Pioneering Neuroscientist Wilder Penfield: Why Don't We Have Intellectual Seizures?

Evolution News and Views ^ | April 21, 2016 | Michael Egnor

[muir_redwoods]

Does your question boil down to, “why aren’t flaws in supposed intelligent design more beneficial or useful?”

Maybe you should question your premise.

[Some Fat Guy in L.A.]

Has he never read any of Obola’s executive orders?

[Heartlander]

The article made no mention of intelligent design. I suggest you heed your advice…

[muir_redwoods]

irrespective of the content of the article, is there some other way I can phrase my question so you can answer it?

[Heartlander]

To answer your question, I read many books many articles that question my beliefs – just this morning I was reading The Evolutionary Argument Against Reality…

That said, to detect design – the design does not need to be perfect. That would be a false premise. (Microsoft software for example)

[muir_redwoods]

this was my question. Do you want to answer it?

“Does your question boil down to, “why aren’t flaws in supposed intelligent design more beneficial or useful?”

[Heartlander]

Again, to detect design – the design does not need to be perfect. That would be a false premise. (There are "flaws" in Microsoft software for example - but that does not mean it wasn't designed)

Now, you asked me a question that had absolutely nothing to do with the posted article and I was kind enough to answer. It's not my problem if you don't like the answer.

[Heartlander]

Actually, here is a question to you that actually has something to do with the article - do you believe your conscience and consciousness ultimately emerged from mindlessness?

[muir_redwoods]

I asked if you wondered why the flaws iwere not beneficial or useful. To date you haven’t addressed that question. I wonder why.

[muir_redwoods]

Yes. If the complexity of human consciousness requires a designer, what designed the infinitely more complex designer?

[Heartlander]

As far as flaws in design go - sure I wonder but I also don't think we know all the answers. I answered the question regarding intelligent design as a theory. Intelligent design is merely using observations, hypothesis, and experiments in order to deduce design in nature . For example (to continue with the software paradigm) we know DNA has the following:

1. Functional Information
2. Encoder
3. Error Correction
4. Decoder

How could such a system form randomly without any intelligence, and totally unguided?

What would come first - the encoder, error correction, or the decoder? How and where did the functional information originate?

Furthermore, DNA contains multi-layered information that reads both forward and backwards - DNA stores data more efficiently than anything we've created - and a majority of DNA contains metainformation (information about how to use the information in the context of the related data). The design inference is obvious.

[Heartlander]

Who created the creator does not apply if the creator exists outside of the physical creation. It would be like asking how long it would take to create time? - or how much area it takes to create space? - it does not apply and there also needs to be an ultimate cause (Aristotle's prime mover).

But now if your brain (the mind no longer applies) comes from mindlessness - who gives a crap? Why believe anything or trust your thoughts? - it's just an organ supplied by evolution for survival - like your liver or anus?

[muir_redwoods]

Who/what then, designed the infinitely more complex designer? Following your logic, no such complex designer could exist without an even more complex designer

And you didn’t answer my question as asked. I helpfully provided it twice and still no direct answer to my specific question.

[Heartlander]

I said - yes I wonder. What more do you want? And no, following my logic does not ‘require’ complex - we don’t know what a non physical conscious reality requires.

[muir_redwoods]

So, you agree that no order of complexity necessarily requires or indicates a designer, is that correct?

[muir_redwoods]

Do you have any support for these thoughts? I see no logic behind what you are saying. At what point did we agree that it is possible to step outside the realm where all of “creation” resides?

[Heartlander]

No - please don't try to interpret my words to fit your dogma anymore. Objective ideas exist outside of nature - such as pythagorean theorem - it does not require the physical if you can imagine it - it is simple - eligant - and universally true.

[Heartlander]

You claim your brain and genome somehow emerged from mindlessness - you are claiming to believe some kind of secular magic.

“Nevertheless you have expressed my inward conviction, though far more vividly and clearly than I could have done, that the Universe is not the result of chance. But then with me the horrid doubt always arises whether the convictions of man's mind, which has been developed from the mind of the lower animals, are of any value or at all trustworthy. Would any one trust in the convictions of a monkey's mind, if there are any convictions in such a mind?”
– Charles Darwin

[Heartlander]

Furthermore, how would our Declaration of Independence look without our ‘Creator’?

We hold no truths to be self-evident, that all (men) are evolved based on chance, that they are endowed by a mindless chemical process from a mindless universal algorithm with uncertain inalienable illusions that among these are a delusion of life, and the pursuit of happenstance.

[Heartlander]

You answered no question in this post.