Help me understand Intelligent Design

I've been pondering.Say what you will about Faith and the YECrs. Their worldview, albeit circular, is at least consistent. "We believe that this book is the absolute truth and explains the world around us."While we can argue about how well it explains what we see in the world, at least we know that the YECrs believe that the mechanisms explained in the book were used to create the world.ToErs, likewise, have a pretty solid worldview. "These observations from numberous different fields of study give us an estimate of the age of the world, and nicely explain/demonstrate the processies for the specification of animals from one or few common ancestors."The mechanisms of Evolution have been well described, tested, observed, etc.But this brings me to the Intelligent Design crowd. And, here I get puzzled.Can ID be defined other than as opposition to Evolution? What are the mechanisms of Intelligent Design? Where do we find sources for these mechanisms? How do these mechanisms explain what we see now?Forget for a moment if it's science or not. Forget if it's testable or not. I just want to know what Intelligent Design stands for? What does it presuppose? How does it explain (even within it's own set of facts) what it suggests has happened?Does anyone have these answers?

But the mechanisms of evolution are natural selection and random mutation.Surely ID can not be saying that natural selection doesn't occur. Obviously it does. They can't be saying that mutation doesn't occur. Obviously it does.So, I can only assume that they are taking out the "random" element and that evolution happens through a process of deliberate mutation?What are the mechanisms of these deliberate mutations? What causes them? How do we determine what is a deliberate mutation versus what is a non-deliberate mutation? Are all mutations done with the purpose of change in the species?These sort of questions are fundamental to the theory. I don't see how a theory can be supported without these kind of answers.Like I said in the OP. Ask Faith about YEC, she HAS answers. You're hard pressed to find a question she can't answer from within the confines of YEC philosophy. (You may not agree with the answers, but they have them).Likewise, ToE.I just don't see ID being able to answer the same kinds of questions. That leaves me with a sinking suspicion that it's not a real "Theory" of how things happened. It's simply a "I don't like your theory" kind of a thing where the proponents want to teach the negative, but don't have a possitive to teach.

You give this as an example of the mechanism But that's a result, not a mechanism. By mechanism I specifically mean the method by which the result is reached.Let's assume that Bat Sonar is, in fact, something which spontaneously arrose via the will of a designer and did not evolve.What was the mechanism by which it arrose? How can we determine if the same mechanism is in use in say dolphin echo location? Why dod some bats have sonar and others don't? Did all bats get sonar at the same time they got flight, or before, or after?If ID describes the world, it needs to be able to at least partially answer those kinds of questions.That's my whole point of this thread. What does ID use for answers that differentiates itself from YECs or ToE?

That's fine if you believe that. However, it doesn't answer the main question of the thread.Intelligent Design is being proposed as a theory. As I said before, forget if it's scientific or not. I just don't see any theory behind the theory."I believe there was a designer" is not a theory. It's just a statement of belief.For ID to be a theory, it needs to be able to answer, at least superficially, the sort of basic questions that naturally arise.So far, the only answers I've been able to get from ID proponents are virtually identical to those we see from the YECs.That's not to say that the YECs answers are right or wrong. It's just to say, IDers are coopting them.If that's the case, let's call a spade and spade and say that Intelligent Design is in no way a theory, but is simply a fancy name for Biblical Creationism and be done with it

Let's take your Rita oil scenario for a second and call it a theory.Since Rita didn't do as much damage as we expected, price of oil per barrel could drop to $50.Okay. Now here's some questions.What is Rita? How do barrels get assigned a price? What is oil? Where is oil from? Why would price go down under this scenario instead of up?There are answers to all these questions. Obviously they are not described in your theory, but I am confident that you could provide at least plausible answers in defense of your theory.Similiar answers have not been provided by IDers.That's what I don't understand. If this theory or opinion doesn't actually answer any questions, what good is it?

There is no known reason for an intelligent pusher not to be responsible for gravity.There is no known reason for an intelligent flavorist not to be responsible for making things taste exactly the way they do.There is no known reason for an intelligent number sorter to keep the meaning of 1 as 1 and 2 as 2.But, we don't need these beings to explain what we see. In fact, their addition to any explaination only serves to complicate things unneccesarily

Sounds like we're all in agreement here.There is no "Theory" of Intelligent Design.Proponents of ID are simply anti-evolution, but have no answers/theories of their own.Basically, the whole movement boils down to a few people with their hands over their eyes screaming "I don't see anything".Brilliant. And these people want to be in charge of education.Fear this

