How does Intelligent Design work?

[bush_cheney2004]

...All we can hope for is that people in our society are exposed to enough rational/critical thinking, real-world evidence, etc, that they have the opportunity to eventually shed any indoctrination they may have been subjected to and instead act like thinking rational beings. And for the most part, that is true, and is leading to slowly declining religiosity in most developed countries.

...except when they run back to faith and religion when the secular idols fail them.

[Canuckistani]

....and yet people/drivers are t-boned every day, even with such knowledge. At some point faith in other drivers enters the equation. It has nothing to do with religion.

Exactly. So leave religion out of it where it doesn't belong. Have all the faith you want, believe what you want, but when you try to lay those beliefs on science without having the evidence to back it up, then that's a no go.

[bush_cheney2004]

Exactly. So leave religion out of it where it doesn't belong. Have all the faith you want, believe what you want, but when you try to lay those beliefs on science without having the evidence to back it up, then that's a no go.

Yes and no....the social sciences are influenced by faith and religion in the form of morals and ethics. Science says I can kill another human being, but should I ? Religion didn't bomb Hiroshima or Nagasaki.

[DogOnPorch]

Yes and no....the social sciences are influenced by faith and religion in the form of morals and ethics. Science says I can kill another human being, but should I ? Religion didn't bomb Hiroshima or Nagasaki.

Now we be into the realms of morals and ethics...keep a sharp eye for sea monsters.

[Canuckistani]

Yes and no....the social sciences are influenced by faith and religion in the form of morals and ethics. Science says I can kill another human being, but should I ? Religion didn't bomb Hiroshima or Nagasaki.

Yeah it did - I bet God and country was as big then as it was with GWB. Science created the bomb, morals and ethics dropped it. And social science can make very good, rational arguments for altruism and cooperation. What science teaches us is there will always be a small proportion of users in society, and they will be successful only if they don't increase in relative numbers too much, otherwise, by by society, species, what have you. For immoral behavior to thrive it requires a groundwork of moral behavior. None of that requires religion.

[Mighty AC]

I think the fact that we cherry pick the ethical scripture that still applies shows that society creates the moral landscape not a god.

[DogOnPorch]

I think the fact that we cherry pick the ethical scripture that still applies shows that society creates the moral landscape not a god.

It was once perfectly moral to burn witches.

[Bonam]

It was once perfectly moral to burn witches.

Still is in some places.

[DogOnPorch]

Still is in some places.

Yes, it is...and there's rather shocking footage of it, too, thanks to modern technology.

[bush_cheney2004]

Yeah it did - I bet God and country was as big then as it was with GWB. Science created the bomb, morals and ethics dropped it. And social science can make very good, rational arguments for altruism and cooperation. What science teaches us is there will always be a small proportion of users in society, and they will be successful only if they don't increase in relative numbers too much, otherwise, by by society, species, what have you. For immoral behavior to thrive it requires a groundwork of moral behavior. None of that requires religion.

Wait a minute...by that measure, "science" created everything.. moral or not. So "science" is responsible for human beings having logic....and faith....in the same brain.

[Canuckistani]

Wait a minute...by that measure, "science" created everything.. moral or not. So "science" is responsible for human beings having logic....and faith....in the same brain.

Can you explain how you got that from what I wrote? The only thing I said science created was the bomb.

[Mighty AC]

It was once perfectly moral to burn witches.

Burning? What a waste! I say if a heathen weighs the same as duck then build a bridge out of her. Then again I am a tree hugger...better to reduce, reuse and recycle.

[DogOnPorch]

Burning? What a waste! I say if a heathen weighs the same as duck then build a bridge out of her. Then again I am a tree hugger...better to reduce, reuse and recycle.

...very small rocks!

[August1991]

As long as 'God' stays out of the science class, it doesn't matter if betsy wishes to believe in Abraham's desert deity. It's when her sort want everybody to drink the same kool-aid that we start getting problems. It's similar to teaching the stork theory as to why babies are born.

Here, I tend to agree.

When God supposedly comes down to Earth, I see politics involved. How many (political) leaders use this threat to influence people: "If you don't do as I say, you will disappear/suffer forever."

----

When I first discovered Kurt Vonnegut Jnr, I liked his phrase: "Take care of the people, God will take care of himself."

I would say the same to Betsy now.

But then, I now fear whether anyone will take care of anyone else, if they don't have faith.

