Happy Wonderer

Please don't misquote me. If you read your own post you will see that I said You have abandoned your argument that the evolution of complexity shows purpose.

Now that you have moved the assertion to "complexity of reproduction... shows purpose" evolution is now completely out of the picture. The only life on earth could be one species of bacteria and your assertion would be just as true or false as it is in the real world. The observation of evolution is an interesting, but unrelated fact to your argument.

Ok. I'm not going to be as much fun as the other guys are on molucular complexity issues, as I'm not a biologist. I'll take a stab at it, though. At some point somebody is going to start talking about an electron at the third energy level and covalent bonds and we will both be in more or less the same boat.

(Speaking of boats, today I was thinking about what the minimal laws of physics and chemistry would be required to make water inevitable in this universe. This was a line of argument showing complexity as a consequence of simple physical laws, but I won't waste your time with it.)

Ok, onwards again. Allow me to put the argument in argument form as I understand it:

Fair enough? I have taken some liberties with your wording but I think it is important to spell out clearly what we mean.

Let's take the first assertion. "Reproduction is complex." How do we measure this complexity? A polypeptide chain is pretty complex to an undergraduate in chemistry, yet we know that it can be created by simple, undesigned processes. It is a consequence of the way that chemicals interact. Is a polypeptide chain more complex than a designed object like, say, a piston engine? (I understand piston engines much better, let me tell you...)

If there isn't a measure of absolute complexity, then right off we are dead in the water. You want to set a 'cut off' point where you can determine the difference between

and
If you can't measure this Complexity Factor (CF) than how for any given process can I make that determination? Complexity becomes completely subject to the beholder; to PZ and others I'm sure that peptide chains are child's play. Relative complexity won't cut it; a hammer is a designed object that is arguably less complex than a molocule of NaCl (salt) which is not. (If NaCl isn't complex enough I'm sure that the other posters will be happy to provide a substitute.)

I see I'm getting wordy and I try to avoid that. The second major problem with your argument is the implied premise that complex processes can't arise without purpose. To that, I answer why not?

HW

By the way, good show on coming back swinging!

LordSnooty

If God designed everything, he's a very poor designer. As others have pointed out, if a highly qualified engineer had 'god-like' ability, he'd probably be able to improve many aspects of human physiology.

I kept reading your posts in the hope that at some point you'd turn around and say 'you're right, I was mistaken'.

Some hope! You've continued with the most ridiculous misconceptions, even when they've been pointed out to you time after time.

Paul

Lobstrosity

Here, Keith, let me try to explain this in the simplest terms possible. I'm sure one of these times it just has to stick. Evolution is a process, just like, say, evaporation. Right now we're arguing about whether that process is feasible. Initial conditions are completely irrelevant to this portion of the debate. Why can you not see this? If god created the first strand of genetic material and then all the life on this earth arose from that initial strand, evolution still occured. People arguing that evolution is a valid process do not need to answer where the first life came from, they simply need to show that given any lifeform we could expect to see on Earth (i.e. given anything with DNA), evolution will occur.

Keith, you assume God created everything as is, more or less. Why would it be any less reasonable to assume God created the first genetic material and let everything evolve naturally according to the physical laws he established to govern this universe? In such an instance, you'd have creation (sort of) and evolution. Or, you could say the whole thing was mindless from the beginning and the first genetic material came about through random accumulations of molecules. Both of these final two explanations support evolution even though the former of the two still invokes some creation by God.

In short: abiogenesis and evolution are completely different subjects. They have nothing to do with each other. One is the explanation for an initial condition and the other is the process by which something changes over time assuming that initial condition as a starting point. Knowing about abiogenesis tells you nothing about the general theory of evolution and knowing about the general theory of evolution tells you nothing about abiogenesis.

Maybe God did give us 100 million dollars three billion years ago and ever since then we have been making a few million dollars a year. Seeing as how this is your analogy, I'm happy to tell you that you can now safely believe in evolution without shattering your current worldview. Congratulations!

Oolon Colluphid

Sheesh, I’m offline for a couple of days and the thread gains five pages!

Right. Time to call Keith on his ‘argument from design’.
Poorly designed, as in, worse than a mere human designer can come up with. Surely that’s not a difficult idea to grasp? You are the one bandying the term ‘intelligent design’. What, then, do you mean by those words?
And of course if this is the case, you have no way to tell what is ‘good design’ either: good design for what? So your own argument from design collapses. Neither of us can identify design, good or bad. If I have no argument, then neither do you.