Herepton,In this recent post you've brought up this issue of Cuckoo migration. I'll quote so others don't need to scroll up and down. Now, I am by no means a bird expert, but I do watch dangerous amounts of the nature programing. As a result, I've seen several shows about the Cuckoo (some more than once). I've NEVER heard anyone mention this.So I went on the web and looked for information about it. There are lots of different types of Cuckoo, and I could find plenty of bird watcher sites that described cuckoo migration by region or time, etc. But none of those sites mention anything about a particular bird finding its parents.So, that get's me thinking. How would a scientist study this? They'd have to tag a mother bird, follow it until it laid an egg in another birds nest, then watch the baby bird grow, then tag it. Then follow both birds from the forest where they were originally found to the other end of their migration route, find them again and see that they had found each other.Two problems here. 1) That's a really complex study, especially if you don't plan to publish it. (seeing as I can't find it published).And more importantly 2) If the birds are starting from the same place and going to the same place (since that pretty much describes migration) how do you determine that the birds have found each other.In other words, if you and I both leave Boston seperately and both go to Seattle, that doesn't mean we went there to find each other.So, I'm willing to accept your Cuckoo Hypothesis if you can find the link to the study where this was discovered.But, if you can't find a link either, we've both gotta assume that you're either mis-remembering something, or someone fed you a complete load of bunk.

1.6,You listed a bunch of theories that all have something in common - mechanics.If we discuss abiogenisis, I can tell you the concept behind the theory, I can tell you how abiogenisis would have happened, I can demonstrate the process, etc.No one has been able to do that with Intelligent Design. Who is doing the designing? "I don't know". How? "I don't know." What's the process for picking which design is used in which species? "I don't know." etc etc etcIt's not a blanket statement to say there is not THEORY in this theory.IDers have been asked again and again to come up with some answers, and all they manage to do is come up with reasons they don't believe evolution.Not believing one theory is not evidence for a different theory.So, unless you have some hidden information that has yet to be revealed, my statements stand. The entire movement is simply "we don't want to believe evolution, so we'll take anything else".

Yes. What's happening on silverfish is a chemical process, it must be. The fish is not swimming around and picking out tiny nitrogenous crystals and pasting them on. It's secreteing them.So the size of what it secretes isn't really important. Some fish secrete more, some less. The ones that secrete more are too shiny and more likely to get eaten. The ones that secrete less are too dark and more likely to get eaten.The fact that the right amount is seven millionths of a centimeter is incindental. Perhaps I misunderstood your original post, or perhaps you've misunderstood this quote. The young cuckoo is NOT flying to meet his parents he's never seen. He's flying to "the winter quarters" where, incindentally, his parents also happen to be migrating.Yes, migration is interesting and it's a behavior. But lots of things migrate, from butterflies to whales. It doesn't take much in the way of incentive to start a migration. It gets colder at point A, there is less food at point A, the animal heads for point B.That the animal can return to point A, that others of the same species tend to cluster together at point B, all interesting. All answerable without having to rely on an Intelligent Designer specifically mapping out exactly where everything goes. What would you expect / accept as evidence? Do you have similiar evidence that supports an Intelligent Designer?

You're joking here, right?

HUH?What are those pictures supposed to mean?

If your question is "which gene causes what mutation in SOPc for example" then the answer is no. That's because SOPc is only known from the fossil record, and we usually don't get good DNA samples out of rocks.But that's like asking you to prove that the Bible was written by Abraham but showing us all the copies since that original document was created.Using those same standards, the Bible at best dates back only a few hundred years.

I disagree. I think the eiffel tower pic is EXTREMELY good evidence of intelligent design. I can not conceive of a way that the Eiffel Tower would have evolved on it's own. None of the pieces are living. It has a staircase and an elevator. It has a restaurant up top.However, I think the picture of the spindelly doodad is in no way evidence of ID, even circumstantial.Lots of things from different angles look like lots of other things from different angles.A top down view of the Eiffel tower looks like an X. So do two crossed swords. Both are made of metal. There's no conclusion to be drawn from that

Close, I'm saying that it is unfair for YECs to demand a higher standard of the data presented by ToE than their own data.If you need step by step genetic confirmation on a individual gene mutation level in order to accept the process, then shouldn't you apply the same thinking to the Biblical texts?Don't we need a letter by letter draft translation for every single version of the Bible, otherwise how do we know what's there is what was meant to be there?Where is the original copy? The first writing of the book of Job, for example. Not the oldest one known, mind you. I'm talking about the first one. The one that arose from nothing. The one that was written down by the guy taking dictation of God and the Devil's wager.