Exactly. Paley’s argument requires that he deny one of the arguments frequently made by proponents of ID, that we can rely on our intuition to detect design. We immediately, without thinking, identify the watch lying on the ground as fundamentally different in kind from the plants surrounding it. And what makes it different is that it was fabricated by an intelligent being, while the plants arose thru natural processes. So, in this case, our intuition leads us to conclude that living things like plants were not designed.
3 Likes
Just to add to this, functions can be transient.
I could pick up a rock and use it as a hammer, a paperweight, a doorstop, a decorative object… Heck, some animals even use rocks as digestive aids.
Function and purpose, much like complexity, are further examples of where ID proponents lose the plot in their attempts at design detection.
Hi FG
That’s right. But the inference to design is weak. If @Faizal_Ali replaced his rubber duck with a stick of wood that would have a larger contrast between strong and weak design inferences. Arguing against design in nature is pretty difficult.
Intelligent design has a chance to be helpful for science if the Ideological temperature could be reduced. It can help guide us to where the likely starting points are for scientific inquiry. Understanding nature is very workable over time. Trying to understand causes of origin events is much harder especially if they are not part of the natural world.
But, to be clear: You consider the “design inference” to be stronger in a living duck, when compared to a rubber bathtub toy that we know, with absolute certainty, to be the product of human design and manufacture.
Correct?
Not really. You only find it difficult because you are hampered by an ideological commitment to bizarre and incoherent ideas that you don’t even seem to understand.
1 Like
I consider both have strong design inferences
My interest is not based on ideological commitment. I was not initially an ID supporter when I first learned about it. Why do you argue against it?
So you no longer believe what you wrote earlier. Why have you changed your mind?
This does not mean both do not have strong design inferences. The function of a rubber duck goes beyond floating as it is a toy for young children.
But one ought to be stronger. A duck can fly, which you said was a stronger indicator of “design” than floating. And a living duck is far more complex than a rubber duck. Complexity is another attribute often cited by ID proponents as an indicator of “design.”
You seem very reluctant to admit that, by your criteria, a living duck has a higher “design inference” that a rubber toy created by humans in a factory. It that because you realize how absurd your position is?
So, if a child plays with a stick that fell off a tree, does it now have a stronger “design inference” than when it was just lying on the ground?
Would that not suggest that there is a non-zero chance that cdesign proponentsist are more productive contributors to science than their non-creationist peers? How do you feel about the prospect of putting that prediction to the test?
So, in other words, science is doing just fine and has no need of any of this creationist piffle.
I could not agree more!
All the best!
Imagine John telling you that, having taken a handful of Scrabble letters in his hand and thrown them onto the board, the letters in question displayed the following sequence: thbogisnestabrf
Now imagine that Peter has done the same thing, but this time the letters have formed the following sequence: the boat is blue
In the case of John, would you be surprised by the outcome ? And in the case of Peter?
1 Like
Not with the current approach to ID, which seems more about guiding people towards conservative nationalist ideologies than anything useful in science.
Obviously these are rhetorical questions where you are looking for a specific answer. Yes, if a person claimed to have thrown a bunch of scrabble tiles into the air and the landed to form a perfect English sentence, I would be skeptical of that claim. Duh.
But this is not relevant to the post you were responding to.
The comment you replied to was me pointing out that Bill’s “strong design inference” example also happened to be the less complex of the two character strings provided. This reinforces what I said earlier about complexity being a red herring when it comes to detecting design.
We don’t need to measure complexity of two character strings to distinguish a random string of letters versus a coherent English sentence.
Now that we recognize ‘thbogisnestabrf’ as a letter sequence used in this thread I would absolutely be very surprised if it was the outcome of throwing the letters in the air. Wouldn’t you?
1 Like
Hi Gil
I think defining the terms “complexity and functional complexity” may help with E’s comment to you.
https://grok.com/share/bGVnYWN5_ab216776-b5a7-4b6c-b9bc-cb1e1c51022a
What’s the difference? Whether any of us are surprised or not tells us nothing about how much or how little intent there was in putting the letters down as they are.
For all I know, Peter might have had a chat bot randomly generate what to you looks like a thought-out sentence, while John might have had deliberately recalled some wifi password, which somehow made it into a dictionary of acceptable strings for a Scrabble game. As faded_Glory is pointing out, if anything, it might be far more “remarkable” if someone were to replicate a very particular, if ultimately meaningless, letter sequence, than if they spelt out instead a fairly inoffensive sentence the likes of which are ubiquitous in English language training books.
But none of this is interesting or relevant. If our entirely subjective and overtly inconsistent "oooh"s and "aaah"s are an adequate measure of this designed-ness property you lot are pretending you can measure, then I daresay it shall remain utterly unhelpful in forming any sort of functional understanding of anything.
1 Like
This is true depending on the ID advocate.
The ideological heat is generated on both sides of the argument and both sides need to recognise the theories importance is that it maybe actually useful. My initial objection to it is I did not think it might be useful when I first learned about it.
It will never useful until ID proponents start asking the right questions. The problem is that if they start asking the right questions, they have to open themselves to the possibilities of an answer they don’t like.