A Leauki's Writings
Published on August 28, 2008 By Leauki In Biology

A lot has been made off the so-called controversy between Creationism and biology.

And ever interested in controversy I have decided to give an example of Intelligent Design.

 

When I entered the office this morning I noticed a strange construction (I thought), which looked like two rooms with double doors that opened when I pressed a button. The rooms were not immediately obvious to me since the doors failed to open until quite some time after I pressed what looked like the doorbell.

Since my desk is on the sixth floor I decided to press the button with the number 6. This room must be magic of some kind, or a very complex construction/design.

The room moved upwards, following a glass tunnel and the door finally opened again in the sixth floor and I wasn't far from my desk any more.

Through the room's glass walls I could see the atrium of the building as well as the internal balconies of the floors.

It was then obvious to me that both rooms (and the six others that looked like it) had been designed for a specific purpose in mind.

 

"Intelligent Design" is the idea that we can look at an object and from doing so learn who designed it and why.

In the case of this room, it was obvious that it was designed:

 

1. All the corners were (rounded) corners and perfectly symmetrical. No random chance incident would produce such a room.

2. The room contained exactly the number of buttons needed (one for each floor, one for alarm, two for door open and close).

3. The glass walls were obviously made so that users of the room could look outwards. (Similarly sized rooms elsewhere in the building have been designed without glass walls so that people cannot look through them.)

4. There was exactly one display in the room, indicating the floor the room currently connected to and an arrow pointing up or down.

 

No way was that room created by random chance.


The rooms had very obviously been designed and the design had a purpose too. The purpose must have been to transport people from floor to floor.

 

It occurred to me that in order for my hypothesis to become a theory it would have to be falsifiable. So let's assume that instead of Intelligent Design I believe that evolution created the rooms. Here's a list of things the finding of which would support the idea that evolution rather than Intelligent Design created the rooms:

1. The corners would be rounder and not perfectly symmetrical. (In fact the corners are really perfectly symmetrical. I measured them in two of the rooms.)

2. There would be more or less buttons than needed. Some floors might not have buttons, other buttons would refer to floors that don't exist (and might not do anything useful). The numbers on the buttons would not perfectly represent the floors as if made to represent the floors. The button for floor 3 might not be between the buttons for floors 2 and 4. (In fact all the buttons work and are arranged in order.)

3. The glass in the walls would not be industry standard. (In fact the glass is pretty perfect for the reasonable amount of money a company might spend on such a room's walls.)

4. There would be several displays and only one or two would show useful information with a third or fourth being off or showing random information. (In fact the only display seemed to show only relevant information.)

Obviously evolution didn't create the rooms, some designer did.

 

Then I thought, perhaps I can learn something about the designer when studying his work? I thought of a few things.

1. Since one room, according to the display outside it, passed by my original floor and didn't stop on its way down or back up, I figured that perhaps the design of the doorbell mechanism is faulty. Further testing revealed that, indeed, the doorbell doesn't work the way it should. From this I figure that the designer is not perfect and makes mistakes.

2. Since the one and only display in the room uses the two arrows (up and down) it can display not to show the direction the room is going to move towards  but instead either arrow is displayed more or less randomly, I figure that perhaps the designer didn't know how to fix the arrow problem. He is apparently not all-knowing.

3. Since it takes the room some time to reach the required floor I concluded that the designer wasn't very powerful. (If he was, I thought, why not design a plain old teleporter instead of an unreliable magic room?)

From all this I deduce that the designer of the magic room is a designer who is not perfect, not all-knowing, and not all-powerful; he was indeed, I am sure, a man (or possibly a woman).

 

At this point the matter seemed to touch the metaphysical and I decided to ask a Catholic friend about it. Perhaps some god had designed it. He said that his god probably didn't design the magic room. I pretty much agreed with him, since the design of the magic room did indicate an imperfect, even stupid (my friend agreed) designer. And why would I insult my friend and claim that his god is an imperfect, even stupid designer?

 

This has been very interesting and I have decided that I will continue to look at things and figure out if somebody designed them and who the designer might have been.

 

 

 

 


Comments
on Aug 28, 2008

So there! My first pro-ID article!

