Scholarly Defense of Intelligent Design

Insane_Duck · Jun 21, 2011

jpcedotal said:
naw, I was saying until we both agree on what u highlighted, anything else we agree on is meaningless...at least for you it is.

What you were saying was also entirely untrue. I need to accept your religion as a premise before we can debate the evidence regarding the beliefs of your religion? Would you accept the same conditions when debating a Muslim?

jpcedotal · Jun 21, 2011

Insane_Duck said:
What you were saying was also entirely untrue. I need to accept your religion as a premise before we can debate the evidence regarding the beliefs of your religion? Would you accept the same conditions when debating a Muslim?

to me, there is no difference between atheism and a Muslim...in the grand scheme of things.

There are only two divisions of folks and I am here on earth to turn as many toward Christ as I can before I die or it is too late.

Insane_Duck · Jun 21, 2011

jpcedotal said:
to me, there is no difference between atheism and a Muslim...in the grand scheme of things.

There are only two divisions of folks and I am here on earth to turn as many toward Christ as I can before I die or it is too late.

Not the point. If you can use your religious beliefs as a premise when debating your religious beliefs, can a Muslim do the same when debating you?

jpcedotal · Jun 21, 2011

Insane_Duck said:
Not the point. If you can use your religious beliefs as a premise when debating your religious beliefs, can a Muslim do the same when debating you?

Evolution is a religion so you are doing the same to me. This is what we are debating...two religions.

Insane_Duck · Jun 21, 2011

jpcedotal said:
Evolution is a religion so you are doing the same to me. This is what we are debating...two religions.

Even if evolution were a religion, it wouldn't change that "evolutionists" use observations and evidence to prove claims. You are using claims to prove claims.

And FYI, religion is defined as:

The belief in and worship of a superhuman controlling power, esp. a personal God or gods.

Evolution simply doesn't fit.

Davian · Jun 21, 2011

jpcedotal said:
to me, there is no difference between atheism and a Muslim...in the grand scheme of things.

There are only two divisions of folks and I am here on earth to turn as many toward Christ as I can before I die or it is too late.

And you think that obfuscation like calling evolution a religion is going win anyone over? Evolution is a fact. Animals change over time. Humans are animals.

If you want to take on the Theory of Evolution, learn about it.

If your god did exist, do you think it would be unable to see through your superficial efforts of trying to convert someone like me? Do you think your god is so easily fooled?

AlexBP · Jun 21, 2011

dazed said:
At the risk of plagiarism, you might want to read up "The God Delusion" written by Richard Dawkins. There's a section where he discussed ID. He would bring up an ID argument and promptly shred it to pieces.

Shredding is matter of perspective, I suppose. I've read The God Delusion and I wasn't terribly impressed by the chapter on intelligent design or by any other part of it. Dawkins' fundamental argument against intelligent design could be summarized like this: (1) If a God existed who was capable of designing the universe, that God would have to be extremely complex. (2) Organized complexity exists only as an end product of evolution or some other such process. (3) Therefore the probability of God starting to exist is extremely small.

There are a lot of darts that could be thrown at his argument, such as demanding to know how he defines complexity and how he ranks the complexity of one thing against another, or how he computes the probability of God beginning to exist. But the fundamental problem is that Christians do not believe that God arose out of any random process; indeed we don't believe that God had a beginning at all. Hence Dawkins' claim about the probability of a random process producing God is irrelevant to our theology.

In some ways I wonder whether Dawkins had some subconscious urge to sabotage his own argument, particularly in one metaphor that he uses. He describes complexity as a height, in which advanced life forms are very high up, and then describes evolution as a "crane" which lifts life forms up to those heights. Now if we see a 100-foot-tall building we can assume that a crane was probably used to build it. On the other hand, if we a mountain 10,000 feet tall we know that no crane was used to build it. Similarly the universe, to my perspective, seems too complex to be explained away as a product of random processes.

In responding to the argument from fine-tuning of the universe, Dawkins acknowledges the fine-tuning and references the book my Martin Rees that I already linked to. He then responds by endorsing the idea of a "multiverse" consisting of an enormous number of universes. Each universe in the multiverse would have slightly different physical constants, and thus even though the probability of constants fine-tuned for life is small in each particular case, there's bound to be at least one universe that has the right constants.

