Creationism v. Intelligent Design v. Evolution

[minkymurph]

Evolution was somewhat easy and very enjoyable. Though I still have a lot more to learn especially in anthropology. Regardless, evolution cannot account for the fully complete human person. Divine Revelation trumps.

No, it can’t. What many atheists today fail to acknowledge is the limitations of scientific knowledge. In my opinion, IDer’s have unintentionally and unwittingly strayed into the modern concept that science knowledge is superior to other forms of knowledge and in doing so, are unintentionally and unwittingly aiding and abetting modern rejection of the Bible. I’ll go into this in more detail in another post as I don’t have the word length to do it here.

I learned this from the early books of Franklin Covey; however, he was not talking about faith. Regarding the Catholic Faith, I believe that Catholic apologetics needs updating in the science arena.

In my view, Catholic apologetics always needs updating and reviewing. Not for the purpose of changing beliefs to accommodate modern thinking, but to meet spiritual needs in a rapidly changing world that presents us with complex ethical and moral issues in an unpredictable climate.

From what I have observed, there are some obvious obstacles to this. No, I am not going to list them.

There are any number of obstacles and I won’t list them either. (because we would be here forever) Suffice to say they need to be addressed and not ignored.

As a former writer/editor before Google, there are some things I feel strongly about, e.g., accurate reporting and research. First hand, hands on research is the best. Working with my sources. etc., etc. I also believe that it is important to give correct information about Catholicism.

It is important to give correct information about Catholicism because there are so many ‘myths’ and notions out there concerning what Catholics believe. In that respect, we can consider ourselves to be on the same side despite what other differences we may have.

 

[rossum]

He didn’t have to make precise calculations to know what he was talking about. He didn’t win the Nobel Prize for talking out of his hat.

His won his Nobel Prize for Medicine. He has no special authority in Physics or Cosmology.

Then all scientists are working with insufficient information.

Not insufficient, just limited. That is why every scientific number comes with error bars on it.

The success of science must also due to insufficient information.

The success of science is to find techniques to work round places where we have insufficient or incomplete information. We observe that scientific induction works well in many situations. We will continue to use it for as long as it works well. It works here and now. The possibility that it might fail to work in 1,000,000 years time does not prevent us using it now.

Do you believe there is any reason or purpose for our existence?

Yes. The reason for our existence is that we failed to attain nirvana in our previous life so we have been reborn for yet another attempt. Our purpose is to avoid suffering by attaining nirvana.

Scientific observation?

Both personal and scientific observation. See Neuroscience may explain the Dalai Lama for one such scientific observation.

So the role of mathematical probability is strictly limited in philosophy?

Yes. Like anything it is limited to the areas for which it is relevant.

That there are overwhelming odds against survival.

Survival of what? Of life in general? Of life on Earth? Of a particular species? Of a particular individual? The odds on those things are different.

The fact remains that unicellular organisms are far more likely to survive.

Which set of odds? My lifetime is longer than that of the average bacterium.

rossum

 

[rossum]

I have been wondering why the human species is extant and still multiplying. Could it be that it is the rational species which adapts environments to itself?

We are still a relatively young species. Other species adapt environments to suit themselves: ants and termite nests for example contain very carefully regulated environments.

rossum

 

[ricmat]

Indeed - though frankly I think it’s impossible to change the minds of these people - they aren’t genuinely interested in following the evidence to its logical conclusion.

Funny, that’s what many people say about evolution - it is a hoax on a grand scale.

I was watching this interview between Richard Dawkins and some creationist, and it made me realise how futile it is to try and change their views, they already know what they want to believe and will simply ignore any evidence to the contrary or misrepresent it to further their own views
youtube.com/watch?v=YFjoEgYOgRo

Creationists are not IDers. This is an inconvenient fact for many who want to trash ID.

lease, Signature in the Cell seems hardly worth reading - firstly it is written by a philosopher, not a biologist and the responses (other than from the choir) are hardly favourable.

