The validity of intelligent design

[Kemosloby]

WHOA!!! I absolutely disagree. Just because one holds that there is some intelligence or "design" in the universe is not necessarily predicated on the existence of a god. So, one need not be a theist or deist to be attracted to the kind of position I mentioned...which is akin to the positions of Taoism and Buddhism (and, for that matter, seems to be supported by some discoveries of modern physics).

I would say by the nature of the design, perhaps we can see who is God. The animals for instance, they have just enough. Jesus was like that. He counted it a human weakness to need so much stuff. I can agree with that, Animals brutally killing and eating each other to survive. God is not all nice, in this current state of world corruption anyway, so you can rule out a lot of impractically lovey dovey religions that way. Science is happy with anything but God, so we know they've the got the blinders on, count them as an unreliable opinion.

 

[Esoqq]

Neither Religion nor Science, in my mind, have come up with a viable explanation regarding the creation of our universe, which do not find surprising since the vast majority of it is beyond our ability to even detect or perceive. I also believe that our limited human intelligence plays a part in our failure to come to a conclusive answer.
Having said that, I must add that I do believe in ID simply because it makes more sense to me based upon the evidence at hand.
The only alternative to the concept of ID is the Multiverse theory. As I understand it, two or more universes in this multiverse bump uglies or something and in this interaction our universe is created. A universe that, at every step, defies unbelievable odds at every step all the way down to the Earth itself and the formation of life.
Then there is the complexities of life itself defies which makes the idea of there not being some ID involved, as Darwin himself implied makes Evolution as the sole source of life progression is proof that there has to be a God. At the time he said this he had no idea how complex life actually is as the science of biology has advance greatly since his time.
All in all, I believe it will be a while before we have any conclusive proof one way or the other.
I have to admit to some degree of amusement though that science is being forced by it's own research to come an idea to explain the evidence it itself has produced that, without an alternative explaination, supports the existance of an Intelligent Designer.

 

[Laughing Coyote]

"However it seems to be the best explanation fitting what we can observe"

That's your opinion. Not mine.

That's fine, for belief, which implies that for whatever reason one has excluded other possibilities. The Big Bang is not my opinion but simply the best explanation for observations that I am familiar with. Maybe if I got some different observations, or divine insight, I might use that as my starting point.

Also, for specific purposes, belief may be more useful and might have better consequences. For example, the people of the League of the Ho-dé-no-sau-nee, or what Immigrant Americans call the "Iroquois Nation" which once spread the length of the East Coast from North Florida to Canada, have a belief that Sky Woman fell from the sky, and with the soil and plants that she had reached out and grasped as she fell through the hole in the sky, she along with all the animals on the sea below created the continent of America on the back of a turtle, which they call Turtle Island. If you have a belief that the mother of all humans, together with the animals, created, planted and populated the land of America, you are probably going to treat the land and its inhabitants with much more respect and care than what a Judeo-Christian-Scientific society has done to the continent. The Ho-dé-no-sau-nee, in fact, are considered the masters of negotiation because they respect, listen to and consider carefully all viewpoints. Perhaps we'd all be better off if we learned some of these things from them.

Science looks for its validity from evidence derived from observations and procedes accordingly. Other explanations are discarded if observational evidence cannot be generated to support them, yet the possibility of anything is kept open procedurally in case new evidence should come or else old evidence is interpreted differently that would lead to something else. Beyond certain premises which I've discussed elsewhere, science and religion diverge in this way. When you step back to these founding premises, however, science and religion have similar origins, and science becomes the domain of philosophy and rational thinking.

 

[Laughing Coyote]

Then there is the complexities of life itself defies which makes the idea of there not being some ID involved, as Darwin himself implied makes Evolution as the sole source of life progression is proof that there has to be a God. At the time he said this he had no idea how complex life actually is as the science of biology has advance greatly since his time.
All in all, I believe it will be a while before we have any conclusive proof one way or the other.
I have to admit to some degree of amusement though that science is being forced by it's own research to come an idea to explain the evidence it itself has produced that, without an alternative explaination, supports the existance of an Intelligent Designer.

