Intelligent Design or unthinking blasphemy?

You admit that you don't know - and can't know - what "Intelligent Design" would be like. You admit that you don't know - and can't know - what the "Designer's" intentions would be. Therefore you don't know - and can't know - whether or not those intentions were achieved.Yet you claim to "infer" that intelligent deign has occurred.The two positions are mutually exclusive. Your admission that you know nothing about "intelligent design" scuttles your inference of intelligent design. Do you understand the difference between "truth" and "truism"?

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I wonder if you changed your mind by the end of the post where you say He can limit Himself as He chooses. Surely if He can do that, then He can also give some privacy if HE chooses. Yes I have heard this quaint refrain before and I do not buy it. "There are things we can do that God cannot because God cannot sin." Tell me do you think that God cannot kill a person? Do you think God cannot take something that belongs to a person away from them? Do you think that God has never said anything which is untrue? Try Genesis 6:7 where He said that He would destroy every human being and animal on earth. If He can do all of these things as He chooses then what exactly does it mean to say that He cannot sin? I don't know. But whatever it means, it doesn't place any real restrictions on Him as far as I can tell. Frankly I think it is word game. Sin is going against the will of God, so God cannot sin.This prohibition against God doing anything which contradicts our definitions of Him sound like really pathetic attempts to put God in our pocket. People cannot stand the fact that they have no way to manipulate or control God. God is utterly good and loving, so why should we fear Him. Because we cannot manipulate or control Him. We cannot manipulate Him with our praises (flattery), appease Him with our good works, bind Him with legal contracts or promises, and we cannot confine him with our theological definitions. Oh yes, He is terrifying.

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I can't prove God to anyone. However, you are confusing Intelligent Design with creationism. We don't need to identify what the Desginer is through science. That aspect is scientifically impossible. However, if you found a toaster in the woods would you need to know who built it in order to understand that someone with a mind must have designed it? Obviously not. The same principle can be applied when considering the Designer(s) of the universe. Its not the job of ID or any branch of science to make theological suppositions. Let theologians battle that aspect. I, like, Einstein, do not believe that God plays dice. I don't believe that nothing can create everything, and I don't believe that chance after chance after chance has the ability to 'get it right' often enough without the universe annihilating itself. I don't believe that we are here by accident. I believe we are here by design. When did I say that I know nothing of Intelligent Design? What I said was I can't 'know' that God exists, (not in the same way that I could know whether or not I ate an apple today). That's all I said. It almost sounds like you're demonizing faith? The difference between the two isn't disparaging. Why do you ask?

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“It is in vain, O' man, that you seek within yourselves the cure for all your miseries. All your insight has led you to the knowledge that it is not in yourselves that you will discover the true and the good.” -Blaise Pascal

This thread is essentially obfuscating a simple cliche commonly used in designating one's ideology. It has the odios odor of opposing the opposite opinion of the author.The term intelligent design is something like a cliche. It's a way of designating whether one believes an intelligent being effected the design of what is observed as apposed to what is being observed having happened by random mutation and natural selection (RM & NS). That's all. Don't over-rate the term and don't abuse it.

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BUZSAW B 4 U 2 C Y BUZ SAW ---- Jesus said, "When these things begin to come to pass, then look up, and lift up your heads, for your redemption draws near." Luke 21:28

I've considered it. But perhaps I'm a little hazy on what you mean by 'privacy.' Yes, I know what privacy means, but in what context might God give someone privacy? Killing and murder are separate issues. I don't believe that God can murder any one. I know He can kill a bunch of people and has. No, I don't, and the reason why is because nothing truly belongs to us in the first place. Everything is His ultimately. Every faculty of my body and every contrivance is because of Him. Everything in the universe is His. If He taketh away it is because we are going through the refiner's fire. All of the people destroyed were guilty, and per the Law, were required to die. Secondly, animals are not under a moral law. Its no more a sin for us to kill 10 bears than it is for the bear's Maker to kill 10 million. I don;t get to call the shots. And even my ability to grasp every thought comes ultimately from Him. So who am I to question His actions? 9 out of 10 times, if I disagreed with God's actions, its proabably because I don't have the full picture in view. Good point. Because He is the one thing that will either save us or condemn us. We are powerless in comparison. As Paul said, "Fear not those who can kill the body, but rather fear that which can destroy both body and soul." Besides, fear just might mean reverence.

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“It is in vain, O' man, that you seek within yourselves the cure for all your miseries. All your insight has led you to the knowledge that it is not in yourselves that you will discover the true and the good.” -Blaise Pascal

I didn't say anything about "identifying" the Designer.I said that you can not know what the Designer's intentions were. Therefore, you can not know whether the designs acheived the Designer's goals. Therefore, you can not determine whether the Designer was Intelligent or Idiotic.So, even if your argument is about design, it isn't about Intelligent design. Maybe the Designer was trying for a toaster when he came up with you. That old canard is a bit dishonest. If I found a toaster in the woods (or a watch on the beach), I wouldn't be concerned about whether it was "designed" or not. I'd be wondering who left it there.That's not an argument for design - it's an argument for alien intervention. Maybe there's a planet somewhere where toasters evolved into watches without a designer. This is a science forum. Your beliefs are irrelevant. No, you didn't say that at all. In Message 72, I said:

quote:

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You might as well just admit that you can't know - that the "Designer" might very well be an incompetent bozo who did screw up many of His "designs" and can't figure out how to fix them.

