Intelligent design and extinctions

[armoured saint]

Quote from ZZZzzzzzzz:

You can never know the real intended purpose of a designer by examination of a design alone, especially when our own human mind itself would be a product of the design of a designer of the Universe.

A computer program cannot know who is the programmer, nor their reason, nor their purpose in writing the program...then again, neither can the computer itself know the computer programmer...

Knowing "something" about "something" doesn't reveal the truth of the whole...

My guess is the person who started this thread is having some issues with their personal faith, and is trying to deal with that problem on a purely "logical" level.

In the end he will either put his faith in his doubts which are a product of his own human mind, or he will put his faith in God to attempt to rise above the limits of his own human mind.

We can't know everything about
anything, but this does not stop us
from knowing something. And we can't
know the motives of another person
with certitude, but we can glean
insight through careful examination.


The problem with omnipotence is that
anything and everything is possible
with it therefore it's used as an
convenient excuse for complete
ignorance.


Your position is simply how can we
know anything at all with certitude
about something in which anything at
all is possible? Well, how can we know
with certitude that glass of water, or
grain of sand? Or the motives of another?

The rational answer is
we examine the evidence and
construct the most reasonable
explanation we can that includes as
much of the pieces of data as possible.

A Designer or a grain of sand, the
fundamental process is no different.
Gather evidence, construct a
reasonable explanation, learn smthg
about its properties, with more or less
certitude.

Continue the process as additional
data comes in, constructing an ever
more sophisticated, and accurate model.

 

[ZZZzzzzzzz]

"Your position is simply how can we
know anything at all with certitude
about something in which anything at
all is possible?"

This has been addressed by philosophers since the beginning.

Sure, you can know your own experience as your own experience. A dream is real dream, there is no such thing as a "fake" dream that happens during the dream cycle. So what does that partial knowledge reveal?

You can know the input from your senses as your own experience, certainly.

However, you cannot know the forest by examination of a few trees...

You cannot know all the laws of nature by examination of one law alone...

You simply cannot know the whole by examination of the parts alone.

If you had never seen an automobile, had no understanding of them at all...and someone came along give you a steering wheel would you know the car? If they gave you all the individual parts and you could not assemble them would you know the car? Say you could assemble them but had no gasoline, would you really know the car, and its designer's intention?

Science has done a marvelous job of improvement of the physical side of life, but is clueless as to why life exists, what the purpose of life is, and why life should be lived one way or another.

Some people will dismiss these questions and just drown themselves in pure materialism, and that's their choice, I have no objection as long as their lives don't prevent me from living life the way I want to...

Every answer throughout history by reasonable men has been "reasonable" but human reason is not synonymous with unchanging truth. The idea that the sun revolved around the earth was most reasonable at the time, given the point of view of those reasonable first scientists...

"Or the motives of another?"

You cannot know the motives of another...they could have a hidden motive you are unaware of or don't understand.

Quote from armoured saint:

We can't know everything about
anything, but this does not stop us
from knowing something. And we can't
know the motives of another person
with certitude, but we can glean
insight through careful examination.


The problem with omnipotence is that
anything and everything is possible
with it therefore it's used as an
convenient excuse for complete
ignorance.


Your position is simply how can we
know anything at all with certitude
about something in which anything at
all is possible? Well, how can we know
with certitude that glass of water, or
grain of sand? Or the motives of another?

The rational answer is
we examine the evidence and
construct the most reasonable
explanation we can that includes as
much of the pieces of data as possible.

A Designer or a grain of sand, the
fundamental process is no different.
Gather evidence, construct a
reasonable explanation, learn smthg
about its properties, with more or less
certitude.

 

[armoured saint]

You cannot know all the laws of nature by examination of one law alone...

You simply cannot know the whole by examination of the parts alone.

Quote from ZZZzzzzzzz:

"Your position is simply how can we
know anything at all with certitude
about something in which anything at
all is possible?"

This has been addressed by philosophers since the beginning.

Sure, you can know your own experience as your own experience. A dream is real dream, there is no such thing as a "fake" dream that happens during the dream cycle. So what does that partial knowledge reveal?

You can know the input from your senses as your own experience, certainly.

Repeatable, reliable knowledge does exist that is common to everyone's experience.

However, you cannot know the forest by examination of a few trees...

You are wrong, some things about a forest can be understood by careful examination of a few trees. Some things about the whole can be understood by examination of its elements.

If you had never seen an automobile, had no understanding of them at all...and someone came along give you a steering wheel would you know the car? If they gave you all the individual parts and you could not assemble them would you know the car? Say you could assemble them but had no gasoline, would you really know the car, and its designer's intention?

Having those pieces of the car before me, as I began to understand how they fit together, yes i would begine to understand the nature of the car and the intentions of its Designer.

Much like I would begin to see the whole of a PUZZLE as the pieces began to fit together.

