#4: Is intelligent design a viable argument for the existence of God?

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afstandopleren, all I've seen you do is be sceptical about stuff concerning science, whilst not at all being sceptical about stuff like giant human fossils being found. Scepticism is great and all, but not like that...

I do not have unlimited faith in science, but so far, science has been able to do what no religion has done before, actually help. It has presented answers based on evidence and rationality rather than imagination, it has cured diseases like no praying or voodoo dances ever could, it has brought human further, deeper and higher than ever before, and made our species the most powerful on the planet. Considering that, I have no moral objections to defending science against someone who seems to be sceptical about it for no valid reason. I mean, you even refuse to look stuff up and would rather just bash it as "impossible."
afstandopleren said:
the only time Africa and Europe where connected was during Pangea and a small period of time after that. I don't believe that a bunch of Neanderthals got lucky crossing the sea.
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Ignorance is not an argument.

Humans travelled to Asia before going to Europe, BTW, which also explain the gradual decrease in skin colour, amongst other things.

Absolute certainty can never be achieved, and science might as well only be the rules of an imagination world, but as long as it shows us how this world works, I have nothing against this.

What bothers me about your way of thinking about science is that you see the scientific method of constant re-evaluation as a downside. I think this process just means that we come closer and closer to the truth (lim [x-> truth] (x)). Evolution has been re-evaluated so many times, and has survived all of the new sciences being created ever since Pierre Louis Maupertuis and the people after him proposed it, especially after Darwin proposed a functional mechanism. The odds of it still being wrong (in general, not the nuiances), are pretty much non-existent.

Kash, I'll debunk your God later, 'kay?
 
Because I want to write this out in an as unconfusing manner as possible, and it takes time.

America, I think I've heard 2 theories before: 1) Ice age, just walk, 2) through Alaska.
Both do seem a bit weird, so I'd have to look it up. I might later.

My exams so far have been going well, no problems. Otherwise I wouldn't be wasting time here :D
 
Yes they both do seem weird. Its good to see your doing well in exams. Your doing A levels right? I am doing GCSE's
 
kashmaster said:
Well religion made science but no one will accept lol
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Religion made science??? Uhhh... If i'm not mistaken, you got the death penalty in the Middle Ages only if you talked about science, those years, from around 500 till 1500 was waste time, science couldn't improve cuz of the church... so don't say religion made science... btw even the scientists in the Greek time (around 1000 BC or so) knew the gods didn't exist...

Heavenly Spoon :F said:
Because I want to write this out in an as unconfusing manner as possible, and it takes time.

America, I think I've heard 2 theories before: 1) Ice age, just walk, 2) through Alaska.
Both do seem a bit weird, so I'd have to look it up. I might later.

My exams so far have been going well, no problems. Otherwise I wouldn't be wasting time here :D
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If i'm correct it are option 1 & 2, both of them combined. It clears also a lot of things up; ever notices the indians looked a bit like asian people? You can see the facial comparisons. In the Ice age when the north of the Pacific Ocean was frozen they could walk from east Russia to Alaska and so they inhabited America. Another theory is because the sea level was a lot lower back then they just could have walked.

The aboriginals have gotten in Australia, i'm not 100% though, possible from east Asia, Malaysia, Indonesia and through various islands they have possibly gotten in Australia. Low sea level, but still they had to cross a few pieces of water... But know, people were able to make boats a very long time before you have ever thought... the Egyptians were able to make real boats around 4000 BC with a sail! so it's highly possible they were already able to make sturdy flots around 8000 BC or earlier...
 
kashmaster said:
We just some how became so intelligent compared to the rest of the animal kingdom. If there has been 4 billion years in the making why couldn't one animal come close to us. See evolution just doesn't work.
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Ah, I think I've heard about this somewhere before.

A theory was that a mutation in a chimp/apey thing had caused it's skull to close a lot later than normal, e.g 30. Chimps skulls generally close shut completely at around 3. However, shutting later would allow the brain to grow more, so it could learn more, and become more intelligent and stuff.
 
Well I do not refer to christianity when I talk about Religion made science. If you don't understand then do some research.

I too believe that the church held back science for to long. By now we could have hovering cars but oh no...

