Intelligent Design

[Minimalist]

Are you looking for a description of covalent bonding? Or, are you searching for something more teleological?

Not How, Why.

Chemistry.

[ErGingerbreadMandude]

[Mr.wizard]

[robvalue]

Just because you can ask a question, such as "why does [such and such] happen", it doesn't mean it's a well formed question, or that it has a meaningful answer at all.

[ErGingerbreadMandude]

I'm just being open minded and wary of the possibilities, I'm not 100% glued to the idea. Although I haven't seen any argument that can unglue me. Maybe Rhythm can help, he seems particularly good at these kinds of things.

[robvalue]

I'm not saying you're wrong, I'm saying I don't feel your conclusion is supported. I appreciate the open mindedness. I don't claim to have any answers at all.

It seems to me that you're using a tautology. If some kind of reality exists and functions, then you would say it is designed. So it seems impossible, with this definition, that a reality could exist and function without being designed.

The obvious counter-example explanation is that things are just the way they are, and our inquisitive minds are over-complicating things by assigning agency everywhere when unwarranted. I'm not saying this is the case, but I'm saying it's not easily discounted. We can ask "why" until we're blue in the face, but if no answer will ever satisfy us except some sort of process or agency, then we are begging the question.

[downbeatplumb]

Whales, an equatic animal, breathe air this is because of their evolutionary past. If you were going to make a massive sea creature from scratch you'd get it to get its oxygen from the sea like the fish.
Piss poor design if it is designed (it isn't)
And why put the arsehole so near the vagina. That's poor design and bound to lead to mistakes or is anal sex to be encouraged?

[ErGingerbreadMandude]

I'm not saying you're wrong, I'm saying I don't feel your conclusion is supported. I appreciate the open mindedness. I don't claim to have any answers at all.

It seems to me that you're using a tautology. If some kind of reality exists and functions, then you would say it is designed. So it seems impossible, with this definition, that a reality could exist and function without being designed.

The obvious counter-example explanation is that things are just the way they are, and our inquisitive minds are over-complicating things by assigning agency everywhere when unwarranted. I'm not saying this is the case, but I'm saying it's not easily discounted. We can ask "why" until we're blue in the face, but if no answer will ever satisfy us except some sort of process or agency, then we are begging the question.

I agree.
To me the explanation that things are just the way they are; we needn't worry more about it; seems a bit, I don't know, theistic. Like when you ask a theist why they believe in God and they go - "It's just the way it is.". 
I know most atheists do not think in this pattern, especially you Rob.

I also don't feel my conclusion isn't unsupported at all. The world we live in supports my conclusion iff we consider any system with rules imposed on it as designed. Since everyone seems to agree with that, I think my conclusion is supported, after all this is not just a random thought, I came across this thought as I was analyzing certain facts, definitions and generally through basic observation.
We live in a designed world. It's a fact. Was it intelligent design or was it a design that came into being as a result of random events or whatever is what I know that I do not know.

[robvalue]

I can't think of anything to say I haven't said already, so we'll have to agree to disagree on this.

[Jackie]

What's the best way to refute the argument that we were intelligently designed? I've seen the bit that Neil Degrasse Tyson did on it, but what else can I put into my arsenal? (More specifically, about how complex flowers are and other things in nature)

Childhood cancer, Eboli, AIDS. Or the fact that cockroaches and bacteria outnumber humans. Or that eagles have better eyesight. Or that a Giraffe has a superfluous-ly long nerve that goes from one ear, all the way down the neck, back up to the other ear. Or that dolphins and whales have separate eating and breathing tubes.