Intelligent Design

Dezaad said:

In answer to your first question, no. In fact, I would say that anything attempting to explain the origin of the existence of things is probably better thought of as an hypothesis, though there is some evidence for a very few of these hypotheses. The hypothesis that god did it is not one of these, and in fact that hypothesis has zero evidence. When you or anyone else indulges in accepting a hypothesis as true, you are engaging in faith. I do not accept any hypothesis about the origin of existence at this time.

In partial answer to your second question: one reason theories are better than faith is because they adjust as new evidence presents itself. They are flexible, where faith is not. If faith were to become flexible, it would no longer be faith, but rather reverts to a hypotheses, tentative, and uncertain. That is one small step in a better direction. A larger step in that direction is when hypotheses are subjected to testing, and a willingness to adjust them according to observable evidence. Yet another step in that direction is a willingness to abandon them when evidence is found which substantially contravenes them.

Theories are also better than faith because they have so much overwhelming evidence which supports them that the only rational course of action is to let them guide a significant part of your thinking and action as if you knew them to be fully proved. Faith has no such overwhelming evidence. Indulging in faith causes people to ignore evidence, twist facts, even causes people to lie to themselves and others. All with the aim of protecting that faith.

As such, theories are better than faith because they allow for and foster the pursuit of objective truth as an ideal, and even foster the pursuit of subjective truth. Despite people's notions otherwise, faith does the opposite, because it causes people to prematurely accept as true things which have zero evidence. Again, Faith, in other words, is the act of accepting an hypothesis as if it were true, before it is tested for evidence. And yet again, faith is anathema to truth, objective or otherwise.

There is no reason to accept a hypothesis as true, to engage in faith. In fact this would be slightly or greatly foolish, depending on the hypothesis.

So, what I have answered, actually, is why it is better to engage in evidence based acceptance of things, rather than faith based acceptance of things. I answered this question instead of the one you asked because you would have misunderstood my position if I had answered your question as if it were about accepting science's hypothesis on the origin as opposed to one of the myriad faith based hypotheses.

But, now to answer that question, it is indeed better to hold the scientific hypotheses in higher regard because they do have at least some evidence, whereas hypotheses about god doing it, and these are accepted on faith, do not.

As to why scientific hypotheses are better for science classes than faith based hypotheses: Scientific ones are falsifiable, faith based ones are not. Science demands a falsifiable hypothesis.

Finally, I will say this: just because you don't have an evidence based explanation for something you are not compelled to accept whatever explanation you prefer because it suits your taste or your sentiments. When people ask me, or I ask myself, "what is the origin of things?" I answer "we don't know". And we don't, neither you nor I do, nor does anyone else that we know of. You may believe something about the matter, but belief is not 'knowing'.

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Well that's nothing new ask two yes or no questions get a 9 paragraph speech.
Bottom line you got no proof

Second answer what it's better to be an athiest cause are explanation is longer?

As far as how God works I do not know.
Once I suggested that perhaps God started evolution planted some ideas and sent the human race on it's way.
This idea was met with some greivous from bothe organized religion and athiest as well as agnostic.
The idea that this could happen according to organized religion God would have to have something to do with science that we can not tolerate.
The atheist and some agnostic said that this could never happen since science would have to be connected to God this we can not allow
Yet ask organized religion on the basis of the orgin of things they make a speech but have no proof but it can't b have anything to do with science.
Ask a faith believer they say I have faith but no proof
Ask an athiest they say we don't know but it can't be God or intellectual design.
If you truely don't know how do you know you can exclude anything??eace

You do know that each of your umm Hypotheses ends with the word theory do you not?
Flexible yet unproven?

presluc said:

Well that's nothing new ask two yes or no questions get a 9 paragraph speech.
Bottom line you got no proof

Second answer what it's better to be an athiest cause are explanation is longer?

As far as how God works I do not know.
Once I suggested that perhaps God started evolution planted some ideas and sent the human race on it's way.
This idea was met with some greivous from bothe organized religion and athiest as well as agnostic.
The idea that this could happen according to organized religion God would have to have something to do with science that we can not tolerate.
The atheist and some agnostic said that this could never happen since science would have to be connected to God this we can not allow
Yet ask organized religion on the basis of the orgin of things they make a speech but have no proof but it can't b have anything to do with science.
Ask a faith believer they say I have faith but no proof
Ask an athiest they say we don't know but it can't be God or intellectual design.
If you truely don't know how do you know you can exclude anything??eace

You do know that each of your umm Hypotheses ends with the word theory do you not?
Flexible yet unproven?

