Detecting Design.

[Evangelicalhumanist]

Jesus Christ. People can't even think of this concept. Yes, it has potential to refute evolution.

I'm talking about if as abstract concept, is it legit. That's different then saying something is actually irreducible complex in nature or the universe.

People are so dogmatic and brainwashed.

Let's talk about the concept. This thread is not about evolution and Islam.

As @ChristineM 's video showed so well, it is very often the case that what looks to be irreducibly complex only does so because intermediate steps are no longer available. Let me assure you, because I have some knowledge of the subject, that magicians do this all the time. What looks to be impossible is very often incredibly trivial, but looks impossible only because of what you don't see.

Evolution has been going on for billions of years. Evolution of complex things like eyes has been going on for hundreds of millions of years -- covering untold billions of small intermediate steps, most of which appeared and disappeared along the way.

I'd like you to try a test involving what I call the Philosopher's Fallacy: mistaking a failure of imagination for a philosophical insight. Here's the question: what do you think the chances are that you and I are related?

If human beings were around 100,000 years ago (and it now seems certain they've been around for longer), how many generations have there been? Let's assume that a generation is 25 years (it would have been a very great deal shorter long ago, because people rarely lived to be 30). In that case, in 100,000 years there have been 4,000 generations.

Now, think about this: as you go back each generation in your family tree, you double the number of ancestors. You have 2 parents, 4 grandparents, 8 great-grandparents, 16 great-greats, and so on. Thus, looking back just 7 generations, you have 256 ancestors. At 19 generations, that becomes 1,048,576 ancestors. At 30 generations, that becomes well over 2,147,000 and at 100 generations 1,267,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000. That is billions upon billions of times more then the total number of people that have ever lived upon this planet.

Now, in light of that, over 4,000 generations, the number of ancestors that you had, and that I had, are almost infinitely more than the number of people who have ever lived -- and therefore, the likelihood that we are related is effectively a certainty.

Who would have guessed it? And in fact, I don't need all those 4,000 generations. It is a certainty that you and I are related going back far less than 40 generations. (In fact, Ancestry.com makes the case that you only need 20 generations to find an ancestor who is common to all of us.)

I did that only to try to get you to see things in terms of big numbers, of stuff we normally don't think about, and can barely conceive (trust me, I had to use a calculator -- I can't think in numbers as big as 2 raised to 4000!)

Use your imagination! It's a fabulous tool at your disposal!

 

[Link]

^What you said shows how little you've thought or researched this issue. I haven't even said the abstract concept detects design for sure. I'm saying, let's see if it does. And people just conjecturing and ranting and not talking about the concept.

How can we talk about the concept if we are just going to rant about incoherent it is without understanding it?

 

[Evangelicalhumanist]

Also, it would have to be a binary system. That is no system can transition to it by definition. It's either on or off. No between steps of A -> C where B is something in-between. This is from my understanding. I will expand on why this necessary trait of it.

The eye obviously failed, because, there is so many transitional steps, it's ironically, the worse example to take lol.

That is quite simply false. There are lots of ways from A to B to C, and having got there, there's lots of ways for some of those steps to be shed along the way -- like removing the support from a Roman arch. The arch doesn't fall down, and it's hard to see how it was erected, unless you consider a support that was later removed. We do this sort of thing all the time, in making everything from toilet paper to space ships -- there's a ton of stuff used along the way that isn't there at the end.

 

[Link]

That is quite simply false. There are lots of ways from A to B to C, and having got there, there's lots of ways for some of those steps to be shed along the way -- like removing the support from a Roman arch. The arch doesn't fall down, and it's hard to see how it was erected, unless you consider a support that was later removed. We do this sort of thing all the time, in making everything from toilet paper to space ships -- there's a ton of stuff used along the way that isn't there at the end.

You aren't trying to understand at all. Yes most things you can transition A->C and B and bunch of steps in between. This isn't it. We are talking abstractly what irreducible complexity requires of it.

And it requires that it be a binary, either the system is on or off, nothing between.

So we have 3 components of it:

1) The components rely on each other (or some of them do).
2) Of the components that rely on each, those components has no usage outside the system.
3) It's binary and not transitional, the system can't come from a different system similar to it.

This abstract. It maybe for all we know, there is no such thing in nature.

I'm talking about let's say these three were proven of something. We can then say, it must be designed. Let's see if this is the case, abstractly.

We aren't talking about nature yet or anything in real life.

 

[Evangelicalhumanist]

^What you said shows how little you've thought or researched this issue. I haven't even said the abstract concept detects design for sure. I'm saying, let's see if it does. And people just conjecturing and ranting and not talking about the concept.

How can we talk about the concept if we are just going to rant about incoherent it is without understanding it?

And who is ranting?

How can you know if a thing is "irreducibly complex" unless you know every possible way that it might have come to be? Do you know, for example, every possible way that the eye could have come to be? Let alone that it is now known that eyes have evolved probably 40 separate times, and in many different ways. And in each and every one of those separate evolutions, there would be stages that have been abandoned, and are therefore no longer there to be seen -- like the support that was removed from under the Roman arch.

 

[Link]

And who is ranting?

How can you know if a thing is "irreducibly complex" unless you know every possible way that it might have come to be? Do you know, for example, every possible way that the eye could have come to be? Let alone that it is now known that eyes have evolved probably 40 separate times, and in many different ways. And in each and every one of those separate evolutions, there would be stages that have been abandoned, and are therefore no longer there to be seen -- like the support that was removed from under the Roman arch.

