ericmurphy
Posts: 2460
Joined: Oct. 2005
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| Quote (improvius @ Dec. 15 2006,22:57) | | Quote (ericmurphy @ Dec. 15 2006,19:30) | | At any rate, Dave has conceded that below a certain point, objects are not so complex as to imply a designer. |
Actually, I don't think he has. If he did, I missed it. I think he's afraid to commit to that one way or another. |
Well, he's at least conceded that there is a line of demarkation between those objects simple enough not to need a designer, and those objects complex enough to require a designer. That looks like what he's saying here:
| Quote (afdave @ Dec. 14 2006,09:04) | Improv... | Quote | So, Dave, did you come up with anything that fails your complexity test? Or does it return true for literally everything? This is important, Dave. You need a baseline or else your conjecture is absolutely meaningless. So just fill in the blank:
"Everything more complex than ____ must be the result of design." |
Very good point. I personally am not setting about to find out where that line should be drawn, but Dembski and Behe and others are. I restrict myself to the clear cut comparisons. IOW, from our study of butterflies (and watches), we know that they reside far, far away from the demarcation line of Design / Non-Design.
I am sure you could provide me some examples of objects which may not be so clear cut and for these we would need a ore rigorous test. I have little interest in these non-clear cut examples in light of the present debate. |
So Dave appears to believe that some objects are simple enough not to need a designer. I'm guessing he thinks anything complex enough to be alive requires a designer. You'll never pin him down on where the line lies, but it's probably somewhere between a quark and a protein.
He also seems to believe that some things are complex enough not to need a designer. He'll protest that he simply doesn't know if God required a designer, but if it's true that he doesn't know, than he has to concede it's at least possible God doesn't need a designer; otherwise he would know. Therefore, he has to concede the possibility that some really complex things don't need a designer. If some complex things might not need a designer, then surely less-complex things also might not need a designer either. But Dave will never agree to that, even though it seems to follow naturally from is own beliefs.
In any event, he does seem to believe there is a line between objects that are simple enough not to need a designer and objects complex enough to require a designer. On the other hand, if you were to sometime later ask him about whether the laws of nature require a designer, he'd probably say they do, and if that's true, then every single thing in the universe, down to the level of quarks and leptons, requires a designer. Unless God just reused parts he found lying around that he didn't have to invent first. Who knows? Maybe electrons were around before God invented himself.
Usually it's a bad sign when your model predicts two mutually-contradictory things. I've pointed this out to Dave before, but he doesn't seem too concerned about it.
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2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
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