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I think you're confusing theories and hypotheses... again.
Read through their differences: Scientific Laws, Hypotheses, and Theories - The Scientific Method

In layman’s terms, if something is said to be “just a theory,” it usually means that it is a mere guess, or is unproved. It might even lack credibility. But in scientific terms, a theory implies that something has been proven and is generally accepted as being true.
A theory is what one or more hypotheses become once they have been verified and accepted to be true. A theory is an explanation of a set of related observations or events based upon proven hypotheses and verified multiple times by detached groups of researchers. Unfortunately, even some scientists often use the term "theory" in a more colloquial sense, when they really mean to say "hypothesis." That makes its true meaning in science even more confusing to the general public.

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iamitter said:

I think you're confusing theories and hypotheses... again.
Read through their differences: Scientific Laws, Hypotheses, and Theories - The Scientific Method

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Verified and accepted by who to be true.

Sorry but according to Websters, theory is plan, scheme, fomula, analysis, doctrine hypotheseis, speculation supposition contempllation, no where does iit say fact or proven fact.
Of course that was copyright 1983.
Perhaps you've changed the meaning since then, when were you going to start burning these books with the old meaning?
However bottom line you got no proof, nothing iron clad.eace

presluc said:

Verified and accepted by who to be true.

Sorry but according to Websters, theory is plan, scheme, fomula, analysis, doctrine hypotheseis, speculation supposition contempllation, no where does iit say fact or proven fact.
Of course that was copyright 1983.
Perhaps you've changed the meaning since then, when were you going to start burning these books with the old meaning?
However bottom line you got no proof, nothing iron clad.eace

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For webster, scientific theory is 5) "5
: a plausible or scientifically acceptable general principle or body of principles offered to explain phenomena <the wave theory of light> "

I mean, the theory of gravity, no proof, nothing iron clad, right?
Verified and accepted to be true by scientists, experts in their fields.
A scientific theory is not a regular theory.

Geo -

welcome back to the circus, tim. i started a response to this earlier... lost my connection. I am gonna respond in separate posts to the separate issues, if you have no objections. it will help to avoid the "kid's toybox" effect

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Thanks, and.. Not at all, although I have seen some unique arguments presented in this thread.

the statement "The universe is perfect, God is perfect" does nothing to define either God or perfection or the universe.

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I'm not going to post your entire idea here, but I have read it, and it is what I am responding to.

"Perfect" is another word I have trouble with, but in the sense that I used it explaining the universe, it could be defined as simply understanding at a fundamental level that the universe seems, for all its potential faults, to have some direction. Consider. We can get from there to here, but we cannot go from here to back to there. We can predict the future, and direct our resources to that location, but what we can't do is know how to get back here, once we get there. This implies a forward momentum, or some "directional movement" that cannot return along its original path. This does not mean it is a perfect thing (The universe), but if there is one rule that would remain consistent in spite of our presence, it would be that EVERYTHING in the universe would follow this rule. All of the energy, and all its matter cannot get back there, from here.

Intelligence for me, is defined by understanding, and observing this phenomenon. What is odd is that, it is difficult to imagine NOT being aware that time follows some direction... The Universe is perfect simply because I know of nothing more perfect outside the inconceivable boundaries that is the universe.

your initial statement is true, but says nothing

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I don't agree. It says that we might one day know of its perfectness.

the car cannot be blue. the car is red because it cannot be any color but red and STILL be red. any imperfection in a creation by a consistent being is an illusion.... it must be 'perfect' if it is consistent WITH that being- it cannot be otherwise... there is no otherwise to be

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Not sure I follow?

now, this does not exclude God (of any description) from reason. it does not negate the premise of a designed universe - as you can see, a universe without God has the same qualifications. i only mention it to keep us aligned with a+b=c, avoiding the a=a=a pseudo-syllogism.

