Biology of life and 3D spatial positioning

[FlawedIntellect]

Well, the problem is how vague the word "nature" is and how its meaning can vary even in the same sentence, so that's the problem.

KCB appears to define "nature" as that which can arise or exist in a way accounted for by generic (non-intellectual) forces in action.
Life doesn't fit under this category by how it is defined. (Life being something organic, biological in essence and operating mechanically through internal structures and chemical reactions.)

Your definition of nature sounds like a vague "all that tangibly exists" sort of thing.

Another definition of nature is the essence and character of a thing.

Be sure to pay attention to this, seeing as the discussion currently derailed into a debate from different meanings of nature and conceptions (did I use this word right?) of biology, albeit looking at some of the same info differently.

Another thread is having a debate on a similar matter, though the other thread was to pick apart Evolution while this one seeks to propose an alternative model for replacing both Evolution and abiogenesis by presenting current scientific findings as a backbone. (And it would be nice to see more of it for curiosity's sake.)

[Proinsias]

I'd be happy to see some findings.

Natural as non-intellectual pretty much sums up the difference in opinion. The point where one decides they are intellectual doesn't seem like much of a watershed moment to me, to others it seems like that the mere assertion of intellect is enough to prove that nature isn't enough.

[FlawedIntellect]

I'd be happy to see some findings.

Natural as non-intellectual pretty much sums up the difference in opinion. The point where one decides they are intellectual doesn't seem like much of a watershed moment to me, to others it seems like that the mere assertion of intellect is enough to prove that nature isn't enough.

Yes, but the main thing of KCB's point is that physical life operates mechanically (that is, biological functions of life work like machines do) and that the only observed cause for mechanical workings is by intelligent beings/agencies. This is what experience based on what we've observed tells us.

It's not that much of a stretch or leap of logic if you consider replication as, say, analogous to a car factory where the same model car is reproduced, and where DNA is analogous to a blueprint and computer code to instruct the factory robots and assembly lines in what to do to form the cars, but granted the analogy is imperfect, yet enough to understand the overall line of thinking involved, at least to my limited understanding of the subject.

[Proinsias]

I think I get it, it's just a pretty big leap in logic from my pov. I can't quite get behind the idea of identifying intelligence and then extrapolating it. It's like hearing a joke and concluding a humorous source beyond the person telling the joke. Inferring humour seems silly, but inferring intellect is intellectual - very sciency sounding. KBCid got me interested with the promise of experiments that would easily demonstrate his novel idea, in the mean time you either get it or you don't - I don't.

[Neige]

I don't see it as an either/or situation between intelligent design and blind natural forces. In my view humans are natural, just as rocks are.

Humans are part of nature, sure, but unlike a piece of rock, animals (and to some degree plants) show signs of intelligence. I think we can all agree to that, can't we? So let's take any object in the entire world - let's use your three examples. A car - obviously requires intelligence to design. A nest - also requires intelligence to design. A yonaguni formation - if it is man-made, it required intelligence to be designed, if not - blind natural forces. The fact that we do not know whether it's man-made or not, does not change the fact - it's either crafted by the intelligent part of nature (humans, animals) or formed by the "blind forces" part of nature (inorganic matter, gravity, gases etc.). In this model there's no third option.

I don't see the fact the humans assemble cars as proof of something supernatural, sub natural, or against nature

The idea of intelligent design as such does not argue for the supernatural at all. ID means just that - a design possible only with the prerequisite of intelligence. A nest is intelligently designed by a bird. Have you ever seen a rock design a nest?

That I can refer to certain biological organisms or their products as intelligent is not for me obvious proof that the source of everything must be intelligent any more than declaring a rock is hard therefore the source of all things is hard

I think you're missing the point here. In this thread KBCid has asserted that the source of life (not source of everything), according to our current observations, can only be intelligent. The reason behind that assertion is that we have observed creation of complex mechanisms exclusively by intelligent beings. We know that life on biochemical level is extremely complex (it is being spatially and temporally controlled - behaviour unobserved by inorganic matter), therefore, there is no way it could have originated from inorganic matter by chance (at least not without "help" from an intelligent designer), just like a car cannot assemble itself by chance from raw materials.

[KBCid]

My honest assessment is that ID is wasting their time with complexity.

J, you do realise that ID is not founded on a concept of complexity alone right? If it was then it would have no arguement against natural cause since complexity by iitself is found naturally everywhere.

