>Brian D. Harper writes:
>
>
>JB:==
>>You mistake shared experience with shared belief. Have you experienced
>>biological evolution? Did you used to be a mollusk?
>>
>>Seriously, that's the difference. No one has shared the "experience" of
>>macroevolution. It's a belief. Your inertia is self-imposed, an a priori
>>mistake. It's time to move...on.
>>
>BH:==
>><<We have a great deal of experience with and knowledge of intelligent
>>designers capable of making watches. Very little with intelligent
>>designers capable of making turtles.>>
>>
>JB:==
>>Really? Is it because you don't *see* the intelligent designer at work on
>>turtles? Or is there another reason.
>
>BH<<Jim, it is absolutely amazing that you could write this immediately
>after writing your paragraph above about macroevolution. I had
>thought we might have a reasonable discussion.>>
>
JB:==
>Brian, this is eminently reasonable, and I think you've just made (albeit
>tacitly) one of the more important points in the entire discussion.
>
Oh yes, I agree I have made an important point, but the point seems
to have escaped you somehow. It is the same point I have made
previously to you. You can't seem to come up with any objection
to evolution which does not also apply to intelligent design.
JB:==
>As a theistic realist, I argue that not being able to "see" a designer does
>not rule one out. And I accept that an element of faith, though reasonable
>faith, is required to move beyond that.
>
>But evolutionists exhibit EXACTLY the same kind of faith. But for them it is
>macro-evolution which, I say again, is not part of anyone's "common
>experience."
>
>Your "amazement" should tell you, then, that evolutionism is a faith as well.
>That's the main point Johnson is making in RITB, and one I make in TDC. This,
>I truly believe.
>
Come off it Jim. Originally you gave common experience and common
sense as important elements of doing science. I went along with this
somewhat. Common experience and common sense play some role in
some situations. I also gave arguments, which you ignored, for why
these elements could be detrimental in other situations. All this before
I understood what you meant by common experience. I thought you
meant just the general experience one gains through the practice of
science. Now that I understand what you mean by common experience
I have to retract any tentative agreement I had previously given. Your
requirement of common experience would eliminate practically everything
from the realm of science, including most things in my own relatively
mundane area of mechanics.
But my objection to your previous comments was that you rule out
macroevolution from the realm of science by this ridiculous criteria
and then turn around and ask this absurd question about whether I
rule out design by this very same criteria. The point being that it is
your ridiculous criteria to begin with. If you use it to criticize
macroevolution then consistency demands you also apply it to
design.
JB:==
>You made a point about watches and turtles, and I asked which was the more
>complex system. Was this an unreasonable question? I noted that this was
>Paley's argument, still potent in my mind. And I am backed up in this by many.
>Most recently, Davin Berlinsky wrote:
>
No, this question is perfectly reasonable. What is needed, though,
is the connection between complexity and design.
Come to think of it, I can't recall anyone giving a precise definition
of complexity. Something objective, so we aren't stuck with "my
this sure does look complex to me" and someone else says
"not me". I have found algorithmic or "descriptive" complexity
very useful. Interestingly enough, random objects are the most
complex according to this definition. I gave a little quiz some
time ago to see whether this definition corresponded to people's
inuitive notion of complexity. I gave the quiz here, on t.o and
to 10 or 12 of my classes at OSU (most soph & junior level
undergrads). So I have now a large sample size, about 70% picked
a random arrangement as being the most intuitively complex from
three possibilities. So a direct association between complexity
and design is very tenuous.
JB:==
><<Paley offered examples that he had on hand, a pocket watch
>chiefly, but that watch, its golden bezel still glowing after all
>these years, Paley pulled across his ample paunch as an act of
>calculated misdirection. The target of his cunning argument lay
>elsewhere, with the world of biological artifacts: the orchid's
>secret chamber, the biochemical cascade that stops the blood from
>flooding the body at a cut. These, too, are complex, infinitely
>more so than a watch. Today, with these extraordinary objects now
>open for dissection by the biological sciences, precisely the
>same inferential pattern that sweeps back from a complex human
>artifact to the circumstance of its design sweeps back from a
>complex biological artifact to the circumstance of its design.>>
>[David Berlinsky, "The End of Materialist Science" Forbes ASAP, December 2,
>1996]
But herein lies the trouble that has been repeatedly pointed out to
you. We can sweep back from the watch to the circumstances of its
design because we know something about the intelligent designers
of watches and we know something about the methods of design and
their implementation. We know the process that links mechanical
objects such as watches to their designers. We cannot sweep back
from a biological organism to the circumstances of its design because
we have no idea of any process that links the organism to the designer.
>
>Not unreasonable, Brian. Indeed, it is compelling logic.
>
My common sense says otherwise.
Brian Harper | "If you don't understand
Associate Professor | something and want to
Applied Mechanics | sound profound, use the
The Ohio State University | word 'entropy'"
| -- Morrowitz
Bastion for the naturalistic |
rulers of science |