Why male and female?

Originally posted by KellyJay
I recall someone once making a point about rocks, they were riding in a
train and there were rocks along the train tracks they thought nothing of
them for there wasn't a pattern or anything that drew their attention,
until they saw rocks all the same size and colors laid out in a patter that
said, "Welcome to ___" I forget the name of the town. While it ...[text shortened]... that spelled out the message were without a doubt were there by
design in my opinion.
Kelly

I think anyone who thinks they can distinguish design from non-design is making a serious error. You are using your experience of rocks to determine random arrangements vs designed arrangements. You similarly may recognise whether a pile of twigs is a birds nest or just a pile of twigs. But you are using your experience of these phenomena to make the decision.
Given something new, say a snow flake, you will not make you decision based on what it looks like, but rather on what you know about it. You know a snow flake is not man made nor made by an intelligent being, so you say 'OK, not designed.' When it comes to life, a whole new category of things, you cannot base your judgement on what you know about rocks, or what you know about snowflakes. To expect life to look like rocks is to ignore the fact that the geology of rocks is totally different from the processes involved in life.
You cannot base your judgement on whether or not you know life was designed (as we did with the snowflake) because this is after all the question being asked.

Originally posted by twhitehead
I think anyone who thinks they can distinguish design from non-design is making a serious error. You are using your experience of rocks to determine random arrangements vs designed arrangements. You similarly may recognise whether a pile of twigs is a birds nest or just a pile of twigs. But you are using your experience of these phenomena to make the deci ...[text shortened]... as designed (as we did with the snowflake) because this is after all the question being asked.

Actually, there are two factors involved. Experience is one (an accumulation of experiences) and the other is intelligence.

It takes both intelligence and experience to recognise intelligent design. Many animals possess both intelligence and experience, and are able to discern the difference between a nest and a pile of twigs. I can think of no reason why humans couldn't do better than a bird or an ape at spotting signs of what another critter did. Experience along with intelligence is how we can know whether a crystalline structure is intentionally designed or is something that occurs in nature.

Originally posted by humy

and knew nothing of their history

No. We do know something about their history. For example, we know approximately when they were built.

"If we didn't see the pyramids being built, and knew nothing of their history..."

Are you intentionally misrepresenting what I said? How did you manage to take that out of context if it wasn't intentional?

And it didn't take very long for you to try turning this into a religious argument, did it.

Originally posted by twhitehead
So prions are life too?

No, because of my condition (3);

(3) it must have genetic inheritable material (normally DNA or RNA but can be something else) that determines some of its characteristics (thus growing and reproducing crystals are not life)

I don't think a prion protein molecule has anything quite like that.

Originally posted by lemon lime
"[b]If we didn't see the pyramids being built, and knew nothing of their history..."

Are you intentionally misrepresenting what I said? How did you manage to take that out of context if it wasn't intentional?

And it didn't take very long for you to try turning this into a religious argument, did it.[/b]

I merely missed the "If" when reading too fast. Sorry, please forgive.

Originally posted by lemon lime
Experience along with intelligence is how we can know whether a crystalline structure is intentionally designed or is something that occurs in nature.

I am not entirely sure what your point is. Of course intelligence is required to think, and we are talking about thinking here.
My point was that we us our intelligence to make judgements based on experience, and when we apply that experience to a totally different category of things, we are likely to get it wrong.
In fact, many people do see design in crystalline structure. A number of people on these forums can see Gods handiwork in just about anything.
When you judge that a snowflake or crystal is not intelligently designed you do so solely on the fact that you know how it was produced, not based on any inherent properties of the structure.
So when someone says they know life was designed based on inherent properties of the structure, they have some explaining to do about what their process is.

Originally posted by twhitehead
I am not entirely sure what your point is. Of course intelligence is required to think, and we are talking about thinking here.
My point was that we us our intelligence to make judgements based on experience, and when we apply that experience to a totally different category of things, we are likely to get it wrong.
In fact, many people do see design in ...[text shortened]... herent properties of the structure, they have some explaining to do about what their process is.

