Is intelligent design a plausible theory?

[Charlemagne_II]

*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.

Perhaps you could take a closer look at Intelligent Design. I think it would be the rare Creationist who thinks “everything was made as is.” Intelligent Design is not meant to be a substitute for evolution, but rather a way to explain why evolution has been so successful. Evolution is a hopeless way to explain abiogenesis because of irreducible complexity, but also because evolution only explains how life evolves from life, not how it rose from inanimate matter. Accidental combinations of proteins and reproductive capacity is also a hopeless, and certainly unproven, way to explain abiogenesis. The only method left is intelligent design. It makes sense because we are familiar with how intelligent design works in our own experience with it. Even Darwin recognized this possibility in his autobiography:

“[Reason tells me of the] extreme difficulty or rather impossibility of conceiving this immense and wonderful universe, including man with his capability of looking far backwards and far into futurity, as the result of blind chance or necessity. When thus reflecting, **I feel compelled to look to a First Cause having an intelligent mind in some degree analogous to that of man; and I deserve to be called a Theist.” **
Now this passage is not stated in his biological works because it comes near the end of his life, after all his major work was done. But Darwin nonetheless anticipates the difficulty that modern biologists are confronted with when they try to discount the existence of some intelligence directing not only the whole course of evolution, but also the “immense and wonderful universe.”

 

[tonyrey]

ID claims that everything was made as-is (for the most part) and things are too complicated to be the product of evolution.

ID claims that irrational, purposeless processes cannot produce rational, purposeful activity. It is the only adequate explanation. If you disagree explain why.

 

[liquidpele]

Perhaps you could take a closer look at Intelligent Design. I think it would be the rare Creationist who thinks “everything was made as is.” Intelligent Design is not meant to be a substitute for evolution, but rather a way to explain why evolution has been so successful. Evolution is a hopeless way to explain abiogenesis because of irreducible complexity, but also because evolution only explains how life evolves from life, not how it rose from inanimate matter. Accidental combinations of proteins and reproductive capacity is also a hopeless, and certainly unproven, way to explain abiogenesis. The only method left is intelligent design. It makes sense because we are familiar with how intelligent design works in our own experience with it. Even Darwin recognized this possibility in his autobiography:

“[Reason tells me of the] extreme difficulty or rather impossibility of conceiving this immense and wonderful universe, including man with his capability of looking far backwards and far into futurity, as the result of blind chance or necessity. When thus reflecting, **I feel compelled to look to a First Cause having an intelligent mind in some degree analogous to that of man; and I deserve to be called a Theist.” **
Now this passage is not stated in his biological works because it comes near the end of his life, after all his major work was done. But Darwin nonetheless anticipates the difficulty that modern biologists are confronted with when they try to discount the existence of some intelligence directing not only the whole course of evolution, but also the “immense and wonderful universe.”

Apparently you have not actually discussed ID with the people that actually made the theory, because it DOES say that. It directly contradicts evolution.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligent_design

I like your quote, but taking one single quote as a point about what darwin believed is silly. He also said such things as “I cannot persuade myself that a beneficent and omnipotent God would have designedly created parasitic wasps with the express intention of their feeding within the living bodies of Caterpillars.”

In reality, Darwin was a religious man, but he came to the only scientific conclusion that he could given the research that he did, and that was evolution over time from lower forms of life. ID contradicts that, which is why it likes to attack or misquote Darwin. Also, the man wasn’t perfect even in his own theories. We’ve found that evolution occurs for other reasons besides natural selection. That’s the nice thing about science though, we get to adjust our theories and views according to new data. ID is the exact opposite, it refuses to accept anything but a God-created reality and refutes all data that contradicts that view.

 

[liquidpele]

ID claims that irrational, purposeless processes cannot produce rational, purposeful activity. It is the only adequate explanation. If you disagree explain why.

