Undesigned, designed, unintelligent design & intelligent design

[wd40]

Is there any way that the terms "undesigned", "designed", "unintelligent design" and "intelligent design" could become falsifiable and thereby acceptable to mainstream (='majority' opinion?) science?

Or by definition of 'falsifiable', can it never happen?

[swampyankee]

Sure. By having the people who espouse those viewpoints accept extant physical evidence that already falsifies their hypotheses.

[Swift]

What exactly does either "unintelligent design" or "undesigned" mean?

[slang]

What exactly does either "unintelligent design" or "undesigned" mean?

Putting a playground near... oh, nevermind.

[Torsten]

My left knee is an example of either incompetent design or evolution. I pick evolution.

[Strange]

Putting a playground near... oh, nevermind.

That's exactly what I thought: unintelligent design seems more plausible than ID (but less plausible than evolution).

[profloater]

it seems evolution only looks "intelligent" with the benefit of hindsight and looks brutal then too, and the evolution of higher atoms in stars looks like a pattern also with the benefit of hindsight granted by the time light takes to reach us, and even more brutal perhaps. So evolution looks like a much stronger concept than design. Thus we will have to wait to see what else can evolve that might be in the slightest way intelligent beyond our understanding of either intelligence or design. Perhaps it's all unintended consequences!

[kamaz]

My favorite theory is intelligent design by committee

[Jim]

... intelligent design by committee.

I think that's an oxymoron.

[Van Rijn]

This makes me think of something my father used to say: "A camal is a horse designed by committee and an elephant is a mouse built to government specs."

I know he didn't originate that but he sure liked to say it.

[HenrikOlsen]

Is there any way that the terms "undesigned", "designed", "unintelligent design" and "intelligent design" could become falsifiable and thereby acceptable to mainstream (='majority' opinion?) science?

Or by definition of 'falsifiable', can it never happen?

Since the main argument for Intelligent design is one of ignorant arrogance, "I can't imagine how X evolved, therefore evolution is false", it's fundamentally unfalsifiable.

[Nicolas]

What exactly does either "unintelligent design" or "undesigned" mean?

The evidence for unintelligent design is vast. Take for example drunken people. They lack a landing gear.

So to me, the main contest is between the theory of evolution and the theory of a Creator who was either incompetent, lazy, sadistic or a combination thereof.

But seriously, whatever the "Grand Start and Overall Reason" may be (if any such thing even exists) and who if anyone was/is involved, from that point on I'm all for evolution given the evidence.

Ten again, maybe evolution is just trial & error by the Unintelligent Designer

[Swift]

What exactly does either "unintelligent design" or "undesigned" mean?

I appreciate slang and Nicolas trying to answer it, but really, wd40, I want an answer from you. "Unintelligent design" with regard to biological evolution is an oxymoron, it would appear to be a term you made up and I have no clue what you think you mean by it. I really would like an explanation.

[wd40]

Can the latest oxymoronic statement on the subject of evolution and design from Rome be brought here? What to one person is an irreconcilable oxymoron, to another is a non-issue core belief.

[slang]

If you're worried that your post might violate rules, PM Swift or another mod with the text you intend to post and ask if it's ok.

I'm unsure what beliefs have to do with it anyway. The whole point of the people involved changing their terminology from "creationism" to "intelligent design" was to get it accepted into science classes of public schools. Getting "beliefs" involved again completely negates that attempt (which already failed miserably, in the Dover trial. Cdesign proponentsists, anyone?)

[Swift]

Can the latest oxymoronic statement on the subject of evolution and design from Rome be brought here? What to one person is an irreconcilable oxymoron, to another is a non-issue core belief.

If by "Rome" you mean the Roman Catholic Church, yes, you could quote them, if that is the answer to my question. Our non-religion rule has two relevant exceptions:

B) Focused, polite discussion of concepts such as creationism and "intelligent design" which bear direct relevance to astronomy and science, for the purposes of conversing about and addressing misconceptions.

