[note: the author formatted this is a way that did not leave space for a page break. So I am inserting the break at the top — NR]
- Paley’s teleological argument is: just as the function and complexity of a watch implies a watch-maker, so likewise the function and complexity of the universe implies the existence of a universe-maker. Paley also addressed a number of possible counterarguments:
- Objection: We don’t know who the watchmaker is. Paley: Just because we don’t know who the artist might be, it doesn’t follow that we cannot know that there is one.
- Objection: The watch (universe) is not perfect. Paley: Perfection is not required.
- Objection: Some parts of the watch (universe) seem to have no function. Paley: We just don’t know those functions yet.
- Objection: The watch (re universe) is only one possible form of many possible combinations and so is a chance event. Paley: Life is too complex and organized to be a product of chance.
- Objection: There is a law or principle that disposed the watch (re universe) to be in that form. Also, the watch (re the universe) came about as a result of the laws of metallic nature. Paley: The existence of a law presupposes a lawgiver with the power to enforce the law.
- Objection: One knows nothing at all about the matter. Paley: Certainly, by seeing the parts of the watch (re the universe), one can know the design.
- Hume’s arguments against design:
- Objection: “We have no experience of world-making”. Counter-objection: We have no direct experience of many things, yet that never stops us from reasoning our way through problems.
- Objection: “The analogy is not good enough. The universe could be argued to be more analogous to something more organic such as a vegetable. But both watch and vegetable are ridiculous analogies”. Counter-objection: By definition, no analogy is perfect. The analogy needs only be good enough to prove the point. And Paley’s analogy is great for that limited scope. Hume’s followers are free to pursue the vegetable analogy if they think it is good enough. And some [unconvincingly] do imagine the universe as “organic”.
- Objection: “Even if the argument did give evidence for a designer; it’s not the God of traditional Christian theism”. Counter-objection: Once we establish that the universe is designed, only then we can [optionally] discuss other aspects of this finding.
- Objection: “The universe could have been created by random chance but still show evidence of design as the universe is eternal and would have an infinite amount of time to be able to form a universe so complex and ordered as our own”. Counter-objection: Not possible. There is nothing random in the universe that looks indubitably designed. That is why we use non-randomness to search for extraterrestrial life and ancient artefacts.
- Other arguments against design:
- Darwin: “Evolution (natural selection) is a better explanation”. “There seems to be no more design in the variability of organic beings and in the action of natural selection, than in the course which the wind blows. Everything in nature is the result of fixed laws.” — The Autobiography of Charles Darwin 1809–1882. Counter-objection: “Natural selection” would be an alternative hypothesis to Paley’s if it worked. But it demonstrably doesn’t, so there is not even a point in comparing the two.
- Dawkins: “Who designed the designer?” Counter-objection: Once we establish that the universe is designed, only then we can [optionally] discuss other aspects of this finding (see counter-objection to Hume).
- Dawkins: “The watch analogy conflates the complexity that arises from living organisms that are able to reproduce themselves with the complexity of inanimate objects, unable to pass on any reproductive changes”. Counter-objection: Paley is aware of the differences between the living and the inert and is not trying to cast life into a watch. Instead he is only demonstrating that they both share the property of being designed. In addition, nothing even “arises”. Instead everything is caused by something else. That’s why we always look for a cause in science.
- Objection: “Watches were not created by single inventors, but by people building up their skills in a cumulative fashion over time, each contributing to a watch-making tradition from which any individual watchmaker draws their designs”. Counter-objection: Once we establish that the universe is designed, only then we can [optionally] discuss other aspects of this finding (see counter-objection to Hume).
- Objection: In Dover case, the judge ruled that such an inductive argument is not accepted as science because it is unfalsifiable. Counter-objection: Both inductive and deductive reasoning are used in science. Paley’s argument is not inductive as he had his hypothesis formulated well before his argumentation. Finally, Paley’s hypothesis can absolutely be falsified if a random draw can be found to look designed. This is exactly what the “infinite monkey” theorem has tried and failed to do (see counter-objection to Hume).
