Refuting the ARGUMENT BY DESIGN. (page 4)

DagothUr

JD, I already told you to look in the sky. The Sun and the Moon are the first watch. No one made them.

To name just one, strictly related to the snowflake, why is the specific gravity of ice lower than the SG of water, making ice cover the water and not sink in it? Most other "solid" materials are multiple times heavier than their "fluid" form. Why not so with water? Is that one of many "very lucky" but hard to explain coincidences?

Who says it is a "very lucky" coincidence? Perhaps things would have followed a different evolutionary path if ice sank. You assume ice is like it is because that's how life needs it to be rather than that life is like it is because that's how it works with ice.

Jackie

sizemik

The snowflake example is simple . . .

An object of intricate and complex symmetry comes into existence randomly and exclusively . . . by the precise environmental influences that just happen to exist at that precise moment . . . every single flake is different . . . and indeterminable in advance. Once those environmental factors change radically . . . or cease to have influence . . . the snowflake disappears . . . melts.

It's s random occurrance which occurs without the input of any designer . . . the evolutionary process being demonstrated in a micrcosm of time and space.

If an intelligent designer does exist . . . why provide such a simple and obvious example of why this very concept is not required?

TheSilence

You assume ice is like it is because that's how life needs it to be rather than that life is like it is because that's how it works with ice.

I will add to this that it seems quite an assumption to make considering life is much more adaptable than the properties of ice.

sizemik

Also . . . the ice and snowflake examples are simply a starting point. When the principle of how the elements, and what they constitute, respond to environmental factors, are extrapolated out into the natural world, the presence of "design" becomes progressively and proportionately remote to the process.

Ultimately you reach the point that intelligent design may have put the whole natural process into action and then become remote . . . but this is nothing more than a guess . . . or belief, not the result of evidence. The evidence screams "a naturally occurring event in response to environmental factors". The process is neither malevolent nor benevolent, bereft of intelligent intent or a pre-determined result. Intelligent design is thus reduced to remote foreknowledge at best . . . a foreknowledge that intended a struggle and fight for survival.

Hoffnung

"The evidence screams "a naturally occurring event in response to environmental factors". The process is neither malevolent nor benevolent, bereft of intelligent intent or a pre-determined result. Intelligent design is thus reduced to remote foreknowledge at best . . . a foreknowledge that intended a struggle and fight for survival."

I agree with this, Sizemik. There is no external influence in the natural processes at the very moment. The designer, if still alive at all, is just observing at best, and very uninterested and far away at worst. Which is absolutely normal, because the balancing systems in nature are doing their job. Only human presence is messing things up.

I find the world and the life on it too beautiful and complex to believe it is merely a product of happy concidences in a goldilocks zone of the universe. It feels like the earth has won the lottery every day. I might have little convincing evidence for it, but this could not have come into existence without a designer. Everything I discover about nature confirms me in that belief. And yes that is a belief and not a fact based upon evidence. And so far I do not see a reason to change that.

Hoffnung

"Who says it is a "very lucky" coincidence? Perhaps things would have followed a different evolutionary path if ice sank. You assume ice is like it is because that's how life needs it to be rather than that life is like it is because that's how it works with ice."

Jackie

Just try the scenario where ice is heavier then water and all your calculations will tell you life would go extinct on most parts of this planet.

still thinking

marking

sizemik

Just try the scenario where ice is heavier then water and all your calculations will tell you life would go extinct on most parts of this planet.

I understand what you're saying Hoffnug. The scenario of an element changing it's basic characteristics and remaining the same element is impossible of course, and therefore the purest form of hypothetical. Nevertheless, the scenario does not necessarily completely destroy the natural world but merely changes it's direction. Sure . . . many species may not survive. Others will flourish, and yet others will adapt to survive. The new environmental conditions will simply drastically change things.

A similar actual scenario has been played out on this planet many times. Impacts from asteroids and comets have occurred . . . there is irrefutable evidence for this. Such an occurrance throws millions of tons of debris into the atmosphere, polluting it. It reduces the penetration of light and drastically lowers temperatures. The same response unfolds . . . many species don't survive . . . others thrive . . . still others adapt and survive. The environmental factors invoke change . . . balance is restored to a relative degree only, because the changes continue . . . it's only the pace which varies.

Humans through superior intellect, have the ability to discern this and adapt themselves . . . although they cannot guide this process, but rather are subject to it. Population growth is behind all of the environmental change we inflict . . . the availabilty of resources along with environmental impact may well change environmental conditions to less than favourable resulting in a diminishing of his domination . . . this too is simply natural change. We are in it . . . not Lords over it. To believe the Earth can remain static in it's present form defies all logic . . . it has never done that throughout it's 4.5 billion year history. Continents have gradually drifted to new environments . . . what were once ocean floors are now ranges of mountains . . . ice ages have come and gone. Species have come and gone. The sun itself has a life-cycle . . . a beginning and an end.

A super-volcano erupted in this country around 2000 years ago. It still remains the largest seismic disturbance on the planet in the last 5000 years. The atmospheric and surface effects wiped out species of plant and animal. The soil compostion it left supports some plant life now which is native to that environment . . . it doesn't exist anywhere else in that form. A new environment exists where some perish, some survive, some adapt, some thrive.

This is the world we live in. All of this is neither malevolent nor benevolent. If it is by design, then logically the designer is neither malevolent nor benevolent either.

nicolaou

Just try the scenario where ice is heavier then water and all your calculations will tell you life would go extinct on most parts of this planet.

Let's accept that as true. You could also substitute the ice/water issue for any number of other factors which also appear 'fine tuned' for life - the weak nuclear force, distance from the Sun, atmospheric composition and so on.

I accept that if key requirements for life were not met then we would not be here arguing about it. What does that prove? That 'obviously' a higher intelligence created the Universe with the conditions that we observe in order that life could exist? There is a much, much simpler explanation.

If conditions were not right for life to exist, then life would not exist.

That's it. It's that easy. You may find it unsatisfying but your feelings or mine do not affect reality. To arbitrarily introduce a super-complex, hyper-intelligence into the equation just so that you can 'feel' better or find some 'purpose' in existence is intellectually dishonest.

If conditions were not right for life to exist, then life would not exist.

Read that again until it sinks in. Oh and sizemik, you nailed my reasons for including the snowflake image

Refuting the ARGUMENT BY DESIGN.

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