Here’s a response to the book from Ayala:
biologos.org/blog/on-reading-the-cells-signature/

Thank you thank you THANK you for pointing out the Ayala situation. That is EXACTLY the situation I was referring to when I challenged Al to read Signature in the Cell. Ayala NEVER READ THE BOOK. HE NEVER (IT APPEARS) EVEN READ THE TABLE OF CONTENTS. Yet, here he is pontificating on what a lousy book it is. It seems to me that he not only refuses to follow the evidence where it leads, he’s not even looking at the evidence. And he uses his influence of having not read the book to influence others who have not read the book to not read the book either.

 

[ricmat]

Let’s suppose life had an average chance of 1 in 5 million, or 1 in 20 million years to arise, just to name some numbers. Even with the latter number, life would still have been statistically inevitable, i.e. in, let’s say, a billion years it would have been quasi a certainty. Remember that we are talking about geological deep time here; it is quite irrelevant for the development of life if it happened on an 800 million years old Earth or a 1800 million years old Earth (a billion years later). With the latter, our bodies would have developed at a time where the life expectancy of the sun would have been only 4 billion years from now instead of 5 billion years. That hardly would matter to us.

RNA probably was ubiquitous on the prebiotic Earth with its reducing conditions, so the only thing that was needed was a chance sequence of RNA nucleotides that was capable of reproducing itself, embedded in a fatty acid membrane and existing in environmental conditions that both sufficiently shielded it and were conducive to allowing that first fragile life to reproduce, which might have had to include hot-cold cycles for the first primitive RNA reproduction (the fatty acid membrane part is the easiest one in all of this).

Once life arose and sufficiently developed into a robust form, it could probably have spread quickly around the globe, or at least around the select places that would have constituted a shielding, favorable environment to the emergence of life. That this evolution and spreading happened in 5 million (or 20 million) years time is not inconceivable and it would have formed the basis for all life to arise from this first organism that conferred to everything its genetic code (the universal genetic code. the marker for descension from a single ancestor).

Now let’s say life arose a second time. In those very fragile early stages life would have been completely defenseless and might simply have been ‘eaten’ by the first life that had already been around since much earlier (with that first life we are talking still bacteria-like single-cell stages here). This process might even have repeated itself a few times in Earth’s history. Finally, the production of oxygen by life would have destroyed the reducing conditions on the early Earth necessary for the origin of life, and life could never again have arisen (it cannot today either).

So in this scenario life would have been both inevitable and guaranteed to appear to have arisen only once, even if in fact it could have arisen several times.

And your evidence of life having arisen several times is…where?

Are you following the evidence?

 

[inocente]

No, it can’t. What many atheists today fail to acknowledge is the limitations of scientific knowledge. In my opinion, IDer’s have unintentionally and unwittingly strayed into the modern concept that science knowledge is superior to other forms of knowledge and in doing so, are unintentionally and unwittingly aiding and abetting modern rejection of the Bible.

Nail on the head there. It’s a strange feature of the times we live in that some atheists and scientists show greater spirituality than some theists. They know that science doesn’t have all the answers, but they can’t get any answers in church when the religionists are too busy trying to make religion scientific.

 

[ricmat]

No, it can’t. What many atheists today fail to acknowledge is the limitations of scientific knowledge. In my opinion, IDer’s have unintentionally and unwittingly strayed into the modern concept that science knowledge is superior to other forms of knowledge and in doing so, are unintentionally and unwittingly aiding and abetting modern rejection of the Bible. I’ll go into this in more detail in another post as I don’t have the word length to do it here.

Before you go into detail in another post, you should probably read something about ID that is written by supporters of ID.

Signature in the Cell devotes the first few chapters to the different types of scientific knowledge, and other knowledge that can be used to draw conclusions.

There are some actual FAQs on this page
intelligentdesign.org/faq.php

as well as links to other ID FAQs. It would be good if you read some of them.

 

[tonyrey]

He didn’t have to make precise calculations to know what he was talking about. He didn’t win the Nobel Prize for talking out of his hat.

                             He won his Nobel Prize for Medicine.  He has no special authority in Physics or Cosmology.

So you reject his conclusions?

Then all scientists are working with insufficient information.

Not insufficient, just limited. That is why every scientific number comes with error bars on it.

That invalidates your demand for coercive evidence.

