Life is Intelligently Designed

Well, well, who'd a thunk it, that this would be end up being a philosophical argument. Con is being drug kicking and screaming into recognizing his own intelligence. Hopefully he'll thank me eventually. So Con again says "I'm not sure if Pro's immaterial intelligence claim is even topical". Really? How can I argue for intelligent design if I'm not allowed to assert the existence of genuine intelligence? If intelligence is an emergent property of the brain, then obviously it didn't create the brain. So look, if Con wishes to actually debate my position, he has to be willing to at least understand my position, he has to be willing to let his intelligence explore my world. And the "formal refutation" is just a tad bizarre. First, do you mean "one *and* the same" - ? I'll assume so. So, Con lists two statements that he claims are mutually exclusive, then simply picks the one of the two he prefers. And then he proceeds to give an example of how two things that are not the same CAN interact - magnetic field and iron. Con assumes magnetism is material, but if you really think it through, he only does so because it interacts with matter, and in a predictable way. So his P1/P2/C dichotomy is in fact given a priori, coming either from a long series of random mutations, or from the intuition of his own genuine intelligence. So I get that becoming aware of one's one awareness can be a bit of an LSD trip for someone who has been indoctrinated in a post-modern mindset, but you can't just run away from new ideas because they upset you. "There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy". I don't know that I have the space or skill to lay out a good defense of a metaphysical intelligence here, so I'd just recommend "Miracles" by C.S. Lewis. Don't let the title throw you off - the beginning of the book is a brilliant introduction to thinking-about-thought and does not directly address the issue of miracles. So, let me just state what we must take from my philosophy in order to have this debate. It is not necessary to think of intelligence as completely immaterial, but it is necessary to admit something that is not limited by the laws of nature. There must be something that is not the strict effect of physical causes and nothing else. Such a thing is untamed, and therefore a bit frightening to us. Con says "we are talking about non-organic intelligence, which we simply do not have any evidence for its existence". But if intelligence is essentially immaterial and the physical is only its medium, like music being carried by mp3 bits, then we have abundant evidence for its existence. Con needs to see how circular his reasoning is, how he is mistaking his default conceptions for fact. The truth about intelligence can only be learned by an intelligence that is willing to examine itself in the mirror. Intelligence cannot be explored by first ruling out the use of intelligence. Then, sigh, Con simply doubles down on what I called his 'grave error'. Didn't impress him much, I see. He once again claims "Natural causation is known to exist". Sure, lots of things are known to exist, but the question here is what is known to be able to cause life. And 'Natural causation for life' is most certainly NOT known to exist. That's just begging the question. But again, the fact that so many brilliant minds have been unable to produce any evidence of how natural causes produce life is the best scientific evidence we have that natural causes cannot produce life. Remember - we're talking about a purposeless planet producing life, so a natural cause for life would be more a matter of discovery than scientific skill. So that fact that no such causes have been found is, as I say, the best scientific evidence we have that a natural origin for life is not possible. Someone may discover something tomorrow, but as of today, there is zero scientific evidence that raw vibrations of our cosmos can produce an ecosystem. And a version of Con's pseudo logic: If natural causes produced life, they should do it again, if we could identify the right conditions. We should be able to reassemble the conditions, get behind the glass observation panel, and say "See, thar she blows!" Some people think they've made a brick this way, but nobody has figured out how to assemble them into the pyramids without having somebody to carry the bricks. And I say "pseudo-logic", because "If life was ID, then IA would have left other designed systems". First of all, the ecosystem is in fact comprised of an uncountable number of different designs. Again, Con is not recognizing that he's starting from his assumption that everything in the ecosystem are distant cousins to all other life. But before that, speculating about the intentions of an unknown designer is of little value. We humans can get great pleasure from the existence of ourselves and the rest of the ecosystem, it's quite natural to expect the designer does the same. So any one potential purpose answers Con's objection, there's no need for me to know exactly what God is/was up to. Ok, down to the paragraph "Evolution". I definitely do NOT agree that I "know that species ... come in ... [to] existence". The primary scientific aspect of the ID/evolution debate is that IDers distinguish genetics from mutation. We would define genetics as selection from existing information, while evolution proper is the self-creation of new information. So the many variations of dogs are presumably all latent in the original dog DNA, by ID thinking. It is the self-creation of new species and new features that I consider to be black magic and unscientific. And here we go again: "Everything at this point has naturalistic drives, which are known and tangible with today's methods and supported by evidence, unlike those of 'intelligent' origins". This is just so badly wrong, on two counts: Number one, THERE IS NO KNOWN WAY THAT LIFE COULD HAVE ARISEN BY NATURAL CAUSES. I think Con simply doesn't want to face this reality. A purely natural origin of life is pure speculation. Pure speculation. Secondly, intelligence is in fact very much in evidence and it is every bit as reasonable as Darwin to suppose intelligence could have produced life. Abiogenesis: "A natural source of life is most certainly very simple". How do you know this? Is Con really this unaware of the fact that he's just stating what he hopes is true as fact? "Existing evidence seems to support this". No. It doesn't. Look, we have to be honest if we're going to have a debate here. Again, there is no way known that natural causes could have produced life. You've got to stop medicating yourself with this nonsense about evidence because there isn't any. It's pure speculation. You are certainly welcome to speculate about autocatalytic systems, but until you've shown that any such system can provide life you're just shooting the breeze over a beer. Speculate away, experiment away. I wholeheartedly endorse both. But don't call speculation science until you've got experimental verification. And, I knew as soon as I typed it that Con would object to "spontaneous". Spontaneous means "without outside cause". That is what you are proposing, no, that life arose without outside intervention? Con then goes on to tell me it's absurd to expect scientific verification of the origin of life. Fine, then it's absurd to call your ideas science. If Con can be honest that a natural origin of life is pure speculation, a.k.a. "wild guess", then perhaps we could get to having a real debate about the origin of life. Con makes a concluding claim: "I demonstrated both the drives, and the mechanisms by which life can and will arise via natural processes". Con has done no such thing, In fact, as I say, he just got done explaining why it's impossible to demonstrate. So I'd call this a lie, but I don't think Con intends to lie. Perhaps it's a start to realize that pop science is lying to us, though, and none of us really has a choice but to try and think this stuff through ourselves. Many find themselves caught between a religion that seems out of date and a science culture that is lying to us. It's a tough place to find one's self, but my instincts tell me the pursuit of truth is the right path. (And I'm not, btw, saying that Christianity IS out of date, but I very much understand the thought that it is, that science has flat out disproved it. But that's for another debate :-)