Here is an informative little video by a guy named Steve Mould who does a lot of “science” videos on youtube. Its all (ostensibly) about how simple little processes can make “meaningful” structures from stochastic processes-and he uses magnetic shaped little parts to show this. Its a popular channeled followed by millions, and is often referenced by other famous people in the science community-and his fans love it.
And hey, it does show how meaningful structures CAN form from random processes. Right? So you can learn from this. Wink, wink. Nod, nod. And all the skeptics will know exactly what he is really saying. Cause we are all part of the clique that knows this language-the language of the skeptic propagandist. I mean, he almost hides it, the real message, it is just under the surface, and the less skeptically aware, the casualist, might even miss it. The casualist might not learn as much about Steve Mould and what he is trying to say here-but the skeptic knows. “See, atheism is true! Spread the word!” Steve has given the wink. The same wink used by DeGrasse Tyson, and Sean Carroll, Lawrence Krauss, Brian Greene, and on and on. You know the one.
And for 95% of his viewers, whether they know it or not, they got his message. I mean, look, its plain as day, right? He just showed you, that is certainly a meaningful structure that arose from random processes, isn’t it? Its defintely meaningful, its a, a, a , well, it’s shape that, we have a, a name for…that’s kind of…anyway, defintely random, I mean other than the magnets and the precut shapes, and the little ball with nothing else inside, and the shaking only until its just right then stopping kind of way…That’s random kind of right???
But there are 5% percent of his viewers that spotted his little wink and nod, and said, hold on a second. If you want us to believe that your little explanation about how simply life can form from nonsense without a plan, how blind exactly do you want us to be? 95%, they are hooked, you got them (Ryan StallardThere are so many creationist videos this obliterates. Especially 4:18.). But some likeGhryst VanGhod helpfully point out: “this is incorrect. the kinesin travels along fibres within the cell and takes the various molecules exactly where they need to be, they are not randomly “jumbling around in solution”. https://youtu.be/gbycQf1TbM0 ” and then you get to see a video that tells you just a few more of the things that are ACTUALLY happening which are even more amazing if you weren’t already skeptical (the real kind).
And if you go through some more of the comments you will notice a few more (real) skeptics, not the wink and nod kind, and you will start to notice why the wink nod propogandist skeptics everywhere you look in modern culture are a very puposefully designed cancer on knowledge and thought.
So is there an experiment? How was it conducted? What were the results? What conclusion flows from those results?
If if if. If my auntie had bollocks she’d be me uncle.
Look phoodoo, why don’t you just say what the purpose, goal, endgames and functions are? And it’s a big “if” Charlie. When it’s “when” wake us all up. The harder you look at PSI the less effect there is. It’s the same here.
It’s very amusing how you are so sure there is purpose but you are unable to say what that purpose is. And yet, despite that, you see it as a flaw for others not to also share that vision. Why don’t you just say what the purpose is? You might actually convince some people that way?
At least Behe was honest about the Intelligent Designer of malaria and what that means. But I doubt you even know what he said about that, Mr Know Nothing and proud of it.
I think a lot of this debate falls right into KN’s expertise. Much of the debate is concerned with the validity of “different ways of knowing.” But what is knowledge? Phoodoo “knows” that his god exists, beyond any doubt even in the bowels of Christ. Of course, his knowledge is backed by a combination of repeated assertion and devout conviction. Is that sufficient?
Coyne, now, seems to equate knowledge with tested observation. Assertions don’t count, belief doesn’t count, hypotheses don’t count, certainly cultural myths don’t count. And even tested observation only supports knowledge, hostage to the next test. In Coyne’s view, knowledge is conditional and “certain knowledge” cannot be achieved. Coyne seems to be saying that anything not determined as probably the case by applying the scientific method, is not knowledge. Even so, the scientific method is imperfect, so “scientific knowledge” still ain’t necessarily so. It’s just proven to be a hell of a lot better than Making Shit Up, Even though MSU sometimes lucks onto truth.
We need KN to tell us what knowledge is.
Yes, that’s good question. And I’m inclined to think that the philosophers have it wrong.
Yes, that’s probably right. But that phoodoo knows it does not imply that we should believe it. Knowing is a personal, subjective condition not an objective condition (in my opinion).
Yes, that does seem to be how Coyne understands knowledge. Yet there is probably a great deal that Coyne claims to know which isn’t actually tested observation.
