The Watchmaker: my fav argument

[The Grand Nudger]

Intelligent design isn't about aliens and you know it, lol. If you want people to take you seriously, try taking yourself seriously first?

At any rate, suppose that ID was about aliens...it's still been falsified. It posited an irreducible complexity which does not exist.

I see you butchering sim theory - it's not actually an intelligent design theory, but go off, I guess?

[Foxaèr]

Intelligent design doesn't tell you who or what the intelligence is. Simulation theory is a claim about intelligent design. Belief that we are the product of accelerated evolution by alien life, is a claim about intelligent design. Gods or the supernatural is not necessary.

Christians disagree. Since they are incapable of intelligence on their own, they rely on the fictional god kind.

Simulation theory, my ass. It's nothing more than the technological age being taken over by theistic woo.

I'd definitely find more plausibility in the alien angle: was even working on writing about it myself.

Christianity and religions = god(s)
Simulation (actually theology) theory = god plus sci-fi plus supernatural
Aliens = supernatural

[John 6IX Breezy]

Hmm I've never heard aliens be described as supernatural entities before. Why is that?

[Foxaèr]

Hmm I've never heard aliens be described as supernatural entities before. Why is that?

It only makes sense. They're always described as being beyond what humans are capable. Seems rather supernatural to me.

[The Grand Nudger]

ID was a failed lever for social manipulation..and... like the idiots we all know and love - they took notes on the criminal conspiracy, which found their way all over the web, and then got savaged by every possible angle on it's own grounds. It was a poorly constructed argument with a disingenuous purpose. Look, look..we found a designable we know to have been designed!

Simulation theory is the notion that all of what we see may be artificial, but it's not the proposition that any of what we see could not have arisen through natural means (either within the sim or without), or was designed for any specific purpose, and ofc it makes no claim on the nature of the universe that our sim is, itself, in.

Aliens are not an intelligent design proposal - we know that life can be manipulated and bred and managed like livestock - but who made the aliens, and could they themselves have arisen naturally - or would they require an alien god to have created them?

Attempts to launder a failed proposal like ID as some other less idiotic thing are doomed.

[no one]

Just because it is beyond the extremely limited scope of human understanding, does not make it in any way, shape, or form, super.

[The Grand Nudger]

Hmm I've never heard aliens be described as supernatural entities before. Why is that?

It only makes sense. They're always described as being beyond what humans are capable. Seems rather supernatural to me.

A more thorough answer might be that aliens came to be seen by society as a storage bin for our preexisting beliefs about supernatural entities.  

They didn't have to be supernatural, and if there are any, they're unlikely to be sorcerers - but that's still how we choose to conceive of them.  That's one of the reasons that characters like merlin fall effortlessly into the ancient aliens narrative. Hell, it's the reason that aliens sprung to mind for our christian friend here as a comparison or candidate for his meat fairy beliefs. It''s a fascinating subject - mythmaking, and we've only recently had the opportunity to observe and record it in real time - which is crucial, because like it or not, our species is compelled by and predicates an immense portion of it;s decisions and actions in the world on the contents and narrative thrusts of the myths we create to assert those truths we believe to be inviolable.

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Speaking of society, myths, and relatability - I can third Johns comments about mans responsibility for man and whatever garden we intend to tend (here or abroad).

This underlying religious belief, not the contents of a superstition, is the fungible article that the stories are meant to serve as a vehicle for - and over this, John and an atheist and an antitheist all agree. It's why we can communicate these things to each other and understand the concepts between each other. We're all agreed on some true article expressed normatively or as a hope for our future. Those things which are not only true, but which we intend to make true together.

The reason that these design arguments always fail, is that they aren't genuinely informed by some observation - they are an assertion meant to facilitate the creation of those things or the maintenance of a society which takes them to be an organizing principle. To say that there is a plan for man or this world is a declaration, not raw data.

-and, for absolute clarity, it should be noted that I'm not criticizing this enterprise in any way. It should be noted that with or without a god, and whether we maintain or are willing to abandon any christian superstitions, and whichever..if any, may be true or false...., christianity is very much a plan for man. There are many plans for man, and for this this world, each and every one the sole and unique responsibility of man - even and especially if, as many believe, some other thing or being originally floated the idea - or we need some other thing to carry us those last few steps.

The normative assertion and the hope, is that we can get -there- and once we're there, as far as we can take it on our own - we can throw our hands up completely satisfied that we've done all that we could, and wait for providence by any name.

[Apollo]

Things that exist regardless of us are objective reality of our universe. Design is not one of them. It’s an emergent pattern meaningful to us allowing us to use it to our advantage.

Could you clarify this? Designs have an objective existence: fashion, buildings, watches. In what way do you see it as an emergent pattern, excluded from objective reality?

Yes they have objective existence AFTER the fact of our creating them. But they don't exist in nature on their own. What we see useful vs not useful (or some pattern we can see vs some randomness) informs our sense of design.

[The Grand Nudger]

It's more the difference between nature and artifice, I think. Not all designs are useful. In fact, the majority of designs, even useful designs, turn out to be insufficient or un-useful in one way or another, even with respect to their natural functional analogs.

My irrigation system is less functional and less useful than simply owning a river would be (if anyone is holding, and would sell, and the water stays around 55f- hit me up, lol) - but we can see, even so, that polyvinyl chloride structures are not naturally occurring. If we were aliens visiting this planet the day after everyone got raptured up by the christer god (he was feeling more magnanimous that day than any of his followers ever have) - we wouldn't need to see any humans to know that what we were looking at was some novel thing - different from the rest...even though, at that point - there would be no utility to the structures whatsoever, by any measure.

My irrigation system is noticeably intentional, noticeably designed....but may be well or poorly designed, more or less or not useful at all.... depending on a frame of reference. None of us have use for a late nl hand axe, and not all late nl hand axes are/were well constructed or equally useful, many, we think, were discarded failures........but this doesn't prevent us from recognizing that they were designed.

Even when we look at some natural thing (or, if we prefer, a thing very strongly believed to be natural), we can still point to the effects of artifice. Bones are not designed, but whatever left tool marks in those bones was. Coming up with some explanation for how those marks made it into those bones some other way stretches npot only our credibility, but goes beyond everything we know about anything and becomes an empty position which can be held by nothing -other- than faith. So, we say, here is a bone that a tool has been applied to and left characteristic marks of artifice. Here, i some non natural thing.

If the god botherers could find something like that, they'd have an argument, but they can't - and they never intended to do so anyway. Their assertion of some design™ is an a priori commitment to a religious belief - not an observation - not even a thing which depends on the truth of their superstitions.

...and, deliciously, none of this matters at any rate, as another poster already very clearly laid out, because no design or plan would or could ever engender a rational belief in some silly goddamned god - because gods - as conceived by god our believers- don't need plans or designs to accomplish things. Christer god didn't sit down with a protractor and come up with the earth. He spoke it into existence. That's not a plan, that's not a design, that's raw fucking power.

[John 6IX Breezy]

Christer god didn't sit down with a protractor and come up with the earth. He spoke it into existence. That's not a plan, that's not a design, that's raw fucking power.

Is that not analogous to computer programming? You issue written commands in an executable language, and things happen?