Intelligent Design, Creationism and Deism

The Barbarian

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ID was initially intended to be a legally-defensible way to insert creationism into public schools. This ended in what ID inventor Philip Johnson called a "train wreck" in Kitzmiller v. Dover.

Intelligent design (ID) is a pseudoscientific argument for the existence of God, presented by its proponents as "an evidence-based scientific theory about life's origins".[1][2][3][4][5] Proponents claim that "certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause, not an undirected process such as natural selection."[6] ID is a form of creationism that lacks empirical support and offers no testable or tenable hypotheses, and is therefore not science.[7][8][9] The leading proponents of ID are associated with the Discovery Institute, a Christian, politically conservative think tank based in the United States.
...
Although the phrase intelligent design had featured previously in theological discussions of the argument from design,[10] its first publication in its present use as an alternative term for creationism was in Of Pandas and People,[11][12] a 1989 creationist textbook intended for high school biology classes. The term was substituted into drafts of the book, directly replacing references to creation science and creationism, after the 1987 Supreme Court's Edwards v. Aguillard decision barred the teaching of creation science in public schools on constitutional grounds.[13] From the mid-1990s, the intelligent design movement (IDM), supported by the Discovery Institute,[14] advocated inclusion of intelligent design in public school biology curricula.[7] This led to the 2005 Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District trial, which found that intelligent design was not science, that it "cannot uncouple itself from its creationist, and thus religious, antecedents", and that the public school district's promotion of it therefore violated the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution.

ID has had a rocky path since, with some, including Philip Johnson ( at least initially a creationist) saying that perhaps the designer was "a space alien." Discovery Institute fellow Michael Behe now says that he accepts evolution, even though he thinks God has to step in now and then to make it work.


And another Discovery Institute fellow, Michael Denton seems to have become a deist in his book Nature's Destiny, breaking completely with creationists in an explicit way:

t is important to emphasize at the outset that the argument presented here is entirely consistent with the basic naturalistic assumption of modern science–that the cosmos is a seamless unity which can be comprehended in its entirety by human reason and in which all phenomena, including life and evolution and the origin of man, are ultimately explicable in terms of natural processes. This is an assumption which is entirely opposed to that of the so-called “special creationist school.” According to special creationism, living organisms are not natural forms, whose origin and design were built into the laws of nature from the beginning, but rather contingent forms analogous in essence to human artifacts, the result of a series of supernatural acts, involving God’s direct intervention in the course of nature, each of which involved the suspension of natural law. Contrary to the creationist position, the whole argument presented here is critically dependent on the presumption of the unbroken continuity of the organic world–that is, on the reality of organic evolution and on the presumption that all living organisms on earth are natural forms in the profoundest sense of the word, no less natural than salt crystals, atoms, waterfalls, or galaxies.

In large measure, therefore, the teleological argument presented here and the special creationist worldview are mutually exclusive accounts of the world. In the last analysis, evidence for one is evidence against the other. Put simply, the more convincing is the evidence for believing that the world is prefabricated to the end of life, that the design is built into the laws of nature, the less credible becomes the special creationist worldview.
Michael Denton Nature's Destiny p. xi


This erosion of creationists to deism is an ongoing problem, possibly accounting for the noted decline in number of evangelical Christians in the United States.


 

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Well, scientists have not been able to recreate life, so we can't prove, using science, how life started. But evolution can be proven because bacteria evolve immunity to drugs over time.
 
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SavedByGrace3

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"design is built into the laws of nature"
As a believer in Theistic evolution, I see that God coded those laws and, therefore, the design of the universe and life were coded into creation on the day of creation. If life were to end on earth, eventually life would emerge once again. The mechanisms of life are encoded. When God said "let the earth bring forth..." the intelligence, the code, and the mechanisms of life were established.
Thanks...
 
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The Barbarian

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Well, scientists have not been able to recreate life, so we can't prove, using science, how life started. But evolution can be proven because bacteria evolve immunity to drugs over time.

There are many, many other such observations. We still don't know exactly how life came to be on Earth. But God's word that it was brought forth by the Earth seems to be more and more supported by the evidence.
 
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Of course ID its the best explanation, not only it doesn't make any sense that art intelligence and conciousness and science came from a blind genetic replication errors and live or die selection process, you can actually know God himself on this earth too through his Holy spirit.
 
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The Barbarian

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Of course ID its the best explanation, not only it doesn't make any sense that art intelligence and conciousness and science came from a blind genetic replication errors and live or die selection process

The key is a simple question: "Do evolutionary processes tend to produce populations that are better fitted to survive in their environments?" If so, it suggests that God created life to do this. (Hint: they do.)

