As a card carrying creationist, I’ve sometimes wanted to post about my reservations regarding the search for evidence of Intelligent Design (ID) and some of the rottenness in the search for evidence in young earth creation. I’ve refrained from speaking my mind on these matters too frequently lest I ruffle the feathers of the few friends I have left in the world (the ID community and the creationist community). But I must speak out and express criticism of my own side of the aisle on occasion.
Before proceeding, I’d like to thank Elizabeth for her hospitality in letting me post here. She invited me to post some things regarding my views of Natural Selection and Genetic Algorithms, but in the spirit of skepticism I want to offer criticism of some of my own ideas.So this essay will sketch what I consider valid criticism of ID, creationism in general and Young Earth Creationism (YEC) in particular.
Take any of the accepted laws of physics, like say the classic one, F=ma in classical mechanics. The physical behavior requires no Intelligent Designer. This is true of every physical law. I recall a professor of physics saying, “after Newton there was no need of witches or of God”. What she meant, it seems to me, is God was irrelevant to understanding physical law. Invoking God doesn’t give further insight to understanding physics.
Only in some controversial interpretations of Quantum Mechanics will some physicists even dare to argue God exists. Such arguments have been put forward by Richard Conn Henry, John Barrow, Frank Tipler, FJ Belinfante etc. See:
But that is the crux of the problem. If the Intelligent Designer is not the focus of physics, and physics underlies all the sciences, then how can ID then be incorporated into science? In that regard, I’m mostly ambivalent to arguing whether ID is science or not.
Like the play “Waiting for Godot”, we are “Waiting for the Intelligent Designer”. I reject the notion that one can apply stone henge as evidence of intelligent design and then make an equally believable case that one can look at the intricacies of the cell and conclude the Intelligent Designer exists. When I was an engineering student, I would be subject to examination to demonstrate that I could make designs. Human made designs are thus subject to independent verification. We can subject those sort of intelligent designers to field laboratory testing, we cannot do so regarding the supposed Intelligent Designer of the universe and life. This lack of direct testability will always leave quite a bit of room for skepticism, if not some inclination for outright rejection, no matter how powerful the arguments are against chemical and biological evolution.
If God were continually making miracles like he did in the time of Moses, we might not be having these debates, but as for now He has chosen to remain hidden from observation and experiment which are the foundations of science.
These criticism of ID will apply to creationism and particularly young earth creationism. Even supposing miracles are real, by their very nature, miracles will elude repeatability (that’s why they are miracles!). The most we can hope for is to use science to demonstrate that an unusual mechanism had to be responsible for certain phenomena. You can pretty much forget being able to create experiments that will require the Intellgent Designer to appear in the laboratory or in the field. Not even creationists will argue for that possibility.
But that is not my worst complaint about the enterprise of YECism. The community appeals to Biblical authority to “prove” its case. But that is no proof whatsoever, and I’d argue that even the Bible doesn’t teach this as a method of proof. Is there biblical thermodynamics, calculus, electromagnetism, classical mechanics, linear algebra, or any major field of research that can be resolved by theology? No.
For example, some YECs will come around and preach that if you don’t believe the Earth is Young, then you’re compromising the word of God. To which I respond, well what does the book of Genesis have to say about what the right form of Maxwell’s Equations should be or how do your resolve the conflict of YEC with the Einstein-Planck equation that is related to the photo electric effect and thus all of Quantum Mechanics. At that point, the preachers have little to say. They’ll then proceed to make disparaging comments about my character.
The major problem of YEC (and there are many) is the problem of distant starlight. Some will invoke temporally and spatially varying speeds of light. Some will argue light was created en-route that gives the appearance of age (GAG!). The problem with varying speeds of light is in order to preserve the energy of the Einstein-Planck equation, one has to then invoke a varying Planck’s constant, which would mean the undoing of Quantum Mechanics. So YECism flies in the face of Maxwell’s Equations (electromagnetism), Relativity (which is related to Maxwell’s Equations), and Quantum Mechanics — no small pillars of real science! Though YECism might stand on its own against evolutionism, it collapses under the weight of modern physics.
