Intelligent Design?

[alextemplet]

Gary, you've got me confused on how you can differentiate "design" with "designer". I'll admit they're not exactly the same thing, but just as art implies that there must be an artist, then shouldn't design also imply that there must be a designer? How are you able to discuss the concept of design without addressing the obvious (and very legitimate, imo) questions of who/what this designer is and how it works? That's the biggest thing that's preventing me from being able to accept your theory as real science.

[GaryGaulin]

How are you able to discuss the concept of design without addressing the obvious (and very legitimate, imo) questions of who/what this designer is and how it works? That's the biggest thing that's preventing me from being able to accept your theory as real science.

I'm relieved to see that it is something so simple! For me the "Designer" inference is such a non-issue to the logic of the theory that I didn't think of it as a problem. Like I was saying a Big-Banger is inferred by those who see the Creator being its cause but Big-Bang theory is not thrown out of science because of it.

The only thing that belongs in a theory is the explaining of how a phenomena works so it can be experimented with. What people infer from that which relates to Creator happens outside the theory. There is no way for some theories to avoid that. So I best I can explain how "design" fits into things to improve the scientific accuracy of the "Designer" inferences that others will later make.

I could say something like "Intelligence that inherently produces new designs is a designer." or just "Intelligence is a designer." but the entire theory taken together is required to make proper sense of what that means. Until I am sure I can use the word without causing even more confusion I am best to leave it completely out.

The theory only needs to provide a coherent explanation of "design" to work from. Addressing the "designer" word bridge into the philosophical inferences is then left a separate church/forum type science project. Once again what Judge Jones found needing separating is separated.

Also, what is expected of Creationists is also expected of you and me and all else here. Unscientific biases that would dismiss a theory because of someone inferring a Big-Banger or Gaia a goddess or Designer are certainly not excused.

The theory is to explain what the Discovery Institute website stated as being what the theory explains, not something else!

The theory of intelligent design holds that certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause[1]

The word "design" is only in the title of the theory. It could have been titled almost anything even named after a goddess. As far as science is concerned it's just the name of a theory that none should take literally in the first place. Therefore the theory does not even have to address "design" it could just focus on the emergent intelligence cause of human intelligence.

The reason that I did include "design" is because it was possible to do so, and useful. The title of the theory can then be taken literally to mean it will explain how "design" relates to "intelligence" even though not necessary. And when you look at how the fossil record is accounted for the word "design" is vital to explaining any other way.

never once was there not a predecessor of like design present for the descendant design to have come from

Without the exact word "design" in the logic of the sentence it doesn't work. For example a good one would seem to be "never once was there not a predecessor of like organism present for the descendant organism to have come from" but "organism" is an abstract word relative to things outside the theory not a geometry/engineering "design" that the theory is explaining inside of itself.

Here are places where various properties of design is explained:

From matter/energy itself comes increasingly complex behavior that molecularly self-assembles into learned and instinctual memory based intelligence that responds to environment by attempting to control it for its own design dependant needs.

Either a "good guess" as in conserved domains being used in new combinations. Or a "random guess" as in replication errors that from-scratch would design conserved domains. Successful responses to environment remain in memory in the population (gene pool) to in turn keep going the billions year old cycle of life that through continual reproduction of previous state of genetic memory one replication at a time builds upon a previous design. A cladogram of resultant lineage thus shows a treeslike progression of adapting designs evidenced by the fossil record where never once was there not a predecessor of like design present for the descendant design to have come from.

The behavior of the cell itself produces self-organization into a functional emergent multicellular design.

Is possible to tell how far light generation technology has advanced and possible vision morphology by unique spectral signatures of more efficient types that ionize gasses in the color range and intensity required of eye design.

No matter how the memory system is designed sensory Input is presented resulting in an Output action state based on prior experience.

There is no one right way to form a brain. With all the different sponges and insects and worms and other designs, there are millions of ways to do it. Each results in a different set of instincts.

To an organism that must attach to a surface, bumping into one is a good thing. It will instinctually want to stay there. Its body design (phenotype) will be made for attaching to a surface, presenting another challenge for neurons to coordinate.

If this is one of the steps in the emergence of intelligence then we can predict that inherent in their behavior is the learning towards the next emergent level(s) above this. Achieving a modern genome requires three nucleotides (in DNA letters A,C,T,G) per codon. This is necessary for a design that can code for twenty-something amino acids from the one of four possible nucleotides.

The reason codons exist, is because such a design is necessary to achieve the next emergent level.

In the very beginning before there was life, molecular forces (bonding, polar) were already self-assembling large quantities of simple cell membranes (vesicles)[2] and numerous crystal designs that like snowflakes self-assemble when environmental conditions are favorable includes DNA, RNA, to increasingly complex designs where tubulin protein based crystal designs include ATP synthase and flagellum motors. All of these are made of molecules that like magnets attract to each other then connect together only one way, resulting in a reproducible design.

Observing microscopic single celled hay infusion protozoa show instinctive behavior inherent to design that may not in itself be memory driven intelligence.

New designs at the multicellular level are also in part guided by what the organism itself intelligently and consciously finds desirable in the variety available to select as a mate. Examples include the peacocks where females selecting the largest most attractive tail design, led to males with brilliant displays, even though this makes it more difficult to fly from predators. In humans the looks of "sex symbols" sometimes computer enhanced to represent the conscious ideals not yet common in our morphology.

Chains with more than three Carbon atoms can form many different structural isomers to make rings, cubes, triangles or branch off. These "isomers" have similar (but not exact for example branched design more easily burned) chemical properties as the straight-chain "n" forms shown.