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I don't think I'm arguing against this? ID for me doesn't require any description of God. God is a place-holder for the unknown, I'm arguing only that the universe is an intelligent system (Recognizably) and it follows that, this intelligence could be designed. Most would agree there are aspects of the universe that are intelligent systems, (Mechanics if you will) but those same people would argue that these systems were not, nor could they have been designed, correct? All intelligent systems, notwithstanding the universe itself (For the sake of argument) I know of, were designed with purpose. The purpose, and the indication of intelligence is in recognition of that design.

a die does NOT produce a random number in the sense that there is no cause for it. there IS a cause. the numbers were placed on the die. the die was caused to tumble. how it finally settles is determined by the laws of Newtonian physics. it is random only in the sense that it is unpredictable. it is unpredictable for the same reason that the weather is... the process is far too complicated for anyone to anticipate all the micro-causes within it. but that does not mean that the causes are not there. it was this sorta thing that produced Chaos and Complexity theories in physics

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Newtonian physics will only tell you that the dice must be set in motion, and that at some point they will come to a stop, and rest. It does not tell you what number the dice will settle under. It is unpredictable, and hence, when the dice are caused to move, the number they finally settle on, regardless of how many sides, or numbers, will always be random!

well, as a colloquial usage, i suppose, and yes it is a step in evolution at work. but no, it is not natural selection.

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Natural selection is a mechanism that produces changes in the gene frequency from one generation to the next. As a result, organisms become better adapted to their environment. It is important to keep in mind . . . that natural selection does not act on individuals; it acts on populations. Individual organisms cannot become better-adapted to their environment.

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The offspring of two organisms can become better adapted to their environment, than the previous generation. Evolutionary theorists don't like this truism because it represents an important gap in their logic. Natural selection simply cannot be observed in a single individual offspring, and the only way to measure evolution is by what populations do, but the predictive power is only retrodictive. Meaning we can explain what happened, after it happened, and the theory is still left valid. Think of a single offspring of two individuals as a single grain of sand falling through the cracks in your analogy! The evolution took place, but you couldn't tell until you observed the size, shape, and frequency of the individual grains.

Evolution is fact, can and has been shown. Is evolution the ONLY process going on in predicating the form of every living thing? THAT is unproven as unprovable, but it is certainly the prevailing opinion among scientists.

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No, if the circumstances change (The environment) natural selection does not make a prediction. It only describes why certain phenomenon are observed in the present, as a direct result of the past. I agree that we evolve, I am not arguing that. What I am suggesting is that you should also consider that natural selection as a mechanism, is only retrodictive. For instance, NS has hindsight, it has no foresight. Theorists pat themselves on the back because their retrodictive powers need not invoke any defining purpose, only cause. And, scold Intelligent Design proponents because their central theory demands that design have purpose. I've argued just how we can conceive, and attribute purpose from design, but you're not buying it. I respect that, but it doesn't make me wrong.

of course it is. that is the whole point of ID. but in saying so, proponents are putting the horse before the cart - you are coming to a conclusion based on something OTHER than evidence, then looking for evidence to show that you conclusion is "right". that is not really how science works.

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Evolution theory is not incompatible with ID, and I understand we're arguing is two directions here. I'm not trying to prove evolution wrong, only that the science is sometimes ambiguous. What I mean is that, the theory suffers from being predictive. I don't agree with you that I have drawn a conclusion and then searched for the premises. I observe that there is an intelligence, and order in the universe, and that we humans are aware of it, and that it is not an illusion, that it is real. All intelligent systems (or machines) are designed as far as I know with purpose. It leads me to believe that if I am aware of this, and if it is true, then it follows that the universe must also be an intelligent system, and if so, since humans did not create the universe (A discussion all in itself) then something intelligent did, and it did it for a purpose, since all intelligent systems, or machines are built with purpose in mind.

we are OF the universe. so are rocks. rocks are NOT intelligent. so the universe is and is not intelligent. sorry, tim, but this just doesn't seem to carry a lot of meaning.

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Ahh.. See. A single atom is not intelligent unless it is working, and by extension a rock is not intelligent either. That's the point, Geo. The rock could be an artifact of purpose, similar to marbles being the artifact of the young lad who wins the marbles championship of the world! They had purpose, but no longer since now that young lad is the marble champion of the world, and his self awareness is now approaching more complete. The marbles were simply devices within the framework of the intelligent consciousness.

exactly. existence IS meaningless. "meaning" is meaningless. (OK... NOW i am in for it).