Ontogeny and morphology are teleological; organisms have purposes and goals just as their metabolic processes and organ systems have functions. So there’s certainly a “final cause” for each individual organism, since there is an ultimate for-the-sake-of-which that explains why it does what it does: reproduction.
Does that answer your question?
Coyne strikes me as the sort who would put error bars over all such things.
Absolutely not, and you should know it doesn’t if you are being honest in the slightest.
First off, The FIRST defintion presented is design in nature. That’s what teleology is. Is that what you mean, there is design in nature?
Secondly we are not talking about each individual organism-that should be pretty clear. After all, I think we all already can agree that an individual can have a goal or a target. A bird can collect sticks for the goal of making a nest. No one is doubting this, so let’s not try to be silly. That is teleological, it has an end purpose. But you don’t really believe that all those books that you referenced which talked about teleology meant this now do you? You think they meant individual organisms can have teleogy? Why are you suddenly being so shy about what they meant? As shy as Rummy.
Thridly, you have now introduced a new concept-that all organisms have a goal to reproduce. Where does this “goal” come from? And what about all the organisms that DON’T reproduce? What about people who don’t have kids, they are not teleological, but other people are? They have no “final cause”. That makes sense to you?
But finally, you know full well that the concept of teleology in nature is talking about nature’s processes as a whole. Does that have a goal, a target, a cause? Because that’s what the books are saying. They aren’t saying beavers can build dams, or people can go shopping for gifts or plan a meal. Is this what you are going to teach in class, that teleology in nature exists because people buy Christmas trees for the purpose of celebrating Christmas?
Some humans certainly have goals, others less so . iIs the designer biological? Or something else? You say you can recognize design in stuff , can you also recognize the how the stuff was designed as well? Is design ongoing?
They certainly not in the league as Charles Berlitz .”Berlitz was a writer on paranormal phenomena. He wrote a number of books on Atlantis. In his book The Mystery of Atlantis, he claimed Atlantis was real, based on his interpretation of geophysics, psychic studies, classical literature, tribal lore, and archeology.He also attempted to link the Bermuda Triangle to Atlantis.He claimed to have located Atlantis undersea in the area of the Bermuda Triangle. He was also an ancient astronaut proponent who believed that extraterrestrials had visited Earth.”
That is my question as well, how does the designer instill that goal?
Isn’t that more a problem for design? Can something be designed with the goal of not having a goal?
velikovskys,
You seem to be sinking into new depths of meaninglessness that doesn’t appear to have a point whatsoever, other then (once again!) who is God and why is he so mean! As if that has any relevance to the topic.
Now you want to discuss a DIFFERENT author because, well this other guy said some things you don’t agree with. So?
“Omnipotent God, please take away all my choices, please take away all my responsibilities, I want to throw my children in the trash, shoot all my friends and it not matter to anyone, and go lay in a bed of sweet cream and do nothing that can ever hurt anyone, ever. You are doing omnipotence all wrong, don’t you see? I have the solution if you would just ask me! Why have you forsaken me!!!???”
Interesting , if Jesus was a real skeptic wouldn’t He be skeptical of His own claims ?
Kantian Naturalist,
Really I don’t see how your idea that because things reproduce, that this is teleology, and this is all anyone means, is any different than Flint’s water running downhill could be considered teleology.
Water being affected by gravity is not a final cause in any way you are going to try to use that phrase that others can agree on. What is different saying things reproduce? Or cold water freezes? These things could be teleology?
Don’t blame me ,I just trying to make sense of your theory of design. You seem mighty reluctant to put any meat on the bones . Or are you just too shy to answer questions?
The point is you seem act like design is the default, no details are necessary. It makes me wonder if you just incurious, that faith is enough or it is something else.
,
Hardly ,never gave it a thought . A God that inspires a story that He wiped out thousands of people and animals in a flood is surely capable of causing an old lady to slip on some ice and break her hip if she pissed Him off or if it fit His goals. Just because a God is a bit of an asshole , from our point of view , does not mean He doesn’t exist.
What interests me is ,how you think design works. You said design is obvious. What ,when , how , same questions other sciences try to answer . Since you are fascinated with teleology , what is the goals short and long term ?
How design achieves the teleological seems relevant .
You brought up the testimony of the those believe in the Bermuda Triangle as evidence . You asked if KN authors were crackpots , just answered your question , none compare to the testimony of Berlitz.
Is chaos the default theory when you see finely tuned, intricantly intertwined sytems that function? Is that what you would choose as the default if you saw a giant machine, with moving parts, and circuits, and oiled gears, if you didn’t know what the machine did? Your default would be chaos over time?
