Intelligent Design == Human Design?

That seems comparable to: water carved the Grand Canyon. The water is unaware of its greater purpose (creating the beauty of the Grand Canyon)...Was water intelligently designed? Was the Grand Canyon intelligently designed?Is the lowly bacteria ("unaware of its greater purpose") the thing that is intelligently designed? Is it the larger organism (the one served by the bacteria) intelligently designed? Or do you just want to say that everything is intelligently designed, and be done with it? Indeed, if you look again at all your "data", can you point with certainty to anything that was not intelligently designed? If you can, what is the (objective?) basis for making this distinction? If you can't, then you're not talking about science at all.In any case, your references to God in the context of trying to argue in favor of ID serves to reinforce the common perception that ID "theory" is simply an attempt to push religious dogma into science classrooms. Therefore, to argue against ID is to argue against adopting religious doctrine into the practice of science. Does this necessarily mean that arguments against ID are "atheistic"? Or could it simply mean that, in order to be objective, science must not adopt the supernatural "explanations" that ID is pushing?

---

autotelic adj. (of an entity or event) having within itself the purpose of its existence or happening.

Tesla, you seem to be asserting that ID has something to contribute to scientific research. Can you clarify what that contribution would be? When we look at the mechanics -- the physical implementation -- of how blood solidifies into clots, or how food is broken down in a digestive tract, or how erosion operates, in what way would our research be improved by assuming that a supernatural agency is involved?If we posit assertions that some component or other in a given process was designed by some purposeful entity (an entity that we cannot perceive directly, whose purpose we cannot know), can you describe any sort of research scenario where these assertions would help us in developing methods to treat hemophilia or reduce the risk of coronary thrombosis? or in improving the efficacy of medicines that are administered orally? or in establishing better land-use policies?Try to be specific: how would any assertion of ID promote a more detailed and useful understanding of physical processes in any branch of science? I'd like to see if you can come up with even a single case -- it can be hypothetical, but try to be specific -- where ID solves a problem in science. That is the main point of science, you know, to solve problems...

---

autotelic adj. (of an entity or event) having within itself the purpose of its existence or happening.

You are so totally missing the point, dennis. The sole and essential basis for ID "theory" is that it is intended to make assertions about an entity that by definition cannot be proven. That's the point.The notion of "proof" does not exist in ID. It doesn't even exist in real science. Real science draws conclusions based on evidence, and when new evidence comes along that contradicts previous conclusions, those conclusions are re-examined, adjustments and corrections are applied as needed to accommodate the new evidence, and once in a very great while, people figure out some completely new way of looking at and organizing the data: plate tectonics instead of geosyncline, general relativity instead of Newtonian physics.Meanwhile, the conclusions of ID are not even based on evidence. They are based on a dogmatic belief that all this stuff couldn't have come about from purely natural causes, that there must be some supernatural entity responsible for it, and it's just a matter of picking one or another process or physical configuration and saying "goddidit".

---

autotelic adj. (of an entity or event) having within itself the purpose of its existence or happening.

That is an apt and excellent insight, tesla! I'm glad to see that you understand and accept this kind of logic. Now, follow through a little more thoroughly and carefully, to see where this insight will lead. It is certainly taking you in the right direction.Actually, consider the following: the difference between a theist and an atheist is that when they encounter and think about the things they do not understand, the theist attributes these things to the will of a supernatural entity (a deity), while the atheist tries to determine what additional knowledge would be needed in order to understand these things.If the things in question happen to pose some sort of threat to well-being or survival, the theist, seeking to react in a manner that he believes will be deemed appropriate by the deity, might try any number of actions that are largely or completely unrelated to the problem at hand (pray, make offerings of food or animal sacrifices, give up alcoholic beverages or dancing or sex, etc). Meanwhile, the atheist will focus attention on making additional observations regarding the threat, and conduct experiments that directly address its apparent causes and consequences.The risk in the atheist's approach is that the actions he decides to take, being often based on incomplete information, might not have the desired effect, or might achieve an immediate goal while leading to some other unforeseen problem (e.g. the pesticide DDT improved crop yield, at the potential cost of driving many avian species to extinction).The risk that the theist takes is that his beliefs are likely to bear no relation at all to the problem at hand, and he will be wasting time on irrelevant activities that can't possibly improve the situation.There's also this important point: coming to understand something (so that it becomes "natural") can be accomplished more quickly and easily if you do not begin with an assumption of supernatural causation. Your statement, which I quoted above, can (and should) be interpreted to mean that a natural understanding should always be preferred over an assumption of something supernatural.When we don't understand something, we should just acknowledge that we don't understand, and try to work out what we need in order to understand it. Making up assertions about anything supernatural being involved simply doesn't get us anywhere.

