Intelligent Design? Myth or Fact

Darwins' theory of evolution is not more convincing to me than the claim that the world was created in a few days or that earth is flat and rests on the backs of elephants who stand somewhere in the middle of the water.

1000 years from now Darwins' theory will sound just as obviously unscientific as ancient myths do today.

 

I would like to make the point that the OP of this thread never said that these points prove intelligent design. Instead here is what was exactly wrote.

This theoretic example you are using is no more credible then the intelligent design theory. Even though I do not argue the big bang actually happening, have you studied the neccesary physical, spatial, and energy based parts that are neccesary for so much that we know are used to to come into being? Do you not realize that even in theory the universe was tecnically created by only a few neutrons, electrons, protons, and such that randomly collided together. Nothing better has been come up with to explain the big bang theory. Are you going to sit here and tell me that in all of science there is an explanation how intelligent, comprehensive, intuitve life could be created by neutrons and gasses? Sounds kind of stupid to me personally. Untill mankind can show me how these components created all that we know I think I would rather believe something that at least makes some sort of sense. What ever that may be.

How does this hold any more scientific fact then the theory of intelligent design? Sounds to me as though some theorists are grasping at shadows.

Anything is possible I don't disagree. But it is only possible if not refuted by science. Unless of course humakinds entire grasp of science is completly wrong. Intelligent design has not been disproved by scientists. It is simply not liked.

 

It will be less relevant, yes.
His guiding principles will remain.
The simple truth is we did not start the way we are now.
That is the simple truth.

 

Yes, his guiding principles may remain , as much as they do when you look at ancient myths.
All claim that things didn't start as they are today, but one or another way got to this point from the beginning [either in a matter of few days or billions of years, by will and design of Creator or random chance/probability/evolution].

P.S. The only truth is that we have nothing but myths.

 

Really? How familiar are you with the evidence? I think the theory is impressive and has stood up well over time. Of course, it's no longer "Darwin's Theory" because it's been modified by genetic drift, Margoulis' symbiosis, etc. But so far, no rabbits in the Cambrian. It may be wrong and be discarded some day, but tahat's science, and we have no way of knowing that. What empirically refutable hypotheses have thus far been generated by the elephant theory, or Intelligent Design, for that matter?

 

The difference is we have some science to back up what Darwin has stated, rather than hearsay, fantasy and nothing more.
To compare ancient myth to our grasp of science and Darwinian principles, is like talking about apples and oranges in the same breath...clearly not the same thing.
I don't think it can be disputed we got here in millions/billions of years not days.

False. We have fossil records and geographical evidence.

 

I am very familiar with the thought pattern that generated the theory , which was based on scant evidence available at the time.
Over the years , as archeological and biological evidence increased, so did number of books written on the theory , but it is still the same theory.

It basically claims that the highest organism in existence is something like a briefcase with multidigit code and that over billions of years these final "briefcases" were opened ,or hacked if you will, by chance, by random trial and error method (each broken "lock" representing a step higher on evolutionary ladder)
while useless "briefcases" were discarded by means of natural selection or stuck on lower steps.
Archeological evidence (fossils that show each organism and corresponding timeline) supposedly confirms the above theory.

What more is there to it ?

 

My bad on tagging the OP for trying to prove ID.

I definately am not saying that "gasses and neutrons" created life, but I think we should not so narrowly define what is living and what is not. Take viruses for example, which themselves do not have any metabolic processes but latch on to other cells and use their metabolisms to in essence "become alive". Or seeds, which can remain dormant for very very long periods of time, but upon the right conditions become "alive" and gain living dynamic. Im not saying that both of these things are dead, but just using them as a general example of how living complexity can come from simpler elements.

For the parallel universe where marijuana is legal, i'm not stating that as fact. That idea is based off the presumption that most people believe that time and the universe is infinite. That the big bang (which once again, i just use as a term for simplicity. instead of big bang, you can put in whatever cyclicle system of universal creation/expansion/compression that you want) didn't just happen once or twice, but for infinite. The thing that I'm refuting about the Intelligent Design arguement is not the fact that the universe does not display intelligent design/intent/purpose, but that it needs a intelligent outside "creator force". The typical indirect reference to prove God's existence is what I'm debating, but I agree 100% with the facts on life's delicate balance and interconnectedness. I'm not saying that the marijuana parallel universe has already occured, but once again. Within the context of existence, there could be 100 billion more cycles before or after us, and so eventually it will have to happen. Each cycle is like a millisecond within the context of infinity.


