Since scientists have not been able to prove or even logically explain the origins of life (abiogenesis) by natural, unguided, gradual processes often referred to as the bottom-up approach, it is conceivable to imply that the process of life origins on Earth could be scientifically explained by the design and creation process often referred to as the top-down approach.The top-down approach is sometimes used by scientists in attempts of recreation of small life forms, like a eukaryotic cell.
I will however apply the top-down approach to the process of the designing and creating of human life Intelligent Designer or God (ID/God) could have used.
In other words, the top-down approach is the only conceivable way of the designing and creating life as even in case of the simplest of cells all organelles and functional structures of a cell have to be present, and at the same time, as they are mutually interdependent, including the cell membrane, for it to function or be alive or stay alive. Without the cell membrane or one of the structures or organelles, the cell stops functioning and eventually dies.
In an attempt to explain how the process of the designing and creating of life could have been achieved by ID/God, I will use the illustration some naturalistic, evolutionary scientists often use to try to explain the process of evolution of life often called descent with modifications, where they refer to an “evolution” or change of one model of the car over the many years.
Since this process itself doesn’t explain how the original car appeared in the first place by slow, unguided processes, (bottom-up) I will use it as an example of what kind of planning, engineering, integration and manufacturing would be necessary for a car to “appear” in the first place, before it could go through the further gradual processes of “descent with modification” or changes over time.
Then I will apply the same methods and principles to the process of the designing and creating of life.
The designer comes up with a general idea and structure for a car and its function
- The designer decides what functional systems would be necessary for the car to work according to the design
- Then the designer decides how the individual parts need to work and be integrated into functional systems and functional systems into functional car
- The designer decides what materials need to be manufactured, such as steel, aluminum, copper, plastic, electrical wires, fabrics etc. for the individual parts to be manufactured he is going to use in order for the functional systems to be assembled, such as an engine, transmission, chassis the body/frame, source of energy and so on
- Once the design has been experimented with the integration of all the individual parts into systems and systems into the functional car, the final blueprint of the car is ready. The final manufacturing process of all the parts can begin
Then, all the parts can be assembled into functional systems and the functional systems into a functional car - The car has been assembled and is ready to function according to the design
Then the designer turns on the ignition, puts into the first gear, then he puts his foot on the accelerator and the car moves - The idea for a car has become reality. It functions according to the initial idea and the design
Let’s look closer at the materials, such as steel, copper, fabrics, wires etc. They are made of smaller elements; really tiny pieces of stuff. Actually, on subatomic level, they are made up of 3 ingredients: protons, neutrons and electrons.
As a matter fact, as far as we know, the whole matter in the universe is made of protons, neutrons and electrons.
The same applies to life, including human body. Life and human body on subatomic level is made of 3 ingredients: protons, neutrons and electrons.
And this is very important information because on this very fact my whole theory as to How ID/God created life is based.
Just like the car, human body is made of or built of many functional systems, like circulatory system, nervous system, lymphatic system, bones, veins, and so on.
Human body systems are made of integrated organs.
Those organs are made of different types of tissues.
Tissues are made of different types of cells (about 200 types of cells).
Cells are made of different organelles – organized or specialized structures within the living cell. Most types of cells share the same organelles or specialized structures within a living cells but other cells do not. Some of the organelles carry DNA, which is necessary for the process of reproduction of the living organism that non-living things, like a cars, don’t obviously have.
Organelles are made of macromolecules, like carbohydrates, lipids, amino acids, proteins and so on.
Macromolecules are made of chemical elements, like carbon, hydrogen, oxygen and so on.
Chemical elements are made of atoms.
Atoms are made of subatomic elements like protons, neutrons and electrons.
And, as I mentioned earlier, just like the car, on subatomic level is made of protons, neutrons and electrons, so is human body and all life on the Earth.
(Quarks are, as far as we know, the smallest pieces of stuff. There are 6 different types of quarks, and different combinations produce different types of subatomic particles like protons. For simplicity and clarity, I’ll focus on the 3 ingredients or building blocks of all matter: protons, neutrons and electrons as it is just easier to follow what I’m trying to convey.)
