Why Creationism or Intelligent Design is Important


prisonchaplain
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How dare I approach God? How dare I ask for help, for mercy, for forgiveness? What makes me think the God of the universe would condescend to care about me? The Psalmist David answers:   DON'T ABANDON ME FOR YOU MADE ME.  This is why God-as-creator is so important, and why skeptics are so opposed to the discussion.

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Guest MormonGator
23 hours ago, prisonchaplain said:

How dare I approach God? How dare I ask for help, for mercy, for forgiveness? What makes me think the God of the universe would condescend to care about me? The Psalmist David answers:   DON'T ABANDON ME FOR YOU MADE ME.  This is why God-as-creator is so important, and why skeptics are so opposed to the discussion.

There is a lot of evidence that some form of a biological evolution happened. I have no problem whatsoever accepting evolution and the existence of a God who created life in the first place. 

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7 minutes ago, MormonGator said:

There is a lot of evidence that some form of a biological evolution happened. I have no problem whatsoever accepting evolution and the existence of a God who created life in the first place. 

Its that part about "God who created life in the first place" that states you believe in intelligent design. But, to actually state that life could not have evolved without divine providence is another story. Where do you stand- Did life evolve because of the Creators intervention and causual effects or did it happen on its own?

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55 minutes ago, Rob Osborn said:

Its interesting though that a lot of LDS reject intelligent design.

They do not reject intelligent design; they reject Intelligent Design.

  • intelligent design: "God is the Creator and stands behind all that happens." (Note that this is not at all incompatible with organic evolution.)
  • Intelligent Design: "There is no possible way the eye could have evolved incrementally. Ergo, organic evolution is a false idea."

Intelligent Design has nothing directly to do with religion; it is a pseudoscientific effort to discount evolutionary theory, mostly by handwaving arguments.

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8 minutes ago, Vort said:

They do not reject intelligent design; they reject Intelligent Design.

  • intelligent design: "God is the Creator and stands behind all that happens." (Note that this is not at all incompatible with organic evolution.)
  • Intelligent Design: "There is no possible way the eye could have evolved incrementally. Ergo, organic evolution is a false idea."

Intelligent Design has nothing directly to do with religion; it is a pseudoscientific effort to discount evolutionary theory, mostly by handwaving arguments.

No, intelligent dedign is a scientific effort to counter 2 arguments- 1.that life evolved from unguided (random) events in nature. This process is now termed "abiogenesis". 2. That complex structures in biologic life forms arise through slow evolutionary process void of any intelligent process preceding it.

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23 minutes ago, Rob Osborn said:

No, intelligent dedign is a scientific effort to counter 2 arguments- 1.that life evolved from unguided (random) events in nature. This process is now termed "abiogenesis". 2. That complex structures in biologic life forms arise through slow evolutionary process void of any intelligent process preceding it.

Hi Rob,

As to my understanding "abiogenesis" is a study that doesn't involve "evolution." It is a study regarding origins of first life, not that life evolved. They are seen as two separate sciences, as I understand it from communications with others who are deeply rooted in purely random organic evolution -- no creator at all.

 

Edited by Anddenex
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4 minutes ago, Rob Osborn said:

No, intelligent dedign is a scientific effort to counter 2 arguments- 1.that life evolved from unguided (random) events in nature. This process is now termed "abiogenesis". 2. That complex structures in biologic life forms arise through slow evolutionary process void of any intelligent process preceding it.

Rob, I suspect you don't understand what "scientific" means.

I agree with what seems to be your underlying point that we often proceed from false premises. This is the fundamental flaw of logic; even perfectly valid logic yields false conclusions when your premises are wrong. And our premises are almost always wrong in some respect. Because of this, the scientific method can yield absolutely outlandish conclusions.

The other side to that coin is that science tends to be self-correcting. Here is an example:

It was determined many hundreds of years ago that light was a wave of some sort. It spreads out past a barrier just like ocean waves do. It shows interference and other properties that water waves show. So light is definitely a wave of some sort.