“Tis demonstrated that things cannot be otherwise; for, since everything is made for an end, everything is necessarily for the best end. Observe that noses were made to wear spectacles; and so we have spectacles. Legs were visibly instituted to be breeched, and we have breeches. Stones were formed to be quarried and to build castles; and My Lord has a very noble castle; the greatest Baron in the province should have the best house; and as pigs were made to be eaten, we eat pork all year round; consequently, those who have asserted all is well talk nonsense; they ought to have said that all is for the best.”
If you really insist on repeatedly imposing your personal theodicy on this audience, you might as well listen to its comments. Do you really believe that if God prevents a single additional act of evil, this will completely destroy all of men’s free will? If not, then this world does not have precisely the right amount of evil.
Apparently, you have chosen to accept that each and every act of evil in this world is absolutely necessary. Fine. What other people are trying to tell you is that to them, the amount of misery and suffering seems a bit on the excessive side just to teach us the difference between good and evil. You can continue to strawman that argument or not: it is the same to me. But I think it would look better if you just acknowledged the argument as valid, but unconvincing to you.
Corneel,
Ah, Dr Pangloss from Voltaire’s Candide.
(I looked it up)
Do you think if he did you would know? Maybe he already prevented 1,000,000 acts that you consider evil, and you and Jock still say he is doing it wrong. How would you know? You want 1 million and 1?
Hoist with his own petard.
What I was referring to is that the examples of archetypes that you bring up here closely mirror your perception of biodiversity (hence a “plant” archetype but never a “Polytrichum” archetype for example; apparently plants don’t interest you that much). Also, you tend to modify what archetypes look like during discussions. I recall that at some point you claimed archetypes were hierarchically nested, just like a phylogenetic tree, to accommodate this observed pattern. Correct me if I am wrong, but that does not come from Goethe I don’t think. These are both indications that “archetypes” is a completely imaginary concept and that it will never result in us learning something we didn’t already know.
You misunderstand. I am not a Christian so the problem of evil does not concern me. As far as I am concerned, all acts of evil are committed by humans, none are necessary, and so I tolerate absolutely zero of them. Also, I do not care how you, personally, resolve the problem of evil. If you think that the amount of evil in this world is exactly right, then fine: Good for you.
But if you bother to present and defend your argument here, you might as well take the opportunity to take counterarguments seriously. There are other resolutions of the problem of evil and if I were a believer I would not have chosen yours.
Perhaps he’s a skeptic after all?
Corneel,
What you (and Jock ) have suggested was that if there really was a great God, then he would have prevented some of the evils in the world (but not all, your argument now goes). Thus, because God didn’t prevent some of those evils, then that must mean there is no great God.
In order to make this argument (which I have already suggested why it is so bad-but let’s go with it) you have to then show that that is in fact the case. But you can’t do that. You can’t even say he hasn’t prevented some evils. INSTEAD what you say is, THERE ARE STILL SOME BAD THINGS, SO…..
So your argment goes right back to the same silly point. If there are ANY evils, there must not be a God. And we must mean ANY. Because less apparently still would not count-because as far as you know, we already have less. So it is either all evil is gone, all bad things are gone, or there is no compassionate good God that created the world.
Your argument rests on there being ZERO bad things. That makes it a weak argument. If it doesn’t rest on there being zero bad things, then you have to say how many bad things does it rest on?
No, my argument rests on there being far more bad things than are strictly required to sustain free will. This is also how I understood the objection made by others.
Let me also emphasize once again that I am not arguing against your faith. If you are happy with your solution, than so am I.
Well then how many would that be? Do I have free will to punch someone else? To stab them? In your argument, can someone punch a kid in their nose and disfigure them? Can you trip an old lady, or steal her wallet? What happens if you try, God comes down and grabs your fist just before hit contacts their nose? But that will still be free will?
This is where the “if there was a God, why…” people fail at their argument. They can’t ever describe what stopping some bad things, but allowing some looks like. They have this idea of limited free will that they can never explain.
We must not forget that phoodoo is on record as someone who believes the concentration camps in China are full of people who deserve to be there.
phoodoo is actively increasing the amount of evil in the world. So I guess he does not believe either that there is the right ratio of good:evil or he’d not be trying to hard to increase the evil side….
Corneel,
You know the details matter, you can’t just brush them away and say some vague , “It should be better, but I don’t know how” hand wave.
