Is intelligent design a plausible theory?

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rossum said:
That is not correct. SETI researchers are not looking for “signs of intelligence”, they are looking for narrowband signals. SETI researchers make an assumption about their designers - that they will use narrowband signals, just as we do. There is also the knowledge that there are no known natural sources of narrowband signals. The detection of intelligence is contingent, not direct.
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The same is for ID. The detection of intelligence is contingent not direct. They make an assumption about their designers, that the design will be analogous to what human beings design, so it will be detectable. ID is not searching directly for the Designer, but looking at evidence that infers the existence of a designer.

That the communicators of signals that SETI might recognize would be intelligent is assumed in the research. It’s assumed that an unintelligent source could not communicate a meaningful message in the signals.
 
This might be of interest to those who site the “Wedge Strategy” as an argument against ID theory. In a long article arguing about how Science and Religion cannot be reconciled, prominent evolutionary-scientist, Jerry Coyne gives the real reason why scientists publicly claim that there is no wedge between science and religion …

Evolutionist Admits Scientists Have Been Lying

This disharmony is a dirty little secret in scientific circles. It is in our personal and professional interest to proclaim that science and religion are perfectly harmonious. After all, we want our grants funded by the government, and our schoolchildren exposed to real science instead of creationism. Liberal religious people have been important allies in our struggle against creationism, and it is not pleasant to alienate them by declaring how we feel. This is why, as a tactical matter, groups such as the National Academy of Sciences claim that religion and science do not conflict. But their main evidence–the existence of religious scientists–is wearing thin as scientists grow ever more vociferous about their lack of faith.
– Evolutionist, Jerry Coyne

It is evident here that evolutionary theory is based on lies. It’s primarly a philosophical movement with a little science tacked on. Here we can see that Mr. Coyne will lie in order to have “grants funded by the government”.

It’s good that he revealed this “dirtly little secret”. I should expect to see evolutionary theory condemned by those who claim that the Wedge Strategy invalidated ID research.
 
rossum said:
I think that you are forgetting the political purpose of ID. In order to have any chance at all of being taught in science classes in American public schools, all religous content has to be removed from ID. Hence the designer has been stripped of all attributes in order to distance the designer as far as possible from God. Thus allowing the ID lawyers to make a reasonable case in court while at the same time allowing the ID proponents to get their political support from Christians.
ID is primarily a political movement with a bit of science tacked on. It lacks credibility with scientists because it is obvious that the political side is much more important than the scientific side.
rossum
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Not all believers in Design have a political purpose. There are many (including me) who are more interested in discovering and explaining how Design is superior to other interpretations of known reality, i.e. the physical universe, persons and intangibles such as truth, freedom, justice and love.

If Design lacks credibility with scientists because the political side is much more important than the scientific side then the obvious solution is to leave out the politics! Even the scientific side is less significant than its philosophical significance. Scientific explanations are based on metaphysical and epistemological assumptions anyway. Who cares if Design does not fit into the present scientific framework? Science is constantly being revised to accommodate new discoveries: “natural” has become such a nebulous term that it could ultimately be extended to include “supernatural”!

To isolate Design from the Designer and the purpose(s) of Design is an illogical tactic that diminishes its value as the most adequate and fertile explanation of our existence.
 
The embrace of scientism is a choice that some people make - it’s the acceptance of a philosophical position.* It’s interesting to try to find out why people make that choice.** It’s not a result of scientific processes but rather, some personal conviction. *

More often than not, that choice seems to be rooted in a philosophical and psychological predisposition to atheism.
 
Charlemagne_II said:
The embrace of scientism is a choice that some people make - it’s the acceptance of a philosophical position.* It’s interesting to try to find out why people make that choice.*** It’s not a result of scientific processes but rather, some personal conviction.

More often than not, that choice seems to be rooted in a philosophical and psychological predisposition to atheism.
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Agreed.
 
reggieM said:
Non-design has to deal with things that do not fit into the defined evolutionary mechanisms. This is done by referring to self-organization, convergent evolution or parallel evolution, lateral gene transfers, replication errors … and more ideas like that which will emerge.
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I am referring to Non-Design, i.e. the theory that the physical structure of the universe and all the development within the universe is fortuitous and not the result of Design.🙂
 
Could a fortuitous or “lucky” universe (friendly to the inevitable arrival of “mind”) be intelligently designed? Yes or no?

