Intelligent Design is not creationism

It's only an endorsement of that paragraph.

An open mind is a good thing, yes?

Meanwhile, let us be vigilant against seduction.

The paragraph describes conditions within an illusiory world, so it is illusive.

Nevertheless, those are the apparent conditions.

Jesus

 

i agree

 

Ahh...

Perhaps I'll push my luck and see if you'll agree with this axiom:

God is Spirit, and Spirit is all there is.


It would follow, then, that the examination of form is the examination of nothing.

But if nothing, why form?

Form, then, must have a purpose.

If Spirit is all there is,

Then,

Form seeks to prove,

A. There is both form and spirit
B. There is only form, and no spirit.

Either of these render the axiom meaningless.

Either the axiom is meaningless, or the "proof" of form is meaningless.



Jesus

 

God is Love

 

forgive me my friend but i must go now...

 

I too would agree with that.

 

Teleologist said:

2cents responded:

Even an atheist and Darwin defender like Michael Ruse disagrees with you. He says:

Despite the fact that modern biology owes so much to teleological thinking, it aggressively shuns any explicit use of such thinking, largely because it is heretical in a Darwinian world. Yet as long as biologists seek to exclude the teleological, a niche is left wide open for others to exploit in their attempts to understand the world. Some form of ID will assert itself not because of public opinion or political pressure, but because it is needed to better understand the world as there will always be someone wanting to better understand the world, even if it means traveling the road less traveled.

 

big deal

 

http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/P...organic_Dust_With_Lifelike_Qualities_999.html

"Physicists Discover Inorganic Dust With Lifelike Qualities

Could helical clusters formed from interstellar dust be somehow alive?
by Staff Writers
Washington DC (SPX) Aug 17, 2007
Could extraterrestrial life be made of corkscrew-shaped particles of interstellar dust? Intriguing new evidence of life-like structures that form from inorganic substances in space have been revealed in the New Journal of Physics. The findings hint at the possibility that life beyond earth may not necessarily use carbon-based molecules as its building blocks. They also point to a possible new explanation for the origin of life on earth.
Life on earth is organic. It is composed of organic molecules, which are simply the compounds of carbon, excluding carbonates and carbon dioxide. The idea that particles of inorganic dust may take on a life of their own is nothing short of alien, going beyond the silicon-based life forms favoured by some science fiction stories.

Now, an international team has discovered that under the right conditions, particles of inorganic dust can become organised into helical structures. These structures can then interact with each other in ways that are usually associated with organic compounds and life itself.

V.N. Tsytovich of the General Physics Institute, Russian Academy of Science, in Moscow, working with colleagues there and at the Max-Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics in Garching, Germany and the University of Sydney, Australia, has studied the behaviour of complex mixtures of inorganic materials in a plasma. Plasma is essentially the fourth state of matter beyond solid, liquid and gas, in which electrons are torn from atoms leaving behind a miasma of charged particles.

Until now, physicists assumed that there could be little organisation in such a cloud of particles. However, Tsytovich and his colleagues demonstrated, using a computer model of molecular dynamics, that particles in a plasma can undergo self-organization as electronic charges become separated and the plasma becomes polarized. This effect results in microscopic strands of solid particles that twist into corkscrew shapes, or helical structures. These helical strands are themselves electronically charged and are attracted to each other.

Quite bizarrely, not only do these helical strands interact in a counterintuitive way in which like can attract like, but they also undergo changes that are normally associated with biological molecules, such as DNA and proteins, say the researchers. They can, for instance, divide, or bifurcate, to form two copies of the original structure. These new structures can also interact to induce changes in their neighbours and they can even evolve into yet more structures as less stable ones break down, leaving behind only the fittest structures in the plasma.

So, could helical clusters formed from interstellar dust be somehow alive? "These complex, self-organized plasma structures exhibit all the necessary properties to qualify them as candidates for inorganic living matter," says Tsytovich, "they are autonomous, they reproduce and they evolve".

