You mean like an actual patent someone registered? An actual lab or factory that manufactures bird cells or feathers, or bones, or navigation systems, and without which there would not be birds anymore?
Oh, do you now? Couldâve fooled me, given the utter zilch you and yours consistently present when called to.
Without resorting to an argument from analogy, how exactly does describing physical anatomy of an animal point to design?
Hi Ron
I think you are right that the logic has holes in it but you may be making a false equivalence to make your point.
Purposeful flight for birds or 747s is a very complex task. As Behe would say it requires a purposeful arrangement of parts. My point is the ability to purposely fly has a stronger design inference than floating or sinking.
We manufacture objects designed to float or sink all the time. Those designs also involve a purposeful arrangement of parts. Boats, rafts, anchors, weight beltsâŚ
Are you telling me that we canât distinguish those objects from non-designed objects like rocks or logs? Or are we going down a teleological rabbit hole where everything is a result of design and therefore we canât distinguish anything?
The design inference is not black or white itâs based on evidence. Purposeful flying has a stronger design inference than floating. Out for the day. Thanks for the conversation so far.
Maybe, but you arenât presenting any. You just point at a thing, and say it is designed (at best because something else is), and thatâs supposed to settle the matter. The bird is designed like the Boeing plane is designed, not because we have evidence of the bird being designed same as we have evidence of aircraft being designed, but rather, by the looks of it, just because.
Interesting suggestion. Here, let me try that game. How about this: Floating has a stronger design inference (what ever that means) than purposeful flying. Impressed yet?
You are just saying stuff. It doesnât mean anything, and it certainly doesnât qualify as evidence, even setting scientific standards aside altogether. You subjectively feeling like birds should be the products of design doesnât make their flight any more in need of a designer than is a logâs floating. Even if you point to arbitrarily refined systems within the organism, all youâll end up with is an appeal to intuition. âDoesnât it feel designed to you too?â, you plead, as you point at things that are complex, or might seem intentional to a race of naked apes who descended from a line that survived thanks to seeing intention even in things that didnât have any. Why would anybody think in this manner, though, but to arrive at the âconclusionâ they decided in advance of ever thinking?
Hi, Bill. Were you unable to answer this one, or did you just overlook it?
Hi Gisteron
If we were to evaluate human designs do you think it is possible to infer a stronger design inference. Would you claim that a slide rule has the same strength of a design inference as an electronic calculator? I think we could test this by seeing if the majority of people would come up with the same answer.
Mike Behe has come up with a criteria for this but I see unbiased human intuition capable of coming up with the same answer in many cases as Beheâs detection method.
So based on the slide rule example what do you think has the stronger design detection, a log floating on the water or a bird flying out of the nest getting food and bringing the food back to the baby birds in the nest?
Out of curiosity do you know how humans recognize manufacturerd objects intuitively?
Iâm not sure what you are asking here. I think almost everyone would say with certainty that both objects were designed. I donât think many people would think there was any chance that either one was at all likely to have arisen thru purely natural unguided processes, as opposed to having been created by human beings.
In which case, the answer to your question would be âYes.â
Are you suggesting something else?
To put this in a general form that Bill wonât understand:
Thing A has property X
Thing B has property X
Thing A has property Y
Therefore thing B has property Y.
Can we see that as a general form this is not a valid argument? It demands the auxiliary premise that property X entails property Y. But with that assumption, thing A is irrelevant. Or another premise that could be introduced is that whatever is true for thing A must also be true for thing B. I think Bill is making both these assumptions implicitly. But he doesnât know that. And again, he wonât understand any of this.
Yes. That was the point of the comment I made in #95, as an attempt to help him grasp this. But, youâre right. Itâs probably over @colewdâs head.
Did you miss this when you were trying to follow the conversation?
No. And my prediction is borne out.
I have no idea what your agenda could be other than to derail a conversation if you are telling the truth that you know I admitted to the flawed logic of what I posted.
You admitted to your flawed logic but then continued using it. You need to stop.
Where did I continue to use it?
This is not the question if they were designed or not designed. The question is about the strength of the design inference.
When you continue to analogize birds and airplanes, for example. Otherwise your argument boils down to âbirds are complicated, therefore they were designedâ.
