768 thoughts on “I lost my faith in ID”
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.
The Skeptical Zone
"I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible that you may be mistaken."
You must be logged in to post a comment.
Which Behe can’t do without assuming design in the first place. Still completely circular and worthless.
They don’t have a purpose Bill. They have an evolved function. Purpose still requires a conscious INTENT no matter how much you equivocate and lie about the terms.
Ah, Bill’s standard ID-Creationist cowardly excuse. Anyone who doesn’t agree with ID-Creationism’s pseudoscience bullshit must not understand it. 😀
Isn’t it high time you started dealing with all the criticisms of Behe’s nonsense like an adult?
Adapa,
Can you cite where Gregory addressed Behe’s arguments directly vs citing his own opinion or the opinion of others?
Get your head out of your ass and try reading the thread.
We do not infer purpose. We ascribe purpose. And unless you have a system of objective principles for ascribing purpose, your ascriptions are going to turn out to be subjective.
If somebody throws a brick through your window, the purpose of that brick was not to build your house.
If you want to look at the purpose for which the brick was made, that was not to build a house. At one time, long ago, bricks were made to build houses. But today, bricks are made to sell on a market without concern for how brick buyers will use them. And that example illustrates the difficulties in ascribing purpose.
Why can purpose not be inferred from evidence?
I agree with you here. There can be multiple purposes of an object. DNA is an example of this. In one case its purpose is to provide information to build proteins in another it is to copy itself in order to aid in the mitosis process.
And the worms that blind children? What is their purpose?
Quite so. But dare you?
So how do you objectively determine the purpose of something? Why do you keep dodging the question? We don’t want more made up examples, we want to know how it’s done.
Well, Behe says how to do it in a youtube video! All science so far!
It can’t be inferred from just an object itself. You need additional outside information about how / when / where / the object came to be. That’s been true for ID-Creationist claims since Day One but the IDiots will never acknowledge it.
dazz,
By observation determining function and asking why questions around its function.
So you finally realized purpose and function are two different things. It only took two days and several dozen posts to get the idea through your thick skull.
Who did you ask your “why” questions to in order to determine intent for the design of eye worms?
Even if wants to go full Dennett and think of both function and intent as stance-dependent ascriptions (which may be the right way to proceed when all is said and done), one will still need to distinguish functions from purposes. The fact that some functions are due to purposes or intentions (e.g. artifacts) doesn’t entail that all functions are due to purposes or intentions.
What ID wants to do — and has always wanted to do, beginning at least with Paley — is assume that since some functions are due to purposes, therefore all functions are due to purposes.
At the very most, the design theorist is entitled to say, “since we know that some functions are due to purposeful intentions, maybe others are as well? Let’s find out!”
But it is this stage of “let’s find out!” that design theorists never get around, and never will.
OMagain,
Or the reasons don’t make sense to us.
Another Bill Cole cowardly evasion of the questions noted. 🙂
Adapa,
Answering questions I don’t know the answer to will make me brave 🙂
Running from questions instead of even trying to answer makes you a coward. Nothing we haven’t seen from you for years.
Adapa,
A coward to say I don’t know? You guys are moving he goal posts to a new argument which is essentially a theological one. Start a new thread.
You’re the one who said you could determine purpose just from observing function. Then when we ask you what the purpose is you wuss out. Face it Bill, you’ll always be an empty blustering bullshitter regurgitating ID-Creationist claims you don’t understand and can’t defend.
Adapa,
This is true you can determine it if you ask a why question you can answer. Did I say we always have an answer? You guys are moving the goal posts to a different subject which will derail this thread. This is Keiths favorite; the argument from evil. Is this where you really want to go?
At this point I think we determined that Behe is on solid ground in being able to infer purpose from certain observations in biology.
And you call that objective? We know the question, what we’re asking for is an objective way to provide answers to them, and you lost yet another opportunity to show you’re not bluffing. Why is that? (there’s a why question!)
