Defence of Intelligent Design

Hi Bran,Neither the creationists or the anti-ID crowd on this thread understands what ID is.ID is simply an expression of a teleological perspective that is at least as old as the ancient Greeks. It essentially states that an explanation of X is incomplete without reference to intelligent design. ID can generate testable hypotheses that help us understand the natural world. It can serve as a guide for an empirical, provisional, historical investigation. ID is not anti-evolution. Intelligent design is an alternative perspective on how evolution occurs, one that doesn't a priori reject teleological processes.ID recognizes that evolution happens. ID is not creationism. Just to make this perfectly clear I submit this statement from Bill Dembski a prominent figure in the ID movement:"ID is not an interventionist theory. It's only commitment is that the design in the world be empirically detectable. All the design could therefore have emerged through a cosmic evolutionary process that started with the Big Bang. What's more, the designer need not be a deity. It could be an extraterrestrial or a telic process inherent in the universe. ID has no doctrine of creation."Does this sound like creationism? If anyone tells you ID is creationism they are out to misrepresent ID. Take anything they say with a grain of salt.Dembski says:"Intelligent design is not a theory about the frequency or locality at which a designing intelligence intervenes in the material world. It is not an interventionist theory at all."I wouldn't even use the term "theory" to describe ID. To me ID is a teleological perspective that generates testable hypotheses. Why can't science function perfectly well with more than one theoretical framework for generating testable hypotheses? To find out more about testable ID hypotheses go here: Welcome idthink.net - BlueHost.com

Only if you ignore 99.99% of the evidence. Yes, he did, in The origin of Species: Chapter 9. It was Darwin's style to ask a rhetorical question and then answer it, and he did the same in this case. It's worthwhile to read his answer; much of it is aplicable today (although the section on the denudation of the Weald suffered from erroneous estimates and oversimplification, and was removed from later editions). A vague and unsupported claim. Fred's almost as confused as you, but is a more prolific writer.You or he should review, for example, the whale fossils (start at http://darla.neoucom.edu/DEPTS/ANAT/Thewissen.html) or the human lineage (start at Prominent Hominid Fossils, which doesn't include all of them by any means, and go on to Prominent Hominid Fossils). What "necessary links" are not listed, and why are they necessary? A bare-faced and outright lie. Darwin said that intermediate and transitional links must be inconceivably great. He went on to explain why the evidence of such links available today is not inconceivably great.Nonetheless, a sufficient number of transitional fossils have been found for us to make valid conclusions, especially about the evolution of Man.The barest beginning of the details is contained at the links I posted above. Read tehm and report back.You claimed that "we do not find a single one of Darwin’s necessary links, not even one that evolutionists can agree on. None. Nada. Zippo". What necessary links are missing, and why are those links necessary? Results: Life on Earth is circa 3.5 billion years old. Although we don't have a good handle on how life originally arose, the panoply of life that we see today was generated from a few primitive organisms by the processes detailed in the mainstream theory of evolution. They don't.[This message has been edited by JonF, 01-23-2004]

The Zen of dealing with such creationists is the sound of one hand clapping ...

I hope that you are icnluding yourself in the number that do not understand what ID is.ID is a blanket term - it includes for instance Young Earth Creationism. And ID certainly used to be committed to interventionism - Dembski himself said that ID was "no friend" to non-interventionist views.I agree that ID is not a theory. I disagree as to what it is. It is a political movement directed at making the biology curricula of schools less scientific and more in line with their personal beliefs.

