Jay Ray
Posts: 92 Joined: Feb. 2006
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Jay Ray,
Quote | No, it was just a typical, thoughtless redundancy, like "very unique." I guess I meant "highly coherent". |
I thought so. Sorry about the diversion.
Quote | One thing we might agree upon is that...once the ball is rolling complexity will arise.
It must be so, because that is what happened. (With a lot of help from yin and yang.) |
This is a good place to start from then. Maybe we can come back to it sometime.
Quote | In the same way, the question "does God meddle," doesn't really compute, because God is all there is, or ever can be. There is no outside to God. I don't think that the reason God is difficult to discern is because he deliberately hid himself or preferred people to have blind faith, but because God is everything. Where is the contrast? So it isn't a question of meddling, but it is a question of how and by what processes this whole drama has unfolded and continues to unfold. |
I understand this. And to some extent, I agree. My take is exceedingly taoist. Humans, like all of nature, are an expression of the whole thing. I think we agree that whatever the universe is--whether it is an unintelligent process or guided--there is no way we can seperate ourselves from it. I'm glad you clarified your postion, because I understand where you are coming from a little better. Your take is a whole lot more sophisticated than Christian fundamentalism.
The whole point of the "meddling" question doesn't really apply to you, if I've learned the right things about your position. Its mostly used to illuminate an inconsistancies in the typically fundamentalist doctrine.
Quote | You may have heard, if you like philosophy, that it isn't so much important to get the right answers, but to know the right questions. |
Ideally, we'd aim for both. Asking the right questions does no good if you draw the wrong conclusions. This isn't an either/or.
Quote | A personal God with preferences is a limited being, not an infinite one. It may be that God is only capable of a focused will or intent when He/she is expressed through a mind of some sort that is less then the Totality. |
I'm glad you've moved past that glaring stumbling block.
Quote | I have serious doubt that frontloading at the big bang can have included the tendency to form something like DNA and the cell. |
Me too. But then, nothing compels me to claim frontloading in the first place. Maybe Dembski can teach you some things about the subject? Its definately not my field.
Quote | It looks to me like there are designs in biology of the meddling sort. That may be a product of lesser minds than what I would call God, or the Absolute, or Atman, who may not engage in that sort of activity. In my opinion, christianity gives that role to the Logos. |
Interesting. So your thought is that somehow this eternal, concious being was incapable of directly tinkering with atoms and molecules and instead works through lesser intermediaries? If I'm wrong, please correct me. If I'm right, then I'd ask how the lesser intermediaries themselves came to be.
Quote | Why do you say that it places limitations on God? This seems a popular idea. What's this about "mere human?" Why dangerous? |
Its a response to the inconsistant fundamentalism doctrine which among a host of other contradictory claims, says that god is omni-everything, who works in mysterious ways, is unknowable yet full of very human emotions, who is benevolent and full of the most perfect love and at the same time, venegeful and jealous and petty and cruel. A god whose subjects are required to have faith without evidence, and who should also know him by his works. Etc.
Anyone who claims to know how a god like this is going to do something contradicts numerous "authoritative" statements about that god. It gets old quickly. But I'm now understanding that this doesn't apply to you, and I hope I won't have to bring this up with you anymore.
Quote | anyway, ID doesn't necessarily say they can know anything about procedure or method, just the bare fact of design. |
Just because something resembles a design does not mean that it necessarily has been. This is a major sticking point for a lot of people.
Quote | As to whether we can know about method, that remains to be seen. But you criticize ID for wanting to maintain mystery, and then you say we can never know about procedure or method. |
Both are true, at least in the case of your average Behe or Dembski. Your ID take is a different from theirs. You should take a closer look at what they are saying, and what they are not. It seems like you might have some weighty philosophical disagreements with them.
Quote | It is exactly what you'd expect if you already accept a set of ideas which are unproven and presume a lot. |
Then you say something like this which puts you squarely back in the middle of the YEC arguments. What unproven ideas? What presumptions?
