Some random thoughts about a Creator

The specific claims have not only been discounted, they’ve been debunked. The argument itself is also unscientific. In fact, I’d call the movement anti-science since it boils down to: we don’t udnerstand it yet, therefore we must postulate a designer. It’s no different from what every culture on earth has done when it reached the limits of its ability to understand the natural world-- invoke something supernatural (or unearthly). It used to be that lightning could only be understood as a conscious act by some being in the sky, and that is no different from ID today.

Well, my original statement should’ve been “…the fundamentals of thermodynamics…” or “…the correct application of thermodynamics…” because I was thinking of the inconsistent open/closed arguments you describe. I was just adding a reference to this constant infusion of energy to go with the loooooong time described by Voyager’s post. Molecules left alone won’t recombine into life, no matter how long you give them, but molecules in the right conditions injected with a lot of crashy-bangy energy can (and have) rearrange themselves into life. Isaac Asimov, in his various nonfiction essays, has made compelling arguments that water- and carbon-based life are the most likely, given the chemistry involved, and these require a temperature range not dissimilar to Earth’s.

If someone wants to go the extra step and say God created the chemistry, let 'em. It just doesn’t contribute anything useful to the discussion.

Empahsis added. If you mean “in the lab”, then no, they haven’t. They’ve rearranged themselves into organic molecules, but that isn’t “life”. We really have no idea exactly how life on earth got started. There are a number of hypotheses, but not one that has been scientifically proven (in the sense that science “proves” things). We certainly have an idea about how it could have come about, but that’s entirely different from knowing how it **did **come about.

This is, I think, one of the major misunderstandings about evolution. The world we see around us didn’t happen “by accident”. Oh, sure, there might have been chance occurances here and there which have helped shape life as we know it, but ultimately, the process of evolution is about as far from “by accident” as “intelligent design” is. Natural selection guides, molds and shapes as surely as an intelligent entity might. It just operates without the need for an external entity.

My atheism and my acceptance of the theory of evolution are unrelated. I don’t know how the primordal material from which we evolved originated; I only know that the Torah, Bible and Koran are collections of mythologies, and do not stand up to any scientific examination. If you insist that all matter had to be created by God, I have to ask: Who or what created God?

And without and discernable goal or “higher purpose.”

I think the main sticking point for many is the difficulty in accepting that my life is no more meaningful in the big picture than that of a woodchuck or bacterium. How can that be. ME inconsequential? Get outta here.

Nope. It’s from an argument with a “believer” in evolution and a creationist; the title, as I said, is from a thread about it on another board. It was funny enough he had to share.

It’s simple enough. They believe in faith; not logic or consistency or facts; faith. They believe in what they believe, and anything that “proves” them right they will use. They will cherry pick and lie and distort and threaten and appeal to peoples emotions as seems useful, because their goal is to convince people, not to prove themselves right. They don’t need to, because they know they are right, and if science show they are wrong, that’s because scientists are all liars or Satanists or in the pay of the liberals.

I’ve always regarded that attitude as cowardly, or lazy. You want a purpose ? Give yourself one. It’s not like there’s a shortage of worthwhile things that need doing.

Except that an intelligent entity would be able to start from scratch and wouldn’t design us to be plagued by back problems and incredibly difficult childbirth. :slight_smile: That’s why I prefer the term unIntelligent Design to Intelligent Design. If there were a designer out there, he wouldn’t be a very good one.

Or the creator is completely detached from its creation and does not delve into the day to day struggles of us mortals. Or he’s just evil. :slight_smile:

Well, because in reality, the ID crowd are nearly all creationists when you scratch off the fresh glossy ID paint job. ID is an attempt to create a plausible scientific facade for creationism.

I think it would be really exciting if there were such a thing as a set of methods that could be mechanically applied to anything and with a few cranks of the logical handle, out would pop the dispassionate, definitive answer “designed by an intelligent entity” or “not”, and this is what the ID folks are claiming is possible. Unfortunately, merely claiming that it is possible, when you can’t demonstrate it, is worthless.

I’ve commented on this before, but I actually think this isn’t a very good argument against a sentient designer. If the designs truly are lousy, then natural selection would weed them out just as surely as a sentient entity would. NS may cobble together a solution out of what’s available, instead of designing for optimal efficiency, but the resulting designs are functional, and often elegantly so. We wouldn’t be the dominant species on the planet if things like back problems, and poorly designed eyes, and appendices, and difficult childbirth and such were really that big a deal.

