Talk:Argument from design/Archive1

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Thunder

Thunder: it was copied from skeptikwiki but without the "above" quote. (only result on google)   ^Contribs_Talk 14:20, 1 August 2008 (EDT)

arguments for god

Do we have a category for the "arguments for god?" I'm not sure if there are even articles for the others (I can think off the top of my head, only of watchmaker, problem of evil) but here's wikip's list [1]. If we have any of these, we might make a cat for it? En attendant Godot 23:58, 16 June 2011 (UTC)

Removed bit of math fail

"Given these constants are real numbers, and therefore there are infinitely many possible values of them, how does one pick an element at random from an infinite set? What is the probability of picking one such element?"

Elements from an infinite set (strictly speaking, an uncountable set - finite and countable sets are OK with discrete probabilities) can be picked at random using a continuous probability distribution. The chance of each exact value occurring is zero, but the chance of the value being within any arbitrarily small non-empty interval is not zero. This bit was not relevant to the rest of the argument, so I removed it. --Tweenk (talk) 08:06, 26 March 2012 (UTC)

New section

Added 'Backwards causation?'. Anthropomorphism seems worth discussing. Frostbyte (talk) 20:17, 18 April 2014 (UTC)

Technological Evolution

The argument that a man made object such as a watch or a computer has been designed therefore a natural object like a rose has been designed fails to take into account three things:

1) That the watch or computer was designed based upon scientific and engineering principles.

2) That man made objects too have evolved over time. The first person to make a time piece would have taught others how to make them, who in turn improved upon the design and taught others, and so on. When an object gets designed poorly it does not survive leading to a general increase in the complexity and quality of the technological device.

3) Technology also has its version of natural selection (or unnatural selection if you will), an example of which is the competition between Blu-Ray and HD DVD where Blu-Ray was more successful and thus survived whist HD DVD became more or less extinct.

Therefore when a creationist tries to use this argument as a 'proof' of Intelligent Design they are actually shooting themselves in the foot and making the case for evolution just that little bit stronger.--Cmbisme (talk) 08:41, 13 July 2014 (UTC)

You can even have some fun and show them a few of the transitional forms between battleships and aircraft carriers from around WW1. But I've always loved the steel mill with steel parts as an example because you can just start throwing people's own arguments back at them. You mean those fragmented, uncertain records of crucible steels? Clearly made by the dark lord of aluminium to test the faithful. Were you there? King Skeleton (talk) 21:44, 15 October 2014 (UTC)

It's also worth noting that in the context of human design, the designer functions as a selective pressure among others such as the market and the laws of physics, not as an almighty creator who can do as they please. A being who knew all of the answers should never produce anything resembling what we do.

The principle difference between our design and evolution is that ours is like if all organisms but the very highest were colonials: all complex designs are assembled from parts which are themselves designs with their own lineage (things like pumps, motors, etc). This allows for a system where the greater organism can experience substantial change within its own lifetime and still pass these traits to other offspring, not necessarily even its own. Nature has a few cases sort of like that like mitochondria, but not that many. King Skeleton (talk) 21:48, 15 October 2014 (UTC)

Fine tuning

This should really be its own article. RW FB group thread may be useful for cribs (and particularly we should crib large chunks of Stenger) - David Gerard (talk) 12:17, 24 November 2014 (UTC)