I will again post my video explaining evolution. Perhaps you will watch it instead of blowing it off like Charlemagne II. It’s actually quite informative.

youtube.com/watch?v=vss1VKN2rf8

Examples of evolution are all around us. These directly contradict ID. Now, if ID said that something intelligent put the very first self replicating proteins on the planet, I think that would be fine. However, reading the wikipedia article on it, it does not appear to be that way. It appears to directly contradict evolution, which even the Catholic church has accepted.

Just look at the official website… intelligentdesign.org/

"The theory of intelligent design holds that certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause, not an undirected process such as natural selection. "

 

[Cristiano]

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.

I am sorry to say but this is the same approach the opponents of ID use. This to me sounds a lot like the same knee jerk reaction that a lot of scientists have when someone talks about ID in the scientific community. Models can be convenient, right or wrong but they are no jokes at all.

 

[Cristiano]

I will again post my video explaining evolution. Perhaps you will watch it instead of blowing it off like Charlemagne II. It’s actually quite informative.

youtube.com/watch?v=vss1VKN2rf8

Examples of evolution are all around us. These directly contradict ID. Now, if ID said that something intelligent put the very first self replicating proteins on the planet, I think that would be fine. However, reading the wikipedia article on it, it does not appear to be that way. It appears to directly contradict evolution, which even the Catholic church has accepted.

Just look at the official website… intelligentdesign.org/

"The theory of intelligent design holds that certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause, not an undirected process such as natural selection. "

I think that your definition of evolution might not be exactly the same one that other people in this forum use. For a lot of people some “evolutionary” models are consistent with ID. A lot of people use the term evolution to describe different methods of change that are not always compatible.

 

[liquidpele]

I think that your definition of evolution might not be exactly the same one that other people in this forum use. For a lot of people some “evolutionary” models are consistent with ID. A lot of people use the term evolution to describe different methods of change that are not always compatible.

The only form of evolution that would be consistent with ID would be that God guides it along the whole time but makes it look like it’s not him, which sounds like something a Calvinist would say. Regardless, God making the changes is something that is neither testable or something that can be invalidated by any evidence whatsoever, it’s essentially saying that something besides probability is causing the mutations and such. This makes is strictly NOT science.

Again, I will stress that ID, as promoted by those wanting it in schools, is clearly young earth creationism in a box that says “science” and we all know that a label does not actually define the thing. Adjusting it so that it makes more sense is something you can attempt to do, but I don’t think that was the initial intent of this thread.

 

[Charlemagne_II]

liquidpele

I like your quote, but taking one single quote as a point about what darwin believed is silly. He also said such things as “I cannot persuade myself that a beneficent and omnipotent God would have designedly created parasitic wasps with the express intention of their feeding within the living bodies of Caterpillars.”

That’s fine, but here he is rejecting the Christian God. Note the operative words beneficent and omnipotent." He does not say “intelligent designer.” The quote I cited is still operative.

However, reading the wikipedia article on it, it does not appear to be that way. It appears to directly contradict evolution, which even the Catholic church has accepted.

There’s no apparent conflict between Darwin and Isaiah (see below in red), given the quote from Darwin: “I feel compelled to look to a First Cause having an intelligent mind in some degree analogous to that of man; and I deserve to be called a Theist.” So I don’t think the Church has rejected intelligent design** or **evolution.

Show me where Michael Behe, one of the foremost ID advocates, rejects evolution as a biological process that began after abiogenesis.

 

[Charlemagne_II]

liquidpele

Examples of evolution are all around us. These directly contradict ID.

Well, I don’t see that! If we are evolved beings, which I grant you, how is it that we can intelligently design our surroundings? Moreover, if the human race continues to evolve, wouldn’t it be entirely possible that we could intelligently design our future evolution?

 

[ricmat]

Apparently you have not actually discussed ID with the people that actually made the theory, because it DOES say that. It directly contradicts evolution.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligent_design

Apparently you have not read the documents from the people who actually made the theory.

