But smuggling in "design" terms like "program" won't help your case, Reed.

Even ignoring the nature of the assertion of a god's existence for a moment, an experiment with no determinate results is enough to keep us from jumping to conclusions -- right?

What if sincere prayer fails to prove this.
Then you would have an indeterminate result.

"... what experiment do you propose to prove your thesis?

Other than sincere prayer I can't think of an experiment to prove that design occurred."

What if sincere prayer fails to prove this.

---Landon

Never mistake contempt for compassion, or power lust for ambition.

http://www.myspace.com/wickedlakes

I had suggested in the morality discussion that the inductive argument for morality be expressed as a deduction which made me think the "design" argument should be able to be expressed as a deduction as well.

I have to concede I was unsuccessful with this deduction. Oh well, it was worth a try.

This is where I started and probably where I should have finished.

Designed things have a designer.
Nature contains designed things.
Therefore nature has a designer.

The problem with the above is to identify designed things to the satisfaction of those denying a designer. Stating that some things are obviously designed is a non argument so, I thought I should find a definition of design.

I wasn't entirely happy with the "design" definition and shouldn't have used it. The problem with defining design is that the only attribute that designed things necessarily share is that they have a designer... which leads to question begging.

Mark -
... what experiment do you propose to prove your thesis?
Other than sincere prayer I can't think of an experiment to prove that design occurred.

Gregster -
There are many bodily artifacts in creatures that no longer serve a purpose. What are you sitting on for example?
What I am sitting on is a chair.
However, I think are alluding to my tail bone and suggesting that it is without function. Three problems with this approach...
1. The tail bone has function in humans; Nine muscles are attached to it - including sphincter control.
2. It is probably impossible to prove that something is without function.
3. Lack of function of part of a thing does not indicate the whole thing is not designed.

Those problems aside I would be very interested in any proposed human bodily artifacts that no longer serve a purpose.

Hayden -
Algorithmic Inelegance
If I understand the writer of the article correctly he is proposing that there is a genetic "program" that was capable of producing all life that exists and this "program" explains why there is no need for a designer.
I think his proposal needs a good programmer and a designer.

Find a room.

That means something coming from you.

Those are nice!

"Why is it that nature requires a designer while the designer doesn't?"

The designer [consciousness] is busy designing but who or what or if anything, designed consciousness is another kettle of fish. I don't mind admitting its outside of my field.

Some say we came from Mud????

Man From Mud Theory
http://www.rehabilitatenz.co.nz/pages/man-from-mud.html [full article]

Far from having come from "science" the "Man from Mud" theory was taken by these scientists from a body of religious demonology and foisted off on man as "modern thought," what you'd expect from fakes.

What religious demonology? Why the Egyptian, of course. In the Larousse

Encyclopaedia of Mythology, the standard work, we find in column 4 page 11

under "Divinities attached to the ennead of Heliopolis and the family of Osiris" the following paragraph:

"Nun (or Nu) is chaos, the primordial ocean in which before the creation lay the germs of all things and all beings."

These "scientific" pots who are calling everyone fakes, might have done abit better than to try to foist off on the world mere religious superstition as the scientific basis on which all their whole "science" is laid. Man from mud?

an oasis in the desert.

Like jewels in a rock.

"standing out like the dog's bollocks"

There is simply nothing in nature which suggests the need for a designer -- apart, that is, from the things which a human consciousness has actually designed.

And those stand out like an aching thumb. (Shouldn't there be a positive simile for "standing out"?)

Complexity in living things is a product of the lack of direction in evolutionary processes, of the accumulation of fortuitous accidents, rather than the product of design.

As is explained, here.

Check your premises.  You have proof that something that occurs in nature is designed? 

Let's apply your other premise to economics:   Design requires a designer.  Economies contain purposeful arrangements of parts and details.  Therefore an economy requires a designer. 

Who designed your economy?

"Nature contains purposeful arrangements"

There are many bodily artifacts in creatures that no longer serve a purpose. What are you sitting on for example?

Nothing was designed, what you see is what physical laws begat.

...and since Darwin, we now know that the designer was Evolution. Problem solved.

No, the designer may have a purpose but that is not part of this deduction.

I was pointing out that you say on the one hand that natures purpose comes from without, from its designer, and on the other hand you say that it's contained entirely within.

Note: Purposeful in this context is referring to a function within the designed thing and not a purpose of the designer

Surely any function within the designed thing must be a purpose of the designer? The designer, if one exists, would have created the function to serve a purpose.

That aside though, I challenge you that nature requires a designer. You assume that it is designed, but there is no evidence that it is designed. Things behave according to their nature, in accord with their identity, but that isn't evidence of design - evidene of design would be a drawing board lying around, and blueprints, and mathematical equations on paper - It's evidence of order, which is something entirely different.

I saw the title and was hoping maybe there was a way to make the Big Guy reduce my tax burden.

Damn. Carry on with the rehash of the watchmaker argument.

I can agree with that statement reed, which is why I am a Deist.

Leonid

"Design requires a designer.
Nature contains purposeful arrangements of parts or details.
Therefore nature requires a designer. "

1.Designer exists and therefore he/she/it is part of nature (existence)

2 Designer must be complete,perfect,and by definition should be most purposeful arrangement of his/her/its parts and details

3.Nature requires designer.

4.Ergo: Designer requires designer and so on ad infinitum

Design requires a designer.
Nature contains purposeful arrangements of parts or details.
Therefore nature requires a designer.

Surely there is a problem here, Reed, in that either the causal logic between the first two parts may not explain your deduction if other factors are involved that may equally provide an explanation, or if the premises in your first two assumptions are wrong, in which case your deduction has its legs taken from under it.

For example, the purposeful arrangements of parts may not require a designer if the result of evolution. And you cannot prove that evolution is the result of a designer, rather than just being a process of evolution, setting the necessary patterns and arrangements that are the products of its own evolving internal logic.

But, to put this back on you, what experiment do you propose to prove your thesis?

Lindsay -
Why is it that nature requires a designer while the designer doesn't?
Neither nature nor a designer require a designer, however things are either designed or not.

If parts of nature are designed then there is a designer of nature.

Richard -
Nature contains purposeful arrangements
Does it?

Yes. Consider this... Our bodies are within "nature"... and any organ or body system is an arrangement of parts or details that serves a purpose to the body.

So in other words, the designer designs things - things that contain functions - with no purpose in mind.

No, the designer may have a purpose but that is not part of this deduction.

Why is it that nature requires a designer while the designer doesn't?

Does it?

"Note: Purposeful in this context is referring to a function within the designed thing and not a purpose of the designer (that would be begging the question)."

So in other words, the designer designs things - things that contain functions - with no purpose in mind. Sounds pretty random to me.