The success of science must also due to insufficient information.

The success of science is to find techniques to work round places where we have insufficient or incomplete information. We observe that scientific induction works well in many situations. We will continue to use it for as long as it works well. It works here and now. The possibility that it might fail to work in 1,000,000 years time does not prevent us using it now.

So mathematical probability is not always the most important criterion.

Do you believe there is any reason or purpose for our existence?

Yes. The reason for our existence is that we failed to attain nirvana in our previous life so we have been reborn for yet another attempt. Our purpose is to avoid suffering by attaining nirvana.

How did that system originate?

Scientific observation?

Both personal and scientific observation. See Neuroscience may explain the Dalai Lama for one such scientific observation.

Does neuroscience explain all our behaviour?

So the role of mathematical probability is strictly limited in philosophy?

Yes. Like anything it is limited to the areas for which it is relevant.

So it is unreasonable to demand precise mathematical calculations in every instance?

That there are overwhelming odds against survival.

Survival of what? Of life in general? Of life on Earth? Of a particular species? Of a particular individual? The odds on those things are different.

Why do you think they are different if you have no precise mathematical calculations to support your conclusion?

The fact remains that unicellular organisms are far more likely to survive.

Which set of odds? My lifetime is longer than that of the average bacterium.

A similar set of odds to that which enabled you to conclude that the the odds on life in general, life on Earth, a particular species and a particular individual are different!

 

[grannymh]

Originally Posted by grannymh forums.catholic-questions.org/images/buttons_khaki/viewpost.gif
I have been wondering why the human species is extant and still multiplying. Could it be that it is the rational species which adapts environments to itself?

For a person who believes in God it must due to His Will and intervention when life on earth almost became extinct.

As a person who believes in God, I find it possible that the human species is extant because at the point of human origin, God gave our first parents the capabilities of a spiritual soul, i.e., intellect and will.

 

[buffalo]

Indeed - though frankly I think it’s impossible to change the minds of these people - they aren’t genuinely interested in following the evidence to its logical conclusion.

I was watching this interview between Richard Dawkins and some creationist, and it made me realise how futile it is to try and change their views, they already know what they want to believe and will simply ignore any evidence to the contrary or misrepresent it to further their own views
youtube.com/watch?v=YFjoEgYOgRo

Please, Signature in the Cell seems hardly worth reading - firstly it is written by a philosopher, not a biologist and the responses (other than from the choir) are hardly favourable.

Here’s a response to the book from Ayala:
biologos.org/blog/on-reading-the-cells-signature/

The Guardian also analysed it from a philosophical perspective:
guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2010/may/05/intelligent-design-theology

I agree with their statement that ID is ‘bad science, bad theology and blasphemy’

Ayala admitted to not having even read it.

 

[vz71]

Would everyone here accept my word that I can duplicate the Golden Gate bridge if I could demonstrate fully my ability to build a bridge using popsicle sticks?

Why?
Building my bridge of popsicle sticks demonstrates my knowledge in the field and shows a working of some of the science I will need.
Yet most people will say that they are not the same thing.

They would be right. Scale is a large thing and we know that the materials tend to change behavior when made on a large scale. A demonstration on a small scale tells little of the designers capability on a large scale.

Yet some will accept scientists claims that they will make life on the basis that they can build other parts of a cell.

That makes little sense.
Life is the process of all of these parts working together in concert towards a goal that may not necessarily be beneficial to all of the parts involved. A single piece of a cell could be likened to a single beat of a single drum while life is the symphony.
The scale of complexity here is much greater then my popsicle stick bridge is to the Golden Gate.

Of course, we still have a problem of probability.
Suppose for a brief moment that our scientists are able to build life in a lab.
They have some fantastic breakthrough and find life emerging where there were sterile chemicals before.
Now we have another problem. Is this lab condition the same as the earth at the time life came about? What are the odds that the conditions in the lab are exact matches to those found on this imaginary earth?
What are the odds that the right conditions for life to continue living and replicate itself many times over stay in place?

I am looking at this hypothesis and seeing fantasticly small probability to the power of fantasticly small probability.

I do not care how life has appeared, someone had to be controlling it. The odds are simply not in favor of a random start.

