Agnosticism and Intelligent Design

[excreationist]

Consider:
"...Complex Organisms are Degenerating – Rapidly..."
http://detectingdesign.com/wp/2018/08/21/complex-organisms-are-degenerating-rapidly/

"...NEWS: Evolutionary Jump from Unicellularity to Multicellularity was Prepared Beforehand..."
http://createdevolution.blogspot.com/2016/10/news-evolutionary-jump-from.html

Earlier this year I had personal experiences that seem like good evidence to me that there is an intelligent force in the universe.

https://talkfreethought.org/showthr...nces-that-suggest-an-intelligent-force-exists
About the intelligent force in the universe idea:

I don't know - it is mysterious and often hard to know if it really even exists. BTW the message from the future in "Interstellar" was very intelligent though. BTW this video from "Quantum Gravity Research" I watched a few months ago is interesting how it talks about the future you influencing the past you:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w0ztlIAYTCU
There is also an issue of New Scientist magazine from February that has a cover story about the future influencing the past: it says it is like a Sudoku game and that quantum physics isn't actually random if the future is involved.
https://www.newscientist.com/articl...e-how-the-future-can-change-what-happens-now/

Here is a video I saw yesterday:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hpdlQae5wP8
It seems unlikely this behaviour could evolve by chance...
The message I get from that is "yes an intelligent force exists"

 

[excreationist]

Simulated reality can involve intelligent design...

Elon Musk has said there is a one in billions chance that we are NOT in a simulation.
https://www.vox.com/2016/6/2/11837608/elon-musk-simulation-argument

If this is a game/simulation the following is possible:

- monitoring anyone and their thoughts
- implanting or wiping memories
- giving people “visions” or entering their dreams
- overriding the physics engine, perhaps with spoken commands
- hidden worlds like Narnia
- though to most people it would still seem like boring old “real life”.

There is a difference between players and NPCs (non-player characters). Players have an existence outside of the game though NPCs could have their consciousness exported from the game if they’re lucky. Players might have a memory of life outside of the game though this might not be the case to make the game more immersive and fresh. Then when the game ends some/all of their memories could be returned, perhaps based on how well they played.

Note that our experience of the world doesn’t require the entire history of the universe to be simulated on a sub-atomic level each time. Approximations and “level of detail” could be used. People’s memories could be generated without being based on actual experiences.

In “The Truman Show” Truman lived in a bubble due to the limitations of his world. He wanted a girl he wasn’t supposed to and left his sheltered life to seek her. He chose the drama and challenge of the red pill. Our lives could involve this chaos and suffering yet still be a game.

BTW here’s a video about an immersive game based on the life of “Roy”:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=szzVlQ653as

 

[DrZoidberg]

Consider:
"...Complex Organisms are Degenerating – Rapidly..."
http://detectingdesign.com/wp/2018/08/21/complex-organisms-are-degenerating-rapidly/

Creationists are getting better and better at dressing up their pseudoscientific babble to look sciency. Well done.

Anybody who managed to stay awake in biology class should be able to poke a hole in this one. It's not a scientific argument. It's an argumentum ad populum

"...NEWS: Evolutionary Jump from Unicellularity to Multicellularity was Prepared Beforehand..."
http://createdevolution.blogspot.com/2016/10/news-evolutionary-jump-from.html

Ehe... what?

Earlier this year I had personal experiences that seem like good evidence to me that there is an intelligent force in the universe.

Here is a video I saw yesterday:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hpdlQae5wP8
It seems unlikely this behaviour could evolve by chance...
The message I get from that is

Everything in evolution is unlikely. But rare events happen all the time in nature. There's a lot of life on this planet. A stable mutation only needs to happen once and it'll spread.

"yes an intelligent force exists"

What I find truly baffling is that you find any of this convincing.

 

[excreationist]

Creationists are getting better and better at dressing up their pseudoscientific babble to look sciency. Well done.

Anybody who managed to stay awake in biology class should be able to poke a hole in this one. It's not a scientific argument. It's an argumentum ad populum

I thought he had used a few scientific arguments...

Ehe... what?

"...A recent study that just came out states that the evolutionary leap from single-celled organisms to multicellular organisms was relatively easy. What may have made it relatively easy was that the ancient single-celled ancestors seem to have had much of the genetic toolkit needed for becoming multicellular already assembled..."

Earlier this year I had personal experiences that seem like good evidence to me that there is an intelligent force in the universe.

