Pullet, so have you replaced it with a clear-cut set of guidlines telling you how to live and what to do, or are you still stuck having to use your judgment to sort things out like those Bible-readers?
There are plenty of good arguments against ID and theism in general, but yours isn’t one of them.
I’m using my judgement right now not to call you a flame blasted troll.
Awful lot of anger for so early in the morning, Alan. Have you had your coffee yet?
You miss the point. If Pullett is a humanist I’m sure he/she accepts they have to sort things out for themselves. I’m yet to meet a humanist who thought that life provided a clear cut set of guidelines.
Fundie Bible-readers say that it is not a matter of sorting things out for themselves, there are rules that God has told them, to be found in the Bible.
I’m an atheist myself, so there’s no anger or missing the point at all. Pullet wasn’t just bashing fundies, (a worthy sport, IMO), he was claiming that because the Bible doesn’t do what fundies claim (i.e., providing unambiguous rules straight from God) it is “impossible” to make sense of and should be “scrapped.”
That’s a straw man argument, and a poor one at that. Plenty of Christians and Jews see scripture as something other than a set of unambiguous rules, and nothing in the text indicates (to me) that we should expect it to be that. And if he can read the Straight Dope without getting confused over which posts to believe and which not to, sorting out which parts of the Bible are meant as allegory or parable and which aren’t should be child’s play, if he’s willing to do a little reading on historical context and the development of the supporting religious tradition.
OTOH, I was suffering from insomnia and hadn’t had any coffee, so if I misunderstood or came across as tetchy (or if I do now) I apologize.
One thing to recall about Intelligent Design, (capitalized as a specific movement alongside science, as opposed to simple theistic evolution, a philosophical/theological approach to what science turns up), is that the proponents of Intelligent Design such as Behe and Dembski do not claim that Darwin’s Theory of Natural Selection never applies. They are usually quite happy to acknowledge that it provides the majority of the grunt labor shaping life forms. They simply want to be able to wedge God (or the god-like designer) into the equation so that they can avoid seeing an a-theistic explanation.
I am sure that Dembski’s, Pennock’s, or Behe’s explanation of fast reacting microbes would be identical to the explanation provided by Mayr, Gould, or Dawkins. They are not interested in creating a whole new Theory of Evolution, they just want to keep enough of it separate so that they can keep God in the picture.
Does any branch of evolution theory believe that the process has stopped? I’ve never heard of any. To those that say that because everything isn’t perfect there can’t be an Intellectual Design, I would say that the Grand Scheme is still playing out. Also I personally don’t think that perfection is necessarily the goal and if it is, it is not perfection according to human standards.
The point of Intelligent Design is that there are features and functions that could not have arisen by chance. “Perfection” is not part of the equation. Some opponents of Intelligent Design do, however, like to point out that if there is a designer handling things, that designer has not done a very good job, (“running the sewer through the playground,” for example, navicular disease in animals that only survive by running, etc.). It is not a serious objection to ID, only a humorous slap at those who insist that the designer must be so necessary (given the many errors in the designs).
Can this Intelligent Designer see into the future? If so, why the need to “tinker”? Could he see into the future and realize that things might need fixing, but be unable to correct it at the source? If so, does this suggest a limit to his powers?
Sorry I missed this earlier.
Pullet you are seriously out of line for Great Debates. Do not dso this again.
[ /Moderator Mode ]
No it does not suggest a limit to his powers.
Not only do we have no current knowledge of “his” goals, I don’t think we could have that knowledge. Which means we can not judge ANY design to be good/bad/close/almost, etc.
It is entirely possible there is a set of goals such that the current state of biology on this planet is an absolutely perfect instance of a solution.
Note: I do not believe in ID, and I am probably agnostic.
It doesn’t matter what the goal is. I am not judging the design. The assumption was that evolution need a little “nudge” every now and then. My question was whether the designer could foresee the need for the nudge, and if so, why not fix it then?
Well, if the current biology is in a “perfect” state, that suggests predestination. The assumption then becomes that he set it up to need the nudge for whatever his mysterious, unknowable goal might be. You might as well say that everything happens for a reason, for how do we separate biology from the rest of history?
If predestination is the justification for ID, then I submit that it is entirely possible for an Intelligent Designer to create a world where there is no tooth decay, where humans have separate apparati for breathing and eating (like snakes do, the little devils,) where free will exists, and yet everyone always makes the right choice.
I see your point, and I think we agree on one thing: ID is a crock of you know what.
But I wasn’t sure anyone could provide evidence that evolution (in the ID scheme) “needed” a nudge, because for all we know, “he” designed the system from the beginning to automatically get “nudged” at the right time.
I agree, it seems ridiculous, like having a magic wild-card variable in every mathematical equation making the solution come out right.
If the ID proponents introduce a magic wild-card, how can we put limits on it’s use? I don’t think we can.
Aside from allowing for free will, which is an entirely separate topic, I would only disagree because it’s possible, due to the physical laws of the universe (that “he” willingly abides by), that some configurations of the universe are not possible.
I will grant you that some configurations of this universe are not possible. But the Intelligent Designer made the universe, did he not? Or do the ID proponents assert that the designer is a feature of the universe? If he made it, he could make it any way he chooses.
To get back the the OP; Intelligent Design (the movement, that is), addresses things like this by aiming for a position consisting of “it’s impossible to know anything for sure, so don’t bother inquiring”. That might seem a little harsh, but in all my dealings with IDers, I’ve been given any number of detailed explanations and defences of what ID isn’t and what it doesn’t do and doesn’t assert, etc.
Trying to find out what it does say/do on any given matter is like trying to nail jelly to a tree - it is deliberately obscure, ill-defined and obfuscated, because the purpose is to stifle inquiry, rather than promote it.
Right. Where does ID fit in with the rest of Natural History, like the Big Bang, continental drift and the Ice Age? Did dinosaurs die out 65 million years ago or did they co-exist with humans? ID is promoted in order to provide students with an “escape clause” so they’re less likely to stop believing the Bible.
Not sure about it being an escape clause as such, but it’s definitely a purposeful attempt to generate a false notion of controversy and doubt where none really exists.
I was rather amused recently to hear that new Scientist had published a piece saying that perhaps as many as 50% of all published scientific papers may contain errors or be incorrect; the funny part is that the ID camp seems to have interpreted this as an invitation to choose which 50% of the material they’d like this to be.
If my interpretation of the OP is correct, then I think most people in this thread have missed the point.
I interpret the OP as saying, “Doesn’t the fact that bacteria become quickly resistant show that bacteria aren’t perfect, and hence, disprove an intelligent designer?”
And there is a factual answer to that question: those who reject evolution generally hold to the belief that (1) humans are special and (2) God allows bad stuff to happen so he can fix it. The self-consistent (but not necessarily correct) reply would be that God designed bacteria with certain loopholes so that he could show people the cure with antibiotics, and that, lest people start worshipping antibiotics, he allows bacteria to gain resistance so we will always depend on him.
I’m not that smart 
My “point” in the OP was that it was pretty obvious, and now proven, that bacteria mutate in a way that evolution would predict.
Or to put it another way, if unlimited weaselling is permitted, anything can be explained away. IDists often also explain bacterial resistance as evidence of forethought on the part of [del]God[/del] the unknown intelligent designer.
Why doesn’t He nudge things in an intelligent directione then?