Intelligent Design Creationism

What, and actually work at a pregnancy by using a uterus like the rest of the suckers?He got his directly from God's online baby store!Just as this site absolutely proves that life begins at conception, it also proves that babies are in fact manufactured by ID.Of course I now see (from the line of babies they have if you scroll down) that babies are actually quite different from each stage of pregnancy to the next with no real transitional form between them. In fact, the online shop admits they don't have any known baby types before eight weeks.This has led me to the conclusion that the first babies are created only at eight weeks of pregnancy and then replaced by wholly new "special creations" of the next stages of pregnancy in turn.In this way, just like the various proto-models are used to create an individual car, God uses various "preemie" models of babies before settling on the final version created for actual birth.Each one is totally separate and alive... and if you're smart you'll buy them all to cherish every proto-type used by the Great IDer to reach the final "birth baby".Heheheh... doesn't that line of babies remind you of Haeckel?This message has been edited by holmes, 06-11-2004 09:00 AM

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

But you could see the nature. Unless you had the lights off (or your eyes closed) you should have seen all the organs responsible for the generation and distribution of semen, as well as what "caught" them.If you had conceived artificially you could even watch the sperm puncturing the egg and fertilization begin.With special cameras you could even watch the gestational being grow after implantation.All of that was natural processes using the natural materials interacting right before your eyes.Nowhere (unless you went with artificial insemination) did you see any 3rd party entering the picture at any time to rearrange pieces and parts and "construct" your baby.I am unsure why admitting that we see nothing but the materials found in nature, interacting naturally, is crap, but asserting an intelligent force we do not see and have never seen built your baby "by design" is not.

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

I believe this is inaccurate. You are a part of nature by being part of the natural world, which is the ongoing processes of the materials we see around us. How those processes originated does not make them any less part of the natural world.For example, you mention a house. While it may have been designed and constructed, its "life" within the environment will be natural until a wrecking company comes to take it down.It is also inaccurate to presuppose processes we have not seen. What are unnatural or supernatural forces and when have you seen them acting on materials? Well first of all that I believe even you would recognize your child as REPRODUCTION. It is that or CONSTRUCTION.Given that it takes two to tango, and this rarely involves blueprints, where do you feel your sexual act was constructed, and where do you believe your child was constructed (and using what mechanisms).I admit science is not up on all the exact mechanisms used by all the chemicals within the egg and sperm and within the womb (fed by the umbilical cord), but I can rest very easy that development involves ONLY the materials available at hand and mechanisms between those chemicals.What outside forces or materials are there?Naturalism assumes nothing extra... you do.Except of course I am sure you consider it your child and do not for an instant believe that God created a mechanism by which your neighbor got your wife pregnant, but it comes out looking like you (down to the DNA). If it was all cooked up beforehand then this is an equal possibility. Never say never... or nowhere...This is the same argument they gave for urea, and then it was manufactured in a lab. As it stands you can observe nonliving materials being used (converted) to create eggs and sperm, and then those joining to create a cell, and then those gestating to eventually form a child.What more do I need than that? Oh sure I'd like to know what the 1st case of nonliving material becoming living was. Was it purely chemical interactions increasing in complexity due to energy input and storage, or was it designed from some unseen entities?Regardless, that says nothing about what happened AFTER the first self-reproducing molecule started working on the nonliving material around it... converting them to life.And how sexual reproduction came about from asexual populations, well what's your major problem with that? Why couldn't asexual beings differentiate or specialize over time, especially once within communities of organisms? Did you have sex in order to have your baby, or did you have it built to order, or did you stumble across it within your wife's womb and just had to have it?If you had sex then you engaged in a natural process to create the baby, if not you can appeal to analogies of a house. Take your pick.But lets address your analogy anyway. Your house is in the woods. Can you tell the difference between the trees and your house? In fact, which is more complex? I'll suggest it is the trees and all the critters living in them.The house we KNOW humans built because we know humans build houses, and things of such complexity. Humans are to this date incapable of making things as complex as trees and critters. Thus we tend to assume that humans did not build them.Yet you want to stretch the analogy. Well what if some entity could build something as complex as everything around the house? Okay. And maybe it was so brilliant it created in those systems something which allowed them to reproduce themselves so that the entity didn't have to build any more than the first "kinds"? Okay.So what? Remember your own words. "As of now we have never observed this, so why infer it?"When have you observed any entity other than man create an object (living or other) using a plan and intelligence? When have you observed such entities creating a whole new "kind" of being that never existed before, from nonliving matter which then went on to procreate and "microevolve" alongside other kinds as now living matter?I can tell you for damn sure I've seen creatures having sex and changing over generations, using only the chemicals and energy supplied to them from their natural environment. The inference I make is that is all that was necessary across time, though specific chemical mechanisms could change depending on environment.So is it me or you that is making an inference that has little or nothing to do with what either of us has actually observed?My observations may be incomplete in that they do not include all EVENTS of change which my theory requires, but they are not completely devoid of actors, materials, and forces as well as events which your theory requires.Right?

