by nicolaou 122 Replies latest watchtower beliefs
The puddle of water wakes up one day and looks around at the hole it is in.
"Why, how interesting that this hole exactly fits my quantity and volume. Without this hole being in just the right place at the right time I would not exist.
Therefore, there must be a creator!"
To Terry's (or Adam Douglass's) point, it's funny to think how small this window of opprotunity is. Our sun is only about 4 and a half billion years old. It wasn't always as hot as it is now, and it's hypothesized that Venus used to be alot more like earth a couple billion years ago, but then as the sun got hotter that was no longer sustainable, but then earth entered that goldilocks zone, and as time goes by the sun will actually get brighter and hotter and that goldilocks zone will move out past earth's orbit. Multicelled life has only existed on the planet for maybe a billion years. In another billion years the earth's oceans will have already boiled off as the sun continues to heat up, and earth will be like venus. Eventually the sun will become a red giant and may engulf the earth entirely leaving nothing. But for some reason, right now, this moment where things are just right for humans to exist, clearly this is the most important moment of monumental eternal significance....because we're here....at the moment...so obviously the entire universe was made for our benefit. Humans have been building civilization for ten thousand years, so CLEARLY this ever changing fourteen billion year old universe was made specifically for this reason...never mind the fact that life on the planet will be wiped out as quickly as it emerged, and humanity will have perished long before then....the universe was made for us.
An excellent opinion on your post#167 ( too long to quote here).
Agree to diagree my friend :)
Rico should stick with evolutionary biology and leave theology to those that actually have a grasp of it.
And I will agree to disagree, too. One need not be a theologian to have an opinion about the existence or non-existence of god, in particular when theology has a way of insinutating itself upon so many areas, in particular evolutionary biology. However, I can see your point, as much as I may not agree with it. Let us say I agree with it as much as I might agree with confining theologians to commenting on god and nothing else. If theologians would agree to that restriction, however, I might be prepared to think otherwise. At least the debate on what to teach our children in school about the origin of life would be moot.
And I will agree to disagree, too. One need not be a theologian to have an opinion about the existence or non-existence of god, in particular when theology has a way of insinutating itself upon so many areas, in particular evolutionary biology. However, I can see your point, as much as I may not agree with it. Let us say I agree with it as much as I might agree with confining theologians to commenting on god and nothing else. If theologians would agree to that restriction, however, I might be prepared to think otherwise. At least the debate on what to teach our children in school about the origin of life would be moot
I agree that theologians shoudl stop from making comments on anything other than theology, at least in the sense of their credentials "legitimizing" anything outside theology.
Be honest though Rico is an awesome name for Richard Dawkins :)
My point, done in a half-assed humour way I admit, was that just because someone has the credentials in one subject, doesn't make them an authroty on any other, much less make their opinion worth any more or even being right.
And that goes for theologians that have NO CLUE about what evolution even states.
Just like a few internet searchs and reading a few books that echo your personal beliefs about God doesn't make you fluent in Theology, the same goes for Evolution or anything for that matter.
One thing though:
I think that the moment we bring God into something and decide to comment or state an opinion on God's nature, especially when it apples to a given religion, we shoudl get a good grasp of that religion and of God.
Commenting that the universe is about as fien tuned as my cousins ass is an opinion and a valid one, but the moment we bring God into it and state that ( and I am just doing an example here): If God knew what he was doing it woudl have been like this...
Well...then you are getting in the relm of theology and why the world is the way it is and why God made it so, right?
1st of all, Nicalou, thank you for having started this thread, I am sorry if it goes further than what you intended.
Jonathan H, thank you for your comments, i think you go too easy by scuffing the ID idea off, calling it is impossible to know. But that is OK. I'll reply on a few specific points you made.
"The problem with your list on what designed life would look like, hoffnung is that it's merely assertions without evidence or solid reason."
I fully agree, I don't see it as a problem though. It is an invitation to research and accept or reject the assertion based upon facts. Obviously I do not have the evidence yet. Otherwise I would have come up wit it.
"Why would a designer leave behind a bunch of traces of trial and error, opposed to leaving only the successful attempts?"
Ever seen a designer where his very 1st model was perfect? I have not. I am not merely looking for extinction and reappeance of a few spieces, I am looking for restarts from zero or almost zero. And even then we have to be cautious, because mass extinction on global scale & restarts of life can have natural environmental causes.