But that is not even the end of the story. YECists like Ken Ham routinely demonize other Christians who disagree with him. This is personally distasteful because many in the ID community who have even been expelled and suffered career loss for their criticism of Darwin are also demonized by the likes of Ken Ham. Even supposing YEC is true, this is no way to treat fellow Christian who have shown a lot of courage in speaking their conscience.
Does his organization spend lots of money on real science? Well relative to the millions they spend on amusement parks which they pass off as the “creation museum”, they don’t do much on behalf of answering scientific questions. I’ve mentioned three major problems which are utterly neglected in favor of building amusement parks of no scientific value.
If YECists consider it sinful to believe in an Old Universe, then they’ll have to come to terms with the work of creationists like Maxwell, who ironically has given the best line of reasoning to argue against YECism. Using intimidation, demonization, and appeals to theology will not make much of a persuasive case, even to card carrying creationists like me. In fact, it only reinforces the view they have no facts to stand on, only blind belief.
Sometimes the way YEC “research” is conducted reminds me of the geocentrists that attempted to influence my denomination, the PCA. [incidentally physicist Dave Snoke is an Elder in the PCA, and Dave Heddle is deeply sympathetic to the PCA]. It was disgusting to try to reason with geocentrists. I know many Christian believers, who are in the aerospace industry. That industry wouldn’t achieve its success if it accepted geocentrism. I even met a Christian creationist astronaut who walked on the moon (Charles Duke). This would not be possible if the biblical geocentrists had their way. But some people are so committed to their own theology, they are unwilling to be reasoned with, nor will they seriously engage reasonable objections to their claims. If you want a taste of geocentrism, go here:
Though YECs one the whole aren’t as bad as the geocentrists, there are pockets of them that are as bad, imho. I don’t want these sort of people on my team, and hence I have chosen to affiliate myself with the ID community because of some of the rotten tomatoes in creationism.
So then, in light of these things, why do I accept ID as true and hold out a smidgen of hope that YEC might be true? That obviously will be the subject of future posts at the Skeptical Zone, but all this to say, one can’t accuse me of not recognizing serious difficulties in some of the ideas I’ve promoted and explored. And that is what I would hope the skeptical zone is about.
Not at all. For example, if we discovered the existence of non-biological intelligent beings that were nothing to do with designing life, that wouldn’t make the case for I.D. of life on its own, but it would at least establish the existence of your general mechanism. We might be able to repeatedly observe fairies making fairy rings (another ancient design inference), for example.
But even that’s not necessary.
If we were looking at an intelligently designed biosphere, there’s absolutely no reason at all that it should be mistaken by any biologist for one produced by unintelligent evolutionary processes. Designers could design life on a million planets without any one of the results coming anywhere close to being inside the parameters of evolutionary possibility.
Let’s face it, it’s just unfortunate for you that the designers have decided to bend over backwards in their efforts to make this planet’s biosphere appear to be a natural product when it’s examined carefully.
Of course their is: a priori ideological bias, which is exactly the case.
Historically speaking, it has never “appeared to be a natural product” when examined at any level. Even Darwin was attempting to explain the apparent design of biological organisms by hypothesizing a process that could mimic the success of human intelligent designers (breeders) when it came to generating different morphologies and maintaining them.
As Lewontin admitted:
Then there is this:
Then there is the history of how biological features and evolutionary processes are described, which is always in prescriptive engineering terms – what things are for, what they are supposed to do, “why” they evolved, to meet what “goal”, etc.
While it may be convenient to your ideology to imagine that, historically speaking, life forms have never “at any level” appeared to be designed, the fact is that to virtually everyone outside of the materialist ideology, biological forms have always, on every level, appeared to be designed, and many materialists also admit this.
Darwinism itself began as a way to explain this apparent design without resort to a designer. If there was never apparent design, there would have been no need to come up with natural selection as a sorting system to explain it.
