Even if there was a Designer, does it matter?

Yes, it matters very much whether there is a designer or not. The question of the designer's identity may be perceived as a parochial one, but if ID is true it means that just about everything we think we know about the world around us is bunk, and worse, that our methods of gaining knowledge are seriously flawed. Not a small matter, I'd say.

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"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science." - Charles Darwin.

Rahvin has already done a nice job of answering some comments on what I said, but I would like to collect some of them and reply myself. There is a big difference between directly designed products and a designed evolutionary process yielding those products. The usual ID argument takes the first as its starting point, and that's what I'm objecting to. If the products are designed then our method of finding out how they came to be is flawed, because we think they have evolved. Of course it still moves, but we would be wrong as to the mechanics of it. Someone pushing it is not quite the same as a force field. But we're not only studying its movement, we want to know about the mechanics behind the movement. No, but neither does my car change on its own. In nature, designs change. Whether a designer is involved in these changes, or whether it's evolution, is hugely important for our understanding. Again, it depends on the extend of the design. ID-ers usually find the eye (or the blood clotting chain, or the flagellum, or what have you), in short, the products themselves very strong proof of ID, and not the process of evolution. If that's the idea we're up against, I couldn't disagree more. If we're talking about a first cause only, then I couldn't care less, because we just don't know.

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"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science." - Charles Darwin.

The question is not whether it's important who exactly wrote the plays (Shakespeare, or another man with the same name), but whether it's important that they were written by someone at all, or came about by a different process (typewriting monkeys for example).I maintain that it's far more important to know how nature's oeuvre came to be, whether by author or by evolution, than who's behind it. We'll worry about who if and when we find out there is a who to worry about.

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"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science." - Charles Darwin.

Rahvin, need I say that I agree?

You, along with others in this thread, still don't understand what I'm trying to say.If the only difference between the stories of ID and science would be the start of the evolutionary process, where ID says it was instigated by an intelligent designer, and science says "we don't know (yet)", then I think I could more or less agree that the identity of the designer, and maybe even whether there is a designer at all, is of lesser importance. Because then the process by which living nature came to be would be evolution after all, in either case.But ID doesn't stop there. ID doesn't say that the designer just set everything in motion and then let evolution take its course. Instead, ID says that, for instance, the eye is directly designed, and is not the product of evolution. And that's why I think it really matters whether ID is true or not. If it's true, our current knowledge of evolution is nonsense, and so is our method by which we acquired that knowledge. It's probably the most important thing humanity could be wrong about.Unless, of course, you don't care about the truth, in which case I wonder what you're doing here.

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"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science." - Charles Darwin.

If that's the case then I apologize for my somewhat cranky remarks at the beginning and end of my previous post. Maybe we should wait for Jar to clear up the misunderstanding.

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"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science." - Charles Darwin.

Your formulation is ambiguous. Please clarify.

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"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science." - Charles Darwin.

I think I understand what you mean now, although your formulation still does not satisfy me. If at time T there was D, then is it true between T and now that there was D at T? Yes, of course it is, historical facts do not change.

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"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science." - Charles Darwin.

If this is true, and we have to find out what "methods" can be "used" to effect changes, then current science is on the wrong track, because we think things happen naturally, without someone using methods. Therefore it still makes a huge difference whether ID is true or not, because if it isn't we know pretty much how things happened, and if it is, we know nothing.

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"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science." - Charles Darwin.

Self-referential sentences that assert their own falsehood aside, yes.

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"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science." - Charles Darwin.

Another strange concept: a true opinion. But let's not dwell on that. In fact let's not dwell, period. Cut to the chase, please.

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"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science." - Charles Darwin.

If by "true opinion" you mean a belief held in something that is indeed the case, then I can still not see a logical connection. A fact is not a fact because one believes in it. Also, one can believe something to be true for the wrong reasons.Anyway, let's have it.

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"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science." - Charles Darwin.

Well, as it stands, if the "opinions" of science are accurate, then there most probably was no designer. And if there was a designer after all, then it's very curious that the consensus of the scientific world would be about 180 degrees opposite to the truth. Mind you, I'm not saying that the scientific community says that there definitely is/was no designer/god. Science simply has no reason to contemplate the possibility, because simpler explanations suffice.Most of us trust the results of scientific inquiry enough to "risk" our lives in flying contraptions controlled largely by electronic devices that rely on quantum mechanics, which is a branch of science that possibly nobody understands completely. Or we ingest impressively named chemicals prescribed by our doctors to cure even more impressively named diseases that would have killed us only half a century ago. In short, we have great faith in the methods by which science acquires its "opinions". This faith is justified because, generally, scientific explanations work.In the case of biology, the explanation in question is the theory of evolution, which even explains things that, when viewed from the point of view of Intelligent Design, can only be called "anomalies", for bearing such remarkable likeness to bad design. So, if there was a designer, then this must have repercussions for the way we acquire knowledge, because our current way of doing so tells us that no designer was involved. If we are wrong about that, what else are we wrong about?

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"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science." - Charles Darwin.

Are you suggesting that scientists have found out how the designer effected mutations, and seemingly random mutations at that? Or that they know how the designer effected non-random survival, in such a way that biologists think they are justified in calling it natural selection? I think science has overwhelmingly shown that what you call "method" is in fact a natural process.If I may paraphrase your conclusion: because the process is known, not the designer an sich, but the very concept of a designer has become irrelevant.

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"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science." - Charles Darwin.

Jar, why are you playing at misunderstanding me?

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"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science." - Charles Darwin.