Intelligent Design vs. Evolution

[Chairtime]

I have an idea. Why don't we list all the known, major things on earth that were created by intelligent design, and all the major things that were created at random.

[QDO1]

My view is that infinity exists right until the end of time.

I dont have a problem with the terms infinitly big, or infinite time - in either direction. to that end there could be an infinite amount of universes, and civilisations. we could be so infinitally far away from eachother we could never meet, or infinitally at different times to each other we would never meet. strictly speaking Neil Armstrong is an extra terrestrial - from the point of a supposed person who lived on the moon

[QDO1]

it is one thing posturing a pre-determination argument on the basis that one could using the laws of physics, always roll a six on a dice... your argument thus folows that if one had the reins on all things physical, you could engineer the big bang, and then by intellegent design - end up where we are today

But where do the folowing come in to play?

• freewill?
• proof without faith?
• why such a convolouted route?

[drk]

QDO1, I gotta give it to you: you are tenacious.

We've violated the thread rules, here, but what the heck?

I agree that theistic evolution is a contorted process. IMO it's a difference-splitting device. I don't buy it, for what that's worth.

Free will can exist in a spiritual sense, i.e. assuming the determined physical human body has a non-determined, non-physical quality. You know what that's called. You have intelligently inferred a soul's necessary existence for true free will, which is a central Christian tenet. Your system infers determinism, ultimately, as you are aware.

[QDO1]

QDO1, I gotta give it to you: you are tenacious.

We've violated the thread rules, here, but what the heck?

I agree that theistic evolution is a contorted process. IMO it's a difference-splitting device. I don't buy it, for what that's worth.

Free will can exist in a spiritual sense, i.e. assuming the determined physical human body has a non-determined, non-physical quality. You know what that's called. You have intelligently inferred a soul's necessary existence for true free will, which is a central Christian tenet. Your system infers determinism, ultimately, as you are aware.

the hair I am trying to split is the one between design and intellegence - the phrase intelegent design, makes the assumption that some /one/thing actually designed the universe. whereas evoloution is inherently without design. One could say evoloution is enforced loaded quasi-random design... that is that weak organisims / traits do not flourish, and strong organisims/ traits ones take over

the thread rules are broken by the word inteligent, because without discussing that word, arguing about the chronologically in-beween bits are just empty postures

[Pete Hanlin]

Let's try a slightly different angle (I think this is called the cosmological argument- but I know it by the "Watch in the Woods").

Let's say we take a bunch of globs of different colored paint and fling them against a blank canvas. In fact, let's do it millions and billions of different times. Do you suppose the result will ever be the Mona Lisa? Of course not, because the Mona Lisa was the work of an intelligent painter who created the image with a purpose in mind.

"Oh, you're being facetious," you may protest. Yet would you argue that the human body (or even the body of a goldfish) is less complex or well-designed than the Mona Lisa? Evolution (if you take it back all the way to primordial goo) claims that atoms were flung together time and again until eventually voila- you have a single celled organism. Several billion lucky (we're talking chance here, so luck would seem to have a part of it) tosses of the cells later, we have a fish, another billion or so tosses (gee, we're really lucky), and you get a bird, then a monkey, then a man!

By the way, you might point out that in your pictures of skulls, some- if not most- of them do not depict actual recovered skulls. Rather, in most cases a tiny fragment of skull is discovered, and scientists build a composite skull based on their theories and deductions based on the shape of the recovered fragment. This wouldn't be so troublesome if scientists didn't have a tendancy to place the wrong dinosaur skull on a body and other such embarrasing errors.

My point remains, you may be able to convince me that natural selection occurs- but the thought that it would happen by chance is patently absurd! For evolution to be successful, it requires a guiding influence- or intelligence within the system.

[drk]

Natural selection and random mutation unarguably exist, but they are relatively weak forces that do not have the capability to have driven the evolutionary process as has been postulated.

[spartus]

How very, very annoying. I got about 2/3 done with a very long post, did something dumb, and -poof!- whole thing gone. Needless to say, I'm typing this one up in Notepad and will paste it in when I'm done.

