Intelligent design

[struggle4progress]

Poll question: Intelligent design

[politicaholic]

1. LOL! very funny!

[Gronk Groks]

2. The funny thing is that we are discussing it...

...but better with humor than without. Otherwise I might get violently ill...:puke:

[A Simple Game]

3. The Bible is the owner's manual.

They must be trying to read the Olde English version, and not the New English version, because they sure aren't following the directions very well.

[Somawas]

4. Lemme know when you find the designer's physical address

cause I want to sue for negligent design.

[heidler1]

5. How come it's called mono theistic when there is also a Devil 1+1 =2?

If this God created everything why isn't he/she blamed for all of the mistakes like two headed snakes, downs syndrome, conjoined twins, imbeciles and on and on.

Did this God create the Devil? If both God and the Devil were created by a higher God does each have equal power? What makes us think that this higher God likes what either of them are up to?

[NAO]

6. The design argument, as applied to cancer, runs like this...

from Ingersoll's lecture "The Gods":

These religious people see nothing but design everywhere, and personal intelligent interference in everything. They insist that the universe has been created, and that the adaptation of means to ends is perfectly apparent. They point us to the sunshine, to the flowers, to the April rain, and to all there is of beauty and of use in the world.

Did it ever occur to them that a cancer is as beautiful in its development as is the reddest rose? That what they are pleased to call the adaptation of means to ends, is as apparent in the cancer as in the April rain?

How beautiful the process of digestion! By what ingenious methods the blood is poisoned so that the cancer shall have food! By what wonderful contrivances the entire system of man is made to pay tribute to this divine and charming cancer! See by what admirable instrumentalities it feeds itself from the surrounding quivering, dainty flesh! See how it gradually but surely expands and grows! By what marvelous mechanism it is supplied with long and slender roots that reach out to the most secret nerves of pain for sustenance and life! What beautiful colors it presents!

Seen through the microscope it is a miracle of order and beauty. All the ingenuity of man cannot stop its growth. Think of the amount of thought it must have required to invent a way by which the life of one man might be given to produce one cancer? Is it possible to look upon it and doubt that there is design in the universe, and that the inventor of this wonderful cancer must be infinitely powerful, ingenious and good?

The Gods
http://www.infidels.org/library/historical/robert_ingersoll/gods.html

[catbert836]

7. No intelligent designer would include

diseases, natural disasters, limited resources, etc in his plan.

[rogerashton]

8. I'm going to comment seriously,

although I have no illusion that anybody will take a comment in favor of intelligent design seriously. You should, though because intelligent design is not an alternative to evolution, and the use of it as an alternative to evolution is a tissue of lies.

Anyway, as a Deist I don't see any conflict between intelligent design and evolution. As I see it the Creator Spirit intelligently fine-tuned the universe to make evolution inevitable.

We Deists hold the opinion (I don't want to call it "belief" because faith has nothing to do with it) that the Creator Spirit -- or the Force if you prefer -- created the universe to operate according to natural law, and doesn't frustrate her own will by intervening with "miracles." As the quote from Ingersoll pointed out, cancers are no less highly developed natural processes than the creatures they kill. Living in a natural world has its downside. Perhaps it is better than any actual alternative -- presumably that was the way Creator Spirit saw the case.

CAN intelligent design be reconciled with the kind of theism that believes in God as busybody? I doubt it -- at that point Ingersoll's points have to be answered. If God is going to be a busybody, why doesn't she take better care of her chilluns?

Now, you know, I am even angrier at those right-wing rat-butts who are stealing my opinions and distorting them for purely political purposes than I am at a number of you here for averring that anyone who accepts intelligent design, such as me, must be a blithering idiot -- but I'm pretty angry at you too. Cheese -- with people like you for friends, who needs wingnuts for enemies?

[struggle4progress]

9. Foo! I have no problem with "intelligent design" as a philosophical ..

.. speculation or even as someone's chosen philosophical position.

I will, however, insist loudly that material presented as natural science must rely on natural phenomena, which can be observed and measured by natural means. If "intelligent design" is to become a scientific theory, it must rely not upon speculations but upon measurements and observations; but this seems unlikely to me.

Let me also say that I am not at all opposed to religious beliefs, such as Deism: in fact, although my theology is somewhat non-standard, I regularly attend a mainstream denomination church. Still, I am afraid that (poor sinful creature that I am) I simply cannot resist tweaking people who take their own silly nonsense too seriously ...

[rogerashton]

10. And who is taking intelligent design "too seriously?"

I agree that intelligent design should not be taught in science classes, since it is at least as much a philosophical as a scientific position. There are some measurements that support it, though, as I understand intelligent design, anyway. Google "anthropic principle."

Now, about your response. I might be accused of taking intelligent design too seriously, since I was the one who brought the word "seriously" into the discussion, but I had the notion that you were not "tweaking"me -- I thought you were tweaking right-wingers. And the problem with right-wingers is not that they take intelligent design to seriously. It is that they do not take it seriously enough to understand it, using it only as a political club to beat their enemies with. I think that needs to be more widely understood and I don't think your levity, amusing as it was, was helpful in that regard.

If I was wrong, and you were calling me personally a nincompoop, I expect an apology.