INTELLIGENT DESIGN: An Engineer’s Approach

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The "pro-science" crowd is afraid that teaching Intelligent Design will result in final exams of reciting "Hail Marys" for graduation.

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Maybe their afraid that if Darwinian orthodoxy doesn't keep every other opinion out they'll be passing the offering plate and singing hymns in the cafeteria by lunch time.

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Imagine that you spend your life studying evolution and how it works. You have personal research experience reconfirming the existence of evolutionary principles. You spend night and day considering all the implications of your study from every concievable angle. You know evolution is true because you have personally shown that it happens. And then, some guy comes along and tells you that your research is wrong. Not that he has studied your subject directly, but he knows you're wrong. And although he might not say it, the main reason is because some thousand or so year-old unrelated book says that your research is wrong. Do you honestly think it is fear that prevents you from excluding this man's views from your classrooms? The only thing you are afraid of is his IGNORANCE affecting your students.

I think the only one who can bring this back on topic is the creator limbosis, since he offered such a unique viewpoint. Maybe since we got some creationists here, we can ask for their viewpoints, assuming they have read this thread.Question: What do you think of the argument that a designer exists, but that the evidence in his products of creation points to an evil, incompetent, and stupid creator? Is this also a misinterpretation of the evidence? Or are we ignoring aspects of the design debate?

One additional comment to the pile that all ready exists. To discuss this from an engineer's approach, you need to do more than simply name a feature, and proclaim that it speaks design to you. You need to point out features of its design, and how those features are similar to objects designed by engineers, and from this analogy make some sort of argument. This is how limbosis proceded in the OP, and seems the best way to construct such an argument.

Limbosis,The optimal body size literature is actually something I am quite familiar with. The optimal body size for mammals is considered to be about 100 grams for two reasons. First, that is the size that mammals seem to be converging towards on islands. Second and more importantly, that size is the mode of the body size distribution of mammal species.Since the optimal size has been defined in light of a distribution, it is not predicting that all species are converging on the optimum. Rather it suggests that there are many species at the optimum because it is beneficial for some physiological reason (the reason is under debate, most likely metabolics). But once the optimum size is filled with many species, then there is a negative selective pressure due to high competition. Organisms become more fit at a slightly lower or higher than optimum size, but one with less competition.This is of course the "macro" view of the matter. The other reason why all organisms are not the same size has been alluded to in another post- local ecology. Different sizes are most fit to different local environments. In either explanation, it seems to be an organisms relationship with other species and its environment that governs the best-fit size for that animal.

Your argument about wings is silly. Are you looking for a transitional form to get from butterflies to birds? Guess what, we don't have one. And we aren't expecting to find one. Birds and butterflies are not linked by a direct common ancestor. They are not sister groups. There is no reason to find transitional forms between birds and butterflies.The reason that their wings are so different is that they arise from different ancestors. From an evolutionary view, we would not expect their wings to be similar unless they arose from the same ancestors. Funny you did not say that sparrows and hawks had different wings. Why? Because they don't, their wing design is similar. And guess what, they are evolutionarily related. Why do we see similar wing design in organisms that are evolutionarily related? Only because evolution must be true.What I am saying is that flight independantly evolved several times. You want transitional forms? We have transitional forms documenting these independant evolutions. Birds are the most well-documented, in Archaeopteryx (All About Archaeopteryx). A transition from reptiles to birds. Or what is Archaeopteryx, a reptile with feathers? Maybe you will claim that Archaeopteryx is still a reptile, and that we have yet to document the transition from reptile to bird? If you insist on putting every fossil find into either bird or reptile, how can we ever find a transitional form? You closed your minds to accepting a transitional form when it is clearly documented.Bats have webbed wings and fur, much like the closely related groups of flying lemurs and lemurs. A living transitional form. See if you can handle that.Insects have wings, in fact two sets of wings. Something only found in Insecta. In case you are curious, insects are currently thought to have evolved from silverfish (We're Sorry That Page is Not Available | Virginia Cooperative Extension | Virginia Tech)
Of transitional forms, we are lacking, though recent research on gliding ants hints at the mechanism (Forbidden) Define perfect, so I know that you know what you are talking about. Because I do. Are dragonfly wings perfect with respect to maximum lift/drag, maximum lift, stall angle, optimal angle of attack, or some other aerodynamic quantity? At what value is perfection reached? Are all flying organisms "perfect" for the Reynolds number that their flight occupies? Keep in mind that human aircraft have the highest L/D of any biological flyer by at least an order of magnitude. By this measure, human aircraft are the most "perfect." But I cringe at the use of the word perfect in an field where good is only measured relative to other designs. This statement is non-sensical and demonstrates a complete misunderstanding of the evolutionary process.
1)You assume that all flight has evolved only once (discussed above)
2)You assume that transitional forms of flight should be well-documented in the fossil record. If flight evolution happens rapidly, this would not be true.
3)You assume that wings should differ in respect to their most common ancestor. Which I assume means that the wings should be different from each other. Which is something you have already made a point of. What are you getting at here? I would actually argue the opposite, that flight it a highly constrained activity, and that after it evolves, we would expect to see little alteration to its basic aspects. This is arguing from the perpective of aerodynamics. Achieving flight isn't trivial, once nature has found a solution to it I would expect this solution to stick. And this is what we see. There are major differences in the wing design of our current flyers. In short, we have feathers (birds) and membranes. In the membraneous wings, we have thick membranes of skin supported by bone (bats) and thin membranes supported by vanes that come in pairs (insects). In other words, the major differences we see group along the three independant evolutions of flight. This indicates that the basic design of wings have not changed all that much after their origination. The differences we see only indicate different origins, not a diversification from a single origin. Given the tight constaints on flight, I would expect not to find much change in the wing design ater its origination. Statements like come as no suprise to me. The basic wing design should not change in the fossil record from then to now.

