What does "Intelligent Design" even mean?

[Pianist4Freedom]

Is it only design if one moment the life form was not there, the next moment it was?

Say there really is a natural process that can spontaneously generate a living cell. Would scientists say they've disproved the existence of God if such a process were discovered? The question would still remain: how did the universe itself get created such that order can spontaneously generate?

To make an analogy to music: maybe God is an improviser, not a composer? Either way there would be intelligent design, a mind creating something.

I guess I think the whole debate is silly. Religious minded people should not feel threatened by evolution, and atheist minded people should not feel threatened by creationism. Neither religious minded people nor atheists can possibly know whether there was a God---but it would be nice if the more vociferous factions on both sides would admit this.

Atheists often assert there is no evidence for something supernatural such as a God---but then again, that's taking scientific evidence out of context. Evidence for a theory is only evidence for a description of something, not evidence for an explanation.

Fire away...

 

[Kotin]

hah, it basically means they know in some way that creationism is true, that it cant all be an accident that everything works in nature harmoniously and they dont want to admit it.


"hey it's raining!"

"no, its not raining, water is just falling from the sky."

 

[Theocrat]

ID in a Nutshell (in Pictures)

Is it only design if one moment the life form was not there, the next moment it was?

Say there really is a natural process that can spontaneously generate a living cell. Would scientists say they've disproved the existence of God if such a process were discovered? The question would still remain: how did the universe itself get created such that order can spontaneously generate?

To make an analogy to music: maybe God is an improviser, not a composer? Either way there would be intelligent design, a mind creating something.

I guess I think the whole debate is silly. Religious minded people should not feel threatened by evolution, and atheist minded people should not feel threatened by creationism. Neither religious minded people nor atheists can possibly know whether there was a God---but it would be nice if the more vociferous factions on both sides would admit this.

Atheists often assert there is no evidence for something supernatural such as a God---but then again, that's taking scientific evidence out of context. Evidence for a theory is only evidence for a description of something, not evidence for an explanation.

Fire away...

Simply put, if we know this Jaguar car was intelligently designed,

then how much more this Jaguar cat is intelligently designed.

It's just a matter of common sense.

 

[LibertyOfOne]

Simply put, if we know this Jaguar car was intelligently designed,

then how much more this Jaguar cat is intelligently designed.

It's just a matter of common sense.

Thanks for the nutty comparison. A non living thing that can't reproduce compared to something that can. YEAH THAT MAKES PERFECT SENSE!!!!

Intelligent Design = God did it

 

[Pianist4Freedom]

Hey, stop the presses for a sec. Please read my OP. Have any of you drilled down that far? Have any of you stopped for a second to consider the question: "What does design even mean?" I don't care which side of the debate you're on. What is "design?" to you? Is it planning beforehand? Is it spontaneously almost randomly doing something but then responding when something cool happens (my analogy to improvisation)? What is it?

 

[yongrel]

It means: "We want creationism taught in schools, but know that it won't make it past the courts if it contains blatant Christian labels like God, Genesis, so on and so forth, so we made the language and doctrine intentionally vague so that we can argue it is nondenominational and scientific."

 

[Pianist4Freedom]

It means: "We want creationism taught in schools, but know that it won't make it past the courts if it contains blatant Christian labels like God, Genesis, so on and so forth, so we made the language and doctrine intentionally vague so that we can argue it is nondenominational and scientific."

Ok, I get it. I understand this is a very emotional debate and most people just want to leap in and fling mud (not at me, at each other, because I don't consider myself part of the debate). But I'm asking a NEW question: What do YOU think design means? Read my previous post.

 

[asgardshill]

Have any of you stopped for a second to consider the question: "What does design even mean?" I don't care which side of the debate you're on. What is "design?" to you?

I know my enemies will be shocked to hear this, but I do not possess the cognitive ability to completely understand God's handiwork and design, much less explain it adequately to somebody else. It would be like expecting a hammer to understand everything about the machine that produced it and every person who ever worked at the factory where it was constructed. Or as we used to say in the Navy, "that question is above my pay grade."

There are more things in Heaven and Earth Horatio than are dreamt of in your philosophy.

