Intelligent Design Creationism

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)

holmes:
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.John Paul:
I believe that is inaccurate. But this inaccuracy is derived from defining nature.holmes:
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.John Paul:
My house is and until they knock it down, remain man-made. We have processes in place to differentiate between man-made and nature-made.holmes:
This is the same argument they gave for urea, and then it was manufactured in a lab.John Paul:
Who are they? Is urea any where close to being as specified or complex as life? NO!How is sex a natural process? What is your basis for defining it as such? Couldn't sex be the product of an intelligently designed process? And yes in educated circles the advent of sexual reproduction is an enigma.Ya see holmes, I have never seen anyone build or design Stonehenge yet I can say with conviction that it is the product of design. No one alive seen the Sphinx being built or designed, any question that it was?If you walked through the woods, came upon a meadow and after the meadow were 10,000 trees spaced 10 meters apart in exact 100x100 rows, would you think this was a product of nature or design?

I have asked what is Intelligent Design Creationism and have been met with silence. Go figure...holmes:
MrH has created many well written posts explaining why ID theory is in fact a form of creationism and so IDC theory.John Paul:
Really? Where and why didn't he point these out?holmes:
You asserted that this was not true, stating in support only that you are right and anyone that says otherwise is wrong.John Paul:
Which shows you didn't read my posts.holmes:
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.John Paul:
That is false. Behe's quote has nothing to do with Creation. Behe is NOT a Creationist.holmes:
You need to make a case for why ID is not a form of creationism.John Paul:
This has been done many times on various websites and publications. I can't force anyone to educate themselves to what it is they want to debate against.For my part I will not call you an evolutionist but rather Ignoramus stupidicus.

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LoL! I am laughing because Stephen Jones opens his book Darwin's Ghost using an analogy of manufactured goods. Go figure...

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Not the same thing. Analogies can be used to CLARIFY a position, but an analogy can not be used as support for a position. This is the problem that IDists have, using an analogy to non-reproducing systems as the sole, evidenciary support for their theory. Within evolution, we have actual studies on living, reproducing populations as evidence. Analogies are only used to communicate the relationships that are evidenced in nature.

I will state that in my copy no analogy with manufactured goods is to be found in the first few pages of the Historical Sketch, the Introduction or Chapter 1.One wonders where John Paul got his idea from.

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)

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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.

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If we used the same argument as Behe, we could argue that stone age technology was inadequate for stacking large, multi-ton stones with such precision. Therefore, it had to be a non-human intelligence that made stonehenge.

So what you're saying then, is that if life is the product of intelligent design, nature doesn't exist?That's the pretty obvious extension of what you're proposing:1) Any life that is intelligently designed is not natural.2) All life is intelligently designed.Therefore, you must obviously conclude that nature doesn't exist anywhere. What, then, is the word "nature" supposed to describe?

i'll refrain from taking the obvious shot here, because making fun of premature babies is just not cool. however, congratulations, and i'm glad they're both ok. um, that IS evolution. really, that's it. how many times have run a mile? more than 26?no one is arguing it all happened at once, except the creationists.and uh, we also have a bunch of transitional species from land mammals to whales and dolphins and such. i'm actually quite proud to own a vertebrea of one. yes, that 1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1=2. where is the glass barries that prevents addition from, you know, adding? things can change a little... but not a lot! lots of little things can't possibly add up to big things!

you hear about the easter island study they did that showed that primitive natives couldn't possibly have raised the big statues? i saw a bunch of scientists competeing for an explanation with logs and ropes and cranes and ditches and such.they came to a conclusion: it was damned near impossible.well, until the natives showed them.it's kind of like the crop circle argument. people can't possibly make these without helicopters and cad programs and complex instrumentation. them some locals with a board, some sticks, and a lot of string sent them a video.

You may not have received the answer you liked, but your question was not met with silence.I have no problem if you offer this as a taunt or jest as part of the discussion, but as Admin I am not part of the discussion, and I need a more constructive response. That you still haven't responded to the concerns I expressed in Message 85 concerns me. That you leave most threads in mid-discussion concerns me. That you have established a very "Fred Williams"-like pattern of leaving for a while, then returning to pick up discussion in new threads while ignoring the threads you left hanging also concerns me.The last member whose posting privileges were completely suspended was Rocket, an evolutionist who proved unable to debate constructively. I personally had no problem with any single one of his posts, and I thought many of them highly entertaining, and not a few thought provoking. But almost none of them contributed to the topic under discussion, and after several warnings and temporary suspensions it was made permanent. In other words, it wasn't his individual posts that were a problem, but a pattern of non-constructive participation.You are causing me the same concern. Please help make it easier for me to think the very best of you. Right now your privileges are suspended only in [forum=-6], but that is very easy to change, in either positive or negative ways.

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--	Percy
	EvC Forum Director

In my personal opinion "Intelligent Design Creationism" is a contradiction.(christian) creationism is the belief in a literal biblical interpretation, with a very specific designer and process.ID on the other hand is the belief in an unknowable hand doing whatever is necessary to make the universe operate the way it does, and it allows every branch of science to be fully valid. As such I feel that ID contradicts creationism.Can you tell me how these could possible be reconciled?Enjoy.

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we are limited in our ability to understand
by our ability to understand RebelAAmerican.Zen[Deist
{{{Buddha walks off laughing with joy}}}

Physical teleology is not physciotheology but there is little discussion of natural purpose in particular as to why it might not be needed to think of Noah's Ark as one spot if the duty was to explain the final cause of agriculture exporing the growing of food in Venus atmosphere and the civilization of man On Mars. Of course if one rejected physciotheology outright there would not be a necessary connection if one stuck ONLY to Wolfram type universaility no matter the worship BEHAVIOR and you could eat the Fladers' credit plastic V card! Dont do it!! I suppose I used to associate Biblical Creationism with the latter and Scientific Creationism a former but the same would apply in you division. Best. Brad.