Critique of Intelligent Design

[Tormod]

Here is an interesting article from LiveScience (from the publishers of Space.com):

 

Intelligent Design: 'The Death of Science'

 

In his highly influential book "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions," science philosopher Thomas Kuhn presented the idea that science is not a gradual progression toward truth, but a series of insurgencies, with scientific theories constantly usurping one another.

 

http://www.livescience.com/othernews/050923_ID_science.html

 

Don't be fooled by the intro - it is a rebuttal of ID.

[Turtle]

___Nice article Tormod! You may have noticed I stay away from this argument in the forum; I don't bathe often enough as it is. But...but I found a math reference in the article & well... dirty or not I have to poke it with my stick. To whit, a quote from the article:

"The second major argument for intelligent design comes from William Dembski, a mathematician and philosopher affiliated with the Discovery Institute, a Seattle-based Christian think tank that serves as the nerve center for the ID movement.

 

Dembski argues that nature is rife with examples of non-random patterns of information that he calls "complex specified information," or CSI for short."

___It still hasn't come to this guys attention ( or many scientists for that matter) that with the advent of chaos theory the concept of randomness is void; yes I said void. Is it still employed in all areas of business & science? Yes. Is it true? No. It is void. Everything is non-random when viewed through the correct lens, whether we know of the lens or not. Any argument based on the concept of randomness is weak at best & dangerous at worst.

___Well, now that I have that said I have to go shower in a spray of non-random water drops. Any more typing & I may get dirtyer with the words. :rolleyes:

[goku]

thomas kuhn, is he the one that builds the hay equipment? i've got a kuhn hay cutter my self, nice peice of machinary.

sorry, just had to get that out.

 

went to the site, sounded like the same old argument

as for the chaos theory.....

hear i am by my self talking to my self, that's the chaos theory

Malcom, Jurrasic Park

[goku]

who was i calling a name?

[blazer2000x]

May I dutifully point out that lack of evidence is not evidence against? Just because Intelligent Design has no specific proof, dosn't mean it can't be true. You have to admit, if you had the odds of creating life by chance on your side, you probably wouldn't be doing too much gambling.

I just find it extremely difficult to believe that something so amazing could form by accident. Every atom in our body had no "life" so to speak. They're just little particles, leaping about in an endless dance. How is it that they somehow, for no reason, happened to each one "fall" in place with the billions of other lifeless particles just like them, in just the right way, where any mistake would lead to the whole thing crumbling before it shaped, and in which natural selection could take no part, and create something with the ability to move, transform matter into energy, grow, reproduce, to live. It is astounding to fathom how infinitely complex our univerese is. You have made the excuse that it became complex over time. But that will never be the case. No matter how much time you give it, no matter how far back you trace, those little particles are always moving, the universe always changing (without change time does not exist) those impossibly unbreakable laws always present and active. That immense energy that now fuels and drives every atom in all that is, it cannot be destroyed, the laws by which we all are bound dictate it to be so. Why is it there? Is it truly intelligent to believe that it simply is? The universe is grinding to a halt. That energy is still there, but it is being converted to a form from in which it cannot benefit any. It will not last forever, and someday it will all be exhausted. It cannot have been deteriorating forever, so it must have had a begining. Since these laws say unchangeably that that cannot be, only one who is above those laws, one who yes, created those laws, that is the only explanation I can see.

You can choose not to believe this if you wish, but I know. I have seen Him in others, I have spoken to Him, I have heard Him, I have seen His love for me, I have turned from Him, and know what that is as well, and every time he has welcomed me with open arms when I returned. He has never denied me, why should I deny Him? If you believe He does not exist, I pray for you. If you try to convince me He does not exist, you might as well try to convince a dead man that there is no such thing as death.

[C1ay]

May I dutifully point out that lack of evidence is not evidence against? Just because Intelligent Design has no specific proof, dosn't mean it can't be true.

Yes, that's quite true. There's actually no specific evidence against a variety of theories. Surely you'd agree that any of them might possibly be true, even the theory of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, huh?

[GAHD]

...You have to admit, if you had the odds of creating life by chance on your side, you probably wouldn't be doing too much gambling....

