Sometimes very active discussions about peripheral issues overwhelm a thread, so this is a permanent home for those conversations.
The Skeptical Zone
"I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible that you may be mistaken."
Sometimes very active discussions about peripheral issues overwhelm a thread, so this is a permanent home for those conversations.
That’s equivalent to what I said.
1. Humans manipulate genomes, either directly or through artificial selection.
2. ???????????????????????
3. Therefore, one cannot say that biological variation is not biased with regard to function.
Perhaps you can fill in the part that makes statement three follow from statement one. I don’t see the connection.
But as several people have told you, this is trivially true. Birds are biological, birds build nests, therefore the categorical statement that biology doesn’t build nests is false. But jumping from there to the conclusion that the purpose of biology is to build nests is not valid.
So you have made a category error. I will repeat what at least two others have said. PEOPLE have intentions. Evolution does not. No question that some few (very few) of the products of evolution have intentions. This is an error so egregious I think people have difficulty believing any sentient person could make it. It’s the equivalent of saying that because some of the products of manufacturing have horns, therefore manufacturing is horny!
Seriously, William, you can do better than this.
William J Murray,
“Evolution” operates without intent or purpose just as wings on an aircraft do not show “intent” when keeping an aircraft in the air.
The pilot of an aircraft displays “intent”, not the wings as they simply create different levels of pressure on their top and bottom surfaces.
In the same way, humans display “intent”, not “evolution”, which could be driven by sentient or non-sentient “guidance”.
Finally, humans are not a “part of biological evolution”, rather, they are a result of it.
Humans can however, introduce “limited” selective pressures on the evolutionary processes.
When a biologist says evolution does not have a goal, I read that as saying mutations are not biased toward function (much less toward some target function).
That is a statement that can be tested by observation and experiment. In fact it has been extensively tested for many decades.
But seriously, why should schools introduce animism into the science curriculum?
What I meant by “illusion” was that from a strictly “Darwinian” view (as you’ve defined it) a belief that one has free will, and therefore truly has a choice in making decisions, is necessarily illusory.
In the movie Presumed Innocent, when accused of murder by the prosecutor, Harrison Ford’s character sarcastically replies, “Yeah, right.” Later, when the prosecutor’s case is falling apart he desperately tries to argue that the defendant’s utterance was a confession. The judge replied, “Oh, c’mon, Mr. DeLaguardia, really?” Clearly such an argument would not impress anyone with the capacity for understanding semantic nuance.
Your argument is like the prosecutor’s. You are trying to claim that when a “Darwinian” (as you define it) talks about a particular biological entity acting with purpose and intent, that they are using those terms in the same way, and with the same meaning, as when they say that nature/biology/life has no purpose, goals, or intent. C’mon William, really?
I’m not dictating, I’m reporting.
In that sense, yes. 🙂
Nope. I never said that. I said that evidence is only meaningful in the context of explanatory models. You are again confusing experiential facts with evidence.
I have no such belief. That is an honest description utilizing the best terminology at hand of what I am experiencing. There is a difference between a description of experience, and a belief about that experience. I have no idea what is **actually** going on (it could all be a delusion), but that my best description of the experience I am having. I don’t hold beliefs that directly contradict my experience.
You don’t seem to fully understand my point; of course they’re not using “intent” and “purpose” in the positivist (Darwinian, biological function) sense (which they should, to be consistent); they’re using it in the normative sense – a claim which is obviously ideological. How the heck can they possibly know that there is no normative intent or purpose in evolution? Why are they even making a comment about it?
So they are either making a purely Darwinist ideological characterization, or they are making a patently false positivist claim. Take your pick.
Flint: you are the one making a category error. “Evolution”, as a term, is a model description of collections of events. Whether those events are intentionally manipulated towards a goal or not, it is still called “Evolution” (under my definitions that separate “Darwinism”, “ID”, and “Evolution”). If enough evolutionary events in a set are intentionally manipulated towards goals, then that set of evolutionary events can be said to be an intentional process towards a goal, whether that deliberate manipulation comes from biological beings or not.
The evolution of many modern organisms was an intentional process. It is reasonable to say that evolution, in those cases, was a deliberate process towards goals.
Your flat statement that “all” of evolution, as a general rule, is not intentional simply demonstrates your Darwinian predisposition. How could you possibly know such a thing? Answer: you cannot.
