meta-intelligent design

alright.

first read this nytimes editorial rationalizing intelligent design. apparently this guy behe came to talk at UCSF and was booed off stage. here is a website with a few links debunking some of his arguments. but let's not stop there. that would be that one-sided and closed-minded. let's get all meta on this guy's ass and everyone elses, too. let's seriously think this through. i'll state my assumptions and biases right now, upfront:

1) i think that there are very simple rules that, when iterated over and over again, are capable of producing the maximum degree of complexity that has been observed in even the most complex of biological systems.

2) i think that we have not yet elucidated exactly what those rules are. to state that darwinian evolution is insufficient to explain the emergence of all biological systems is simply stating the obvious: we have not yet fully explored the mathematics of nonlinear systems enough to understand how complex properties in the world can emerge from the iterative application of simple rules, and we have not yet built the experimental tools we need to uncover the mechanisms that guided the evolution of many complex biological systems.

3) i think that our perception of the world is fallible, so just because mt. rushmore looks designed and we feel it is designed does not mean that when we encounter complexity on scales we still know very little about, such as on the level of molecular motors in cells, if we feel it is designed, that means it is designed.

okay. now i will build on those assumptions and suggest that proponents of intelligent design are right, but looking in the wrong place and attempting to discredit a field of study that they should, in fact, be promoting as consistent with their own theory.

i think that, more amazing and complex than a molecular motor or mt. rushmore, is the fact that a designer does not have to be invoked in order to explain their emergence from an unsupervised iterative process based on a finite set of simple rules. so if there's a place to look for an intelligent designer, it is not in the actual emergence of any of these seemingly engineered systems, but rather in the universe that pre-dated their emergence. when did these rules get set, and how did the initial conditions get set such that the iterative process would produce something so architecturally magnifiscent that we would be sitting here now staring at it and wondering how it could not be designed? if anyone wants to invoke a designer, they shouldn't be invoking one to explain how this, the most beautifully complex process ever, engineered life, but rather they should be invoking one to explain how a world was created that would make engineering unnecessary.

God is efficient. why would He create a system that required explicitly thinking about each machine and putting the right pieces in place one at a time when He could create a system that allowed Him to go take a vacation and let it organize itself?

such a silly controversy. both sides are incomplete, but right. stop arguing over who knows more about a world that we know nothing about and just keep looking for evidence of how the world works in the most unbiased way we can, despite our innate predispositions to do everything in the most biased way possible.

haha.