Is there a legitimate argument for design?

How about this?He can go over to Faith's blog and they can argue about definitions until the cows come home. Then the winner can come back here and we can get on with the real discussion?

Ok,
Having found no potential for intellectually honest debate on this thread, I will leave all you good people to go about whatever it is you do.If you don't understand intellectually honest debate, look it up.Sorry for having wasted your time.
You are excused for wasting mine.

Sorry if you feel you have to leave.However, a large part of what we do involves science and the scientific method. That is based on evidence. So far, you have not been able to supply evidence.And as for being prickly when your view is challenged, welcome to the world of science! That's the way it works.

Hi Taiji2,In the proclamation in your signature about what a debate is and is not you could add an item about a debate having a topic for discussion to center on.You might want to reexamine the way you approach discussion, which seems designed to irritate everyone, even those who might agree with you. Visit some other discussion boards - if you act the same way you did here you'll encounter the same difficulties. It's a pretty safe bet that when you think everyone's against you, it's not them, it's you.You began by arguing that an idea could be shown true without supporting evidence, so when you think the time is right why don't you come back and resume discussion. If you keep your focus on defending that idea instead of on keeping everyone on your idea of the straight and narrow you'll have a lot more success, and a lot more fun, too.--Percy

Well, I'm disappointed.Apparently whatever else the Tao designed, it designed you overbearingly and stiffly proud.All of us here find our ideas challenged as boldly and sharply as yours were. No one was dishonest in their discussions with you.In your search for intellectual honesty, don't bother holding your lamp to the mirror. The Tao wept.

Do you find the word "experience"?"Evidence" is some thing that we "experience" - the key word being "we". You may expereince feelings subjectively but we experience evidence objectively."Fanciful" is not restricted by reason or (objective) experience, while science is.

Heh, yeah. I was hoping to have a nice conversation with the fella.
But he's just too hypocritical.His last message says: However, in his reply to me just a few posts before he states: ...but he never engages anything I talked about.
He wasn't looking for intellectually honest debate. He was trolling. Really, it was obvious from just a few posts from him. But, well, we have nothing better to do, do we? So, really, we trolled the troll. He thinks he's wasting our time or having his own fun weaving through our posts acting like an upstanding citizen or something. But in all actuality, every single one of us was just posting to see what sort of ridiculousness he'd say next Even in his reply to me he contradicts himself: He talks about respecting logic and reason, and then totally brushes off my "personal conclusion"... which was entirely explained to him using logic and reason.
The hypocrisy was strong in this one.The only thing resembling evidence for design was the talk of "front loading" for the very first cells (or whatever). It was a short discussion about front-loaded evolution coming from junk DNA.At first glance, this seems to separate "designed front loading" from "blind evolutionary processes." But if we look at how evolution works, we see that front loading isn't required for this sort of evidence to exist at all.The 'front loading' argument is that new abilities are always present, and just 'turned on' when required. Therefore, any 'turning on' of abilities when required is evidence of "designed front loading" and therefore evidence of a Designer! Weeeeee!!!Well, not really...Evolution is driven by random mutation... which results in random new abilities.
Therefore, at any given time every being/animal/organism on the planet may or may not have certain newish random abilities that aren't being used (because their environment doesn't change) and just pop up every now and then.
Then... something happens and the environment changes.
This then causes a bunch of critters to die.
It also causes some critters to make use of their random new abilities to adapt to the new environment.And... voila! We have the 'turning on' of new abilities when they were required except it was not front loaded from the beginning of time. It was simply randomly developed before it was required. That's all. Just regular old evolution.Evidence of front loading from a designer would be if every organism could 'turn on' the new abilities whenever they were needed.
But that doesn't happen. There's always a whack of them that die. In fact, most of them die. What's the number? 99.999% of all species ever are now extinct? That's not front-loaded design at work.That's regular evolution, some organisms get random new abilities... and some of those abilities become useful when the environment changes to kill off those without it. That's why a bunch die, but some live.That's evidence of regular old evolution, not front-loading.

That's what I was thinking after I saw this:

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Having found no potential for intellectually honest debate on this thread...

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after he posted this:

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Perhaps you can highlight or color code the word for me. I still do not find the word evidence in what ringo provided.

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Oh, that is intellectually honest?Here's what Ringo provided, and I'll oblige his intellectually honest request:

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taiji2 writes:

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ringo writes:

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Any idea that is not supported by evidence is fanciful by definition.

I have consulted Merriam-Webster and did not see evidence mentioned.

That's odd. I consulted Merriam-Webster and I found:

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1: marked by fancy or unrestrained imagination rather than by reason and experience link

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"Experience" would be evidence.

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WOW!Stile, this is the best refutation of front-loading and ID I have ever seen, simple and obvious, well done.