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and in Message 74, you replied:

quote:

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... you are right that I could not possibly 'know' that anymore than I could know if He has screwed up many times.

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I take that as an admission that you don't know anything about the Designer's abilities. Not on this thread, as far as I can remember. Maybe you're thinking of another thread where I was demonizing faith.

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Exactly, so why expect science to pay heed to ID? The only "evidence" for ID is an endless round of PRATT-based ToE criticism. No positive evidence.Do you agree, therefore, that ID is not science and must be kept out of science class?

nemesis_juggernaut Then how do you arrive at the conclusion that the design is implemented by intelligence? Indeed,as a matter of topic here,what do you consider intelligence to mean as applies intelligent design?

I would prefer to believe that we don't currently (and collectively) know---the characteristics of the Designer yet we can possibly and/or potentially know a Creator/Designer and may do so---some day!In other words, I believe that we may not yet know and shall some day know the intentions of the Designer (God.)

Thanks for asking. He gives the same privacy to everyone. He gives us the privacy of our future actions. He doesn't peek at what we are going to do. Of course, as I said before, sin destroys free will and so there are some people who are so utterly predictable, that He would not need to peek anyway. Ok, maybe this is beating a dead horse since you practically conceded the point when you said "good point". But I thought I would point out that I agree with what you say in these statments but that they illustrate why saying "God cannot sin" is no limitation upon God. You try to distinguish between killing and murder, but the murderer also kills the people who break "their law". But God's law defines true right from true wrong so if He kills it is justice. If He takes, He is only taking what is His. If He says something, His power probably makes it true.PS. You need to reread this. You missed it somehow. This was an example of God "lying" not murder. But he didn't destroy every human being and animal on earth. Ok poor example, this could be called changing His mind and not lying.

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We could start a new topic on this!

Maybe you should, since we have drifted far and wide from what should be in a science forum.

Ok, so maybe it is time to tie it back together.In Shh's first post, He put forth the idea that Intellegent Design is laughable because the term "Intellegen Design" is incompatable with the idea of God. His entire argument was based on the presumption that "trial and error" was a necessary part of the activity of designing. In post 54, however, I utterly repudiated this because the only need for "trial and error" in a design process comes from the difficulty that the designer has in predicting how design features will effect the end result. I suggested, therefore, that we are left with two possible conclusions. The first comes from the possibility that the difficulty arises from deficiencies of the designer, which is certainly inapplicable to God. The second arises from the possibility that the difficulty arises from the nature of what is being created, in which case I claim that the word "design" is inappropriate for the process of its creation at all.Therefore I agree with Shh that there is a contradiction between the idea of "Intellegent Design" and "God", but not for his reason and only when the nature of living things is also considered.To understand this shift in the argument has required some exploration of the omnisicence of God in relationship to living things, for it depends on the idea that God can create something which He cannot predict. This required justification in my argument in post 73 that the only consistent understanding of omnicience and omnipotence must include God's ability to decide what He knows and thus having the ability to give privacy to his creations.Of course there is certainly a sense in which I have hijacked this thread for rather than simply pointing out the flaw in Shh's original argument (which was from an atheist perspective), I replaced it with different argument from a theistic perspective. I have "rudely" changed the nature of this thread from a battle beween atheists (ridiculing Christian ideas) and Christians (defending them), to a theological battle between Christians.It just goes to show that Christians have enough to argue about among themselves without engaging in arguments with atheists. On the other hand, an argument between groups that share so few fundamental presumptions is a lot less productive than between those who share at least a few. LOL Edited by mitchellmckain, : gramatical mistakes

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That's a good summary of the debate. Thanks.I think most non-theists don't really have much of an argument with theists as to whether there was creation. They have a difference of opinion, but not real argument. Most will admit that they cannot disprove that there was a creation.The argument they do have, is with the claim that "Intelligent Design" is science. They also have an argument against YEC (Young Earth Creation), since the evidence is strongly against it. Yes, I agree with you over that. I have long thought that biological organisms seem to be very different from designed things, so I have never found the watchmaker argument to be convincing.

Well that is certainly a different issue which I have addressed in Message 121 of Creationism/ID as Science, and it is not an issue between atheist and theist but between those who understand science and those who do not. Atheists who think that science is "on their side" proving that religion is nonsense are guilty of exactly the same thing. I beg to differ for that does not jibe with my experience. It may be more true of the agnostic crowd, but it is certainly not true of the majority of atheists. Not only do many seek to revive the idea of a steady state universe, but there are others like Steven Hawking who look for an explanation of a beginning in spontaneous phenomena.For some you could call it a difference of opinion but there are also atheists who do not know the difference between science and rhetoric just as their are theists who do not know the difference between science and rhetoric. And the majority (barely, not overwhelming) of non-theists that I have encountered, in other forums at least, are of this variety that are either uninformed or simply refuse to see the difference. These do think that they can disprove the idea of creation.It is true however that their are religious groups including some branches of Christianity which seem to encourage this kind of uninformed attitude, and this willfull and organized promotion of rhetoric as if it were science is definitely the greater tragedy.

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