And that is ID.
Now if I examine the problem further, I may be led to the conclusion that it was God in the driver’s seat all along.
That fact does not negate the science and logic I have used to get there.

That is not ‘theology in a cheap suit’ it is real science and real logic leading to a real conclusion.

But there are many that dislike the conclusion. And we can all see the results of that.

 

[Al_Moritz]

Funny, that’s what many people say about evolution - it is a hoax on a grand scale.

Creationists are not IDers. This is an inconvenient fact for many who want to trash ID.

Thank you thank you THANK you for pointing out the Ayala situation. That is EXACTLY the situation I was referring to when I challenged Al to read Signature in the Cell. Ayala NEVER READ THE BOOK. HE NEVER (IT APPEARS) EVEN READ THE TABLE OF CONTENTS. Yet, here he is pontificating on what a lousy book it is. It seems to me that he not only refuses to follow the evidence where it leads, he’s not even looking at the evidence. And he uses his influence of having not read the book to influence others who have not read the book to not read the book either.

Because he already knows what ‘evidence’ Meyer will present. And I know too, and I am not interested.

Why am I not interested? Because I have been an ID proponent myself. As such I have had a detailed discussion with atheistic evolutionists that dragged over weeks since I took the time to refute everything they said in detail, and which in the end I clearly won (not that I was ultimately right), given my vastly superior biochemical knowledge (I am a scientist in biochemistry). I even developed my own argument why biochemical pathways have to be irreducibly complex, before I even was familiar with any of Behe’s arguments.

But then I studied the real evidence and everything collapsed. I studied some more and even an origin of life by natural causes now seems highly likely to me, or to put it another way: I would find it highly unlikely that God would have had to perform a miracle for life to get started.

I have been one of you guys. Let me repeat: I have been one of you guys. You don’t have to try to convince me of the merits of the ID arguments. I know ID. I have been a hardcore IDer myself. But then I opened my mind and studied the real scientific evidence.

And finally I discovered that ID also implies lousy theology. This is the last bit that I really do not need.

 

[buffalo]

Let’s suppose life had an average chance of 1 in 5 million, or 1 in 20 million years to arise, just to name some numbers. Even with the latter number, life would still have been statistically inevitable, i.e. in, let’s say, a billion years it would have been quasi a certainty. Remember that we are talking about geological deep time here; it is quite irrelevant for the development of life if it happened on an 800 million years old Earth or a 1800 million years old Earth (a billion years later). With the latter, our bodies would have developed at a time where the life expectancy of the sun would have been only 4 billion years from now instead of 5 billion years. That hardly would matter to us.

RNA probably was ubiquitous on the prebiotic Earth with its reducing conditions, so the only thing that was needed was a chance sequence of RNA nucleotides that was capable of reproducing itself, embedded in a fatty acid membrane and existing in environmental conditions that both sufficiently shielded it and were conducive to allowing that first fragile life to reproduce, which might have had to include hot-cold cycles for the first primitive RNA reproduction (the fatty acid membrane part is the easiest one in all of this).

Once life arose and sufficiently developed into a robust form, it could probably have spread quickly around the globe, or at least around the select places that would have constituted a shielding, favorable environment to the emergence of life. That this evolution and spreading happened in 5 million (or 20 million) years time is not inconceivable and it would have formed the basis for all life to arise from this first organism that conferred to everything its genetic code (the universal genetic code. the marker for descension from a single ancestor).

Now let’s say life arose a second time. In those very fragile early stages life would have been completely defenseless and might simply have been ‘eaten’ by the first life that had already been around since much earlier (with that first life we are talking still bacteria-like single-cell stages here). This process might even have repeated itself a few times in Earth’s history. Finally, the production of oxygen by life would have destroyed the reducing conditions on the early Earth necessary for the origin of life, and life could never again have arisen (it cannot today either).

So in this scenario life would have been both inevitable and guaranteed to appear to have arisen only once, even if in fact it could have arisen several times.

probably - could have - might even have -

**“What this professor wants to afflict on us is far more unbelievable than what we poor Christians were ever expected to believe.” **

 

[grannymh]

We are still a relatively young species. Other species adapt environments to suit themselves: ants and termite nests for example contain very carefully regulated environments.

rossum

True. However, we added mechanical air conditioning to our nests.