If I missed a step or more in the structure of what the human body and life is made of, feel free to correct it but this is not really that important now…
Life and human body on subatomic level are built of only 3 ingredients: protons, neutrons and electrons. While this might be mind-boggling if you think about how complex human body is, especially human brain, this is actually true as far as science has revealed it so far.
While the composition of life and human body is based on the 3 subatomic elements protons, neutrons and electrons, how life and human body function is based on how the three elemental building blocks of life (protons, neutrons and electrons) interact with each other or what their quantum state is; what their interactions or relations are.
Quantum state is simply something that encodes or translates the state of a system; how protons, neutrons and electrons interact with each other to form a state of a system. Behind each quantum state is the information that expresses the quantum state of the subatomic particles.
Here is the most interesting part about quantum state and quantum mechanics (science that is a part of physics) that deals with the mathematical description of the motion and interaction of subatomic particles.
According to quantum mechanics any quantum state of protons, neutrons and electrons that form a system or systems can be transferred or teleported due to quantum entanglement (predicament of subatomic particles) from one place to another, without traveling through any physical medium.
Scientists have already successfully teleported photons, which are particles of light as well as small pieces of matter across a short distance.
And this is the most essential part of my theory.
Since scientists have successfully teleported particles and small pieces of matter, who says that humans could not be teleported in the future? While human teleportation is still in theory today, it may very well become reality in the future. It has not been proven wrong at least mathematically.
Let’s just focus on the possibilities of human teleportation.
Since a picture is worth a thousand words here are some videos that explain how quantum teleportation of humans could work:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nQHBAdShgYI
I personally like this video at 40 minute mark:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Z8Ma2YT8vY
So, human teleportation in theory seems possible. Whether it will be possible in the future it remains to be seen.
NEXT
So you may wonder; how does human teleportation, whether possible or not in the future, relate to the theme of my post: How did the ID/God create life?
Well, I think it does.
As you may recall on the outset of my post, just like any car is built in the top-down process starting with an idea/design, blueprint etc. all the way down to the elements that are made of subatomic particles, so could human body starting with its blueprint all the way down to the elements that are made subatomic particles; protons, neurons and electrons.
How that could have been done in reality by ID/God, the possibility of human quantum teleportation sheds some light on that.
For human body to be teleported–transferred from one place to another, without actually traveling through any physical medium–the quantum state of each of the subatomic particles that make up the human body to be teleported would have to be extracted (scanned or analyzed) and then teleported or sent exactly to the designated location where the human body is supposed to “arrive” and to be reassembled.
In quantum teleportation, the subatomic particles that make up the original human body are NOT literary sent. No. It’s the information about their quantum state that is sent thanks to the laws of quantum mechanics called quantum entanglement.
Wikipedia–Quantum entanglement is a physical phenomenon that occurs when pairs or groups of particles are generated or interact in ways such that the quantum state of each particle cannot be described independently of the others, even when the particles are separated by a large distance—instead, a quantum state must be described.
QE video link???
For human quantum teleportation to happen, 2 entangled chambers containing subatomic particles, protons, neutrons and electrons are needed. The first chamber will act as a “sending chamber” and the second as a” receiving or reassembling chamber”.
Then, a third chamber will be needed that will act as a body scanner or fax machine that will be interacting with the “sending chamber”, while compering the quantum states of each particle that the human body to be teleported is made of.
The process of quantum teleportation involves the scanning or extracting the quantum state of each of the subatomic particles (protons, neurons and electrons) that the body to be teleported is made of and sending it to the receiving chamber that is entangled with the sending chamber.
Because the particles in the “sending chamber” are entangled with the particles in the “receiving chamber”, the “receiving chamber” reads the quantum state of each particles that was extracted from the human body in the scanning chamber and reassembles it into the exact quantum state or the exact human body composition that it was before being teleported.
In quantum teleportation, the subatomic particles that make up the original human body are not sent. It’s the information about their quantum state that is sent thanks to the laws of quantum mechanics called quantum entanglement.
Since according to quantum mechanics, life on the subatomic level equals the quantum state of each the subatomic particles that make up the life form, there should be no difference between the human body that was alive in the scanning chamber and the reassembled human body that is now alive in the receiving chamber.
Since according to quantum mechanics you can’t create 2 exactly the same quantum states of an object, in quantum teleportation you can’t teleport an object without destroying in the process.
