Natural Observations in Science.

Hmmm - how about equating design with symmetry? There exists a lot of work on classifying types of symmetry . . .

 

So, give us your examples from nature that you think shows something other than what the author calls "non-intelligent-natural" design? With a fatual and logical case for such claim.

 

"I would think that some kind of symmetry would be a necessary element or component of design. What kind of design would be asymmetrical?"

So you think that life that does not show symmetry does not show signs of design?

"Since the author's example of the design of tiger teeth is based on natural selection I would use crystalized rocks or ice as examples of something which exhibited qualities of design outside of natural selection processes."

I would love to hear your reasoning for this. At least a tiger's teeth are meant to do something. Crystals form the way they do because of the interaction of the atoms that make up the crystal. The way the different parts of the constituent moleules line up make the crystal what it is. What kind of unnatural design does this show?

 

Maybe I was not clear.

What about crystalization do you think shows design that is outside the realm of natural and not intelligent design?

 

Well, the word "design" is somewhat loaded with the connotation of a designer. As in "how can there be a design without a desinger?"

Consider the rainbow. A most pleasing configuration of color and definately patterned. Yet it apparantly comes not from design but merely the working out of natural law. Was the rainbow made on purpose, or was it a happy byproduct of other creative elements, perhaps happier for us than, say, the wonderfully symmetrical kind of mountain often produced by volcanoes?

I think in these cases we can talk of pleasing symmetries but it is perhaps pushing to call them designs

 

OK there's not much symmetry in an amoeba. Do you sense "design" there?

 

I don't "sense" design anywhere. I just rely on others (especially biomimetic scientists and engineers) to point it out to me.

I'm not even sure what a DESIGN is. Are you? </font>[/QUOTE]Loose usage: a pattern is a design.

But patterns/ symmetries might arise spontaneously without intelligent cause; and the word design is sometimes used to speak of an intelligent agent causing the design. So language can be confusing.

One of my favorite jokes is the proof that my house is better than heaven. It goes like this:

Nothing is better than heaven.
My house is better than nothing.
THerefore my house is better than heaven.

Of course, there is the little detail that the word "nothing" doesn't mean the same thing in both uses. Let's be careful not to make the same logical error as we discuss the word "design!"

 

PS there's lots of patterns inside an amoeba, including the elegant spiral structure of the DNA, the fixed shape of internal organelles, the intricate choreography of the ensyme mediated chemical reactions . . . .

 

So karl, would you say that the honeycomb of bees was designed?

How about the spiral of a ram's horn, or the internal bracing of trabiculae in bone?

Or do you think that maybe they aren't designed after all?

 

These "patterns" as you call them are only part and parcel of the greater design of the amoeba. </font>[/QUOTE]Precisely. But if you are going to say that the intricacies of the design imply they could only be designed and that excludes evolution, then you've gone and committed the logical error I warned about in the previous post.

Evolution claims to be able to account for the patterns, the designs. It is cheating to say they are designs and therefore there is a designer in the same sense that a watch is designed by a watch maker; cheating just as much as the proof I gave earlier that my house is better than heaven.

Now I believe that God created all things; but I also believe He did it over time, using the process of evolution. He allowed evolution to form the designs of living things.