Edited March 29, 2013 by August1991

[kimmy]

Betsy is right to wonder - and I won't belittle her faith. If you don't wonder too, then I reckon that you are passing beside the wonderful life that by grace you can enjoy.

I would like to point out a couple of things:

First off, "Betsy is right to wonder" incorrectly implies that betsy wonders. She doesn't. She is not a skeptical critic of evolution, she is a close-minded critic. She doesn't know how it works, she just knows it is wrong. Kind of like you and movies, August. You know which ones you hate before you've even watched them. So with Betsy. She's not searching the internet for information about the origins of life, she's searching the internet for web-pages that validate the opinion she already holds.

Secondly, "and I won't belittle her faith" implies that Betsy's a victim of abuse, rather than the instigator. In fact, she is the instigator. She starts these threads-- and there have been dozens of them over the years-- for the purpose of attacking world views different from her own.

-k

[Pliny]

I would like to point out a couple of things:

First off, "Betsy is right to wonder" incorrectly implies that betsy wonders. She doesn't. She is not a skeptical critic of evolution, she is a close-minded critic. She doesn't know how it works, she just knows it is wrong. Kind of like you and movies, August. You know which ones you hate before you've even watched them. So with Betsy. She's not searching the internet for information about the origins of life, she's searching the internet for web-pages that validate the opinion she already holds.

Secondly, "and I won't belittle her faith" implies that Betsy's a victim of abuse, rather than the instigator. In fact, she is the instigator. She starts these threads-- and there have been dozens of them over the years-- for the purpose of attacking world views different from her own.

-k

So you're saying there's still a chance. I read ya!

[kimmy]

So you're saying there's still a chance. I read ya!

Sure, Pliny, I'm telling you there's a chance.

What are you on about this time? A chance of what?

-k

Edited March 30, 2013 by kimmy

[kimmy]

After a quick read through this thread, let me choose you Kimmy for opprobrium:

Well, what scientific support is there for evolution?

Evolution? Evolution is an undeniable fact. Microbiologists can demonstrate evolution in their laboratories with fast-breeding, short-lifespan microorganisms like bacteria. The evolution of drug-resistant bacteria is an example of the process at work.

Perhaps you mean something more specific when you ask what support there is for evolution?

Thomas Nagel, like Einstein, rightly questions it.

Einstein, as far as I know, didn't have any biology credentials at all; I'm not sure what he has to do with this.

As for Nagel, I'd never heard of him before. But this article makes it clear that he doesn't have any science credentials either. He is a philosopher. His objections to evolution are not that it doesn't stand up to scientific scrutiny, but rather that he objects to the idea that physical processes are the guiding force in the evolution of consciousness, because he believes consciousness has some quality that transcends physical processes.

I'm not even sure what you can say in response to that.

I'd like to highlight this quote from the article:

But Prof. Nagel, an atheist, is not quite that. He says his book is meant to be a defence of the untutored reaction of incredulity.

What does "a defense of the untutored reaction of incredulity" mean?

To me, it sounds like he is trying to defend "I don't understand how it works, but it doesn't make any sense" as a valid position from which to debate an issue.

"I don't understand the science behind the process of evolution, but it doesn't make sense to me." It reminds me of Pliny's objections to relativity from prior threads. The idea that untutored incredulity is a legitimate debating position is probably very popular with untutored incredulous people, but science isn't a democracy.

-k

[betsy]

As promised, I'm here to answer where we left off.

There's no debate on this issue in the scientific community.

Then perhaps you don't read anything other than evolution-propaganda rags, thus to you, there's no debate among the like-minded people that inhabits your "scientific community" - which is sounding more and more like a cultist commune!

Just the simple fact that I'm aggressively facing you all - and with supporting articles, links and videos (which of course Canuckstani, quite understandably if I put myself in his quaking boots, refuses to admit in his topic) should be proof enough that there is indeed a debate in not only one, but several issues that pertains to evolution!

That you fail to deduce that simple logic is mind-boggling to me - and I'm really experiencing deja vu with you......like I'm dealing with microbes and fossils all over again.

My question is, how much of what you write do you actually understand?

Edited April 27, 2013 by betsy

[betsy]

Translation: you're searching through Creation.com and AnswersInGenesis and Living Waters Ministries for pages that say "stasis disproves evolution". You'll probably find some, and it won't matter at all because those guys are just as wrong as the first guy. Just because a stupid idea is popular with other stupid people doesn't mean it isn't stupid.-k

This has been waiting for a month.

I'll prove that you don't know and understand most of what you're spouting about. Without any links, or any videos.

