OK, I’ll bite - why is it insane? If I understand you correctly, you seem to be asserting that it is impossible that an intelligence tolerated any delay between the beginning of the universe, and the appearance of modern man. Why is that?
What is it about that time table that makes it a logical necessity?
Regards,
Shodan
Because it’s a stupid waste of time to deliberately take as long as reality did. Tell me, how many projects do you start up, then dick around with for thirteen billion years before bothering to start the part of it that you actually want? If there were a god noodging electrons and particles around, he certainly wouldn’t have spent 130 million years playing with dinosaurs before clearing the slate to start on the beings he really wanted to make. He would have made us first - and probably on a custom-made planet a few billion years earlier.
(And don’t even start with a timeless god - such a god would also have no reason to script out an extra thirteen billion years of stuff he didn’t care about. The god being timeless doesn’t change that all that time was created for, to him, no reason whatsoever.)
The long delays make sense with abiogenesis and evolution because those are (to some degree) random. You don’t expect to get all aces on your first deal. But if you’re stacking the deck, then you do.
I am trying to come up with a less smartypants answer than “what’s the big hurry?”
But seriously, I don’t see why there would have to be such a deadline. Why is it logically impossible to fool around with electrons and dinosaurs and instead get right to making people?
Regards,
Shodan
You’re stating fundamental differences, but I’m failing to see what they are except that the universe has magnitudes more constraints and requirements. Beyond that, it’s still a mutliple objective optimization problem, just magnitudes more complex.
Huh? I don’t think you’re understanding my point. Constraints are a natural part of any design. If I’m designing a house on a plot of land that’s 50’ x 50’, I obviously can’t build a house that’s 60’ x 60’, can I? The designer may be operating under certain constraints that could include, but not limited to, the laws of physics and other basic underlying properties, available materials and interations.
What you’re probably refering to are basic requirements and criteria for determining the design. Virtually any design, unless all objectives reach a global maximum at the same point (in which case the design is trivial), inherently have flaws when compared to any arbitrary criteria. This is a place where the car example is apt. One could say that a beautifully made Italian sports care is flawed because it gets terrible gas mileage, but good gas mileage is not a meaningful criteria to the designer. Sure, he probably could give it better gas milege but, due to constraints, by improving gas mileage, he would likely reduce the value of other criteria that he deems more valuable and, thus, making it less optimal.
And, yet again, no one claimed the ID guaranteed perfect designs. Thus, the fact that humans are not absolutely perfect in form, which again is decidedly different from perfectly designed, does not mean that humans were not designed, it simply means that if we were designed we either were perfect and no longer are, or never were because that wasn’t the goal of the designer. In either case, it doesn’t contradict any of the premises at all.
No, I wasn’t point out that the entire origin of the diversity of life argument, no matter what direction you take, is inherently circular because they all require a lot of assumptions. And, yet again, I am not a proponent of ID, but attacking it because of perceived variations from absolute perfection simply means that you don’t understand how multi-variable optimization problems work.
And yes, even though I don’t agree with ID, I don’t see how a God, even an omnipotent and omniscient God doesn’t fit. You assume that an omnipotent and omniscient God would want to create perfect humans but inherently and saying that, since we aren’t perfect, he isn’t perfect. The fact that humans aren’t perfect doesn’t imply anything about the original goals of the designer himself nor does a perfect God imply that he would necessarily want to create perfect beings.
Bolding mine. At least for Christians it’s a result of the Fall.
It does follow. (provided that you accept the Bible and so forth…)
Motives are absolutely irrelevant. The motives could be because they want to subvert the educational system, or they could be because they’re trying to reconcile their faith with science, or it could be because they’re being telepathically mind controlled by aliens from Venus. The source of a theory has absolutely zero bearing on it’s validity. To say it does is an ad hominem fallacy.
Yet again, you’re conflating YEC with ID. You’re also making basic assumptions about the designer that are not necessary. Maybe the designer’s goal wasn’t humans, maybe it’s something grander and we’re just a stepping stone. If it is the Christian God, maybe it doesn’t matter how long it takes because time is completely irrelevant to him. ID is a way of addressing abiogenesis and irreducible complexity, it is NOT a way of trying to make the universe be only 6000 years old.
If you want to talk about methods for disproving ID, fine, I’m all for that, and I can give you plenty of reasons why I don’t think ID works, but that’s not what this thread is about. The OP put a bunch of questions that evolution has answers to and claimed that ID did not, and I’m arguing that ID DOES have answers to those questions, that those answers are in fact identical to the ones evolution would answer, and that it’s just a strawman argument.
The point was to show ID does not belong in the classroom, since the questions have answers that fit evolution, it does then follow that ID should have an as good or better answer if you say so. I’m waiting.
Ideas from ID like “irrecducible complexity” or “complex specified information” are not employed at all in science. You bet the intention is to make IDers irritated.
As I already pointed out the idea that I’m assuming that ID is referring to perfection is wrong, I am taking their “good” or Very good" stance as also not being scientific.
Only rhetoric will not do, as mentioned before I’m still waiting for an ID idea that can be experimented with, as the questions are based on actual research I would expect to see the same coming from the IDers
Hmmm? I didn’t say the motives implied it wasn’t a valid argument - where did I say that?
Now, whether it’s an argument worth bothering with, much less defending…
I’m conflating nothing, and I’m making one assumption about the designer - that it’s not insane.
If we weren’t the goal, the sane designer wouldn’t have bothere ID’ing us. He might have ID’d things that he did care about, but not us.
If the god was God, he still has no reason to dick around with dinos.
And, I wasn’t saying that ID was trying to prove a young earth - it merely only makes sense (as a way of making humans) if you are already assuming a young earth.
Meh, I’ll talk about whatever seems interesting at the time.
