Why do people say intelligent design is not scientific?

reply to post by Kapyong

We DIRECTLY observe them happening WITHOUT a "nucleus intelleigence" (what on earth is that?)

I hope to GOD you aren't speaking of the now-debunked Miller experiment......

Originally posted by resonance
I would like to ask why many people try to say intelligent design is not scientific

The reason intelligent design is not scientific is because there is no evidence for it whatsoever. You see - in science we don't begin with conclusion and thereafter try to search for evidence to support those conclusions. Rather, we begin by observing the world and performing experiments. Only then do we pose hypotheses based on those observations or experiments. After conclusions are reached, the rest of the scientific community actively tries to disprove those conclusions, rather than reinforce them. When faced with a question we cannot answer, there is no generic fill-in-the-blank response such as "God did it."

With religion, you begin with the premise that everything has a preordained purpose and that purpose was determined by some higher being. You do this because it makes you feel special and alleviates a persistent fear of death or that you have no reason to exist. No troubling feeling of inadequacy that follows perceived ignorance. To protect this idea, you ignore everything in the universe that is inconsistent with it. For example, species going extinct, miscarriages, natural disasters, or other deaths you clearly recognize as meaningless and particularly cruel.

By shutting down the reasoning center of your brain selectively, you are able to thank god that you survived cancer as a result of chemotherapy but never ask why you got cancer in the first place. Unfortunately, the drive to assume purpose and plan leaves you with lingering questions about all the bad things that happen in the world. You wonder why good people die and bad people get rich. Rather than using this to challenge your poorly conceived philosophies as science would, you resign yourself to the idea that there is a plan but you are simply too dumb to see it or understand it.

The fact is that all the things you see as perfect are inherently and pervasively flawed. The human body is fantastic but a million things can and do go wrong with it. Nature is beautiful but not because it was made specifically to be so just for you. Flowers are pretty to attract bees. Women are pretty to attract men. You think nature is pretty because people who didn't think so to the point where their own dissatisfaction impeded their ability to survive and reproduce did not in fact survive and reproduce. Every living thing in nature is the way it is because in the past those features made it more successful, at some point, at surviving and reproducing.

The hubble space telescope was once pointed at a black section of the spy with the expectation that it would see nothing. Instead, it found hundreds of new galaxies containing millions of stars and planets, part of a universe that is far more enormous than any human mind could possibly comprehend, existing over a period of time that no human mind could possibly understand. Historically, mankind has chosen to look to God to answer all the questions it was unable to answer. As our knowledge of the world around us has increased, we have understood more and more about nature and attributed less and less to God.

Basic logic dictates that this process will continue at a steady pace and one day, provided our species does not destroy itself, we will answer most or all questions there are to answer about the universe. At that point, God will cease to have a function in our lives. The things we do today and take for granted, such as splitting the atom and traveling through the sky, were once the sole realm of God. The things we today consider godly will one day me arbitrary and ordinary to our great great great grandchildren. This fact is undeniable.

One day people will decide that they are the masters of their own destinies. They don't need a God to tell them right and wrong or tell them why they should live. They will make reach these conclusions on their own. We will truly accept death and will cease to be afraid of it. Today, we are children. Tomorrow we will be adults who will completely abandon superstition.

Religion divides us, serving as one more way we can classify us and them. We want to believe we presently have a mastery of the universe, life and death, by holding a special place in the eyes of our chosen deity. Those that disagree with us are wrong and therefore inferior. The fact is that we are smarter but no better or worse, from any other species on this planet. No one is watching out for us except each other. Whether we stand or fall, it will be our choice.

We do not really believe in Heaven or Hell so we hire policeman and build courts and jails to provide justice and safety in this life because we really know that this life is all there is. Many of us will not consciously recognize this fact but they will nonetheless instinctively call 911 when their father has heart attack rather than simply praying. In this sense, we are willfully ignorant hypocrites, a feature that, like color vision, has served us well in the past. You see - imagining a God is nature's adaptive response to a emotional brain that is intelligent enough to comprehend its own inevitable death and capable of comprehending pain and suffering of people we will never know on the other side of the world. An irrational belief in God is both a strength and a weakness in our species because it compels us to be both compassionate and arrogant at the same time. The knowledge that comes from science is not dangerous but combined with the arrogant, reckless, and willful ignorance of religion, it creates the potential to have both the ability and motivation to destroy ourselves accidentally or purposely.