The fact is, historically speaking, biological life forms have always appeared to be designed, and it is only those most deeply ingrained in materialist ideology that can say it doesn’t appear to be designed.
But, this is just one more way that atheistic materialists must exist in a state of denial of what is obvious to satisfy their ideological bias.
The fact is, historically speaking, biological life forms have always appeared to be designed, and it is only those most deeply ingrained in materialist ideology that can say it doesn’t appear to be designed.
The fact is, children can tell the difference between their toys, themselves and their parents. Did WJM ever naïvely think that he and his parents were designed?
Except it doesn’t appear to be a natural product. Nature cannot be a natural product.
You said: “The fact is, historically speaking, biological life forms have always appeared to be designed…”
To humans, but not all humans. What if humans didn’t exist? What about before there were humans? What about after humans are extinct?
Is design or non-design of “biological life forms” strictly determined by human opinions/perceptions/beliefs? In other words, if there were no such thing as humans, who or what would be around to opine on whether life forms were designed or not? And if there were no such thing as humans, wouldn’t other life forms still exist?
What if a lizard could talk, and it were asked if it believes that life forms were intentionally designed? If it said no, would you accept that answer as being true? Keep in mind that lizards have been around a lot longer than humans.
WJM
This sounds like a fact made up to support a particular argument. I think you are projecting, as usual. Aristotle, for example (having, you may agree, a significant influence upon subsequent thought) opined:
“Animals and plants come into being in earth and in liquid because there is water in earth, and air in water, and in all air is vital heat so that in a sense all things are full of soul. Therefore living things form quickly whenever this air and vital heat are enclosed in anything. When they are so enclosed, the corporeal liquids being heated, there arises as it were a frothy bubble.”
This sounds decidely unlike a Design Hypothesis. Its origins can be traced to numerous pre-Aristotelean philosophers. Going back yet further, a Stone Age Paley might have written: “In crossing a heath, suppose I pitched my foot against a stone, and were asked how the stone came to be there; I might possibly answer, that, for anything I knew to the contrary, it had lain there forever: nor would it perhaps be very easy to show the absurdity of this answer. But suppose I had found a
watchshaped flint upon the ground, and it should be inquired how thewatchflint happened to be in that place….”It would hardly have the same emotional appeal. I think the Design Hypothesis postdated the Age of Machines, and did not predate it. Until we had intricate man-made systems, there was nothing remarkable in our Designs to prompt the analogy, whatever one’s assumed ideological predisposition.
ROFLMAO
When you have a theory (Darwinism), the entire purpose of which was to explain the apparent design found in life as the result of non-design processes, and the proponents of said theory are capable of asserting that there is no apparent design in life, one can recognize the self-refuting capacity of an a priori ideology.
The assumption that living entities were designed goes back as far as recorded history. There is no argument to be had with those who would deny this. The recent discovery of what exists at the microscopic level in life does nothing whatsoever to diminish this view; in fact, it supports that view.
No is there anything now that would prompt the analogy to anyone who thinks about it.
ID advocates seem conveniently to forget their own research. For example, who would guess that this was authored by one of the core ID advocates?
I would love to see a design proponent suggest an alternate way to design coding sequences.
Perhaps you missed my first paragraph, William. There’s no reason for science to have an a priori exclusion of anything, including the fairies I mentioned. Rather, it works the other way around. When something is discovered, it’s included.
Then I go on to point out that, hypothetically, an intelligently designed biosphere could certainly be identified, and that there’s no reason that it should bear any resemblance to an undesigned one, unless the designers were deliberately attempting to achieve that effect. Perhaps you don’t realise how tight the constraints on naturalistic evolution are.
At the end of the post, I used the phrase “examined carefully”. It is in the modern scientific epoch that we start to examine life carefully. “Historically”, we weren’t really in a position to do so. And historically, as you’re interested in bias, Europeans had a heavy bias towards the view that an intelligent designer was responsible for life which goes back a long long way. Long before “careful observation”.