As you can see it is showing how the word "design" relates to chemistry, biology, microbiology, paleontology, crystallography, engineering, programming, electronic type schematics and more. And it already covers the territory of all of abiogenesis and ET plus the best of AI, robotics and university level molecular/cellular intelligence research. Going beyond that point would result in a theory that covers so much it would be approaching ridiculous. Maybe further on down the road how to explain "designer" will fall into place. Let me know when you have an idea. But for now that is unnecessary.

The theory only has to explain what science can reasonably explain and no more. Expecting more than that from it is simply you being unscientific, not the theory.

[alextemplet]

Alright Gary, I think I see your point, and I do accept that a designer/creator/deity/etc. is perhaps the best explanation (for now, at least) behind the Big Bang and possibly a few other phenomena. However, for the development of life, I still think blind evolution by natural selection is a much better explanation. I'm still not sure if ID theory should be considered as scientific, but you've at least caused me to have some respect for it, and that is quite an accomplishment worthy of congrats on your part.

[GaryGaulin]

Alright Gary, I think I see your point, and I do accept that a designer/creator/deity/etc. is perhaps the best explanation (for now, at least) behind the Big Bang and possibly a few other phenomena.

I can also say where there is no science to go any further it is my responsibility to stop right there. Where the line ends up drawn is where Big-Banger Designer territory begins. Have to be glad the theory does not go past there. And I also have to separate what Judge Jones found needed to be separated, which happens the moment the theory goes beyond what was clearly stated by the Discovery Institute the theory explains.

However, for the development of life, I still think blind evolution by natural selection is a much better explanation.

If that works for you then there is no shame in that. It's one of the ways to explain the same thing. Not a theory that replaces ET it's an origin of intelligence theory that explains with its own design dependant word needs, in addition to science already there. Paleontologists and such like the cladogram and morphological cataloging system that Darwin is famed for. Love putting together the tree of life and often only have bones and traces so the intelligence is no longer there anyway.

The benefits of explaining as a product of intelligence is for someone looking for an easy way to add intelligence to their game engine. Also helps show what is going on in Genetic Algorithms that are such good problem solvers by their having the 4 requirements. Natural Selection is something added to zap out some of the replicated designs, not what produces them. NS is a brute force sort of way to influence what they develop towards but they would none the less develop towards something. And GA's take "good guesses" through crossover exchange that are not "blind" which is why they are in GA's and genomes. In your field the differentiating between random and good guess is not necessary but in another it's vital to understand both. And epigenetics is challenging what we know about genes by their being just one part of a programmable memory at another level with coiling system and more. It's great news for the theory that has a place waiting for how that works. But it's already complicating the ET based conventional thinking.

I'm still not sure if ID theory should be considered as scientific, but you've at least caused me to have some respect for it, and that is quite an accomplishment worthy of congrats on your part.

Good enough for right now! At least you know I'm not out of bounds of science.

I also worked on the introduction to be more clear with fewer words. What was being lost in a long paragraph was made its own so it's spaced to stand out as important. There is still work to be done but at least what it was saying should be noticeably easier to understand.

Might be helpful to mention that sometimes I copy-paste what I said in a forum or somewhere then do a quick word change so the theory at least has that in it as a placeholder sort of thing. Better than end up with nothing at all due to time constraints. I recently added a good batch of them including the predicted reason for there being codons. They seem to fit in well but where it looks like a hasty cut-paste from some rambling I had somewhere, it probably was. They in time find the right wording, then another batch is there so its always like there is some work left to be done. So if that were not the case then it would mean that the science part of the theory is not really going anywhere in which case all I have left to do is work on the grammar.

It's not just what the theory is right now to consider, it's what at the year+ current rate of progress it should become by this summer. Just keeps getter all the time as new science becomes available. And just today I found out that the theory is missing something important in the design features of histones, so here we go again with a needing a whole new section just to keep up with science alone! It's always like this which is why for so long I was certain the challenge was developing into something useful even though I had no way of knowing what that would exactly be. That is more determined by where things go in forums. Like for example the introduction is now better worded for someone like you and there is no trilobite bug in it now either. I didn't cause that to happen the forum did. I in a sense move the theory from forum to forum acting as an inference engine as described by group "collective intelligence" in Wikipedia to form new knowledge from the old, which kinda works the same as the scientific method. Presenting it in a forum like this is first of all informal peer-review and you know how theories benefit from as much as they can get. And the title has a beneficial way of making some work hard to give it a good challenge, not a "polite" response like some priest with something they called the Big-Bang wondering what you thought of their math equations to explain red shift and all that. Probably politely think it was great they had a science hobby then wish them well with it. But the Theory Of Intelligent Design is not that way at all, all are ready to rip it to shreds. Adapting to that, made it increasingly better to what you now see.

The computer model, aquariums and other things predated the challenging the theory of ID by writing the theory itself. Months before Ben Stein's movie came a complete change in my prior thinking that the "Theory Of Intelligent Design" had to go. The movie coming had me weirdly agitated and when really riled up in an off-the-wall way what was needed to make a theory popped into my mind then I wrote it down as fast as could not to lose any of the thoughts it needed. I could fuzzily see some of things in between that makes it more resemble what it is right now but the core logic it needed shows up in what was written down. In case you want to see the magic moment here it is:

http://www.kcfs.org/forums/viewtopic.php?p=10099#10099

Before then I saw no way to write that theory. Then it kept getting better until soon I needed a blog for it all. And I must add that I own a dinosaur tracksite with best specimens being studied from the Springfield Science museum so there is plenty of respectable science for me to do without the theory. It's that I knew what I had. Would in time at least get you to say what you just did about it. And even that is supposed to be impossible. I knew that in the science world that would profoundly change conventional thinking. All together it would be nuts to pass up the chance to turn science on its head like this, not nuts for doing so!

Now I just wonder what next. Any ideas?