Some of my issues with "intelligent design."

[mrdevious]

I don't mean this as an attack on anybody for holding such beliefs, but I do bleieve it's essential to give serious and logical consideration to both sides of such a claim. It's nobody's "fault" for holding beliefs for or against god, but merely their belief that their reasoning is sound, is what's faulty. That being said...


INTELLIGENT DESIGN:

Before considering intelligent design, also consider this; does it not seem a bit suspicious to you that that we carry SO many behavioral similarities to all the lower species, almost as if we're related (IE. evolution). When dolphin's reach the equivilant of their teen years, they often leave the pack temporily with other teenage dolphins and go to other dolpin packs. There they form friendships with other teenage dolphins, they often pick fights with the other teenagers, and often screw the teenage girls from that pack.
Look at kids, especially in high school. They act just like animals in the pack mentality. I remember how all the boys were constantly trying to vye for dominance, picking fights with the weaker ones to secure their dominance over them, fighting the stronger ones to climb the dominance ladder. This is even more prevelant in prison societies.
Puberty: pretty much every complex organism goes through a stage of sexual developement similar to puberty, whether it be boys turning into men, or tadpoles turning into frogs.
Flirting. Have you ever seen a dog or a gorilla try to strut his stuff in front of a female to impress her, show off his masculinity and strength, and often be shot down by the less-than-impressed female? I've seen dogs do the EXACT same thing that guys do in bars, and the same goes for every animal that fights for a female.

Not to metion our genetics. We share 99.95% of our genetic code with neanderthal's (where do all these sub-genus version of humans fall into the bible anyway?). We share 98.5% of the genetic code with monkeys, just a coincidence I suppose, even though genetic codes have billions upon billions of pieces of informaiton. In fact every species on earth, including plant life, has a certain degree of their genetic code that's shared with everything else.

Mammals: We, like it or not, are mammals. There are tonnes of species on this planet who "coincidentially" fall into the same genetic family as us, that being mamilian. We, like so many animals, all have mamary glands (breasts) and use them to feed our offspring. We nurture, care for, and protect them in much the same way as every other mammal.

Dinosaurs: I'm not really sure how they'd fall into the 6,000 year old earth claimed by many creationists. Many people make silly claims like "the great flood wore them down quickly and made them look older". That simply doesn't work. We don't test the age of dinosaur, and MANY other and older fossil's by by "looking" at them and guessing their age, we use carbon dating and a couple other methods I forgot at the moment. Carbon dating measures the rate of radiological decay within the carbon-based lifeform, and the rate of decay is 100% consistent. The life-span of radiological decay can be measured up to 500 million years.

------------------------------------------------------

Now in considering intelligent design, and the desigh behind it:


Such a logical answer to our complexity isn't it? It always struck me as odd that in god's "intelligent design", he would create the vastly varried plethora of diseases we have today. I mean he couldn't just create one, or a huge variety of diseases that efficiently and relatively painlessly kill us. Instead he had to create the Ebola virus, where you liquify your organs and shit them out; AIDS, where you can fall victim to any number of infections and suffer for years; cancer, just to endure the pain and slow degrading of your body for weeks/months/years before death; the common cold... you know, just for some inconvenient and needless suffering; ecoli or salmonela, for several days of horrible stomach pain, diarhea, nausea, and I'm sure a few more that you have a good chance of surviving anyway....

But not just the foreign invaders of course. Apparently god saw it fit to design my body to have permanent and intense neurological pain that couldn't be fixed and we still can't find an answer to, other than a couple specific injuries from 5 years ago that have long since healed. This all happened when I had strong faith in the lord btw. My little brother, who's a really good kid, for some reason has to endure aspergers and all the social and psychological problems that go with that. My dad gets the fun of diabetes, not sure what the point is there....

And while we're at it, lets not forget mosquito's! God just woke up in a bad mood on the 6th day I guess, and decided to just make us all really itchy. The only other function carried out by mosquito's of course, is to arbitrarily spread malaria and kill millions of people every year.