Because its the details of the world as we know it know that you are comparing it to. You are bringing up cases of where you say bad things happen, but you can’t give any real details about the alternative.
For Christians , Heaven is an alternate design.
velikovskys,
Ok, so you are going to diverge from Corneel and his “world less evil but still some evil” scenario then?
I get that . Where does free will come into the mix, wouldn’t that add an instability to a finely tuned machine if the parts could chose not to perform ? Or even destroy the machine ?
Interesting question, I guess if we accept the premise the universe is the the result of a single intelligent designer, it would depend of the knowledge and skills and goals and choices of that designer. Humans and their concerns may be inconsequential. In which case more or less evil is a meaningless metric .Then again the designer could view humans as something useful in the design. That is the problem with design theory , without faith in a particular version of the designer there are lots of possibilities.
Yes, it would. You would be free to try to punch an old lady on the nose, or rape a child, but you would fail. Personally, I am a fan of debilitating brain aneurysms in these situations.
You are claiming that God not letting you complete the rape of a child would be a denial of your free will. Strangely, though, you are free to try to fly through the sun, yet God denies you the opportunity to complete this action. How is this not a denial of your free will?
[I predict phoodoo’s answer will make his God less than Omnipotent, or strangely ineffable]
Nobody here is claiming that it is impossible to have a world with even MORE suffering in it. We are merely pointing out that the amount we observe seems a bit much for the stated aim of allowing free will. In particular, the suffering unrelated to ethical choices seems excessive.
If by “the books” you are referring to the books I had mentioned earlier (here), not a single one of them talks about “design in nature”.
None of them suggest that there’s some purpose or goal for all of nature.
They are all talking about how to understand nature as containing things that have goals — namely, living things.
Let’s not put people in concentration camps? Your deity had no problem in the past making personal appearances to change things it did not like. So what’s the difference now? Why does your god not come down and smite the concentration camp guards?
Are you one of those guards?
That sort of makes phoodoo a liar! And we know he has far far too much honour to allow that to happen.
But wait just a second….
I may have overstated the case but I was making the point that their intention was to change the electrical gradients through manipulating the ion channels and gap junctions. They could deliberately alter the facial topography of the organism. And just as this requires human intelligence, normal development requires the cells to have a collective intelligence. Normal development can be altered with severe consequences by knocking out single genes, but what does this tell us? I can drastically change the function of my TV set by removing a fuse. This is a long way off from understanding the intelligence built in to the set.
How many genes need to be orchestrated to produce one ion channel let alone ensure it operates in a cooperative way? As Levin demonstrated with oncogenes, normal development of form requires collective intelligence.
When they rearranged the face of a tadpole they found that the resulting adult frog regained its normal pattern. What explanation is there for this? Levin’s work brings up a lot of difficult questions for those who hold a gene centred view of development and evolution.
Yes I do see that. So I’ll listen to any criticism you care to give about the methods, data and results. His experiments are not about any single earth shattering demonstration. He is building a statistical picture of extremely subtle effects that participants are being asked to produce. What they are being asked to do takes a great deal of mental effort and concentration.
Whether or not any results are earth shattering depends on one’s world view.
And yet useful ‘understanding’ can be obtained that is sufficient to do useful work without any true understanding at all.
For example gpt2 is a software construct that ‘understands’ many things. You can annotate it’s understanding with a domain specific set of knowledge but by default it comes out of the box with a level of understanding that allows it to do useful work in a domain traditionally limited to conscious beings.
For example:
If we take that as the starting point we get this:
Check it out here: https://app.inferkit.com/demo
There are plenty other gpt2 demos out there. And all it did was ‘remove a fuse’ over and over again to obtain that ‘understanding’ that people are actually using to e.g. create or edit content.
It’s genes all the way down in the same way that letters and words are at the bottom of any Shakespearean play. The words of Shakespearean plays resemble each other more that the words of a play by Goethe.
Does the mind of Shakespeare seem like an unnecessary layer of explanation when studying the format of the play, “Hamlet”?
What data, methods and results? Is there a published paper we can discuss?
Oh good , a few details are starting to finally leak out. In a God liked design world, according to Jock, you wouldn’t be able to punch old people. Or maybe Jock means you only wouldn’t be able to punch old ladies, you could still punch old men-so Jock perhaps isn’t totally heartless after all.
