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Author Topic:   Is Intelligent Design Religion in the Guise of Science?
Beretta
Member (Idle past 5597 days)
Posts: 422
From: South Africa
Joined: 10-29-2007


Message 61 of 204 (447859)
01-11-2008 6:36 AM
Reply to: Message 54 by molbiogirl
01-02-2008 5:08 PM


Re: Teleological arguments
Unlike evolution, which has from its beginnings been science, ID is derived from creationism.
Evolution has been a philosophical alternative to the creation story from the beginning. If there is no God, only matter, then let's make up our own story of where we came from avoiding God having anything to do with it.
Assumptionwishful thinking) We can't see God therefore He doesn't exist.
You may imagine it is religious thinking to invoke God as a cause but it is just as religious to insist that there is no God when you cannot be sure that that is true.All it is, is an alternative belief
system.
ID is derived from creationism.
Only in as much as both believe that this world can't be explained in purely materialistic terms. They have points of similarity but creationism insists on the God of the Bible and 6000 years human history as a worldview.ID proponents often do not believe that - they just agree that evolution (in the macro sense) makes no sense if you look purely at the evidence.

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 Message 54 by molbiogirl, posted 01-02-2008 5:08 PM molbiogirl has not replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 63 by jar, posted 01-11-2008 9:37 AM Beretta has replied
 Message 64 by Granny Magda, posted 01-11-2008 12:32 PM Beretta has replied
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Beretta
Member (Idle past 5597 days)
Posts: 422
From: South Africa
Joined: 10-29-2007


Message 62 of 204 (447861)
01-11-2008 6:54 AM
Reply to: Message 48 by Organicmachination
01-02-2008 12:39 PM


Re: And Should it be Taught in Our Schools?
Simply observing the complexity of DNA, cells and the human brain and then somehow saying that they are too complex to have come around by evolution proves only that..
...unproven evolutionary assumptions accepted as fact are not good enough for everyone.
You have little idea how science works. You cannot make the conclusion that God did it from the observation that life is very complicated and improbable
but you could logically conclude that the evolutionary explanation may be right and it may be wrong and follow the evidence where it leads - to a supernatural intelligence outside of the material world if needs be.Neither can be proven -some things just seem far more likely than others to some people and for good reason.
negative arguments don't fly in science, unless of course, you have eliminated every single other possibility
..every single material possibility you mean which means you start with a bias that only material causes are possible.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 48 by Organicmachination, posted 01-02-2008 12:39 PM Organicmachination has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 65 by Organicmachination, posted 01-11-2008 1:18 PM Beretta has replied
 Message 94 by nator, posted 01-13-2008 8:50 AM Beretta has replied

  
Beretta
Member (Idle past 5597 days)
Posts: 422
From: South Africa
Joined: 10-29-2007


Message 66 of 204 (448113)
01-12-2008 4:01 AM
Reply to: Message 63 by jar
01-11-2008 9:37 AM


Re: Stop repeating falsehoods.
Evolution is a fact. We can see it happening today and see that it happened in the past.
1."Evolution is a fact" is a mantra not a fact.Certainly not a fact in the way that evolutionists would have us believe. We see limited variation happening today and dedicated Darwinists assume that adding all these small variations up over a vast amount of time would amount to the evolution they choose to believe in or have been indoctrinated into - the common ancestor type of macroevolution. This is still at the level of fairytale not fact -nobody has observed this to happen, they assume it based on limited observations over relatively short periods of time.
The Theory of Evolution is the best explanation so far on how the Fact of Evolution happened.
The theory of evolution remains a theory and evolution remains controversial as science progresses to the point where it no longer appears that 'everything created itself randomly from nothing'would be the best explanation for the existance of everything.
Evolution and the Theory of Evolution are two different things.
The fairytale and the fairytale explanation of how the fairytale may have happened - yes.
Neither has anything to say about the existence of God.
Oh yes it does -it explicitely says that nature is all there is and all that is necessary and implicitely says that God is not necessary in the least to explain our existance.'Science has nothing to say about God' is the patronizing attitude of the scientific establishment to those of the fluffy faith that should be allowed to wallow in their supernatural fables 'if it makes them happy.'
Neither says that there is no God.
Well a god that has no role to play and is not required by the random chance processes of evolution, is, for all intents and purposes, no god at all. Since this hypothetical god has no point, no purpose, no job to do, why pretend except to patronizingly accomodate others in a politically correct sense.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 63 by jar, posted 01-11-2008 9:37 AM jar has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 71 by jar, posted 01-12-2008 10:25 AM Beretta has replied

