Intelligent Design

[NeedingGnosisNow]

What if God created everything then manipulated it to get what he wanted? Or maybe its like a big experiment to Him so he tweaks certain life forms to see what they will evolve into. But to accept this you have to believe that God is not all-powerful and does not know how it is all going to end. This makes sense to me because why else would it have taken Him 6 days to create and then rest on the 7th? Or if He already knows EVERYTHING then why would he get mad or sad if we act a certain way? Without free will wouldn't we just be robots? Maybe he created us so He can learn along side us, or use as a tool to get to know Himself. If God is perfect and everything he created is perfect then is evil perfect too? Maybe it is! Without evil we couldn't know what good is just like we couldn't know up without down or left without right. I know God is suppose to be unknowable and we can't begin to understand the why or how He does anything so why should we try to give Him human attributes like the God that was so wrathful in the Old Testament? Just so we can understand Him? Didn't mean to rant i just wanted to express my views since they aren't necessarily pro-creation or pro-evolution but kind of a mix of both. Maybe this will makes sense to some.

 

[Jayhawker Soule]

What if God ...

 

[NeedingGnosisNow]

I dont pretend to know like some fanatic fundamentalist, all I'm saying is how can we know and why argue over it? I'd rather be able to form my own opinions than have the Word crammed down my throat or have some non-believer act like if some if I have thoughts or than theirs I must believe in fairy tales.:areyoucra

 

[Skwim]

What if God created everything then manipulated it to get what he wanted? Or maybe its like a big experiment to Him so he tweaks certain life forms to see what they will evolve into. But to accept this you have to believe that God is not all-powerful and does not know how it is all going to end. This makes sense to me because why else would it have taken Him 6 days to create and then rest on the 7th? Or if He already knows EVERYTHING then why would he get mad or sad if we act a certain way? Without free will wouldn't we just be robots? Maybe he created us so He can learn along side us, or use as a tool to get to know Himself. If God is perfect and everything he created is perfect then is evil perfect too? Maybe it is! Without evil we couldn't know what good is just like we couldn't know up without down or left without right. I know God is suppose to be unknowable and we can't begin to understand the why or how He does anything so why should we try to give Him human attributes like the God that was so wrathful in the Old Testament? Just so we can understand Him? Didn't mean to rant i just wanted to express my views since they aren't necessarily pro-creation or pro-evolution but kind of a mix of both. Maybe this will makes sense to some.

It all falls under the category

1) God of Abraham

A)Characteristics

a)Contradictions and absurdities
​

 

[NeedingGnosisNow]

lol Skwim you're right, I kinda put a lot out there by accident. Guess i had to get it all off my chest.

 

[NeedingGnosisNow]

I meant to show how our Creator may have had a hand in evolution. Nothing is concrete for me, since none of it can be proved. Hence the WHAT IF at the beginning of my first statement.

 

[outhouse]

I meant to show how our Creator may have had a hand in evolution. Nothing is concrete for me, since none of it can be proved. Hence the WHAT IF at the beginning of my first statement.

Atleast you have a good hand on your theism

carry on bud

 

[Photonic]

I do not trust your agenda any longer.

I am not seeing a search for enlightenment in your post, simply a way of deeming your God responsible for fact.

 

[RedOne77]

This makes sense to me because why else would it have taken Him 6 days to create and then rest on the 7th?

Perhaps God could have done it anyway he wanted, but specifically chose that way to teach us something; as humans we learn by watching and mimicking. When you look at the Hebrew calendar, they had 6 days of work and 1 day of rest - imitating what God did. God was setting the example of how we should work and rest, at least according to the Jews.

Or if He already knows EVERYTHING then why would he get mad or sad if we act a certain way?

No amount of knowledge changes what happens when people do certain things. I may know that Tom will go out and steal some things, that doesn't reduce the harm Tom did or change anything about Tom's actions.