Finally, to use the logic- if not the mantra- of the intelligent design crowd, evolution has never been demonstrated on a macro scale. That is, we see a species that looks as if it may be a bit more basic than another and induce that perhaps the more complex creature evolved from the more basic.

Yawn. As biologists use the term, macroevolution means evolution at or above the species level, or speciation.

"Three species of wildflowers called goatsbeards were introduced to the United States from Europe shortly after the turn of the century. Within a few decades their populations expanded and began to encounter one another in the American West. Whenever mixed populations occurred, the specied interbred (hybridizing) producing sterile hybrid offspring. Suddenly, in the late forties two new species of goatsbeard appeared near Pullman, Washington. Although the new species were similar in appearance to the hybrids, they produced fertile offspring. The evolutionary process had created a separate species that could reproduce but not mate with the goatsbeard plants from which it had evolved."

I'm telling you, ID is misunderstood and being jingoistically villified.

http://www.discovery.org/scripts/vi...%20of%20Science

Cut and paste of conclusion:
An openness to empirical arguments for design is therefore a necessary condition of a fully rational historical biology. A rational historical biology must not only address the question "Which materialistic or naturalistic evolutionary scenario provides the most adequate explanation of biological complexity?" but also the question "Does a strictly materialistic evolutionary scenario or one involving intelligent agency or some other theory best explain the origin of biological complexity, given all relevant evidence?" To insist otherwise is to insist that materialism holds a metaphysically privileged position. Since there seems no reason to concede that assumption, I see no reason to concede that origins theories must be strictly naturalistic.

Simply put, evolution is not so "all that" that it deserves to be presented as scientific, all the while calling ID "nonscientific". It's unjustified, logically, to do so.

(Source)
Astrology would be considered a scientific theory if judged by the same criteria used by a well-known advocate of Intelligent Design to justify his claim that ID is science, a landmark US trial heard on Tuesday.

Under cross examination, ID proponent Michael Behe, a biochemist at Lehigh University in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, admitted his definition of “theory” was so broad it would also include astrology.

...and introducing our new Secretary of Education, Miss Cleo!

One could imagine a flap that could evolve over numerous generations, but how would that original "microflap" have helped the animal in question? They wouldn't be able to glide or anything, so the flap would have to continue developing with a goal of eventually allowing flight.

I'm going to address this one in reverse. Anyone ever been to New Zealand? Heard of it, at least? The place is full of flightless birds. Most of them are fairly fat and lazy as well, particularly the sleeps-20-hours-a-day-national-symbol Kiwi bird. The reason they're all flightless is until just a few hundred years ago, there were no cats, dogs, rats, and most destructively, opossums in the country--in short, no predators. They're chiefly herbivorous, so flying as a means of defense or getting to food no longer was necessary, so they stopped flying. The fat and lazy part came later. Now, you may be asking yourself how they got there. Duh. They're birds. They flew there. I don't know if you've looked at a map, but New Zealand is out in the middle of nowhere. Too far for other animals to swim, so they got to live in a little bird paradise for a very long time. The introduction of other species has really devastated a great many of the birds. The story of the kakapo is the most heartbreaking one, if you're inclined to read up on it.

Anyway. Islands are wonderful for this sort of thing, as until fairly recently, they were quite separate from the mainland and each other. This is why weird and rare species survive only on isolated islands--Komodo dragons, the flightless birds down under and lemurs are merely the first examples to spring to mind. Lemurs are an interesting case unto themselves. The only place lemurs--interesting proto-monkeys--still exist in the world is on Madagascar, which is, naturally, an island. There's one other thing that's special about Madagascar: no monkeys, just as where monkeys live, there are no lemurs. Lemurs are the older of the species--they either evolved into monkeys long ago or died out when faced with the competition--probably a combination of the two. The aye-aye, which is a particularly rare lemur, has an interesting mutation that they use to great effect: They have one very, very long finger. It's not because they're rude little proto-monkeys (though it's unwise to rule it out), it's that they like to eat ants, and the easiest way for them to reach this snack is to stick their finger into the anthill and slurp 'em up.

