Is life so complex that it requires a designer?

[Andrew Green]

Flying Spaghetti Monster actually

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spaghetti_Monster

 

[Andrew Green]

Ok, let's give that Earth was intellegently designed. By Aliens... from Magarathea... They however evolved

 

[Blindside]

The Spaghetti Monster.

No, I am not trying to be funny. Look it up.

Oh my, I think I was touched by His Noodly Appendage and was forced to buy a t-shirt.

Lamont

 

[arnisador]

Ok, let's give that Earth was intellegently designed. By Aliens... from Magarathea...

I can cite literary evidence in support of this theory.

 

[heretic888]

Intellegent design is being labeled as creationism in a suit, but I think thats incorrect. As Heritic pointed out, it all depends on where you place the intellegence.

Errr.... something like that.

The point I was making is that Baldwinian evolution demonstrates that an omnipotent Designer is unnecessary because organisms and populations have, perhaps since the earliest prokaryotes, been subtly 'designing' and 'constraining' and 'guiding' their own phylogenetic evoluton for a long, long, long time.

This is abundantly obvious among human beings, in which we use our evolved intelligence to create environments that require even higher intelligence to flourish within. Thus, the Flynn Effect: the observation that average IQ scores have steadily and progressively risen among all 20th century industrialized nations.

Essentially, its something of a circular system, a sort of internal feedback-loop. The population evolves a new skill or intelligence that lets them manipulate the environment to their benefit. This results in a more complex adaptive landscape which brings new adaptive challenges to the population. Reciprocally, even more intelligence or better skills are required to adapt to the new environment, which itself becomes more complex to the next generation. So on and so on and so on.

Not only does this completely blow away any critical validity 'Intelligent Design' may have had (you don't need an intelligent Other to design things when organisms and populations can do it themselves), but it also leaves gaping holes in orthodox neo-Darwinism. It shows us that evolution is not entirely or even primarily 'random', that there are some long-term 'directional' or 'linear' trends or patterns in evolutionary history, and (most importantly) it does away with the fallacious paradigm of 'genetic determinism' that neo-Darwinism has traditionally rested upon (it makes no sense to say genes determine an organism's adaptive fitness in the environment when you realize that an expressed phenotype can be quite different from the innate genotype).

I really will be interested to see how this and the post-Darwinian paradigms will expand our definitions and understandings of 'natural selection' in the coming decades. Very interesting stuff.

Laterz.

 

[OnlyAnEgg]

I could never get the hang of Thursdays

 

[heretic888]

I could never get the hang of Thursdays

Its Tuesday, actually.

 

[OnlyAnEgg]

Its Tuesday, actually.

See?!

 

[Shizen Shigoku]

Ok, so 'Intelligent Design' is the answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything.

What's the question?


Nevermind, I've just decided to convert to Pastafarianism.

 

[Andrew Green]

no no no

The answer is 42

Maybe the question is "How many Universe Designers does it take to screw in a light bulb?"

 

[Cryozombie]

Maybe the question is "How many Universe Designers does it take to screw in a light bulb?"

Nah... cuz the answer to that is 1 if its made of spahgetti.

 

[Andrew Green]

Or perhaps the spaghetti monster is made up of 42 pieces of spaghetti?

 

[Makalakumu]

So... thats not proof in my book. Now... the aliens at Roswell on the other hand...

The methane signatures found are only made by living organisms. The only harder "proof" that could be found is to actually find an organism. This is proof enough for many scientists...its like being in the room with another person and smelling a fart except that this fart has the definitive chemical signature of a burrito.

 

[arnisador]

That's it. I'm quitting science.

:fart:

 

[mrhnau]

That's it. I'm quitting science.

:fart:

I'll join. Wanna stuff burritos?

MrH

 

[arnisador]

I'll join. Wanna stuff burritos?

Is that a double entendre in your pocket, or are you just glad to see me?

 

[Blindside]

The methane signatures found are only made by living organisms. The only harder "proof" that could be found is to actually find an organism. This is proof enough for many scientists...its like being in the room with another person and smelling a fart except that this fart has the definitive chemical signature of a burrito.

None of these findings have been peer reviewed, and lets remember that extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof (Sagan).

Lamont

 

[Andrew Green]

So an extraordinary claim, like "Out of the Billions of planets out there, we are the only intellegent life" would require extraordinary proof?

 

[Makalakumu]

None of these findings have been peer reviewed, and lets remember that extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof (Sagan).

Lamont

Even the ones published in Nature?

 

[Cryozombie]

The methane signatures found are only made by living organisms..

Ah, I missed that part. I only saw where they said they were SIMILAR to some found here on earth in caves.