- Objection: Paley confuses descriptive law with prescriptive law (i.e., the fallacy of equivocation). Prescriptive law does imply a lawgiver, and prescriptive laws can be broken (e.g., speed limits, rules of behavior). Descriptive laws do not imply a law-giver, and descriptive laws cannot be broken (one exception disproves the law, e.g., gravity, f = ma.). Counter-objection: Of all the laws with known origin, all (100%) have a lawgiver at the origin. The distinction between descriptive and prescriptive laws is thus arbitrary and unwarranted.
- Objection: It is the nature of mind to see relationship. Where one person sees design, another sees randomness. Counter-objection: This ambiguity is present only for very simple cases. But all humans agree that organisms’ structures are clearly not random.
- Dawkins: “Biology is the study of complicated things that give the appearance of having been designed for a purpose.” Counter-objection: Just a corollary: since organisms indeed appear designed, then they are most likely designed according to Occam’s razor.
- In conclusion, Paley is right and his opponents continue to be wrong with not even a plausible alternative hypothesis.
Links:
The central dogma is not absolute
(but It’s good to know you know the name 🙂 )
And besides just because information flows in one direction does not mean that it cannot be amended and added to along the way. Also in order for the information to flow it has to be retrieved by components from further on in the path.
Sure, but those amendments, etc, also depend on information stored in, and retrieved from, DNA.
More information that’s also stored and retrieved from DNA.
That’s why Allan wrote “other DNA segments” or something to that effect.
DNA doesn’t provide the microtubules. It assists by providing some information which is necessary in their formation.
By what means does it provide the location “signatures”? How does it “know” how to assign a specific location to a specific microtubule? How does it “know” when to form them, when to degrade them and all the other information needed to ensure the timing, quantities and associated complexes that are required?
To wit: Evolution.
Yes DNA is vital. And the memory circuits are vital to the functioning of my phone. But everything has to function in a coordinated way.
We all begin our lives as fully functional, inwardly coordinated, single celled organisms and our lives will end when the coordination breaks down beyond the point where it can recover. The organism functions as a whole unit.
It provides the information to build those microtuboles. It provides the information to build the machinery that builds the microtuboles, etc. This is what I meant by “provides the microbubules.” Sorry for jumping the steps.
By providing the information to build the molecules that act in guiding microbubules.
y providing the information necessary to build the molecules that gather environmental situations, intracellular situations, etc.
By feedback provided by more molecules whose information is also stored in other segments of DNA.
What can I say? The organism makes extensive use of its DNA.
Yes evolution.
The way I would put it is that pieces of information needed to assemble
and provide for functional microtubules are retrieved from the DNA. The separate pieces still need to be brought together in the right way.
Yep. The point I’m discussing is your apparent claim that the information in a messenger RNA was not in the DNA, and that the protein information was not in the DNA either. Even splicing positions are part of the information transcribed from the DNA to the RNA.
You are giving me lots of vague generalities without much substance.
A spliceosome alone consists of what? around 80 different proteins. How does the DNA instigate and provide for the appearance of this complex?
And the point I am making is that the organism takes this information, amends and adjusts it to assemble sections of final mRNA which gives a different output depending on the way that they are constructed. These assemblies are dependent on a variety of inputs, not solely from the DNA.
Me? You started making vague and erroneous assertions for things we do have some knowledge about.
There’s DNA segments that are called promoters and cis-acting regulatory elements. There’s also DNA segments coding for all of those proteins, normally downstream of such cis-acting elements. Proteins, also called trans-acting regulatory elements, also encoded in other DNA segments, bind to DNA cis-acting elements, thus “instigating” the “appearance” of the ~80 proteins you’re talking about, etc.
Huh. Interesting response. I cannot imagine anything more horrifying than if the core beliefs of Christianity were literally true.
That was my reaction when I read this:
How did the spliceosome get so complicated, you ask?