I agree completely. But here's the problem. If scientists who work directly with the evidence concerning evolution are claiming its true, and its really not, this must be for one of two reasons. One, they are ignoring evidence. This is highly unlikely considering how intelligent and highly trained most scientists are. Two, they are decieving everyone else. Why are they decieving everyone? No one lies without reason, there must be an exterior motivation. For some scientists, namely Dawkins, there is quite clearly a motivation of atheism. For most scientists, they share few common threads. Their motivations are ranged and varied, at best. Many are strongly religious and strong supporters of evolution. Religion can't be a motivation. In fact, the best way to make a name for yourself in science is to successfully challenge long-held opinions. But no one even really attempts to challenge the main aspects of evolution in the science community. Mutually agreed upon deception? Why would scientists be distortion the evidence? What motivation would compel all of them to do this together despite their training?Now let's look at ID. The movement is run by a group with obvious religious persuasion. Their argument was originally framed with religious connotations, which have been afterwards dropped due to legal issues hurting their objectives. These people have a common thread binding them, religion.We have two groups looking at the same evidence and claiming two different conclusions. Assuming both groups are composed of intelligent individuals, that leaves one alternative- one group is lieing. Which group has the stronger motivation to lie?BTW- most new scientific ideas are usually considered rubbish when first introduced. They have to go through a rigorous process of analysis before being accepted, part of the critical aspect of being a scientist. It is up to the proposers of the new idea to ardently defend their idea against the long-held scientific views, it is not up to the scientific community to prove them wrong point by point. If this was done with every new issue that came up, scientist would have no time to perform any work of their own. Though I believe a point by point analysis of Behe's argument has already been performed. Behe himself has admitted he is wrong.

In fact, I am reading Darwin's Black Box now, so I refrain from further comments about Behe until I finish. I was only speaking from anectdotal evidence I heard on this forum.One point you still simply refuse to address. I will keep this post short, so that if you decide to respond, you will have to address it. One group looks at the evidence and concludes that evolution (or "macro-evolution" if you will, if that's any different) has occured. The other group looks at the evidence and determines that not enough is known to say that evolution has occured. In other words, there is a disagreement about the evidence. Assuming that both groups are composed of intelligent people who are not overlooking evidence due to stupidity or ignorance, there is one alternative: someone is lieing! To determine this, we must look at motivation. Now I ask you, which group has more motivation to lie?

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You hear evolutionist says we are descedant from apes and monkees. Sure, but that's not the point. All of life is related, not just human's with monkees. If you hug a tree, you're hugging a relative, a very distant relative, but a relative nonetheless." Dr. Joan Roughgarden in Evolution and Christian Faith

You were lied to. I am in a biomechanics lab, and I am told the exact opposite qutie frequency. None of these example refer to things in nature, they are all human designed. Biological organisms have immense variability that immediately complicates any sort of simple engineering test. Simple example- it hard to get stress-strain curves for many biological materials because there is just no easy way to get them to stick to force transducers.

So, perfection no longer refers to "perfect" features, but to the "perfect" mix of features. Tell me, how many times in your engineering classes was the word perfect applied to any sort of design? I hope zero. Can't a material always theoretically be better at resisting forces? At what strength (engineering definition) is perfection reached?There is no such thing as a perfect design in engineering, so your argument from engineering about a perfect biological system is silly. Humans aren't "suppose to be" anything. Like any organism, they still live because they are good enough at reproducing themselves to sustain their existence. They can have defects while still being just good enough to reproduce. If a human being had a different mix of "perfect" features, would that mean he was designed for a different purpose? You should watch your implicit assumptions that humans are designed, have a purpose, and that this purpose is intended by some external agent. Your assumptions structure your questions such that they inherently exclude any answer that does not include a creator.