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Intelligent Design

Little_Sticks

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Here [happy people].

Something to talk about.

[YOUTUBE="VVT6N3QBj54"]A War On Science[/YOUTUBE]
 
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Chris_in_Orbit

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Here's a question from an nonreligious heathen such as myself: why do these things have to be contradictory?

Why can't evolution be the means by which god made what he made?
 
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Here's a question from an nonreligious heathen such as myself: why do these things have to be contradictory?

Why can't evolution be the means by which god made what he made?

I wonder this all the time. Politics, I guess. It's not enough to be right, the other person has to be wrong. That's why I don't have a problem with ID even though I believe in evolution. ID has been co-opted by evangelicals to try to put religion in schools, but the fact that they perverted it doesn't mean the general idea is without merit. Science can explain how things happened, but not why they happened at all. I don't see the problem with speculating on that in a way that doesn't contradict known science.
 

Stevo

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Intelligent Design is a despicable tactic employed teach religion in public schools. It is not science as it is not falsifiable or indeed testable, not parsimonious, and just intellectually lazy. Even though they don't state it and even try to hide it, when they say "Intelligent Designer" they don't mean aliens, or other super-intelligent life. It's quite obvious they mean the Christian god.
 

Quinlan

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Here's a question from an nonreligious heathen such as myself: why do these things have to be contradictory?

Why can't evolution be the means by which god made what he made?

It seems like only a temporary answer, if we accept every natural process as being gods means, god quickly runs out of things to do.

An entirely natural god is no god at all.
 

Valiant

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This is a funny topic to watch people go haywire over.
Like a couple of guys have said, nothing can be proven one way or another with philosophy or current science.
So why bother?


Meh, i'll just sit over here and watch you all fight to the death

:popc1:
 

Coriolis

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It seems like only a temporary answer, if we accept every natural process as being gods means, god quickly runs out of things to do..
God may run out of things to do, but not necessarily of things to be. It all depends upon one's understanding of God, all of which are fundamentally subjective.
 

Polaris

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Intelligent Design makes some interesting philosophical points, but speculative philosophy has no place in a Science classroom. Science is concerned with things that can be tested in a laboratory, and basic observations about the nature of consciousness (of which intelligent design is an example, in spite of the extravagant conclusions drawn from it by religious people) are only related to the extent that they give scientists a loose framework in which to design testable hypotheses. A given framework might consist of anything from Discordianism to Christianity, and still have a pre-scientific relevance, provided it serves as the impetus for creating experiments that lead to new and hopefully useful discoveries.

In theory that puts ID on the same footing as any other kind of basic belief, but in practice ID has focused on tearing down theories of evolution (thus belying its creationist motives, since ID as such is perfectly compatible with evolution), without succeeding or providing any testable alternatives of its own. This puts ID in a category of being not so much a field of science as a critic who is determined to keep on beating a dead horse, not with the intention of killing it but of somehow bringing it back to life through acts of mutilation.
 

Pixelholic

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Here's a question from an nonreligious heathen such as myself: why do these things have to be contradictory?

Why can't evolution be the means by which god made what he made?

It diminishes the role of Yahweh in the minds of ardent Christians. It also gets rid of the "special" factor of humans if we share a common ancestor with apes and aren't designed.

That's not even getting into Christian Literalism.

Like a couple of guys have said, nothing can be proven one way or another with philosophy or current science.
So why bother?

One side has mountains of research done over a hundred and fifty years by thousands of people all pointing to one theory and strengthening it.

The other one has the holy book of a Bronze age tribe.


The biggest problem is that people don't understand what a scientific theory actually is. Intelligent design is a theological idea disguised as bad science designed (heh) to confuse people who don't have a good grasp of how basic science works.

This shouldn't even be a debate.
 

foolish heart

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One would think that seperating intelligent design from science favors the suggestions made by concept of intelligent design. However, I think the mere presumption that there is a dichotomy is a false assumption and a lie. For that matter, any dichotomy that makes a comparison of reality is a lie. There is what is, and what is not, what is true, and what is untrue, what is reality and what is simply made up. Science is a means of determining what is true with as much certainty as possible. Removing science from spiritual truth for any reason other than maintaining objectivity amidst the subjectivity of human suppositions of spiritual truth is a false separation made by those wishing to distance themselves from the stigma of religion. The fact is, religion is highly flawed, and man-made just like science. Spiritual truth and scientific truth are one and the same (if there were a means for us to measure the spiritual like the physical) and any "scientist" who discounts the nature of spiritual ideas simply due to their immeasurable nature is limiting themselves and in my opinion not much of a scientist at all. The true scientist is willing to venture into any territory and entirely open to reality as it exists, seen or unseen, provable or not.

What of spirituality? Personally, I think it is very real. The mere fact that we are thinking about it and arguing about it suggests that we have a spiritual component. What would be the purpose otherwise? Why else would we question our purpose in the first place? If it weren't reality, we would have never thought to make the consideration. You might say this contradicts what I've said above about things being true or untrue, but even untrue things exist as a perverted truth.