~Magma King~ said:
kashmaster said:
We just some how became so intelligent compared to the rest of the animal kingdom. If there has been 4 billion years in the making why couldn't one animal come close to us. See evolution just doesn't work.
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Ah, I think I've heard about this somewhere before.

A theory was that a mutation in a chimp/apey thing had caused it's skull to close a lot later than normal, e.g 30. Chimps skulls generally close shut completely at around 3. However, shutting later would allow the brain to grow more, so it could learn more, and become more intelligent and stuff.
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No I am saying why isn't any animal comparable to our intelligience when the evolution has been happening since 4 billion years ago (near enogh that time)
 
Evolution has no set path. A lot of factors are needed to not only have our intelligence (a lot of animals come close), but be able to build a society like us. For example, dolphins don't have hands, can't invent fire because they live underwater, and so on. If we wait a few million more years, there there might be more, but evolution is unpredictable, so you never know.

But there have been a lot of animals (Neanderthals come to mind) which were pretty advanced, but failed in the end because of natural selection. Homo sapiens was just the superior species at the time, it seems.
 
Heavenly Spoon :F said:
afstandopleren, all I've seen you do is be sceptical about stuff concerning science, whilst not at all being sceptical about stuff like giant human fossils being found. Scepticism is great and all, but not like that...

I do not have unlimited faith in science, but so far, science has been able to do what no religion has done before, actually help. It has presented answers based on evidence and rationality rather than imagination, it has cured diseases like no praying or voodoo dances ever could, it has brought human further, deeper and higher than ever before, and made our species the most powerful on the planet. Considering that, I have no moral objections to defending science against someone who seems to be sceptical about it for no valid reason. I mean, you even refuse to look stuff up and would rather just bash it as "impossible."
afstandopleren said:
the only time Africa and Europe where connected was during Pangea and a small period of time after that. I don't believe that a bunch of Neanderthals got lucky crossing the sea.
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Ignorance is not an argument.

Humans travelled to Asia before going to Europe, BTW, which also explain the gradual decrease in skin colour, amongst other things.

Absolute certainty can never be achieved, and science might as well only be the rules of an imagination world, but as long as it shows us how this world works, I have nothing against this.

What bothers me about your way of thinking about science is that you see the scientific method of constant re-evaluation as a downside. I think this process just means that we come closer and closer to the truth (lim [x-> truth] (x)). Evolution has been re-evaluated so many times, and has survived all of the new sciences being created ever since Pierre Louis Maupertuis and the people after him proposed it, especially after Darwin proposed a functional mechanism. The odds of it still being wrong (in general, not the nuiances), are pretty much non-existent.

Kash, I'll debunk your God later, 'kay?
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1. Since when is my version of skepticism bad? Just that I am the only one that seems to 'go the other way' doesn't mean I am skeptic for no reason. You should be skeptical about everything in order to be open to things. (At least, that's the way it works for me.) Yet all I hear is science this, proofed wrong that.

2. Don't underestimate the power of thought. Something that science only recently discovered while it's always there. >_>

3. Curses and voodoo??? *Is confused* I don't believe in that I have ever said to believe in that stuff, or even brought it to subject in any post of mine.

4. Science still hasn't searched for an good answer to the following question: Why are we the only species so far 'developed' on this planet? Even with all the technological dependencies we have now, science still can't cure stuff like cancer without nasty side effects but we have the knowledge to go into space. Sorry, but that just seems a bit backwards to me.

5. We are not a powerful species at all. We depend on our inventions to become powerful. >_>

6. Who are you to say that I don't have a valid reason? Just because I am not willing to share that reason, my skepticism is based on nothing??? Heck no! Not everyone is going to give you the reasons of how and why a person acts the way he/she does. Yet you seem to expect it from me in this case.

7. Me ignorant? >.< Just because I have different knowledge of things then you, so you think I am ignorant? I do so hope that is not what you mean with "Ignorance is not an argument.".

8. Plausible explanations are not facts. You of all people should know that...or so I expect. So that is why I even take plausible explanations with a grain of salt.

