There is so much evidence around us to prove an Intelligent creator.

by nicolaou 106 Replies latest watchtower beliefs

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  AuldSoul

  And over time if the pressure remains the species has a harder time going back.

  The genome does not lose the capability to produce larger specimen, and will readily do so if pressures change in the other direction. It does not have "a harder time going back" at all. In my opinion, adaptability within the genome is as much (or more) an indication of intentional design as it is an indication of random chance.

  Random chance would hardly demonstrate a propensity to survive, random chance would not care whether or not it survived.

  AuldSoul
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  MissingLink

  I think you're missing the very basic concept of evolution. If random choice produces traits that don't promote survivablity, then these traits tend not to be inherrited.

  And your analogy of the robot being different from its inventor. Sure the nature of it is different. But would an intelligent creator make something that goes against his wishes? Would you create a robot that kills if you think that killing is wrong?
• 

  AuldSoul

  And your analogy of the robot being different from its inventor. Sure the nature of it is different. But would an intelligent creator make something that goes against his wishes?

  Here you are once again attempting to force a discussion of originator and/or origin into the picture. The robot can be analyzed and recognized as known design even if the originator is never identified. The personality, capabilities, tastes, and even nature of the originator cannot be divined purely from a study of the robot. Perhaps you do not think humans are intelligent—and I think you'd have a strong case for it—but often in our history we have created things that go against our wishes.

  Just as evolution theory does not attempt to prove origin theories intelligent design does not have to support any particular theory regarding the designer to establish the likelihood of design as evidenced by the results.

  I think you're missing the very basic concept of evolution. If random choice produces traits that don't promote survivablity, then these traits tend not to be inherrited.

  I think we are missing a more basic question that evolution has never answered: why should anything survive? Why should any bacteria eat chemicals in the first place? Why should any collection of protein bindings and amino acids ever have multiplied to begin with? You are talking inherited traits, a concept that only impacts self-replicating life. Why should life have ever propogated? Sand doesn't propogate. Water doesn't propogate.

  It is incredibly unlikely that life should have survived at all on this planet. It has been noted that life has an amazing capacity to adapt in order to survive, but why should it have that capacity? There is surely no need for life to survive, so why does it seem so plainly driven to do so?

  [edit to add] There is no doubt that single-celled life forms terraformed this entire planet into a place more suitable for sustaining much larger life forms, but evolution theory does not have any prediction that life thinks ahead, or even that single-celled life thinks at all. So the existence of much larger life forms (which are also not needed for life to survive) owes its existence to the fact that single-celled life prepared a place that would support larger life, which can be explained easily if the selection of life forms has been at least partly guided by intelligence and cannot be explained at all by evolution theory.

  Respectfully,
  AuldSoul
• 

  Spectrum

  IP_SEC, Your checkered board is very interesting abstraction that to my mind could go towards evidence of a designer. If I saw something like that I wouldn't say it was impossible that the cards are only on the white tiles, I'd say where did the cards come from then I'd say how comes they are only on the white tiles. Environmental pressures don't prove the non-existance of God, therefore your black tiles don't come through for your evolutionary/no-god-needed bias conclusion. I believe that the laws of the universe are in two parts the physical laws and the evolutionary laws laid down by a creator who is probably nothing like the one envisaged by the world's religious community. Landing on the black tiles is easily explainded - grinding a wheat seed into flour is simple compared to creating one ie environmental pressure to destroy reducing entropy. On the otherhand landing on the white tiles something clever has to happen ie environmental pressure to create, add, change. Those playing cards have to turn into computer memory cards and you know that ain't going to happen for the next 4 billion years no matter how many layers of checker boards you have unless there is a law that says it is predestined to happen just like there is a law that says NaOH will always react with HCL to always produce NaCl and H2O. I have to say that if evolution is a random chance and environmental pressure alone then you would think that there would be alot more of it in evidence in this solar system. What do you think?
• 

  DanTheMan

  Designers aren't the design and aren't necessarily even bound by the same rules as the design. There are many examples of this from known design. I'll bet you thought of a few as soon as you read that statement.

  You separate the design from the designer as easily as you separate a robot from its inventor, the one is not the other and the two do not share all the same paradigms of origin, or existence, or perception, or even interaction.

  Let me clarify - by my asking, "at what point do you separate the designer from the designed", what I'm asking is, where does the regression stop? Yes, a robot shows signs of design. And so, that leads to the question, who is the designer? How did the designer come into being? And who designed this designer? Another designer? And who designed that designer?
  
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  nicolaou

  Random chance would hardly demonstrate a propensity to survive, random chance would not care whether or not it survived.

  Agreed, but who has ever suggested that random chance is the driving force behind evolutionary theory? No-one other than the Watchtower Society and all the other creationists. The choice is not between chance and design, that's a false dichotomy. Random chance is the straw man every creationist loves to knock down because it's so easy.

  The choice is between natural selection and design.

  Natural selection is about as non-random as you can get. What works is 'selected', what doesn't work is 'discarded'. Granted, the whole process takes millions of years as opposed to just 'six days' but it's a viable explanation for how complex organisms with the appearance of design exist today.
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  MissingLink

  Random choice is involved somewhat. There is some randomness to the mutations, but it is the ones that generate traits that benefit survivability that get inherited because these are the creatures that survive long enough to reproduce. I agree it's natural selection, but concede that randomness is a key driver as well.
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  Perry

  How did the designer come into being? And who designed this designer? Another designer? And who designed that designer?

  Dan the Man,

  Why must you make time be a factor in your questioning? I mean hundreds of years ago, I could see why this would be a big river to cross. But now, after Einstein, why is time even being considered as a query in regards to the nature of a Designer capable of of designing just one cell, that is likened to a Saturn V rocket in complexity..... on the conservetive end?

  To suggest, that the one responsible for that is anything dimensionally like us is not only unnecessary, but probably incongruent as well.
• 

  5go

  The genome does not lose the capability to produce larger specimen, and will readily do so if pressures change in the other direction. It does not have "a harder time going back" at all. In my opinion, adaptability within the genome is as much (or more) an indication of intentional design as it is an indication of random chance.

  It is random chance though. Any way you look at it it was random chance a certain fish turned out to be consumable. It was random chance that they adapted. BTW A species might not be able to adapt to the pressure and die out is the the work of the lord too? If so why did he create it in the first place?

  Now you are stuck. If your god created something to only have it fail then he/she is not perfect. Though if he/she did create it to fail he is then he/she sadistic and not loving.
• 

  Moxie

  How can we start off this debate about intelligent design and can we all agree to try and keep it civil?

  Hi Nicolaou :)

  I really respect that you're starting an objective and civil debate on this topic. Personally, for years I really didn't know what to think. I thought perhaps there was a combination of the two (creation and evolution) at work.

  I'm now an Atheist, but that was the result of a lot of studying... and in the end that's what makes the most sense to me. I firmly believe that everyone has the right to believe what makes sense to them. Finding your own truth can only come from seeking impartial information.

  If you're interested in researching evolutionary science and forming your own educated opinion I suggest reading Richard Dawkins... he has just published a fairly simple book called the God Delusion that discusses many of the main religious arguments on creation vs. evolution. I found it very interesting.

  Cheers,

  Moxie