The curious thing about this is that there are several species of monkey in mainland Africa that like to eat the very same type of ants, but don't have the lengthened finger. Instead, they use long, thin sticks to the same end. Tool use--no wonder the long-fingered lemurs lost out! Islands give us a fantastic insight into parallel evolution under similar circumstances--two smaller branches off the larger branch.

By a major mutation, do you mean the sudden appearance of a complete organ, aperature, or characteristic? If so, I'd have to say "no," I don't believe this happens. Even in cases where an animal does have a major mutation, it usually leads to the creature's death.

While the X-Men have cool mutations, not all mutations are necessarily major to be beneficial. A mole is a mutation. Webbed toes are a mutation. Height, red hair, bad teeth--all can be described as "mutations". It's not always a second head, or the ability to cloud men's minds.

Even in cases where it doesn't, the mutation hinders the animal and is not passed down to offspring.

Um. Ever heard of recessive genes? Good, bad, ugly or indifferent, a lot of it is passed down to offspring, just not actively. Just because it's dominant doesn't mean it's not present.

Scientists are discovering that the universe has been precisely tweaked to enable life an earth.

Indulge me and look at that the other way around. Life has been tweaked to enable (and enhance) its own existence here.

Can someone offer some definitions of evolution here? No one is saying that animals don't evolve and improve. The debate is whether or not life was designed by intelligence or evolved randomly.

Ahem.

...evolution has never been demonstrated on a macro scale.

See my case? It's over there in the corner, resting. Thanks, I'll be here all week.


Anyway. This exchange was fun:

Check out this quote by Charles Darwin!! "To think that the eye had evolved by natural selection seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest possible degree."

INTELLECTUAL DISHONESTY ALERT!!! The following is the rest of this quotation. (Shame Chairtime!!)

Yet reason tells me, that if numerous gradations from a perfect and complex eye to one very imperfect and simple, each grade being useful to its possessor, can be shown to exist; if further, the eye does vary ever so slightly, and the variations be inherited, which is certainly the case; and if any variation or modification in the organ be ever useful to an animal under changing conditions of life, then the difficulty of believing that a perfect and complex eye could be formed by natural selection, though insuperable by our imagination, can hardly be considered real. How a nerve comes to be sensitive to light, hardly concerns us more than how life itself first originated; but I may remark that several facts make me suspect that any sensitive nerve may be rendered sensitive to light, and likewise to those coarser vibrations of the air which produce sound. (Darwin 1872, 143-144)

What do you mean, shame?? That's not the same quote as mine.

Rimmy, Rimmy. As usual, technically correct, but disingenuous to the hilt. You're right, in that what chm posted is not the same quote as yours--the words are different and everything. What it is is the rest of the quote. Let me explain what you've done, since I'm sure you'll continue to squeal your innocence: You took the part of the quote that supported your argument, and ignored the part that didn't.

Continued (reached the max post length)...

[spartus]

Darwin follows that statement with a three-and-a-half-page proposal of intermediate stages through which eyes might have evolved via gradual steps (Darwin 1872):

• photosensitive cell
• aggregates of pigment cells without a nerve
• an optic nerve surrounded by pigment cells and covered by translucent skin
• pigment cells forming a small depression
• pigment cells forming a deeper depression
• the skin over the depression taking a lens shape
• muscles allowing the lens to adjust

All of these steps are known to be viable because all exist in animals living today. The increments between these steps are slight and may be broken down into even smaller increments. Natural selection should, under many circumstances, favor the increments. Since eyes do not fossilize well, we do not know that the development of the eye followed exactly that path, but we certainly cannot claim that no path exists.

Evidence for one step in the evolution of the vertebrate eye comes from comparative anatomy and genetics. The vertebrate βγ-crystallin genes, which code for several proteins crucial for the lens, are very similar to the Ciona βγ-crystallin gene. Ciona is an urochordate, a distant relative of vertebrates. Ciona's single βγ-crystallin gene is expressed in its otolith, a pigmented sister cell of the light-sensing ocellus. The origin of the lens appears to be based on co-optation of previously existing elements in a lensless system.