I never meant to say that intelligent design is not right, and its definately my fault that I came off that way. I'm pretty new at posting on bulletins (as opposed to IM's), so I try to cram too much information into one little post, while leaving out too much. Im much more of a instant messager, live debate type guy.

 

Here I would like to quote Einstein himself on science and religion. "Science without religion is lame; religion without science is blind." Perhaps a quote by one of histories other great minds on intelligent design and the creation of the universe is neccesary. "Philosophically, the notion of a beginning of the present order of nature is repugnant to me.... I should like to find a genuine loophole." Arthur Eddington.

Now let us look at the Cosmological Argument. Simply stated here it is.
1: Everything that had a beginning had a cause.
2: The universe had a beginning.
3: Therefore the universe had a cause.

For an argument to be true it has to be logically valid, and its premises must be true. This is a valid argument but are the premises true? Lets take a look at the premises.
Premise 1: Everything that had a beginning had a cause- is the Law of Causality, which is the fundamental principle of science. Without the Law of Causality, science is impossible. In fact Francis Bacon (the father of modern science) said, "True knowledge is knowledge by causes." In other words science is a search for causes. Thats what scientists do- they try to discover what caused what.

If there's one thing we've discovered about the universe, its that things don't happen without a cause. When a man is driving down the street a car never appears in front of his car out of nowhere, with no driver or no cause. Even the great sceptic David Hume could not deny the Law of Causality. He wrote, " I never asserted so absurd a proposition as that something could arise without a cause."

Since the Law of Causality is well established and undeniable, premise 1 is true. How about premise 2? Did the universe have a beginning? If not, then no cause was needed. If so, then the universe must have had a cause. Untill about the time of Einstein, athiests could comfort themselves with the belief that the universe is eternal, and thus did not need a cause. But since then, five lines of scientific evidence have been discovered that prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the universe did indeed have a beginning. And that beginning is what we now know of as the "Big Bang" This Big Bang evidence can be easily remembered by the acronym SURGE. SURGE is taken from several laws in science today. I'll state the names of these laws and if you are interested you can go educate yourself on them.

S= The Second Law of Thermodynamics

U= The Universe is Expanding. This is predicted by General Relativity, and proven by Edwin Hubble in the late 1920's when he looked through his telescope and scientists were able to confirm from his findings that the universe is actually expanding from a set point. How does the expanding universe prove a beginning? Think about it this way: if we could watch a video recording the history of the universe in reverse, we would see all matter in the universe collapse back to a point, not the size of a baseball, not the size of golf ball, not even the size of a pinhead, but mathmetically and logically to a point that is actually nothing(i.e. no space, no time, and no matter.) Its important to understand that the universe is not expanding into empty space, but space itself is expanding- there was no space before the Big Bang. What is nothing? Well Aristole once said "Nothing is what rocks dream about!" And we can take that quite litterally when you think about it.

R= The third line of scientific evidence that the universe had a beginning was discovered by accident in 1965. Thats when Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson detected strange radiation on their antenna at Bell Labs in Holmdel, New Jersey. No matter where they turned their antenna, this radiation remained. What they discovered turned out to be one of the most important scientific discoveries of the last century. These two Bell Lab scientists had discovered the afterglow of the Big Bang explosion!
Technically known as the cosmic background radiation, this afterglow is actually light and heat from the initial explosion. This light is no longer visible because its wavelength has been stretched by the expanding universe to wavelengths slightly shorter than those produced by a microwave oven. But the heat can still be detected. As early as 1948 scientists had predicted this radiation was there. Agnostic astronomer Robert Jastrow had this to say. "No explanation other than the BIg Bang has been found for the fireball radiation. The clincher, which has convinced almost the last Doubting Tomas, is that the radiation discovered by Penzias and Wilson has exactly the pattern of wavelengths expected for the light and heat produced in such a great explosion."

