Does complexity require intelligent design?

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Citizzzen

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How/Why does (apparent) complexity necessitate an intelligent designer?

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Mere complexity does not necessitate an intelligent designer. Complexity with purpose and function seems to indicate an intelligent designer. I have never witnessed nature [the natural universe] creating anything. I have witnessed intelligent individuals creating machines, works of art, structures, theories, literature. How do we know this? Is there a mathematical formula that proves this apparent supposition? Which systems that didn’t work are you referring to? Can you give some specific examples? I know that many species are extinct, I didn’t know that it was proven that any are extinct due to an inability to compete with what? Other species? Please give some examples. Please give some examples of these planets that were destroyed by meteors or comets.Isn’t the temperature of the stars in question less important than the orbital characteristics of the planets involved? Rates of spin, angles of inclination, distance from the star and other factors? Couldn’t most stars support life as we define it if the conditions were right on the planet?Of course our planet’s life systems are dependant not only on the above mentioned factors, but the presence of the moon to activate the tides and prevent the oceans from stagnating, and the unique quality of water as a solid becoming less dense than the liquid form, thus preserving life in bodies of water by forming an insulating blanket of ice on the surface, rather than the entire body freezing solid. Sounds perfectly reasonable to me that it's all chance.

Hello loudmouth,

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Comparing design created through human manufacturing can not be compared to design created through biological reproduction.

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Design is not created through biological reproduction. It is copied. Creation is an entirely different process than reproduction. Why would one want to differentiate between random patterns regardless of how they were created? My question was : How is it known that these are really random, as stated?
My questions were intended to point out the sweeping generalizations in the opening statement that I felt were unsubstantiated. I do not know if there is an intended pattern to the arrangement of the stars, but I doubt that the constellations we have given names to were provided for the purpose of making vague predictions about one’s life. I was primarily addressing the apparently unique conditions that exist in this solar system that make life as we know it possible. I believe we do know that it is impossible for life to have formed spontaneously. The relatively recent discoveries concerning the complexities of DNA and the minimum requirements for the simplest functioning living cells have led even ardent evolutionists to admit that life could not have formed by chance.

Hi there, 1.61803, your post is clever; but I'm sure you know that bees are merely performing the function they were designed for. How would shape determine function in that example? Or if you don't agree with my belief about bees, how about eyes? Why are there so many differently shaped eyes on the different species when they perform basically the same function?I believe that God created all of nature, and you can't see Him, so you believe that nature created itself, somehow.This message has been edited by xevolutionist, 03-17-2005 01:56 AM

Now crash, it seems as if you've altered the parameters here. If only it could be shown that the design could be modified by mutation to some viable redesign, which is not obvious in nature as the vast majority of mutations which have an observable effect are harmful, not beneficial. [cancer is one that comes to mind]

I never stated and I don't believe that God created Himself. He always existed, He is the uncaused cause.

Schraf, your reply does not address the question I asked about form determining function. The fact that each unique type of eye would have had to develop independently, when Darwin speculated that just the human eye was hard to envision forming by random evolution, [this at a time when the complexity of cellular processes and dna were not yet known] is yet another hurdle for evolutionary theory, which I don't have time to address right now.

hello cit, I've reconsidered my original response, and yes the complexity of the universe does require intelligent design. The law of cause and effect. I don't think the patterns of the stars as observed from earth convey any special message, the existence of the universe alone requires a creator, or first cause. The complexity of life is a persuasive argument for ID.I wouldn't state that the proof of ID is dependent on the intelligence of the observer, but without intelligence would the question even be asked? I doubt that many platypus are asking themselves "why do I exist?" By the way, the platypus has at least one very important purpose, to confound the believers of ToE. Everything does have a reason for existing or God would not have created it. The application of brush strokes to canvas does not always produce art, and using a tool is quite different from designing a tool. Art is subjective, but a rose by any other name... No, as to the apparent patterns that men perceive, yes as noted above. Any school would have records of the students that were attending and then quit. Just as we have a record of God's creation of the universe. My point was that there is no proof of why species became extinct, other than the ones we have observed become extinct. Granted they were primarily observed on dinner plates, and it is a reasonable assumption that they could not compete with man, but the idea of lesser species competing with each other to extinction is almost never seen in the ones that are around to observe, unless we change the habitat. Species are amazingly resilient, ocassionally popping up long after scientists deem them extinct. Isaac Asimov wrote a really good article about this, I believe it was originally pubished in Science Fact/ Science Fantasy, a paperback I read voraciously as a child. The fact is that no life would exist on earth without the tides and their effects on this third rock from the sun. I think the designer has left clues and the more we discover about the physical universe the more obvious they become, like dna. You are correct in that we are capable of convincing ourselves of almost any idea, especially when we close our minds to objective reasoning.
Would the natural world exist without the creative force of the supernatural? I once believed that. There is evidence of a big bang type of event, [first described in the bible]which indicates that at that one exact moment the universe as we know it began. That was the effect, God is the cause.

