Intelligent design: could we do better?

[Akincana Krishna dasa]

An intelligent designer for the natural world? Hogwash. Every stray observable fact a deliberate design feature? Sure doesn't look that way.

Why not? Why don't you think it looks that way?

What would you imagine every stray observable fact of the natural world to look like if an intelligent world were to have designed it?

[Brian37]

Intelligent design, as someone above me said, is evident in jet engines and the other technological wonders conceived and produced by human beings.

An intelligent designer for the natural world? Hogwash. Every stray observable fact a deliberate design feature? Sure doesn't look that way.

The universe we observe looks like forces and properties expressing themselves so far as they can before bumping up against different forces and properties which impinge upon them. I see no creator behind that.

Complexity is not a starting point, it is an emergent property requiring no cogntion or magic man.

One cloud is less complex than an entire hurricane, but no sane person thinks Posiden is the cause of a hurricane.

Single atoms by themselves are NOT complex. Now if we can accept that atoms make up the clouds that make up hurricanes, then there is no fucking reason for morons to assume that life is caused by a cognition anymore than a hurricane is.

[Whateverist]

An intelligent designer for the natural world? Hogwash. Every stray observable fact a deliberate design feature? Sure doesn't look that way.

Why not? Why don't you think it looks that way?

What would you imagine every stray observable fact of the natural world to look like if an intelligent world were to have designed it?

As I went on to say in the same post:

"The universe we observe looks like forces and properties expressing themselves so far as they can before bumping up against different forces and properties which impinge upon them. I see no creator behind that."

[Angrboda]

As a Taoist, I'm a firm believer in intelligent non-design.



Intelligent design would be fascinating if real, if only to give me a reason to go back into math. However it's not, for some surface reasons, but also deep ones that will likely not go away. The most important of which is the difficulty in determining what one means when one says that something "looks designed" in a way that is rigorous and usefully applicable. Next is that the intuition which powers the argument rests on a faulty and invalid syllogism. Intelligent design, even if true, will need a different logical foundation. And one of its worst issues is that even if you prove design, you still have no real evidence there is a designer behind it. I'm not completely persuaded by Humean skepticism of causality, but if all you've got is tail, you don't know if there's a dog attached to it. Design may demand a designer, but design itself cannot "cause" a designer to be.

[Godscreated]

So, for the smokers out there, you would have to stick the cig in your nose and then blow that smoke out of your nose, this way you do not get throat cancer, you get nose and sinus cancer and will have to have your nose removed, gooooood design.

Exactly how would one cough and get rid of the gunk that builds in the lungs when you get a cold, have pneumonia or anything that would cause congestion. Then that leads to how would one breath when their nose and sinuses are inflamed and stopped up.

Your design would make it difficult to scuba dive and snorkel, and when one drowns it would be impossible to cough up the water to be able to breath again, this would make drowning a death sentence no matter how the water gets into one's lungs and who would want to do mouth to nostril resuscitation, though I did once.

One problem with your design might not be to bad, we would not be able to talk, then we would not have words and we would not have to listen to your stupid idea of separating the esophagus and windpipe.

One could not run or do other strenuous activities, you can not take enough air into the lungs just through the nostrils, unless you want them to take up about half your face, I for one have a nose that is big enough.

I'm sure there are other reasons but I'll stop here.

Yea our bodies are so well designed that the same tube we eat with we can choke with that same food and DIE. And that flap works so well it doesnt always prevent us from choking.

Oh and as Hitchens said in his speeches and in his book about the pathetic design argument "he put an entertainment center in the middle of a sewage system."

But even more rediculous than design is the claim that a non material invisible magical super brain is a posibility.

Both argument from design and invisible friends are nothing more than products of human imagination. Same credulity caused the Egyptions to incert their own god of the gaps by projecting it onto the sun.

I'll give you one thing you are easily entertained by man's attempts to be a god. So, by your reply I take it you would rather have "The Germans" design, the problem you have, you just can't intelligently defend what he said out of complete ignorance. So, all that above jabber was for nothing, a complete fail at defending a different design.

[Napoléon]

Why not? Why don't you think it looks that way?

The better question is why do you think it does...

Go on, roll out the 'order of the universe' bullshit.

[Brian37]

As a Taoist, I'm a firm believer in intelligent non-design.



Intelligent design would be fascinating if real, if only to give me a reason to go back into math. However it's not, for some surface reasons, but also deep ones that will likely not go away. The most important of which is the difficulty in determining what one means when one says that something "looks designed" in a way that is rigorous and usefully applicable. Next is that the intuition which powers the argument rests on a faulty and invalid syllogism. Intelligent design, even if true, will need a different logical foundation. And one of its worst issues is that even if you prove design, you still have no real evidence there is a designer behind it. I'm not completely persuaded by Humean skepticism of causality, but if all you've got is tail, you don't know if there's a dog attached to it. Design may demand a designer, but design itself cannot "cause" a designer to be.

Jefferson thought that his deistic god simply started everything and stepped aside.

I love what Jefferson contributed to humanity as far as secularism and protection of dissent, but if alive today even he would not get a pass from me.

The word "intelligence" cannot be removed from a thinking cognition even if that "cognition" is picking up the dice and doesn't care where they land. It still requires something thinking to pick up the dice in the first place.

I put your definition with Jefferson's generic idea in the same catigory as even pantheists who claim that the universe is "intelligant".

All three still postulate that thinking does not require a material brain and evolution says otherwise. It is a dodge to say that this non material thinker is not intervening.

[Haydn2]

Is it possible to genetically engineer a god? and would it be wierd if god then praised us? (the inferior creators)

It may eventually rebel, like Ralph said.

I think an imperfect and inferior designer cannot create a perfect sentient being.

Individually inferior yes (and probaly more so then a millenia ago) . But collectively ? With the snowball of knowledge that is gifted to us and one that we all add to in minute ways , i wonder if anything at all is un-achieveable now.
Imagine geneticaly enignneering a human race to its ultimate possible intelligence? then let that race go further with this , with more intelligence , more capability . Creating a new race that does the same and this cycle never ends . Improving , growing and learning.
The pinnacle of this (if there is one) is a being that not only has complete control of its destiny , but perhaps the abillity to shape and manipulate the universe.
A god by todays standards. And all acheived by the simple old inferior us . Remember the evolution of amobia to modern humans.

[System of Solace]

I'll give you one thing you are easily entertained by man's attempts to be a god. So, by your reply I take it you would rather have "The Germans" design, the problem you have, you just can't intelligently defend what he said out of complete ignorance. So, all that above jabber was for nothing, a complete fail at defending a different design.

Nice dodge. I'm sure any intelligent human could see that Brian's priority in that post wasn't defending German's idea. This leaves us a few clues about you.

[Brian37]

I'll give you one thing you are easily entertained by man's attempts to be a god. So, by your reply I take it you would rather have "The Germans" design, the problem you have, you just can't intelligently defend what he said out of complete ignorance. So, all that above jabber was for nothing, a complete fail at defending a different design.

Nice dodge. I'm sure any intelligent human could see that Brian's priority in that post wasn't defending German's idea. This leaves us a few clues about you.

I love the bullshit fallacy that atheists are attempting to be god themselves. They never consider another option.

God does not exist AND humans cannot be gods because gods dont exist.

It simply bothers believers that god is nothing but a product of their own wishful thinking. If anything that is what makes beleivers act like gods because they always claim to have magic tin foil rabbit ears that magically give them the message on the God channel.

I will never claim to be god. It would be like claiming I could be Super Man or Mickey Mouse.