Jason
>But can a computer choose on its own? I don't think so. It's 'choice' is
>determined exactly by the seed the programmer chooses, whatever that may
be.
>The programmer actually dictates the choice to the computer! The question
>becomes, is the programmer actually choosing or is choice supernatural?
Chris
Well, yes and no. The question with respect to the computer is: How does it
choose? Is that PROCESS of choosing supernatural? Does it go beyond
naturalism? Clearly not. Suppose a computer was programmed with everything
EXCEPT how to process one choice, and suppose we let cosmic rays hitting a
detector determin how that choice was to be carried out. Are you then going
to claim that the cosmic ray was supernatural, or that it was choosing in
some supernatural way? Or what?
No: The fact is that what's in a computer is not supernatural, and that the
question of how it got there is a DIFFERENT question (as the cosmic ray
example shows). If you want to support a claim that choice is supernatural,
you have to show that ordinary brain functions can't do it. Since we know,
almost as well as we CAN know such things, that the brain CAN do it, and
that, WHEN it does it, there is no apparent external intervention, the
introduction of supernaturalism is superfluous, like introducing
supernaturalism to explain why a person smashed to a pulp against a wall by
a speeding car is a DEAD person.
Choice is not a mysterious process, nor is its existence. If you have to
MAKE it seem mysterious in order to support a design theory, the design
theory is pretty weak. Living organisms have to act in various ways in order
to perpetuate their genes. This requires of some organisms that they be
aware of possible different courses of action, and that they have an
information-processing mechanism that causes them to act in better ways (for
their genes) than simply arbitrarily picking a way to act by the mental
equivalent of flipping a coin. When we do it consciously, we call it
choosing. Where's the supernatural in this?
Chris
>>We find a chaos of the useful and the non-useful in the genes, for
>> >example.
Jason
>Do you know for sure they are non-useful? Or has there merely not been a
>discovered usage of them yet?
Chris
Some of them may be useful, but many of them can be removed without harming
the offspring (and, in some cases, IMPROVING the offspring). Further, we
know that some of them, in some cases, are there because of viruses that
implant strings into the genes of the hosts but don't kill the host, so the
host reproduces WITH the new genes intact (yet another method of variation
that Darwin didn't know about). Surely, you're not going to claim that every
gene introduced into an organism by a virus is useful, are you?
Chris
>>No, design in nature is an illusion of the same sort that causes some
>> >people to see the Virgin Mary in the water stains on the sides of
>> >buildings, and bunny rabbits in clouds, and "irreducible complexity" >in
>>molecules, and some to believe that other people are secretly >plotting
>>against them.
Jason
>Care to verify the links between all of these and the assertion they are
>illusions? (specifically the irreducible complexity and design in nature)
Chris
Sure, though I thought it was obvious: They are linked by the fact of
"seeing" things that are not there, or not actually shown to be there by
what is seen. Claiming that the mere appearance of a "Virgin Mary"-like
water stain is a supernatural event, claiming that every car-horn beep is
someone sending messages to one, claiming that molecular structures prove
design, etc., are all instances of grossly out-of-rational-bounds
interpretation, of imputing that the evidence is evidence of something far
beyond what it can possibly be rational evidence of.
Chris
>>You can "see" design in absolutely anything, if you set your mind to >it,
>>or if you are predisposed to confuse pattern and structure with >design,
>>and if you are willing to suspend objectivity (or are unable >or unwilling
>>to achieve it).
Jason
>Or if it's actually there. How do you rule that out?
Chris
The question is, how do you rule it IN? The burden of proof is on the
design-claimant. In practice, we rule it out by showing simply that we don't
have the kinds of evidence needed for a proof of design.
In science and in philosophy, we don't get to make arbitrary assumptions and
still have a right to claim rationality. Design must be PROVED, not assumed.
Until it is, it rules itself out by requiring much stronger evidence than
naturalistic explanations of Nature do.
Chris