Is intelligent design a plausible theory?

[liquidpele]

liquidpele

*Lastly, as I stated before, **the idea of ID seems to reject a God that is able to create a universe that can evolve through normal physical principals as opposed to him babysitting the thing. ***This is a very ironic view of God, and don’t try to say that some “designer” is not really God - everyone knows ID is religiously oriented, claiming is is not will not be taken seriously.

I don’t follow your reasoning. Why can’t the normal physical laws be subject to nudging, or “babysitting” as you call it? We Christians always believe that God is not always in complete control of us by granting us free will. He nudges us to do good, even when we stumble and do bad. I don’t think of God as babysitting, so much as driving evolution. He makes a turn here, a turn there, sometimes a u-turn, sometimes a complete halt, sometimes racing us toward oblivion as the galaxies move farther and farther away from each other until some day, if we were still here, we would see nothing but black sky.

This is a very ironic view of God, and don’t try to say that some “designer” is not really God - everyone knows ID is religiously oriented,

Well, it might be for those inclined, just as the “blind watchmaker” notion nudges some people toward atheism. That’s neither here nor there. The question is: Does something look like it is designed or not? If it looks designed, why not just accept it as such because it is the most logical explanation, rather than a Big Bang by accident and evolution by accident and man by accident, and space exploration by accident, etc. etc.? At some point you have to explain why it is that we are running out of accidents and things are starting to look purposeful.

“Does something look like it is designed or not?” is not a valid question… If someone looks like they are dead, you would be burying people in a coma perhaps. It should be “Does the majority of evidence point to X”. In this case, all the evidence points towards evolution, and not ID. Perhaps there is a creator that kicked everything off with a plan and design, but there is absolutely no evidence whatsoever that he’s still guiding that, which means that one of the basic premises of ID (that things are too complicated to have been evolved) is totally misguided.

You also said: “Why can’t the normal physical laws be subject to nudging, or “babysitting” as you call it?”

It’s possible… but mos things are. My point is that there is no evidence of it, and that such a theory is not based on science - hence ID is not science, it is just a philosophical idea.

 

[Charlemagne_II]

liquidpele

In this case, all the evidence points towards evolution, and not ID.

**All of what evidence **points to evolution of the first life form as an accidental gathering of atoms and molecules resulting in life?

Are you glossing over something here? We are talking about ID with respect to the first appearance of life. The theory of evolution is hopeless adequate to explain it. There is absolutely no evidence that **life erupted spontaneously by accident **on earth by accident. An accident is required to explain abiogenesis without intelligent design. The tremendous complexity of the first life form (think about gene structures alone) requires that we suspend our disbelief if we argue that it happened by accident. However, the spontaneous eruption of life is entirely believable if we see it as the result of sosme clever intellect manipulating atoms and molecules in such an ingenious way as to produce not only life, but self-replicating life.

 

[Charlemagne_II]

*My point is that there is no evidence of it, and that such a theory is not based on science - hence ID is not science, it is just a philosophical idea. *

You may call it philosophy if you like. I’d call it mathematics, and I’ve never heard of science repudiating mathematics since so much of science is built on mathematics.

When you hear of a biochemist or a mathematician saying it’s entirely probable, or even plausible, that the first life form appeared spontaneously by accident and then replicated itself, please let me know. I’d also need book, chapter, and verse.

But I don’t need Richard Dawkins, who is not a mathematician nor a biochemist, and whose most notorious statement is that the theory of evolution made atheism intellectually respectable.

 

[Michaelo]

You may call it philosophy if you like. I’d call it mathematics, and I’ve never heard of science repudiating mathematics since so much of science is built on mathematics.

When you hear of a biochemist or a mathematician saying it’s entirely probable, or even plausible, that the first life form appeared spontaneously by accident and then replicated itself, please let me know. I’d also need book, chapter, and verse.

Can you demonstrate why improbability betokens intelligent design?

 

[tonyrey]

However, i absolutely do not believe that this is what evolution actually proposes, regardless of what popular scientists might want to tell the media. In fact, metaphysically speaking, i believe that a desired purpose can be achieved through a system that incorporates chance or random events with natural selection, so long as you have predetermined irreducibly complex information at the root of an evolutionary system.