Take a moment and get some depth into the arguement being brought;

The Design Inference from Specified Complexity Defended by Scholars Outside the Intelligent Design Movement

The quality of a scientific approach or opinion depends on the strength of its factual premises and on the depth and consistency of its reasoning, not on its appearance in a particular journal or on its popularity among other scientists.
Stephen Jay Gould, amici curiae,
Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals

According to mathematician and philosopher William A. Dembski, "given an event, object, or structure, to convince ourselves that it is designed we need to show that it is improbably (i.e. complex) and suitably patterned (i.e. specified)."[1] Dembski has defended "specified complexity"-or "complex specified information" (CSI)-as a reliable design detection criterion in numerous writings,[2] including his peer-reviewed monograph The Design Inference.[3] In simplified sum, a long string of random letters is complex without being specified (that is, without conforming to an independently given pattern that we have not simply read off the object or event in question). A short sequence of letters like "this" or "that" is specified without being sufficiently complex to outstrip the capacity of chance to explain this conformity (for example, letters drawn at random from a Scrabble bag will occasionally form a short word). Neither complexity without specificity nor specificity without complexity compels us to infer design. However, this paper is both specified (conforming to the functional requirements of grammatical English) and sufficiently complex (doing so at a level of complexity that makes it unreasonable to attribute this match to luck) to trigger a design inference on the grounds that "in all cases where we know the causal origin of . . . specified complexity, experience has shown that intelligent design played a causal role."[4]
http://epsociety.org/library/articles.asp?pid=54&ap=1

Anyone can make a complex mess. It takes intelligent agency to take a complex mess and arrange it into a specifiable form repetitiously. So to be clear ID proposes 'specified' 'complexity' and in the case of this thread specified complexity in conjunction with irreducibility.
Note that 'function' which you refer to is in fact dependant on specifiable complexity which cannot be reduced to a simpler form to get the same effect so you can't eliminate the foundation of understanding for how function can exist and still assert function as the indicator of design. The question begging to be answered is how does the function arise. I make mechanistic systems for a living and the users of these systems in nearly every case have no clue as to how the functionality of the system is arranged. In there experience they click a single button to initiate a function... simple right? its just a flick of the switch nothing complex here right? But if they were to disassemble the mechanism and see the chain of causes that result in the function from a simple flick of a button then it wouldn't be so simple anymore.

Here is an excercise that helps one gain understanding.
You have a ping pong ball and you are sitting 10 feet away from a wall with a hole in its center that is just a hair bigger than the ball and your mission is to form a system that repeatedly takes the ball from where it is and moves it through space into that hole. What is the simplest system you can envision to allow that function to occur? What are the least amount of components necessary? and then we want you to make it automated.

Your living system does the same type of function with all its substrates and then also does the same thing at the cellular level. What is minimally required to control matter in space and time and then control the arranged complexes in the same way? How does an irreducible specified complex system that performs a function come to be arranged without the mechanism of evolution to form it?

no replication, no evolution

[KBCid]

But it's so simple... Most of the things around us are formed either by blind natural forces or intelligent beings (most notably humans). If you can't tell which one is the intelligent one - a piece of rock or a human being, then perhaps you should reconsider what intelligent means to you. For example, you see a car and you know, based on your own experience and knowledge, that such an object does not occur naturally by itself. It has so many essential parts that have to be arranged in a very specific manner, that you cannot simply put the components into a box, shake it and expect for a car to form inside it at some point. It actually requires intelligence to be assembled, it requires understanding of each and every part and its function - understanding, that only humans have shown to possess, as you surely must have noticed. That's how you tell it's intelligently designed, you do it every day of your life.

I don't see it as an either/or situation between intelligent design and blind natural forces. In my view humans are natural, just as rocks are. Intelligence is way of classifying the natural world, of which I believe we are a part of. We come up with, often controversial, ways to measure or quantify intelligence just as we come up with, often controversial ways, to determine or quantify say the hardness of a rock. We can classify people in terms of intelligence as we can classify rocks in terms of hardness.

Do you see the problem Neige?
In Pro's view everything 'had' to arise from the forces of nature science has defined. This is the common tautology of evolution. When you see something that looks designed you have to override your instinct to infer design and insert natural. Thus Pro cannot conceive of there being a question of one or the other cause.
The problem though reduces down to what one will accept as a logical explanation for the evidence observed. ID and I agree as do most theists that we can deduce the cause of an effect based on the 'known'/ observed causes we see in the here and now. We observe that only intelligent agency has produced the effects observed in living systems because intelligence has been the only thing in our experience to be capable of producing it. Pro on the other hand dismisses this connection out of hand because he holds a belief that all things 'must' come from defined natural causes. Of course this is a belief without any empirical method of validation which is why I can assert that it comes down to his religious belief verses the laws of physics and mechanics since my assertion is not based on anything other than the known and repeatable scientific method that is the foundation of science.
Pro's problem at this point is that he would need to provide (by scientific method) evidence that nature is capable of making the types of formations that have only been observed to be caused by ID without ID and this is where his position currently fails. The entirety of his position is a foundational belief.

