Kudos to what Else wrote.
gl
What is "Intelligent Design?" Does that Mean Creationism Is Dead?
by Swan 43 Replies latest jw friends
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metatron
THANK YOU, Alan! Finally, somebody understands my point - even if it seems radical or initially unbelievable.
While I don't specifically endorse his ideas, Rupert Sheldrake is the only biologist brave enough to keep bringing up
some basic arguments about genetics that no one wants to talk about. In particular:
If the genetic code is the same in every cell (skin, heart, bone, kidney), then how can cells differenciate? How can any
form develop? Logically, there MUST be some overarching pattern or program that is superior to the genome - and directs
it.
I can't really say what this "something" is - however, we should be seriously looking at "spooky" answers - even reincarnation-
because the path of reductionism is leading us to a dead end - scratching our heads,wondering where we missed the
turn for Biological Form. Watch scientists when they use the word "emergent".
Excuse my rambling here, but I predict SOMETHING SIMILAR is going to happen in Artificial Intelligence research!
Trying to reduce "mind" to a simple set of rules has resulted in failure ( ask the Japanese, who spent billions on this).
The editor of Red Herring magazine pointed this out some time ago - and discussed its implications. To a degree,
mind "just is" - or emerges at a certain level of complexity - which is why you'll start to see more success when
computers grow out of neural elements. They reported a lab grown neural net that can fly a F-22 fighter last month.
Once you start thinking in this direction - and REALIZE the limitations of extreme reductionism - suddenly
the universe looks kind of magical - and intelligent thruout. Intelligent Design only becomes Creationism
if you throw in Genesis. Until you do that, it's just PANTHEISM - and pantheism ain't creationism.
metatron
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drwtsn32
Yep... ID is a pathetic attempt to remove religion from Creationism. But it doesn't work.
To demonstrate, see how many IDers are accepting of the possibility that aliens started life on earth. That is just as possible as "God" doing it!
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BrendaCloutier
: I'm sure the counter claim to this by the athiest is show proof that god does exist, and that they, too, are wrong.
ALAN F: To a certain extent, yes. But the principle that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence puts the burden of evidence on the believer in the Christian God, Allah, Zeus, or whatever god one postulates. Weight of evidence, once again.
Just a sidebar: My suggestion and belief of a god at the core of the universes whos power created them (though the big bang with intelligent intent even if a ... star system, species line, etc., died out either by intent or not) whose power and laws support the universes, is not necessarily a theological figure... i.e. one to be worshipped. My suggestion of this god is a childlike explanation for a source of the universes intelligent design that is beyond our current tiny brain's ability to understand and limited scienctific exploration.
COLD RED RAIN: One doesn't have to be a religous theologist to believe in intelligent design. Case in point, that scientist that reverted from being atheist the other day. You can say he's far from beign a theologist, since he disavows any connection to any Abrahamic gods, but rather, he recognizes a god that depends less on theology and more on philosiphy. Creationism however is a religious teaching. To believe in creationism is to believe in intelligent design coupled with a brand of theology. Much like being an athiest and a Darwinist. You can be an athiest without being a Darwinist.
My point exactly! Except my philosophy takes this "god" to a location and an overall purpose.
I think a little of what has happened on this thread is that the term ID has had two definitions applied - that of the Intelligent Designer using the Big Bang and Evolution as it's creative tool, and that of the Christian Right Wing that wants creationism taught as science alongside evolution.
Really good thread. This uneducated, poorly read, pseudo-intellectual enjoys this kind of debate. I learn so much and have my prior understanding and beliefs reinforced. Thanks ya'll
Hugs and Peace
Brenda
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bebu
What I'm wondering about is, if pantheism is a possible foundation for intelligent design, is how this intelligence is directing all the design while at the same instance being part of everything that is created. Pantheists believe God and nature are all one, so if nature disappears, God does, too. It seems like a cartoon character who draws himself... but from what?
There is a lot of things that are presupposed--that intelligence was not, and then suddenly was, right along with the whole universe. If at such a young point, an infant 'intelligence' could be dazzling mature/wise enough to grasp all the paths and ways to assist so many systems interacting and flourishing from the very start--with better success than me with my houseplants, despite my many advantages of having ready water, plant food, sunlight, soil, and of course, classical music--well, then if that ain't a miracle, I don't know what is.
There are other religions beside Christian that understand God as a creator. I'm just pointing out here that pantheism seems inadequate to the task of ID.
bebu
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Abaddon
Okay, first of all; New Light anyone? ID is (amusingly) a form of Creationism that has evolved to survive in the face of modern science.
Just as most 'sanitised' far-right organsiations (like the British National Party) contain ex-members of recognised neo-nazi or other racist groups (as in the BNP's case; it's leadership were in the old National Front), so too do many organisations pushing ID have ex-Creationists at their heart.
