Posted on 07/03/2009 8:42:41 AM PDT by virtuous
A new Zogby poll shows that a majority of Americans support intelligent design.
According to the poll, only 33 percent stated that they believe in Darwinian evolution, while 52 percent stated they believe life was guided by intelligent design.
Steve Meyer is the director for science and culture at the Discovery Institute. In his new book Signature in the Cell: DNA and the Evidence for Intelligent Design, Meyers suggests that the digital revolution is fueling the popularity of intelligent design.
"In the book I've written, I discuss the evidence of the digital code that's inside life -- the four-character digital code in the DNA molecule. I call it the signature in the cell. Bill Gates says it's like a software program, only more complex than any we've ever written," he notes. "You have at the base of life not just...matter and energy, but you have information as well, and I think that's very intuitively something that arises from an intelligent source, not from undirected processes."
He adds that as people become aware of the scientific discoveries that show the complexity of life and they compare that with the complexity of the technology around them, they tend to question the "textbook" account of the origin of life that basically states that life arose from an undirected process.
Yes, even “intelligent” people like Richard Dawkins believe in Intelligent Design, its just that they attibute it to aliens from another planet, and not God. LOL!
There’s a difference between “i d” and the “I D” idea of the “I D Movement”.
If you are under the impression that the "I D Movement" people identify the intelligent designer as the Christian God, you believe something that was never true.
The pollsters (not Zogby, which was only hired to carry out the poll) designed the questions with hot-button terms and then claimed the wording represented “Darwinian evolution” even though their terms aren’t part of the definition of evolution. It’s a bogus poll.
Agreed. Evolution was portrayed as being completely random.
I never said the IDrs mention a Christian God, they just mention an intelligence behind Creation. That is the prime foundation on which all monotheistic religions are built. Furhter conclusions about the nature of man and the universe are necessary to derive Christianity.
HerrBlucher: "Yes, even “intelligent” people like Richard Dawkins believe in Intelligent Design, its just that they attibute it to aliens from another planet, and not God. LOL!"
HerrBlucher: "I never said the IDrs mention a Christian God, they just mention an intelligence behind Creation. That is the prime foundation on which all __monotheistic religions__ are built.
See the problem?
You'd have been better off stopping after that first sentence above, because in your second sentence you admit that _you believe_ that the "I D Movement" people are pushing "a religion" focusing on "one God".
The ID Movement itself denies any such thing.
Wow, talk about jumping to conclusions, yikes!
I was making fun of Dawkins squirmy backtracking in "Expelled", pushing the problem of irreducible complexity off earth and on to some other planet. He squirmed and proposed this scenario because he is unable to even allow the alternative scenario of a supernatural intelligence behind creation.
From what I know of ID, the goal is to simply show that Chance + Time cannot answer what we scientifically observe in the universe. After that you are on your own....God, Gods, reincarnation, afterlife, whatever etc.
I cannot engage in conversation with someone who isn't able to recognize incoherance in his / her position.
In other words, I'm outta here.
The best and most recent poll we have is the voters in Dover, PA voting the IDers off the school board before the trial started.
Why bother when "irreducible complexity" is no problem? IOW the original IDer claim -- that an IC system (one where all parts are necessary to the function of the system such that none can be removed) cannot be created in a stepwise fashion -- is simply false. (IDers will often admit this when pressed persistently by a skeptic, even if they remain content to use this falsified trope on the sheeple.)
There are in fact several ways to generate IC systems by small steps. For instance the addition of parts or steps that are not initially necessary (only helpful) but which later become necessary due to other changes.
Or there's the removal of scafolding. Simple example the later would be a stone arch built around interior stones later removed. The final arch is irreducibly complex (every stone is essential to maintain the arch) but it was formed one stone at a time.
Functional shifts provide other paths. (Think of the arch with the interior stones still in place as not a disfunctional arch, but a functional wall.)
Tell that to the genius Richard Dawkins, he is the one that felt the need to invoke Aliens in the face of irreducible complexity.
While it may be true that step by step the extremely complex DNA molecule could have been formed purely by chance, the chance of that occurring is so ridiculously low it borders on the impossible, as Dawkins was apparently aware and under such pressure made a fool out himself.
First, no one, not one single person, certainly no scientist working on origin of life issues, thinks DNA "formed purely by chance".
Secondly, the DNA molecule is not "irreducibly complex," nor have IDers ever argued that it is IC. They use entirely different arguments (e.g. "specified complexity") with regard to DNA, and these with regard to the information component, not the molecule as such. (Nor by the way is the informational DNA code IC. Even a high school freshman learns that it is redundant.)