To answer it from a Christian perspective, God wants a relationship with us. God is seen as a person's spouse, or parental figure, God wants an intimate relationship with his children, us. When we act out or sin, what happens is that we are separating ourselves from God - the Bible describes sin as a giant wall separating us from God. When this happens, we would expect a response from God. After all if you slammed the door on your wife, you would expect her to go on a rampage.

If God is perfect and everything he created is perfect then is evil perfect too? Maybe it is! Without evil we couldn't know what good is just like we couldn't know up without down or left without right.

Was evil created by God? What is evil?

I know God is suppose to be unknowable and we can't begin to understand the why or how He does anything so why should we try to give Him human attributes like the God that was so wrathful in the Old Testament? Just so we can understand Him? Didn't mean to rant i just wanted to express my views since they aren't necessarily pro-creation or pro-evolution but kind of a mix of both. Maybe this will makes sense to some.

Personification is a common element in trying to understand why something is the way it is. In my experience, the more refined theologians have hinted throughout time that our understanding and even our language has human limitations, and the best we can do is point to the real image of God through our limited understanding and language.

In the OT, many people had surreal experiences with the divine, and in an attempt to explain and record those experiences they talked of God and gave him human attributes as that is what the cultural and human limitations/parameters were for them.

 

[not nom]

After all if you slammed the door on your wife, you would expect her to go on a rampage.

uhm, no? I wouldn't even necessarily expect that of a human, much less of.. the creator of everything

 

[Photonic]

uhm, no? I wouldn't even necessarily expect that of a human, much less of.. the creator of everything

Too bad the Bible, Qu'ran and Torah are filled to the brim of such a delightful deity.

 

[RedOne77]

uhm, no? I wouldn't even necessarily expect that of a human, much less of.. the creator of everything

Haha, I see your point. It was hyperbole though, the point is that such would illicit a response regardless of whether or not the person/god knew that it would happen in advance or not.

 

[NeedingGnosisNow]

I do not trust your agenda any longer.

I am not seeing a search for enlightenment in your post, simply a way of deeming your God responsible for fact.

I am not trying to say my God was responsible for evolution, I'm just trying to get people to think for themselves and to stop letting others tell them what they should think. Your right though, I wasn't searching for enlightenment. I was just sharing thoughts hoping that others would share theirs and maybe, just maybe, they could do this without arguing or putting others down for their opinions.

 

[painted wolf]

I think what you are talking about is theistic evolution... not Intelligent Design.

Intelligent design is basically the idea that if you can't understand how something happened naturally, then God must have done it.

Theistic evolution is the idea that God guided the process of evolution but otherwise let nature take it's course.

wa:do

 

[NeedingGnosisNow]

I think what you are talking about is theistic evolution... not Intelligent Design.

Intelligent design is basically the idea that if you can't understand how something happened naturally, then God must have done it.

Theistic evolution is the idea that God guided the process of evolution but otherwise let nature take it's course.

wa:do

I think they are pretty much the same thing. Here is what wikipedia says:Intelligent design (ID) is the proposition that "certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause, not an undirected process such as natural selection."[1][2] It is a form of creationism and a contemporary adaptation of the traditional teleological argument for the existence of God, presented by its advocates as "an evidence-based scientific theory about life's origins" rather than "a religious-based idea". It avoids specifying that the hypothesized intelligent designer is God.[3] Its leading proponents are associated with the Discovery Institute, a politically conservative think tank,[n 1][4] and believe the designer to be the Christian God.[n 2][n 3]
ID seeks to redefine science in a fundamental way that would invoke supernatural explanations, a viewpoint known as theistic science. It puts forward a number of arguments, the most prominent of which are irreducible complexity and specified complexity, in support of the existence of a designer.[5] The scientific community rejects the extension of science to include supernatural explanations in favor of continued acceptance of methodological naturalism,[n 4][n 5][6][7] and has rejected both irreducible complexity and specified complexity for a wide range of conceptual and factual flaws AND:Theistic evolution or evolutionary creation is a concept that asserts that classical religious teachings about God are compatible with the modern scientific understanding about biological evolution. In short, theistic evolutionists believe that there is a God, that God is the creator of the material universe and (by consequence) all life within, and that biological evolution is simply a natural process within that creation. Evolution, according to this view, is simply a tool that God employed to develop human life.