Science has done a marvelous job of improvement of the physical side of life, but is clueless as to why life exists, what the purpose of life is, and why life should be lived one way or another.

It's not the endeavor of science to answer the question of why. Science seeks to form reliable knowledge by examining/codifying REPEATABLE events.

The question of 'why' is the purview of philosophy, which has its roots in logic and reason, and is shaped by scientific knowledge.

Some people will dismiss these questions and just drown themselves in pure materialism, and that's their choice, I have no objection as long as their lives don't prevent me from living life the way I want to...

Obviously, you do have an objection as evidenced by your prolific replies here

Every answer throughout history by reasonable men has been "reasonable" but human reason is not synonymous with unchanging truth. The idea that the sun revolved around the earth was most reasonable at the time, given the point of view of those reasonable first scientists...

FAITH has also been shaped by scientific knowledge too. Since you are so willing to dismiss reason on the basis of what you say above, you should have no problem rejecting FAITH by the same token

"Or the motives of another?"

You cannot know the motives of another...they could have a hidden motive you are unaware of or don't understand.

Because you can't know with certitude, you don't even try to gather any insight or understanding as the why another did this or that? I find that hard to believe..

 

[ZZZzzzzzzz]

"You are wrong, some things about a forest can be understood by careful examination of a few trees. Some things about the whole can be understood by examination of its elements."

Knowledge of "some things" doesn't reveal knowledge of the whole.

Oh, and you can never know what the outside of the forest looks like from inside the forest. Without the ability to stand apart from a forest, you wouldn't ever know it to be a forest, you would be just another person lost amongst trees...

Doh!

Quote from armoured saint:

You cannot know all the laws of nature by examination of one law alone...

You simply cannot know the whole by examination of the parts alone.

Repeatable, reliable knowledge does exist that is common to everyone's experience.



You are wrong, some things about a forest can be understood by careful examination of a few trees. Some things about the whole can be understood by examination of its elements.



Having those pieces of the car before me, as I began to understand how they fit together, yes i would begine to understand the nature of the car and the intentions of its Designer.

Much like I would begin to see the whole of a PUZZLE as the pieces began to fit together.



It's not the endeavor of science to answer the question of why. Science seeks to form reliable knowledge by examining/codifying REPEATABLE events.

The question of 'why' is the purview of philosophy, which has its roots in logic and reason, and is shaped by scientific knowledge.



Obviously, you do have an objection as evidenced by your prolific replies here



FAITH has also been shaped by scientific knowledge too. Since you are so willing to dismiss reason on the basis of what you say above, you should have no problem rejecting FAITH by the same token



Because you can't know with certitude, you don't even try to gather any insight or understanding as the why another did this or that? I find that hard to believe..

 

[I am...]

Quote from Cache Landing:

Let's assume that this planet was created specifically for what we call modern man, and that this isn't just extreme arrogance.

Quote from Cache Landing:

Many believers say the earth was created FOR man. Using the death of any animal or plant as a argument against creationism is pointless because nobody ever claimed the earth was created for the other species.

Wait...it's looks like we just got a claim in from the Sasquatch Militia. This may go all the way to the Kansas Kreation Kourt.

Let's assume Mars was created specifically for what we call "Martians". Why then are Martians extinct?

Let's assume Earth was created for the Black Plague and that this isn't just extreme arrogance. Using the death of any human or animal as an argument against creationism is pointless because no other diseases have claimed the earth was created for any other viral strains.

Jesus

 

[yip1997]

Quote from stu:

Yes, but why do you believe that?
I am interested to hear because there appears no substantial reason or evidence anywhere, as to why a process of natural evolution should have intelligence built into its design process, thereby making it an artificial design process.

Don’t misunderstand, I am not saying you should not believe anything you want, but on the basis, "it is possible" , anything is possible, even in the face of all evidence, knowledge and understanding that a contrary is the case.
On those terms there is no meaningful conersation to be had. Is there?

I don't think my belief is "unreasonable". Our intelligence is built on the rules learned by observing the nature. If the nature is dumb, can we learn from it? (Of course, we can. Everything is possible.)

What is "Intelligence"? Is it an ability to learn and reason? Is it an ability to discover?

The "better" one performs, the more intelligent one is. The concept of "better" provides an "optimization" concept. When we build an intelligent system, we mean we build a system that can learn and adapt. We mean the system can optimize.

An intelligent system doesn't need to have a mind. It might not live. However, it can adapt and optimize in a certain way.

The natural evolution is a powerful optimization process. It is indeed unreasonable for me not to use "intelligent" to describe the process.

