intelligent design, right and wrong

There IS no right and wrong in a an absolute sense.You are implying with this that atheists go about killing,
raping, pillaging etc.Our upbringing and genetic predispositions affect how we as
individuals stick to the socially constructed right's and wrong's
of the culture in which we live.People often bringing up 'killing' in this context, and yet there
isn't a culture in the world (not individuals but cultures)
that doesn't justify killing in some circumstances (and that
includes killing humans) [Except perhaps strict budhists].Laws are constructed to control the masses, and religious systems
put forward a morality that had the same intent.Laws are backed up by prison or execution.
Religious systems are backed up by concepts of eternal suffering
in one sense or another.

Humans didn't come about by random chance and accident.Humans came about via millions of years of selection amongst
various traits that gave a survival advantage in particular
circumstances of environments. Many of these traits are modified
at random ... effectively by an error in the genetic copying process.There is nothing random about the process of evolutionary change.

You can indeed do whatever you want ... that doesn't make it
right if there is no right/wrong. It makes it
behaviour.We govern ourselves based upon how we were socialised as
children and adolescents.Personally I would be a little scared of someone whose only
reason for not killing out-of-hand was the belief that some
diety would punish them after death.I'm an atheist, yet my personal view of right-wrong (shaped
by my parents and the society in which I was raised) tend to
lead me in a 'christian-compatible' path. That's because I
was rasied in a society that has been influenced by christianity
for the last thousand years or so.

quote:

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if we evolved so we could live under the circumstances of
where the sun is today, wouldnt we have all died out before we got to a point where we could live under the sun?

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No.The first life that developed, did so with the sun (more-or-less)
where it is now. All major biological systems then evolved
from this first 'life form' (be that a single entity or a number
of different ones).[This message has been edited by Peter, 05-21-2003]

Sorry to butt in, but I think you may have misunderstood
or misread what was said ... becuase I think you are saying
more or less the same thing.ID does not insist that the IDer was any known god or gods
(which you said & so did the person you are answering).Literal belief in the Bible means a belief that God created
life the universe and everything ... by an act of intelligent
design. Therefore to believe in the Biblical creation account
makes one automatically accept ID ... but put forward God as
the IDer.No-one is saying that ID is classical creationism, but a classical
creationist might use any evidence of ID to support their claims.

What elements of ID theory would a biblical
literalist need to reject?

So ID is more attractive to the evolutionary creationist
or the OEC who believes that God has put the 'information'
in place and perhaps tinkers with organisms on occasions ?

I opened a thread on intelligence behind design,
where I suggested that the output of an evolutionary
process would look like a 'designed system'.Partly the idea stems from genetic algorithms used to
design electrical circuits.If design does not require 'intelligence' nor a 'designer'
then evidence of design cannot be used to infer anything.

Is this thread kinda off-track and dead ... or is it
just me?

The OP suggested that without 'Intelligent Design' there
could be no right and wrong and we may as well kill someone
as eat an icecream.That's what I meant by off-topic.

Yes .. thankyou Now ... why would an IDist hold such an opinion in the
first place?My opinion is fear ... but then that's why I think
anyone would want to believe in a diety ... so that
dieing (sp??) is less scary.[Or deity even ... I don't beleive in diety becuase I too
prefer to eat icecream [This message has been edited by Peter, 07-07-2003]

I think the problem is that ID provokes very little
thought, because it is not formalised in a testable
manner.What claims does ID theory actually make?
What evidence supports such claims?
How could such claims be refuted?Perhaps laying these out in concise points may help
to clarify the IDist position.

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P.S. Peter, have you read Daniel Dennett's book "Darwin's Dangerous Idea"? In it, he eloquently argues that there's design in living nature, but that this doesn't necessarily imply an intelligent agent. So we can meet the ID-ers halfway: there's design, yes. But intelligence? Nope, there's no need for it. (Now lash out with Occam's Razor...)

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I'll have to dig that out ... thanks.The separation of 'intelligence' from 'design' has been pointed
out in threads here .... with very few takers from the ID
supporters ... they seem to get stuck on 'design' and drop the
'intelligence'