Posted on 04/11/2005 10:25:55 AM PDT by Michael_Michaelangelo
"Intelligent design." It's been in the news a lot lately. Lawsuits over textbook stickers, the presentation of evolution and the legality of presenting alternatives, have thrust the term into public awareness.
But just what is intelligent design? To hear some folks talk, you'd think it's a scam to sneak Genesis into science classrooms. Yet intelligent design has nothing to do with the six days of creation and everything to do with hard evidence and logic.
Intelligent design (ID) is grounded on the ancient observation that the world looks very much as if it had an intelligent source. Indeed, as early as the fifth century BC, the Greek philosopher and astronomer Anaxagoras concluded, "Mind set in order … all that ever was … and all that is now or ever will be."
After 2400 years, the appearance of design is as powerful as ever. That is especially true of the living world. Advances in biology have revealed that world to be one staggering complexity.
For example, consider the cell. Even the simplest cells bristle with high-tech machinery. On the outside, their surfaces are studded with sensors, gates, pumps and identification markers. Some bacteria even sport rotary outboard motors that they use to navigate their environment.
Inside, cells are jam-packed with power plants, assembly lines, recycling units and more. Miniature monorails whisk materials from one part of the cell to another.
Such sophistication has led even the most hard-bitten atheists to remark on the apparent design in living organisms. The late Nobel laureate Francis Crick, co-discoverer of DNA's structure and an outspoken critic of religion, has nonetheless remarked, "Biologists must constantly keep in mind that what they see was not designed but rather evolved."
Clearly, Crick (and others like him) considers the appearance of design to be strictly an illusion, created by naturalistic evolution. Yet it's also clear that this impression is so compelling that an atheistic biologist must warn his colleagues against it.
In contrast, ID theorists contend that living organisms appear designed because they are designed. And unlike the design thinkers whom Darwin deposed, they've developed rigorous new concepts to test their idea.
In the past, detecting design was hampered by vague and subjective criteria, such as discerning an object's purpose. Moreover, design was entangled with natural theology--which seeks, in part, to infer God's character by studying nature rather than revelation. Natural theologians often painted such a rosy view of nature that they became an easy mark for Darwin when he proposed his theory of evolution. Where they saw a finely-balanced world attesting to a kind and just God, Darwin pointed to nature’s imperfections and brutishness.
Since the 1980s, however, developments in several fields have made it possible to rigorously distinguish between things that "just happen" and those that happen "on purpose." This has helped design theory emerge as a distinct enterprise, aimed at detecting intelligence rather than speculating about God's character.
Dubbed "intelligent design" to distinguish it from old-school thinking, this new view is detailed in The Design Inference (Cambridge University Press, 1998), a peer-reviewed work by mathematician and philosopher William Dembski.
In contrast to what is called creation science, which parallels Biblical theology, ID rests on two basic assumptions: namely, that intelligent agents exist and that their effects are empirically detectable.
Its chief tool is specified complexity. That's a mouthful, and the math behind it is forbidding, but the basic idea is simple: An object displays specified complexity when it has lots of parts (is complex) arranged in a recognizable, delimited pattern (is specified).
For example, the article you're now reading has thousands of characters, which could have been arranged in zillions of ways. Yet it fits a recognizable pattern: It's not just a jumble of letters (which is also complex), but a magazine article written in English. Any rational person would conclude that it was designed.
The effectiveness of such thinking is confirmed by massive experience. As Dembski points out, "In every instance where we find specified complexity, and where [its] history is known, it turns out that design actually is present."
Thus, if we could trace the creation of a book, our investigation would lead us to the author. You could say, then, that specified complexity is a signature of design.
To see how this applies to biology, consider the little consider the outboard motor that bacteria such as E. coli use to navigate their environment. This water-cooled contraption, called a flagellum, comes equipped with a reversible engine, drive shaft, U-joint and a long whip-like propeller. It hums along at a cool 17,000 rpm.
Decades of research indicate that its complexity is enormous. It takes about 50 genes to create a working flagellum. Each of those genes is as complex as a sentence with hundreds of letters.
Moreover, the pattern--a working flagellum--is highly specified. Deviate from that pattern, knock out a single gene, and our bug is dead in the water (or whatever).