Poisonous snakes? well I guess that's just the leftover from god turning, um... how did it go again? It seems Satan turned into a legged snake in the garden of eden, then after all his doings god punished him by taking away the snakes legs.... even though Satan only took the form of a snake, and there are clearly thousands of varriations of snake, and Satan was clearly banished to hell as his punishment.... well maybe they're just poisonous for the heck of it. Lets face it, the story of Adam and Eve sounds no more credible or logical than any piece of mythology about thor or poseidon.

Our reproductive systems:

- Why are women designed with a reproductive system that requires at least 4 days of severe menstrual cramps, bleeding through the vagina, and awful mood swings? Don't even trying feeding me that chauvinistic crap about punishing ALL women for the supposed crimes of eve. It seems a recurring theme in the bible is punishing hundreds of generations of decendents for the crimes of their anscestors. Sounds like primitive thinking of an ancient day to me.

- Boys: why is that when they go through puberty and have their voices "break" every so often during the maturity process? God just thought it would be funny to have friends/classmates laugh at them at awkward times?

- why must our balls be so delicate?

- Why must sex on the first time be so painfull for girls?

- why are there sexually transmitted diseases that are incredibly painfull and/or itchy, but don't kill? Is there a purpose there?


Why did god make Earth such an isufficient size to withstand our innevitable exhaustion of resources and pulluting of the planet? Free will or no, god would have seen it coming, and he could have made the Earth a LOT larger and with more adundant resources.

Wisdom Teeth: Those damn painfull teeth that grow at the back of our jaw, don't have enough to room to flourish, and generally get in the way. Wisdom teeth serve no purpose other than to help dentists make a living, and are certainly not suited to the homosapien body. It's almost as if.... I don't know, they were left over from an ascestor that we evolved from who had a wider jaw (we've found plenty of fossil's of such).


Though unfortunately, it seems if a person is entirely devoted to their faith, no amount of arguments, no matter how perfect or logical, will sway them. The entire premise of faith is to put desire before logic, to convince yourself so thoroughly that blind faith is an attribute, that to even consider otherwise would be a crime against god. And so any arguments to the contrary are readily dismissed and not seriously considered. But as I came to think about my faith as I got older, I felt compelled to ask questions and believed that if god really did exist, he could easily stand up to any and all challenges to his existence.

"faith", to me, is the ultimate insult to human intelligence. That's not to say a person cannot have faith and be intelligent, but it is nontheless a means of instilling devotion in the mind so powerfully that it disallows one from considering the logic behind it.

mrdevious Reviewed by mrdevious on 12-11-2006. Some of my issues with "intelligent design." I don't mean this as an attack on anybody for holding such beliefs, but I do bleieve it's essential to give serious and logical consideration to both sides of such a claim. It's nobody's "fault" for holding beliefs for or against god, but merely their belief that their reasoning is sound, is what's faulty. That being said... INTELLIGENT DESIGN: Before considering intelligent design, also consider this; does it not seem a bit suspicious to you that that we carry SO many behavioral Rating: 5

[Polymirize]

inquiring minds want to know huh?

actually it's a pretty nice list D.

[Squishy(tm)]

Mr Devious ... you couldnt have explained this any better ... I concur ... how old are you btw?

[MastaChronic]

i consider "intelligent design" to be just another ploy made by the chruche to garner more potential donaters and/or church goers. they parade it around as science but it is just another sneaky attempt to infiltrate schools and bypass the seperation of church and state

[Stemis516]

u give plenty of logical reasons for intelligent design but i have yet to see real proof of long term evolution resulting in us coming from apes

therefore you are just the same as a "person of faith" that u mention....it takes just as much faith to believe in evolution as it does to doubt it....nothing has been proven

keep in mind, when it comes down to it, i believe in evolution...i say belive because if there was real proof of evolution then there wouldnt be any creationists left because the decision would be obvious

u listed alot of evidence that is pro evolution just like many creationists can list evidence against intelligent design...evidence and proof are not the same thing

i hate to play devils advocate but i hate when people single out people because of faith and faith alone when in reality every1 who is for intelligent design in the end, is going on faith too...including me

