When does design become intelligent? (AS OF 8/2/10 - CLOSING COMMENTS ONLY)

The "fuck" is for emphasis, not emotion. Except that you pretty plainly stated that we could orbit as much as 3 million miles closer or 35 million miles further our before we burned or froze.There's nothing finely-tuned about a range that wide. That's the exact opposite of what "fine tuning" means. Hint: the fine tune on your radio is the knob you use to dial in to an exact frequency, to within a certainty of usually one one-hundredth of a megahertz. The knob you use to just get in the ballpark is the coarse-tune. Always with you the name-calling.No, I wasn't lying. But, it's always amusing to have my mind read over the internet. Through a time-machine, even! Always with you the name-calling! Nonetheless, since God doesn't exist, you can't have a "relationship" with him. But, I can appreciate that you see it differently. Unlike you I'm not infuriated by the prospect of us disagreeing on something.

It doesn't really get to the heart of it, no. Are prokaryotes alive? Are viruses alive? Are prions?What does the Bible say about prokaryotes and prions? Geology and astrophysics is the basis from which we can determine the conditions of the early Earth. If you want to know the conditions and the reasoning from which we conclude those conditions, why not start with this? And? You think, in over fifty years nobody's thought to expand the experiments in the light of our improving knowledge about the geochemical environment of the early Earth? Yes. Like I just told you, experiments - in the vein of, but not limited to, the Miller-Urey experiments - conducted under the conditions of the early Earth showed that natural processes can produce the complex chemical precursors to living things.

Some viruses can survive for decades in between hosts. Prions are frequently incredibly durable, a few are suspected of being communicated through fully cooked hamburger.But are they alive? That's what I asked. Is there a reason you insist on evading direct questions?

Well, no. The Bible says that God created living things after their own kind. Are prokaryotes alive? Are viruses? Are prions? If I had linked to you a book of Rollinson's opinions, you could dismiss them on whatever basis you chose. But that's not the text that I linked to you. It's not a work of opinion, it's a text on geochemistry. You should believe it for the same reason you should believe any legitimate science textbook - because it presents sourced, consensus science. But I did. The Miller-Urey vein. Not limited to the Miller-Urey experiment itself, which is 50 years out of date. That's not at all what was proved. The point of the experiment was never to create life. None of those experiments are done towards the goal of producing life.Why do you insist on moving the goalposts? The Earth was there to record the conditions, and its from the geochemical record of the Earth that those conditions can be determined.

Viruses don't have jobs. You're right! Why, it's kind of ambiguous, isn't it? Almost like they have qualities of living beings and qualities of nonliving matter, at the same time!How weird, huh?

It's not a holy book. It's a fully-sourced science textbook, as you might find used to teach a graduate-level course on geochemistry. It's authoritative. The evidence that leads scientists to the conclusions they hold is part of that textbook. As we've seen over the years, there's a limit to how much a worldview can bend the evidence. If a worldview is in factual error holding it in the face of the contradictory evidence simply becomes untenable, until one has only two choices - stop exposing oneself to the evidence, or give up the worldview.If the evidence really was in favor of creationism creationists wouldn't have to play games to ignore it, as you're doing. Exactly what they found - that organic biomolecules could have an inorganic origin under the conditions likely to be found on the early Earth.

Sure. The problem is that the inference is unidirectional. We infer the design of the paperclip given the presence of paperclip designers (in this case, the Gem Manufacturing Company in 1870.) We cannot infer any notion of a designer just from the paper clip.We know that things are designed because we see designers design them. We can't know that they're designed only from the end results, because the universe contains means of arriving at the appearance of design without the presence of any designers. This is certainly not the case in ID as its most prominent proponents describe it, such as Michael Behe.

Yes, because they probably have people in their civilization that make steel and plastic and make things out of those materials.Living things aren't made out of steel or plastic. Living things first emerged on Earth almost 3 billion years ago, long before the existence of human beings, which are the only beings we know of in the universe capable of intelligent design. Indeed - perfect replication is a feature of design. In the biological world, individuals differ, frequently substantially, from other individuals. Even from their own siblings.Even identical twins differ physically. This is a powerful indication that biological organisms were not designed, they evolved.

Not really. Random mutation and natural selection is one process by which nature creates genetic information with no need of intelligence.

Yes. Evolution by natural selection and random mutation is more creative, and faster in doing so, than any known intelligence. That's why intelligent designers - like shipwrights, aeronautical engineers, and electricians - are using selection and mutation to design airplanes, hulls, and radios.We need no faith to come to these conclusions because the evidence is manifest and has been set plain in front of your face for seven years. When are you going to start paying attention to it?If, after all this time, you still don't understand it, maybe it's time to stop making the same old refuted pronouncements and start asking questions?

No, time is a real thing, not just our subjective experience of the linearity of events. That's how the passage of time can be affected by speed and mass according to General Relativity. Causality is limited to within the scope of time because causality assumes precedence. And one event cannot precede another without the existence of time. Therefore, causality cannot apply to the beginning of the universe since it occurred outside of time.And an uncaused universe is much more parsimonious than an uncaused deity.

Existence of what? Time begins to begin when the existence of the universe begins, just like that's the beginning of "left", "right", "up", "down", "length", "width", and "depth." Existence is not a predicate of time, it's commensurate with it. Why? What makes you even think that non-existence can exist? Maybe the universe exists because its non-existence is impossible. Therefore how? Please be specific - you've skipped a lot of steps.

I'm curious - if your alien encountered a radio signal pulsing in regular, constant intervals, would they arrive at the conclusion that it was an intelligent radio transmission?Should they?

That's common ancestry, since every cell in your body is ultimately a descendant of the same single cell. Try a college-level chemistry textbook. I recommend Olmstead and William's "Chemistry", now in probably 5th or 6th edition (I have it in 4th.)

No, it's actually all chemistry. Enzymes can only increase the rate of a chemical reaction, it can't make a reaction occur that wouldn't occur spontaneously on its own.If you're interested in the biochemistry of DNA replication (in prokaryotes or eukaryotes), I recommend Lehninger's Principles of Biochemistry. Natural selection and random mutation, two concerted processes that together are the way nature produces information without need of intelligence.