INTELLIGENT DESIGN: An Engineer’s Approach

Hey guys,Those were great posts, and they did shut PJ up for a while, but just a reminder. This is limbosis's thread, and he has specifically distanced himself from the ID movement. He has accepted those posts, and said that the designer is obviously evil and stupid, but that evolution is still wrong and that evolutionists are misguided. I think this still needs to be addressed.(BTW- I did open a new thread on PJ's elaborate list of quotes, feel free to direct comments on that list there.)Edited by platypus, : No reason given.

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You hear evolutionist says we are descedant from apes and monkees. Sure, but that's not the point. All of life is related, not just human's with monkees. If you hug a tree, you're hugging a relative, a very distant relative, but a relative nonetheless." Dr. Joan Roughgarden in Evolution and Christian Faith

Sorry but that makes no sense. If you "distance yourself from ID" then there is no designer to be "obviously evil and stupid".Either you support the concept of a designer or you don't.If Evolution is wrong then you need to provide the model that explains what is seen.If it is not evolution and not design then what is the model?

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

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Granted. That frame of mind is especially enticing if the idea of evolution was hereafter limited to a description of the way things happened, and not allowed to pose as the explanation for a process that does not exist. You could call it a set of chronologies, a gant chart at best.

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Sorry limbosis, you lost me. "A description for the way things happened" is in my mind posing "the explanation for the process." If evolutionary biology did not do this, it would be more like natural history.The current explanation for speciation through natural selection can explain how things got to be the way they are. And this explanation is not motivated by turning away from a benevolent God. In fact, you could incorporate the idea of a benevolent God quite easily into this framework. For example, a benevolent God created the world through the Big Bang and used the process of evolution to create humans.Ideas such as this are known as theistic evolution. Some evolutionists do believe in such a thing, some (such as Dawkins) adamantly don't. One thing is definitely true, evolutionists study evolution because it intrigues them intellectually, not because they are trying to turn away from any sort of God. The God thing only gets brought into the issue after the fact.

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If it is not evolution and not design then what is the model?

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That is what we are trying to find out from limbosis, but he hasn't been entirely clear on this issue yet. What he has been clear on is that he believes that there is a designer, but that this designer is not an Intelligent Designer (ID), but an evil designer(s) (ed- note no caps) who may or may not have a sense of humor. He is not arguing from religious grounds.

Let me back up. Are you saying you would obey an evil god, for obvious reasons?Or, are you saying that something like a god may have endowed this earth with fully-fledged evolution?

Ah, the

• Inadept
• Inept
• Incompetent
• Inefficient
• Inexpert
• Incapable
• Inappropriate
• Infelicitous
• Ill-timed
• Inelegant
• Inexpert
• Inexperienced

Designer Theory.Certainly a possibility.Loki.

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

Jar,I will respond to both you and Chiroptera as soon as I can.Trust me when I say we are doing everything we can.

I didn't say. But many people who accept evolution have not turned away from God. As to their conception of God, I'm sure that's as varied as the people themselves.--Percy

Au contrair, mon frer. There's more than one way to put lipstick on this pig.All I need to do is diplomatically remind the evolutionist community that there is but one thing left for them to do. That is to carry out the simple process of evolution, as it is clearly outlined in the theory, to generate a single new species.I would start with dogs, to be honest, because at least we'll get some new breeds--the likes of which we have never seen--in the process. But, as we all know, any evolution scientist worth his or her salt will be eager to test the theory. Given that fact, I would say that the mystery of evolution has been solved, unless we can carry out the process just once. Start now. There is nothing left to do.Until then, there exists no greater foundation for the theory of evolution than there is for the theory of a benevolent god. Neither of which are, IMHO, as realistic as the idea of an evil designer, given the predominance of manufactured aggression and the lack of any real science associated with the "process" of evolution. The two go hand-in-hand. All I need to do is sit back and watch. I won't be holding my breath, though.But I'll wait until after the ensuing barrage, to crystallize the direct correlation between our family tree and the ascent of the automobile.BTW, where the hell are all the creationists? Don't they see a howling window of opportunity here?

Well, hold your horses, chief. You're conflating speciation with morphologic change.You can get a new species with no change to morphology. You could have two organisms that appear completely physically identical to the eye, but would be two seperate species.This is because species is defined as a reproductive community, not a specific morphological layout. Of course, the funny thing is, scientists have created hundreds of new species in the lab (they look pretty much like the old ones), and plenty of weird new morphologies in the old species, as well.Drosophila melanogaster (the fruit or vinegar fly) is the model organism for this sort of research. The generation time is a matter of days or weeks, they're sexual, easy to breed and store, and they have fairly simple genetics. And, indeed, it only takes a number of generations of genetic isolation to produce new species of D. melanogaster, a simple proceedure that has been done hundreds of times.So, according to you - there's nothing left to do.

i would take a good, long, and hard look at this list, provided by talk origins.Observed Instances of Speciation.speciation has occurred, pure and simple. In some cases, we've been responsible (ie, lab work).

Mmmnope!A) Rendering a poor fruit fly sterile, is not the same thing as creating a new species.B) We're not talking about genetic engineering, which actually lends credence to the notion of a designer.We're talking about good old-fashioned selection, whether it be natural or otherwise.Now, put your head together, and come up with a way to devise legitimate physical proof that the theory is correct. That way, you won't have to waste your time arguing with level-headed people like myself. I know you mean well.BIG BIG HINT: I would go with the fruit fly, given the turn-around time. Do the math. One generation per ten days x 365 days x 20 years = 730 generations of prime selection activity. Amortize that for one spontaneous mutation in every say thousand generations, as it would be hypothetically conceded, and it gives you effectively 730,000 generations of unadulterated progress. Multiply that by 40 years of analogous human lifespan, and you're looking at approximately 30 million years of "natural" human evolution, expressed as a discrete number of new species over time. If you can't do something with that, then you're not really trying.Mmmnext?

see list above. speciation has occurred, and we've witnessed it.this is a point most creationists actually concede, and since then, they've lost thier previous definition for kind--species.they just couln't stand that they were proved wrong about macroevolution, so now they've demanded a greater divergence. go figure.

I'm fairly confident that all this speciation stuff is way off topic.Maybe go back and review message 1?Adminnemooseus

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I don't know, I think its still fairly relevant. Limbosis was forced into arguing for an evil design theory through discussing message 1, and now we are using speciation to show that his theory is not correct, or at least not noticably in conflict with current evolutionary theory. If this is deemed off-topic, I won't continue the issue, though.Since you brought up dogs, I'll point out the obvious. We call different kinds of dogs "breeds" rather than species, simply because we breeded them in certain directions. If we saw a chihuahua and a German shepard in the wild, we'd classify them as separate species. So looking at dogs we see evidence of what is effectively several new species. I use Chihuahua's as an example because physically, they are sexually isolated from other dogs. Physically meaning their equipment is too small.Darwin saw artificial selection in the form of carrier pidgeons, and this was a motivating factor in developing his theory. Observe: All of these morphological forms of pidgeons (3 shown here, 15-20 overall) developed from one species of rock pidgeons, shown at the top. Darwin speculated in the Origin of Species that this selective breeding started probably about 3000 years ago.There you have it, in-your-face drastic morphological differences caused by humans over the course of many years, resulting in different "kinds." I guess fruit flies are a more subtle, scientifically correct form of speciation, but you seemed to want the big morphological differences. There you go, nothing left to do.