From whence came the Intelligent Designer.

[Onefinity]

The belief in a god or gods is a way of working with the world that has stood the test of time. Therefore, trying to debate it is pointless.

Now, as to intelligent design, as I've said elsewhere, it appears to be a thinly veiled attempt to promote creationism. However, I suggest that both sides consider macro-evolution itself to be an intelligent process, one that is "super-human" in the sense that it occurs on a scale and complexity beyond what humans could really comprehend, but without the need for that intelligence to be centered in a particular "being" (e.g., a God).

If the creationists and the anti-creationists would find common ground there, then I think we would make a major advance in the march toward what I believe is an inevitable merger of science and spirituality. Creationism as it stands today is not that merger, contrary to the phrase "creation science;" it is a false merger. But a real merger is possible.

 

[wesmorris]

God is real to me.

Can't argue with that. Nothing to debate.

The comparison represents that God being complex does not make him irrelevent to me any more than my father did when I was young.

That's fine, but anthropomorphizing nature doesn't compare to finding your father complex as I see it. Obviously, you see it differently. As you wish.

I'm fine with nature just being nature, and its origin a theory.

 

[§outh§tar]

Thinking about God and trying to explain God are separate things.

Umm.. does anyone agree with me that this is utterly stupid?

How do you try to explain God without thinking about Him? And how can you think about God if you haven't first tried to explain Him? Will there be anything to think about?

I cannot explain God. I don't need to. Why are you thinking about God?

I'm not.

I was talking about the "Intelligent Designer", which, alledgedly, is a non religious concept.

 

[wesmorris]

Umm.. does anyone agree with me that this is utterly stupid?

(you asked)

Nah it makes sense to me. You've never thought about something you didn't try to completely analyze?

How do you try to explain God without thinking about Him?

I don't think that was the assertion. He just said that thinking about it and trying to figure it out aren't necessarily the same thing.

And how can you think about God if you haven't first tried to explain Him?

Regardless of history, cannot one still do either?

Will there be anything to think about?

Emotions.

I was talking about the "Intelligent Designer", which, alledgedly, is a non religious concept.

LOL. Thinly veiled indeed. The idea of ID as "non-religious" makes me want to smack the asshat who came up with that marketing scheme.

That religion is marketed in any way sickens me and cheapens it to dust.

 

[wesmorris]

We agree strongly on that point.

At a fireworks/truckstop recently I saw a publication from an obviously cheesy publisher called something like "how to double your church attendance". It was one of a number of cheesy titles like "computer repair in 30 minutes" or whatever other silly crap was there.

I was curious, so I picked it up and perused it for a minute. I was freakin shocked. "make sure everyone in your parish has a task, no matter how mundane or pointless, it gives them a sense of belonging". That was a light one. It was all calculating marketing, preying on people's weakness to suck them in.

 

[Onefinity]

I agree. I don't debate a belief in God either. I just believe in Him. If I attempt to promote non-creationism, is that non-intelligent design? If I consider macro-evolution, and it is the truth, then God engineered it. You have left off the rest of creation. What about everything else? Was the universe created by evolution also? How did it get it's start?

Ah, that takes us deeper into the concept of evolution. Far beyond just biological evolution, and into ideas only explored by a few in the 20th century - such as Alfred North Whitehead, Teilhard de Chardin, Jonas Salk, Ervin Laszlo, Brian Swimme, Erich Jantsch - and myself, in my own humble ways So-called "General Evolutionary Theory" considers the dynamics of evolution in all complex systems, from the physical to the biological to the cosmic. And when that is applied to the origin of the universe, we need to re-examine the very notion of time itself, and perception, the meaning of birth and death, and all of these horizons that we take for granted.

"Start"? I don't think there was a start, nor an end. I think that when we get into that stuff, we have to question the notion of linear time. But that's gettin' way out! One of the hardest ideas to work with. You know, there is an interesting title of a book - "The Ever-Present Origin," by Jean Gebser. Written in the first half of the 20th century, I think. I haven't read it, but I want to!

 

[§outh§tar]

(you asked)

Nah it makes sense to me. You've never thought about something you didn't try to completely analyze?

Umm.. no?

If you are thinking about "something you didn't try to completely analyze", then you are thinking about a form of that thing, but not the thing itself.

You can think of what God is like (anthropomorphization), but very obviously, that is not the same as thinking about God proper.

Regardless of history, cannot one still do either?

Fine then, try to first think of what a computer is like. And the secondly, think of a computer.

Now tell me if the two thoughts are the same thing.

Then apply it to the spirit kalamik essence of poon (who lives in an unknowable dimension), and, unlike a computer, you don't even know.

You obviously can't think of it, only what it might be like (again anthropomorphization).

So to think of such a being, you would obviously have to "explain" it to yourself. To explain is to make familiar and so you would do this by giving it attributes you can comprehend and are familiar with. After explaining, then you can think of it.