---

autotelic adj. (of an entity or event) having within itself the purpose of its existence or happening.

tesla, it is really a very bad idea to be coy when it comes to citing sources. It just adds to the annoyance among your readers, who will tend to lose interest in your posts and dwindle away.I'm sorry to point out that, having googled for the source of your quotes, I disagree with your description. I'm assuming that Kevin Sluder is the author of those two paragraphs you just quoted (found here: Page not found) -- unless he himself is a plagiarist (which is a possibility, since copy/paste posting is rampant among religious web sites -- especially those that try to link laws of thermodynamics with Big Bang and evolution theories; I simply stopped looking after finding Sluder's material).In any case, Sluder is obviously not a "science dude". He is a religious apologist who begins by asserting that the truth must be based on what the Bible says, and then straddles a fence between making up imaginative interpretations of scripture and cherry picking actual evidence -- just like every other religious apologist.If you want to be scientific, you have to be willing to do the same thing with scripture that you do with any scientific text: recognize when it's wrong, don't assert that it's factual when the bulk of evidence contradicts what it says, and adopt a better description and a better understanding when the evidence warrants dismissal of the previous description and understanding. Why should it be so difficult to do this?Edited by Otto Tellick, : (minor syntax repair)

---

autotelic adj. (of an entity or event) having within itself the purpose of its existence or happening.

Are you talking about experiments to test telepathy and the efficacy of prayer? Things like that have been done, and the results indicate nothing better than random performance (it might work every now and then, but in general it doesn't work). You won't even get the Discovery Institute or the Institute for Creation Research (or whatever they call themselves now) to fund that kind of stuff, because spending money on experiments that fail is less effective for their purposes than propaganda and lobbying.Even if you're talking about something else, the hard part is obviously going to be coming up with some concept that is both "God" and "defined". This really can't be done in any sort of objective framework -- it's something intrinsic about the concept of "God", which by definition defies objectivity.(I considered responding to your other "suggestions", but apart from being utterly religious and non-scientific, they were just too senseless.)

---

autotelic adj. (of an entity or event) having within itself the purpose of its existence or happening.

tesla, now that you've been "referring back" to all the "evidence" you've been showing us, I have to point out that your dozens of posts on this thread are actually showing direct evidence of something about you in particular: you fail to grasp the implications of your own statements, and you appear to be unaware that you are contradicting yourself. Case in point: So far as I'm able to tell, you've said that sort of thing twice now in this thread. The first time you said something like that (way back at Message 13), I myself responded to you in a very positive and supportive way (here: Message 22), and I meant what I said.Now that you've said it twice, I interpret your statement in both cases to be talking about people who hold beliefs in supernatural entities and causes. The statement does not apply to people who take a purely scientific or objective view of the things they do not know or understand, because the scientific, objective approach is simply to acknowledge that you don't know or understand something, and you don't bother trying to assert any supernatural cause or purpose for the matter at hand, because doing so doesn't really improve knowledge or understanding in any objective sense.Rational people understand your statement as saying that the attribution of supernatural causation is just a stop-gap, a place-holder, an ersatz "answer" to fill a space that can't be filled on the basis of careful and replicable observation. In other words, asserting "God" as a cause is actually just an admission of ignorance.And yet, in the very same post quoted above, you conclude by saying: This bit all by itself would qualify you as a nut-case. Science does not -- cannot -- say "God's there"; ignoring supernatural explanations is in the very nature of doing science, for very good and essential reasons.Taking this bit in combination with your other statement above, which expresses the true relationship between science and supernatural explanations ("once you understand something objectively, it is natural, not supernatural"), the only conclusion I can draw is that you yourself do not understand at least half of the things you are saying.Perhaps you are using some sort of "internal" language, where you've invented your own meanings for words like "God" and "science" and "evidence". Whatever the problem is, I'm sorry to say you've failed at coherent communication.Edited by Otto Tellick, : minor punctuation fix

---

autotelic adj. (of an entity or event) having within itself the purpose of its existence or happening.