Umm, I would like to know exactly where Darwin himself did imply this? ID likes to take things such as Darwin's introduction to his discussion of the the structure of the eye, for example, in which he says the eye is so complex that you would think that only some creator could have designed it. But ID then excludes all the many pages that follow in which Darwin shows how all the elements of the eye developed step by step, just opposite of what one would think. Darwin again and again uses rhetorical forms such as this to bring his argument to a hostile world, including that of science at that time.

Nature has been extremely generous in leaving a record of all these steps in both the fossil record and within the various rungs of existing life, and more recently accessible in the minute detail in the mapping of the chromosome, allowing very good understanding of how complex structures developed. This is particularly the case with the eye, in which every single step can be found in living forms allowing one to see how the next one followed the previous one. Furthermore, because things such as the eye developed step by step, they are not designed in the manner of something that had a pre-existing plan. They are stuck with elements and arrangements determined by forms that preceded them rather than more efficient arrangements that a designer with a preconceived idea of what he wants might design.

To present a portion of a person's argument that appears to support one's own argument, which is a subject separated from its object, but hiding what follows which totally contradicts it is dishonesty. I've read much of the ID literature, and basically it consists of creating straw men that are set up falsely as being the position taken by the theory of natural selection and then knocking them down and saying that evolution has been disproved. It in fact has no evidence-based "theory," as such, of its own to offer as alternative.

To accept such arguments without reading even very good popular discussions, much less Darwin's Origin of Species with all its limitations as you pointed out, which itself was written for a wide audience, and even less everything that followed, is just intellectual laziness in my mind. There is a difference between lack of conclusive proof, or as a scientist might put it, compelling evidence, and having not looked at or considered that evidence -- many millions of publications of results of different studies, and more books that explain and synthesize it then you could get through in a lifetime. If evidence for intelligent design were like the precariously piled sand of an anthill at the base of Mt. Everest, because you don't want to turn from the anthill to face Everest doesn't mean that Everest, or Sagaramatha -- the mother of the seas -- as locals call it, doesn't exist and shouldn't be climbed.

And generally work on the theory of evolution is simply much more interesting reading than Intelligent Design. It is the difference of staying moored at a dock and calling it a voyage versus throwing off the moorings and setting off on a journey across the world. Darwin wrote another wonderful book about that too, called The Voyage of the Beagle, in which you can see him making his observations and developing his thinking. It is one of the classic travel narratives. Unlike religion, nobody beforehand or afterward tells you to abandon one God for another, nor need you give up belief in God in general. You will find your belief much deeper and richer for it. As he put it in a sentence on the next to last page and the very last sentence of the Origin of Species:

"To my mind it accords better with what we know of the laws impressed on matter by the Creator, that the production and extinction of the past and present inhabitants of the world should have been due to secondary causes, like those determining the birth and death of the individual. ... There is a grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved."

 

[Laughing Coyote]

I would say by the nature of the design, perhaps we can see who is God. The animals for instance, they have just enough. Jesus was like that. He counted it a human weakness to need so much stuff. I can agree with that, Animals brutally killing and eating each other to survive. God is not all nice, in this current state of world corruption anyway, so you can rule out a lot of impractically lovey dovey religions that way. Science is happy with anything but God, so we know they've the got the blinders on, count them as an unreliable opinion.

What you are describing in your first two sentences is basically the theory of thermodynamics, which underlies all the sciences, including evolution. Everything that evolves is balanced against its energy cost, which can become a burden too great for it to carry. That is why animals seem to have just enough, except they don't because there are constant tensions between different elements of their body and way of being, and furthermore everything else in the world is in flux too, changing the conditions to be met. Just as a example which ID proponents like to cite, is the example of giraffes. Male giraffes fight using their heads like clubs on their long necks evolved longer and longer to give more leverage in battle. But the long necks require the highest blood pressure of any mammal which is just about the limit of toleration.

Yes, Jesus, was wise. So also the Buddha. Similarly the great Japanese farmer sage, Sontoku Ninomiya. People who see the more clearly realize the rest is just hindrance and even destructive.

