Intelligent Design: Did you design yourself?

[Angrboda]

The atheists will be the ones needing to justify the claim that our lineage is the results of natural processes.

No, the ones who claim that there is a way to tell natural lineages apart from artificial ones will be the ones needing to justify.

Just as they are now.

If you think there is a way to tell them apart, particularly given the limitations of what we know about current lineages, then show it.

Otherwise, you have a hypothesis that you can't back up with evidence or reasoning. Mere speculation.

[pocaracas]

So, for the record..are you proposing a designer that created the first spark..or one that just keeps stepping in every time a new "lineage" crops up?

I am proposing that it will soon be a human experience that lineages of life are the products of intelligent design. And without ever observing a lineage coming into existence naturally, people will have a strong rationale to believe that our lineage of life is the product of intelligent design. If we apply our rule for determining if something is designed or not, that rule will suggest our lineage is a designed thing.

The atheists will be the ones needing to justify the claim that our lineage is the results of natural processes. Yes Stimbo....this is shifting of the burden of proof....but it is not me doing the shifting. What is shifting the burden of proof is the circumstances we now find ourselves in.

It is this change in circumstances that is putting the atheistic position on a weaker footing. Maybe it is time you re-think your positions.

Very well.
I applaud your effort. It is a good one, for sure.

But it's still a shifting of the burden of proof.
It rests on the fact that humans have designed and built some life form.
Humans are the only evidence of "intelligent designers" that you are presenting.
So then you propose that there were humans before there were humans in order to design those humans, huh?
Oh, but that can't be, so it must have been something else... dinosaurs?... nah... they were lizards! so something else... hey, we have this book here...

If you want us to accept that there is an intelligent designer, you must present one, only then you may show that that designer was responsible for designing life on Earth.
Until then, natural causes are all we have to work with. Theories exist, one has shown remarkable resilience to new evidence, so it has become accepted. The details are still being ironed out, but you can't trump your wishful thinking all over that theory.

[Artur Axmann]

If you want us to accept that there is an intelligent designer, you must present one, only then you may show that that designer was responsible for designing life on Earth.
Until then, natural causes are all we have to work with. Theories exist, one has shown remarkable resilience to new evidence, so it has become accepted. The details are still being ironed out, but you can't trump your wishful thinking all over that theory.

Do I have to present you with an intelligent designer?

A little presumptious ,aren't you..

Step right up folks and let me show you the one who made the universe, yessiree .. for only five bucks you can even ask him a few questions . just step up and stay to the right.

Can I present you to caravaggio? Do I have to prove he was a pretty good painter . Do I have to convince you that Picasso was a cubist?

Don't you think you're sounding just a little bit stupid?

[Rampant.A.I.]

[Wyrd of Gawd]

OK, so there's an intelligent designer. Now what? How do you end up with the Jewish deity of the Bible when there are countless other ethnocentric deities who also claimed to created everything?

[pocaracas]

If you want us to accept that there is an intelligent designer, you must present one, only then you may show that that designer was responsible for designing life on Earth.
Until then, natural causes are all we have to work with. Theories exist, one has shown remarkable resilience to new evidence, so it has become accepted. The details are still being ironed out, but you can't trump your wishful thinking all over that theory.

Do I have to present you with an intelligent designer?

A little presumptious ,aren't you..

If it's a presumptuous requirement, then the idea that such a thing exists goes out the window.

Step right up folks and let me show you the one who made the universe, yessiree .. for only five bucks you can even ask him a few questions . just step up and stay to the right.

I was hoping for a freebie.

Can I present you to caravaggio? Do I have to prove he was a pretty good painter . Do I have to convince you that Picasso was a cubist?

That age old canard?
Allow me to quote from some famous person: extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
Caravaggio and Picasso were painters, human beings who paint on canvas. We have photos of one of them. We have their signatures on their respective paintings. We have commonplace reports of their existence as humans, such as civil ID or church baptism records. And many other trivial pieces of evidence attesting that such persons existed.
Now, the designer of life on Earth, on the other hand... is either hiding from its creation, or just non-existent. Either way, for all practical purposes, the assumption of non-existence is equal to the assumption of existence while playing hide-and-can't-seek.