Religion may be as necessary as oxygen to some now but if we do not move past it soon, the most advanced tools of science will be forced to serve spiritual agendas. A scientist who thinks he is as powerful as God or a religious man who thinks he knows God's will or plan, one will eventually try to kill us all if we do not change. Only through rational thought and cautious humility can we overcome our self-destructive tendencies. We are not Gods because there are no Gods. We are hairless apes on a small planet in a small solar system, found within a galaxy that is only one of billions of other galaxies in a universe whose size and diversity we will never know.

[edit on 4-11-2009 by andrewh7]

Gday,

Originally posted by NOTurTypical
I hope to GOD you aren't speaking of the now-debunked Miller experiment......

You couldn't even get the NAME right !
It's the Miller-Urey experiment.
en.wikipedia.org...

Which was a great success and proved what it set out to - that organic compounds could form from inorganic compounds in primitive conditions.

The experiment found that organic compounds DID form - it was a great success.

Furthermore, the materials of the experiment were kept, and recently re-tested with more sensitive equipment and even MORE amino acids were found than originally.

The experiment was MORE of a success than first realised.


So, what is the creationist response?
Naturally, they lie that it has been debunked - the exact opposite of the truth.


No-one but a creationist believes that lie.


K.


[edit on 4-11-2009 by Kapyong]

Originally posted by On the Edge
reply to post by TheWalkingFox

 

I don't know what you're quoting from.

I didn't think you would. You seem to be just copy-pasting warm-and-fuzzies from a "Yay Jesus!" website.

Isaiah 13
"13:19 And Babylon, the glory of kingdoms, the beauty of the Chaldees' excellency, shall be as when God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah.
13:20 It shall never be inhabited, neither shall it be dwelt in from generation to generation: neither shall the Arabian pitch tent there; neither shall the shepherds make their fold there.
13:21 But wild beasts of the desert shall lie there; and their houses shall be full of doleful creatures; and owls shall dwell there, and satyrs shall dance there.
13:22 And the wild beasts of the islands shall cry in their desolate houses, and dragons in their pleasant palaces: and her time is near to come, and her days shall not be prolonged.

My mistake on the Unicorns, that's actually Numbers 23 and Deuteronomy 33. I'm willing to forgive these, because I personally think that "unicorn" is a mistranslation of whatever the ancient hebrew word for "rhinoceros" was.

This is Old Testament stuff. Since you're bound to be a Christian, let's look at the New Testament proophecies. Many of these assert that jesus' return and the end of the world will come within the characters' lifetimes - Paul was quite adamant about this. even jesus himself was pretty certain the world would asplode while his disciples were still alive. Unless one of those twelve guys is still hanging out somewhere ("How'd I do it? Whiskey and two packs a day, menthol unfiltered!") this is some prophecy that's pretty easy to flush.

How about all those prophecies Jesus was supposed to fulfill?

Let's start with Isaiah 7:14, "Therefore the Lord himself shall give you a sign; Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel." (KJV).
Big problem here, the hebrew word in this line is "maid" (Almah) meaning a young woman. The Hebrew word for virgin is bethulah. And we can of course see that Jesus' name was not Immanuel, it was Yehoshua bin Yosef - Joshua, son of Joseph.

