Searching for GOD...

[floo]

Proponents of unguided evolution claim that the specific complexity needed to support life is just a natural consequence from random, unguided non complex activity, and higher levels of complexity are not needed to develop the amazing complexity we see in living beings, particularly human beings.

Yet when we examine human creativity, there is ample evidence that the specific complexity we see in human creations was derived from the more complex activity of human brains being consciously guided by their intelligently driven free will.  This shows that conscious willpower exists and can interact with this material universe to produce intelligently conceived creations.  Just consider the implication behind the possibility that intelligently guided forces were involved in the incremental development of life as we know it, and try to imagine the degree of intelligence needed to bring this about from what begins as a cloud of exploding gas.

What is ample evidence to you, isn't to the rest of us!

[torridon]

Proponents of unguided evolution claim that the specific complexity needed to support life is just a natural consequence from random, unguided non complex activity, and higher levels of complexity are not needed to develop the amazing complexity we see in living beings, particularly human beings.

Yet when we examine human creativity, there is ample evidence that the specific complexity we see in human creations was derived from the more complex activity of human brains being consciously guided by their intelligently driven free will.  This shows that conscious willpower exists and can interact with this material universe to produce intelligently conceived creations.  Just consider the implication behind the possibility that intelligently guided forces were involved in the incremental development of life as we know it, and try to imagine the degree of intelligence needed to bring this about from what begins as a cloud of exploding gas.

In other words, for intelligence to arise, it must have been created by intelligence.

Can you really not spot the flaw in this line of reasoning ? 

[Enki]

Proponents of unguided evolution claim that the specific complexity needed to support life is just a natural consequence from random, unguided non complex activity, and higher levels of complexity are not needed to develop the amazing complexity we see in living beings, particularly human beings.

Yet when we examine human creativity, there is ample evidence that the specific complexity we see in human creations was derived from the more complex activity of human brains being consciously guided by their intelligently driven free will.  This shows that conscious willpower exists and can interact with this material universe to produce intelligently conceived creations.  Just consider the implication behind the possibility that intelligently guided forces were involved in the incremental development of life as we know it, and try to imagine the degree of intelligence needed to bring this about from what begins as a cloud of exploding gas.

You don't seem to have any idea of what evolution entails, Alan.

I can't be bothered to unpick the half digested, ignorant statements you make in this car crash of a post. However, I'll  simply respond to your rambling final sentence.

I'll consider the implications behind the possibility that intelligently guided forces were involved., and the degree of intelligence needed...... Right I have now considered it. Okay, it's a possibility, and it would have to come from some very superior(although error strewn and totally amoral) intelligence. Satisfied? However there is not the slightest evidence which justifies this approach, so although I've considered it, I have now relegated it to the postion of pure conjecture. Satisfied?

Oh, and from what we know, it didn't begin as a cloud of exploding gas, that came later.

[Enki]

Unfortunately I perceive that your over active fallacy detector may be hiding you from the truth.

Unfortunately your ability to perceive seems not to live up to the standard that I would expect.

[Enki]

Just think, if there is an infinite multiverse, there are an infinite number of Alans pumping out clouds of exploding gas.

That's a truly depressing prospect, Wigs.

[Alan Burns]

In other words, for intelligence to arise, it must have been created by intelligence.

Can you really not spot the flaw in this line of reasoning ?

Corrected:
In other words, for any new forms of intelligence to arise, it must have been created by the source of all intelligence.

[Stranger]

Corrected:
In other words, for any new forms of intelligence to arise, it must have been created by the source of all intelligence.

And we have copious evidence that the source of all intelligence is evolution.

[Alan Burns]

You don't seem to have any idea of what evolution entails, Alan.

I can't be bothered to unpick the half digested, ignorant statements you make in this car crash of a post. However, I'll  simply respond to your rambling final sentence.

I'll consider the implications behind the possibility that intelligently guided forces were involved., and the degree of intelligence needed...... Right I have now considered it. Okay, it's a possibility, and it would have to come from some very superior(although error strewn and totally amoral) intelligence. Satisfied? However there is not the slightest evidence which justifies this approach, so although I've considered it, I have now relegated it to the postion of pure conjecture. Satisfied?

No.

I do not think you fully comprehend the truly unimaginable intelligence needed to enable a complete human being, with all its intricate complexity, to be formed and maintained from the information contained within a microscopic molecule of DNA.  It is truly mind blowing to think about, and I believe it brought about some form of conversion experience to one of the people involved in the discovery of DNA.

And apart from that, we have the continuing problem of not being able to define how our conscious awareness can emerge from the reactions of material elements alone.

Then we have to deal with our perception of free will .........
(And it can't be just explained away as an illusion!)