Watch me.

http://www.mapleleafweb.com/forums/topic/22477-15-questions-for-evolutionists/page-15

Edited April 28, 2013 by betsy

[BubberMiley]

Watch me.

You "proved" nothing other than that you continue to be completely unwilling to address the issue of why we are increasingly finding new types of drug-resistant bacteria. Saying people who believe in evolution "hate God" not only weakens your case, it makes you sound less than Christian.

[gullyfourmyle]

Intelligent Design was initially the premise that some supernatural being designed the universe and everything in it. It all works, there are no blank spots where we find that something was missed and everything either has a reason to exist or it ceases to exist. Even that is part of the design. There are no missing shadows or inexplicably incomplete shadows.

Where life is concerned, we can start with single celled living beings who were first shown conclusively in an on-line video near the turn of this century to have decision making capability. The demonstration took place in a maze and two microbes approached each other in the maze, detected one another and took avoidance action. The experiment was done a few times and has been replicated since and expanded upon. So we know conclusively that even single celled organisms can detect at a distance, make rational decisions and act on those decisions to potentially extend their lives.

From there we can jump from the lab straight into a living body. Dog, cat, mouse, tiger, whatever. For a long time we considered all of higher mammalian decision making took place in the brain after we got over the mistaken notion that everything they did was driven by instinct. But it has become very clear since that quite a lot of decision making takes place at the neuron level throughout the body whether fish or man. Lots of studies have been made to measure how long it takes for our sense of touch, hearing, taste and so on take to travel from the moment and location of threat awareness to the moment of reaction. The time it would take for the impulse to reach the brain and return is fatally long. Threat reaction has to occur long before the signal can reach the brain. Other more local decisions are made at the cellular and sub cellular levels. The entire body is aware, alert and all of the cells are working as a unified complex team. To a slower extent, vegetation and moulds follow a similar pattern.

As conditions change, new skills and adaptations have to occur as the planet itself changes due to activities on it and in it.

Moths for instance change colour in two or three generations to adapt to smog conditions. In sooty surroundings, white moths are vulnerable.

In the human body, we have the much maligned appendix that nearly everyone thinks is useless. It isn't. The appendix is a mechanism that alerts its owner to poor dietary habits assuming the owner is in tune enough with his or her body to interpret the message properly. Appendicitis does not occur all of a sudden. It's a result of eating the wrong things over an extended period of time. That does not always mean junk food. Stuff like watermelon seeds can get stuck in there. If the chemistry of the body is acidic, say from eating too much meat, dairy or grain products inflammation soon follows and that causes pain. Unless the host has the sense to stop eating and fast long enough to allow the appendix to clear, the inflammation becomes an infection due to food induced, localized putrification that becomes life threatening if not treated.

Just because hardly any doctors know anything about natural healing processes does not mean that our various body parts such as the appendix, spleen, gall bladder and various other parts we are told we can live comfortably without don't have a vital purpose. If they didn’t they would not be there.

Modern medicine is not only an imprecise craft, it is really just people floundering around trying with equally imprecise equipment making assumptions about life processes they have no clue about. Modern medicine has evolved from the trades of butcher and barber, not healer and consequently our modern medical break throughs are mostly about cut and paste.

Human health from a design standpoint is determined by the quality of water consumed and the quality of food consumed. Food is the body’s tool box. That is where the nutrients the body uses for fuel, growth and repair come from. Consider the nutrients as the most powerful tools in the toolbox, not drugs or anything else a doctor might describe. If this were not so, you would not be alive to read this. Misuse and abuse of foods is, barring accidents and other forms of injuries and diseases passed along by outside influences is the cause of all bodily degeneration. Every living body is a piece of the grand design that is life on planet earth. Everything is connected and woven together seamlessly and with no loopholes. It is all driven by the quest for food and water in order ultimately extend life by begetting new life. Every life form has a shelf life and has to reproduce itself to continue the genetic equation which is in each case the core of the life form, not our brains or other parts of our bodies. The planet runs on DNA and more importantly, the codes within. Everything else comprises the vessels or support structures doing a dance to propel genetic codes of the present into the future. The movie Tron was a beautiful analogy of how the game is played mostly without until recently, our being aware that we are locked into a service that has absolutely nothing to do with religion on any level. Religion is merely an invention to streamline and shape human activities. The shaping process determines which genetic lines prosper and which are extinguished.