Regarding scientists, you are making blanket statements based on your prejudice. Many scientists I have known, including my father, an astronomer, were church, temple or shrine - going people who thought deeply about god and the implications and responsibilities in believing in God. Others sought mystical experiences in other ways. In some ways, furthermore, many atheists are even more open to both God and people who believe differently than themselves than believers because they come with no assumptions of what God is or isn't.

 

[shawn001]

I think intelligent design suffers from negative connotations and shouldnt be reviled because of a name. There are more main stream scientists who support non adaptive origins of life which is based on biology rather than religion. There is evidence that complex forms of life similar to today were around from the start and the origins of life did not evolve through natural selection. It is not a case of religion verses evolution as even if evolution is true it does not discount a creator God starting the process which in some ways fits what we see.

"There is evidence that complex forms of life similar to today were around from the start and the origins of life did not evolve through natural selection."

The above is IMPOSSIBLE!

 

[shawn001]

The Father of Intelligent Design Phillip Johnson a Lawyer

Defending Intelligent Design — NOVA | PBS

Again not one single fact has been proven with ID, not one at all!!! In fact, the ones they tried failed miserably.

ID was repacked Creationism to be taught in schools and that is unconstitutional. The Discovery Institute LIED and got caught!

Kenneth Miller is a Catholic and argued against ID He is also the one that discovered the chip genome that separates us from them.

"KENNETH R. MILLER: Not a single observation, not a single experimental result, has ever emerged in 150 years that contradicts the general outlines of the theory of evolution. Any theory that can stand up to 150 years of contentious testing is a pretty darn good theory, and that's what evolution is."


Then much later, even more, proof for Darwin in DNA, but it's already a scientific fact and a working scientific theory. Many people don't understand this or even want too. But there are literally billion's of facts that support it, while still not even one fo ID. They even admitted there was not one fact to support it.

DNA Agrees With All the Other Science: Darwin Was Right

Molecular biologist Sean Carroll shows how evolution happens, one snippet of DNA at a time


"One of the great triumphs of modern evolutionary science, evo-devo addresses many of the key questions that were unanswerable when Charles Darwin published On the Origin of Species in 1859, and Carroll has become a leader in this nascent field. Now a professor of molecular biology and genetics at the University of Wisconsin, he continues to decode the genes that control life’s physical forms and to explore how mutations in those genes drive evolutionary change. These days, Carroll also devotes increasing energy to telling the public about his field’s remarkable discoveries through a series of books—Endless Forms Most Beautiful, The Making of the Fittest, and the brand-new Remarkable Creatures. He spoke with DISCOVER senior editor Pamela Weintraub about what his work has taught him about Darwin, the nature of evolution, and how life really works.

It has been 150 years since Charles Darwin proposed his theory of evolution in On the Origin of Species, yet in some ways, the concept of evolution seems more controversial than ever today. Why do you think that is?
It is a cultural issue, not a scientific one. On the science side, our confidence grows yearly because we see independent lines of evidence converge. What we’ve learned from the fossil record is confirmed by the DNA record and confirmed again by embryology. But people have been raised to disbelieve evolution and to hold other ideas more precious than this knowledge. At the same time, we routinely rely on DNA to convict and exonerate criminals. We rely on DNA science for things like paternity. We rely on DNA science in the clinic to weigh our disease risks or maybe even to look at prognoses for things like cancer. DNA science surrounds us, but in this one realm, we seem unwilling to accept its facts. Juries are willing to put people to death based upon the variations in DNA, but they’re not willing to understand the mechanism that creates that variation and shapes what makes humans different from other things. It’s a blindness. I think this is a phase that we’ll eventually get through. Other countries have come to peace with DNA. I don’t know how many decades or centuries it’s going to take us."

DNA Agrees With All the Other Science: Darwin Was Right | DiscoverMagazine.com

Every science confirms evolution. Nature confirms evolution.

"
Excerpts of Statements by Religious Leaders
Who See No Conflict Between Their Faith and Science

Many religious denominations and individual religious leaders have issued statements acknowledging the occurrence of evolution and pointing out that evolution and faith do not conflict.

