Stephen Meyer on Engineers and ID
| January 6, 2007 | Posted by GilDodgen under Intelligent Design |
In this, Part 2 in a series of posts based on the Q&A section in the recently released DVD, Case for a Creator, I offer the text of Meyer’s response to the question, Why are many engineers intrigued by intelligent design theory?
As a software engineer — in both the artificial-intelligence and aerospace research and development fields — I recognized that there were huge problems with the thesis that natural selection and random variation could produce complex information-processing systems, because designing such systems is what I do.
Here are Meyer’s comments in answer to the question posed to him above:
The origin of a new structure, of a miniature machine, or an information-processing system, or a circuit, is an engineering problem. Oftentimes people have criticized the intelligent design movement because there are so many prominent professors of engineering in our number. But we don’t make any apologies for that, because engineers are precisely the scientists that know what it takes to design things, to build things. And the question of origins is essentially a question of engineering. How did these systems get built? And when you have so many top-level professors of engineering — in mechanical, electrical or software engineering — saying, I think we’re looking at systems that clearly show evidence of design, I think the Darwinists have a serious problem. If they can’t persuade those people, that the 19th-century mechanism of selection and variation is up to this task, I think that the theory is in serious trouble.
93 Responses to Stephen Meyer on Engineers and ID
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Tom More & other RMNS fans,
Ever heard of DFSS ? Design for Six Sigma ?…
It is a theory, an approach, that uses a lot of statistics and maths to improve a design… It is widely used in manufacturing, also, to improve production processes, setups, flows… And it uses HELL A LOT OF DAMN INTELLIGENCE (experiments, designs of experiments, math) to design & produce not only a good product, but at best cost…
You said a Boeing 777 is a simple structure… Have you ever thought of how much design time (experiments, calculations, simulations) was needed by the best brains in aeronautical industry to build that “simple structure” ?… Do you know what PURPOSE means ?… Do you know that engineers at Boeing have DESIGNED the 777 for the PURPOSE of safe flight ?…
By the way, if evolution is “so powerful”, why don’t you guys come up with some useful “blind-watchmaker-kind-of” algorithms that would help us engineers develop better products, better machines, without using so much of our (intelligent) brains ?…
By the way, if evolution is “so powerfulâ€Â, why don’t you guys come up with some useful “blind-watchmaker-kind-of†algorithms that would help us engineers develop better products, better machines, without using so much of our (intelligent) brains ?
Sure would save a lot of bucks and since rm-ns is true somebody is going to get real rich when they apply it to engineering. I mean the only reason it hasn’t happened yet is because nobody has thought about it until this thread. Right? Right?
Dave,
You’ve had a lot of experience in this eh! Mine has been very different.
Did you ever open up the MS code libraries? When I did, I couldn’t believe the kind of stuff that was in there. Redundancy galore, constants, variables and macros defined, redefined everywhere, sloppy memory checking,…
But I do think you’re right about drivers and such being the worst culprits. I’ve just had to deal with user machines that were constantly crashing, MS software bugs, STL leaks galore and so on.
If everything is programmed correctly of course that shouldn’t happen, but you wouldn’t believe some of the horrendous code I’ve had to debug then scrap and write cause debugging was going to cost more than re-writing!
I had to modify some web code written in JavaScript – 6000 lines in one single file! And only 1 comment that read, I kid you not : “// Joe”
I even found this code – supposedly OOP in C++ wherein there were over 200 lines of code used to initialize a C structure’s elements – 1 by 1 – all to null! I replaced the whole thing with one line of memset(….); !
The same guys also wrote 3 different C functions to initialize 3 different C structures – all the same structure! (3 variables declared)!
something like :
struct my_struct
{
string title;
int year;
};
my_struct a,b,c;
then
void init_struct_a();
void init_struct_b();
void init_struct_c();
Can you believe it? That was written by guys in a well known IT consulting firm!! AND, for a military application (thankfully just a prototype)!
I guess my chief complaint on dev these days is that back in the old days when memory was very costly, programmers learned how to do very efficient code in very little space.
I mean look at VAX or any virtual machine type system. The processors weren’t all that powerful (compared to today) nor was there endless volumes of memory, yet those systems almost never crashed – 3rd party software or anything else you threw at ‘em.
Star programmers? The biggest problem I’ve seen is those who think they are star programmers but aren’t. They can really get on yer nerves…. Haven’t earned bragging rights but still brag.
Worse still is kids who think they’re code whizzes but who actually program like they play Nintendo games – type type type (no forethought), run, ooops game over, type type type, run, oops game over. I’ve seen that over and over.
I’ve never considered myself a star programmer but I AM a star (caliber) guitar player and that’s even better!
BTW, love your posts on ID and all. Keep up the good work.