Nineteenth century naturalists (biologists) started off with this heavy bias, but eventually the weight of their observations would lead them to question aspects of it, particularly the creation of individual species or “kinds” as they are.
Many people in western culture still have the ancient cultural bias towards intelligent design, and one of its bizarre effects is that it can lead them to believe that those who don’t share it are themselves biased.
Fairies are fine by me, but it needs very good evidence to establish them as part of the real world.
Still waiting for a position on good-faith dialogue here from you, Creodont2
What is really interesting in all of these debates is to see how differently everything is interpreted – every word, phrase, piece of evidence, argument, etc. – by the two parties. The atheist-materialists interpret everything completely differently than the theistic-dualists; so much so that both sides eventually conclude that the other side is simply not arguing in good faith or are willfully ignorant of the material.
This goes back to a prioris and shows how important they are. Everything that follows one’s a prioris bears their unmistakable imprint.
dr who,
I read your post. I understood it. Your view is that our biosphere appears as if non-designed, or if designed, it is designed to appear non-designed. I disagree. IMO, it is so obviously designed, and so obviously unlike that which is not-designed, as to warrant most humans intuitively accepting/understanding that it is designed, and assigning such design to some kind of deliberate agency greater than themselves.
What would a non-designed biosphere look like then?
You can’t not know this for your claim that it is designed to be true.
Basically, William, your argument boils down to asserting that you are the only intellectually honest person in the room. The rest of is are either stupid or dishonest.
When you translate all your postings into plain English, that’s what they say.
Like the guy shoveling shit in Dr. Zhivago, you are the only free man.
You forgot a line:
William, do you live in a world where miracles can happen at any time?
What I find most interesting is the imbalance of results across the “sides”.
The theistic-dualists have been going round in circles since the beginning of time.
The atheist-materialists seem to have created the computer you are typing on and industrialised the world in a few generations.
So when the theistic-dualists actually achieve something or decide something please do let me know.
Presumably you’d rather fly in a place designed by atheist-materialists then theistic-dualists? Why?
Let’s examine your a prioris:
If I were to claim that a giant frog named Fred designed and created the universe, would you accept that? If I were to claim that God is actually a one inch tall, 48 legged, 10 winged, green and purple striped, 12 eyed flying fish, would you accept that? If I were to claim that the one and only true God is female, would you accept that? If I were to claim that the one and only true God is gay or bisexual, would you accept that? If I were to claim that “the designer” was a really, really big cell that gave birth to this universe and then died of internal hemorrhaging, would you accept that? If I were to claim that Zeus or Odin is “the designer”, would you accept that? If I were to claim that I am the one and only true God and the designer of the universe, would you accept that?
Would you accept any of the above without very convincing evidence?
William J. Murray
I disagree. IMO, it is so obviously designed
OMTWO: What would a non-designed biosphere look like then?
I second this question: What would a non-designed biosphere look like?
How would you tell that it was not created that way on purpose?
You left out Voltaire
Yes, animism is an ancient way of looking at natural phenomena.
WJM:
The assumption that living entities were designed goes back as far as recorded history.
Only in societies that had an a priori conception of a designer* and a host of corollary assumptions about the goals and abilities of that designer.
*AKA “creator,” AKA “god.”
William J. Murray
I disagree. IMO, it is so obviously designed, and so obviously unlike that which is not-designed, as to warrant most humans intuitively accepting/understanding that it is designed
“It is so obvious the sun and stars revolve around the stationary Earth, and so obvious that the Earth isn’t moving, as to warrant most humans intuitively accepting/understanding Geocentrism.”
You do understand that human intuition is notoriously unreliable in identifying the true causes of observed phenomena, don’t you? That one of the primary goals of science is to remove unreliable intuition from the equation as much as possible?
Maybe you don’t understand.
Did it ever occur to you that if your challenge is valid, the converse must also be true? That if one is going to claim that he biosphere appears non-designed, they must know what a designed biosphere would look like?