 

[buffalo]

His won his Nobel Prize for Medicine. He has no special authority in Physics or Cosmology.

Not insufficient, just limited. That is why every scientific number comes with error bars on it.

The success of science is to find techniques to work round places where we have insufficient or incomplete information. We observe that scientific induction works well in many situations. We will continue to use it for as long as it works well. It works here and now. The possibility that it might fail to work in 1,000,000 years time does not prevent us using it now.

Yes. The reason for our existence is that we failed to attain nirvana in our previous life so we have been reborn for yet another attempt. Our purpose is to avoid suffering by attaining nirvana.

Both personal and scientific observation. See Neuroscience may explain the Dalai Lama for one such scientific observation.

Yes. Like anything it is limited to the areas for which it is relevant.

Survival of what? Of life in general? Of life on Earth? Of a particular species? Of a particular individual? The odds on those things are different.

Which set of odds? My lifetime is longer than that of the average bacterium.

rossum

Can induction be used to conclude there is a God?

 

[minkymurph]

Manifesting God’s glory, to the converted.

Do the converted need to have God’s glory manifested to them? In fairness, perhaps. It is as important to nurture and develop our own faith as well as that of others. However, establishment of empirical evidence through scientific discovery in an attempt to prove scientific findings wrong because it’s not compatible with certain religious beliefs is another matter.

The objective of ID is to search for design in nature.

Is it? However, let’s say for now it is. If the objective is to search for design in nature - why? Why do we need evidence of design in nature? To cast doubt on evidence that suggests we physically evolved perhaps? Design by who or what? God, or someone or something else?

It has been argued that the ID movement attempts to disguise the religious intent of ID. The evidence suggests that ID has a religious intent. ID is not a new phenomenon. It has been around for a long time and is routed in religious belief. Aquinas wrote on Intelligent Design in the Medieval period. An historical examination regarding the development of contemporary thinking concerning ID demonstrated further it is routed in religious belief. Fundamentalist Christians in the 1920’s effectively suspended the teaching of evolution. They took this action because it was contrary to their interpretation of Genesis and not because it was contrary to established empirical evidence.

In the 1960’s, Fundamentalist Christians proposed creationist science as an ‘alternative scientific explanation’ when evolution was introduced into the national curriculum. Their scientific explanations are routed in arguments proposed by Fundamentalist Christians in the 1920’s but more to the point, their intention was the same - to discredit scientific findings that called into question literal interpretations of Genesis and establish empirical evidence that literal interpretations of Genesis aren’t as far out as what the scientific world would have us believe. Therefore, historically ID is intrinsically linked to certain religious beliefs and interpretations of Genesis meaning, it is not purely a scientific inquiry.

It has further been argued that empirical evidence that supports ID theories have been established in accordance with, and in conjunction with certain religious believes. In recent years in my part of the world, ID is experiencing a revival. Pressure groups who promote ID and want it taught in the science class and not just the RE class are born-again Christians and their intention in doing so is to validate literal interpretations of Genesis for reasons mentioned above. They do believe empirical evidence that refutes evolutionary theories and the age of earth is sound, but don’t claim this the only reason they promote ID and want it taught in a science class. They openly state their intention is to present scientific evidence that supports literal interpretations of Genesis in conjunction with others to give people the opportunity to make up their own mind. That part is not entirely honest because in their eyes, people who objectively consider both sides of the argument and come up with a conclusion that Genesis should not be read literally and empirical evidence that supports evolution as the stronger argument is wrong. However, while I don’t agree with them at least they are honest about their intentions and don’t attempt to disguise the religious intentions of ID.

