Chance or intelligent design? (page 9)

Disillusioned JW

cofty, he asked all three of those questions, since none of our answers said "God did it". I think he is also saying that the alleged naturalistic processes which created the first cell must be thought of as having begun as far back as the beginning of the universe (if we say the universe had a beginning), and even further back to what caused the big bang, and thus to what existed prior to the universe. His line of questioning is ultimately endless.

He might perceive our science based answers as like saying "it's turtles all the way down", and thus he wants us to trace it all the way down to the ultimate origin. He knows that no one knows the scientific answer to all the way to the very beginning (even if someone says it fluctuations of quantum foam, and/or of virtual particles, in the vacuum). He thus feels he is at an advantage of simply saying God has always existed and that God began the existence of everything which is not God.

Physicist Lawrence M. Krauss in his book called A Universe From Nothing (or in a comment about it) raised the issue of if the origin of the universe amounts to the metaphor of "it's turtles all the way down", and he said he does not think so, but he does not say what the ultimate origin was, for he doesn't know. But https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_Krauss says the following about Krauss' view.

'In his book A Universe from Nothing: Why There is Something Rather than Nothing (2012), Krauss discusses the premise that something cannot come from nothing, which has often been used as an argument for the existence of a prime mover. He has since argued in a debate with John Ellis and Don Cupitt that the laws of physics allow for the Universe to be created from nothing. "What would be the characteristics of a universe that was created from nothing, just with the laws of physics and without any supernatural shenanigans? The characteristics of the universe would be precisely those of the ones we live in."[43] In an interview with The Atlantic, however, he states that he has never claimed that "questions about origins are over". According to Krauss, "I don't ever claim to resolve that infinite regress of why-why-why-why-why; as far as I'm concerned it's turtles all the way down".[44] '

peacefulpete

An ornithologist studying seagulls observes them for weeks, day after day, learning all about their behavior and nature, he watches them do seagull things, fly in patterns, feed on small fish and reproduce. Then one day the flock flies out over the ocean, he watches them get smaller as they move away, he uses his binoculars to watch them until they slip over the horizon beyond his ability to see. Would a reasonable ornithologist believe the seagulls are still seagulls doing seagull things? Or would a reasonable ornithologist assume that when they became invisible to him, their very nature changed and they became angels?

cofty

It reminds me of when infants keep endlessly repeating - 'but why?'

Fisherman

why?

Because

LoveUniHateExams

@Vidqun

At the risk of going off topic, the sexes aren't magically divided at all. Roughly 1.3 % of people are intersex.

If evolution without God is accepted, then the existence of intersex people is fairly easily explained: evolution via natural selection is a mindless process which sometimes throws up anomalies - errors just naturally occur.

But if you believe in intelligent design, why would God create intersex people?

TD

Since the subject of books people have and haven't read has been mentioned, I thought I'd throw this in:

I read the 1967 JW publication, Did Man Get Here By Evolution Or By Creation? as an adolescent. It was satisfying at first, but I eventually realized it contained serious errors that any farm boy could spot. The author(s) enumerated members of the dog "kind" to include species that were not fertile with each other despite their insistence that "kinds" are defined along reproductive lines.. They held up hybrid sterility as an example of an animal reaching, "the limits of its kind" when it is actually clear and unambiguous evidence of genetic drift. The author(s) did not even seem to understand the difference between a mule and a hinny (!)

In 1985, the JW's released the book, Life - How Did It Get Here? By Evolution Or Creation? Although this book was a little more polished, it contained the same misuse of mathematics and (At this point) outdated arguments. It also failed to address some of the more compelling arguments for evolution including, divergence, speciation and zoography.

The same year, Michael Denton's Evolution: A Theory In Crises was published, which was head and shoulders above the JW publication above. Denton was fair inasmuch as he drew a clear distinction between Darwin's conservatism and anti-clerics like Huxely, Spencer and Romaines He acknowledged the reality of speciation and instead, drew his line in the sand at what he termed "Saltational types."

However like the JW's, he too had the aggravating tendency to reason via analogy. An analogy is a useful rhetorical device to illustrate a concept once it has been positively established, but it is not proof in and of itself. People who compare molecular interactions to heat engines and other metallic machinery or polypeptide chains to linguistics are at best, selling you snake oil and at worst, don't actually understand what they're talking about.

Michael Behe's 1996 book, Darwin's Black Box conceded even more territory to Darwin. Behe acknowledged that evolution accounts for the emergence of new species, including disease resistant bacteria. Behe, in public debate, also agreed that the 100% match in shared DNA sequences between human and gorilla proved that they shared a recent, common ancestor.

However like Denton, Behe balked at what he termed "Irreducible complexity" which strikes me as a mischaracterization of the basic proposition of evolution. Evolution does not propose that the individual parts of a complex structure evolved independently. Evolution proposes that simple structures evolved into more complex structures over time. Big difference.

I'm not saying that you should accept evolution. I'm saying that if you want to argue against it, you should do so honestly. At a bare minimum, that would require familiarity with these books:

Charles Darwin -- On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life

Richard Dawkins - The Blind Watchmaker

Donald Prothero - Evolution: What the Fossils Say and Why It Matters

Vidqun

Loveuni, don't know where you get your stats from. I'd say you are roughly out of the ballpark. You have males, with XY chromosomes, you get females with XX chromosomes, and you get intersex people (hermaphrodites),either XX, XY. or a combination of both. The latter are sexual developmental disorders, similar to the current "woke" gender confusion, which used to be called gender disphoria. It's abnormal, an aberration, similar to Down Syndrome, cleft lip an club foot. Think of it in terms of "mutation." In my part of the world some of it was caused by the spraying of DDT to ward off mosquitoes. So some of the problem is man-made. You refer to it as anomalies being thrown up. I view it as "imperfection" coming through.

LoveUniHateExams

@Vidqun

You view it as imperfection coming through.

So why is God's creation imperfect?

cofty

I jut want to highlight this important paragraph that TD wrote above...

'An analogy is a useful rhetorical device to illustrate a concept once it has been positively established, but it is not proof in and of itself. People who compare molecular interactions to heat engines and other metallic machinery or polypeptide chains to linguistics are at best, selling you snake oil and at worst, don't actually understand what they're talking about.'

LoveUniHateExams

There is an interesting video from youtuber Cool Worlds called The Ultimate question, well worth a look.

I don't know how to post it here using my phone but if someone else could do that it would be great.

Chance or intelligent design?

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