Well, that all depends on whether you're a materialist or a dualist. Although the dualist still believes we're under an illusion, that the world as we know it is all that there is. Of course there's the answer to your mystery as well.Ryokan said:
Intelligent Design & the tapeworm?
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Dr Adequate
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I dare say you could. I judge you competent to perform any task of which a parrot is capable.Vagabond said:
I explained to you how the theory of evolution explains why the HIV virus kills its host, as you seemed not to understand this. If there is something in my explanation you didn't understand, you could ask me about it instead of whining about it like a petulant child.
Fortunately, there are lots of people reading this thread who are interested in science, so I have not merely cast my pearls before a swine.
You see, I was right... you can manage the stupid tu quoque! Well done! But you see, I get my theory of evolution out of books written by evolutionary biologists, whereas you have patently failed to understand even the most basic principles, so when I point out that you're making it up as you go along, I'm telling the truth.
I notice that you couldn't find any one specific statement I made which is inaccurate. That would be more difficult than just whining about the whole post, I guess.
It seems to me that proponents of the ID theory are making one basic assumption, although I have not seen it stated: namely, that the spider's web and the fly's eye and all other examples of "complexity" are indeed complex in some absolute sense.
This is a somewhat arrogant idea. When we say that something is complex what we really mean is that its level of complexity is high in relation to the ability of our brain to understand things.
Suppose that it were possible to rank everything in the universe according to its complexity, on a scale from 0 to 100: for all we know, the human brain might be somewhere between 0 and 1. What we think of as amazingly complex may be very simple on the universal scale.
If you are a beetle, a grain of sand may seem so complex that it could only have been created by an Intelligent Designer.
This is a somewhat arrogant idea. When we say that something is complex what we really mean is that its level of complexity is high in relation to the ability of our brain to understand things.
Suppose that it were possible to rank everything in the universe according to its complexity, on a scale from 0 to 100: for all we know, the human brain might be somewhere between 0 and 1. What we think of as amazingly complex may be very simple on the universal scale.
If you are a beetle, a grain of sand may seem so complex that it could only have been created by an Intelligent Designer.
I apologise in advance if these seems like name-calling but it isn't, but the majority of IDers also have trouble with even simple concepts like sand grains. It is amazing the lack of basic general knowledge many of them demonstrate. And herein lies the root of the problems, I'd say...allanb said:
Dr Adequate
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No, but I've got to admit I lifted the line about swine and pearls. This is a little different from shrieking "same to you".Iacchus said:Oh come on now! How do we know "you" just didn't get this someplace else?
I'm a little angry with myself, actually --- like a sucker, I really thought Vagabond wanted to know the answer to the question he asked. It's an interesting question, after all. But anyone who really wanted to know would have found out. It seems more like Vagabond wanted, not the answer, but an unanswered question, so as to be a counterexample to his made-up theory of evolution.
* sigh *
Come back, Nick Harman!
fishbob
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Re: Re: Intelligent Design & the tapeworm?
Standard ID argument from ignorance: 'I don't understand how this works, so a designer must have done it'. The official ID movement political correctness guidance handbook warns to avoid the mention of 'god' so as to make ID look sort of sciency and avoid those pesky separation of church and state laws.
By the way, the deepest measurement in the ocean to date is the Challenger Deep, at 35,838 feet. What conch species lives there and who observed it putting air into its shell and all the other cool stuff that I suspect you just made up?
Vagabond said:
Standard ID argument from ignorance: 'I don't understand how this works, so a designer must have done it'. The official ID movement political correctness guidance handbook warns to avoid the mention of 'god' so as to make ID look sort of sciency and avoid those pesky separation of church and state laws.
By the way, the deepest measurement in the ocean to date is the Challenger Deep, at 35,838 feet. What conch species lives there and who observed it putting air into its shell and all the other cool stuff that I suspect you just made up?
Dr Adequate
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Unless you know something about evolution. If you're entirely ignorant of it, then I guess that's what you would think.Vagabond said:
RandFan
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Possibly, it has always been my understanding that the brain is the most complex system in the known universe. Perhaps this is specious or do you mean the potential for something more complex exists?allanb said:
The brain is probably the most complex structure in the known universe;
DuckTapeFileMan
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You could build a quantum computer, that might be more complex than the human brain and more powerful. As it wouldn't be limited to the size of the skull.
