too intelligent to actually be intelligent?

GDR You have neglected to realize that I am not defending the intelligent design idea but you are.This arguement about the computer is following along the lines of the intelligent design idea you say is supported by the evidence. Continuing the logic of the idea you are supporting we come to the point where we have to ask ourselves what intelligent designer designed the intelligent designer?That we are able to design and build complex items in a physical universe does not mean that it follows that our own complexity also had to be designed. In fact the chemical elements in existence appear to have the properties that allow for life to unfold given the right conditions.

I know the whole natural selection and random mutation shhpeal.
The theory of evolution proposes we are here by accident ie;
no thought was involved. That was my point.
IC

I appreciate your kind words. Then, in that case, I'd suggest questions like, what is a species? How do we determine what species an individual belongs to? How do we identify the species of fossils?Under what conditions might we say that a population of individuals belongs to a different species than its ancestors? That's probably the most important one.I'd reccommend you ask these questions, or even research them yourself. Wikipedia would be a good place to start in terms of defining concepts like "species." Very smart people have tried to develop a rigorous, scientific means to reliably detect design, but all of them have failed. It's not sufficient to point out that something has function, because we know that function can evolve. Nonetheless, I wish you the best of luck.But consider this. I throw a handful of pennies up in the air; they land according to random chance. I map out their locations and, 10 feet to the left, I take the same number of pennies and place them, one by one, in the exact same configuration.One of those arrays of pennies is random chance, and the other is the product of my intelligent design. You come across the array later. By what means would you use to determine the intelligent design from the random one?

Excellent analogy, Crash.I'd like to add that "complexity" is meaningless, as well. My cat can mindlessly turn a ball of yarn into a complex tangle in moments. The tangled yarn would be difficult to design, and parts of it would not remain tangled if other parts were not in their place. Remove a section of the tangled mess, and more will unravel.But I'd certainly never say the mess was a design, or that anything intelligent made it.

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Every time a fundy breaks the laws of thermodynamics, Schroedinger probably kills his cat.

I'm not sure where you got the idea that I thought you were arguing for ID.Both of us know that, even if I'm correct in my beliefs, that there is no physical answer to this question. We are limited by our 4 dimensions and 5 senses. We have no way of knowing what else there is. There are presumably a lot of things that we don't know because of our physical limitations.Time is a function of this universe. We talk about this being spatially a infinite universe. Who is to say that God doesn't exist in a universe where time is infinite and presumably the words before and after would be meaningless, thus no need for another level of ID.Incidentally, by your logic we can't exist either. We required parents who required parents and so on to infinity, but just the same, here you are.

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Everybody is entitled to my opinion.

False. See if you can tell me why?

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we are limited in our ability to understand
by our ability to understand
RebelAAmericanOZen[Deist
... to learn ... to think ... to live ... to laugh ...
to share.

Perhaps you'd like to participate on MACROevolution vs MICROevolution - what is it? by explaining what you think "macro"evolution is and how it is different from "micro"evolution.Enjoy.

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we are limited in our ability to understand
by our ability to understand
RebelAAmericanOZen[Deist
... to learn ... to think ... to live ... to laugh ...
to share.

quote:

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However, saying that it is impossible that it has an IDer behind it is a Science of the Gaps argument.

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I have never said it was impossible that an IDer exists.I have only said that there is no positive evidence for an IDer, and therefore there is no logical or evidence-based reason to presume one exists.

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The difference of course is that if you are right you might eventually be proven correct whereas my opinion can never be proven.

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Right.Of course, this is exactly the opposite of what you have been claiming all along.You have repeatedly claimed that neither position is testable and that both positions are merely differences of opinion.Glad to see that you have come around to my way of thinking.

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OK, but it doesn't give a logical basis to assume one doesn't exist either.

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Actually, yes it does.There is no positive evidence for the existence of an IDer.Therefore, I cannot logically assume that an IDer exists, just as I cannot logically assume that Krishna, or the Tooth Fairy, or Santa Claus, or the FSM exists.I can believe in all of those things as a matter of faith, but I cannot, if I am aware of all of the evidence, logically conclude that they exist.

