Nibb Tardis

If we were intelligently designed, we wouldn't have useless stuff like man nipples, the coccyx or the appendix.

Twisted Pharaoh

Coccyx - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


Vermiform appendix - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Nipple - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

detrius

Wrong.

To test whether an object is designed, you try to figure out how much how much of it actually serves the presumed purpose. So the universe's degree of habitability is a good indicator for its degree of 'design'.

A natural rock arch for example isn't designed as a bridge because much of the material doesn't actually have a structural function and its maximum load bearing capacity isn't very high. In a designed bridge on the other hand, every part has a function.

The same principle applies to a universe designed for humans. If ID was correct and this universe had been designed for (human) life, it would actually resemble something like Minecraft: an infinite plane, a few hundred meters deep with some airspace above the ground, where all the resources you need can be found by cutting down plants and digging in the dirt. No space = no cataclysmic cosmic events, no plate tectonics = no tsunamis/volcanoes etc, the sun and the moon are just lights in the ceiling etc.

The fact that most of the universe actually is a) unreachable and b) deadly shows that it wasn't designed for life.

Nope, it's actually the creationists who came up with that idea, the argument goes like this:

"Omega-Lambda is 0.7! It could be any other number and if it was, we wouldn't exist, therefore God!"

...to which my response would look like this:

"Dude, the only reason why you can pull such improbable probabilities out of your rectum is because you happen to use the set of 'real numbers' to represent the cosmological constant, which by definition happens to be infinite. But this is not how probability calculation works."


But I'm not talking about alternative universes anyway, my point was simply the absurdity of believers clinging to a vague idea of the universe's existence being in some vague way "against all odds" (even though they don't actually know the odds) and then subsequently ignoring the fact that the vast majority of this universe is absolutely lethal to them.

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Twisted Pharaoh

"Actually" is the key word.

My answer is this:




This part I agree with, somewhat. Anyway I'm not defending the idea that universe has been designed for human life.

detrius

You missed the point.

If you were to design the human skeleton and needed to connect some tendons and muscles with it, or were to try to figure out a way to enable humans to sit comfortably, the result would be a distinct lack of tail bones because you'd come up with a better alternative.

The same thing goes for appendices: if humans need an organ for training their immune system, you would just give them one designed for that specific task instead of recycling vestigial organs for that purpose.

And almost any part of the body could be an erogenous zone - why would it have to be vestigial lactiferous gland that is prone to infections?

Twisted Pharaoh

Nope, the word was "useless".

Ishina

You're playing semantics.

"Any change in function, which can be effected by insensibly small steps, is within the power of natural selection; so that an organ rendered, during changed habits of life, useless or injurious for one purpose, might easily be modified and used for another purpose. Or an organ might be retained for one alone of its former functions. An organ, when rendered useless, may well be variable, for its variations cannot be checked by natural selection. At whatever period of life disuse or selection reduces an organ, and this will generally be when the being has come to maturity and to its full powers of action, the principle of inheritance at corresponding ages will reproduce the organ in its reduced state at the same age, and consequently will seldom affect or reduce it in the embryo. Thus we can understand the greater relative size of rudimentary organs in the embryo, and their lesser relative size in the adult. But if each step of the process of reduction were to be inherited, not at the corresponding age, but at an extremely early period of life (as we have good reason to believe to be possible) the rudimentary part would tend to be wholly lost, and we should have a case of complete abortion. The principle, also, of economy, explained in a former chapter, by which the materials forming any part or structure, if not useful to the possessor, will be saved as far as is possible, will probably often come into play; and this will tend to cause the entire obliteration of a rudimentary organ."
- Darwin, On the Origin of Species, Chapter 13

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detrius

Most of the universe is completely unaccessible to us, and even if we could reach the farthest galaxies at some point in the future, that wouldn't change the fact that they've just been sitting there for billions of years. And if you expose a human being to the vacuums of space, he/she will be simultaneously be cooked/suffocated/frozen to death in a matter of seconds. There's simply no discussion about the appropriateness of the word "actually".

I'm sure you could respond without being deliberately mysterious in your answers.

But yeah, those are violin parts and I notice a remarkable lack of 'tree' around them.



It's the same problem again: trees aren't designed for making violins just like the universe isn't designed for producing life. If they were, violins would grow on them like fruit - instead, manufacturing music instruments requires a lot of human knowledge and manual skill.

Yes, you were: when faced with the idea that the vast majority of the universe simply doesn't seem to have a 'pro-(human)-life' purpose, you countered by suggesting that in fact it does (even though you drastically reduced the size of the universe in the process): "But we still need the seas for survival, since they recycle our CO2, along with the forests."

detrius

As Ish said: you're playing semantics.

The point was that nature creates hodgepodge makeshift solutions for problems that result in heaps of genetic clutter in our DNA, vestigial organs and cascading consequences. This is the antithesis of the kind of 'design' that requires a creative agent behind it.

