Intelligent Design? Myth or Fact

Throughout my studies of religion and philosophical belief I have came across 10 major facts that could easily be used as a back bone for the intelligent design argument. Obviously there are several people who post in these forums that would have interesting and intelligent outlooks on this. So here you go

1:If the centrifugal force of planetary movements did not precisely balance the gravitational forces, nothing could be held in orbit around the sun.

2: If the universe had expanded at a rate one millionth more slowly than it did, expansion would have stopped, and the universe would have collapsed on itself before any starts had formed. If it had expanded faster, then no galaxies would have formed.

3:Any of the laws of physics can be described as a function of the velocity of light (now defined to be 299,792,456 meters per second). Even a slight variation in the speed of light would alter the other constants and preclude the possibility of life on earth.

4: If water vapor levels in the atmosphere were greater than they are now, a runaway greenhouse effect would cause temperatures to rise too high for human life; if they were less, an insufficient greenhouse effect would make the earth to cold to support human life.

5: If Jupiter were not in its current orbit, the earth would be bombarded with space material. Jupiter's gravitational field acts as a cosmic vacuum cleaner, attracting asteroids and comets that might otherwise strike earth.

6: If the thickness of the earth's crust were greater, too much oxygen would be transferred to the crust to support life. If it were thinner, volcanic and tectonic activity would make life impossible.

7: If the rotation of the earth took longer than 24 hours, temperature differences would be too great between night and day. If the rotation period were shorter, atmospheric wind velocities would be too great.

8: The 23-degree axel tilt- of the earth is just right. If the tilt were altered slightly, surface temperatures would be too extreme on earth.

9:If the atmospheric discharge (lightening) rate were greater there would be too much fire destruction; if it were less, there would be too little nitrogen fixing in the soil.

10: If there were more seismic activity much more life would be lost; if there were less, nutrients on the ocean floors and in river runoff would not be cycled back to the contintents through tectonic uplift. (Yes even earthquakes are neccesary to sustain life as we know it!)

Do these facts point toward intelligent design or not? Go ahead and take a nice chunk out of this.

 

Actually none do, and these are fairly simple, long known constants, necessiated the same way as the flow of water is necessiated by the relief of surface , resistance and force of gravity that acts upon it.

It is only at the higher levels of scientific discovery , knowledge and reflection that one stumbles upon unexplainable phenomena.
One must have little more than the general education to know what I refer to.
We are yet incapable, and as a humankind may perennially be incapable, of comprehending or explaining it, however just because we are not able to comprehend anything doesn't mean that it owes existence to intelligent design.

 

These are some of the facts behind the so-called Anthropic Principle or Fine Tuning argument, and it's taken seriously by scientists like Francis Collins and Paul Davies. Davies' books have had a lot of influence on my Christian faith: The Mind of God, The Goldilocks Enigma, and most recently The Fifth Miracle. Does it prove the existence of God ? I think the hard core skeptic could still resist. Until Darwin came along, most scientists thought that the watchmaker view of creation was inescapable. Atheist Richard Dawkins, in The Blind Watchmaker, argues that natural selection can provide an alternative explanation. So it is always possible one will turn up for Fine Tuning. Some of the objections raised already are: (1) we don't know that our universe is improbable, since we don't have a random sample of universes to compare; (2) there may be gazillions of universes; we don't know how many there are, so we can't calculate the odds; (2) the improbable conditions may not be independent of each other; (3)there may be natural selection of universes; (4) dial setting may not imply intelligent design as we usually think of it. Davies argues, I think persuasively, that Occam's razor favors intelligent design as the most plausible explanation, but he admits this isn't proof. We're stuck with faith. To me, just going to WalMart and looking at the people is proof enough to bet my life on God.

 

A lot of the arguments rest upon the assumption that evolution only can work once. Maybe life as we know it could not exist, but life surely could possibly exist. For example, it had long been thought that life needed energy from the sun to keep going (that is to say, plants are the basis of continuing life), but there are giant tube worms that rely on geothermal vents. Lets say that the earth did spin too slow. I think these things could still exist. Maybe not humans, maybe not most things, but something could. The same argument is used a few times in your post.

I keep on returning in a Creation class of mine (probably best seminar class ever. Various types of creationists come into the class and we talk with them mainly about why they ae wrong because so far they have been YEC, but wednesday we have an atheist professor coming in. A good mix of Christians and atheists also make up the class)...but I keep on returning to Martian methane. What if it turns out to be biological? There goes the "Earth is fine tuned" arguments out the window.

I see design in the numinous.