Heavenly Spoon :F said:
Absolute certainty can never be achieved, and science might as well only be the rules of an imagination world, but as long as it shows us how this world works, I have nothing against this.
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9. Ah, so that is why you like science so much. It explains everything you can't explain yourself and gives a grip on the way you experience your reality.

10. It IS it's downside. Schools for example, can never keep up with all the progress being made, teaching things that already have been proven wrong. It's like the Dutch dictionary. One day ' gift' (The one you give and get from people) is written like this: "Kado" and the other day it's written like this: "Cadeau". Can you grasp how nutty it is?

11. Good for you if you think the whole Evolution Darwin thing can't be disproved anymore the way it is now. I am not saying it is wrong, I am saying it might be wrong as there still are many gaps to cover to get that 100% IMHO.
 
Heavenly Spoon :F said:
Evolution has no set path. A lot of factors are needed to not only have our intelligence (a lot of animals come close), but be able to build a society like us. For example, dolphins don't have hands, can't invent fire because they live underwater, and so on. If we wait a few million more years, there there might be more, but evolution is unpredictable, so you never know.

But there have been a lot of animals (Neanderthals come to mind) which were pretty advanced, but failed in the end because of natural selection. Homo sapiens was just the superior species at the time, it seems.
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It doesn't matter where you live in this planet, surely some species could have evolved to some what our level.

Evolution is un-predictable, wasn't you guessing we would look some what like aliens. Big heads, big Eyes no fur
 
It is unpredictable, but if one has 2 animals, it's not hard to link them together. These "aliens" and humans look very much alike, to deny a link would be silly.

And there don't have to be animals as intelligent as us for evolution to be true. There being multiple animals with the same characteristics from different branches of the evolutionary tree is not a prediction of evolution.

Afstandopleren:
1. Science is a big bunch of scepticism. I was pretty much saying that you were only sceptic when it suited you. You weren't sceptic at all about these skeletons...
2. Rational thinking has been part of science since forever, what do you mean?
3. That was just at the general bunch of people reading this thread.
4. As I said, evolution is unpredictable. And for a society like this, you not only need intelligence, but the ability to make stuff. We have opposable thumbs, or even just hands, that's quite important. Mammals are in general smarter than non-mammals, and mammals haven't been around for that long, and especially haven't been as dominant as this for long. Give evolution some time, and there will probably be more intelligent life (probably not within our lifetime, "some time" in evolution is easily millions of years).
Cancer isn't really a disease, but a fault in the human body. Religion is trying to stop genetic experiments on humans and such, and it gets little funding.
5. That's what I said, science made us the most powerful.
6. You can't have a debate without arguments, give your reasons.
7. "Ignorance is not an argument" means you can't say something couldn't have happened just because you don't know how it could have happened.
8. There's a point at which something is so very plausible, the act of still openly questioning it without substantial evidence which would contradict it becomes silly. That's like claiming gravity doesn't exist. Sure, it might not, but the odds of that...
9. It helps us explore the world, find out what's it about, yes. It gives answers (or close enough) to previously unanswerable questions in a justified way.
10. Schools should only encourage kids to become more involved in science. What they teach in schools usually falls under the category explained in 8. anyway.
11. There are still gaps, but only once you prove one gap cannot be covered, or covering it would prove the theory false, it's pointless to argue that the theory is false, especially when it is backed up with so many evidence, and contradicts none of these other (near-)facts.
 
kashmaster said:
@ apophys, I am sure all animals have emotions, did I say they never had emotions or did I say we have far superior and developed emotions?
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And I contested that. My opinion is that elephants have at least as developed emotions as we do.

I do not think all animals have emotions. Sea anemones and the simpler insects, for example, probably don't. My opinion is that mammals as a class have the most developed emotions.
 
afstandopleren said:
10. It IS it's downside. Schools for example, can never keep up with all the progress being made, teaching things that already have been proven wrong. It's like the Dutch dictionary. One day ' gift' (The one you give and get from people) is written like this: "Kado" and the other day it's written like this: "Cadeau". Can you grasp how nutty it is?
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This has nothing to do with science... This is because we took the word ''cadeau'' from France. In Dutch (many years ago) we didn't use the 'eau' combination of letters (the 'c' wasn't pronounced as a 'k' either), that's why we've changed the word to our pronounciation. Nowadays the correct spelling is 'cadeau' however 'kado' isn't wrong. It's just an older word. But since we take so many words from other countries they decided to leave them as they are...
 