 

[yongrel]

Ok, I get it. I understand this is a very emotional debate and most people just want to leap in and fling mud (not at me, at each other, because I don't consider myself part of the debate). But I'm asking a NEW question: What do YOU think design means? Read my previous post.

It means: "Let's be intentionally obfuscatory when talking about faith in order to disguise it as science."

According to some, life is to complex to exist with out a designer. As Theocrat posted above, if a car required a designer to figure out how to attack the engine to the drive shaft, than the animal must have required a designer in order to "figure out" how to connect the esophagus to the stomach.

Let's just ignore for a moment that biologic life is an entirely different ballgame than mechanical operations.

 

[Pianist4Freedom]

yongrel: You just repeated your previous post. You are answering my question based on what creationists/intelligent design proponents think about "design." I already know that. What do YOU think of as design (regardless of whether you believe it or not): Is it the idea that God sat at a workbench with a blueprint (so to speak) and designed beforehand, or is it something else?

 

[yongrel]

I think that design would require conscious manipulation of life, if not necessarily creation. For instance, the engineering of various organism through genetic tweaking would qualify as "design."

Also, the notion of panspermia could potentially be accompanied by design, if one were to postulate an alien intelligence that decided to bugger around with life on Earth.

 

[Theocrat]

Silly Rabbit, Evolution is For Kids

Thanks for the nutty comparison. A non living thing that can't reproduce compared to something that can. YEAH THAT MAKES PERFECT SENSE!!!!

Intelligent Design = God did it

I was talking about design attributes in the complexity of an object or organism, not the ability or capacity for something to reproduce. Quite frankly, I agree with the thread starter that this whole debate over whether something is intelligently designed is silly. It's so obvious that life is designed that it's simply ridiculous and at the height of ignorance for anyone to argue contrary to this fact. It would be like two people debating over whether Mount Rushmore was designed from a rock formation or if torrential rains over millions of years formed Mount Rushmore.

Usually, those who have a problem with intelligent design really also have a problem with God (as has been illustrated in a recent post here from yongrel). The evidence is so easy to see that life is intricately and delicately made, so the opponents of intelligent design choose rather to have subjective and irrational debates (craftily designed) with creationists to make themselves feel better, while ignoring the objective, scientific evidence which conclusively shows that the creation has a Creator.

 

[yongrel]

... while ignoring the objective, scientific evidence which conclusively shows that the creation has a Creator.

Post proof or retract.

 

[Theocrat]

"Unlocking the Mystery of Life"

Post proof or retract.

The proof is here. By the way, this would be an expanded explanation of what intelligent design is for those of you with eyes that can see and ears that can hear.

 

[Pianist4Freedom]

Say there were no proof one way or the other (we could argue all day on what is and is not proof),

If scientists were able to cause biochemicals to spontaneously form a cell in a lab---would they declare they have refuted the creationists, the intelligent design proponents?

 

[Truth Warrior]

Check out the last sentence in Darwin's "Origin of Species" 6th edition.

" There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed by the Creator into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone circling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being evolved. "
http://www.literature.org/authors/darwin-charles/the-origin-of-species-6th-edition/chapter-15.html

 

[Primbs]

Intelligent design has to help answer the question, who or what created most of the laws of the universe. Who or what set up the parameters so that scientists could learn the rules rules of physics, math, biology, geology and astronomy.

The hundreds of laws of physics and math get very complex. Many of the great scientists have begun to discern that most of these laws work too well and didn't just get
set up by chance.

Here is the latest book on the subject.
Archimedes to Hawking: Laws of Science and the Great Minds Behind Them

http://www.amazon.com/Archimedes-Ha...bs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1209406110&sr=1-1

 

[Kade]

Intelligent design has to help answer the question, who or what created most of the laws of the universe. Who or what set up the parameters so that scientists could learn the rules rules of physics, math, biology, geology and astronomy.

The hundreds of laws of physics and math get very complex. Many of the great scientists have begun to discern that most of these laws work too well and didn't just get
set up by chance.

Here is the latest book on the subject.
Archimedes to Hawking: Laws of Science and the Great Minds Behind Them

http://www.amazon.com/Archimedes-Ha...bs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1209406110&sr=1-1

The Anthropic Principle has nothing to do with "Intelligent Design".