To be quite frank, if I had that amount of luck on my side I'd hit & be banned from every casino in Vegas.

[Tormod]

You can choose not to believe this if you wish, but I know. I have seen Him in others, I have spoken to Him, I have heard Him, I have seen His love for me, I have turned from Him, and know what that is as well, and every time he has welcomed me with open arms when I returned. He has never denied me, why should I deny Him? If you believe He does not exist, I pray for you. If you try to convince me He does not exist, you might as well try to convince a dead man that there is no such thing as death.

 

Please - this is not the place to preach.

[blazer2000x]

To be quite frank, if I had that amount of luck on my side I'd hit & be banned from every casino in Vegas.

 

What? The odds for life having been created by chance are terrible! What are you talking about?!

[Eclogite]

If you try to convince me He does not exist, you might as well try to convince a dead man that there is no such thing as death.

Why do you feel life arising through abiogenisis and evolving through natural selection is antithetical to a creator?

[TRoutMac]

Why do you feel life arising through abiogenisis and evolving through natural selection is antithetical to a creator?

 

For the record, and since you asked, in the abstract I don't personally think that life arising through abiogenesis and evolving through natural selection is necessarily antithetical to a creator.

 

But let me ask you what might seem like a "sideways" question, if you don't mind:

 

Do you think that the laws of physics apply the same to manmade systems as they do to biological systems? In other words, do you believe that a "bio-mechanical" system such as a human arm, for example, has to obey exactly the same laws of physics that a robotic arm (engineered and built by humans) has to obey?

 

Thank you.

[damocles]

 

But let me ask you what might seem like a "sideways" question, if you don't mind:

 

Do you think that the laws of physics apply the same to manmade systems as they do to biological systems? In other words, do you believe that a "bio-mechanical" system such as a human arm, for example, has to obey exactly the same laws of physics that a robotic arm (engineered and built by humans) has to obey?

.

 

Human Arm-> made out of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, calcium, potassium, iron, etc.

 

Robot arm-> made out of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, calcium, potassium, iron, etc.(in different proportions.)

 

A=A

 

Here is the cheap trick.

 

The robot arm has an intelligent designer-> a human.

Ergo the human arm has an intelligent designer.

 

Logic fault?

 

Reasoning by superficial and demonstrably false analogy.

 

Howso?

 

Set of assumptions.

1. Systems require an intelligent designer and cannot organize without one.

2. Humans are intelligent designers.

3. Humans design robot arms to mimic human arms.

4. Something designed a human arm.

5. That something is an intelligent designer greater than humans since it designed humans to mimic it.

6. Therefore the universe is intelligently designed.

 

Where the analogy breaks down.

Systems require an intelligent designer and cannot organize without one.

 

Abiogenesis;

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abiogenesis

 

Abiogenesis (Greek a-bio-genesis, "non biological origins") is, in its most general sense, the hypothetical generation of life from non-living matter. Today the term is primarily used to refer to hypotheses of the origin of life from a primordial soup. Earlier notions of abiogenesis, now more commonly known as spontaneous generation, held that living organisms are generated by decaying organic substances, e.g. that mice spontaneously appear in stored grain or maggots spontaneously appear in meat. (That idea, which has long been known to be incorrect, will be called "Aristotelian abiogenesis" in this article.)

 

<snip>

 

Yockey

Information theorist Hubert Yockey argued that chemical evolutionary research raises the question:

 

Research on the origin of life seems to be unique in that the conclusion has already been authoritatively accepted … . What remains to be done is to find the scenarios which describe the detailed mechanisms and processes by which this happened.

One must conclude that, contrary to the established and current wisdom a scenario describing the genesis of life on earth by chance and natural causes which can be accepted on the basis of fact and not faith has not yet been written. (Yockey, 1977. A calculation of the probability of spontaneous biogenesis by information theory, Journal of Theoretical Biology 67:377–398, quotes from pp. 379, 396.)

 

Some folks can take hope in Yockey, but do not be decieved;

 

Origin of Life

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origin_of_life

 

Research into the origin of life is a limited field of research despite its profound impact on biology and human understanding of the natural world. Progress in this field is generally slow and sporadic, though it still draws the attention of many due to the gravity of the question being investigated. A few facts give insight into the conditions in which life may have emerged, but the mechanisms by which non-life became life are still elusive.