@ Heavenly, But how can you say there is a link between aliens and humans. As a scientist would say, there is no evidencentual proof for aliens. Well ones that look like humans that is...

Yes there would need to be proof of a species with comparable intelligience as I hardly believe in so much time only one species evolved to become the most superior. Surely this doesn't make sense
 
kashmaster said:
@ Heavenly, But how can you say there is a link between aliens and humans. As a scientist would say, there is no evidencentual proof for aliens. Well ones that look like humans that is...

Yes there would need to be proof of a species with comparable intelligience as I hardly believe in so much time only one species evolved to become the most superior. Surely this doesn't make sense
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The same way scientists determined the evolutionary tree, observation, comparison, looking at similarities, trying to find a logical trend, and so on. You can't apply genetics to extinct animals, so you have to resort to other methods. I don't even think you know what evidential proof for evolution is...

But let's explain how deciding the validity of a theory like the theory of evolution works:
Step 1: Come up with a theory (based on observation and rationality, it would be pretty pointless otherwise, as step 4 would show)
Step 2: Make logical predictions (fossils will be organised, there will be no bunny fossils next to triceratops fossils, the closer animals are related to each other according to the evolutionary tree, the closer the resemblance, not only in appearance, but also in genetic structures and so on. But also more complicated and detailed stuff, like the formation of the bacterial flagellum should have happened in obvious steps, most of which we should find in nature (we found pretty much all of them, BTW) and humans should have a fused chromosome (which we do). The last 2 were arguments used to challenge the theory of evolution, and they eventually ended up make it even stronger)
Step 3: Look for these logical predictions in nature.
Step 4: If all your predictions are true, congratulation, you've got a valid theory. If they aren't, however, too bad.

Proving religion seems to work like this:
Step 1: Define your religion
Step 2: Accept it as true
Step 3: Search for evidence in nature
Step 4: Ignore everything which goes against the religion
No logical predictions.

If I were to predict stuff based on creation, I would predict the following:
1) No Earth layers, or a perfectly layered Earth. Why would we need different layers anyway? How could they have formed? What's their purpose? That'd be a bunch of very useless design, like most of the surface of the planet.
2) Fossils of all animals found together, as everything was created at the same time, everything should fossilize at the same time. Why would a God want to test its believers by fooling them into thinking he's not real anyway? How could that ever make sense?
3) No similarities between animals, especially not in terms of genetics. Did you know birds actually have the gen for teeth? How would this be logical if all animals were created by a perfect God? Why would a God put unused genes in animals?
4) Evidence, God appearing for our very eyes and stuff. If a God truly wanted us to believe in him, he's give us something to validate this belief, not some old book which barely reaches most of the world's population.
5) A more simple, less vast, less complex universe, as Earth is the only planet God would care about anyway. What's the point of, say, Pluto, according to creation?
and the list goes on and on.

Creation also does not predict the discoveries made by modern genetics, does not predict the fossils being organized like they are, does not predict background radiation, stars and galaxies so very far away from us, viruses and bacteria in general, dinosaurs, and so on.

So, to sum it up: Religion fails at predicting future scientific discoveries, when Evolution, the Big bang theory and Abiogenisis (although not perfected yet) did just that.

"God works in mysterious ways" is just a way of saying "Let's just ignore all this and continue living in our happy little fantasy, who needs facts?". You cannot justify or rationalize this. Creation is so blatantly wrong, yet you willingly refuse to believe it, probably in the hopes of being judged in positive ways for your actions in life, life after death, or maybe you just don't want to admit you were wrong. Humans are stubborn like that...

I know it's easy to say "God could've done this", but it wouldn't make sense, at all. Use your brains instead of your book for once.

(This was NOT the post I was talking about posting, BTW, this is just a fun extra).
 
Well Heavenly, since half of your argument is that God didn't exist is because we believed in the time the Quran was written, everything science as it was. That is where you are wrong. You need to do some research, but I will give you a little taster:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E2s14T6x5AM&feature=related

Hopefully this link works. This is just an inkling of what I am talking about and as you know I haven't at all based my arguments regarding this video.

