[...]
Bertvan:
>>Do you believe free will exists?
>
>Chris
>*I* do, but not in the sense in which a typical Christian would mean it. You
>have free will if you are acting according to your judgment and not out of
>some form of external-to-judgment compulsion. I wouldn't WANT to act in any
>other way; it would be suicidal.
>
>But, free will or not, we still have choice. Choice does not require
>indeterminism. Indeterministic free will IS an illusion, created by simple
>confusion, ignorance, and superstition. We experience free will, not
>indeterminism.
>
I'm having a hard time understanding this. Free will and choice
seem to me to be impossible in a deterministic world. If the
future states of the world are determined from its current state
and physical law, then how can one possibly ever choose anything?
Or perhaps you are defining determinism in some other way?
>And, so far, "the appearance of design" in nature appears to be an illusion,
>too, for similar reasons. How do we determine what's designed and what's
>not? We do it by the fact that things that are designed are DIFFERENT from
>what we see in Nature, and in certain specific ways. My computer keyboard is
>recognizable as an object of design because it is DIFFERENT from anything we
>know of in Nature. It did not GROW, it doesn't look like something that
>arose by erosion, it has almost nothing but components that are known
>products of human design. Further, when we analyze a computer keyboard, we
>don't find any reproductive mechanism, and yet, we know that there are
>millions of computer keyboards. Organisms in Nature simply don't have the
>kinds of traits that truly distinguish all KNOWN examples of design.
>
>Instead, they have ORDER, which is an inevitable aspect of anything that
>exists,
I'm also having a hard time understanding this. Using definitions
of order that I'm used to, organisms are anything but ordered.
What definition are you using for order? Also, why is order an
inevitable aspect of anything that exists?
>and they have specific general traits that would be expected of
>things that evolve without design (metabolism, self-reproduction (or at
>least reproduction in situ, as in the case of viruses), variability, a
>mechanism for storing information from generation to generation (genes), and
>so forth). In short, they are almost specifically LACKING in any signs of
>design. Are they held together by rivets, screws, glue, nails, wire, solder,
>etc.? Are they made out of components that are known to be designed and
>manufactured? Do they have trademarks or manufacturer's logos stamped on
>them? Are they made of plastic and metal and strips of wood (i.e., boards)
>cut from trees? Have we ever seen a Designer making them, as we have seen
>people making things?
>
>And it doesn't get any better if we get into details; it gets worse, much
>worse, Behe's desperate ploy notwithstanding. Instead of finding the
>PUT-togetherness of design, we find the THROWN-and-GROWN-togetherness of
>evolution. We find a chaos of the useful and the non-useful in the genes,
>for example. We find that no large organism that we've ever studied has a
>clean genetic structure; it's an unGodly mess in there; If it's designed,
>it's designed very badly, very sloppily.
As a follow on to the above question about order: If you believe the
above is true then why say that organisms are ordered?
>It's the kind of stuff we find from
>beginning computer programmers; a jumble. If it's designed, the designer is
>an idiot. Any second-year engineering student could do better (and often
>DOES do better!!!!!!!!).
>
As one who regularly teaches second-year engineering students I find
this statement very amusing ;-).
[...]
Brian Harper
Associate Professor
Applied Mechanics
The Ohio State University
"All kinds of private metaphysics and theology have
grown like weeds in the garden of thermodynamics"
-- E. H. Hiebert