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No, it's just not very scientific.

again, there seems a lack of connective tissue between premise A: a rock is not intelligent and premise B: the solar system is intelligent. if it seems a reasonable extrapolation that 'intelligence' cannot come from nowhere (which is what it sounds as if you are saying) and so must exist 'of itself'.... i think we might want to examine what we mean by 'intelligence'.

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Intelligence to me is merely a higher order of understanding when applied to something other than humans, however, intelligence as defined by humanity, is a bit more tricky. I think put simply, intelligence is a capacity to learn, and apply that knowledge!

I mentioned it because he also draws parallels between the bizarre phenomena that QM proposes and much of Eastern philosophical thinking. in that, i think there a suggestion of corollary between pure science and pure philosophy that might suggest an intelligence behind it

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I think that applied philosophy bridges the gap between direction, and science, when science shows no direction. (Stuck in the mud) You might argue that science doesn't have a direction, but if we stipulate that the universe, in terms of time, has direction, then, yeah science has a direction, and it is away from the past!


Tim-

Guy Incognito said:

I don't know what you mean when you say I "don't support aliens." I've mentioned in other threads that extraterrestrial life is no more likely to exist, absent evidence, than the flying spaghetti monster. But if aliens did exist, and I see no reason to think the cannot exist in principle, nothing I'm speaking of would change. Their subjective experience would have value as well.

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That was a very poor choice of words. I was getting pretty tired by the time I made that post. The flying spaghetti monster and life outside of Earth are two completely different things. Life outside of Earth is based in probability, while the flying spaghetti monster is a parody of the baseless claims of religion. I was using it as an argument against human superiority, alongside earthly species I also brought up the highly likely possibility of alien life.

Guy Incognito said:

Let's analyze what you are really saying here. You aren't making a scientific argument, because you are not basing any of this on data. You are philosophizing as to where to place value. You have an intuition that tells you there must be something greater than our mundane experiences here on earth, but you can't put your finger on what. Despite dressing it up in scientific terminology, you are basically talking about the religious impulse.

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Yes I am. I'm comparing the scale of the universe, to the scale of Earth, I'm also measuring the time that the Earth has been in existence, and much less, the human race, then I measure the intelligence of Earth's creatures, and see how some of them come close to human intelligence... Long story short, when you think about the scale of Earth and the scale of the universe it really becomes preposterous to think life is an isolated occurrence. And based on the fact that some species already come close, it's highly unlikely that humans are the most intelligent creatures in the universe. Science also bases things off of mathematics and probability, it's not necessary to see aliens to see the likelihood of their existence.

I have no intuition whatsoever. I'm just weighing things out, and coming to what I think is the best conclusion. I don't know that alien life exists, but I do know it's very likely that it does. Mundane wouldn't be the word... Actually I could spend hours explaining the inner-workings of my mind and how I come to these conclusions. I literally study everything. There may very well be multiple other reasons I have come to my conclusions about alien life, and I'm only using this scientific one to rationalize them, but they have nothing to do with religion.

Guy Incognito said:

And I think that's great if people can use science to achieve religious ends. But what's happening to you is that science, while underlying the religious questions you are asking, is also serving as an impediment to your achieving any understanding or resolution of them. You're so caught up in filling in the gaps left by science that your imagination fills in those gaps with sciencey sounding stuff that has no basis in data. It's not only depressing, it's fundamentally illogical. You need to just let go and allow yourself to be happy.

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Not even remotely. I couldn't even begin to explain how off you are.

ShivanCommander said:

Hello, just seeing what everyone's thoughts are on intelligent design. Intelligent design is the idea that life and the universe were created by a highly sophisticated entity known as the intelligent designer, or intelligent agent. This intelligent designer then created the universe to it's own specifications and created life in it. It's a non-religious view on creationism and the origins of man, as opposed to evolution and natural selection. What are your thoughts on intelligent design?

More Info: Intelligent design - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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Non religious view on creationism... that's kind of contradictory

presluc said:

Well that's nothing new ask two yes or no questions get a 9 paragraph speech.
Bottom line you got no proof

Second answer what it's better to be an athiest cause are explanation is longer?

