The Scientific Case for Intelligent Design

[VillagePlank]

Intelligent Design. Unless you're having me on lol.

Until 'evolution' can explain away the examples of irreducible complexity in the cell, flagellum, as well as the human body....then really we are just following this highly dictatorial evolutionist paradigm. The nature of life and living things points to that of a creator, and He\She\It is clearly reflected in the design. Whatever you're 'belief' in spirituality matters may be.

You have accused me of many things the last few days - particularly not reading others posts.

Therefore, although I have laid a bedrock for you to espouse your beliefs in a logical, rational way, and I have suspended my own in an effort to accomodate and facilitate my own learning, you have spurned this at every opportunity instead opting for the notion of pseudo-scientific soundbites.

It is, then, the case, that I concede. Not for the lack of my having a logical argument, but rather the lack of you providing the same, therein, and recipirocation of respect.

In truth? I feel hard done by, and I've had too much to drink. You have, for what little it is apparently worth, lost any admiration I ever held for you.

Sorry.

Edited July 19, 2007 by VillagePlank

[PersianPaladin]

I think we should stick with life, first; as you say it's contentious, and we'll get to 'design' later.

I think that your definition is too complicated. My four year old can tell me what is alive, and he knows nothing of the things you talk about. Besides, donkey's can't reproduce, and, of course, fire fits in with all your points as well, yet, I would not consider fire to be alive.

My opinion? For what it's worth I think of life as: 'Somthing is alive if it demonstrates directed movement' That is, it moves against the general scheme of things. I think that that's how my kids define it.

What do you think?

(NASA define life as something capable of undergoing Darwinian evolution, so that's not particularly helpful in this case, huh )

Steady on VP.....I was answering OON's post, not yours!

I would say that there is life and there are life forms. Water and fire are ultimately neccessary for the existence of life forms and their perpetuation, I could argue that water as an example...is the very essence of life.

An organism or a life-form is something that utilises that energy in order to live and exist as a manifest entity.

Good gracious.

Sorry....'tis a bit 'revealing' some of that.

:unsure:

Edited July 19, 2007 by PersianPaladin

[Hiya]

Intelligent Design. Unless you're having me on lol.

Until 'evolution' can explain away the examples of irreducible complexity in the cell, flagellum, as well as the human body....then really we are just following this highly dictatorial evolutionist paradigm. The nature of life and living things points to that of a creator, and He\She\It is clearly reflected in the design. Whatever you're 'belief' in spirituality matters may be.

I'm not an evolutionary biologist and neither are you, and I'm pretty sure no one else on this forum is. The examples you give may well have good theories behind their evolution, ones that even you think are plausible, but in this limited discussion they are omitted.

See once we get past that point it’s pretty much a matter of opinion. In my opinion I'm not designed, I have evolved from some long forgotten primate with billions of years worth of natural selection behind me. The notion of a grand designer in my opinion is absurd, since I have no proof of this designer and the idea all seems a bit far fetched. No I don't need proof of evolution, it makes perfect sense to me, and I've seem countless examples of natural selection, even amongst humans. My only belief is in nature.

I'm a tolerant man, so you can believe in a grand designer if you want, we're all free to believe what we wish since we have a wonderfully designed brain that allows free thought.

Anyway, hostility aside, I'm curious, as all good scientists are.

The link I posted the other day about the butterflies, how would you explain that using ID?

[Azores Hi]

Until 'evolution' can explain away the examples of irreducible complexity in the cell, flagellum, as well as the human body....then really we are just following this highly dictatorial evolutionist paradigm. The nature of life and living things points to that of a creator, and He\She\It is clearly reflected in the design. Whatever you're 'belief' in spirituality matters may be.

No, sorry but no. Even if evolutionary biology is wrong (and I doubt that it is) there is no reason at all to insert a creator into the gap in our knowledge. You may well propose that there is a creator but until you can prove it (and irreducible complexity does not mean proof it just means we can't yet explain how).

Time and again you have been asked to prove that ID is plausable yet all we have been offered are postulations that try to debunk Darwinism. Fine if Darwin was wrong what makes ID right? Why not some other method that we haven't thought of yet? This is the problem I have with ID it just inserts God into Ignorance which of course is the stuff religion thrives on.

Frankly this thread has gone to pot, as I thought it would, time and again science and Religion will bang heads without compromise, science gradually fills the gaps in our ignorance which will eventually leave religion nowhere left to hide. It's just a matter of time.

[Roo]

Until 'evolution' can explain away the examples of irreducible complexity in the cell, flagellum, as well as the human body....then really we are just following this highly dictatorial evolutionist paradigm.

Done!