 

"Intelligent design" usually refers to the irreducible complexity anti-evolution argument of creationist "scientists" like Michael Behe, though I gather you're not talking about that.

The anthropic principle does not point to a designed universe in any way. It may point to an improbable universe, but there's nothing about an improbable outcome which requires supernatural guidance for it to occur. People win the lottery every week. It's a mistaken inference to assume this improbability means the universe has the purpose of supporting life. It happens to be this way, and it happens to support life. If it happened to be any other way, it may not support life, or may support a radically different kind of life, but since we are here observing it, it has to be this way at this particular time, and cannot be any other. The "fine tuning" argument is therefore a bit of a fallacy. Physicist Roger Penrose:

 

None of these are arguments for anything. Every one of those statements is of the same form and meaning. Basically: "If things would have happened differently, then things would have been different than they are now. No shit? But guess what, things happened the way they did. What does that prove? Nothing but itself.

 

An argument is just that, something that can be taken many different ways. What one perceives to be is not always what another perceives. Lessons learned are thoughts well gained.

 

Yes, the finely-tuned universe argument is tautologous and consequently lacks any explanatory power. It runs: the universe is able to support life as we know it because conditions in the universe are such that it supports life as we know it.

Any assumptions about divine creation are extraneous to this tautology, they do not proceed from it.

 

How can you answer any question definitely in absence of knowledge required to answer it in so certain way?

All I can say, in absence of knowledge :

A) I wish there was an Intelligent Design, for it suits my feelings, desires, preconditioned thoughts, beliefs , needs and what not.

or

B) I wish there was Evolutionary Design , for it suits my feelings, desires, preconditioned thoughts, beliefs, needs and what not.

I find it contrary to my faculties of intelligence to state just because I wish so something is really so.

 

Exactly what I meant. They are not arguments at all, simply tautologous statements. There is an implied argument inherent in these that is a total non-sequitur which is: Things could have happened in any of an astronomically large number of ways but they happened the specific way they did, therefore God must have done it. Do you see the problem?

 

The question was framed in terms of whether or not a set of facts "point to" intelligent design. I agree with Lithium that the use of the term "intelligent design" here is unfortunate, because of its association with anti-Darwinians like Demsky and Behe. I also agree, as I mentioned in an earlier post, that the facts stated, even when coupled with other facts supporting Fine Tuning, don't "prove" anything. Logically, one could say that the Anthropic Principle is tautological. These conditions are necessary to support life as we know it. If we didn't have them, we'd have life as we don't know it, or maybe no life at all. From a strictly scientific or logical standpoint, so what?

Science tends to emphasize avoiding what statisticians call Type 1 errors, or false positives, accepting hypothesized relationships that aren't real--avoiding a "false alarm" being one example. Scientists require proof comparable to the courtroom criminal standard of "beyond a reasonable doubt", confirmed by rigorous testing of falsifiable hypotheses in replicable experiments confirmed by extensive peer review. This process leads to knowledge we can rely on to a high degree. In the criminal justice system, the presumption of innocence and the "beyond a reasonable doubt" standard of proof are designed to avoid the unacceptable outcome of convicting an innocent person. On the other hand, there are Type 2 errors to deal with: avoiding false negatives, or rejecting hypothesized relationships that really are there. If we set the confirmation standards too high, the latter errors are a danger: false negative, failed alarms, criminals running loose on the streets.

Getting back to the Anthropic Principle, scientists and logicians would be right to reject it. They're just doing their jobs. Ordinary schmucks like me, however, are faced with the problem of betting our lives. Do we trust the used car salesman who looks a little shifty? Do we want to take this job, noticing that there are beds in the offices? Do I want to date this girl on Match. com, when she might be under 18, or might not even be a girl? I could take a scientific approach, say I have insufficient evidence to make a decision, and go through life carless, jobless, and girless. Or I could draw on as much evidence as I can, including personal experience and intuition, and take a chance, knowing that there's a real danger of error. The fact that I'm alive seems remarkable to me, although statistically speaking I seem not to be exactly unique in that regard. If things had been different and I never came to be, I'm not inclined to say "So what?" How did the miracle of me come about? (Yes, I know, Mom and Dad, but I'm thinking of the bigger picture involving intelligent life forms). If somebody says to me, "No big deal. You're the lucky winner of the cosmic lottery in which there were a gazillion contestants, I'd be inclined to be skeptical,especially if somebody else says maybe design had something to do with it. Either way, it seems like a miracle, although all sweepstakes winners probably feel that way. It's all to easy to explain any apparent relationship away by saying that we won the sweepstakes in a possible multiverse of a gazillion contestants when the existence of the multiverse and the contestants is a matter of sheer speculation. I don't see why such an explanation is more plausible than that God or the Flying Spaghetti Monster did it. My inclination would be to go with the apparent probabilities in the only universe I know. Breezy dismissals that apparent relationships are coincidences or tautologies may make sense to a logician, but to a guy who's betting his life, I have to check the odds and play hunches.