As far as how God works I do not know.
Once I suggested that perhaps God started evolution planted some ideas and sent the human race on it's way.
This idea was met with some greivous from bothe organized religion and athiest as well as agnostic.
The idea that this could happen according to organized religion God would have to have something to do with science that we can not tolerate.
The atheist and some agnostic said that this could never happen since science would have to be connected to God this we can not allow
Yet ask organized religion on the basis of the orgin of things they make a speech but have no proof but it can't b have anything to do with science.
Ask a faith believer they say I have faith but no proof
Ask an athiest they say we don't know but it can't be God or intellectual design.
If you truely don't know how do you know you can exclude anything??eace

You do know that each of your umm Hypotheses ends with the word theory do you not?
Flexible yet unproven?

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I am not excluding anything. Give me evidence that god did it, and I will consider it. Give me overwhelming evidence that god did it, and I will accept that god did. I do know that some are going to find this next bit offensive, but I really don't know any other way to make the same argument clearly, so here goes: Give me evidence pink unicorns did it, and I will consider it. Give me overwhelming evidence that pink unicorns did it, and I will accept it.

Can't you see where we are at here? You accuse atheists of excluding god from the set of explanations, and yet it is you that excludes an infinite number of alternate explanations. If you have evidence, real evidence, for why you choose to consider that god did it as opposed to considering that pink unicorns did it, atheists will take your evidence seriously. Really, they will, trust me on that. But you don't, or at least, you have not presented it. And in years and years of discussing these matters, never has any believer presented to me any evidence whatsoever that god did it.

So, atheists consign "god did it" to the bin containing the magical pink unicorn hypotheses, along with an infinite number of imaginative other speculations. We are ready and willing to retrieve any of those speculations out of the bin. Just give us evidence.

And just for the record, my descriptions of hypotheses did not turn into me calling them theories. I was talking about two separate but related matters, and contrasting hypotheses with theories. I am sorry you didn't understand that. I even oversimplified the matter a bit in order not to bring unnecessary confusion into it. You really do need to gain a firm grasp of speculation, hypothesizing and theories. In science, not Websters. If you do not do this, you will continue to fail to understand what people are talking about.

People, there's proof that if we were created, it wasn't by anything intelligent.

"Inteligent design" is religion and suitable for teaching is a science classroom as an example of how conmen can pervert the appearance of the scientific method for fraudulent purposes, like the debunked Anthropogenic Global Warming theory.

digsbe said:

There is no physical proof that a species has evolved from another species. Just ideas and theories and nothing more.

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Wrong.

The Donkey, the Horse, and the Zebra are three (3) distinct species.

Each of those species draws it's heritage from eo hippus. Therefore, while some could claim that the evolution of one species into a different species is not evidence of speciation, the fact that extant branches of three distinct species from a solitary parent species is evidence of nothing but evolutionary speciation.

Ergo, your position is false.

SheWolf said:

Non religious view on creationism... that's kind of contradictory

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I honestly have no idea how anyone could work it out to be anything but at least theistic, so I concur with your assessment. It is a religious view, even if not specific to any particular creation myth. It is, in the end, a speculation which postulates that at least one of the creation myths is in fact true.

Hicup said:

I already did explain it. What does evolution do to refute intelligent design?


Tim-

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Conform to known fact.

Dezaad said:

I honestly have no idea how anyone could work it out to be anything but at least theistic, so I concur with your assessment. It is a religious view, even if not specific to any particular creation myth. It is, in the end, a speculation which postulates that at least one of the creation myths is in fact true.

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Not necessarily. Keeping in mind the axiom that any science significantly advanced will seem like magic to a lesser advanced level of science, then we can take that to a further extreme and postulate, in the ID theory, that the universe was indeed created by design, but said designer is not the omniscient, omnipotent entity we typically refer to as God. In other words, this creator or creators (as it could be a team) are outside our universe and are conducting an experiment. Time flow for them could be hours to our eons.

Mayor Snorkum said:

Conform to known fact.

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Yes, but it has no forward-looking predictive value. Einstien's theory of relativity predicted numerous things, and we have discovered some of them. Among them is gravitational lensing, and phenomenon recently proven. Many others..

Tim-

Hicup said:

Yes, but it has no forward-looking predictive value. Einstien's theory of relativity predicted numerous things, and we have discovered some of them. Among them is gravitational lensing, and phenomenon recently proven. Many others..

