Intelligent Design

by Delta20 234 Replies latest watchtower bible

  • seattleniceguy
    seattleniceguy

    Hey Liberty II,

    It is also possible that our own dark and irrational natures and the cruel chaotic Universe are a reflection of the Creator.

    I've thought about that too. Talk about a nightmare scenario. But I think his hands-off approach indicates that, at best, he is simply totally disinterested.

    D Dog,

    Using your analogy, you are making the jump to say, if God created orange cats He Himself must be an orange cat.

    LOL...I don't know if you could possibly have missed the point more outrageously, or rephrased my argument in a less correct way. And I don't think it's possible to break it down more than various posters on this thread already have, so we'll just leave it at this. But you should be aware that you still haven't grasped the argument.

    SNG

  • Deputy Dog
    Deputy Dog

    derek

    What are the laws of logic and where did they come from?

    D Dog

  • Deputy Dog
    Deputy Dog

    sng

    Yea, those laws of logic keep getting in the way.

  • Liberty II
    Liberty II

    Hi D Dog,

    Logic is the system which makes communication possible and gives form to human thought. Logic has evolved along with human intellegence. There must be a consistant base for thought processes to compare facts and observations against, otherwise our thoughts become muddled nonsense. We all must agree to certain standards of objective reality, hence the reason insane people cannot hold conversations or build lasting relationships. Ultimately logic is made up of all the rules we have learned for communicating and getting along with others. If your employer says he'll pay you every Friday but then claims he can't pay you because he doesn't believe in Fridays it would not take you long to end this relationship and find an employer who could be relied on to follow the rules of logic.

    When I dared to apply the everyday rules of logic to Watchtowerism and then eventually to the Bible and God Himself I found that none of these added up. I would not buy a product with my hard earned money which was invisible, silent, and inactive unless I had good evidence which proved it could benifit me in some way. There is no such evidence for God so why would I buy into such a silly concept? Remove religion and its scriptures and gods from their logic protected cultural/traditional box and they are easily seen to be frauds that otherwise smart folks such as yourself would never buy into. Which is why Western Christians won't believe in Islam, Roman mythology, or the Easter Bunny because they are not protected from our logical skepticism, unlike our own religion/god.

  • AlmostAtheist
    AlmostAtheist

    >> What are the laws of logic and where did they come from?

    I think it order to have a logical debate you have to have some agreed upon "truths". Water is wet, ice is cold, batteries run down and die, that sort of thing. In this discussion, one base truth is missing: Do logical conclusions about the creation apply to the creator? Unless I am missing something, DDog, you would say that they do not. I would say that they do. Without that agreed-upon basis, we'll always reach different conclusions.

    I don't think that's bad, or makes either conclusion "wrong", it just means that any argument that leans on those premises will not be accepted by the other party.

    Dave

  • Abaddon
    Abaddon

    SNG: re. disinterested god.

    I find sci-fi fascinating. Very often, exclusively in the case of Star Trek, it is speciesist. Plucky little human beings over-take moribund civilisations thousands of years older, or unite them into a peaceful union (where the humans really seem to sit in the driving seat). More advanced civilisations that can defeat humans are always cold, inhuman or evil.

    What we see is exactly what most primitive cultures espouse. Many tribal names translated as something along the lines of 'real people'. Other tribes weren't really people. Everyone thought they were special. And as there wasn't a good explanation for things like lightning, god entered as a filler of gaps.

    But each god made his people feel special. Chosen.

    The idea that a Universal creator would occupy itself with anything as petty as us seems to be an assumption bred of human conceit that the world revolves around them.

    And about the topic in general...

    Now the 'gaps' spoken of above are an awful lot smaller. One can insist that complex things need a designer, but then, to avoid the obvious contradiction, you either have to speculate on the possibility of a non-complex designer, or ask why the maker of a barrel of complex things would be bound by the rules for complex things in the barrel.

    BOTH these again require an explanation of origin, either for the curiously non-complex designer, or for the barrel-maker.

    Unless one presupposes an eternally existing curiously non-complex designer or barrel-maker, which is on about the same level of logic as putting a bone through your nose to keep evil spirits away, you still end up with an infinitely recursive set of designers. This is a silly idea, although if they were indeed outside time they would have plenty of emit to be recursive in, as well as teanifni ecaps.

    Now, you can have fun with a non-complex god that is comprised of everything that exists, a Universal mind, with some people accessing it as 'Avatars'. Hinduism, Buddhism, even way-out Catholics like Teilhard all play with this idea.

    But if believing in god is about faith, and your particular belief requires you to make a leap-of-faith and presuppose the existence of an eternal creator... please get on with it.

    There is nothing wrong with doing that. It is indeed an expression of the certitude of your faith.

    To make extraordinary claims that when you don't have extraordinary evidence is what faith is about. But it doesn't mean one should insist the claims are in some way logical. They shouldn't have to be if you have faith. Get over it. You don't have to play golf, you can play tennis. Just don't insist that the rules are the same.

    Besides, "I believe just because I believe" is one hell of a good way of getting me to shut-up.

  • zen nudist
    zen nudist

    how about irreducible stupidity?

    who designed the human eye backwards?

    some animals actually have their optic nerve running into the back of their rods and cones so that photons are unobstructed, yet the human eye has the optic nerve running through the front of each rod making a blurr which needs to be corrected by brain algorhythms...

    or how about a type of fly whos offspring begin life by borrowing through her body as their first meal?

    or how about a type of insect which buries itself in the ground for seven years, just so it can break free for a couple of DAYS and mate, plant the next generation into the ground and DIE--what genius god thought that one up?

    there are many examples of really stupid things in the world like these.

  • ballistic
    ballistic
    how about a type of insect which buries itself in the ground for seven years, just so it can break free for a couple of DAYS and mate, plant the next generation into the ground and DIE

    I bet the sex is really good.

  • Pole
    Pole

    Great points zen!!!

    Yeah, how about the dumb-design theory?

    My favourite example of is the mix-up of the digestive and the respiratory systems. God - the Great Designer Created humans but he didn't care to separate the two systems. Now, I wonder what the thousands of people who have choked to death on chicken bones would have to say about the so called "Intelligent Design".

    Same goes for the location of the eyeballs. They are located deep in the skull so that nothing can hurt you. Except for a pointed stick, right? Damn it. The Dumb Designer screwed it up again!

    There are thousands and thousands of examples in Nature of screwed up biological defence systems.

    Pole

  • Gollum
    Gollum

    This debate is somewhat depressing to me, since it reminds me of the horrible Cognitive Dissonance I lived with for years as a JW. I remember making some of these same arguments, and just like the elephant in the room, ignoring the logical fallacies. All I can say is that the Creator outside of the box is just another version of ?it?s turtles all the way down?.

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