>Ccogan: A fully intelligent designer does not need *ever* to produce
useless variations, because it is intelligent and knowledgeable enough to
know beforehand what will work. In intelligent design, there is no massive
amount of variation *because* it's intelligent.
DNAunion: Is that why personal computers have not changed at all over the
last 20 years???? Is that why cars have not changed at all over the last
century??? What about airplanes, and televisions, and magnetic recording
devices and media, etc: surely they are exactly the same today as when they
were first introduced, right??? Of course not - they were all intelligently
designed but not one of their designs was "gotten right the first time".
Your argument here seems to be valid only against those that claim the
designer(s) was/were perfect and omniscient.
>Ccogan: The evolutionary algorithm is *hugely* wasteful in design terms,
precisely because it doesn't know what it's doing. And it doesn't know
because it's not intelligent.
DNAunion: Waste itself is not a sign of lack of intelligence. Industries
intentionally create huge amounts of waste everyday - are they not controlled
by intelligent beings?
>Ccogan: If we grant that the evolutionary algorithm is intelligence by
proxy,ID theorists would be right in this one case at the cost of their
entire real position. This is because, if we grant that such a mindless
process as the evolutionary algorithm is intelligent, then blind, mindless
*Nature* is "intelligent" in the same sense…
DNAunion: Could you provide the example on which you base your claims? What
exactly evolved in the virtual world by the evolutionary algorithm and where
can one gain access to the guts of this algorithm?
>Ccogan: … and thus does not need God or any other alleged non-natural
designer to direct it to produce functionally complex living things.
DNAunion: "Not needing something" is not the same as "something did not
happen". For example, let us hypothesize that 50 years from now, both
intelligence and nature are shown to be capable of producing life from
non-life. At that hypothetical time, if IDists and Creationists stated
"nature is not NEEDED to produce life", would you accept that life was
designed? I seriously doubt it. So why would you expect IDists and
Creationists to accept now that life evolved purely naturally because
intelligence is not "needed"? (And furthermore, I believe you still have not
shown your basic premise to be true).
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Sun Oct 01 2000 - 22:40:45 EDT