So I'm interested in "coincidences". That if the "strong" nuclear force had been slightly weaker, no element except hydorgen could have come into being; that if the resonance of carbon had been somewhat different, the collision of three helium atoms would not have produced an atom of carbon; that if gravity were much stronger than it is, the stars would collapse, etc.

 

So you accept theism based on the Pascal's wager concept? What if you chose the wrong god? What if god would be more likely to accept into heaven an atheist who reached his conclusion honestly than a theist who believes due to fear of what will happen if he doesnt? What if belief isnt necessary to god? Not only do you believe in a deity without evidence, but you make a lot of unjustified assumptions about the nature of that deity.

 

I reject Pascal's wager principle, for reasons you've suggested. My wager principle is closer to William James's. Pascal's formulation reminds me too much of those chainletter emails where if you send it on to 20 friends you'll win fame and fortune, and if you don't the curse of King Tut will fall upon you. I delete them. Besides, he thought it wasn't good enough to believe in God; you had to become a Catholic, and that's a lot to put up with just to win the Cosmic Sweepstakes. I don't believe in an afterlife, and I don't have a lot of assumptions about the nature of a deity. Just working hypotheses. Call it Okie existentialism.

 

All we know is that we're here, that our science gives us some inklings as to some of the processes and mechanisms involved in us being here, but nothing like a full picture. I would truly love to know, but in the meantime I'm happy to rest in uncertainties, doubts, and not knowing. I accept that I'll almost certainly never know some things. This doesn't stop me making life choices based on the partial evidence I do have, but I won't make my mind up in any particular direction until there's good evidence, and even then it's never final. Obviously the science points us in a particular direction as to likely naturalistic mechanisms since the big bang, and obviously the childish wish-fulfilment element of a sky daddy god is transparently and absurdly simplistic.

 

There is an overlap...

The knowledge of physical world has changed greatly in the past 100 years.

But that knowledge is so specialized, so confined to narrow circle of only the few that in any kind of discussion regarding the Nature of Universe it feels as if the subject is being discussed in the middle of the XIXth or even XVIIIth century as opposed to post XXth century era.

You don't necessarily have to be Einstein to understand the thought processes and conclusions of the latter (or Neils Bohr, Wolfgang Pauli or even Gustav Jung), but you must be aware of what is known , what unknowns are known to be unknown and what unknowns may still remain to be unknown in the process of acquiring ever greater knowledge , and you must know and understand what this means before there is a possibility of having a discussion where participants speak the same language...





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Good for you. The way you put your position, it's not much different from my own, except I may read more theological literature than you, use more religious metaphors, and maybe am more open to the possibility of SBOT (Something Big Out There). The "happy to rest" part is also an attitude I don't share. I'm restless by nature. I concede that "doubt, uncertainty, and not knowing" are part of the human condition, but I could never be happy resting in them, even though I'm well aware that I'll never escape them. It's the Sisyphus syndrome, or to use Plotinus' metaphor, a moth drawn to the flame. Have you read any of Davies books? What do you think about panentheism (not pantheism) and process theology as alternatives to Sky Daddy?

 

God was so intelligent with his design that he calculated that he needed to make trillions of planets in order to insure that intelligent life would develop on at least one planet because of the astronomical odds of all theses variables life balances on. He also must have know that most men wold not be able to grasp the enormous numerical odds associated with their relative existence and not being able to associate with the billions of baron lifeless planets they would come to invent an imaginary superbeing to give credit for this delicate planet and provide comfort from the harsh reality of a fragile and violently uncertain random existence. And if anyone ever questions a believers reasoning they simply need to state some astronomical probabilities that can only point to intelligent design when ignoring sheer numerical realities of the universe. The circular logic is so tight the shit will never leak out of it!