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In the end I guess it all comes down to, "why is there something instead of nothing". (Whatever nothing is. )

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And this is where arguments with ID proponents always end up.Remember where we began?You claimed that science didn't know the answers to questions about why the human body evolved with sub-optimal design, but when I showed you that it did, you declined to discuss anatomy.Then you claimed that your argument tacking on an IDer to the ToE didn't violate Occam's Razor, but then when you were shown that it did.Remember how you ignored the fact that 99% of all life that has ever lived on Earth has gone extinct?Eventually, you brought up the first cell and claimed that you "didn't see" it evolving through evolutionary forces. (IOW, you just personally don't believe that it could, regardless of your relative ignorance of Cellular Biology)You brought up a couple of other Arguments from Incredulity in there, and also tossed in a few impressivey wrong Strawman misrepresentations of Evolutionary theory.So now, you have backed all the way up to "Why is there something rather than nothing" as a reason to hold on to your bwelief in an IDer.Which is fine, of course, as a religious belief.But it has nothing to do with science, biological evolution, or logic.

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'Explanations like "God won't be tested by scientific studies" but local yokels can figure it out just by staying aware of what's going on have no rational basis whatsoever.' -Percy"The first principle is that you must not fool yourself - and you are the easiest person to fool."- Richard Feynman"Science is like a blabbermouth who ruins a movie by telling you how it ends! Well I say there are some things we don't want to know! Important things!"
- Ned Flanders"I haven't studied the theory of evolution much because I disagree 100%
with its claims."--ICDESIGN

But these really aren't synonyms.For example, water "finds its own level" without any thought. But it would be bizarre to say that it does so "by accident". After all, it does so every time, and we understand why.To take another example, a gas will evenly fill a container. The is caused, not by intelligent forthought, but by the random interactions of the molecules of gas, and yet it is no "accident" that the gas in a container is (neglecting gravity) the same pressure everywhere: rather, this is an almost inevitable statistical consequence of the random motion of the molecules. Sometimes "random chance", as creationists like to call it, has a crushing inevitability about it. And no thought is involved: gas molecules don't think.In the same way, the adaptation of organisms to their environment is not an "accident": it is the result of natural laws.

One of many that I've ripped off from Rrhain, from when he used to post here.

There is no evidence-based reason but I contend it's logical. We just disagree. Not correct. I have said that there is no way that either is testable (now), but neither of us know what the future holds. I have to admit though that I don't believe it ever will be testable either way, but I could be wrong. You seem to insist on making up the rules as to what constitutes positive evidence. The fact again is why something rather than nothing is evidence. The fact that we have consciousness, a moral code, a sense of beauty etc is evidence about which we can form our own opinions. We have different opinions and certainly faith plays a role. The anatomy discussion, which I agreed I knew very little about anyway, wasn't pertinent. I still contend as have others that it doesn't constitute an argument against Theistic Evolution. No. You argued that it did and I argued that it didn't. Again, we disagree. (Incidentally, I have always wondered why Occam's Razor gets held up as a principle that can't be violated. It seems to me that if that was true we would still be living under Newtonian physics and would have rejected Eisnstein's relativity.) Don't expect me to figure everything out for you. It's like a lot of things that we aren't personally experts on. We have to decide which of the experts we believe.Darwin writes I read "The Language of God' by Francis Collins. He disagrees with you.So now I have to choose between Darwin and Collins or Dawkins and Sagan. (I finished reading Sagan's "The Variety of Scientific Experience - A personal view of the Search for God", about a month ago.)I accept Darwin and Collins as being correct. You accept Dawkins and Sagan. We just don't agree. You seem to think that I can only possibly be right if I agree with you. It has nothing to do with science or biological evolution but if we are going to come to a conclusion about whether an IDer exists or not it is logical to take it into account.

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Everybody is entitled to my opinion.