Or, in the case of ID creationists, something, possibly a "space alien", designed it.
 
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Aussie Pete

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Well, scientists have not been able to recreate life, so we can't prove, using science, how life started. But evolution can be proven because bacteria evolve immunity to drugs over time.
This is the great deception employed by evolutionary science. Adaptation is not evolution. No bacteria has been shown to evolve into a different creature. Some viruses mutate at an amazing rate, but they remain viruses.

This site may help you. CEH – Creation Evolution Headlines
 
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The Barbarian

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This is the great deception employed by evolutionary science. Adaptation is not evolution.

It can be. To be evolution, it has to be a change in allele frequencies in a population. If, for example, a toxic chemical becomes present in an environment, and a mutation that resists the toxin become common in a species of birds, that's both adaptation and evolution.

If you spend a lot of time in the sun and get tanned, that's adaptation, but not evolution.

If an allele that has no selective value for good or bad happens to become more frequent in a population by chance, that is evolution, but not adaptation. Does that clear up the confusion for you?

No bacteria has been shown to evolve into a different creature. Some viruses mutate at an amazing rate, but they remain viruses.

Humans evolved from other primates. And we're still primates. I don't think you've thought this out very well.
 
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The Barbarian

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Here's an example of their stuff:
Darwin fairy tales are not told in the forward direction; they’re told in reverse. Instead of saying, “Abracadabra, mishikaboola, bibbity bobbity boo!” and getting a toad to emerge into a prince, Darwinists tell their fairy tales in reverse. Seeing a prince, they visualize Deep Time. Then they shout, “Oob ytibbob ytibbib aloobakihhsim, arbadacarba!” and see a toad. Squealing with delight, they shriek, “It evolved!”

It's a Poe site, making fun of stupid things creationists say. You didn't realize that? Really?

 
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And here we see more evidence that many creationists are evolving into deists, because of their rejection of God as an omnipotent creator.
God is the omnipotent creator, and in His wisdom, He used evolution to create creatures that could adapt to their environment over periods. I know of no one who believes in Theistic Evolution that denies that God is the creator or that He is omnipotent.
 
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Bob Crowley

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Well, scientists have not been able to recreate life, so we can't prove, using science, how life started. But evolution can be proven because bacteria evolve immunity to drugs over time.

Bacteria might evolve immunity to drugs over time, but they remain bacteria. The fortituitous combination of cellular material which allows a very, very small percentage of bacteria to survive a new drug and thus reproduce is already built in. But because they are the ones that survive, they tend to be the ones which reproduce. Ensuing generations are thus more likely to have this protection builit in, and so more and more will survive until they are effectively immune.

They don't become another species, and they certainly don't evolve into other phyla.

Secondly natural selection does not plan for the future. If there's some freak development, then it has to meld with everything else to survive. The reality is that the great majority of genetic mutations are deleterous, not beneficial.

Human genome decay and origin of life - creation.com

Finally the Cambrian Explosion of life appears to have no antecedents - there are no "missing links". Yet it would appear that Trilobites, which were ancient crustaceans, were just as complex as modern crustaceans.

All the basic structures that life demonstrates - mobility, vision, digestion, food gathering, sexual division, and senses equivalent to hearing and smell were right there at the very start.

Something designed it all, and got the ball rolling.
 
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The Barbarian

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Bacteria might evolve immunity to drugs over time, but they remain bacteria.

Primates might evolve a larger brain and ability to form complex civilizations, writing, and space travel, but they are still primates. I think you make the argument for evolution, here.

The fortituitous combination of cellular material which allows a very, very small percentage of bacteria to survive a new drug and thus reproduce is already built in.

No. Many forms of drug resistance are recent mutations. God built into the universe, the formation of life that could evolve to adapt. That's where the "built in" happened. Want to see some examples?

They don't become another species

Even many creationist organizations have now conceded the fact of speciation. "Answers in Genesis":
Before the time of Charles Darwin, a false idea had crept into the church—the belief in the “fixity” or “immutability” of species. According to this view, each species was created in precisely the same form that we find it today. The Bible nowhere teaches that species are fixed and unchanging.
Speciation

Institute for Creation Research:
Speciation events are documented for nearly every kind of animal that has been described, and recently it has been estimated that 10 percent of all animal species still hybridize (mate with other species, producing fertile offspring) in the wild, and even more when brought into contact with each other in captivity. This evidence indicates that most species had a common ancestor from which similar species have descended.
Speciation and the Animals on the Ark

Now, to remain creationistically-correct, they will tell you that this kind of "descent with modification" isn't "real evolution", whatever that means. But they know better than to deny speciation.