[floo]

No.

I do not think you fully comprehend the truly unimaginable intelligence needed to enable a complete human being, with all its intricate complexity, to be formed and maintained from the information contained within a microscopic molecule of DNA.  It is truly mind blowing to think about, and I believe it brought about some form of conversion experience to one of the people involved in the discovery of DNA.

And apart from that, we have the continuing problem of not being able to define how our conscious awareness can emerge from the reactions of material elements alone.

Then we have to deal with our perception of free will .........
(And it can't be just explained away as an illusion!)

If your god is responsible its intelligence is in question as it has screwed up pretty badly, and did a botched job.

[Alan Burns]

If your god is responsible its intelligence is in question as it has screwed up pretty badly, and did a botched job.

Are you claiming that your intelligence must be superior to that which brought you into being?

[torridon]

Corrected:
In other words, for any new forms of intelligence to arise, it must have been created by the source of all intelligence.

So something intelligent can only be created by something even more intelligent.

Category logic fail.

Mr Ockham would be pulling his hair out at this.

[Stranger]

I do not think you fully comprehend the truly unimaginable intelligence needed to enable a complete human being, with all its intricate complexity, to be formed and maintained from the information contained within a microscopic molecule of DNA.

I don't think you fully comprehend how evolution by natural selection explains this complexity, how well supported by evidence it is, and how it is actually the only explanation that anybody has ever thought of ('explaining' complexity and intelligence in terms of magic pre-existing complex intelligence is not an explanation).

And apart from that, we have the continuing problem of not being able to define how our conscious awareness can emerge from the reactions of material elements alone.

Then we have to deal with our perception of free will .........
(And it can't be just explained away as an illusion!)

All the evidence points to these being functions of our brains and you have offered no alternative explanation - your thought-free personal incredulity and trite assertion that it must be god-magic, really don't count for anything.

[Sebastian Toe]

Our physical bodies provide the window into this material world. 

Where is the other side of the window if it is not in this (material)  world?

[floo]

Are you claiming that your intelligence must be superior to that which brought you into being?

Yep as it is unlikely god is anymore than a human creation.

[Stranger]

Are you claiming that your intelligence must be superior to that which brought you into being?

In the theory with which we have to deal, Absolute Ignorance is the artificer; so that we may enunciate as the fundamental principle of the whole system, that, IN ORDER TO MAKE A PERFECT AND BEAUTIFUL MACHINE, IT IS NOT REQUISITE TO KNOW HOW TO MAKE IT. This proposition will be found, on careful examination, to express, in condensed form, the essential purport of the Theory, and to express in a few words all Mr. Darwin's meaning; who, by a strange inversion of reasoning, seems to think Absolute Ignorance fully qualified to take the place of Absolute Wisdom in all of the achievements of creative skill.

MacKenzie RB (1868) The Darwinian Theory of the Transmutation of Species Examined (Nisbet & Co, London).

The evidence of the following 150 years has overwhelmingly supported Darwin's "strange inversion of reasoning" over MacKenzie's incredulity.

You need to catch up.

[torridon]

To which we can add Orgel's Second Rule, which captures the insight from biology that blind trial and error plus selection is a ultimately better strategy to produce fit-for-purpose design, than 'intelligent design'.  Intelligence always has a limit; blind trial and error doesn't.

[Enki]

No.

I do not think you fully comprehend the truly unimaginable intelligence needed to enable a complete human being, with all its intricate complexity, to be formed and maintained from the information contained within a microscopic molecule of DNA.  It is truly mind blowing to think about, and I believe it brought about some form of conversion experience to one of the people involved in the discovery of DNA.

And apart from that, we have the continuing problem of not being able to define how our conscious awareness can emerge from the reactions of material elements alone.

Then we have to deal with our perception of free will .........
(And it can't be just explained away as an illusion!)

I didn't think you would be, but I did what you asked.

I also think that its rather mind blowing, Alan. This doesn't lead me to think that DNA has anything to do with your 'source of all intelligence' unless you accept that the process of evolution can possibly be called such.
I think you must be thinking of Francis Collins, who was head of the Human Genome Project. He was not however one of the four people involved in the discovery of DNA, whom, I believe, were all agnostics or atheists. Please correct me if I am wrong. Even so, the thinking of any individual has nothing to do with any argument or evidence in favour of or against the idea of such an intelligence. Any argument or evidence must stand in its own right.

Because we have problems in defining conscious awareness in no way negates the argument that it is a result of processes which involve the interaction of material elements, especially when no other alternatives have been suggested which have any evidential integrity.

Arguments have been produced which suggest that your idea of free will does not stand the test of logic, so, almost undoubtedly, at its deepest level, it is illusory.

