Is intelligent design a plausible theory?

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Charlemagne_II said:
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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Why does no one actually watch the interesting and informative videos I give them?.. sigh.

Anyway, I respectfully disagree. Science classes are specifically for science. This means theories that cannot be tested, proven, or have no basis in the scientific method do not belong there.

As I said, I personally don’t have a problem with religion being taught in schools if there was no establishment clause, but such ideas do not belong in a science class any more than Shakespeare belongs in a French class.
 
*As I said, I personally don’t have a problem with religion being taught in schools *

Intelligent Design is not religion. It is a theory like the Big Bang or Evolution. It’s not so well accepted by the scientific community as the others, but it’s certainly not religion. It’s theory is that if the creation of life is too complex to have occured by chance, then it is reasonable to infer an intelligent force at work. The Intelligent Designer doesn’t have to be God or Zeus or Allah. It could be something as indefinite as Einstein’s God. Whether Einstein’s God is provable is not relevant either. We might infer the existence of intelligent design just as we infer the event called the Big Bang or the event called Evolution or the event call Abiogensis. If reason defies the accidental event called abiogenesis as not only unlikely, but never even observable, we have to have an alternate explanation. The only alternate explanation is intelligent design … and not only intelligent design, but design by a super intelligence. :bowdown:

*As I said, I personally don’t have a problem with religion being taught in schools if there was no establishment clause, but such ideas do not belong in a science class any more than Shakespeare belongs in a French class. *

The establishment clause had to do with not establishing a national state religion, such as existed in England at that time. Intelligent Design does not establish a state religion any more than evolution establishes atheism.
 
Michaelo said:
No, ID is not a scientific theory as it’s unfalsifiable and relies on argument from ignorance.
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A lot of “scientific” theories are unfalsifiable! Your statement that it is based on an argument from ignorance is just prejudicial.
 
Charlemagne_II said:
Intelligent Design is not religion. It is a theory like the Big Bang or Evolution. It’s not so well accepted by the scientific community as the others, but it’s certainly not religion. It’s theory is that if the creation of life is too complex to have occured by chance, then it is reasonable to infer an intelligent force at work. The Intelligent Designer doesn’t have to be God or Zeus or Allah. It could be something as indefinite as Einstein’s God. Whether Einstein’s God is provable is not relevant either. We might infer the existence of intelligent design just as we infer the event called the Big Bang or the event called Evolution or the event call Abiogensis. If reason defies the accidental event called abiogenesis as not only unlikely, but never even observable, we have to have an alternate explanation. The only alternate explanation is intelligent design … and not only intelligent design, but design by a super intelligence. :bowdown:

The establishment clause had to do with not establishing a national state religion, such as existed in England at that time. Intelligent Design does not establish a state religion any more than evolution establishes atheism.
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Oh please. Everyone knows ID is just creationism lite. It’s a theory equal to my theory that the universe was created by unicorns, neither can be proven wrong because they rely entirely on opinion instead of any scientific evidence whatsoever. This is what the other poster meant by the fact that it is not falsifiable.

As for the establishment clause, you are correct in your interpretation, but the courts defined that religion in schools fell under the state establishing a religion. Since ID is just creationism with a new name, it certainly should fall under this clause.

In short, the real issue is not whether ID is a valid argument… it certainly is an interesting discussion to bring up. However, it is NOT science, and it IS religious in nature. Claiming otherwise is being wilfully deceptive or exceedingly ignorant.
 
Cristiano said:
Cosmological theories!
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Consider the following as one example of the Big Bang theory’s falsifiability:
The basic idea of an expanding universe is the notion that the distance between any two points increases over time. One of the consequences of this effect is that, as light travels through this expanding space, its wavelength is stretched as well. In the optical part of the electromagnetic spectrum, red light has a longer wavelength than blue light, so cosmologists refer to this process as redshifting. The longer light travels through expanding space, the more redshifting it experiences. Therefore, since light travels at a fixed speed, BBT tells us that the redshift we observe for light from a distant object should be related to the distance to that object.
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source

This demonstrates falsifiability because if scientists hadn’t observed redshifts then the “expanding universe” notion would be wrong.
 
Michaelo said:
Consider the following as one example of the Big Bang theory’s falsifiability:

source

This demonstrates falsifiability because if scientists hadn’t observed redshifts then the “expanding universe” notion would be wrong.
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I was thinking more of something like the cyclic model. What is the nature of the dark force that is used to justify it? Can you show me how to measure it in a lab?

You have to understand that a lot of these models are not about Truth. Physical models are aimed to be the simplest explanation of an effect and you must be aware that they do not automatically imply truth. A lot of these models are just patches of some other theories. It looks like some of these models are like the theory of hidden variables used to argue against quantum mechanics.
 
Cristiano said:
I was thinking more of something like the cyclic model. What is the nature of the dark force that is used to justify it? Can you show me how to measure it in a lab?
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I’m not going to pretend like I’m familiar with this to avoid making ignorant assertions 😛
 
Cristiano said:
I was thinking more of something like the cyclic model. What is the nature of the dark force that is used to justify it? Can you show me how to measure it in a lab?
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Nobody has any dark matter, or dark energy. It has never been observed up close. Nobody has ever played with any. Nobody has actually ever seen any.

But the (current) cosmological model of the universe requires gravity to do just about everything, but unfortunately, with that assumption, the model falls apart mathematically.

So dark matter and dark energy have been invented as a kluge - they are defined to have just the right properties, and be in just the right places in just the right amounts to put the gravity model back in order. How convenient.

