Intelligent Design

What’s wrong with saying that the universe displays an enormous amount of fine tuning, and to such a degree that the universe is more likely the result of an intelligent designer than…well, chance? Why should we ignore ID as a possible hypothesis?

 

do you call appendicidus "intelligent design"?

or have ever attempted to duplicate in art or miniature the range of diversity of the natural world that can be observed all arround us, were we merely to step away from our artifacts and their illusions of superiority they give us, for even the briefest of moments?

this is not an argument against the POSSIBILITY of intelligent intentions having set such diversifying proccesses in motion. such a possibilty i have no wish nor claim to deny. but neither does this possibility, as opposed to the pretentions calling themselves "intelligent design", in any way conflict, with observable mechanisms of natural selection.

it is not a question of ignoring anything. the claim that any possibility has been, is more of the same sour grapes and infantile tantrum we have heard repeatedly before.

=^^=
.../\...

 

I don't think there's anything wrong with saying this. Intelligence has a counterpart in matter. It may be that all matter is intrinsically linked with mind, that they are one in the same.

So like, you could say that the firing of the neurons in our brains is the result of an intelligent process. Yet an observer within the brain might not see any reason to postulate any intelligence inherent in it.

 

in addition to energy and matter, information is also an inherent part of the universe.

it had to come from somewhere..

 

Hello

I'm actually talking about fine tuning.

But I'm not asking if you think it's possible, I'm really saying that the universe is more likely the result of ID. If the probability of the universe being fine tuned by chance is low, why not look into another option?

 

So you're saying that matter intentionally arranged itself into the universe as we know it now, by way of its inherent intelligence?

 

Aside from anything else, we have no point of comparison. The universe seems to slot nicely together and generally "work", but this could simply be because it's the only universe we know. If we had, say, five universes to compare, we might well find that this one is a piece of crap that looks like it was designed by a retarded five year old compared to the others.

 

It shouldn't be considered as a scientific theory, because it's not in the least bit scientific. There's not a scrap of evidence for design, in fact, there's plenty for the opposite. Appendixes, cells mutating and becoming cancerous, genes causing things like excessive growth or lack of growth. Plenty of animals have useless or hampering parts. You can't say, that's complicated, so a magical being made it, that's not a scientific theory. It's a religious theory, and should be treated as such.

 

Yeah, exhibit A = the daddy long legs, a creature which has within its body one of the most powerful toxins in the world, yet also has no means of administering it.

If there's a designer, s/he has an really cruel sense of irony.

 

Well actually SC, that's just an urban legend, there's no toxin in the daddy long legs. But there are plenty of actual examples of useless properties, the fact that pregnancies can develop in the oviducts pour example, causing immense complications and often death.

 

Aww, that's disappointing

Well yeah. I dunno, to be honest I was talking more about physics than biology. We know that there's a fair amount wrong with organic life; if there weren't, we wouldn't have had so much oil.

 

Sort of. I'm saying that it could be the case. And maybe "intelligence" isn't even the right word, if by intelligence you mean reason. Because just because you possess a mind doesn't mean that you use it to reason. So it may be that mind is ubiquitous in the universe and all matter simply goes where it wants to. And it also may be that it has no choice as to where it "wants" to go. So maybe not "intelligent" design so much as "willful" design.

 

So instinctive design more than intelligent design?

 

To suppose a divine creator implies that he is infinite, ie: was always there, will always be there. This is much harder to explain then the universe, which has evolved over billions of years, there's nothing chancy about it.

 

On some level, and then on even larger or bizarre scales the things we see may be part of intelligences abstract from (if not superior to) our own. And then the whole shebang of course would have to be the epitome of anything that could be called intelligent.

 

Does it?

 

Well if you don't say that, then you have to come up with a reasonable explanation for the origins of said creator, and that sorta thing gives way to russian dolls.

 

Well, to be honest, Russian dolls isn't such a bad thing, given that it at the very least would not jar with everything else in the universe as we know it. But no, I was thinking more along the lines of a creator who only creates, and need not exist beyond that.

I understand the basic idea here, but I think if you want to find more than Russian dolls, you're probably not going to get it.

 

Regardles of what may be "out there" somewhere, you've still got to account for what we have, viz., a universe that displays a large degree of fine tuning. Suppose it is the case that there is some other universe that is far better than our own. This would in no way imply that ours isn't the product of ID.

Beyond that, if you're willing to entertain the idea of there being some other universes out there (something for which there is no evidence) why wouldn't you also entertain the idea of there being an intelligent designer?

 

Well no, that was my point. It seems to fit together well because it's all we know. If there was one big thing "wrong" with the laws of physics, we'd have no way of knowing. This is my point, you say it "displays a large degree of fine tuning", but since we have no concept of how a universe is supposed to be, or how it is if it isn't fine-tuned, we can't really say that.

Nothing happens in contradiction to nature because our entire concept of nature is based on observation of things that happen. If something is happening which shouldn't be, or isn't happening which should, we would assume that it is "natural" for it to happen/not happen, because again, we define nature by what we observe to be natural. If our universe's law of gravity is "wrong", we wouldn't know it, because our law of gravity, our understanding of it, would be based on the "wrong" version, rather than the "right" one.

I don't dismiss the possibility off hand. All I'm saying is that the apparent bloody-cleverness of our universe is not evidence for it in itself. I do also consider the possibility that our designer wasn't that good.

Again, not knowing what makes a "good" or "bad" universe, I don't for example know whether life is supposed to emerge. I know that if I design a rat's maze, or a science experiment, and there's mould growing in it or ants running around in it, I probably just rinse out the test tube or clean up the maze and start again.