This fails to convince me for a couple reasons. First of all, a few pages earlier Dawkins was arguing against God because he claimed that the complexity of a God capable of making the universe made it highly unlikely that such a God would existed. Now a multiverse containing our universe and vast numbers of others would be more complex than our universe alone. (It doesn't matter which definition a "complexity" is used here.) So how can Dawkins use complexity as an argument against God while ignoring the complexity problem in arguing for a huge multiverse?

Second, atheists frequently tell me that I should reject all claims that do not have any evidence to back them up. Now certainly there is no evidence for the existence of any universe besides our own. So by that standard I should chuck out the multiverse.

Third, even if there were a multiverse containing vast numbers of universes and even if each one had slightly different physical constants, all chosen at random, there would still be virtually nil chance of a universe capable of supporting life happening to spring up. For instance, in order to have life, you must have matter. If a bunch of universes sprang up without matter, it wouldn't matter what physical constants they had; they still wouldn't have life. Likewise if a bunch of universes sprang up without energy, there couldn't be any life, no matter what the physical constants. Likewise there needs to be orderliness in the physical laws, If physical laws were always changing from moment to moment there could be no life. And so forth.

Jade Margery · Jun 21, 2011

jpcedotal said:
Genesis order:
earth first, sun moon and stars later
fruit trees first, marine creatures later
whales first, land animals later
birds first, reptiles later

Everything created in Genesis is backwards according to evolution. So from this, either an intelligent being knew what the argument was going to be and purposely created life in an order that could not be stepping stones of evolution OR evolution's real intent is to discredit the Genesis story as its number one priority.

The theory of evolution doesn't say anything about the sun, moon, and stars. (Also if you want to get technical, no science claims they were produced backwards to that model. As near as we can tell it goes some stars > our star > our planet > our moon.) Most of this was determined well before evolution became verified fact, by astronomy and geology.

Do you seriously think that the earth was created before the stars were?

Incariol · Jun 21, 2011

jpcedotal said:
Evolution is a religion so you are doing the same to me. This is what we are debating...two religions.

This thread is about someone trying to write a paper presenting both sides of Intelligent Design, not a Creationism vs. Evolution debate, you realize this, right?

Jade Margery · Jun 21, 2011

Rather tellingly, JP has equated creationism to intelligent design. Which is, of course, what i.d. is--creationism disguised by pseudoscience. Which is why there aren't any scholarly documents on it. There are opinion pieces by believers and philosophers, but there's no research to be done, no experiments to be conducted, nothing to write papers about and no real peers to review them anyway. What's to test? Something smart made everything. No, we can't prove it. But we're going to insist that you take it as truth against something that has had years of investigation and validation by observable and testable facts.

Insane_Duck · Jun 21, 2011

Incariol said:
This thread is about someone trying to write a paper presenting both sides of Intelligent Design, not a Creationism vs. Evolution debate, you realize this, right?

It all kinda devolved after it became obvious that ID doesn't really have a substantiated side. It's mostly just arguments from reason (with really bad logic) and attacks on evolution. There isn't anything intelligent to write a paper about.

The Paul · Jun 22, 2011

sammyhales said:
I am writing a paper in college about Intelligent Design. It has to be a position paper for both sides, and I can't remember the best arguments for Intelligent Design. What I'm looking for the most is a scholarly defense of it, but I'm having trouble finding them in peer-reviewd scholarly sources. I'm thinking philosophy is my best bet, but they tend to argue against ID as much as for ID. Any help? Anyone want to practice their apologetics and see if you can support it in a scholarly setting?

I'd be curious what class you're taking, at what school. And what, exactly, was the phrasing of the assignment?

Intelligent design vs evolution really does boil down to religion vs science. Being asked to write a religion vs science paper strikes me as really weird.

But then you get classes where people are asked to argue stuff like smoking: good or bad for your health? The question isn't really the point of the assignment. It'd be helpful to know what's going on here.

ToddNotTodd · Jun 25, 2011

AlexBP said:
Third, even if there were a multiverse containing vast numbers of universes and even if each one had slightly different physical constants, all chosen at random, there would still be virtually nil chance of a universe capable of supporting life happening to spring up. For instance, in order to have life, you must have matter. If a bunch of universes sprang up without matter, it wouldn't matter what physical constants they had; they still wouldn't have life. Likewise if a bunch of universes sprang up without energy, there couldn't be any life, no matter what the physical constants. Likewise there needs to be orderliness in the physical laws, If physical laws were always changing from moment to moment there could be no life. And so forth.