You obviously don’t have the faintest idea how science works, and what evidence is. Just because you can “observe” something and make up answers to why questions, doesn’t mean that counts as evidence for your answers.
If you were capable of reviewing the examples you’ve provided critically, you would easily see that you take the original intent of the designer of an object as the purpose of the object. Take the car for instance: taking you from A to B is something cars are made for. It’s glaringly obvious that you ASSUME that purpose is linked to the intent of the maker of an object, but that, of course, makes Behe’s stupid argument entirely circular: you start by looking for a purpose, which assumes design (as people have been telling you here), and then you pretend to conclude design.
It’s no wonder why Behe’s method is not being used anywhere. The more it’s put to the test, the more evident it becomes it’s a massive fraud. Well, evident for anyone with a modicum of critical thinking skills anyway. Unfortunately, that’s not you.
dazz,
Behe is not the first to use assign purpose to functions in biology. It is done quite frequently. It’s a little iffy to call someone a fraud before you have done your homework.
To whom do you ask the why question when you want to establish intent? Unless you asked and were answered by the Designer all you have is subjective speculation.
LOL! As always when he is thoroughly beaten Bill declares himself the winner and scurries towards the door. 😀
This is another lie by Bill Cole. People occasionally use anthropomorphic language or use “purpose” as a synonym for “function”. No one in science has ever assigned any intelligent deliberate intent to the origin of any biological feature or function. EVER. But Bill desperately need his religion to “win” so lying is OK.
You’re not listening. The issue is that Behe (and you) simply assume that function entails purpose and design. It’s not hard. Keep trying and you’ll eventually get it… or maybe you won’t. Nah, you will never get it, your track record proves that
I don’t think this is quite right. The ID folks assume all functions imply purpose, without exception. This assumption is not open to discussion, as we see. When presented with functions he dislikes, Bill basically says those functions STILL have a purpose, since this is part of his definition of a function. He just doesn’t know the purpose, but it must be there because he sees a function.
In other words, purpose is not a conclusion as you write (“therefore all functions are due to purpose”). When he circles the idea that if a brick can be put to many uses it must have many purposes, he’s saying that for every function there is a purpose; the two cannot be separated. As for the “correct” purpose, obviously this objectively depends on who you ask.
I just showed an example of the purpose of mitosis. Are you claiming mitosis has no purpose?
I would be interested to see this claim supported beyond a Richard Dawkins style assertion.
No you didn’t. You listed the functions of mitosis that someone described with anthropomorphic language. We know such childish word games impress you but they just get you laughed at by scientifically literate people.
Flint,
I think it is possible to have a function without a purpose. A computer program that does not halt is an example. This may or may not have a purpose (possibly due to miscoding) yet if functionally runs bits through a micro processor.
Adapa,
So nothing more than a subjective objection. He is clearly answering why mitosis occurs.
Give us an example of a function without a purpose in biology.
But how can that be when we all share the same kind of “mind”? Are you now saying that that mind is so different from us that we are prohibited from ever understanding it’s reasoning?
Then where does that leave your “we know minds, our minds and a mind like ours did it” stance?
No, actually it’s not at all a new argument. It is your argument that we know “minds” and therefore a “mind” like ours could have created biology.
So you don’t get to say it’s a theological argument now. It’s still about Intelligent Design. You are determining the intent behind the design, remember?
Using the sort of minds we have we’d say that the sort of mind that created eye worms to blind children is a sick one.
Nothing you’ve said so far is anything other then function. Nothing about purpose.
Chemistry is.
Listing the physical functions is not establishing any purposeful intent. I can explain the physics behind why clouds produce rain but that doesn’t make rain clouds be purposely designed.
You’re still playing the same dishonest equivocation game. As always childish word games are all you have.
Well let me demonstrate why that is not true in a way you cannot answer and therefore will ignore.
Wound or injury is healed by repeated mitosis cell division in the surrounding healthy cells.
Simply play the “why” game.
Why does mitosis cell division heal wounds?
To keep the organism alive.
Why keep the organism alive?