Actually, you can’t extract the quantum state of the object to be teleported without destroying it in the process of scanning it.
While there may be some philosophical implications (depending on one’s beliefs on soul and consciousness) that would have to be answered about the process of human quantum teleportation (I can try to answer them later) let’s just focus on the implications that the possibility of human quantum teleportation presents us with when it comes to the process of creation of human life.
While still in theory, human quantum teleportation seems possible, could the human quantum teleportation be done by the ID/God who created the universe and physical laws that govern quantum mechanics and make human quantum teleportation seem possible?
Let’s just ponder this for a moment: Scientist have already teleported small pieces of matter. Could the creator of matter and the physical laws that make quantum teleportation possible teleport bigger pieces of matter?
How about quantum teleportation of a piece of matter that is alive? Is it possible? Would it be feasible for ID/God who knows every detail about quantum mechanics and quantum entanglement that make quantum teleportation possible, including human teleportation?
And if ID/God is able to teleport matter that is alive, like human body, could he have used the same method, the laws that govern quantum mechanics that he created, like quantum entanglement to create life in the top-down approach rather than bottom-up, like abiogenesis or evolution?
Without answering this question now, let’s assume that ID/God could use the physical laws of quantum mechanics, like quantum entanglement and quantum teleportation to create life on Earth, including humans.
Let’s see how that could have been accomplished considering what we have discussed so far about quantum mechanics, quantum entanglement and quantum teleportation.
As I said before, according to quantum mechanics, life on subatomic level equals the many quantum states of subatomic particles-protons, neurons and electrons.
In other words, the composition of life is dependent on the information about the many different quantum states of the particles that form the life form, including human life.
As I mentioned earlier, for human quantum teleportation to happen, 2 chambers with entangled particles protons, neutrons and electrons are needed, as well as a scanning device or chamber that compares the quantum state of particles making up the human body to be teleported with the particles found in one of the entangled chambers that will act as the sending chamber.
The sending chamber containing with subatomic particles protons, neutrons and electrons entangled with the particles in the receiving chamber
The receiving chamber with subatomic particles – protons, neurons and electrons that are entangled with the sending chamber
The scanning device or chamber that acts like a scanner or a fax machine that interacts with the sending chamber and extracts the quantum state of the particles making up the human body to be teleported.
Let’s now apply what has been mentioned so far about the possibilities that quantum mechanics, quantum entanglement and quantum teleportation present us with to the process of creating life.
Could the laws of physics, like quantum mechanics, that govern the universe have been use by ID/ God to create life on earth including humans?
As I mentioned on the outset, the process of the designing and manufacturing the car involves the top-down approach. First an idea for a car, the blueprint, the design of different systems that would make up the car, the parts that would make up the functioning systems, the materials that would be used to manufacture the parts, the elements that the materials would be manufactured from and at the end of top-down method are the subatomic particles that make up the elements that the whole car is made of or built with.
In reality however the whole structure of the car and its function is dependent on the quantum state of the 3 subatomic particles protons, neutrons and electrons. And while in theory today, because of laws of quantum mechanics, the whole car could also be teleported using quantum teleportation method of the 3 chambers mentioned earlier. Scientists have already teleported small pieces of matter. Is it just a matter of time before they teleport bigger, larger ones?
A car to be teleported would have to be scanned in the scanning chamber for the quantum state or the many arrangements of the 3 particles it is made of and reconstructed exactly at the receiving chamber that is entengled with the sending chamber that interacts with the scanning chamber.
???video car teleportation???
Let’s focus now on the creation process of life and humans.
Similarly to the process of the designing and manufacturing the car, the ID/ God comes up with an idea for human life (having already experimented with simpler life forms that had been created before human life); human body and its function.
Starting with a blueprint, first he decides what the human body is going to look like and function, what functional systems are going to be the part of the functioning human, like circulatory system, nervous system, lymphatic system, bones, veins etc. and obviously the reproductive system.
Then he decides what organs are going to be integrated into body systems.
Then he decides on the many different types of tissues that those different organs are going to be made of to perform their many functions.
Then he decides on the many different types of cells (about 200 types of cells) that those tissues are going to be made of.
