An Accident? Convince Me...

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ughaibu
 
Reply Tue 30 Mar, 2010 06:29 pm
@Amperage,
Amperage;146384 wrote:
Nothing exists without a reason for existing as far as I am aware of in my understanding of science, nature, and reality.
Your statement is too vague.
1) I have reasons for living, but I couldn't have had those reasons before I was alive
2) the pile of books on my computer exists for the reason that I put them there, but not for any purpose
3) the reason that the ashtray exists in front of me is so that I can neatly dispose of ash and dog ends
4) anything mathematically random exists for no reason, for example, the binary string entailed by whether my sentences contain even or odd numbers of letters, but I have reasons for saying and writing what I do.
 
Rob phil
 
Reply Tue 30 Mar, 2010 06:50 pm
@Amperage,
Amperage;146392 wrote:
no that makes sense...I see what you are saying....You're basically saying that for something to be an accident implies that something else was intended that was not the accident itself.

For me to spill milk and that be classified as an accident I must have had some different intent with the milk other than spilling it







just a side note....i then proceed to cry


Sweet! I've made a contribution!Smile
 
Arjuna
 
Reply Tue 30 Mar, 2010 07:05 pm
@Amperage,
Rob;146391 wrote:
Yeah it seems like to have an accident there has to be an original intent in the first place even if its for a certain accident not to occur. Am I making any sense to anyone besides myself? :\ I'm new to a lot of this.:brickwall:
Definitely making sense. Sort of. To understand the word accident, you have to comprehend intention. Intendiendo?

So with biology, we customarily talk about things in terms of purpose, whether we mean to or not. That's why we get this little perspective bump from imagining that actually none of it results from any intention.

To make it even more complicated, we're talking about the human body...the state of which, at any particular moment, is influenced by human intention. That's voluntary muscles, bub.
Amperage;146392 wrote:
no that makes sense...I see what you are saying....You're basically saying that for something to be an accident implies that something else was intended that was not the accident itself.

For me to spill milk and that be classified as an accident I must have had some different intent with the milk other than spilling it







just a side note....i then proceed to cry
Laughing
 
TurboLung
 
Reply Tue 30 Mar, 2010 08:38 pm
@ughaibu,
Quote:
Please tell me what you mean by 'accident'.
That life is not intentional.
Quote:
Selective pressures on accidents produce apparent design.
The word "selective" in your answer does not help your cause. Fail - unconvinced.
Quote:
Exactly.

This doesn't look like an accident to me either:

http://i.livescience.com/images/ig35...akes_01_09.jpg
Do I even need to explain the differences in a human body and a snow flake? Fail - unconvinced.

[quote]Are you by chance talking about the Primordial Soup Theory?[/quote]
No. I am a Darwinist, however, evolution looks more like a plan than an accident to me.
Quote:
Who thinks its an accident?
Most people on this forum.
Quote:
You mean, you think that the appendix is there as a result of design?
The appendix did serve a purpose previous. Fail - unconvinced.
Quote:
Is it so that doctors could make more money taking it out when it goes bad, so they would not have to suffer with only driving E Class Mercedes, and could instead drive S Class Mercedes? Or did god just like giving humans more opportunities for pain and suffering because he is a sadist?
You ignore the complexity of our bodies and you argue the fact that we are not designed perfectly. Why do you assume I believe in a Christian-type God? I do not. Perhaps we are an alien experiment. Broaden your mind. Fail - unconvinced.

Quote:
And do you think that the complexity and unreliability of the eye is by design? Did god want most eyes to fail to work properly, or is he an incompetent manufacturer?
Porsches break down. Fail - unconvinced.

Quote:
Please explain how the high-maintenance, low-reliability human body shows evidence of design. It is a cobbled together mess.
The human body serves its function; to pass on genes. It is perfect for that in our environment. Fail - unconvinced.

Quote:
I think that your question is referring to the fact that the human body is very elaborate and it seems very unlikely that we were created like this. I guess the answer is in our ancestors. If we evolved from very simple organisms over time than it does not seem very hard to believe. For myself at least. I dunno.
Simple organisms evolving/incubating into the human body does not appear like an accident. Fail - unconvinced.

Quote:
Some time ago, I had an episode. I'd been studying cardiac anatomy and physiology and after having worked and worked to see it, all the sudden the whole functioning of the heart appeared in my mind. It's a complex dual pump for a pressurized system. But to understand the heart, you also have to bring in kidney, nervous, and hormonal function. It was a WOW moment.
Convincing.

Quote:
Your statement is too vague.
Incorrect. It is very simple.