And you actually believe wikipedia?

 

[rossum]

Apparently you have not read the documents from the people who actually made the theory.

They do indeed have some interesting things to say:I also don’t think that there is really a theory of intelligent design at the present time to propose as a comparable alternative to the Darwinian theory, which is, whatever errors it might contain, a fully worked out scheme. There is no intelligent design theory that’s comparable. Working out a positive theory is the job of the scientific people that we have affiliated with the movement. Some of them are quite convinced that it’s doable, but that’s for them to prove… No product is ready for competition in the educational world.

Philip Johnon - Berkley Science Review (Spring 2006)
and
We are not here challenging common descent, the claim that all organisms trace their lineage to a universal common ancestor. Nor are we challenging evolutionary gradualism, that organisms have evolved gradually over time. Nor are we even challenging that natural selection may be the principal mechanism by which organisms have evolved. Rather, we are challenging the claim that evolution can create information from scratch where previously it did not exist. The conclusion we are after is that natural selection, even if it is the mechanism by which organisms evolved, achieves its successes by incorporating and using existing information.

Dembski and Marks - Life’s Conservation Law (2009)

And you actually believe wikipedia?

Of course I do, I wrote some of it.

rossum

 

[Charlemagne_II]

“I feel compelled to look to a First Cause having an intelligent mind in some degree analogous to that of man; and I deserve to be called a Theist.” Charles Darwin

I don’t see how it could be stated more clearly. Darwin himself advocated intelligent design. Dawkins, eat your heart out!

 

[ricmat]

Of course I do, I wrote some of it.

rossum

Wash your hands. Quick!

 

[liquidpele]

“I feel compelled to look to a First Cause having an intelligent mind in some degree analogous to that of man; and I deserve to be called a Theist.” Charles Darwin

I don’t see how it could be stated more clearly. Darwin himself advocated intelligent design. Dawkins, eat your heart out!

Even if he was advocating something like ID, he’s only human, he’s allowed to make mistakes

As I said before, you can’t look at one quote and determine someone’s beliefs. He also said very contradicting things, such as:

“To suppose that the eye, with all its inimitable contrivances for adjusting the focus to different distances, for admitting different amounts of light, and for the correction of spherical and chromatic aberration, could have been formed by natural selection, seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest possible degree. Yet reason tells me, that if numerous gradations from a perfect and complex eye to one very imperfect and simple, each grade being useful to its possessor, can be shown to exist; if further, the eye does vary ever so slightly, and the variations be inherited, which is certainly the case; and if variation or modification in the organ be ever useful to an animal under changing conditions of life, then the difficulty of believing that a perfect and complex eye could be formed by natural selection, though insuperable by our imagination, can hardly be considered real”

The only way you could think Darwin thought there was an intelligent designer was if he thought maybe God put things here and then we evolved from that point… which is NOT what ID is about.

You also said:

"Well, I don’t see that! If we are evolved beings, which I grant you, how is it that we can intelligently design our surroundings? Moreover, if the human race continues to evolve, wouldn’t it be entirely possible that we could intelligently design our future evolution? "

The swine flu is an example, surely you heard about that? We can intelligently design stuff, but that doesn’t mean EVERYTHING is intelligently designed… is that not obvious to you? Lastly, we could intelligently design our future, but once again that doesn’t mean that we were designed up until this point or that design created things like cancer, autism, genetic disorders, parkinsons, etc etc etc etc etc.

 

[Charlemagne_II]

liquidpele

*The only way you could think Darwin thought there was an intelligent designer was if he thought maybe God put things here and then we evolved from that point… which is NOT what ID is about. *

Well, do you really know what ID is about? ID is not limited to explaining abiogenesis whereas evolution cannot. It is also about explaining how the universe evolved as it did, programming all things, even the dirt of the earth, our distance from the sun, our gravitational field, our presence of water and clean air, etc. etc. on top of the marvelous event called abiogenesis.

