How many ways would you like this argument destroyed? 1. You presume something you know is false as a means of hypothesizing it as true. No one has found pyramids on Mars, so everything that follows is impossible until the premise is satisfied. 2. The Egyptian pyramids are constructed in a manner which doesn't just suggest that they were designed by an intelligent life form -- Pharaoh chiseled his name inside the things, so there would be no mistaking who built them! 3. If a pyramid were found on Mars similar to those found on Earth, they would show the obvious evidence of their construction (e.g., chisel marks on the insides of the stones, where the weather had not reached). Otherwise, it wouldn't "be" similar to the pyramids on Earth. I could go on for an hour, but the remainder of your argument is too weak to bother addressing.
Attempting to thwart the design inference by invoking infinite regress is a ploy easily defeated. Take any example of human design and move it to a location where humans have never been. Scientists observing it would immediately infer design. The infinite regress issue wouldn't even come up. A sufficiently strong design inference will trump infinite regress everytime.
cool... when shld we expect to be presented with the 1st empirical basis for your teleological suspicions? before, or after this coming sunday mass? if i were you, i'd hurry... i hear Santa Claus is up to sthg BIG!!!
This is totally non-responsive to my prior post. However, assuming you're attempting to raise this as a new issue, then your response here is completely irrational, and trivial to refute. No matter how you slice it, if a designer is the foundation of the theory of creation, then every designer who follows must have been designed by a predecessor designer until you reach the original creator. If not, then evolution must have occurred somewhere in the process. Which brings us right back to where we started. There is actually proof of self organization from randomness, and no proof of a creator who has existed eternally. Any proof is better than no proof, thus randomness wins.
Quote from Teleologist: Attempting to thwart the design inference by invoking infinite regress is a ploy easily defeated. Take any example of human design and move it to a location where humans have never been. Scientists observing it would immediately infer design. The infinite regress issue wouldn't even come up. A sufficiently strong design inference will trump infinite regress everytime. kjkent1 wrote: What new issue? My previous example asked what scientists visiting Mars would do when confronted with an artifact. Would they deny the artifact was an artifact to avoid the "problem" of infinite regress? No, they wouldn't. That is certainly responsive to your previous post. Consider an object found on earth that causes you to suspect it was designed. Now, what if you found a similar object on Mars? Would you still suspect it was designed or would you allow the infinite regress argument to thwart any design inference? It is obvious that the infinite regress argument should play no role in determining whether something originated via a teleological or non-teleological process kjkent wrote: That's your mistake. A designer isn't the foundation of ID. The foundation of ID is that empirical evidence of intelligent design exists in nature independently of any evidence of an intelligent designer. That's why scientists upon finding an artifact on Mars would immediately infer it was designed without worrying about about who designed the designer. There is no reason to go looking for designers till there is evidence that causes one to suspect something is designed. First things first. kjkent wrote: If evolution occurred at some point in the history of the universe that wouldn't mean that a non-teleological process was responsible for the origin of life on earth. kjkent wrote: But is this process responsible for the origin of life on earth? Origin of life researchers admit they are baffled. I haven't seen any of them invoke infinite regress to eliminate their bafflement.
It's sometimes difficult to believe, isn't it? What analogy can we make? Your chemistry teacher shows up naked to class and start lecturing as if nothing is unusual? Your wife reaches behind her neck one evening and pulls her face off, revealing that it was a MI-type mask and that she's actually a man? The skies open up and a thousand angels with trumpets and a bunch of multi-eyed goats start raining down? What else would inspire the kind of jaw-dropping disbelief that statements like this do? I wish someone would put into words how ridiculous this statement is. I can't do it anymore.
Iron Pyrite forms cubic crystals. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Cubicpyrite.jpg They look like golden dice without pips. I don't infer design to these crystals merely be cause they are shaped like dice. I search for actual evidence of the designer. If there's no evidence of a designer, then I start looking for a natural process which would produce the crystal. If I find neither a designer nor a natural process to explain the iron pyrite crystal, then I keep searching for answers until I find them. In the case of iron pyrite, the natural process can be demonstrated. No designer necessary. Can we, as humans create iron pyrite crystals? Yes. Does this mean that all iron pyrite crystals must have been designed? Nope. There is no reason to infer that because we can produce synthetic crystals, that all crystals must therefore be synthetically produced. Analogizing this to evolution, means searching for a designer. DNA contains no copyright or trademark, there are no tracks in the starts showing a spacecraft receding from the Earth at nearly the speed of light, and no evidence that any of the so-called miracles which are told of in the various books of the ancients ever occurred. Thus, there is no evidence of a designer. Now, we search for a natural process. And, sure enough, we can prove that information gain can occur from random matter. Moreover, I can show that successively deeper geologic levels and successively older fossils show creatures that are successively less complex. All of this is evidence of information gain. And, we can mutate virus and bacteria in a lab and cause them to change their DNA and exhibit new traits. During that entire span, until the rise of human tool use during the past 100,000 or so years, there is zero evidence of any designer of biological life. Just the inexorable increase in complexity of biological organisms via information gain in their DNA. Can humans create DNA molecules? Yes, we can, although not very well, yet. Regardless, does this mean that because we can do it, that this means that we should infer design of all DNA? That would be silly. There's no evidence of anyone messing with DNA millions of years ago. There is no design inference. You are imagining something that doesn't exist. There is either actual evidence of a designer, or there isn't. If that evidence is not exhibited in the artifact itself then there's no reason to infer a designer, because there is NO EVIDENCE of a designer. Evolution of biological organisms has supporting evidence. No evidence to support the existence of a designer is present. Until such evidence exists, there is no designer -- except for us humans, that is.
Tell us what the designer of the crystals would look like? How would you know him if you found him/her/it? What exactly would constitute evidence of a designer? A signature like in a painting? A written manuscript describing in detail the process? How do you know that the signature isn't there, but you just can't see it with the tools you are looking with?
I haven't read this thread, nor do I intend to. Has teleologist produced any empircal evidence of a designer? Such proof would be jaw-dropping Nobel Prize winning, world-altering stuff, so I'm fairly certain I would have heard about it within minutes of its discovery.
Until such time as I can find evidence of a designer, no designer exists -- not as you would have it, the other way around. Do you have some evidence of a designer to share, other than some poetic statment of your belief? Can you show me an object which appears in nature and cannot possibly be the product of either human and/or natural processes?