Evidence for Design?

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buffalo said:
Now let us examine the language/code of DNA. There are** no **examples naturally produced.
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There’s a very interesting article on physorg from the 16th of this month. That’s all I’m saying 😉

Sarah x 🙂
 
rossum said:
My apologies, I thought we were discussing shuffled cards in this part. Indeed, we only have one sample universe.

Agreed. However, the anthropic principle tells us that life will only appear in universes where it is possible for life to appear. The fact that we are here means that our single sample universe is one of the subset of universes in which life is possible. We only have one sample, and that sample is a biased sample. Extrapolating accurate probabilities from a single biased sample is not a wise thing to do.
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  1. The sample is biased only if we assume that the life on this planet is the **only **form of life.
  2. Even with the possibility of totally different forms of life - like microbes which live on arsenic - there is a strictly limited range of physical conditions essential for their emergence, reproduction and long-term survival.
  3. The immense complexity of the human brain militates against the hypothesis that rational beings are a common occurrence.
  4. Stephen Hawking has argued that rational beings are likely to have a limited span of life because of their greater capacity for destruction of their environment.
  5. The overwhelming odds against survival in a hostile universe is a formidable difficulty for those who maintain that life is fortuitous.
  6. How do you reconcile Buddhism with an accidental existence? 🙂
 
Daedelus76 said:
What kind of designer created Cotesia glomerata, a wasp whose larvae consume caterpillars alive, whose eggs are “designed” to paralyze the caterpillar and cripple its immune system (think of the film Alien ). Does this designer love the caterpillar, or just the wasps?
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Can you produce a blueprint of a universe totally devoid of conflict? :confused:
 
Daedelus76 said:
What kind of designer created Cotesia glomerata, a wasp whose larvae consume caterpillars alive, whose eggs are “designed” to paralyze the caterpillar and cripple its immune system (think of the film Alien ). Does this designer love the caterpillar, or just the wasps?
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God is love.

To love requires free will and intellect. God has both, and loves both wasps and caterpillars, because he created them, and because they follow their the natures for which God intended them.

The wasps and caterpillars cannot love back because they have neither intellect or free will.

Man, as the only being with intellect and free will can love God back (as he loves us). Man has these capabilities because we are, unlike the rest of creation, made in the image and likeness of God.

As the reason for creation, man’s love (or lack of it) is important. That man, wasps, and caterpillars follow the natures for which they were intended is important. That wasps kill caterpillars is interesting, but unimportant.
 
tonyrey said:
  1. The sample is biased only if we assume that the life on this planet is the **only **form of life.
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The sample is biased because it is, of necessity, taken from the subset of universes what can support some form of life. While it does tell us something about that subset, extrapolating to the complementary subset, those universes that do not support any form of life, is a much more iffy proposition.
  1. Even with the possibility of totally different forms of life - like microbes which live on arsenic - there is a strictly limited range of physical conditions essential for their emergence, reproduction and long-term survival.
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Which is why any universe that contains life must come from a subset of possible universes.
  1. The immense complexity of the human brain militates against the hypothesis that rational beings are a common occurrence.
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The immense numbers of possible life-bearing universes works in the opposite direction. Remember also the ratcheting effect of .
  1. Stephen Hawking has argued that rational beings are likely to have a limited span of life because of their greater capacity for destruction of their environment.
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Probably correct.
  1. The overwhelming odds against survival in a hostile universe is a formidable difficulty for those who maintain that life is fortuitous.
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It is also a problem for those who maintain that the universe was designed especially for us. To a close approximation 100% of the universe is unsuitable for human survival.
  1. How do you reconcile Buddhism with an accidental existence? 🙂
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I don’t. Our existence is not accidental, but caused by our own actions in the past. Science in general, and in particular, relate to material bodies only.

rossum
 
tonyrey said:
Can you produce a blueprint of a universe totally devoid of conflict? :confused:
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Yes. Some possible models result in universes consisting entirely of clouds of hydrogen. No other elements, and no stars in which to manufacture them. Just clouds of hydrogen for ever. Rather boring.

rossum
 
A scientist here draws an interesting conclusion from the data …

Interviewer: If we do not accept the landscape [multiverse] idea are we stuck with intelligent design?
Susskind: I doubt that physicists will see it that way. If, for some unforeseen reason, the landscape turns out to be inconsistent – maybe for mathematical reasons, or because it disagrees with observation – I am pretty sure that physicists will go on searching for natural explanations of the world. But I have to say that if that happens, as things stand now we will be in a very awkward position. Without any explanation of nature’s fine-tunings we will be hard pressed to answer the ID critics. One might argue that the hope that a mathematically unique solution will emerge is as faith-based as ID.
Interview: Leonard Susskind
17 December 2005
Amanda Gefter
 
buffalo said:
… The big bang is now part of the furniture of modern cosmology, but Hoyle’s unease has not gone away. Many physicists have been fighting a rearguard action against it for decades, largely because of its theological overtones. If you have an instant of creation, don’t you need a creator?
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New Scientist magazine has no problem at all drawing the simple conclusion that many on this thread have not been able to accept.

