An alternative? Are you suggesting that a mere 10,000 years after leaving our caves that we are capable of limiting the altneratives to 2? Perhaps the Science has yet to be invented that explains how things came to be. It seems that many present and past scientists have philosophized about the question without resorting to childish name calling, or ridiculing one side or the other. Indeed, the father of the Scientific Method proposed his own theory on "Intelligent Design"... and How I could misrepresent Hawkings , WHEN I SIMPLY QUOTED HIM, is beyond me. My Analysis? This thread is a total fucking joke, filled with small-minded, bigoted people. These people are basically advocating that Aristotle be banned from public schools. Frankly, this thread could have been condensed into a few posts, because there really is not alot to debate about in concrete terms. I've played devil's advocate, and basically wasted my time, mainly because I felt compelled to based on all the "flying unicorn" rhetoric and "christian wacko" references. "Things look designed" ...... there really isn't much to argue about in this statement. Indeed, Giants in philosophy and Science have noticed the same thing. It seems the crew here has decided for everybody... ... "NOPE! It's Either CHANCE OR YOUR WORTHLESS SANTA CLAUS FAIRY TALES!" later, adios', not-if-i-see-you-first.... done and doner PRE-CHRIST CHRISTIANS... you know, christians long before christ even walked the earth. (if he ever did): ========================================= Plato (c. 427âc. 347 BCE) posited a "demiurge" of supreme wisdom and intelligence as the creator of the cosmos in his work Timaeus. For Plato, the demiurge lacked the supernatural ability to create "ex nihilo" or out of nothing. The demiurge was able only to organize the "anake." The anake was the only other co-existent element or presence in Plato's cosmogony. Plato's teleological perspective is also built upon the analysis of a priori order and structure in the world which he had already presented in The Republic. Aristotle (c. 384â322 BCE) also developed the idea of a creator of the cosmos, often referred to as the "Prime Mover" in his work Metaphysics. Aristotle's views have very strong aspects of a teleological argument, specifically that of a prime mover who, so to speak, looks ahead in setting the cosmos into motion. Indeed, Aristotle argued that all nature reflects inherent purposiveness and direction. Cicero (c. 106âc. 43 BCE) also made one of the earliest known teleological arguments. In de Natura Deorum (On the Nature of the Gods) Cicero stated, "The divine power is to be found in a principle of reason which pervades the whole of nature". He was writing from the cultural background of the Roman religion. In Roman mythology the creator goddess, Gaia was borrowed from Greek mythology. The Romans called her Tellus or Terra. "When you see a sundial or a water-clock, you see that it tells the time by design and not by chance. How then can you imagine that the universe as a whole is devoid of purpose and intelligence, when it embraces everything, including these artifacts themselves and their artificers?" (Cicero, De Natura Deorum, ii. 34) Augustine of Hippo (354â430 CE) presented a classic teleological perspective in his work, City of God. He describes the "city of man" and essentially posits that God's plan is to replace the city of man with the city of God (at some as-yet-unknown point in the future). Whether this is to happen gradually or suddenly is not made clear in Augustine's work. He did not, however, make a formal argument for the existence of God; rather, God's existence is already presumed and Augustine is giving a proposed view of God's teleology. Augustine's perspective follows from and is built upon the neo-Platonic views of his era, which in turn have their original roots in Plato's cosmogony.
Not if you're a mystic who believes in magic and ghosts and goblins. If you're a free thinker who values the spirit of human endeavour and objective inquiry, you don't base your life or work on assumptions about how things 'look'. You find proofs. It has been established that ID can never be proved, since it is a purely faith based belief system. The reason that it can never be proved is that implies a Designer and that leads directly to Creation and thus to God. The existence of God will never be proved, until the heavens open up and a thousand angels come down with trumpets and a bunch of multi-eyed goats come raining down and a lake of fire and brimstone appears for sinners like me. I for one am not holding my breath. I just saw a program about how these modders were modifying a Cadillac coupe. They were using a $1.2 million dollar laser shaping machine that could cut steel to within 2 mm tolerances. It was a beautiful thing to see this machine at work. The machine was the product of the hard work of literally thousands of researchers. While they were working, guided by the spirit of objective inquiry (the only thing that would allow them to create the possibility of the machine, since basing their actions on their ASSUMPTIONS about what is true or not true would lead to nothing), others were mumbling incantations and dreaming about life in the hereafter and fantasizing about the Supreme Creator of life on earth. Thank goodness for men like these, the engineers of human progress.
do you think they believe in god? do you think they might be religious? do you think it possible that they machine could simply randomly fall into place? hey man, i don't claim to have any answers. I'm simply a software engineer, not a witch doctor.