 

[EarthAlive]

Intelligent design is basically the idea that if you can't understand how something happened naturally, then God must have done it.

That is not what intelligent design is. ID is about studying complex structures on earth, concluding that they must of been designed due to no way of coming about by chance. Look up Irreducible complexity for example, on earth there are some very complex organisms, I know the eye always gets brought up, but how could natural selection and some random mutations create such a complex structure, remember if even one tiny part of the eye is wrong then the whole of the eye does not work. How did complex structures such as this originate? Clearly if they were the result of evolution then it could of not of been by the gradualistic darwinian theory, it would have to of been some very quick, and guided evolutionary mechanism.

 

[painted wolf]

ID makes some specific claims about where and when God steps in to work his magic... And that magic has to happen. For example, God had to zap the eye into existence for everything that has eyes. Because God wasn't able to make it happen naturally.

Theistic Evolution says that no specific magic tricks were needed... eyes evolved naturally because we needed them... God set up evolution to eventually produce what was needed on it's own.

wa:do

 

[painted wolf]

That is not what intelligent design is. ID is about studying complex structures on earth, concluding that they must of been designed due to no way of coming about by chance. Look up Irreducible complexity for example, on earth there are some very complex organisms, I know the eye always gets brought up, but how could natural selection and some random mutations create such a complex structure, remember if even one tiny part of the eye is wrong then the whole of the eye does not work. How did complex structures such as this originate? Clearly if they were the result of evolution then it could of not of been by the gradualistic darwinian theory, it would have to of been some very quick, and guided evolutionary mechanism.

Lot's of things see with whole sections of "the eye" missing... for example Nautilus don't have lenses... Paramecium see pretty good with just an eye-spot.
There are lot's of transitional eyes out there. Heck, there is a pretty wide range of evolutionary development in just Mammals eyes.

wa:do

 

[EarthAlive]

Lot's of things see with whole sections of "the eye" missing... for example Nautilus don't have lenses... Paramecium see pretty good with just an eye-spot.
There are lot's of transitional eyes out there. Heck, there is a pretty wide range of evolutionary development in just Mammals eyes.

wa:do

??? You are comparing the eye sight of a Nautilus to a human being? The nautilus which is a cephalopod does not have a lense becuase it lives underwater, it's called a pinhole eye, many other underwater species such as clams have this, these are fascinating creatures but you are comparing the eye of a clam to a human being? Human beings need eyesight, clams etc use eyes for photosynthesis, not like human beings do.

You do realise Nautilus live under 300m in the middle of the ocean so there is very little light? Your examples are dodging the real question.

Look at the tarsier, a nocturnal animal which heavly relies on it's eyesight. You are claiming this animal had hardly any eyesight for 1000s of years? And it's eyes were going through transitional stages? Then how did it survive? Theres not a shred of evidence that complex structures are random and the result of a blind process of random mutation and natural selection over millions of years. Regarding the past and of the origin of structures, Creationists but a religious God in the gap, Darwinists but natural selection in the gap. No different really. Neither, not testable, observable or provable.

 

[NeedingGnosisNow]

ID makes some specific claims about where and when God steps in to work his magic... And that magic has to happen. For example, God had to zap the eye into existence for everything that has eyes. Because God wasn't able to make it happen naturally.

Theistic Evolution says that no specific magic tricks were needed... eyes evolved naturally because we needed them... God set up evolution to eventually produce what was needed on it's own.

wa:do

Oh i see the difference now. Thanks!