Refuting the ARGUMENT BY DESIGN. (page 7)

Refuting the ARGUMENT BY DESIGN.

nicolaou

Mere coincidence does not create or design anything, definitely no complex life systems.

Agreed. But then, nobody advanced coincidence as an explanation.

Terry's post has been most helpful I feel . . . Human nature is often uncomfortable with the unknown . . . but then it takes the unfortunate step of making something up and defending it with passion . . . to relieve that discomfort.

It was the experience of mystery - even if mixed with fear - that engendered religion. Albert Einstein

If the unknown is allowed to occupy a place with us, albeit a little uncomfortable at first, this sense of mystery then becomes a powerful motivation for seeking understanding and knowledge about our universe and our existence.

Once we commit ourselves to a belief system . . . we then take a stance, which we tend to defend relentlessly. The unknown is satisfied and the mystery is removed . . . we have no "vacuum" to fill . . . and so we progress in understanding only reluctantly . . . or not at all. If we do progress, we must first let something dear to us go first . . . in order to accommodate it. This can be painful and difficult.

Debating the various arguments is healthy . . . provided we allow room for our understanding to grow IMO.

ringo5

I like Douglas Adam's take on the argument with his analogy of the creationist argument "It's just too perfect to be anything else but designed"

Imagine a puddle waking up one morning and thinking, "This is an interesting world I find myself in — an interesting hole I find myself in — fits me rather neatly, doesn't it? In fact it fits me staggeringly well, must have been made to have me in it!" This is such a powerful idea that as the sun rises in the sky and the air heats up and as, gradually, the puddle gets smaller and smaller, it's still frantically hanging on to the notion that everything's going to be alright, because this world was meant to have him in it, was built to have him in it; so the moment he disappears catches him rather by surprise. I think this may be something we need to be on the watch out for. We all know that at some point in the future the Universe will come to an end and at some other point, considerably in advance from that but still not immediately pressing, the sun will explode. We feel there's plenty of time to worry about that, but on the other hand that's a very dangerous thing to say.

Also, to the idea of teaching the "controversy"....

All opinions are not equal. Some are a very great deal more robust, sophisticated and well supported in logic and argument than others.

Cheers,

ringo5

Interesting thread, and I have been enjoying reading the 'discussion', and learning from it. I've always accepted the theory of evolution as I learned it in school (!) back in the 70s; it is both plausible and proven. I've never felt the need to read up on it (except for Origin of Species, which is a fascinating book) as there are so many other things for me to learn, and as I said, for me, evolution is a 'given'.

However, I have one point to make to those who may wish the argue the point with a creationist. I admit, it's an aside, but nonetheless one that I feel is germaine to the discussion in a more-or-less global sense.

Language matters, especially to JWs, who are manipulated by terminology their whole lives.

When I tried to point this out to a poster on another thread, he got very rude with me because I insisted on calling evolution a theory (keeping in mind all those creationists who were reading) ,,, and dismissed me as ignorant and opposed to scientific fact / empirical evidence (hahaha, very funny). I'm guessing this was his 'JW mentality' showing, but I digress.

Simply put, the theory of evolution is supported by powerful empirical evidence, and is 99.9% a fact, therefore, scientists call it so. However, the average JW, who is extremely ignorant of science, is going to close their minds snapped shut as soon as you start throwing around the term "Evolution is a fact".

Yes, it's semantics,,, but semantics is important in many arguments. This is one of them, imho.

If you are going to refute her/his belief system, the creationist has to be able to hear your argument, instead of being thrown off by terminology which immediately raises a red flag for them. Also, making sarcastic comments which imply they are stupid is a good way to (figuratively) make anyone stick their fingers in their ears and say "la la I can't hear you".

I'm in discussions right now with an acquaintance who is a staunch creationist and believer in "intelligent design", so am hoping to pick up a few pointers on this thread.

I hope you don't feel this is off-topic, nic, and I don't wish to argue, or otherwise belabour, the point with other posters.

* carefully chooses her words when trying to make a point *

hoffnung:

The reason I am in favor for the designer theory, is that I am a technician and have come across many complex systems. ... Mere coincidence does not create or design anything, definitely no complex life systems.

It cannot be stressed enough that some of the strongest optimization/search methods in computer science is build around schemes where you have some kind of (stochastic) variation and selection strategy. Of these i can mention stochastic gradient descend, MCMC, simulated annealing and (ofcourse) genetic algorithms. There are huge classes of problems which are simply intractable by non-stochastic methods, and i can mention that of the 5 last simulations i have written 4 of these have been stochastic.

Stochastic optimization seem like a joke when you first see it, but large optimization problems live in spaces with millions of dimensions and our intuition do not work very well there.

Refuting the ARGUMENT BY DESIGN.

nicolaou

sizemik

ringo5

Slidin Fast

talesin

simon17

bohm

Nickolas

tec

Nickolas

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