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It is for beauty like this that I believe all living things were originally designed by some intelligence, somewhere. Perhaps designed to mutate and evolve, or
by swamp40 13y ago
It is for beauty like this that I believe all living things were originally designed by some intelligence, somewhere.
Perhaps designed to mutate and evolve, or perhaps that was a limitation in the source materials, but there are some beautifully engineered living systems on our planet.
- chockablock 13y agonon sequitur. Why does beauty imply the existence of an intelligent designer?
- swamp40 13y agoEngineering beauty. Like a Saturn V rocket, or an AC induction motor. Things that make you proud to be an engineer.
- biomecha 13y agoSo that intelligence would be able to feel proud of something? That's a very human concept.
- swamp40 13y agoWell, I was just explaining why I used the word beauty. Maybe whatever created these gears was being tortured by an evil master until it made something satisfactory. I really can't say for sure...
- iron_ball 13y agoGod cannot feel pride, for that would imply the possibility of failure. God is beyond most human emotions, probably all, for that reason: our emotions imply their opposites, while for God, there are no alternatives other than what is -- which is by definition perfect. Mind you, I'm an atheist, so this is just my understanding of the argument.
- GravityWell 13y agoIt doesn't. In this context, "...that I believe all living things", the words "I believe" can be directly converted to "I have faith without any evidence".
- fakeanon 13y ago> It is for beauty like this that [I believe][I have faith without any evidence] all living things were originally designed by some intelligence, somewhere. Looks like this for is as in "because", he is telling you why he belives, because of "beauty like this". You can only say you do not believe this evidence implicates that.
- shmageggy 13y agohttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teleological_argument http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teleological_argument What I was looking for but didn't find in the article was an explanation (or even a hypothesis) for how this mechanism evolved. One of the things I find most fascinating about evolution is how seemingly irreducible complexity in nature always turns out to have a some path of mutations and adaptations that led to the current state. For instance, the canonical example of 18th century teleology, the eye, was touted as being so unimaginably complex that there's the only conceivable explanation for its existence was design, yet today we have a clear picture of how that organ arose from simple photorecptive cells. My guess in this instance? The friction plates that their ancestors have and the other species have got bumpy, then they got more bumpy, then they interleaved.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- snowwrestler 13y agoEvolution is the ultimate proof of the power of agile engineering--ship on a schedule, test with real data, then work on the next iteration, keeping the good and discarding the bad.
- emiljbs 13y agoExcept that the new iteration is pretty much making random changes.
- dragonwriter 13y ago> Except that the new iteration is pretty much making random changes. E.g., avoiding ivory tower planning and instead using empirical, in-the-wild A/B testing.
- to3m 13y ago...over tens of thousands of years.
- snowwrestler 13y agoA common misperception but not true, because traits are heritable and the environment selects for fitness. Mutation and genetic drift play a role in evolution, but are not the sole source of changes.
- dsego 13y agoBut if the environment suddenly changes you die out.
- CatMtKing 13y agoOr adapt... depending on how shallowly you demarcate a population of organisms and how initially resilient they are to the environmental change.
- dsuth 13y agoYou're fitting the data to support your preconceived ideas. That never works out well.
- swamp40 13y agoWell, I can't disagree with that.
- Slackwise 13y agoJust because something looks "engineered", doesn't mean it is. A perfect example is the eye. An organ of great complexity, but one that is very easily explained by logical evaluation, as well as existing living creatures and fossils: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nwew5gHoh3E http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nwew5gHoh3E If you're a software engineer, I hope you understand how procedural systems and algorithms can transform data and functions. Similar processes take place via chemistry and biological interaction. Conway's Game of Life is a good example of a simple system giving rise to complex interaction and patterns. Complex beauty can arise from the interaction of systems, but if you say to yourself that it "must have been engineered by something greater than me", you settle in your mind, and shortcut around critical thinking and never progress toward understanding. And that's a great, great shame.
- swamp40 13y agoI'm a hardware engineer. I agree with you about patterns and mathematics - also beautiful, but cold (sorry, best I can explain it). But when we see a complex physical problem, and then see a nicely designed and implemented real-life solution - there I think my "engineered" theory has as good a chance at being correct as does the theory that says it just sprang up from 100 million years of evolution and random mutations (both of which I agree do occur).
- pygy_ 13y agoWhat more, the vertebrate eye has a flaw: its blind spot. The fibers of the optic nerve and the central retinal blood vessels irradiate in front of the retina. You may think that it is a necessary defect, but the squid eye, which evolved independently to end up almost identical to its vertebrate counterpart doesn't have it. The nerve fibers and blood vessels run behind the retina. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cephalopod_eye http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cephalopod_eye
- beauSD 13y agoAs a software engineer, when I see an algorithm that transforms and processes data using instructions and symbols, I reasonably assume that someone created that algorithm. When I'm told the algorithm is really just a random collection of instructions, assembled through an unguided process, that just happens to be work...that strains belief. But even accepting that, I'm still left with instructions, language, symbols, and interpretation. And these can only be produced by intelligence. Something as simple as the characters we use to write code means nothing unless meaning is ascribed to them, and meaning can't arise from a strictly meaningless process (evolution, chemical interactions, etc). I think the simpler, and truer explanation for why these systems appear engineered, is because they are.
- lotsofcows 13y agoEvery time you see something ugly, do you change your mind?