If you haven't assigned the spirit kalamik essence of poon any attributes that you can comprehend, what is there to think about?

Emotions.

Theists can at least agree that emotions aren't God.

That religion is marketed in any way sickens me and cheapens it to dust.

Hah. See this site's rational "defense" of ID and tell me what rank you would give the writer's intelligence.

http://www.christiancourier.com/penpoints/noDesignerArgument.htm


Every strawman in the world is beaten to death in that article. I mean, he is refuting the popular "atheist claim" that the universe is eternal (no citations, of course) and also refuting the claim of "our atheist friend" (derisiveness is a hallmark of his) that natural selection explains the beginning of the universe (wondrously, no citations again). I mean, what buffoon believes that natural selection has anything to do with the beginning of the universe?

In conclusion, he says about atheists:
And so, to adopt our adversary’s jargon, there he goes, “chasing” those mega-mega-designers down that “rabbit hole” of infinite darkness. Clickety click, clackety clack, he meets himself coming down the track!

 

[Dinosaur]

The final copout of a believer.

• You try to explain God? God's complexity rises above your ability to think.

Faith is often a comforting attribute, and I usually make no attempt to undermine another's belief system. However, the believers should keep their opinions in Sunday school, church, and other apppropriate places. They have no place in a science classroom or a science textbook, which is where the ID & Creation people are trying to put their concepts.

 

[Dinosaur]

Dalahar: First of all, if you believe that people and everything else were designed by some intelligent designer, I have no quarrel with you. You have a faith based belief.

The issue arises when those who believe in ID start attempting to prove their belief using logic. The current argument from complexity claims that living creatures are too complex to occur without an intelligent designer. Fifty years ago, I remember somebody talking about an aborigine finding a ticking watch on the beach, and deducing a watch maker. An obvious objection to that argument can be expressed by asking who designed the ID. If I, a dog, and an ant require an intelligent designer, is the ID not more complex than I, the dog, or the ant? If the ID is more complex than his creations, the argument from complexity requires a higher level designer to design the ID, who in turn requires a still higher level designer, et cetera.

The recursive nature of the argument from complexity indicates that the logic is not valid. A believer could reply to this objection in various ways.

• My belief in the intelligent designer is based on faith. I only used the argument from complexity as a reasonable approach to presenting my belief to you in hopes that you would become a believer.
  
  
• I believe that the ID came into existence due to some form of unexplainable magic and the argument from complexity is not applicable to the ID. This reply seems weak, but is not a real copout.
  
  
• God’s complexity is beyond your ability to think

The last reply is a copout. It is also a subtle form of ad hominem, an attack on the intelligence of the opposing debater.

Believers are currently trying to pressure politicians and educators to put Intelligent Design into science textbooks and science classrooms where it does not belong. I do not object to it being in Sunday school classes, religion courses, or philosophy courses. I do not argue with those who claim that their belief in ID is based on faith. I reject any who try to back up this belief with fallacious logic and copouts.

What is so terrible about admitting that you have a belief based on faith? I thought that faith was the foundation of religious beliefs. Why do believers attempt to use logic when they do not really believe that logic is superior to faith?

 

[Dinosaur]

Dalahar: I did not say anything like the following.

• So basically, you are saying that anyone who has faith in God forfeits any right to exercise logic.

I certainly hope that religious people use logic when dealing with non religious issues. It only gets silly when they attempt to use logic to prove their belief in god or some Intelligent Designer. This is like Euclid trying to use logic to prove the axioms of plane geometry, which he assumed to be true.

BTW: Great advances in mathematics and logic were achieved by an unsuccessful attempt to prove the axioms of plane geometry via reducto ad absurdem methods.

The advocates of Intelligent Design are attempting to have their beliefs put into science textbooks and science classrooms. The belief in ID is based on faith, not logic or scientific methods. It therefore has no place in a science course, and I resent attempts to present it as science.

Belief in god or/and Intelligent Designer is a faith based belief belonging to the subject matter of theology, philosophy, maybe sociology. It is stupid to try to use logic to prove the existence of an ID. Anyone who tries to do so, displays his own ignorance of logic or is attempting to bamboozle somebody he thinks is too stupid to understand the discussion.

Again I ask: Why are religious people not willing to state that their belief in an ID is faith based? Do you consider it demeaning to have a faith based belief? Do you consider a faith based belief to be less valid than a belief based on scientific methods and logic?

Perhaps the believers in ID are trying to get it into science classrooms because they need some help in maintaining their own belief system. If they cannot convince (or brainwash) a large number of others perhaps they are afraid that they will stop believing.

BTW: Mathematics, logic, and science rely on a faith based belief in a core set of unproven axioms. Those axioms are extermely simple. For example : A and Not A cannot be both be true; A straight line is determined by two points and is the shortrest distance between them. The axioms of science and mathematics are much simpler than the axioms of religous belief systems which is the reason I consider science/logic based beliefs to be superior to religious based beliefs.