ID vs. Evolution

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Okay, this one has the potential to be an all out flame war, but I hope we can keep the arguments strictly logical and not delve into any personal opinions, or personal attacks on anyones beliefs.....

The one thing that I cannot grasp about ID is that it is making a comparison that cannot be made. How do you say that things are intelligently designed when you have no idea of what an intelligent design is? The only thing that we can compare this universe with is this universe. You cannot compare something with itself and then make a value judgement.

Sort of like judging the accuracy of a newspaper by buying the the same newspaper. In order to judge the accuracy of a newspaper, you have to compare it with another source. In order to judge the design of the universe, you would have to compare it with another universe.

Mankind had no ability to judge the value of our planet, until the invention of the telescope and the discovery of new planets. It was only then that we had something to 'compare' our planet too, and only then was it that we could make a value judgement about this planet.

Any thoughts? And I mean strictly logical thoughts on this?

I agree that one problem with the "designer vs. no designer" argument is that we don't have any basis for comparison because we can't step outside time and space to observe from a neutral viewpoint.

A common cliché is the "watchmaker" argument which asserts that if we found a watch lying out in the middle of nowhere we would assume that *someone* had to make it.

Fine. But we are not watches; we're globs of ever-changing combinations of hydrogen, carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, and other elements. Even if someone changed it to the "lava lamp argument" the comparison is weak because our own bodies are obviously capable of altering themselves without outside interference.

Another big problem with "Intelligent Design" is that its very name asserts that there's an Intelligent Designer. First, identify the physical entity that is this alleged designer. Second, prove that this entity is "intelligent" and not just an expression of random or robotic processes.

Yes, we can go logical on this:

Assume Intelligent Design, then examine what can then be deduced about the character and purposes of the designer.

"But before then, most of you will have been eaten" runs the caption of a Gary Larson cartoon, as a mantis expalins the facts of life to a brood of offspring.

Designed to be food? The fate of much reproduction of small creatures.

There are some bizarre and nasty parasites out there, which presumably have to be considered part of the design package. Some of the parasitic wasps, and then there's Sacculina!

And then there's human beings...
The crossed trachea/oesophagus, which lets us choke on food.
The male prostate gland... the jury-rigged eyeball getting into trouble after forty years...


No, assuming a designer does not make life simpler. Possibly even nastier.

(invoking The Fall as an explanation of a ruined creation made better than we see it now makes for two extra entities: a creator and a rebellion. Occam's razor deals with that unless there is compelling reason to introduce such complexity)

By keeping this in the realm of "strictly logical thoughts" you have eliminated the I.D. argument.

Humans are deeply flawed. Just look at us, we are loaded with numerous flaws and problems. This is unsurprising considering that we are the product of evolution, which is a very inexact process which involves an element of randomness.

Considering how very flawed and ridiculously over-complicated we are, if we are the product of an intelligent designer, then that designer is an idiotic untalented craftsman who made a litany of mistakes. God is an untalented hack.

Humans were once perfect, until the fall of man. THEN we became the flawed obominations we are.

why do the two theories have to be mutually exclusive? I rather like the Annunaki/Nefilim hypothesis.

LMAOROTF!! !! !! !! !! !! !! !!

Then how do you explain the rest of the animal kingdom??

Panspermia's quite good too, especially when you drop the term into conversation and some people aren't sure if you're being rude, and some incorrectly are sure you are!

Exogenesis is just the milder verion of that, which I don't consider that unlikely. It gives evolution on Earth more time, whether it needs it or not.

Scrapheap: God does not consider us animals, but beings higher than them. Humans have always had free will, while animals never did. I'm sorry if I misunderstood your question, but that wasn't very specific.

"free will" doesn't necesarilly exist, though. it's simply a belief which can't really be proved either way. and their is nothing to say that if we have free will, animals don't have it as well. we are all animals, after all.

This is the problem with a literal belief in the bible. It leads to a "conficting worlds" view between science and religious dogma. Everything you've said here is scientificaly disprovable. Your beilief system has made you such a nihilist that you can't tell when when someone is blowing wind up your a$$.

My favorite disproof of the ID guys is that they think that entropy (approximately disorder) is always increasing. This is true, but only for a closed system. You would say that a living creature has less entropy than all the atoms required to make it because it is a self sustaining system. Also, using a little phyisics, you can say that the temperature of Earth, on average over time stays the same, so energy in equals energy out. You can now say that for every single high energy photon that hits earth, about 20 low energy photons leave, resulting in the rest of the universe increasing in entropy and disorder (you have 20 photons moving in different directions instead of one photon moving in a single direction) and the Earth is decreasing in entropy and increasing in order. Life is then just an expression of this increase in order. This is not that good of an explanation, but it is good enough to show that it is possible to reduce entropy, if you have an open system like the earth. Now imagine that we turned off the sun and built a giant sphere around Earth to reflect all the energy radiated back to the ground. In that case, you could say that it is now a closed, isolated system and entropy would increase until everything was dead and the Earth's surface was covered in a uniform layer of dust (a bunch of particles being blown in random directions instead of orderly life forms). Thankfully, the sun isn't scheduled to go out any time soon.

A Nihilist?! You gotta be kidding me... You don't even know me Scrapheap, so don't accuse me of being things I'm not. FYI, I believe science/evolution and ID can go hand in hand. If you read the book of Genesis, then you know God created everything one 'day' (I use quotes because I am unsure of what 'day' meant) at a time. Could this not be considered a form of evolution, or something similar?

And I want INTELLIGENT answers! No name calling, or false accusations!

You made statements that clearly contradict empirical evidence. "Nihilist" is an accurate description of one who denies evidence in order to cling on to a pre-diposed belief.