I'm not sure what your point is either. Are you saying living things (or non living things) are a totally different category of things, and so we cannot apply the same principle to living (or non living) things? If all life arose from inorganic matter, and DNA is simply a logical outcome of what we know natural forces are able to do, then why would living things (or inanimate matter) fall under a different catagory? What would be a totally different category than living or non living things?

As far as I know, the only thing capable of creating a functional design not seen in nature is intelligence. If nature cannot by itself create a particular design, or self regenerating system that appears to overcome the problem of naturally occurring disorder, then something must be able to do that. What that something is or might be belongs to another discussion.

Experience is how we are able to see consistency and details of design, so even if nature is able to pile leaves and twigs into something that looks like a birds nest, experience with observing bird nests is what allows us to take note of the differences.

Originally posted by lemon lime
I'm not sure what your point is either. Are you saying living things (or non living things) are a totally different category of things, and so we cannot apply the same principle to living (or non living) things? If all life arose from inorganic matter, and DNA is simply a logical outcome of what we know natural forces are able to do, then why would living ...[text shortened]... s nest, experience with observing bird nests is what allows us to take note of the differences.

Are you saying living things (or non living things) are a totally different category of things, and so we cannot apply the same principle to living (or non living) things?

I don't know were you gone wrong there with that complete muddle but what he means is, for example, the category of all things that we call butterflies are a totally different category of things that we call t-shirts. Thus, because the two categories are totally different categories, we cannot say that, for example, because a t-shirt having water soaked within it indicates it has been in a washing machine, butterflies having water in their their living cells indicates they too have been in a washing machine. For the same reason, we cannot for example say that because some t-shirts have complicatedly shaped patterns designed by humans, this indicates that the complicatedly shaped patterns seen on butterfly wings were designed by humans. And, if we cannot even make that erroneous extrapolation, we certainly could not say because some t-shirts have complicatedly shaped patterns designed by humans, this indicates that the complicatedly shaped patterns seen on butterfly wings were designed by a god! Because 'the gods' are not even in the same category as humans.

If you disagree with this, then, using the same logic, you must agree that butterflies having water in their living cells is an indication that they may have been in a washing machine.

If all life arose from inorganic matter, and DNA is simply a logical outcome of what we know natural forces are able to do, then

DNA is not an inevitability outcome of nature but rather just one possible outcome out of many. Life could have (but didn't) evolve to have molecules instead of DNA that had the same function as DNA but wasn't DNA. The fact that life just happened to evolve with DNA exactly the way it did is as a result of an accident of natural history of evolution that could have taken a different route but just happened not to.

What would be a totally different category than living or non living things?

That's not what he said.

As far as I know, the only thing capable of creating a functional design not seen in nature is intelligence.

I assume what you mean by “design” here is “intelligent design”? life does not have a functional intelligent design so the fact that all things not found in nature that have functional intelligent design were intelligently designed it irrelevant. Living things don't have functional intelligent design but rather just have functional anatomy, metabolism and biology.
How do you KNOW that life has intelligent design?

A 'function' can mean just an action something does in a particular way and needn't imply it necessarily having been made intentionally to do what it does.
So something being 'functional' doesn't imply that it MUST necessarily have been made intentionally to do what it does. So you can have 'functional biology' of a lifeform without implying a 'functional intelligent design'.
This would go against common usage of normal English but you could get away with talking about the 'functional structure' of a hurricane and the eye of the hurricane 'functioning' as defining its center etc without that being logically incorrect. But this would not imply the hurricane was made with that structure intentionally. In the same way, 'functional biology' of a lifeform doesn't imply a 'functional intelligent design'.

If nature cannot by itself create a particular design,

Again, I assume what you mean by “design” here is “intelligent design”?
Nature doesn't create intelligent design and nobody is saying it does.

or self regenerating system that appears to overcome the problem of naturally occurring disorder,

Are you talking here about thermodynamic disorder? If so, thermodynamic disorder is not a “problem” for “self regenerating system” (of life) that need to “overcome” because thermodynamic disorder, not to be confused with the vaguer English dictionary meaning of “disorder”, has absolutely nothing to do with the various kinds of biological deteriorations that can occur.

