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Harsh Truth: If Intelligent Design is Untestable . . .

David M

Well-Known Member
Intelligent design theory simply means to accept as fact that freedom is real and relevant in the universe. You can see by that evolutionists fall over each other denying free will of people is real, that they simply have a problem with accepting any freedom is real.

Evolution theory is a scientific dead end, and the field is awash with ideologists producing pseudoscience intended to influence society.

No, intelligent design partially negates free will. It means that what we are has been predetermined in advance billions of years ago be someone so powerful that they can accurately produce a given end goal from an extremely remote starting point and that end goal includes our instincts and how our senses work to perceive the world around us.
 

David M

Well-Known Member
Has anyone attempted this same logic to discredit ID?

As in, if all this stuff is designed by humans, then which humans designed your system of beliefs?

It has been pointed out (I think it was a poster called Febble? on another forum) that the known mechanism of evolution such as Natural Selection fits the definition of an "Intelligent Designer", it does so because the ID crowd can't make explicit references to who they really think that designer is (the Abrahamic God) without losing all ability to claim the ID is not a religious claim rather than science.
 

McBell

Unbound
And please tell me what things you use for a specific purpose in your occupation were not designed by someone familiar with that occupation, for that purpose?
What does this have to do with god?

The Bible itself uses this logic......"....the one who constructs a house has more honor than the house itself. Of course, every house is constructed by someone, but the one who constructed all things is God." (Heb 3:3, 4)

You cannot prove that statement is false by applying science.
You cannot prove the statement is true by using science.
Now since the statement cannot be proven, there is no reason to take it seriously outside of wishful thinking.

Science gives more honor to the house than to the builder. This is nothing new. They say there is no builder...but look at the modifications that the house made to itself! Amazing, undirected chance mutations constructed all you see....? Seriously, you don't see the flaw in this argument?
Yes, I do see the flaw in this argument.
Sad that you are so unwilling to.

Evolution uses a lot of imagination, (educated guessing) as has been demonstrated in this and other threads. Can you tell me why clever men making assumptions about fossils is equivalent to "facts" being presented as unalterable truth. A truth isn't truth until it's proven to be a lie. A truth might stand challenged but it is unalterable. An assumption isn't a fact.

It has already been established by scientists themselves that the fossil record is incomplete and relies on environmental circumstances that are also assumed to have taken place.

"The fossil record is incomplete. This incompleteness has many contributing factors. Geological processes may cause confusion or error, as sedimentary deposition rates may vary, erosion may erase some strata, compression may turn possible fossils into unrecognizable junk, and various other means by which the local fossil record can be turned into the equivalent of a partially burned book, which is then unbound, pages perhaps shuffled, and from which a few pages are retrieved. Beyond geology, there remains taphonomy -- the study of how organisms come to be preserved as fossils. Here, there are further issues to be addressed. Hard parts of organisms fossilize preferentially. The conditions under which even those parts may become fossilized are fairly specialized. All this results in a heavily skewed distribution of even what parts of organisms become fossilized, and that affects which features of morphology are available for use in classification. The issue of geography enters into all this, as a consequence of the fact that living lineages occupy ecological niches, and those niches are bound to certain features of geography.

Paleospecies, then, have to be recognized as species from morphology alone, where the available morphological characters are drawn from a skewed distribution, the pattern of fossilization is skewed, and the geographic correlates of fossilization are limited in extent."


Are these statements false?
round and round and round we go.
I really wish the WatchTower would come up with a new song and dance for JW's to perform.
 

McBell

Unbound
I have been accused of being dishonest on these forums by people who stated categorically that evolution is a fact.
Perhaps if you stopped being dishonest, you would no longer be accused of being dishonest?

The true dishonesty is in stating that the beliefs of science are more important than the beliefs contained in God's word, when there is no more concrete evidence for evolution than there is for an intelligent designer of all things.
see, here are two blatantly dishonest statements from you.

Ironic that they come from you right after you whining about being accused of being dishonest.
 

Parsimony

Well-Known Member
It just depends on circumstances of how much evolutionists think they can get away with, how far they go with their rejection of freedom.

