Don’t Give Up The Faith!

_{Gil Dodgen

February 20, 2009

Intelligent Design}

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Given enough time, inanimate matter — through the laws of chemistry and physics, and with enough random trials, filtered by natural selection which throws out stuff that doesn’t work — will self-organize into highly sophisticated information-processing machinery that produces the human mind.

How could this ultimate truth not be obvious, except to those who have been indoctrinated with silly anti-scientific beliefs, like that there might be “design” in this whole process? How could anyone with an IQ above room temperature deny such an obvious truth?

Science has proven it. The debate is over. The mechanism described above can explain everything. All real scientists accept it.

All you ID guys should get a life and admit that your lives have no ultimate meaning or purpose, because everything is all meaningless and purposeless. It’s all chemistry, physics, and chance.

Crap! I just figured something out. If my life has no ultimate meaning or purpose, how am I supposed to get a life?

I’ll have to ruminate on that one.

Trust me. I’ll get back to you with an answer later. In the meantime, don’t give up the faith!

Comments

To tim [20]: I seem to sometimes have trouble understanding the meaning of creative writing, such as yours. I'm not sure if you agree with me, disagree with me, made ad hominems or just felt like being poetic for it's own sake. Can you clarify?Hoki_{February 22, 2009
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StephenB: The materialist has rendered a judgment that there is no objective meaning or purpose to search for. The ID advocate acknowledges the possibility that meaning and purpose are real and, therefore, may be worth pursuing. Design suggests purpose. ID gives you no objective meaning or purpose either. Sure, ID says that there MAY be an ultimate purpose, but so what? You're still left in the dark trying to find it. You are infinitely more likely to pursue the wrong purpose rather than the intended one in the event that there actually is one. What if you DID know the purpose but didn't like it?Hoki_{February 22, 2009
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How can one have a moral code without free will? Doesn't a moral code imply one has a choice? I shouldn't say this because it might start the debate all over again because certain people do not have the free will to stop.jerry_{February 22, 2009
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GilDodgen @ 16
The assertion that there are no moral absolutes and no human free will is easily refuted by a simple example. A thoroughgoing moral relativist who does not believe humans have free will would never object to someone cutting in line at the grocery store. Yet, they do object. Why? Because it’s not “right”?
Having been to Italy, I can assure you that, while the concept of standing in line is not foreign to the Italians, it is ignored more often than it is observed. The fact that most if not all human societies have concepts of good and evil does not mean that they are in exact agreement on what is meant by the words or that they are some kind of "absolute". One society believes that it is a good thing to amputate the hands of thieves, for example, while others believe that is wrong. What appears to be the case is that all humans have certain needs in common such as food, water, shelter and a secure environment in which they can live and raise a family. At a pragmatic level, moral codes function to regulate the behavior of people towards each other in society so that those needs can be better met.
Materialist philosophy is basically incoherent and self-contradictory at every level. No materialist can live with the logically inevitable consequences of his philosophy. He claims that there is no free will, claims moral relativism, but then objects when he is done “wrong” and wants “justice.”
If you look at it closely, there are serious philosophical questions about the concept of free will. And while there is no reason outside of religious dogma to think there is some kind of absolute, universal morality, as mentioned above, we do have basic interests in common as living creatures around which we can construct moral codes. It's not as easy as having someone else tell us what to do but it's not impossible.Seversky_{February 22, 2009
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Hoki
ID is compatible with every conceivable (and inconceivable) "ultimate" purpose.
If you're talking about the entity (or entities) that designed life, then you are indeed right. If you're talking about a Cosmic Designer, then I beg to differ. I argue below that only a Deity whose nature is to know and love perfectly could serve as a guarantee that the cosmos will continue to exist from one moment to the next, and that the laws of nature will continue to hold in a way that lets scientists go about their work. Such a Deity is not a science-stopper, but a science-enabler. Seversky
[W]hether created by God or not, we are also beings capable of reason so what is to prevent us from working out moral laws for ourselves?