In Matthew 2 we have the following: "2:15 And was there until the death of Herod: that it might be fulfilled which was spoken of the Lord by the prophet, saying, Out of Egypt have I called my son."
Matthew is quoting Hosea 11 here, "11:1 When Israel was a child, then I loved him, and called my son out of Egypt."
Any goober can look at that and tell it's not even a prophecy, but is God speaking about the Exodus from Egypt. (And don't get me started on that one)

Also in Matthew 2, there's this one:
"2:17 Then was fulfilled that which was spoken by Jeremy the prophet, saying,
2:18 In Rama was there a voice heard, lamentation, and weeping, and great mourning, Rachel weeping for her children, and would not be comforted, because they are not."
Matthew of course considers this to be a prophecy of King Herod's supposed slaughter of the sons of israel. The problem with it being a prophecy describing Jesus? In context (Jeremiah 31:15-17) it's actually speaking of the Babylonian Captivity, and has diddly to do with Jesus.

I could go on, but there is a character limit.

(Does anything divide people as much as religious beliefs?!)

Well, let's ask Jesus!

Matthew 10:21 And the brother shall deliver up the brother to death, and the father the child: and the children shall rise up against their parents, and cause them to be put to death.

Huh. Yikes.

Deep down,I believe we all have the same needs,and we're all looking to fill that void in our life that only a spiritual belief can inhabit.

If you say so. It really strikes me as more of a psychological disorder, really.

There are many paths to follow. In the end we shall know the truth!

You want the truth? Gods are the whims of men to control other men. Imaginary, intangible, and unconvincing, unless you are in the thrall of a person more powerful than yourself who insists on their existence. Religiosity is willing slavery, physical, emotional, and mental. it has stunted mankind, continuously caused us to drive towards information and understanding with the emergency brakes on and has resulting in the meaningless deaths of millions of our species from time immemorial.

That's the truth.

I wish you peace!

Maybe you should wish peace towards places that need it more than I.

Originally posted by Outlawstar
I thnk the answer of fire is more a shot in the dark than anything else, seems to be stratching it a bit imo, Ill be honest I dont buy it.

I'll be honest, I don't think you're ever going to "buy" anything that doesn't reinforce what you already believe. However, the ability to cook our food is very definitely the cause of our smaller jaw size compared to our ancestors. We have to chew less, which means we have smaller jaw muscles and smaller jawbones to anchor them. we've become dainty!

Interesting, perhaps that is true.

Actually it's a shot in the dark, because i'm taking it for granted that you're correct about neanderthals becoming "more primitive" towards the end. We do know that the last neanderthal populations were basically squeezed into the extremes of their ranges by the advance of modern humans. If they did become "more primitive" as you contend, inbreeding would seem a logical reason for it.

Interestingly, these neanderthals, while maybe becoming more physically primitive, were also becoming more technologically advanced - These last neanderthals were using the toolkits of contemporary modern humans, while their own ancestors had used a far more primitive core-flake toolkit that was inferior to that of the modern humans they competed against. This Neanderthal culture is called Chatelperronian

By mans explosin I mean modern man, his sudden embracing of a whole host pf previously neglected paradigms, a seeming boom in consiousness.

That is actually a good question. A better question would be, "who was first, and why?" - for instance, why did art get invented? This is basically the line that divides behaviorally modern humans from anatomically modern humans - both are the same species as ourselves, but one had the capacity for art (and we presume, language) but how this oddurred is still in the debate stage. I's one area that I personally don't have a lot of information on, but most of what i've read points towards it being an awkward mutation.

However if you meant technological innovations, well, that's pretty simple. I'm sure you're aware that technology increases exponentially, right? If you invent one thing, it'll lead to two more accompanying inventions, each of which will lead to two more, and so on and so forth. People also pick up useful things as soon as they notice how useful it is.

Here's one. The horse. The horse was domesticated a long time after goats, and nearly an eon after dogs. Both goats and dogs only have a single point of origin (the far east for dogs, the near east for goats and sheep) - but horses have multiple points of origin, from the far east, into central asia and europe. They are one of the few domesticated animals with this genetic patchwork background (Cattle are runners-up, with two points of origin - Turkey and India).

Why? because horses were so useful for meat, milk, transport, and warfare, that people who saw them in use rushed out to tame their own, rather than waiting to trade for or inherit horses from their neighbors.