Secondly natural selection does not plan for the future.

Correct. Mutations don't arise in response to need, although population stress might increase mutation rates in some cases (which would be useful in hard times). Two men got their Nobels for showing that useful mutations appear randomly, even when they aren't needed. In fact "useful" only counts in terms of the environment.

The reality is that the great majority of genetic mutations are deleterous, not beneficial.

Actually, most of mutations don't do anything noticable. We all have perhaps a hundred of them that were present in neither parent. A few of them are sufficiently harmful to make it less likely that you survive long enough to reproduce. And a very few of them make it more likely you survive. The more fitted a population is in the environment, the greater the number of harmfuls compared to the usefuls. And as Darwin pointed out, natural selection would actually prevent evolution in a well-fitted population in a constant environment.

Finally the Cambrian Explosion of life appears to have no antecedents

No, that's completely wrong. The Precambrian Ediacaran fauna (we know they were animals because traces of cholesterol have been found in those fossils) long preceded the "Cambrian Explosion." The Cambrian seems to have been marked by the evolution of full body exoskeletons, which suddenly made a wide diversity of lifestyles possible:

Ediacara fauna | Definition, Biota, and Facts

And prokaryotes exist in fossil deposits billions of years before complex metazoans.
Fossil Record of the Cyanobacteria

All the basic structures that life demonstrates - mobility, vision, digestion, food gathering, sexual division, and senses equivalent to hearing and smell were right there at the very start.

Nope. Read the link. The earliest fossils show none of that.
Something designed it all, and got the ball rolling.

No mere "designer." An omnipotent Creator. ID creastionists say that the "designer" could be a "space alien." That's not the One who made the universe.
 
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Landon Caeli

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Bacteria might evolve immunity to drugs over time, but they remain bacteria. The fortituitous combination of cellular material which allows a very, very small percentage of bacteria to survive a new drug and thus reproduce is already built in. But because they are the ones that survive, they tend to be the ones which reproduce. Ensuing generations are thus more likely to have this protection builit in, and so more and more will survive until they are effectively immune.

They don't become another species, and they certainly don't evolve into other phyla.

Secondly natural selection does not plan for the future. If there's some freak development, then it has to meld with everything else to survive. The reality is that the great majority of genetic mutations are deleterous, not beneficial.

Human genome decay and origin of life - creation.com

Finally the Cambrian Explosion of life appears to have no antecedents - there are no "missing links". Yet it would appear that Trilobites, which were ancient crustaceans, were just as complex as modern crustaceans.

All the basic structures that life demonstrates - mobility, vision, digestion, food gathering, sexual division, and senses equivalent to hearing and smell were right there at the very start.

Something designed it all, and got the ball rolling.

Sorry, it goes against my beliefs. I have faith in evolution.
 
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The Barbarian

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A rational view of "already built in" by an "Intelligent Design" advocate:

t is important to emphasize at the outset that the argument presented here is entirely consistent with the basic naturalistic assumption of modern science—that the cosmos is a seamless unity which can be comprehended in its entirety by human reason and in which all phenomena, including life and evolution and the origin of man, are ultimately explicable in terms of natural processes. This is an assumption which is entirely opposed to that of the so-called “special creationist school.” According to special creationism, living organisms are not natural forms, whose origin and design were built into the laws of nature from the beginning, but rather contingent forms analogous in essence to human artifacts, the result of a series of supernatural acts, involving God’s direct intervention in the course of nature, each of which involved the suspension of natural law. Contrary to the creationist position, the whole argument presented here is critically dependent on the presumption of the unbroken continuity of the organic world– that is, on the reality of organic evolution and on the presumption that all living organisms on earth are natural forms in the profoundest sense of the word, no less natural than salt crystals, atoms, waterfalls, or galaxies.


In large measure, therefore, the teleological argument presented here and the special creationist worldview are mutually exclusive accounts of the world. In the last analysis, evidence for one is evidence against the other. Put simply, the more convincing is the evidence for believing that the world is prefabricated to the end of life, that the design is built into the laws of nature, the less credible becomes the special creationist worldview.4

Discovery Institute Fellow Michael Denton, Nature's Destiny
 
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ID was initially intended to be a legally-defensible way to insert creationism into public schools. This ended in what ID inventor Philip Johnson called a "train wreck" in Kitzmiller v. Dover.