Tim-

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How about increased mutation rates in more dynamic environments upon which we base our seasonal flu vaccinations and predict antibiotic resistance?

maquiscat said:

Not necessarily. Keeping in mind the axiom that any science significantly advanced will seem like magic to a lesser advanced level of science, then we can take that to a further extreme and postulate, in the ID theory, that the universe was indeed created by design, but said designer is not the omniscient, omnipotent entity we typically refer to as God. In other words, this creator or creators (as it could be a team) are outside our universe and are conducting an experiment. Time flow for them could be hours to our eons.

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Ok, I thought of that. But, how could these creators be different from actual gods?

And as for this speculation, which is what it is, how would we verify it? How would we study it? If we cannot, it does not belong in a science class.

Ben K. said:

How about increased mutation rates in more dynamic environments upon which we base our seasonal flu vaccinations and predict antibiotic resistance?

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But that predictive value comes from observing, and quantifying past environments, and only holds value when the forward prediction matches the identical circumstances we observe in our quantifiable experience. To say that life forms increase mutations in fast moving, dynamic environments is something we intuitively expect based on what we have observed in the past, but it is not a prediction that you can quantify variables for. How would you set up an experiment to test your predictive theory? What would you control for, and how would you measure its success? Would it be reproducable?


Tim-

I would just add, that, I would consider a major breakthrough in evolutionary science (And intelligent design for that matter) if it could identify past environmental conditions for a life form, replicate that condition in a heavily controlled closed system, and see if ancient (Junk DNA) is utilized in the sequencing of genes. If these mutations would "revert" back to a mutation that places the organism in an position to survive the environment, it would suggest to me that DNA is indeed intelligent. We currently know of no memory storage ability in the structure of DNA, but most of us would agree that one indication of capacity for intelligence would require some system of memory recall. Utilizing ancient DNA to mutate back to a state when an environment closely matches a state a life form was subject to, would be very interesting, and might move the science of both natural selection, and ID forward.


Tim-

Dezaad said:

Ok, I thought of that. But, how could these creators be different from actual gods?

And as for this speculation, which is what it is, how would we verify it? How would we study it? If we cannot, it does not belong in a science class.

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All science starts out as speculation. Am I correct in saying that you believe that there was a point where Evolution should not have been taught in the classroom? What would be the turning point? What was the turning point for Evolution?

Would you say that radiation has no place in science classes in the period of time before we were able to detect and measure it?

I totally agree that ID (as tied to a Christian world-view as it can be) or any other metaphysics regarding God, creation, or spirituality does NOT belong in a friggen science class. There should be a metaphysics class offered in high school to explore these issues: God, creation, spirituality, subjective/objective ontologies/epistemologies, solipsism, nondualism, realism, idealism, constructionism/constructivism, neoplatonism, infallibilism, fallibilism, reliabilism, etc.

Hicup said:

"Perfect" . . .could be defined as simply understanding at a fundamental level that the universe seems . . .to have some direction. Consider. We can get from there to here, but we cannot go from here to back to there.

We can predict the future, and direct our resources to that location, but what we can't do is know how to get back here, once we get there. This implies a forward momentum, or some "directional movement" that cannot return along its original path.

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Tim, thanks for returning. given the rather minor, even picky, distinction between 'making predictions, and "predicting", the above seems true, yeah... annoying, innit?

and not just because i would love to time travel, but because it does not seem rational that if time and space are two aspects of the same 'fabric' we could travel in all dimensions through one form but only one direction in through the other.

that said, i think you have established, at least well enough for me, that the universe we inhabit has direction. that is a trick statement, though... "seems" being the operative word.

This does not mean it is a perfect thing (The universe), but if there is one rule that would remain consistent in spite of our presence, it would be that EVERYTHING in the universe would follow this rule. All of the energy, and all its matter cannot get back there, from here.

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again, cannot dispute that. what physicists would say is everything DOES follow that rule. We are simply incapable of experiencing it intellectually. they would have it that time as a unidirectional dimension is a product of our consciousness, not of time itself. Our awareness of events occurs as events (points in time) become observable. now, I personally do not pretend to understand this vary well (though i find the idea fascinating) and so will not pretend to explain it.