Ridiculously improbable things happen every day in a universe as vast as ours. In an infinite or nearly infinite multiverse, conditions for life would occur in countless universes.

Xenocide · Jun 25, 2011

Aliens Created Us

AlexBP · Jun 25, 2011

ToddNotTodd said:
Ridiculously improbable things happen every day in a universe as vast as ours. In an infinite or nearly infinite multiverse, conditions for life would occur in countless universes.

What grounds do you have for saying that? As I've already pointed out, if you had a huge number of universes but none of them have any mass, none of them would ever have life. If none of them had energy, then none them would ever have life. If none of them had any physical laws, then none of them would ever have life. You seem to take it for granted that if you have a whole bunch of universes, there must be a "countless" ones that support life, but why do you think it's safe to assume this?

Furthermore, that doesn't counter the other flaw I pointed out in the multiverse argument that Dawkins made. If a vast number of universes exist, they're more complex (by any definition of the word) than a God capable of making a single universe. Hence, according to Dawkins' own argument, the God capable of making a single universe is much more likely to exist than the enormous multiverse.

The Paul · Jun 25, 2011

AlexBP said:
What grounds do you have for saying that? As I've already pointed out, if you had a huge number of universes but none of them have any mass, none of them would ever have life. If none of them had energy, then none them would ever have life. If none of them had any physical laws, then none of them would ever have life. You seem to take it for granted that if you have a whole bunch of universes, there must be a "countless" ones that support life, but why do you think it's safe to assume this?

Furthermore, that doesn't counter the other flaw I pointed out in the multiverse argument that Dawkins made. If a vast number of universes exist, they're more complex (by any definition of the word) than a God capable of making a single universe. Hence, according to Dawkins' own argument, the God capable of making a single universe is much more likely to exist than the enormous multiverse.

Well, he's got some probability to justify his arguments. It's not like he can say "The probability of a life-bearing universe is X." But given 4.2 kerjillion randomly generated universes the probability that at least one contains life is much higher than if there's 4. It's a pretty simple concept.

This is as opposed to the fine tuning arguments, which has a bunch of really big, entirely made up, arbitrary numbers meant to look impressive and convincing. The odds the strong nuclear force would have a value capable of allowing star formation is 1 in 800,000? Says who? Who created the strong nuclear force ex nihilo in a lab a few million times to determine that?

The fine tuning argument could be expressed thusly "There are more imaginable universes where life as we know it is impossible than where life as we know it is possible. It would seem the odds of life existing in a godless universe are poor."

But the numbers are totally made up, and even when it's just framed conceptually like that it ignores the anthropic principle.

...

Of course a lot of people would like intelligent design to be true and so you can easily find things other people wrote supporting both intelligent design and evolution.

In support of intelligent design you can find people like William Lane Craig complaining fine tuning is necessary because he personally finds the concept of infinity difficult to imagine.

In support of evolution you can find an experiment showing it takes about 20,000 generations for a metabolic pathway utilizing an unprecedented energy source to develop "in vivo." (given a known mutation rate I don't recall.)

It's not really the same sort of thing, though.

AlexBP · Jun 25, 2011

The Paul said:
This is as opposed to the fine tuning arguments, which has a bunch of really big, entirely made up, arbitrary numbers meant to look impressive and convincing. The odds the strong nuclear force would have a value capable of allowing star formation is 1 in 800,000? Says who?

I wouldn't think it necessary to explain why we know that the universal constants must have been fined tuned for life to exist. After all, even Richard Dawkins acknowledges that much to be true. But if you dispute the point, I've already mentioned two books that explain the reasoning at length: The Mind of God by Paul Davies and Just Six Numbers by Martin Reese. A few excerpts from the first one:

[FONT=&quot]We can write down the equations of physics and then tinker with them a bit to see what difference it makes. In this way theorists can construct artificial-model universes to test mathematically whether they can support life. Considerable effort has gone into studying this question. Most investigators conclude that the existence of complex systems, especially biological systems, is remarkably sensitive to the form of the laws of physics, and that in some cases the most minute changes to the laws are sufficient to wreck the chances of life arising.

