Intellient Design

[SeVeR]

Another thought, there is some scientific law/theory that says that living cells must come from other living cells. So, how could the universe go from nothing (before the big bang), and then develop cells? The two things contradict themselves.

Another Bible site?

 

It is possible to form complex organic macromolecular compounds within the conditions that are thought to have existed billions of years ago on Earth. Just like you can grow a plant with the right conditions. It's not certain that this is how life came about but it's the only evidence we have.

 

But when have you seen a Blue Jay turn into a Chicken?!?!

How often do you see human beings born with webbed fingers and toes?

 

However, this is mainly secondary schooling. If someone starts talking about Science as if it is Faith, then they haven't really learned what science is all about.

Exactly, no-one teaches science as absolute fact. We say: "we don't know, but this theory is pretty convincing so here is an experiment you can do to convince yourself". The Bible has the capacity to be wrong, therefore it is misleading a child to tell them God exists, Jesus died for our sins, good and evil are easily distinguished, and heaven and !@#$%^&* exist.

 

I am all for teaching religion in secondary schools as an informative subject where you learn about the !@#$%^&*umptions made by each religion. I don't know about anyone else but i was repeatedly encouraged to convert through visits to churches, holy communion classes, school hymms, readings from priests etc in my childhood; These were all people who told me they spoke the truth. They all lied because they only gave me their !@#$%^&*umptions. This is what i'm against.

[»i88gerbils]

Right. Like any book that attempts to convince you to live a certain way of life the Bible is dated. There are plenty of lessons to learn that apply to our lives Today, but some of them are out of context. Pork is fine to eat since the Middle Ages because we know how to treat it to not get sick. We also now have techniques to help prevent the spread of STDs, which they did not have back in the Neolithic, Bronze, and Iron ages. this is slightly off-topic.

[ThunderJam]

Another thought, there is some scientific law/theory that says that living cells must come from other living cells. So, how could the universe go from nothing (before the big bang), and then develop cells? The two things contradict themselves.

Another Bible site?

Umm, no. I picked that out of Biology class myself. Seems to kinda stand out when the teacher teaches two contradicting things.

 

It is possible to form complex organic macromolecular compounds within the conditions that are thought to have existed billions of years ago on Earth. Just like you can grow a plant with the right conditions. It's not certain that this is how life came about but it's the only evidence we have.

I am talking about before the Earth, before the universe, before the Big Bang. Before the Big Bang, nothing existed, correct? How could life come from nothing, if a scientific law says that life must come from life?

[»i88gerbils]

Why do you assume that Science operates on the same method as Religion? It does not.

 

Think about Santa Claus.

 

I have faith that he will drop down any chimney or visit every house who celebrates Christmas to fill our stockings and dump presents. It comes true every Christmas (just follow me here). However, when I take a look at Santa's operation it is a logistical impossibility. Try making the points that Santa does not exist and could never do the job even if he did, and you would have just proved the whole point of separating the Scientific Method from Faith.

Edited December 22, 2005 by i88gerbils

[MonteZuma]

Monte you keep saying evolution is proven to occur. YES, evolution is proven to occur, but the discussion here is whether evolution is proven to be the origin of the universe.

In your first post, you said:

teaching Evolution as a fact is simply dumb

If it is proven to occur then teaching evolution as a fact is not dumb.

 

Intelligent design 'theory' is concerned with the origin and 'evolution' of both life and the universe.

 

What do you mean when you say "whether evolution is proven to be the origin of the universe"? The sentence doesn't make sense. If we are talking about an 'origin' then we must be talking about what happened before anything began to evolve. That is purely a discussion about creation - which is only one small part of the debate about intelligent design.

[Confess]

Having webbed fingers would be going DOWN the chain, which, according to evolution, is not possible.

[Kameloh]

. Edited July 11, 2007 by Kameloh

[»Ducky]

Having webbed fingers would be going DOWN the chain, which, according to evolution, is not possible.

Uh, no.

 

Evolution to webbed fingers would mean that it was a necessity and/or an anomaly, thus it doesn't 'go down' the chain.

[MonteZuma]

Having webbed fingers would be going DOWN the chain, which, according to evolution, is not possible.

Species evolve according to a combination of environmental factors and random genetic mutations that give individuals a competetive advantage in survival or reproduction. There is no up or down.

[Aileron]

And this is science, though it can only be indicated rather than proven. If I handed you a 6 sided die, and told you that die could either be weighted or random. Suppose for some reason, you couldn't analyze or dissect that die. You throw it 100 times and it always lands on 5. The probability of the die being unweighted is 1.5306467*10^-78, practically zero. On the other hand, its virtually certain that the die is weighted. However, you can't *prove* either possibility. Yet, the rational and scientific conclusion is that the die is weighted.

Backtracking a little - but this caught my attention.