Cars etc. evolving is a common enough idea now. It is how evolutionists talk about how cars were made.
Technology changing over time is evolution of a sort, but it isn't Darwinian.

I can't help but agree with Skwim's sentiments here.
 

shawn001

Well-Known Member
Actually, evolution is not A theory, but a fact. However, there are theories OF evolution. And it's an important distinction.
So, while evolution is a fact there are also various theories regarding its operation: ideas and sets of ideas intended to explain how it works. And this is the only context in which "theory" has any meaning in regard to evolution.

Skwim, pretty sure my post explained it, a Fact and a working scientific theory.
 

Skwim

Veteran Member
Skwim, pretty sure my post explained it, a Fact and a working scientific theory.
Yes it did; however, your source, Evolution Resources From the National Academies, was wrong in saying that evolution was both a theory and a fact, particularly in its title. And being a very reputable source I find this surprising. Usually they're far more careful.
 

FearGod

Freedom Of Mind
No, intelligent design partially negates free will. It means that what we are has been predetermined in advance billions of years ago be someone so powerful that they can accurately produce a given end goal from an extremely remote starting point and that end goal includes our instincts and how our senses work to perceive the world around us.

Body is different than soul, similar to the car as body and the driver as soul, the car without the driver is dead and it moves according to the driver's will.
 

JayJayDee

Avid JW Bible Student
Couldn't pass this one up.

Evolution IS a fact. Evolution is defined as changes in allele frequencies in a population over time. It is a verified fact that this occurs therefore evolution is a fact.

Can we get one thing crystal clear here.....no one is disputing that adaptation (micro-evolution) is a fact. All creatures have the ability to change characteristics within their own genetics to adapt to climate change or food source alterations. None of that is in dispute. What is in dispute is whether it is a stretch to assume that these small changes can somehow leap into the realms of fantasy where science is "assuming" some things by inference, and taking it into the realms of fantasy, where proof becomes a matter of interpreting the findings in the fossil record in favor of their theory.

The Theory of Evolution explains this fact and other facts such as the fossil record, comparative morphologies, genome similarities and differences etc (e.g. both the great apes and guinea pigs are unable to sythnesize Vitamin C because the gene that does so is non-functional, however it is "broken" in in a different way for the apes than for the guinea pigs).

This is just funny. What is the natural conclusion from this fact? Why does the Vit C factor have to link them like it can only mean one thing? The deductive powers of science are skewed to add up to their own ridiculous conclusions. It can mean more than one thing....just like the pelvis in a whale may be more useful than first thought....not vestigial at all. The creature's natural diet would more than make up for any Vit C deficiency. Both are designed to obtain plenty of Vit C without even being aware that they need it.

Although people use the term "Evolution" to cover both instances it is the former when people say the evolution is a fact because a scientific theory is never a fact, its an explanation of facts.

No, I 'm sorry...it is not an explanation of facts at all...it is an explanation of how they "think" the facts add up.
If their facts are not facts to begin with, then how is there any certainty to their conclusions? Opinions, even professional ones are only opinions.


I thought this was interesting.....from your link. (It's the same site I quoted before)

"It is time for students of the evolutionary process, especially those who have been misquoted and used by the creationists, to state clearly that evolution is a fact, not theory, and that what is at issue within biology are questions of details of the process and the relative importance of different mechanisms of evolution."

OK, so what do we have here? "Questions about the details of the process and the relative importance of different mechanisms of evolution."

Since the fossil record is far from complete and the mechanisms of evolution are for the most part unknown, how can things be stated as facts?

"It is a fact that the earth with liquid water, is more than 3.6 billion years old."

The Bible does not argue with this, though creationists might. I am not a creationist. I believe in intelligent design but not that God started life and allowed it to evolve mindlessly from single called organisms over millions of years.

"It is a fact that cellular life has been around for at least half of that period and that organized multicellular life is at least 800 million years old."

Cellular life still exists...we are all cellular beings. We are all made from the same raw materials, but humans are vastly superior to any apes in ability and language. Why is it assumed that there must have been ape-like cavemen? Primitive peoples co-exist with modern civilisation even now. What does it prove? The illustrations that are presented in science text books and Internet sources as factual reconstructions, are nothing more than the imaginings of scientists. This is what they "think" the bodies of these creatures looked like. They aren't photographs.

