too intelligent to actually be intelligent?

Again, personal attacks are irrelevant. The only thing that supports your arguments is evidence, and you've presented none.

Can I make a suggestion?Assume for a moment that the reason you consider evolution to be flawed is because the way scientists understand evolution is a lot different than the "evolution" you're familiar with. Assume for a moment that sources like creationists, and the Discover channel, and movies and stuff, weren't accurate in showing you what the theory of evolution really is and what it really says.Assume all that for a second, and start asking questions. Questions like:How do scientists think one kind of organism can evolve from another?What are fossils? How are they formed? What do they tell us about the history of life? Why don't we see fossils of one organism changing into another?How do new organs and body structures evolve? How does an organism survive with "transitional features"? Why would an organism evolve something like a primitive wing, which doesn't seem to have any purpose until it's fully evolved?Why do scientists believe all organisms are ultimately descended from a common ancestor? What evidence do they have for this, and what other explanations could there be?It's questions like these that I think you would find most illuminating. Maybe you'd change your mind, or maybe not, but you'd at least begin to understand the science.

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?

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

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?

No, I'm telling you that there's no reliable test for intelligence in design. That a design seems clever is not enough, for two reasons:1) It fails to detect intelligent designs that aren't clever, like my penny example. Clearly it took a considerable amount of planning and intelligence to place all those pennies exactly as though they had fallen there by random, but your test doesn't detect my use of intelligence.2) It fails to discern the difference between designs that are clever because intelligence was applied to make them clever, and designs that are clever because of the action of the forces of mutation and selection. For instance, in this case, your test would tell us that the radio was the product of intelligence, but we know by other means that this radio developed purely by mutation and selection, by accident.Your test returns false negatives and false positives, so it's not a test we can rely on. You claim to be able to detect intelligence in the complexity of the human body, but how can you trust your detection when it returns false results under controlled situations? It may very well be. But until you can explain why, how do you know that you are right to laugh?Have you considered the possibility that the rest of us are finding your ignorance laughable? Even if I had used my intelligence to lay them out?You would be wrong, then. What else might you be wrong about? Heh. I appreciate the joke.

I don't mean it as an insult or a personal attack. But surely you have to realize that there's a great deal of biology that you don't know?I mean it takes at least 7-8 years - after 4 years of undergraduate university - to get a doctorate in biology. What do you think they're doing for all that time? Twiddling their thumbs?No, of course not. It takes that long to become an expert because biology is a very deep field with a lot to learn. I'm not asking you to become an expert. I'm simply asking you to recognize that there's a great deal of biology that you literally don't know. I don't know what to call that but "ignorance." If you have a suggestion for a word with a less negative connotation, I'd like to hear it.But I'd like you to stop ignoring my arguments because you perceive some personal attack that isn't intended. I wrote a bunch of paragraphs and your reply is two lines? There's a lot there you didn't respond to, because you believe my reference to things you didn't know obviates the need to respond meaningfully. But that's not the case.I don't claim universal knowledge on every subject, but I do know a lot more about biology than you do. Just as I'm sure there are countless topics for which you would be perfectly justified in calling me ignorant. And I'm not asking you to accept my arguments just because I know something about biology. Since you consider my arguments flawed, however, I'm just asking you to tell me how.

Why not? Earlier you made it clear that, any time an intelligence is at work, that's an intelligent design.If you're retracting from your claim, and now you admit that it's possible for an intelligence to create an unintelligent design, why isn't the reverse true? Why can't an unintelligent process result in an intelligent design?

Fine. If you can toss two handfuls of pennies up in the air and have them come down in the exact same design, then you'll have convinced me that there's a discernible difference between designs that happen by natural forces and designs that happen by intelligent design.Look, think it through. If you come across two piles of scattered pennies, but the piles are exactly the same, at least one of them has to be intelligent design. Right? I mean, what random force in the universe could scatter pennies exactly the same way twice?So which pile is random and which is intelligent? If you can't discern intelligence in a simple example of pennies, how could you possibly do it for something as complex as the human body?

You're entitled to your own opinion, not your own facts. When you make accusations like: you'd best be prepared to substantiate them. What material, exactly, have I presented to you that is false, fraudulent, or otherwise dishonest?Since you're calling me a liar, I think I have a reasonable expectation that evidence that I have been lying be presented. It's really frustrating to try to talk to you, IC. First you're adamant that you want to debate these issues. Then you insist your opponents shut up. Then you apologize for pitching a fit and insist that you're interested in these issues.Now, once again, you're insisting that you never wanted to talk about this stuff in the first place. What, exactly, is going on with you? Just when you're this close to maybe learning something about the world around you, you accuse everyone around you of lying to you and throw a tantrum, like this. If you're convinced we're all liars, why are you still here talking to us?It's your good sense breaking through. Just when our points are starting to sink in, you panic because you're beginning to realize what an intellectual sinkhole creationism really represents. That's why there's so much back and forth with you. On a personal note - if it were my job to create pseudoreligious "scripture" that would insulate people from looking critically at the beliefs they were force-fed as children, this is exactly what I would write. But, you know, I'm sure it makes perfect sense that science is all foolishness. I mean, what the hell have scientists ever done for anybody?**Besides, you know, curing diseases, saving billions who would have starved, sending men to the moon, and creating the very computer you're reading this message on. Besides that stuff, I mean.

