[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:
OMagain,
A public poll done properly such as Pew or Gallop is a neutral source.
Alan Fox,
A metabolic pathway is a group of enzymes. The challenge is finding a single function twice with two very different sequences.
Polls by Pew seem to have a Republican bias.
I’m not familiar with “Gallop” poll. Is that run by a stable genius?
Cute. Keep trotting ’em out.
Hey, you two, stop horsing around!
What was wrong with the one I linked then? Got a better one?
How does “design” meet that challenge?
No, don’t bother. “It was designed by a mind” is what you’ll say.
Neigh!
Flint,
I agree with you but this exercise is not possible without the evidence of the watch. The evidence for the source of the design in the case of the cell is the Tanakh, the New Testament and the letters along with some other historical and archeological evidence.
I don’t have any problem saying additional evidence is more convincing. The problem I have is with the “no evidence” claim.
Alan Fox,
Let’s start with a couple of simple Isaiah passages.
7:14
“Therefore, the Lord Himself will give you a a sign: The virgin will conceive, b have a son, and name him Immanuel”
Immanuel means “God with us” in Hebew..Virgin could also mean young woman
9:6
For to us a child is born,
to us a son is given,
and the government will be on his shoulders.
And he will be called
Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God,
Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.
Here is a popular song whose lyrics are derived from these Isaiah passages.
No. Enzymes are catalysts. They promote reactions without being consumed in the process.
I think that challenge has been met. Function is not limited to specific sequences. I wonder if anyone has mentioned Keefe and Szostak to you before. 😉 (It’s the classical example of which I’m sure there are plenty. Function being unique to specific sequences is incorrect!)
What happened to Daniel? I take the trouble to read Daniel 9, point out I can’t see any text that might be seen as a prediction of later events connected to Jesus and you change the subject! Not impressive!
*chuckles*
Yes, I have heard this many times during the build-up to Christmas. I was educated by the Church of England primary school system. As a kid I sang the hymns too. I could still remember many of the words if the tunes were to strike up – nothing wrong with a good sing-song. Stirs the emotions and gets the juices flowing. But I thought Jesus was called, well, Jesus. French president Macron is Emmanuel; I’m not convinced as he is of his God-like powers
How is this evidence of a link to Jesus?
Well, of course. It’s the same in Demotic Greek. This is one thing that seems particularly daft and undermines claims that Bible stories can be considered reliably historical. I haven’t time now but I might put up an OP on this, though I’ll have a look in case there’s a previous OP that covers it.
ETA partisan anthem
Depends more on what words mean than what reality we observe. The properties of water are not recorded in its precursors, just as the hydrogen atom doesn’t carry a copy of the Shrödinger wave equation. Schrödinger just produced a model that fits.
For some uses of the word “design” I’d agree because the Supreme creator could have chosen these properties by design rather than it just being the way things are. Could be both!
The Schrödinger wave equation is a good model for the hydrogen atom and an explanation for the 106° bend in the water molecule. Doesn’t tell us why things are the way they are. Religious claims purport to do that but that’s just human wishful thinking.
On reading this I wonder if there is a clear distinction here. Depending on the context, I am both attracted and repelled. It’s the emotional versus the intellectual. Why can’t it be both? 😉
ETA for example, I find this oddly attractive and repulsive at the same time 🙂
What is the best most obvious piece of evidence that the bible supports the idea that the cell was designed?
What specific passage, letter or whatever is the most significant piece of evidence in it’s own right?
Or is “The new testament supports the claim that the cell is designed” literally it?
Given up on writing that first paragraph that you say should have compared the probability of new cell types against design have you?
Odd how suggesting things you yourself cannot do never seems to cause a problem for you. Odd how it never makes you realize perhaps you are in error.
But then, people like you who do what you do know full well the reasons for avoiding certain questions…
That you cannot identify the biological problem for which the watchmaker analogy is the purported explanation is extremely telling. This is the reason why ID creationists often get accused of starting out with their preferred conclusion and reasoning backwards from it. Most of them are better than you at covering that up and start posting really-complicated-looking pictures of molecular networks. You on the other hand don’t make it into formulating a biological problem at all, even after being prompted twice. Clearly, the theological side of the argument is the thing that appeals to you. That’s all fine with me, but don’t pretend that this is a scientific dispute.
Now, you keep referring to Paley’s watch as the “evidence”, but that watch doesn’t actually exist now does it? It’s just a rhetorical device in an argument that relies on the superficial similarity between living organisms and man made contrivances. That similarity is what one might call, with a bit of good will, the evidence. That is the entirety of your evidence, so you better cherish it.
Are you saying that the chemical properties of water are NOT associated with its matter? Where does that information come from then? Does water have an “internal intelligence” that tells it how to build pretty crystals when it hits zero degrees Celsius?
That doesn’t make sense at all, Charlie. All matter has properties that are inseparable from it. Those properties are sufficient to explain the dynamics, order, and complexity in living organisms.
In thinking reductively we imagine there to be complete separation when in fact nothing is so isolated. To think holistically is to understand that here is no such thing as matter separate from life. I am aware of four states of being, so called lifeless matter, active living beings, conscious beings and self-conscious beings.
