Hi Jon,
"This and a previous e-mail touch on an interesting point. Both at the macroscopic level as you say, and also at the genetic level (pseudogenes, replication errors, etc.), there is a good case to be made for lack of design in the details of the process, even though the end result still fills us with wonder and a sense that the outcome was intended."
The same process that generates pseudogenes and replication errors generates gene duplication and gene duplication is precisely a mechanism would we expect from a front-loading designer. I don't see the good case that you see.
"That is, it perhaps appears undesigned *IF* design (via a supernatural Intelligent Designer) is held to what we consider a reasonable standard of "good design", which includes efficiency, elegance, and a clear direction of "forward progress" in the development."
I agree. But then we should apply this criterion in an intellectually honest manner. The genetic code, for example, is a fantastic example of good design according to several parameters. If something doesn't stand up against a reasonable standard of "good design", it counts against design; if something does stand up against a reasonable standard of "good design", it counts for design. Proponents of design have a hard time admitting the former, while critics of design have a hard time admitting the latter. I wonder why? ;)
"Analogies are made with software development at times, but in the "designed evolution" of software, each step forward has a particular advancing or constantly improving purpose in mind. Yes, human software does get convoluted with baggage code the cumbers down the whole system, but one would hope that an Intelligent Designer would do better than Microsoft."
Indeed. And after over 3 BILLION years of tinkering, along billions of lineages, the blind watchmaker has not significantly altered the universal genetic code. It's a nice example of a mature design, found at the very root of the tree of life.
"The Intelligent Design movement seems to completely overlook the areas where appearance of design is challenging, and instead focus on areas where there is beauty, elegance, and a sense of awe at how such an entity could have developed in the absence of design. This seems inconsistent at best."
The IDM is a socio-political movement and like all movements, will of course have inconsistencies. But I don't think it is a good idea to look to a socio-political movement for guidance in an open-ended investigation.
"I think this illustrates two problems with IDM. One, the assumption that design must be what we limited humans consider to be "good design"; and two, overlooking certain aspects of what appear to be "bad design"; which leads to the unstated conclusion that some things must not have been designed well. Thus the TE approach of giving God credit for providentially directing the whole works instead of just some parts of it, seems to be a more orthodox view than IDM, which seems to emphasize God's direction only in some parts of it."
Yes, and neither is it a good idea to mix theology with a design inference. The design inference is merely about an attempt to DETECT and detection is not equivalent to reality. Our minds, and our methods, are far too crude to detect all there is that is out there.
- Mike Gene
----- Original Message -----
From: Jon Tandy
To: asa@calvin.edu
Sent: Thursday, February 05, 2009 6:52 PM
Subject: RE: [asa] evidence for design
This and a previous e-mail touch on an interesting point. Both at the macroscopic level as you say, and also at the genetic level (pseudogenes, replication errors, etc.), there is a good case to be made for lack of design in the details of the process, even though the end result still fills us with wonder and a sense that the outcome was intended. That is, it perhaps appears undesigned *IF* design (via a supernatural Intelligent Designer) is held to what we consider a reasonable standard of "good design", which includes efficiency, elegance, and a clear direction of "forward progress" in the development. Analogies are made with software development at times, but in the "designed evolution" of software, each step forward has a particular advancing or constantly improving purpose in mind. Yes, human software does get convoluted with baggage code the cumbers down the whole system, but one would hope that an Intelligent Designer would do better than Microsoft.
The Intelligent Design movement seems to completely overlook the areas where appearance of design is challenging, and instead focus on areas where there is beauty, elegance, and a sense of awe at how such an entity could have developed in the absence of design. This seems inconsistent at best.
I think this illustrates two problems with IDM. One, the assumption that design must be what we limited humans consider to be "good design"; and two, overlooking certain aspects of what appear to be "bad design"; which leads to the unstated conclusion that some things must not have been designed well. Thus the TE approach of giving God credit for providentially directing the whole works instead of just some parts of it, seems to be a more orthodox view than IDM, which seems to emphasize God's direction only in some parts of it.
Nothing new here that hasn't already been said on this list, but I thought it was interesting that both at the level of evolution of species and at the genetic level, there is messiness that challenges the idea of an interventionist design policy, and yet there is beauty and order in the picture as a whole. In a similar comparison, nature seems to exhibit true randomness both at the atomic level, the genetic level, and on large scales (such as expressed in chaos theory). And yet, each of these systems, though random in some details, exhibit a great propensity toward stability. Even though each of these systems has their own laws and mechanisms which are different from each other, it seems that these characteristics of simultaneous randomness and stability are fundamental properties of the "nature of nature" at many different levels.
It's also interesting that both the regularity and orderliness, and also the opposing characteristic of randomness, have been used to rule out God. Regularity seems to imply that nature could go on deterministically without the need for God, and randomness seems to imply lack of purpose; at least for those who don't wish to accept the implications of God's existence. Obviously, theologies (or many of them) can deal with both of these in different ways, without ruling out an active and purposeful God.
Jon Tandy
From: asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu [mailto:asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu] On Behalf Of Don Winterstein
Sent: Thursday, February 05, 2009 11:16 AM
To: asa@calvin.edu
Subject: Re: [asa] evidence for design
...things which 'look haphazard' do not look undesigned to me, certainly in the context of natural science. ... from an intellectual and philosophical vantage point, life on earth looks shot through with design to me.
