Wistahpatsfan

[CPF]

Hey Wistah, I’m sorry it took so long to get back to you. I pray that both you and your family had a wonderful Holiday season and are all well.

Admittedly, I haven’t had time to dissect Dembski’s paper, but on the surface a key problem jumps out. As I reduce his argument to its smallest components in my tiny little mind, it seems to boil down to one question relative to this whole debate. If God (that’s who we’re talking about, right? I find it curious that the name is left out of the analysis and replaced with euphemisms like “intelligence” and “designer”)

The reason is that Dembski is attempting to make a scientific analysis of information and it’s origin, not a philosophical analysis of “who” or “what” that origin may be.

, acting intelligently, was processing a number of “possibilities” to arrive at a single decision or a series of compatible, interdependent decisions which would ultimately lead to the functioning universe including the terrestrial biotic system, then what is the origin of these sets of “options” that God has to select from? In order to qualify as a process controlled by a central intelligence, these conditions must have been in place before the system was formed and, consequently, executed by the designer. It seems to me to be the pathway to an infinite process of event reduction that transcends our capacity to understand and can’t be resolved within the systems of rationality we as humans presently possess. I realize that normally, we can only operate within systems that are known at the time in order for this debate to continue within any type of manageable framework, but I’m comfortable with that framework having multiple dimensions that are completely open-ended and unexplored until now. Dembski’s analysis is closed within a framework that is limited to the premise that a set of options exists and choices are available to the designer to use intelligently in forming the universe. How do you resolve this issue?.

I see, this is kind of like the “who created God” argument right? Except you have substituted the "possibilities" for God. As far as I can ascertain, we can trace “creation” (for lack of a better word) back to a singularity. Now many theoretical physicists are hard at work attempting to smash that singularity (see Stephen Hawking’s “Imaginary Numbers”) but thus far they have been unable to do so, at least not without resorting to “bending the rules“ so to speak. We really have no way to look any further back than the singularity, and while we can speculate and postulate theory after theory based on differing hypothesis, we are left with no way of knowing how that singularity came to be. All we know is that in the natural world things don’t have a tendency to spontaneously create themselves, especially something as complex as the singularity in question would have to be, considering from it emerged the universe we now experience all around us. Thus there must have been what is commonly referred to as a “First Cause”. I don’t think we need really concern ourselves with what happened prior to the “First Cause” as much as we need be cognizant of what happened after it. I think you are right that it is completely beyond our “capacity to understand” but we would expect this of an intelligence advanced enough to accomplish what we are talking about. Dembski attempts in some way to explain how CSI works from a biological perspective by indicating that, in some cases of CSI, the “pattern” is given after the “possibility” is actualized.

Many of the interesting cases of specified information, however, are those in which the pattern is given after a possibility has been actualized. This is certainly the case with the origin of life: life originates first and only afterwards do pattern-forming rational agents (like ourselves) enter the scene. It remains the case, however, that a pattern corresponding to a possibility, though formulated after the possibility has been actualized, can constitute a specification

He goes on to qualify his statement.

Certainly this was not the case in the third scenario above where the target was painted around the arrow only after it hit the wall. But consider the following example. Alice and Bob are celebrating their fiftieth wedding anniversary. Their six children all show up bearing gifts. Each gift is part of a matching set of china. There is no duplication of gifts, and together the gifts constitute a complete set of china. Suppose Alice and Bob were satisfied with their old set of china, and had no inkling prior to opening their gifts that they might expect a new set of china. Alice and Bob are therefore without a relevant pattern whither to refer their gifts prior to actually receiving the gifts from their children. Nevertheless, the pattern they explicitly formulate only after receiving the gifts could be formed independently of receiving the gifts-indeed, we all know about matching sets of china and how to distinguish them from unmatched sets. This pattern therefore constitutes a specification. What's more, there is an obvious inference connected with this specification: Alice and Bob's children were in collusion, and did not present their gifts as random acts of kindness.
But what about the origin of life? Is life specified? If so, to what patterns does life correspond, and how are these patterns given independently of life's origin? Obviously, pattern-forming rational agents like ourselves don't enter the scene till after life originates. Nonetheless, there are functional patterns to which life corresponds, and which are given independently of the actual living systems. An organism is a functional system comprising many functional subsystems. The functionality of organisms can be cashed out in any number of ways. Arno Wouters (1995) cashes it out globally in terms of viability of whole organisms. Michael Behe (1996) cashes it out in terms of the irreducible complexity and minimal function of biochemical systems. Even the staunch Darwinist Richard Dawkins will admit that life is specified functionally, cashing out the functionality of organisms in terms of reproduction of genes. Thus Dawkins (1987, p. 9) will write: "Complicated things have some quality, specifiable in advance, that is highly unlikely to have been acquired by random chance alone. In the case of living things, the quality that is specified in advance is . . . the ability to propagate genes in reproduction."

