Re: Human design and natural "design"

Tim Tyler wrote:
> dkomo <dkomo871@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote or quoted:
>
>>Perplexed in Peoria wrote:
>>
>>>"dkomo" <dkomo871@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message news:ddiijq$2ok$1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>
>
>>Because nature can use massive parallism to explore an immense search
>>space. It can literally "experiment" on tens of millions of species
>>simultaneously. And it has tens of millions of years in which to do it.
>>These significant advantages over what humans have to work with.
>>
>>But we can produce a complex design directly with very little trial and
>>error. Given a design spec for a digital filter, for example, we merely
>>feed the parameters into a computer, and presto voila there's the
>>filter. Nature has absolutely no capability to do this.
>
>
> Here you are using terminology which divorces man from nature.
>
> I know there's a long tradition of that - going back to Darwin and
> beyond. However I wish people would stop using such terminology.
>
> One of the Darwinain revelations is that man is part of and a
> product of nature - not something apart from or divorced from it.
>

I think I answered this in my reply to Guy Hoelzer today (Wednesday).
Re-reading your post and his, the needle of my pedantry detector has
started to move toward the high end of the scale.

I'm trying to pinpoint the differences between human intelligent design
and the biological evolution which consists of random variation and
selection. If you think this means I'm "using terminology which
divorces man from nature" then you're being pedantic. If we can't make
these kinds of distinctions, then let's just declare "All is One" and
stop wasting our time. And "All is One" is the equivalent of saying
that, for example, nature can perform analytical and top-down design
because humans can.

Silly.

>
>>Actually, you could say nature did evolve the
>>silcon chip indirectly by evolving man, but it took her 3.5 billion
>>years starting with some basic biochemical ingredients.
>
>
> That's more like it ;-)
>

I was waxing metaphoric here.

>
>>It could be said that nature is herself intelligent because is composed
>>in part of billions, if not trillions, of intelligent organisms. [...]
>
>
> A useful perpective. The evolutionary process has become intelligent.
>
> No longer can it be argued that evolution can't perform fitness
> evaluations under simulation - or that it lacks foresight, aims
> and goals. Those things may have been missing back in the dark
> ages, true - but these days the process includes intelligent agents
> that have these attributes and abilities - and their actions can
> influence the path evolution takes.

Ah. All is One?


--dkomo@xxxxxxxx


.

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