I don't see the fact the humans assemble cars as proof of something supernatural, sub natural, or against nature - I find it a little odd that people point to what seems to me to be human nature as proof that humans are something other than natural.

Notice also that he cannot differentiate between humans and intelligence or natural vs. unnatural. In our experience intelligence is held in varying degrees by all living things thus, intelligence is not a human only property.
On the question of natural vs. unnatural we are simply defining the difference between what can be empirically linked to natural causes and what can only be linked to intelligent causes. A car or watch or space shuttle are the words we use to describe complex specified arrangements of matter that perform functions. These types of material arrangements have only been observed to be an effect of direct intelligent intervention within the natural environment that nature by its forces has not caused to occur now or at any historical point we can refer to. So minimally what Pro wishes to argue is that intelligence is caused by natural forces and that anything that is derived from the action of intelligence is ultimately derived from natural cause. The unfortunate problem for him is that he has no empirical evidence to make that line of reasoning. It is a belief plain and simple and no rationale other than his is valid in his mind since he would need to believe that something other than his own foundational belief is possible.
Religious beliefs are a tricky rationale to work with. Once you can convince someone of the validity of a belief then they will typically die for it. This was what science was supposed to help overcome. The conceptual need to have faith in the validity of an assertion that could not be backed by empirical evidence for its truth. What we are seeing first hand here is that science and the scientific method has been circumvented by allowing a belief system to control it. The belief system is called materialism which is simply a philosophy.

Materialism
In philosophy, the theory of materialism holds that the only thing that exists is matter or energy; that all things are composed of material and all phenomena (including consciousness) are the result of material interactions. In other words, matter is the only substance, and reality is identical with the actually occurring states of energy and matter.
To many philosophers, 'materialism' is synonymous with 'physicalism'. However, materialists have historically held that everything is made of matter, but physics has shown that gravity, for example, is not made of matter in the traditional sense of "'an inert, senseless substance, in which extension, figure, and motion do actually subsist'… So it is tempting to use 'physicalism' to distance oneself from what seems a historically important but no longer scientifically relevant thesis of materialism, and related to this, to emphasize a connection to physics and the physical sciences."[1] Therefore much of the generally philosophical discussion below on materialism may be relevant to physicalism.
Also related to materialism are the ideas of methodological naturalism (i.e. "let's at least do science as though physicalism is true") and metaphysical naturalism (i.e. "the physical world is all that exists").
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Materialism

See he is practicing the philosophical position "let's at least do science as though physicalism is true" and "the physical world is all that exists" Therefore it is beyond his ability to consider anything that goes beyond the philosphical beliefs which he holds as true without the evidence to make them valid.

Much of the issue I'm having with KBCid is that regardless of stance he's proposing a system which has no specifics as yet...

Ahhh but I have given specifics. Specifically the system must be able to control matter in 3 planes of existence as I delved into many posts ago and I asked you specifically if you wanted to delve into further specifics of how such an effect can be implemented. So you are misrepresenting me at this point.

what is of interest is the way in which one makes a knife. Telling me that knife making is the result of intelligent design and 3D spatio control doesn't really forward my understanding of knife making without any specifics or experiments to do...

and I have provided experiments that anyone can do to test the concept.
Using the least amount of parts conceivable form a system that can repeatedly move matter through 3 dimensional space precisely. Ping pong ball going through a precision hole is the last test I referred to in this thread and it was also discussed much earlier in the thread. So this is misrepresentation 2.

...much like telling me biology is obviously an intelligently designed 3d spacio-temporal control system which is only lacking in specifics doesn't really forward my understanding of biology

I stated that the system is only lacking some of the specifics of how it is implemented not that the system lacks specifics. This is misrepresentation 3.

Each of us has every right to a belief of their own and I do my best to honor each persons beliefs. What I have a hard time with is when a belief system causes one to misrepresent others to retain a sense of validity. The one good thing that this thread shows to others is just how far one will go to protect a foundational belief.

[Proinsias]

I'm sorry but if you want to put a ping pong ball through a small hole, pick it up and put it through the hole. An engineer may feel the urge to design a machine that will do this but the person who simply throws the ball at hole multiple times or walks over and puts it in the hole is no less intelligent, perhaps less inclined to engineering. The person who declares your challenge a waste of time and effort is also not someone I would declare as an unintelligent.