Sorry to be blunt, but you don't seem to know what you're arguing for any better than you know what you're arguing against.
Ok then, lets simplify this so we don't argue over irrelevant details. The IDrs are saying that Chance + Time is inadequate to explain the origin of life, and so the concept of ID. And Dawkins, faced with that, and apparently not understanding the issue as you do, resorted to Aliens to explain the origin of life on earth. But he didn't solve the problem, he just moved it to another planet.
And that was the reason for my original lighthearted jab at the pompous Dawkins.
We can argue all day the details of what IDrs are asserting, but the bottom line is: Chance + Time vs Intelligent Design.
ping!
Well, then we'll apparently have to argue all day about what evolutionists are saying, because none of them would say that. At least I've never heard it -- as a "bottom line," first aproximation, simplification, or anything of the type -- from a biological evolutionist, or origin of life researcher, as a characterization of either evolutionary theory or origin of life hypotheses. (Can't say about Dawkins specifically, however. Never been a fan of his and have not paid much attention to him ... however much he seems to be constantly angling for attention.)
I have, of course, heard the "chance + time" characterization from creationists, but only from that source.
Look, I'm no scientist and no big expert, but I have thumbed through college level textbooks on evolution and related subjects from time to time, and dipped into relevant scientific literature just a bit. Let me assure you that some dozen or so major, and many more minor, mechanisms are considered wrt the operations of biological evolution:
Natural selection, kin selection, sexual selection, group selection, founder effect, genetic drift, the neutral theory of molecular evolution ... those are just a few mechanisms, off the top of my head, without looking anything up, from a non-expert who hasn't followed the subject closely in some years ... I could easily make the list far, far longer.
Here's how Merriam Webster defines a scientific mechanism:
the fundamental processes involved in or responsible for an action, reaction, or other natural phenomenon
IOW, particular processes that have particular effects. That is not "chance". Chance (alone) never has been and never can be a scientific mechanism (although it can be an element of a mechanism).
So, anyway, no. We do NOT agree on the "bottom line" you suggest. It is in fact a decidely, and inexusably, false strawman which I actively reject, as I'm certain would any other evolutionist here.
33 percent believing in evolution astounds me.
Could it be that 33 percent of our population might now be either agnostic or atheist?
Great find! Here’s another link to an article over at DI re: the same study:
http://www.discovery.org/a/11451
If not chance + time then what?
If there is no pre existing intelligence, or Force as per Star Wars, creating the universe and subsequently life, then the ONLY other alternative is Chance + Time. Chance, in that the right materials happened, by Chance, to come together in the right evironment, and the right step by step sequence to form the earliest life forms. And then, genetic variations in the offspring of these earliest life forms, that were the Chance result of reproduction, combined with Chance enviromental pressure caused these life forms to evolve into other, more complex life forms and so on to the abundance of life we see today, and specifically, to that life form that has the ability to think about itself and the universe, and the origin of life i.e. Man. And of course, Time and LOTS of it, was needed for all this to happen.
Chance + Time is how I have always understood the arguments of Athiests in explaining the origin of life. It is also what I was taught in college when the subject of the Origin of Life came up i.e. primordial soup. If Athiests, and scientists studying and hypothesizing about the origin of life, are now revising that to include some sort of directive, purposeful, force then I would call that the New Athiesm. I would also call it Theism.
But I don’t think that is what you are saying, you seem to be proposing some third alternative that I as yet cannot comprehend. Not ID, not Chance + Time, rather____________.
You're (amazingly) ignoring natural law, and all the multitudinous consequences thereof.
Let's start with a very simple example.
Surely you have mixed coins somewhere around the house. Put some into a jar or a can. Now shake it up really good. Notice what happens. The coins sort themselves -- not perfectly, but roughly, statistically far beyond what's possible by mere chance -- with the larger coins, e.g. quarters, near the top of the jar and the smaller coins near the bottom.
How does this happen? Is there some intelligence, "or Force as per Star Wars," forcing the quarters to the top? No, obviously not. It is also statistically impossible that most of the quarters will ALWAYS end up at the top just by random chance.
The reason it happens is due to a simple MECHANISM. Shaking creates spaces between the coins. The spaces are of various sizes, but at least some of the spaces are smaller than quarters but big enough for nickels, some others are smaller than nickels big enough for pennies, etc. Thus smaller coins will TEND to move below larger coins into these spaces just because they will MORE OFTEN fit into the spaces.
