"The only thing that can be known is that ..." with an approach like that, you won't know if anyone knows.
On this issue you are an emotional wreck. Conception is not proof. Go ahead prove there is no Creator. Your faith in an atheism approaches that of a zealout - your science is weak -seek the truth. When I tell you that science proves there is a Creator (without any proof) - then you call put me in the same whack job category as atheists.
Several posters are equating Intelligent Design with creationism, Biblical literalism, and an anti-evolution position. I started this thread to point out that evolution and intelligent design can co-exist; they are not mutually exclusive concepts. You can design with and through evolution. Things can be designed to evolve, evolution can be designed, evolution can be used by design. This perspective doesn't prevent one from employing an experimental, inductive approach to the world. It is merely an alternative perspective for exploring and interpreting scientific data. It has nothing to do with proving the existence of God.
Stu do you think anyone truly absolutely 100% knows whether there is a god or whether there isn't a god? The approach is absolute common sense because i know i don't know and I know that no one knows so therefore i can say to people who constantly speculate whether they know or not that they truly don't know as well. Saying their isn't a god is just as factually incorrect as saying there is a god. Yet for some reason the emotionally invested Christians and athiests constantly speculate the subject when nothing can be accomplished.
The fact is of course people know there is a god. I find it constructive to argue against such a thing whose origins lie in terrifying and enslaving people and cultures , enough to divide control and delude them, irrespective of whether or not they truly absolutely 100% know whether that god exists or not.
This ground has been gone over by philosophers and Budhists for decades if not centuries. I understand your proposal that "our" existence might have been designed to evolve the way an AI program can be designed to learn. Where that gets sticky is when you ask the question, "is the designer a member of the same existence as the existence he designed?" It would have to be. You might toss out the possibility that the designer is from another dimension outside of that same existence. But that "existence" has to include even any other dimension. To use the phrase "our existence" is sort of a tribal perspective, imposing us and them subsets to the definition of existence. Even if Existences were hierarchal its inescapable that they too are a network not extra-existent of one another. The debate for intelligent design proposes a creation but fails to include itself in the scheme.
god is not the problem ... people's definition and their tactics at enforcing that definition is the problem. my god exists. and he won't be sending you to hell. (yes, mine is male... hope that doesn't offend the many feminists who frequent ET)
People don't know there is a god. They just think they know just like athiests think they know their isn't a god. Are you being sarcastic when you say of course people know there is a god?
give us some facts about yourself... age, location ... you seem engaged. but your pleading will get you nowhere.
Are you upset about my stance on religion? There is such a thing as a conservative who knows it is impossible to actually know there is a god or not. Don't you know why believing in a god is called faith? I went to a Catholic school for 12 years and never found evidence of a factual god. What pleading are you talking about?