BTW, loved the movie and the book “Presumed Innocent”.
The evolution of many modern organisms was an intentional process.
How could anyone possibly know such a thing?
Assuming you mean the evolution of certain ‘domestic’ breeds of pet or food, I’m not convinced that it is reasonable even then to say that evolution was a deliberate process towards goals. Frequently, what happened was a fortuitious mutation that we discovered – for example, triploidy in wheat. The resulting increase in yield was obviously beneficial to those farmers, and perhaps they searched for some other useful sports, but essentially they provided the selective environment, with ‘blind” nature supplying the variation (yeah, an ‘ideological’ bias towards seeing mutation as an undirected process in all instances, and not just deleterious ones). A limited amount of serial evolution is possible, for example increasing yield or changing the size of wolves up or down. The ‘goal’ may be the smallest possible wolf. So, by goal-oriented selection, you pick from among the smaller variants thrown up, iteratively, until you use up all the variation. Then you wait …. can we produce a wolf the size of a cockroach, or an elephant, by ‘intention’?
Even in ‘intentional’ evolution, the mutations (and other genetic changes) themselves are not goal-oriented – not in the service of THIS intentional agent, anyway, who only discovered what chromosomes did under a century ago, and has a much greater power to screw up genomes than make them bend to his will.
If you want to make the argument that the “Darwinists” are making metaphysical claims that overreach their science (a la the quotes you cited), then by all means make that argument. But I think muddying it with the silly argument about how claims of purposelessness are self-refuting is not helpful.
William J Murray,
If “evolution” had intent or purpose, why would it “intentionally” make so many mistakes?
If an engineer or “intelligent designer” made as many mistakes as evolution, they would be fired.
William J Murray,
The following statement has nothing to do with religion or a belief in a deity.
Your experiences in this life, contradict your belief that an “intelligent designer” exists, UNLESS you have actually “experienced” the designer at work.
WJM
The evolution of many modern organisms was an intentional process. It is reasonable to say that evolution, in those cases, was a deliberate process towards goals.
Your flat statement that “all” of evolution, as a general rule, is not intentional simply demonstrates your Darwinian predisposition. How could you possibly know such a thing? Answer: you cannot.
Are you really incapable of distinguishing between the tool, and the person who uses the tool for a purpose?
Yesterday I used a pipe wrench to tighten the fittings on my bathroom sink. Does that mean the pipe wrench itself had its own internal deliberate intentions?
Of course not. After all, humans build artificial moons; therefore we cannot say with certainty that our moon is not artificial.
We build lakes and ponds; therefore we cannot say that the oceans are not artificial.
You will go far with that line of reasoning.
http://www.evolutionnews.org/2012/02/a_bit_unpreposs056161.html
Plant and animal breeding is not a particularly good example of guided evolution. Actual observation reveals that when the artificial selection is removed, populations revert to something closer to their prior configuration, or go extinct.
The argument that evolution is unguided is based on a number of observations, the most important of which is the complete absence of any entity capable of doing the job. It is the same kind of observation that rather arbitrarily rules out the possibility that crimes are not actually committed by disembodied spirits who enjoy framing innocent humans.
How are prosecutors able, without committing perjury, to claim that this doesn’t happen?
After all, if humans can commit crimes, how can we say with certainty that never seen entities do not commit crimes?
You seem to be saying that because some evolution is directed the statement “Evolution is directed” is therefore true.
But this adds nothing. It’s just the same as saying “directed evolution is directed”.
It seems to me that William is hanging all of ID on proving a negative. If that’s all William has to offer then I don’t see any way to disabuse him of that notion.
Yes, humans direct evolution to their own ends. And the statement that “evolution is not intentional” is thereby falsified. That’s trivially true. But so what? It just means that you need to write:
“all of evolution, as a general rule, is not intentional unless a human being has interfered”.
Not seeing how this helps your position. If the best you have is lack of evidence that evolution is not goal directed then that’s about as weak a case there could be.
What leads you to believe that evolution (of whatever stripe) is directed, over and above human interventions?
None has ever been observed. None has ever been needed. The idea of complex designs being created from such a (seemingly) simple process will be a new one to some people, especially people who have been lied to all their life up till that point. So pointing out that creation can flow from a creator that is mindless seems reasonable to me, just as it seems reasonable to note that these creations were not intended to be. They just are.