Up to a point, we can. The problem is that sooner or later, moral reasoning gets bogged down in highly speculative, metaphysical questions. Case in point: suppose you decide to ground your ethics in a nice, simple intuitive principle: the Golden Rule ("Do unto others as you would have them do unto you"), which is found in nearly all societies. Here's the problem: who counts as "others"? Newborn babies, which are sentient but lack a concept of self? Fetuses? Embryos? Chimps? Lizards? Fish? Computers of the future whose processing capacity exceeds that of a human brain? Computers (should they ever be built) that can pass the Turing Test? Terminator robots? Alien life-forms? In order to decide what counts and what doesn't, you need to import some metaphysical assumptions. However, if evolutionary materialism is true, then it is highly unlikely that human reasoning can be relied on when addressing such abstruse questions, as it evolved in order to deal with practical tasks. At best, our capacity to reason about speculative metaphysical questions is a mere by-product, or a "spandrel" (to borrow a phrase from the late S. J. Gould). And the fact that people's metaphysical intuitions often clash profoundly is yet further reason to be mistrustful of reason's capacity to resolve controverted moral issues, IF one happens to also believe that the human mind evolved from inanimate matter via undirected processes. I'm not saying that atheists can't reason morally. Obviously they can. My point is that their own metaphysical account of human reasoning, and where it came from, tends to undermine their confidence in their own moral reasoning, as well as limit it to "conventional," familiar cases which arouse little controversy (Don't poke other people in the eye; don't steal people's wallets.) A common-sense ethical principle such as the Golden Rule is insufficient by itself to address the ever-multiplying moral dilemmas which confront us, in today's ever-changing world. To escape these shackles on our reasoning, we need two things: a metaphysical outlook which gives us confidence that human reasoning is indeed competent to address any problem that we may have to confront; and a set of metaphysical "givens" that are indispensable for resolving disputed ethical questions. Someone who regards the human capacity to reason speculatively as being God-given can rest assured that speculative human reasoning is indeed something we can rely on, PROVIDED that God is someone we can rely on. Atheists tend to pounce here, and say: "Aha! And what makes you think that the Supreme Being is someone you can trust? Why couldn't it be nasty, or mischievous, or just plain absurd, like the Flying Spaghetti Monster?" My answer is that "Supreme Being" is the wrong way to define God. A Supreme Being could be anything; we need a non-arbitrary definition of a Deity. The FSM is a joke, because its attributes are ad hoc. The same goes for a Cosmic Imp, or a Cosmic Troll. Here's a short definition of God which I'd like to put forward: God is a fully integrated being, whose nature it is to know and love perfectly. (By "fully integrated" I mean a being that is by nature incapable of being broken up into parts; such a being is essentially indestructible.) I picked the verbs "know" and "love" as defining attributes of God because they are non-modal verbs, with no built-in limitations, and can therefore be considered totally non-arbitrary attributes. (For instance, I may have many different modes of knowing and loving; but the verbs "know" and "love" do not specify these modes, and they can be properly applied to any of them. Of course, God's modes of knowing and loving are utterly different from mine, but that is irrelevant here, as the verbs "know" and "love" are meant to describe what God does, rather than how God does it.) By contrast, if I had defined God as a being who kicks or makes spaghetti perfectly, that would have been ad hoc: the verb "kick" can only be ascribed to beings with legs, while making spaghetti is a restricted power - why not cheesecake too? Knowing and loving are attributes which do not