As a quick follow-up, I did not intend to imply that “evolution” only applies to humans and other vertibrates… plants, viruses and bacteria certainly count as living organisms. And, assuming for a moment that our Intelligent Designer was “Thraglon Compendium from Omnicron-Persei-8?”, what or who created that or them? (forgive me if I don’t know what the "Thraglon Compendium from Omnicron-Persei-8?, other than to guess that it is a “collection of Thraglons”…
Shocker! An ID’er not accepting the facts…my world view is shaken to the core.
First, please check that run-on sentence. I don’t think it ended with the point you meant to make when you started…or there are a few commas missing or ???
But I think I get your point, and I’ll give you my run-on reply. Since we have been unable to discover and connect every single dot from 4 billion years ago to today, then obviously the conclusion is to thus believe a bunch of campfire stories from a few thousand years ago written down by a bunch of Jews walking around in exile. Yeah, that’s intelligent. :dubious:
As to who created the ficticious science-fiction overlords who then created us…Isn’t that in the Bible? No? Well then, obviously it can’t be true, because we all know for a fact that if it is in the good book, then it must be true.
And all those other religions and their theories…they’re just wrong. Obviously. We can prove they are wrong. Don’t ask me why God allowed all those billions of mis-guided sheep to believe their views…I’d have just created one religion. But I guess he needed to design a system of strife. You know, sorta like why The Matrix was re-programmed to have suffering. War and strife are good for us, donchaya know. The intelligence of The Designer is far too great for mere mortals to understand.
-Tcat
Nahhh… I don’t believe that’s the foregone conclusion either… I think it’s more complicated than that. You’re quite sure, that’s for sure, but I am not. Could any of this not be like “phlogiston”?
I generally agree with your notion about the OT (campfire stories, that’s funny): it is very heavy in superstition, parables and spritual metaphors (and I don’t want to get into a purist archeo-anthropoligcal view of The Bible, which is a valid perspective on the text).
Which brings me back to my original objection: “intelligent design” is not synonymous with “perfect design”. If the design is adequate when viewed under the light of evolution, why is it suddenly inferior when viewed in light of supposed ID? Either the design is functional, or it is not. Show me any man-made object, for example, that must perform multiiple functions and is perfectly designed.
In other words, you can’t complain about the inadequecies of things like vertebrate eyes and human backs just because some supposed omnipotent designer was responsible for them. If the design is adequate and functional as a product of evolution, it is likewise adequate and functional as a product of ID.
Or, to once again hammer my main point: you can’t tell anything about the presence or nature of any supposed “intelligent designer” by looking at how organisms are put together. There are plenty of reasons to reject ID as science, or even as a theoretical possibility. But you can’t tell if God exists by looking at a squirrel.
Do auto designers have any influence over whether their products are subsequently destroyed as a result of accident or carelessness? Death due to bad luck says nothing whatsoever about the nature of the designer itself. An omnipotent designer does not necessarily imply omnipotence in all realms. Would you blame the watchmaker for faulty craftsmanship if someone decided to take one of his products and squash it in a machine press?
You’ve apparently never read anything I’ve ever written if you even think I have a god. Note the user name; that’s not an ironic choice.
I think ID is crap, is bunk, and is by no means anything resembling science. What I am saying is that arguments whereby one can look at the structure and function of organisms and deduce that there is no God are just as flawed as arguments whereby one looks at those same organisms and deduces there is a God. If the existence, or nonexistence, of God could be so easily determined, these debates would have been settled millenia ago.
Dookie, apologies for tone. I’m a sarcastic jerk sometimes.
But man, I just don’t understand the mindset of people who argue against facts and then prop up speculation as retort. It just don’t sit well…and if you look at the ID threads on this Board, you get a ton of that…albeit probably less than at other boards.
Have a nice weekend-
-Tcat
Thanks TCat, nice weekend to you too…
I am new to the SDM Board, so I am not sure if these post are meant to be funny
or sophmoric.
For instance, the original poster complained about the un-intelligent design of
human reproduction, but the earth’s human population is over 6 billion. I don’t know about you, but I already have enough problems finding a parking space…
Others made fun of the Genesis acccount in the Bible, but how many five thousand year old short narratives have you read that describe how and why we got here?
Religious bigots and atheist dimwits misrepresent the 6 days described in the
creation account. How would you briefly describe the material in a way that could
be understood over five millenia? Did you ever notice that the fossil record is in the
order described in the creation account?
I personally don’t understand how anyone who is honest and has basic mathematics
skills can believe in Macro-Evolution (neo-Darwinism).
Most scientists have accepted Paul Dirac’s work that says the number of baryons (subatomic particles of which atoms are made) in the cosmos is 10 ee 78 (one with 78 zeros after it).
