The Power of the New Intelligent Design...

What it comes down to is did the various generations of life over the past few billions of years produce offspring by the usual birth (or hatching or spawning or whatever bacteria do to split from one cell into two descendants) or was there some miraculous instance of creation every time a slightly different creature (or plant, etc.) grew up to walk (or crawl, swim, etc.) on our planet?

If there is no change over generations, there will be no new organisms. Unless they're miraculously created. Since the creatures on earth today are different from those of a hundred million years ago, how do you account for this?

If you're willing to postulate that all these miraculous creations are being done year after year for millions, billions of years, then that will indeed explain everything.HOWEVER, the same can be said of the explanation that the universe was created January first of this year, with memories implanted in all our minds to make us think that there had once been (for example) Mao Tse-Tung, Mansa Musa, Metternich and Michael Jackson.But it doesn't make sense to believe that the universe was created January first. Just as your sequence of zillions of miraculous creations makes no sense. Especially since scientists have actually observed new species evolving over time.- A new species of Buffalo grass evolved that can tolerate soil contaminated with mine tailings.
(go to page 2 of http://education.nationalgeographic.com/...opedia/speciation)- The worm Nereis acuminata (JSTOR: Access Check)- Madeira island house mice Speciation: more evidence ignored by intelligent design | Nondiscovery Blog
and Are new species still evolving? › Ask an Expert (ABC Science))- A flower called the "American goatsbeard" (Evolution: Watching Speciation Occur | Observations - Scientific American Blog Network)Do a web search on "examples of observed speciation" to find more examples, if you like.

What's interesting about the creationists is that their "design" argument can be turned back on them. If you believe in a deity, then you presumably believe that your deity is a big and complex thingy.So there must have been something to create that big and complex thingy.But presumably the creationists don't believe their god was manufactured by something else, do they?So creationists must believe that something very big and complex can come to exist without an intelligent agency manufacturing it.Which is the whole idea of evolution.

It's the fundamental flaw in the "design" argument. If creationists say that a complex organism couldn't develop naturally, but would have to have a "designer" then what does that say about their god, who (presumably) is a seriously complex structure. Surely they don't contend that they worship something that was "built" by something else.Do you see the contradiction here?

You don't even need to speculate about a First Cause. If the universe is infinite in time (admittedly a big IF!) then there need be no first anything, just causes and effects going back forever. Still, if a deity is a complex thing, and complex things don't develop naturally, then the deity must have been built by something.Which is certainly an odd situation!

Christianity seems to be fading in the UK these days. Could just as easily have been a Hindu or Muslim magpie. Or a druid. Who knows?

I was talking about intelligent design and creationism. Does this mean you consider those to be religious rather than scientific concepts?

So explain why you think I'm wrong. Do you think that complex structures can develop without an intelligent builder being somehow involved?

On the other hand, all this stuff about a First Cause doesn't get to the heart of the issue of evolution. Do living organisms reproduce by the usual methods (giving birth, laying eggs that hatch, releasing spores that land and grow, etc. etc. etc.)? Have they done so throughout the history of the planet?If so, then regardless of whatever First Cause got things started a dozen or so billion years ago, all the living organisms today are descended from an earlier generation which is descended from an earlier generation and so on and so on for millions of years. Since what we see around us is different from what was there a million or ten million or a hundred million years ago, living organisms must have evolved.

If you think I am wrong, you are free to give your reasons.

Seems to me that plenty of living organisms do pretty well without intelligence. Just ask any tree.

And the rocks and stones, they are not sleeping, they are merely planning their next moves, very slowly, very deliberately.

Intelligence is a difficult concept to define precisely, especially if you want to have a definition that includes us humans but does not include dolphins or chimpanzees or beavers or orioles.But surely organisms such as plankton or earthworms have prospered for far longer than humans without the need for intelligence.By the way, what do you think? Do you think we are descended from living organisms (through the usual method of conception and birth) that were very different in the past? Why or why not?

Oh, yes, of course. But the rolling stones, when they stop rolling, may gather moss . . .