The Intelligent Designer is so complex...

If the universe was the product of a creator then it most certainly was not the result of intellegent design. It bears all the hallmarks of a rush job done at the last minute as a deadline approaches. I should know, its how I work most of the time.

"What (or who) designed the designer?"

By raising the question of the need for a designer for objects with irreducible complexity, ID also raises the question, "what designed the designer?" By ID's own arguments, a designer capable of creating irreducible complexity must also be irreducibly complex. Unlike with religious creationism, where the question "what created God?" can be answered with theological arguments, this creates a logical paradox in ID, as the chain of designers can be followed back indefinitely, leaving the question of the creation of the first designer dangling. The sort of logic required in sustaining such reasoning is known as circular reasoning, a form of logical fallacy.

One ID counter-argument to this problem invokes an uncaused causer - in other words, a deity - to resolve this problem, in which case ID reduces to religious creationism. At the same time, the postulation of the existence of even a single uncaused causer in the Universe contradicts the fundamental assumption of ID that every complex object requires a designer. Another possible counter-argument might be an infinite regression of designers. However, admitting infinite numbers of objects also allows any arbritarily improbable event to occur, such as an object with "irreducible" complexity assembling itself by chance. Again, this contradicts the fundamental assumption of ID that a designer is needed for every complex object, producing a logical contradiction.

Thus, according to opponents, either attempt to patch the ID hypothesis appears to either result in logical contradiction, or reduces it to a belief in religious creationism. ID then ceases to be a falsifiable theory and loses its ability to claim to be a scientific theory.

Richard Dawkins, biologist and professor at Oxford University, argues that Intelligent Design simply takes the complexity required for life to have evolved and moves it to the "designer" instead. According to Dawkins, ID doesn't explain how the complexity happened in the first place, it just moves it. [60]

Guys, don't reinvent the wheel. People far more... intelligent... than you and me have debated this to a great extent.

My question about consciousness is a philosophical one, and a very old point of contention between the materialist and spiritual views of the world. Does consciousness exist as itself, or must it be an emergent condition of very complex systems?

A lot of current science fiction has the view that the latter is not only necessary but inevitable. I guess we'll see if the 'net ever starts talking back to us.

To expand on my counter-argument (for the sake of discussion or whatever).

If one drops the assumption that consciousness is the product of complexity, it leaves open the possibility that a sentient entity could pop into and out of existence much in the manner of an elementary particle.

As such, and I kind of like this theory because it gibes with my own recall, consciousness without form could exist prior to the formation of the current universe. Or more precisely, could come about in the same moment of the first creation of space and time, as time as we know it was also created at that point.

To have an illusion in the first place, one presumes 'awareness' of said illusion.

On the intelligent design debate brought over from Wikipedia, this is the same flaw in the anti's argument. It assumes that the designer or initial cause must necessarily have been complex. Arguing about characteristics the creator may or may not have and then proceeding from those assumptions as a means of taking apart the ID case seems like a waste of time. It's an unknown. Both sides in this seem to have trouble accepting that some things are just not known.

My apologies for glossing over Dennett's work in an SL forum and imagining that I could prompt anyone to look further into the relevant investigations. In fact, Dennett spends the initial part of Conciousness Explained demolishing the Cartesian inner-homunculus of observation as an aburd infinite regress as you so keenly point out.

It is indeed true that we know very, very little about the universe but that ought not cause us to resign to our armchairs and try and recapitulate all the investigations that have been done before; not only is it wasted effort but it is highly unlikely to yeild new and useful truths. Worst of all, should you - on your own - divine the universe in a grain of sand it ain't much use if you don't tell anyone about it.

I have a little "intuition pump" that I use when trying to frame my limited perceptual skills: I have a cat, I live in the woods. When I imagine how difficult it would be for me to clearly observe the gross behavior of my very macroscopic cat through a few acres of an afternoon's activity I throw up my hypothetical hands in dismay at my limited observational faculties.