So, did the “options” or “possibilities” exist apart from the intelligent cause of the universe? Or did they exist in the “mind” of the designer? I don’t know, all I do know is that we are able to observe in varying ways what has occurred since that one optional singularity was chosen and what we see, in my opinion, is a definite pattern. A pattern that is quite distinguishable from uncaused chance. Take care.

[All_Around_Brown]

This is all well and good, but isn't it much more plausible to state simply that organisms evolve over time? How? Through natural selection.


We know alot about artificial selection, its how we came to feed ourselves with tasty smoked bacons, plentiful eggs and milk, and juicy steaks. Now, instead of human directed, artificial selection, substitute environment, and you have natural selection.
CPF, I've forgotten, how do the ID people explain artificial selection?

[CPF]

Originally Posted by All_Around_Brown

This is all well and good, but isn't it much more plausible to state simply that organisms evolve over time? How? Through natural selection.


We know alot about artificial selection, its how we came to feed ourselves with tasty smoked bacons, plentiful eggs and milk, and juicy steaks. Now, instead of human directed, artificial selection, substitute environment, and you have natural selection.
CPF, I've forgotten, how do the ID people explain artificial selection?

For goodness sake AAB; why don't you respond to my post to YOU before we go off on a tangent in my post to Wistah. Lets give WPF a chance to weigh in and see where the conversation goes from there. Take care.

[All_Around_Brown]

Originally Posted by CPF

For goodness sake AAB; why don't you respond to my post to YOU before we go off on a tangent in my post to Wistah. Lets give WPF a chance to weigh in and see where the conversation goes from there. Take care.

Oh...these personal thread titles get me all confused.

[CPF]

Originally Posted by All_Around_Brown

Oh...these personal thread titles get me all confused.

Sorry about that, I should have used your full screen name, I just get in the habit of shortening folks names (the way I did with my own) in order to save time, especially names like yours and Wistahpatsfan's that are a bit long. Let me know if this bothers you and I will of course stop. Take care.

[All_Around_Brown]

Let me review...I'll respond later today.

[wistahpatsfan]

[quote=CPF]Hey Wistah, I’m sorry it took so long to get back to you. I pray that both you and your family had a wonderful Holiday season and are all well.

I believe, and have no basis for this other than my experience with people trained rhetoric and persuasive logic, that he derives his arguement from an assumption based on nothing but a religious text that may or may not have been written thousands of years ago by people who claimed that God told them what they wrote. Were it not for his pre-disposed notions of the moment of creation (if there was one), he would have to retrace his postulation based on observable evidence using the scientific method, otherwise it's philosophy, which is also fun.
You presume I’ve set up a “who created God” argument – and I haven’t. It’s a “where did the ideas in God’s mind come from” thing. I am not operating under the assumption that there even is a God for the sake of this discussion. The presumption of God throws the logical controls of objectivity into question.

I’m sorry, but I haven’t ascertained that we can trace “creation” back to a “singularity”. I don’t feel the need to make that assumption and as of now, I haven’t been convinced of that scientifically or philosophically (logically). Resorting to “bending the rules“, as you say, is not reserved for scientists. Those in the philosophical world do it regularly and cannot stand up to scrutiny when being checked for errors of elemental presumptions, such as “there must have been a singular event – a “beginning”. You say that we “…have no way to look any further back than the singularity…” but I contend that we don’t even have a way to look back TO a “singularity”, other than what we’ve been told via religion. Your theory consistently counts on the existence of a “singularity” and what you really want to say is “God”, and that’s OK if you’d like to say it – I’m not offended. We agree that events in other dimensions can only be feebly considered in our minds and not observed, but how does such a mental concoction become real?

I happen to believe that it’s possible to have patterns develop in chance events that reflect a greater universe of pre-existing patterns that had no real “beginning” as we can conceive it.

[CPF]

You're next on the "hit parade" Wistah, I'll be getting back to you soon, take care.

[wistahpatsfan]

Originally Posted by CPF

You're next on the "hit parade" Wistah, I'll be getting back to you soon, take care.

What were we talking about, again?

[CPF]

Originally Posted by wistahpatsfan

What were we talking about, again?

Very funny I know it takes me a while to get back to you guys but honestly if I could devote more time to these on-line discussions I would, life is simply too busy. I'm hoping to carve out some time tonight to get a response to you. Thanks for your patience and take care.