INTELLIGENT DESIGN: An Engineer’s Approach

Suppose that this Designer has told us some things and we didn't like it? Suppose the Designer said "jumping into bed for sex with someone you're not married to is fornication. Its wrong. And It will be judged."Well, if we like to fornicate we might want to throw out this bit of information and everyting else along with it from the speaker. Then its back to "Woe is us! Why won't this Wizard of Oz come out and explain to us?"Leave some from for the possibility that the Designer has provided some information but we threw it out because it contained some moral concepts that we disdained.This feels to us like a cat being stroked on her fur the wrong direction.We could say "But wait. We want to fornicate, steal, commit adultery, have idols, murder. Woe is us! Why DOESN'T this Wizrd come out and tell us things which doesn't rub our fur the wrong way."Maybe if you turn the cat around the rubbing won't be so annoying.Edited by jaywill, : No reason given.Edited by jaywill, : No reason given.

It didn't, and no-one has ever claimed that it did. No. The question: "Why is there evolution" is legitimate, just as the question "Why is there a designer?" is legitimate.But your bizarre assumption that evolution evolved is no more "legitimate" than assuming that blacksmiths are made out of wrought iron. It's a complete non sequitur.

Exactly. It's the rubber who is wrong, not the rubbee.If I design/build a house that accumuluates too much snow on the roof, is it the house's fault or mine? If I design/build a car that bursts into flames when I turn left, is it the car's fault or mine?Why does the "designer" get a free pass? Why blame the victim?The rubber needs to learn how to rub correctly.

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Suppose the Designer said "jumping into bed for sex with someone you're not married to is fornication. Its wrong. And It will be judged."

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I would say that the Designer should mind her own business.But that's off-topic for this thread.

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I have always preferred, as guides to human action, messy hypothetical imperatives like the Golden Rule, based on negotiation, compromise and general respect, to the Kantian categorical imperatives of absolute righteousness, in whose name we so often murder and maim until we decide that we had followed the wrong instantiation of the right generality. -- Stephen Jay Gould

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"So where did Evolution evolve from?"

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It's like falling down, or gas expanding into a region of lower density. It just comes about because that's the way nature works.You have living species produce more progeny than the environment can support. Therefore, most individuals will die without reproducing themselves. There is variation in the population: some individuals will have characteristics that will increase their chances of survival and reproductive success, others will have characteristics that will decrease their chances of reproductive success. These characteristics are usually inherited. New inheritable characteristics can come about.These are facts. And evolution is the natural and logical outcome of these facts. But this, too, I fear may be off-topic.

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I have always preferred, as guides to human action, messy hypothetical imperatives like the Golden Rule, based on negotiation, compromise and general respect, to the Kantian categorical imperatives of absolute righteousness, in whose name we so often murder and maim until we decide that we had followed the wrong instantiation of the right generality. -- Stephen Jay Gould

It seems to me, this would-be king that you may be referring to wouldn't be a very good king after all, at least not a very effective one.The problem is that a designer of such things as civilization would already know that delivering its message thru its "messengers" would not work for anybody except the naive and the dim. The designer would understand that the likelihood of tainting the message would be too great. The message would get stepped all over, by the very things that the designer was "clever" enough to recognize beforehand. That leads to the conclusion that the designer is corrupt. That's just common sense.Let me address some of the things you point out directly... We like to fornicate because we are designed to like it. What more information is there to throw out? And yes, why wouldn't this wizard of Oz come out and explain anything to us directly? Maybe it's because the designer would be exposed for what it really is. People fornicate because they like it. Nothing wrong with that.People steal because they want their fair share, in the face of ubiquitous corruption. And, they're going to do whatever they feel like doing to get it. They don't care about what creationists believe. Where is the designer for them?People commit adultery for the same reason they fornicate. A black book with gold letters isn't going to stop that.People have idols because there is nothing better to believe in.People murder for perceived justice. And remember, you can't believe everything you see on TV.

Touche, I couldn't have said it better myself.Yeah, it looks like we got a bad rubber on our hands.

I'm assuming that you don't buy the idea of a benevolent god, either.So, if you treat the earth as a closed system, would it matter where they came from? And, by the same token, would it even matter whether it was robots, aliens, or a designer?Because, regardless of what it was, wouldn't our imperatives be the same?

Actually if you're curious, I believe in a benevolent, intelligent, and efficient (or lazy) god. This God created the laws of chemistry and physics which govern our universe, and then spun everything into motion with the Big Bang. This God is smart and efficient enough to create a machine (our universe) which is able to sustain itself without his continual input. To me, this is a mark of intelligence. He created the machine- but the machine propagates itself. Science is a study of the machine created by God.Of course I understand all of this stuff about God is what I BELIEVE, as opposed to what I KNOW about the process of evolution. Perhaps this may help you answer your question about purpose. If design is "present" in nature, where is it present? In the products of the designer, or the machine created by the designer? Several people have all ready indicated the how nature's organisms are not like our manufactured cars in ways that argue against a designer. If the designer created the machine (our universe), the purpose is held in the machine, not in the individuals produced by the machine (species).

Another Deist?

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de·ism -n. The belief, based solely on reason, in a God who created the universe and then abandoned it, assuming no control over life, exerting no influence on natural phenomena, and giving no supernatural revelation.

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The definition reflecting a certain bias with the word "abandoned" instead of the less connotation laden "left"

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No less bizarre than the assumption that someone or something had to create God.So if the atheist/agnostic wants to puzzle over the problem of "But this God Creator of yours had to have a cause too." then we can also puzzle over "How did this process of Evolution evolve?"You know that for a great number of evolutionists, evolution is a replacement for an intelligent Creator. Since many evos want to replace a Creator with Evolution exactly, the problem of infinite regress can also be tranfered from the theistic view to theirs. They should take all the baggage with them and not just what they want to take.I know you guys like to play tag team. The original poser of the issue has not yet answered me on this particular point. Edited by jaywill, : No reason given.Edited by jaywill, : No reason given.Edited by jaywill, : No reason given.Edited by jaywill, : No reason given.

The problem is that the idea of an Intelligent Designer at the critter level has been absolutely refuted. See Message 8It is still possible at the critter level that there might be some Incompetent Designer, or perhaps a Trickster Designer that is intelligent but malicious, but a benign Intelligent Designer is refuted.

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

Care to substaniate this?

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Just a monkey in a long line of kings.
If "elitist" just means "not the dumbest motherfucker in the room", I'll be an elitist!
*not an actual doctor

Wouldn't any rebel in revolt claim the supposed errors of the authority he seeks to rebel against?If you had kids I'm sure they had their moments when they thought you were a "would be" parent - incompetent, not knowing what you're doing.

So you prefer your world without any final accounting or justice?Or is it that only when you're on the harmed side of the wrong doing that you'd want some final authority to correct the injustice?Edited by jaywill, : No reason given.Edited by jaywill, : No reason given.