User:Tznkai/playground

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

I don't see it as relevent to the article. Think of it like this... examine the physical properties of your computer and you will find that it is irreducibly complex. Now based on ID reasoning, because it is irreducibly complex, it was intelligently designed - something you can know based on the object's physical properties.

But is there anything else about the designer that you can know from this object's physical properties besides the fact that he/she/it is intelligent? I mean, do you know if the designer was Asian or not? Married or not? Homecoming King or class clown?

Push the reasoning further, and you can't even conclusively say that the designer is human or not based on the fact that your computer is irreducibly complex. Nor do you have any prayer or knowing how or why or even if the designer was designed itself. The only thing you know is that something intelligent made your computer. That is the only fact you can assert.

This is precisely why ID is not creationism. Creationism seeks to justify science with a particular creation story. ID says nothing about a story. When ID is successful, all it says is "we know that X was designed by something intelligent" because we don't have a clue how to ascertain any data about the designer or the designing process apart from the fact that the designer is intelligent.

"Who designed the designer?" is simply a regressive question that cannot be answered ultimately without some kind of faith. ID says that if we have an object here we can tell if it's intelligently designed based on its properties. So, if the designer shows up, you can test its properties and see if the designer was intelligently designed... and then look for that designer. But unless you can physically produce the designer, ID refrains from guessing at his/her/its nature... including whether or not the designer was designed. David Bergan 5 July 2005 19:53 (UTC)

Whoa Whoa WHOA!! slow down there, buddy.... It is VERY relevent. If you make the argument that anything complex needs a designer, then it follows that the designer needed designing. since this is a major flaw in ID, it is necisary to point out... And I dont know about you, but MY computer is reducable. It is made out of a hard drive, ram, cpu and a motherboard. the hard drive is made of motors and plates. the plates are made of metal, the motors made of wire and magnets... etc... computers are NOT irreducably complex. and way, fo rthe sake of arugument, I will allow it, this once....Looking at a computer I can ifure quite a bit about the desinger. It sees in the human optical rane (emition form monitor) the sound range it can here in, the fact that it has poking apendages, and moving apandages with pressy bits, and that these two bits are below the see-y bits (otherwise they would block the see-y bits when the poke-y bits poked....

This is why I personally believe that ID has no place in an "orgins" debate.... since ID is so regresive, it cannot EVER have an orgin that is factually based. However, since people are loath to move it and re-define it, it stays in the orgins section. Again, since ID says that complex things need a designer, and the simple fact that anything able to design another thing would be complex, ID invalidates itself as anything other than a faith argument. Since the biggest issue in the evolution-creationism debate is teaching ID in schools, which would be unconstitutional, pointing out the religion inherit in ID is necisary... moran ;-) anything that shows how stupid ID is can't be bad, unless it makes the article look less reliable.

Behe's definition of 'irreducible complexity': "a single system which is composed of several well-matched interacting parts that contribute to the basic function, wherein the removal of any one of the parts causes the system to effectively cease functioning." If you removed any one of the items you mention, your computer would stop functioning. Therefore, it is irreducibly complex.

Also, you will get no argument from the main ID proponents that ID is not about ultimate origins. Dembski's reply to the question, in The Design Revolution:

"Design-theoretic explanations are proximal or local explanations rather than ultimate explanations. Design-theoretic explanations are concerned with determining whether some particular event, object, or structure exhibits clear marks of intelligence and can thus be legitimately ascribed to design. Consequently, design-theoretic reasoning does not require the who-designed-the-designer question to be answered for the design inference to be valid. There is explanatory value in attributing the Jupiter Symphony to the artistry (design) of Mozart, and that explanation suffers nothing by not knowing who designed Mozart. Likewise in biology, design inferences are not invalidated for failing to answer [the] who-designed-the-designer question."

At least learn a little bit about a subject before criticizing it.--Johnstone 6 July 2005 01:38 (UTC)

My 2 cents... computers are not irreducably complex... you can remove all but ram, mobo, and cpu and you have a working computer, additionally each of those parts is reducable, with a different function, which is the flaw in behe's argument, too... Oh and attributing the symphony to mozart is NOT the same as attributing everything in the universe to mozart, ergo that analogy is not appropriate. If mozart were a part of the muzic, then maybe you would have a caseIreverentReverend 6 July 2005 03:03 (UTC)

RAM, motherboard, and CPU all contribute to the basic function of the computer. They each have separate functions, but they don't work independently. I don't understand your comment about Dembski's Mozart analogy at all. Rhetorical question: Do you conceptualize the designer to be part of the universe?--Johnstone 7 July 2005 00:27 (UTC)

Dembski-to-human translation: "It doesn't matter our explanation is contradictory to our premises." - Lurking observer.

No contradiction at all. From Dembski (again): "The fundamental claim of intelligent design is straightforward and easily intelligible: namely, there are natural systems that cannot be adequately explained in terms of undirected natural forces and that exhibit features which in any other circumstance we would attribute to intelligence." ID doesn't claim to explain the source of specified complexity, it just claims that it exists and that fully naturalistic theory cannot explain it because the known mechanisms of nature (chance and law in combination) cannot generate complex specified information (CSI), only shift it around.--Johnstone 7 July 2005 00:27 (UTC)

"This is precisely why ID is not creationism. Creationism seeks to justify science with a particular creation story. ID says nothing about a story." Uhm, this is whacked. The definition of "creationism" doesn't hinge on any particular story. There are plenty of vastly different stories of how the universe was created. What defines creationism is specifically some outside influence stepping in and creating life, the universe, and everything. But then, ID is all about redefining terms. "science" is redefined to include religious dogma. "creationism" is now somehow tied to a story. sure. why not. FuelWagon 6 July 2005 14:36 (UTC)

