Re: [asa] evidence for design

The Bible gives us no reason at all to think that God is concerned about efficiency in our sense of the term.
Paul Tillich's sermon "Holy Waste" (starting from the text about the woman at Bethany wasting the jar of valuable ointment on Jesus) is a good corrective to that notion.

---- Bill Dozier <wddozier@mac.com> wrote:
> Great point, Don. Efficiency is an important element of design for any
> engineer. If you have great inefficiencies in a system but you are
> claiming to detect design in it by analogy to engineered systems, then
> you probably need another analogy.
>
> On Feb 6, 2009, at 8:45 AM, Don Winterstein wrote:
>
> > I think I understand what's going on here. Both you and Mike Gene
> > see design where I and others see chaos. That's fine. As I've said
> > many times, because of the outcome, I believe design is there even
> > when I don't see it. It's just that your concept of design is very
> > unconventional. For example, a human who intended to build a house
> > would not spend years fiddling with the gravel that was to go into
> > the concrete of the foundation. Anyone who did that would be
> > regarded as peculiar at best, even if his house eventually turned
> > out well.
> >
> > If God wanted to have oxygen in the atmosphere, he surely could have
> > found a way to get it there more efficiently than by nurturing
> > cyanobacteria for several billion years. And yes, conventional
> > meanings of design do have a connection to efficiency. If someone
> > were all-powerful and all-knowing and goal-oriented, conventional
> > thinking would have him achieve his goal more rapidlly and
> > efficiently. Otherwise, his degree of goal-orientation would be in
> > question.
> >
> > You're too easy on God, altogether giving him a pass on speed and
> > efficiency. For myself, I claim there are deeper reasons for all
> > this.
> >
> > Don
> >
> > ----- Original Message -----
> > From: Schwarzwald
> > To: asa@calvin.edu
> > Sent: Thursday, February 05, 2009 7:49 PM
> > Subject: Re: [asa] evidence for design
> >
> > Heya Don,
> >
> > On Thu, Feb 5, 2009 at 12:15 PM, Don Winterstein <dfwinterstein@msn.com
> > > wrote:
> > ...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.
> >
> > Life is not a game, but nature is certainly and strongly comparable
> > to a program. I'm not suggesting that God is literally a programmer
> > (though I do think it's a thought-provoking way of looking at the
> > question), but if we're going to talk about what design looks like,
> > it's worth pointing out that not all design is akin to the end
> > product of a sculptor.
> >
> > I have a feeling some of these questions you asked were rhetorical,
> > but I'm going to do my best to give my own meager thoughts
> > nevertheless.
> >
> > What motive would you ascribe to an intelligent designer who
> > designed almost all of his organisms so that they go extinct?
> >
> > I'm assuming that here you're asking why species go extinct. I can
> > come up with multiple reasonable motives for a designer to do such a
> > thing, but in particular - why should I conclude that the only
> > destiny a designer could have for any species is to thrive and
> > persevere for all time? Maybe they were meant to contribute towards
> > shaping and preparing the environment as a whole either through the
> > temporary niche they occupied, HGT, or otherwise. Maybe their
> > purposes weren't just in their temporary life, but in the
> > discoveries and information they would provide when humans arrived
> > on the scene. Maybe all of the above, and these possibilities are
> > far from a complete list.
> >
> > And why would he generate many avenues of development that turn
> > out to be dead ends?
> >
> > My response here would be similar to the question above, since talk
> > of dead ends seems to matter most in the context of extinction.
> >
> > And if his objective is humanity, why would he be fiddling around
> > for billions of years with lower organisms that never amount to
> > anything?
> >
> > Never amount to anything? At that point we may as well ask why, even
> > in Genesis, God bothered with making anything but humans. Aren't all
> > those things really a distraction when you get right down to it? If
> > we're supposed to be center stage, why do we have to share that
> > stage with platypii?
> >
> > Either way, my perspective is that 'fiddling around' does no justice
> > to the history of life on this planet. Those billions of years
> > passed with organisms spreading about the entire planet, developing
> > niches, growing and changing, converging on 'solutions', and - if we
> > want to think most purely in terms of 'humans as the end goal' -
> > setting the stage for the arrival of humanity. A species that, keep
> > in mind, even now continues to learn about their existence, their
> > features, their habitats, their traits - sometimes being inspired to
> > pragmatic application of what we learn, other times stimulating
> > imagination, still other times just plain producing knowledge for us.
> >
> > I don't see the validity of arguing that the past should have been
> > different, especially if one accepts the present - because there's
> > no way to change one without the other. Even if one can imagine the
> > past playing out differently and the present being 'different, but
> > similar to now', that's a bridge too far.
> >
> > 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.
> >
> > And I'd disagree across the board here. Your view seems to be that
> > if humanity were the goal of a designer, we should expect.. I don't
> > know, some utterly rapt, strictly ascendant, shorter evolutionary
> > history? Say, OoL -> Humanity in a billion years tops, development
> > without extinctions or dead ends, every animal and plant species
> > that currently exists going through a comparatively short evolution
> > before being locked into a 'final form'? If so, again, I disagree
> > for a number of reasons. Partly because 'efficiency' is more a
> > concern for limited creatures than omnipotent (or even 'very
> > powerful') designers, partly because it's a mistake to view the
> > purpose of species purely in terms of 'do they thrive for all time',
> > and more.
> >
> > 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.
> >
> > I only have access to the same evidence you do - what differs is our
> > perspective and understanding of that evidence. I look at the
> > development and history of nature from the perspective of an amateur
> > programmer - so for me, the very processes of evolution, mutation,
> > etc seem designed, flowing along according to the rules of a
> > program. Maybe absolutely everything that has transpired was
> > directly intended, down to the smallest minutae. Maybe only larger
> > developments (convergences, splitting into the larger varieties of
> > plant / mammal / lizard, the introduction of humanity) were directly
> > intended, with smaller events only mattering insofar as enabling
> > those larger events. Again, I refer to procedural content generation
> > in programming - even in that case, where we know humans are
> > limited, and where we can reasonably suspect that some specific
> > outcomes seen in the program were not precisely foreseen by the
> > programmer, saying 'Well, clearly none of this was designed' is
> > still a tremendous mistake. And it strikes me as a similar mistake
> > when it comes to looking at what was generated in our own past.
> >
> > And, I see Mike Gene has thrown in his input - at a glance, I'd
> > agree with what he's saying, though his views on this matter are far
> > more developed than my own.
> >
> >
> > 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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Received on Fri Feb 6 16:07:20 2009