Such highly specified complexity, which demands the presence of every part, indicates an intelligent origin. It's also defies any explanation, such as contemporary Darwinism, that relies on the stepwise accumulation of random genetic change.
In fact, if you want to run the numbers, as Dembski does in his book No Free Lunch, it boils down to the following: If every elementary particle in the observed universe (about 1080) were cranking out mutation events at the cosmic speed limit (about 1045 times per second) for a billion times the estimated age of the universe, they still could not produce the genes for a working flagellum.
And that's just one system within multiple layers of systems. Thus the flagellum is integrated into a sensory/guidance system that maneuvers the bacterium toward nutrients and away from noxious chemicals--a system so complex that computer simulation is required to understand it in its entirety. That system is meshed with other systems. And so on.
Of course, what's important here is not what we conclude about the flagellum or the cell, but how we study it. Design theorists don't derive their conclusions from revelation, but by looking for reliable, rigorously defined indicators of design and by ruling out alternative explanations, such as Darwinism.
Calling their work religious is just a cheap way to dodge the issues. The public--and our students--deserve better than that.
Mark Hartwig has a Ph.D. in educational psychology from the University of California, Santa Barbara, specializing in statistics and research design.
No, Physicist is correct. A crystal has lower entropy than an ionic solution. This is elementary chemistry.
You might want to add the disclaimer that you do not intend to harm his children...
I did not mention myself in the statement.
The inverse certainly does not follow from reason. The inverse says that any God that would create you is evil. I for one am grateful that He created me and do not blame him for my bad choices, even though He gave me the freedom to choose.
"Free will is not absolute, and so if it was created, it had limits forced upon it."
Free will does indeed have limits. So what? You are arguing that anything less than absolute lack of freedom to choose evil, is itself evil. You are arguing for your own destruction. If that's what you want to do, so be it. But leave me out of your argument. I believe God was good for creating me, not evil. I'm thankful that He created me.
For that matter, I'm thankful that He created you too. Heaven might end up without an AntiGuv in it. But at least AntiGuv was given the chance.
---If god is everything in existence, then us and all our actions up to now and in the future are part of god, and he would not see them as evil unless he sees a part of himself as evil. If the latter were true, then the part of himself that is evil would presumably not see those actions as evil since they would be a part of that part of god.
If god is infinite, nothing can be apart from god.---
KJV: I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the LORD do all these things.
NIV: I form the light and create darkness, I bring prosperity and create disaster; I, the LORD, do all these things.
No.
Again, you are determined to keep everything neatly in a little box.
If we suppose (and this is partially based on Bible references I have already provided, and partially on other Bible passages which I can provide if you wish to examine them) that God created Satan before mankind, and that Satan rebelled (opposing God's will). Satan is essentially arguing that whatever he does is not wrong because God made him the way he is. Satan attempted to trap God with this paradox.
Notice that Satan challenged God as to whether God's "servant", Job, obeyed WILLINGLY or was COERCED or BRIBED.
God created mankind as an object lesson to angelic beings (among other purposes). People can choose to do evil and, through redemption, turn away from evil and choose good. This proves the existence of choice. (God did not offer redemption to fallen angels.) Every possibility and ramification of choice, both good and evil, is being played out on the human stage.
You said it is rational to think God could have prevented evil, "so long as God does not consider it evil".
But what is evil is up to Him. He has the right to command people to do whatever He wants. He calls disobedience evil. He also warns that those who continue to do evil and do not repent will receive divine judgment. Those who do repent and obey His commandments will be rewarded. And He is able to transform all the evil that has ever happened to us (who believe) into good.
These things will be accomplished when Jesus Christ returns.
True, but it would freak me out if someone asked me "do you want your loved ones hurt?"
Good, do you allow them to do anything that could possibly bring them harm?
AntiGuv™, (and the good-versus-evil bunch):
I don’t think it is useful to argue this line. Whether you define ‘good’ and ‘evil’ as something created by the divinity, or whether you say they are the two poles of rational philosophical analysis… the truth is probably more mundane: good is always defined as action-or-investment with a constructive end result (and great good further requires the path-to-the-end to also be constructive, and ‘good’ in its own right). Evil inevitably is associated with destructive ends, unsustainable practices, selfish ideals.
