Why complex form requires an Intelligent Designer

Not really, you know. ID is nothing more than Paley's watchmaker fallacy dressed up. And IDers are IDers only because it's their way to get their god back into the classrooms. Ever heard of the Wedge Strategy? Certainly anything is possible to those who think creationism/ID has any scientific merit. But I don't honestly think this proposal needs any further consideration until someone opens up a church dedicated to the worship of Rube Goldberg. Sure they do. They just don't say so while they're advocating for ID in schools because they know that letting the cat out of the bag would queer the deal. And now who's falling into the "no true Scotsman" trap, eh?

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Those who would sacrifice an essential liberty for a temporary security will lose both, and deserve neither. -- Benjamin Franklin

Not really. Do you notice how the sun, planets and moons all have a similar spheroid shape? All are formed under gravity.In any case, if one chooses to see "intelligent design" everywhere one can do so. What ID propoents have so far been unable to do is produce evidence of an intelligent agent to do the designing.The best KBC and others can do is to argue from incredulity.Edited by RickJB, : No reason given.

Oh, right. We're only talking about a being purported to have the power to fine-tune the initial conditions of the universe for life, after all.There aren't exactly a whole lot of entities with that specific skill-set. Isn't it more than just a little ridiculous to assert that the Designer in ID is anybody but a deity? I mean the ID people even capitalize "Designer", just to make it abundantly clear that we're talking about somebody's god.

That's news indeed. I'd like to see your math for this one.The authors of Pandas and People substituted 'intelligent design' for 'creationism' throughout the text without modifying a single definition. It was a simple search-and-replace.On that basis ID was ruled creationism in Kitzmiller vs Dover last December. See also Barbara Forrest's book Creationism's Trojan Horse._

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ArcherAll species are transitional.

But you're forgetting, my good Archer, that those people aren't the "true" IDers.

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Those who would sacrifice an essential liberty for a temporary security will lose both, and deserve neither. -- Benjamin Franklin

gasby Dubious claim but even playing devils advocate it reamins a fact that IDists do not define at all just what the intelligence actually is.

correct me if I'm wrong, but your contention that has no bearing. why? this intelligent designer must still consider his choices. It doesn't matter that I can recognize 5 choices at one time, I still have to consider each one individually in the act of deciding.

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Of course! How could I forget?True IDers hide the evidence better..

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ArcherAll species are transitional.

That doesn't make one iota of a difference.Suppose we number the forms the intelligent designer has considered. If the intelligent designer has considered an infinite number of forms, then there cannot be among them a form with the highest number, otherwise the number of considered forms would be finite.So, even if the designer has considered an infinite number of forms instantaneously, in one fell swoop, there must be at least one form with a number higher than any of the forms the intelligent designer has considered, which therefore has not been considered.Hence "there's always one more to consider". Such is the nature of infinity. If you mess with it, it bites you in the arse.By the way, this is becoming infinitely off-topic.Edited by Parasomnium, : No reason given.Edited by Parasomnium, : No reason given.

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"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science." - Charles Darwin.

I suppose you're right... but consider this. Why the hell does an intelligent designer have to consider every possible form for a biological structure before snapping its fingers?When I was going around shopping for the right material at the most reasonable price to put in my backyard fencing, I certainly didn't go check out every company, every brand, every shop, every contractor, etc. in the state, let alone the world. I only checked out as many as I wanted to in my town.I simply don't see why an intelligent designer has to consider every possible form before waving that big magic wand to do the magic.

While it is true that they haven't officially named the intelligent designer, they have most certainly tried to make it clear in court that more research had to be done before a reasonable answer could be given.You're not helping debunking ID by demanding that the IDists know everything about everything. They use the same tactic against real scientists in debates. I've seen a creationist hammer an astronomer with geology questions only to get "I don't know" from the astronomer. A lot of people in the audience that night thought that the astronomer was a dumbass and the creationist was the true intellectual.

I occasionally have the pleasure of talking to an "evolutionist" (I still don't feel comfortable with that term) who doesn't know jack poop about what he's talking about. There are those out there that are (1) loud mouthed, (2) not very knowledgable, (3) misrepresent their own side, and (4) make everybody else on their side look bad. For a more classic example of this, just look up Fred Phelps.

Questioning someone's motive isn't exactly what I like to do in a debate.But here's some junk food for thought. I recently read a book called "calculating god". It's about an alien race finding fantastic coincidences in the geological records of its planet and the planets of other life supporting planets that harbor technologically advance civilizations, especially about the major mass extinctions. The book talks about how unlikely it is that an intelligent race could arise through the evolutionary process at relatively the same time as another intelligent race on another planet. The mass extinctions in the geological records of all these planets happened at about the same time giving rise to intelligent races at relatively the same time.But that's not all. Nearby supernovas that happened in the past that should have sterilized every planet within light years somehow didn't harm any of the life harboring planet in this part of the galaxy.Anyway, the alien race begins to suspect that there must be some kind of intelligent force behind all these coincidences, and they're calling it god for lack of a better word.It turns out that the intelligent force is a space dwelling creature who thought the universe was too boring so decided to get involve with the evolutionary processes on the various planets with the intention of coercing evolution to give rice to technologically advance races at about the same time so they could converse with each other. This creature is anything but an all powerful being like the christian god, but advance enough (and big enough) to smash asteroids onto planets and block the angry photons from exploding suns.It's science fiction, I know. Yet, it is an interesting concept. You generally see 2 polar opposite views in the EvC debate: the ones that insist on an all powerful creator and the ones that insist on no intelligence at all. Neither side would ever consider for a moment that if there is an intelligent designer that the designer would be like a child playing with his ant colony while we are the ants trying to understand the ant farm (aka the universe). I'm intellectually neutral in these matters. I just like to look at and consider all sides.

Actually, the Trojan War would have ended rather differently if the Greeks had used creationist tactics.Scene: outside the gates of Troy. Enter a bunch of Greeks making whinnying noises.TROJANS: What do you want, you bunch of Greeks?
GREEKS: We're not Greeks.
TROJANS: But you look like Greeks.
GREEKS: We are, in fact, a horse.
TROJANS: A what?
GREEKS: A horse. A wooden horse. With wheels. Why don't you open the gates and drag us into the city?
TROJANS: You don't look like a wooden horse.
GREEKS: No? What do we look like?
TROJANS: You look like a bunch of Greeks who've crossed out the big letter G on their shields and painted in an H.
GREEKS: Oh ... right ...
TROJANS: I see that some of you are carrying a banner saying "We Are A Large Wooden Horse".
GREEKS: Yes. It didn't convince you?
TROJANS: It lacked authenticity, put it that way.
GREEKS: We worked on it all night.
TROJANS: I'm sure you did. Nonetheless ... the end of the Illiad's going to be a big let-down, isn't it?

It's not that "our" side isn't willing to consider that there could be an intelligence behind it all that isn't god. It's that there's no real reason to suppose that anything is happening other than natural processes that we (more or less) see in operation today. If natural processes can explain it, there's no reason to hypothesize that anything else is at work.Now, given the scenario that you described from the book, were we to find evidence of that nature, it would be beyond belief that such coincidences would occur and the only reasonable explanation in that event would be that something else is at work.

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Those who would sacrifice an essential liberty for a temporary security will lose both, and deserve neither. -- Benjamin Franklin