 

Not really. It would unscientific to assume that the die was weighted if you couldn't analyse the die. For example, you might also assume that all six sides of the die had the number 5. There also might be some issue !@#$%^&*ociated with the mechanism used to throw the die. A creationist might argue that there is a supernatural force at work.

 

But the theory of evolution is based on much more evidence than just 100 throws of a dice. Every time a new method for testing evolution is invented (eg DNA profiling), the evolution 'theory' still stands. We know for a fact that genes are passed on through generations and that sometimes genes mutate to produce new inheritable traits - it happens every year with the influenza virus. This is fact - not theory. Evolution happens. If it didn't exist then we would never need to worry about bird flu.

 

Yet on the other hand, the conclusion that the die is weighted is certainly not an unreasonable one.

 

As for evolution, I agree, but as I said it doesn't contradict intelligent design at all. Any gracious intelligent designer would design the lifeforms so that they would improve over time. Or, perhaps the designer's skill increased over time, and it was the designer that was evolving, allowing him to create better lifeforms with each generation.

 

Still, I'd say that BOTH theories apply, intelligent design for macroscopic changes and evolution for the more subtle ones.

 

The only reasonable hole in the evolution theory is that evolution is continuous, wheras not all changes were. An example would be how things came to fly. Flight requires multiple things: light density, wings, disproportionally strong muscles, etc. The point is that in evolution, the fact that at one stage a lifeform had none of these properties, and that a related life form later had all of these properties would imply that between those two species would exist a species with half those properties.

 

If some lizard evolved into a bird, that would imply that between the lizard and bird there would be a species that might have wings but has bones too thick to get off the ground, or a species with half dense bones, half-wings, and slightly stronger muscles. Such a species would neither take to the air nor have much success on the ground, so according to survival of the fittest it would not survive. Since this species would be an ancestor to the species coming after it, it would imply that birds would never have come to exist.

 

Evolution explains changes in species very nicely, but sometimes fails to explain big changes, and does NOT explain at all where the first life-form came from in the first place.

[»Ducky]

or a species with half dense bones, half-wings, and slightly stronger muscles. Such a species would neither take to the air nor have much success on the ground, so according to survival of the fittest it would not survive. Since this species would be an ancestor to the species coming after it, it would imply that birds would never have come to exist.

Wouldn't that imply that the species, before dying; would have to find some other distinctly different way of staying alive.

Similar to that of an Ostrich or Penguin.

 

What of those animals that could fly previously to migrating to thier current location; finding no preditors and thus not needing a reason to fly any longer. (Dodo)

 

A mother has 3 children. All 3 leave home and venture to find thier own homes. 2 of which get eaten by tigers during thier life time; yet the 3rd was able to dodge the fate and had 4 children of his own.

3 of those were killed by tigers, but another escaped.

 

During the process of this ancestry; originally they were not built well enough to live around tigers. Down the line though, the had become increasingly faster to outrun the preditor.

 

Although the primary line of ancestry is gone through generations and generations; doesn't mean that all are.

 

It just seems to me there are too many Ifs or ands to make a solid conclusion that because a species is weak, there are no longer any ancestry among the current species without intelligent design.

----------------------

 

I'm not too knowledgable on this subject as a whole, but I would assume Inbreeding would be one of the leading causes of evolution; even more so than the need to evolve.

Just my opinion though.

[SeVeR]

I am talking about before the Earth, before the universe, before the Big Bang. Before the Big Bang, nothing existed, correct? How could life come from nothing, if a scientific law says that life must come from life?

You're confusing the origin of life with the origin of the universe. Life can (probably) evolve from basic-building block materials and so that scientific law is not a law at all. You're right when you talk about the origins of the universe, but life can come from whatever basic particles came from the Big Bang. Life and the origin of the universe are not connected in that way.

 

The argument i think you're getting at is: there must have been a first cause to start everything going. This first cause does not need to create life, it only needs to create energy and matter. We don't know anything about what came before the Big Bang, it is possible that there were many causes prior to the Big Bang that existed in a universe with completely different physical laws. Theorising about it is impossible because we have no evidence. This is the ultimate unknown question and it doesn't surprise me that Christians now turn to this "lack of evidence" and call it evidence for God. The actual evidence for God is zero in this instance.

 

Having webbed fingers would be going DOWN the chain, which, according to evolution, is not possible.

I was talking about the randomness of mutation as a factor in evolution. A Blue Jay may not lay an egg that hatches as a chicken but it may hatch as a mutated jay. The mutations can be remnants of past cells that have become dominantly active. From looking at the world around us we can see that habitat is a factor in evolutional mutation (as Ducky said). Penguins have adapted to conditions in the Antarctic. We know that Antartica never used to be at the south pole and we know that penguins are birds with extremely thick body fat and wings that are half-way to being flippers. Penguins cannot survive without land so they must have adapted to the southward movement of the antarctic plate. Its not concrete but are we to assume that God just "magicked it the way it is"? There are countless other examples similar to the penguin that fit with our ideas of evolution through habitat change.