The assumption was that there was some sort of "water" that light traveled through. After all, if you remove the water from the oceans, you remove the waves. The waves don't exist without water. The water defines the waves. So the "water" or medium through which the waves of light traveled -- the medium that actually defined light -- was named "the luminiferous ether". Great efforts were made toward isolating and studying this "ether" -- how fast it transmitted waves, whether it had mass, how it interacted with objects, etc.

Eventually a rather bizarre model of the luminiferous ether came about. The ether apparently had zero mass. It did not interact in any observable way with any material objects. It transmitted light at one speed in air but at other speeds in other materials. Most peculiarly, the motion of the earth seemingly didn't count -- light traveled just as fast in the direction of earth's motion as it did the other direction.

This was truly strange, because other waves do not work like this. If water waves travel at 20 MPH and you're in a boat traveling across a lake at 10 MPH, you would find that, relative to you, waves move in the direction you're traveling at only 10 MPH (20 - 10), but at 30 MPH (20 + 10) in the opposite direction. Similarly, if light travels at 300,000 km/s through the ether and the earth travels at 30 km/s around the sun, you would expect light to travel, relative to us on the earth, at only 300,000 - 30 = 299,970 km/s in the direction of earth's motion around the sun, but at 300,000 + 30 = 300,030 km/s in the other direction.

Careful experimental measurement confirmed that the speed of light was exactly the same in both directions.

So it was assumed that the luminiferous ether must somehow be pulled around with the earth -- that the earth's "ether" traveled with it, through the rest of the "ether". But this model was untenable, and arguably unscientific. Finally, scientists simply dropped the idea of the "ether" altogether, and began to say that light was somehow a "self-existent" wave, one that didn't require a medium to travel through. Which is pretty much where we are today.

The moral of this story is that science and scientific thinking can indeed lead us down rabbit holes, but the nature of science is self-correcting. As far as I can tell, this is not at all true with so-called "Intelligent Design".

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I will agree with what I think is the basic idea of PC's OP -- there is significant value in recognizing and acknowledging that God is our creator. And not just our creator in the sense that He created everything, but that He created us in His image and likeness, which makes us unique among His creations ("I know I am somebody, 'cuz God don't make no junk."). Hopefully, this kind of belief allows us to see God as approachable and to get a glimpse into "the worth of our souls".

The challenges that I see are trying to understand mechanics and truths around what it means to me to see God as creator. Sometimes, I see "God is my creator" meaning that God very specifically created me. This invokes in my mind a picture of God deeply and intimately involved in every detail of my creation, including His influence on which specific gametes joined together at my conception, His control and manipulation of the meiotic processes that generated those two specific gametes, long history of genetic manipulation throughout my ancestry that deterministically made sure that the specific genetic material needed to create "me" would be exactly in place at the right time, and that the other influences (embryonic and developmental and environmental) would all be perfectly in place to create "me". All of that without needing to exactly control my parentage (if this is what we mean when we say that we don't believe in soulmates or other forms of pre-destined marriages), and while making this perfectly deterministic process be mathematically indistinguishable from a random process. Certainly an omnipotent and omniscient God can do this, but does He do this?

Some variations of this suggest that, while God is not deeply involved in every detail, He initiated a chain of events that, would deterministically culminate in "me", again while appearing indistinguishable from random processes. How far back do I need to go to find the most recent tweaks God made in my creation? Does it go back several generations? Perhaps to Adam and Eve? Perhaps to the origin of life on Earth? The creation of the solar system? The formation of the galaxy? The Big Bang?

I have frequently found some commentors claims that "God created men/women to be (fill in stereotype here)" interesting. As I see some of these stereotypes "debunked", I have often thought that, if God were truly manufacturing men/women to fit certain stereotypes, His manufacturing tolerances could stand some improvement. Just another thought train that gets me wondering exactly what the process of creation really looks like.

I don't claim to know anything about these answers, nor do I feel that they are ultimately important to the OP's starting point. I believe that I am one of God's creations, and one of His "children." I believe that God is approachable and that I have worth.

Edited by MrShorty
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12 minutes ago, Vort said:

Rob, I suspect you don't understand what "scientific" means.

