One of the most compelling arguments supposting intelligent design these days is the so called SETI analogy. It basically says that if SETI is considered a science then ID can also be a science. That’s not a bad argument and for some time I didn’t have a good argument against it. Then I thought what if they are correct? Then they have to accept that anything they say is designed could also have been designed by extraterrestrials! And chances are they were evolved, not made by other aliens. After that we can use Ocam’s Razor and just say that we evolved since it’s less likely that the aliens lived long enough to be able (and wanted to) create us. So that’s why the SETI analogy is groundless.
Here is a website that supports and expands on my argument:
http://www.stephenjaygould.org/ctrl/pennock_design.html
Now this is a good ID argument (by a computer scientist?):
http://www.mit.edu/%7Ehooman/ComputersAndGod.ppt
from this website:
October 10, 2007 at 12:21 pm
This is an interesting take on the SETI analogy for Intelligent Design. Personally, I do not believe in ID; I’m an evolutionist. (Is that really a word?)
However, given the ID camp’s rhetoric, it makes perfect sense that the “Intelligence” behind their Design could have been *any* intelligence at all.
This is the premise behind David Brin’s pan-galactic society in his Uplift novels; species are bred for intelligence from high-potential natural “stock” species that are allowed to develop on worlds left fallow for hundreds of thousands of years.
The question inevitably becomes; who was the first? The setting Brin describes seems to indicate that evolution can, on its own, produce intelligence, and has several times. One instance of it are the mysterious “Progentitors” of the Uplift milieu (that species which began the Uplift cycle so long ago), and a much later instance being the Humans of Earth.
Given the billions of years that have passed between the Progenitors and Humans, ID pundits might find that (even by their math) it would be possible to have two, distinct, *evolved* intelligent species within that time-frame.
Regards -
October 10, 2007 at 9:20 pm
Yeah my argument is not that good. You’re right that it can be any intelligence sending a message in space but when they use that argument for DNA for example it makes no sense because evidence shows that it is evolved (a high percentage is not used for example). There is also an issue of what is intelligence and if evolution can be called intelligent.
There are still things about evolution that haven’t been explained; for example there is clear evidence that gene size through evolution but if someone tells you that they know how that happens in general he/she is probably lying. But when you do a genetic algorithm experiment it always converges to a solution. There has been no experiment so far that has produced open-ended evolution of either solutions, programs or robots. So we still don’t know what property of the universe (my opinion is some unknown thermodynamic law related to turing completeness) causes this. Or maybe it’s god causing it.
If someone found that law I’m talking about that will make the idea of an intervening god (he might have writen the law at the begining of the universe) completely unecessary to explain nature.
October 11, 2007 at 2:39 pm
What is intelligence? Yeah, that could be a stumper…
As for aliens “breeding” us specifically, the concept isn’t that far-fetched for farmers and people active in animal husbandry. The guilty aliens would have to, presumably, travel here to do it though. Granting aliens faster-than-light travel or interstellar-range remote presence is as big a premise as a benevolent, smiling deity creating all of humanity and the Earth in less than a week. That’s what makes the idea rhetorically equal to Creationism; they both require personal belief and a huge suspension of observable physics.
As for “…when you do a genetic algorithm experiment it always converges…”; be careful! We, as human beings experimenting with artificial life techniques, *prove* the rhetoric of the Intelligent Design movement. We put technology and ideas to work in the effort to create Life. I can’t think of a much better illustration that the tenets of ID are correct.
It’s a Good Thing(tm) that the GA experiments are failing to create biologically-complicated results! It proves that intelligence (modern scientists and researchers) cannot design a system as complicated as biological life. That’s a big argument *against* the concept of ID.
If you would, consider complexity to be the property of the universe that causes evolution. None of our models, software or hardware come close to the complexity of a single-celled amoeba. When you consider the proteins, cellular structures, enzymes, and all that stuff that makes up a typical microbe we’re looking at some deep and wide complexity.
Given deep enough complex systems interacting with one another, you get emergent behavior. Atoms form molecules. Later, those molecules form larger molecules, then chains of molecules, then structures like DNA. All it takes is time, deep complexity, and the opportunity for these systems to come into contact with one another.
There are lots of planets out there that are cooking their own pot of Primordial Stew, as well. Over here, it was too hot. No life develops. Over there, there was too much atmospheric pressure. Again, no life. In this other planetary system, the fourth world was humming along just great, until that comet finally smashed into the planet and cracked the crust again… Once again, no life develops.
There are an astounding number of variables in the pursuit of an explanation for the origins of Life. I believe that the majority of Intelligent Design proponents either don’t want to think in concepts this broad, or they can’t. I’d like to remind the former that the universe is an astoundingly large place. There’s room for all kinds of things to happen out there.
Remember also that there are lots of systems in nature that follow a pretty strict progression. I’m thinking specifically of the valence shells around atoms – they like linking together with other shells in quite specific patterns, after all. If genes have this pattern, it’s very probably complicated enough that we haven’t found the pattern yet.
Deep complexity – I’m not certain, but my best guess for the source of evolution is probably deep complexity.
I’m unclear about the grammar in your sentence about “…clear evidence that gene size through evolution…”. Could you elaborate a little more on that? I’m unfamiliar with that argument in the Creationist / Evolution debate.
Thanks for reading my post and responding!
October 12, 2007 at 12:40 am
I’m not sure why you think that alife techniques prove anything that ID is saying. You might be thinking that since we are writing the programs maybe god “wrote” a program too (the middle link in the article talks about this). That’s fine because what that means is that god created the universe and then he let it run without any further intervention and that is not what IDs are saying. They say that god made not only the first DNA strand but human DNA. Even the anthropic principle could be used to argue why the program (universe) we are living in was “written” this way.
I don’t know if the “complexity threshold” people have been talking about since is Von Neumman is correct (he never proved that right?). Maybe it’s just having the right primitives. It has also to do with the size: some people think that a CA large enough will cause open-ended evolution but the system has to be large enough. The rules can still be relatively simple.
Yeah I forgot the word “increases” in that sentence. I meant to say: there is clear evidence that gene size increases through evolution (through studing very close species) but a general explanation for this has not been found.
October 12, 2007 at 11:21 am
My point about Alife techniques proving ID is just rhetorical – according to logic, humans are:
a) intelligent
-and-
b) designing artificial life
While our efforts are nowhere near as complicated as biological life, those are the fundamental premises of the Intelligent Design camp. Humanity is Intelligently Designing life.
It doesn’t change my evolutionist stance, though. This reminds me of a good friend taking his daughter to hospital when she passed out. The doctor examined her and said, “It could be X or it could be Y.” Both options required immediate medication and an extended stay…
My friend, a computer scientist and robotics programmer, looked in horror at the doctor and asked, “Could it be both X *and* Y?”
On a deeper level, there could be multiple sources of life. IMO, Evolution created biological life; Humans created alife. However, I still think that humanity’s work toward self-aware robots and artificial life would be an excellent (if hollow) argument for Intelligent Design if members of that camp decided to pursue it.
Your blog is something I’ve come to enjoy reading; thanks for the links and thoughtful posts! Keep it up. I normally can’t stand listening to ID pundits and their rhetoric, and it surprises me that I’ve posted so much in your ID thread… I’ll try and post something interesting for the a-life threads (which is what I found your blog for in the first place).
I’ll look into the ‘increasing gene size’ and see what i find… Excellent reading!