Matter which appears to be lifeless is, nevertheless, always contained within what I understand to be living beings. Life is not the outcome of these forces you mention, “e.g. hydrophobic interactions, hydrogen bonds, van der Waals forces”. These are the natural attributes of life. These are living forces that are in evidence. In reality there are only living processes, there is not such thing as static matter.
The solid state is matter in its most dormant form at the level which our senses operate. In liquids and gases it has more of its living nature on display.
Spliceosomes are active living beings. It is not a case of a free floating intellegence somehow manipulating all these forces you talk about. This organised system of forces and movements is the intelligence.
To understand the spiceosome we cannot just stick to the spliceosome. It has to be seen in its context. Like any other complex being from dynein ‘motors’ to humans, the interplay of the proteins of which it consists give it its dynamic form.
In Genesis it is written that in the beginning the “earth was without form, and void”, and in St John’s Gospel it is written, “In the beginning was the Word”
Scientists have done a magnificent job of showing us the processes within the cell which are involved in forming organisms. But what we find with these activities is the means and not the cause of the formations.
Just as these words in the Bible point to an overarching cause for the whole of physical reality, there are lesser creative causes within this reality. Cosmos condenses out of Chaos at many levels. The spliceosome is a microcosmos which reflects the greater macrocosmos. It is formed out of the chaotic presence of amino acids within the cell in order to achieve the formation of the organism in which it exists. To think of this complex emerging from the coded sequences is to only consider one side of the process. It cannot happen without the condensation process from the other direction.
The organism is the higher cause of the spliceosomes existence.
I don’t suppose that the above will be any easier for you to follow but at least it has helped me in the fact that I have had to write down my thoughts.
As a reader with no axe to grind, I’d point out some of your statements are uncontroversial, some incomprehensible. This one:
“Spliceosomes are active living beings.”
Is a bit of an outlier, even for you!
Alan Fox,
Sorry I thought you had some understanding of biology. Let’s go back to the basics a metabolic pathway contains a group of enzymes that perform several different reactions. An example is the Krebs cycle. You can google it.
Again this statement is based on a lack of understanding. We are talking about a probability calculation vs a let them eat cake statement.
Alan Fox,
You read it but did not comprehend it. The Isaiah passages are more basic so I thought we could start there.
Except this song was written after you were a kid. The point is that you can write Christmas songs using old testament passages. Does that trigger any thought?
OMagain,
I just know you can answer this without any help 🙂
Corneel,
The argument is pretty solid unless the quacking animal being a duck disturbs you. Seeing Alan’s posts this morning was strong evidence that facing reality is deeply disturbing to him. He is a lot smarter than his posts would indicate and so are you.
Bill,
Alan has a far better understanding of biology than you do, so you should probably stay away from that tack. In this case, Alan is correct and you are wrong. You wrote:
That is wrong. I was going to point this out to you myself. A metabolic pathway is a series of chemical reactions. You are confusing the reactions with the catalysts. It’s yet another example of the kind of sloppy thinking that pervades the ID movement.
Likewise, your
Displays a failure to respond to what was written that is difficult to reconcile within site rules. Alan cited Keefe and Szostak, his point being, there are many different sequences that are capable of performing a particular function. This affects your probability calculation..
Tell me Bill, which is the largest number:
The number of different 80- amino acid sequences that can bind ATP
or
The number of ways of ordering a 52 card deck.
or
The number of atoms in the observable universe
?
I can: none whatsoever.
As long as you stop insisting the quacking animal is a watch I am fine with that. Anyway, science it isn’t.
I’d be a bit careful with those statements if I were you. People might think you are projecting.
It wasn’t easier to follow, but thanks for putting in the effort anyway.
DNA_Jock,
So a metabolic pathway does not contain a group of enzymes? Can you cite an exception?
Are you really going to try and validate his “let them eat cake statement”?\
Corneel,
It isn’t science based on what criteria?
Corneel,
It’s not ok to call out Alan when he pivots into full BS mode?
Are spliceosomes active?
Do they belong within the domain of life?
Do they exist?
🙄🤔😒
In your case, you don’t actually have a scientific question.
Sure it’s OK. Just mind that such statements might have a tendency to boomerang on you.
Corneel,
Based on what criteria? Why are you guys in full BS mode today?
If a person insists on using words in ways that are different from the uses accepted as normal by the people he’s talking with, is aware that he is doing so, and yet makes no attempt to explain or justify the unusual uses, then he is no position to complain that he is being misunderstood.
In this case, you insist on using the words “matter” and “life” in a way that no one else here does, and you don’t explain why we should prefer your unusual uses to our accustomed ones. It’s nice that you think you have some amazing insight that you want to share with us if only we would trouble ourselves to read Steiner and Barfield, but when was the last time you troubled yourself to read anything that any of us recommended?
Well, Oxaloacetate to pyruvate comes to mind, but that is beside the point. You wrote
Which is wrong. A simple, “Oh, that’s not what I meant…I meant to say that a metabolic pathway is catalyzed by a group of enzymes, or a metabolic pathway can be described by a group of enzymes” or similar would suffice to move the conversation on. But you appear to have no interest in discussing Wagner, or Gallwitz, or any thing else.