I agree with what seems to be your underlying point that we often proceed from false premises. This is the fundamental flaw of logic; even perfectly valid logic yields false conclusions when your premises are wrong. And our premises are almost always wrong in some respect. Because of this, the scientific method can yield absolutely outlandish conclusions.

The other side to that coin is that science tends to be self-correcting. Here is an example:

It was determined many hundreds of years ago that light was a wave of some sort. It spreads out past a barrier just like ocean waves do. It shows interference and other properties that water waves show. So light is definitely a wave of some sort.

The assumption was that there was some sort of "water" that light traveled through. After all, if you remove the water from the oceans, you remove the waves. The waves don't exist without water. The water defines the waves. So the "water" or medium through which the waves of light traveled -- the medium that actually defined light -- was named "the luminiferous ether". Great efforts were made toward isolating and studying this "ether" -- how fast it transmitted waves, whether it had mass, how it interacted with objects, etc.

Eventually a rather bizarre model of the luminiferous ether came about. The ether apparently had zero mass. It did not interact in any observable way with any material objects. It transmitted light at one speed in air but at other speeds in other materials. Most peculiarly, the motion of the earth seemingly didn't count -- light traveled just as fast in the direction of earth's motion as it did the other direction.

This was truly strange, because other waves do not work like this. If water waves travel at 20 MPH and you're in a boat traveling across a lake at 10 MPH, you would find that, relative to you, waves move in the direction you're traveling at only 10 MPH (20 - 10), but at 30 MPH (20 + 10) in the opposite direction. Similarly, if light travels at 300,000 km/s through the ether and the earth travels at 30 km/s around the sun, you would expect light to travel, relative to us on the earth, at only 300,000 - 30 = 299,970 km/s in the direction of earth's motion around the sun, but at 300,000 + 30 = 300,030 km/s in the other direction.

Careful experimental measurement confirmed that the speed of light was exactly the same in both directions.

So it was assumed that the luminiferous ether must somehow be pulled around with the earth -- that the earth's "ether" traveled with it, through the rest of the "ether". But this model was untenable, and arguably unscientific. Finally, scientists simply dropped the idea of the "ether" altogether, and began to say that light was somehow a "self-existent" wave, one that didn't require a medium to travel through. Which is pretty much where we are today.

The moral of this story is that science and scientific thinking can indeed lead us down rabbit holes, but the nature of science is self-correcting. As far as I can tell, this is not at all true with so-called "Intelligent Design".

You dont understand intelligent design theory then. If science is self correcting as you say then how come the law if biogenesis hasnt been proven false as evolutionists argue it must? Where is the obvious self correction there? They are hanging on to a false premise that has shown over and over to be unobservable, untestable and against all known laws in science.

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Guest MormonGator
19 minutes ago, Vort said:

Rob, I suspect you don't understand what "scientific" means.

I agree with what seems to be your underlying point that we often proceed from false premises. This is the fundamental flaw of logic; even perfectly valid logic yields false conclusions when your premises are wrong. And our premises are almost always wrong in some respect. Because of this, the scientific method can yield absolutely outlandish conclusions.

The other side to that coin is that science tends to be self-correcting. Here is an example:

It was determined many hundreds of years ago that light was a wave of some sort. It spreads out past a barrier just like ocean waves do. It shows interference and other properties that water waves show. So light is definitely a wave of some sort.

The assumption was that there was some sort of "water" that light traveled through. After all, if you remove the water from the oceans, you remove the waves. The waves don't exist without water. The water defines the waves. So the "water" or medium through which the waves of light traveled -- the medium that actually defined light -- was named "the luminiferous ether". Great efforts were made toward isolating and studying this "ether" -- how fast it transmitted waves, whether it had mass, how it interacted with objects, etc.

Eventually a rather bizarre model of the luminiferous ether came about. The ether apparently had zero mass. It did not interact in any observable way with any material objects. It transmitted light at one speed in air but at other speeds in other materials. Most peculiarly, the motion of the earth seemingly didn't count -- light traveled just as fast in the direction of earth's motion as it did the other direction.