C) Focused, polite discussion of the difference between astronomy (including cosmology) and religion

[baric]

Is there any way that the terms "undesigned", "designed", "unintelligent design" and "intelligent design" could become falsifiable and thereby acceptable to mainstream (='majority' opinion?) science?

Or by definition of 'falsifiable', can it never happen?

Yes, they need to make falsifiable predictions.

I mean, I know that seems obvious ("become falsifiable by making falsifiable predictions") but honestly, that's all there is to it. The ball is completely in the court of the ID supporters.

However, my gut feeling is that they either cannot formulate predictions from their theory or they have no desire to risk being falsified.

[wd40]

I'm sure the astronomers at the Vatican Observatory are quite happy with this. But the average Catholic will be quite confused.


http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110423/...easter_vigil_4

"Humanity isn't random product of evolution

Pope Benedict XVI marked the holiest night of the year for Christians by stressing that humanity isn't a random product of evolution.

Benedict emphasized the Biblical account of creation in his Easter Vigil homily Saturday, saying it was wrong to think at some point "in some tiny corner of the cosmos there evolved randomly some species of living being capable of reasoning and of trying to find rationality within creation, or to bring rationality into it."

"If man were merely a random product of evolution in some place on the margins of the universe, then his life would make no sense or might even be a chance of nature," he said. "But no, reason is there at the beginning: creative, divine reason."

Church teaching holds that Roman Catholicism and evolutionary theory are not necessarily at odds: A Christian can, for example, accept the theory of evolution to help explain developments, but is taught to believe that God, not random chance, is the origin of the world.

The Vatican, however, warns against creationism, or the overly literal interpretation of the Bibilical account of creation."


This Vatican kind of thinking flies directly in the face of unashamed IDers, Creationists, YECs, literalists, and fundamentalists like Huckabee (who may yet become president!), Norris(!), Bouw, Gish, Ham, Snelling, Setterfield, Bowden, Faulkner, Humphries etc.

They will tell you that the Designer is infinitely capable and intelligent, but that he deliberately placed foibles and inefficient but tractable faults in to his design like weak spines, weak knees, cells that can go cancerous, disease, death, decay, decrepitude etc. eg he could have arranged that of the XII Cranial Nerves, the Occulomotor should supply all 8 out of the eye muscles. Instead it only supplies 6, with another whole one, the Abducens cranial nerve, being dedicated solely for the lateral rectus muscle; and another whole cranial nerve, the Trochlear, dedicated just for the superior oblique muscle. This to me smacks of "Deliberately Unintelligent Intelligent Design", the main purpose of which seems to be to pique & prod our curiosity and study into the nature of the Designer and his Design!

[Gillianren]

This Vatican kind of thinking, as you phrase it, isn't new. It's been the Vatican's stance for decades.

[Swift]

<snip>
This Vatican kind of thinking flies directly in the face of unashamed IDers, Creationists, YECs, literalists, and fundamentalists like Huckabee (who may yet become president!), Norris(!), Bouw, Gish, Ham, Snelling, Setterfield, Bowden, Faulkner, Humphries etc.

my bold
Now I have to act as a moderator - Be very, very careful here. The comment about Hackabee is now crossing into politics, and there is no evolution/ID exception for politics on BAUT. Any further political comments in this thread and you will get an infraction.

[Hernalt]

Mythology was the earliest science, religion (re-ligare, I bind again) is the technology of applied mythology (etiology, titanomachy, Virgil/Aenid), and corporations that fight to stay relevant must modernize their technology. They may be pointing towards some kind of a Mandelbrot recursive chaos, initiated from simple rules, that lends complexity to the perceived world. So they could say something like, "The complexity of the world that makes one question God is actually the fractal artifact of God's subtle undesigned design."

[Gillianren]

They could, but I would hope they'd avoid overblown Pretentious Metaphysics Speak.

[Hernalt]

Perhaps the author of the thread will be the judge.

[Paul Beardsley]

They could, but I would hope they'd avoid overblown Pretentious Metaphysics Speak.

Yay! I've never heard you speak, Gillian, but I can imagine a really dry delivery to this.