A similar thing happened with the invention of agriculture. The earliest agricultural revolution seems to be in northern Syria, but it spread rapidly from there. The original school of thought was that these early farmers conquered everyone around them and instituted agriculture. Genetic evidence however, shows that it was the opposite - their neighbors saw the usefulness of agriculture and adopted it almost immediately.

You then get a few hundred different ways to plow a field, which then begets a few hundred different ways to tend your tools and livestock, blah blah, blah, technological explosion.

And our traits are NOT what youd expect at all, we have evolved far in excess of whats needed to survive.

Survive where?

[edit on 5-11-2009 by TheWalkingFox]

Originally posted by NOTurTypical
reply to post by Kapyong

 

You have 'millions' of proofs of MICRO-evolution, which no one denies. You evolutionists need to provide ONE "proof" of MACRO evolution, don't shift the burden of proof onto ID scientists to prove your theory wrong, you guys need to prove it right.

Quick question for you.

What is a "species"? Traditionally the answer is a group of organisms that can reproduce together to produce fertile offspring that are different from other organisms that they cannot produce fertile offspring with, right?

Problem with this? Carnivores. All members of the canis genus are cross-fertile. if you put a male wolf in a pen with a jackal bitch, you're going to get fully fertile wolf-jackle hybrids. You can then cross these with coydogs you got out of the dog / coyote in the next pen over. You can then cross the wolfjackal-coydog crosses back to the original species of wolf, jackal, coyote, and dog, and they're still fertile. You can do the same with members of the Felis genus of cats, as well as the Ursus genus of bears. Panthera felines are sometimes fertile when crossed, but usually not, and I have no idea about the cross-fertility of the pinnepeds or mustelids.

Also, have you ever heard of a phenomena known as a "ring species"? This is a pretty wild one. You start with a species - a good example is a salamander in California - and you put it in an area next to a geological feature that it can't go over or through - a hot valley or a mountain or something. This critter will naturally migrate through the climates it can migrate to. As it goes, it will undergo genetic drift from isolated populations - what you call "micro-evolution". Each of these micro-species will be crossfertile with their neighbors, semi-fertile with the next neighbors over, and so on. Eventually though, the critters come full circle around the valley or mountain or whatever... and are no longer cross-fertile with the parent population that you started off with! They're a functionally separate species, despite the fact that they're crossfertile with their immediate ancestors, who are crossfertile with their immediate ancestors, all the way back to that parent population.

Go on, have a look.

You point to numerous examples of micro evolution then expect us to automatically assume chemical, stellar, and macro evolution exists without verifiable scientific evidence.

Chemical and stellar evolution? You know you can't just make up terms and expect people to answer them.

then shift the burden of proof to US to prove that they don't exist. Classic... How exactly do we PROVE a negative???

You can't.

But i'd love to see some evidence of whatever you think created all this stuff. I mean, we have physical proof that the moon was originally a chunk of the earth knocked off a few billion years ago, physical proof that there is a being that even to this day is controlling and creating every organism on the face of hteplanet seems like it would be child's play compared to that.

[edit on 5-11-2009 by TheWalkingFox]

reply to post by np6888

If an event is too statistically impossible to happen by chance(yes, given an "infinite" amount of time, an event, no matter how unlikely, will happen, however, the universe is said to be "only" 14 billion years old), yet happens anyway, then doesn't that imply that someone must have designed it?

All that proves is that the chance of us existing is equal to 1, because we exist. These assumptions you're making are all logical fallacies, much like Aristotle's views on motion seemed true by common sense at the time, and despite lasting for 100's of years due to being favoured by the catholic church, they are completely untrue.

Yet the truth is, Jesus walking on water is no more a miracle than the fact that this universe started out as an atom.

When you're talking about unknown's at the beginning of our universe, it's silly to relate the chances of those unknown's occurring compared with other alleged events, and doing so just isn't scientific.

And if somebody did walk on water, does that really prove that god exists? That would simply be more logical fallacies.

Flying at 500mph in the 1st century AD would have also being considered magical or supernatural, would it not?