Quote:
1) I have reasons for living, but I couldn't have had those reasons before I was alive
Not relevant to question. Fail - unconvinced.
Quote:
2) the pile of books on my computer exists for the reason that I put them there, but not for any purpose
The piles of books on your desk were created by a plethora of minds, from manufacturers, resource collectors, writers, discoverers etc. Fail - unconvinced.
Quote:
3) the reason that the ashtray exists in front of me is so that I can neatly dispose of ash and dog ends
Refer "pile of books" line of thought. Fail - unconvinced.
Quote:
4) anything mathematically random exists for no reason, for example, the binary string entailed by whether my sentences contain even or odd numbers of letters, but I have reasons for saying and writing what I do.
The words in your sentence were designed and your sentence was thought out [although not thoroughly]. The number of letters in your sentence can easily be controlled by you. Fail - unconvinced.
 
ughaibu
 
Reply Tue 30 Mar, 2010 08:42 pm
@TurboLung,
TurboLung;146439 wrote:
Fail - unconvinced.
As this is your response to all my suggested interpretations of "reason", and you haven't given a different interpretation, for the moment, I'll conclude that there was no meaning.
 
TurboLung
 
Reply Tue 30 Mar, 2010 08:44 pm
@ughaibu,
ughaibu;146443 wrote:
As this is your response to all my suggested interpretations of "reason", and you haven't given a different interpretation, for the moment, I'll conclude that there was no meaning.


"reason" = intentional. "Intentional" can only mean from intelligence.
 
ughaibu
 
Reply Tue 30 Mar, 2010 08:59 pm
@TurboLung,
TurboLung;146445 wrote:
"reason" = intentional. "Intentional" can only mean from intelligence.
So, when I see a certain rock that has fallen from the cliff side, your hypothesis isn't that the reasons for it having fallen are to be found in geological considerations and gravity, but that intelligence was involved and it was intentionally moved from the top to the bottom of the cliff?

ETA: a crucial missing "not" added.
ETA: I must be really tired, unnecessary "not" removed.
 
Krumple
 
Reply Tue 30 Mar, 2010 09:10 pm
@TurboLung,
TurboLung;146183 wrote:
This is a question for those who believe life is an accident.

Looking at the human body; it doesn't look like an accident to me.

Please explain.


Perhaps from the onset of someone who knows very little of the human body, they might get that impression. I have studied it quite a bit and I don't see it as being intelligently designed.

The appendix? All it has to do is get infected and it can potentially kill the person. If this was intelligently designed it must just have been a kill switch for god to smite the person easier. Right?

What about the lack of the ability to synthesize Vitamin C? Almost all other animals have the ability yet the human lacks it. If a human goes too long without it, it can become sick with scurvy.

There is a huge list of defects as far as I am concerned with the functioning or problems of the human body. I wouldn't say the human body was just tossed together like ignorant theists like to try and argue. Instead the human body developed along a path of what worked and was passed on. Even though the human body has many shortcomings it works enough to pass on it's genes. The human body evolved over millions of years, in the form of other species. We have within our genetic code the ability to grow wings, but it is dormant.
 
Arjuna
 
Reply Tue 30 Mar, 2010 09:23 pm
@TurboLung,
TurboLung;146439 wrote:
No. I am a Darwinist, however, evolution looks more like a plan than an accident to me.
Surely a little philosophy can help us examine what we can learn from how something "looks"?
 
TurboLung
 
Reply Tue 30 Mar, 2010 11:06 pm
@ughaibu,
ughaibu;146455 wrote:
So, when I see a certain rock that has fallen from the cliff side, your hypothesis isn't that the reasons for it having fallen are to be found in geological considerations and gravity, but that intelligence was involved and it was intentionally moved from the top to the bottom of the cliff?

ETA: a crucial missing "not" added.
ETA: I must be really tired, unnecessary "not" removed.


Very good, but we are not talking about rocks. Fail. Unconvinced.

---------- Post added 03-31-2010 at 03:17 PM ----------

Krumple;146462 wrote:
The appendix? All it has to do is get infected and it can potentially kill the person.


If the appendix wasn't useful and benefit humans moreso than hinder them, then evolution would not have led to the appendix. The appendix helped in getting humans to this point. Fail. Unconvinced.

Quote:
If this was intelligently designed it must just have been a kill switch for god to smite the person easier. Right?
Incorrect. Read above. Fail. Unconvinced.

