Intelligent Design: Did you design yourself?

[archangle]

Leave out the word "intelligent".
"were you designed".
It aint rocket science ladies.

There is only one reason to leave in, or otherwise not change, the words "intelligent design". To prove yourself right and them wrong. Self-justifying-nullshit. The answer seems like it will be "in-between". It's the best we can do today.

We return you to "Back to Bashing "them-there" evil people" ....

[Cyberman]

I know it's probably a typo, but loving the word “nullshit“ - not only is the thing in question shit, it's also nothing. This needs to be in dictionaries.

[FreeTony]

That's not science. Even if you demonstrate "if a natural object was designed, it will contain high levels of CSI" this does not mean "If we see high levels of CSI it must have been designed".
This is your logic applied to flying animals: "if an animal can fly, it will have wings" therefore when we observe an animal with wings, it must be able to fly. This of course doesn't work in the case of flightless birds.

Can't the same criticism be leveled against evolution?

For instance could one say "Evolution is not science, Even if you demonstrate "multiple evolutionary pathways", this does not mean it must have evolved"?

I don't think it is unreasonable to look for objective ways to differentiate designed things from those which are undesigned. I'm not convinced looking for high levels of CSI are a good way to do it, but it is, in my opinion, a good faith attempt at solving a problem.

I'm not quite sure what you mean. The equivalent would be "just because it has been demonstrated that organisms evolve by natural selection, it does not mean this particular organism evolved by this means". Horses evolved primarily due to natural selection, then via selective breeding. We will likely get to the stage where we could design a simple organism ,and then produce it. This doesn't mean therefore that we ourselves were designed.

Creationists think every single thing in the universe was designed, yet they also claim to be able to be able to tell if something is not designed, despite that fact they've never supposedly encountered something that is not designed.

[Tonus]

I don't have a problem with schools co-opting the terms "creationism" and "intelligent design" by explaining to students that the only observed instances of either are when humans create or design things.

[Mister Agenda]

Who is to say the bacteria flagellum wasn't designed? Just because a pathway was found that showed it could have evolved doesn't mean that it did evolve.

Do you know what 'irreducibly complex' means?

There is nothing wrong with asking students to look at a feature of the universe and ask, "is this better explained by intelligent cause or an unintelligent cause?" This is a perfectly valid line of inquiry.

Unless you're talking about graduate research students, they have enough to do learning the material without having to reinvent the wheel pursuing redundant lines of inquiry. It's science class, not philosophy class.

You are confusing species with lineage. There is only one known lineage of life on this planet(two if you count mycoplasma laboratorium as a separate lineage....I do not because I see it as a modification of existing life). All life shares a universal common ancestor. Once we start creating biological life from scratch(instead of cobbling it together frakenstien style) there will be several lineages.

That's a pretty useless usage of 'lineage'. Every single synthesized nucleus would be a new lineage if you stick with common descent as the criteria, but we won't be generating new genetic information just for the fun of it. It will be long, difficult work to make a variation distinct enough from the existing lineage that you can tell it's artificial without 'water marks'. The vast majority of new species we create, especially over the next 40 years, will be modifications of existing genetic information, even if we build the germ cells from scratch, and without watermarks would appear to a geneticist as belonging to the same lineage as other life on earth.

We've got two new 'letters' for DNA, but building a genome that functions out of them rather than just inserting them here and there is incredibly daunting.

This is just a difference of opinion on how fast things are going to change, and not that germane to the main issues at hand. I could certainly be underestimating how quickly things will change.

---

Big negative.

I advance the claim that natural organism could be intelligently designed. I don't believe they are, but I acknowledge they could be. I also believe it is a perfectly valid line of inquiry to look for evidence of such design and that such inquiry is still science even if it turns out to be fruitless.

[Rampant.A.I.]

I find it interesting that Christians will invoke genetics when it suits their purposes, when Francis Collins, evangelical Christian and founder of the Human Genome Project, has openly stated the Adam & Eve story is genetically impossible.

And if Adam & Eve are genetically impossible, is original sin possible?

Why was there a crucifixion if there was no original sin?