Can I “prove” that to your satisfaction? No, of course not. But if you want to change my mind (and it’s open to be changed) then simply provide your evidence and make your case. However there are an infinity of things out there that have not been (and can’t be in many cases) falsified. Do you believe all of those also?
But then again I hear there is a very special teapot that might interest you.
Yeah, you did: “All information humans receive from experience is interpreted, first by senses, then by mind.” Unless you want to claim that in your private world of idiosyncratic terminology an interpretation is not the utilization of an explanatory model. In which case you will need to define what in the world you are talking about when you use these terms.
Except that I am not confusing anything. You are the one trying to construct distinctions that don’t exist in the context we are discussing. In science, evidence = experiential facts.
Ah, so now you are going to claim that this: “I do not allow myself to believe that I’m not looking at a monitor” is somehow different than you believing that you are looking at a monitor. Sorry, I don’t see any meaningful difference.
More importantly, as I already tried to tell you, *utilizing the best terminology at hand* = interpreting the experience via an explanatory model.
You sure? Given the evidence at hand (that being the body of verbiage WJM has deposited here), it would be imprudent to disregard the possibility that WJM cannot do any better than this.
WJM said:
“The evolution of many modern organisms was an intentional process.”
Which ones?
No, “we” don’t have that. You have a belief in agency involvement, but that is not “evidence”.
No one knows for sure, but there are people trying to figure it out, and they’re making headway by doing science, instead of relying on religious beliefs.
It is tested in labs and other places every day. Scientists around the world are trying to figure out everything that makes this universe what it is. A lot has been accomplished toward that goal but many things are still unknown to humans. If science ever discovers real evidence of a designer God, I doubt that it will be kept quiet.
If you want to investigate your supernatural fantasies, feel free to do so, but if you want science to investigate them you’ll have to come up with a scientific way to do it. Your beliefs aren’t enough.
To me, “Darwinism” is just a derogatory term conjured up and used by religious fanatics.
There is a great deal of evidence that supports the theory of evolution, which is mostly available to anyone who wants to study it. Not everything is known yet, and may never be, and scientific theories are provisional and amendable. The theory of evolution is the most rational and evidential explanation of the diversity of life on Earth. There is no benefit in adding an imagined, supernatural, designer God to a scientific theory.
Mostly, although not everyone would agree with me on what constitutes evidence. Sometimes evidence is totally convincing, but sometimes it is only partly convincing and more evidence is needed. Some evidence is misinterpreted or debated even by so-called experts. I’m pretty patient and I base my acceptance of evidence on how well it’s demonstrated or established. I don’t accept something completely unless it has been verified completely. As much as I’d like them I don’t have to have all the answers to everything right now.
LoL! “Darwinism” was coined by non-other than Thomas Henry Huxley. It is an honor to have something named after you.
I have studied it and the evidence supports baraminology.
Unfortunately there isn’t a “theory” of evolution, just a bunch of vague untestable claims.
But anyway it appears that you don’t even understand the basics.
Yes, we have plenty of evidence for agency involvement. And again your position has all the power in that someone can just step up and demonstrate that matter, energy, necessity and chance can do it, but everyone has failed to do so.
I take it that it bothers you that the way to the design inference is through materialism.
LoL! The design inference is science. My only “belief” is that we, the people, can understand the evidence and data. And using cause and effect relationships we can run tests to determine the cause of what we observe.
The same way we can know that Stonehenge was intentional.
Joe G,
Hi Joe,
I’m transferring the discussion from the “intent” thread, because several of us were wandering from the topic.
Here, you can ask me for evidence that insects aren’t artifacts made by other animals, if that’s what you want to ask me. If not, then you can easily explain what you mean by the cause of insects being natural or non-natural. You also need to clarify whether you’re talking about the proximate cause of insects, or the ultimate cause of insects.
Hi drwho,
I am still waiting for you to produce some evidence that nature produced insects. If you refuse to do so then we don’t have anything to discuss.
I know you are.
Wrong again, as usual. My inference is based on the evidence and scientific data.
LoL! having other observers do not take anything away from our privileged status. Only if those observers were in any location, locations very different from ours, would our privileged status be not so privileged.