I know of nothing more perfect outside the inconceivable boundaries that is the universe.

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i still think the 'universe is perfect' statement to be essentially empty and essentially inessential to the meat of the argument. the red car and such... is an example of "begging the question" ("a fallacy in which the premises include the claim that the conclusion is true") - in this case, of the meaning of perfection. the universe is perfect because it cannot be imperfect.

Most would agree there are aspects of the universe that are intelligent systems, (Mechanics if you will) but those same people would argue that these systems were not, nor could they have been designed, correct?

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arguable. complexity seems to demonstrate intelligence. that is why we came up with 'weather gods'... the planet's weather systems certain seem to be alive, to act willfully. complexity and emergence is where these same sorta questions have driven many physicists (and science philosophers). i love playing in that field myself. The book Complexity by M. Mitchell Waldrop is one of the most amazing books i have ever read. there is a new edition out... i still have my old one, but maybe i will get the new one, too.
'

All intelligent systems. . . were designed with purpose.

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again, an assumption, WE are intelligent systems. I would argue that, if WE have a purpose, i cannot discover it.

The purpose, and the indication of intelligence is in recognition of that design.
[ . . . . when the dice are caused to move, the number they finally settle on, regardless of how many sides, or numbers, will always be random!

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random only as a synonym of unpredictable, but that unpredictability is a limitation in our intellectual powers, not a trait of the die OR of the process [the newtonian physics) of tossing them.

The offspring of two organisms can become better adapted to their environment, than the previous generation. Evolutionary theorists don't like this truism because it represents an important gap in their logic. Natural selection simply cannot be observed in a single individual offspring, and the only way to measure evolution is by what populations do, but the predictive power is only retrodictive.

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well, this is an instance of your choosing you definition over theirs. but... that an indvidual within a population MAY in fact, be individually better able to exploit the benefits of his environment still does not equate to evolution. that may make him a detriment to his environment (as humans frequently are).

evolution produces NEW SPECIES from these adaptations. THAT individual is not a new species. even if that individual has changed genetically such that he can no longer reproduce with the members of his population (the broad definition of a species), still he is not a species. an individual is not a species. mutation operates at the individual level, evolution works on populations.

What I am suggesting is that you should also consider that natural selection as a mechanism, is only retrodictive. For instance, NS has hindsight, it has no foresight.

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evolution has no sight whatsoever.

retrodictive powers need not invoke any defining purpose, only cause. . . . [ID's] central theory demands that design have purpose. I've argued just how we can conceive, and attribute purpose from design, but you're not buying it. I respect that, but it doesn't make me wrong.

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nicely summarized. yes, you can conceive...so could the ancients... hebrews, greeks, celts... and it makes for fine philosophy. it does not make for science.

I don't agree with you that I have drawn a conclusion and then searched for the premises. I observe that there is an intelligence, and order in the universe

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order is observable, intelligence as a cause of that order is an unsupported assumption. look closely at the following extract summary:

systems are designed as far as I know . . . leads me to believe . . . .if it is true, . . . the universe must also be . . .and if so

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not to be ungenerous, but you see might point? not a bad hypothetical train of reasoning, except that it leads to an unsupported conclusion: "humans did not create the universe . . then something intelligent did" and this to a second unsupported supposition "and it did it for a purpose". but there is no connective tissue. no science.

meaning is subjective. meaning obliges something to be meaningful to. your life will certainly have meaning to YOU, but life itself... who or what does it have meaning to? to Unlife?

I think that applied philosophy bridges the gap between direction, and science, when science shows no direction. (Stuck in the mud) You might argue that science doesn't have a direction, but if we stipulate that the universe, in terms of time, has direction, then, yeah science has a direction, and it is away from the past!

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philosophy is a good starting point for the pursuit of science. but for science to begin, all presumptions must be abandoned. we cannot assume the conclusion of our investigation or we risk.

weather has me down a little.... but it is spring break so i can afford to be on the rag for a day or two.

geo.

iamitter said:

For webster, scientific theory is 5) "5
: a plausible or scientifically acceptable general principle or body of principles offered to explain phenomena <the wave theory of light> "

I mean, the theory of gravity, no proof, nothing iron clad, right?
Verified and accepted to be true by scientists, experts in their fields.
A scientific theory is not a regular theory.

