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To: Mr. Silverback
I hate these threads. The orthodox Darwinians and the Biblical literalists anathematize each other while both ignore the third possibility, ID theory, or else criticize it ignorantly.

Intelligent Design doesn't presuppose God! What it does is make evidence-based arguments that blind random selection is insufficient to explain the full diversity and complexity of life that is observed. "Design" here means "not randomly caused", but no assumptions are made about the identity of the "designer" -- it could be a technological civilization from elsewhere in the galaxy for example. The core technical concept is that random variation has its limits, which can be characterized mathematically, and that certain conditions on a system allow one to deduce that the probability it could have been created by random-mutation-driven evolution is vanishingly small.

42 posted on 06/09/2003 8:51:01 PM PDT by VeritatisSplendor
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To: VeritatisSplendor
...probability it could have been created by random-mutation-driven evolution is vanishingly small.

Thank God for natural selection!

43 posted on 06/09/2003 8:54:24 PM PDT by Rudder
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To: VeritatisSplendor
NO matter WHO the designer is, it is NONFALSIFIABLE, therefore it is NONscientific.

Until you can prove that an intelligent designer exists, then you are stuck with a NONscientific theory if you use an intelligent designer to explain it.

That is your premise, and it is NOT scientific, therefore your theory falls into the same category.

NONSCIENTIFIC....
44 posted on 06/09/2003 8:55:37 PM PDT by Aric2000 (If the history of science shows us anything, it is that we get nowhere by labeling our ignorance god)
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To: VeritatisSplendor
I hate these threads. The orthodox Darwinians and the Biblical literalists anathematize each other while both ignore the third possibility, ID theory, or else criticize it ignorantly.

It's not really a "third possibility;" it's essentially crypto-creationidiocy repackaged in a shiny new box in an attempt to try to sneak creationism into schools under the radar.

Of course, there's still a group of fanatical Young-Earth Creationidiot types that don't particularly like ID, but actually probably even the majority of Creationidiots have managed to finally figure out that Young-Earth Creationidiocy and absolute Biblical literalism is too obviously stupid to try to sell, at least immediately.

As is usual in a lot of scientific threads, I don't think people grasp how incredibly tiny the ID community is among legitmate scientists. (In contrast, the number of legitimate meteorologists and climatologists that question "Global Warming" theory is quite large, it's just that the media doesn't like them.) It's a tiny group who are continuously cited and re-cited. I'm aware that some of them claim not to be particularly religous but their proselytizers and the people buying their books certainly are.

And of evolutionists probably MOST are religious to some degree, with many thousands being churchgoing Christians and of course many thousands of agnostics or atheists; however, you'll look a long time before you find an atheist creationist; if it truly was such an attractive theory there would be some SOMEWHERE.

49 posted on 06/09/2003 9:08:43 PM PDT by John H K
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To: VeritatisSplendor
ID is an interesting concept, but crappy science. That's why we evolutionists dismiss the science.

The creation-evolution spectrum isn't binary. A lot of evolutionists believe in God, and believe that God created the universe, but Intelligent Design is an attempt by SOME who believe in creation to attempt to prove it scientifically, and they fail.
60 posted on 06/10/2003 1:36:04 AM PDT by CobaltBlue
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To: VeritatisSplendor
Intelligent Design doesn't presuppose God!

Actually, it does. When taken to its obvious conclusion, ID presupposes a supernatural "first cause." Think about it: If the Intelligent Designers were, oh say, little green men from Zeton, how did they come to be? Who were their designers? Who designed the designers? Ad infinitum. ID cannot escape such a supernatural conclusion, and as the supernatural is, by definition, not science (which only deals in the natural), ID cannot be scientific.

66 posted on 06/10/2003 3:32:36 AM PDT by Junior (How do stormtroopers use the restroom?)
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To: VeritatisSplendor
Intelligent Design doesn't presuppose God! What it does is make evidence-based arguments that blind random selection is insufficient to explain the full diversity and complexity of life that is observed. "Design" here means "not randomly caused", but no assumptions are made about the identity of the "designer" -- it could be a technological civilization from elsewhere in the galaxy for example.

In a story told by Stephen Hawking, scientist was giving a lecture on astronomy. After the lecture, an elderly lady came up and told the scientist that he had it all wrong.

"The world is really a flat plate supported on the back of a giant tortoise." The scientist asked "And what is the turtle standing on?" To which the lady triumphantly replied: "You're very clever, young man, but it's no use -- it's turtles all the way down."

The notion of ID proposes a greater complexity to explain a lesser one. How does ID propose to explain the greater complexity. It seems to me they would need something akin to, "It's turtles all the way up."

275 posted on 06/10/2003 6:04:50 PM PDT by laredo44
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