I spend much of my life holding out faith in, and being mocked for, intelligent design for biology or humanity. I love the theories of Eric von Daniken, Robert Temple's Sirius theory and the fascinating deductions of Rand Flem Ath and Colin Wilson. I'm not a materialist, I'm all for souls, spirits, chi, qi and a great deal of stuff my more logical friends would, and often do, declare bollocks. I just don't think any of it is science yet, I would love it to be one day.

If you can convince the biological community of intelligent design by asking them to put a ball through a hole I will be very impressed.

I'd be keen to see evidence of intelligent design and I don't see that asking for some specifics about the intelligent designer as a cop out or fallacy.

The universe is an ever changing complex spacial arrangement, and I think Demski's theory of ID is guff.

Darwin proposed evolution, the hunt for a mechanism was on, Francis & Crick proposed dna and the biological community has been busy every since. Interrupting Venters work to ask him to put a ball through a small hole I don't think will add much.

I suspect that finding out life was designed by an intelligent alien race from Sirius wouldn't make a blind bit of difference to your world, it would rock mine. Finding an intelligent designer doesn't matter to your theory as it's based, as far as I can see, on simply inferring that all intelligence must derive from intelligence. If there's twenty alien races discovered that span 40 different universes and each intelligently designed the following one your logic will always dictate a previous intelligence.

Yes, biology seems pretty natural to me. I'm more than open to evidence otherwise, I see none. Demski's theory has been often attacked as providing nothing aside from a basis for the ID movement - no one looking for intelligent designers feels it is of any use, people who have no interest in finding intelligent designers like yourself find it of immense significance.

Apologies if the above is overly enthusiastic or curt, I've had a few glasses of merlot

[Byblos]

Apologies if the above is overly enthusiastic or curt, I've had a few glasses of merlot

Ooh my favorite, I knew we had to have at least one thing in common.

I'm sorry but if you want to put a ping pong ball through a small hole, pick it up and put it through the hole.

Lol, Proin you make me laugh. I think the point KBC was trying to make is to have a mechanism of repeatedly pushing the ping pong ball through the tiny hole, from a distance, and having 100% success rate. If you are presented with such an experiment without the benefit of seeing how the ball is controlled, in your honest opinion what would be the most logical explanation?

His ultimate point, of course as I understand it, is that biological replication is akin to getting the ping pong ball through the hole, from a distance, every time, without failure. The ball may get a few dents, the hole may get bigger (i.e. mutations) but the process is controlled nonetheless.

[Neige]

Do you see the problem Neige?

I think Proinsias' main problem, though, is that he hasn't fully understood the concept of ID.

Yes, biology seems pretty natural to me. I'm more than open to evidence otherwise, I see none.

Again, no one here has asserted that biology is supernatural.

I'd be keen to see evidence of intelligent design

Just put two and two together already. Intelligent design = intelligence + design. Look at your watch - it was designed by someone, starting from designing a blueprint all the way up to putting the tiny metal wheels inside together and designing some fashionable design elements on the outside. (Protip: the keyword is 'deisgn') It was done by a human (not a rock, not a rain cloud) - a conscious, intelligent being. That is all that intelligent design stands for. What more evidence do you need? It's everywhere you look. KBCid puts it nicely:

These types of material arrangements have only been observed to be an effect of direct intelligent intervention within the natural environment that nature by its forces has not caused to occur now or at any historical point we can refer to.

[KBCid]

Lol, Proin you make me laugh. I think the point KBC was trying to make is to have a mechanism of repeatedly pushing the ping pong ball through the tiny hole, from a distance, and having 100% success rate. If you are presented with such an experiment without the benefit of seeing how the ball is controlled, in your honest opinion what would be the most logical explanation?
His ultimate point, of course as I understand it, is that biological replication is akin to getting the ping pong ball through the hole, from a distance, every time, without failure. The ball may get a few dents, the hole may get bigger (i.e. mutations) but the process is controlled nonetheless.

Yes sir, you have represented my POV correctly. This is what system mechanics addresses. Any human with a fully functional body can do the job because the mechanics of the human system are already in place. The problem in biology is to define how an automated system can perform the same 'simple' action that any human could do without the human doing it. Our factories are more and more being designed to process materials without human intervention at many points along the way and each of these points when automated all have the same minimal requirements for moving the matter / materials through the process and this is foundationally defined by physics and since mechanical engineering and system mechanics is truely applied physics we have by empirical scientific method been able to define what physics are required to cause the effects. These same effects are observed in biological systems which is why I don't need the entirety of the breakdown for how the system is implemented to know that very specific types of controls are part of the system.
Thx for being a rationale viewpoint on this Byblos. <3

[KBCid]

I'm sorry but if you want to put a ping pong ball through a small hole, pick it up and put it through the hole. An engineer may feel the urge to design a machine that will do this but the person who simply throws the ball at hole multiple times or walks over and puts it in the hole is no less intelligent, perhaps less inclined to engineering. The person who declares your challenge a waste of time and effort is also not someone I would declare as an unintelligent.