Quote | To contrast, the IDer doesn't look at the process, only at the result. Hmmm, well that certainly is true of a YEC. I find YECism really boring. What is interesting about a magical God with a big magic wand who waves it over the planet making millions of species in a day? Pure magic! |
Quote | I don't know if I am uncomfortable, but it just doesn't appear that much was left to chance. But neither do I see God as an outside agency tinkering, deciding to make the blueprint for a beaver or a badger down to the last detail. Rather, I think that God is unfolding within and as the universe, and is also probably transcendent in some way that I don't understand. |
You probably aren't uncomfortable, and I take that as good.
Perhaps you can explain how you square statistical, probabilistic quantum mechanics with a being who leaves little to chance? Why go through all the trouble to create this system which is almost entirely random, when in fact what you really wanted to do was have the universe be what it is today? "Unfolding" implies that everything is going according to plan. Why do the laws of physics sport this feature? Newtonian mechanics would have worked better for this task.
Quote | I do think that something like humans is intentional and required for completion. |
Completion? Completion of what? What goal does the god-verse have in mind, here? Explain how you derive this.
Quote | The question, does God care about us, is another nonquestion because there is no need to ask it. Like karma, it takes care of itself. We are not separate from and cut off from, God. As they say in the east, that which was never born cannot die. We are part of that and are therefore unvulnerable, altho we don't know it. And God's love is universal and impersonal. |
I agree that its a non-question. I agree we are part of it, and invulnerable from the overview. But I'm not sure I follow the some of this. What is love without care? Where do you derive the conclusion that there is any emotion whatsoever felt by this eternal, concious, intelligent being?
Quote | I don't agree with that at all. It [ID's description of process or method]could happen any time. |
It won't come out of Behe or Dembski, that's for sure. It'll be someone with a more Eastern perspective. Maybe you? But if there is, the process described won't say a darn thing about the most important parts of ID, which are the designer or its intelligence. Therefore it won't prove a thing. It'll be a description of blind, self consistant, unintelligent process which naturalists have been pointing out for eons. But hey, if you have some specific facts, please tell the Discovery Institute. They could use some good news.
Quote | sure, but what is nature, then? Might it contain more than meets the eye? |
Of course there is more than meets the eye. I don't know of a single scientist that would claim otherwise. I certainly haven't. To the contrary: anytime I reference the unknown, I'm referring to this very concept. What I wont do is a priori replace it with "intelligence" or "plan" or "love" or anything at all. Its just the unknown.
Quote | And when a person says that nature just does what it does, then you have no real right to argue with ID, because you have stood back and assessed the situation from a distance. ID is about looking up close. |
Slow down. What is your evidence that I assess only from a distance? I object to that characterization, for I also assess from as close as I can get. My position is not purely philosophical. Perhaps this will become more clear if you notice that both in this thread, and in others, I base arguments and reference definate physical processes which support my claim that no intelligence is required to see what we see. Perhaps More will come to light as our conversation trundles ahead.
I'm not sure how ID being about "looking up close" in any way grants it superiority as a method of discovery. If we're going to stick to an ocular analogy, I'd say that on the one hand, ID is downright myopic. They are squinting so hard they've lost sight of everything but what's real. On the other, they have this feeling that there must be some kind of guiding hand in control of all this, so everything they look at is filtered through that lens. "If it looks designed, it is designed!"
Wellll, wait a minute, bub, says I. That's quite an extraordinary claim. You're going to have to offer more evidence than a subjective impression to justify that statement.
Quote | You are satisfied and find it adequate to say, "Nature just does what it does." That is hardly different than saying, "God did it, so we can't study it." ... What are yousaying? I mentioned some very specific types of things that humans do with their intelligence that of course nature cannot do, such as write novels or build cars. |
You took that quote out of context, or you read something into it that was not intended. The point was that when making statements about nature's "ability" are attributing human qualities where they are not justified. Because although we'd like them to, that rivers don't flow uphill somehow suggests that nature is incomplete or insuffiecient in some way? No.