Obviously there are many, many, many, many, many more mechanisms operative in nature, and far more complex ones. This was just a very simple example to illustrate that your dichotomy between chance or intelligence is (massively) false.
Ok then, I’ll change the wording. The IDrs assert that (Natural Mechanisms + Time) is inadequate to explain the origin of life. They assert this because they believe the likelyhood that these natural mechanisms could have created what amounts to a supercomputer (DNA Molecule) borders on the impossible. I have heard some IDrs claim it amounts to the likelyhood of a tornado moving through a junkyard and creating a 747.
Bottom line: Natural Mechanisms + Time vs Intelligent Design.
Will that do?
Thanks for the ping!
Thanks for the ping!
No need to get so excited about it. If you want to dig out the quarters the hard way instead of just shaking the can, go ahead. Sheesh.
Will that do?
Still excessively broad as a bottom line, maybe, but yeah, that's much better.
Thanks for the ping.
I love the debates on these threads.
Thanks for the ping.
I love the debates on these threads.
Apparently so much I had to say it twice.
I choose such a simple example to make clear that you can't have a physical universe at all -- at least one both as orderly and complex, e.g. containing solid matter, as this one -- without having mechanisms.
So you are in effect saying that the existence of such a universe, even if it didn't happen to also have biological life, is evidence for God. (Which, btw, I don't think is a bad argument.)
So, once you have a universe like this one you consequently have natural law and consequently have physical mechanisms. That is to say you HAVE to have physical mechanisms just a consequence of an orderly physical existence, WHETHER OR NOT they were specifically forethought by a Creator, or merely incidental to creation. The quarters come to the top either way.
HerrBlucher is incontestably correct in the modified version of the "bottom line" I drove him to, at least insofar as it represents the stated and written opinions of leaders in the "Intelligent Design" movement. They DO argue that "design" is called for because "natural law" alone is insufficient to generate at least some features found in biological organisms. They do NOT argue that the mere existence of natural law, of scientific mechanism, qualifies as "intelligent design," at least in the sense they use the phrase. If they did then Darwinian evolution itself would have to be considered an instance of "intelligent design"!
To repeat, IDers emphatically distinquish the "intelligent design" they refer to as being something ADDITIONAL to natural law (even if beyond that they are hopelessly and uselessly vauge; being equally emphatic in refusing to tell us anything further about what ID actually is; or when, where and how "design" is instantiated into physical beings or systems).
So, your position that, "Without God there is are no mechanisms," is more the stance of the theological evolutionist than of the evolution skeptic.
You didn't drive me anywhere, I just changed the wording around to make you more comfortable. The fact is, the base line ID argument remains the same i.e. the likelhood that the first life forms occurred "naturally" borders on the impossible. The rest is just semantics.
If that's the way you see it. To me it is vastly different to say, on the one hand, that the world is orderly, even in its complexity, versus on the other hand that it runs merely by "chance."
Indeed I think this distinction is theologically significant. The Bible frequently distinguishes between the orderliness that God imposed on creation, versus the chaos to which it would otherwise be prone.
And if the poll supported darwinism, then no doubt it would be touted as highly accurate and a reflection of the US in general.
Not by me. Unlike some, I don't base my assessment of the validity of a reasoning process on whether it arrives at the conclusion I favor. Show me a bogus poll supporting "darwinism," and I'll call it bogus.
Yeah, they make an assumption that the fitness landscape is relatively smooth whereas ID advocates assume that the fitness landscape is much harsher. In reality, we are not sure what it is and must do much more basic work before landing on one side or the other.
That’s curious, I haven’t seen you attack any of the bogus drivel supporting Darwin on FR!
And what's the best way to do this?
Haven't really seen any, sorry. Also haven't seen any bogus polls supporting "darwinism." I'll be sure to attack it if I do, though!
We know, that's the point! You should get that looked into!
First understand mechanically how every feature of an existing simple organism comes about from the molecules up. Then construct simpler forms of life until you reach a minimum organism. Then use that knowledge to construct the simplest possible fitness landscape using only known livable sequences.
If the fitness landscape is deemed too harsh for natural evolution, then design has been proven. If it is reasonably smooth then evolution gets a boost.
Right but my question was more aimed at this information being shared and uninhibited from children on up to adults.
And until more answers are realized, what about the “that’s not science” whiners?
WHO exactly was it that appointed these mouthpieces “kings of science” in the first place?
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