Author:
Wade A. Tisthammer
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Date Posted: 05/31/05 10:19pm
In reply to:
Damoclese
's message, "Where have I seen this before?" on 05/17/05 9:48pm
Sorry for the delay. My computer has been out of commission.
>>Perhaps so, but abiogenesis creating the designer is
>>untestable because we don't know anything about the
>>designer.
>
>I find this line rather amusing in the way that I find
>a four car pile up in the middle of the evening rush
>hour amusing.
Ah, so that implies that ID is untestable because we don't know anything about the designer? Not so, for a number of reasons. One, even though we know little about the designer, modern ID can still make empirically testable and falsifiable predictions, as I explained earlier. Think of the robots on Pluto example. Does the fact that we don't have a clue about the designer means we should pretend that ID isn't the most rational explanation? Obviously not.
Why is it applicable for abiogenesis -> designer? ID bases its arguments on what we do know about the kind of life we see on Earth. We know what life is made of, and we can examine the problems and barriers thereof (e.g. getting functional proteins, RNA, and DNA via undirected chemical reactions) or (should ID be empirically falsified) ways to get life via undirected chemical reactions. This sort of thing allows ID to make testable and falsifiable empirical predictions. However, we can't apply those same principles to the designer, because we don't know what the designer is made of.
And of course, none of what you said even addresses the problems of abiogenesis (an example of which you seemed to have ignored) or my example of a rational design inference (the magician example); nor does it address my claim....
My claim, “It is rational to believe belief X if it is highly probable that belief X is true.” Why is this statement false? You haven’t, for instance, given a counterexample or possible scenario in which the antecedent is true but the consequent is false.
Nor does what you said refute my criticisms of your (purely, it seems) philosophical objections against ID. For instance,
>>"Well, we don't know where the designers came from, so
>>let's all pretend these robots weren't artificially
>>created."
>
>Neato. A straw man.
Really? Let's look at what you said:
>>But then again, think of my robots on Pluto scenario.
>>Would you really reject ID in that scenario merely
>>because we don't know where the designer came from
>>etc.?
>
>Put succintly, yes.
If you think what I said was a straw man, then don't claim that "we don't know where the designer came from" is grounds to reject ID.
Nor of course does what you said refute my claims about ID being empirically falsifiable etc. (whereas abiogenesis does not seem anywhere near as falsifiable). Nor does it address what I said about your imaginary law:
But there are two problems you seem to be ignoring. One, you said that perhaps there is "some sort of fundamental universal law that trends towards lower entropy," and I have two criticisms. (1) We've never seen this law that's supposed to be fundamental and universal, but we have seen a fundamental universal law that tends towards the opposite direction. This does not strictly disprove the law, but it makes its existence less plausible. (2) This imaginary law will have to be consistent with known laws, and that includes the laws of chemistry (note the serious chemical problems that plague abiogenesis, which again seem to point in the opposite direction of this imagined law). Again, not a formal disproof, but it makes the existence of this unknown, unobserved law look less plausible.
Note again that ID argues from what we do know about mathematical probability and observed chemistry, whereas abiogenesis here is arguing from laws we don't know about and haven't observed. This is a big reason why I believe ID explains the data better in this instance. There doesn’t seem to be any good reason to think otherwise (except perhaps that one may not like ID for philosophical reasons).
There’s still a lot of serious, unaddressed problems. Where have I seen this before? I know: abiogenesis.
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