But 42 is the answer to some problems. Perhaps it's a matter of posing the right questions.

Schraf,
Originally I was asking why, if form determins function, [or was it the opposite, no matter the question remains the same]are so many eyes formed differently, since all perform basically the same function. This does bring up the fact that the eye would have had to seperately evolve for each species with different eyes.Your quote from Darwin: Thanks for translating that for me as the last sentence seemed to have the opposite meaning.I have somewhat of a problem with an imperfect and simple eye. It seems that without perfectly functioning eyes, those animals that depend on vision to escape predators, find food, and so on would have a marked disadvantage, survival wise, and therefore only the animals that didn't need vision would triump. Logically then, all surviving species should be blind, from purely evolutionary theory.This message has been edited by xevolutionist, 03-17-2005 06:51 PM

Hi Mick, the platypus as you probably know is one of the two mammals that lay eggs, not resembling the other monotremes in any other significant way.The interesting evolutionary conundrum is that the oldest monotreme fossils are almost identical to the living monotremes. There is nothing even close to them in the fossil record, so that evolutionists cannot claim that they evolved from some other animal. Any similarities in physical structure are usually grounds for evolutionists to see common ancestry, even going so far as to claim that whales are evolved from a wolf, based on the shape of a tiny bone in the wolf's ear.Also the platypus exhibits features not found in combination on on any other animal. The bill that senses prey by detecting small electical currents. Spurs on hind legs that can inject venom into a predator. Underwater it stores food in cheek pouches until it surfaces, then sorts it out. The young live on milk provided by the mother, but she does not have nipples.The other monotremes, are two species of echidna, also known as the spiny anteater.Another interesting species that I believe demonstrates the fallacy of evolutionary theory is the arctic flounder, but I don't have time to go into that right now.

Thanks for the tip Bob. Actually I mentioned it only in passing, as Scharf didn't realize that the we had been discussing form and function, not evolution of the eye, and I meant it as an example of perceived complexity.Even though I do get material from the AIG website occasionally, I sometimes think for myself. Dangerous, but a lot more fun.

Given the infinitesmal number of beneficial mutations that have been observed in relation to the great number of harmful ones that have been observed, nothing. And accquired or inherited immunity or resistance is not a beneficial mutation. It's a normal function designed into our bodies. The original, genetically undamaged, prototype humans were immune to all disease. It's a credit to our designer that our built in genetic redundancy allows most mutations to have no clinical effect.Again, if it could be shown to have actually happened and a pervasive process like that should leave evidence, and positively affected at least a few humans in the how many generations in the last seven thousand years I believe we've been here, and surely in the millions of years that evolutionists claim that we have existed, there should be some documented improvement in some individuals.

crash, No I don't. Unless you run a loop you have an endless number of causes. We have never observed anything happen without a cause, but something always begins every process that we observe. To postulate a first intelligent cause that we didn't witness, is to me, more acceptable than the alternatives, and explains more than just my existence.Entropy assures us that the universe will eventually achieve that steady state of one uniform temperature and no available energy in the universe. Since we observe that the galaxies are moving away from each other at an apparently accelerating rate [I'm not an astronomer, some things all of us just end up accepting by faith] it doesn't seem like a great number of worlds are going to collide and provide that critical mass needed to jump start another universe, without outside intervention.Whatever theory you have of the origin is no more valid than mine. I believe that the universe and life give us clues to the nature of the first cause, or the first intelligent designer if you prefer.

That was just a question relating to 1.61803's message #21. I was not attempting to disprove evolution with the Darwin quote on the complexity of the eye, as some seem to think.This message has been edited by xevolutionist, 03-18-2005 10:05 AM

Pink, your referenced link states that we did change the habitat by introducing pigs. As I stated. Perhaps I should have been more precise by stating "unless we change conditions in the habitat." I consider this extremely doubtful, but you are entitled to speculate about that. I really like Asimov, although I don't agree with him on everything.