Nilsson and Pelger (1994) calculated that if each step were a 1 percent change, the evolution of the eye would take 1,829 steps, which could happen in 364,000 generations. (They wrote a book about it, even.)

Emphasis added.

Also:

("Common Pathways of Illumination," Natural History 12/94, p. 10) According to Gould, "Anti-evolutionists continually cite this passage as supposed evidence that Darwin himself threw in the towel when faced with truly difficult and inherently implausible cases. But if they would only read the very next sentence[s], they would grasp Darwin's real reason for speaking of absurdity 'in the highest possible degree.' (Either they have read these following lines and have consciously suppressed them, an indictment of dishonesty; or they have never read them and have merely copied the half quotation from another source, a proof of inexcusable sloppiness. Darwin set up the overt 'absurdity' to display the power of natural selection in resolving even the most difficult cases -- the ones that initially strike us as intractable in principle. The very next liner, give three reasons all supported by copious evidence for resolving the absurdity and accepting evolutionary development as the cause of optimally complex structures."

Besides Gould's article there have appeared several others on the topic of the evolution of the eye, demonstrating that such an evolution is far from "absurd," but rather is entirely plausible.

See professor Kenneth R. Miller's excellent article on eye evolution, "Life's Grand Design" (Technology Review, v. 97, no. 2, Feb./Mar. 1994, pp. 24-32).

See also D. E. Nilsson and S. Pelger's article, "A pessimistic estimate of the time required for an eye to evolve" (Proceedings of the Royal Society B, 1994, v.. 256, pp. 53-58).

In his recent book, River Out of Eden (Basic Books, 1995), Richard Dawkins points out how Nilsson and Pelger set up a computer model of evolving eyes to determine if a smooth gradient of change exists from a pigmented eye spot to the camera eye with a lens and cornea, and how long it would take such a transformation to occur. They employed pessimistic figures for the amounts of change possible per generation -- giving their model only 50% "heritability" (many human traits are over 50% inheritable), and chose pessimistic values for the coefficient of variation (how much variation there typically is in a population). And they determined that Darwinian evolution could produce a good camera eye in less than a half a million years! That's a mere "blink of the eye" in geologic time!

Since an eye's efficiency can be easily measured using elementary optics, their computer simulation had more validity than, say, trying to measure how subtle anatomical changes increased the efficiency of a cheetah's speed and agility.

"Nilsson and Pelger began with a flat retina atop a flat pigment layer and surmounted by a flat, protective transparent layer. The transparent layer was allowed to undergo localized random mutations of its refractive index. They then let the model deform itself at random, constrained only by the requirement that any change must be small and must be an improvement on what went before. The results were swift and decisive ... leading unhesitatingly from the flat beginning through a shallow indentation to a steadily deepening cup. The transparent layer thickened to fill the cup and smoothly bulged its outer surface in a curve [the cornea]. And then, almost like a conjuring trick, a portion of this transparent filling condensed into a local, spherical subregion of higher refractive index [a lens]." -- Dawkins, pp. 80-81

And the lens that formed was not of a uniform refractive index, but was "graded," just like real eyes, with the highest refractive index near the center of the lens! And it was graded according to the optimum ratio for vision, known as "Mattiessen's ratio."

I should add that Nilsson and Pelger's computer simulation never produced an eye that combined the focus of two lenses -- one placed directly behind the other -- lenses that could slide toward and away from each other to produce added magnification and "close-ups" of small objects and far away objects, as in a "zoom camera." Instead, the best "zoom" available to us humans is to bring the newsprint closer to our eyes! I guess the "Biblical Creator" in his infinite wisdom could not design eyes any better than natural selection could. However, robots of the future will undoubtedly have such "extra" design features added by their human creators.