Yes, I admit that some of the engineers whose work led to the development of this machine might have believed in God. But I suspect they would reject the idea that their personal mystical beliefs should the basis for public policy. I am dead sure that the majority of Christian engineers whose work led to the development CO2 lasers would not advocate the idea that Western society should be 'remade in a manner more consonant with theistic ideals'. This is the stated goal of those who rebranded Creationism as ID and are attempting to push this mystical agendum onto those of us who do not share the faith. Religion is a private matter and should be kept private. The question is meaningless. It is easy to show that the machine was built by humans. It will never, ever be shown that life on earth was designed. Since it will never be proved, it is of no value to anyone who doesn't buy into the Christian story of Genesis.
neophyte321 said: TraderNik replied: Are you claiming you can prove non-design? If not, then your belief in non-design is like believing in ghosts and goblins. Show us how your non-design belief is based on anything more substantial than how things look to you.
TraderNik wrote: Perhaps, but if the design inference generates testable hypotheses that help us better understand biotic reality it will prove to be useful. That's all I expect of it.
Sorry, science does not proceed according to how things look or how they don't look. We observe a naturally occurring phenomenon, then we try to come up with explanations but (are you ready to be shut down forever?) We don't believe in any of them until we have proof I don't have a belief in non-design or a non-belief in non-design. I just observe and then try to come up with theories which explain the observations. If I come up with a theory that can never be proved or disproved like ID/Creation, I discard it. The faithful have faith, so they don't discard it. They have no need for proofs. For people like you, it is enough to ASSERT. The entire ID/Creation argument is based on ASSERTION. This will always be the case since there is only one way that ID/Creation can be proved - only one. That is - the day the heavens open up and a thousand angels come down with trumpets and a bunch of multi-eyed goats come raining down and a lake of fire and brimstone appears and all sinners, including myself apparently, fall into the lake and the righteous ascend and take their place in the Kingdom of God. Aside from that, ID/Creation can never be proved. The ID/Creationists, for all their hand waving, have never, nor will they ever, come up with one testable hypothesis that substantiates ID/Creation as the origin of life on earth. We waited for it for a total of what, 1400 post in all? Not one example. Just a bunch of faith-mongering talk. End of story.
This statement is gobledygook. Can you actualy propose a hypothesis inferred from design which can actually be tested? If so, then state the hypothesis.
This post is another pure appeal to authority. No hypothesis, no test. Nature doesn't look designed to me. When I view the landscape from an aircraft, I can see the design of cities, visible from the obvious symmetrical nature of the construction. But where the city runs up against the mountain range it is obvious that the mountains are not symmetrically constructed. They don't fit into the city plan, and they don't allow for places where roads can be built easily. The water that runs off of the mountains doesn't come down in a straight line towards a perfectly round lake. The water runs off in any number if tiny rivulets which slowly combine in no particular order until a winding creek becomes a river and finally falls into an irregularly shaped depression to form a lake or an ocean. Rocks fall from the mountainside when the wind blows and water works the rock to the point then the rock cannot remain in place without succumbing to the pull of gravity. I can't set my clock by when any of these events occur -- they just happen until one day the rock falls, and when it falls, no telling where it will come to rest. It may plop into a stream and divert the water to a different route, or smash into the head of a passing bear, killing it and providing a meal for a pack of wolves who would have otherwise died, had the rock not fallen when and where it did. Whereas in the city, alarms ring in the morning and people get up and they go to work at the same time, in the same cars down predictable roads. The roads don't necessarily follow the easiest path to the lowest point in the city. The roads frequently are built to take the driver on a path which directly challenges gravity, because the people who designed the road wanted to go a different way. Elevators are built to drag people to the top of towers because the people want to go there. Birds don't build elevators to defy gravity so that they can accomplish their work in trees. Birds are endowed with wings and they get their meals by accepting gravity as reality and attacking meals down below them. You want things to look designed, and that's the way that they will look. But, if you just open your eyes, you will quickly see where the design ends and the randomness begins. Vacant lots are only designed at their edges. Within the edges, things are pretty damn unpredictable.