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To: Fester Chugabrew
Even pieces of a complex object, to the extent they exhibit any functionality at all, imply intelligence and design.

No, they don't. Some complex objects self-assemble from random components without intelligence or design. You can keep repeating this uncorroborated assertion if you like, but it doesn't advance your argument.

The Universe looks organized to you, and it is in some aspects, though not in others. You attribute organization to a designer, since in your experience organization has always been produced by a designer. But your experience is not an infallible probe of the Universe. We know of scores of complex structures that self-organize under non-equilibrium conditions without any external intervention whatsoever, let alone an intelligent intervention.

554 posted on 03/17/2004 3:24:09 PM PST by Right Wing Professor
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To: Right Wing Professor
Some complex objects self-assemble from random components without intelligence or design.

They do!?

557 posted on 03/17/2004 3:30:23 PM PST by Elsie (When the avalanche starts... it's too late for the pebbles to vote....)
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To: Right Wing Professor
But your experience is not an infallible probe of the Universe.

May I ask whose is? Is it "Collective Science"? How am I supposed to search things out and understand them without experience?

559 posted on 03/17/2004 3:39:24 PM PST by Fester Chugabrew
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To: Right Wing Professor; js1138; Elsie; Doctor Stochastic; Amelia
We know of scores of complex structures that self-organize under non-equilibrium conditions without any external intervention whatsoever, let alone an intelligent intervention.

Without even laws of nature? You could give some examples of this if you wish, but I will always come back to the propostition that we would not even be able to perceive such self-organization if it did not have attributes that can be apprehended by intelligence, and thus demonstrate a certain aspect of intelligence themselves, namely meaning. There is simply too much to infer from this to discard the question of how/whether intelligence is operative in these processes.

I question the certainty with which your sentence is declared. We do not yet know for certain there is "no external intervention whatsoever," for example. Your perceptions and intelligence are no more an "infallible probe of the Universe" than anyone else's, even if you were cloned six times over.

Some people would like to ask, "How do you know?" Dogmatic evolutionists would prefer to deny an inquiring mind the right to even ask. And THAT is the crux of this controversy. Not which world view is worthy of doing science, but whether both (and more) can be the subject of honest inquiry. Scientific inquiry is not reserved for evolutionists alone, as #104 bears out clearly.

Well, we need to get our definitions down so we don't keep speaking past each other. It requires reaching back into the assumptions we make about facts, truth, and knowledge. Meanwhile I appreciate your willingness to let my ideas bounce of your opposite point of view. Yes.

562 posted on 03/17/2004 4:13:33 PM PST by Fester Chugabrew
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To: Right Wing Professor
It seems good old animism is still alive and kicking and trees still need dryads to grow and wells nyads to flow ;)
563 posted on 03/17/2004 5:08:02 PM PST by BMCDA
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To: Right Wing Professor; js1138
Some complex objects self-assemble from random components without intelligence or design. You can keep repeating this uncorroborated assertion if you like . . .

Would you care to mathematically corroborate the number of cases where "some complex objects self-assemble from random components without intelligence or design" vs. the number of cases where complex objects otherwise exist?

Never mind. I know it is outside your capacity to produce an accurate corroboration in this regard, and I won't hold either your inability or refusal to do so as a proof of any kind. I am not in a position to claim scientific absolutes, though others seem to be.

568 posted on 03/17/2004 8:30:20 PM PST by Fester Chugabrew
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To: Right Wing Professor; js1138; Doctor Stochastic; jennyp; ElizabethP; Amelia
Do you remember the very first moment when you realized you had a mother who gave birth to you? Probably not.

But that does not make your realization, nor the fact that you have a mother, any less based in reality than if, at the time, you had a mature intelligence able to apprehend this fact through all of your senses, i.e. in a "scientifically" quantifiable way. Only outside of your conscious experience could these facts have been observed and noted.

I bring this up only as an example to show that regardless of where we are in the way of personal experience, there may be FACTS that lay beyond our comprehension because we have not yet developed the tools to gather evidence and comprehend.

574 posted on 03/17/2004 9:17:57 PM PST by Fester Chugabrew
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