[/FONT][FONT=&quot]Most scientists have tacitly assumed that an approximately non-quantum (or "classical", to use the jargon) world would have emerged automatically from the big bang, even from a big bang in which quantum effects dominated. Recently, however, Hartle and Gellmann have challenged this assumption. They argue that the existence of an approximately classical world, in which well-defined material objects exist at distinct locations in space, and in which there is a well-defined concept of time, requires special cosmic initial conditions. Their calculations indicate that, for the majority of initial states, a generally classical world would not emerge.[/FONT]

[FONT=&quot]A careful study suggests that the laws of the universe are remarkably felicitous for the emergence of richness and variety. In the case of living organisms, their existence seems to depend on a number of fortuitous coincidences that some scientists and philosophers have hailed as nothing short of astonishing.[/FONT]

Well, he's got some probability to justify his arguments. It's not like he can say "The probability of a life-bearing universe is X." But given 4.2 kerjillion randomly generated universes the probability that at least one contains life is much higher than if there's 4. It's a pretty simple concept.

That ignores a problem that I've already pointed out. Even if vast numbers of universes were springing out of nowhere, there's no reason to believe that each one would have a slightly different set of physical parameters: slightly different total mass, slightly different total energy, slightly different gravitational constant, etc... Even if we knew of some mechanism that causes universes to spring out of nowhere--which, needless to say, we do not--a mechanism which produced many universes with the same properties seems much more probable than one in which the properties all vary a tiny little bit and thus allow one to escape the fine-tuning argument via multiple universes.

Then there are the two other objections that neither Dawkins nor any of his fans can answer. First, they're constantly telling me not to believe in things when there's no evidence for those things. There's certainly no evidence for any universe other than this one. No one's ever seen, heard, smelled, tasted or touched such a universe, nor any evidence originating from or otherwise suggesting the existence of such a universe. So, to be consistent with how atheists tell me to think, I have to reject any claims about multiple universes.

Second, a vast multiverse is much more complex (by any definition) than a God capable of creating one universe. So by Dawkins' own reasoning the later is preferable to the former as an explanation for the existence of a universe capable of supporting life.

it ignores the anthropic principle.

Like many people I find the anthropic principle utterly unsatisfactory; in fact, so does Dawkins. The fact of the matter is that we have a universe capable of supporting life; here we are, as proof of that. So it's natural for as to ask the reason for it. The anthropic principle doesn't give a reason.

Insane_Duck · Jun 26, 2011

AlexBP said:
AlexBP said:

I wouldn't think it necessary to explain why we know that the universal constants must have been fined tuned for life to exist. After all, even Richard Dawkins acknowledges that much to be true. But if you dispute the point, I've already mentioned two books that explain the reasoning at length: The Mind of God by Paul Davies and Just Six Numbers by Martin Reese. A few excerpts from the first one:

Click to expand...

I believe that Laurence Krauss adressed the fine tuneing argument in this way:

1. What evidence do we have that the universe can be fine tuned?
2. How do we know that our type of life is the only way (or configuration) is the only one possible?

(not to mention Dawkins' argument that you have to have a designer equally complex (or more so) in order to fine tune the universe. (and or know how to fine tune it) Thus you haven't really explained anything by interjecting a God. As such:

Conventional View: "The universe has been here forever."
(last couple hundred years)
Science: "The universe couldn't have been here forever."
Christians: "The universe was magically created by a being who has been here forever."

You are just shifting the burden to a theoretical entity who can't be observed.

Like many people I find the anthropic principle utterly unsatisfactory; in fact, so does Dawkins. The fact of the matter is that we have a universe capable of supporting life; here we are, as proof of that. So it's natural for as to ask the reason for it. The anthropic principle doesn't give a reason.

Click to expand...

I just watched a debate where Dawkins was talking about the anthropic principle. He said that while it wasn't wholly satisfying (in the case of multiverse theory) he said that it was a much better explanation than a theistic God. In fact, Occam's razor just about eliminates a personal God as a viable option. (compared to others)

Lord Emsworth · Jun 26, 2011

How come we have the right 'kind of' God, huh? I mean the right kind to create a life supporting universe and not something else? The chances must be incredibly small.

*shrug* As if ...

Tinker Grey · Jun 26, 2011

To say "if things had been different they would be different" isn't a concession to fine-tuning.

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