[edit on 5-11-2009 by john124]

I'll be honest, I don't think you're ever going to "buy" anything that doesn't reinforce what you already believe. However, the ability to cook our food is very definitely the cause of our smaller jaw size compared to our ancestors. We have to chew less, which means we have smaller jaw muscles and smaller jawbones to anchor them. we've become dainty!

Aargh how many times do I have to say I have no beliefs as such, I am in no way religious, cant a guy just disagree, I mean seriously theres a lot more to our complex evolution than smaller jawbones.

Interesting, perhaps that is true.

Actually it's a shot in the dark, because i'm taking it for granted that you're correct about neanderthals becoming "more primitive" towards the end. We do know that the last neanderthal populations were basically squeezed into the extremes of their ranges by the advance of modern humans. If they did become "more primitive" as you contend, inbreeding would seem a logical reason for it. Interestingly, these neanderthals, while maybe becoming more physically primitive, were also becoming more technologically advanced - These last neanderthals were using the toolkits of contemporary modern humans, while their own ancestors had used a far more primitive core-flake toolkit that was inferior to that of the modern humans they competed against. This Neanderthal culture is called Chatelperronian

Intriguing, it does seem a logical explanation.

I'll be honest, I don't think you're ever going to "buy" anything that doesn't reinforce what you already believe. However, the ability to cook our food is very definitely the cause of our smaller jaw size compared to our ancestors. We have to chew less, which means we have smaller jaw muscles and smaller jawbones to anchor them. we've become dainty!

Aargh how many times do I have to say I have no beliefs as such, I am in no way religious, cant a guy just disagree, I mean seriously theres a lot more to our complex evolution than smaller jawbones.

Actually it's a shot in the dark, because i'm taking it for granted that you're correct about neanderthals becoming "more primitive" towards the end. We do know that the last neanderthal populations were basically squeezed into the extremes of their ranges by the advance of modern humans. If they did become "more primitive" as you contend, inbreeding would seem a logical reason for it. Interestingly, these neanderthals, while maybe becoming more physically primitive, were also becoming more technologically advanced - These last neanderthals were using the toolkits of contemporary modern humans, while their own ancestors had used a far more primitive core-flake toolkit that was inferior to that of the modern humans they competed against. This Neanderthal culture is called Chatelperronian

Intriguing, it does seem a logical explanation.

That is actually a good question. A better question would be, "who was first, and why?" - for instance, why did art get invented? This is basically the line that divides behaviorally modern humans from anatomically modern humans - both are the same species as ourselves, but one had the capacity for art (and we presume, language) but how this oddurred is still in the debate stage. I's one area that I personally don't have a lot of information on, but most of what i've read points towards it being an awkward mutation. However if you meant technological innovations, well, that's pretty simple. I'm sure you're aware that technology increases exponentially, right? If you invent one thing, it'll lead to two more accompanying inventions, each of which will lead to two more, and so on and so forth. People also pick up useful things as soon as they notice how useful it is. Here's one. The horse. The horse was domesticated a long time after goats, and nearly an eon after dogs. Both goats and dogs only have a single point of origin (the far east for dogs, the near east for goats and sheep) - but horses have multiple points of origin, from the far east, into central asia and europe. They are one of the few domesticated animals with this genetic patchwork background (Cattle are runners-up, with two points of origin - Turkey and India). Why? because horses were so useful for meat, milk, transport, and warfare, that people who saw them in use rushed out to tame their own, rather than waiting to trade for or inherit horses from their neighbors. A similar thing happened with the invention of agriculture. The earliest agricultural revolution seems to be in northern Syria, but it spread rapidly from there. The original school of thought was that these early farmers conquered everyone around them and instituted agriculture. Genetic evidence however, shows that it was the opposite - their neighbors saw the usefulness of agriculture and adopted it almost immediately. You then get a few hundred different ways to plow a field, which then begets a few hundred different ways to tend your tools and livestock, blah blah, blah, technological explosion.

I agree once you start you just cant stop as it were, however that is not always the case, as a scan over history will tell you there have been many instances of sterility in technological advancement, Im not saying your wrong, just pointing something out.

