Evidence for God from Science

BGoodForGoodSake wrote:

godslanguage wrote:You don't know?

Because non-goal directed does not create specified and irreducibly complex modular systems, this is what ID theory infers.

zoegirl is correct. The theory of evolution does not identify a non-directed mechanism. The regularity of physical laws which manifests itself into the environment provides the direction.

So the question is will a goal-less process lead to complexity. Because neither side is claiming lack of direction.
A friendly suggestion, perhaps you should review the theory of evolution once more, why fight a strawman?

Another interesting application is the use of the word designed by evolutionists. Clearly they use the word in the same context, only the driving forces behind the engineering and design process for them are random mutations and natural selection. How many times have we heard the phrare "engineered by evolution", "evolutionary design"....Obviously, they agree that there are elements of design as well.

Ultimately, to me, the descriptions of natural selection and even, dare I say, the proposals of evolutionary history do NOT exclude the involvement of a God, or intelligent force, or aliens, or whatever you choose to describe. I think from this perspective, there is a false premise. Somehow if scientests show different fossils out there that could possibly be a pathway for development, Christians must throw their hands up in despair, giving up.

godslanguage wrote:Therefore, in whichever way you would like to form analogies to derive biological conclusions, it happens to be a waste of time since IC and CSI are not interchangeable, they work together just like any other goal-directed mechanism to achieve a particular goal-intended function.

This entire concept of 'goal-directed' or 'goal-intended' mechanisms or functions from IC is completely misleading.

The only way that irreducible complexity makes its argument when it 'infers' a 'goal-directed/intended' system is by working backwards - looking at complex systems and then removing parts in order to show that the system in question could not work without them- like a child breaking apart a device - a remote control, cell phone, what have you, to see how the device works in the absence of a specific part. This process is fine (its also called ablation) as long as you remember that things do not evolve 'backwards'. This is important to note as when you begin to work backwards in this way, you begin to observe the present function of a part as the 'goal' of the evolutionary process. It's an illusion which Michael Behe creates (and admits) - that by working backwards, the illusion is created that the function of the system is the 'goal' of the system.

To state that there is a 'goal directing' process of some kind in evolution (part of the IC's implication) is a complete misunderstanding of evolutionary theory.

Evolutionary theory is not eschatological - systems are not goal oriented; they exist due to random mutation, and they continue to exist because they allow the life form to procreate successfully, as per natural selection.

zoegirl wrote:Another interesting application is the use of the word designed by evolutionists. Clearly they use the word in the same context, only the driving forces behind the engineering and design process for them are random mutations and natural selection. How many times have we heard the phrare "engineered by evolution", "evolutionary design"....Obviously, they agree that there are elements of design as well.

I don't think they are used within the same context at all. ID asserts purpose when they use 'design'. ID has yet to prove any purposes exists within any of the mechanisms, functions or organisms it questions.

Ultimately, to me, the descriptions of natural selection and even, dare I say, the proposals of evolutionary history do NOT exclude the involvement of a God, or intelligent force, or aliens, or whatever you choose to describe. I think from this perspective, there is a false premise. Somehow if scientests show different fossils out there that could possibly be a pathway for development, Christians must throw their hands up in despair, giving up.

Can you expound on this a bit further? Particularly the latter part of that; are you referring to transitional fossils?

animal wrote:The only way that irreducible complexity makes its argument when it 'infers' a 'goal-directed/intended' system is by working backwards - looking at complex systems and then removing parts in order to show that the system in question could not work without them- like a child breaking apart a device - a remote control, cell phone, what have you, to see how the device works in the absence of a specific part.

I may be wrong, but my understanding is this:

When we take apart a device (going backwards) we see all the necessary components for it to function. We also see (some of the time, as is the case with IC) that the device will not work with the absence of some of the pieces. Not that it will still work, only a little less. It will not work. A complex cell phone without a battery is as useless as a simple rock of the same size.

The point is that, unless someone or something is putting the device together all the pieces at the same time, it is unlikely the device will come together. It is incapable of being assembled in step-by-step improvements. (again, what good is a cell phone that is missing a battery, or a speaker, or a microphone?)

That is the point of the goal oriented part. Evolution cannot say "hey, this speaker will come in handy later when i get a battery to power it, maybe i should keep it for now" If the speaker isn't immediately useful (which it isn't in a cell phone without a battery to power it) then evolution is going to throw the speaker away.

animal wrote:This process is fine (its also called ablation) as long as you remember that things do not evolve 'backwards'. This is important to note as when you begin to work backwards in this way, you begin to observe the present function of a part as the 'goal' of the evolutionary process. It's an illusion which Michael Behe creates (and admits) - that by working backwards, the illusion is created that the function of the system is the 'goal' of the system.