limit their possessor. Moreover, they are truly universal in scope: the act of knowing can be directed at any truth, and the act of loving can be directed at anything good. Finally, the two go hand-in-hand, insofar as a being's capacity to love depends on what it is capable of knowing or understanding, and a being's capacity to know determines its capacity to love. (A creature lacking a "theory of mind," for instance, could never love other minds as such; but a creature possessing a "theory of mind" is thereby capable of empathy.) There are other non-modal verbs in English, such as "be," "act" and "have", which are free of built-in limitations, but which I avoided in my foregoing definition of God. Why not these verbs? Because they are utterly devoid of content: hence, they can't tell us anything about the nature of God. If I had defined God as a being whose nature it is to exist perfectly, or even a being whose nature it is to act perfectly, you'd be none the wiser as to what God is, or what God does. (I'm no fan of philosophical attempts to define God as "Pure Existence" or "Pure Act"; mystics might appreciate them, but to me, they're vacuous.) By contrast, the verbs "know" and "love" aren't non-descript like "be" and "have"; they have genuine content. Knowledge is always directed at some truth; while love is always directed at some good. Finally, I didn't define God as the First Cause, because this is not an essential attribute of God: it tells us nothing about God's nature. Causation is a contingent attribute of God. All it tells us is that God freely chose to create the world, and that everything which is not God depends for its existence on God. Now we can address the question: can we trust our speculative reasoning? If the God I have described exists, then we certainly can. For if it is God's nature to know and love perfectly, then it follows that God would want to be known and loved by any creatures (such as ourselves) which are naturally capable of doing so, and it also follows that God would endow such creatures with a capacity for reasoning whose scope is maximally generous - by which I mean that its scope encompasses any problem which human beings may need to solve. Morality is something we have to get right; but it is built on a foundation of metaphysics. A God who wants us to love the right "others," in the right way, must have given us the metaphysical wherewithal to figure out who these others are. Thus IF God exists, metaphysical reasoning is reliable. IF God exists...? All I will say is that if God doesn't exist, then scientists have no right to expect the laws (or regularities) of nature to continue holding, as they have done in the past. The number of ways in which these laws can go wrong is infinitely greater than the number of ways in which they can go right. (Use your imagination!) However, science is built on the assumption that we can do experiments, and replicate research findings. That requires laws to keep working. But why should they? That's an act of faith. The only thing that could guarantee that the universe will continue to be a science-friendly place is a science-friendly Deity: that is, a Deity who is incapable of frustrating the human quest to know, because its all-knowing, all-loving nature prevents it from doing so. "But what stops this God of yours from falling over?" I hear you say. Answer: a God who is by nature complete and self-sufficient cannot fall over, or cease to be. "Well then, couldn't we say that the cosmos is self-sufficient, and leave it at that?" No. For the laws which apply throughout the cosmos, and can therefore be said to characterise the cosmos, are limiting, arbitrary and totally ad hoc. They could have been otherwise. God, by contrast, is defined in terms of non-arbitrary attributes: knowledge and love. There's nothing limiting about either of those attributes. You write:
I find myself in a similar position to Paul Davies in that I find equally unsatisfactory the concept of a creator God or that we must accept the existence of the Universe as a "brute fact" which is susceptible of no further explanation.
