Posted on 09/20/2005 7:02:45 AM PDT by Right Wing Professor
I answered the exact question you asked me.
The question was "Does seeding a planet count as design?"
Now you're asking a new question. A design for what? A seeded planet? Sure. A design for the actual organisms that result? No.
In one million years, will whatever is doing paleontology think that dogs are not the result of natural selection? Do you think aphids don't evolve by natural selection because they are kept as slaves by ants? I guess I don't much care how civilians divide up the world into natural and unnatural selection. By this classification scheme, I guess I'm supposed to conclude that when asian flu evolves a new strain in the pigs and chickens and peasants of China, that it wasn't natural selection because humans built the henhouses and pigstys.
Insofar as scientifically meaningful distinctions go, if something happens to a genome due to variation and selection, that pretty much makes it a case of Darwinian Evolutionary theory in action. that pretty much
You might want to focus a little more on the word "selection" here. Humans did not deliberately select a certain strain of flu and prevent the others from propagating. If they did, then that would be artificial, not natural selection. That's the difference.
Actually there have been studies of isolated, feral dog populations. They tend to revert to yellow mutts, not too different in form from African wild dogs.
Natural selection and breeding are limited to naturally occurring variation, but the criteria for reproductive success is generally different. This is another way of saying that natural selection is not random.
And so what? I didn't say the outcome had to be different, just that the distinction between the burned down forest being a design or not was determined, at least in part, by the intention or lack thereof.
Again, I don't think there is anything controversial in what I'm saying. Check any dictionary. Here's one.
Also, I was not specifically addressing ID vs. evolution, just your contention that the outcome of an evolutionary process must necessarily be undesigned. If I took your view, I'd have to say the the algorithms and electronic circuits produced by evolutionary programming techniques are not designed, but clearly they are designed even if the details of the programs or circuits are not.
So if human interaction deflects a genome in some direction or another that was unintentional that was natural selection, but if humans intended the exact same result, it wasn't natural selection? Let me point out that humans are a part of nature.
If the outcome isn't any different from what would have happened anyway, then it's pretty meaningless to talk about it being a design.
If I took your view, I'd have to say the the algorithms and electronic circuits produced by evolutionary programming techniques are not designed, but clearly they are designed even if the details of the programs or circuits are not.
Except that you are determining the parameters for survival. Beyond that, you're not designing the algorithms and circuits, unless you're still engaging in artificial selection along the way, as is done when breeding domesticated animals.
So? God or little green men deliberately building an organism that is supposed to evolve is clearly design, and ID, as most ID's luminaries represent it, most particularly the folks who are fond of micro-macro argument, includes just such a scenario. Not that I'm fond of defending the parameters of ID theory, but your take on this question is out of kilter with the common perception of ID theory.
You're still not coming to the right understanding of the word "selection". Natural selection is what preserves a genetic change that has occurred; it's not what causes it.
Let me point out that humans are a part of nature.
That true only to the extent that automobiles are part of the natural environment.
I am, of course, totally unsurprised to hear that when you return a creature to the environment it occupied long ago, some fraction of that creature's population reverts to something approximating the form it occupied in that environment, and the less adapted forms die off. Do you think this demonstrates that if you leave ostriches and hummingbirds alone that their ancestors will eventually be able to mate?
It is a design of that organism. It is not necessarily a design of whatever it evolves into.
OK. I'm removing my hands from the counter and slowly walking away, slowly shaking my head and repeating "natural selection doesn't cause genetic change." I'm afraid you are going to have to continue this argument with someone else.
No, but their descendents might.
Joking aside, I would not expect this.
Sorry about that. So you think that Hummingbirds and Ostriches, that can't mate now, will gradually change form until they are very similar in shape, and then they will be able to crossbreed? Do you also think that marsupial wolves, and mammalian wolves would have been able to mate, if they had been on the same continent? May I assume you also suspect that the various bird families that occupy similar nitches, and are similarly sized can mostly interbreed?
Well, it's true. Genetic changes are caused by cosmic rays, or toxins, or whatever else. Natural selection decides whether those changes stay or go. (usually go, at least 99.9% of the time)
Oh, poop, just as I was getting a head of steam up. Spoilsport.
Darwinian natural selection, which I was under the impression we were discussing, proposes a paradigm that consists of two important behaviors--variation, and selection. If you keep over-applying occam's razor to every standard definition of the theories we are discussing, you are going to cut yourself into epistemological shreds.
Darwinian theory proposes a paradigm which consists of (natural) variation and (natural) selection.
Again, so what? I addressed that point - the agent must act to bring about the result, this is one of the three factors I listed. Didn't you read my post?
The question is, is something that *has* happened a design or not. And again, the intent of the agent is a crucial determining factor. How can you doubt this?
Tell you what, why don't you look at the dictionary entry I linked and tell me which of them is what the Design in Intelligent Design means to you. Then at least we'll be discussing the same meaning.
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