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Author Topic:   Intelligent Design and Parasites
anastasia
Member (Idle past 5953 days)
Posts: 1857
From: Bucks County, PA
Joined: 11-05-2006


Message 16 of 36 (412914)
07-26-2007 7:20 PM
Reply to: Message 1 by iceage
07-23-2007 4:53 PM


I don't think it matters, ultimately, whether we say God 'created', or God 'designed', parasites.
In MOST cases it is the same deal either way. Until recently, anyone who accepted creation, accepted that God 'designed' the creation. A good portion of those, however, believed in something like the Fall. I remember growing up and hearing that 'evil' did not exist in the world before the Fall, and this may be true, but (sorry) how far do we take that?
I don't think you are asking whether an intelligent being could create parasites. You are asking about a benevolent being creating parasites.
Basically, if I look around, I see groundhogs eating my veggies, I see beetles destroying my cleomes, my cat is eating birds and moles, I am eating someone else's veggies, I am eating animals, insects are eating me...that's life. That is the same life which has always been.
So, what does intelligence do? It protests. It creates a God who also understands that 'life' as we know it, is hard and sad. It creates a God Who ultimately wants the 'intelligent' part of us to be free from sadness and pain. If humans evolved the intelligence to see a better way, what does that mean? Nothing, perhaps. It may just be our crutch to bear, to seek an ideal in a world where we all have to consume or be consumed, and where we will all end up being devoured by other life forms no matter what we believe. Does our intelligence ever seperate us from our own animal nature? Could we survive in a world where there were no controls of populations? Could we survive without animal consumers of life? If not, then it is very 'intelligent' to allow nature to be nature.

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Replies to this message:
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iceage 
Suspended Member (Idle past 5915 days)
Posts: 1024
From: Pacific Northwest
Joined: 09-08-2003


Message 17 of 36 (412943)
07-26-2007 10:55 PM
Reply to: Message 16 by anastasia
07-26-2007 7:20 PM


Ana writes:
I don't think you are asking whether an intelligent being could create parasites. You are asking about a benevolent being creating parasites.
I am asking, given that good percentage of life is parasitic (living off the flesh of a living host) and with a good number of those parasites have the side effect of causing serious pain, suffering and disfigurement, what does this say about the nature of some alleged Intelligent Designer? Are these creatures intelligent designed or not?
Most Intelligent Design adherents don't think the whole issue through to the logical conclusion. I have listened to many sappy Christian creation radio programs for kids where they dramatize talk about the wonderful creator and the magnificent migrating birds. You won't see a program on the tapeworms or botflys.
Keep in mind most of these parasites are not involved in the balance and harmony of populations, they are just opportunistic life forms that found an easier form of living - pain is suffering is not part of the equation.
Parasitic life is explained and predicted by a evolution outlook and not one would expect from a creator, and especially a creator that is personally interested in how your day went.
Edited by iceage, : No reason given.

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Omnivorous
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Message 18 of 36 (412950)
07-26-2007 11:56 PM
Reply to: Message 12 by Cold Foreign Object
07-26-2007 11:39 AM


Re: Adamic Fall created parasites?
If the Fall brought the first evil into God's perfect Garden, how did the Serpent get in the Tree?
These stories really were devised by a tiny cult in the desert and supposedly (by the lights of ID proponents) have nothing to do with the theory of Intelligent Design.
Conclusion: Your Biblical explanation is both internally inconsistent and irrelevant to the topic.

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anastasia
Member (Idle past 5953 days)
Posts: 1857
From: Bucks County, PA
Joined: 11-05-2006


Message 19 of 36 (413049)
07-27-2007 12:53 PM
Reply to: Message 17 by iceage
07-26-2007 10:55 PM


iceage writes:
Parasitic life is explained and predicted by a evolution outlook and not one would expect from a creator, and especially a creator that is personally interested in how your day went
Oddly enough, botflies have not been capable yet of wiping out belief in a personal deity.

