Some of my issues with "intelligent design."

[mrdevious]

BTW, in this entire thread nobody has yet tackled the issues I brought up in the original post. Is somebody going to give me a little intellectually stimulating debate, or should I throw up my arms and except I'm just going to get more "I know I'm right, I put my faith in god."

My fellow posters, please, realize that if your beliefs are true then questioning them and researching the arguments against them (as well as for)will only confirm what you now hold so dear. and if it doesn't, then it's better to have found the truth.

[Stemis516]

lol intellectually stimulating??? u guys ruined that awhile ago

im not necessarily disagreeing with you guys, im just arguing more for an open mind....the fact that you guys fight so hard for this and that some of the ignorance clearly shows through your logic worries me

i on the other hand am open to anything...sure i have my set of beliefs which i personally believe to be the most likely through my understanding of truth, but i am fully aware that i am most likely wrong, or at the very least could be wrong...in fact the statement that probably most clearly sums it up for me is that id be willing to bet that no one got it right but that wont matter in the end

[harris7]

im not necessarily disagreeing with you guys, im just arguing more for an open mind....the fact that you guys fight so hard for this and that some of the ignorance clearly shows through your logic worries me

IF you see a flaw in my logic point it out. I do not believe there is one, and the fact that you havent pointed any out makes me think you are bluffing.

And you know, you can stop blaming our disagreements on my "ignorance".

a more open mind... an open mind dosn't mean believing everything. it means considering everything criticaly.
I have done this, it sounds like you have two. but I do not believe you can properly consider evolution without a good understanding of it.

I assume you dont have a good understanding of it because really few people do. i didn't untill last year when i formaly learned aoub it

[ate]

You gotta admit, it's a pretty intelligent design.

I mean who could come up with a design that actually evolves based on it's environment.

[Oneironaut]

There is no doubt that evolution is a fact. It is the only conceivable explanation for how a complex intelligence of any type could arise in the universe. As a million creationists have already pointed out, complex things don't just come out of nowhere by chance. They come into existence only by small incremental changes to self-replicating beings whose occasional mutations provide a gene pool in which natural selection selects more advantageous forms for surviving and replicating in a given environment. If there is an intelligence complex enough to design universes out there, then it must have evolved somehow. And if it evolved, it does not deserve the name "God".

Sorry to burst your bubbles, but we are apes. The DNA sequences of the primates have been studied extensively, and mathematically it's simply impossible that our DNA just looks exactly like it's descended from ape DNA through sheer luck. Either God is trying to trick us into thinking we're closely related to the other ape species, or we really are apes.

And honestly, if you were God, why would you create man in your own image, and then go on to make chimpanzees in 97% of your own image, and gorillas in 95% of your own image, and so forth? Why would you even design it so their junk DNA (the huge strands of DNA that don't do anything at all) looks uncannily similar to each other?

Why would you go around making DNA strands that can be arranged in hierarchical evolutionary trees that look mathematically identical to what we would expect from random modifications and Darwinian natural selection? Why would you place abundant fossil evidence of proto-human like creatures, the Australopithecines and the various species of Homo, to make it look like there is a continuous line between apes and humans?

The universe is not made for us. We have to get over our arrogant aspirations and accept that. We, and the rest of the life-forms on this planet, are just the product of what happens when natural selection is allowed to develop simple self-replicating molecules into ever more complex forms over geological timescales. There is no giant father figure in the sky looking down on us, guiding our particular species, meticulously looking after the world for our benefit.

In this world without meaning are those who pretend
that their lives and their deeds serve some grand cosmic end
and that they are the reason for all that exists
and the fate of the cosmos is right in their fists

And to them we're not apes with less hair and big brains,
we're the center of everything there's to explain!
Not just masses of atoms traversing through space,
rather far grander things from a far grander place!

We're just specks on this planet which, I do believe,
is much larger than anything we can conceive,
and that planet's a speck to its star that's a speck
in a universe which is gigantic as heck!

[Oneironaut]

You gotta admit, it's a pretty intelligent design.

I mean who could come up with a design that actually evolves based on it's environment.

It's not a design. It's just what happens when entities become capable of making pretty faithful copies of themselves. Once you get that going, there's no way to prevent it!

The real question is, who could come up with a design for a designer who can create the whole universe and millions of complex lifeforms? And who could come up with a design for an intelligent designer designer? Surely if God created the whole universe, and has the machinery for monitoring everything that goes on inside it, and the machinery for generating all the biological diversity around us, then he must be way more intricate and complex than life itself!

[Stemis516]

IF you see a flaw in my logic point it out. I do not believe there is one, and the fact that you havent pointed any out makes me think you are bluffing.

And you know, you can stop blaming our disagreements on my "ignorance".

a more open mind... an open mind dosn't mean believing everything. it means considering everything criticaly.
I have done this, it sounds like you have two. but I do not believe you can properly consider evolution without a good understanding of it.

I assume you dont have a good understanding of it because really few people do. i didn't untill last year when i formaly learned aoub it

the flaw in ur logic is that u accept evolution to be 100% true without a doubt in ur mind

gravity is 100% true, thats why its called a law....show me a person who doubts the existence of gravity plz

[Stemis516]

It's not a design. It's just what happens when entities become capable of making pretty faithful copies of themselves. Once you get that going, there's no way to prevent it!

The real question is, who could come up with a design for a designer who can create the whole universe and millions of complex lifeforms? And who could come up with a design for an intelligent designer designer? Surely if God created the whole universe, and has the machinery for monitoring everything that goes on inside it, and the machinery for generating all the biological diversity around us, then he must be way more intricate and complex than life itself!

the very definition of God proves your statement wrong....

[mrdevious]

the flaw in ur logic is that u accept evolution to be 100% true without a doubt in ur mind

gravity is 100% true, thats why its called a law....show me a person who doubts the existence of gravity plz

Actually gravity is a theory (that scary word that creationists constantly mix up with "hypothesis"). The law of gravitation, however, is indeed the law you speak of.

[mrdevious]

lol intellectually stimulating??? u guys ruined that awhile ago

im not necessarily disagreeing with you guys, im just arguing more for an open mind....the fact that you guys fight so hard for this and that some of the ignorance clearly shows through your logic worries me

i on the other hand am open to anything...sure i have my set of beliefs which i personally believe to be the most likely through my understanding of truth, but i am fully aware that i am most likely wrong, or at the very least could be wrong...in fact the statement that probably most clearly sums it up for me is that id be willing to bet that no one got it right but that wont matter in the end

You're not letting off as the open minded person you keep claiming to be, just presenting arogance through ignorance. Simply stating that everything is unsure and never taking a stance isn't "open minded", it's just choosing not to take any risks or make any real effort to search for the truth. Real open mindedness isn't shying away from reality, it's engaging in intellectual debate and considering all points of logic so as to get closer to the truth than you were before.