Who designed the ID designer(s)?

*cracks knuckles*OK, the thread is almost a year old, but let's give this a crack, since ID Man used evasion, I'll try and be more direct. I'm going to explore your first option vis: We are going to have to define 'nature'Nature: What is nature? Is nature just defined as the universe? Is universe just defined as the thing that has been expanded from since the big bang? What about the theory of multiple 'baby universes', ours being one of them. Perhaps these universes exist in a 'space' comprising of more, or different dimensions than we do.Each of the baby universes in our hyperspace has its own 'laws of nature', but they all abide by the laws that govern hyperspace. To avoid confusion (or perhaps to increase confusion, we'll have to see), we'll call this superset of natural laws supernature.OK, the stage is set. Within hyperspace we have baby universes. But that is not all! We also have sentient entities. These sentient entities arose through the laws of supernature (which govern everything). They then decided to act with the same laws of supernature to design universes and perhaps manipulate them to create effects such as life.So we have a wonderful combination of the supernatural and perfectly rational definable laws. Who designed the designers? Nobody did! They arose according to the laws of supernature which (unlike our laws of nature) allows for the spontaneous creation of specified complexity.Now - there is absolutely no evidence for any of this of course so it can easily be described as 'faith', but it is not 'faith' in the religious sense. I think I might have made a little headway in this, but I guess it raises more objections than it settles. Anyway, I enjoyed coming up with it, have fun with it

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Eternity is in love with the productions of time.
The busy bee has no time for sorrow.
The hours of folly are measur'd by the clock; but of wisdom, no clock can measure.

Hi CK, I am certainly not veteran enough to tell you about the forums and stuff, but perhaps the philosophical implications of Darwinism/naturalism/evolution should be reserved for a seperate thread? I only say this because ID debates have a tendency to drift into a defence of evolution or darwinism or whatever because IDers so very frequently end up saying "Oh yeah? Well your theory is worse!" or "If we should teach your philosophy they should teach mine!".edit: OK, I guess I was beaten to it by Paul I'll just slope off over here -->*slopes*This message has been edited by Modulous, Mon, 16-May-2005 06:08 PM

Oh I appreciate that you are comfortable with them...however I postulated that our natural laws maybe one of many subsets of supernatural laws. And I believe I managed to convey a feasable supernatural environment which does not require a god or gods.

Are you suggesting that all supernatural beings are gods? Everything from demons, angels, nephilim, ghosts, vampires, werewolves, Uri Gellar, wizards, leprechauns...?

If that is how you define divinity then that is the conclusion you will reach. However, I don't think that your definition is the commonly accepted definition. I'd say you've loaded your definition to make your logic impossible to refute. I put it to you that any hypothesis regarding the origins of the big bang (eg M-Theory) are by definition supernatural.Anyhoo - I'm going to write to James Randi to tell him to stop tempting god

I think you are defining it backwards. By definition all gods are supernatural, but not all supernatural things are gods. For example, who would be worsipping these IDers? Nobody, therefore they are not gods, by your definitions:- "believed in and worshiped by a people".Supernatural means:-" not existing in nature or subject to explanation according to natural laws"It can be used to describe a god, but a supernatural entity does not have to be a deity. For example, a vampire, which is also not worshiped, neither are ghosts or fairies, or of course, Uri Gellar.

Let me try and explain this again, using a simple example. I believe it is a syllogistic error your are committing.

• All mammals are warm blooded
• Birds are warm blooded
• Birds are mammals

Only what you are saying here is:

• All gods are supernatural
• The IDers are supernatural
• The IDers are gods

Its a logical fallacy. Your logic stands refuted until such time as you can demonstrate that supernatural entity always means god.

I agree that when defining things, we have to use full definitions, that was my point. My contention is that not only gods act in supernatural ways. Lets use your logic again:

• only gods can act in supernatural ways
• Ghosts act in supernatural ways
• therefore ghosts are gods

Whilst many old civilizations engaged in ancestor worship, I don't they ever equated the departed souls of their family as being gods.

Once again, you have demonstrated that all gods have supernatural abilities, but you have not demonstrated that posession of supernatural abilities makes one a god - lesser or otherwise. Personally I think it dilutes the meaning of god to assign everything with supernatural powers as some kind of deity. It is also confusion bound - most people would disagree with you. Basically it comes down to opinion. You think that demons,vampires, telekinetics and seers are gods whereas I say most people would strongly disagree.Since we are arguing from opinion, I don't think it is going to be fruitful to debate whether or not werewolves are lesser deities any further.Whilst you might define ghosts and unicorns and Uri Gellars as 'lesser gods', does it necessitate 'faith' when one postulates their possible existance? That is to say, is it possible to have faith in a non-specific undefined entity which may or may not be divine depending on whose defining what at the time?

re: definitions. Yes some definitions of supernatural involve deities. Not all of them, including the way I was using the term. That's not an answer to the question though. The question is 'Can someone have faith in an undefined entity which the someone in question does not think is divine?'

Naturally, if someone believes something then its a form of faith...but is it a religious faith? I believe that sun will rise tommorow morning, I have faith that it will happen. What if they postulate that a supernatural entity is a possibility, and that there might be evidences of their existence in the natural world? Is that religious faith?

What does it mean to arrive a position via faith?You can take the claim of the truth of a position on faith.You can also make a leap of faith when there is insufficient evidence to know something.You can have faith in something for which there is no evidence, but it is more common to have faith in something for which there is some evidence but not a sufficient amount to know it. Even if you want to argue that 'religious faith' must be without any evidence (and often people will claims subjective or anecdotal evidence in support of their religious faith which would undercut even that argument), religion does not have a monopoly on faith.But I think more to the point, how important is this point?Edited by Modulous, : No reason given.