It's only in the last ten years or so that modern science has been able to discover what animal lovers have known for centuries - that animals can think, reason, feel pain, happiness, tell jokes, comprehend multiple languages, lie, cheat, invent, make and use tools, read - in short, pretty well everything we can do but within the context of their species and their lives. A fox for instance cannot think like a human in all respects and has no use for Shakespeare. But then the much smarter human cannot think like a fox either and we don’t care to scent mark trees or rocks. As much as we can learn about various species we ultimately cannot learn enough about them to live that way except in very exceptional instances - adoption at a young age by monkeys and wolves most commonly. People who have had that happen to them fail to develop properly in all but one case that I've heard of - a child in South America who was kidnapped, abandoned and adopted by monkeys at age 5. When she was captured she was sold into the prostitution trade but was eventually rescued. Her name is Marina Chapman. She was able to be reassimilated back into society most likely because she had years of normality that allowed the major brain functions to develop normally before the kidnapping. But she raised her own children drawing from techniques she learned from her years with the monkeys.

For most of our history it has been maintained that humanity was added after everything else was created. The fossil record and the cellular record shows that notion to be wrong. Our bodily processes are similar to identical with practically every living thing. Our mitochondria, the cellular stuff which holds us all together is identical with that of all other species. How is that for conservative, efficient design?

Zebra Danios, a common tropical fish species are used extensively to study spinal cord injuries because their spinal chords are so similar to ours. These fish are typically an inch and a half long or three centimeters.

American Motors (Rambler) was for decades the number four automotive manufacturer in North America until 1987. It was well respected for its ability to survive using techniques used in nature. The way it survived was by using common parts over and over again so that existing designs looked like they were new designs. The same 6 cylinder engine block designed in the early sixties is still used by Chrysler in today's Jeep. Their V8 engine block was used to make every engine size from 290 to 401. Modern technology has gotten almost 500 cubic inches out of those V8 blocks and over 700 horsepower. It turned out that AMC made the strongest engine block of any manufacturer. All of their engine blocks regardless of internal size (displacement) had the same external dimensions. So the bigger engines weighed about the same as the smaller ones. That meant that suspension only had to be designed once and could be optimized for every model. The other manufacturers couldn’t optimize their big block cars without extravagant, expensive redesigns and extra costly manufacturing of a wider assortment of parts that had to be inventoried. So AMC’s competitors – GM, Ford and Chrysler produced cars that handled like landing barges compared to AMC products.

Insect eyes are marvels of bio-technology, their exoskeletons architectural genius. Insects have been shown on TV to be able to understand multiple languages. They need to in order to survive.

Insects for most higher animals represent the ultimate vitamin pill and food supplement. Insects are nutrient dense. They are a food staple for grizzly bears for instance. We don’t eat them because now we associate insects with disease. But that association is only made possible by a condition brought about by civilization – overcrowding that generates poor sanitation. As a species, we are living a long way past our optimal species density.

The slow learners on this level are human beings who tend to get in their own way and refuse to believe the evidence of their own eyes. The obstacle we can't see past or around is religion that has stated that everything on earth was put here for our benefit. Genesis, Chapter 1 Verse 26 tells you all you need to know about how stupid as a species we have been and how we have allowed religion to warp and stunt our potential as the dominant species. We as a species have had the ultimate opportunity to create a utopian world where all species flourish but we blew it because we thought we had to dominate by force when what we needed to was to dominate with intelligence, wisdom and compassion. We’ve always had the tools but too few of us understood that.

Intelligent Design from a Universal perspective has nothing to do with anything created by man. When we look at naturally occurring materials through the lens of a powerful microscope, we see beautiful images, dazzling images. When we look at man made materials, the images are grotesque by comparison.

You have to realize that I'm talking in generalities here. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. If you Google beauty and then go to images, you'll see a frightening array of things someone thinks is beautiful. There is no accounting for taste.

As for the God part of the discussion you might go and read the God Thing if you haven't read it already. After that read about how religions started in order to enslave and abuse women. After that you may have a different perspective on Intelligent Design and where it came from.

[neobendez]

Intelligent Design proponents have rarely published on Intelligent Design in established scientific journals and resist modifying their ideas in response to the scrutiny of the scientific community.

[cybercoma]

Intelligent Design proponents have rarely published on Intelligent Design in established scientific journals and resist modifying their ideas in response to the scrutiny of the scientific community.

How could they publish in scientific journals? It's not a scientific thought. It's a hunch with no support.