Granted, and I've made no claim to the contrary.But from the conclusion "we don't know this all there is", to jump to "...and I know that what's beyond this is something called 'God', who has these characteristics" is to make a very considerable leap of faith indeed. Certainly not a logical one.We're ignorant about what exists beyond the material universe. To argue from that position of ignorance, to use ignorance as a foundation to make assertions, shouldn't be something you expect us to take seriously. Why not?I'm sorry, but I just don't find the question very significant. The universe exists. So what? I'm much more interested in its properties than in unanswerable questions about it's origin - if it even has one.The question you pose is unanswerable. The reasonable response to an unanswerable question is not to use it as an excuse to jump to the conclusion you like the best. No, I can't; but it's your responsibility to prove your assertions, not mine to disprove them. And what I do know is that the thought process you appear to have used to generate your conclusions is not one that, historically, leads people to the truth. In your opinion, does jumping to the conclusion you like the best tend to lead people to truth? The simplest explanation that explains the observations is the best one, though. Between two theories that explain the same data, we reject the one with the unnecessary features. Between the explanation of gravity, and the explanation that little angels push down on my shoulders, I know which explanation is the more scientific model for why I don't float out of my chair. Indeed - but Newton's laws proved to be wrong. They were contradicted by observation. Thus, their simplicity ceased to be relevant, and relativity was accepted - the simplest explanation that accounted for all observations. Oh, my apologies. I wasn't aware you were the arbiter of scientific theory.

Which is, I thought, the scientific (pseudoscientific, in fact) claim that life on Earth is best explained by intervention by an intelligent designer responsible for the physical structures of life. If we're talking about ID then we've left the realm of logic and philosophy, and we're talking about a position whose proponents say is something that can be tested scientifically. How? By making things up? I don't put a lot of stock in philosophy as a means by which existential truths are discovered. It's just words. But we have no idea if they're right or wrong, though, and therefore no reason to take their word on it. And just as many equally intelligent and educated people believe that this universe is all that is; or at least, all that's relevant to our lives. It's your argument that is weak, because jumping to the conclusion you prefer is exactly what you're doing. You've admitted that there's no way to decide or know for sure - yet, you've decided anyway.What is that if not leaping to conclusions? And I'm supposed to accept that you've leapt to the conclusion that a cosmic, intelligent force is deeply interested in you - you who He knows by name, even - and that's all coincidence? That it has nothing at all to do with the fact that that's also the conclusion that you would prefer to be true?Just how credulous do you think I am, exactly? ID is held by its proponents to be a scientific theory. I'm not sure under what authority you claim to be able to make their claims irrelevant.But you have to realize that philosophy and theology are two fields where there is absolutely no rigor. There is no way to prove that an argument in philosophy is wrong, or that a position of theology is untrue. Wrong arguments in science are eventually uncovered and disposed of. In philosophy and theology, wrong arguments are enshrined.So saying that you're making an argument from philosophy and theology, to me, is akin to saying that you're making an argument from the Dungeons and Dragons Players Handbook (3.5 edition.) It may be all very interesting, and I might even take part, but you've just told me that your argument is about fictional concepts doing fictional things ("if a red dragon fought a mind flayer sorcerer, who would win?",) not about anything that's going on in the real world.

Why wouldn't the origins of our existence, being something that happened here in the physical universe, be a matter for scientific inquiry? Plato can go fuck himself, for all I care. Did Plato ever test his conjectures against reality? No. That was, in fact, the specific reasoning that he rejected. If that's all there was to it, you wouldn't be here talking to me. Clearly you think that your views are supported by reasons that are objectively true, that represent reality - not just your own preference. I'm trying to get you to either tell me what those reasons are, or admit that you don't have such reasons. If some philosophers advance position A, and some philosophers advance position ~A, they can't both be right. A /= ~A is one of the basic assumptions of logic.So clearly somebody's wrong. The problem with philosophy and theology is that they have no idea who it is. In science, we eventually find out. Won't your actions prove it?

Nobody's twisting your arm to make you post here, or to read the things that are written.You wanted to debate me, don't you remember? I didn't email you out of the blue. You insisted that your views be responded to.Who's wasting whose time, again?

I thought you said it wasn't a scientific question? To argue from this basis would be an argument from ignorance, which I won't engage in, but it's clear that science has a track record of disproving explanations of natural phenomena by divine providence.But, hey. I guess the God guys can't be wrong all the time, right? (Or maybe they can...) It means he's worse than wrong - he's unfalsifiable.Look, anybody can make up an infinite number of statements that can't be disproven, by definition. I could sit here all day and imagine traits about Invisible Ninjas from Beyond the Universe, and there would be no empirical evidence you could bring that would prove me wrong.But who on Earth would confuse that with a process of truth-gathering? Making stuff up? The predominant characteristic of things that are made up is that they usually don't turn out to be true. It's only when you restrict yourself to the evidence that you stand a chance of getting it right. These are just platitudes. Life's uncertainty isn't an open license to make up whatever you want and act like you've just discovered a truth. I disagree. Love, like anything else, is detectable by its effects. Gravity makes me fall. Love makes me rise again. The dilation of my pupil and the rise in heart rate give the lie to your position that love is something we can't detect.And that's not even getting into love's observable biochemical effects on the brain. The existence of love in humans can't be denied, and it's certainly not something that's a great mystery to science. It's a common platitude to assert that something or another is "beyond the reach of science." Thankfully scientists don't usually listen.