Did the universe at some point in its early stage unconsciously yield to laws that would be so discernable to “mind” that sooner or later the universe would by those laws create a mind conscious of the universe and its laws?

If so, would that end result grant “purpose” to the creation of the universe? Why or why not?

Only a universe that could not produce “mind” would be a purposeless universe.
 
tonyrey said:
I am referring to Non-Design, i.e. the theory that the physical structure of the universe and all the development within the universe is fortuitous and not the result of Design.🙂
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Right – what I meant was that since things in nature do not fit into Darwin’s version of evolution (natural selection and mutations), the non-design theory has to invent new concepts which really don’t explain anything.
 
reggieM said:
Right – what I meant was that since things in nature do not fit into Darwin’s version of evolution (natural selection and mutations), the non-design theory has to invent new concepts which really don’t explain anything.
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You’re a man after my own heart.🙂
 
tonyrey said:
What a ridiculous argument! You obviously regard high intelligence as the key to success. It is more reasonable to equate success with love, compassion and kindness rather than intellectual pride, contempt for more than half of mankind and the ability to design a superior universe to the one we inhabit. :bowdown:
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You’ve missed the point.

Hard work, perseverance, and a fair amount of luck seem to be more important to success than intelligence. However, if a smart person and a dumb person each put forth the same amount of diligence, the smart one will generally be more successful. People skills and access to psychic information are oft more important than all the other factors I mentioned.

Intelligence is definitely necessary in order to integrate separate components of an argument so as to see the overall point of the argument. Folks who are not too bright will simply focus upon a single aspect of a complex argument and pick on it, imagining that they’ve done something useful. At least it’s a start.
 
greylorn said:
You’ve missed the point.

Hard work, perseverance, and a fair amount of luck seem to be more important to success than intelligence. However, if a smart person and a dumb person each put forth the same amount of diligence, the smart one will generally be more successful. People skills and access to psychic information are oft more important than all the other factors I mentioned.

Intelligence is definitely necessary in order to integrate separate components of an argument so as to see the overall point of the argument. Folks who are not too bright will simply focus upon a single aspect of a complex argument and pick on it, imagining that they’ve done something useful. At least it’s a start.
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You are evading the point. You stated:

"It is to note that half of the people on the planet have two-digit IQ’s and little imagination. The majority of human failures come from within this group. Yet, God could have chosen to give everyone of these people a mind as good as Einstein’s or better. Can you, with intellectual honesty, integrate that information into your notions of intelligent free beings reflecting and embracing the glory of God? "

Your phrase “a mind as good as Einstein’s” reveals your criterion of goodness. We have only to look around you to see that a modicum of intelligence can be taken for granted but love and compassion cannot. Heaven help us if you had the power to rule a Brave New World! No doubt you would be in a state of euphoria if you could promulgate eugenics and euthanasia. 🙂
 
Einstein spoke of trying to know the “mind of God.” He was not talking about the Christian God, but rather about the Deist god who caused and designed the universe with all its laws. That Einstein was a mathematical genius no one can deny. Why he chose to use the term God to designate the power behind the universe is intruiging. I think he saw God as the great Mathematician whose influence is felt everywhere in the universe. Virtually all scientific laws are reducible to quantification of some sort or another. There would be no sciences without mathematics.

If the universe produced human beings not by design but by accident, why did it produce us to understand nature through mathematics? It is as if its mathematical laws pushed evolution to result in a creature that could understand the universe even better than the universe could understand itself?

“God is a mathematician of a very high order and He used advanced mathematics in constructing the universe.” Paul A.M. Dirac Quantum Physicist, Matter-Anti-Matter
 
What do you mean by “even better than the universe can understand itself?”
 
What do you mean by “even better than the universe could understand itself”?

There is an implicit mathematical order to the laws of the universe. This implicit mathematical order existed before the creation of humans. If there is no Intelligent Designer, one might argue that such an order must have given birth to itself without consciously realizing what it had conceived. Yet it also gives birth in the course of time to a conscious being (man) who can consciously understand the laws it cannot understand, and can grow indefinitely in that consciousness.