If the “purpose” of each step in biology is to enable one, or more, other steps then you are left with the question what is the purpose of the final step?
Unless your chain ends with an actual purpose then the supposed purposes of all the turtles underneath fall away.
Just keep asking yourself why mitosis occurs. And then, whatever answer you come up with, ask yourself why that occurs. Eventually you will run out of “purposes” to things with a final unlinked section in your purpose-chain.
Why did you eat breakfast?
OMagain,
You and I have similar minds yet we see thing differently especially depending on our perspective.
OMagain,
I agree you end up with lots of purposes of mitosis. This is what’s particularly interesting with Behe’s argument. Most designed entities you can do this with. Ask yourself the purpose of a microprocessor and you get a similar chain.
The biggest difference between you and everyone else is you think it’s OK to lie about science when arguing for your religious beliefs. For the rest of us lying is not acceptable.
Adapa,
On what authority do you determine that what I am saying is untrue? I am stating what I think is the true state of things it simply differs from your beliefs.
Dazz called Behe a fraud and you accuse me of lying.
If you could support your argument this would not be necessary. I see you make false claims yet I assume it is just because you do not understand the issues. I usually let you slide as I think you will eventually figure things out.
The fact you’ve been caught in some pretty egregious lies over your history of attacking evolution. You just got caught dishonestly quote-mining an article on the difference between purpose / function in this very thread. I’m sure in your mind you think such willful dishonesty is OK because your mortal soul is at stake, right?
colewd,
You’re not answering our questions, you’re incapable of spotting the circularity in the argument you’re advancing. You simply repeat the same crap over and over again, as if more examples of the same shit will somehow address the glaring issues you’re avoiding.
You have missed my point. But that was not unexpected.
Oh? Can you name some that you cannot do such with?
Please name a single one. And then, perhaps, you will see the absurdity of your argument.
The same authority you are using to assign purpose to what you observe.
You can’t legitimately state the purpose of biology without knowing the intent of the designer.
That’s the point. And you don’t know that, do you?
You are lying. You cannot know the purpose of biology or it’s components. Claiming that you can is a demonstrable lie.
How many years do you think it will be before evolution falls and Intelligent Design replaces it?
1? 10? 50? 100?
Name one you can’t do that with and perhaps you’ll have a crisis….
Out of interest, how have you convinced yourself that mitosis was designed? Is it because you can assign a purpose to it’s arrangement of parts, by any chance?
I think this is a start. He thinks he’s identified a purpose based on his beliefs. But how can something as objective as the purpose of something depend on the beliefs of the observer? The function something is being used for, or whatever it is doing, can be objectively observed, independent of the observer. But belief, and therefore purpose, are FULLY dependent on the observer, and entirely subjective in many cases.
What you are saying is clearly true for you. Not for anyone else. By your own testimony, purpose lies entirely in the mind of the observer, and NOT in the object. Only function lies in the object.
Flint,
I agree it can be subjective but there are many cases that if presented to rational people not hung up in this debate would agree. There is more than one purpose as in the brick example.
If I would ask 10 people what are the top 5 purposes of a heart are rational people would come to similar conclusions and name cellular reparation as one of the purposes.
Thank you for this point. A single person is making an inference. The judgement is subjective but Behe has provided an objective criteria for judging the strength of the design inference. Certainly reasonable people can disagree with the inference especially where parts are few and cohesion of function is loose.
I am testing if Behe’s use of purpose is reasonable. I do think you can find definitions of purpose where it does not fit his usage but at the end of the day I think his usage is certainly within the constraints of proper usage and adds an interesting dimension to his argument vs just using the word function.
Right on cue here comes Bill the Cheerleader repeating the lie about Behe’s “argument”. You must have one hellacious man-crush on Behe there Bill.
That’s the evidence ID-creationists do not want us to ask for: the evidence for designers: plans, machinery used for building the designed stuff, tools, a declaration from the designers about the purpose of each part and of the finished products. Evidence that there was some designers involved who intended things to work the way they do. But designers are declared off limits by IDiots.