Why nanomachines are considered designed only if they are built by humans
J. Fraser Stoddart, Nobelist, Chemistry 2016
From David Klinghoffer at Evolution News & Views:
The 2016 Nobel Prize for Chemistry recognized the intelligent design (what else would you call it?) of artificial molecular machines. These “nano” machines are impressive as technical achievements. Yet they are also exceedingly simple, “cute” but “useless,” as Nature reported that “some chemists” say. “We need to convince [researchers] that these molecules are really exciting,” as one scientist remarked.
Writing at CNSNews, Discovery Institute biochemist Michael Behe makes the point that Darwin advocates don’t want to hear. If scientists need to be “convinced” that nano machines are “exciting” and useful, the same is surely not true when it comes to the molecular machines familiar to biologists. That’s the nanotechnolgy that make continuing existence possible for chemists, Nobel Laureates, and every living creature on the planet: …
No one needs to labor to convince anybody that kinesins (walking transport proteins) are useful. It sounds like he’s headed in a dangerous direction: More.
Let’s spell out the danger: It is okay to talk about design in nature as long as we are referring to human artifacts (because humans are not special, evolved so as to be unable to understand reality, and consciousness is an illusion.
The question of how all that information got built up somehow is circumvented by assuming that we would not know if there was information anyway. That is the message of naturalism: Not that the evidence supports it but that we can’t know. Which means evidence does not matter.
The conflict between fine-tuning and the multiverse turns precisely on that point: The multiverse is an attempt to circumvent the evidence for fine-tuning on principle because the evidence does not matter.
A naturalist theory can, of course, be imposed without evidence, and imposing the theory is what matters.
Except for artificial intelligence, of course. Which, in such a framework, is considered real intelligence. Because there isn’t any real intelligence anywhere. 0 = 0
If you believe it.
See also: Terminology watch: Hidden “intelligence” in our cells?
People say that “intelligence” is just a word. No one means it. But that is their mistake. It is becoming harder all the time to pretend that Darwinism (natural selection acting on random mutation) explains what we see. Eventually, as here, writers must start using terminology that makes sense if they are to understand the story themselves, never mind conveying it accurately. |