The designs are what they are. If the design is thought to be clumsy, then the designer is at fault whether it’s “blind” NS or a supposed “Intellligent Designer”. It’s sort of a “damning with faint praise” thing, if used as an argument in favor of NS, as I see it…

Isn’t this what all designers do? :wink: *

*Ignoring the negative connotation of the words “cobble together.”

I’ve commented previously on this, too. We already have several good test cases wherein we know the organisms are the result of “Intelligent Design”: anything from domesticated breeds to GMOs. Yet, for some reason, they ID folks never turn their explanatory filters or specified complexity theories or whatever to these “knowns” in order to show that their processes are, indeed, scientific (as they claim). If the IDers can do that much, they will have contributed something to science. if they can’t (and instead make a bunch of vague noises about how you can tell just by looking at complex systems that they “must have been designed”, as is currently the case), then they’re not worth listening to. So much opportunity here for IDists, but none of them seem to see it.

…this is a running theme for me regarding my fellow X-tians…

If you are a follower of Jesus, stop caring about the origins of the universe and start caring about your precious Saviour in his most disturbing disguises…the homeless, the poor, the wartorn…start caring about the fact that GWB (evengelist in chief) is waging a war based on lies that is killing people Jesus loves dearly.

I don’t have any evidence for who lit the fuse on the Big Bang, but the evidence is overwhelming that GWB lied to get us into a war where hundreds of thousands of people he professes Jesus loves have died.

I believe there is a God who created the universe. The history of how he did it is written in the science of the world. What I believe is not as two dimensional as that, but it will suffice for the discussion here.

And if there is in fact a God, he certainly does not need me to defend him. My energies are better spent defending “the least of these”.

I would strongly disagree with this. While I’m sure that many creationists embrace the ID concept as a way to broaden their base, I think many of them also want to keep it pure and biblical. OTHO I think many many many more people who don’t subscribe creationism do think that a ‘God’ did play some part in creation, from guided evolution, creation of ‘humans’ as we know them, the creation of the initial life itself, to setting everything in motion from the big bang in such a perfect way that humans would evolve.

Well, yes. Which is why I don’t think the argument works as a point in favor of NS. An omnipotent designer could certainly start from scratch each time, but then his products would very probably not bear similarities sufficient to deduce any sort of relationship between them (as, indeed, there wouldn’t be), and the results would be very unlike what we actually find in nature. If, instead, the Designer worked from initial plans, and made modifications along the line as it evolved, then the results would very likely be similar to what we do see.

So, I guess my overall point is that you can’t tell by looking at an organism whether it was designed or whether it had evolved, regardless of the perceived quality of the design. If it were that easy, this discussion would have been resolved long ago.

You sure don’t sound like the christians I know in person, newcrasher.

Today at work I overheard some of my self-proclaimed devout christian co-workers (5 of them) talking loudly about how the US populace was failing to serve our current president, who is inspired by God his own self, by questioning the mission to fight terror in Iraq and bring christianity to the middle-east like Jesus wants. They blamed godless liberals (while looking in my direction :cool: ) and went on to talk about how badly christians were being persecuted in the US.

Are you sure you’re disagreeing with what I actually said? My assertion was that most IDists are creationists, not that most creationists promote ID. And by IDists, I’m talking about people who identify positively as ‘believers in intelligent design’ and subscribe to the views of Behe et al

For me, that comment was just more of a joke, hence the smiley. Sort of an: Intelligent Designer, my ass! Why is back sore all the time!!??

Yeah, you could make an analogy with cars and compare the basic design of a model T to the latest 2007 models and you’d see lots of similarities. Still, if there is some module that doesn’t work well on the older cars, we can throw it out completely and add something new-- with no traces of the earlier design.

Of coures the idea of an omnipotent designer who has to experiment with earlier versions before he gets it right is a strange contradiction. So, maybe we were “designed” by a race of highly advanced alien beings and we’re what came out of their laboratory. But then how did they come into being and if that was thru natural selection, we’ve only made the net process more complicated, not less complicated.

(again this is my opinion)
I think so, but lets break it down and you can let me know:

If we define creationist is the biblical view that God created the world in 6 days…Adam and Eve… snake… etc., and ID’ers defined that a ‘God’ had some input in the creation of the universe/life/evolution/man.

I contend that most people believe in some form of ID, but very few believe in a literal creationist view.