'The examples offered to support the irreducible complexity argument have generally been found to fail to meet the definition and intermediate precursor states have been identified for several structures purported to exhibit irreducible complexity.^[3] For instance, precursors to the flagellum's motor can be found being used as ionic channels within bacteria, known as the Type III Secretory System.^[4] This is true for most of the structure of the flagellum in general; of the 42 proteins found in the flagellum, 40 have already been found in use in different biological pathways.^[5] Even Behe's toy model used to illustrate the concept, the mouse trap, was countered by critics including biology professor John McDonald, who produced examples of how he considered the mousetrap to be "easy to reduce", eventually to a single part.^[6]'

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irreducible_complexity

'Similarly, the claim that something - say the bacterial flagellum - is too complex to have evolved by natural selection is alleged, by a lamentably common but false syllogism, to support the "rival" intelligent design theory by default. This kind of default reasoning leaves completely open the possibility that, if the bacterial flagellum is too complex to have evolved, it might also be too complex to have been created. And indeed, a moment's thought shows that any God capable of creating a bacterial flagellum (to say nothing of a universe) would have to be a far more complex, and therefore statistically improbable, entity than the bacterial flagellum (or universe) itself - even more in need of an explanation than the object he is alleged to have created...In fact, the bacterial flagellum is certainly not too complex to have evolved, nor is any other living structure that has ever been carefully studied. Biologists have located plausible series of intermediates, using ingredients to be found elsewhere in living systems. But even if some particular case were found for which biologists could offer no ready explanation, the important point is that the "default" logic of the creationists remains thoroughly rotten.'

http://www.guardian.co.uk/life/feature/sto...1559743,00.html

Edited July 20, 2007 by Roo

[Guest Viking141]

Quite so Roo. I have already pointed out that PP's entire agrument is fallacious as it is based on the following flawed logic:

A or B

Not A

Therefore B

Which any fool can see is a completely flawed argument which ignores at least two other possibilities either:

Both A & B could be correct in certain respects, or

There could be another possibility i.e. C

[Roger J Smith]

Well, there is a certain inevitable logic contained in this debate about ID.

If one believes in ID, then it follows that one believes in an entity that most would call God, under whatever name.

If one does not believe in ID, then one must subscribe to one of two possible beliefs:

(.a.) there is no entity such as God, or

(.b.) the entity such as God played no role in the design of the observed universe.

Belief (.a.) is neither provable nor disprovable, placing it in the same category as the ID camp -- an article of faith.

Belief (.b.) requires some level of qualification for illustration. One might believe in the existence of a God who has made minor or shall we say recent changes in the universe. Even if He made a phone call there was some element of intelligent design to His actions. So it would be reasonable to qualify this belief by saying that God did no more than tinker with the randomly evolving universe to suit His own purposes. That would let in perhaps a scattering of events such as those widely believed by followers of various religions within the human historical era.

I just thought I would add this to the discussion because a lot of the other things introduced as "logical" considerations are in fact matters of opinion. From first principles, there is nothing really more or less logical about either faith in God or pure atheism. These are merely alternative starting points for a value system that is an inevitable byproduct of human intelligence.

To pretend that atheism is more logical than faith is really an attempt to distort the paradigm under consideration so that it will "logically" appear that ID cannot exist.

Logic has a fairly precise set of definitions and constraints, and choosing value systems or frames of reference does not fall within those boundaries. I am not even sure that the choice between faith and atheism could be resolved in the mind of every observer by what some might perceive to be the demonstration of the existence of God (such as Him showing up in our midst) -- one observer might say the events proved His existence and another might say it was a hoax or a false paradigm. Christians believe this has already happened on several occasions, Jews perhaps one fewer or several more depending on the details.

[Admiral_Bobski]

If one does not believe in ID, then one must subscribe to one of two possible beliefs:

(.a.) there is no entity such as God, or

(.b.) the entity such as God played no role in the design of the observed universe.

There is a third option:

(.c.) God "prepared" the Universe and then set off the Big Bang - his "design", therefore, is something built in to the universe which develops naturally over time.

This "design" would start the ball rolling, so to speak, but everything in the universe would develop by natural means as time goes on. Therefore, Evolution would be a legitimate scientific process, as would any physical, chemical or biological process that occurs in the universe.

CB

[VillagePlank]

I'm afraid that I cannot agree with what you say, Roger, on the basis that it is a presumption from a false premise.

Your starting point (like many other) is that there must be only two value judgements and that one or the other will lead to varying conclusions. Of course, these judgements are whether one should believe in the existence of God. Since the result, as you correctly point out, for either case is unprovable, then we cannot have an axiom on which to base an argument. In fact the argument (as it exists) must come from the reverse. There is a proposition that "All (known) living things are designed" It is only a presumption (and that is a clear fallacy) that the designer should be God. Indeed which God are we arguing for? The anglican (who like female priests) the catholic (who doesn't like female priests) The list is virtually endless....

It could be just as easy the argue that some alien designer seeded the Earth with the required mechanics, and thus life's genome is designed. Not an argument that I'd support, but it is there, nevertheless.

Incidentally, in a Wiki link posted earlier there was a good section (applicable in this case) with the argument from ignorance. It says "It is a logical mistake to assert that because a phenomenon is unpredictable by current scientific theories, that a better scientific theory cannot be found that provides an adequate natural explanatory model for the phenomena in question; and that therefore, one must assert that the only viable explanation of the unexplained phenomena is the supernatural action of God."

