At 01:18 PM 11/01/2000, you wrote:
>Bertvan:
>I don't regard ID as meaning everything was planned beforehand. I believe
>the biosphere was designed to interact with the environment. Darwinists also
>believe life interacts with the environment, but they insist it is all a
>process of chance and accidents - no design. I doubt "chance" played any
>part in the appearance of "beneficial" mutations, -- intelligent, rational,
>interacting pieces of complex biological systems.
Chris
Consider a species of grass that lives throughout a large valley. One side
of the valley, A, changes so that it is no longer well-suited to that kind
of grass, but the other side, B, *is* still suited to it. In the next
generation of grass, we find that some individuals on both sides of the
valley have modifications that make them more suited to the conditions on
the A portion of the valley, but *less* suited to life on the B side of the
valley. Question: Are the changes in these grass plants on the A side of
the valley *designed* to adapt the grass to the new conditions, but merely
accidental on the B side of the valley?
Forget it. I forgot for a moment that rational thought and asking questions
concerning the coherence of your own views is against your screwed up
religion. However, this is the kind of question any *rational* person
considering your anti-empirical theory of "design" would have to ask
himself, because, if the *exact* same variations that are beneficial in one
environment are harmful in another, on what amazing could anyone possibly
claim that when it occurs beneficially, it is designed, but when it occurs
harmfully, it is accidental? To a moderately *rational* person, this kind
of distribution of variation would be considered as evidence *against*
design, but, the last time I brought up this same point, you answered my
post but did not deign to answer this point.
What would be the evidence for your claim? Oh, wait, that would be a
*scientific* issue. But *then*, you shouldn't be making such claims at all,
should you, having admitted that you are not qualified to evaluate
scientific arguments (*that* much, at least is certainly true).
Interestingly, the fact that you are *also* utterly unqualified to be
making *philosophical* claims has not stopped you from making them, so, in
this respect your hypocrisy regarding scientific pronouncements is
consistent with your hypocrisy regarding philosophy. You use the same
ant-rational "epistemological" principles in both: almost perfectly pure,
blindest of blind, faith in how things happen to "appear" on the absolutely
shallowest outermost surface to your subconscious (i.e., your *emotions*)).
You have a lot of gall to be criticizing people for believing in crap like
Freudianism when your own person way of thinking is
all-but-indistinguishable from that kind of pseudo-science. But, I suppose
this is just another example of your total unwillingness to examine your
own thinking habits, another example of your nearly perfect intellectual
corruption and hypocrisy, another example demonstrating your nearly total
unwillingness to question any ideas except those you disagree with.
>Every piece of an organism
>is alive, including mutations, and so far "chance" has not proved capable of
>producing either life or intelligence.
Chris
Perhaps you have not noticed, being hopelessly biased, that nothing else
has "proved capable of producing either life or intelligence," *either.
Further, though the existence of life and the total lack of independent
evidence of design does not absolutely prove that chance is capable of
producing life and intelligence, we have come far closer to proving *that*
than anything else. If life was not produced by "chance," then the best we
can do is simply say that we have no idea how life came to be.
ID theory, so far, is not even a distant second to evolutionary theory,
scientifically *or* philosophically (as is demonstrated by the work of
Johnson, Dembski, Behe, and by the fact that people like Jones have to drag
out witless arguments like the "Pascal's Wager" argument because they have
*absolutely *N*O*T*H*I*N*G* to offer that's *rational*. Jones has even gone
so far (following similar claims by Johnson) as to claim that ultimate
starting points must be simply assumed, even though he cannot come up with
anything but a first-year philosophy student's pseudo-intellectual argument
to support this claim, a claim that is, in any case, blatantly self-refuting.
Bertvan
(Remember, abiogenesis is still a Darwinist hope, not a fact.) Selection
could only choose between functioning, complex mutations that already
include life and intelligence. Intelligence is an attribute of life.
Once again, since you admit (correctly) to being unqualified to evaluate
scientific claims, you are not qualified to make claims of this sort. *You*
don't know whether abiogenesis is a "Darwinist hope" or a fact, so you
shouldn't be making such claims. Further, there is no evidence that
"selection" *chooses* between *anything* and anything else. If you are
merely using "choose" metaphorically, your claim is *still* false.
Selection can (and *does*) select mere molecules. If you introduce an
autocatalytic molecule and a *non-*autocatalytic molecule into a suitable
solution, the autocatalytic ones will be replicated and the others will
not. *That's* selection. Selection is the (non-random) differential
*greater* reproduction of something that has certain traits vs. something
that has *other* traits. *Life* is absolutely unnecessary. All that's
necessary is that there be some mechanism by which an information-carrying
medium (such as a water molecule) gets reproduced, and some conditions
under which it does not get reproduced (such as the lack of hydrogen and
oxygen).
Finally, perhaps you should have actually *read* the Margulis quote. She's
clearly talking about species that *are* able, in a not completely
metaphorical sense, to choose, in some sense, as in mate-selection.
However, even mate-selection, except in organisms with a fairly
well-developed intelligence, mate-selection seems as nearly deterministic
as it can possibly get, just not necessarily strictly determined by *genes*
alone. Even among *humans*, mate selection is typically driven by
psychological factors that people don't even *try* to justify by
intelligence or choice. It's not driven entirely by genes, obviously, or
there would be no cultural differences in mate selection, but it's
obviously not usually driven by anything even approximating "design," either.
Further, it's clear that, except in an extremely loose sense, "Relations
between co-evolving members of different species" do *not* begin as
*conscious decisions.* The only exception we have (and not much of an
exception, even so) is the relation between humans and some animals (dogs
and cats, for example):
Cave-kid (holding wolf-puppy found after a wolf was killed): "Mommy, can we
keep it?"
Cave-mom (busy cooking carcass of the puppy's mom): "Well, okay, for a
little while."
Even in *this* case, the beginning of the relationship is conscious only on
the part of the humans.
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