[MetalHeadz]

I honestly believe that Intelligent Design is just a way of 'conveniently' avoiding the !@#$%^&*ing and scientific evidence of Evolution, as Sever has noted above. In my opinion the debate about the origin of man should have ended 100 years ago. However, there are certain holes or 'gaps' in science where by religion or spirituality can co-exist with science. An example I like to use is, how did anything ever get here? On the hand there is this need for fundamentalists (deludedly so) to pay ultimate and complete belief to their religion. And the fact is religion was forged in times of social unrest - to 'control' the masses and to implement some kind of ultimatum to life. For example a principal shared in most religions is that if you're bad in life you go to '!@#$%^&*' or re-encarnate as a gr!@#$%^&* hopper. There is genuiene and scientific grounds for spirituality, but the ignorance of religion completely undermines this.

 

Indeed it is ironic that the very principals of religion are the ones holding it's philosophical essence back. -Metal Headz (24/12/05)

 

Btw I read a post on the other page that said evolution was a 'choice of individual' - evolution is a process of genetics, to think an animal has any concious decision over there genetic formation is absurd.

And Ducky - you we're confusing 'adaptation' and 'evolution' - evolution is the mutation of a DNA that betters the animals chances of survival therefore outliving it's species. Adaptation is something you described - learning behaviour to survive.

Edited December 24, 2005 by Metalheadz

[»Ducky]

I never mentioned any forms of behavior adaptation.

Dodo evolved into a flightless bird. He didn't merely stop using his wings.

 

In my ancestry analogy, they became faster through evolution; they simply did not decide one day "Perhaps if we run faster."

[MetalHeadz]

Well you suggested that the situation they were in meant they needed to adapt there behaviour - through technique, through intelligence - rather than a genetical mutation through chance and luck. I suppose you can incoporate natural selection to this - the strongest siblings survived because they were more intelligent/stronger, but certainly not evolution.

[»Ducky]

You are warping my analogy to prove that point.

I only suggested 2 generations while I was leaning towards multiple.

 

I didn't take the time to jot down the history of a 17 generation family. My bad :-p

[SeVeR]

I think Ducky meant adaptation in the form of natural selection. The faster birds will outrun the predators and so will survive to produce birds of similar genetic advantages. There's no mutation here just an overall adaptation to the predators. On the other hand a random mutation can yield positive or negative consequnces that are passed on to the offspring based on how succesful those mutations are in surviving. So adaptation and mutation are both succesful through natural selection although its sometimes hard to see how mutations influence a spieces over millions of years. All we have for that is fossil evidence.

[Yoink]

Another thought, there is some scientific law/theory that says that living cells must come from other living cells. So, how could the universe go from nothing (before the big bang), and then develop cells? The two things contradict themselves.

Another Bible site?

Umm, no. I picked that out of Biology class myself. Seems to kinda stand out when the teacher teaches two contradicting things.

The cell theory excludes the first cell. That should be obvious. That's just as stupid as asking, 'Can God create a rock so heavy he cannot lift it?' - The answer is no, because God would always be able to lift the rock. The same applies for the origination of cells, you can't create an insurp!@#$%^&*able paradox and expect us to give you a reasonable answer. That's lying to yourself, IMHO.

It is possible to form complex organic macromolecular compounds within the conditions that are thought to have existed billions of years ago on Earth. Just like you can grow a plant with the right conditions. It's not certain that this is how life came about but it's the only evidence we have.

I am talking about before the Earth, before the universe, before the Big Bang. Before the Big Bang, nothing existed, correct? How could life come from nothing, if a scientific law says that life must come from life?

No, matter has always existed, however perhaps not in the forms we know it as? The Big Bang provides us with something to investigate the formation of organic molecules (and then into stable and self-replicating, larger organic molecules.)

 

Why would we say that matter did not exist before the Big Bang and t hen continue to say that matter cannot be created or destroyed? Again, don't attempt to use an insurp!@#$%^&*ible paradox to prove someone wrong. It's illogical.

[MetalHeadz]

Matter always existed eh? Well, your a better informed man than I. The word 'always' is a little irrational - indeed there is a whole scientific debate about this. Don't degrade someones opinion and then back yours' up with inaccurate and unproven statements. Edited December 26, 2005 by Metalheadz

[SeVeR]

Saying matter always existed is a common Atheistic belief that coincides with the belief that God doesn't exist. We don't know if matter always existed because we don't know if God exists. I would say Atheism is no better than Christianity because both make irrational !@#$%^&*umptions for unanswerable questions.