Originally posted by lemon lime
I'm not sure what your point is either. Are you saying living things (or non living things) are a totally different category of things, and so we cannot apply the same principle to living (or non living) things? If all life arose from inorganic matter, and DNA is simply a logical outcome of what we know natural forces are able to do, then why would living ...[text shortened]... s nest, experience with observing bird nests is what allows us to take note of the differences.

I supposed that shows the difference between a snow flake and a snow
man, or sand dune and a sand castle.
Kelly

Originally posted by KellyJay
I supposed that shows the difference between a snow flake and a snow
man, or sand dune and a sand castle.
Kelly

I'm going to play devils advocate here and take the opposing point of view.

A snow flake and a snow man are not the same. Both are snow but the flake is not a man and the snow man isn't a man although he could be a flake but that not what I said. And comparing sand to snow is apples to oranges... were you drunk when I wrote that? How do you know nature couldn't have pushed snow up into something that looks like a man with branches for arms and a carrot nose and two pieces of charcoal for eyes? And a top hat on his head! If it's possible for a tornado to drive a piece of straw through a telephone pole don't you think it's possible for a funnel wind to unearth a carrot and stick it into a snow mans head? If anything is possible then no matter how far fetched then given enough time and booze anything can happen... will happen!

Originally posted by lemon lime
I'm going to play devils advocate here and take the opposing point of view.

A snow flake and a snow man are not the same. Both are snow but the flake is not a man and the snow man isn't a man although he could be a flake but that not what I said. And comparing sand to snow is apples to oranges... were you drunk when I wrote that? How do you know nature ow far fetched then given enough time and booze anything can happen... will happen!

We I guess that would depend on what the snow man looked like wouldn't
it? Its no different than the "welcome to ___" example I gave with the
rocks laying around the ground. You can get nice ice formations that
resemble different things, than you can get an expert ice scupture that
carves out a face or something else, the degree of design could be easier
to see from one example to the next I suppose. You could get a monkey to
punch a keyboard to alter a complex computer program, or you can get a
programmer skilled in that language to make the changes, both would be
key strokes with intelligence behind them, but only one would be writting
funtiional code towards a goal.
Kelly

Originally posted by twhitehead
I am not entirely sure what your point is. Of course intelligence is required to think, and we are talking about thinking here.
My point was that we us our intelligence to make judgements based on experience, and when we apply that experience to a totally different category of things, we are likely to get it wrong.
In fact, many people do see design in ...[text shortened]... herent properties of the structure, they have some explaining to do about what their process is.

But the snowflak and crystal formations can be a result of intelligent design. I am not sure if any of the snowflake patterns repeat themeselves or not, but there seems to be a lot of different patterns like our fingerprints that can be formed. But these patterns are probably due to the atoms or molecules conforming to the laws that were put in place by the supreme Designer of the universe.

The Instructor

Originally posted by KellyJay
We I guess that would depend on what the snow man looked like wouldn't
it? Its no different than the "welcome to ___" example I gave with the
rocks laying around the ground. You can get nice ice formations that
resemble different things, than you can get an expert ice scupture that
carves out a face or something else, the degree of design could be easie ...[text shortened]... elligence behind them, but only one would be writting
funtiional code towards a goal.
Kelly

Do monkeys charge less for their services than programmers? I'm on a budget, so I need to take that into consideration.

Originally posted by lemon lime
Do monkeys charge less for their services than programmers? I'm on a budget, so I need to take that into consideration.

I think the monkeys work for food, like bananas. So they might be cheaper. Good luck.

The Instructor

Originally posted by lemon lime
Do monkeys charge less for their services than programmers? I'm on a budget, so I need to take that into consideration.

They are very cheap as far as programming is concern, there are more than
a few complaints on the quality of work, but from what I hear if you let them
type for a few billion years they may get it right given enough time. 🙂
Kelly