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Come on , man you can do better than that.
Verified and accepted by scientist please you are talking natural law here if they hadn't verified or accepted it what we would all just float away??? lol
We both know that gravity was not invented or proven , gravity was around long before the word gravity was used .
Gravity has been proven time and again where there is no gravity what happens you float right, where there is gravity you don't that's proof enough for me.

Some scientific theories can be proven aka the spliting of an atom, DNA map.and the list goes on.
Perhaps one day alternitive fuel as well as space travel to distant solar sytemes will be scientific theories that can be proven.
These are theories that can and should be worked on harder instead of trying to theorize on the creation got started.

Which every theory that has been presented by scientist about the creation of the universe as holes in it so wide you could drive a truck through.
I can understand people questioning me having faith in someone that I can not prove but some of these scientific theories make my faith look pretty good.eace

presluc said:

Come on , man you can do better than that.
Verified and accepted by scientist please you are talking natural law here if they hadn't verified or accepted it what we would all just float away??? lol
We both know that gravity was not invented or proven , gravity was around long before the word gravity was used .
Gravity has been proven time and again where there is no gravity what happens you float right, where there is gravity you don't that's proof enough for me.

Some scientific theories can be proven aka the spliting of an atom, DNA map.and the list goes on.
Perhaps one day alternitive fuel as well as space travel to distant solar sytemes will be scientific theories that can be proven.
These are theories that can and should be worked on harder instead of trying to theorize on the creation got started.

Which every theory that has been presented by scientist about the creation of the universe as holes in it so wide you could drive a truck through.
I can understand people questioning me having faith in someone that I can not prove but some of these scientific theories make my faith look pretty good.eace

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I can see there's no point in explaining the definition of a scientific theory to you - maybe someone else has the patience for this.

I'll leave you with the note that scientific theories cannot be proven true. They can only be accepted as there is significant evidence for it and it has not been dis-proven yet.

Dezaad said:

I am not excluding anything. Give me evidence that god did it, and I will consider it. Give me overwhelming evidence that god did it, and I will accept that god did. I do know that some are going to find this next bit offensive, but I really don't know any other way to make the same argument clearly, so here goes: Give me evidence pink unicorns did it, and I will consider it. Give me overwhelming evidence that pink unicorns did it, and I will accept it.

Can't you see where we are at here? You accuse atheists of excluding god from the set of explanations, and yet it is you that excludes an infinite number of alternate explanations. If you have evidence, real evidence, for why you choose to consider that god did it as opposed to considering that pink unicorns did it, atheists will take your evidence seriously. Really, they will, trust me on that. But you don't, or at least, you have not presented it. And in years and years of discussing these matters, never has any believer presented to me any evidence whatsoever that god did it.

So, atheists consign "god did it" to the bin containing the magical pink unicorn hypotheses, along with an infinite number of imaginative other speculations. We are ready and willing to retrieve any of those speculations out of the bin. Just give us evidence.

And just for the record, my descriptions of hypotheses did not turn into me calling them theories. I was talking about two separate but related matters, and contrasting hypotheses with theories. I am sorry you didn't understand that. I even oversimplified the matter a bit in order not to bring unnecessary confusion into it. You really do need to gain a firm grasp of speculation, hypothesizing and theories. In science, not Websters. If you do not do this, you will continue to fail to understand what people are talking about.

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Give me evidence that the creation of the universe was due to science alone.
Give me overwelming evidence not theory that the creation of the universe just happen to appear from nothing and then science took over I'll listen.

Where am I at??
Ok athiest you tell me how the creation of all things started?
Ya can't you don't know remember.

But you do know that there could be no God involved or no Intelligent design involed.
I'd like to know how you know that?

That's what makes things easy for me I have faith in God , I've already stated I have no proof.
However these alternitive explanations , I'm going to ask athiest the same thing they ask me .
Where is your proof?
If scientific theory is proven a lot of people will be changeing their minds.
One small problem it hasn't happened yet.

So science has broken off from websters huh?

In short theory means speculation to people but not scientist.?
Speculation is a guess but not to scientist?
What athiest/ scientist have their own special rules and regs now.
What applies to people does not apply to athiest/scientist???
That's a failed systeme ny friend for a rose by any other name is but a rose,
A guess by any other name is still just a guess.