No matter who the calculator has been, the probability figures for any event involved with the origin of life is so large (approaching 10 ee 300) it is beyond the number of possible baryons in the cosmos. When Francis Crick (an atheist who discovered DNA) calculated the odds of life being able to start by chance on earth according to the Miller Oparin model, he came out with a number that he recognized as a statistical impossibility. He solved this by proposing that aliens have seeded DNA packets throughout the cosmos. Murray Eden at MIT did a similar study as did Shappiro and Frederick Hoyle. All of these studies have found probabilities much worse than one in 10 ee 78. There are so many variables that the odds are beyond the possible number of subatomic particles in the cosmos. No amount of time or space is going to solve this problem unless all known cosmology is discarded. If we are arguing from evidence, that is not a reasonable proposal.
In a very silly way, the movie “Bruce Almighty” showed that being God
(even only for a few days for the city of Buffalo, NY) is not as easy as it looks …
I would urge anyone who is serious about these topics to consider the writings of
J. Budziszewski, Michael Behe, Issac Newton, Thomas Aquinas, or John Locke.
There are many good web resources, such as www.doesgodexist.org as well.
Or you can keep fighting windmills amongst yourselves, ala Don Quixote …
sigh
First of all, a good many of us are kinda joking around in this thread.
Secondly, the only thing that adding an “intelligent designer” does to all the allegedly statistically impossible occurrences is to add an even more statistically impossible occurence – the existence of the designer. Who or what created him/her? Is it any more likely that the intelligent designer “just happened” or “always existed?” Or, if aliens seeded the cosmos with life, where did they get the seeds from?
Finally, the emergence of life, and the fact of evolution are not, as some claim, “sheer chance” or “random events.” Natural selection is anything but random. What works survives; what doesn’t dies.
Unless of course, a species’ perfectly good habitat is pummeled (and obliterated) by an asteriod.
Everything works great 'til then. 
Finally! Something we can agree upon!
Yes, I admit helping go off-thread…I apologize.
Well, for your information, there are thousands of scientists with mathematical backgrounds that do ‘believe’ in just that. In fact, just ask Steve. “He” (and his current 674 permutations) do provide a nice little counter cite to your Christian site.
As for big numbers and probabilities and odds, well, y’know, I’ve studied statistics and I agree with with the experts on this. There are lies, damn lies, and statistics. It all depends on how you setup the equation, what tolerances you allow, what speculation you use and ultimately what criteria one chooses to include/ignore that affect the outcomes.
The specific awe-inspiring “more than baryons in the cosmos” statement: I can get numbers larger than that with two packs of cards. The number of combinations of two shuffled decks (Ace of SpadesA, Ace of SpadesB, 1 of SpadesA…King of HeartsA, King of HeartsB)is 104!, or 1.029E+166. WOW! I can create more combinations than the known baryons in the cosmos with two packs of cards? What are the odds of me shuffling those two decks together over and over again for eternity and getting the same exact order twice? Pretty small odds that that would happen…but it could. It is not very likely, but it can happen.
The combinations of a single deck with Jokers is 54!, or 2.3E+71, still a very HUGE number. One would think that even getting the same combination for a single deck twice would be statistically impossible. But, is it so hard to believe that somewhere, sometime, somehow, someone shuffled a deck with the same combination twice?
And if I am going to believe any type of creationism, I doubt it would be Cristianity’s version…I rather like the Hare Krishna’s version of 8.4 million species being created all at once to allow for stratifying the levels of reincarnation from better to worse. That seems MUCH more logical and thought out. A place for everything and everything in its place. Now THAT is intelligent design.
-Tcat
Thanks for your post…
I poked around the site. It seemed more of a bait and switch than a critical
eval of the data. Seems like everyone on both sides has an agenda and will
do almost anything to protect their beliefs.
As for statistics, most of the calulations I’ve seen have come from atheists.
Vegas and state lotteries were built on the backs of those who were bad at
math. Odds like 1 in 10 ee 200 are not just small, they are statistically impossible!
Who would take those kind of odds? Maybe that is why government (aka public)
schools do such a bad job of teaching math. Someone has to buy those lottery
tickets.
Personally I think most creationist like a small God so their small minds can
rationalize it. Most Macro-evolutionist (neo-Darwin) will not even consider
the possibility of God because they want to be their own god. So they use pretzel
logic (like Crick) and dream up answers like UFO’s, which still don’t answer
the frigggin question. So they are both faith-based religions: one based on bad
religion, the other based on bad science.
As for who created God, there is an interesting book called Flatland by Abbott
(sp?). It is about a man who lives in a 2-D world and how he perceives 3-D
objects. Imagine trying to scribe a sphere to a being who could only perceive
two dimensions. So while we are limited by things like the first, second, and third laws
of thermodynamics, perhaps a God who exists in more dimensions that we
would not have those limits. For example, time is linear for us. Imagine if
time were just another dimension we could naviate. We could be in the
future, the present, and the past all at once. What the Greeks might call
the Alpha and the Omega. Einstein’s later writings touched on this.