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sidelined
Member (Idle past 5909 days)
Posts: 3435
From: Edmonton Alberta Canada
Joined: 08-30-2003


Message 20 of 36 (36128)
04-02-2003 6:21 PM
Reply to: Message 17 by iceage
07-26-2007 10:55 PM


iceage
I am asking, given that good percentage of life is parasitic (living off the flesh of a living host) and with a good number of those parasites have the side effect of causing serious pain, suffering and disfigurement, what does this say about the nature of some alleged Intelligent Designer?
That he passed his Bar exam?

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Message 21 of 36 (413174)
07-29-2007 3:19 PM


Bringing this thread back to the present...
Enjoy!

--Percy
EvC Forum Director

  
Straggler
Member
Posts: 10333
From: London England
Joined: 09-30-2006


Message 22 of 36 (413383)
07-30-2007 4:31 PM
Reply to: Message 16 by anastasia
07-26-2007 7:20 PM


Back to Benevolence and Parasites
I don't think you are asking whether an intelligent being could create parasites. You are asking about a benevolent being creating parasites
Exactly. Why would a benevolent being create such creatures?That is the question.
Could we survive in a world where there were no controls of populations? Could we survive without animal consumers of life? If not, then it is very 'intelligent' to allow nature to be nature.
Well if the best method of population control a benevolent and powerful being can come-up with involves the victim being eaten alive in agonising and debilitating pain what does that say about either the limitations of that power or the paucity of it's benevolence??
Surely unconscious, indifferent and unplanned forces of nature are more consistent with the facts of parasites than any sort of benevolent being powerful enough to create all life???

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Doddy
Member (Idle past 5910 days)
Posts: 563
From: Brisbane, Australia
Joined: 01-04-2007


Message 23 of 36 (413914)
08-01-2007 7:54 PM
Reply to: Message 12 by Cold Foreign Object
07-26-2007 11:39 AM


Re: Adamic Fall created parasites?
Doddy writes:
Like it or not or believe it or not the Bible says the disobedience of Adam & Eve CAUSED it all.
No, it doesn't. Where do you think it says that?
I can see that the Bible says, in lots of places, that humans are cursed because of sin, but nowhere can I see any indication that any other creature, aside from the serpent, is cursed to live a life of suffering too.
So, how did parasites that cause death and suffering in other animals arise?

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iceage 
Suspended Member (Idle past 5915 days)
Posts: 1024
From: Pacific Northwest
Joined: 09-08-2003


Message 24 of 36 (420316)
09-07-2007 12:37 PM
Reply to: Message 19 by anastasia
07-27-2007 12:53 PM


Devilish Evolution
Ana writes:
Oddly enough, botflies have not been capable yet of wiping out belief in a personal deity
Perhaps because those believing in a personal deity have never really pondered the intelligently designed botfly?
In the past when I have brought this question up to Creationist/ID'ers and they will predictably resort to the "fall" and the "devil" to explain the more the horrific mechanisms of life. (See Ray M. responses)
Then following that thread and pointing out that many of these wonderfully and fearfully made organisms are intricately and intimately "designed" to their hosts and that if these organisms "fell" to these unpleasant methods of making a living then there must have been a second creation or at least a time period of rapid massive evolution with none other then the devil in charge! This is typically where the conversation trails off.

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Taz
Member (Idle past 3292 days)
Posts: 5069
From: Zerus
Joined: 07-18-2006


Message 25 of 36 (420326)
09-07-2007 1:00 PM
Reply to: Message 23 by Doddy
08-01-2007 7:54 PM


Re: Adamic Fall created parasites?
Doddy writes:
So, how did parasites that cause death and suffering in other animals arise?
Even though I don't believe a word of the bible, I would like to offer a possible answer to this.
Gen 3:17 To Adam he said, "Because you listened to your wife and ate from the tree about which I commanded you, 'You must not eat of it,' "Cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat of it all the days of your life.
Not only are Adam, Eve, and the serpent cursed, but the ground is also cursed. This, at least to me, is a suggestion that all other life forms are affected as well. God created the plants and animal to be dependent on the land. The land is cursed. Therefore, the plants and animal are affected.
I could expand my already wild imagination a little bit more and say that parasites and predators are a result of animal that found a better way to survive because of the cursed land by living off of other animal. It's sort of like the movie 'Alive' where because the ground is cursed there's nothing around to eat accept dead human bodies.