Then he decides on the many different types of spricialised structures like organelles – organized or specialized structures within the living cell – that the many different types of cells are going to be made of
Then he decides what macromolecules, like carbohydrates, lipids, proteins etc. are going to be used to make up those specialized structures (organelles).
Microelements are made of chemical elements, like carbon, hydrogen, oxygen etc.
The elements, like carbon, hydrogen and oxygen and so on are made of atoms.
Atoms are made of subatomic elements or particles, like protons, neutrons and electrons.
And, as I mentioned earlier, just like a car on subatomic level is made of protons, neutrons and electrons, so is human body and all life on Earth.
Those 3 subatomic particles form all matter in the universe including all known life, like human life.
However, what makes the existence of matter and life possible are the many different quantum states (arrangements) of those 3 subatomic particles or how they interact with each other.
Now, the ID/God has the final blueprint and the design of human body ready.
Now using the same laws of physics that make quantum teleportation possible he encodes (using a big, big efficient quantum computer?) the exact information about the many different quantum states of each of the 3 subatomic particles to form the fundamental elements of the human body like carbon, hydrogen, hydrogen etc. He arranges the many different quantum states of those 3 particles to form a functional human body according to the original blueprint and design.
The process of encoding the information about the many different quantum states into the 3 subatomic particles of life involves foreknowledge and foresight as to how the human body is going to function in the end.
This knowledge requires that the final integration of all systems be encoded in the top-down approach that fully functional human body that is alive is dependent on all functional systems and subsystems that are all present or it can’t function or be alive just like a cell mention earlier.
In other words, the ID/God knows exactly what the entire final quantum state (information) the human body would have to be in for it to function or be alive. So, he encodes this information exactly for the many different quantum states that protons, neurons and electrons would have to be in order to interact with each other to form the many of their quantum states for the elements to form, macromolecules and so on…then the fully functional systems and then he integrates systems to form life and the human body that is alive.
Once all the information about the quantum state of each individual part of the human body is encoded, the process of human creation can begin using the same method that applies to quantum teleportation with one exception of the scanning device or chamber, since no physical human body exists yet to be scanned. It needs to be assembled or materialized first based on the information that has been encoded by ID/God.
In order to create (assemble) the exact human body based on the final quantum state it needs to be in, all the ID/ God needs to do is encode the sending chamber or send the information directly about the quantum state of each of the many particles that the human body is going to be made of.
Just like in quantum teleportation,
the sending chamber (interacts) is encoded with information from the scanning device or chamber about the quantum state of each of the particles the human body to be teleported and reassembled in the receiving chamber,
in human body creation, the sending chamber is encoded directly by ID/God with information about the quantum state of each of the many particles of the human body to be created in the receiving chamber.
The rest of the process of the creation of the human body remains the same as in the quantum teleportation process mentioned earlier.
Based on the information about the quantum state the human body needs to be in to be created, thanks to quantum entanglement, the receiving chamber reconstructs the quantum state of each of the particles based on the information the sending chamber was encoded with or received directly by ID/God.
The human body creation has been accomplished thanks to the possibilities of quantum mechanics, quantum entanglement and quantum teleportation.
So, the process of creation of life, including human life, would involve the already known process that quantum mechanics allows in the quantum teleportation due to quantum entanglement of particles, which is dependent on the information about their many, many quantum states those particles can be arranged into.
(Another possibility would be for ID/God to encode or send the information about the quantum state of each of the particls to form the humand body directly to the receiving/assembling chamber but because scientist can’t do that yet, the more reasonable approach is the use of quantum entagled chambers.)
Use 1 only
Is there evidence or a clue that the process of creation of life (by top-down approach) on Earth including human life that quantum mechanics allows could have been used by ID/God?
Are there any clues that ID/God used the top-down method in the creation of life on Earth, like human life using already existing laws of physics like quantum mechanics?
Let’s see.
The biblical account of creation in the book of genesis tells us that God created life including human life out of the dust of the ground. The Hebrew word for “dust” in Genesis 2:7 is aphar can be translated as clay, earth, mud, ashes, earth, ground, mortar, powder.
How would you describe the process of creation of human life to men few thousand years ago involving quantum mechanics or the many quantum states of subatomic particles forming human body? Would you describe it in the terms physicists use today to explain quantum mechanics? I doubt that.
