Sub-Optimal Design?

Bill Pratt responds to atheists who claim that the sub-optimal design of biological organisms argues against the existence of the Christian God:

I am an electrical engineer who has been designing integrated circuits (IC) for 20 years, either personally or through managing other engineers. I am extremely familiar with IC design. Over the years, I have often heard young engineers, who did not design a particular IC, criticize the design of that IC by saying it is sub-optimal, that they could do a better job. I have then seen these same engineers eat crow when they finally talk to the original designer and discover the constraints that original engineer was under when he designed the IC and the purposes for which he designed the IC.

It is impossible to judge a design as optimal or sub-optimal without knowing the purposes of the designer and without knowing the constraints the designer faced during the design. Young engineers just assume that they know both when they look at somebody else’s design. After being embarrassed a few times, they usually drop this approach and gain some humility.

I see the atheist who uses the argument from poor design in the same light. Biological organisms are incredibly complex and they operate in an environment that is massively complex. Our current knowledge of biological organisms and of all the earth’s diverse ecosystems is in its infancy….

Here is the problem for the atheist. Like the young IC designer, they are in a very poor position to judge whether biological organisms are optimally designed or not. Each year, scientists discover new purposes, or functions, for biological organisms, and each year scientists discover more constraints within which biological organisms must function.

Read more from Pratt about why this move by atheists is really just “atheism of the gaps.”

Comments

[The Great Suprendo]

Reposted from Rational Skepticism http://bit.ly/1hj8jym

The Emergence Of Life On Earth

[Comment removed by moderator. We allow links and quotes, but not re-posts.]

[scbrownlhrm]

Comical.

No Mind intrusions atop matter in the promised "grand synthesis" soon to come one day.

Right?

[scblhrm]

TGS,

As a theist, I have every confidence that Mind can push and pull, tweek, adjust, supplement, detract, and so on, and thereby make Life.

It's called fine tunning a rather unruly nature.

[scblhrm]

Man in Mind - the Child - begins his stumbles in his Father's House, tipping over jars, stacking up blocks.

The Son in fullness - timeless - fashions the eye once blind.......

And so much more ~~~~

[WisdomLover]

It's as if someone said to Paley

Look! Here is an automated factory that no human needs to maintain or control, and it spits out watches, just like the one you found, by the bushel. So, you see, that really is a strong reason to think that the watch is not designed, even though it appears that way.

[Goat Head 5]

Ok, Suprendo, one last try. Perhaps third try really is the charm...

Provide a mechanism, whereby DNA or RNA is synthesized by natural processes (non living), then is transcribed and proteins built, the proteins self assemble into a living cell that is able to reproduce itself.

By all means, provide this, then explain why we don't observe this happening today, why the process can't be reproduced in the lab, etc.

You don't have to fully explain every part of the theory of evolution, just the critical part of the rise of life from non life. Simple really, if you have all the evidence you claim to have. And unless you have degrees in Chemistry, Biochemistry or Biology, I think I can probably wade through the papers a little better than you.

If you don't have a mechanism, you have a just so story based on your assumptions about the world. And you'll have to stop hiding behind the "i don't know" obfuscation.
Goat Head 5

[The Great Suprendo]

Goat Head

I have degrees in Biochemistry and Philosophy.

Read the link I posted above from Cali on Rat Skep. Its a good summary.

"why the process can't be reproduced in the lab, etc."

Because it took so long

"If you don't have a mechanism, you have a just so story based on your assumptions about the world. And you'll have to stop hiding behind the "i don't know" obfuscation"

1. What mechanism have you proposed? nada
2. Noone can even say what they mean by designed in the context "biological organisms are designed"
3. Whats about "I dont know" is an attempt to make things unclear. Its an honest appraisal.
4. Its a bit rich when you cant provide anything for your own assertion to attack mine

[scbrownlhrm]

As in interested Theist I am looking forward to the day when Man’s Mind fine tunes, regulates, and modifies those unruly reverberations within nature and designs another wonderful novel in the language of life. The conceived designs of Mind upon the stage are always a joy to peruse.