I agree with you, with the reservation that the advent of human beings implies divine intervention. Otherwise the soul, intellect, emotions and free will would be produced by physical processes!

Merely pointing out that the qualities we recognize as life arises through a medium of natural processes, is not enough to disprove design.

It would weaken the argument though leaving only physical energy to be explained. Atheists argue that there is an unknown physical explanation or that physical energy is eternal.

Chance can only function once nature exists.

Chance can be used to describe a purposeless, uncaused event, such as the spontaneous appearance of an atomic particle. Why not the entire universe? I find the idea absurd but at least one scientist has claimed to explain it mathematically. (I thought his name is Peter Evans but I must be mistaken.)

 

[tonyrey]

Can you demonstrate why improbability betokens intelligent design?

If an explanation relies on the improbability of an event it is obviously inferior to an explanation which does not. The higher the degree of improbability the weaker the explanation becomes. Therefore Design is an explanation far superior to non-Design.

 

[tonyrey]

In this case, all the evidence points towards evolution, and not ID.

All the evidence points towards evolution but it does not point to fortuitous evolution. A succession of random combinations of molecules and random mutations of genes is not an adequate explanation of the origin and development of order, complexity, consciousness, rationality, autonomy, morality, purpose and persons.

 

[liquidpele]

All the evidence points towards evolution but it does not point to fortuitous evolution. A succession of random combinations of molecules and random mutations of genes is not an adequate explanation of the origin and development of order, complexity, consciousness, rationality, autonomy, morality, purpose and persons.

Ah… but it IS! Your banana is even an example, as is this:

newscientist.com/article/dn14094-bacteria-make-major-evolutionary-shift-in-the-lab.html

Just because you don’t understand probability and the reasons why this is possible doesn’t mean it’s not true, just that you personally don’t understand it. The fact that you don’t understand it doesn’t mean others don’t.

 

[rossum]

If an explanation relies on the improbability of an event it is obviously inferior to an explanation which does not. The higher the degree of improbability the weaker the explanation becomes. Therefore Design is an explanation far superior to non-Design.

Design has probability of 0% if the Designer does not exist. What is the probability that the Designer exists? Unless you calculate that probability and include it in your overall probability calculation then you are not comparing like with like and your argument fails. GIGO.

rossum

 

[liquidpele]

*My point is that there is no evidence of it, and that such a theory is not based on science - hence ID is not science, it is just a philosophical idea. *

You may call it philosophy if you like. I’d call it mathematics, and I’ve never heard of science repudiating mathematics since so much of science is built on mathematics.

When you hear of a biochemist or a mathematician saying it’s entirely probable, or even plausible, that the first life form appeared spontaneously by accident and then replicated itself, please let me know. I’d also need book, chapter, and verse.

But I don’t need Richard Dawkins, who is not a mathematician nor a biochemist, and whose most notorious statement is that the theory of evolution made atheism intellectually respectable.

ID is mathematics? Well! Then please show me the math, I would LOVE to see it. Or is it just basic logic in your head and not actually math that you’ve done to prove anything?

This is now the THIRD time you’ve tried to spin my position into saying that abiogenesis is proven. It is not, it is just a theory that happens to be possible according to the research so far. I’m sure I could find several quotes from scientists saying it’s likely, but I won’t bother because it doesn’t matter their opinions in this case.

Then you bring in Dawkins again for no reason whatsoever… so in short, that whole post was almost entirely strawman.

 

[rossum]

All the evidence points towards evolution but it does not point to fortuitous evolution. A succession of random combinations of molecules and random mutations of genes is not an adequate explanation of the origin and development of order, complexity, consciousness, rationality, autonomy, morality, purpose and persons.

Correct. However a succession of random mutations, rigorously sorted and filtered by natural selection is an adequate explanation. Evolution includes natural selection so if you exclude natural selection and its effects whatever you are discussing is irrelevant to evolution.

rossum

 

[liquidpele]

Design has probability of 0% if the Designer does not exist. What is the probability that the Designer exists? Unless you calculate that probability and include it in your overall probability calculation then you are not comparing like with like and your argument fails. GIGO.

rossum

The problem with that is that you can always claim a designer exists that happens to not be provable or disprovable (even if it appears to not be anything like what’s described in the bible). This is why I stick with the evidence issue… or rather, lack of it I’ve set to see any evidence for ID, or any serious evidence against evolution.