So, to describe the process of creation that would involve the many quantum states of subatomic particles forming human body to simple man few thousand years ago or even few hundred, the word dust or clay could be appropriately used since all the elements necessary to form human body are available in the ground of the earth. It seem that only 11 major elements are necessary for life.
Wikipedia “Almost 99% of the mass of the human body is made up of six elements: oxygen, carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, calcium, and phosphorus. Only about 0.85% is composed of another five elements: potassium, sulfur, sodium, chlorine, and magnesium. All 11 are necessary for life. The remaining elements are trace elements, of which more than a dozen are thought on the basis of good evidence to be necessary for life. All of the mass of the trace elements put together (less than 10 grams for a human body) do not add up to the body mass of magnesium, the least common of the 11 non-trace elements.”
All these elements are found in the Earth’s crust.
Now, once all the necessary elements were “formed” (the many quantum states of the subatomic particles have been encoded) into the human body, something would have to be needed to make those elements form a living thing or living human body. The account from genesis definitely implies that.
Other translations ??G, of enesis 2:7
“God formed the man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being”.
So, just like the designer of the car tuned on the ignition and applied the source of energy for all the systems to start to function, like to start the engine for the car to function, so did the ID/God to make the human body become alive applied the energy sustained by breathing for human body to function.
John Harshman,
Fair enough, and I would expect you to return the same courtesy. Design rules are standards that guide designs. In the semiconductor world 20 nano meter line widths is a design rule. This allows designs to be leveraged across industries.
The claim is the existence of design rules in nature is evidence of design.
The evidence in biology is overwhelming today seen as evidence for common descent. On the other hand, the evidence is also for design rules hence the debate. Atoms and molecules also follow a set of design rules. If they did not our PC’s we are communicating with would not function.
colewd,
Why do you think it’s more plausible for an immaterial God to poof a physical information stream into existence, destined for a teleportation receiver, than it is for him to manipulate atoms?
In either case a non-physical entity is manipulating the physical. You have no explanation for how that is possible. It’s just magic.
colewd,
This is hopelessly confused. Atoms and molecules are not designers following design rules.
You have trouble with the simplest of concepts, Bill.
So what? Why is the repeatable behavior of atoms an indication of design? You make tons of assertions like this, but nothing by way of logic or evidence is provided in support.
Don’t you get tired of just claiming this, wouldn’t you want to actually show why it implies design?
This only seems useful if there were multiple designers or the tools used for design were standardized. Are you saying organisms that do not seem to have the same design rules are evidence of non-design?
So what? Why is any of this an indication of design? Why is it not the product of evolution? Again, it’s just lots of vague hints. There’s not even any argument here. You just list a bunch of bare factoids and then… what? Where is the connection?
Oh and, snow flakes store water? lolwut?
Why? How do you know we were the intended consequence, if electrons and protons were designed? How do you know the designer doesn’t just like large empty spaces with dilute gases and ionizing radiation in it?
And if you think we are part of the “end-game” of protons and electrons, aren’t you conceding that the blind material forces that govern the behavior of matter allows life to evolve all by itself?
What window is that? Support this assertion. Like all the others you make. You just sit there and make claims but offer nothing else about why you make them.
Okay, then support that claim. Now you’ve made it, the time has come to support it.
That makes no sense whatsoever. In what way does the evidence for common descent imply “design rules”?
You keep calling the physical forces “design rules”, yet offer nothing in support of the claim.
The first rule of intelligent design is: beg the question. The rule that rules them all
It seems to me as if colewd wants to say that the equations that describe the behavior of quantum systems are no different that the social conventions used by engineers.
That seems . . . confused.
That doesn’t seem to fit the definition of “design rules” that you just provided. I see nothing in nature I would describe as a design rule by your definition.
No, the evidence for common descent can’t rationally be interpreted as a set of design rules. Of course, you are quite unfamiliar with that evidence, unable to evaluate it, unable to understand papers that provide that evidence. We’ve seen that in your failure to understand both my paper and Theobald’s.
