Intelligent Design

[The Grand Nudger]

-just as we've observed speciation.  So whats the problem?

It's not an issue of convincing me (I'm actually pretty easy to convince, btw, what with not having any sacred cows to maintain). The reason I'm not a christian has nothing to do with my inability to believe in your god, or whether or not your god is, in fact, real.

[Whateverist]

Unless of course they claim to have witnessed extraordinary things.

Well, I still don't know that you just dismiss the claims. I mean what would you do if tomorrow Richard Dawkins decided to become a Christian after claiming that God talked to him the night before? Would you dismiss him? Very credible people sometimes claim to have seen extraordinary things.

Richard Dawkins does not walk on water.  If he said such a thing I'd chalk it up to the revenge of the unconscious.  Anyone can be factually wrong.  If he limited what he said to "I had an experience last night which is of the sort which others might describe as talking with God", I'd be much more interested to hear him elaborate.  It is the simple minded acceptance of the extraordinary on a literal level which should always be questioned.

[AAA]

The God claims are based on the presence of qualities only known to be the product of a designing intelligence found in cells and the universe. We don't jump to God directly from this though. Just that they are best explained as the product of intelligence.

Only when your main arguments are argument from ignorance ("I can't figure out how these things could have come about via natural mechanisms, therefore it must have been my god") and argument from analogy ("this thing in the cell sure looks like a complex machine, therefore it must have been designed") does a magic being, that lives in a realm that can't be shown to exist, become the best explanation.

Complexity and function are not a sign of design.

It's not an argument from ignorance. I think you got to this thread late, but this has been covered a lot. It's not "We don't know, therefore God", it's "We do know how it works, and it functions like things that we only see paralleled (although not nearly rivaled) by things designed from humans" Therefore maybe it requires intelligence to exist.

[AAA]

-just as we've observed speciation.  So whats the problem?  

It's not an issue of convincing me (I'm actually pretty easy to convince, btw, what with not having any sacred cows to maintain).  The reason I'm not a christian has nothing to do with my inability to believe in your god, or whether or not your god is, in fact, real.

But you just said that even if God himself approached you, you would not believe, so I think you are admitting that nothing could convince you.

[Whateverist]

I would, you know why?  There is no atheist priesthood.  An alien concept, obviously, since you chose to make that comment...but there it is.  To be brutally honest, I'd dismiss christianity even if christ himself appeared on my couch.

That doesn't surprise me. Can I ask why nothing could convince you of Christianity?

Not addressed to me, but I need no help at all in being convinced of Christianity.  It exists.  Obviously.  But the sad thing is the simplistic, literal level at which it is understood by so many of its practitioners.  There are some who hold its truths symbolically with whom I have no disagreement.  The proliferation of fundamentalism saddens them as much as it does me.

God, understood correctly, is not pleased that you wish to remain in an infantile relationship toward Him.

[Simon Moon]

Hey - there's only room for one prophet around here! Work the other side of the street!

In fact, I don't see any value in asking - let alone "demanding" - proof (or even evidence - learn the difference) for unfalsifiable things. I was just going to point out that positing a less-credible and unprovable explanation than rather more mundane yet plausible ones isn't a particularly tenable approach to discerning reality, that's all. Basically, when you hear hoofbeats, first eliminate horses (not literally, in a weird Equus kind of way) before concluding unicorns.

Right, but what happens in instances where you eliminate every known hooved animal? You then have to start to think outside the box, and suppose it may be explained by something we have not yet seen. But yes, I agree we should turn known causes before we turn to things that we don't know can cause it.

But if all known hooved animals are eliminated, the best answer does not then become, "must have been unicorns", by default. The best answer  becomes "we don't know what made the hoofbeat noise, lets find out".

Appealing to the supernatural when you are out of natural answers, is argument from ignorance.

[ApeNotKillApe]

Absurdly wrong.

This has been done to death, but if we must go back to the presence of a genetic code, a protein code, and a molecule (tRNA) to connect the languages, we can.

That the system is functional is the ground upon which you argue for a deity; that is not any ground at all, it is a position of ignorance, based on wild contradictory suppositions and speculation. When your assertions are refuted you make new assertions, you come up with some excuse why evidence contrary to your argument "doesn't count". You don't care about evidence or truth, you've already said as much, that evidence isn't always necessary and that the least credible forms of testimony are sufficient evidence for outlandish and farcical claims supported by anecdotal evidence and the more logical fallacies you can use to support it, the better.

[Simon Moon]

Only when your main arguments are argument from ignorance ("I can't figure out how these things could have come about via natural mechanisms, therefore it must have been my god") and argument from analogy ("this thing in the cell sure looks like a complex machine, therefore it must have been designed") does a magic being, that lives in a realm that can't be shown to exist, become the best explanation.

Complexity and function are not a sign of design.

It's not an argument from ignorance. I think you got to this thread late, but this has been covered a lot. It's not "We don't know, therefore God", it's "We do know how it works, and it functions like things that we only see paralleled (although not nearly rivaled) by things designed from humans" Therefore maybe it requires intelligence to exist.

Yes, argument from analogy. Just as bad as argument from ignorance.

So, when have you eliminated all possible natural explanations? What peer reviewed journal is your paper published?

Why haven't the majority of biologists been swayed by your oh so convincing arguments?

Face it, you already had your conclusion, and you are constantly forcing the evidence to fit.

[LadyForCamus]

You don't need to see it, you need clear evidence of it.

Millions of people claim to have been abducted by aliens. 

The point being, why believe ANYTHING on a claim, without evidence?

I guess you don't have to believe anything just on a claim, but I personally don't think it is a good life philosophy to require evidence for everything. If someone you know tells you they got a new TV, would you demand to go to their house before you would believe them? If people have no motive to lie, then we don't need to require them to justify every single claim they have. Still I think that if we go with the alien example, and everyone but you claimed to have been abducted, you would eventually have to concede that there is some phenomenon behind it, even if they didn't have material evidence. The eye witness is definitely weak evidence, but it shouldn't just be dismissed.

Robvalue made an EXCELLENT video regarding the nature of claims that would have followed perfectly after this post. Anyone have any idea which thread it is in?

[God of Mr. Hanky]

Then in that case nobody has any reliable historical records.

All historical field studies defer to lab analysis for authenticity testing and date validation (got that from the school of James Michener ).

Maybe for things like carbon dating, but the subject of history has its own method of comparing the validity of primary sources for descriptions about the time period. I'm no expert on history, but the lab can't replicate events that are defined as unique and unrepeatable events.

Oh, please keep showing us more of just how ignorant you really are, Little Theist - it's so much fun to watch you frantically run about sticking your "can not" or "impossible" labels on every scientific theory that you don't want to understand. When you replace them with the irony of your magic creator hypothesis, now there you have comedy gold!