Quote:
What about the lack of the ability to synthesize Vitamin C? Almost all other animals have the ability yet the human lacks it. If a human goes too long without it, it can become sick with scurvy.
Evolution has deemed the lack of synthesizing vitamin C more beneficial than the ability to do so. Perhaps the energy used to produce this system was outweighed by other more beneficial functions. Perhaps we did not require the function as vitamin c is easily available to most human beings. If the system required it, then evolution would have led us towards it. Fail. Unconvinced.

Quote:
There is a huge list of defects as far as I am concerned with the functioning or problems of the human body.
You assume the designer must be perfect. Why? You assume that the design must be perfect. Why? Regardless of "defects", it is stranger to say that the human body is a mere accident that just happened due to outside forces. Fail. Unconvinced.

Quote:
Instead the human body developed along a path of what worked and was passed on.
A string of unimaginable accidents that led to the human body? Fail. Unconvinced.

Quote:
Even though the human body has many shortcomings it works enough to pass on it's genes.
It appears that the human body is only there to pass on genes. Fair enough, but why? Why would an accident without design want to pass on genes? Fail. Unconvinced.

Quote:
The human body evolved over millions of years, in the form of other species. We have within our genetic code the ability to grow wings, but it is dormant.
Look at the wing. Is this also another accident? Fail. Unconvinced.
 
ughaibu
 
Reply Wed 31 Mar, 2010 12:31 am
@TurboLung,
TurboLung;146502 wrote:
Fail. Unconvinced.
As you're the character ostensibly offering a position, the words "fail. unconvinced" are negligible. Apparently you have no case.
 
jeeprs
 
Reply Wed 31 Mar, 2010 12:51 am
@Jebediah,
Jebediah;146227 wrote:
Exactly.

This doesn't look like an accident to me either:

http://i.livescience.com/images/ig35_snowflakes_01_09.jpg


Ah yes. But snowflakes are patterns. Patterns are one thing - DNA is another. DNA carries information. This information acts to specify the development of organisms. Outside of living cells, there is nothing in nature that encodes information. There are plenty of patterns, but no codes. Patterns don't cause anything to happen. Codes do.

---------- Post added 03-31-2010 at 05:56 PM ----------

Incidentally I am not a creationist. But I think it is a mistake to believe that life occurred fortuitously.
 
ughaibu
 
Reply Wed 31 Mar, 2010 12:58 am
@jeeprs,
jeeprs;146536 wrote:
Outside of living cells, there is nothing in nature that encodes information. There are plenty of patterns, but no codes. Patterns don't cause anything to happen. Codes do.
This is untrue, patterns of static electric charge cause lightning to follow a course from A to B. Whether those patterns constitute information or codes is a matter of how the terms are defined.
 
TurboLung
 
Reply Wed 31 Mar, 2010 01:47 am
@ughaibu,
ughaibu;146540 wrote:
This is untrue, patterns of static electric charge cause lightning to follow a course from A to B. Whether those patterns constitute information or codes is a matter of how the terms are defined.


This is where atheists' arguments always go - clutching at straws.

BTW, I am an agnostic.
 
jeeprs
 
Reply Wed 31 Mar, 2010 03:12 am
@TurboLung,
the ideas of chance vs design, accident vs destiny, are philosophically very interesting. I do wonder if it suits liberal individualism to believe that life arose by chance, because it implies complete freedom for the self to invent itself. Whereas, under the various religious regimens, there are obligations implicit in the way we have come into being.

In Indian religions, the idea of evolution is not at all alien as there is an instinctive kind of parallel with the idea of reincarnation. After all, if you behave like an animal, goes the theory, then you will be reborn as one. However, even though there is no explicit conflict between the Darwinian account of evolution and the various Indian creation myths, the idea that life arose fortuitously would still be regarded, generally, as 'a wrong view', because it would seem to imply that there was no real foundation to the ethical law ('dharma').
 
Krumple
 
Reply Wed 31 Mar, 2010 04:02 am
@jeeprs,
jeeprs;146568 wrote:
However, even though there is no explicit conflict between the Darwinian account of evolution and the various Indian creation myths, the idea that life arose fortuitously would still be regarded, generally, as 'a wrong view', because it would seem to imply that there was no real foundation to the ethical law ('dharma').


I find it incredibly funny that you say life couldn't fortuitously arise yet everything in life is fortuitous. You are not born specifically, there is many chances that you would have never been born. Change a few elements and you would have never existed. Everything in life is random and the luck of the draw. Interesting how you dismiss only one part and ignore all the other aspects as if you accept them being random. Or perhaps you think nothing at all is random, that everything happens specifically out of purpose.
 
jeeprs
 
Reply Wed 31 Mar, 2010 04:29 am
@TurboLung,
It is patently not true that everything in life is fortuitous. There is luck, for sure, but not everything happens by chance.