It is a fact that palaeontologist have discovered fossils in the strata but as the comment quoted in my previous posts (in blue) suggested, the strata is not even an infallible indicator of when these creatures existed. When changes to the environment are taken into consideration, upheavals or erosion or floods could have messed up the whole story.

"It is a fact that major life forms now on earth were not at all represented in the past. There were no birds or mammals 250 million years ago."


This also agrees with the Bible. The order of appearance in Genesis is as science asserts.

How did Moses know the order in which living things appeared?

Then six "days" (creative periods of unstated length) in preparing the earth for living creatures. (3-31)
Calling them "days" in no way limits them to 24 hour periods.

Day 1: light; day and night (3-5)

Day 2: expanse (6-8)

Day 3: dry land and vegetation (9-13)

Day 4: heavenly luminaries become visible. (14-19)

Day 5: fish and birds (20-23)

Day 6: land animals and humans (24-31)

"It is a fact that major life forms of the past are no longer living. There used to be dinosaurs and Pithecanthropus, and there are none now."

We have seen many extinctions of creatures that were long gone before man even arrived, so again. What does this prove? Did they have a purpose before we got here and their services were no longer required? Who knows? Science doesn't and neither do we.We simply aren't told.

"It is a fact that all living forms come from previous living forms."

This is true but evolutionist shy away from discussion about it, because they simply cannot explain how life suddenly sprang into existence. It is impossible for science to create life. They can pass it on but all they can really do is guess about how it changed from a single called organism into all the life we see on earth past and present. What they lack in evidence is more than made up for by their imagination.

"Therefore, all present forms of life arose from ancestral forms that were different. Birds arose from nonbirds and humans from nonhumans."

Now we see the sleight of hand in the wording.....from "ancestral forms" to "birds from non-birds and humans from non-humans"......where are these chains of evolving ancestral forms who were not birds and who were not human?

Show them to us....not in illustrated form but in the flesh (or bone or fossil) and show us how science arrived at their conclusions without using speculation and assumption about what "might have" or "could have" taken place.

"No person who pretends to any understanding of the natural world can deny these facts any more than she or he can deny that the earth is round, rotates on its axis, and revolves around the sun."


And you can really compare something that is provable and with something that isn't, and pretend that they are the same?....they are not even in the same ball park.

The earth is a "Goldilocks" planet.....just the right distance from the sun in the right part of our galaxy....it is just the right size and shape and spins at just the right speed at just the right tilt on its axis and it has just the right mixture of gases so that living things can breathe oxygen without fear of lightning a fire and everything exploding? All just random chance of course....nothing designed about any of that. o_O

We have this miracle substance called water that just happens to be vital to all life on earth, yet in its natural state in the oceans it is too salty for land dwelling animals to drink a drop of it. In order for water to be drinkable it has to have the salt removed....by an amazing process called precipitation.....which is just another fluke of nature. No design there either.:rolleyes:

Green vegetation is also the stuff of life. Other living things on this planet survive by consuming living plants which serve the purpose feeding everything that eats vegetation, whilst at the same time, grass and trees stabilized the topsoil so that they prevent erosion.
Trees just happen to breathe in what we breathe out and vice versa.....again just an incredibly useful accident of nature.

When death occurs among living organisms, again co-incidentally, creatures in abundance feast on the corpse and absorb its nutrients back into other living things which feed other living things and replenish the planet and life itself itself.....and there we have an amazing symbiotic Eco-system that again just popped up out of nowhere.

You have gone nowhere close to convincing me of the "facts" of evolution, when I contemplate what you guys gloss over as if it's all just part of the fantasy. :confused: Do you realize what you are asking us to swallow? Your version of events is more fanciful than ours and requires much more gullibility IMO.

And what are "the various forces in molding evolution"? A bunch of clever men, with slippery language making sure that God goes away in the hearts and minds of those who don't see through their agenda.