 

[FanOfFridays]

I see that the Disgusting Troll has some new victims. It must be nice to have some unsuspecting noobs upon whom you can practice your black art, Z.

armoured saint and smilingsynic, please make sure you make yourself aware of the real motivations of the Disgusting Troll ZZZ before you engage him. Also, please take note of his join date and his total posts. If this is not a sign of dysfunction, I don't know what is. And, unbelievably, he has other ET aliases, under which he was banned (Optional777 and ARogueTrader). Ask him why he has been banned twice. You may get an interesting answer.

http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/showt...302784&highlight=troll+zoologists#post1302784

Here's a summary of the Disgusting Alcoholic Troll's faith. He once said that children in pediatric cancer wards must have done something wrong to end up there because 'God does not make mistakes'. Other sickening statements can be found by searching his long ID thread.

 

[smilingsynic]

Quote from traderNik:

I see that the Disgusting Troll has some new victims. It must be nice to have some unsuspecting noobs upon whom you can practice your black art, Z.

armoured saint and smilingsynic, please make sure you make yourself aware of the real motivations of the Disgusting Troll ZZZ before you engage him. Also, please take note of his join date and his total posts. If this is not a sign of dysfunction, I don't know what is. And, unbelievably, he has other ET aliases, under which he was banned (Optional777 and ARogueTrader). Ask him why he has been banned twice. You may get an interesting answer.

http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/showt...302784&highlight=troll+zoologists#post1302784

Here's a summary of the Disgusting Alcoholic Troll's faith. He once said that children in pediatric cancer wards must have done something wrong to end up there because 'God does not make mistakes'. Other sickening statements can be found by searching his long ID thread.

Thanks for the heads-up, but I was aware of this already. His illogical arguments do not infuriate me; most of the public does not know how to think critically, and I hope that all of them start to trade. All I care about is what I do, and I do my best to support what I say with copious evidence and cogent reasoning.

 

[I am...]

Quote from Hansel H:

Hans: Here I believe you are saying the self is an illusion. This is an idea very popular with modern thinkers. It's a very dangerous idea that I don't accept.

Yes. This is the self I spoke of when I said something like, "Lay down your life that you may take it up again". This self breaks away from the real Self to express an opposing thought system. Part of the opposition is a kind of death wish. The questions is, can you lay down the death wish without laying down the self it is killing? Perhaps. But for the same amount of mind training it would require to accomplish this, you could just as easily lay down the breakaway self entirely.

This is "dangerous" to the extent that its like a voluntary extinction. Only those who no longer see value in the breakaway self would consider this, let alone actually attempt it. But the rewards are well worth it. The Self is awesome, and immortal.

The path that leads to this identity exchange generally goes like this:

Dualism
Semi-dualism
Non-dualism
Pure non-dualism

Non-dualism includes authentic Buddhistic legacy. It also includes the Vedanta as correctly interpreted by Shankara.

I, Jesus, have been teaching pure non-dualism since 30 AD. It has been popularily interpreted in a dualistic way, as early as the Postle Paul. Pure non-dualism is just not all that popular. Paul was a real crowd pleaser. And the crowd is all about dualism. This includes the three Abrahamic religions. Semi-dualism includes the New Age genre. The path narrows until you get to pure non-dualism. This accepts nothing but God. The mind that makes this world is given back to Self, choosing it's own extinction.

Jesus

 

[I am...]

Quote from Hansel H:

Hans: This is determinism. You either believe in it or you don't. There's no way to prove or disprove it; it's just a matter of preference. I think that we have free will and reject the notion that the Universe is completely deterministic. I can't prove this though. It's just a belief based on my own experience.

Something to consider...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=18HFs4DfoTc

Yes, determinism is the right word. However, I prefer to use the word self-determinism with a small "s" to distinguish it from the Self.

The small "s" self is what makes this world, and divides itself into a legion of even smaller selves. I've called this world a "wind-up toy". For conversation purposes, let's just say your fate is determined during the wind-up phase. Once the toy is let loose, your fate is sealed. The toy simply unwinds whats been wound. In computer terms, it executes the code exactly as it's been written.

If you look at the world, you can see that every self's fate is pretty much the same in the end, with twists of fate inbetween phases. The phenomenon of rich and poor is mainly determined by the script. The rich man will be the poor man some other time around. This means you can never really judge by appearances. To solve the puzzle, you must look at the world as one script for one self. Just look at what this self is doing to itself!

So the self that makes this world is rather 'sick', shall we say? The trick is to train the mind of the tiny little self that you think of as "you" to access the mind of the self that makes this world...and change it's mind. This can't happen if you do not see it this way. That is, you must accept responsibility for making this world, and change it's mind if you want to see a better world. The benefits will flow as the cause of pain is changed.

This is the only way to have an effect on the scripts that are running. They will tend to run as written while you are accessing the mind that wrote them. As you change that mind, your experience of the scripts will change first, and then the scripts will improve as your choices tend to call forth the better scripts among a multiple choice menu. The better scripts key off of a decreasing amount of guilt buried deep in your unconscious mind. In such scripts, there is no call for any kind of punishment. Even if there was, you can change your experience of it so that there is no pain and suffering involved.

This is the path out of hell.

Jesus