Biological 'systems' don't have the convienience of having an onhand intelligent agency to move things for them which is why I directly asked you to consider what it would take mechanically to perform the same action as a human could perform. In essence you are at every turn avoiding the system mechanics issue by not addressing the system necessities which this thread is based on. You cannot understand systems engineering by avoiding the steps necessary to gain the understanding nor can you truely understand the implications with applying physics as required in the design.
Everything is simple, until you define the chain of causes that can allow an effect. If you really want to understand what my position is and how it is all tied into known laws of physics you must be able to comprehend how matter can be controlled and be able to define what is minimally required.

If you can convince the biological community of intelligent design by asking them to put a ball through a hole I will be very impressed.

These are the points being defined in this thread. The community has been observing that matter has been performing actions that are not occuring by any control that happens as a natural force.
Their problem as I see it is that they don't have any experience with mechanical engineering or system mechanics to open their minds to what must be required by physics.

I'd be keen to see evidence of intelligent design and I don't see that asking for some specifics about the intelligent designer as a cop out or fallacy.

Your desire to know who the designer is is shared by many however, from a scientific viewpoint it is not necessary to be able to identify who possesses the intelligence before one can assert that an effect is generated by intelligence. This is why SETI feels they may be able to identify something being generated by intelligence before they ever have a clue as to who the intelligence is that caused it.

The universe is an ever changing complex spacial arrangement, and I think Demski's theory of ID is guff.

Anyone can assert an opinion. Some people still have the opinion that the earth is flat.

Darwin proposed evolution, the hunt for a mechanism was on, Francis & Crick proposed dna and the biological community has been busy every since. Interrupting Venters work to ask him to put a ball through a small hole I don't think will add much.

Crick also asserted that life came by way of panspermia because there was no evidence to back it originating here on earth by natural causes.

I suspect that finding out life was designed by an intelligent alien race from Sirius wouldn't make a blind bit of difference to your world, it would rock mine. Finding an intelligent designer doesn't matter to your theory as it's based, as far as I can see, on simply inferring that all intelligence must derive from intelligence. If there's twenty alien races discovered that span 40 different universes and each intelligently designed the following one your logic will always dictate a previous intelligence.

I have not asserted anything about how intelligence first occured. That is not what this thread is dealing with. That question will begin once it is realised that the replication of the living system requires intelligent cause to begin functioning and we may never be able to prove the who. The fact is that we are simply defining necessary cause for an observed effect. My own choice beyond the empirical method is the belief in God. This is a personal choice that has no foundation in either physics or system mechanics and is beyond the position dealt with in this thread. Here we are simply defining what is minimally needed to make an observable effect once we get past that point you can form any type of belief in the who you want but you will always be limited to choosing an intelligent agency since that will be the minimal required cause.

Yes, biology seems pretty natural to me. I'm more than open to evidence otherwise, I see none.

No one here is asserting that anything unnatural is occuring within living systems. Every bit of the system operates on foundational laws of physics which I have repeatedly asserted. So you cannot see something that is not being asserted. You position in this point can only occur if you add the implication to what I am asserting in this thread. This is what is called a strawman arguement where you make up a point that you attribute to me and then define why its incorrect. However, is is clear to most here that you are making things up in many cases just to avoid the plain implications from physics and system mechanics.

[Proinsias]

I'm sorry but if you want to put a ping pong ball through a small hole, pick it up and put it through the hole.

Lol, Proin you make me laugh. I think the point KBC was trying to make is to have a mechanism of repeatedly pushing the ping pong ball through the tiny hole, from a distance, and having 100% success rate. If you are presented with such an experiment without the benefit of seeing how the ball is controlled, in your honest opinion what would be the most logical explanation?

His ultimate point, of course as I understand it, is that biological replication is akin to getting the ping pong ball through the hole, from a distance, every time, without failure. The ball may get a few dents, the hole may get bigger (i.e. mutations) but the process is controlled nonetheless.

I'm not sure what the most logical explanation for a machine that fires ping pong balls through a tiny hole with a 100% success rate is.

The ultimate point doesn't really stand for me as biological replication doesn't seem to be one of 100% success rate, the theory of evolution through natural selection is pretty much built upon the notion that variation introduces both losers and winners. I don't know a lot about machines that fire ping pong balls through small holes but I suspect the success rate is below 100% too - and inversely related to the size of the hole.