Other recent articles, like Gould's, mentioned above, have pointed out how a common genetic key triggers the development of eyes of vastly different construction in animals as varied as flies and mice (in vertebrates and invertebrates). So, all eyes may originate from a common ancestor that evolved this genetic trigger. See for instance, Peter Monagham's article, "Revelations from Fruit Flies" (Chronicle of Higher Education A8-A9, May 26, 1995). And also see Carol Yaesuk Yoon's article, "The Wizard of Eyes: Evolution Creates Novelties by Varying the Same Old Tricks" (New York Times, Nov- 1, pp. C1, C11).

Also see the articles on eye evolution in Science, v. 265, no. 5173, Aug. 5, 1994, pp. 742 & 785; and in Nature, v. 368, Apr. 21, 1994, p. 690.

It is not inconcivable that one group of monkeys learnt to hunt in the plains, whilst due to geographical issues, another continued to forrage in the forrest

See my bit on lemurs up there. Great minds, etc., etc.

I have an idea. Why don't we list all the known, major things on earth that were created by intelligent design, and all the major things that were created at random.

Great idea! You start, and the grownups will go out for cocktails. Don't forget to use every color crayon!

Let's say we take a bunch of globs of different colored paint and fling them against a blank canvas. In fact, let's do it millions and billions of different times. Do you suppose the result will ever be the Mona Lisa? Of course not, because the Mona Lisa was the work of an intelligent painter who created the image with a purpose in mind.

If you did it trillions and trillions of times, over tens of thousands of trillions of years, you eventually would do it. The chance is beyond infinitesimally minute, but it exists. I'm not saying that it'd be a good idea to try, but the probability, while miserably small, exists.

(Note upon finishing the second draft: The first one was better. Y'all missed out.)

[rinselberg]

This seems like an opportune moment to offer some cross-references back to the Atheism Vs Religion thread.

Poster: spartus
Post tittle: untitled
Subject: Critical assessment of Michael Behe and other Intelligent Design theorists.
http://www.optiboard.com/forums/show...&postcount=296

Poster: rinselberg
Post title: RinselNews™ - Fair and Balanced
Subject: Brief discussion of ID (Intelligent Design) and well known ID theorist Michael Behe.
http://www.optiboard.com/forums/show...&postcount=265

Poster: rinselberg
Post title: Fossil evidence for macroevolution
Subject: Discusses transitional evolutionary forms in the fossil record from a Neo-Darwinist viewpoint.
http://www.optiboard.com/forums/show...&postcount=237

Poster: rinselberg
Post title: Deism and the Big Bang
Subject: Responds to ksquared's discourse concerning the Big Bang theory of the origins of the observable universe.
http://www.optiboard.com/forums/show...&postcount=161

Poster: rinselberg
Post title: A Neo-Darwinist speaks
Subject: Comments on the possible natural evolution of human morality and links to a profile of the widely published Neo-Darwinist Robert Trivers.
http://www.optiboard.com/forums/show...3&postcount=59



Listen to RinselTunes™ online at ...
http://www.laramyk.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=558

[spartus]

Thank you. In my first draft, I referenced back to that stuff, then got sloppy (and frustrated) the second time around.

[Pete Hanlin]

If you did it trillions and trillions of times, over tens of thousands of trillions of years, you eventually would do it. The chance is beyond infinitesimally minute, but it exists. I'm not saying that it'd be a good idea to try, but the probability, while miserably small, exists.
Ah, well obviously putting faith in an chance that is "beyond infinitesimally minute" makes loads more sense than believing in an intelligent force that created- or guided the creation of- the universe! I wonder, would you concede that the existance of God is possible (perhaps possible only by a chance that would be beyone infinitesimally remote," but possible)? If not, why is your long-shot chance of evolution possible, but not the chance that there could be a God?

PS- Oh, and Da Vinci is turning over in his grave!