Since you people have taken your parting shots, I shall take mine.From my experiences as a soldier in Viet Nam, a very good analogy to the behavior I see on this forum comes to mind. We (U.S. Army) sometimes worked joint operations with ARVN (Army Republic of Vietnam) troops - south Vietnamese.One evening, just after dark, our unit (C Troop, 1st Squadron, 1st Armored Cavalry Regiment) had our tanks and armored personnel carriers (APCs) circled into a defensive position for the night. Inside our perimeter was a company of ARVN troops who were working the mission with us. We came under attack from the NVA (North Vietnamese Army). We received mortar fire, rocket propelled grenade fire (RPG), and small arms fire.The American troops of my unit mounted their vehicles and returned fire until the NVA broke off the attack and withdrew.When the firing stopped, not a single ARVN soldier was in sight. They had all crawled under the tanks and APCs to hide. Talking to my fellow soldiers after the firefight, none had observed any ARVN soldier engage in the battle. They had all acted like cowards. These are the same ARVN soldiers we had been working with for days. Those previous days had involved no combat, the enemy had not been found.These same ARVN soldiers in the days prior had strutted, brandished their weapons, and were convincing in looking tough and appearing to be soldiers. When it came time to be soldiers, when the bullets started to fly, they proved themselves cowards and ran. Interestingly, the next day, they resumed their peacock strutting, pretending to look like soldiers, acting as if nothing of moment had happened.How is this analogy pertinent? What I have seen on this forum is intellectual cowardice. Any time a relevant issue is raised, if you cannot respond logically, you "crawl under the tank" using intellectually dishonest debate tactic to avoid the question, blow smoke up my ass, and pretend that it is me causing the problem.There are some very good articles on intellectually dishonest debate tactics. I would suggest you read them, but it appears you already have and use them to great effect as your modus operandi.You may further argue that I have misconstrued what is going on here. I make my statements not without independent verification. My wife is a lawyer. I had her read some of what has gone on here and asked her opinion on whether the debate was honest. She concurred that what she had seen was not proper debate, and that such tactics would not be allowed in a court of law. In a court of law, objection would be raised and the judge would sustain.She further said that the legal system would not work without rigidly enforced rules of debate.Now, before any of you clever people take my analogy out of context and claim I am the one to run from this discussion, let me be clear......... I am willing and would like nothing better than to continue a discussion of creation versus evolution.But I will do so only in the format of intellectually honest debate. A venue which promotes intellectually dishonest debate tactics is suitable only for mind-fuck games and I am just not interested.Specific shot to PERCY........ if a forum moderator is not there to guarantee honest debate, what is he there for?Specific parting shot to Stile: Thank you, you verified with specific comment "we trolled the troll" my observation coming into this discussion that what was going on here was not debate but a game in which you people assume a troll, you people exhibit your own troll behavior ( intellectually dishonest debate), then you wave your troll flags in the air when the first party leaves (having or having not exhibited troll behavior along the way). Your observed ritual is to always claim "he was a troll" at the end. Like the sage Percy once told me...... maybe you should look deep within yourselves.Specific shot to everyone... this forum could be an excellent platform for debate. There are some smart people here. There are interesting issues to be discussed. Truth could manifest if allowed. But it "ain't gonna happen" as long as you continue to play this ridiculous game.My comments stand as a warning to anyone entering this forum. You will find only intellectually dishonest debate here. What they do here is play a game of what might be called "shoot the troll in the barrel". If they do not have a troll, they seek to turn you into one by their own troll behavior. Even if they do not succeed, they will end the game by calling you troll. That is how it works. Enter at your own risk. It is a mind game only. Finding truth is irrelevant to these people.Edited by taiji2, : No reason given.

Seriously dude. Every time I questioned your position, you wilted under the least bit of heat. I'm really not sure what you expected.Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.

Hi Taiji2,I'm replying with my moderator account so I can respond to this: Moderators have dual accounts. One is a normal account with no privileges. My normal account name is Percy. My moderator account name is Admin.Members with dual member/moderator accounts are strongly discouraged from participating and moderating the same discussion. Since I was participating as Percy I could not also moderate as Admin.I will likely not post to this thread again as Admin. I did so only to make the difference between the two accounts clear to you.Sometimes we're short of moderator resources at a time when a thread could use some moderation, and in that case a moderator can post a note that he is recusing himself from discussion in that thread and then will rejoin as moderator after the passage of a couple days.

The intellectual honesty left the debate when you asked for something that was not spectacularly designed, and when examples were given you decided that we were no longer able to determine if something was well designed or not.Edited by Taq, : No reason given.

When the firing stopped, the only one not in sight was you.--Percy

Seriously dude,
All that i ask of anyone new entering this thread is to go back over the old posts and form their own judgement.