You are ranting over nothing and not trying to understand.

I'm going to wait for Tiberius.

 

[Evangelicalhumanist]

You aren't trying to understand at all. Yes most things you can transition A->C and B and bunch of steps in between. This isn't it. We are talking abstractly what irreducible complexity requires of it.

And it requires that it be a binary, either the system is on or off, nothing between.

So we have 3 components of it:

1) The components rely on each other (or some of them do).
2) Of the components that rely on each, those components has no usage outside the system.
3) It's binary and not transitional, the system can't come from a different system similar to it.

This abstract. It maybe for all we know, there is no such thing in nature.

I'm talking about let's say these three were proven of something. We can then say, it must be designed. Let's see if this is the case, abstractly.

We aren't talking about nature yet or anything in real life.

I'm sorry, but you aren't talking about anything you appear to know much about at all. You are trying, as so many have before you -- and failed -- to make an argument for what you already believe, but for which you have no evidence.

 

[Link]

Tiberius so far we have (and we may adapt more):

1. It's proven to us there are components that rely on each other.
2. It's proven to us some of those components have no individual usage alone nor transitional phase to them possible.
3. It's proven no system can transition to the system we are talking about, because it's binary. What I mean by this, is the design is unique as a system. Not that there can't be many versions of the system. And this would be hard to prove over most things since on extreme ends, they might be similar to be something else which is similar to something else on extreme and so it's very difficult to prove. I'm talking about let's say in theory, this is true of the system just design wise, there is nothing similar to it nor can transition to it.

Keeping in mind these three points, would design be detected in this case.

 

[Evangelicalhumanist]

It's an irrational concept is what it is. @Link is just trying to sell us a logical fallacy - argument from ignorance - under a different name.

"I can't see how this complexity could have arose naturally, therefore it must not have arose naturally."

This is quite equivalent to what I've been calling the Philosopher's Fallacy: mistaking a failure of imagination for a philosophical insight. And I think it plays a very big part in a lot of human misapprehensions.

 

[Link]

I'm sorry, but you aren't talking about anything you appear to know much about at all. You are trying, as so many have before you -- and failed -- to make an argument for what you already believe, but for which you have no evidence.

I'm not talking biology, I'm talking purely abstract.

First it maybe proven rationally impossible to detect design by this. In this case, the topic is done.
But it can be proven for all we know, it can detect design.

In the latter case, it doesn't prove there is design in nature. That would be where we apply the concept. But someone doesn't even want to discover the abstract concept itself.

How can we say something is been refuted when you don't understand the concept.

 

[Evangelicalhumanist]

Oh, dear, I can see that someone is desperate -- if he doesn't get "design" as the answer, he's positively going to melt down.

I'll leave you all to it, then. I'd hate to be the cause of a melt-down.

 

[Link]

Desperate for what. Didn't someone say it, suppose design fails, suppose evolution is true completely without any design, which one disproves God? None.

I don't even fully understand concept yet to be honest. I'm reflecting over it. We may have modify it, and we may come up with the conclusion, with something that can detect design or end up realizing, we can't detect design because of some reason.

If you want participate in the discussion, you are welcome.

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

How can we say something is been refuted when you don't understand the concept.

You're right: whatever concept you've been trying to express has been incoherent so far.

We can't evaluate - as true or false - what we can't even parse.

 

[Link]

What is incoherent about it so far?

 

[Link]

Tiberius so far we have (and we may adapt more):

1. It's proven to us there are components that rely on each other.
2. It's proven to us some of those components have no individual usage alone nor transitional phase to them possible.
3. It's proven no system can transition to the system we are talking about, because it's binary. What I mean by this, is the design is unique as a system. Not that there can't be many versions of the system. And this would be hard to prove over most things since on extreme ends, they might be similar to be something else which is similar to something else on extreme and so it's very difficult to prove. I'm talking about let's say in theory, this is true of the system just design wise, there is nothing similar to it nor can transition to it.

Keeping in mind these three points, would design be detected in this case.

Tell me what is incoherent about any of those 3. I'm not talking about biology, I'm purely talking abstract wise.

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

What is incoherent about it so far?

The only person who might have any idea what you mean by "purely abstract irreducible complexity" is you. You just keep repeating the term without ever explaining what you mean by it.

 

[Link]

Abstract means non-specific and we aren't looking an instance of concrete thing.

It's generic and conceptual.

 

[Nimos]

It's useful, because, in programming, you can almost all the time, add a function itself, test by itself. But sometimes for somethings, you need multiple functions at the same time working together, before some of those functions individually can have a use. This happens rarely in programming from my limited experience. So usually a function is testable and good in itself.

But you don't need any functions to program, a function basically just makes things easier as you don't have to repeat the same functionality over and over again.

So you can reduce the programming language to not contain any functions and it would still work, it would be a whole lot more complicated and time consuming but still functional.

 

[Link]

But you don't need any functions to program, a function basically just makes things easier as you don't have to repeat the same functionality over and over again.

So you can reduce the programming language to not contain any functions and it would still work, it would be a whole lot more complicated and time consuming but still functional.

lol, you are missing the point of the analogy. Every analogy fails if you take it too far.

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

Abstract means non-specific and we aren't looking an instance of concrete thing.

It's generic and conceptual.

I know what "abstract" means. What I don't know is what concept you're trying to describe when you say "purely abstract irreducible complexity."