Nor do I see what design rules you imagine atoms and molecules follow, or what design rules have to do with functional PCs. I think there are a great many steps and assumptions in your reasoning that you fail to mention, and probably even to see.
newton,
If I were to examine two integrated circuits and measured the line with, looked at the architecture of the transistor and measured the output voltages and got the same values I would believe they shared the same design rules.
In semiconductor design the rules will change every generation as line widths shrink to atomic levels. The same designer will use different design rules over time. I think that your point is right. If we looked inside atoms and observed differences in charged particles then this would be evidence against design. If we looked at DNA and saw different nucleotides in different animal types or a different mechanism for translating DNA then this, again, would be evidence against design.
What is extraordinary is that we can build anything in the Universe with protons, neutrons and electrons.
Rumraket,
pre wiki
This variation exists with a current population of 7 billion people in populations all over the world. Is there enough variation being generated to cause a real speciation event?
Since the difference between humans and chimps is only about 1%, yah, probably.
Why? If the designer is responsible for the charged particles in an atom, why would any variation be evidence against design? You don’t make any sense.
Again, why? Your argument makes no sense at all.
I guess the New ID Argument is that it’s evidence of intelligent design that the world exhibits any regularity and orderliness at all and isn’t just pure random chaos that arbitarily changes from moment to moment.
Reality is not complely and utterly insane, therefore God.
Or something.
It seems to be an argument from constraint. But of course there are many sources of constraint, and they don’t all need to be chosen. Common descent for example. If you derive your nucleotides from ancestors, there is not the latitude available in other scenarios for variation in sampled descendants. It’s no good looking to ‘common design’ as a viable alternative to common descent on this basis, as the unlamented Joe G was wont to do. There are many problems with it, but the one here is most germane: you can’t use something which is an expectation of A to argue against A. Especially if it’s more an expectation of A than B.
So, if we looked at different computers, and some used different programming languages, that would be evidence against their having been designed?
Seems oddly like what actual designers might do, in fact. As demonstrated by what actual designers do, rather than the “let’s define as designed what we want to be designed” school of “design detection.”
Glen Davidson
You are using terms you don’t understand. Mere variation, no matter how great, doesn’t result in speciation. Generally, a long period of geographic isolation is also necessary. Your source is wrong, by the way; different humans are on average 99.9% similar, but every possible point mutation happens multiple times every generation, somewhere in the current population.
I suggest reading Speciation, by Jerry Coyne and H. Allen Orr, if you want to know something about the subject.
So you have gone from not seeing design at all to not being sure if something is designed.
Are you saying that the pufferfish sand sculpture is produced by more than unintelligent mechanical processes of physics and chemistry?
We don’t need to infer it, we witness it being created by the puffer fish? If that pattern had been designed in an art studio we would infer intelligent design.
Yes and I was arguing against a specific claim you made.
In fact I agree with you about inferring the design of life in general. It is one thing to come to the conclusion that a bacterial flagellum is designed to provide locomotion or that an eagle’s wing is designed to make use or aerodynamic forces, but when there is speculation about the design of life or humans as a whole, it is easy to slip into the belief that God is exactly the same as a human designer only on a grand scale, as in the subject of this thread. This is just the result of materialistic thinking.
If God is somehow teleporting humans across space, where from? And why would he need to if he is not within space and time?
That’s because we have a background knowledge of art studios, who work there, and the type of designs they do. We wouldn’t just infer “intelligent design”, we would infer human design, perhaps some rendering technique, even the particular studio.
We have no such background knowledge of how any divine entities go about “designing” anything
And, unsurprisingly, when a fish “designs” that pattern we infer that it is not the result of intelligent design.
See how evidence works?
Glen Davidson
Back to Deism.
All this arguing about stuff that can’t be decided is simply about whether we cease to exist as sentient beings when we die.
Everything else is just window dressing.
There are those afraid of dying, those that aren’t, and those who are resigned to whatever happens. This doesn’t take a lot of reading between the lines.
It does occur to me that we don’t have much trouble recognizing animal productions when they’re sufficiently transformative, but that it would be very hard to tell from the pattern itself (not tipped off by being formed out of glass, metal, or other obviously human productions) whether it was due to what we more typically think of as “intelligence.” That is, if we just saw the puffer fish’s pattern on the sea floor with no idea of who or what made it, yes, we have good reason to think it’s due to a nervous system (we can’t be certain from just the pattern, I don’t think), but we don’t know if intelligence plotted it out.