If I understand you aright, your question here seems to be: "How could a necessary Deity serve as an explanation of something as contingent as this cosmos?" That's the question you raise in your post, and which physicist Paul Davies has repeatedly asked in his books. Brief response: if God is the kind of Being whose nature it is to know and love perfectly, then there are constraints on the kind of cosmos God can create. My guess is that God chose the physical constants and initial conditions that characterise our cosmos, not because they are the best, but because they are the most robust: thanks to them, the earth and the heavens are built to withstand whatever mischief intelligent beings with free will can wreak, with a minimum of damage in the worst possible cases. Another set of constants or initial conditions might well give rise to a nicer universe - perhaps one with less pain! - but it would be a more fragile one, too. For instance, it might be one where intelligent life-forms could, if they wished, blow their entire planet to smithereens (which is something that we can't do in our universe, because there isn't enough uranium, thankfully). So that's my working hypothesis. If anyone has a better one, I'm all ears. The foregoing discussion is predicated on one huge metaphysical assumption: that things have a NATURE. That might sound un-Darwinian, but as I have argued elsewhere, it doesn't have to be. Organisms change very slowly over time, and at any given point in time, they can still be said to have a set of features which characterise them. An evolutionist can continue to maintain that organisms have their own distinctive natures, provided that these natures are understood as being slightly fuzzy (no precise set of defining features), non-transitive over time (if organism A at t0 has the same nature as organism B at t1, and B has the same nature as organism C at t2, then we cannot assume that A and C have the same nature, as they may be different chronospecies), and in some cases non-transitive over space as well (to account for ring species). In short: a believer in gradual change can still believe in natures; a Goldschmidtian, who believes in hopeful monsters, cannot. In order to resolve ethical boundary disputes and decide who counts as "morally significant," we need to investigate the nature of the beings we are talking about. Does an embryo have the same nature as a baby, or a full-grown adult? If the answer is yes, then it has the same human rights. What about a robot? Obviously, we need to ascertain whether it even has a nature at all. Is it merely an assemblage of parts? How does the esential unity of an organism differ from the design of a robot? These are not easy questions to answer, but at least recognising that entities possess natures allows us to ask the right questions in the first place. Finally: could the universal God I have described above be the same as the God of any particular religion? Possibly. However, any "extra attributes" which a particular religion imputed to this universal God would have to be consistent with its nature, as a being which knows and loves perfectly. These attributes would also have to be either essential attributes which flowed automatically from the God's nature as someone who knows and loves perfectly, or contingent attributes which reflected choices made by this God while interacting with the cosmos and the creatures that people it. Case in point: many Trinitarian Christians believe that God's being triune is a necessary consequence of God's knowing and loving himself perfectly. If they are right, then God's being triune is an essential attribute of God, but it adds nothing "extra" to the definition of God - it merely clarifies it.(St. Augustine of Hippo argued along these lines.) On the other hand, the Incarnation (God's becoming man), and God's calling the Jews, are regarded by Christians as free choices on God's part, and hence as contingent attributes of God. The sticking point for most skeptics when it comes to revealed religion is the apparent severity of the God of Judaism, Christianity and Islam, who seems harsh and unjust. (Reading the book of Deuteronomy was what undid that prejudice for me, but that's another story.) My advice to these skeptics is: if the God of revealed religion is a bridge too far for you, then stick with the God who knows and loves perfectly. Such a Deity is worthy of worship. The only remaining argument open to a skeptic is that the definition of God which I have proposed above is meaningless and hence "not even wrong." For my part, I have yet to meet a persuasive argument to this effect; asserting that there is such a Being makes perfect sense to me, as I think it does to a lot of people. In any case, I think we can all agree that the concept of God is either true or meaningless. So the question I would ask a skeptic is: what's not to like about the concept of God? (I have obviously drawn upon the work of many philosophical and religious thinkers in writing this post, and I make no claims to originality. Any errors are entirely my own.)vjtorley_{February 22, 2009
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StephenB @ 11
Natural law is comprised of those precepts that govern the behavior of beings possessing reason and free will. The first of those is that human beings ought to do that which is good and avoid that which is evil, a standard that is not appropriate for animals, which have no free will. Darwinists, of course, do not acknowledge the substantial difference between humans and animals, and, cannot therefore, affirm any kind of human morality.
Outside of human society where is there anything to suggest that "The first of those is that human beings ought to do that which is good and avoid that which is evil..."? What is meant by "good" and "evil"? These are not physical properties like color or temperature. The most we can say, as of now, is that they are concepts in the minds of human beings. As what you would call a materialist, I have absolutely no problem with being as much an animal as my cats. That does not mean I am exactly the same as them. There are significant differences, like they have a fur coat and better night vision and I can use a computer and use my opposable thumbs to operate a can-opener. As for morality, I asked before - without getting a satisfactory answer - what is to prevent us from working out our own moral codes?
The natural moral law has an objective and a subjective component. The “objective” component is written in nature in the sense that it exists outside the minds and wills of humans;
Clearly you and a lot of other people believe that but you have not offered any good reasons for thinking that morality has any existence outside of human thought.