The Supreme Court (through citing a District Court ruling) identified "scientific creationism" as not just similar to the Genesis account of creation, but in fact identical to it and parallel to no other creation story. (Edwards v. Aguillard citing McLean v. Arkansas Board of Education). There's your definition of creationism. And ID is not that. David Bergan 6 July 2005 15:11 (UTC)

I just read your post three times and I didn't find the phrase "scientific creatinism" anywhere. All you said was "creationism". So I assume you are attempting to rewrite history and attempt to tell me you said something else. FuelWagon 6 July 2005 15:23 (UTC)

What's your point? That I added the word "scientific" in front of the word "creationism" when I found a legit definition? Big deal. It was implied in my post, as I assume it is in all our posts, since we probably aren't talking about "voodoo creationism" or "pink elephant creationism" or "unicorn creationism" but the one that would be closely associated to science, evolution, and ID. Did you seriously misunderstand me or are you just trying to be a jerk? David Bergan 6 July 2005 15:41 (UTC)

And while I'm at it, in that very same post, you said "When ID is successful, all it says is 'we know that X was designed by something intelligent'", and that is "begging the question". You say ID "knows that X was designed", but you have changed the definition of "knowing" from observiable, repeatable, falsifiable, a posteriori to some version of intuitive, non-observable, non-repeatable, a priori hocus-pocus. You love to present loaded examples like a laptop or Mt. Rushmore and say "ID just determines that these were designed", but they're loaded examples, because we already KNOW they were designed. Why don't you start with something you DONT KNOW, and try that same line of logic. The only reason it works is because you start with an example where you already know the answer. We know a mousetrap was designed, and you come in with your whacked logic and attempt to retrofit your arguments as "proof" that your logic is correct. Apply your logic to anything we DONT KNOW, and it fails miserably, or at the very least, sounds like the pseudo-science mumbo jumbo that it really is. Your "logic" only sounds logical when you apply it to loaded examples like mousetraps, laptops, and Mt. Rushmore. You don't KNOW jack. You only retrofit your argument on top of already known information. FuelWagon 6 July 2005 15:32 (UTC)

I thought this was already addressed, but I'll copy/paste it from before: David Bergan 6 July 2005 15:41 (UTC)

Maybe this will help. Pretend that there are two ways of knowing that X is designed. The first (and most obvious one) is to know the object historically. We can see pictures of the guys blasting away Mt. Rushmore in the gift shop at its base. The second way is what ID is attempting to establish... recognizing design from the physical properties of X. This is where design theorists use terms like "irreducible complexity," "specified complexity," and "information mechanism" because they think that if X has, say, irreducibly complex parts, then it was designed. Mount Rushmore does not have irreducibly complex parts nor information mechanisms, but they are looking at its properties to see if they can isolate something else as a potential sign of intelligence. (We could use a modern car, or a computer, if you want an analogy with IR and IM.) So they are looking at something we know historically to be designed so that they can discover/isolate these signs of intelligence and see if they apply to biological systems, alien radio signals, etc.

FW, no one says that you have to agree that biological systems HAVE these signs of intelligence. But there doesn't seem to be anything unscientific in their manner of investigation. David Bergan 19:05, 3 Jun 2005 (UTC)

FW. Breathe. This isn't the place to debate our arguments on ID, especially on something that's been beaten into the ground by notable personages. Bergan, I'd like for you to stop as well--Tznkai 6 July 2005 15:45 (UTC)

Woah woah woah. We're getting off topic here. The talk page is not for us to argue our own views on what ID is. The consensus seems to be that this is a Notable criticsm of Irreducable Complexity. If FW or FM or Ghost (who all seem to be rather good at this) can find me a refrence, I'll start working on the style.--Tznkai 6 July 2005 15:02 (UTC)

Wow, you can't get two paragraphs into ID without people putting things in the design theorists' mouths. First off, the fact that your laptop has parts does not mean it is not irreducibly complex. Yes, it has parts. But it is IC because it needs all those parts to function. If you take out the CPU, it doesn't work. If you take out the power supply, it doesn't work. If you take out the motherboard, it doesn't work. If you take out the hard drive, it doesn't work. Yes, a few peripherals could be removed (like a webcam or speakers) and it will still process data... but that just means that the webcam is not part of the irreducibly complex core.

To repeat myself, all ID attempts to say is "We have this computer and we know that it has this property called irreducible complexity. All irreducibly complex objects were intelligently designed. Therefore, this computer was intelligently designed."

Now, any further questions about the designer or the design process is outside the scope of ID. To some degree, you are right, you can learn certain things about the designer from the object, but that is not ID. If you want to say that since the monitor emits photons in the visible spectrum (rather than infared) therefore the designer must have an eye like a human's, you can make that educated guess... but it has nothing to do with intelligent design. Johnstone's quote from the Design Revolution says exactly the same thing in Dembski's words.

Second, let's address the regressive question. It was said, "ID says that complex things need a designer, and the simple fact that anything able to design another thing would be complex." A couple things need to be said. (A) The person saying this is setting up his own regression. Obviously, humans design things. He is as much saying that since we do design things, we were designed ourselves. A nice little example of proving the other side's point. (B) But more importantly, ID never ever says that "anything able to design another thing would be complex." It is perfectly logical that the first designing thing could have been self-organized. My point is that ID says nothing about abstract designers. Unless you give it something physical, ID stays totally mute. For this reason, a section on the nature of the designer is irrelevant because that is based on philosophy and/or faith rather than ID. David Bergan 6 July 2005 15:06 (UTC)