There’s a kind of apparent reason or rationality to the design, which we often credit to “intelligence” like ours, but which other animals appreciate on some level, and can produce with a few actions that repeat.
It’s fair to think that evident rationality is a far better indicator of intelligent design than complex functionality is (evolutionary theory is one reason, but Paley’s inference was never truly legitimate, as it failed at too many points where intelligence should have known differently). But even “unintelligent” animals can act rationally, so there’s no actual point at which we can differentiate between our intelligence and what animals do with repetitive innate actions. In the end it comes down to observation, context.
Glen Davidson
There’s a workshop for that.
Why do the rules change?
If a designer created the charged particles why would he be constrained to make all the charged particles the same?
Why would a omnipotent designer be constrained to using one mechanism?
No. I still don’t see design at all. We aren’t talking about the patterns made by the pufferfish, but life itself. Some living organism are intelligent designers. They make designs, and they exist in nature. But that doesn’t mean those organisms themselves are the product of intelligent design.
Besides, there isn’t anything about the pattern that says to me it’s designed. I know it’s designed because we know the pufferfish designed it. We know it from direct observation. But similar patterns can be made by many unintelligent and mechanistic processes, so there isn’t any aspect of it that could only have been made by some intending sentient agent.
No, I’m saying some particular patterns of collections of unintelligent mechanical processes of physics and chemistry amount to what we call intelligent design.
When I sit here and scribble some pattern on a piece of paper, I’m of course also in effect, some giant collection of complex but at bottom unintelligent mechanical processes of physics and chemistry. But that collection of them, in that particular pattern, is what I would classify as part of a larger set of complex processes that we call intelligent design. I recognize that the distinction is ultimately arbitrary, and I couldn’t tell you exactly where it begins, or why I define it to being at that particular point.
At my current level of understanding, it’s really just operating at a sort of hunch-like level. At what level of complexity of some process do I define it as being “intelligent” ? I’m not sure. I get the feeling when watching the pufferfish, that it has some idea of what it is doing. At least that would be one aspect of intelligent design. The designer has to be doing the designing with some level of intent. It has to know what it’s doing and do it with the feeling of intent, of deliberation. How does that feeling emerge from complex patterns of neurochemistry? I don’t know.
If it’s not done with intent, it isn’t intelligent design. Then it’s a byproduct. An unintended byproduct. Even intelligent designers, actively engaged in some action of intent, can still produce patterns and events which are unintended byproducts of their actions. Suppose I was running around in a circle in some wet sand, in order to bounce a ball around on my head or something. A circle of footprints would form in the sand below me. I would say that circle wasn’t intelligently designed, even though it was made by an intelligent designer.
But I could also form that circle deliberately. I could run around in that circle, intending to make it with my feet. Then it would be intelligently designed. It should be obvious now why the circle itself cannot tell me, by my own definition of intelligent design which involves intent, that it was made by engaging in intelligent design. After all, it could be an unintended byproduct of other actions I take.
I could imagine the same being the case for the pufferfish and the pattern it makes.
Yes, that’s how we know it was designed.
Yes, because we know it was designed in an art-studio.
Tell me, what is it about it that makes you think it is intelligent designed besides the fact it has been observed? If we had never observed how it formed, and saw it for the first time, what property of that pattern leads you to infer intelligent design?
For me there isn’t anything about it that could tell me that. There’s nothing about the pattern itself that tells me it had to be designed with intent. It is only because we have observed it being made by the pufferfish that I think it was intelligently designed. That the pufferfish intended to make it with some level of understanding of what it was doing.
I would completely dispense with the claim that these things were designed “to make use” or “to provide” function X. Those phrases imply intent, and I don’t think that is at all necessary to explain their origin and persistence in life.
The cause of their persistence in life is because they provide locomotion and so on, and these are adaptive properties to their respective species (and the causes of their ultimate origin is more complicated, in any case). But their adaptive effect is why they persist. We don’t need to posit there is some greater, overall intending agency behind it all. In fact not only don’t we need to do that, I don’t see why we would do that.
newton,
The rules change to improve performance i.e. speed and die size. Smaller die size the lower the cost given equal yields.