  
Beretta
Member (Idle past 5597 days)
Posts: 422
From: South Africa
Joined: 10-29-2007


Message 67 of 204 (448116)
01-12-2008 5:56 AM
Reply to: Message 64 by Granny Magda
01-11-2008 12:32 PM


Re: Teleological arguments
Darwin started from a position of belief in a divine creator. When his observations contradicted this he changed his mind.
You mean when his reading of people like Lyell changed his mind and he started to look at the world in a different manner and tried to formulate a mechanism of how this evolution concept could work. It wasn't his concept but like other christians led astray or allowing themselves to be led astray, he wondered about other people's ideas and formulated his theory. He had plenty doubts about his own ideas though so he wasn't as good a Darwinist as today's radical fundamentalist Darwinists who cannot see anything that does not fit into their precious worldview even if it screams 'design' at them.
To not see design was more understandable in those days before cell biology and genetics made it an absolute necessity to be a blind believer in order to miss the design concept.
When his observations contradicted this he changed his mind.
Darwin's theory was based on philosophical considerations, it was not evidence-based.Darwin was very aware that the fossil record did not support evolution but he hoped that time and a more complete fossil record would provide all the billions of transitionals required by gradualism -they never did find them and Darwin would not have been a believer in evolution if he could have seen what we know now because he knew what would convince him that evolution had not in fact happened.
there is in fact no reason why evolution and belief in God are incompatible.
There are lots of reasons for incompatibility. The Bible for one says sin brought death.Evolution says death was there long before man so that would make the Bible a fairytale. That would also make Jesus' death on the cross 'for the sins of mankind' and 'to overcome death' completely unnecessary.
Either God created man and sin caused the fall of man or evolution is our creator.I call that completely incompatible.
The ToE simply removes the necessity of resorting to God, in order to explain the complexity of life.
Man's desire to rid himself of God brought about the ToE.It's an alternative explanation for what we are doing here.It frees up man to do pretty much as he pleases within the constraints of manmade law (which changes continually as long as there is no God and no absolute truth.)Now when we see design we can say 'no design, no God,just pure chance and mutation."

This message is a reply to:
 Message 64 by Granny Magda, posted 01-11-2008 12:32 PM Granny Magda has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 69 by Woodsy, posted 01-12-2008 6:45 AM Beretta has replied
 Message 81 by Granny Magda, posted 01-12-2008 3:33 PM Beretta has replied

  
Beretta
Member (Idle past 5597 days)
Posts: 422
From: South Africa
Joined: 10-29-2007


Message 68 of 204 (448124)
01-12-2008 6:43 AM
Reply to: Message 65 by Organicmachination
01-11-2008 1:18 PM


Re: And Should it be Taught in Our Schools?
you must be able to prove to me beyond contention that evolution is absolutely wrong
Actually you can't prove either beyond contention but some things, given all the facts we have at our disposal make more rational sense than others.
the other 9 billion Gods us humans have created that made the world.
Well the question is did God create us or did we create God? You have to assume that we created God but then you have to ignore the obvious possibility that a superior intelligence produced our ability to reason and be creative in the first place.
panspermia or some other natural method of life propagation might have created life here because, as molbiogirl pointed out, you run into an infinite regression problem.
There's no infinite regression problem if God is outside the natural system ie. supernatural. If God is eternal and not created then God does not have to have a cause. Only created things have a cause.
This leaves only supernatural explanations, of which only one possibility might be correct.
Truth would require that only one explanation is correct. Fortunately truth does not change with opinion nor consensus nor with wishful thinking.
Id doesn't concern itself with who the supernatural creator is, it's up to us to find out what's true but realizing that intelligence not chance must have created us puts us in a position to search for the truth without evolutionary blinkers on.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 65 by Organicmachination, posted 01-11-2008 1:18 PM Organicmachination has not replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 72 by reiverix, posted 01-12-2008 10:46 AM Beretta has replied

  
Beretta
Member (Idle past 5597 days)
Posts: 422
From: South Africa
Joined: 10-29-2007


Message 70 of 204 (448127)
01-12-2008 7:04 AM
Reply to: Message 69 by Woodsy
01-12-2008 6:45 AM


Re: Teleological arguments
Darwin is very famous for having done long, laborious, meticulous, empirical work to substantiate his theory
Long laborious meticulous and empirical it may have been but he still only observed natural selection and variation within kinds -the theory part is an extension of his observations based on all sorts of philisophical considerations.
He never saw a finch change into anything that was not a finch,he only imagined that it was possible so 'empirical' stopped right there.
What liars these creationists are!
That too is a mantra. If you stick with this forum, you will see it repeated ad nauseum.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 69 by Woodsy, posted 01-12-2008 6:45 AM Woodsy has not replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 73 by RAZD, posted 01-12-2008 11:05 AM Beretta has replied
 Message 95 by nator, posted 01-13-2008 8:53 AM Beretta has replied