You can all believe as you wish....but I hope you can see why I can't swallow most of it. The small amount of truth that is offered by science does not mask the vast amount of guesswork that others will blindly accept as "gospel". :(
 

Bunyip

pro scapegoat
Can we get one thing crystal clear here.....no one is disputing that adaptation (micro-evolution) is a fact. All creatures have the ability to change characteristics within their own genetics to adapt to climate change or food source alterations. None of that is in dispute. What is in dispute is whether it is a stretch to assume that these small changes can somehow leap into the realms of fantasy where science is "assuming" some things by inference, and taking it into the realms of fantasy, where proof becomes a matter of interpreting the findings in the fossil record in favor of their theory.



This is just funny. What is the natural conclusion from this fact? Why does the Vit C factor have to link them like it can only mean one thing? The deductive powers of science are skewed to add up to their own ridiculous conclusions. It can mean more than one thing....just like the pelvis in a whale may be more useful than first thought....not vestigial at all. The creature's natural diet would more than make up for any Vit C deficiency. Both are designed to obtain plenty of Vit C without even being aware that they need it.



No, I 'm sorry...it is not an explanation of facts at all...it is an explanation of how they "think" the facts add up.
If their facts are not facts to begin with, then how is there any certainty to their conclusions? Opinions, even professional ones are only opinions.



I thought this was interesting.....from your link. (It's the same site I quoted before)

"It is time for students of the evolutionary process, especially those who have been misquoted and used by the creationists, to state clearly that evolution is a fact, not theory, and that what is at issue within biology are questions of details of the process and the relative importance of different mechanisms of evolution."

OK, so what do we have here? "Questions about the details of the process and the relative importance of different mechanisms of evolution."

Since the fossil record is far from complete and the mechanisms of evolution are for the most part unknown, how can things be stated as facts?

"It is a fact that the earth with liquid water, is more than 3.6 billion years old."

The Bible does not argue with this, though creationists might. I am not a creationist. I believe in intelligent design but not that God started life and allowed it to evolve mindlessly from single called organisms over millions of years.

"It is a fact that cellular life has been around for at least half of that period and that organized multicellular life is at least 800 million years old."

Cellular life still exists...we are all cellular beings. We are all made from the same raw materials, but humans are vastly superior to any apes in ability and language. Why is it assumed that there must have been ape-like cavemen? Primitive peoples co-exist with modern civilisation even now. What does it prove? The illustrations that are presented in science text books and Internet sources as factual reconstructions, are nothing more than the imaginings of scientists. This is what they "think" the bodies of these creatures looked like. They aren't photographs.

It is a fact that palaeontologist have discovered fossils in the strata but as the comment quoted in my previous posts (in blue) suggested, the strata is not even an infallible indicator of when these creatures existed. When changes to the environment are taken into consideration, upheavals or erosion or floods could have messed up the whole story.

"It is a fact that major life forms now on earth were not at all represented in the past. There were no birds or mammals 250 million years ago."


This also agrees with the Bible. The order of appearance in Genesis is as science asserts.

How did Moses know the order in which living things appeared?

Then six "days" (creative periods of unstated length) in preparing the earth for living creatures. (3-31)
Calling them "days" in no way limits them to 24 hour periods.

Day 1: light; day and night (3-5)

Day 2: expanse (6-8)

Day 3: dry land and vegetation (9-13)

Day 4: heavenly luminaries become visible. (14-19)

Day 5: fish and birds (20-23)

Day 6: land animals and humans (24-31)

"It is a fact that major life forms of the past are no longer living. There used to be dinosaurs and Pithecanthropus, and there are none now."

We have seen many extinctions of creatures that were long gone before man even arrived, so again. What does this prove? Did they have a purpose before we got here and their services were no longer required? Who knows? Science doesn't and neither do we.We simply aren't told.

"It is a fact that all living forms come from previous living forms."

This is true but evolutionist shy away from discussion about it, because they simply cannot explain how life suddenly sprang into existence. It is impossible for science to create life. They can pass it on but all they can really do is guess about how it changed from a single called organism into all the life we see on earth past and present. What they lack in evidence is more than made up for by their imagination.

"Therefore, all present forms of life arose from ancestral forms that were different. Birds arose from nonbirds and humans from nonhumans."