View attachment 17644

I think that a scientific world-view may still be compatible with my belief that an intelligent force exists - e.g. the future influencing the past - or that we're in a simulation. That means that sometimes seemingly blind chance is being guided... (see my other thread e.g. about God in Futurama)

Here is a video I saw yesterday:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hpdlQae5wP8
It seems unlikely this behaviour could evolve by chance...
The message I get from that is

Everything in evolution is unlikely. But rare events happen all the time in nature. There's a lot of life on this planet. A stable mutation only needs to happen once and it'll spread.

I had believed that there was a near infinite number of parallel universes. That means it is inevitable for highly unlikely things, such as the evolution of humans, to have happened by chance. But I think on average there wouldn't have been as many amazing species, such as in the example, to have evolved in an average universe with humans.
I suspect it takes more than a single stable mutation to create that behaviour seen in that video.
Also I thought there is a 1 in 2 chance that a new trait would be sent to the offspring.

"yes an intelligent force exists"

What I find truly baffling is that you find any of this convincing.

1. my experiences in the other thread
2. those links in the OP
3. my reasoning about the unlikelihood that there would be such a large number of amazing species

There are a lot of scientists who believe in theistic evolution - often because of some evidence rather than them just believing that because of their belief in God.

Then there's the fine-tuning arguments... that can be explained by multiverses - but we'd only see all the variety in life we see if we were very lucky... that's just my belief though.

 

[excreationist]

....Here is a video I saw yesterday:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hpdlQae5wP8
It seems unlikely this behaviour could evolve by chance...
The message I get from that is "yes an intelligent force exists"

I didn't properly watch the start:

"He can't rest for more than a moment, but must work 24 hours a day for a week, or the current will destroy his creation"

I had assumed it didn't take that long...

I suppose it could have evolved gradually but what is the point of it all? What does it achieve? My thought is that it is impressing the humans that see it. I assume that naturalists would have to say that it is due to sexual selection which would require the female in the species to also have mutations that find the behaviour attractive.

So maybe in the past there was a pufferfish that spent 1 day on it and another spent 2 days and the female chose the one that spent 2 days...

I think this might be the most sophisticated creation that an animal creates that isn't directly related to survival (e.g. a nest) - a related example is a bower bird nest - but the behaviour involved isn't very complex - just sees blue objects and drops them off at the nest. I was amazed that the pufferfish creation is symmetrical at the far edges (though not symmetrical in the center)

 

[excreationist]

I don't claim to have proved that Intelligent Design is true, but I am finding it persuasive. I don't believe in anything supernatural though if we are in a simulation it could exist (see my second post). I'm just saying that chance events could be guided - in a way that might promote some religious ideas.

 

[skepticalbip]

This reasoning is the old, "I don't understand therefore god", only replacing "god" with "intelligence".

The thinking seems to be that the end results of a long string of chance occurrences and natural selection were a goal.
A simple test may help dispel this idea:
Flip a coin a hundred times and record the results of each flip. What results will be a record something like, "H..T..T..T..H..H..T.....". Now calculate the odds of that exact series of heads and tails occuring by chance. You could flip that coin for the rest of your life and there would be next to zero chance of repeating that exact same series and yet you got that series the very first time you tried.

What is, is because it is the end result of a hell of a lot of chance (accidental) occurrences. It wasn't goal driven to reach this specific end.

 

[phands]

ID is just rubbish. The pufferfish thing is mating behaviour.

Lots of hand-wavy woooooo and special effects in those videos, but little in the way of facts.

 

[DrZoidberg]

I thought he had used a few scientific arguments...

It's "sciency". Regular theist propaganda dressed up to fool the scientifically illiterate. Anybody scientifically trained will immediately spot the fraud. Yes, it's fraud. It's an extremely dishonest method of debating.

"...A recent study that just came out states that the evolutionary leap from single-celled organisms to multicellular organisms was relatively easy. What may have made it relatively easy was that the ancient single-celled ancestors seem to have had much of the genetic toolkit needed for becoming multicellular already assembled..."

It's just sciency. It's a bizarre statement that violates everything we know about evolution. If true the researcher would already have a Nobel prize. So it's clearly bullshit.

My guess is that its either misinterpretated honest research, fraudulent research or straight up bullshit. Creationists today have their own "scientific" conferences, their own "peer-review" journals. The length to which they are willing to go to delude themselves and others is mind boggling.

What Creationists fail to realize is that evolution is one of the most robust and well supported scientific theories we have. You might as well be arguing against gravity. Which is a much less scientifically supported theory.

I had believed that there was a near infinite number of parallel universes. That means it is inevitable for highly unlikely things, such as the evolution of humans, to have happened by chance. But I think on average there wouldn't have been as many amazing species, such as in the example, to have evolved in an average universe with humans.
I suspect it takes more than a single stable mutation to create that behaviour seen in that video.
Also I thought there is a 1 in 2 chance that a new trait would be sent to the offspring.