 

Matter may have existed before the Big Bang for the purpose of causing the Big Bang which is why there is no reason to assume either way. We have a complete lack of evidence. The correct answer is: we don't know - Just like we didn't know what the stars were thousands of years ago. The only way we find the answers is by not making !@#$%^&*umptions.

[MonteZuma]

SeVeR. You know a lot about this topic. I'm impressed. I agree with everything you and Ducky (and MH) have said.

[Aileron]

The point still stands that it would be very unlikely to have organic molecules be formed from entirely inorganic molecules. It could easily be possible for a cell to form around a DNA molecule in primordial soup, but what is the probability of a stable DNA molecule making a lifeform that can not only survive, but reproduce and evolve, just making itself?

 

Its like laying a deck of cards on a table, and a catagory 9 earthquake shakes the table. At the end of the earthquake the cards are arranged in a delicate and complex house of cards.

 

Could this happen? Certainly. You have all the components. You have 52 cards and enough kinetic energy to lift up and rotate the cards. Still, if one observes a house of cards, one comes to the conclusion that it was set up by an intelligent lifeform rather than the random shaking of an earthquake. It is simply a matter of probability.

 

 

The same thing applies to intelligent design. We obserb lifeforms that are more complex than most of our machines. Life is so complex that it is beyond our individual capacity to understand it. For instance, it is impossible for a person to memorize how his or her own DNA works. We need a GROUP of scientists working with a lot of expensive machines just to map DNA.

 

 

The biggest problem the intelligent design theory faces is its publicist. Some idiot somewhere falsely implied that its a secular version of creationism. It isn't. The conclusion bears some similarities, but the reasoning is completely different.

 

We have a lot of lifeforms. Each one is a biological machine that is far more complex than anything modern humankind can produce. The parts of each of these machines fit together on the molecular level. There are molecules in lifeforms that resemble nothing found elseware in nature, though have similarity to articificially produced molecules made by chemists. Lifeforms move by themselves, and thus bear more similarities to our machines of transportation than any rock or fluid found in nature. Lifeforms are also delicate. If a monkey wrench in thrown into a machine, the machine breaks down. Similarily if some external force prevents the internal workings of a lifeform from functioning, the lifeform dies.

 

It can easily be stated that a lifeform is a biological machine. If life is a machine, could it not also have been made by an intelligent designer like all other machines?

[»i88gerbils]

For some reason SSF refuses to let me paste in something and post it. Just timesout on me. I found this article interesting. The judge in this case follows the arguments given in this discussion, and ends up following much of what I had been trying to propose. Edited December 29, 2005 by i88gerbils

[Yoink]

Matter always existed eh? Well, your a better informed man than I. The word 'always' is a little irrational - indeed there is a whole scientific debate about this. Don't degrade someones opinion and then back yours' up with inaccurate and unproven statements.

Yeah, re-reading what I wrote, you're right.

[AstroProdigy]

Religion is a tool used by man used to explain natural phenomenon before science can come in and explain how the natural phenomenon actually occured. Religion gives people peace of mind over their basic fear; the unknown. To say that Intelligent Design explains the creation of the first cell and the creation of the universe is simply to say that you do not understand how these events actually occured because science has not advanced that far yet.

 

I love seeing how people agree that religion was wrong in the past because it only made !@#$%^&*umptions and tried to destroy science in order to keep it from being proven wrong, such as with the Inquisition and Galileo, but THIS TIME IT'S SOMEHOW DIFFERENT EVEN THOUGH THE CIR!@#$%^&*STANCES ARE THE SAME!!!! Future generations will look and laugh at the people who want to replace science with religion for things that they did not yet understand, yet I bet future generations will have new phenomena that they can't prove yet so many of them will call it "Intelligent Design" or whatever the new name will be and then say THIS TIME IT'S SOMEHOW DIFFERENT EVEN THOUGH THE CIR!@#$%^&*STANCES ARE THE SAME!!!!

 

Let's not try to turn religion into something it is not. Religion is a measure of faith and it's fine to be religious, but trying to turn religion into science is impossible unless you leave out obvious facts disproving it. The lessons of history should not just be ignored. The way you can tell someone really knows what they're talking about is if they know that no one really knows for sure about anything. Science operates under this principle tries to do the best that it can with what it has to find out what is occuring and eliminate as much sources of error as possible. If an error cannot be eliminated, then the science has to be changed to suit experimental data better.

 

Religion starts with an !@#$%^&*umption and must stay with that !@#$%^&*umption no matter what the evidence says. If the evidence can be seen as being in support of religion it is hailed as indisputable proof and if the evidence smacks the face of religion it is covered up. That is why religion cannot be proven. The blatant disregard for the scientific method means that it is not a science. It could be right, but until it can actually be treated as a science it is not a science.