But you are right. What I should have said is … “in a way that the universe could not understand itself.” Sorry for the confusion.

But the absence of an Intelligent Designer, it seems to me, makes rather bizarre this presence of mathematical order in the universes that matches up so nicely with man’s ability to reduce the laws to some kind of mathematical sense. It’s as if the universe saw us coming from the start and made sure not only that its laws would produce us, but also made sure we would be able to understand how those laws could produce us … and yet the universe at large would still be unconscious of our consciousness of itself.

The plot thickens!
 
Dave,

That was a rather interesting link! Welcome to Catholic Answers!

Charlie
 
Charlemagne_II said:
But the absence of an Intelligent Designer, it seems to me, makes rather bizarre this presence of mathematical order in the universes that matches up so nicely with man’s ability to reduce the laws to some kind of mathematical sense. It’s as if the universe saw us coming from the start and made sure not only that its laws would produce us, but also made sure we would be able to understand how those laws could produce us … and yet the universe at large would still be unconscious of our consciousness of itself.
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yea… that’s making a HUGE presumption… the laws of the universe are actually extremely complicated… most that we know of are APPROXIMATIONS because taking every possible thing into account is impossible.

Lets not pretend that ID is anything more than a political strategy being used to get some limited Christian theology into schools in an effort to subvert the establishment clause as ruled on by the courts.

Honestly, I don’t even care about religion in schools… I’m all for a religion class there if people want to take it, but trying to pose something as science that is clearly NOT is dishonest and something that [insert politician you hate here] would do.
 
liquidpele

*Lets not pretend that ID is anything more than a political strategy being used to get some limited Christian theology into schools in an effort to subvert the establishment clause as ruled on by the courts. *

And I suppose forcing the theory of evolution into the public school classrooms was not an attempt by atheists like Dawkins to grind their own axe? As I recall, the majority of biologists are agnostics/atheists. So what have you proven by your remark but that it can be stood on its head?

Would Antony Flew, a world-reknowned atheist, have given up atheism and been very much impressed by intelligent design because he wanted to get Christianity into the biology classrooms? I don’t think so. Flew’s recent book, There is a God, is an attempt to honestly (not dishonestly, as you argue) deal with the trends in modern science, which are away from the notion that everything in the history of the universe favors life by mere accident.
 
Charlemagne_II said:
liquidpele
And I suppose forcing the theory of evolution into the public school classrooms was not an attempt by atheists like Dawkins to grind their own axe? As I recall, the majority of biologists are agnostics/atheists. So what have you proven by your remark but that it can be stood on its head?

Would Antony Flew, a world-reknowned atheist, have given up atheism and been very much impressed by intelligent design because he wanted to get Christianity into the biology classrooms? I don’t think so. Flew’s recent book, There is a God, is an attempt to honestly (not dishonestly, as you argue) deal with the trends in modern science, which are away from the notion that everything in the history of the universe favors life by mere accident.
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Dawkins is just a loudmouth, don’t bring him into this. It serves no purpose.

Evolution is taught in schools because it’s PROVEN. It is part of science curriculum because we observe it, we can test it. Furthermore, evolution does not have anything to do with explaining where life originally came from. Abiogenesis, is the idea that life came from a mixture of chemicals. Evolution only says that life changes over time. Have you noticed that abiogenesis isn’t taught in schools either?

If you want to understand evolution, watch this video. It simply explains how it works and why it doesn’t contradict any religious teaching AT ALL.

youtube.com/watch?v=vss1VKN2rf8

I hope that makes you more informed.
 
If you want to understand evolution, watch this video. It simply explains how it works and why it doesn’t contradict any religious teaching AT ALL.

I don’t have to watch the video because I already believe that evolution doesn’t contradict religion. Even the popes have said so. What you are missing is the inference some people are all too willing to make, that it does contradict religion. Dawkins is only one of many thousands of biologists who would take that view ever since Darwin’s bulldog, T.H. Huxley, promoted it.

Theories of the origin of life ought to be considered in any biology text, even those that have not been conclusively proven, just as a book on psychology might comment on various pschological theories none of which can be conclusively proven, or a book on astronomy might include reference to various theories about the origin and fate of the universe, even though none of them can be conclusively proven.
 
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