Look at the bold first part of Darwin’s remark:

*"[Reason tells me of the] extreme difficulty or rather impossibility of **conceiving this immense and wonderful universe, including man *with his capability of looking far backwards and far into futurity, as the result of blind chance or necessity."

Darwin is hinting here that he recognizes, as Newton did before him, and Einstein after him, that there are just too many cooperating agents to consider life on earth a meaningless product of Dawkin’s so-called “blind watchmaker.”

*We can intelligently design stuff, but that doesn’t mean EVERYTHING is intelligently designed… is that not obvious to you? *

Nor does it mean that it’s impossible that everything in the universe is designed.

If some things in the universe are designed, it is plausible, if you look at nature long and hard enough, to see that other things are designed besides the ones we ourselves design. Why isn’t that plausible?

That is the question of this thread … not whether it is decisively proven that the universe and everything in it is intelligently designed, but that it is plausible (as opposed to improbable or impossible) that everything in the universe, including abiogenesis, is intelligently designed.

 

[Charlemagne_II]

Have you heard this one?

*God was sitting in heaven one day when a scientist said to Him, “God, we don’t need you anymore. Science has finally figured out a way to create life out of nothing – in other words, we can now do what you did in the beginning.”

“Oh, is that so? Explain…” replies God. “Well,” says the scientist, “we can take dirt and form it into the likeness of you and breathe life into it, thus creating man.”

“Well, that’s very interesting… show Me.”

So the scientist bends down to the earth and starts to mold the soil into the shape of a man. “No, no, no…” interrupts God, “Get your own dirt.”*

What’d You Think?

 

[liquidpele]

Have you heard this one?

*God was sitting in heaven one day when a scientist said to Him, “God, we don’t need you anymore. Science has finally figured out a way to create life out of nothing – in other words, we can now do what you did in the beginning.”

“Oh, is that so? Explain…” replies God. “Well,” says the scientist, “we can take dirt and form it into the likeness of you and breathe life into it, thus creating man.”

“Well, that’s very interesting… show Me.”

So the scientist bends down to the earth and starts to mold the soil into the shape of a man. “No, no, no…” interrupts God, “Get your own dirt.”*

What’d You Think?

I fail to see how that has any relevance… you might as well tell me a story about Zeus messing around with the mortal Greeks.

Anyway, you are consistently claiming that ID is about things evolving by the will of God basically. The problem with that, is that when we look at it, it looks like it’s random. It doesn’t look like there is a God there doing it. So… how is that science again? How is something that is not provable, falsifiable, testable, or based on the scientific method science? You might as well be saying that the idea that God zapped us all into existence 10 seconds ago with memories of the past to trick us should be taught in science class because that’s how we “really” evolved. In short, although it’s a discussion point it is not science and does not belong in a science class, and for most people it is thinly disguised creationism whether you try to adjust it to not be as crazy.

 

[Charlemagne_II]

liquidpele

*How is something that is not provable, falsifiable, testable, or based on the scientific method science? *

How is it provable, falsifiable, testable, or based on the scientific method that abiogenesis happened by chance? And it certainly didn’t happen by evolution!

 

[liquidpele]

liquidpele

*How is something that is not provable, falsifiable, testable, or based on the scientific method science? *

How is it provable, falsifiable, testable, or based on the scientific method that abiogenesis happened by chance? And it certainly didn’t happen by evolution!

This is the second time I’ve had to remind you that I never claimed abiogenesis was true, and that it is also not taught in schools, but that there is evidence that it’s a possible theory:

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

 

[Charlemagne_II]

Oh, my!!!

Here is the first line of text at that website:

A fundamental but elusive step in the early evolution of life on Earth has been replicated in a laboratory.

In other words, what they have succeeded in doing is replicate **by intelligent design **(isn’t that what you’d call an experiment) what they think might have been a fundamental step in the early evolution of life?

Isn’t this really more of a proof for intelligent design?