  
Beretta
Member (Idle past 5597 days)
Posts: 422
From: South Africa
Joined: 10-29-2007


Message 74 of 204 (448181)
01-12-2008 11:30 AM
Reply to: Message 73 by RAZD
01-12-2008 11:05 AM


Evolutionary hot air
What he saw were finches that had changed in a number of different ways
Yes and then when the weather changed and the food supply then they reverted back to the mean but that would destroy the story -you need to imagine that given a lot of time and adding up the hypothetical more and more gradual changes, they would eventually change into something clearly different in a meaningful way that would allow us to imagine the macro possibilities.That's the problem you see -imagination is everything we need -evidence is for the idiots I suppose.
That is all the empirical evidence of finches that was needed
For what -to convince us that reptiles can change into birds and bacteria into people?

This message is a reply to:
 Message 73 by RAZD, posted 01-12-2008 11:05 AM RAZD has replied

Replies to this message:
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Beretta
Member (Idle past 5597 days)
Posts: 422
From: South Africa
Joined: 10-29-2007


Message 75 of 204 (448182)
01-12-2008 11:37 AM
Reply to: Message 72 by reiverix
01-12-2008 10:46 AM


Re: And Should it be Taught in Our Schools?
Beretta writes:
Id doesn't concern itself with who the supernatural creator is
Maybe ID doesn't, but the people supporting it are all motivated by religion, which is the topic
No not so, they are actually motivated by the truth and the misrepresentations and undue extrapolations of evolutionary wishful thinking.There are enough examples of ID proponents -Anthony flew and Michael Behe for example that have no religious affiliations but find the evidence for major evolutionary change by chance and random mutation unconvincing at best.

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Replies to this message:
 Message 76 by bluescat48, posted 01-12-2008 11:48 AM Beretta has replied
 Message 88 by Rrhain, posted 01-13-2008 7:02 AM Beretta has replied

  
Beretta
Member (Idle past 5597 days)
Posts: 422
From: South Africa
Joined: 10-29-2007


Message 77 of 204 (448188)
01-12-2008 11:51 AM
Reply to: Message 71 by jar
01-12-2008 10:25 AM


Re: Stop repeating falsehoods.
The Topic happens to be "Is Intelligent Design Religion in the Guise of Science?"
A equally appropriate question would be "Is evolution religion in the guise of science" -it takes far more faith and ignorance of evidence to believe that blind chance produced us I would say.Is your brain operating according to natural chemical reactions or is there a reason for your rationality?
Who is the Designer?
Personally. I'll go with the God of the Bible but the actual overall point of the debate is "can blind chance and mutation produce everything we see? Can it account for this world and everything in it?" The debate is about scientific evidence and the fact that I believe in the God of the Bible is another argument altogether.I believe the evidence points to a supernatural intelligence and only then can I measure the evidence of the different religions and decide who I believe the creator is.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 71 by jar, posted 01-12-2008 10:25 AM jar has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 78 by jar, posted 01-12-2008 11:54 AM Beretta has replied
 Message 79 by Organicmachination, posted 01-12-2008 12:19 PM Beretta has replied

  
Beretta
Member (Idle past 5597 days)
Posts: 422
From: South Africa
Joined: 10-29-2007


Message 83 of 204 (448356)
01-13-2008 3:37 AM
Reply to: Message 78 by jar
01-12-2008 11:54 AM


ID is not religion
Beretta writes:
I'll go with the God of the Bible but the actual overall point of the debate is "can blind chance and mutation produce everything we see?
No, the point of the thread is "Is Intelligent Design Religion in the Guise of Science?", so it appears your answer is "Yes, ID is religion.
Your reasoning is unsound.Since there are a higher percentage of atheists that are evolutionists than atheists in the general population does that mean that evolutionism is the same as atheism (a religion)? As I have stated before, there are more than enough ID proponents that have no religion, are agnostics whatever so do we then say that ID is not a religion on that basis? As there are Christians that believe in evolution (lots of them), does that mean that evolution is a religion? Is that a logical argument?
My stating what I believe in is purely in the interests of truth and remaining straight forward in everything I say on this forum -it was rather obvious what you were aiming to achieve by getting me to admit my personal affiliation but since I have mentioned my own personal beliefs all over this forum, I assume you are trying to be clever in front of a wider audience.
What is your personal belief? Lets see what clever conclusions we can draw about evolution on the basis of what you believe.
How about try disproving ID on the basis of facts rather than using the 'ID is religion' avoidance plan.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 78 by jar, posted 01-12-2008 11:54 AM jar has replied