The point is that the system cannot be put together gradually and that it has no function at all when missing one or many pieces. What difference is a cell phone that has no battery to a cell phone that has no battery and no speaker? Nothing. Both are simple paperweights. Adding a speaker to a phone without a battery doesn't change the function, it only makes it harder to assemble (and evolution would favor the easier assembly). The only reason the goal-oriented discussion is included is because many evolutionist will work this way as well. "The cell phone case is a good paperweight, and then such-n-such is added (a cell phone specific part like a speaker), then such-n-such improvement is made"

But no improvement is made. When a cell phone case 'evolves' a speaker, no benefit comes. So, the speaker is thrown away and the case remains unchanged. How can an entire cell phone assemble in a step by step process when each step does nothing to improve the over quality of the phone?

Now, some people may say that a bigger diaphram on the speaker will improve the speaker sound or a bigger battery will create longer life, etc., etc. But, how did it all come into place originally? Once it is all together, some small, step-by-step improvements can be made to increase the performence of the cell phone, but that is only after the entire device is put together.

animal wrote:I don't think they are used within the same context at all. ID asserts purpose when they use 'design'. ID has yet to prove any purposes exists within any of the mechanisms, functions or organisms it questions.

Maybe i am misunderstanding you, how does ID assert purpose? It merely infers a designer from the design, where evolution asserts random from the design. ID removes the random, it doesn't add purpose.

*scratches head*

I think my point was misunderstood. The cell phone analogy wasn't used to represent biological systems (that would be a false comparison if only for the fact that a cell phone isn't a living system capable of things like reproduction).. it was only used to represent the method of ablation, or working backwards... The reason I used a child and a cell phone as an example is because children use the method to learn about objects (a remote control and cell phone came to mind - they were next to me, but you can use anything else in that particular example).

Again, you must understand that things don't evolve backwards. When ID does this (work backwards to see if a missing part will render the function non-functional), particularly irreducible complexity, it introduces a false sense that the biological entities in question have 'goals' or 'purposes'. Aside from this, Behe admits himself that there is a more efficient solution to the problem of irreducibly complex systems - a process called exaptation.

He discusses it in p. 40 of The Black Box:

[An] irreducibly complex system could have evolved from an indirect circuitous route — a precursor system that evolved for a different function, or a series of precursor systems, cobbled together, for a new function.

Behe basically concedes that organisms with a non-functioning system (enter your no battery or speaker) could still live and procreate.

Frankly, this concession alone is all that is needed to refute his own argument.

Enigma7457 wrote:Maybe i am misunderstanding you, how does ID assert purpose? It merely infers a designer from the design, where evolution asserts random from the design. ID removes the random, it doesn't add purpose.

Evolutionary theory proposes a mechanism for how things evolve - random mutations plus natural selection. ID, which has no model or mechanism does 'infer' design as you rightly point out, but it does so through circular logic; if something cannot be explained, or is too complex (also an argument from ignorance) the system or thing in question must be 'designed'. This leads to the illusion of some sort of 'goal directed evolution'.

Also, inferring a designer comes with the burden of implying purpose. I think that goes without saying... If things are designed by a designer, then they are designed for a purpose (whatever purpose that may be).

Finally, to say that evolution 'asserts' random for design is a sign, in my opinion, of a misunderstanding of evolutionary theory when someone - like an evolutionary biologist, or a zoologist - uses the word design. The design we currently see, say in a gazelle, is anything BUT random. I think you and I can clearly see, via the relationship of the gazelle and the cheetah, two of the fastest land animals on earth, that thanks to natural selection and adapting to each others environment that these animals did not become as fast as they are simply due to pure randomness...

That is, of course, but one example and a small window into a larger view of the kind of misunderstandings I am referring to of the use of the word 'design' in evolutionary theory...

So the question is will a goal-less process lead to complexity. Because neither side is claiming lack of direction.
A friendly suggestion, perhaps you should review the theory of evolution once more, why fight a strawman?

You know Bgood, I took your friendly suggestion into consideration, AND...I watched the video of the claymen 10 times over. I found nothing new about evolution, is there anything about this imaginary goal-directed mechanism you speak of Bgood I should consider as something scientific?