 

<snip>

 

Origin of organic molecules: Miller, Eigen and Wächtershäuser's theories

 

The Miller-Urey experiment attempts to recreate the chemical conditions of the primitive Earth in the laboratory, and synthesized some of the building blocks of life.The "Miller experiments" (including the original Miller–Urey experiment of 1953, by Harold Urey and his graduate student Stanley Miller) are performed under simulated conditions resembling those thought at the time to have existed shortly after Earth first accreted from the primordial solar nebula. The experiment used a highly reduced mixture of gases (methane, ammonia and hydrogen). However, it should be noted that the exact composition of the prebiotic atmosphere of earth is currently somewhat controversial. Other less reducing gases produce a lower yield and variety. It was once thought that appreciable amounts of molecular oxygen were present in the prebiotic atmosphere, which would have essentially prevented the formation of organic molecules; however, the current scientific consensus is that such was not the case.

 

The experiment showed that some of the basic organic monomers (such as amino acids) that form the building blocks of modern life can be formed spontaneously. Simple organic molecules are of course a long way from a fully functional self-replicating life form; however, in an environment with no pre-existing life these molecules may have accumulated and provided a rich environment for chemical evolution ("soup theory"). On the other hand, the spontaneous formation of complex polymers from abiotically generated monomers under these conditions is not at all a straightforward process. Further, according to Brooks and Shaw (1973), there is no evidence in the geological record that any soup existed.

 

There is an abundant amount of evidence of something called self-organizing systems.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-organization

 

Self-organization refers to a process in which the internal organization of a system, normally an open system, increases automatically without being guided or managed by an outside source. Self-organizing systems typically (though not always) display emergent properties.

 

<snip>

 

Overview

 

Cellular automaton here running Stephen Wolfram's "rule 30", a mathematical construct displaying self-organizationThe most robust and unambiguous examples of self-organizing systems are from physics, where the concept was first noted. Self-organization is also relevant in chemistry, where it has often been taken as being synonymous with self-assembly. The concept of self-organization is central to the description of biological systems, from the subcellular to the ecosystem level. There are also cited examples of "self-organizing" behaviour found in the literature of many other disciplines, both in the natural sciences and the social sciences such as economics or anthropology. Self-organization has also been observed in mathematical systems such as cellular automata.

 

Sometimes the notion of self-organization is conflated with that of the related concept of emergence. Properly defined, however, there may be instances of self-organization without emergence and emergence without self-organization, and it is clear from the literature that the phenomena are not the same. The link between emergence and self-organization remains an active research question.

 

Self-organization usually relies on four basic ingredients:

 

Positive feedback

Negative feedback

Balance of exploitation and exploration

Multiple interactions

 

(see http://Cellular automaton for a description of such a system as pure mathematics.)

 

Now then, the first premise in the false analogy is a possible and proven not true statement.

 

See the house of cards collapse.

 

Evidence.

 

That is the only benchmark. Not assumptions.

 

Best wishes,

[TRoutMac]

Human Arm-> made out of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, calcium, potassium, iron, etc.

 

Evidence. That is the only benchmark. Not assumptions.

 

Hmmm. It seems you assumed I was headed in a direction that I was not heading. Next time wait to the see evidence and maybe, just maybe, don't presume to know where I'm going.

 

Heading someone off at the pass only works if you know what pass they're crossing.

[damocles]

Hmmm. It seems you assumed I was headed in a direction that I was not heading. Next time wait to the see evidence and maybe, just maybe, don't presume to know where I'm going.

 

Heading someone off at the pass only works if you know what pass they're crossing.

 

Nice try at rhetoric, but useless to negate the analysis of a faulty argument.

 

One can easily know the way that someone else thinks by the words that someone else writes.

 

Painter/pigment/image/painting/presentation.

 

Every word someone writes is the evidence he leaves behind of the way he thinks.

 

Claiming otherwise after the initial presentation is not factual. That instead is an attempt to defend oneself psychologically from the public admission of either a logic failure or of a mistake in thinking.

 

Proper evidence of refutation is required to negate the analysis of logic error, which in this case was not supplied.