But I’ll answer your challenge: a non-designed biosphere would inexorably gravitate – as all other supposedly non-designed phenomena do – to the most efficient (simple) state and arrangements of materials as possible. IMO, if there is such a thing as a non-designed biosphere, it would never consist of anything much more than that which is the simplest arrangement of matter and expenditures of energy necessary.
Furthermore, I wouldn’t expect any “biosphere” to last for very long, because it’s not like matter cares whether it is “alive” or “inert”, and I imagine there are far more conditions that would end a biosphere than would sustain it. Also, if all you have are rock and bacteria, or water and bacteria and rock, it seems to me that the simplest biosphere possible is the one to expect nature to gravitate towards.
I certainly wouldn’t expect such a vast, interdependent collection of amazingly, unbelievably complex nano-technology and versatile, error-checking code.including things like the illusion of free will, self-aware perception and reflection, hologram-like memory systems, etc. All of that appears to me to be a horribly inefficient, unnecessary manner for matter to be arranging itself into.
There doesn’t appear to be a law that dictates that matter should organize itself into such patterns (unlike the laws and lawful interactions that govern planet and star formation, or the formation of crystalline structures.
So, I think that what we are looking at is exactly what we should not expect to find as the result of non-directed (by intention) biological evolution. A world full of nothing but bacteria-like single-celled organisms – perhaps; a world full of fish and mammals and plants and reptiles and birds and insects .. all forming an enormous, functioning, self-sustaining biosphere?
I’m not saying it couldn’t happen, but when most scientists refer to the origin of life itself as a secularist miracle, and the events that were necessary in order for multicellular, complex life to evolve later as almost equally miraculous, I don’t think anyone can say that what we see today in the world is what anyone would expect to find as the result of lawful and stochastic interactions of matter, even if that matter happened to miraculously turn into a self-replicating organism.
What is “the designer” a product of?
My view is that it appears non-designed on careful examination. Most humans, historically and in the present, haven’t examined it carefully, and most have grown up with the cultural preconception that it was intelligently designed, so it’s hard to tell to what extent their conclusions are intuitive. It’s worth mentioning that not all traditional cultures include the concept of intelligently designed life, so this doesn’t seem to be a basic intuition. Rather, like volcano gods being responsible for the actions of volcanoes, it can come into some cultures, and then be passed on down the generations.
I don’t think you really understand my point about the constraints on biological evolution. It would require a conscious effort on the part of intelligent designers to remain within them.
Yes, I know all that . What’s your point? The argument isn’t if it can be proven that life is designed, but if there is reason to consider or assume it is designed. Of course there is. It appears to be designed, whether it actually is or not.
William J. Murray
But I’ll answer your challenge: a non-designed biosphere would inexorably gravitate – as all other supposedly non-designed phenomena do – to the most efficient (simple) state and arrangements of materials as possible.
Upon what observations or evidence do you base that assertion? What supposedly non-designed phenomena are you referring to?
Why couldn’t a designer create such a simple efficient state if It so desired?
William J. Murray
T: “You do understand that human intuition is notoriously unreliable in identifying the true causes of observed phenomena, don’t you? That one of the primary goals of science is to remove unreliable intuition from the equation as much as possible?”
Yes, I know all that . What’s your point? The argument isn’t if it can be proven that life is designed, but if there is reason to consider or assume it is designed. Of course there is. It appears to be designed, whether it actually is or not.
My point is that since you are basing your argument for ID solely on your unsupported personal intuition, there’s no reason for anyone else to accept it. There’s certainly no reason to try and force that view into public schools as IDers keep trying to do.
I think if you took the nano-technological cities operated by code and high-precision machinery we now know the cell to be and showed it to Darwin, he would have torn up his manuscript and burned it. I think it is a jaded existence within ubiquitous coded technological constructs that allows anyone the illusion that what we find inside the cell to be an argument for “non-design”.
I think the only way those nano-technological microscopic cities, and the super-code and operating system that controls and maintains the whole thing can be considered an argument for non-design “on careful examination” is through the ideological lens of atheistic materialism.
I didn’t say it couldn’t.
But it *is* designed – designed by evolution! So not only does it appear to be designed, it *is* design.