But let’s test this design argument. What might constitute ‘good design’, if we were to look for it? Some things normally associated with it are simplicity, and not using more materials than necessary. For example, manufacturing researcher and consultant Terry Hill, in his 1986/2000 book Manufacturing Strategy, notes that “any third-rate engineer can design complexity”, and goes on to say that the hallmark of truly intelligent design is not complexity, but rather simplicity, or more specifically, it is the ability to take a complex process or product spec and create the least complicated design that will meet all project parameters.

Surely this is reasonable?

So what, exactly, might be the priorities that would lead a designer to consider it a good idea to put eyes that do not function on organisms that do not need eyes at all?
Bwahahaha!

You really don’t get it, do you? My entire point was to take ‘intelligent design’ at face value!

If we do so, we do not need further explanation of the amazing intricacies of living stuff, for it was designed by some intelligence. Fine.

The problems arise when we make further predictions from it.

If a great intelligence were behind nature’s complexity, what might we find? Brilliant designs. And we do.

But evolution also explains brilliant designs, by cumulatively allowing only improvements (ie, the non-random element) out of all the randomly-occurring variations through to the next round. So finding good designs does not help us choose between the two hypotheses.

If a great intelligence were behind nature’s complexity, what might we not find? Stupid designs?

And yet, we do find stupid designs. They are stupid because, if we allow the design argument at all, if we can judge the good stuff as good, then the same criteria that lead us to see those as good allow us to judge others as poor.

Evolution, on the other hand, predicts poor designs, because it is contingent. Since it builds each step on what’s there already, it has to make do and mend, producing ‘jury-rigged’ ‘designs’. So finding eyes that do not work in cave-dwelling creatures that don’t need them is no surprise -- it is expected if the animals’ ancestors did have eyes, and they have evolved by natural selection from them.
It need exist nowhere other than a human designer’s mind, skills and experience, and it need not be some sort of universal ultra-optimal. It just needs to be as good as we can think of -- which is surely at least as good as some creator could think of.

If you can tell that designs are good, you can tell that some are poor too. Or you must drop the argument from design.
If you cannot see that the only reason for using the terms was to examine the designer hypothesis, then you are even more obtuse than I had thought.

Sub-optimal design does not exist in nature; nor does optimal design. Because nothing was designed and there was no designer. The terms are just a linguistic convenience.

TTFN, DT

Dr Rick

You have provided no rational argument to support your contention that "reproduction shows purpose; " you just post it as an irrelevant and unrelated conclusion to your assumptions:

This is not a rational proof; the conclusion does not follow from your assumptions.

Rick

Rick

Jobar

"Why is the goal survival?"

Keith, I've been following this thread from the beginning, and the title has been bothering me from the start- maybe if I point out why that is so, you will stop trying to :banghead: .

I think your mistake lies in one word- "the".

"The" implies one, single, ultimate purpose. And you have been told numerous times, by many people, that there is no one goal. Evolution is a goalless, purposeless process, with no more absolute meaning than the turning of the tides, or the eroding of mountains, or the formation of stars. Evolution is an emergent process, a consequence of chemistry and the energy influx from the sun.

"Goals" and "purposes" are human concepts. Nature comes long before these.

Your fruitless seeking for *the* goal- of life, of survival, of evolution, of existence itself- is the central mistake you are making. You look for ultimate, absolute meaning- and we cannot address this with words.

I'm unsure if you are able to understand this. I am damn sure you are *unwilling* to do so- but if you are truly trying to understand evolution instead of simply trying to rationalize your denial of it, you should stop trying to find unlimited meaning.

Keith

I'll grant number one, and even number two as long as it isn't assumed to be permanent.

Keith

Keith

The complexity can be measured in terms of information content. There is a branch of mathematics called information theory which can be used to compare the specified complexity between two or more complex systems.

I don't think I've actually said that complex processes can't arise without purpose, but it is usually assumed by most people to be true. IOW, if you happened to find a complicated piece of something (electronic or mechanical) by the side of the road, you would most likely assume it had a purpose, and that it didn't just spontaneously develop its complexity.

Keith

Principia

False. There is no branch of mathematics that measures anything called "specified complexity." This is merely an invention of pseudoscientists.

Keith

Unless you know God's plans and purposes you can't know that God is a poor designer.

Keith