Disclaimer:
Occasionally, owing to the deficiency of the English language, I have used he/him/his meaning he or she/him or her/his or her in order to avoid awkwardness of style.
He, him, and his are not intended as exclusively masculine pronouns. They may refer to either sex or to both sexes!

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RAZD
Member (Idle past 1406 days)
Posts: 20714
From: the other end of the sidewalk
Joined: 03-14-2004


Message 26 of 36 (420365)
09-07-2007 3:08 PM


bankrupt ID explanation is creationism?
Why is it that the "ID" explanation for parasites is a biblical fall?
Either:
  1. there is no ID explanation (so religious people that adapt an "ID" view "fall back" on a creationist explanation)
  2. ID is creationism
  3. no person arguing an "ID position" has been able so far to segregate their thinking from creationism and actually think in terms of "IDology"
Enjoy.
Edited by RAZD, : sp

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iceage 
Suspended Member (Idle past 5915 days)
Posts: 1024
From: Pacific Northwest
Joined: 09-08-2003


Message 27 of 36 (420389)
09-07-2007 4:52 PM
Reply to: Message 25 by Taz
09-07-2007 1:00 PM


Re: Adamic Fall created parasites?
Bible writes:
Cursed is the ground because of you
The point I am striving to make is that this "fall" or cursing the ground involved a considerable amount of creative constructive intelligence that is maybe on the same level as the original creation.
The life cycles of some of these parasites are not just life cycles gone bad. These organisms constitute specific adaptations and physical appendages and body components that were not just co-opted after the "fall" to other ends. These are not merely some de-evolved organisms. The Guinea worm was not dining on pond algae prior to fall and the botfly was not laying eggs in mango's. Some parasites have extremely mind-boggling life cycles that involves 3 or 4 different hosts which are highly tuned and specific to the task.
The consequence of this is that at the "fall" or cursing of the ground the Intelligent Designer must have gone back into the workshop to bring forth a second cursed creation that either created entirely new organisms or added information those existing and gave them new job titles.
Edited by iceage, : No reason given.

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ringo
Member (Idle past 412 days)
Posts: 20940
From: frozen wasteland
Joined: 03-23-2005


Message 28 of 36 (420399)
09-07-2007 5:59 PM
Reply to: Message 27 by iceage
09-07-2007 4:52 PM


Re: Adamic Fall created parasites?
iceage writes:
The consequence of this is that at the "fall" or cursing of the ground the Intelligent Designer must have gone back into the workshop to bring forth a second cursed creation that either created entirely new organisms or added information those existing and gave them new job titles.
Such a dramatic re-engineering so soon after the product's release suggests that the original design was horrendously unintelligent.
Edited by Ringo, : Added missing word.

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CK
Member (Idle past 4128 days)
Posts: 3221
Joined: 07-04-2004


Message 29 of 36 (420403)
09-07-2007 6:09 PM
Reply to: Message 26 by RAZD
09-07-2007 3:08 PM


Re: bankrupt ID explanation is creationism?
You beat me to it.
"ID is nothing to do with the bible, it's SCIENCE"
"Can I ask a question?"
"sure!"
"What about parasites?"
"Well if we read our bibles we see..."
The jig is up when you explain ID in terms of the bible!

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Dr Adequate
Member (Idle past 285 days)
Posts: 16113
Joined: 07-20-2006


Message 30 of 36 (420404)
09-07-2007 6:13 PM


And why did the intelligent designer give us parasites and immune systems?

  
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