It flows downhill because it must, by the laws of physics. It does what it does because is has to.
Quote | I think you are finding it an attack upon the value of nature to say that it cannot do the things humans do. Sure, and humans cannot do what nature does. This is not a value judgement, just a difference in qualities. Humans are produced by nature, and we have fantastic minds capable of amazing feats. We can give nature the glory for it, if you like, but the point is, that human focused intelligence accomplishes things which would not happen without intelligent input. |
I'm finding it incorrect and unjustified to dress an unconcious nature in human clothes or feelings. I'm a stickler that way. I think its a dangerous tendency that we humans don't know when to leave well enough alone. Ever read Kurt Vonnegut Jr? In his book Galapagos, the narrator of the story is a cute widdle fuzzy-wuzzy from the distant, post-apocalyptic future. The narrator is actually a descendant of those earlier humans, who now has a smaller brain than his distant ancestors. The cute widdle fuzzy wuzzy claims that the problem with the older humans is that their brains were just a bit too big. Big enough to get into trouble, but not big enough to get out of it. So when they screwed up the planet, the few survivors had the adaptation of brains that didn't grow so big anymore. Sounds about right to me.
Quote | Secondly, I find nature has a music all of her own ... Nature is music.
That may be literally true. There is a whole thread of thought which says that vibration, of which sound is an aspect, is the main method by which existence becomes manifest. It seems compatible with string theory. |
Heh. If there was ever justification for creationists to claim "well, its just a theory!", then I think "string theory" has earned it. Practicing scientists should object to attaching "theory" to the concept. Its a hypotheses, untested and at least so far, untestable. Its very interesting and extremely suggestive work, but totally, completely, utterly undemonstrated at this point.
Quite opposite from evolutionary theory...
Quote | In trying to come up with scenarios for a cell to form, mostly a long list of problems presents itself. Of course life itself doesn't go against the laws of nature, but what I mean is that the chance formation of DNA, proteins, the cell membrane and that sort of thing has not been accounted for, and has run up against many dead ends. Life appears to be discontinuous with nonlife. |
Talk about your problems. There are plenty of this board who have a deep knowledge of the biological sciences. I even know some biology and physics myself. I'm lousy at math, though. In any case, step away from philosophy for awhile and maybe the science itself will give you some new ideas one way or another. Its a win-win, as far as I can tell. Plus, (here's a nudge in the ribs for you) this is your chance to put your money where your mouth is and "look close" like you think all good IDers do.
We'll all grant you that at least so far, we don't have a digital recording of how replicating molecules came to exist. But we're looking, and I bet we come up with a plausible explanation. The great unknown! Our big brains have to look around the corner to see what's there.
Quote | But if you accept frontloading, then again you have to ask yourself, does god continue to meddle? Why would god need to?
Yes, those are the questions. I tend to favor some idea that there is intelligence residing within, perhaps in the DNA, guiding it. It appears like a learn as you go project, yet not a mindless one. |
This doesn't make sense to me. I'm going to see if I can't sum up what I'm hearing from you. Correct me if I'm wrong, and I'll try not to get too snarky.
The god-verse has always existed. The god-verse feels love, but doesn't care. He has some plan, part of which involves the tiny speck called planet earth, and all the life on it, including humans. The god-verse doesn't or can't act directly, so he acts through intermediaries. He's a kind of supervisor, then. The god-verse is trying to stick to the plan, but mistakes occur. Maybe these mistakes aren't the god-verses mistakes. Perhaps they are the mistakes of the intermediaries who act on his behalf. Yet he (or they) learns from these mistakes, and so the plan, of which we are an intentional part, is unfolding constantly.
