Intelligent Design: Did you design yourself?

[Zidneya]

No, IT/Creationism is a claim. Look at the many imperfections of the human body. It leads us to conclude that any such designer is incompetent.

That's one of those statements that are funny because it's right.

The human body is an interesting thing, it has a recreation center next to a waste disposal facility ; Robin William in Man of the year

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Intelligent design begins with the observation that intelligent agents produce complex and specified information (CSI).

You want to talk about the production of CSI?
Okay fine by me.

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[Esquilax]

Is intelligent design a scientific theory?Yes.

No. Scientific theories make predictions and open themselves up to tests, something that intelligent design has never done. If you wish to say otherwise, please propose a falsifiable test of intelligent design, and more importantly, the demonstrable mechanism of intelligent design. The latter is literally step one, and aside from some glib insinuations that it's god, I've never seen anyone show this mechanism.

The scientific method is commonly described as a four-step process involving observations, hypothesis, experiments, and conclusion. Intelligent design begins with the observation that intelligent agents produce complex and specified information (CSI).

Stop! What's the definition of complex and specified information, how can it be demonstrated to exist objectively, and how can it be measured?

Design theorists hypothesize that if a natural object was designed, it will contain high levels of CSI.

"High levels," implies you're capable of putting a numerical value on it, and also that you have an idea of what a normal level of complex and specified information would look like. That's good, because you'd need those things to be classified as a scientific theory, so what are they?

Scientists then perform experimental tests upon natural objects to determine if they contain complex and specified information. One easily testable form of CSI is irreducible complexity, which can be discovered by experimentally reverse-engineering biological structures to see if they require all of their parts to function. When ID researchers find irreducible complexity in biology, they conclude that such structures were designed.

Irreducible complexity is, at its heart, one great big argument from ignorance, as used as a scientific test. All it's really saying is "I can't think of a way that this could have evolved, and therefore it didn't," because unless you know how something actually developed you've got no way of knowing whether it truly is irreducible; in Heywood's examples the reason we know of irreducible complexity there is because we literally witnessed it, and even then it's entirely possible to propose an evolutionary method for the same thing.

Not to mention, irreducible complexity as you're attempting to apply it is thoroughly unscientific anyway, because all it's doing is trying to poke holes in the established theory of evolution. No matter how many negative arguments you make, no matter the number of "evolution couldn't do that"s you can find, that doesn't add up to proof of intelligent design. Positive proof does that, and intelligent design doesn't even make predictions through which positive proof could be ascertained.

The entire thing is a shit show designed to assuage creationist egos, which is so aptly demonstrated by the fact that the best evidence it has, irreducible complexity, is nothing more than an attempt to prove evolution wrong. That's not a scientific test, it's a smear campaign.

[Rampant.A.I.]

They even admit it's a deliberate smear campaign:

The intelligent design creationists who are executing this strategy collectively refer to themselves as “the Wedge.” Phillip Johnson, the architect of the strategy and the group’s de facto leader, invokes the metaphor of a wood-splitting wedge to illustrate his goal of splitting apart the concepts of science and naturalism. A fundamental part of the Wedge strategy is the rejection of naturalism as unnecessary to science. Of course, the only alternative to naturalism is supernaturalism. But ID proponents avoid this word when speaking to mainstream audiences, substituting thinly disguised euphemisms such as “non-natural.” They believe that such semantic subterfuge will enable them to skirt the constitutional prohibitions against promoting religion in public schools.

https://www.au.org/church-state/february...an-horse-a

[jesus_wept]

Is intelligent design a scientific theory? Yes

No, it's a god of the gaps argument and an appeal to ignorance. I don't understand something therefore god did it is not a scientific theory.

[downbeatplumb]

I see these IDers believe in the god of evolution.

http://wiki.lspace.org/mediawiki/index.p..._Evolution

Turning his back completely on the human race and moving to Mono Island, he then threw his energies into re-designing living creatures and seeking to improve on them. This is hampered as he can only do things one at a time: until he has a frank chat with Mrs Whitlow, he is ignorant in the fine details of how to get his creations to reproduce themselves. Many of his early creations proved non-viable, due to his misguided attempt to put wheels on everything; of the ones that made it, the hermit elephant can be considered typical of his "improvements".

[Fidel_Castronaut]

Is intelligent design a scientific theory?Yes.

It's as much of a scientific theory as guessing at an answer to a question and then doing absolutely nothing to prove yourself wrong but declaring you're right anyway.

[pocaracas]

Is intelligent design a scientific theory?Yes.

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The scientific method is commonly described as a four-step process involving observations, hypothesis, experiments, and conclusion. Intelligent design begins with the observation that intelligent agents produce complex and specified information (CSI). Design theorists hypothesize that if a natural object was designed, it will contain high levels of CSI. Scientists then perform experimental tests upon natural objects to determine if they contain complex and specified information. One easily testable form of CSI is irreducible complexity, which can be discovered by experimentally reverse-engineering biological structures to see if they require all of their parts to function.

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When ID researchers find irreducible complexity in biology, they conclude that such structures were designed.

http://www.intelligentdesign.org/

Have these "ID researchers" ever tried to look out of their own backyards?

Galileo Had to peer through a telescope to find evidence that the Earth revolved around the Sun.
Darwin had to travel to the Galapagos where he found evidence that animals evolve.

Complexity does not equal design.
If anything, design usually comes with simplicity. It only becomes complex after several attempts and lots of tinkering with the original simple design. But this is not what you're advocating... is it?

[Bad Wolf]

More than a hypothesis, it is a fact of reality.

Are we talking about the same thing here? Intelligent design? The 'scientific' cover for creationism. The movement that presumes a god made everything and then goes out looking for evidence for that presumption.

Mycoplasma Laboratorium is a synthetic species of bacterium. Within the DNA of the species is a series of water marks.
These water marks are too complex to have evolved and can only be the product of intelligent design.

Says who? You?
Who is to say that it would be impossible for this to occur naturally?

It has been demonstrated scientifically that biological systems can be intelligently designed and contain systems which are irreducibly complex.

Great! Now how does that prove your god?

[Esquilax]

Great! Now how does that prove your god?

He's just quibbling over details. He knows we're discussing something entirely different to what he is, but pretending to be the smartest man in the room is apparently how he gets off, so I say just let him.

Frankly, a dipshit with delusions that everyone else thinks he's a genius is much sadder than a know-it-all that we've busted down to size.

[LostLocke]

it is a mathematical impossibility for the universe to be the way it is without external interference.
The universe ,in its construction ,reveals the
the laws of mathematics and these laws can be calculated and diagrammed by physicists.

This implies an intelligence in creation and underpins I.D. theory.

So you need billions of galaxies to produce life on Earth?

That's kind of the same principle that, if you put me in a pitch black room with a dart board somewhere on one of the walls, then give me billions of darts to throw and I eventually get a bull's eye, I'm now suddenly a pro dart player. :p