Twisted Pharaoh

/yawn

Saying that we NEED something is not saying that something has been DESIGNED for us.

Twisted Pharaoh

I'm not commenting what Ishina says. When she'll start speaking with sincerity I'll reconsider my position.

Ishina

... said the guy playing the semantics game.

detrius

I could slap you down for this display of arrogant, snobbish, self-righteous attitude in the same manner you used to respond to Ish in the previous post:

"If you're not interested in a sincere discussion, there's no point in continuing it."

In fact, nothing Ish said in this thread was anywhere close to this kind of My-Head-Is-Stuck-Up-My-Own-Ass-And-I-Like-It attitude you're showing off with that "yawn".

More semantics.

I argued that the anthropic principle is debunked by the fact that the majority of the universe is not suited for higher lifeforms to which you responded by implying that those parts might simply be a part of the design that is necessary to satisfy some vague needs of above mentioned life. That is a defense of Intelligent Design.

(And it is a defense that completely ignores that a) a competent designer would simply eliminate those needs in the first place and b) doesn't address the existence of things like cosmologial voids - there's nothing in there, so what could we possibly need that for?)

There was nothing insincere in Ish's post, you're just fishing for excuses to exit an inconvenient discussion.

Twisted Pharaoh

You are interpreting what I'm saying with other words and you are calling that semantics.

I never said such thing, I just mentioned the fact that water was not useless, and I don't care about the anthropic principle, is that clear?

Casey Pelous

lolwut?

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Cindy Claveau

It bears adding that organic structures which may not have any apparent purpose at the moment may, in fact, have previously been useful under different environmental circumstances or will be useful under future environmental changes.

This is part of the resounding debunk delivered on Behe's "black box" nonsense - things which appear to be ideally "designed" at the moment and which aid an organism in survival may not have had the same function before environmental changes. There is no black box and nature is not a static, unchanging thing. And nothing can be considered in isolation from its environment.

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Naiki

Science is wrong.

I shall even cite sources.

About « Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster

That makes my post valid.

Twisted Pharaoh

anthropic principle is one thing, intelligent design is another thing, fine tuned universe is a third thing.

When you mix two of those in the same sentence all you are creating is confusion. So learn to use the right words then you can lecture others about semantics.

So, seriously it is impossible to debate with you because you don't use the proper terms. You are on the "scientific" side, you should be a little more serious.

I'm not defending anything I just noted that what was called "useless" had a use. That's what you get for using the wrong words.

I also mentioned that if you drop someone randomly on Earth they have more chance of dying than living. I still fail to see where this is a defense of ID, except the part about the utility of water, which you are using against me.

So what do you want? To win the discussion? Okay you win. I don't care.

If you want to debate seriously then be serious and when someone makes a proposition take it for what it is and not what you expect/think/want it to be.

infiniview Merit

Did you know that there are over 100 trillion cells in the human body? And you can actually fit a proportionately scaled down universe into just one of them?

I think that is really cool.

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Artemis Fate

The problem with Intelligent Design and creationism is pretty much always: Who designed the designer?

Beau Perkins

I still fail to understand how science and belief in a creator contradict each other. That requires a weak faith in my eyes.

This is why I believe God looks something like this.

Kaimi Kyomoon

Wrapping my mind around a being with no beginning or end is like wrapping my mind around a universe that either is or is not infinite. I can't do it.

Beau Perkins

Nothing. What ever God is, he was, is and always will be. One has to grasp an existence outside of time.

I choose to believe there are no physics in the spirit realm. It is a dimension that never changes. There is no such thing as nothing, because even where we see nothing there is a realm which makes that place even exist in the first place.

Edit to add - WHat is outside the universe? Science says it is always expanding,right? So what is there outside that next inch it is going to expand into? If there is nothing there, how can it expand?

My head just exploded on my desk.

Hypatia Callisto

I need a shrug button... seriously, this post only bears a lack of scientific understanding of just how complex physics is.

The vacuum (that nothing you talk about) isn't empty!

Vacuum state - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Light created from a vacuum: Casimir effect observed in superconducting circuit


There are two general theological positions - that science is or is not compatible with theology.

I think it is compatible, and many other theologians believe the same.

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"I suppose so," said Alice.

"Well, then," the Cat went on, "you see, a dog growls when it's angry, and wags its tail when it's pleased. Now I growl when I'm pleased, and wag my tail when I'm angry. Therefore I'm mad."

"I call it purring, not growling," said Alice.

"Call it what you like," said the Cat.

Cindy Claveau

It all depends on one's views. Science definitely contradicts a literal interpretation of the Bible and that's where so many fundies get upset.

Because they think some superstitious mystics 2,000 years ago could have outlined any fact-based scenario for the origins of the cosmos. Hell, they didn't even know about dinosaurs or genes back then.

Whether one wants to posit a God who thought up the brilliant device of Evolution, or chooses (like me) to think it makes divine intervention irrelevant, it doesn't matter. Evolution is a fact and denying it only tells us that someone doesn't know what they're talking about.