But it isn’t a strawman to ask why the ‘mysterious designer’ would have designed us with so many obvious problems. The answers aren’t the same, between evolution and ID, because the real answer that evolution provides to all those questions is, “because we aren’t the result of deliberate planning and design by an entity with an awareness of the alternative better methods”. ID, necessarily, is arguing that either the designer didn’t design the stupid parts :dubious:, or that the flaws aren’t flaws :dubious:, or that the designer was not perfectly competent. The latter point isn’t a problem for you, but it is a deathblow to those dishonest people who have the ‘unstated’ premise that the designer is some specific god (such people comprising everyone who is actually avocating the argument).
You have repeated this, but you have not bothered to explain how an ID proponent would do so, the worse part is to make it sound like if ID is not the joke that it is:
If humans were able to Fall in the first place, that is a failure of design. A few tweaks to our brain could preserve our “free will”, if desired, while making humans un-Fall-able.
The problem with “Intelligent Design”–which some people in this thread are not getting–is the problem it shares with creationism: fundamentally, anything one can’t quite understand or explain through currently understood natural processes means that “God did it.” It’s a science-stopper. More to the point, it’s non-science. It’s basically, “my brain is too small to exist in such a big universe without a god in it to make me feel better.”
Sorry, but I have nothing but contempt for “intelligent design.”
As far as the questions go, they are only answerable in any substantive, predictive way via evolutionary theory. All “I.D.” adds is “I think god did it.”
Non-science.
It was in a local paper, I can’t cite it. Regardless, it doesn’t matter, his arguments are dreadful, involving teleological arguments and such.
Learn to read? You posted well after my edit.
You could just read the wiki article or something.
The Fall is due to directly contradicting God’s orders. Intelligent people can always think they know more. The only way to mke humans free-willed and un-Fall-able would’ve been to make them perfect. If you can’t screw up, there’s no free will.
Even angels Fall.
There is a major flaw in the argument that Free Will was bestowed upon man and that man simply abused it, therefore justifying the existence of suffering.
In Christian theology, there is an End Game in which beings live eternally in perfection with God. It should be obvious upon examination of this that those beings are unable to use a Free Will to sin.
This begs the question, then: Why not start with heaven if you are an omniscient Creator whose end game is to live with beings in an eternal state of no suffering?
If, indeed, it’s true that “If you can’t screw up, there’s no free will” then there is no free will in heaven. And heaven is the end-game for all eternity. So therefore free will is not some sort of absolute requirement of any kind, and the only thing it ever accomplished was the unnecessary suffering of billions of beings.
Firstly, you can cite a local paper. The claim that you cannot do so is laughable and bizarre. Secondly, if Anthony Flew were actually senile, someone would surely have posted evidence of the fact on the internet. Thirdly, in the years since the publication of There Is a God, Flew has continued to do things which a senile person cannot do, such as publishing articles and attending conferences. Hence your claim that Flew is senile is logically false.
As for your insistence that “his arguments are dreadful”, why don’t you quote specific arguments from him and explain why they’re dreadful?
Assuming you mean Hoyle’s wiki article, I’ve read that, and I’ve read some of his scientific work as well. I find that all of it upholds high standards of logic and clarity. If you’d like to argue otherwise, I would, of course, be willing to listen.
In this post you are merely projecting your own thinking onto God. Efficiency, that is to say the dictum of doing everything by the fastest possible means, is very important to most people in the USA in the early 21ast century, but it would be arrogant and solipsistic to suppose that it’s equally important to everyone in every time and place. In fact, most people in most times and places, people put much less emphasis on efficiency, and sometimes none. Hence, there’s no justification for assuming that a nonhuman would prize efficiency either.
In fact, producing and cultivating things is one of humanity greatest joys that a human can experience, so it’s small wonder than many people draw it out for long stretches of time. Since humans are made in the image of God, it seems logical that the same is true for God.
Going beyond topic here, but you are also projecting your own thinking.
Even that thinking is too small.
But if that is the case, then God is busy in more fertile grounds:
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2008/08/22/the-beating-heart-of-w5/
We are not the focus of it all, and this became apparent after Copernicus.
In any case, Happy Valentines Day everyone!
Deism is incompatible with Intelligent Design.
Deists believe in a God who is distant, impersonal, and doesn’t meddle with the universe.
Intelligent Designers (mostly) believe in a God who meddles with critters and plants in the universe.
And you know the design process of humans would be a multiple objective optimization problem because…? You make assumptions about the nature of the designer, and the design process, then you go and use the conclusions from those assumptions to support the assumptions themselves.
I get it. You think that an intelligent designer is similar to a house or car builder. My argument is that if you’re going to take that tack, you can logically analyze the design and point out flaws inconsistent with a god figure. Your response is, in essence, “if it didn’t make sense, it wouldn’t be that way”. It’s a circular argument.
Knock it off with the condescension. I know what you’re saying, I just happen to think the concept of ID is illogical when you actually think about it without constantly resorting to this “you don’t understand because you aren’t the designer” non-logic.
Your claims about design constraints don’t fit with an omnipotent god. If God created everything, why not remove the constraints and do a better job, out of benevolence? Saying “God did it that way because he wanted to” is just side stepping the actual, logical analysis of the issue. It’s a non-answer to the questions presented in the OP.
Of course, when you notice that God wasn’t drawing out the enjoyable process of creating humanity, but in fact was not working on it at all for billions of years, this theory collapses into rubble, leaving us with God who, at best, preferred to spend his time screwing around with other things for incredible spans of time, and then, (supposedly) a hairs’ breadth from the time he’s been planning to destroy the entire shebang, says to himself “Oh my, time’s nearly up, I guess I’d better put away the cool dinos and start getting serious about those hairless monkey things.” Lemme guess; procrastination is a virtue?