Wow, I missed BAUT during those three days.

[kamaz]

I'm sure the astronomers at the Vatican Observatory are quite happy with this. But the average Catholic will be quite confused.

Not really.

You see, the Vatican has learned something from the Galileo affair. They understood that they are in the spiritual business, not science business. So instead of claiming to know how everything came into being, they limited themselves to discussing why it happened. Thus, the whole dogma has been moved out into non-falsifiable realm.

This is how they treat evolution theory. When it came out, they condemned it. However, they have quickly figured out that it is too well founded scientifically to be rejected. What they did instead, is they said that evolution theory does not contradict the Magisterium. So, every church member is free to believe in evolution or not. Thus, nobody can use evolution to contradict the existence of God (specifically, the RCC concept of God), as the RCC itself declares that it has no problem with evolution.

An added benefit here is that if something was found contradicting the evolution theory (i.e. someone proves Daeniken right by finding a derelict alien spaceship with a dead alien holding a copy of Mahabharata) the Vatican is still on top, since it never chained itself to Darwin in the first place. They would say these aliens, which created humans through genetic manipulation, were tools of God's plan to create humanity or something to this effect.

However, there is a catch in the does not contradict stance. Evolutionary theory says that evolution is random, so if the metaphorical dice rolled differently, we would have six legs (or something like that). This is something that Vatican has a major problem with, because if creates two problems. First, if the process was random, it is by definition unplanned which contradicts God's plan. Second, if we are a product of random evolution, then our morality is essentially random (i.e. if we had six legs, we would have a different moral code) which contradicts the existence of absolute, God-imposed, morality.

To resolve this paradox, Vatican says that although humans were (likely) created by evolution, God was rolling the dice according to his plan. An alternative way of saying that was that the process was random, but used loaded dice to produce the desired effect.

They will tell you that the Designer is infinitely capable and intelligent, but that he deliberately placed foibles and inefficient but tractable faults in to his design like weak spines

RCC never claimed that humans are a perfect creation. A perfect creation would not sin, so the intellectual construct the whole dogma rests upon would break down. RCC claims that humans are superior to all other creation and thus destined to rule it, but this is another matter.

This Vatican kind of thinking flies directly in the face of unashamed IDers, Creationists, YECs, literalists, and fundamentalists like Huckabee (who may yet become president!), Norris(!), Bouw, Gish, Ham, Snelling, Setterfield, Bowden, Faulkner, Humphries etc.

You can see from the above why Vatican does not like YEC: YEC is falsifiable (in fact, already falsified) and they prefer to have dogma firmly outside the realm of falsifiability.

Plus, I am very much delighted to see official condemnation of YEC from the Vatican. From where I sit, YEC was originally an American Protestant thing, and RCC was squarely in the evolution bandwagon. Over the last decade however, I have observed that certain elements within RCC have started promoting YEC. Needless to say, I am not very fond of it, as acceptance of YEC demonstrates a major intellectual regression.

[Noclevername]

So the RCC view is that God makes evolution look random even though it's not? No wonder I'm lapsed.

[kamaz]

So the RCC view is that God makes evolution look random even though it's not? No wonder I'm lapsed.

This is how *I* understand the idea:

You go to play roulette at the casino with your friend. Winning or loosing a roulette is a random process. At the end of the evening, you win $715, your friend looses $576. RCC says that God's plan was that you win and he looses, because such outcome is necessary for something later in the grand scheme of things.

Essentially RCC is arguing that evolution must have had a purpose -- i.e. creating us, in our present shape and form. They accept that we are descended from apes. What they do not accept is that the process had no purpose, no goal and we exist purely by chance.

[Noclevername]

So all those poor Neanderthals and other branches off of the protohuman tree died for nothing.

[kamaz]

Um, could you elaborate what you mean?

[Noclevername]

Um, could you elaborate what you mean?

If we were "planned", we could have taken a straight path from protochimp to h. sapiens. Instead we have so many branches and subspecies of our ancestral development path who simply died out, leaving only us. It's a wasteful method, simulating randomness like that.