A designer proponent could respond that mass extinctions are an example of not getting it right the first time.

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Conscious reasoning is an attempt to justify the choice after it has been made.

it would be an interesting experiment to put the designer proponent and a velociraptor in a sealed environment and see which survived.

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plenty of woo, at the hotel hoagaland...

Cdesign proponentsist. Get it right!

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"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge" -- Charles Darwin
"Your right to hold an opinion is not being contested. Your expectation that it be taken seriously is." -- Jason Thompson
Meet the OOONG TOE.

Actually, I realise I agree.

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plenty of woo, at the hotel hoagaland...

I have been thinking about this.

Now, to preface, I am agnostic. I don't want to be biased in either direction.

There are certainly ideas in the universe, when you look at them, that are "odd" because they seem to be exceptions to the rules. Water being less dense in its solid state than at slightly higher temperatures, for example, is a major factor for the development of water-based life (ice floats).

You can explain the mechanisms behind this eventually, of course. But it is an odd thing, and it is a chicken-or-egg problem - did life evolve because the state of matter was designed in that way (in which case WayneFrancis' "white room" simile stands), or did life evolve in precisely this way because of this anomaly and would have evolved differently or not at all otherwise?
It boils down to this: You can't ever answer the "why", only the "how". There's no big evidence towards either interpretation.

In my opinion: All in all, it doesn't make a big difference to us, the observers.

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Si tacuisses, philosophus mansisses.

"Half of what I say is meaningless, but I say it so that the other half may reach you."

But there is no question we see design in individual elements, some we are even designing ourselves. The issue here is whether the universe itself shows design.
Right, those are the "barren realms" that I am also pointing to. Others see fertile soil there, but I stand unconvinced, and point to the absence of demonstration along with certain philosophical paradoxes associated with that stance.
Right, that's what I mean by the various different ways to define "design" in regard to these various substructures. Without an agreed-on definition, the debate will spin its wheels.

Yet there is evidence that we, intelligent apes, can understand and predict black holes. There's something going on there. If it fails some particular definition of design, it likely satisfies some other reasonable version.

There are universal constraints, like the speed of light. However, as we have agreed (jokergirl alludes to this as well) the existance of these constraints or universal parameters cannot be used as evidence of design. So if the behaviour of a simple object is completely dominated by these constraints, rather than being specified by counter-entropic design process, then we still have no evidence for design, and can entertain the hypothesis that a black hole is an undesigned object. If the universe is designed, that that should require that all objects in the universe are designed.. the existance of a single undesigned object disproves the theory.

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plenty of woo, at the hotel hoagaland...

Ah, yes! Sir Martin Rees talked about this possibility. It is interesting in a philosophical sense but I'm not sure I'd still call this "intelligently designed" for the most part. I wouldn't even call it designed. We do simulations about parts of our universe all the time. The simulations output are not meant to be designed but a model of the real universe. The better the model the more accurate the fit. So if we are a simulation of another universe then it isn't turtles all the way down but turtles until we find the ground and then the simulation isn't designed in the way ID supporters like to talk about.

IE if I had a computer system that models a chemical reaction the chemical reaction within the computer is not designed if I did built the computer system correctly. Because I would have not "designed" anything into the chemical reaction process. Like wise if we are meant to be a simulation of another universe then from within our universe we should not detect any "design". Sure the computer that runs the simulator might be designed but if the simulation is proper we would never be able to detect that design because it is outside of our universe and if the simulation is different from our parent universe then again, really how would we know because then what part of our universe is not designed? How would you tell the difference.

It is a completely philosophical question that leads to no scientific answers.

how you would detect this from with the simulation is beyond me. I mean who's to say that the Planck length isn't a precision boundary of a the simulation we are in. If you do find artefacts how can you give them meaning? Wouldn't they just be to us? I mean sure they might be a bug or artefact in the parent universe but to us they would just be.