Just put two and two together already. Intelligent design = intelligence + design. Look at your watch - it was designed by someone, starting from designing a blueprint all the way up to putting the tiny metal wheels inside together and designing some fashionable design elements on the outside. (Protip: the keyword is 'deisgn') It was done by a human (not a rock, not a rain cloud) - a conscious, intelligent being. That is all that intelligent design stands for. What more evidence do you need? It's everywhere you look. KBCid puts it nicely:

If intelligent design = intelligence + design, could you elaborate a little on the distinction between the two? Is it possible to identify intelligence which does not design or a design which is not intelligent? and where does consciousness fit in....

Any human with a fully functional body can do the job because the mechanics of the human system are already in place. The problem in biology is to define how an automated system can perform the same 'simple' action that any human could do without the human doing it. Our factories are more and more being designed to process materials without human intervention at many points along the way and each of these points when automated all have the same minimal requirements for moving the matter / materials through the process and this is foundationally defined by physics and since mechanical engineering and system mechanics is truely applied physics we have by empirical scientific method been able to define what physics are required to cause the effects. These same effects are observed in biological systems which is why I don't need the entirety of the breakdown for how the system is implemented to know that very specific types of controls are part of the system.

The idea of relating nature to a factory is not exclusive to biology - as a chloroplast is like a solar panel, a sun is like a nuclear power plant. It doesn't seem alien to you either to think of the entire universe like a factory, you've alluded to it with the mention of planetary orbits. My issue is that your point doesn't really seem to relate to specifically, or affect, biology. The gain in attributing the workings of biology to intelligently designed 3-d spactio temporal control systems seem about the same as the gain one would make by attributing a ping pong ball machine to an intelligent agent.

If you really want to understand what my position is and how it is all tied into known laws of physics you must be able to comprehend how matter can be controlled and be able to define what is minimally required.

Much of the problem I think is that you understand how matter and control works and I think it's a big mystery. What is minimally required for control of matter? control and matter. Once you commit to two separate things called 'control' & 'matter' you can begin to entertain notions of non-material control or uncontrolled matter.

If you can convince the biological community of intelligent design by asking them to put a ball through a hole I will be very impressed.

These are the points being defined in this thread. The community has been observing that matter has been performing actions that are not occuring by any control that happens as a natural force.

FlawedIntellect hit the nail on the head with the comment at the top of the page, our ideas of natural vary. I suppose I'm a hippy at heart and see even rebellion against nature as natural.

Your desire to know who the designer is is shared by many however, from a scientific viewpoint it is not necessary to be able to identify who possesses the intelligence before one can assert that an effect is generated by intelligence. This is why SETI feels they may be able to identify something being generated by intelligence before they ever have a clue as to who the intelligence is that caused it.

The desire to find other designers is why SETI exists. The big difference is that SETI are looking for intelligence and you have found it.

Crick also asserted that life came by way of panspermia because there was no evidence to back it originating here on earth by natural causes.

Yes, Crick did suggest directed panspermia. He thought life probably arose elsewhere in the universe and has been propagating for a long time. He wrote a book called of Molecules & Men in support of the idea of a molecules to man theory. From what I gather he was of the opinion a simple replicating molecule appeared by chance somewhere in a galaxy far far away and has been evolving into different forms across time and space since. Pretty much everything I can find about the guy makes it appear he would disagree with you on almost every level, he was a strong supporter of Darwinism & evolution, a critic of religion and Christianity in particular, he signed the Humanist Manifesto with the declaration "Humans are an integral part of nature, the result of unguided evolutionary change.", he argued against creationist science, he said: "And if some of the Bible is manifestly wrong, why should any of the rest of it be accepted automatically? ... And what would be more important than to find our true place in the universe by removing one by one these unfortunate vestiges of earlier beliefs?". He wanted Darwin Day as a British National Holiday - to use him as support for your position is I think to entirely misrepresent the man.

[Neige]

If intelligent design = intelligence + design, could you elaborate a little on the distinction between the two? Is it possible to identify intelligence which does not design or a design which is not intelligent? and where does consciousness fit in....

I'm sure other members of this board could elaborate much better, but I'll try. The term 'intelligence' does have a lot of meanings and it can sometimes be a bit confusing. I guess, since we are talking about living. vs. non-living matter, we can highlight self-awareness and reasoning as the necessary preconditions for detecting intelligence. I'm hoping we can both agree that self-awareness and ability to reason are characteristics exclusively displayed by living organisms.