[Shaker]

No.

I do not think you fully comprehend the truly unimaginable intelligence needed to enable a complete human being, with all its intricate complexity, to be formed and maintained from the information contained within a microscopic molecule of DNA.  It is truly mind blowing to think about, and I believe it brought about some form of conversion experience to one of the people involved in the discovery of DNA.

If you're referring to Crick and Watson, unsurprisingly you believe wrongly. Staunch atheists both, and Crick in particular was notably anti-theistic - he resigned from whichever college he was at when it funded a chapel. In fact C & W said that one of their motivations for studying the genetic basis of life was to do away with any appeal to supernaturalism.

If, as enki has surmised, you're referring to somebody like Francis Collins, he wasn't involved in the discovery of the structure of DNA, having the misfortune of being three years old at the time. (DNA as the mechanism of inheritance had been discovered by Oswald Avery in 1944).

Then we have to deal with our perception of free will .........
(And it can't be just explained away as an illusion!)

Why can't it?

[Alan Burns]

And we have copious evidence that the source of all intelligence is evolution.

But do we have evidence that every one of the billions of beneficial mutations involved in the evolution process were the result of aimless, unguided, random events?

Just because we can't perceive any guiding source to generate these beneficial mutations does not mean they are unguided or unintended.  The evidence is in the result, and in the capacity of human beings to guide their own thought processes to bring about human creations by consciously manipulating the physical elements of their body.

[Shaker]

But do we have evidence that every one of the billions of beneficial mutations involved in the evolution process were the result of aimless, unguided random events?

Just because we can't perceive any guiding source to generate these beneficial mutations does not mean they are unguided or unintended.

I know a term for that.

[ippy]

Fancy being proud of being so ignorant, what's up A B, having a job facing up to the facts, you seriously need to read up on evolution and provided you don't let your bias get in your way you should be eating your words in no time, do let us all know when the penny finally drops.

Necessarily kind regards ippy.

[Alan Burns]

Fancy being proud of being so ignorant, what's up A B, having a job facing up to the facts, you seriously need to read up on evolution and provided you don't let your bias get in your way you should be eating your words in no time, do let us all know when the penny finally drops.

Necessarily kind regards ippy.

I am well aware of how evolution is supposed to work.
And I am well aware of the evidence for it being capable of fine tuning something which is already complex, for example it can ensure better chances for the survival of green frogs in a forest than those of white frogs.
And I am aware that all the theoretical scenarios put forward for the evolution of complex working organs assume a virtually infinite supply of beneficial mutations for the process to work on.
Yet there is little evidence for the probability of so many beneficial mutations occurring at the required time.
When looking back on the substantial changes in environment which caused near extermination of all life, I find it nothing short of miraculous that a series of specific mutations needed for survival just happened to occur at the right time.

[Maeght]

I am well aware of how evolution is supposed to work.
And I am well aware of the evidence for it being capable of fine tuning something which is already complex, for example it can ensure better chances for the survival of green frogs in a forest than those of white frogs.
And I am aware that all the theoretical scenarios put forward for the evolution of complex working organs assume a virtually infinite supply of beneficial mutations for the process to work on.
Yet there is little evidence for the probability of so many beneficial mutations occurring at the required time.
When looking back on the substantial changes in environment which caused near extermination of all life, I find it nothing short of miraculous that a series of specific mutations needed for survival just happened to occur at the right time.

What right time are you referring to?

[Gordon]

I am well aware of how evolution is supposed to work.
And I am well aware of the evidence for it being capable of fine tuning something which is already complex, for example it can ensure better chances for the survival of green frogs in a forest than those of white frogs.
And I am aware that all the theoretical scenarios put forward for the evolution of complex working organs assume a virtually infinite supply of beneficial mutations for the process to work on.
Yet there is little evidence for the probability of so many beneficial mutations occurring at the required time.
When looking back on the substantial changes in environment which caused near extermination of all life, I find it nothing short of miraculous that a series of specific mutations needed for survival just happened to occur at the right time.*

* My emphasis.

This just you Alan: your particular brand of incredulity mixed with religious faith is getting in the way of your ability to reason - have you told all the evolutionary biologists that they are barking up the wrong tree?

[Shaker]

I am well aware of how evolution is supposed to work.

That's what you keep saying, but your comments tell a different story. In fact here you're about to prove how addle-pated you really are:

Yet there is little evidence for the probability of so many beneficial mutations occurring at the required time.
When looking back on the substantial changes in environment which caused near extermination of all life, I find it nothing short of miraculous that a series of specific mutations needed for survival just happened to occur at the right time.

There we go. Clueless.