That isn’t a requirement. We can still make plenty of scientific discoveries right where we are
Phyisics doesn’t know everything about the universe
I have. I’ve pointed out that the only thing we have evidence for producing anything in the biosphere is nature in the broad sense of the term.
As this is true, you’ve attempted to bring in a definition of nature which excludes some things, so we ended up with the definition that’s normally opposed to “man-made”. When I pointed out that man couldn’t have produced insects as they pre-date us, you wanted to include “artifacts” made by other animals outside the definition of nature you want to use for this discussion.
Fine by me. Now, you’re essentially asking me to present evidence that insects were produced “naturally”, meaning evidence that they were not produced by other animals as artifacts.
That’s easy. The only creatures known from the present and the fossil record with anything like the capability to make insects from scratch are ourselves, and it’s still beyond our technology. At the time that insects first appear, there’s absolutely no evidence that there were animals who could even make the simplest of artifacts, let alone insects.
So, on current observations, we can easily see that “natural” non-intelligent processes are by far the best explanation for the origin of insects.
I suspect that by “natural” you really want to say “unintelligent”. If so, please use something like that instead of natural, because, as I pointed out on the other thread, intelligence is a natural phenomenon that we observe in animal brains. Perhaps “telic” and “non-telic” could be useful words for your purposes. For example:
Joe says: “Evo, give me your evidence for the non-telic origins of life.”
But we don’t have any evidence for nature producing nature.
Also artificial refers to more than just man-made.
But anyway the rest of your rant proves that you have no idea what is even being debated. When you figure it out come back and we can have a discussion.
Your confused logic is not evidence dr who.
The best evidence for the non-telic origin of life is the complete absence of alternative hypotheses.
Did you not understand what I meant when I asked you whether you were talking about the proximate cause of insects or their ultimate cause?
As I said, it’s fine by me if you want me to refute the suggestion that animals other than man created insects as artifacts. I’ve done it.
Which is your way of saying that you cannot present a scrap of evidence to support the view that there were intelligent animals designing on earth when insects first appeared, but you won’t admit that I’m right in my observations and reasoning.
And don’t make the mistake of suggesting intelligent non-animals, as there’s absolutely no evidence to suggest that such things even can exist, let alone that they do.
Joe and I somehow got onto the subject of the origin of insects rather than the OOL. The OOL is even worse for him because non-living intelligent beings are effectively an absolute zero evidence proposition. 🙂
You have no idea what ID says about it. So first you have to demonstrate that understanding, then we can talk.
YOU don’t have a hypothesis for non-telic OoL.
Perhaps you should start there.
Again your position can’t even muster a testable hypothesis for the OoL, the origin of insects, nor anything pertaining to biology or the universe.
I take it that bothers you…
dr who- I get it, you have no idea how science operates and you obviously don’t have a clue wrt extrapolation.
YOU have absolutely no evidence to support YOUR position. YOU can’t even produce a testable hypothesis for it.
But good luck wallowing in your ignorance…
And more proof above that ID is a wholly negative position. Gapsism at its finest.
Hypotheses can be tested against observations, Joe. My hypothesis that insects aren’t artifacts is supported by the observations I’ve made (and which you haven’t disagreed with) and could be falsified if we discover an insect making animal. Your apparent hypothesis that insects are artifacts is completely unsupported by any observations.
I call them on their cell phone- or walkie-talkie- never leave home without ’em.
What if there isn’t anything to stand or climb on and I am stuck at ground level? Hey, I know- I will call them.
And then there is PLANNING as in a designated area to meet if we get separated.
How does it get there without violating the known laws of physics and how does it maintain that position without violating the known laws of physics?
Do you go to many crowded areas carrying your own steps?
Debate? Don’t give yourself so much credit.
And more proof that Rich is clueless- the design inference goes THROUGH materialism, Rich. That means if you could just step up we would never get a chance to consider ID.
Yet here we are, and it bothers you.
And we are still waiting for yours.
Insects come from other insects. You can only say that insects are not artifacts if nature can produce one. And you have failed to demonstrate that nature can produce an insect.
No observations you would understand anyway.
You are sorry, Rich. One of the sorriest people I have ever come across.
Our earth moon sun system exists because the universe is here to supprt and allow it. It does not exist in isolation.
Someone or something still has to MAKE it, though.
Design is NOT both. Simple proof: Not everything ever designed has been made.
But, tell us more about the earth falling into the sun in this simple system.