It cannot be clearer: that society in and of itself exists beyond the troop-of-chimps level by the very virtue of equality underlying social enterprise. If we have 5 bananas and 15 very hungry kids, the only equitable solution is to divide the kids into 5 groups and let them share a banana in each group. A good solution. The evil solution would be to peel all the bananas and toss them into the pack of kids, letting them fend for themselves. The weaker, more distant, and less aggressive kids would lose. Some kids might even get 2 or more bananas.
Same goes for murder and theft and usury and covetous adultery. The Bible, along with most every other ancient religious treatise made it clear that these were intrinsically evil. Yet, murder-in-the-name-of-state, theft-in-the-name-of-society, usury-in-the-name-of-business, and adultery-in-the-name-of-freedom are all tolerated, and even possibly lionized in some quarters. The military cannot be seen except evil for a greater good. Same goes for all the other aspects of human existence.
The true evil that is generally recognized as such is that which is wantonly destructive, is barbarous and simply thoughtless, non-empathic, unsustainable, and oppressive. Stalin’s evil, that of starving millions, is so clear that it needs no analysis. But is the lionesses killing of a nearly newborn antelope evil? Is the whole damned animal husbandry thing that leads to hamburger?
And it is in that that “God” did not create either good nor evil. Man recognized that constructive, collective, careful and creative “things” were beneficial in extraordinary ways to society. We also recognized that the opposites were generally anti-civilizational. But whether they are constructive or not is a concept so atheistic, so purely mathematical, that one might as well be talking of the concepts of 1 and 0, of True and False, of integers and operators.
That is why I cannot get into any arguments that pull ‘good/bad’, ‘evil’ and so on into it. Trying to tie one’s-self into a logical knot of great holding strength based on good and evil is like trying to build a good house out of wet newspaper.
GoatGuy
Fascinating. From where did you derive this idea?
And, out of curiosity, what do you believe the "other purposes" are?
Huh?
I do not think evolution is built into ID in any way, rather that we may have been genetically engineered and then placed on earth by aliens. Though this is Art Bell material, I think it's as plausible as anything else. This is my rational view of creation (as I don't buy basic Creationism).
My faith explains creation in Genesis. This story contradicts my reason, but so does telling me that a waffer is made of God's body. I make no attempt to rationalize the problem, because I probably won't like the answers.
Either way, I have bills to pay, and life is too short... it's better not to let stuff bother us too much. Others may take it seriously if they wish, but I enjoy not caring.
Not sure I agree with the above statement. I do see, however, many evo's trying to torpedo ID.
ID is interesting because it can account for primary forms, which evo cannot. Why is it not possible that evo IS the intelligent design? Right along with the laws of thermodynamics, or gravity, or mathematical constants?
Obviously the universe operates under a strict system of rules or laws.....where did they come from? At least ID has an answer.
Well, I didn't make the inverse statement. You did. LOL
The rest of your comments are articles of faith; not statements of reason. Nor do they rationally follow from one to the next through to the end, but I don't have any more time for this thread.
I said that arguments for the existence of gods are either irrational or irrelevant (for practical purposes - because one cannot draw definite conclusions). Nothing I've seen here has indicated otherwise. To say that is not to say that assuming that god exists, having for whatever reason accepted some such irrational or irrelevant argument, it is irrational to follow his commandments.
In other words, you are arguing against a position that I have not taken (a straw man) which is: It is irrational to obey god. I have never made that stupid statement, nor would I.
Now, I've got to bid you adieu for now. See ya around!
What's the answer?
Tell that to Andrew. LOL
That description is not irrational; but it is irrational to make your own insertions between the lines so that it reads like this:
"KJV: I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil even though I don't want it to exist: I the LORD do all these things."
That has been my point all along. And, if god creates evil, it's because he wants it to exist.
Consider, then, just for a moment, that YOU had the power to create what you consider to be a 'perfect' god (or GOD, your choice.)
What would His (his, her, HER, it's) attributes be?
---Nothing I've seen here has indicated otherwise---
Look at existence, is all I'm saying. We are the idea and expression of God, as we are in his image.
It's just that easy.
That's how logic works.
There's just one strand of our particular debate that I want to resolve. Do you consider this a rational statement: "Evil exists entirely at god's discretion although he doesn't want it to exist."
A yes or no will be best.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.