Why "intelligent designers" can't grasp evolution

Great Debates
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Intelligent Designists (the “-er” is what the “-ists” posit…) do graps evolution. They even accept it, in general cases. Where they deviate from scientific thought is when they posit that an Intelligent Designer is necessary to explain the diversity of life.

I’ve often said that thast there are essentially two aspects to evolutionary theory: the mechanistic theories, and the historical pathways. Few IDists deny that the mechanisms function as adverstised; they simply deny that they can produce all known “end results”, because the specific historical pathway that is necessary to produce a given trait or structure via those mechanisms is either unknown or incomplete. For example, how can natural selection produce the vertebrate eye, or a bacterial flagellum?

In cases where science is unable to provide an answer at the time, the default assumption of IDists seems to be that the structure/behavior/other trait in question must therefore be too complicated for science to resolve the pathway, therefore a Designer must have been responsible. In other words, the Intelligent Designer is relegated to being an ad hoc explanation for unresolved historical pathways by its own proponents! ID becomes Special Creation, writ small. Eventually, science may catch up to a specific problem, and a suitable pathway is discovered (e.g., bacterial flagella may have evolved from primitive protein secretion structures), rendering the Designer unnecessary in that instance. And so it goes.

What IDists do fail to grasp, in my opinion, is the fact that evolutionary theory as currently formulated does not render an Intelligent Designer (or just plain God, if you prefer) non-existant, only that the explanations provided render such a designer unnecessary. A tinkerer is not required to explain life as we know it. That does not mean such a tinkerer does not / cannot exist.

The main point being that science is meant to be free of any particular metaphysical assumptions. God may or may not exist, but we have no way of knowing one way or the other. Therefore, it would behoove us to find explanations that do not require a god, just in case. ID, on the other hand, requires that God exist (and that God tinkered at one or more points in Life’s history, and that He left identifiable hallmarks of this tinkering…). On this basis alone, it is less powerful as an explanation, simply because it is absolutely wrong if there is no God.

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I don’t deny that some kind of “intelligence” is possible. After all, we are here and we do think. There may be something behind DNA which “desires” organization.

But I stop short of attributing that intelligence to a theistic God which is emotionally similar to man. The descriptions of an omnipotent God who creates galaxies on a whim does not fit with the painstaking process of biological evolution.

I believe the universe may organize itself on a kind of fractal system. For example nuclear/orbital organization (more theoretically than not sometimes) exists on small scales and large.

Maybe consciousness exists in the universe in a fractal way.

But a somatic cell in my pinky toe, with its fractal organelles, even though it behaves as though it knows what it is doing, synthesizing proteins and such, doesn’t have a personal relationship with the greater consciousness of which it is a component, namely, me.

Why would we believe that we can have a personal relationship with a greater consciousness, especially with all the evidence that if there is one, it don’t give a crap what happens to us.

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Tom~…thanks again for the clarification. By far, the best posts on this thread.

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Tom’s posts are good indeed, but that statement is the single most important assertion made thus far.

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There should be a “Greek Orgy” forum for gratuitous rim jobs.

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[Moderator Hat ON]

Ok, that is enough of that sort of comment, Ex Machina.

[Moderator Hat OFF]

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What do hubcaps have to do with sex?

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Wow, the greek orgies featured hubcaps thousands of years before they were invented? Who knew.

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The still have orgies in present day Greece. Sometimes they have them right in the limo with rims and all.

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And there should be a comprehension test after you read the SDMB rules, and before you post something that doesn’t belong…but we can all dream, can’t we Ex? :wally

And at the risk of performing another rim job upon the masses in the eyes of Ex…yes Lib, I do have to agree with you there.

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Yeticus, while I appreciate your support, the “Wally” smiley is also prohibited in GD. Let’s keep the discussion on the discussion and not on the posters or our personal reactions to them. There is another Forum for that.

[ /Moderating ]

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Theistic Evolution? The notion that some divine creator put things in motion with the mechanism of evolution through mutation and adaptation strikes me as even more far-fetched than a creator simply creating things as we see them now.

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Ok, I got it. I thought I had scaled back my reply enough, but apparently, I also need that comphrehension test as well. :smack:

Even though the OP is a little skewed, this thread has helped me find a definition that describes my own beliefs, and that is why I was “[del]b[/del]rimming over with joy” reading your posts, orgies notwithstanding.