Such will be another gratifying route by which to obey Love’s command to master all of physicality to the Nth degree, and, perhaps, another agreeable conduit of gifting our beaten and bruised neighbor with newer varieties of bandages. As an intellectual plus, such will be yet another firm trajectory by which to spy Mind’s necessary employment in the writing of such wonderful manuscripts, and therein assure us that Mind’s necessity in the production of such narratives is no illusion but in fact our perception therein is accurate, appeased by the confirmation of such a strong vector.

[scbrownlhrm]

I myself live only by Life from without the Self. I am no Island. No. I am a Parasite, and I find that Immutable Love delights in filling me His child with such Life. –Tis His Joy, for such Love does. In the beauty of Love’s Ontology, we are reminded by Lewis that we find that Life Himself does spread His arms wide, does Pour-Out, does Fill-Up, as Immutable Love is a Host Who deliberately creates His Own parasites that they may exploit and take advantage of Him. This is the diagram of Love. The very word Parasite derives its nuance, its contextual definition, its expected manifestations to the bitter ends of Time and Physicality - from the highest to the lowest - by the Wonder Who is Uncreated Love, that fully singular, that fully triune [Self-Other-Us] Who is the unchanging E Pluribus Unum. Should reality be void of that which is on definition Parasite we would find there an argument against Love’s Ontology, though of course such just is not the case, as His Ontology proves coherent from A to Z. We find there within Love’s Whole physicality’s Image willed by Immutable Love, and, also, we find within that same Image descended into painful fragmentation the expectation of the very vectors we find laced throughout our current loveless Now within Time and Physicality as all such lines are exactly those observations our minds perceive. On this Now we need not fear, as from A to Z that fully singular, that fully triune E Pluribus Unum in like manner descends into Time and Physicality and fills them to their bitter ends, and therein, ultimately, in His Timeless Unhurriedness, makes of Himself both our Means and our Ends.

[Goat Head 5]

Suprendo!

I'll take a look at your link when time allows.

I'm open to being convinced and go where the truth leads.

The truth is the truth regardless of presuppositions. Something for you to think about...

Goat Head 5

[scbrownlhrm]

It is unfortunate that we cannot dialogue with TGS and Ben and their close cousins for more than a few paragraphs before they resort to their inevitable safety hatch of endless semantic equivocations. No one here is hiding behind some “spooky” definition of “design” though these cousins will, as here, inevitably seek to create, or paint, the narrative that it is us their counter-part hiding behind spooky and morphing semantics all the while it is they who just cannot, or ultimately will not, dialogue with the obvious. Empirical efforts are aborted if too pesky and instead the sematic equivocations begin. These cousins thus end up in a flavor of dialogue much less robust and far less fruitful than those of Dawkins and others. First, appearances will not be enough should they support design, then, appearances will be enough so long as fragments of circuit boards suffice for proof of supposed “traces” of evidence supporting a conclusion of naturalism. Vanishing traces outside of village walls need not be dealt with, for horses are good at pushing carts and need not be asked to pull them, in such sematic dances. First, Comparators will be all the buzz, wholly necessary, then, they will state that they do not really disagree, formally, that a Comparator can be dispensed with, then, when all comparators in the real world are found to mirror, not traces, but [Each Other], [Villages], the semantic equivocations once again ensue. Ever morphing stands are asserted between ever equivocating definitions. Ben and TGS and their cousins typically end in this arena of equivocations, and, eventually, they equivocate to such an absurd degree that the discussion ends in their go-to dodge: universal and fatal skepticism. This is never actually stated by them, but it is always inched ever closer to by them with yet one more appeal within semantic equivocation - never committing, but always taking that next sematic dodge away from empirical efforts. "Actual" will mean A now, and then it will mean B in the next post, and then it will mean C in the next, ad infinitum, depending on whether the particular dodge is to Mind’s Perception, or, to Mind’s Measurements, or, to Thought itself in a kind of regress as Thought ends as simply one more physical system enslaved to yet one more precursor, ever pushed around, Thought/Thinking itself thus being found void of intent, and therein void of actual logic, void of actual sight. Whatever “actual sight” means to them in post A, it will, by post E, have morphed inexplicably. As C.S. Lewis commented, when we go on seeing “through” everything, we end up seeing nothing, for, there on the other side of, well, everything, there is, well, nothing.

Fortunately, we have the brutally repeatable experiences of Logic and Love wherein we perceive those contextual nuances of that fully singular, that fully triune [Self-Other-Us] Who is E Pluribus Unum.