Evolution Resources from the National Academies



How many people on the planet who have been sick, have been cured or helped by our understanding evolution and its processes and nature as opposed to ID? Has ID saved any lives?

 

[shawn001]

This basically sums up ID.

 

[Nirvana]

Whoa! I`m enjoying this. I`m just not getting time to participate but I`ll be here soon.

 

[Kemosloby]

What you are describing in your first two sentences is basically the theory of thermodynamics, which underlies all the sciences, including evolution. Everything that evolves is balanced against its energy cost, which can become a burden too great for it to carry. That is why animals seem to have just enough, except they don't because there are constant tensions between different elements of their body and way of being, and furthermore everything else in the world is in flux too, changing the conditions to be met. Just as a example which ID proponents like to cite, is the example of giraffes. Male giraffes fight using their heads like clubs on their long necks evolved longer and longer to give more leverage in battle. But the long necks require the highest blood pressure of any mammal which is just about the limit of toleration.

Yes, Jesus, was wise. So also the Buddha. Similarly the great Japanese farmer sage, Sontoku Ninomiya. People who see the more clearly realize the rest is just hindrance and even destructive.

Regarding scientists, you are making blanket statements based on your prejudice. Many scientists I have known, including my father, an astronomer, were church, temple or shrine - going people who thought deeply about god and the implications and responsibilities in believing in God. Others sought mystical experiences in other ways. In some ways, furthermore, many atheists are even more open to both God and people who believe differently than themselves than believers because they come with no assumptions of what God is or isn't.

I don't think that explains why more animals don't have Eagle vision. I don't see the energy cost as being much different and it would certainly help many other creatures to survive.

 

[Grandliseur]

A religious person saying Armageddon is upon us any day now? Hmm, wonder if anything like that has happened before? List of dates predicted for apocalyptic events - Wikipedia

You're putting words into my mouth. I did not say Armageddon is upon us. I said that we are in the End Times. This period is not defined as such; though, I think a generation is 40 years, but when to count from is the question.

What is your interpretation of the events across the board? Do you not see the nations getting ready for WWIII? What are the events with Russia, China, US, Europe - telling you? All it took before was some small event that blossomed into WWI, WWII.

 

[Grandliseur]

A religious person saying Armageddon is upon us any day now? Hmm, wonder if anything like that has happened before? List of dates predicted for apocalyptic events - Wikipedia

Where do you live to have a Skoda? And, where did you find it?

 

[stevevw]

"There is evidence that complex forms of life similar to today were around from the start and the origins of life did not evolve through natural selection."

The above is IMPOSSIBLE!

Not when it comes to single celled life. This also fits in with the Cambrian explosion where most of todays body forms came into existence in a short period of time. But its not just that complex life was around earlier but that natural selection was not responsible for the evolution of that life and it was the non adaptive mechanisms that brought about more complexity which supports a non naturalistic and random source for life.

What is in question is whether natural selection is a necessary or sufficient force to explain the emergence of the genomic and cellular features central to the building of complex organisms.

The frailty of adaptive hypotheses for the origins of organismal complexity

 

[omega2xx]

Those who accept the BB as a fact always have to start after the fact. What is the origin of the matter that went bang, and what is the origin of the energy needed to cause it to go bang?

It seems to me that energy so strong to cause matter to go beyond what man can see, or even what man can see, that instead of forming stars and planets, it would have reduced everything to dust.

"Those who accept the BB as a fact always have to start after the fact."

The BB is a fact as we have very detailed pictures of it, look up Wmap and Planck satellites. I am busy today, but will respond more to this at another time. Matter was created from the Bang. Also remember e=mc#.[/QUOTE]

When you can explain the origin of the matter that went bang and the energy that caused the bang and how life originated from lifeless elements, get back to me. As I said you have to start after the fact and still can't do it.

 

[metis]

If "intelligent design" was real, then how does one explain miscarriages? serious physical and mental defects that cause much suffering? Is God or the Gods that malicious?

This is one reason why I think any serious approach when dealing with God(s) needs to probably link an impersonal God(s) and Nature (all encompassing, as with the approach of Spinoza and Einstein) together as a unified whole. I think that the various religions have indeed made serious and honest attempts to find and understand God(s), but I think that God(s) is/are likely to be much more complex and intrinsic with the universe/multiverse than what we've been taught.