Notice, though, that the moral prescriptions of the Bible are “discovered” by reason not “created” by reason. Only the creator can prescribe moral prescriptions for the creature because only the creator knows their true nature. We cannot design that which is inherent in our nature. We can only conform to it or subvert it. To decide it for ourselves is to subvert it.
If we arrive at an agreed moral code through a process of reasoning does it really make any difference to say that it was "discovered" rather than "created"? The important point is that we are able to work it out for ourselves, we are not children dependent on some authority figure to tell us right from wrong.Seversky_{February 22, 2009
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Hok: "So, an IDist is, just like a materialist, left to figure out their own purposes (or, perhaps, have them thrust upon themselves from someone/something else)." Not exactly. The materialist has rendered a judgment that there is no objective meaning or purpose to search for. The ID advocate acknowledges the possibility that meaning and purpose are real and, therefore, may be worth pursuing. Design suggests purpose.StephenB_{February 22, 2009
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Hoki at #17, "ID is also consistent with your purpose being to have your body fats extracted, turned into soap and sold in swanky department stores on the planet from where the aliens that created us came." To which I somewhat curtly respond: Hoki, your statement re: alien soap Invoked panspermia, a too-common trope. But Mork's alien corpus Evolved too, without purpose. You're back to square-one but a bit of a dope. Now, don't blame me in vituperative stupor. It's entirely possible that I've made a blooper. Without too much college-ing, I find I'm acknowledging That now science suggests some of nature is "super".Tim_{February 22, 2009
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Hoki, you are right that ID itself does not answer questions of meaning and purpose, just as is true of any part of science. I wouldn't expect ID or any other scientific undertaking to fulfill that role. What ID does avoid is the need for a blind faith that mindless matter is able to perform actions that in the history of mankind have never been observed to be originated by mindless material processes and have always and only been originated by intelligent agents. ID opens the options for explanation to allow consideration of intelligent agency as a legitimate source for effects that are beyond the reasonable reach of law plus chance. Unfortunately for materialism, it seems that materialism requires that one doesn't "give up the faith" regarding the unobserved, supposed abilities of mindless matter, despite any and all evidence to the contrary. In other words, the ID advocate has many options to consider (including the role of unguided law+chance where that is supported), while the materialist is ideologically obligated in advance of the evidence.ericB_{February 21, 2009
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The assertion that there are no moral absolutes and no human free will is easily refuted by a simple example. A thoroughgoing moral relativist who does not believe humans have free will would never object to someone cutting in line at the grocery store. Yet, they do object. Perhaps they lack the free will to do anything else?Hoki_{February 21, 2009
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StephenB [8] and absolutist [7]: ID is consistent with a purposeful, mindful God, even if it cannot identify God’s identity; materialism rules out a purposeful, mindful God. ID is also consistent with your purpose being to have your body fats extracted, turned into soap and sold in swanky department stores on the planet from where the aliens that created us came. According to ID, your (and anything else's) purpose could have expired a long time ago. I.e. you have no "ultimate" purpose. ID is compatible with every conceivable (and inconceivable) "ultimate" purpose. So, an IDist is, just like a materialist, left to figure out their own purposes (or, perhaps, have them thrust upon themselves from someone/something else). But don't despair, plenty of people find meaning and purpose in mundane tasks such as gardening. They would consider themselves to have lives, even if these have no "ultimate" purpose.Hoki_{February 21, 2009