[Chairtime]

C O N T A M I N A T I O N A L E R T

Contaminant: irrelevant non-scientific peroration
Source: poster "spartus"
Specimen: "Don't forget to use every color crayon"
Threat Level: 'very low'
Decontamination Method: self-destruction

[rinselberg]

At left, the "Hatena" organism possesses a green alga as a symbiont, with a tail sticking out from the cell wall. At right, two daughter cells are created during cell division, with one of the daughters inheriting the green symbiont. The other daughter goes out and captures a new algal cell. The black scale bar represents 10 microns in length. Credit: http://www.sciencemag.org/


I was checking the latest world news from MSNBC and chanced upon this report about a current scientific development that seems to fit nicely onto this thread. Scientists are observing what may be an ongoing process of endosymbiosis - where two different species combine genetically to give rise to a new, third species. The process occurs at the cellular level, when one species incorporates another species, forming a new "conglomerate" organism. Scientists believe this powerful form of genetic recombination was central to the development of modern, multi-celled plants and animals from single-celled organisms.

Some will see this as a validation of the power of a spontaneous, undirected and randomly-driven Neo-Darwinian process, culled only by natural selection of the fittest, to evolve highly complex lifeforms.

Others will hail it as a substantiation of the careful purpose that must have been incorporated into the evolutionary process by an Intelligent Designer.

For the moment, I simply present it as another news report.

For the complete MSNBC report:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9686843/



Listen to RinselTunes™ online at ...
http://www.laramyk.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=558

[QDO1]

If you did it trillions and trillions of times, over tens of thousands of trillions of years, you eventually would do it. The chance is beyond infinitesimally minute, but it exists. I'm not saying that it'd be a good idea to try, but the probability, while miserably small, exists.
Ah, well obviously putting faith in an chance that is "beyond infinitesimally minute" makes loads more sense than believing in an intelligent force that created- or guided the creation of- the universe! I wonder, would you concede that the existance of God is possible (perhaps possible only by a chance that would be beyone infinitesimally remote," but possible)? If not, why is your long-shot chance of evolution possible, but not the chance that there could be a God?

PS- Oh, and Da Vinci is turning over in his grave!

Refers you back to my post about dice, and probrability. See senario's 1 thru 4 - It is easy to quote a probrability with the No. 1 hat on, because without thought it makes sense. Infact we are not in the No. 1 System, more like No. 3/4

I will try to illustrate this...

Imagine a scenario where we have a tribe of monkeys who paint, by flinging blobs of paint. Also imagine we have a species of tigers with a taste for these monkeys. The monkeys who can fling blobs of paint and make something by chance, that happens to act as a camoflauge will have a higher probrability of surviving, than those who cant. Those who cant have a higher probrability of being eaten. After many generations, the paint monkeys are wicked artists, and the tigers have moved on to eating wildebeast

You might look at the painting the monkey made and say haha here is a beautiful painting of a treetrunk - it is so complex that the chances of that happening are for example 1,000,000,000:1 where as infact the odds are far shortened. True the odds of randomly painting the picture could be the hypothetical 1,000,000,000:1, but natural selection, has in a sense held some of the dice back, and reduced the odds to a point where the picture is painted with skill, as opposed to randomness

A complete pile of twaddle you say - well, artists were employed in the wars to produce camofluge, and there are many examples of where camoflauge in nature, enables an animal to live

[QDO1]

The we are here, there is an infinitessamally small chance of us being exactly here, the way we are now, therefore we are here by some intellegent design theory just does not stack up

I can illustrate this

If one of the founding fathers of America never got on the boat, America may well look completly different, interms of populus, where the cities are etc. to what it does today. We might not even be here ourselves. The fact that we are we are today relies on the fact that those families got on the boat. But perhaps there was a family that was supposed to go over, that did not get on the boat - if that had happened who knows what would have happened

We are where we are, no one designed america the way it is now, by saying - lets put X/Y on the boat, but leave off A/B. It is unreasonable to look at a person in California, and say... the chances of you being here are infinitly small, therefore you must be here by intelegent design. What we are looking at is a snapshot (today) of where we are today, and because we have records, one might be able to trace the roots back to the Mayflower. Just because we can do that proves nothing in terms of probrability, or intellegent design

[chm2023]

What do you mean, shame?? That's not the same quote as mine.