We call it apparent design to differentiate it from the usual use of the word “design” where “designers” are things like us.
So there is no argument there. The biosphere is “designed” for certain values of “designed”.
Why?
And what are some examples of “other supposedly non-designed phenomena”, for context.
William J. Murray
Why couldn’t a designer create such a simple efficient state if It so desired?
I didn’t say it couldn’t.
Then we’re back to the original question – how would you determine that a simple efficient system was non-designed?
Really? Who invented the computer, and who are those mostly responsible for the industrialized world? You appear to be conflating “science”, “technology”, and “engineering” with “atheist-materialists”.
But that did not answer my question as to what a non-designed biosphere would look like. You just noted what you thought it would *do* not what it would look like.
So what would it look like?
That wasn’t the original question.
Indeed. But there is a strong correlation between progress and atheism. The rise of science coincides nicely with the fall of theism. Why would people look for answers when they know all they need to know? Why would people strive to make this life better when eternal paradise awaits?
etc etc.
Both cancer and HIV can be described in similar terms.
So presumably they are designed also?
William J. Murray
T: “Then we’re back to the original question – how would you determine that a simple efficient system was non-designed?”
That wasn’t the original question.
You were asked how you would tell a non-designed biosphere and you said if it was a simple efficient state.
Now you say a simple efficient state *isn’t* a sure sign of non-design.
You just refuted your own argument. Want to try again?
WJM:
You appear to be conflating “science”, “technology”, and “engineering” with “atheist-materialists”.
What kind of science, technology or engineering is theistic-immaterial?
A good argument could be made for Alan Turing as the answer to that question.
Do you know what the theists and their bigotry did to him?
Christian Science.
It’s funny, but what would you expect to happen to the parts that don’t function?
So when you see what currently exists and say “see, it all has a function therefore that’s proof it was designed” that’s missing the point by a wide margin.
If what you say is true, that the biosphere is designed and we are designed, then what’s up with the sun’s limited life?
When it goes out is the designers grand experiment over? How do you feel being a lab rat in a lab you can’t even perceive?
Some universe, designed for life but mostly empty space and hard radiation and even where life can thrive, in the tiny fraction of the universe that’s just right, an upper limit is set on it’s duration.
Not at all. Darwin would be intelligent enough to realise that complexity on the microscopic level is exactly the same as complexity on the macroscopic level from nature’s point of view. We might intuitively find things on the scale of cells and galaxies amazing, because our scale of operation is in between. When will you take my point about careful examination? Belief in intelligent design of life is much lower amongst those who carefully examine cells than it is amongst the rest of the population, and that belief in the Designer did not originate from preachers and proselytizers looking through microscopes.
This is a great example of what I’m talking about when I say that one’s a prioris color everything. You interpret theists a certain way that is favorable to your ideological positions. The rise of science doesn’t coincide with “atheism”; it coincides with the combination of the principles of the enlightenment with the monotheistic views of both Christianity and Islam.
The reason scientific progress stalled out under Islam is because they largely purged enlightenment principles from their acceptable catechism. The reason the principles of reason and rational thinking on their own didn’t generate a scientific golden age long before it reached Christian Europe was because there was no reason up to that point to consider enlightenment principles a sound correlation to what one would expect from the physical world.
Before the enlightenment, Christians examined the world in order to discover the works of God. This is why historians changed the connotation of “the Dark Ages” to “the Middle Ages”; there was a lot of scientific progress before the advent of the Enlightenment. When Christians widely adopted the philosophical premise that god was rational, we then had the heuristic that a rational god created a rationally-appreciable world and provided humans with corresponding rational capacity to be able t discover, recognize, and appreciate the handiwork of god.
That was the rosetta stone principle that unlocked scientific and technological progress. Not “materialism” and certainly not “atheism”.