 

on Aug 28, 2008

Wow! That was quick. I only wrote the article less than an hour ago. Thanks for featuring!

on Aug 28, 2008

So, I see you like taking elevator rides.

on Aug 28, 2008

So, I see you like taking elevator rides.

 

on Aug 28, 2008

I cannot see, touch, smell, taste or hear your moving rooms, ergo they do not exist.

on Aug 28, 2008

I cannot see, touch, smell, taste or hear your moving rooms, ergo they do not exist.

I fail to see the relevanve of your comment.

I described my findings, I didn't demand that you believe that there are elevators in my office.

 

on Aug 28, 2008

elevators in my office.

I never said elevators.

on Aug 28, 2008

Now there's some intelligent design I can get behind.

~Zoo

on Aug 28, 2008

I never said elevators.

A room that moves up and down is an elevator because of the elevation involved.

 

Now there's some intelligent design I can get behind.

See? And you dismissed Intelligent Design as religion!

My belief in an imperfect, ignorant, weak elevator designer is not religion. It's science. I want it to be taught in schools.

 

on Aug 28, 2008

My reason for choosing Intelligent Design is this: Even if I weren't religious, would a Random-Chance world be quite as complex? I mean, yeah, it could be complex, but would it be as complex?

on Aug 28, 2008

would a Random-Chance world be quite as complex? I mean, yeah, it could be complex, but would it be as complex?

Have you ever taken statistics?  Tell me that's not complex when dealing with large numbers.

~Zoo

on Aug 29, 2008

My reason for choosing Intelligent Design is this: Even if I weren't religious, would a Random-Chance world be quite as complex?

Hm...

Evolution has nothing to do with "random chance". So I take it your reason for choosing Intelligent Design is that you do not understand evolution?

But that's really besides the point.

Do you agree or disagree with me regarding my main points?

Have those magic rooms in my office been designed?

And can I deduce from the design that the designer was an imperfect being?

 

on Aug 29, 2008

Have you [Erathoniel] ever taken statistics?  Tell me that's not complex when dealing with large numbers.

You know, I hate maths but I did take statistics. I took all sorts of classes in the four universities/colleges I saw during my time as a student.

You are right, it is complex.

The problem is that people have a hard time understand emergence. It's one of those concepts the understanding of which was never a survival trait and so we are bad at it. (Other such concepts are deep time and the ability to see height like length.)

I also took a class in computer structures. After I (nearly) understood my way from transistors to the MIPS RISC CPU and then from machine language via compilers to languages like C, I understood not how but that systems based on very simple principles can become very very complex after just two or three applications of simple rules.

But it takes years to get that. Most people don't understand it. (Many people can't understand it even.)

It is said that only 10% of the whole population can program (i.e. break down a task into its components including possible branches). Most people don't even understand why a certain task has components (or why the components really have components as well, or what the components are given a certain machine definition) because the human brain does things automatically (when WE do them, not when we teach a machine to do them).

And it is said that of those 10% only 10% (i.e. 1% of the whole population) understand pointers (i.e. redirection, keeping track of a variable that doesn't contain the value you want but an address of a location in memory where that value starts).

That's why Visual BASIC was such a success. It doesn't use pointers and that meant that ten times as many people could use it.

And to those that don't understand pointers or programming computers are simply magic (if they can see the complexity) or simple devices (if they cannot).

And similarly those who understand complexity and emergence understand evolution, whereas those who cannot (i.e. maybe 90% of the population of the earth) either see the complexity of nature and think "magic" (or "design by a superior being") or don't have an opinion (if they don't see the complexity).

But to accept that OTHERS might be able to understand these things is difficult. I have accepted that certain areas of physics are probably neither magic nor simple but merely too complex for me to understand. But to accept that that is true for almost everything one interacts with is obviously difficult for some. If you have to choose between admitting (relative) stupidity and finding answers in pseudo-science, people pick pseudo-science.

And suddenly educated scientists are no longer much smarter than we but merely on the wrong track. It turns out our faith in magic is superior to all their hard work and research and we never have to understand what they actually do.

And then we can call evolution "random chance".

 

on Sep 18, 2008

Any ID discussion should have this brought up:

http://jp.youtube.com/watch?v=JVRsWAjvQSg

(don't ask me why it is on japan's youtube, it is in english)