Mike writes:
In essence, though, you're entire argument boils down to us being unable to know anything about the designer, not being able to predict anything about the designer, and, since we can't tell what the designer is doing, because it can do anything (including not allowing us to perceive that it was designing anything in the first place, since it can do anything and we have no way of knowing what the thing its doing is), then there's no point to positing a designer in the first place.
That's not what I'm saying at all. I'm not an IDist, so I'm not going to pretend to be able to speak as one. What I am saying is that there are better questions to ask than a question we know noone can answer. It's like asking what Bush is thinking at this very exact moment.
What is the point of positing something that we can't know anything about? If knowledge of it is impossible in the first place, then there's nothing we can say about it. If Intelligent Design is to be put forward as an explanatory model (e.g., a scientific theory, as it is claimed to be), then it has to be able to explain things.
From the original post in this thread...
quote:
If an initial intelligent designer is posited as the reason for the biodiversity we see today...
My responses have been made under the assumption that there really is an initial intelligent designer.
If it maintains the existence of a designer, it has to be able to explain the nature of that designer.
There you go again. IDists have never claimed to "know" the nature of the designer. What they do claim is to be able to see the affects of what this designer has done.
Can you tell me if I'm married or not from looking at my programs? Can you tell how many times I go to the bathroom each day from my programs? Can you tell if I am bald or not from my programs?
You are asking unfair questions, questions you knew noone could answer.
Your statement about biologists not being able to create a worm in a laboratory is quite silly. Of course we can't; it took hundreds of millions of years for them to come about. Yours is in part an argument from incredulity and in part an argument from complexity. The fact that we can't create a worm in a laboratory isn't evidence of some non-human being able to do so, though.
Nope, that's not my argument at all. If anything, I could accuse you of trying to get off subject by introducing evolution into this thread.
When I said biologists can't create a worm in a lab, I didn't use it as an argument for an intelligent designer. I said IFF there is an intelligent designer and IFF the designer created the worm and we can't, obviously we are not as technical and sophisticated as the designer.
I find it interesting that you're claiming atheism here while defending this; Intelligent Design advocates generally claim theirs not to be a religious idea, and I haven't once brought up anything about any notion of deity or theology. In fact, I haven't even assigned the posited designer any identity, not even a gender.
I'm not an IDist either. It doesn't mean I have to agree with you. Your questions (where is the designer now? how come it stopped designing? etc.) are unfair because the questions expect IDists to know personally what the designer is or how it operates.
Look at it this way. If you take a walk in one of the cookie cutter neighborhoods, you should be able to recognize that the designs of all those homes are very similar and that they were all designed by the same engineer or group of engineers. Without any other information except the houses (and I'm assuming you can analyze the houses all you want), can you tell me where all the engineers who designed these houses at this very moment? How come they've stopped designing these houses? What are they doing now?
The answers to these questions are probably the following. They are probably elsewhere designing other houses in other areas. In the same way, I could probably say that the designer is elsewhere in the universe designing other echo systems. Who knows...?
I do like the veiled threat about your experience with "kicking ass," though. It does wonders for your credibility in this discussion.
Goodness... do you not have a sense of humor?
And by the way, I've never been to the Amazon, but I have had the opportunity to discuss modern biological science with the "baba" who maintains a temple to the goddess Kali in the Trinidadian rain forest. Not a tribesman, but not exactly the beneficiary of a classical education, either. He never resorted to comments about kicking ass and had no problem at all reconciling his ideas about the universe with the new information, and I learned a few things from him, too. Given a little time and effort toward putting things into familiar terms, you'd be surprised what "native tribesmen" are capable of grasping.
During world war 2, there was a an undeveloped island in the south pacific with natives who had never had contact with the outside world. Above the island was a battleground for some of the south pacific air battles between the US navy fighter planes and the Japanese air force. These planes were seen as gods to these natives. After the war, the natives prayed and prayed and prayed for their gods to return. When some white contacts arrived on the island, they saw these natives had built life size models of WW2 war planes and worshipped them.
What I am trying to get at is that IFF there is an intelligent designer, our technological and mental level compared to the intelligent designer would resemble something like the technological and mental level of the mentioned natives compared to us.
In any case, with such brilliant arguments as the ones you've made here, I'm sure that the Intelligent Design folks are overjoyed to have you sticking up for them.
I'm not sticking up to them. I simply see your questions as unfair.
In my time, I've seen (heard) questions such as "if people came from monkeys, how come there are still monkeys around?" Everytime someone asks such a nonsensical question, he undermines his own position as a creationist/IDist. Everytime one of us asks a silly question such as "where is the designer right now?", our position that claims to be rational and scientific is undermined.
If you really want to ask a valid question about ID, ask something like what are the foreseeable benefits ID could contribute to the scientific community as well as humanity? After all, the theory of evolution has directly resulted in anti-biotics, which have saved literally millions and millions of lives, agricultural advancement, which have helped fed hundreds of millions of people, and a myriad other things that are regarded as the high marks of the 20th century developed society.
Asking rhetorical questions, like where is the designer at this very moment, contribute absolutely nothing to the debate.
Oh, and have I mentioned that the ass kicking thing was a joke, although sometimes I do hope they'd invent a way for me to hurt someone physically over the internet...?
Edited by Tazmanian Devil, : No reason given.
™ Version 4.2