If we have established that, we can move on to the 'detection' part. We can distinguish any thing between made by living organisms and made by non-living agents or other natural forces. As KBCid already mentioned, there are certain types of material arrangements, that only living (consequently intelligent) organisms have shown to produce - a watch, a telescope, a nest - all of these only living things (people, animals) have shown to be able to produce. If you come by a telescope in the middle of a desert, you know it hasn't arranged itself by chance via gravitational influence and other natural forces, you know it's a specific material arrangement, that only human beings have shown to be able to create. At this moment you have detected intelligent design.

What I'm basically saying, ID = anything that living organisms purposefully produce, by influencing other matter in time and space. It can be virtually anything - a napkin, a plastic bag, a screw, you name it.

[KBCid]

His ultimate point, of course as I understand it, is that biological replication is akin to getting the ping pong ball through the hole, from a distance, every time, without failure. The ball may get a few dents, the hole may get bigger (i.e. mutations) but the process is controlled nonetheless.

I'm not sure what the most logical explanation for a machine that fires ping pong balls through a tiny hole with a 100% success rate is.
The ultimate point doesn't really stand for me as biological replication doesn't seem to be one of 100% success rate, the theory of evolution through natural selection is pretty much built upon the notion that variation introduces both losers and winners. I don't know a lot about machines that fire ping pong balls through small holes but I suspect the success rate is below 100% too - and inversely related to the size of the hole.

What logic says it has to be fired. This would a very illogical method of delivery that one can conceive of since the item would no longer be under control once it left the projection mechanism. Futher, this concept only applies force in a single plane which if you had been paying attention is not what I am pointing out. 3 planes of control is neccessary. Do you suppose maybe, that a mechanism can carry it there from a starting point?
It should be pointed out that a 100% success rate is a theoretical concept of a mechanism operating within perfect environmental variables. No machine or mechanism that I have ever seen operates at 100% under all conditions. Thus, even a design that could conceivably work at 100% accuracy under optimal conditions is not expected to operate at 100% in real world conditions. This is why designers typically add backup systems and error correction mechanisms to offset environmental variability and these systems are indeed also observably functioning in the living machine.

DNA replication is extraordinarily accurate.
DNA polymerase makes very few errors, and most of those that are made are quickly corrected by DNA polymerase and other enzymes that "proofread" the nucleotides added into the new DNA strand. If a newly added nucleotide is not complementary to the one on the template strand, these enzymes remove the nucleotide and replace it with the correct one. With this system, a cell's DNA is copied with less than one mistake in a billion nucleotides. This is equal to a person copying 100 large (1000 page) dictionaries word for word, and symbol for symbol, with only one error for the whole process!
http://www.contexo.info/DNA_Basics/DNA% ... cation.htm

In fact without a precision replication system with its array of backups involved in the precision part of replication then evolution cannot function. no replication, no evolution.
For those who wish to get a grasp on just what is involved in precision replication here is an article written about one single component involved in the process;

Secrets of a Precision Protein Machine
A Berkeley Lab-led team deciphers the structure of FEN1, a key player in DNA replication and repair
DNA replication is ----critical---- to the life of all organisms, insuring that each new cell, as well as each new offspring, gets an accurate copy of the genome. Among the legions of proteins that do the work so essential to a cell’s survival, the DNA-slicing “flap endonuclease” FEN1 plays a key role.
The structure of human FEN1 has now been solved by an international team of scientists led by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) and the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla (Scripps). The structure reveals the surprising mechanism behind FEN1’s speed, accuracy, and versatility.
“FEN1 has to perform 50 million operations during each replication. It has to do them quickly and it can’t be sloppy,” says John Tainer of Berkeley Lab’s Life Sciences Division (LSD) and Scripps. “But FEN1 is also important in DNA repair, which presents different challenges.
http://newscenter.lbl.gov/news-releases ... n-machine/

It's machines all the way... precision machines.

Just put two and two together already. Intelligent design = intelligence + design. Look at your watch - it was designed by someone, starting from designing a blueprint all the way up to putting the tiny metal wheels inside together and designing some fashionable design elements on the outside. (Protip: the keyword is 'deisgn') It was done by a human (not a rock, not a rain cloud) - a conscious, intelligent being. That is all that intelligent design stands for. What more evidence do you need? It's everywhere you look. KBCid puts it nicely:

If intelligent design = intelligence + design, could you elaborate a little on the distinction between the two? Is it possible to identify intelligence which does not design or a design which is not intelligent? and where does consciousness fit in....

Intelligent is a descriptor for a type of design. For this thread design = the specifiable arrangement or pattern of elements or features. Conciousness has nothing to do with this thread.