 

The analysis stands.

[Southtown]

Damocles, the monomers are akin to crystaline growth correct? Whereabouts would random, organic-like compounds start working together? This is the definition of life as it pertains to the dying: the parts of the body cease to work together. So how can polymerizing molecules that are competing for resources begin to work together in a non-competitive fashion? And why would they reproduce at the expense of resources?

 

Furthermore, if life is gradually accidented by chemical reactions, what is consciousness? In other words, why must I witness my life, if it can happen on its own?

 

From the creationist standpoint, I would need mechanisms to consider before I could call abiogenesis a theory.

[damocles]

Damocles, the monomers are akin to crystaline growth correct? Whereabouts would random, organic-like compounds start working together? This is the definition of life as it pertains to the dying: the parts of the body cease to work together. So how can polymerizing molecules that are competing for resources begin to work together in a non-competitive fashion? And why would they reproduce at the expense of resources?

 

Furthermore, if life is gradually accidented by chemical reactions, what is consciousness? In other words, why must I witness my life, if it can happen on its own?

 

From the creationist standpoint, I would need mechanisms to consider before I could call abiogenesis a theory.

 

A monomer is not necessarily thought as a crystal;

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monomer

 

In chemistry, a monomer (from Greek mono "one" and meros "part") is a small molecule that may become chemically bonded to other monomers to form a polymer.

 

Examples of monomers are hydrocarbons such as the alkene and arene (homologous) series. Here hydrocarbon monomers such as styrene and ethene form polymers used as plastics like polystyrene and polyethene.

 

Amino acids are natural monomers, and polymerize to form proteins. Glucose monomers can also polymerize to form starches, amylopectins and glycogen polymers. In this case the polymerization reaction is known as a dehydration or condensation reaction (due to the formation of water (H2O) as one of the products) where a hydrogen atom and a hydroxyl (-OH) group are lost to form H2O and an oxygen molecule bonds between each monomer unit.

 

Note that the lower molecular weight compounds built from monomers are also referred to as dimers, trimers, tetramers, pentamers, octamers, 20-mers, etc. if they have 2, 3, 4, 5, 8, or 20 monomer units, respectively. Any number of these monomer units may be indicated by the appropriate prefix, eg, decamer, being a 10-unit monomer chain or polymer. Larger numbers are often stated in English in lieu of Greek. Polymers with relatively low number of units are called oligomers.

 

Monomers are plastic in that they can bend kink zip and unzip, catalyze and retain structure in a liquid solution.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crystal

 

A crystal is a solid in which the constituent atoms, molecules, or ions are packed in a regularly ordered, repeating pattern extending in all three spatial dimensions.

 

Generally, fluid substances form crystals when they undergo a process of solidification. Under ideal conditions, the result may be a single crystal, where all of the atoms in the solid fit into the same lattice or crystal structure but, generally, many crystals form simultaneously during solidification, leading to a polycrystalline solid. For example, most metals encountered in everyday life are polycrystals. Crystals are often symmetrically intergrown to form crystal twins.

 

While it is theoretically possible to have "life" that is crystalline, the transport of nutrients in such a lattice is extremely problematic. You would be happier as a complex animal/plant if you were made out of limpids.

 

As to how life organizes in seeming defiance of the laws of thermodynamics?

 

I read and learn; here I'll give you two examples,

 

http://www.fes.uwaterloo.ca/u/jjkay/pubs/thesis/2.pdf

 

In this paper a paradigm is presented for examining living systems. The purpose of the paradigm is to illuminate: 1) Why and how living systems persist in a predictable environment; 2) Why and how living systems develop over time, even if environmental conditions remain unchanged; 3) How the system responds to unpredictable environmental stress. Exploration of current literature indicates that no satisfactory paradigm exists for dealing with these questions and that many basic philosophical and conceptual issues have not been resolved. Examples are: how to define living systems, what level in the hierarchy to examine, whether to use a holistic or reductionist approach. Such concepts as complexity, order, randomness, and organization have not been satisfactorily defined in the context of the above questions.