Life isn't a game. What motive would you ascribe to an intelligent designer who designed almost all of his organisms so that they go extinct? And why would he generate many avenues of development that turn out to be dead ends? And if his objective is humanity, why would he be fiddling around for billions of years with lower organisms that never amount to anything? The individual organisms emerging can and do look designed, but the processes that give rise to them don't. It's these processes that the designer presumably is controlling. The evidence says either he doesn't know how to control or he isn't able to. One would suppose an intelligent designer who had the knowledge and power to control and who also had a well-defined objective in mind would have generated life forms in a vastly more efficient way.
Ultimately I'm arguing that, because the outcome is what it is, the whole thing in some way was designed by an intelligent designer after all. But on the basis of what I know about historical geology and paleontology, I claim it is a humongous stretch to say there is evidence of intelligent design in the way that organisms have emerged--until modern humanity. If you have such evidence, please share.
Don
----- Original Message -----
From: Schwarzwald
To: asa@calvin.edu
Sent: Thursday, February 05, 2009 7:46 AM
Subject: Re: [asa] evidence for design
Heya Don,
On Thu, Feb 5, 2009 at 10:02 AM, Don Winterstein <dfwinterstein@msn.com> wrote:
Even Dawkins will, if I recall right, admit to seeing 'illusions of design' in nature.
More than that, many atheists and agnostics even have "religious experiences." I recall reading such testimony years ago in the Skeptical Inquirer: someone described such experience in detail and subsequently dismissed the whole thing as illusion. Many atheists acknowledge that their bodies and minds are primed to receive "spiritual illusions" along with sensory illusions. They simply categorize such "illusions" as stemming from human frailty and are careful to dismiss them. That's what I mean when I say they suppress that side of themselves. They can't completely control it, but if and when "illusions" come, they are careful to "recognize them for what they are." In the end, they make their intellects dominate and see only nature in nature.
Perhaps, and I'm sure there's something to be said for there being an appropriate amount of skepticism even for christians. I'd put what they're doing differently, I think - rationalizing, denying what's apparent and often doing so without much thought or justification, or really giving consideration to what's entailed by what they deny. But, again, it seems like that's a point where we diverge.
...The universe, for whatever reason, just happens to spit out rational minds and illusions of design left and right.
There's a difference between mere design and design that requires an intelligent designer. Plant parts, animal parts and whole plants and animals often display various symmetries. Think of many kinds of flowers. And crystals are known for their symmetries. Such designs most of the time (excepting crystals here) can be readily ascribed to evolutionary processes. Microscopic things like bacterial flagella are admittedly much harder to explain, if it's even possible. But as I pointed out before, on the largest evolutionary scale, the emergence of the various organisms as seen in the fossil record seems utterly haphazard in the sense of being unguided by any force except nature. The observed sequences of organisms beg the question of why an intelligent being who had any degree of control over what was going on would choose to bring organisms into the world so haphazardly. If at this largest scale, the scale that presumablly would be most important for an intelligent designer, we see only apparent randomness, an implication is that examples of order and design at lesser scales are only apparent and do not witness to an intelligent designer. As Dawkins has pointed out, evolution is what makes atheism respectable (or whatever it was he said along those lines).
And this is where I would disagree strongly. The typical way I see this explained is with snowflakes - 'every snowflake is unique, and they have noticeable patterns - some of them very beautiful. But we know the various natural processes involved in making each and every snowflake, so therefore snowflakes aren't designed.' One problem I have with this comes from some meager programming experience - procedural content generation being a particularly good example. I can name probably a dozen or more (at the least) games where content is generated on the fly. But it would be a tremendous mistake to, say, play one of these games and go 'Well, this stuff is generated according to these algorithms which the programmer has no direct control over, therefore it was not designed.' Even in the case of the programmer, what you're playing with is the result of a designed program - the specific outcomes may be of surprise to a mere human programmer, but quite a lot of the content and what you experience would be part of a plan. That before realizing that some content can be 'guaranteed' to show up mixed in with the rest of what's procedurally generated. Saying 'Well, a natural (or evolutionary) process did this, therefore there is no design' strikes me as equivalent to saying 'Well, a procedural content-generating algorithm did this, therefore no programmer'.
So no, I disagree sharply with Dawkins on this point - and certainly with the conclusion that nothing (or few things) in nature looks designed 'because natural processes (which themselves, in my view, positively reek of design - before looking at the specific organisms and micro-organisms) can explain what we see'. It's akin to explaining away programmers because, really, computers alone can explain software. In my view - and admittedly, it's probably too strong for some - evolution made atheism intellectually respectable only by comparison with YEC (or outright denials of any substantial evolution), and only with the assumption that if YEC is not true that no God exists. There's a reason why atheists almost exclusively promote atheism indirectly (by attacking/insisting on skepticism of claims of religion(s)) rather than positively offering up atheistic explanations for the universe. Not just because said offering is emotionally undesirable, but because it would sound more ridiculous than the most ancient, myth-laden religion.
But still, my main point here is that things which 'look haphazard' do not look undesigned to me, certainly in the context of natural science. Again, we may just end up disagreeing here, but from an intellectual and philosophical vantage point, life on earth looks shot through with design to me. I don't rule out a designer just because natural forces may have been in use, anymore than I rule out toy designers just because every GI Joe I've ever come across was assembled by an unthinking machine.
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