As for re-incarnation, I find religions based on a caste system depressing. I am
blessed to live in a nation where I am not sentenced to a life based on the
stupid/wise decisions of my ancestors. In America, you can be born of modest
means (e.g. Sam Walton) in a poor state (arkansas) and become the richest
person on the planet. You can also be born wealthy and piss it away too.
I like the freedom of choice (aka life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness).
I hope to read more of you postings …
A bump, because apparently, a British biologist is taking a similar tack against IDers. You can hear with an interview with him here (scroll down to the link for Steve Jones near the bottom). One of the things that he points out is that if there was a designer, then why do some of us need glasses to be able to see and why aren’t our eyes good enough to spot things like bacteria, since they can pose such a threat to us?
Meaning that Intelligent Design should be intelligent and not a haphazard mess?
-Tcat
[QUOTE=ryobserver]
er sorry to nit pick but tonsils FUNCTIONS are to catch infections before they move down to the chest where they arew potentially much more serious and the appendix does a similar job. Wisdom teeth evolved in an age when the human diet included a lot more grit etc. by accident with the result that teeth wore down a lot more quickly ,or even fell out .The wisdoms would then come through to take their place.Tuckerfan: Excellent OP. It is unfortunate that so few find humor in the world around us and need for everything to be so serious. A spoonful of sugar does indeed, help the medicine go down.
I just suggest that folks who don’t believe in evolution to continue using the exact same bug spray in their home for 10 years.
When folks think about evolution, they tend to come up with some really wonky statements,
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The first one, that grates on my nerves the most, is that we came from apes. That statement is just so patently false, isn’t what is said and so turned around from what facts DO state, that apes and humans share a common ancestor. You and I may both be related to Thomas Jefferson, but that does not mean that we are the same, or even similar. No different that being born in a city requires that all our lifes and our progenies lives must live in that same city. If one person moves away then the fact that we were born there must be false. It boggles my feeble little mind.
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Evolution is BIG. The old, why aren’t there proto-humans today? Why isn’t there some middle ground still evolving? Evolution is small. I may have the exact numbers wrong, but a mutation that gives an organism a 1% better chance of survival, within 100 generations will become prevalent. Our generations are so long, and getting longer, it is difficult to see the changes. However, in creatures with much smaller generations (say, aphids) it is far easier.
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Survival of the Fittest. Okidoki, this has been so bandied about, the actual reasoning behind it gets lost in the rhetoric. It isn’t “only the strong survive.” It is the organism that is best suited to its environment will have an advantage. Growing a fin in a desert doesn’t do much for you, but by golly, if you are in the water, bingo! Even in our fragmented society, finding out where you fit in is important. I, for example, am pathologically unable to process information like an accountant. If I lived in a world of accountants, my life would be pretty miserable. Actually, I figure that Hell for a smartass would be locked in a room full of tax accountants.
I have always maintained that religious folks (especially bible-based ones) really don’t give god much credit, nor do they have much imagination. It is far, far more god-like to have created that first little spark, knowing the variation, the progression, the development would all occur afterwards. Not shaping a human out of dust. Hell, I can buy play-doh and make all the shapes and stuff, that isn’t the hard part. Creating one big, badass spark that would spawn all that has been on earth and all that will be on earth is far, far more impressive. I could also imagine a god that clever sitting back with an Eternal Bowl of Popcorn and watching all the neat things that happen, every, single, day. Formed us out of dust/clay/dirt. How boring. Going back to Ant101, we studied the Yanomamo. They believed they came from the blood of the moon. Where the blood dropped the most was where they, the fierce people live, where it merely splattered, is where us wimpy white folks live. How about the Easter Islanders, who are stuck out in the middle of freakin’ NOWHERE. Couldn’t see land if they tried, and yet, when they imagine themselves, they do not see themselves as being “way the hell out in the middle of nowhere.” The see themselves as the belly button of the world, right in the middle of everything.
There are so many, many interesting and exotic and fascinating creation myths, IMHO, the one in the bible is rather bland, boring and unimaginative.
If you are going to worship a god, wouldn’t you at least want to worship a clever, really powerful one? And who in the hell wants a god that has nothing better to do all day that monitor me sitting in front of my computer typing all this out? The god of my dreams is a busy, busy being. I want a god that has things to do, places to go, people to see. I want one that does more than work for a week and take eternity off. If god did create this in a week, what the hell has he been doing the rest of the time? I’m a mortal, it only took me 32 weeks to make a human, and I was working full time while I was at it.
At least give your god some credit. For an all-knowing, all-powerful dude, he seems pretty lame to me.
Re: Wisdom teeth. Many people do not have them, or have them but they never erupt.
My husband and I both had 2 full sets of adult teeth. Although they manifested differently, he is the only person I’ve ever met who had that. We joke that our daughter is going to be a shark, it is all I can do to not take her to a dentist and see exactly how many sets of teeth are there.
Also, a mutation is only significant when it affects ones ability to procreate. If wisdom teeth create problems before people became sexually mature, life will selected against them. Losing vision in old age isn’t a biggie, you have presumably already bred by then.