This was truly strange, because other waves do not work like this. If water waves travel at 20 MPH and you're in a boat traveling across a lake at 10 MPH, you would find that, relative to you, waves move in the direction you're traveling at only 10 MPH (20 - 10), but at 30 MPH (20 + 10) in the opposite direction. Similarly, if light travels at 300,000 km/s through the ether and the earth travels at 30 km/s around the sun, you would expect light to travel, relative to us on the earth, at only 300,000 - 30 = 299,970 km/s in the direction of earth's motion around the sun, but at 300,000 + 30 = 300,030 km/s in the other direction.

Careful experimental measurement confirmed that the speed of light was exactly the same in both directions.

So it was assumed that the luminiferous ether must somehow be pulled around with the earth -- that the earth's "ether" traveled with it, through the rest of the "ether". But this model was untenable, and arguably unscientific. Finally, scientists simply dropped the idea of the "ether" altogether, and began to say that light was somehow a "self-existent" wave, one that didn't require a medium to travel through. Which is pretty much where we are today.

The moral of this story is that science and scientific thinking can indeed lead us down rabbit holes, but the nature of science is self-correcting. As far as I can tell, this is not at all true with so-called "Intelligent Design".

@Vort, I hope this isn't TMI or too personal, but don't you have a background in the science field? IE-your major in college or something? 

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15 minutes ago, Rob Osborn said:

If science is self correcting as you say then how come the law if biogenesis hasnt been proven false as evolutionists argue it must? Where is the obvious self correction there?

What are you talking about, Rob? What is the "law of biogenesis", and how have evolutionists argued that it must be proven false?

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13 minutes ago, MormonGator said:

@Vort, I hope this isn't TMI or too personal, but don't you have a background in the science field? IE-your major in college or something? 

My degree from BYU was in applied physics. I went to grad school at Penn State in physics but switched to bioengineering, which frankly was a better fit.

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1 minute ago, Anddenex said:

Here is a quick wiki for starters regarding "law of biogenesis": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biogenesis

I have never heard of the "law of biogenesis". According to the wiki article, it is simply the observation that complex living organisms don't spontaneously generate, which on my scale of self-evident observations rates a "duh".

So that answers my first question. The second question still stands: How have evolutionists argued that it must be proven false? Which evolutionists have argued that some complex organisms simply appear out of thin air? Frankly, that sounds a lot more like a creationist argument than an evolutionist argument.

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23 minutes ago, Vort said:

I have never heard of the "law of biogenesis". According to the wiki article, it is simply the observation that complex living organisms don't spontaneously generate, which on my scale of self-evident observations rates a "duh".

So that answers my first question. The second question still stands: How have evolutionists argued that it must be proven false? Which evolutionists have argued that some complex organisms simply appear out of thin air? Frankly, that sounds a lot more like a creationist argument than an evolutionist argument.

I also have never heard of the "law of biogenesis" except through "intelligent design" arguments. My intent was merely answering the first question; however, from Rob's words I don't see any of his discussion specifying "out of thin air."

Rob appears to point out two factors the intelligent design arguments are countering:
1) Evolved life was solely through random unguided events of universal laws
2) Complex structures are able to evolve without any intelligent designer

The majority of my encounters with "evolutionists" is life evolved without any deity involved, thus they hammer the Intelligent Design proponents (To be fair, the majority of "Intelligent Design" proponents I have read do not in totality disagree with organic evolution, they disagree with "macro" evolution and accept micro evolution). It happened through random events over a long period of time. Rob appears to be conflating two independent studies (abiogenesis and evolution -- @Rob Osborn feel free to correct my misunderstanding), thus the notion that evolutionists haven't provided any overwhelming evidence for evolution (void of a intelligent designer) as it begins with life from no life -- inorganic to organic -- whereas the "law of biogenesis" argues that life in no way could have commenced without an intelligent designer and it is through an intelligent designer that any evolution could exist because life results from life. As pertaining to abiogenesis there is no evidence that life randomly, unguided, came into existence.