It started out much simpler, and has been tweaked quite a bit in the intervening billions of years. Check out all the different kinds of introns…
Ironically, my first publication (over 30 years ago) included the discovery of alternative splicing in the gene I was studying, and I included the reasons for thinking that regulation of the alternative spliceforms might have functional significance.
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I was wrong: the alternative spliceform was just a random accident with no functional significance. It happens. Quite often, in fact. But thank you for the introductory primer on alternative splicing.
Well, I admit there are some issues re theodicy and omnipotence; chap’s got some ‘splaining to do. Also, with my somewhat cafeteria attitude, I would be assuming the Old Testament was wrong. Or were you referencing something else?
I was thinking about how horrifying it would be if immortality was real.
Might be a chance to finally catch up on sleep.
Entropy,
I think you make conclusions based on evidence that is limited and ignoring evidence that contradicts the claims that are made. While simple adaptions and the theory around them are very useful the rest of the theory is based on speculation.
Corneel,
It’s commendable you are easy to please. 🙂
OMagain,
Think about it in the same way that a software engineer reduces the probability problem of a functional software program coming into existence versus emerging without a coder (mind) behind it.
Too stupid.
Kantian Naturalist,
Yes, the Wowbagger problem. If you deem the Good Place Season 4 solution to be cheating, then I would just have to rely on an infinite variety of drugs. I might be driven to serially insulting people.
Nonlin.org,
Haha!
You’re a champion of irony. Your claims are often based on shallowly looked at data, while, when looked at more carefully, the supposedly contradictory evidence happens to go in accordance to the theory, which remains healthy and strong.
Either that or mistaken notions which you do not care to fix, even after loads and loads of explanations.
That you’d say this, after so many explanations we’ve given to you, tells me that it’s you who pays very little attention to what contradicts your position. As I said, you’re an irony champion.
ETA: spelling mistakes, repeated words …
That’s not quite what I had in mind. I was rather thinking about a remark by Todd May (yes, the same Todd May who was the philosophy advisor on The Good Place): “Mortality offers meaning to the events in our lives. Morality helps to navigate that meaning.” Morality makes no sense to beings that live forever, because infinite existence makes choice meaningless.
A being that will endure forever cannot make a choice of the sort that undertaking one project means losing the possibility of undertaking an incompatible project — you can marry, or not, but not both — you can have children, or not, but not both. You can’t live a life in which you’re married and have children and also one in which you don’t. You have to make a choice because we have finite lives, and that’s where morality becomes important to us. A being that would endure forever would never need to make a choice like that, so it would never need to reflect on the morality or immorality of its choices.
Put otherwise: on the Christian view of things, the entire goal and purpose of being moral (in this live) is to become a being for whom morality is impossible (in the afterlife).
I find that utterly monstrous & I cannot understand people who don’t.
Kantian Naturalist,
Pie in the sky when you die!
The claim that all of life, (and how it changes, and how diversity occurs, and how novel structures arise), is evidence of Divine Design, is impossible to refute. This is as ironclad a claim as Last Thursdayism, and as well supported. So long as the machinations of the Divine cannot be explained, or replicated, or even observed, this seems to be considered support for such claims. After all, as has been observed many times, claims not based on evidence cannot be refuted with evidence.
So one of the counter arguments, as usual once again, involves utility. Sure, anything can be explained with gods and magic, but such “explanations” don’t lead to greater understanding, nor do they suggest any possible avenues of investigation. The rational investigator will generally respond something like “you may be right. Nobody can prove you wrong. So what?”
This entire site is devoted to efforts to deploy evidence to debunk faith, even though failure is inevitable. To the believer, evidence is irrelevant! It simply DOES NOT MATTER! And this, for the faithful, is a wonderful thing, because for them all answers are the same, knowledge is useless, so efforts to gather any are wasted.
But in the process, I learn a good deal about biology, genetics, historical development, and the intractability of blind ignorance.
Flint,
Yet the claim is based on evidence. A gun at a crime scene is evidence as is Paley’s watch. Lets see how many times the evolutionists deny evidence is really evidence. I have counted at least 5 times on this post. Your not alone in evidence denial 🙂
You rely on creating a straw-man argument which is very obvious. Do you realize you are doing this? This first conclusion of the evidence is intelligent cause. The straw-man is jumping to a Devine being which misstates the argument.