 

[shawn001]

Not when it comes to single celled life. This also fits in with the Cambrian explosion where most of todays body forms came into existence in a short period of time. But its not just that complex life was around earlier but that natural selection was not responsible for the evolution of that life and it was the non adaptive mechanisms that brought about more complexity which supports a non naturalistic and random source for life.

What is in question is whether natural selection is a necessary or sufficient force to explain the emergence of the genomic and cellular features central to the building of complex organisms.

The frailty of adaptive hypotheses for the origins of organismal complexity

Not even single cell life could have survived the early Earth's massive radiation, heat conditions, and natural gas atmosphere. It wasn't until cyanobacteria evolved which created an Oxygen atmosphere in the first place and why your breathing oxygen because of evolution.

You mean the Cambrian explosion evolutionary event? The Ediacaran was then followed by the Cambrian. Land masses were not the same either.

The Cambrian event was followed by a mass extinction which was then followed by the Ordovician Period.

There have been five big mass extinction events.


The biggest mass extinction was the

"Permian mass extinction
The Permian mass extinction has been nicknamed The Great Dying since a staggering 96% of species died out. All life on Earth today is descended from the 4% of species that survived."

BBC Nature - Big Five mass extinction events


Life has evolved through natural selection over billions of years.

 

[shawn001]

"Those who accept the BB as a fact always have to start after the fact."

The BB is a fact as we have very detailed pictures of it, look up Wmap and Planck satellites. I am busy today, but will respond more to this at another time. Matter was created from the Bang. Also remember e=mc#.

When you can explain the origin of the matter that went bang and the energy that caused the bang and how life originated from lifeless elements, get back to me. As I said you have to start after the fact and still can't do it.[/QUOTE]


"Those who accept the BB as a fact"

You don't under the Big Bang as a scientific theory. This is a picture of it in Microwave radiation that fills the entire universe. This was back in 2003


NASA RELEASES STUNNING IMAGES OF OUR INFANT UNIVERSE

NASA today released the best "baby picture" of the Universe ever taken; the image contains such stunning detail that it may be one of the most important scientific results of recent years.

Scientists using NASA's Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP), during a sweeping 12-month observation of the entire sky, captured the new cosmic portrait, capturing the afterglow of the big bang, called the cosmic microwave background.

"We've captured the infant universe in sharp focus, and from this portrait we can now describe the universe with unprecedented accuracy," said Dr. Charles L. Bennett of the Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC), Greenbelt Md., and the WMAP Principal Investigator. "The data are solid, a real gold mine," he said.

One of the biggest surprises revealed in the data is the first generation of stars to shine in the universe first ignited only 200 million years after the big bang, much earlier than many scientists had expected.

In addition, the new portrait precisely pegs the age of the universe at 13.7 billion years old, with a remarkably small one percent margin of error.

The WMAP team found that the big bang and Inflation theories continue to ring true. The contents of the universe include 4 percent atoms (ordinary matter), 23 percent of an unknown type of dark matter, and 73 percent of a mysterious dark energy. The new measurements even shed light on the nature of the dark energy, which acts as a sort of an anti-gravity.

"These numbers represent a milestone in how we view our universe," said Dr. Anne Kinney, NASA director for astronomy and physics. "This is a true turning point for cosmology."

The light we see today, as the cosmic microwave background, has traveled over 13 billion years to reach us. Within this light are infinitesimal patterns that mark the seeds of what later grew into clusters of galaxies and the vast structure we see all around us.

Patterns in the big bang afterglow were frozen in place only 380,000 years after the big bang, a number nailed down by this latest observation. These patterns are tiny temperature differences within this extraordinarily evenly dispersed microwave light bathing the universe, which now averages a frigid 2.73 degrees above absolute zero temperature. WMAP resolves slight temperature fluctuations, which vary by only millionths of a degree.

Theories about the evolution of the universe make specific predictions about the extent of these temperature patterns. Like a detective, the WMAP team compared the unique "fingerprint" of patterns imprinted on this ancient light with fingerprints predicted by various cosmic theories and found a match.