Also to answer some of your questions:

1) Earth needs layers they are not useless, surely out of everyone you know that
2) I don't believe that we were all created at the same time so it doesn't apply for me
3) Maybe the gene for teeth was just there to stabilise things. I am not to sure about this. Why did evolution keep that gene if it is useless?
4) What is a belief without a challenge. If you had to believe in God, then you would need to see him in front of you why? That shows you have no faith, you need to have faith to have belief. I could say the same about evolution, we never saw it occur or the Big bang but we assume it did.
5) Every planet is needed, the universe is vast. You don't know maybe there are aliens that God cares about. Everything is there for a reason
 
Evolution made the gene subdominant, the teeth don't appear anymore, do they? But the gene doesn't need to disappear. Evolution perfectly explain this gene, Creation doesn't. I don't think you even get the point of this post. It's not so much an evidence-based post as it is a post which forces you to compare the 2 theories and realize that your absolutely makes the least sense.

You give vague answers, like religion always does, whilst science can answer those using evidence, facts, observations. Don't you get it, you're just needlessly trying to validate an imagionation...

I don't have much time ATM. I'll watch the vid tomorrow. I know that guy, though, he's the guy who claims that there are no books which say "fact of evolution", which means 2 things:
He doesn't know the meaning of a scientific theory.
He didn't look hard, or even at all.
I doubt he's that reliable.
 
Is evolution a fact though? It is only a fact when everyone accepts it. Everything is a theory and really nothing is a fact as all theories may become defied one day, we never know. But evolution has little evidence and is to vague and complicated to work. Why aren't we suited to our environment. I stated this earlier. We are not superior to apes in other context rather than intelligience.

I do not give vague answers but the opposite. I am the only one who opposes you with a proper understanding of evolution. I am sure that no-one knows evolution better than me on these forums who have posted on this, except for you and probably pokequaza.

If I understand the theory of evolution and know its inner workings and so on and can still defy it, what is wrong with that?

Also Heavenly, I will unfortunatly spend less time on this forum and on the computer as I am going to be doing lots of stuff in the Summer. So someone fight for God please :D
 
kashmaster said:
But evolution has little evidence and is to vague and complicated to work.
[...]
I am the only one who opposes you with a proper understanding of evolution.
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These two statements are contradictory.

If you had proper understanding of it, you'd know that there is a whole lot of evidence supporting it. Check wikipedia.
It's also not very complicated. The DNA in your egg/sperm is damaged or incorrectly copied, creating a mutation. If this creates a favorable trait change, the child has an increased chance of survival. A lot of this built up creates a different species from the original. This is evolution.
 
This'll be the only post I'll make in this thread:

As of now, we have COMPLETE evidence of us evovlving. We also have evidence of other species evolving. Evolving is a course of nature, which we all know happens in a slow process. We didn't just "Pop up" on earth, along with other fury animals like the Bible story of Adam and Eve fortold. And I assume that you we know as a fact, that some Bible stories are untrue, like Jonas and the Whale. They were written to explain things, like other religions did hundreds of years ago. The same goes for Adam and Eve, they had no idea how we came about, especially because there were no scientists as of today, but it was to make sure eveything had it's meaning. Which brings us to Greek and Roman mythology. Their seperate gods were to explain things in nature, just as evelution ocurrs in nature. They had no scientists studying artifacts, search team looking for evolved life. We have evidence of the actual human life beginning in Africa. And for you who say "How can we evolve from monkey's if they're still living?" Evolution takes thousands of years to be complete, which leaves half of us being evoolved, and the other half staying the same through all of these years. If you were to argue that evolution doesn't exist, then what do you call adaptation? Which well KNOW exists. It's "evolving" to suit the enviornment they are in. Primates evolved into humans because of they're high intelligence and striving to become smarter and smarter, eventually to learn to stand up on all for legs, use tools, make clothes for themselves which eventually makes their hair fall off, have their heads shaped differently, and evolves into what is today's humans.

And Kashmaster, you're standing on Faith but as for anyone who isn't, we're standing on facts which we KNOW is true. I am Catholic, but science is stronger on this issue than my religion.
 
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