too intelligent to actually be intelligent?

How do you measure the "intelligence" of a design?...eh, never mind. It's not like you respond to rebuttals, anyway. Are you ever going to address the evidence put before you in that thread?

Why, when we know that mutation and selection working together can produce the same kind of designs? You didn't ask any questions. Did you notice that there wasn't a single sentence in your post that ended with a question mark? The only questions in your post are the ones that you quoted but didn't address.

What makes you think we don't? Deformed animals are kind of creepy but there's no shortage of specimens. How many of your objections to evolution are based on asserting that something doesn't exist just because you don't know about it? It continually amazes me that people like you conclude that ignorance is a great basis from which to attack a scientific theory.Oh, and just to point out how you're not really thinking these things through - all monkeys, and indeed, all hominids, have mouths on the sides of their heads - the front side. Strictly speaking a mouth in-line with the digestive tract, like most animals have, would be on the top of the head.Edited by crashfrog, : No reason given.

Well, I know it, and I just told you for the second time, so why is the debate going on? It seems like you've correctly identified that the debate is between the knowledgable and the ignorant. In fact, nobody disagrees that genetic programming employs mutation and selection. The "natural" computer is the real world. In the way that things in computers happen according to programs, things in the real world happen according to physical laws. In this particular case we can simulate the operation of those physical laws inside a computer. Such a simulation tells us what happens in the real world. That's how simulations work. What other kind of simulations could there be? Are you saying that simulations are impossible, that they don't exist? How does that make any sense? If you don't study the claims you don't know what you're arguing against. I disagree with creationism 100% but I still familiarize myself with creationism and what people say in it's defense. How else could I argue against it?Ignorance is not a good basis for discussion. I thought you said that true science followed the evidence? If there's no evidence that you would ever allow to convince you, how can you claim to be doing or representing true science?

I was simply taking your reasoning to the logical conclusion. There's no known designer with the intelligence to design the human body. Therefore we need to look for a source of design that is non-intelligent.That's mutation and selection, acting together. And already proven to have the capacity to design. The vast fossil record is further evidence.IC, what's the point in debating you? You've admitted you can't be convinced by any data. You're not interested in learning. I've already routed all your self-congradulatory emails to my spam trap. What are you here to do, exactly? You don't respond to rebuttals or answer questions. What does it take to get through to you?

Something that people made.

1) Fossilization is rare. The odds of a single individual being fossilized are fairly low.2) If an organism is too deformed, it doesn't even gestate. Miscarriage is the usual result.3) There are plenty of bizzarely deformed individuals, but it's important to remember that evolution doesn't proceed by gross deformity, but by subtle changes to body structure over a very long time.4) It's also important to remember that natural selection doesn't create changes in organisms; it selects among variant individuals to allow the best-adapted organisms to reproduce. Random mutation is the process that is responsible, largely, for the variation in individuals that natural selection acts on. Does that make sense?

Maybe I don't understand the question. What, exactly, are you asking me?

And I'll thank you not to speak to me like a child. It's a public forum; I'll reply to any and all posts as I see fit.

Just telling me I'm a liar doesn't mean anything. If you believe that what I'm telling you is false, then why don't you prove it?All I'm doing here is trying to educate you, but the only reply you seem to have is "shut up", and to call me a liar, and biased, and other personal attacks. You repay my efforts by spitting in my face. I don't believe I've ever met someone as ungrateful and rude as you. Is that what you consider Christian behavior, and pleasing to God? What makes you think there's just a few? I mean, how many fossils have you gone out to look at, anyway? Who said anything about "choice"? Once again you've confused mutation and selection. Mutation happens at random, with no regard to environment. The results of mutations are good sometimes, and bad other times. It's literally random.The results of selection are anything but random. Natural selection rewards individuals with good mutations with survival, and causes individuals with bad mutations to die. That's the "choice"; it's the environment "choosing" individuals to live and die, based on how their individual traits give them advantages in the environment over each other.Make sense?

You know what would really shut me up? Proving me wrong by responding to rebuttals and introducing new evidence.I don't get you, IC. You're the one who sent all those emails to me, begging me to debate you, and now that we are you're telling me to shut up and that you don't want to hear from me. What's wrong with you, exactly?

If we have evidence that substantiates our position, how can we be brainwashed?And where is this brainwashing happening? Who's doing the brainwashing, and for what reason? Do you see why it's far, far more ridiculous to assert a grand, secret campaign by scientists - including Bible-believing Christians - to brainwash people than it is to accept that natural selection and random mutation are responsible for the history and diversity of life on Earth?There's evidence for evolution. What evidence do you have for your conspiracy theory? Those things actually vary considerably from person to person. I used to date a girl who had one eye considerably higher than the other. (The weird thing is, I never noticed until I saw her reflection. Face-to-face, you'd never know, but looking at her over her shoulder in a mirror, it was obvious. I've never figured out quite how that worked.)So saying things like "perfectly positioned" don't make that much sense to me. People have eyes above their noses above their mouths because human beings are descended from organisms that have eyes above their noses above their mouths. The basic tetrapod body plan is the same from humans to primates to platypuses; every vertebrate organism has the same body plan that, ultimately, descends as a modification of a certain kind of invertebrate segmented worm. (You can still see the segments in vertebrate organisms - it's your segmented spine.)And, again, the reason you don't see people with eyes under their chins is that it takes a pretty big fuckup of the developmental and genetic process to produce that morphology; so big, in fact, that such an organism is doomed to die before it's even born. But, occasionally, you see really unusual body deformities that survive to be born and even become adults. Conjoined twins. People missing arms, or with extra fingers. The study of such individuals is "teratology" - literally the "study of monsters." We learn a lot about pre-natal development from the instances in which it goes wrong. I think Gould wrote an essay about that. It's possible by random mutation and natural selection operating over billions of years, because that's what happened. We've observed these processes do exactly that in the short term - in the wild, in the lab, in simulations - and there's no reason to believe that they don't work in the long term. And the fossil record proves that they do. Because you say so? You need to present evidence for your assertions, not simply assert them. You can say whatever you want, but unless you present evidence you're not making arguments and we're not having a debate. You're putting a lot of effort into telling us all how we're brainwashed idiots. Why don't you put some of that energy into finding evidence for your positions? I told you, I don't understand the question. Can you explain it? I tried to answer it but you didn't like my answer, so clearly i misunderstood you. If you can explain more clearly what you meant, I'll be able to answer.

It's a great argument, actually, unless you lower your expectations for what an omnipotent eternal figure should be capable of. You have, apparently.

Well, that's fair enough; I wasn't aware that it had been offered in that way. I'm not sure what the specific claims of theistic evolution are. Is that like Deism? You say that's not scientific, but you're still making an existential claim supported by no evidence. And even philosophy requires that statements be supported by some evidence. What you're talking about is a statement of faith. I can't rebut faith, but I can tell you that there's no evidence of "souls", or of any spiritual realm; and there's a lot loaded into those concepts that's internally contradictory.

How about instead of grandstanding, you address rebuttals by introducing evidence?I'm not interested in a battle of wits with an unarmed man. First you wanted to debate; next you wanted me to shut up; now you're offering to box me or something. The common thread through all these behaviors is a complete inability to address the materials put before you.