The role and nature of chance in Darwin's theory is a very interesting question. Chance is the engine, but natural selection drives the process, so it is said. But I think in this context, it is not possible to determine if there are factors other than chance and necessity. Before Darwin, biologists all thought that there were laws of form. Of course this has all been discarded by Darwinism, but it is a very difficult thing to test for. The only way you could really do it would be to survey life-bearing planets for similarities. There might be a tendency for some morphes to emerge. We simply can't say that there isn't.

It is interesting that there is such excitement about the Large Hadron Collider at the moment. They are trying to figure out what matter is made of. Just dumb stuff. And yet many people seem so utterly convinced that we have a 'theory of everything' when it comes to life itself, which is infinitely more complex than matter. As if there is no possibility that the current theory might not have to be augmented or revised in some way. Do you really think such questions are all settled once for all?
 
kennethamy
 
Reply Wed 31 Mar, 2010 07:23 am
@jeeprs,
jeeprs;146536 wrote:

---------- Post added 03-31-2010 at 05:56 PM ----------

Incidentally I am not a creationist. But I think it is a mistake to believe that life occurred fortuitously.


But who believes that? Certainly no scientist does. Perhaps you are saying that it is a mistake to believe that the cause of life is design. In that case you are right. Many people think that is a mistake.

---------- Post added 03-31-2010 at 09:26 AM ----------

jeeprs;146568 wrote:
the ideas of chance vs design, accident vs destiny, are philosophically very interesting..


The trouble is that those dichotomies are false dichotomies, since to say the something happened by accident need not be to say that it had no cause.
 
Pyrrho
 
Reply Wed 31 Mar, 2010 08:15 am
@Amperage,
Amperage;146384 wrote:
By purpose I simply mean the reason for a things existence. Nothing exists without a reason for existing as far as I am aware of in my understanding of science, nature, and reality.



So by "purpose" you mean "cause"? If so, then of course, there is a cause or are causes for the appendix to exist.


Amperage;146384 wrote:

By what standard do you critique the "supreme-ness" or lack thereof of the design of the human eye? Without the design specs so to speak how can we know how well something is designed?



We don't need to look at design specifications to know that an extremely unreliable car is crap. If the design specs involved intending for it to be crap, then it was fulfilling the design, but it is still crap.

Likewise, with the human eye, it is so unreliable that, if it was designed, it is a poor design, either on purpose (in which case the designer is evil, wanting it to fail) or by accident (in which case the designer is incompetent).


Amperage;146384 wrote:

I may look at a toothpick and say, "hey that toothpick seems to be poorly designed because look how easy it breaks", but a toothpick is not designed to withstand breaking, so while my observation may be correct in one sense, it still fails to demonstrate the poor design of the toothpick per what it is supposed to be.



So, you think the eye is designed for something other than seeing well? If so, you have a very unusual take on the subject. And if not, then if the eye is designed, it is a very poor design, because it is extremely unreliable. Hence the need that most people have for glasses, contact lenses, eye surgery and drugs, to correct the errors of "design".
 
Amperage
 
Reply Wed 31 Mar, 2010 09:15 am
@Pyrrho,
Pyrrho;146652 wrote:
We don't need to look at design specifications to know that an extremely unreliable car is crap. If the design specs involved intending for it to be crap, then it was fulfilling the design, but it is still crap.
If something is exactly what it is supposed to be it's crap?

The whole point I'm trying to make is that to determine if a car is unreliable one must have a standard by which they are judging. Is a car unreliable since I'm forced to change the oil every 3 months? Is it unreliable because it can't withstand a grenade blast? Is it unreliable because it only lasts X amount of miles?

Pyrrho;146652 wrote:
So, you think the eye is designed for something other than seeing well? If so, you have a very unusual take on the subject. And if not, then if the eye is designed, it is a very poor design, because it is extremely unreliable. Hence the need that most people have for glasses, contact lenses, eye surgery and drugs, to correct the errors of "design".
The point I'm trying to draw, and I hope you at least kind of started to see it with the toothpick analogy I gave previously, is that to say something is "unreliable" or a "poor design" is not enough. Compared to what? Your image of what an eye ought to be? Why ought an eye be that? Is an eye poorly designed on the basis that I don't have infrared vision? Or X-ray vision? Is it unreliable because clarity goes down in low light conditions? Is it unreliable because an eye, like all material things, is corruptible? Are you seeing the pattern here?....get it seeing the pattern
 
 

 
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