What Are Your Favorite Arguments For Intelligent Design?

[Michael_Callen (Herculean Skeptic)]

@scd

because any gear we know about was made by design. and indeed there are many other such interesting structures like wings, vision systems, light systems, motion systems etc. we also need to remember that human mimmic many structures from nature.

I think that you mean that it is intuitive to consider when we see a gear in nature that it was intelligently designed, because we are familiar with gears that were designed by humans. It does not follow, though, that all gears were designed.

[Roy (30-year veteran)]

@Giltil

@AllenWitmerMiller

Do you think the fact that the monolith looks remarkably similar to structures designed and erected by humans might explain why your “sane person” attributes the monolith to an intelligent agent?

No. Even the prehumans in the scene understand that the monolith comes from a kind of higher intelligence.

You know this how, exactly?

[scd]

@Michael_Callen

I think that you mean that it is intuitive to consider when we see a gear in nature that it was intelligently designed, because we are familiar with gears that were designed by humans. It does not follow, though, that all gears were designed.

ok. but do you agree that the burdon of proof is on someone who claim that gears are not the product of design?

[AllenWitmerMiller (Retired Professor & Minister.)]

@scd

because any gear we know about was made by design.

Is this your argument:

If the first occurrence of X observed by humans was created by a human, then it is forever deemed to be ONLY AND ALWAYS a product of intelligent design. And if the first occurrence of X observed by humans was found only in nature (at least initially), then—uhhh—well—then it is still assumed to be a product of design!

I don’t get it.

Also, if additional mechanical gears are found in nature (such as among other living things beside that particular insect species), does that undermine your argument? If it doesn’t, are you saying that “mechanical gears” in nature are evidence of ID no matter what?

I don’t see the logic in any of this—despite the fact that I believe that God is ultimately the designer of everything because he created the universe in such a way that various processes were inevitable.

@scd

ok. but do you agree that the burdon of proof is on someone who claim that gears are not the product of design?

You are trying to reverse the burden of proof. Nobody (to my knowledge) is claiming that mechanical gears are not the product of design. Instead, I am claiming that you have failed to meet any reasonable burden of proof for your claim that such gears are necessarily the product of intelligent design.

[Faizal_Ali]

@scd

because any gear we know about was made by design.

The one you showed the picture of wasn’t. It was produced by mindless chemical processes as part of evolution.

If gears are signs of intelligent design, and biology was designed, why is this the only known example of gears in all of biology?

[Roy (30-year veteran)]

@scd

@AllenWitmerMiller

I don’t understand why a “mechanical gear” found in nature is evidence for intelligent design .

because any gear we know about was made by design. and indeed there are many other such interesting structures like wings, vision systems, light systems, motion systems etc. we also need to remember that human mimmic many structures from nature.

1. All the other gears we know about were designed, so these were too.
2. All the other gears we know about were designed by humans, so these were too.
3. All the other gears we know about were manufactured, so these were too.

#2 & #3 are clearly rubbish, but you nevertheless believe #1 to be valid.

[Michael_Callen (Herculean Skeptic)]

@scd

ok. but do you agree that the burden of proof is on someone who claim that gears are not the product of design?

Can you prove that they were designed? No, you cannot. You can assert that it is unlikely that they came about on their own. So, by default, the onus is on the scientist to provide the evidence. But lack of evidence does not prove your point. You can only say that, to you, these look like human-designed gears and that it it makes sense to you that an intelligent agent designed them. It cannot go beyond an assertion, because you have no proof.

Furthermore, the claim from science, as I understand it, would be that the gears evolved, not that the gears are not a product of design. One is asserting that something happened. The other asserts that something did not happen.

[Faizal_Ali]

@scd

ok. but do you agree that the burdon of proof is on someone who claim that gears are not the product of design?

That’s not how it works, no.

[scd]

i got confuse here. you said that: “Nobody (to my knowledge) is claiming that mechanical gears are not the product of design”

and then you said: “you have failed to meet any reasonable of proof for your claim that such gears are necessarily the product of intelligent design.”

its seems like a contradiction to me.

[Rumraket (Mikkel R.)]

@scd

here is a good one:

(image from This Insect Has The Only Mechanical Gears Ever Found in Nature | Science | Smithsonian)

In what way is that evidence of ID?

[AllenWitmerMiller (Retired Professor & Minister.)]

@scd

its seems like a contradiction to me.

There is no contradiction—but perhaps we have a language barrier. (This is an international forum and so it is hard to know who speaks English as their primary language and who speaks English as a second language.)

Perhaps it would help if I put the word necessarily in italics:

you have failed to meet any reasonable of proof for your claim that such gears are necessarily the product of intelligent design.

Nobody doubts that lots of mechanical gears are the product of intelligent design (specifically, human design.) The issue is whether whenever we see yet another example of mechanical gears, such as in this particular insect, it therefore must necessarily also be a product of intelligent design.

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AFTERTHOUGHT: Wheels are very efficient structures for locomotion in a great many contexts (though not all.) So why don’t we find “intelligently designed” wheels in animal anatomy being used for locomotion? Meanwhile, I would say that it is not hard to under why evolutionary processes have not been observed to produce such locomotion wheels.

[Rumraket (Mikkel R.)]

@scd

because any gear we know about was made by design

You mean any other gear we know of, except this one, was made by humans.

But this one clearly wasn’t made by humans. So why is it evidence for ID?

[Rumraket (Mikkel R.)]

@scd

ok. but do you agree that the burdon of proof is on someone who claim that gears are not the product of design?

If someone were to claim that NO gears are the product of design, then they would have a burden of proof yes. But nobody actually claims that.

What people are saying is that they are not convinced by the claim that ALL gears are the product of design, and that the claim that ALL gears are the product of design has not met it’s burden of proof.

[T.j_Runyon]

And a physical brain

[T.j_Runyon]

And preexisting materials.

[Giltil (Gilbert Thill)]

@Rumraket

In what way is that evidence of ID?

Because of the following answers:

• is it contingent? yes
• is it complex? yes
• is it specified in the sense that it conforms to an independent pattern? Yes (the pattern here being a gear)

[T.j_Runyon]

@Giltil

an independent pattern?

Is this an independent pattern? Ghfftfdavnccgkygnllmmfhjbc

[Rumraket (Mikkel R.)]

@Giltil

Because of the following answers:

• is it contingent? yes
• is it complex? yes
• is it specified in the sense that it conforms to an independent pattern? Yes (the pattern here being a gear)

Then everything imaginable is evidence for ID. Even random noise is evidence for ID.

Is random noise contingent? Yes.
Is random noise complex? Yes.
Is random noise specified in the sense that it conforms to an independent pattern? Yes(the pattern being random noise).

[Roy (30-year veteran)]

@Giltil

Because of the following answers:

• is it contingent? yes
• is it complex? yes
• is it specified in the sense that it conforms to an independent pattern? Yes (the pattern here being a gear)

The last answer should be “NO”, because gears made by humans didn’t exist until long after baby hoppers had them, so for most of their existence there was no independent pattern.

The other answers should probably be “no” too.

[scd]

@Michael_Callen

Can you prove that they were designed?

interesting challenge. first: do you think there is any object that we can both agree that its a proof of design? of instance: what about gears that made out of wood?