I don't mean to defend the idea as it isn't mine nor do I place much stock in it, however I could answer your question by saying that if we observed skips in reality on some rare occasions, it would not represent normal physics as we know it, so it would lead to greater investigation. Upon said investigation if you cannot ascribe the effect to understandable physical processes, you might very well conclude some metaphysical process, like a simulator. Of course, the designer might notice this flaw was attracting attention and so might throw in a few more Intel GigaCore processors to eliminate the skips!

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Conscious reasoning is an attempt to justify the choice after it has been made.

Hehehehe!

That's a pretty narrow definition of "design". An architect designs a building, but does not design everything that goes into the building, such as the materials. If you have two caves, and one is man-made and the other is natural, how can you tell which one was man-made? You'd look for signs that no natural process could have made it, such as perfect symmetry and so forth. But perfect symmetry is exactly the kinds of attributes we look for when seeking laws of physics, and that's supposed to be describing natural processes. It's a problem. Without a clear meaning of "design", we cannot say what processes demonstrate it, or when it is a hallmark of something natural and when it is a hallmark of intelligence. The inescapable paradox is that intelligence itself is natural.

Actually ice floating as a requirement for life is a bit of a straw man.
1st of all it is not unique as many ID proponents claim
2nd while it does have an impact on the climate of Earth this property is actually destructive for life.

The key attribute of water when it comes to life is that it is a solvent. That is it. A good designer would have made ice more dense then water then there would be no catastrophic cell damage from freezing.

I've even had ID proponents with science degrees try to argue that water is the only molecule which does this which is false. There are, from memory, at least 2 elements that have this same property of having a less dense solid form then their liquid form and molecules only introduce an much larger set of matter that can take on this property.

Our definition of life may well change in the future. In colder environments life may use other solvents besides water, carbon might be replaced by something like silicon, etc. Personally I believe carbon will be involved in extra terrestrial biochemical processes but who knows.

Not saying this is what Ken G meant but...

If anyone thinks humans are "better designed" then mountain gorillas then you are not thinking to deep. Put us in the mountain gorillas environment and see who is "better designed"

Some evidence that we are not "better designed" full stop. Humans can not make our own vitamin C. Gorillas can produce their own vitamin C where the gene responsible for it in us is broken. They also don't suffer from haemorrhoids like we do.

That's faulty logic. You could just as easily say put mountain gorillas in our environment, like say Manhattan, and see who is better designed.

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Conscious reasoning is an attempt to justify the choice after it has been made.

I think that this is exactly the point WayneFrancis was trying to make, DrWho.

Thanks for the clarification on the water metaphor, I was clearly mistaken there. I'll research more carefully next time!

If we are talking about an internally consistant universe in which the laws were designed, but matter took its course according to these afterwards, there is likely not a way we can detect evidence of design or not. I think the best bet for detecting such evidence would be looking for inconsistencies instead - though as we know, any sufficiently advanced science/tech is indistinguishable from magic.

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Si tacuisses, philosophus mansisses.

"Half of what I say is meaningless, but I say it so that the other half may reach you."

Ah yes, you are right jokergirl (after re-reading Wayne's post). Apologies to Wayne.

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Conscious reasoning is an attempt to justify the choice after it has been made.

Put us there.. we are still better designed than gorillas. Humans can thrive everywhere on earth, for the most part. We've gone to the moon.

When I say designed, I mean naturally. By evolution, not ID.

We are better designed because we have the best chances of survival, we are at the top of the food chain, and we have created civilization.

I get your point though, which I think is: "better designed for what?" Obviously a fish is better designed to live under water. In evolution's eyes though, we are the pinnacle of success. Surviving and reproducing, we are the best at.

Witty comeback #1: So far.

Witty comeback #2: I'd say bacteria beat us at that by lengths.

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Si tacuisses, philosophus mansisses.

"Half of what I say is meaningless, but I say it so that the other half may reach you."

Both true!

NO

Well put, Mawech. Succinct and unambiguous. Welcome to the board.

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Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts.

Possibly only because he is a imperfect designer in an undesigned universe.

If a person makes a cave by blowing a hole with dynamite is that really 'designed', or is it reasonable to ask what extent is it designed, implying that part of the structure is the result of random or contingent events over which the dynamiter had no control. . .or non-designed. Also, natural selection produces design without need for intelligence. So design itself is also paradoxically natural.