I guess its brain anyeurisms for everyone who tries. Of course maybe that is what happens already, maybe the people who have brain anyeurisms were thinking of punching someone-and that’s why they got them. So we could already be in Jock’s theoretical world. Oh, but no we can’t because some children can still be abused. So no children abused , but after 17 woman can be abused and raped, because Jock claims he doesn’t want to rid the world of all evil things, just some (again, this is Jock’s view of Godworld, remember).
So to conclude, if a great God existed and made this world, you could cheat on your wife and break her heart, you could beat up your neighbors as long as they aren’t old ladies, rape is fine, as long as its not kids, children can get sick and die (but you can’t cause it), but you can refuse to feed your children and give them heroin, because again, Jock doesn’t want to make you live a sealed world where NOTHING bad can happen, he has already said this, only SOME bad things can’t happen.
So see God, THIS is how you do omnipotence-you make a world of philandering husbands who rape and pillage and give heroin to kids, but if anyone touches those kids, brain anyeurisms (although I guess you can still beat the kids, Jock hasn’t ruled that out either. Remember, he only wants LESS evil, not zero evil). Its so simple, why haven’t you asked Jock how to do it??
Is putting people in concentration camps without even a perfunctory trial:
a) good
b) neutral
c) evil
?
Do you, phoodoo, want a world with
a) more
b) the same
c) less
amount of evil in it?
In a system where everybody has personal autonomy enforced by some mechanism (personal security robots, an all seeing AI that stops crimes in progress or whatever you might imagine a future society comes up with if it still contains such problems) would seem to solve most of the issues you raise.
Husbands would be free to philander, but not to rape and pillage and give heroin to kids (their protective agents will disallow that).
So it seems a society with a few robots per person can give the entire freedom that an individual could ask for unless and until it conflicts with somebody else’s freedom. Issues such as fidelity are excluded from that purely physical domain.
At some point something like this will happen. There are already AI tools that can identify what is happening in a given scene for example and take appropriate action.
Children will continue to get sick and die, until we have a full(er) understanding of biology, again likely helped along by that selfsame AI I mentioned earlier. Until all disease is eliminated and death becomes an individual’s choice.
Then it seems we’d have achieved the thing that you seem to think is impossible, so impossible that your deity is unable to do it. A society where there is free will but you are unable to enforce your will on another physically. In such a world what happens to all the important ‘lessons’ you seen to think that such physical pain is teaching us?
So society will likely eventually stop being like you think it has to be in order for us to progress. What then for your viewpoint?
Mother Teresa thought like you, that pain brought people closer to god. She denied them painkillers. She took them herself at the end. What does that tell me? That she was just like you phoodoo…..
I just did. And I’ve said more or less the same before which you even acknowledged previously with something like “now you are getting it”. I can no doubt find that and I likely will as it’ll be vastly amusing to have you contradict yourself only using your own words. Stay tuned.
That’s the trouble with people like you. Your quoted claim above is just like all your other claims – it does not matter to you if it’s true or not. That people do and have explained their idea of limited free will to your does not change your desire to continue to claim that nobody has. It’s a general attitude to evidence that allows you to be an ID supporter in the first place.
Well, He is Omniscient, so He already knows. And Omnipotent, so He already can. It’s a little awkward that someone with OMagain’s finite intellect can come up with a workable solution, but your weak-ass Deity cannot.
For testing His children’s ethics, I would be fine with the existence of queue-jumping, as I have explained previously. So the antics of Pol Pot and Hitler seem a mite gratuitous. And you never explained why your Tri-Omni Deity finds Sanfilippo Syndrome worthy of inclusion.
I find the concept of Omnipotence incoherent.
This problem was posed long ago: Can god make a rock so heavy he can’t lift it? If he’s omnipotent, then yes he can make a rock too heavy for him to lift, but yes, he can lift it anyway, because he can do anything.
Omnipotence is inherently self-contradictory.
Flint,
I am puzzled that phoodoo should be so unaware of basic concepts in theology. All those references to Voltaire are just whooshing over his head.
I am not surprised, mind you.
Sure I can. I never claimed to be able to create a perfect world. But I don’t need Divine insight to see that the current world is so full of misery and suffering that we would have plenty of opportunity to learn about evil if it were reduced to only a tiny fraction of the current amount.
Whereas those postulating the influence of invisible formative fields outside of time and space will have no problem explaining how the correct species-specific bio-electric pattern is set up in an embryo, and certainly don’t need to be asked three times before answering.
Back in my Catechism days. omnipotence was defined as the ability to do anything that is logically possible .