Rubbish. Design is inferred by the existence of recognition all the time. You distinguish and infer design by knowledge and existence of shape and pattern . Intelligent design is not made existent through inference, it will require knowledge of an intelligent designer. The whole idea of intelligent design is not about inferring design or 'designers' which can be confirmed ( a drop of water in a pond is a 'designer'), it is about inferring an intelligent designer, of which there need be no inference, as things like drops of water do well enough in designing pattern simply by their own existence. You can't build a theory of an intelligent designer. If you could you would have done so. All you have achieved is to infer one where one is not required and then presumed there must be one, without offering anything in support past 'things are designedâ. The only reason you are arguing for an intelligent designer appears to be because things that occur naturally have design : ie recognizable shape. From that you seem to be saying as they have design, so then there will be - not a designer which already exists in the form of the thing itself ( a drop of water for instance) - but an intelligent designer. But why? Living organisms and inert objects make shapes essentially because they exist. There is no reason you have provided, nor that is essential, to assume they make particular shapes because they have been designed to do so. An intelligent designer would necessarily be such a design maker. Then it too by your argument would require a designer in the same way. You have offered no concrete information on how an infinite regress of intelligent designers is not an intrinsic part of your ID idea. You start out with a kind of acknowledgement that you will not be able to distinguish what sort of intelligent designer you infer, then expect to be able to achieve a working explanation of it. So a working explanation of - you know not what - but you do expect it to be intelligent. Why? Why intelligent why any intelligence in design where non is required? It is demonstrated all the time that design does not require intelligence to be created. Your only argument seems to be akin to ZZzz fallacious ramblings that the thing doing the design must be designed to do design. But for no reason or supportable explanation past inference. The earth is flat is an equivalent inference. You finish in a sort of admission that human beings may never be able to answer some things in principle. I suggest make-believe ideas and groundless concepts of Intelligent Design, Gods and Santa fall into the realms of fantasy which, do not warrant principled answers but deserve a pragmatic 'that's nice now go away and prove it'. You know like science does with things. I would bet the farm ID'ers will get no further better explaining their concept anymore than ZZzz understands snowflakes - or over the past 2 year period made comprehensible how he makes H20 turn to water.
"Your only argument seems to be akin to ZZzz fallacious ramblings that the thing doing the design must be designed to do design." Rubbish, rubbish, rubbish. So there stuey. Design means design, not non design. The "thing" doing the design... LOL! The "thing" must be ignorant? Right? The "thing" must exist for no reason. Right? The "thing" must exist as a product of non design. Right? LOL! The "thing" is flashing to any reasonable person....just how did this "thing" come to existence? Oh yeah, by chance...which or course you can't prove, but assume, and then declare it to be fact, and anyone who disagrees with your is spouting "rubbish." An entire philosophy of life erected on chance...rubbish, isn't it? No, it is a philosophy by design of an atheist who must do everything possible to deny an intelligence greater than himself. Your non ID evangelicalism is duly noted though replete with unshakable faith of the true believer, as well as the circular reasoning, from assumption, to a proof of the assumption by using the first assumption as the supporting evidence to seal the deal. Cracks me up the "path" you are on, and the projection of superiority you project with your "rubbish" comments. I say your path, illustrated below is rubbish, as your avoidance of causation keeps you trucking on the wheel...and all you got is going back several years to your repeated misunderstanding and misrepresentation. Pathetic stu, but that's what stuey do...by design, of course. <img src=http://www.wmmhs.org/users/art/marrero/buttons_etc/man_in_hamster_wheel.gif>
I have no reason to prove you wrong on this one. My argument has never been that I know who the designer is based on science. I have not even been arguing that the universe is designed. I have only been making the point to straighten out all the athiest who for misguided reasons think their faith is superior to people who believe in a creator. I keep my religious beliefs in my beliefs labled as beliegs and I think atheist should understand that to deny a creator is also a belief. The only scientific position is that we do not know. Regarding milliseconds you are correct I should have sub yactoseconds. But the integrity of the point I was making still stands.