But nobody has ever seen or played with dark matter or dark energy. What a joke.
 
liquidpele

Everyone knows ID is just creationism lite. It’s a theory equal to my theory that the universe was created by unicorns, neither can be proven wrong because they rely entirely on opinion instead of any scientific evidence whatsoever.

Take Paley’s argument. If you came upon a watch lying on the desert floor, picked it up, examined its works, and then concluded that something intelligent designed it, would that be creation lite? Would that deduction be the equivalent of deducing that the universe was created by unicorns?

No, it would be the deduction that something this complex could not have assembled itself by accident. What’s fundamentally religious about intelligent design? If humans can intelligently design things, why can’t something greater than humans also be the source of Intelligent Design? It’s not as if the idea is preposterous since we see it in our own nature when we intelligently design things.

There are many theories in science that are not falsifiable: such as multiverses, Big Crunches, string theory, etc. Yet you see these talked about with the greatest reverence by people who would rather believe in anything but Intelligent Design.
 
ricmat said:
Nobody has any dark matter, or dark energy. It has never been observed up close. Nobody has ever played with any. Nobody has actually ever seen any.

But the (current) cosmological model of the universe requires gravity to do just about everything, but unfortunately, with that assumption, the model falls apart mathematically.

So dark matter and dark energy have been invented as a kluge - they are defined to have just the right properties, and be in just the right places in just the right amounts to put the gravity model back in order. How convenient.

But nobody has ever seen or played with dark matter or dark energy. What a joke.
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Actually, that is incorrect. We can “see” dark matter through gravitational lensing. Dark energy is more of a joke though, since we have not seen any direct evidence of it.

However, this is missing the point. We can find out more and conclude that these things have properties xyz, or that they don’t exist and something else was causing the behaviours that we were seeing. There is literally no evidence and no test that can be done to test if something was created by an “intelligent being” because that is entirely subjective.
 
ricmat

Would you give me the precise verse from Isaiah for your signature quote?

Never mind, I just found it. Great quote!

Thanks,
Charlie
 
liquidpele

*There is literally no evidence and no test that can be done to test if something was created by an “intelligent being” because that is entirely subjective. *

Nor is there any evidence that abiogenesis could have happened by accident. If there is, please provide the evidence. If there isn’t, by your standard there is no evidence that it was designed or that it was by accident. Are we therefore not free speculate either way? And if the mathematical odds that life occurred by accident are infinitely small due to irreducible complexity (not only of the first life form but of the universe itself preparing the way for abiogenesis, then doesn’t that argue for intelligent design as the more probable cause of abiogenesis?
 
Charlemagne_II said:
liquidpele
Take Paley’s argument. If you came upon a watch lying on the desert floor, picked it up, examined its works, and then concluded that something intelligent designed it, would that be creation lite? Would that deduction be the equivalent of deducing that the universe was created by unicorns?

No, it would be the deduction that something this complex could not have assembled itself by accident. What’s fundamentally religious about intelligent design? If humans can intelligently design things, why can’t something greater than humans also be the source of Intelligent Design? It’s not as if the idea is preposterous since we see it in our own nature when we intelligently design things.

There are many theories in science that are not falsifiable: such as multiverses, Big Crunches, string theory, etc. Yet you see these talked about with the greatest reverence by people who would rather believe in anything but Intelligent Design.
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And if the watch had the ability to walk around, reproduce, and there were all kinds of similar clocks of different sizes and complexity doing the same? Comparing life to a watch, while sounding good, doesn’t really make sense.

I agree that ID is similar to things like multiverses, string theory, etc. Again though, lets not beat around the bush. Everyone knows ID is creationism put into a form that looks like science. I think it’s up there with string theory myself though, both are totally unproven theories to me.
 
Charlemagne_II said:
ricmat

Would you give me the precise verse from Isaiah for your signature quote?

Thanks,
Charlie
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Yes, it’s Isaiah 45:18

We used to have a poster here (the barbarian) who claimed that it was an insult to call God a “designer.” I figured that if it was OK for Isaiah to call him such, it’s good enough for me. 🙂
 
ricmat

*We used to have a poster here (the barbarian) who claimed that it was an insult to call God a “designer.” *

I suppose he also thought it was an insult to say that we were made in the image and likeness of God.

Thanks for the quote!
 
I think it’s up there with string theory myself though, both are totally unproven theories to me.

And I’m still waiting for proof that abiogenesis happened by accident. Wheee! 🤷
 
Charlemagne_II said:
I think it’s up there with string theory myself though, both are totally unproven theories to me.

And I’m still waiting for proof that abiogenesis happened by accident. Wheee! 🤷
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Wheee? You seem to be having fun with this… 🙂

I never claimed proof of abiogenesis. However, there have been some studies that do lean towards it…

wired.com/wiredscience/2009/05/ribonucleotides/

Hardly proven though, but like I said earlier, abiogenesis is not in science books for that reason. It’s still highly debated because there is not much evidence supporting it at this time. On the flip though, you can gain evidence to support or deny abiogenesis. Either molecules can join to form self replicating proteins or they can’t. However, proving that there is a “creator” that designed everything is a lot harder short of finding a message in our DNA saying “Hey guys, I like totally made you lol”.

And anyway, ID hardly compares to abiogenesis anyway. ID claims that everything was made as-is (for the most part) and things are too complicated to be the product of evolution. It doesn’t say that the first life was put here by something and we evolved from that, which I actually think is a possibility.
 
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