The nifty thing about books is that they are the most efficient way of conveying and sharing thought that we've yet invented. That's why I use them so that I might stand on the shoulders of people who know way more about a given subject than I. No amount of navel contemplation will replace that no matter how good your navel or your contemplation.

...that the Intelligent Designer could not have sprung into being on his/her/its own, thus the Theory of an Intelligent Designer Designer.


discuss.

Astrology is scientific theory, courtroom told

Astrology would be considered a scientific theory if judged by the same criteria used by a well-known advocate of Intelligent Design to justify his claim that ID is science, a landmark US trial heard on Tuesday.

Under cross examination, ID proponent Michael Behe, a biochemist at Lehigh University in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, admitted his definition of “theory” was so broad it would also include astrology.

The trial is pitting 11 parents from the small town of Dover, Pennsylvania, against their local school board. The board voted to read a statement during a biology class that casts doubt on Darwinian evolution and suggests ID as an alternative.

The parents claim this was an attempt to introduce creationism into the curriculum and that the school board members were motivated by their evangelical Christian beliefs. It is illegal to teach anything with a primarily religious purpose or effect on pupils in government-funded US schools.

Supporters of ID believe that some things in nature are simply too complex to have evolved by natural selection, and therefore must be the work of an intelligent designer.

Peer review

Behe was called to the stand on Monday by the defence, and testified that ID was a scientific theory, and was not “committed” to religion. His cross examination by the plaintiffs’ attorney, Eric Rothschild of the Philadelphia law firm Pepper Hamilton, began on Tuesday afternoon.

Rothschild told the court that the US National Academy of Sciences supplies a definition for what constitutes a scientific theory: “Theory: In science, a well-substantiated explanation of some aspect of the natural world that can incorporate facts, laws, inferences, and tested hypotheses.”

Because ID has been rejected by virtually every scientist and science organisation, and has never once passed the muster of a peer-reviewed journal paper, Behe admitted that the controversial theory would not be included in the NAS definition. “I can’t point to an external community that would agree that this was well substantiated,” he said.

Behe said he had come up with his own “broader” definition of a theory, claiming that this more accurately describes the way theories are actually used by scientists. “The word is used a lot more loosely than the NAS defined it,” he says.

Hypothesis or theory?

Rothschild suggested that Behe’s definition was so loose that astrology would come under this definition as well. He also pointed out that Behe’s definition of theory was almost identical to the NAS’s definition of a hypothesis. Behe agreed with both assertions.

The exchange prompted laughter from the court, which was packed with local members of the public and the school board.

Behe maintains that ID is science: “Under my definition, scientific theory is a proposed explanation which points to physical data and logical inferences.”

“You've got to admire the guy. It’s Daniel in the lion’s den,” says Robert Slade, a local retiree who has been attending the trial because he is interested in science. "But I can’t believe he teaches a college biology class."

Yawn. This is Schrodinger's Cat amended by Wigner's Friend, all over again. Schrodinger can't look at the cat in the box and establish the measurement for the collapse of the wavefunction when a quantum system is measured. Only when Wigner comes into the room and joins Schrodinger are the results of the experiment known: dead cat/sad friend or alive cat/happy friend. Wigner must "create" Schrodinger as the conscious cause of wavefunction collapse, before the collapse can occur.

Been there, done that, didn't see the forecasted results, went into scientific rinse and repeat mode, came out with better theories.

Dress it anyway you like (and the philosophical gowns y'all have bought above are soooo beautiful!), the superimposition of conscious states is not paradoxical because there is no interaction between the multiple quantum states of a particle - and therefore it does not stray beyond natural characterisitics. The state of the general system is a linear sum of possible states. If you think you've found consciousness, you've probably only found a larger, indeterminate state.

So if you want to find God in the details, you'll have to go way further in and way further down.

Ask me who invented sarcasm .