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plenty of woo, at the hotel hoagaland...

Right, there is a real problem in defining what is meant by "design", so we cannot really get too far answering if the universe is designed until we know what this word is intended to mean. If we restrict to "intelligent" design, that really doesn't help much-- as you say, an intelligence can use dynamite, but the outcome won't be much different from some naturally occuring explosion. An even worse paradox in the concept of "intelligent design" is, what designed the intelligence? If the intelligence itself did not need to be designed, then they are saying that you can have a non-random structure without needing it to be designed by something else, and that initial assumption contradicts their entire argument. Nevertheless, there are sensible ways to define design, and to ask if the universe exhibits those definitions or not.

Design or not it certainly is magestic.

Not to quibble, though I like to, but a person can be an agnostic atheist, agnostic deist, or agnostic theist. It would simply imply they recognize the possibility of the opposite of their belief.

I hope this is recognized as an academic point and not otherwise.

EDIT:

Ken, beautifully said!

A corollary might be that perhaps it is moot to distinguish between the "designer" and the "designed". Everything we create is distinctly human. That is, our technology is an evolutionary extension of ourselves: it shapes our lives and our lives shape it. By the same token, our ancestors "designed" us by engaging in life: they fought, they ate, some had babies, and some didn't (to be simplistic). Any alien life form creating technology would also create things that are specific extensions of itself and exist because it does.

Given enough time, human or otherwise, it may be impossible to distinguish between the life form and machination



M74

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I pray to no one.

Fun fact:

The number of different ideas that can be expressed using various combinations of the words "agnostic", "theist", "atheist", and "deist" is 15n, where n is the number of people in the room.

That made me laugh, but I'm not sure about the math. I've never been combinatorics.

m74

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I pray to no one.

I'll point out that we are not designed for most places we go. We take our technology with us and it is it that allows us to survive. Remove the technology from humans and see how unsuited to most of the Earth and space we are.

My point is the human body is not a pinnacle of design. Our brain...pretty good for our environment but there are plenty of situations where it is unsuited for the tasks at hand. Its all about the environment we find ourselves in.

Ironically our dependence on our modern technology has, in some cases, caused us to be more susceptible to the environments we find ourselves in.

The biochemistry of the brain has shown to be very poor for many conditions we ourselves put ourselves into as a society. Take drugs like crystal meth. Our brain is not designed to deal with the environment that crystal meth puts it in. It tries to adapt by reducing the number of neural transmitters in response to the artificial highs the drug causes but this results in a positive feed back loop which in the vast majority of cases end up in a continually worse condition.


But everything living creature on the Earth is "designed" by evolution. Just because we think we dominate the world doesn't mean we are the best designed. We might be the most destructive parasite on the Earth but I'm not sure I'd say we are the best designed.

Again only if we can hold on to our technology.

But we aren't the best reproducers. That goes to a species of bacteria and we are much more fragile then it is. There are a few species that out number us in both numbers and total bio mass.

We are the most successful primate for sure. But note many things we defined ourselves by have been found to not be uniquely human. We are not the only animal that use and fashion tools. We are not the only animal that has culture and we know we are not the only species to have language. If we dropped off the face of the Earth I'd be surprised to come back in 10 million years and see humanoids as the "dominate" life in terms of what most people consider it.

Don't get me wrong in the future we probably will be very well designed but this will be more do to us taking control of our design.

I'd much have the eyes of a squid for example. From a purely functional point of view their eyes have a much better "design" and that is only one example. Don't get me wrong I like being human but there are some stupid things going on with humans, and every other form of life for the most part. This is just part of how evolution works. Hmmm aren't we on an astronomy board...I'm getting to much into biology.

addition:
I think a short way of saying what I'm trying to say is that "best design" is loaded because we define the criteria to which we judge "best design" if the criteria is "who is the most technologically advanced" then our design would currently be the best. But if we go change it to "Who is the most successful reproducer" then we are no longer "the best designed".

agreed