How can there be disagreement in logic? Either your syllogism proves that your conclusion is supported by your premises, or it isn't. There's no room for disagreement.I suspect that perhaps what you meant was "reasonable," but I don't see what's reasonable about believing things with no evidence. I don't see how that's evidence. For all we know, "nothing" isn't a possible state that the universe can inhabit. "Nothing" may very well be something made up by humans. Then it's not really evidence for anything, is it?Throughout your post I see you engaging in this reasoning: "There's no way to know for sure, so I've simply decided which conclusion to leap to." Presumably because you'd prefer the conclusion that there's a divine power on your side over the conclusion that there's no such power in the universe.Tell me - in your experience, when people jump to the exact conclusion that they would prefer, is that a path to truth? I don't see how it's ever been. Occam's razor doesn't obviate the need for theory to correspond with reality and observation. If Newton's Laws and Einstein's relativity explained the exact same observations, we would have rejected relativity.But the need for theory to correspond to reality means that, because Einstein's model explains observations that Newton's theories do not, Newton's theories were supplanted by relativity. When Newton's theories explained all the observations we were able to make, we accepted them because they were simplest. When we began to make observations that Newton's laws couldn't explain - like the speed of light in a vacuum remaining constant for all observers, no matter their motion - we understood that Newton's laws were too simple, and Einstein's laws emerged. But you're clearly deciding, not on the basis of evidence, but on the basis of who's telling you what you want to hear. In your experience is that generally a reliable path to truth?

By reference to their knowledge of the history of evolution.For example, since we know that we descended from monkeys, it is evident that the coccyx is a vestigal tail. (Interestingly, it starts off as seperate vertebrae and fuses during embryological development.)Now, this might seem, to the naive, to lead us into a piece of circular reasoning: for if we rely on our knowledge of evolution to tell us what's vestigial, then how can we cite vestigial structures as evidence of evolution? The same question might be asked of the similar evidence from throwbacks and from "recaptiulation" in the developmental stage.The answer is that the our knowledge of the history of evolution (as gained by studying the fossil record, genetic record, comparative morphology, et cetera tells us which vestiges, throwbacks, and recapitulaed features we can see. In the womb, your caudal vertebrae fused to form a coccyx. In the same way, you grew, and then lost, a coat of fur. This is allowed by the theory of evolution, because all the other data suggest that you had a furry, tailed ancestor. But you do not have anything that looks like a vestigial wing, and you did not grow and shed a coat of feathers, because that isn't in your ancestry, and the theory of evolution prohibits it.Embryonic birds have foreclaws, unfused digits, and an semi-lunar carpal. Sometimes, birds grow rudimentary teeth. All this is permitted by the theory of evolution, because all the other data suggest that birds are descended from dinosaurs, which had those features. They don't have a carapace, 'cos all the other evidence says that they aren't descended from turtles or tortoises or suchlike, so the theory of evolution prohibits it.Recently, someone found a dolphin with hind flippers, just like the ones in the fossil record. The theory of evolution says that's fine. But a dolphin with a set of tentacles? Can't happen.Note that the theory of evolution doesn't say that these events have to occur (let us always remember that Haeckel was wrong) but it divides the possible from the impossible: the possible vestiges, throwbacks, and temporary well-developed features of the embryo have to fit with what all the other data tell us about evolution. Natural selection prevents a structure from developing now for use later (since producing and maintaining a useless structure has a cost for no reward) so if you found a structure with no function and which couldn't be accounted for in the way described above, then this too would serve to falsify the theory of evolution.

That was a really classy thing to say. I've only got a couple of minutes so I'll just reply to this. To a degree I would agree, but don't we all do that regardless of the conclusion that we come to. To be honest that was a lot more correct when I first went from being an agnostic to tentatively accepting the Christian faith represented the basic truth of our existence. Over the years however, I have more and more come to the conclusion that my Christian Faith is spiritually correct, and that Intelligent Design provides the most reasonable, (using your word), explanation for the fact that the natural exists.Edited by GDR, : sp

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Everybody is entitled to my opinion.

....as a general reply to all your guy's examples:
so your telling me you think placing 10 pennys on
the ground or water and gas levels can be compared
to the human body as an example of intelligent design?Honestly, this is laughable to me. The laws of physics
that God put in place are why levels settle where they do.
And if I saw 20 pennies sitting in a random fashon I
would not equate it with any intelligent design at all.If however I saw the pennys sitting their in a pattern
that spelled "hi their" in the english language it would
be obvious that someone with the ability to think and
spell aranged them that way on purpose.next