So as to the last statement, yes it is a creationist argument that evolutionists are still wanting in proving life began without a creator, thus life could not evolve without a creator. Evolutionist arguments remove "deity" all together; unless you have read a science book (in school) that purports life possibly could have begin and evolution commencing with a creator. I have never read it.

Edited by Anddenex
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I know he used the term "biogenesis", but did Rob mean to use "abiogenesis"? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abiogenesis That seems more consistent with his arguments, which, in my limited knowledge of this branch of biology, does have a lot of questions and almost no real answers about the earliest spontaneous generation of "life" or even biological molecules (whether they were proteins or nucleic acids or what they would have been). I don't know that I see anything in that lack of evidence that says we should reject all attempts to theorize about what that might have looked like, nor do I see in that lack of evidence evidence that there must have been an intelligence directing the initial formation of these molecules (in part because there is also a severe lack of evidence of any guiding intelligence at that phase of creation).

In my essentially uninformed opinion, it seems like we sometimes spend a lot of energy calling each other heretics (from either side of this debate) with little to no evidence to support either side.

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11 minutes ago, MrShorty said:

I don't know that I see anything in that lack of evidence that says we should reject all attempts to theorize about what that might have looked like, nor do I see in that lack of evidence evidence that there must have been an intelligence directing the initial formation of these molecules (in part because there is also a severe lack of evidence of any guiding intelligence at that phase of creation).

I think this is the point of "intelligent design" proponents who are searching for an "intelligent designer" scientifically, thus stating it is still scientific, and that it should be viable option for students to learn and hear a different thought approach in schools. Evolutionists will claim, no creator, but are still unable to provide any significant impact regarding abiogenesis and yet we still call it "science" or "scientific." Allow students to choose for themselves which theory they want to pursue, rather than only teaching one method -- theory.

I personally don't see anything wrong with it, and I don't see why anyone who professes a belief in "deity" would have any issues with it either. We live in a world that continually tries to separate science from "intelligent designer" as if they are mutually exclusively -- when they are not.

Edited by Anddenex
religion to intelligent designer
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12 minutes ago, Anddenex said:

I think this is the point of "intelligent design" proponents who are searching for an "intelligent designer" scientifically, thus stating it is still scientific, and that it should be viable option for students to learn and hear a different thought approach in schools. Evolutionists will claim, no creator, but are still unable to provide any significant impact regarding abiogenesis and yet we still call it "science" or "scientific." Allow students to choose for themselves which theory they want to pursue, rather than only teaching one method -- theory.

I personally don't see anything wrong with it, and I don't see why anyone who professes a belief in "deity" would have any issues with it either. We live in a world that continually tries to separate science from religion as if they are mutually exclusively -- when they are not.

Its an entire movement that is trying to remove God from every aspect schooling, belief, society, etc. Is it possible another human intelligence brought life to this planet? Yes. But science will never accept that possibility because that "human intelligence" may be thought of as "God" by some people. This really points to the underlying problem being not so much about science (science, by itself, unbiased doesnt care if there is a Creator or not) but rather a philisophical belief regarding the existance of deity. Of course we all know Satan wants to teach that there is no God and any belief in such is heresy. 

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3 minutes ago, Rob Osborn said:

This really points to the underlying problem being not so much about science (science, by itself, unbiased doesnt care if there is a Creator or not) but rather a philisophical belief regarding the existance of deity. Of course we all know Satan wants to teach that there is no God and any belief in such is heresy. 

True.

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12 minutes ago, Carborendum said:

When I bake a cake is that using science or is that intelligently designed?

Well, the baker (the intelligent designer) uses intelligence, combined with scientific laws to make a cake. You dont just happen to walk down a trail in the woods and happen randomly upon a chocolate cake sitting in the middle of the forest and assume mother nature made it.

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Just now, Rob Osborn said:

Well, the baker (the intelligent designer) uses intelligence, combined with scientific laws to make a cake. You dont just happen to walk down a trail in the woods and happen randomly upon a chocolate cake sitting in the middle of the forest and assume mother nature made it.

Exactly.  I believe the argument would be better made when we understand what scientific laws really are.

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