Replies to this message:
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Beretta
Member (Idle past 5597 days)
Posts: 422
From: South Africa
Joined: 10-29-2007


Message 84 of 204 (448359)
01-13-2008 4:02 AM
Reply to: Message 79 by Organicmachination
01-12-2008 12:19 PM


Religion or Science
First of all, to believe in a theory vehemently because it is backed with all of the natural evidence we have uncovered is not religion, but common sense
But is it backed by all the natural evidence or did the worldview of 'matter is all there is' dictate the terms of the engagement.
Evolutionists absolutely cannot allow for God on the basis of their own self serving definition of science which cuts God out of the equation a priori.
So you start by not allowing for God no matter what the evidence shows and then no matter how the evidence refuses to fit your belief in evolution, you just keep jamming the evidence in to make it fit.
If that is what has been happening, then that is religious - an a priori commitment to naturalism or materialism precedes the evidence.
To back a theory vehemently because you are too stupid to understand evolution and therefore can only believe that some supernatural guy in the sky did it is absolutely religion.
Except that that is not what is happening -the vehemence belongs to the committed evolutionist who tries to keep the supernatural guy in the sky out of the picture no matter how impossible the pure naturalistic viewpoint looks.
You are completely proving our points that ID is religiously motivated here
See reply to jar above -you are as confused as he is. Try sticking to the evidence rather than making unsubstantiated accusations. Crying 'ID is religion' is not going to make it go away because it is actually science -do you even know what their argument is? If you did you would understand it as science.
Do you know that for 5000 years of earth history, the belief in God as the creator of all was the predominant worldview.There was a worldwide flood which is a common factor in all the world's cultures. Evolution took over as an alternative to the explanation that the people wanted to reject. Its amazing what you can do and justify if you write God out of the equation.
Whether evolution or creation happened is an historical matter - you look for historical records, cultural narratives and the scientific evidence to see which worldview all of these things fit better -creation or evolution?
Evolution is the man-made alternative to the creation story. The evidence doesn't fit evolution, it is made to fit.
As Sir Arthur Keith put it "Evolution is unproved and unprovable. We believe it only because the alternative is special creation and that is unthinkable." -pretty religious comment, wouldn't you say???

This message is a reply to:
 Message 79 by Organicmachination, posted 01-12-2008 12:19 PM Organicmachination has replied

Replies to this message:
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Beretta
Member (Idle past 5597 days)
Posts: 422
From: South Africa
Joined: 10-29-2007


Message 85 of 204 (448361)
01-13-2008 4:47 AM
Reply to: Message 81 by Granny Magda
01-12-2008 3:33 PM


Re: Teleological arguments
Certainly evolution is incompatible with a literal reading of the Bible, but that's not the only reading possible. Plenty of Christians, and folks of other religious persuasions, manage to believe in God and evolution.
Granny dear, if I offend, I'd like to know how -if the truth is offensive well that's another thing altogether.The Christians that think evolution and Christianity are compatible do so only through the brainwashing they have received through secular education.They also have to graunch the obvious words of the Bible into what makes it compatible with evolution. For example 'the first day' means 'an indeterminate long period of time' -in their dreams. Do you think God couldn't have said "And in that first long age...etc." Were there no Hebrew words to indicate a long period of time? I think there were plenty but they were not used. Why? If every other incidence of 'day' with a number was meant to convey a 24-hour literal day and if the 'first day' was qualified by saying "the morning and the evening -the first day " etc. then I suggest that a literal day is the absolute meaning and only graunching would make it into the required long period of evolutionary time required by the evolutionary faith.
If Jesus body was in the tomb for three days, must we suggest that that was actually a few million years? Did the Hebrews wander in the desert for 40 years or was it 40 million + years? Why change it to say what you want it to say -believe it or don't but changing it to say what it clearly doesn't say is pure wishful thinking.
The pharisees changed the Bible's meaning to fit their purposes -does that mean theistic evolutionists are some type of pharisee?
I'd personally rather be an out and out deceived evolutionist than a so-called Christian that doesn't even believe the Bible.
Congratulations though, on being honest enough to admit that the mysterious "designer" is God. Perhaps in future, you will simply refer to "intelligent design" as "biblical creationism".
If it were that simple, I would indeed admit it but my belief is not the general belief of the ID proponent so I cannot speak for them all. Some are agnostics, some belong to different religions, not Christianity, some are Bible believing Christians. The only thing they are clearly not, is atheists, because they have reason to believe that a supernatural creator of some sort is responsible for life rather than the pure materialism of the atheist religion.
Rather than try to force all ID proponents to be Biblical creationists, believe me on this one. A lot of them believe in a common ancestor and millions of years which I do not and neither does the Bible if you take the time to read it.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 81 by Granny Magda, posted 01-12-2008 3:33 PM Granny Magda has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 110 by Granny Magda, posted 01-13-2008 9:23 PM Beretta has not replied