Just as most 'sanitised' far-right organsiations like the BNP, attract those who feel sympathy for some of the goals or views of the 'sanitised' organsiation, but to whom the policies of the older neo-nazi et. al. group were far too extreme, so too does ID attract people who feel sympathy for the goals or views of ID, but whom found older forms of Creationism too extreme.
ID says things are too complex to arrise without a directing intelligence. This very foundation invalidates it as a theory.
It can provide no explanation for how the complexity that is the directing intelligence came about without having another pre-existing directing intelligence there to design it.
Unless it is post-Big Bang ID, which I'm not sure exists as a term yet, but it will, as it's the only one that can survive modern science (and it is this which may or may not have been kicked around by other posters; don't want to put type on screen for anyone).
It is already pretty clear (albeit unproven) that the very fabric the Universe is 'built-on' is such that events like the generation of our Universe are eventualities.
Doesn't explain the WHY or HOW of the fabric, but means we don't need a god to make a big bang as, for whatever reason, that's what happens anyway.
The how and why of the fabric is likely to remain inexplicable; any theory would be untestable.
So, eventually ID'ers will accept ALL of science from the Big Bang on, but say that this directing intelligence arose with, during or after the bang and by metaphysical means directed the development of us.
Of course, there still won't be any evidence for it!! I could decide the directing intelligence was an invisable purple kangaroo called Henry, born from the fire of the Big Bang, and have just as valid a claim as other ID'ers.
metatron
... and think Darwinists should stop their prejudicial labeling of everyone.
I think you have something in your eye; you are labelling too.
Intelligent design could easily support the notion of a pantheistic 'Creator' or deism. What's so wrong with the notion, that intelligence may be distributed thruout nature?
No evidence.
I can't even understand how Darwinism exists in the face of modern genetics. The notion of reducing all the complexity of an organism down to a small amount of genetic code is increasingly ridiculous.
It may well be part of inherited characteristics are not coded for in nulcear DNA; well, in fact we already know this (mitochondria). But mitochondria has it's own DNA. Orgamisms carry around their inherited characteristics in a form that can be transferred to their progeny as easily as their was transferred to them. Whether it is all genetic code, as in nuclear DNA, has nothing to do with ID.
There is shit loads of the DNA that was for years termed 'junk DNA', that we basically thought was accumalated error and (now) non-functional sequences of ancestors preserved by the nature of genetic transfer.
To postulate other 'invisable' modes of transfer whilst we are just begining to explore and understand differentiation and have masses of unexplored data being transferred we don't understand yet we can 'see', is really nice, but not really relevent.
We've got lots of stuff we can see to explore and understand.
If that leaves gaps in our understanding, we need to go looking for other ways.
Or if we learn how to 'see' other ways inherited characteristics are transfered, they will have presented themselves to us for investigation.
I love science. It is fun. Grown-up equivalent of pulling wings off flies to see how they work (never did that though).
My brothers were all born before DNA was discovered. They still inherited characteristics, though no one knew how then.
That means there may still be other methods of inheritance, but it also means the science is young.
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Abaddon
seatlleniceguy
Lovely posts.
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frenchbabyface
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BrendaCloutier
Here's a monkey wrench for y'all. Kevan (my spousal unit) brought it up the other day when we were discussing the origins of the universes, big bang, does our universe expand: on a plain or multidirectionally, is god at the core, etc.
Well, what is at the core, and what is beyond the outer limits (oooohh) or boundary of the universe? Afterall, the universe, mathemetically/scientifically is expanding, hence the basis for the theory of the big bang. So it has to be expanding into something... nothing?
Did the big bang and our universe replace, displace, or destroy another universe? (I thought this was an excellent question on Kev's part, one I hadn't considered)
Are there other universes outside/beyond our own (as there are galaxies beyond our own)? Or are they "parallel", or both? There is some scientific postulation that there may be as many as 34 parallel universes within(?) related(?) to our own. (Possible - afterall they are just beginning to provide theoretical evidence of nutrinos)
Infinity +1
Brenda
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Abaddon
There isn't (apparently) anything to 'push' out of the way. Best way I can make sense of it is that reality is expanding and this means the problem of what it expands into an unreal one, as reality is all there is, it's just there is always slightly more of it.
Bad news if you are on a diet.
The expansion of the Universe links back onto the fabric it is built on. They are begining to think that 'vacuum fluctuations', what I am losely refering to a 'fabric' will continue to expand the Universe forever. If it does and there isn't any more energy created it means the Universe will suffer entropy death; matter smeared out thinner and thinner until a single atom would have to travel across what would have been the diameter of our galaxy before meeting another atom.
Very cold. Very dark.
Winter is coming.