 

The problem with modern society is that they don't understand that in order to truly grasp a theological concept you must first differentiate between Religion and Faith. Religion is a foundation of belief that has been created by one set person or small group of people to guide the masses into what they feel should be believed. Faith is trusting your own heart and mind about what is true. When one considers the idea of god they should not consider with their brains. Nor with their intellect because no matter how much they consider it will always have problems. For example, in Judeo-Christian belief God is omnipotent and omniscient, among a pantheon of other things, these are the most well known attributes given to the Christian God. But there is a problem with this so called "truth" about their God. If he is omniscient then he knows all things that have been, all things that are, and all things that are yet to come. If you follow this train of thought then God knew that mankind would fail when tempted by Satan, not only did he know but he basically set us up for the fall. If God knew all things that would come then why did his "plan" for mankinds salvation change not once, not twice, but three times? By looking at this fact we can easily realize that the Christian view of God has its flaws and its lies.

There is no word or thought in the world that can truly define a being as infinite as something that could create an entire universe, perhaps even a multiverse, and at the same time be able to order affairs on a single small planet in the backwater of the galaxy. But of course everything I just stated is from a single ultimate being belief. The entity that so many call God cannot truly be defined. What God really is is a way for mankind to explain the unexplainable, grasp the unthinkable, and a way for them to settle their fears and have one single constant in this ever changing world. It is my belief that all gods were created to suit the needs of society that created them. For an example lets take the ancient Hebrews, now known as Jews, thousands of years ago the Jewish nation was a nomadic tribe of sheep and goat herders. They wanted a god that would be with them no matter what land they were journying thru, no matter what difficulties they faced, and no matter the fact they had no set place to worship this diety. Thus the god Yahweh was born. He fit a nomads way of life perfectly, being omnipotent, omnicient, and giving them a sort of father figure to look up to. As another example let us look at ancient Egypt. The egyptians, as far back as their history goes, had a set land by the Nile, thus they did not need a god or gods that were in all places at once, or able to know all things at all times, or even all powerful. Thus their religion had dieties that each had specific roles and capablities.

All gods, in my opinion, derive from the single unknowable entity that created the cosmos and sustains it everyday. Each diety has a set of attributes that when compiled together form a picture of this great entity in all its glory. Now in closing I must remind you that these are only my theories.

 

Pascal was a philosopher about the Original Sin well grained in human nature. We may doubt the redemption capabilities in a God, but we were certain of the sinner in anyone of the deistic confrontation of going to church, or even the person who cannot decide by all choice to just believe in God's existence. We choose; so we had an inclination, and that's certainly the certainty of something inner like a Sin (or commonly his critique about society, the hate reasonable people do at each other). But what contingently made inclination a reality of the mental factualization of the evolving World: it is the changing state of the purposeful end of the choosing Choice as we are distracted in a way from our goal. Maybe we are failing our obligations, maybe we are coping to the knowledge of a hostile world. The end is determined to change in spite of ourselves.....:cheers2:

 

So how many life forms are there in the universe? How many of those are intelligent? Do you know. I sure don't. Neither does science. "Trillions" of planets? Do you think any of them other than ours could be inhabited by intellgent life forms? Since science is unable to tell us how life began, it isn't much help in addressing those issues, so what are you basing your knowledge on?

Biochemist George Wald's 1950s idea that life began with an improbable chance event is now out the window because of evidence that life goes back about 3.8 billion years, near a time when conditions on earth would have been unfavorable for even the toughest bacteria; and even the simplest conceivable life form would have to be so complex that assembly couldn't have happened by chance during such a limited time period. Dawkins' Blind Watchmaker (Natural selection) can't work until reproduction has started. More plausible is de Duve's theory that life is the product of law-driven chemical steps that could occur again under similar conditions--presumably even on other planets. But Davies argues that something more is required: software; genetic information; DNA, or at least RNA. As Dawkins tells us in The Blind Watchmaker, each cell "contains a digitally coded database larger, in information content, that all 30 volumes of the Encyclopedia Britannica put together." Where did the programming come from? Davies tells us in The Fifth Miracle: "The key step that was taken on the road to biogenesis was the transition from a state in which molecules slavishly follow mundane chemical pathways, to one in which they organize themselves to follow their own pathways. (p. 211) How did this happen?

One of the problems I have with the caricature of "believers" is that we're all portrayed as close-minded fundamentalist simpletons. The OP asked about intelligent design. You gave it a name "God" and even a gender "He", and then heaped sarcasm on the idea, which some scientists are taking seriously. Intelligent design isn't the right term, it's the Anthropic Principle. It doesn't necessarily have a beard and speak to us from mountaintops. It may have properties which could be considered intelligence in some sense of the word, although not necessarily omnipotence and omniscience. I think it's an intriguing phenomenon worth exploring, especially when combined with other mysteries like consciousness and the origins of life, as yet unexplained by science. It may not be Yaweh, but it could be pretty cool.