..more ZZzz fallacious ramblings. The day you can hold civil discourse with anyone will be the first Read a post properly for once, You don't need more causation when something is the cause itself. The drop of water is the cause for the pattern. All you want to do is shift cause back again to what "caused" the water. So ID sees patterns, assumes an Intelligent Designer, there is not one, the design is done anyway, so shift their ID patterns into mysterious magic realms. ID'ers avoid causation when they insert an unnecessary Intelligent Designer, then the cause of the Intelligent Designer turns into infinite regress. When you get past your "H20 turns to water" and then work on an understanding of snowflakes , you might start to appreciate the nonsense of problems ID creates for itself.
We do not advocate 'denying belief' in a Creator God. We simply say 'Let us provide proofs for our hypotheses. Let us not assert that something is true because our heart tells us it is true and then subsequently claim that this personal belief should form the basis for school curricula'. If the argument is that a Creator God can never be 'proved' in the scientific sense, then let us leave it where it belongs; in the realm of faith. And once again, ad nauseam, is it not bizarre that the Creationists claim on one hand that the central idea of ID/Creation is that it is a scientifically provable alternative to evolution, and then turn right around, as we see here, and complain that science is a faith based belief system that is untenable. I have asked the question 20 times in this thread and have been met with deafening silence on the issue. Perhaps those who sense the contradiction don't want to say anything for fear of breaking ranks (although with so many Z aliases in this thread, it is hard to know what that would mean, exactly).
It's the conservative Christians who believe that their belief is superior. I don't know any atheists that have this "moral superiority" syndrome. Most atheists tend to have an open mind. However, there are atheists who are just as stubborn as the conservative Christians. You're also misunderstanding the "scientific position." The scientific position is not that we don't know. Science doesn't care. There is a strong logical argument that can be made that a Creator does not belong in the realm of science. So you have scientists who are atheists and scientists who are theists. In principle it shouldn't matter. In practice, however, being a believer sometimes can cloud one's judgement in science. One has to be very well disciplined in his/her thinking to not let the religious belief interfere with the science. Not the fault of religion but rather the fault of human nature. That's probably why there are a larger percentage of atheists in science than in the general population. You change miliseconds to sub yoctoseconds, there is no integrity of your point any more. Tell me a physical process faster than sub yoctoseconds today that we understand. If we cannot see anything faster than sub yoctoseconds today, why would there be a problem that we cannot see the first sub sub yoctoseconds 12 billion years ago?
That last paragraph of yours is a very tricky. We never had a disagreement as to the amount of time that point is completely irrelvant. You stated that it did not make sense to ask a question about something before time began. I pointed out that time and everthing science can tell us happened after the big bang. And we know that the big bang happened before that piont in time - (which turns out to be desiginated the Planck area.) So since we know something happened before time began. it was not inllogical for me to ask the question. You got off on the tangent of how long that period time was. The length of that period of time is an extraneous point. That an event happened before time began was and is the point that made you comment incorrect. As to your other comments - I am not no nor have I ever been supporting anyone that says you have to believe something symbol because their faith says so. Atheists and any Christians who attempt to tell you they know about the creator and you should accept their belief as correct without proof - are simply asking you to accept their faith. Who cares. But, it is the athiests who frequently falsely act like science is on their side of the argument. I am just pointing out their ignorance.
It is illogical to ask what happened before time began. Your point was that there is a finite amount of time between the Big Bang and what we can know from science. That point is wrong and illogical. We can infinitely approach the point of the Big Bang, to as close as our current technology allows. In other words, if we can see things happening in 1 yoctosecond today, we can get as close as 1 yoctosecond from the beginning of time. If we improve that time by a factor of 10 tomorrow, then we can push that limit by a factor of 10 closer to the beginning of time. Time did not begin 1 yoctosecond after the Big Bang. Time began at exactly the point of the Big Bang. You are wrong and you still refuse to learn.
You're just showing your ignorance. Atheists never made the claim that science is on their side of the argument. They're just trying to debunk the religious establishment's attempt to hijack science to serve their religion. Throughout history, there have been many attempts by the religious establishment to prove the existance of God from pseudoscience arguments. Obviously none have been successful. But each time it took the atheists to stand up to the nonsense of the religious establishment. ID is a current example of these attempts. If you leave science alone, atheists would be happy to leave your religion alone.