Why are We Disagreeing with ID?

But someone plugged the hole with chewing gum so it leaks less, so now someone has to go down into the bottom of the ship and haul water, which helps burn calories and keeps them in shape. This ship design is brilliant!

Iā€™m going to have to pull your license. Those mean quite different things. The double negative makes the claim much less emphatic, and in fact all it means is what you said: anything can be claimed to be designed, as there are no constraints on mysterious ways.

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Show me your syllogism! :slight_smile:

I donā€™t got to show you no stinking syllogisms.

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Given the supposition: Vision (perfect or not) implies Design
Then:

Vision (T) does not imply not-Design (F),

is True

Truth tables. Check my work?

Iā€™m with John here. Doesnā€™t negates ā€œto meanā€, and not negates ā€œto designā€.

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I concede my error. :slight_smile:

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Wrong. Because the calculator I describe above would also have been created by a being who reasons. He just made a crappy calculator.
Iā€™m not saying our reasoning is perfect, I only say that reason can produce reason, as in a good calculator.

Well, all right, the atoms in your brain in the sense of the atoms in their current configuration, produce mind in your view.

I donā€™t have his book, but heā€™s no idiot.

Confirmed by doctors and medical evidence.

Some tests do show a positive result, and some do not this would be expected, if there is a real being, answering prayers yes or no.

ā€œSo, the time between the prayer and the eye exam isā€¦29 years! This is ā€˜instantaneous resolutionā€™? Essentially, weā€™re taking this patientā€™s word that their eyesight improved after prayer, but the authors (or anyone else) didnā€™t bother to test it for nearly 30 years. This level of incompetence, poor design, and digging for positive results is staggering. This is not the way one confirms medical claims.ā€

Well, I think it would be pretty clear if a person can see, after being documented as being blind.

ā€œReason is itself a matter of faith. It is an act of faith to assert that our thoughts have any relation to reality at all. If you are merely a sceptic, you must sooner or later ask yourself the question, ā€˜Why should anything go right; even observation and deduction? Why should not good logic be as misleading as bad logic? They are both movements in the brain of a bewildered ape?ā€™ The young sceptic says, ā€˜I have a right to think for myself.ā€™ But the old sceptic, the complete sceptic, says, ā€˜I have no right to think for myself. I have no right to think at all.ā€™ " (Chesterton, Orthodoxy)

Certainly human reasoning is imperfect, but that does not mean we cannot have real perception of valid reasoning.

No, the view of dualism is that there is body and soul.

Well, yes, trade-offs are part of both views, so we have to look elsewhere for a verdict.

So it behooves us to get to know the Designer, if possible. And a falsification would be to demonstrate a way that nature could probably have done X.

No, you have to negate the entire sentence, and reverse the condition: ā€œif itā€™s designed, it may mean itā€™s perfectā€.

No. To falsify Design it must be possible (at least in theory) (edit to insert:) find evidence that would disprove design. Demonstrating nature demonstrates nature, OR that the designer acted in a way consistent with nature - It would not falsify design. We require (the possibility of) evidence that design is not ā€œnaturalā€, and to date there are very few suggestions what that evidence might be.

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So there is no problem in principle with the idea that atoms can produce valid reasoning.

Oh look, itā€™s the argument from quotation of someone making blind assertions. Unfortunately no answer can be provided to these questions that are anything more than assumptions. Supernatural ones have no advantage and would merely beg the question just as much as any putative naturalistic assumption youā€™d make.

Weā€™ve been over this.

You have no way of knowing whether youā€™re merely created by an omnipotent God to persist in the delusion that God has given you the ability to engage in valid reasoning. You have to simply assume he hasnā€™t made you terminally deluded. All the apologetics you construct around this by referencing the Bible as something youā€™ve discovered that affirms your assumption could all be part of the elaborate ruse. You could be in a sort of matrix God has constructed, in which heā€™s put Bibles that contain falsehoods, and then made you to feel nice things when you contemplate Godā€™s goodness etc. etc.

You just canā€™t get out of any of this. Theism offers no superior solution to the problems of solipsism, the ontology of logic, the validity of reason, or anything of this sort. Your assumptions are as blind and unprovable as all the alternatives.

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In Computer Science theory there is a concept called ā€œTuring Completeā€ (TC), meaning a process capable of emulating a Turing Machine can perform any calculation, and is TC. Things like a pile of sand can be shown to be TC. A pile of sand is probably a crappy calculator too, but it does not require a reasoning being to make a pile of sand.

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I donā€™t deny that reason can produce reason.

It does not follow that only reason can produce reason. This is pretty basic, well, reasoning. :wink:

Yes.

Matter of opinion, I guess. Dude thinks someone who is unconscious from a cardiac arrest cannot have any brain functioning. If not necessarily idiotic, thatā€™s not exactly smart, either.

Look up what an ā€œanecdoteā€ is.

It is also what would be expected if there is no real being answering prayers. So you have demonstrated nothing to support your belief.

I am not denying that.

How do you demonstrate this was due to someone praying 29 years ago? They person may also have eaten a chocolate fudge banana split 29 years earlier. According to your ā€œreasoningā€, this would mean doctors should be using chocolate fudge banana splits to cure blindness. Do you think that would be sound reasoning?

Incorrect. Tradeoffs would not be predicted if they were created by an omnipotent being.

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We have abundant evidence, in human designs, for instance, in irreducible complexity in biological structures, and in Beheā€™s edge of evolution.

But the atoms are not the source of the reasoning, human reason is the source.

Weā€™re all making our best deductions from the evidence. I believe in God because Iā€™ve found his directions and promises hold up. I believe in the validity of reason as a postulate, then I can see that my reason can be trusted in general, because it comes from a perfect Reason.

Fulfilled prophecy is one of the main ways God shows heā€™s real, such as the prediction of the five kingdoms in Daniel 2, we are in the time of the fifth kingdom, itā€™s ā€œpartly strong and partly brittleā€ (Dan. 2:42), and no kingdom of man will arise in this area again.

ā€œSet forth your case, says the Lord;
bring your proofs, says the King of Jacob.
Let them bring them, and tell us
what is to happen.
Tell us the former things, what they are,
that we may consider them,
that we may know their outcome;
or declare to us the things to come.
Tell us what is to come hereafter,
that we may know that you are godsā€¦ā€ (Isaiah 41:21ā€“23)

A cellular automaton, right? Not just a pile of sand.

IC is always defined as either 1) something necessarily incompatible with evolution without supporting examples, or 2) something with examples that are not only not necessarily incompatible but frequently demonstrably explainable by evolution, and therefore irrelevant.

And then ID proponents inevitably weasel between the two, pretending that their examples from (2) fit their definition from (1). Behe has never presented an example incompatible with evolution.

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Presumably you mean the fourth kingdom - Daniel 2:41-42 continue to describe the kingdom introduced in Daniel 2:40.

And that is a failed prophecy, since those kingdoms ended more than 2000 years ago. Daniel 8 makes it clearest, but there is plenty of other evidence in Daniel.

But this is off-topic, so I suppose it should be split if there is to be any discussion.

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