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.
---That has been my point all along. And, if god creates evil, it's because he wants it to exist.---
Perhaps. Again I ask, could you imagine a world in which there was no negative emotion/expression?
Yes. (I wish you'd get on with it)
This, of course, implies that the numbers are REALLY KNOWN, to be able to, in the first place, come UP with some kinds of 'odds'.
Many 'odds' are mere guesses - stabs in the dark - that 'something' might be possible to begin with.
I form the light.... What does that do? It creates darkness(absence of light)... I make peace ..... What does that do? It creates evil(absence of peace).
Look, I agree with evolution, but it doesn't get to the main questions: How did we come about? And why?
There's really nothing exciting about evolution if you ask me.
Then you allow what you don't want.
blakep: "Perhaps. Again I ask, could you imagine a world in which there was no negative emotion/expression?"
Elsie: "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?"
You are both attempting to impose limitations on god by examining my limitations. And AndrewC is trying to do the same (in a long, drawn out, annoying way that he's not done with yet).
If I were an infinite God, I would (a) be able to imagine a world without negativity; (b) be able to create a world that I regarded as perfect; and (c) be able to give my children freedom without distress.
But I am not God, and you cannot prove that God exists by proving that I am not God.
Sin has been judged, but not good and evil. Read Job, Genesis, Proverbs and Psalms, and Scriptural references to judgment, and consequence of rebllion in regards to references to angelic beings, powers, principalities, etc.
Some doctrines exist regarding the human race being an experiment test in something of an appeals trail of the fallen angels as well as an example for the elect angels to recognize the just nature of God's decisions and sentancing of the fallen angels and things good for nothing into the Lake of Fire.
Uh... just WHY is this a requirement?
limited... if I choose NOT to stop my 2 year old grandchild from playing with matches, does this make ME limited?
"I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the LORD do all these things."
Period.
"The firewall should exist in the classroom, because ID is NOT a scientific theory."
Sorry, that really begs the question. I can look at any object on my desk and, based on any number of evidences, deduce that there was some sort of intelligent design that brought it into existence in the very form that I observe. Am I not allowed, in a fully rational way, to seek to understand and define the principles upon which I reach my conclusions. Am I not allowed then to hypothetically apply those principles to other things and create experiments to validate or disprove those principles. And if my experiments lead me to draw some theoretical conclusions about the wider world, why is that not scientific? After all, that is pretty much what scientists do every day.
It DOES??
Where?
It is only a requirement to keep it rational. There are other places that I haven't specified, and if you find any more that's exactly what I mean. Outside rational bounds, nothing is required, so anywhere that I refer to anything as "required" I mean that it is required if the statement is to be rational.
Otherwise, I have now covered all the points I care to cover here, and it's time for me to completely depart the thread. Chances are I've spoken to whatever else might come up along the lines argued thus far. If you want my opinion for some strange reason, it's all posted so I'm done!
Maybe you can't draw definite conclusions from the kind of malarky that you've been throwing out. But your conscience has (or at least had at one time) a conclusion.
There is evidence.
...are lies.
And again, and again, and again....
That is it in English. Do you have ANY clue how that reads out in its original Greek?
Typically you wouldn't state simply one assertion then run with it. This is a modernized interpritation of it.
It would likely read more like this "I form the light, (and therefore) create darkness: I make peace (thus) there is evil."
And I've enjoyed the discussion even if it's been a wee bit testy at spots (that's my fault). I like to come back and ponder these things later when I have time to really consider them. See y'all around!
Anti-Guv, your argument was based solely on 'why is there evil, or suffering', therefore I responded with a question based on your primary assertions.
People ask why there is evil in the world. I believe that we were made consious of our actions(unlike animals) as to elevate ourselves and further humankind, in order to recognize the faults of mankind.
Otherwise we would be ordinary animals that still roam through the forest.
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