How Intelligent Design Works?

[Martin]

From: www.people.howstuffworks.com

Not so long ago, there were two major competing theories in the United States regarding the origins of life: evolution and creationism. Evolution represented science's opinion of how the universe began, and creationism offered the religious explanation. It was pretty cut and dry. Then came "intelligent design."

The intelligent design (ID) movement claims that life as we know it could not have developed through random natural processes -- that only the guidance of an intelligent power can explain the complexity and diversity that we see today.

How does intelligent design explain the origins of life? Does it fit the criteria of a scientific theory, or is it religious dogma in a scientific wrapper?

[orangekea]

I suspect Intelligent Design is Creationism camouflaged as scientific theory, Martin. From what little I hear about the US school system, ID may have been thought of as a kind of compromise by Christian/Theistic parents concerned about their kids being taught Evolution rather than creation by God. If Intelligent Design would be accepted in a school, teachers could mix up both theories in class, asserting that however life developed, an intelligent Creator was guiding this process. Nice, both (secular) State and Bible then are respectively paid lipservice and obeyed.

The problem many evolutionists have with this, is that Natural Selection, which kills off whatever doesn't work, allowing functionality to reproduce, is an extremely effective (=INTELLIGENT!) way to design lifeforms, yet it does not require an intelligent Creator God to give direction.


orangekea

[Carol Nistri]

Whats wrong with saying We Dont Know,why does there have to be an explanation for the unexplainable?

[orangekea]

Originally Posted by Carol Nistri

Whats wrong with saying We Dont Know,why does there have to be an explanation for the unexplainable?

It goes against human curiosity: we are natural born Know It Alls, Carol.

[orangekea]

Martin, I'm very happy to see Wiki online again, and here's their ID article. Nice one too.

The Wiki overview seems to imply the two real movements competing were (religious) Creationism, stating that God created our world, versus Evolution Theory, saying that random events and competition between lifeforms resulted in our known reality.

Intelligent Design is an American religious-political movement, born out of necessity after a 1987 Supreme Court ruling made Creationism unconstitutional for teaching in public schools. Why unconstitutional: teaching a creating God in school is not allowed. So ID thinkers/authors simply removed the religious language (God, Bible, Genesis, Sin, Great Flood, Noah's Ark) from Creationism, replacing it with a theoretical Intelligent Design or Designer, and hoped to keep these teachings within US schools.

Actually, I don't have a problem with giving children both extensive religious (Creationism included!!) information, plus a solid understanding of Evolution.

But the problem with ID is that it is dishonest, religious belief MASQUERADING as science.


orangekea

[Skeptical]

The intelligent design people will usually take the example of the human eye saying that it is too perfect to have come up by random chance. I think that's absurd, considering that Nature has had billions of years and many millions of chances to get it right.

The thing I don't get is why they can't think of evolution as the mechanism by which God carries out his creation - what's so tough about that?

S

[Jurgen]

When I look at animals and start to think how they've become as they are I can't help to get the feeling there is an intelligence behind it all.
Take a seemingly common thing among animals namely protective colouring. I know how natural selection works and how the things that work stay and what doesn't dies out.
Take fish and other sea animals. bright from below and dark on their backs. Hard to see them for predators from below and above. It's simple but effective and when you start to think about it, it's insainly brilliant... almost intelligenty designed.

Zebras which stand in a group look like a single large animal for big predators.
The Praying Mantis and stick insects mimic the movement of twigs moving in the wind to get close to their pray. The disign is more intelligent than the creature itself!
Not to mention camouflage as squids and chameleons possess.

[Miss Deetective]

Originally Posted by Jurgen

When I look at animals and start to think how they've become as they are I can't help to get the feeling there is an intelligence behind it all.
Take a seemingly common thing among animals namely protective colouring. I know how natural selection works and how the things that work stay and what doesn't dies out.
Take fish and other sea animals. bright from below and dark on their backs. Hard to see them for predators from below and above. It's simple but effective and when you start to think about it, it's insainly brilliant... almost intelligenty designed.

Zebras which stand in a group look like a single large animal for big predators.
The Praying Mantis and stick insects mimic the movement of twigs moving in the wind to get close to their pray. The disign is more intelligent than the creature itself!
Not to mention camouflage as squids and chameleons possess.

Ok...but this same god who can, and supposedly did all that, seems incapable of preventing a LOT of suffering in this world!!! That same god turns a deaf ear and a blind eye to the sufferings and needs of this "perfect" world he is supposed to have created!!!!
Imo, ID can also be applied to the ancient alien theory....perhaps an alien race is responsible for our creation and evolution!!! Creation in the sense of manipulating our DNA billions of years ago and then monitoring our evolution since then. That makes a whole lot more sense to me.

[orangekea]

Originally Posted by Skeptical

The intelligent design people will usually take the example of the human eye saying that it is too perfect to have come up by random chance. I think that's absurd, considering that Nature has had billions of years and many millions of chances to get it right.

The thing I don't get is why they can't think of evolution as the mechanism by which God carries out his creation - what's so tough about that?

S

Tough, Skeptical? I suppose because God is no philosophically neutral idea like explaining severe bouts of flatulence, cloud formation or Superstring Theory. Once real, he's the Big Guy in the sky telling you what's right vs. wrong, hell vote Rick Santorum (for US believers) for all I know !!

Perhaps it goes the other way round: many theist believers will feel comfortable with a version of Creationism. Including one with God guiding evolution. Atheists and Agnostics instead tend to like Evolution more, because it dispenses with the need for a Creator God.


orangekea

[dr wu23]

One of the most interesting books I read on ID was The Cosmological Anthropic Principle by Barrow and Tipler.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_D._Barrow
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthropic_principle
In astrophysics and cosmology, the anthropic principle is the philosophical argument that observations of the physical Universe must be compatible with the conscious life that observes it. Some proponents of the argument reason that it explains why the Universe has the age and the fundamental physical constants necessary to accommodate conscious life. As a result, they believe that the fact is unremarkable that the universe's fundamental constants happen to fall within the narrow range thought to allow life.
The strong anthropic principle (SAP) as explained by Barrow and Tipler (see variants) states that this is all the case because the Universe is compelled, in some sense, to have conscious life eventually emerge. Douglas Adams used the metaphor of a living puddle examining its own shape, since, to those living creatures, the universe may appear to fit them perfectly (while in fact, they simply fit the universe perfectly). Critics argue in favor of a weak anthropic principle (WAP) similar to the one defined by Brandon Carter (see variants), which states that the universe's ostensible fine tuning is the result of selection bias: i.e., in the long term, only survivors can observe and report their location in time and space.


Those who support ID have taken this concept further to say that since things are the way they are, set up for life to emerge, they must have been designed that way. I don't think the Fundamentalists started this line of reasoning but some scientists who are religious. But some Christans use it to support Creationism in some forms.

But if one does believe in 'God' or a Creator in some manner, theists, then by default they have to believe in ID in some form since 'God' is then responsible for the Universe and was the one who 'designed' it. Being agnostic I honestly sit on the fence on this since I can see valid philosophical arguments that support both positions.