 

[JDaniel]

Ah… but it IS! Your banana is even an example, as is this:

newscientist.com/article/dn14094-bacteria-make-major-evolutionary-shift-in-the-lab.html

Just because you don’t understand probability and the reasons why this is possible doesn’t mean it’s not true, just that you personally don’t understand it. The fact that you don’t understand it doesn’t mean others don’t.

Pele:

Read the article. Here’s my problem with it: having worked as a biologist and having owned populations of various animal life, I know that with a little nudging, whether intentional or not, I could get animals to eat whatever I wanted them to eat. It was dependent more upon their hunger (occasionally due to my schedule and the resultant occasional neglect) than upon food preference.

IOW, if, when the glucose medium was being made, the tiniest amount of citrate was purposely, or accidentally, added to the culture, the E. coli might have devoured the medium - because they needed to feed and the amount of citrate was so small - and developed a resistance to the prior “genetic” resistance to the citrate.

I’d really like to read the entire white paper on the project to determine what precautions were put in place to prevent contaminations of the media. Was the culture media self-prepared, or, commercially prepared, etc. The article was OK, but just not enough. Although one would think that, in a study of such import and with a strain of bacteria that is so potentially dangerous, assuming that they were keeping a disease producing strain, all the right precautions were meticulously maintained. One would think.

jd

 

[liquidpele]

Pele:

Read the article. Here’s my problem with it: having worked as a biologist and having owned populations of various animal life, I know that with a little nudging, whether intentional or not, I could get animals to eat whatever I wanted them to eat. It was dependent more upon their hunger (occasionally due to my schedule and the resultant occasional neglect) than upon food preference.

IOW, if, when the glucose medium was being made, the tiniest amount of citrate was purposely, or accidentally, added to the culture, the E. coli might have devoured the medium - because they needed to feed and the amount of citrate was so small - and developed a resistance to the prior “genetic” resistance to the citrate.

I’d really like to read the entire white paper on the project to determine what precautions were put in place to prevent contaminations of the media. Was the culture media self-prepared, or, commercially prepared, etc. The article was OK, but just not enough. Although one would think that, in a study of such import and with a strain of bacteria that is so potentially dangerous, assuming that they were keeping a disease producing strain, all the right precautions were meticulously maintained. One would think.

jd

Like most serious scientific studies, great pains were put in place to account for such things. For instance, they kept samples of each generation frozen, then when they witnessed this they went back and made sure they didn’t screw up. I do agree it’s possible there was something they missed. However, even then most evidence still points towards evolution through natural selection, genetic drift, etc.

 

[JDaniel]

Correct. However a succession of random mutations, rigorously sorted and filtered by natural selection is an adequate explanation. Evolution includes natural selection so if you exclude natural selection and its effects whatever you are discussing is irrelevant to evolution.

rossum

Hello, Rossum:

I have two problems with the above:

1.) “…a succession of random mutations, rigorously sorted and filtered by natural selection is an adequate explanation” until we qualify the process further by expanding the “succession of random mutations” to infinity, which science has done in order to make sure that all possible mutations are accounted for.

If we postulate that luckily, the right mutations occurred someplace along the finite a priori succession of mutations, well before said finite succession was able to reach infinity, we throw a monkey wrench into the adequacy of the explanation.

2.) “…rigorously sorted and filtered by natural selection…” Who, or what, is supplying the rigor? Natural selection . . . alone? Remember, natural selection, across millions of years, resulted in the dynasty of the reptiles. We still aren’t exactly sure why they surreptitiously relinquished their reign on earth.

jd

 

[JDaniel]

Like most serious scientific studies, great pains were put in place to account for such things. For instance, they kept samples of each generation frozen, then when they witnessed this they went back and made sure they didn’t screw up. I do agree it’s possible there was something they missed. However, even then most evidence still points towards evolution through natural selection, genetic drift, etc.