The scientific data supports the idea that intelligent design was present at the beginning.

Clearly, if you have a instant of creation – and the science gives evidence of this – then this fact brings “theological overtones”.

The fact that scientists have “been fighting a rearguard action against this” simply because the data supports the existence of a creator also provides insight.
 
tonyrey said:
  1. How do you reconcile Buddhism with an accidental existence? 🙂
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You need to research Buddhism more… Buddhist posits “creation” via karma, but karma is a process not a person. Furthermore, most scientists and secular humanists do not view human existence or evolution as accidental… just ultimately impersonal, undirected. Once you really understand natural selection you see the simplicity and the cold, amoral calculus behind it… you realize God is completely pointless as an explanation for life’s developement. This just exist because they survived and passed on their genes, not because of a loving being that willed their happiness (in fact, people that breed are actually less happy than the child-free, but this goes against what most parents would tell you. Natural selection at work, people that are happier don’t breed, but people that are less happy breed).
buffalo said:
Bogus argument. First, one has to know the intent of the designer. Second, original designs may have been corrupted.
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  1. if scientists can’t know the “original design intent”, the Catholic Church does?
  2. If original design is corrupted, God must have willed that to be so, assuming he is omnipotent. He’s still not off the hook. Either way, it takes alot of faith or arrogance for you to assume you are somehow more consmicly significant than the caterpillar. How do you know God isn’t using you to hatch some alien maggots? Couldn’t an omniscient, omnipotent designer produce some less detestable organism that would better show love than some kind of freakish creature that belongs only in science fiction horror?
 
Interesting, he says in that video:

“… it looks as if it was Intelligently Designed …”

He thinks that is an illusion. But you need to know what ID is in order to tell the difference between real and illusion in this case, right?
 
Daedelus76 said:
You need to research Buddhism more… Buddhist posits “creation” via karma, but karma is a process not a person. Furthermore, most scientists and secular humanists do not view human existence or evolution as accidental… just ultimately impersonal, undirected. Once you really understand natural selection you see the simplicity and the cold, amoral calculus behind it… you realize God is completely pointless as an explanation for life’s developement. This just exist because they survived and passed on their genes, not because of a loving being that willed their happiness (in fact, people that breed are actually less happy than the child-free, but this goes against what most parents would tell you. Natural selection at work, people that are happier don’t breed, but people that are less happy breed).
  1. if scientists can’t know the “original design intent”, the Catholic Church does?
  2. If original design is corrupted, God must have willed that to be so, assuming he is omnipotent. He’s still not off the hook. Either way, it takes alot of faith or arrogance for you to assume you are somehow more consmicly significant than the caterpillar. How do you know God isn’t using you to hatch some alien maggots? Couldn’t an omniscient, omnipotent designer produce some less detestable organism that would better show love than some kind of freakish creature that belongs only in science fiction horror?
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Yes, it knows it through Revelation.

No God did not will it, it was a free will decision by Adam and Eve.

Again, Revelation tells us:

**3. Q. What is man?
**A. Man is a creature composed of body and soul, and made to the image and likeness of God.

**6. Q. Why did God make you?
**A. God made me to know Him, to love Him, and to serve Him in this world, and to be happy with Him for ever in heaven.
 
buffalo said:
**6. Q. Why did God make you?
**A. God made me to know Him, to love Him, and to serve Him in this world, and to be happy with Him for ever in heaven.
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If God loves everyone, and He knows some people, for whatever reason, will die in mortal sin and/or unrepentant, and thus will be condemned by God to eternal punishment, wouldn’t it be better, and more loving, to simply not create that person in the first place?

If our only purpose is to know, love and serve God, and that is the only reason we were created, are people who can not do this, being short-changed, both in this life, and in the next because they will be punished forever for their inability to know love and serve God?

Sarah x 🙂
 
tonyrey said:
Then science lacks a **rational **foundation!
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i just don’t understand the use of believing in purposeful design. would you be living your life differently if you didn’t believe? what’s wrong with just believing we woke up in history. i’m man enough to receive whatever happens after this, whether that be heaven, hell or nothing. to live in society, it is beneficial to get along with everyone… which requires new emotions.

i’m failing to see any purpose. all we can agree on is that there is something in the first place. i think we tend to feel more comfortable with other people who have made similar choices. that doesn’t imply purpose whatsoever, only the ability of reflection… which plays onto our offspring.
 
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