Moral Argument for God

Yes. You forgot about selection, but yes, chance and selection are superior designers to intelligence, according to the evidence. That's why so many engineers are turning to genetic design models that employ chance and selection instead of designing things directly. I don't understand the question. Cause and effect?

I don't think that is the case.. However, there is a big differnece between life (a self replicating self catalyzing set of chemical reactions), and a cpu.The CPU analogy you used is not valid, since a computer is not self replicating. The chemicals that make up life are. Therein lies the difference.

When complexity reaches a certain level, and can only come about by random mutation and chance and selection. Ha Ha Crashfrog.
Reduce the argument against intelligent design into one sentence.
Only one problem: 1. The fundamental laws of nature and the universe that allow the processes of increased complexity could be the design elements themselves. What better way to insure ever increasing complexity than to design a system that is self regulating and self designing according to ever changing conditions just like those genetic engineers you are mentioning.

It could be.There, of course, is no evidence that it is. It also is totally unneeded for there to be an 'intellence' behind those algorthims.. they stand on their own, naturally.You can keep on pushing back, and saying 'what if , what if'. Some things can never be either proven or disproven. Most of those are just totally unneeded.

1.61803 Since the intelligent design theory requires that anything of great complexity requires that there must be a designer behind it {as in your "design elements"} then we are left with the puzzle of what designed the designer since,it is reasonable to assume,that the designer is of even greater complexity.So,if we ask what designed the designer necessary to support your hypothesis, and,continuing on in like fashion ad infinitum, what designed the designer of the designer of the design,we quickly see the absurdity of the position. But,in designing a system,we then need to ask the mechanism by which this was accomplished,since,in order to place a pattern in nature it seems necessary to place constraints upon the degrees of freedom of the system that the laws of nature reflect.The existence of the mechanism would proceed again,as with the designer,as a consequence of its complexity,into absurdity.

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For those who want some proof that physicists are human, the proof is in
the idiocy of all the different units which they use for measuring energy.

Getting way OT but that is an interesting concept I'd love to discuss with you sometime.

Which is something I've been discussing recently elsewhere (if it's the bit I'm think of - the infinite regression and the "uncaused causer"). There is a discussion in there about 1) the universe and why doesn't ID say it created itself and 2) why Occam's razor goes "BOOOOOOOOOOOO" to ID.You want to propose something Sidelined so we can discuss it?

So god exists so that humans may have morality?

So we are superior because we have morality and we have morality because we are superior.We exist so god must exist?

Charles Knight Sounds good to me. Let me collect the thoughts to establish the topic and I will try to propose it tonight or tomorrow.

That's right. Engineeers (designers) are turning to a superior designed model for inspiration to create something in a new dirrection. But there still is a designer in the middle of it.Why don't I see hyper-creativity in action today with the living species. The best arguement that I have heard is that for Autistic children actually being the beginning of a new species of humanoid. The way that I have heard it, they are a transitional species to a new totally separate new species.

What, just because he's there in the room? You're telling me that just the proximity of intelligence in the room somehow magically inflects the processes of natural selection and random mutation with intelligence?How the hell does that make any sense? Probably because you're not looking for it. How many biology journals do you read a week? I'm going to need some kind of context in regards to your search for hyper-creativity before I'm going to give credence to the claim that you haven't been able to find it. That's stupid. My guess, from interviews with autistic persons, is that while you and I have brains specialized for language and social interaction, they have brains specialized in other ways. Sometimes tey make it work, and sometimes they can't.

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If I understood my Aquinas properly, the existence of moral principles that are basic to human society, per se, can be demonstrated purely through the application of human reason.

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The existence of such principles, in and of themselves, is not sufficient evidence to conclude there is (or isn't) a God.

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True.

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WHY they exist in the first place, well, that's another matter.

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Not really.The tendency to follow such principles was selected for.Those who could not keep from breaking such principles would tend to not enjoy the protections of the group as they would be less welcome in the group, and would certainly be less apt to mate and pass on their genes if they were not accepted into the group.We see such principles in higher primates, like chimps. There are fascinating experiments regarding fairness and reciprocity which show that such social behavior is not shown by humans alone. Page Not FoundSo, clearly, no god needed. Just evolution.

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So the criticism often heard from fundamentalists that atheists/agnostics can't have, or subscribe to, moral principles, really is not a fair argument.

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Of course, we agree.

Wish I had seen this sooner... My two cents:I agree that this cannot be an argument that God exists... though it might be an argument that the existence of God in the minds of the populace is necessary for a stable society. Well, it leads the atheist to reveal himself as someone who has no logical basis for condemning Hitler and rape. The problem is that without God, there is no logical basis for imposing morality on anyone. You cannot say that anyone ought to do anything. Sure, you can say that what Hitler did was not in the best interests of the humanity, but who can say that looking out for the human race is the right thing to do?If there is no God, right and wrong are just as you stated human creations for practical purposes, just like your sneakers. You can take them off whenever you feel like, and no one can has any logical grounds to tell you that you ought to put them back on. Of course, if you're a smart girl, you'll keep them on because that way you won't cut your feet on glass, you'll walk farther faster, and people won't give you wierd looks.If we ask "why" about everything we do, we will eventually come down to either two answers: "because that's what God wants, or because that's what we want"Asking why does God want it is silly because what is, is simply what is. It's like asking why must red be red or the sky blue. Asking why we want it will most likely lead us back to some explanation of evolutionary origin, which carries no intention, and therefore no reason.So... If you are an atheist you have no logical reason to be outraged at anything that is "wrong" and say what anyone "ought" to do. Any outrage you feel is the result of conditioning plus an evolved response designed to improve the survival of the human race. You may decide that what you and others want is in the best interests of society and possibly yourself, so you decide to make rules and play by them, but since the whole thing has no objective foundation, you should feel no obligation to abide by these rules. Any motivation to abide by these rules can only stem from your own desires and knowledge of consequences. If you are a logical purpose driven person, you will be forced to ask "why" even of your own desires and realize there is no answer, and therefore become a nihilist, or if you could care less about purpose, then you can accept your desires for what they are, evolved characteristics and milk the pleasure out of life by fulfilling desires when you get the chance.If you believe in God as the creator and sustainer, then good and evil, right and wrong, are just one more aspect of reality. Sure, they may have evolved with time, but just because we evolved with time, this doesn't make us any less real. We are what we are, and good and evil is what it appears to be. All subjective experience is as real as anything else. So doing right or wrong becomes an area of reality to explore rather than a purposeless tool for survival. Lying goes from a behavior with long term detrimental effects to society and to your ability to fulfill your desires to an immediate attack on this reality of Goodness and Truth and a destruction of yourself and your connection to It.This message has been edited by Hangdawg13, 07-25-2005 12:00 AM

I think what the argument actually shows is that Christians are opposed to morality. Every time the argument comes up, all Christians try to do is to knock down any possible basis for morality. They don't actually offer a viable alternative. Worse we often have the egotistic and anti-human arguments of the sort proposed by Lizard Breath which actively rule out any real morality.As for Hitler, I need hardly remind you that the Bible endorses an example of ethnic genocide. It is easier for an atheist to condemn Hitler than it is for a Christian who seeks to follow the Bible as a moral guide.