Then, you are accepting your postulation concerning the rigor of their investigation on “faith”. Believe me, I am not arguing for (or against, really) ID. I am merely trying to keep the thought processes on the straight and narrow. Nowhere in these forums have you heard me say anything pro-ID. It’s hard for me, as a one-time biologist, to be anti-evolution/natural selection.

jd

 

[liquidpele]

Then, you are accepting your postulation concerning the rigor of their investigation on “faith”. Believe me, I am not arguing for (or against, really) ID. I am merely trying to keep the thought processes on the straight and narrow. Nowhere in these forums have you heard me say anything pro-ID. It’s hard for me, as a one-time biologist, to be anti-evolution/natural selection.

jd

Call it what you want I guess… but at the end of the day we can’t research everything and know everything, so we have to take some things without compete proof. However, we have the ability to judge whether something told to us would likely be true or not… you would likely not believe a homeless man on the street, but you probably would someone you respected right? Also, lets not forget that science uses reproducible experiments and peer-review to cut down the probability of false science being accepted as we saw with the infamous cold-fusion stuff. Sure, nothing is perfect, but I was simply trying to express that it is reasonable to assume that many things are true without specifically doing the experiments yourself.

 

[liquidpele]

Hello, Rossum:

I have two problems with the above:

1.) “…a succession of random mutations, rigorously sorted and filtered by natural selection is an adequate explanation” until we qualify the process further by expanding the “succession of random mutations” to infinity, which science has done in order to make sure that all possible mutations are accounted for.

If we postulate that luckily, the right mutations occurred someplace along the finite a priori succession of mutations, well before said finite succession was able to reach infinity, we throw a monkey wrench into the adequacy of the explanation.

2.) “…rigorously sorted and filtered by natural selection…” Who, or what, is supplying the rigor? Natural selection . . . alone? Remember, natural selection, across millions of years, resulted in the dynasty of the reptiles. We still aren’t exactly sure why they surreptitiously relinquished their reign on earth.

jd

You said you are a biologist… but you don’t seem to understand that infinite mutations are not necessary or statistics involved here… I think these videos might be of assistance:

youtube.com/watch?v=vss1VKN2rf8

youtube.com/watch?v=98OTsYfTt-c

 

[Charlemagne_II]

Why is it that the Big Bang produced not only mathematical laws that govern the universe, but also (apparently by random mutation, according to atheists) a being able to grasp those laws bit by bit with Herculean effort? Why is the human brain so constructed by evolution to conform to and understand not only the laws of human nature, but of the universe itself? What useful purpose does evolving a creature capable of intelligent design serve from the point of view of natural selection? If survival alone were the end of life, evolution could have stopped with bacteria. But evolution did not stop there, and was driven by some inexorable force toward greater and greater degrees of complexity, until it produced not only a creature who could think abstractly, but a creature who decides to wrestle with the mystery of being itself … and can imagine (without imagining himself to be absurd) an intelligent design that pervades the universe just because he recognizes laws, rather than chaos, everywhere in the universe.

All that I have just said is possible. It is more possible and far more believable than the notion that the universe and everything in it is meaningless and therefore absurd, as the atheists would like us to believe.

 

[Charlemagne_II]

Michaelo

*Can you demonstrate why improbability betokens intelligent design? *

I think tonyrey answered your post in # 345?

I’m repeating here a number of calculations posted earlier in this thread.

*Professor Steven Weinberg is a skeptic of traditional religion, yet he gives the odds of the present universe randomly evolving out of the Big Bang as one part in 10 to the 120 power!

As for the rising of life out of inanimate matter on Earth, astronomer and one-time atheist Fred Hoyle protested that was about as likely as the random assemblage of a Boeing 747 by a tornado swirling through a junkyard.

Countless other mutations of life forms in the evolutionary process were also possible, and many of them that were possible and tried failed to survive. We shall never know exactly how many. But the odds that many of those mutations would in a direct line of succession lead to the only creature capable of consciously recognizing the universe as a whole and reflecting on its birth and destiny were highly unlikely. The fact that that happened is no argument that it happened accidentally. It is more likely that the way of evolution was intelligently designed for the appearance of Man. Roger Penrose is helpful in this respect. His mathematical calculations reveal the high unlikelihood that evolution happens by pure chance, but rather as a process “leading to some future purpose.” (The Emperor’s New Mind). According to Penrose, the unlikelihood that the universe at its inception would produce laws capable of evolving life to the level that we know it by accident is one out of ten to the power of ten to the power of 123. All of those chances tried out would require time much longer than the universe has existed (Schroeder, The Science of God). *