It has also been argued that ID should not attempt to disguise it’s religious intentions as do so, is to unwittingly aid and abet modern rejection of the bible. A major concern today is the compatibility of evolutionary theory with belief in God and the Bible. There are not only many Christians out there who are well grounded in historical, literary and redaction criticism, but a lot of clever atheists who have done their homework concerning biblical scholarship and can present sound arguments that challenge literal interpretations of Genesis. Theists have argued that for ID must to be meaningful and long lasting, it must be followed by or accompanied by a sound presentation of true Biblical creationism as to not do so discredits both the bible and belief in God. Therefore, whether we like it or not, ID cannot be considered in isolation of religious belief and biblical scholarship as purely a scientific endeavor.

What you do with it is up to you.

True, it is. What do IDer’s intend to do to address the major issue of the compatibility of evolutionary theory with belief in God and the Bible, and how do they propose to address another major issue - the relationship between developments in biblical scholarship and modern scientific developments? They can’t avoid it by claiming ID is purely a scientific inquiry that is unrelated to Genesis; nor can they claim it is devoid of any religious intention.

 

[rossum]

So you reject his conclusions?

Not yet. I am suspending judgement until I have more information.

That invalidates your demand for coercive evidence.

I am prepared to accept number with error bars. I cannot work with no numbers at all if you want me to look at odds.

So mathematical probability is not always the most important criterion.

It was you who mentioned the odds of life forming. Since we are discussing odds then yes, mathematical probability is extremely important. Odds are a way of expressing probability.

How did that system originate?

The same place your God originated.

Does neuroscience explain all our behaviour?

Ask a neuroscientist.

So it is unreasonable to demand precise mathematical calculations in every instance?

It is unreasonable to expect precise outputs when there are imprecise (name removed by moderator)uts. The precision of the output can be calculated given the precision of the (name removed by moderator)uts. Not all mathematical calculations in science are probability calculations.

Why do you think they are different if you have no precise mathematical calculations to support your conclusion?

I have enough information to know some of those odds, and that tells me that the odds are different. The odds on me surviving the next year are reasonably good; I can read actuarial tables for non-smoking males my age. The odds on a particular bacterium surviving that log are very much against since their lifetimes are of the order of days or weeks.

A similar set of odds to that which enabled you to conclude that the the odds on life in general, life on Earth, a particular species and a particular individual are different!

Please show your working. I am not aware of any relevant actuarial tables or research into the lifetimes of bacteria. I did not assume that the odds are the same because they describe different entities. The average lifetimes of a species is longer that the lifetimes of the individuals comprising that species. Different entities; different lifetimes; different odds.

rossum

 

[minkymurph]

Before you go into detail in another post, you should probably read something about ID that is written by supporters of ID.

Signature in the Cell devotes the first few chapters to the different types of scientific knowledge, and other knowledge that can be used to draw conclusions.

There are some actual FAQs on this page
intelligentdesign.org/faq.php

as well as links to other ID FAQs. It would be good if you read some of them.

I’ll get back to you on it. I don’t have the time at present.

 

[Al_Moritz]

As a person who believes in God, I find it possible that the human species is extant because at the point of human origin, God gave our first parents the capabilities of a spiritual soul, i.e., intellect and will.

Precisely, that is the point.

 

[buffalo]

Because he already knows what ‘evidence’ Meyer will present. And I know too, and I am not interested.

Why am I not interested? Because I have been an ID proponent myself. As such I have had a detailed discussion with atheistic evolutionists that dragged over weeks since I took the time to refute everything they said in detail, and which in the end I clearly won (not that I was ultimately right), given my vastly superior biochemical knowledge (I am a scientist in biochemistry). I even developed my own argument why biochemical pathways have to be irreducibly complex, before I even was familiar with any of Behe’s arguments.

But then I studied the real evidence and everything collapsed. I studied some more and even an origin of life by natural causes now seems highly likely to me, or to put it another way: I would find it highly unlikely that God would have had to perform a miracle for life to get started.

I have been one of you guys. Let me repeat: I have been one of you guys. You don’t have to try to convince me of the merits of the ID arguments. I know ID. I have been a hardcore IDer myself. But then I opened my mind and studied the real scientific evidence.

And finally I discovered that ID also implies lousy theology. This is the last bit that I really do not need.

And I have been on the other side too and found lots of fairytales.

I cannot reconcile the above with the following questions.

Questions:

1. Does design exist?
2. Is it detectable?
3. What is the problem with science pursuing it?