Any human with a fully functional body can do the job because the mechanics of the human system are already in place. The problem in biology is to define how an automated system can perform the same 'simple' action that any human could do without the human doing it. Our factories are more and more being designed to process materials without human intervention at many points along the way and each of these points when automated all have the same minimal requirements for moving the matter / materials through the process and this is foundationally defined by physics and since mechanical engineering and system mechanics is truely applied physics we have by empirical scientific method been able to define what physics are required to cause the effects. These same effects are observed in biological systems which is why I don't need the entirety of the breakdown for how the system is implemented to know that very specific types of controls are part of the system.

The idea of relating nature to a factory is not exclusive to biology - as a chloroplast is like a solar panel, a sun is like a nuclear power plant. It doesn't seem alien to you either to think of the entire universe like a factory, you've alluded to it with the mention of planetary orbits. My issue is that your point doesn't really seem to relate to specifically, or affect, biology.

Indeed without an understanding of both physics and its mechanical application you won't understand how things relate to one another. Most people don't know or understand how their phone works either because of this same problem. However, when you wish to discuss the specifics of how something functions you need to expand your understanding and account for the physics and mechanics involved. This is a point I have repeatedly stated to you through this discussion and so far you feel no compulsion to delve into either of these subjects other than to state 'I don't see how it applies to biology".

The gain in attributing the workings of biology to intelligently designed 3-d spatio temporal control systems seem about the same as the gain one would make by attributing a ping pong ball machine to an intelligent agent.

Which would be that one requires the other in order to come into existence. In order to define a cause from an effect you should minimally be able to define both and as soon as we witness a ping pong ball machine falling from the sky then we can look into the possibility of nature creating it, till then though we can be confidant that such organisations don't happen naturally by the forces of nature.

If you really want to understand what my position is and how it is all tied into known laws of physics you must be able to comprehend how matter can be controlled and be able to define what is minimally required.

Much of the problem I think is that you understand how matter and control works and I think it's a big mystery. What is minimally required for control of matter? control and matter. Once you commit to two separate things called 'control' & 'matter' you can begin to entertain notions of non-material control or uncontrolled matter.

I'm sure you tried to make a point here but it doesn't make any sense.

If you can convince the biological community of intelligent design by asking them to put a ball through a hole I will be very impressed.

These are the points being defined in this thread. The community has been observing that matter has been performing actions that are not occuring by any simple natural force.

FlawedIntellect hit the nail on the head with the comment at the top of the page, our ideas of natural vary. I suppose I'm a hippy at heart and see even rebellion against nature as natural.

nature = the creative and controlling forces in the universe. The four known fundamental forces are electromagnetism, strong nuclear force, weak nuclear force, and gravitation. Any arrangement of matter that can be directly attributed to the actions of these forces would be natural.

Your desire to know who the designer is is shared by many however, from a scientific viewpoint it is not necessary to be able to identify who possesses the intelligence before one can assert that an effect is generated by intelligence. This is why SETI feels they may be able to identify something being generated by intelligence before they ever have a clue as to who the intelligence is that caused it.

The desire to find other designers is why SETI exists. The big difference is that SETI are looking for intelligence and you have found it.

That may be their ultimate goal buuut, the fact is that they are confidant that they can define the action of intelligent agency BEFORE they identify the intelligence that caused it. This is the point you have skirted around. I do not have empirical evidence for who the designer may be which is why that is a belief separate from the evidence for the subject of this thread. As already stated many times now you are free to insert whatever intelligent agency you want to believe in at your end since the single important point is that it is an effect only observed to be caused by intelligence that that has so far produced similar observable evidence.

Crick also asserted that life came by way of panspermia because there was no evidence to back it originating here on earth by natural causes.

Yes, Crick did suggest directed panspermia. He thought life probably arose elsewhere in the universe and has been propagating for a long time. He wrote a book called of Molecules & Men in support of the idea of a molecules to man theory....

look closely at that previous reply I made... I wasn't asserting that he would agree with me. My point was that he didn't believe life naturally arose here. He had no conceivable mechanism to tie nature and the beginning of life on earth. Of course in his day the systems involved in life were very blackbox.
Our view today has improved considerably. We can now define the 'machines' operating everywhere controling everything. Your being exists within an extremely complex machine composed of 100's of thousands of machines interacting in ways only observed in modern factories. Substrates are formed in specifiable locations and then 'moved' through 3D space and time to build the 3 dimensional structures that are the foundations of this massive system.
The part you continuously avoid is delving into how everything can be moved in space and time with accuracy and precision. For this you must come to grips with all three of the planes of space and how anything can precisely and repetetively be moved through them.