Yahweh said:
Alkatran said:
RandFan said:
Aw gee, thanks.
*bows*My article points out that those particular creatures are more in line with an intelligent designer testing biological weaponry, creating stuff to defeat the intelligently-designed defenses someone else made, or just overall being an *******, than the benevolent gods of most religions. When you think about it, given how red in tooth and claw nature is, all of these seem more probable than a monotheistic view and an additional, tacked-on, attempted explanation for why God--entirely counterintuitively--made such horrors as the eye worm. As I write on the webpage, if we're going to go by analogies to human-designed things, God's surprisingly creative at designing implements of torture, and I'm not sure if ID-ists would want the baby-killing liberals to teach that in schools.
Ultimately, yes, I believe such creatures prove beyond a reasonable doubt there's no god as the major religions describe one. One could still exist that was uncaring toward humanity, limited in power and forced to use a process--such as evolution--that auto-creates such Frankensteinian beasties despite a desire not to, or simply a sociopath who did it on purpose to harrass us. This argument of mine is the bastard love child of Epicurus' ancient Argument from Evil, and William Paley's Watchmaker argument.
But I just loved collecting all that cool parasite-related information, as well as getting all those horribly gross and disturbing pics, so I'm glad you all enjoyed it, too.
Iacchus said:
I assure you I don't know. IDers don't know either. There are hunches, guesses, hypothesis and theories, but ultimately nobody knows.
I tend to prefer explanations that can be verified and checked versus explanations that depend on 'a miracle happened'.
It is simply a track record kind of thing. When I look back through history at all the things that have been attributed to gods and supernatural events and were later shown definitively to have been the product of natural causes it seems prudent to reject 'god did it' type arguments in favor of exploring and finding more concrete answers.
Heck, even if god did it that still leaves the question of 'how and when did god do it?' unanswered and worthy of exploring.
As such ID theory seems pointless to me. If one chooses to believe that behind everything is god that is fine. In science courses, however, we do not and ought not, leave it there. We look to answer the when and how of things.
Paul C. Anagnostopoulos
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Well, they do have a specific definition of complex. A biologial mechanism is complex if all possible naturalistic origins of the mechanism have a probability of formation below a universal probability bound (they use 10^150). The problem is computing the probabilities for all possible naturalistic origins.
~~ Paul
Read a book, Iacchus.Iacchus said:Oh come on now! How do we know "you" just didn't get this someplace else?
To those with some understanding of natural selection (the vast majority on this forum, I suspect), Dr. A's post was a very good summation. It addressed Vagabond's question completely; I was shocked when Vagabond failed to see that and called it rambling and pointless. It would appear that both Vagabond and you have been inadequately educated on this topic. That, or you are willfully misrepresenting the theory. It is extremely amusing to see your "oh come on now!"; it shows just a bit of the depths of your ignorance.
DuckTapeFileMan
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Any way AIDS originally inhabited another species, possibly the green monkey.(Cats also have a type of AIDS don't they?)
And I think that it was stable within that species.
I think that given enough time human AIDS could evolve into a non-lethal organism.
The difficulty is that it has a rather large source of uninfected humans to infect so at the moment the AIDS organism has no evolutionary incentive to become non-lethal as it probably did within a small community of monkeys.
It is also a two way street in that there are already some humans that seem to be immune to AIDS so in the future a happy combination of nonlethal infection and immune humans will lead to the organism just existing within the human population.
And I think that it was stable within that species.
I think that given enough time human AIDS could evolve into a non-lethal organism.
The difficulty is that it has a rather large source of uninfected humans to infect so at the moment the AIDS organism has no evolutionary incentive to become non-lethal as it probably did within a small community of monkeys.
It is also a two way street in that there are already some humans that seem to be immune to AIDS so in the future a happy combination of nonlethal infection and immune humans will lead to the organism just existing within the human population.
Beerina
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allanb said:
I never got what was so special about a few light-sensitive cells on skin evolving into an eye, or about a proto-spider drooping sticky stuff out it's woo woo that dried into a filament (or better yet, just gooped up insects so the spider could eat 'em.)
Goop -> thread (probably coincidental with spreading it around -> a web)
Light sensitive cells -> clearer cover so light could get more easily to the living sensitive cells thru the dead skin --> lens and retina, rather quickly if you ask me.