Many make RM&NS seem like some sort of in-genius goal oriented procedure, if that in-genius mechanism has been discovered then Microsoft and for that matter all technology companies should abandon they're current methods for designing complex systems and should be dependent on this Darwinian mechanism you propose.

I been busy in the last few days, I will catch up on my responses for the weekend....

To state that there is a 'goal directing' process of some kind in evolution (part of the IC's implication) is a complete misunderstanding of evolutionary theory.

That is the whole point, that the term goal-oriented has completely nothing to do with evolutionary theory. That is one reason it doesn't work. Although there is no way to refute this point that the only known mechanism is a completely goal-directed mechanism for creating complex structures that produce specified and irreducible complexity, at least to human knowledge. If there are other ways of creating complex structures without either a) pre-programmed mechanism that creates (instantaneously or incrementally) pre-determined complex structures in the heap b) a complex structure that gets input from a goal-directed mechanism for creating specified complex structures in real-time (in either case, its goal-directed),...then please show the evidence and leave out the assumptions.
Random mutations don't add any new information remaining either neutral or deleterious , Natural Selection doesn't have anything to select from. Evolution is un-demonstrable to any degree of significance or level that Darwinists like, yet they praise the defining prospectives of science which Neo-Darwinian theories don't oblige by.

ID is about the best-fit evidence for complex biological structures, Neo-Darwinian theories are about wishful thinking and a plague of assumptions for producing best-fit evidence for complex biological structures.

The whole irrefutable part here, is that goal-directed mechanisms produce IC and CSI structures, otherwise they don't happen.
There is no need to inject "intelligence" into this scenario, to our best knowledge, as we know , goal-directed is a subset of intelligence along with foresight, ability to see things before they occur or "in advance". Therefore, all you need to do is provide a goal-directed mechanism that doesn't have anything to do with Intelligent Design theories, otherwise it- ID remains the best-fit theory.

I don't think the point I am making goes as far to suggest that ID is absolute truth scientifically, or evolution has been falsified scientifically. We don't know how God did it, I am not about to exclude some form of evolution God may have used, I really don't care if evolution was used or not. The point is about that only known mechanism to human knowledge to explain the evidence as best-fit.
That is the whole point of ID, not to completely exclude a mechanism, but to include a mechanism. You wonder why many ID proponents believe in evolution and even common descent.

I am not one of those ID proponents, due to the fact I have trouble with the defining word "evolution" itself.

The only way that irreducible complexity makes its argument when it 'infers' a 'goal-directed/intended' system is by working backwards - looking at complex systems and then removing parts in order to show that the system in question could not work without them- like a child breaking apart a device - a remote control, cell phone, what have you, to see how the device works in the absence of a specific part. This process is fine (its also called ablation) as long as you remember that things do not evolve 'backwards'. This is important to note as when you begin to work backwards in this way, you begin to observe the present function of a part as the 'goal' of the evolutionary process. It's an illusion which Michael Behe creates (and admits) - that by working backwards, the illusion is created that the function of the system is the 'goal' of the system.

Yes, the breakdown approach is way to determine if object "X" is irreducibly complex, however you missed the entire concept that IC is based on CSI. You are going about this backwards, if a object is complex specified to perform a certain task/function, we can go about doing a test for irreducible complexity. Although I don't tend to agree completely with Behe's IC (perhaps he just didn't get this far), because if a particular component was in fact reducible and still worked, that would indicate more design then previously thought, its a form of redundancy application where the design is considered faulty beforehand, that way certain measures are taken for each of the subroutines, perhaps a feedback loop to indicate or signal a problem, perhaps the design is meant to withstand certain drawbacks to its own design in extreme pressures, redundant design has a backup mechanism to ensure efficiency without rendering it completely useless. The immune system is an example of such, ID would predict this as a highly complex redundant application at the molecular level, something which goal-directed as a mechanism can explain.

godslanguage,

Tell me what do you see here?

Are these parts irreducibly complex?
Do these parts display specified complexity?

Okay, I'll play Bgood's puppet for a minute.

I don't know whether your referring to the actual picture of the bicycle or the bicycle itself. I figure you when you say "tell me what you see here" is either a trick question, as in specifically what do you want to to classify as irreducibly and specified complex, is it the .gif or .jpg picture or is it the the bicycle itself.
Anyhow...I will try to put this as simply as I can.