  
Beretta
Member (Idle past 5597 days)
Posts: 422
From: South Africa
Joined: 10-29-2007


Message 86 of 204 (448362)
01-13-2008 5:04 AM
Reply to: Message 80 by Archer Opteryx
01-12-2008 12:23 PM


Turn on the lights
Beretta:
Personally. I'll go with the God of the Bible
Which makes ID a religion.
So if other Christians believe in evolution does that mean evolution is a religion? If non-Christians believe that ID has a point, does that mean it is not a religion? Does what I personally believe make ID unscientific? Do you understand the controversy at all?
Judge Jones and Jar got it right.
In that they are equally confused.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 80 by Archer Opteryx, posted 01-12-2008 12:23 PM Archer Opteryx has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 97 by nator, posted 01-13-2008 8:58 AM Beretta has not replied
 Message 107 by RAZD, posted 01-13-2008 1:09 PM Beretta has replied
 Message 121 by Archer Opteryx, posted 01-15-2008 7:34 AM Beretta has not replied

  
Beretta
Member (Idle past 5597 days)
Posts: 422
From: South Africa
Joined: 10-29-2007


Message 87 of 204 (448365)
01-13-2008 5:38 AM
Reply to: Message 76 by bluescat48
01-12-2008 11:48 AM


Re: And Should it be Taught in Our Schools?
There is no more proven truth in ID than in evolution without ID.
In that they are both historical concepts and all our facts exist in the present, yes that's true, neither can be proven.
So the question is, since we have the same facts, which one is a better interpretation of the facts and why?
Is it conceivable that random variation and mutation has a creative capacity? It is certainly not provable and genetic research in general seems to point away from that possibility since the majority of mutations are either neutral or negative in effect.
Did the genetic code with all its complexity arrange itself by chance and natural laws or was intelligence necessary?
If dogs give rise to dogs that give rise to dogs, it is possible that long ago and far away, something that was not a dog acquired the genetic information to become a dog. Why doesn't science just stick to empirical, factual, repeatable, observable science rather than forcing all the evidence into the possibly completely imaginary evolutionary box?
If science wants to play around with historical concepts such as origins then ID is the alternative explanation to random evolution.
So you see this is a scientific argument not a religious one by any stretch of the evolutionary imagination.
ID is not trying to get rid of evolution -they wish to be allowed to follow the evidence wherever it leads and to feel free to present alternative possibilities in accordance with the facts.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 76 by bluescat48, posted 01-12-2008 11:48 AM bluescat48 has not replied

  
Beretta
Member (Idle past 5597 days)
Posts: 422
From: South Africa
Joined: 10-29-2007


Message 96 of 204 (448386)
01-13-2008 8:54 AM
Reply to: Message 88 by Rrhain
01-13-2008 7:02 AM


Re: And Should it be Taught in Our Schools?
(Michael Behe)...He's a staunch religionist.
Well that's not quite the point I wished to make. He has an affiliation to a religious institution in that he grew up a Roman Catholic but I'm sure you must know many people who grew up in a religious tradition but never actually believed. Scientific considerations made him a believer in a higher intelligence.
Lots of people become believers for different reasons -his was scientific. What I meant to draw a distinction between is a Biblical creationist and an ID proponent. He still believes in long ages and a common ancestor which means he is not a Biblical creationist by any stretch of the imagination.
If you count him as a staunch religionist then we'll have to throw in Richard Dawkins and all the atheists who believe by faith that there is no creator God.
I certainly do think that the designer in all likelihood is God
Only agnostics get counted out in that case because they don't believe either way in fact by definintion they don't believe that you can know
So maybe the entire argument is religious on both sides but only one side can be right.So what does the evidence show is more likely?
God or no God -that is the question?

This message is a reply to:
 Message 88 by Rrhain, posted 01-13-2008 7:02 AM Rrhain has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 109 by Rrhain, posted 01-13-2008 7:05 PM Beretta has replied
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