This, of course, in my case that I quote this, is the logical fallacy of 'appeal to authority' ...

(Those who subscribe to AGW on the basis that the UN say so is another such example of appeal to authority. In this case it is much worse than above because people provide for a body that they believe is inerrant and deiteous)

Edited July 23, 2007 by VillagePlank

[crimsone]

Option C...

"God"/"the Divine" and the universe are one entity, giving the universe itself a sense of conciousness (though probably not one as we would consider it in human thought), and thus the universe has some innate knowledge and understanding of what it needs and what it needs rid of, using observable mechanisms, laws, and systems to these ends, resulting in the current situation today being a product of continuous and compounded change rather than design.

Option D...

The universe, possibly the multiverse, is in fact one big self organising system with no actual consciousness of any sort.

Option E...

God or not, the universe is neither stable or constant, and will one day blink out of existance, just as a star or an entire galaxy would. It's most stable state is emptyness, and the very existance of human beings in such numbers, and varied life and species in such numbers on earth (and possibly elsewhere) is in fact one symptom of the entropy now inherent in the system...

...

...

... Options F, G, and H anybody?

Edited July 23, 2007 by crimsone

[AtlanticFlamethrower]

There is a third option:

(.c.) God "prepared" the Universe and then set off the Big Bang - his "design", therefore, is something built in to the universe which develops naturally over time.

This "design" would start the ball rolling, so to speak, but everything in the universe would develop by natural means as time goes on. Therefore, Evolution would be a legitimate scientific process, as would any physical, chemical or biological process that occurs in the universe.

CB

If God "pressed the button" to run the universe the outcome would by definition not be random, it would be designed within the parameters of the program.

That would mean evolution would not be blind, but rail-roaded to a known destination; that the probability of life and humans evolving was 1; that evolution "knew" it had made an eye when it enabled sight.

In other-words what in c) may be observed as evolution by natural selection would not be the result of a random process but the outcome of a fixed path, within parameters set by the designer.

Evolution as a process is therefore a contradiction - it's intelligent, not unintelligent design - along with its false claims to "design without a designer".

Edited July 23, 2007 by AtlanticFlamethrower

[Admiral_Bobski]

If God "pressed the button" to run the universe the outcome would by definition not be random, it would be designed within the parameters of the program.

That would mean evolution would not be blind, but rail-roaded :lol: to a known destination; that the probability of life and humans evolving was 1; that evolution "knew" it had made an eye when it enabled sight.

In other-words what in c) may be observed as evolution by natural selection would not be the result of a random process but the outcome of a fixed path, within parameters set by the designer.

Evolution as a process is therefore a contradiction - it's intelligent, not unintelligent design - along with its false claims to "design without a designer".

Why all the emoticons?

So...if God pressed the button then the outcome would be designed. By extension, therefore, He Who Presses The Button would know the outcome...

Hmmm....

When our lovely friends the Climate Modellers write their models, do they know what the outcome will be?

In fact, the models' results will be different depending upon what actual figures are put into them at the beginning - the model itself is completely separated from the results the model gives.

So, theoretically speaking, God could have created the Evolutionary process without there being any prerequisite for the development of human life. It's like winding up a clockwork toy and seeing where it ends up - you know it's going to go somewhere, but you don't know exactly where.

Besides, I was just adding another option to Roger's somewhat stunted list...

CB

[VillagePlank]

If God "pressed the button" :lol: to run the universe the outcome would by definition not be random, it would be designed within the parameters of the program.

Why? What makes this assertion valid? I can tell you that I push my wife and daughter into Bluewater shopping centre, and their movement is certainly random - even though they are rational beings.

That would mean evolution would not be blind, but rail-roaded to a known destination;

Pure determinism. If you can resolve the dilemma of determinism and freewill you may have a strong point, there.

that the probability of life and humans evolving was 1;

This is mixed. The creation of life, and the evolution of life are two seperate entities. There's still room to include a creator in the first, and, of course, the argument of design is only, in the context of this thread, applicable to the later.

to ensure that life happened that evolution "knew" it had made an eye when it enabled sight.

I just don't understand why you need to make the universe self-aware for processes to happen.

In other-words what in c) may be observed as evolution by natural selection would not be the result of a random process but the outcome of a fixed path, within parameters set by the designer.

The only thing controversial here is whether you assign the parameters to a designer or natural process. I have never claimed that evolution is random. It may be complex enough to appear random, but it isn't. Even flipping coins makes for a poor random number generator.

Evolution as a process is therefore a contradiction - it's intelligent, not unintelligent design - along with its false claims to "design without a designer".

I simply can't see how you've arrived at this conclusion. Perhaps it's my idiocy, or perhaps I've missed the link somewhere?

[Bobby]

I admire your efforts VP and GW but nobody will change their mind on this issue; something I have learnt while debating subjects that people hold dearly.