The cornerstone of the paradigm is to view living systems as the solution to the thermodynamic problem of maximizing the degradation of the incoming solar energy in a changing and unpredictable environment. Using a scenario based on Prigogine et al and Wicken's work it is argued that the solution to this problem is the development of systems (chemical factories) which are joined together in a supersystem. The supersystem degrades the incoming solar energy by producing and then breaking down molecular structures. The chemical factories have four common behaviors: a self-construction and death cycle, reproduction, evolution and adaptation.

 

The problem of maximizing energy degradation while maintaining an internally stable system which can survive in a changing and unpredictable environment places several conflicting pressures on the systems. Ecosystems, which are systems made up of primary producers and other inter-dependant components, would respond to these pressures through the development of components which tend to minimize their dissipation rates. Ecosystems therefore must increase energy degradation by increasing the number and types of components, rather than the rate of degradation of each individual component. An ecosystem grows through the introduction and reproduction of new components. The ecosystem evolves and adapts through changes in the interactions of the components.

 

In order to increase the degradation rate of the entire ecosystem as many of the components as possible should be in their early stages of development. This hypothesis leads to the conclusion that the components will be continually cycling through a growth, reproduction, death process. Because the predictability of the microenvironment of other components must be preserved, the reproductive process must produce offspring similar, from the perspective of the ecosystems, to the original components. This means that there must be some sort of pre-programming of the development process of the components. The components of ecosystems are living systems which share the same pre-programming and are the highest level in the system's hierarchy which spontaneously die. Together such living systems form a class called a species.

 

Two hypothesises about species are presented. The first is that an individual of the species will survive long enough to insure the survival of offspring to replace it. The second is that the species as a whole will maximize its contribution to the degradation of energy by producing as many offspring as possible, who will survive to reproduce. Each species represents a unique solution to the problem of surviving and reproducing in it's particular microenvironment. These two hypotheses define the goals of individuals and species.

 

For each set of environmental conditions there will exist at least one system optimum operating point, a point where the functioning of the system represents an optimum tradeoff between the goals driving the system. Self-organization is the process by which the system modifies its internal structure and function so as to move its operating point to the optimum operating point and maintain it there. Self-organization, as seen is this paradigm, is the response of living systems to thermodynamic and environmental pressures.

 

The process of self-organization makes use of information stored by the system about past pressures as well as information about current situation. Just how this is done is not clear, but the work of Saunders and Ho and Prigogine provide us with some clues and the indication that it is a stochastic process which is not restricted to the random mutation of genes. One thing is clear, the diversity of environmental pressures, both past and present, at the species level, would lead us to expect there to be many kinds of species present in a mature ecosystem.

 

Any analysis of self-organization must begin by identifying the system and its environment, the components of the system and their microenvironment, and the supersystem. The goals of the system, and the environmental factors which have an influence on the system's ability to reach these goals, must be identified. In the context of ecosystems, the paradigm allows these steps to be undertaken.

 

The next step is to identify the optimum operating point. Then an evaluation of the ability of the system to attain and maintain the optimum operating point can be carried out. Analysis of both stress-response and health involve two separate factors. The first is the change in, or desirability, of the optimum operating point. The second is the ability of the system to attain and maintain the optimum operating point in the given environmental situation. While the paradigm provides some insight into the qualitative and empirical aspects of the analysis, quantitative analysis awaits the development of mathematical measures of the thermodynamic functioning of ecosystems and the relationship between environmental factors, species behavior and the thermodynamics of ecosystems.

 

The development of a quantitative theory based on the paradigm presented here will not be easy. Much theoretical work remains before ecosystem thermodynamic measures can be developed. The science of thermodynamics is not adequate in its present form to deal with living systems. In particular the concepts of entropy, exergy, availability, and work need further development, perhaps using information theory, before they can be adequately applied to living systems. As well measures of available work and available nutrients in ecosystems must be constructed. Until this development is accomplished, it is impossible to build the required thermodynamic models of ecosystems and species.

 

Development of these concepts and measures are part of a more general problem in theoretical thermodynamics. (Kay 1984) This general problem centers on clarifying the relationship between information theory, statistical mechanics, and thermodynamics. Tribus (1961), Tribus, Shannon, Evans, (1966), Costa de Beauregard and Tribus (1974) and Jaynes (1963, 1965) have argued that statistical mechanics, the First and Second Laws of Thermodynamics, and the concepts of heat and work have their root in information theory rather than physics. Until these issues are settled it is difficult to generalize the concept of entropy sufficiently so that non-equilibrium thermodynamics can be applied directly to macroscopic systems.