There are other sources of evidence that eventually get you to the conclusion of a Devine being.
Entropy,
Do you think convergent evolution is a credible scientific explanation? How would you test its existence to a high certainty?
Is there possibly circular reasoning going on here?
If it were a mere claim it wouldn’t. But that’s not how science works. Scientists notice something kind of unusual. Say they notice that some bacterium resists an antibiotic. they assume they must have a gene for the protein known to be involved. They try hard to find the protein based on this assumption, and they don’t find it. Shit! Then how is this bacterium resisting this antibiotic without this protein to digest it? So they go back to classic searching for an unknown protein, they find it, it’s not similar to the protein previously known to digest that antibiotic, and works by a different catalytic mechanism, yet digests the very same antibiotic. They further check. the previous protein belongs to some membrane-biosynthesis family, while the newly discovered one belongs to a heme-based dehydrogenase family. As more evidence accumulates a case of convergent evolution for degradation of antibiotic-X gets further and further documented until it gets boring and reviewers reject any further articles for beating a dead horse too many times.
By performing very careful analyses, gathering data, etc. It’s something called scientific method.
Nope.
Of course , some people might argue that presence of any unknowns about the crime is evidence of divine action.
That’s the secret of my happiness.
I thought it is the watch that we are trying to explain. The watch is the crime in your analogy, not the gun.
So what are you trying to explain, what is the explanation and what is the evidence for that explanation? They can’t be all the same thing.
Sorry, it is a fact. None of the supposedly separate factors you elicit in support of your contentions resides anywhere other than in a sequence of DNA, somewhere in the genome. All the RNAs large and small, all the proteins, all the upregulatory and downregulatory gene expression, all the allosteric interactions positive and negative … all of it. This is not an opinion.
CharlieM,
Splutter!
Yet according to you this is how you ‘test’ that design is responsible for the origin of new cell types:
Do you think that s a credible scientific explanation? That’s what you think the authors should said in their paper, “obviously it’s much more likely that a mind is responsible, after all computer programs don’t write themselves” and you call that science and what these other people are doing here, who are trying to teach you, not-science?
You have a serious deficiency. And no honour.
it’s divine. Idiot.
vs
Tested your deities existence to a high certainty have you? Do tell..
Basically you are a hypocrite, demanding evidence from others that you are unable to supply for your own position. And you don’t even understand the evidence you are arguing against, that much is obvious.
You say that researchers should have included design as an alternative to evoltuion but then cannot even write the first paragraph of what you say they should have included.
You complain about people not doing what you yourself cannot do, specify the likelihood of design in numbers and justify them, and yet are happy to complain that researches are not doing the same!
Why don’t you show everyone how it’s done colewd? Why don’t you demonstrate the thing that you believe is possible, that you say other people should be including in their work?
Shall I start an OP to rub your face in.it even more? I think so…
It would be nice to get ten yards without an analogy. They can be useful, but in some hands serve only to confuse. Molecules aren’t letters. They don’t behave like letters. Send an email to someone – even one saying ‘attach a microtubule’, or ‘replicate this’ – and nothing much will happen. But make a microtubule, an actual physical thing, and it will attach wherever the interaction of electrostatic forces gives the locally lowest-energy conformation. Fiddle with the DNA, and you might disrupt or improve the attachment point, hence attenuating or promoting the lineage of that particular variant.
Thinking of letters or RAM is classic map-territory confusion – which I might illustrate by resorting to an analogy of my own: an actual, well, map. Digitise a landscape and send it off to someone, and they have all the information they might need to navigate a physical landscape in their mind’s eye. They extract this information, process it, stick it on their phone. But it’s a representation of something else. As to the actual landscape, the base information is in the form of actual contours: rise and fall, gravity; sometimes there’s substance and sometimes fresh air. You can’t get around this landscape other than through physics. You can’t think your way between peaks. Likewise in biology: at the cellular level whatever is produced simply falls down energy gradients; it’s not ‘instructed’ to go anywhere or do anything. Physical behaviour can only be altered by fiddling with these gradients in some way, and that ultimately tracks back to changes in the root DNA.