Evolution doesn't happen by chance. I guess we've now figured out where you went wrong. Congratulations on learning something today.

 

[phands]

Evolution doesn't happen by chance.

I have to take issue with that....the mutations which drive evolution are entirely random; biologists agree on this.

 

[Keith&Co.]

Simulated reality can involve intelligent design...

Elon Musk has said there is a one in billions chance that we are NOT in a simulation.

The problem with such calculations is that they are formed without much in the way of a sample size. It's not like he can point to the differences between this, the test universe, and the other universe known not to be intelligently designed...

"...A recent study that just came out states that the evolutionary leap from single-celled organisms to multicellular organisms was relatively easy. What may have made it relatively easy was that the ancient single-celled ancestors seem to have had much of the genetic toolkit needed for becoming multicellular already assembled..."

Same thing.

In some fiction, we might be in a position to say that "life developing on Earth went through certain stages relatively easily compared to evolution on Vulcan or Kronos, , suggesting guidance by a higher life form." But we really don't have any idea what the galactic standard is for such things.

Maybe we're average for that leap. Or even retarded. We aren't in a position to judge.

 

[Keith&Co.]

Evolution doesn't happen by chance.

I have to take issue with that....the mutations which drive evolution are entirely random; biologists agree on this.

But selection isn't random. So while THAT PART YOU MENTION is entirely random, the overall results are not. Thus "Evolution doesn't happen by chance." is accurate.

Consider a poker game. The distribution of cards is random. What the players do after that is not. So the winners of poker trounaments are not randomly selected.

 

[steve_bank]

To begin with as to 'intelligent' design, whoever designed humans did not do a very good job. And what about all those pesky asteroids, why couldn't they be avoided?

 

[DrZoidberg]

Evolution doesn't happen by chance.

I have to take issue with that....the mutations which drive evolution are entirely random; biologists agree on this.

Then say that mutations are driven by chance. Mutations without natural selection will just create a big mess

 

[skepticalbip]

I thought he had used a few scientific arguments...

There were a few scientific facts such as the description of what a crystal is, however the arguments and most of the assertions were baseless or pure WOOO. A good flim-flam must have a few truths to make the BS less obvious.

"...A recent study that just came out states that the evolutionary leap from single-celled organisms to multicellular organisms was relatively easy. What may have made it relatively easy was that the ancient single-celled ancestors seem to have had much of the genetic toolkit needed for becoming multicellular already assembled..."

This seems to me to be a rather absurd assertion. Single cell organisms were around for a couple billion years before the first multi-cell organism appeared. This doesn't seem to me to obviously make the evolutionary leap "relatively easy".

 

[DrZoidberg]

To begin with as to 'intelligent' design, whoever designed humans did not do a very good job. And what about all those pesky asteroids, why couldn't they be avoided?

I agree. A better term would be "incompetent design"

 

[phands]

Evolution doesn't happen by chance.

I have to take issue with that....the mutations which drive evolution are entirely random; biologists agree on this.

Then say that mutations are driven by chance. Mutations without natural selection will just create a big mess

Most mutations are fatal or non-effective (at least at first, but subsequent ones can add up to changes later), and very few are beneficial. Many are repaired by enzymatic action before expression. Even then, natural selection IS random, depending on environment, predation and many other factors that prevent a genetic change being propagated.

 

[Keith&Co.]

Most mutations are fatal or non-effective (at least at first, but subsequent ones can add up to changes later),

And how do the non-fatal, non-benign mutations "build up?"

Even then, natural selection IS random, depending on environment, predation and many other factors that prevent a genetic change being propagated.

No... No, that's just wrong.

A creature living in a desert has offspring with two different mutations. Some develop an improvement on their ability to retain water. Some develop an improvement on their ability to breathe water.

Do you think it's totally random which mutation is most likely to be selected for?

 

[phands]

Most mutations are fatal or non-effective (at least at first, but subsequent ones can add up to changes later),

And how do the non-fatal, non-benign mutations "build up?"

Even then, natural selection IS random, depending on environment, predation and many other factors that prevent a genetic change being propagated.

No... No, that's just wrong.

A creature living in a desert has offspring with two different mutations. Some develop an improvement on their ability to retain water. Some develop an improvement on their ability to breathe water.

Do you think it's totally random which mutation is most likely to be selected for?

If such a mutation were to be advantageous in a given environment, then yes, it is more likely to survive and reproduce, you're right.

 

[Keith&Co.]

If such a mutation were to be advantageous in a given environment, then yes, it is more likely to survive and reproduce, you're right.

And that is why evolution is not random.
Beneficial mutations tend to confer an advantage in survival, so tend to be expressed in the next generation.