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To: Right Wing Professor
Therefore, it is clear that the creation of order does not require intelligence . . .

If you mean "intelligence" as necessarily originating from a personal source I can understand why you would propose this, although it is not necessarily "clear." If you mean "intelligence" as it relates to design, then I beg to differ.

Design could be stupid. Think Edsel.

I was hoping you would consider the question more seriously and expound a bit further than this. If anything, your example only bespeaks your personal bias against a human product that, regardless of its deficiencies, is another clear example where intelligence HAD to be exerted through a personal agent to achieve a desired result.

476 posted on 03/16/2004 3:53:39 PM PST by Fester Chugabrew
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To: Fester Chugabrew
You've avoided the main issue, which is that all of the complexity you see in the world is probably the deterministic result of a few simple laws. You then are faced with the task of proving that the existence of a small set of universal laws is the result of 'design'. Good luck with that one. Reiterating it over and over again won't help.

I was hoping you would consider the question more seriously and expound a bit further than this. If anything, your example only bespeaks your personal bias against a human product that, regardless of its deficiencies, is another clear example where intelligence HAD to be exerted through a personal agent to achieve a desired result.

The Edsel example was obviously too subtle for you. Design does not necessarily imply high intelligence. In fact, the ID case is harder to refute if you concede that most organisms are not particularly intelligently designed. The Manichaeans, for example, believed that the Earth was created by an imperfect and capricious junior deity. Elsie is pushing the idea that God created a perfect genome and Original Sin (by some molecular mechanism yet unknown) messed it up. And, gosh, if you claim there is order in living systems, but not particularly intelligently designed order, I'd have a tough time arguing with you.

486 posted on 03/16/2004 8:58:38 PM PST by Right Wing Professor
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To: Fester Chugabrew
Try the following (a graphing program is helpful.) Take an equilateral trangle (any one will do.) Pick a point at random (not one of the vertices); this is the moving point. Then continually LOOP: choose one of the vertices at random (has to be random), move the moving point halfway to the chosen vertex; draw a dot there; POOL (that's 1970s computerese for REPEAT).

489 posted on 03/16/2004 9:11:57 PM PST by Doctor Stochastic (Vegetabilisch = chaotisch is der Charakter der Modernen. - Friedrich Schlegel)
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