Atheist materialists like to imagine that a belief in god is science-stopper, but – again – that’s just a self-serving, convenient a priori interpretation. It doesn’t diminish one’s desire to examine nature and “figure it out”; it stokes the fires of motivation to find out “the mind of god”, so to speak. To understand the purpose of this biological feature or the usefulness of that one. The principle of parsimony or elegance is a direct result of the belief that god is both rational and efficient. Otherwise, why should we think that theories are better when they are more efficient, or more elegant?
Why would we expect efficiency and elegance from a non-designed universe?
Theists strive to make this world better for the same reason anyone else does: it’s the world we’re in now, and the world our children and grandchildren will live in. Why not strive to make it better? What else do we have to do here? Furthermore, for most theists, striving to make the world a better place is a spiritual responsibility, not some ad hoc secular purpose we may or may not feel like working towards.
Under a theistic premise, science is much more than simply a way to earn a living, or a way to get grants; it’s about finding out the truth about what god has made. What do atheists care about truth? What do materialists care about it? What difference does it make to them?
I’d argue that it is rather the infusion of ideological atheism/materialism into science that has turned science largely into a political circus bent on pursuing and advocating an ideological agenda, crucifying any that disagree with the “consensus”.
I’d like to thank all the participants for the dialogue. Like Allen MacNeill, I view these discussions as a means to clarify our positions and clean up our mistakes and strengthen our presentation.
I’ve appreciated the restraint my side has shown, and I appreciate JoeG’s forbearance in waiting in the moderation queue. I didn’t want the thread to devolve into a shouting match, especially the ID side making insults to the non-ID side. I consider it a great privilege to have scientists like Joe Felsenstein commenting on my discussions, and I would hope the channels of communication remain open since his responses and that of other scientists carry great weight.
I am working on a post that will cover the topics I mentioned, namely GA’s and Natural selection.
I’ve said most of what I wanted to say on this topic, so for the remainder, I leave the discussion to those who want to stick around.
Thank you again to all, and thanks to Elizabeth for the hospitality and willingness to moderate the discussion on the Reservations about ID, and Rottenness in Creationism. I look forward to our reconvening in the next post.
I wasn’t making an argument. I was describing what I thought a non-designed biosphere would likely look like (given that a set of self-replicating organisms can come into existence without being designed).
Because an intelligent designer can design a water feature in your back yard that doesn’t look designed doesn’t mean that now all water features look designed.
Some water features look designed, others do not, whether they actually are or not. I would expect a non-designed biosphere to look like what I described. That doesn’t mean it would necessarily be non-designed.
No, not really. It’s just an observation.
Says you. The enlightenment promoted science, intellectualism and opposed superstition. Fact is the enlightenment would not have happened had religion not had a stranglehold on society. It would not have needed to happen.
You had that for ~2000 years. It seemed that Christians preferred to construct a mechanism to keep the poor poor, the rich rich and the leaders of the Christian cult in power.
This idea that a rationally-appreciable world came about because of Christianity is laughable. It was there all along, Christianity prevented it’s rational examination not encouraged it.
No, it was not.
Theism started out as essentially the default position for the world. You had long enough. What took you?
What rot! Tell me them, what is the purpose of the brain? What is the purpose of malaria?
So atheists don’t understand parsimony or elegance? Really?
If your god is so rational and efficient why do I have to eat down the same tube I breathe through?
Why would we expect it from a designed universe? Is your designer incapable of designing a inefficient universe that nonetheless could support life?
And you call creating a universe that’s almost all uninhabitable (not to say inaccessible) an efficient design, if we are the intended result?
They strive to make the world a better place for those who share their belief.
What else do you have to do? Why don’t you tell me, as it’s you that is living in a designed biosphere on a designed planet in a designed universe. After all that you say that you don’t know what the designed purpose of life is? Very strange designer that can build a universe but forget to leave you a note explaining what it’s all for.
Give me a *single* example of a scientific discovery conducted under a theistic premise that illustrates that point.
That you have to ask tells me all I need to know about you.
He said while typing on his computer, in his air conditioned flat.
Loads of people disagree with the “consensus”. They get Nobel prizes if they are right. And can *show* that they are right, that’s the important part.