RE: Intelligent Design: Did you design yourself?
May 31, 2014 at 12:18 pm
(This post was last modified: May 31, 2014 at 12:21 pm by Whateverist.)
(May 31, 2014 at 1:18 am)Heywood Wrote: Now unless some new development happens, like we observe a new lineage of life emerge from natural processes, in the near future theists will be able to claim that our lineage of life is the product of intelligent design, because in our experience lineages of life only come into being via intelligent design.
Nothing you've said gives any reason to believe that the transition from inorganic to organic was the result of an intelligent agent. The only observed instances we have of deliberate design are those which we and other creatures engage in. It is more reasonable to suppose that the complexity we observe in the world that was not the result of human activity, is the result of natural processes.
Your entire argument revolves around one big what-if. What if the laws of physics, chemistry and genetics were all designed by an agent capable doing so? But is there any reason to think the natural world would ever have given rise to such an agent? No. Of course that won't stop anyone from supposing there just always was this super agent. When people dream up gods, they go big or they go home.
Even though no one knows exactly how the inorganic to organic threshold was first accomplished, there is one thing I would like you to consider. Given only empirical observation you must agree that organic states of matter are possible states for inorganic matter. The very same atoms and molecules which we can mine from the earth as inert and lifeless coal had previously been living trees. Every atom in your body has spent many eons in a lifeless state since its inception in the death of a mega star. But most of the material which makes up your body will have been material for other bodies before they came together to become you.
If life weren't a possible state of inorganic materials not even your god could animate them. Since life is a possible state of lifeless material it may be that a divine spark is no more necessary for forming life than it is necessary for forming crystals or snow flake. Leastwise, nothing you've said about intelligent design argues against abiogenesis.