"Why would there be hard boundries as to what life can do rather than a broad range of synthesis, and why are those specific boundries (such as no animals can breathe carbon dioxide) the lines that can't be crossed?"
designers choose options, and this choice makes other options impossible. A car with a diesel engine cannot run on petrol, that kind of stuff. Natural selection does not have a free will to choose. Species are pushed to adapt and develop, taking on as much options as they can, as a reaction upon stochastic elements, if I understand it right. That it thereby crosses boundaries is a very important cornerstone of natural selection.
"The problem with coming up with a list of what designed life would look like is that it infers an understanding of what the designer would do. Which in essence means you can make the theory fit the facts."
I have gone out of my way to not fall into this trap. I might have failed in some points, but I guess I succeeded in others. And again, I don't have all the facts available, so my theory does not fit your assumption, and I cannot make it fot mine either.
"All you have to do is explain why the designer did it this way instead of that way. Are there traces of trial an error? Yes? That's because the designer was working out solutions, he didn't get it right on the first try. No? That's because he's an intelligent designer and didn't leave behind lots of mistakes. Either outcome is explainable by design just by changing the designer. A vague designer is a theory that will fit any fact"
Very true. This list is intended to make the designer less vague and more concrete, without ever really knowing him. If you want to help to narrow it down, add some more items to the list. And again, it is not about WHY, it is about HOW.
"To come up with a solid methodology for prediction, you would first have to make solid predictions about the designer involved. And no ID movement wants to do that."
Well, I must be the very 1st then. I am making solid predictions about the designer.
"But even with the list you made, it doesn't conform to our planet. Ecosystems for instance, are not spontaneous and stable. The planet is in constant flux, the continents are drifting around the planet, it shifts from ice age to thawed age, and back again, and there have been multiple mass extinctions on the planet, as well as a constant background extinction rate. You would have to infer, not a designer that made it and then watched it go, but a designer that is constantly at work, shaping and reshaping the world's ecosystems."
We are well aware no designer is at work in nature at the moment.
"But there again is the rub, either way all you have to do is change the designer to fit the facts. As long as you assume a priori that it was designed then it's easy to explain anything by design. You just have to say that's how the designer wanted and then make up a reason why. Which is really a reverse process"
I don't assume it was a priori designed. By making a list of solid predictions about the designer, I am making it more difficult to make the theory fit the facts.
"It would be more logical to try and understand the nature of said designer by examing the available data, rather than the other way around."
That is exactly what I am trying to do, hence the list. And as you have stated, in order to avoid making facts fitting the theories, you need to have some clear ideas about the designer, so that you cannot renounce it when it does not suit you any more .
It is indeed not easy to find undeniable proofs of design. If it would be easy, somebody would have done it before us. One thing is important in this discussion. It centers around HOW, and not WHY. The why is in the realm of religion and stuff.
If I recall correctly from something you wrote in another thread, Paul, you're studying toward a degree in theology, are you not? A question I've always wanted to ask is does one need to believe in God in order to become a theologian?
EDIT:
Be honest though Rico is an awesome name for Richard Dawkins :)
Absolutely. I watched one of his earliest video productions (The Blind Watchmaker, 1987) just this past week and I had to chuckle that he was a young, long haired, lean maverick back then. Rico is perfect.
If I recall correctly from something you wrote in another thread, Paul, you're studying toward a degree in theology, are you not? A question I've always wanted to ask is does one need to believe in God in order to become a theologian?
It certainly helps, LOL !
But I would say, No one doesn't HAVE to believe in God and many theologians do "lose their faith" and still remain theologians.
I think that a belief in God drive a person to want to knwo everything they can about God and there is SO MUCH out there bro, you have no idea !
( maybe you do).
There are so many writings from the past 2000 years and new ones coming out every year, it is truly a subject that is virtually endless.
One can spend a lifetime studying just ONE of the MANy subjects or figures.
The bad part is that the vast majority of peoples don't realise how much literature there is out there.
And the modern approaches to apologetics is truly impressive and amazing.
Ok, great, Hoffnung. You have made an actual attempt at some kind of ID science. But based on your criteria, your version of ID has been disproven. The designer you hypothesized does not exist, if nothing else because ecosystems haven't spontaneously generated, and that they have in fact been in a constant state of flux, and the enthymemes necessary to reconcile this would violate another premise, namely that the designer is not still working.
But ID is a bit like asking who dug the grand canyon. It's a silly and unnecessary question unless you assume from the get go that somebody dug the grand canyon.