Flies, Flies, chill out. It's gonna be okay. Promise.You ask: "Jeez, I don't know how you other people at this forum put up with this" (referring to Whatever's cluelessness, I think).First, I imagine whoopin' up some killer grub ... the whole nine yards kinda spread ... and havin' to do it while someone who cannot boil an egg without a recipe looks over my shoulder and asks me how to replicate this or that dish.If that doesn't put me in the right frame of mind, I imagine I'm talkin' to Billy Fred Norton down at the local used tire exchange. He's the dude in the greasy overhalls with two good teeth and a great deal of pride at being the first in his clan to marry outside the immediate family.Peace.edit: On second thought, what JonF said in Message 78 is a much better way to handle it, Flies. Phooowhoosh.[This message has been edited by Abshalom, 01-23-2004][This message has been edited by Abshalom, 01-23-2004]

LOL, I am, almost all the time, calm. whatever is not worth the fuss. S/he is easy to ignore (most of the time) because the posts are so obviously stupid. S/he obviously isn't (or can't) read the replies given. When it gets this extreme I read for amusement only.I feel that enough forum guidelines have been violated by whatever that a suspension is in order, however I also thing that the creationist side should be held to much lower standards. What I suggest is just ignoring his/her fool rants.

---

Common sense isn't[This message has been edited by NosyNed, 01-23-2004]

Sure it does. Natural selection is a filter that selects for better designs that arise through random mutation/descent with modification. The processes of descent with modification and natural selection have even been formalized in the form of genetic algorithms that themselves design better nozzles and analog circuits. Show me. I suspect you have a very distorted idea of what a transitional fossil is. Do you understand that according to evolutionary theory, basically every fossil is a transitional? The form of every presently existing species represents the transition between the form from which the population has evolved and the form to which it will evolve next. I doubt that Darwin himself fully grasped that notion, but the mistakes of Darwin are irrelevant to the validity of evolutionary theory.Blessings,
::
(...who suspects he's made a mistake thinking that rational arguments would carry any weight with this particular opponent...)[This message has been edited by ::, 01-23-2004]

quote:

---

It is interesting that evolution doesn't answer the problem in that every creature exibits design, in that the fossil record show the fossils came onto the scene fully formed (evidence supporting design), etc...

---

What do you mean by fully formed? Do you mean a fish with no tail, only half formed? What would a transitional fossil look like using your criteria of "fully formed"? Of course every fossil is fully formed, otherwise it couldn't feed itself. It's kind of hard to chase down prey if you are not fully formed.I've thought about the misrepresentations that you seem to stick to, fully formed fossils among them. I came to the conclusion that you have not even looked at the logic that you put forth. Let me ask you this. BTW, this is a hypothetical situation where evolution is understood to be affecting morphology through time, you need not agree with evolution only understand the hypothetical situation. We go into the future (lets say 20 million years) and find that there is a dolphin like creature that somewhat resembles lion seals. The dolphin-like aquatic mammal has a blowhole at the top of its head, but its pectoral fins display small claws that resemble those found in seals. We then go back through time to the present, observing along the way the evolution of the lion seals to dolphin-like mammals. Now, back in the present, would you characterize lion seals as fully formed? Or would you say they are not fully formed since they don't have a blow hole on the top of their head.On top of all this, we still haven't dug up every fossil out there, probably much less than 1% of the total fossils in the earth. Secondly, not every species is recorded in the fossil record. For instance, has anyone every found a fossil of a carrier pigeon? If not, then this species will never be a part of the fossil record, much less the few transitionals that link the carrier pigeon to a common ancestor with other pigeons. Thirdly, fossilization rarely preserves soft tissue, usually only hard tissue such as bones and cartilage. Therefore, changes in soft tissue morphology are often lost in transitionals, changes that could easily trigger rapid changes in hard tissues that could be observed in real time but is lost due to the rarity of fossilization.With these points in mind, how can the fossil record with nebulously defined "fully formed" fossils realy be an indication of design? Add this to superposition theory and dating techniques (which you have yet to refute) which create a readable timeline along evolutionary lines. What design lacks is evidence. Until then it is an unsupported opinion and little else.