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The assertion that there are no moral absolutes and no human free will is easily refuted by a simple example. A thoroughgoing moral relativist who does not believe humans have free will would never object to someone cutting in line at the grocery store. Yet, they do object. Why? Because it’s not “right”? Materialist philosophy is basically incoherent and self-contradictory at every level. No materialist can live with the logically inevitable consequences of his philosophy. He claims that there is no free will, claims moral relativism, but then objects when he is done “wrong” and wants “justice.” This is a philosophical universe completely disconnected from reality, and such a disconnected mind cannot see the actual reality that is screaming at him from every direction. And this includes that living systems were designed by a super-intelligence. If the debate is over, it is that the Darwinian mechanism of chance and necessity is an artifact of a pre-scientific age (in modern terms), that was poisoned by the 19th century death-of-god movement, that basically made it impossible for the intellectual elite to examine the evidence impartially, but instead, forced them to cram the evidence into a hopelessly illogical, mathematically absurd, evidentially unsupported paradigm that is collapsing at a catastrophically accelerating rate in the 21st century.GilDodgen_{February 21, 2009
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I find the concept of a creator such as the Christian God at least as improbable as the proposition that it all appeared out of nothing or it has existed for all eternity,
1. The universe could not have existed forever or heat and energy would be evenly spread throughtout the universe (second law of thermodynamics) therefore it was created. 2. Matter in the universe expanded at precisely (Stephen Hawkings says a thousand million million parts slower and it would have collapsed, faster and matter couldn't have formed stars) for the conditions for life to exist. 3. Water was needed for life to begin. There are no plausible theories for how 326 000 000 000 000 000 000 gallons (16 500 tons of water every minute for 150 million years) got to earth. 4. The minimum requirements for the first cell according to the information we have now are 30 000 base pairs all in the right order, at least 12 specific different proteins with the amino acids all in the right order, ATP or some other energy source, and a semipermeable cell membrane. There are no plausible models on how the first cell was formed. 5. After a few billion years of unicellular life suddenly a fairly complex comb jelly appeared as the first animal. 6. The Cambrian Explosion 7. "In any system, open or closed all things tend toward entropy" and yet atheistic evolution claims that life tended toward higher organization not once but millions of times. 8. The eye which according to Dawkins evolved separately 40 to 65+ times. 9. The absence of mutations that increase complexity. Natural selection does not increase complexity, just selects out or for certain traits. 10. Studies on resuscitated individuals who all seem to go through the things upon death. 11. DNA segments that appear in different species of plants and animals that do not appear in their common ancestor. 12. Other To me it is more logical that an intelligent being was involved in evolution than it happened by chance. Everywhere we see organization, we immediately conclude that an intelligence designed and created it. Why would it be any different with the universe. I am still trying to figure out what exactly the creator is but the probability that there is one far outweighs the alternative.
alaninnont_{February 21, 2009
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-----Rob: "If you’re talking about Dawkins, he contrasts “the illusion of design” with “true design”. He puts man-made objects like planes and computers in the latter category, just as Seversky does." Like many materialists, Dawkins position is incoherent. On the one hand, he insists that our genes rule us (no free will); on the other hand, he says that we can rebel against them (free will). He writes, “I am very comfortable with the idea that we can override biology with free will.” So, it sounds as if he is allowing for the kind of free will that permits design. But as Philip Johnson writes, “Who is the “we” that is supposed to do the rebelling.. Dawkins does not believe that there is a single, central self which utilizes the machinery of the brain for its own purposes. The central self that makes choices and then acts upon them is a creationist notion, which reductionists ridicule as the “ghost in the machine.” Selfish genes would produce not a free-acting self, but rather a set of mental reactions that compete with each other in the brain before a winner emerges to produce a bodily reaction that serves the overall interests of the genes” So, for Dawkins, everything is a result of un-designed natural forces, which means, of course, that everything is determined, which means there is no free will and no real capacity to design anything differently that what nature's laws of cause and effect are bound to produce. All materialists disavow free will, but some materialists are more up front about it than others.StephenB_{February 21, 2009
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StephenB:
—- “Materialism cannot be said to deny the existence of design in nature if it admits of beings such as ourselves who are capable of design.” According to materialist Darwinists, design is an “illusion.”