Even a very creative and bizarre artist like Salvador Dali paints something I have in my room, a clock. There is a reason a watch is used as the metaphor of intelligent design... it is used to measure time. There is no such thing as human inspired originality. Everything that we have been has been before and will be again to both ends of time. Like a watch we are created within time and it's whim. People attempt to discredit the concept of spiritual truth with things like the flying spaghetti monster because they seem to forget flying, spaghetti, and monstrosities are things we experience in physical reality. If you think about it, I'm sure you too will find that the only true originality was origin itself, our inception, our creation, and all consciousness henceforce can be traced back to the beginning. Where, then does the consciousness of the spiritual truth/reality come from? There is only one explanation: it existed, and can be assumed to still exist like time and watches and the idea of purpose. There is only 1 other instance of true originality and that is the life of Jesus, and Jesus himself stated "I tell you the truth". This is because like our origin Jesus was the creator and not creation. Truth is definitive, equal to and and verified by our existence.
 

Mole

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Yes

The problem with intelligent design is that it is dishonest, for it is simply a cover for creationism.

But we should not feel superior, for MBTI suffers from the same problem.

MBTI claims dishonestly to be a personality test, but in seventy years not one double blind experiment has been done.

So both intelligent design and MBTI are dishonest.

And both come out of the same stable - the largest economy in the world.

So do we love the dollar so much we will accept lies?

And the answer is yes.
 

Pixelholic

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The biggest difference is MBTI isn't posited as an equal to neuroscience the way ID is to Evolution.
 

rhinosaur

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Hey everyone, a little bit of a necro post but I thought you would enjoy this.

 

Lily flower

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I am a conservative Christian, but I would say that I am fairly open minded about how God created, whether through evolution, etc. However, about a month ago I decided to read a book that actually explained evolution (from an anti-creationist view). I expected to be really swayed by the science, but instead I was amazed at how weak the whole concept was. Microevolution (which I have always believed in - natural selection and within species changes) makes a lot of scientific and logical sense. Macroevolution (the idea that one species evolved from another) actually made no sense at all when I read the science behind it. In fact, the author even said that many of the major tenants behind macroevolution are contradictory to microevolution. Crazy!

I suggest that before you take a scientific stance on evolution that you read a couple books about it first.
 

Randomnity

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I am a conservative Christian, but I would say that I am fairly open minded about how God created, whether through evolution, etc. However, about a month ago I decided to read a book that actually explained evolution (from an anti-creationist view). I expected to be really swayed by the science, but instead I was amazed at how weak the whole concept was. Microevolution (which I have always believed in - natural selection and within species changes) makes a lot of scientific and logical sense. Macroevolution (the idea that one species evolved from another) actually made no sense at all when I read the science behind it. In fact, the author even said that many of the major tenants behind macroevolution are contradictory to microevolution. Crazy!

I suggest that before you take a scientific stance on evolution that you read a couple books about it first.

Actually, macroevolution is exactly the same as microevolution. It's a false dichotomy promoted by creationists. What creationsists call macroevolution is simply cumulative microevolution. Speciation (distinct species separating from each other) i.e. "macroevolution" has been observed in nature as well as created by humans both in the lab and through breeding (modern-day sheep can no longer produce offspring with the wild sheep it was bred from, apparently).

I can try to dig up some sources for you if you don't believe me. My field isn't evolution but I have taken a few classes that covered various aspects of it throughout my biology degree and grad school.

edit: even wikipedia will tell you :
Macroevolution can be seen as the sum of long periods of microevolution, and thus the two are qualitatively identical while being quantitatively different.

Do you mind if I ask what the title of that book is? I might take a look.
 

Qlip

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The whole 'debate' is just an artifact of Fundamentalism. The ironic thing is science as we know it came out of Judaic/Christian/Islamic tradition. It's basically a battle between cousins, one being six fingered mountain folk.
 

Mole

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I am a conservative Christian, but I would say that I am fairly open minded about how God created, whether through evolution, etc. However, about a month ago I decided to read a book that actually explained evolution (from an anti-creationist view). I expected to be really swayed by the science, but instead I was amazed at how weak the whole concept was. Microevolution (which I have always believed in - natural selection and within species changes) makes a lot of scientific and logical sense. Macroevolution (the idea that one species evolved from another) actually made no sense at all when I read the science behind it. In fact, the author even said that many of the major tenants behind macroevolution are contradictory to microevolution. Crazy!

I suggest that before you take a scientific stance on evolution that you read a couple books about it first.

I good book to start with is Charles Darwin's, "The Origin of Species". It's a lovely little book, easy to read.

And then you might follow up with James D. Watson and Francis Crick's book, "The Double Helix", which confirms, "The Origin of Species".
 

Valiant

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This truly is one of those things that makes me realize that we're not that far away from medieval times.
Creationism is hilarious if you read their theories. I'm a somewhat religious person myself, although not really a follower of any code or rules.
Creation probably happened pretty much like the big bang theory suggests, and evolution itself is, as several members say, proven.
It's odd how some people can't accept the best possible logical arguments based on what we know.
The same people tried to stick to that the world was flat for quite some time...
AND that it was created just a few thousand years ago, at that, which is entirely disproven.
In my mind, a book created by an almighty God that knows everything... Well, it shouldn't contain errors like that.
Which in turn suggests that it was completely made up by some guy with an active imagination.
Which would make it all an early work of Science-Fiction or Fantasy.
I'm sure evolutionary theory isn't very far off the mark from how stuff really works, even if some of it is logical guesswork.
 

Nicodemus

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The concept of intelligent design is the epitome of the conditio humana. It says nothing about the world but all about our way of understanding.
 
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