JonF, I heard the Neanderthals hands were not curved, that their backs were not hunched over, given the bible infers there were giants in them days, that they were competent in smelting iron, bronze to the making of impliments kjv genesis 4:22, etc...when you look at the pleistocene fossils, they talk of giant beavers, anteaters, mammoths, etc... Atlantisquest.com which are not evident today, and given you all believe pleistocene fossils were quite recently, why wouldn't our biblical ancestors be quite large too, etc...Giant Humans and DinosaursP.S. The sediments that erupted out of the earth would of dated old even before they erupted out of the earth, these contaminants would of leached into the basalts, igneous rocks, by dual porosity, no wonder the different dating methods appear to agree one to the other, but really its meaningless, due to said processes, etc...

quote:

---

JonF, I heard the Neanderthals hands were not curved, that their backs were not hunched over, given the bible infers there were giants in them days, that they were competent in smelting iron, bronze to the making of impliments kjv genesis 4:22, etc...when you look at the pleistocene fossils, they talk of giant beavers, anteaters, mammoths, etc... Atlantisquest.com which are not evident today, and given you all believe pleistocene fossils were quite recently, why wouldn't our biblical ancestors be quite large too, etc...

---

As soon as we find fossils of a giant human species, like the giant land sloth fossils, then your hypothesis will have more weight. So far, no large apes whatsoever, much less hominids. Given that the Hebrews could have been small in stature on average, a culture that averaged 6 feet tall could have been impressive.

quote:

---

P.S. The sediments that erupted out of the earth would of dated old even before they erupted out of the earth, these contaminants would of leached into the basalts, igneous rocks, by dual porosity, no wonder the different dating methods appear to agree one to the other, but really its meaningless, due to said processes, etc...

---

We have already shot holes through your leaching hypothesis. Argon does not leach out and then back into rocks, otherwise lunar rocks would date very young, and they don't. Also, if there was leaching, meteors would date young as well since they would lose all of their argon to the vacuum of space. Instead they date to more than 4 billion years old. Then, you have to rely on selective leaching of isotopes of the same element between different layers of rock, something that water solubility is not affected by. Sorry, your leaching model doesn't work.[This message has been edited by Loudmouth, 01-23-2004]

quote:

---

LOL, I am, almost all the time, calm.

---

Yeah, but you're CANADIAN. What are the rest of us mortals supposed to do?

---

holmes
"...what a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.."(D. Bros)

A variety of things... I know this is nitpicky, but I saw Dan already correct you and I have to admit it really bothers me too.The bible is not an interpreting thing. It is the thing you interpret. As such, the bible doesn't "infer" anything. It implies things. You might infer such-and-such from the bible, but the bible itself doesn't do any inferring. I'm just gonna give you the benefit of the doubt and let this go as a typo. Are you seriously linking to a site that purports to describe the "culture, people, language and technology" of Atlantis as an authority on paleontology?Please answer that question directly.

::, Intelligent design believes in natural selection, that life adapts survival of the fitess, but that this support design, in that the alleles of the genes is part of the diversification of the species, etc...
P.S. I brought out how inbreeding caused problems, in fact breeders will use this to create new species of dogs, parrots, but this doesn't address the need for the creatures to increase information, new genes needed for the different organs, irruducible complexities that differ in different species, etc...In truth, Darwins origin of the species, has no proof the cambrian explosion, massive fossil evidences didn't have a common designer, but the fossils that came onto the scene were fully functional, granted some of since went extinct, you just don't see a cat evolving into a fish, not that they don't share evidence of a common designer, Every fossil is not a transitional fossil for there is simply no evidence in the natural that genes are increasing in information, but there is evidence that a decreasing of information, is increasing, etc...[This message has been edited by whatever, 01-23-2004]

Hey you took that out of context!!! A quote mine!!I am mostly calm here. Ask my teenagers how calm I am "all the time". I think you were being complimentary. Thank you for that. But it is also stereotyping and to be politically correct I should chide you for that.It may be, also, that the underlying reasons for my calm are not so complimentary. It may be that I am an arrogant SOB who feels he is so knowledgable and intelligent that I can look down on someone who obviously cannot compete with me intellectually (and in spite of my moderately advanced age perhaps physically ).S/he is just words on a computer screen. There are fools all over who have no hope of learning a damm thing. When you run into one don't waste your time on them. Give them a moderate chance to demonstrate a mimimal ablitity to think and then put 'em on the ignore list.

---

Common sense isn't

Prominent Hominid Fossils. What "necessary links" have not been found, and why are they necessary?