Perhaps you fell prey to the skewed use of your quote by someone else--it is a big favorite of fundamentalists. I know it's not the same quote, it's the rest of the passage from On the Origin of the Species, first edition. By only quoting the first line, which is clearly rhetorical in light of the entire passage--the very next line refutes the suggestion that the evolution of the eye is "absurd"--you completely misrepresent Darwin's seminal work. Cherry picking from the writings of a scientist of this caliber is a dangerous game.

So that's what I mean by "shame"--you are misrepresenting the ideas of an intellectual giant. It's a cheap trick, and a telling one. If Darwin was so off base, why are you anxious to make him appear to support your POV?

[Chairtime]

Perhaps you fell prey to the skewed use of your quote by someone else--it is a big favorite of fundamentalists. I know it's not the same quote, it's the rest of the passage from On the Origin of the Species, first edition. By only quoting the first line, which is clearly rhetorical in light of the entire passage--the very next line refutes the suggestion that the evolution of the eye is "absurd"--you completely misrepresent Darwin's seminal work. Cherry picking from the writings of a scientist of this caliber is a dangerous game.

So that's what I mean by "shame"--you are misrepresenting the ideas of an intellectual giant. It's a cheap trick, and a telling one. If Darwin was so off base, why are you anxious to make him appear to support your POV?

Why are you so anxious to avoid meaningful discussion on the subject of ID vs. Evolution? (very telling by the way)

[chm2023]

I will give this one last go:


I believe that God created the universe (and I don't hide behind "intelligent design". For heavens sake, have the courage of your convictions.); I also believe in evolution (this would be the means). My objection to the intelligent design folks is that they are trying to disguise faith and insinuate it into the science cirriculum, where it does not belong.

The discussion of probability is interesting. Things that are highly, wildly improbably happen daily: someone won the PowerBall the other day. What were the odds of them winning--something like one in 300 million if memory serves. You can make the argument, which somewhere here did, that every outcome is one in a gazillion if you factor in all the variables. Starting from my birth, what were the odds that today I would Fedex an invoice for moderating research groups at 9AM to a company in Reston VA for $32,000? Beyond minute, but it happened.

This kind of stuff freaks me out if I think about it much. Reminds me of one of the classic Simpsons Halloween episodes where Homer goes back in time and is warned not to touch anything or the history of the world would change dramatically. Well you can imagine...:D

[chm2023]

Why are you so anxious to avoid meaningful discussion on the subject of ID vs. Evolution? (very telling by the way)

What's very telling is your inability to admit your mistake.

[Chairtime]

What's very telling is your inability to admit your mistake.

What's more telling is your need to pursue the admission.

[Chairtime]

Note to self: don't fall for chm2023's antics

[Steve Machol]

What's very telling is your inability to admit your mistake.

What's more telling is your need to pursue the admission.

This is ridiculous. I suggest you keep to the topic.

[Chairtime]

it is one thing posturing a pre-determination argument on the basis that one could using the laws of physics, always roll a six on a dice... your argument thus folows that if one had the reins on all things physical, you could engineer the big bang, and then by intellegent design - end up where we are today

But where do the folowing come in to play?

• freewill?
• proof without faith?
• why such a convolouted route?

Freewill - determines our individual existence to a large degree. Does not alter intelligent design of the universe. Can you even picture a world without free will?

Proof without faith - In what sense?

Why such a convoluted route - You mean, why didn't the Intelligent Designer just create the end result directly? Not sure. Maybe it defeats the whole point.

[QDO1]

Freewill - determines our individual existence to a large degree. Does not alter intelligent design of the universe. Can you even picture a world without free will?

thats just plain daft - if ID takes into account the progression of life to get us where we are, freewill is the antithisis of ID, it lets us choose to deviate from the design. If we have freewill, we can't have intelegent design - not in the complete sense anyway

Proof without faith - In what sense?

what proof do you have for ID, real tangiable proof, or is it just faith?

Why such a convoluted route - You mean, why didn't the Intelligent Designer just create the end result directly? Not sure. Maybe it defeats the whole point.

then it is not that intellegent then