Quote, please. If you're talking about Dawkins, he contrasts "the illusion of design" with "true design". He puts man-made objects like planes and computers in the latter category, just as Seversky does.R0b_{February 21, 2009
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—- “Materialism cannot be said to deny the existence of design in nature if it admits of beings such as ourselves who are capable of design.” According to materialist Darwinists, design is an “illusion.”StephenB_{February 21, 2009
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---- “Materialism cannot be said to deny the existence of design in nature if it admits of beings such as ourselves who are capable of design.” According to materialist Darwinists, design is an “illusion.” ------"As for moral laws it is hard to see how they can be objective an any sense other than that they are proposed by beings such as ourselves who have an objective existence. They seem to have no existence apart from ourselves. They do not seem, for example, to be woven into the fabric of space and time in the way that the laws of gravity or electromagnetism are." Natural law is comprised of those precepts that govern the behavior of beings possessing reason and free will. The first of those is that human beings ought to do that which is good and avoid that which is evil, a standard that is not appropriate for animals, which have no free will. Darwinists, of course, do not acknowledge the substantial difference between humans and animals, and, cannot therefore, affirm any kind of human morality. The natural moral law has an objective and a subjective component. The “objective” component is written in nature in the sense that it exists outside the minds and wills of humans; its “subjective” component exists as “conscience,” that faculty which apprehends the objective moral law. Because human beings are capable of distinguishing objective right from wrong, they can claim the moral right to freedom. Through this principle, they can dispense with the directives of kings and tyrants and govern themselves according to the natural moral law. -----“Materialism does not mean that we cannot decide moral codes for ourselves. After all, Christians believe that God is a rational rather than a capricious being. He does things for good reasons rather that just - dare I say it - for the hell of it. We can assume, therefore, that the moral prescriptions of the Bible are rational - they are the product of reason. That being the case, whether created by God or not, we are also beings capable of reason so what is to prevent us from working out moral laws for ourselves?” Notice, though, that the moral prescriptions of the Bible are “discovered” by reason not “created” by reason. Only the creator can prescribe moral prescriptions for the creature because only the creator knows their true nature. We cannot design that which is inherent in our nature. We can only conform to it or subvert it. To decide it for ourselves is to subvert it.StephenB_{February 21, 2009
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StephenB @ 6
...ID proposes design in nature, which is consistent with the objetive moral law; materialism denies design in nature and disavows any possibility of an objective moral law.
Materialism cannot be said to deny the existence of design in nature if it admits of beings such as ourselves who are capable of design. As for moral laws it is hard to see how they can be objective an any sense other than that they are proposed by beings such as ourselves who have an objective existence. They seem to have no existence apart from ourselves. They do not seem, for example, to be woven into the fabric of space and time in the way that the laws of gravity or electromagnetism are. Materialism does not mean that we cannot decide moral codes for ourselves. After all, Christians believe that God is a rational rather than a capricious being. He does things for good reasons rather that just - dare I say it - for the hell of it. We can assume, therefore, that the moral prescriptions of the Bible are rational - they are the product of reason. That being the case, whether created by God or not, we are also beings capable of reason so what is to prevent us from working out moral laws for ourselves?Seversky_{February 21, 2009
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alaninnont @ 5
...I believe that there is some kind of creator involved because the probability of all this (waving my hand through the air) happening by chance is so miniscule, it is more logical to believe in a creator.