The constraint is based on how they are used. For charged particles in both electronics and biology repeatability and precision is critical. The charge needs to have the same value in all cases. Electronics requires very accurate timing and biology requires precise chemical reactions.
A good question. We definitely see very consistent design rules across biology. The job of creating millions of organisms if you agree with J-Mac’s thesis would greatly improved with solid design rules. Where the design rules went through a learning curve in electronics, it appears in biology they were optimized at the molecular level very early in the process.
Let alone less quarks need to be teleported from the particle factory. Makes sense
Your belief: The ability to build a termite mound resides in the genomes of individual termites and the same goes for the migratory abilities of creatures such as monarch butterflies.
My belief: The instinctive wisdom of individual creatures lies in the group soul of the group, which may or may not coincide with the species.
It doesn’t matter how you judge the artistic merit of the puffer fish design, the point is that it is done with intent.
According to current dogma in the case of vertebrate evolution the only connection the individual forms have with one another are the historical source that they have in common. They have radiated out from a common ancestor. So species are compared in their isolation, everything in its own little niche.
I believe that the common link for the various vertebrate forms is the human form. If this is so it will be fruitful to compare the various species in comparison to the human form, how the various animal species have developed human attributes in a narrower one-sided way. Compare the cow and the eagle. The bovine form is tied to the earth, it is greatly affected by gravity. It accentuates what is in the human the lower limbs and metabolism. Now look at an eagle, how it overcomes gravity. It can be compared to the human head and nervous system, the opposite pole from the cow.
Human walking has everything to do with gravity, thinking nothing to do with it. Even the organ of thought, the human brain is spared the full effect of gravity by being immersed in cerebrospinal fluid.
Genomes have been observed. They exist. Souls, group or otherwise, not so much.
Okay if it makes you happy change I will replace “blind evolution” to “evolution which is blind to the future”
That’s true of cow brains and eagle brains as well.
I think you have this the wrong way round. Consciousness evolved. Darwinists need to insert magic in order to explain it.
In what sense are they not designed?
If the puddle obeyed the maxim “know thyself” and was fully self aware then it would know that it was liquid, it would know the properties of liquid, and therefore it would know its relationship to the hole and why it fits so well.
You would have a hard job convincing me that a termite mound is not intelligently designed. And who thinks the ability to build a mound comes from the minds of individual termites? Group intelligence makes much more sense. And it also makes more sense to think of bacteria having group intelligence.
Please explain why you would infer this?
I don’t think your “group soul” model can do the job though. I would say there needs to be many individual termite souls, a group soul, and an ectoplasmatic connective network to coordinate them all by means of interdimensional quantum signaling.
Your are making an abstraction and giving it powers that it doesn’t have. Nervous systems are not causal entities. Organisms are causal entities.
Is cost and die size an issue for the design of life?
So if chemistry and electronics did not exist then that would evidence that if humans existed they were not designed .
This is my issue, an omnipotent,omniscience being’s ability to create one organism or trillions cannot be improved. It is capable of anything logically possible. Any choice is equally possible. Such a being is not limited by die size or cost. Your hypothesis leads to the absurdity that if an omnipotent being created a species which broke all design rules,you would see that as evidence against an omnipotent being designing life.
On the other hand, viewing life as the result of the laws of nature such a species would be unexplainable and would be evidence for design.
Nervous systems are part of a causal chain. No nervous system, no pattern.
There is a possibility that humans who know maxims don’t know their relationship to the “hole” and why they fit so well.
Yes, and if you obeyed that maxim you would also know that you are fitted to your environment, not the other way around. Which was the point of the story, if you were only self-aware enough to see it.
Are you being serious? Just think of the lengths we humans go to to shield ourselves from the environment. Clothes, houses, air conditioning, cars, shopping malls, processed food to name but a few ways of doing this..
The low reasoning capacity of puffer fish.
Glen Davidson
You are acting as if the fact that I mentioned a particular necessary part of an organism for this particular function meant that I was suggesting that it was the whole answer.
No excuse for that. A reasonable person is supposed to recognize that nervous systems function within organisms, rather than to split them off in order to make a “point” that was clearly implied in the first place.
Glen Davidson