Intelligent Design is a non-science. It is an assertion, based on nothing but observation. An argument from incredulity. As defined by the National Academy of Sciences: "intelligent design, and other claims of supernatural intervention in the origin of life are not science because they cannot be tested by experiment, do not generate any predictions, and propose no new hypotheses of their own."

The assertion is, literally, the modern form of the teleological argument for the existence of GOD, merely modified to avoid using "god" as a term. Intelligent Design asserts that living things and the universe are best explained by an "intelligent cause".

In order to promote the nonsense as legitimate, there is a culture war of sort, which the movie "Expelled" is part, that involves an active attempt to redefine science to include supernatural explanations.


Comprehensive list of scientific communities rejecting Intelligent Design.

The problem is, and remains the finality of it all.

If you desire to put faith on the altar of science, you are prepared to allow faith to be falsifiable.

Who among the faithful are willing to do this? Who are willing to put their beliefs to the test, and if wrong, reject the hypothesis, like science does with thousands of bad ideas a day?

 

[Pianist4Freedom]

The Anthropic Principle has nothing to do with "Intelligent Design".

Intelligent Design is a non-science. It is an assertion, based on nothing but observation. An argument from incredulity. As defined by the National Academy of Sciences: "intelligent design, and other claims of supernatural intervention in the origin of life are not science because they cannot be tested by experiment, do not generate any predictions, and propose no new hypotheses of their own."

The assertion is, literally, the modern form of the teleological argument for the existence of GOD, merely modified to avoid using "god" as a term. Intelligent Design asserts that living things and the universe are best explained by an "intelligent cause".

In order to promote the nonsense as legitimate, there is a culture war of sort, which the movie "Expelled" is part, that involves an active attempt to redefine science to include supernatural explanations.


Comprehensive list of scientific communities rejecting Intelligent Design.

The problem is, and remains the finality of it all.

If you desire to put faith on the altar of science, you are prepared to allow faith to be falsifiable.

Who among the faithful are willing to do this? Who are willing to put their beliefs to the test, and if wrong, reject the hypothesis, like science does with thousands of bad ideas a day?

Faith and religion have nothing to do with evidence and hypotheses. They deal with things that are by definition outside the realm of evidence and scientific description. For example: can you tell me what an electron is? Oh, it is a subatomic particle? What's that? A small point of energy? A vibrating string? What are those? What is energy? All of these things are labels. We can put labels on as many things as we want---none of it will explain *WHAT* an electron is. It just is. Thus, asking how it got here, why, and what it really is EXTERNAL to the universe is impossible to answer scientifically. Therefore it is a logical fallacy to suggest that science might one day refute faith or God or anything else. It cannot. Correct me if I misunderstood your post.

 

[familydog]

I guess I think the whole debate is silly. Religious minded people should not feel threatened by evolution, and atheist minded people should not feel threatened by creationism. Neither religious minded people nor atheists can possibly know whether there was a God---but it would be nice if the more vociferous factions on both sides would admit this.

I normally stay out of these religious arguments, because I'm secure enough in my beliefs that I don't have to push them down other people's throats in these threads, but I'm feeling frisky tonight. With that said, I am a devout Catholic, and I will admit that I don't "know" if God exists. I agree with what many of other religious minded people say on this forum when they say they don't know there is a God, but have faith that there is one. Religion, and spirituality in general relies on faith.

I have to say that I completely agree that the whole debate is silly. It is a distraction plain and simple. Rather than debating whether there is a God or not, we could be debating things that actually have immidiate tangible relevence on our lives. Again, which is why I tend to stay out of these arguments. I understand why religious people are threatened by evolution and I understand why athiests feel threatened by creationism. I don't agree with why they feel that way though. These arguments lately have been very divisive. Ron Paul supporters, freedom and liberty-minded supporters are now being spereated into groups. "The Christian Ron Paul supporters" vs. "The Athiest Ron Paul supporters." A divided movement is no movement at all. With so many people with such big egos, I'm very curious to see if this movement is just a fad, or is here to stay.

Anyways, to answer your question on what intelligent design means to me. It simply means that living organisms on Earth came about and are maintained by an intelligent entity that "designed" things that way. It means a more intelligent, thought-provoking, and ellaborative way to express the word creationism.