He adds that the plasma conditions needed to form these helical structures are common in outer space. However, plasmas can also form under more down to earth conditions such as the point of a lightning strike. The researchers hint that perhaps an inorganic form of life emerged on the primordial earth, which then acted as the template for the more familiar organic molecules we know today."

 

Correcting Misconceptions about Intelligent Design in Jewish Action Magazine

by Casey Luskin on August 20, 2007


You cannot critique a theory for inappropriately concluding “X” when indeed the theory does not conclude “X.” Jewish Action Magazine has an article entitled “Revisiting Intelligent Design” that repeats this common flawed argument for intelligent design. First, the article misrepresents Michael Behe’s arguments as saying that ID proposes “the existence of a supernatural being, whom he calls the ‘intelligent designer,’ meaning, of course, God.” Of course Behe does believe that the designer is God, but Behe has made it clear that as a science, intelligent design does not try to address religious questions about the nature of the designer. So while the designer may be God, the empirical data cited by Behe—information in DNA and complex machines in the cell—do not inform us on that matter. The author then writes that “there is not a single secular scientist who claims that it is necessary to invoke supernatural intervention to explain the animal kingdom,” but this is not accurate, for intelligent design does not invoke the “supernatural,” but rather merely invokes intelligence without digging into questions about the “supernatural.” Moreover, there is a growing body of mainstream scientists who believe that it is not inherently inappropriate to invoke intelligence. Indeed, the author cites the Kitzmiller trial, but during that trial, 85 scientists signed a brief to Judge Jones supporting academic freedom to investigate intelligent design. Clearly there are secular scientists who support ID. Finally, the article’s use of the phrase “secular scientist” is curious: exactly what is a “secular scientist”? Many ID proponents are scientists in the mainstream scientific community. Or is a “secular scientist” one who is not religious? If that is the case, does the author suggest that religious scientists are now disbarred from making their case to the scientific community? Hopefully the author is not making such a prejudiced argument.

The article’s second major mistake is when it claims Behe views his arguments as “ironclad proof.” Again, this also misunderstands intelligent design, which is an inference to the best explanation, and not a deductive proof. The article later tacitly admits it misrepresents Behe as it describes his arguments as saying “this implies design.” The latter description is more accurate. The article’s third major mistake is to claim that evolutionary biologists have taken Behe’s argument and “ripped it to shreds.” It cites a 1996 article by Allen Orr in Boston Review as having demonstrated the “demise of ID,” but apparently the author does not realize Behe forcefully rebutted Orr’s article after it was written. Behe wrote in response to Orr:

"Professor Orr has a mistaken notion of irreducible complexity. I thought I made that clear in my reply, but from his response I suppose I did not, so let me try again. I define irreducible complexity in Darwin’s Black Box as “a single system composed of several well-matched, interacting parts that contribute to the basic function, wherein the removal of any one of the parts causes the system to effectively cease functioning.” Orr, however, uses the term loosely to mean something like “if you remove a part, the organism will die.” In his review he talks about lungs, saying “we grew thoroughly terrestrial and lungs, consequently, are no longer luxuries, they are essential.” The problem is, if you quickly dissect lungs from an animal, many parts of it will continue to work. The liver will work for a while, muscles will twitch, and cells will metabolize until they run out of oxygen. Thus lungs are not absolutely required for the function of those other parts, not in the way that a spring is absolutely required for a standard mousetrap or nexin linkers are required for ciliary function. That’s the problem with using poorly chosen examples, especially at the whole-organ level. I am careful in my book (pp. 46-47) to say that you must look at molecular systems to see if Darwinism can explain their development. When you look at irreducibly complex molecular examples, it is clear that Darwinism has not and, I believe, cannot explain them. Orr’s main line of argument, therefore, simply misses the point.”

The critique in Jewish Action Magazine also assumes that Behe never allows for parts to be added sequentially. Yet this also misunderstands Behe’s argument: the problem for evolution is that some systems do not work unless all the parts are present. So to argue that Behe is refuted because some sub-systems can be built gradually does not explain how the final system assembled in a stepwise fashion.