What is unique about biological systems is the capacity of self-replication. It is not simply that the physical landscape is navigated, but the means to generate a precise replica of that physical landscape is itself part of the landscape. Because the contours of the single-strand DNA landscape precisely specify the counterpart, and vice versa, enzymes can wander along that landscape and – driven only by lowest-energy conformations, by physics – construct a replica from subunits. That replica has all the properties of the original. It’s not transformed by ‘the cell’ or ‘the organism’, used as cache to store the results of a few operations or an instruction to an invisible operator to pass the message on to three friends. Those analogies place something outside in order to process it or look after it in some way. You’ve got ‘the thing’ and then you’ve got ‘the system’ of which it is part. It’s tempting to simply move ‘the system’ from outside to inside in the case of self replication, and retain the intuition that the system is in the driving seat. ‘The thing’ is replicated by ‘the system’ of which it is part; the second copies the first. But there is an important distinction. When ‘the system’ is generated entirely from components of ‘the thing’, this intuitive ‘system-thing’ subservience is eroded. ‘The system’ changes only by virtue of changes in ‘the thing’.
I love self-references.
Yes there are all of these things and they all need to function in a coordinated manner. So it has been discovered that there are regulators in the system. But on closer examination even the regulators are regulated.
Someone can point to the DNA and say this is where it all begins, this is the master controller. No it isn’t. Do you think that your life is being controlled by your DNA?
The figure below represents the known interactions within the protein complex of a mouse’s spliceosome sub-network. Where does the DNA regulation fit in here? How does the DNA instigate the building of this complex? And remember this is just one small piece within the vital processes of the functioning organism. And it’s not a case of, “Oh! look how complicated it is, how can we explain that!”. The figure itself reveals how much has actually been discovered. I’m sure many of the proteins within this network will have themselves been created via RNA splicing.
The body is not a dictatorship run by some autocratic DNA, it is a coordinated, cooperative collective where multiple processes work in unison to maintain the whole.
And it’s utterly unlike any designs humans create.
Agree or disagree?
Can you provide anything like the diagram you have just posted there for human designed systems? If so perhaps you might have a point.
No I didn’t ask.
The problem is that we don’t have any DNA from billions of years ago to confirm the theory that it started out much simpler.
What gene was it if you don’t mind me asking?
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No functional significance that you were aware of. There have been cases where things that were believed to have no significance turned out to be significant.
I take it you are thanking me on behalf of those readers of my post, who, like myself, have only a little bit of knowledge about these topics but are interested in looking more deeply into it? Or do you think this thread is being read only by experts like yourself who already know all this stuff?
Agree.
Yes it is. It’s the tornado in a junkyard argument. But I don’t see how this demonstrates that the required information is not contained within the properties of the biomolecules (in particular DNA), but derives from some invisible internal intelligence instead.
I hope I have paraphrased your position correctly, BTW. For someone complaining that he only receives “vague generalities without much substance”, you are doing a poor job describing how this internal intelligence organizes this complex.
You are very confident that you are in possession of the truth.
But in reality the “separate factors” are not separate. We can isolate them in our minds for the purpose of analysis but only their interactions within the whole give them meaning in reality. Any living organism that is ever studied begins its existence as a complete functioning organism. It cannot be reduced to anything below this level. As you or I were conceived, intracellular activity was already well under way. DNA was being manipulated within the cells organisation. Genes need to be “switched on” by something, but genes are required to produce that something. And so the wheel keeps turning.
No one section is in charge, it is more like a well choreographed dance between multiple partners.
Where in the DNA does the organism get its form from?
Was that a splutter or a cough? I suggest you self isolate for a week just to be on the safe side 🙂
Yes, in my laptop ten yards worth of thread would take an awful lot of scrolling 🙂
And what point might I have?