The consiousness explosion never ceases to amaze, I mean what role did "natural selection" "see" for art in our evolution, does it like creativity, does it like to endow expressive behaviour?

If so why, doesint that raise some interesting questions about the nature of this natural selection?

Why on earth as a parallel did things even evolve at all, why not just continue forever as a single cell ecosystem as was the case for long periods of time?
Whats the incentive, are we in our current form the incentive?
Something life strives for perhaps, there are a lot of questions, IM NOT inferring any sort of deity so please dont assume so!



[edit on 5-11-2009 by Outlawstar]

[edit on 5-11-2009 by Outlawstar]

reply to post by sirnex


I thought we were done with this conversation!

You believe what you want and I'll believe what I want! Nothing we say to each other will change a thing.

I'm sorry my wishing you "peace" caused you discomfort! I'll refrain from that in the future.

im gone for a day and the thread flourishes.

looks like some very capable people picked up where i left off and are doing a better job than i have done.

thanks to all of you.

still...

this thread still remains "evolution is a lie"/"TEH BIBBLE IS TROO!"

changing the subject of "there is no science for ID" does not support ID.

Originally posted by ELECTRICkoolaidZOMBIEtest
im gone for a day and the thread flourishes.

looks like some very capable people picked up where i left off and are doing a better job than i have done.

thanks to all of you.

still...

this thread still remains "evolution is a lie"/"TEH BIBBLE IS TROO!"

changing the subject of "there is no science for ID" does not support ID.

The entire thread has not been taken up by an evolution v Bible, some of us are non-partisan and looking for real answers!

reply to post by Outlawstar

just saying its a lot more than there really should be if something totally "unrelated" is the topic.

im not even complaining. it is pretty amusing watching the grasping at straws.

Originally posted by ELECTRICkoolaidZOMBIEtest
reply to post by Outlawstar

 

just saying its a lot more than there really should be if something totally "unrelated" is the topic.

im not even complaining. it is pretty amusing watching the grasping at straws.

I do see where youre coming from, personally I believe its gonna take a lot more than a religious approach to ID, I can of course see you are against the ID scenario, but know that ID for many such as myself is truly a viable option and NOTHING to do with some religious deity.

reply to post by Outlawstar




im kind of surprised more people HAVENT taken the non-religious approach to ID.

i was expecting more people to support aliens creating human life. at least it would be something new for a few minutes. im shocked that no one is standing up and defending that idea.

Originally posted by ELECTRICkoolaidZOMBIEtest
reply to post by Outlawstar

 

im kind of surprised more people HAVENT taken the non-religious approach to ID.

i was expecting more people to support aliens creating human life. at least it would be something new for a few minutes. im shocked that no one is standing up and defending that idea.

That could well be possible, as little as modern science would like to hear it, some great scholars have put forward that very notion.

reply to post by Outlawstar


i know they have. and it's probably more easily defended than arguing from the religious angle, but im not an expert on what evidence exists for aliens so i cant make that call for sure.

[edit on 5-11-2009 by ELECTRICkoolaidZOMBIEtest]

reply to post by Matt_Mason

really? whats the funnest part so far?

That you haven't argued anything of substance. I love it!

reply to post by ELECTRICkoolaidZOMBIEtest

i was expecting more people to support aliens creating human life. at least it would be something new for a few minutes. im shocked that no one is standing up and defending that idea.

I did suggest it a while back ago, but pointed out some obvious flaws in that line of thinking.

reply to post by Outlawstar

That could well be possible, as little as modern science would like to hear it, some great scholars have put forward that very notion.

I disagree, modern science would love to have evidence for life elsewhere. Unfortunately, I don't know of any "great scholars" who have produced evidence for it.

reply to post by sirnex


yeah i thought i remembered something like that in this thread. but it was glossed over. with the amount of people claiming to be abducted by aliens and the rampant belief in aliens here i wouldve expected that to be more common.


but it has occurred to me that beauty is TERRIBLE proof of ID. if an intelligent creator wanted beauty, wouldnt they presumably have the power to make things more beautiful than trees? or quasars?