 

These problems aside, attempts to validate (or rather more correctly invalidate) the hypotheses generated using the paradigm may have to wait a long time. The problem is that there is little consensus about which phenomena are actually exhibited by ecosystems. Also, the type of data required for thermodynamic models is scarce. Accumulating the empirical information required to resolve either of these problems might take decades.

 

However, several tests of the hypotheses are possible. Those phenomena which are generally accepted as being associated with ecosystem development and stress-response can be compared with the phenomena predicted by the hypotheses. Examples of the development/stress-response of specific ecosystems can be qualitatively examined for consistency with the hypotheses. Information Theory measures of ecosystem structure can be developed and specific predictions can be made and tested. (Kay 1984)

 

The paradigm, hypothesis and conceptual ideas presented in this paper provide some insight into the driving forces behind ecosystem development. In particular the role of the second law of thermodynamics is clarified. The conceptual problems associated with order, organization, complexity, stability, health and stress-response are dealt with. The philosophical dichotomy associated with the community vs. population and holistic vs. reductionist paradigms have been resolved. All these perspectives play a role in the paradigm presented here. In fact Regier and Rapport (1978) identify ten different approaches to examining ecosystems. Eight of these approaches are incorporated in the approach presented in this paper

 

This paper shows how ecologies organize in seeming violation to local entropy by seeking an explanation in self-organizing system inter-competitiveness/co-operation.

 

http://www.mdpi.org/fis2005/F.15.paper.pdf

 

Abstract: Conditions of applicability of the laws established for thermodynamic entropy do not necessarily fit to the entropy defined for information. Therefore, one must handle carefully the informational conclusions derived by mathematical analogies from the laws that hold for thermodynamic entropy.Entropy, and the arrow of its change are closely related to the arrows of the change of symmetry and of orderliness. Symmetry and order are interpreted in different ways instatistical thermodynamics, in symmetrology, and in evolution; and their relation toeach other is also equivocal. Evolution is meant quite different in statistical physicsand in philosophical terms. Which of the different interpretations can be transferred tothe description of information? Entropy, introduced by Shannon on mathematical analogy borrowed fromthermodynamics, is a mean to characterise information. One is looking for a possibly most general information theory. Generality of the sought theory can be qualified byits applicability to all (or at least the more) kinds of information. However, I express doubts, whether entropy is a property to characterise all kinds of information. Entropy plays an important role in information theory. This concept has been borrowed from physics, more precisely from thermodynamics, and applied toinformation by certain formal analogies. Several authors, having contributed to the FIS discussion and published papers in the periodical Entropy, emphasized the alsoexisting differences in contrast to the analogies. Since the relations of entropy - as applied in information theory - to symmetry are taken from its physical origin, there isworth to take a glance at the ambiguous meaning of this term in physics in its relation to order and symmetry, respectively.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

This paper seeks to address the contradictions that arise when the entropic functions in thermo-dynamics laws conflict with the inherent observed local concentrations of enthalpic inbalances(life) which defy straightforward direct one to one correspondence information theory analysis. Instead the authors argue that the intepretation of biological systems must take into account a special subset of conditions that fit the general paradign of information theory as applied to thermodynamics.

 

What free time I have goes into reading and testing any concept I come across. Now that doesn't mean that self-awareness is not "spiritual" or that there are not profound questions as to why we are here. But the how is rather straightforwardly physical and not that complicated or beyond our understanding.

 

Best wishes;

[Turtle]

A monomer is not necessarily thought as a crystal;

 

___I beg to differ; everything is representable by crytalline geometry.Structure is everything; shape is everything; geometry is everything; relational interconnectedness is everything . Whether your first principle is physical or metaphysical, it has geometry...it has form...it has pattern. The pattern of 'proofs' of the existence of God is the pattern of irreproduceability.

___Here is a suggested experiment: You bring your intelligent creator & a can of gas & I'll bring my fire suit & a can of gas & we'll pour the gas on each other & strike a match. :hyper: