Re: Reply to CCogan: Waste and computer evolution

From: DNAunion@aol.com
Date: Fri Oct 06 2000 - 00:50:05 EDT

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    >Chris: Not so. For the same general burden of proof reasons, we may presume
    until evidence indicates otherwise, that the intelligent causes, if any, are
    naturalistic.

    DNAunion: So "you guys" win by default? You don't need a shred of evidence,
    you just simply win. "You guys" have no burden of proof to bear? Nice double
    standards.

    >Chris: Further, since we only have a theoretical means of recognizing
    intelligent design by naturalistically-occurring beings (i.e., humans, aliens
    (because they would necessarily live under the same *basic* conditional
    factors, limitations, and constraints as we do)), we have yet another reason
    for presuming that any "design" we claim to see should be regarded by
    presumption as design by metaphysically naturalistic beings.

    DNAunion: Okay, let me ask this. Are you saying that computers and
    airplanes and four-stroke reciprocating internal combustion engines are
    NATURAL because they were produced by "natural" intelligences instead of by a
    supernatural intelligences?

    I agree that the items I listed are not supernatural, and thus could be
    somehow (mis)classified as "natural", but you cannot get away from the fact
    that they do not arise by purely-natural means: merely by the laws of physics
    and chemistry: that intelligence must direct their creation. You don't go
    out to a beach and see a computer or an airplane or a television set form
    before your eyes by the simple shuffling of atoms and molecules.

    If you want to classify intelligent input by ETI's, computer and other
    engineers, systems analysts and computer programmers, electricians and
    electrical engineers, geneticists, protein engineers, etc. as natural, that
    is your business. The general consensus is that such input is better defined
    as intelligent, and that the items produced by such intelligences (as listed
    above) are NOT natural.

    >Chris: If you, or Behe, or Johnson, or Dembski, or anyone else can come up
    with a *rational* way of specifying what divine design would necessarily look
    like, then go right ahead.

    DNAunion: If you, Elsberry, Dawkins, or Orgel, or anyone else can come up
    with a valid and detailed explanation for the purely-natural origin of life
    here on Earth, go right ahead. In the meantime, "you guys" should not state
    as fact that it occurred here on Earth by purely natural means: assumptions
    are not the same as facts, no matter how much "naturalists" wish them to be.

    By the way, why must "you guys" always turn "our" arguments into GOD
    arguments. I notice that the word GOD (and divine etc.) come up far more by
    anti-IDists than by IDists. Why? Because "you guys" want so badly to label
    ID as a religious idea. What if all of "us guys" continually mislabeled
    evolution as an atheistic idea? If in every single reply "we" made - not
    just here and not just us, but every IDist and every Creationist on every
    board, book, and TV show - began driving in the "fact" that all evolutionists
    were atheists (or even Nazis): would you consider that fair? I don't think
    so. So why do "you people" keep doing to "us people" what you would not want
    us to do to you - that is, make the other person's beliefs out to be
    something they are not in order to gain some points.

    >Chris: But, until then, and until evidence is found that "works" better with
    that concept of divine design than with naturalistic design, divine design is
    verbal and conceptual fog.

    DNAunion: Great - so when was I talking about divine design? Who are you
    addressing? Surely not me. If you are going to respond to MY posts, then
    doesn't it make that you respond to MY statements?

    By the way, using your logic, I come up with, "But until then, until evidence
    is found that works better with the concept of a purely-natural origin of
    life here on Earth than with an intelligently-directed model, then
    abiogenesis is verbal and conceptual fog."



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