I find the concept of a creator such as the Christian God at least as improbable as the proposition that it all appeared out of nothing or it has existed for all eternity, but there is really nothing better on offer so I would not deny believers the comfort of their beliefs. Unfortunately, I can no longer be one of them because it is impossible to ignore all the evidence that is inconsistent with such a being, although it does depend on how you define it. The Intelligent Design movement is really of little help here because they are not concerned with the nature of any designer. It seems perfectly respectable to investigate the proposal that all design, whatever its origin, has common and distinguishing properties which can be observed and measured but that tells us nothing about the origins of any designer or of life or of the Universe itself. I find myself in a similar position to Paul Davies in that I find equally unsatisfactory the concept of a creator God or that we must accept the existence of the Universe as a "brute fact" which is susceptible of no further explanation. The suspicion is that there is something deeply mysterious - something we have yet to even conceptualize - underlying it all but I have absolutely no idea what that might be.Seversky_{February 21, 2009
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Hoki [4] ID does not identify a designer because the designer label is not on the design. This does nothing to invalidate the self-evident design of say, a bacterial flagellum. ID just shows that materialistic naturalism is ruled out as a theory of origins, not purpose and meaning. I would say au contraire, it gives exponential purpose and meaning to life. Loving the truth and searching for it wherever it leads, whatever the conclusion, should guide us all.absolutist_{February 21, 2009
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----Hoki: "Yes, but given the unwillingness of ID to say anything about the nature of the designer, ID won’t tell you anything about your purpose or meaning either. Surely, merely adhering to ID gives you as much guidance as adhering to materialism does, does it not?" ID does not rule out meaning, morality, and purpose; materialism does. ID is consistent with a purposeful, mindful God, even if it cannot identify God's identity; materialism rules out a purposeful, mindful God. ID proposes design in nature, which is consistent with the objetive moral law; materialism denies design in nature and disavows any possibility of an objective moral law.StephenB_{February 21, 2009
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To Seversky, It's not a question of whether it is right. As scientists, all our beliefs are conditional, always open to new information and adjustments to our theories. We tend to make logical conclusions with the information we have available to us. They believed the sun rotated around the earth because it is what made sense to them with the information they had. I believe that there is some kind of creator involved because the probability of all this (waving my hand through the air) happening by chance is so miniscule, it is more logical to believe in a creator.alaninnont_{February 21, 2009
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All you ID guys should get a life and admit that your lives have no ultimate meaning or purpose, because everything is all meaningless and purposeless. It’s all chemistry, physics, and chance. Crap! I just figured something out. If my life has no ultimate meaning or purpose, how am I supposed to get a life? I’ll have to ruminate on that one. Yes, but given the unwillingness of ID to say anything about the nature of the designer, ID won't tell you anything about your purpose or meaning either. Surely, merely adhering to ID gives you as much guidance as adhering to materialism does, does it not?Hoki_{February 21, 2009
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The purpose of the post was to lay bare the claims of Darwinists, as taught to our children in public education, although it is never done in such honest or forthright terms, as I did in the first paragraph. When presented thus, it is clear that these claims require an extraordinary amount of blind faith. But here’s the worst part:
Science has proven it. The debate is over. The mechanism described above can explain everything. All real scientists accept it.
Students are expected not to question or challenge, but just swallow it all on claims of authority and consensus. In addition, the inescapable metaphysical implications concerning meaning and purpose are never revealed or discussed, although they are quite obvious. The reason these implications are never discussed is also quite obvious: to do so would reveal the agenda underlying the theory.GilDodgen_{February 21, 2009
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That's right Seversky. They were not privy to the facts. And that can be seen with the emergence of facts today. We are starting to see how wrong Darwin's theory was. And just like the day's of old, we will look back and say gee, did people really believe we emerged from a warm goo billions of years ago? And ALL life came from one single simple organism?IRQ Conflict_{February 21, 2009
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There was a time when most people believed the Sun went around the Earth because it was the most logical explanation. That was what it was clearly observed to do. But all those people believing it did not make or right then or now.Seversky_{February 21, 2009
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The situation in the former Soviet Union is interesting. For 70 years the communist party ruled before their collapse. They tried to wipe out religon with techniques that bordered on brainwashing. They enforced the teaching of scientific atheism and evolution in all education systems. Some religion was tolerated but "believers" were denied promotions, ridiculed, and sometimes persecuted. After about three generations of this indoctrination, the Soviet Union collapsed and religious freedom increased. I looked up two surveys and the current percentage of self-proclaimed non-believers now stands at 16 or 18.9 percent (depending on which survey you accept). Alan's Postulate: When exposed to information, people tend to believe what is most logical.alaninnont_{February 21, 2009
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