Don't you think you're sounding just a little bit stupid?

I know what'll happen if I reply to this, so I'll behave and just leave it at that. zen...........

[Tonus]

Do I have to present you with an intelligent designer?

Are you implying that you cannot?

[Cyberman]

If he's got one to present, that'd be great. To be honest, I'd settle for some evidence that we should even suspect one exists.

[Heywood]

The atheists will be the ones needing to justify the claim that our lineage is the results of natural processes.

No, the ones who claim that there is a way to tell natural lineages apart from artificial ones will be the ones needing to justify.

Just as they are now.

If you think there is a way to tell them apart, particularly given the limitations of what we know about current lineages, then show it.

Otherwise, you have a hypothesis that you can't back up with evidence or reasoning. Mere speculation.

Implied in your counter argument, the portion I bolded, is a claim. You are claiming natural lineages of life exists. If your counter argument is going to carry any weight, you need to justify this claim first.

My argument is we don't know if our lineage of life is the result of intelligent design(which we know exists) or some naturally occurring process(which we don't know if it exists).

How do we determine what is intelligently designed and what isn't? By personal experience. If we find a piece of machinery on the surface of pluto when the New Horizon probe flies by, we will know it is the product of intelligent design because in our experience we have only observed machinery coming into existence via intelligent design.

If we observe intellects intelligently designing new lineages of life, and never observe new lineages of life coming into existence via some natural process. That gives us cause to categorize all lineage of life, even the ones to which we are not privy to their creation details, as being intelligently designed.

You asked me to tell you how we tell designed things from undersigned things....and I told you.....by experience. If the kind of thing we are looking at only comes into existence via intelligent design....its a pretty good bet something we find of that thing....was intelligently designed.

---

Very well.
I applaud your effort. It is a good one, for sure.

But it's still a shifting of the burden of proof.
It rests on the fact that humans have designed and built some life form.
Humans are the only evidence of "intelligent designers" that you are presenting.
So then you propose that there were humans before there were humans in order to design those humans, huh?
Oh, but that can't be, so it must have been something else... dinosaurs?... nah... they were lizards! so something else... hey, we have this book here...

If you want us to accept that there is an intelligent designer, you must present one, only then you may show that that designer was responsible for designing life on Earth.
Until then, natural causes are all we have to work with. Theories exist, one has shown remarkable resilience to new evidence, so it has become accepted. The details are still being ironed out, but you can't trump your wishful thinking all over that theory.

If the burden of proof is shifted it is because of a change in circumstance. Further I do not need to show you the intelligent designer. All I need to do is make the case that something falls into the category of being intelligently designed. If that thing falls into the category of being intelligently designed, it is strong evidence of an intelligent designer.

If you find a watch on the beach, you don't need to see the maker in order to know there was one. Your counter argument fails.

[pocaracas]

If the burden of proof is shifted it is because of a change in circumstance. Further I do not need to show you the intelligent designer. All I need to do is make the case that something falls into the category of being intelligently designed. If that thing falls into the category of being intelligently designed, it is strong evidence of an intelligent designer.

I bolded the bit I'm addressing there.... make the case? What is this? Jury duty?

If you find a watch on the beach, you don't need to see the maker in order to know there was one. Your counter argument fails.

Knowing that watches are made by man, then any watch I find is assumed to have been made by man.
Knowing that self-replicating molecules replicate themselves naturally, through chemical reactions and that, sometimes, these replications carry errors, I expect to find, after a lot of time, self-replicating molecules that have accumulated lots and lots of "errors"... first and foremost, the errors that managed to keep the molecules replicating, and those that made it replicate even better.
All this is natural and follows physics and its subset known as chemistry.

If you wish to make the case that self-replicating molecules exist because they were designed, then you must show the designer.
Like we see the man that designs watches and cars and planes and cogs and electronics chips, etc., so too, I'd expect this designer you claim must exist to come forth. Until then, all I see is Nature working as Nature does.