theological and scientifical questions might be problematic.
I’ll point out that is a completely fallacious argument because known unintelligent natural processes are empirically observed to produce increasing complexity. The amount of complexity can be as large as we see in biological life since the iterative feedback processes of evolution have been running continuously for close to 4 billion years.
There’s also the big problem Designers usually don’t produce complex “Rube Goldberg” mechanisms like we see in biological life. Human designers anyway usually strive for the simplest, least complex arrangement which will do the job. In fact extra unnecessary complexity is a good argument against Intelligent Design of life.
ETA: Why did I know Bill would be back today with the same logical fallacy he’s been schooled on so many times in the past, including yesterday?
Recently over at The Skeptical Zone (which is frequented by lots of IDers) a challenge was issued to produce a CSI calculation for any real world biological feature. After three weeks not a single example of a CSI calculation was presented by anyone.
The pro-science people weren’t surprised at all since CSI has always been just an empty rhetorical device and never a bona fide scientific concept.
Bill, as you know, I have very little respect for your intellectual abilities. You have done nothing here to dislodge my opinion. I see nothing worth replying to.