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

MrH has created many well written posts explaining why ID theory is in fact a form of creationism and so IDC theory.You asserted that this was not true, stating in support only that you are right and anyone that says otherwise is wrong.You then used a quote from Behe to make an argument for IDs objectivity, without realizing that does not actually make the case that ID is any less about creationism. Remember MrH is arguing it is a form, so it might have slightly different appearances (say of greater objectivity).What else can one say? You need to make a case for why ID is not a form of creationism. Perhaps an explanation of how it uses purely scientific observations and explanations to derive the entities and forces it goes on to posit.For my part I do not call it IDC, in deference to ID people who wish to avoid association with creation science. I call it Intelligent Design Inference and Organic Teleology theory... IDIOT theory for short.

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

Nice verbal poke (gotta give credit where it's due), but the rest does not address the point.I can fully agree that an intelligent being designed and created everything in the world at its set up. That has little impact on what is defined afterward.Since I am referencing everything in the world as Nature, and how they interact as we see them now as Natural Processes, then no matter that they were not created according to Natural Processes initially, they are a part of Nature and what they do now is Natural.To not be NATURAL, something would have to be created using materials or forces that are not out in the world at this time.If you have some way of defining nature in some other way, I'd love to see it. Are you telling me you've never heard of roof repair, repainting, flood repair, wood rot, subsidence etc etc?Your house continues to change as it is affected by the natural world in which it sits. These changes are according to some architect? Ahhhhhh, this is beneath you I'm sure. I'm not saying urea is the same as self-replicating molecules. I was simply reminding you, given history, never to say never.It was once believed by some scientists that certain structures could only be produced by living beings. This was eventually proven wrong.Now you and IDers are making a similar argument. Because something is so complex, it must have been designed by an intelligent being. This may also prove to be wrong. Thus you are in the same position as them... never say never about what chemicals can and cannot do. Yes it could. See I never say never. But the second sentence you offer, while perhaps true, lends no credence to the theory posited in the first.We know living entities selforganize and gain in complexity through the process of organization and specialization. They due over the course of many generations living among other entities.Yes this has been seen, at the very least with bacteria.A mechanism for the development of sexual reproduction, while not known exactly (and I'm sure how we would know EXACTLY how it was done) is not excluded from this theory, it is simply not defined.Now what exact mechanism do you propose created sexual reproduction? Or give me a general one. And remember, one that we have seen at some point or there is no use in inferring that it ever existed. And you are pretty certain it wasn't chipmunks or space aliens that built stonehenge or the sphinx aren't you? Yeah come on and admit it.Hey, maybe my thread supporting some use for ID theory has disappeared, but I do agree that humans could and perhaps should develop criteria for detecting design in biological structures.The problem is that does not readily transport, at least at this time, to ANY conclusions regarding SUPERNATURAL MADE objects.We know what man, or manlike, intelligences would require and so generally what to use to judge their creative impact on living and nonliving entities.Since there has NEVER BEEN a well documented case of SUPERNATURAL FORCES AT ALL (much less INTELLIGENT ones), nor of any SUPERNATURAL MECHANISMS by which those forces could affect natural entities, we'd have no criteria with which to judge signs of intelligent design of organic or inorganic entities by the supernatural, nor reason to posit the supernatural in the first place.Maybe someday we could, but right now we can't.If you cannot differentiate between what should or should not be posited as mechanisms or plausible creative entities by science, based on historical experience, then you would have no way of saying humans created stonehenge versus gods or chipmunks. In the end, everything is made possible.Please give me ONE observational example to believe, even if I accede that life might show signs of intelligent design, that it was anything other than men or manlike creatures that created them. I would suspect design of some kind. Now back to you. Would you suspect humans did it or God or chipmunks? How do you tell?Next, where have you seen anything like that in biological entities. Don't confuse great complexity, with design.The reason I said I would suspect design in the forest you described is that we have a pretty good knowledge of tree growth and dispersion, as well as examples of human organization. The forest you described fits examples of human organization and not natural tree dispersion. It had NOTHING to do with level of complexity, or even specified complexity.With regard to biochemistry we do not have enough knowledge about how they interact to measure complexity or specified complexity, much less to judge what level of such things is natural versus artificially organized.That will take a lot more work. IDers seem to want to skip the sweaty part.Sorry Dembski, Trix are for Kids.