Now we see the sleight of hand in the wording.....from "ancestral forms" to "birds from non-birds and humans from non-humans"......where are these chains of evolving ancestral forms who were not birds and who were not human?

Show them to us....not in illustrated form but in the flesh (or bone or fossil) and show us how science arrived at their conclusions without using speculation and assumption about what "might have" or "could have" taken place.

"No person who pretends to any understanding of the natural world can deny these facts any more than she or he can deny that the earth is round, rotates on its axis, and revolves around the sun."


And you can really compare something that is provable and with something that isn't, and pretend that they are the same?....they are not even in the same ball park.

The earth is a "Goldilocks" planet.....just the right distance from the sun in the right part of our galaxy....it is just the right size and shape and spins at just the right speed at just the right tilt on its axis and it has just the right mixture of gases so that living things can breathe oxygen without fear of lightning a fire and everything exploding? All just random chance of course....nothing designed about any of that. o_O

We have this miracle substance called water that just happens to be vital to all life on earth, yet in its natural state in the oceans it is too salty for land dwelling animals to drink a drop of it. In order for water to be drinkable it has to have the salt removed....by an amazing process called precipitation.....which is just another fluke of nature. No design there either.:rolleyes:

Green vegetation is also the stuff of life. Other living things on this planet survive by consuming living plants which serve the purpose feeding everything that eats vegetation, whilst at the same time, grass and trees stabilized the topsoil so that they prevent erosion.
Trees just happen to breathe in what we breathe out and vice versa.....again just an incredibly useful accident of nature.

When death occurs among living organisms, again co-incidentally, creatures in abundance feast on the corpse and absorb its nutrients back into other living things which feed other living things and replenish the planet and life itself itself.....and there we have an amazing symbiotic Eco-system that again just popped up out of nowhere.

You have gone nowhere close to convincing me of the "facts" of evolution, when I contemplate what you guys gloss over as if it's all just part of the fantasy. :confused: Do you realize what you are asking us to swallow? Your version of events is more fanciful than ours and requires much more gullibility IMO.

And what are "the various forces in molding evolution"? A bunch of clever men, with slippery language making sure that God goes away in the hearts and minds of those who don't see through their agenda.

You can all believe as you wish....but I hope you can see why I can't swallow most of it. The small amount of truth that is offered by science does not mask the vast amount of guesswork that others will blindly accept as "gospel". :(
Micro evolution is evolution, you agree it is a fact and say that nobody is denying it - well case closed. Micro evolution is a fact as you admit. Micro evolution is evolution.
 

JayJayDee

Avid JW Bible Student
Micro evolution is evolution, you agree it is a fact and say that nobody is denying it - well case closed. Micro evolution is a fact as you admit. Micro evolution is evolution.
Bunyip....micro-evolution is adaptation...nothing more. It is not proof of one form of life evolving into another form of life.

Millions of years did not see the horse transform into anything else other than a furry four footed hooved creature. (If the creature that they cited was ever a horse at all.)

Whales did not begin life on land. They were created in the water.....their large bodies were designed to be suspended in the virtual weightlessness of the open ocean. Creatures stayed within their "kinds" and science has no concrete proof to state otherwise.
 

Bunyip

pro scapegoat
Bunyip....micro-evolution is adaptation...nothing more. It is not proof of one form of life evolving into another form of life.
It is evolution. Notice how the second word in 'micro evolution' is 'evolution'? Besodes which macro evolution has also been observed. It is a fact, an observed fact.
Millions of years did not see the horse transform into anything else other than a furry four footed hooved creature. (If the creature that they cited was ever a horse at all.)
What? The modern horse evolved from a small deer like creature.
Whales did not begin life on land.
Their ancestors did.
They were created in the water.....their large bodies were designed to be suspended in the virtual weightlessness of the open ocean. Creatures stayed within their "kinds" and science has no concrete proof to state otherwise.
Of course science has such proof. What point do you think there is in your denying it?
 

FearGod

Freedom Of Mind
Soul, like God, is a man-made fiction.

You can realize that you're a soul and not just a physical body, i don't need a man-made fiction to tell me that.
but if you don't know and feel your own "self" then that doesn't mean that what you feel is the absolute fact.
 
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