[gullyfourmyle]

If you want to get picky, there is no such thing as intelligent design. There is such a thing as an intelligent designer. Design is the work done by a designer. It has no life, no decision making abilities one way or the other and while a design can form spontaneously on its own, once started it can't reverse it's position and start over. A designer can.

The important events that occur in the universe happen on the sub-molecular scale. If we were able to backtrack to the beginning of nothingness, we would find that nothingness wasn't empty. All the basic elements needed probably existed as sub-molecular matter floating in endless space.

Movement was probably undetectable and visually, everything would have been black.

However, it's an immutable law that nothing is ever completely motionless despite appearances. Eventually motes would have collided. In the utter vastness of endless space, eons must have passed before a second collision occurred. After that, possibly the time between collisions sped up. Like billiard balls caroming off one another. In this case though on some level magnetism must have been involved.

Eventually space would have been a maelstrom of infinitely tiny particles flying around at ever increasing speeds. Think of space as a giant collider.

As particles became attracted to each other or smashed and stuck together the particles would start to grow.

Over time different levels of magnetism on a large scale could be considered gravity. Differing levels of gravity would exist all through the fabric of space.

Increasing particle size, movement and friction would eventually generate electricity.

Even space conforms to rules or laws that are repeated on earth. What we have here on earth is likely a miniature repetition of what space is really like if you get far enough away from it to close up the gaps between particles. Same thing if you go small enough. There can be no limit to how small or large eternity is.

For instance I paint in a style I call Fluid Dynamics. It's similar to fractal art but in my case the creation of my art and the final result is largely dependent on how the molecular particles in the different colours of paint react with one another. Nothing blows up but there is considerable ebb, flow, mixing and not mixing. All of this activity exists on a plane since this isn't a weightless environment. Watching this happen is really interesting. Sometimes I guide the colour in order to achieve a look. I've produced sequences that show in colour how lung tissue grows, how veins form. All sorts of things that have given me insight in to how bodily functions are performed.

In space, apparently much the same thing happened. If our universe is viewed from a great enough distance, all of it seems to have oriented itself into a plane. Like paper, this plane has thickness.

When my paintings are creating themselves, what I frequently end up with are compositions that look like portions of outer space complete with galaxies, planets, suns, comets and background colours. This all happens in a plane of water. The paint is free to go where it wants. Mind you I have to put in play. But again you can say I've created a version of outer space. Am I god? No. Did I cause any micro life to exist? Almost certainly. There hasn't been any contact yet.

So who is to say, my scenario isn't repeated in some way over and over outwards and inwards?

Inside a living body, plant or animal, the same things happen as happen in my paintings. There is flow and spontaneous growth. The biggest difference though is that living tissue as I mentioned in my earlier post, can make decisions. The human brain only does some of the decision making. Like the universe, events that make tiny changes eventually prompt noticeable changes Different circumstances presented mean different tactics must be used for survival of the whole and the component parts. Circumstantial stressors at some point caused snails to lick and grind algae and others caused those same snails to believe that dry land was an option that could be explored and with some adaptations, snails eventually spent more and more time out of water than in it. Now we have snails that would drown if you put them in water with no place to crawl out.

Evolution is not a magic transformation from one form to another for no good reason. Any successful transformation is the result of decision making and usually a lot of trial and error. So evolution of anything can be called the sum of decision-making.

Right now the human race is evolving in countless ways in response to our ability to transcend our formerly limiting boundaries.

If you were to examine all human races in a line, you'd notice that humans come in a wide variety of shapes and colours but all built on the same essential platform: a head, neck, torso, arms, hands, legs, feet and so on. We are fat, skinny, short, tall, medium, bent, twisted and our hair can be made to look like anything and be shaved right off. Or it falls off. We come in lots of colours too. Mostly various shades of brown from almost white to brown to black. The Turegs stain themselves blue and we think of Chinese as yellow. They aren't really.

In that mixture we now have all of our races, all the shapes, colours and genetic make-ups are being mixed together like never before. The results are people with different genetic traits who look distinctly different than either of their parents. If that were done often enough with parents of the same races being mixed the same way, we'd soon have a new race of humans distinct from every other.

That's not what's happening. All of the races to a greater or lesser extent are mixing together and depending on geography we'll end up with conceivably one race that is the melting pot having traits of every race. The least useful traits will disappear. God will have nothing to do with any of it.

This process is rightly called evolution. It is not stupid design or intelligent design. It's a process that happens and affects all living things, plant, animal, fungus, virus - you name it.