I see a bicycle that is specified to do something because it performs the function of transporting humans from point a to b, it takes the energy from the person who is riding the bicycle which allows it perform that function of transporting a human from point a to b, it requires far less "skill" to ride this bicycle than a bicycle that has one wheel but probably requires far more "skill" to operate then current modern bicycles. If the bicycle had square or rectangular wheels, if it had one or more spoke missing, if it did not have a seat, if it did not have a steering mechanism etc... then performing the function of transporting a human from point a to b would be either completely insufficient for that purpose or it would be faulty or catastrophic to the bicycle itself and the individual riding it, unless it has a very skillful operator who is capable of balancing out this injustice of either "one wheel missing", "seat is missing", of course.

Humans are very creative individuals, who at times add unnecessarily to a particular design, we know that if you took off the front fender (if that is in fact a "fender" or "mud guard"), then the bicycle would still function and getting from point a to b would still be possible. However, since the front fender was specified for the "individual" or "operator" riding this bicycle, then it is likely that the fender is in fact specified to prevent mud, rain etc...getting in the face, therefore it would be irreducibly complex since the front fender has its specified purpose.

Bicycles of course, by themselves don't perform anything specific, of course they look complex and are even reducible to molten lava. Without the whole chain of requirements, this object is reducible, but since it was specified to achieve that purpose of getting a individual from point a to b using that available technology, it is therefore specified and irreducibly complex at the same time, fulfilling the individual's need as the primary objective.
The bicycle was designed so that minimal input energy would give off or produce a higher output energy, especially in the circumstance where gravity reduces/minimizes that input energy (ie: going down a hill).

The problem I see with Darwinists, is that they cannot get this around they're heads. The more specified something, this usually means that its unlikely to have a different function then it was meant to have, the more likely it is designed by a goal-directed and goal-intended process. The bacterial flagellum as an example, is specified to do something very specific, it is unlikely that the bacterial flagellum was specified to do something else, whatever that might-be, or perhaps I will just note an example ND'st use: a mousetrap can be a keychain etc... . If evolution takes out the bad and leaves the good, why would something like the bacterial flagellum even evolve?, when it can be no more and no less to specified to perform anything else then what its specifically meant to do.

I could also add by stating that in internet communications, to send and receive data across networks all "hosts" use a "standard" protocol called TCP/IP, which is used to send packets (or data). There is no need to go into specifics here about what programming language is used in which runtime environment, what happens to the data, what medium and devices it travels through to get to a destination etc.. the point is that if there was no standard protocol, devices would not be able to communicate across Wide Area Networks and the entire internet would be dead.
To get down to the main point, TCP/IP does not have to be any more specified, and any less specified renders "hosts" useless for communication. Its specified to do just what it does, and if the source code was any different, socket programming (for clients/servers) would not be a delightful task (an impossibility). The bacterial flagellum, doesn't need to perform anything else beyond what it does, any less would be unstable in circumstances you may know of (or Behe or whoever else that studies them may know of), the only way to reach a conclusion such as this, is if I make the claim it is specified complex beforehand. If you make the claim that it evolved via a undirected chance process then you cannot at the same instance, include any goal directed process, and you cannot reach the claim that it is specified because you believe evolution via those processes occurred and therefore it is also currently at present, occurring. But this is absolute non-sense to me, when I don't see how the bacterial flagellum has any reason to get better (for what other purpose...is it yet in its developmental stages to reach "Ferrari" status?...or perhaps I am simply overdoing it here since Ferrari is probably jealous of the bacterial flagellum itself operating at speeds up to 100 thousand RPM?). I just don't see what other sub-parts of the bacterial flagellum would have any other uses on they're own?...I mean, am I missing something here, logically? Am I just an uneducated Christian who needs to learn a lesson or two from the Darwinists?

godslanguage,

If I explain to you the evolution of the bacteria flagellum, would you then repudiate intelligent design? (if at the very least to this IC argument?)

Now, before you think your initial reaction to this response through - just think about the question, honestly, for a moment.

If I explain to you the evolution of the bacteria flagellum

I predict your explanation will go something like this:

'''You know man, like these gears and stuff, they like blindingly evolved you know man ...
You know how that happened man, its like the gears like randomly came out of nowhere man,
This lighting bolt like zapped some mud together man, and it like piled up man...into this ball of mud man...
Then this mud man, it kind of rolled down a hill man, and like man, this other mud like kind of squished together man
And then it hardened man...long story short man... but it like kind of came together and started working man, and then you know man...stuff happens man, it kind of needs to happen man just like we need to smoke and drink....man!

Its evolution baby!!!... ROCK ON!!! HEY HEY YAA MAN """