Intelligent design (ID) is a pseudoscientific argument for the existence of God, presented by its proponents as "an evidence-based scientific theory about life's origins".[1][2][3][4][5] Proponents claim that "certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause, not an undirected process such as natural selection."[6] ID is a form of creationism that lacks empirical support and offers no testable or tenable hypotheses, and is therefore not science.[7][8][9] The leading proponents of ID are associated with the Discovery Institute, a Christian, politically conservative think tank based in the United States.
...
Although the phrase intelligent design had featured previously in theological discussions of the argument from design,[10] its first publication in its present use as an alternative term for creationism was in Of Pandas and People,[11][12] a 1989 creationist textbook intended for high school biology classes. The term was substituted into drafts of the book, directly replacing references to creation science and creationism, after the 1987 Supreme Court's Edwards v. Aguillard decision barred the teaching of creation science in public schools on constitutional grounds.[13] From the mid-1990s, the intelligent design movement (IDM), supported by the Discovery Institute,[14] advocated inclusion of intelligent design in public school biology curricula.[7] This led to the 2005 Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District trial, which found that intelligent design was not science, that it "cannot uncouple itself from its creationist, and thus religious, antecedents", and that the public school district's promotion of it therefore violated the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution.

ID has had a rocky path since, with some, including Philip Johnson ( at least initially a creationist) saying that perhaps the designer was "a space alien." Discovery Institute fellow Michael Behe now says that he accepts evolution, even though he thinks God has to step in now and then to make it work.


And another Discovery Institute fellow, Michael Denton seems to have become a deist in his book Nature's Destiny, breaking completely with creationists in an explicit way:

t is important to emphasize at the outset that the argument presented here is entirely consistent with the basic naturalistic assumption of modern science–that the cosmos is a seamless unity which can be comprehended in its entirety by human reason and in which all phenomena, including life and evolution and the origin of man, are ultimately explicable in terms of natural processes. This is an assumption which is entirely opposed to that of the so-called “special creationist school.” According to special creationism, living organisms are not natural forms, whose origin and design were built into the laws of nature from the beginning, but rather contingent forms analogous in essence to human artifacts, the result of a series of supernatural acts, involving God’s direct intervention in the course of nature, each of which involved the suspension of natural law. Contrary to the creationist position, the whole argument presented here is critically dependent on the presumption of the unbroken continuity of the organic world–that is, on the reality of organic evolution and on the presumption that all living organisms on earth are natural forms in the profoundest sense of the word, no less natural than salt crystals, atoms, waterfalls, or galaxies.

In large measure, therefore, the teleological argument presented here and the special creationist worldview are mutually exclusive accounts of the world. In the last analysis, evidence for one is evidence against the other. Put simply, the more convincing is the evidence for believing that the world is prefabricated to the end of life, that the design is built into the laws of nature, the less credible becomes the special creationist worldview.
Michael Denton Nature's Destiny p. xi


This erosion of creationists to deism is an ongoing problem, possibly accounting for the noted decline in number of evangelical Christians in the United States.

I missed where deism supposedly comes into this.
 
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The Barbarian

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I missed where deism supposedly comes into this.

Deism is the idea that God created the universe, and then left it to go as it would. That's what this IDer is saying. "Design" is exactly what the deists say. If you think the world was made by a designer, you're at odds with the doctrine of special creation.
 
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J_B_

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Deism is the idea that God created the universe, and then left it to go as it would.

Yes, that's part of deism.

That's what this IDer is saying.

OK. I guess I missed that. I don't think all IDers say that, but OK.

If you think the world was made by a designer, you're at odds with the doctrine of special creation.

That doesn't follow. I happen to believe God 'designed' creation, though that's not a Biblical term. If a creation is intentional, it always involves some aspect of design. Though I'm not as critical of ID as most seem to be, where I part ways with them is thinking one can scientifically prove something was designed.
 
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Well, scientists have not been able to recreate life, so we can't prove, using science, how life started. But evolution can be proven because bacteria evolve immunity to drugs over time.
Does bacteria evolve or does the bacteria that is resistant to drugs survive and reproduce? Isn't this more natural selection than evolution?
 
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The Barbarian

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That doesn't follow. I happen to believe God 'designed' creation, though that's not a Biblical term. If a creation is intentional, it always involves some aspect of design.

That would be confusing "design" with "intent." Designers figure out things. An omnipotent Creator does not; He already knows.
 
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