G= Great Galaxy seeds. Scientists beleived that we should see slight variations in the temperature of the cosmic background radiation that had been discovered, if the Big Bang were true. These temperature variations enabled matter to congregate by gravitational attaction into galaxies. In 1989 the serach for these variations was intensified by the building of the $200 millon satellite aptly called COBE for Cosmic Background Explorer. Of course we now know that these variations were found. COBE not only found these variations but scientists were astounded by their precision. The variations showed that the explosion and expansion of the universe was precisley tweaked to cause just enough matter to congregate to allow galaxy formation, but not enough to cause the universe to collapse back on itself. In fact the variations are so precise (down to one part in one hundred thousand) that George Smoot, COBE project leader, called them "machining marks from the creation of the universe" and the "fingerprints of the maker."
These variations are not just points on a graph somewhere. They have actually been photographed. Now keep in mind that space observations are actually observations of the past because of the long time it takes light from distant objects to reach us. These photos point to the existance of matter from the very early universe that would ultimately form into galaxies and clusters of galaxies. Smoot called this matter "seeds". These seeds are the largest structures ever detected, with the biggest extending across one third of the known universe. Thats 10 billion light years or 60 billion trillion (60 followed by 21 zeros) miles.

E= Einstein's Theory of General Relativity.

These are just some interesting points to ponder. What made the universe as we know it? Not the universe has we fantasize it to be but as it is?

 

I wouldn't say that atheists couldn't comfort themselves with the idea of an eternal universe.

What came before the big bang? Outside of that super condensed point of all energy, what exists? Is there spatial relativity? So to say that the big bang was uncaused well. That's not very scientific.

 

Once again no where in my posts do I state the belief that the big bang was uncaused. Neither has any one else who has posted in this forum man.

 

I'm wondering just where the big banged happened

 

I'm sorry man it's like 12:30 am over here, and im like gettin dyslexic. Once again I submit to you, sometimes my thoughts get a little jumbled and I mix ideas. Thx for pointing it out though, seriously.

What I meant to criticize was n your previous post you talked about how atheists couldn't find safety in the "eternal universe' because science has found beyond a reasonable doubt that the universe had a definate beginning. That assumption kinda seems to go along the line of thought that this is the first big bang. Start, Finish, End. From my understanding even at the end of the compression cycle of the big bang it's supposed to once again restart. Since science (as far as our current understanding and technology) can only examine things within this cycle of the big bang, that severely limits our understanding of what happens before/after.

I don't doubt the whole big bang type of concept, but how does evidence of a beginning of the big bang automatically preclude the idea of having an eternal universe? How do you know there weren't an infinite amount of big bangs before the one we're in now? And an infinite amount of big bangs after our current big bang cycle completes?

*BTW do you have an AIM screename or anything? If you care to debate for a lil bit, i'd be up for it*

 

If you want to debate with me personally you can send me pms here on the forums. As to your theory on an eternal universe lets take a look at it. In order for the universe itself to be eternal it would in essence have to be never ending, nor beginning, in other words it would have always been and will always be. But if there have been multiple Big Bangs then that would preclude the eternal universe theory due to the fact that the universe in existance before this one would have to have been destroyed for this one to exist. As such your idea would fit better the theory of eternal reality, which would be a constant state of creating, altering, and ending of the universe as we know it.

 

As I stated previously scientists have pinpointed an almost certain starting point for the origin of our universe.

 

. As to your theory on an eternal universe lets take a look at it. In order for the universe itself to be eternal it would in essence have to be never ending, nor beginning, in other words it would have always been and will always be

While a number go with the big bang, I don't buy it. For one there would be no bang as there was no air to allow sound

It's too much like we are trying to impose our mortality upon the universe.. It has to have a birth and a death like us... while we can generally see the future going on to infinity we can't seem to look back as see the past as being infinite also.

 

Okay. We all know the properties of energy, laws we learned in 4th grade or so. So where did energy come from? IF it can't be created, or destroyed, then what was the causation of the initial energy which allowed for the big bang to even occur?

 

I can go along with it to a point , but reality in 3d space, unless we have at least 2 vantage points separated by a large distance we're living in a 2d realm when it comes to viewing something as large as the universe

we have made some improvements ... VLBA

but we have a long ways to go before we can make any such bold statements like we really know without a doubt

 

With the fairly new discovery <creation > of the Bose-Einstein condensate.

It pretty much can riddle the big bang theory to shreds.

 

Perhaps you should reread post #69. As stated there the laws of science as we know it and several recent and not so recent discoveries make the Big Bang theory all but indisputable. In order for the big bang to be incorrect our entire out look on science as we know it would have to be incorrect as well.