I'm scratching my head here trying to understand this. What is the plan? Why can't GV work directly? What's the deal with the intermediaries? What are they? How were they created, or did they also always exist? Are they subservient to GV somehow? How the heck did you figure all this out, anyway? Oh, did I ask what the plan was?
It all sounds very Hindu to me.
Quote | Well, I think we are in the dark ages now much as we were 500 years ago. Relativelyspeaking. It was reasonable to suppose that maggots spontaneously arose from rotten meat. It looked that way, it was consistent, and the micro-world didn't exist. If we don't destroy our civilization, in time we will understand very much more about embryonic and other genetic and epigenetic processes, and then, I think, we will have a clearer idea about whether random mutation has the creative power currently attributed to it. |
I agree. The picture will be clearer in the future.
Quote | How do you see ID as laboring under the same limitations as YEC? |
Perhaps later. I'm getting antsy.
Quote | But frontloading IS a kind of process. Isn't drawing up a blueprint, getting parts delivered, and building a house, making a few adjustments as you go, and putting in the finishing decorations a process? |
My understanding of "frontloading" is a sort of magic wand, an imprinting of initial conditions. The implication to me is that god wanted things to happen more or less a certain way, and with a wave of the wand (frontloading), set the universe in motion. Everything after that is happening "just so", because of the frontloading. But frontloading and actual building are two different things.
Frontloading is often referred to by creationists when they talk about "the laws of the universe being just right for life". Of course, they don't admit the anthropic bias. So you never hear them say "its just right for MY life". That's because IF the laws were a little different, OTHER life could have or would have occured, and that's not what god frontloaded things for. No siree, god wanted ME.
I think it was Dembski who referred to frontloading when he suggested that the original biological cell contained DNA for every different kind of life on the planet that would come after. Massive, massive frontloading. As this original "supercell" multiplied, the various sections of DNA that form individual species broke off into daughter cells. So gradually, Dembski's idea was that the supercell, just like a machine, contained all the instructions that would eventually lead to right here, right now, and of course, humans specifically were part of the plan.
What you describe is not what I think creationists mean by frontloading. You're describing a busy infrastructure involving architects, engineers, construction workers, raw material gathers, etc. Even one little person could decide he wants to build a log cabin, say, and then go about the process of doing so. But that's not frontloading. That's tweaking what nature would do by itself without intelligent interference. Its an active, time reliant process. It's a whole series of things, coming together over time to complete a function: forming ideas, drawing up plans, hacking and sawing, dragging and sweating, rearranging, binding and lashing and gluing and nailing, etc.
Quote | ...we have to acknowledge that this being was itself uncaused.
Right, otherwise, what use is he? |
Use? I think this is about the plan again, right? *waits for it*
Quote | Because, if by universe, you mean only dead matter, then it is simply impossible to suppose that it caused itself, nor can dead matter itself have the property of self-existence, uncaused existence. |
So. Dead matter cannot be caused without direct intervention. Life itself is a heckof a lot more complicated than dead matter. And you're saying that neither life nor just plain stuff could happen uncaused.
But this original intelligent, concious creator thing is obviously alive in every meaningful sense. Its certainly more complicated than dead matter. So by that logic, it could not exist either. Its self-contradictory to assign life without a cause while simultaneously exluding it.
Quote | There is no planck time or quantum weirdness without existence. Exsitence is primary. |
I'm with ya.
Quote | The big bang, if it even happened, is not that important because obviously it had a cause. |
That it had a cause is likely. Is that important? I dunno. I think its fascinating... but important? *shrug* I guess I don't really know what that means.
Quote | I don't accept the idea of multiple universes. If there are such, then the one whole is what I would call the universe. Universe, by definition, means ONE. |
I have no evidence for "other universes", and don't make the claim either way. Anyway, its a matter of definition. Semantics, really, and not that interesting of a distinction.
One last thing. Do you or do you not agree that electromagnetism and gravity exist? What about the nuclear force?
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