Instead, you go for the misplaced (and boy do I mean misplaced) condescension.
To what do you refer? You are the only person talking about ‘cake’.
In order to calculate the probability you seek, you are going to have to take into account the number of different ways of achieving function X.
And for the one example I know of that’s published, binding ATP, the number is 10^93, more than the number of atoms in the observable universe. [This experiment has been successful lots of times, but those results remain by and large unpublished.]
So if pointing that FACT out to you is “validating his ‘let them eat cake’ statement” in colewd-world, then yes, that’s what I’m doing.
You are starting to sound a lot like Nonlin. You used to be more polite than that.
So what word is giving you trouble? Is it “science”, “criterion” or “question”?
By matter I mean what we experience with our senses in the form of solids, liquids and gases.
By life I include what we would regard as organic life. But I do not restrict my understanding of life to this. Self sustaining, intrinsic activity for me would be a sign of life which need not be confined to carbon based organic life.
I’m not asking you to agree with this position, but does that help to clarify my views?
I do follow at what others recommend. Obviously I don’t study all sources to the same degree. It all depends on availability and me level of understanding.
I think all these guys are trying to solve a problem they cannot solve. I read Wagners book and found it to be speculative at best. Darwin’s inference was before the cell was understood. When I discovered that DNA and Proteins were sequence dependent I felt the game for evolution as a potential complete explanation was over. The arguments I have followed along with and 3 years of cellular research have confirmed that this idea is dead. I know you are arguing for evolution and honestly I admire your grit but even someone as cleaver a you cannot make a silk purse out of a sows ear.
I think we all have common ground that evolutionary science has value but it is only a partial explanation. The design guys have a very good case.
The question is what is function X. There can be many solutions or only a few as in proteins like alpha actin in mammals. The worst case the probabilities get so small they are silly to even talk about. In living organisms you cannot avoid the worst case.
Corneel,
You made a claim that the watch analogy is not science. I am just asking you to support it.
That does help explain why you think that all matter is alive. Since 20th century science has long since out-grown the materialism/vitalism framework, I don’t see any need to use the terms “matter” and “life” as you do. In your sense of “life,” I am happy to say that all “matter” is “alive”.
But I wouldn’t want to endorse that claim without loads of qualifications and restrictions — not only because I restrict the term “life” to what you call “organic life,” but much more importantly, because my understanding of the term “matter” is based on 20th and 21st century physics and not based on ordinary uses.
He’s smart, sure, but you’re the sharpest cleaver in the drawer. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.
Designed by an utter shitbag of a god, sure, if you want to go there let’s talk about how the child killing god created cells. Let’s talk about the god who destroyed all of humanity bar a single family, despite most of that humanity having no idea of why they were drowning.
It seems that people saying things counts as evidence for colewd. Just that, words on a page, nothing else required. Somebody wrote that god made light and colewd believes it.
That other people have different origin stories bothers colwed not a jot. His old man in the sky designed cells, and that’s that.
That same old man laid down rules for slavery, beat em but not till they die. Otherwise, do what you want. That’s not a problem. We should be delighted that cells were designed, that we were given an opportunity to be enslaved in service to his ‘deity’.
So yeah, the best evidence that your designer designed cells is that if it did not it would hot have had anything to murder later on and you can’t have a psychopathic deity’s urges left unsatisfied can you?
“Likewise also as it was in the days of Lot; they did eat, they drank, they bought, they sold, they planted, they builded, but the same day that Lot went out of Sodom it rained fire and brimstone from heaven and destroyed them all. Even thus will it be in the day when the Son of man is revealed.”
No cells, nothing to reign fire down on eh? So yeah, fair enough. The bible proves cells are designed, as a mad deity needs it’s playthings to torture.
In the land of Uz there lived a man whose name was Job. This man was blameless and upright; he feared God and shunned evil.
I’m sure you are one of the people that sees Job’s story as all about god being great and all wise instead of just a psychopath.
Then use the right words. “Emerges” is not right. Water is not the progeny of H, H and O. It just is and always has been even before the first molecule. It did not “evolve”.
Some say 104.48°, but you’re the expert: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Properties_of_water
Probably an expert on everything Schrödinger too.
Nah, nothing intellectual there. Just anger at one’s mental impotence.
At some point one must call a spade a spade.
Who’s “we”?
What value does “evolutionary science” have?
Where exactly is the ‘science’ in “evolutionary science”?
Btw, are you a Biologos/PS follower now? I thought the PS guy spit you out at some point.
OMagain,
I struggle with this also. The part that is hard to reconcile is how loving and kind the human form (Jesus) was. The only thing I can think of is how hard it was for God to get humans with free will to behave with objective morality.
Nonlin.org,
Evolutionary Biology explains part of life’s diversity. Certainly there is evidence of some level of speciation that occurs. Also in species adaptions occur like resistance to antibiotics.
I still comment at Peaceful Science but very infrequently at Biologos.