[MastaChronic]

u give plenty of logical reasons for intelligent design but i have yet to see real proof of long term evolution resulting in us coming from apes

therefore you are just the same as a "person of faith" that u mention....it takes just as much faith to believe in evolution as it does to doubt it....nothing has been proven

keep in mind, when it comes down to it, i believe in evolution...i say belive because if there was real proof of evolution then there wouldnt be any creationists left because the decision would be obvious

u listed alot of evidence that is pro evolution just like many creationists can list evidence against intelligent design...evidence and proof are not the same thing

i hate to play devils advocate but i hate when people single out people because of faith and faith alone when in reality every1 who is for intelligent design in the end, is going on faith too...including me

there is plenty of proof.
we can see a miniaturized version of evolution by watching the influenza virus. we need a new innoculation every few years and why? because it evolves a resistance to the present vaccine.

[muffinman]

i am amazed, but one thing i must point out, the AIDS virus from what i have heard was actually man made or so it seems to me i'll see if i can find my sources brb.

[Pass That Shit]

Stemis,
You hit the nail right on the head.

Mr. Devious chooses to put his faith in man, and I choose to put mine in God.
You can try as hard as you like, but you will NEVER prove God wrong. It's not possible.

[harris7]

u give plenty of logical reasons for intelligent design but i have yet to see real proof of long term evolution resulting in us coming from apes

therefore you are just the same as a "person of faith" that u mention....it takes just as much faith to believe in evolution as it does to doubt it....nothing has been proven

keep in mind, when it comes down to it, i believe in evolution...i say belive because if there was real proof of evolution then there wouldnt be any creationists left because the decision would be obvious

u listed alot of evidence that is pro evolution just like many creationists can list evidence against intelligent design...evidence and proof are not the same thing

I always like to point this out,

In science evolution is considered FACT.

as well evolution isn't a theory saying that organisms changed and differentiated creating new theories.

evolution is an explanation as to WHY these things happened. there is no doubt that it has occurred, fossil records show it. Genetic rRNA maps show it.

PLEASE if you know any "logical" reasons to believe in creationism make a thread, i've never heard one. and i've looked good and hard 4 one.

i even made a thread asking for one, none came up. wonder why

also, he is arguing against intelligent design (i think you gots your terms mixed up). Intelligent design = creationism

as well, if you havenâ??t seen the evidence then you havent looked. if you are interested i can give you links.

But you are correct about one thing, there is a huge difference between evidence and proof. In science there isnâ??t proof, only evidence and disproving. This is the misunderstanding people have about science that allows creationists to make their arguments to the ignorant (no offence)

[harris7]

And I go on:

The only “Faith” one needs to believe in evolution is faith that we are observing reality. And faith that we are not being completely mislead in a similar fashion as in the Matrix.

I can understand that for you, someone who doesn’t know much about evolution, might have to accept it on faith. You say you only “believe” in it because some people don’t, so you assume they are speaking from reasonable footing.

What does that mean about people who believe that the white race is superior.
Nothing supports that, yet people believe it.

It is all related to the power of beliefs and our resistance to change them.

And… We didn’t evolve from apes. What happened, approximately:
Is that we share our origin with the apes. We both evolved from the same organism.
So at one time there was a big population of our ancestor, the population got divided some how and each sect went their separate ways. Then experienced different environmental stresses and turned out different after a few million years.


To muffinman:

As well, humans didn’t create the HIV virus… you should check your sources. Humans haven’t created Any virus it is far beyond our ability. WE can modify them, but we didn’t. HIV came from some species of Ape in Africa and it mutated and crossed over to humans.