WMAP will continue to observe the cosmic microwave background for an additional three years, and its data will reveal new insights into the theory of Inflation and the nature of the dark energy.

"This is a beginning of a new stage in our study of the early universe," said WMAP team member Prof. David N. Spergel of Princeton University, N.J. "We can use this portrait not only to predict the properties of the nearby universe, but can also use it to understand the first moments of the big bang," he said.

WMAP is named in honor of David Wilkinson of Princeton University, a world-renown cosmologist and WMAP team member who died in September 2002.

Launched on June 30, 2001, WMAP maintains a distant orbit about the second Lagrange Point, or "L2," a million miles from Earth.

WMAP is the result of a partnership between the GSFC and Princeton University. Additional Science Team members are located at Brown University, Providence R.I., the University
of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, the University of Chicago, and the University of California, Los Angeles. WMAP is part of the Explorer program, managed by GSFC.

For more information, including high-quality images, videos and press products, refer to:

NASA - Top Story - NEW IMAGE OF INFANT UNIVERSE REVEALS ERA OF FIRST STARS, AGE OF COSMOS, AND MORE - Feb. 11, 2003

So yes the Bing Bang is a fact and the theory only states the universe was VERY hot and dence in the distant pass.

 

[shawn001]

Then we sent up and even more precise satellite than the Wmap called Planck. That took even more detailed pictures.

2009

Planck Satellite Brings Early Universe into Focus

"From its orbit 930,000 miles above Earth, the Planck satellite spent more than four years detecting the oldest light in the universe: the cosmic microwave background radiation. That fossil from the Big Bang fills every square inch of the sky and offers a glimpse of what the universe looked like nearly 14 billion years ago, when it was just 380,000 years old. Planck's observations of this relic radiation shed light on everything from the evolution of the universe to the nature of dark matter.

Just last week, Planck released new maps of the cosmic microwave background supporting the theory of cosmic inflation, which posits that the universe underwent a monumental expansion in the moments following the Big Bang. During that time, space expanded faster than the speed of light, growing from smaller than a proton to an enormity that defies comprehension.


Planck Satellite Brings Early Universe into Focus (Kavli Hangout)

 

[shawn001]

"When you can explain the origin of the matter that went bang and the energy that caused the bang and how life originated from lifeless elements, get back to me."

I have tried to explain some of it to you, but you need to know more about physics-astronomy and cosmology. You have also disregarded facts and said they were only "theories" in regards to extremely strong scientific theories, a big difference, between a hypothesis and a scientific theory.
Why not study the Big Bang and early universe yourself for some of the answers?

While they don't have the totally complete answers to how the Big Bang Started (possibly a singularity" or how evolution started (abiogensis) we do understand processes like Nucleosynthesis pretty well.

There is again not one fact from ID or creationism, but billions to trillions of facts from the bang and evolution. The Big Bang was also NOT an explosion. As I stated earlier and you dismissed, many cosmologists believe the universe was started by virtual particles and are working on that aspect.

 

[The Holy Bottom Burp]

What is your interpretation of the events across the board? Do you not see the nations getting ready for WWIII? What are the events with Russia, China, US, Europe - telling you? All it took before was some small event that blossomed into WWI, WWII.

I was teasing you slightly Grandliseur, but to answer your question I don't put any interpretation on current events. I don't believe in any religion, so I don't believe in "end times" as an event, unless you mean the eventual end of the Earth as it gets burnt up by the Sun in 7 million years or so! Of course I have concerns about the amount of weaponry stockpiled by countries, but it is hardly a new development. For many decades now we have had weaponry that could scorch the earth and make it uninhabitable. When you look at the statistics you see that since WW2, the world population has grown enormously and deaths by armed conflict has shrunk considerably compared to past times. Sure, it could be some nutcase decides to launch nuclear weapons, but we've been through the Cold War when people thought nuclear war was inevitable (for decades) but they were wrong. At the moment I'd say there are fewer reasons to fret about world war than ever before in my lifetime (and I'm no spring chicken!).