And if a Christian studying human genome admits evolution is the mechanism by which God created all life from a common ancestor, what is the point of "looking for design?" Either God created ALL life, or God created life by an automated process, and directly created a couple forms of life, and hid them somewhere on the planet as Easter eggs, or God did not create any life.

It's not even a god of the gaps argument, it's god of the Where's Waldo argument.

[Cyberman]

Creationists think every single thing in the universe was designed, yet they also claim to be able to be able to tell if something is not designed, despite that fact they've never supposedly encountered something that is not designed.

It's the same thing pointed out by Matt Dillahunty, re the watchmaker argument: that to a creationist, they're standing on a beach made of watches, next to an ocean made of watches, with trees made of watches, beneath a sky and clouds made of watches, then picking up one watch and saying “look - this watch is different to all the others, therefore it must have had a designer.“

[Heywood]

Can't the same criticism be leveled against evolution?

For instance could one say "Evolution is not science, Even if you demonstrate "multiple evolutionary pathways", this does not mean it must have evolved"?

I don't think it is unreasonable to look for objective ways to differentiate designed things from those which are undesigned. I'm not convinced looking for high levels of CSI are a good way to do it, but it is, in my opinion, a good faith attempt at solving a problem.

I'm not quite sure what you mean. The equivalent would be "just because it has been demonstrated that organisms evolve by natural selection, it does not mean this particular organism evolved by this means". Horses evolved primarily due to natural selection, then via selective breeding. We will likely get to the stage where we could design a simple organism ,and then produce it. This doesn't mean therefore that we ourselves were designed.

Creationists think every single thing in the universe was designed, yet they also claim to be able to be able to tell if something is not designed, despite that fact they've never supposedly encountered something that is not designed.

What creationist believe is irrelevant. The proposal that certain features of the universe or certain biological systems are intelligently designed is either true or false regardless of their belief....it just so happens to be true. How do you identify which features or systems are designed and which are not is a valid and useful quest for knowledge. How does SETI know if a signal they receive is from an intellect or cosmic noise? How do you know if something you find on say the moon is a structure or formation?

[The Grand Nudger]

The proposal that certain features of the universe or certain biological systems are intelligently designed is either true or false regardless of their belief....it just so happens to be true.

I think you might to do a little more work on the second part there amigo.

How does SETI know if a signal they receive is from an intellect or cosmic noise?

They have examples of things that aren't "intellect" and -do- create noise. Maybe I did miss this, believe it's been asked...do you have any examples of something that wasn't designed?

How do you know if something you find on say the moon is a structure or formation?

You know how I would find that out..top of my head...right off the bat...I'd go find evidence of something on the moon that could create structures.................that'd be step number 1 to answering that little pickle........

[Heywood]

That's a pretty useless usage of 'lineage'. Every single synthesized nucleus would be a new lineage if you stick with common descent as the criteria, but we won't be generating new genetic information just for the fun of it. It will be long, difficult work to make a variation distinct enough from the existing lineage that you can tell it's artificial without 'water marks'. The vast majority of new species we create, especially over the next 40 years, will be modifications of existing genetic information, even if we build the germ cells from scratch, and without watermarks would appear to a geneticist as belonging to the same lineage as other life on earth.

We've got two new 'letters' for DNA, but building a genome that functions out of them rather than just inserting them here and there is incredibly daunting.

This is just a difference of opinion on how fast things are going to change, and not that germane to the main issues at hand. I could certainly be underestimating how quickly things will change.

You agree that at some point, on earth, most lineages of life will be the result of intelligent design. If this is true of the earth, and it appears this will soon be the case, Why couldn't it be true of the universe itself?

---

The proposal that certain features of the universe or certain biological systems are intelligently designed is either true or false regardless of their belief....it just so happens to be true.

I think you might to do a little more work on the second part there amigo.

I've already shown the second part is true earlier in the thread.

---

They have examples of things that aren't "intellect" and -do- create noise. Maybe I did miss this, believe it's been asked...do you have any examples of something that wasn't designed?

I can only give you examples of things assumed to be un-designed. However without an objective means to determine what is designed and what isn't, such assumptions aren't really reliable. This is why I think concepts like intelligent design and irreducible complexity have merit. They may be wrong, but the idea of obtaining an objective means to determine what is designed and what isn't is certainly a noble one.