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

Ugh, I am not about to hunt them down for you. I haven't been on in several months so if they are gone, maybe they got removed? I doubt it though.You can ask him why he hasn't pointed them out. Maybe he didn't want to hunt them down either?I guess if I don't and he didn't that's good enough reason for you not to have found them as well. Yes I did, but I was only refering to your initial post, because that is where you "asked your question". I am saying that with that as your start, whether you tried to give support later or not, it's no wonder no one answered. You missed my point. I was saying that you used a quote by Behe that did not counter MrH's position that ID is a form of creationism. It may have addressed his other criticisms of ID as an attempt at real science, but not whether it has any relation to creationism.Perhaps you need to define Creationism as well as Nature and Science and ID. I am unsure what your functioning definitions are. I am an avid reader of the discovery center and with the exception of some of the latest books by Dembski have read everything they put out. I know why they define themselves as being different than creationists. I am pretty certain MrH knows why they define themselves as being different.He is calling BS on this distinction and has shown why there attempt at separation is not accurate. If you do not get this, then you need to do some rereading.Since he has made his case, and you have not rebutted it, perhaps you should start trying to in a way that reflects on whether ID functions as a creationist movement, even if they have thrown in legalistic mumbojombo to say that they are not. Well, you can also call me right. I am not positing the existence of anything which has not been observed as a material or force, in order to construct my theory. Thus my inferences flow naturally from my observations.You have not even bothered to refute the fact that your theory requires entities and forces which have never been observed, and so directly contradicts the argument you use against evolutionary theory.I think we got a name for that too...

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

Weren't you the guy that said if 10,000 scientists produced reports saying porn is not harmful to kids then they were all liars and secret pedophiles? Well, given the tone of that same post I mentioned above, plus the fact that you never answered my reply, that would make you a ranter as well... and a hater.Perhaps, those in stained glass houses should not throw stones. Awesome, imagine what that means about me!Now the above was just a gentle reminder of your hypocrisy and the fact that you have left a reply unanswered.The following goes specifically to this thread... This is curious to me. Intelligent Design theorists, even the full on Creationist kind, accept "microevolution". That means that humans can evolve to some degree or other within human "kind".So how does this charge NOT effect IDC as well as modern evolutionists. The only thing standing between us is one kind to another.And indeed modern evolutionary theorists, believing all kinds come from same origins, tend NOT to view any species or race (if there are even such things as races) as inferior/superior.You have linked a scientific theory to political movements which at times misused parts of that scientific theory to attack their enemies.But this can easily be shown to be true for religious beliefs as much as, if not much more than for scientific theories.And in this case, neither evo nor IDC can claim some magical divide from how "evolution" was misused by racists, as the portions able to be misused are shared by both.

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

Evidence separates opinions from facts. As you yourself were claiming, looking at evidence brings one closer to God.Yet on the other issue you simply ignored evidence, NOT refuting it, in order to state you hatefilled opinion.That not only makes you a hypocrite, it takes you away from god (according to your own words, AND because it makes you a bearer of false witness). You realize the most politically correct position on children and sex is that it is harmful, right? And YOU are saying that evidence must pass your PC test or it ain't real evidence... in fact it is manufactured.And that's what really galls me. If you had said the scientists (or at least MOST of the scientists) had made an error in their research, that would have been something at least possible. But instead... acting in true PC thug fashion... you blasted them ALL as conspirators and intentionally creating misleading research because you didn't like the data. That is not completely true. The popular ID movement (as seen in Behe, Dembski) do not ascribe to Genesis. I realize they are not the entire creationist movement and GENERAL IDC, but they are the more prominent group getting SPECIFIC IDC into education. Hmmmmm, let's start again and see if you get it on a second try. All racists need in order to consider one race superior to another is a tiny portion of evolution (what IDC theorists call "microevolution").Thus there is no difference whether macro or micro (aka ModEvo or IDC) were the leading theories, the racists would still have ammo for their Holocausts.Unless you are claiming that you do not even believe in what IDC theorists call "microevolution"? That ought to be interesting. They are theorists, but not because of a lack of facts. I am uncertain where you got that strange notion about how science works. Actually this is not true. Not all evos even agree that we did come from the "same origins" (depending on how you define it).Indeed, one can easily hold that aliens planted life here, or that humans from the future started it, or minds from another dimension did. Evolution does not in and of itself require abiogenesis, or singular biogenic events.Right now a purely material philosophy can include introduction of life from outside the earth (though it will not be from "supernatural" beings). Evolutionary theory merely explains what happens once life IS here.Some people do believe aliens seeded the universe, and some of the life caught on and grew on earth.I am not trying to defend any of these positions, just explaining that your statement is inaccurate on the facts. I would add that my own acceptance of evolution and abiogenesis (although I am still open to the particular environments for abiogenesis) were not due to a need to replace Genesis or God.You know a person could just as easily say they do not believe in Xianity and that they do not know how life works or came about? Why would you want or need to? I said I could not speak for Darwin and that would go for Huxley as well. They may have been racists or not, what do I care? I have found nothing to support a racist position in evolutionary theory and if they expounded it to me today I would point out their error.Newton was a total religious freak, and some chemists were as much astrologers and alchemical magicians as solid chemists. What people do (or fail to do) right on their own time (and outside of the useful theories they have laid down) is not my problem. See how wrong and bigoted you are. I am a modern evo and I haven't rejected Darwin's racism at all. The most I can say is I have no idea if he was or not, and it makes no difference to my use of evolutionary theory.If you are trying to imply that Xianity stemmed from a bunch of nonracists (as opposed to evo theory) and so is purer, well I just have to LAUGH AND LAUGH AND LAUGH.Do I really need to quote racist dogma from YOUR THEORY'S past?

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