What is ID?

[Speedwell]

If you take cotton, set it on a table, given a sufficient amount of time, it will become a shirt.

Given time inert materials get board, they insist on complicating their existence.....and for no particular reason.

Yes, if you put hydrogen and oxygen together under the right conditions they will combine to form water, H2O. Under other conditions, they will combine to form hydrogen peroxide, H2O2. For no particular reason, right?

 

[bhsmte]

If you take cotton, set it on a table, given a sufficient amount of time, it will become a shirt.

Given time inert materials get board, they insist on complicating their existence.....and for no particular reason.

Home Depot works to keep materials separate because they have had a problem with spontaneous assemblage. Once they found a dog made from nuts and bolts.

Will the shirt have buttons on it?

 

[Colter]

Yes, if you put hydrogen and oxygen together under the right conditions they will combine to form water, H2O. Under other conditions, they will combine to form hydrogen peroxide, H2O2. For no particular reason, right?

That's a start I guess.

 

[doubtingmerle]

The first pair of humans were a "sudden" development within a family of inferior parents roughly 1,000,000 years ago in the highlands of what is now Afghanistan. Asia is the homeland of the human race, not Africa.

The First Human Family: Paper 63, The Urantia Book

I don't know what to make of this Urantia Book. Do you take it literally, or just as historical fiction? The quote above says,

63:0.1 URANTIA WAS REGISTERED as an inhabited world when the first two human beings—the twins—were eleven years old, and before they had become the parents of the first-born of the second generation of actual human beings. And the archangel message from Salvington, on this occasion of formal planetary recognition, closed with these words:

"Man-mind has appeared on 606 of Satania, and these parents of the new race shall be called Andon and Fonta. And all archangels pray that these creatures may speedily be endowed with the personal indwelling of the gift of the spirit of the Universal Father."​

63:0.3 Andon is the Nebadon name which signifies "the first Fatherlike creature to exhibit human perfection hunger." Fonta signifies "the first Sonlike creature to exhibit human perfection hunger." Andon and Fonta never knew these names until they were bestowed upon them at the time of fusion with their Thought Adjusters. Throughout their mortal sojourn on Urantia they called each other Sonta-an and Sonta-en, Sonta-an meaning "loved by mother," Sonta-en signifying "loved by father." They gave themselves these names, and the meanings are significant of their mutual regard and affection.​

Which is just shear nonsense. How would anyone know that the first two humans were twins named Andon and Fonta?

The evidence is simply not there that there was a sudden jump to creatures that were fully human 1,000,000 years ago in Asia. Rather, what we see are creatures that incrementally get closer and closer to humans, and it happens in Africa.

 

[Colter]

I don't know what to make of this Urantia Book. Do you take it literally, or just as historical fiction? The quote above says,

63:0.1 URANTIA WAS REGISTERED as an inhabited world when the first two human beings—the twins—were eleven years old, and before they had become the parents of the first-born of the second generation of actual human beings. And the archangel message from Salvington, on this occasion of formal planetary recognition, closed with these words:

"Man-mind has appeared on 606 of Satania, and these parents of the new race shall be called Andon and Fonta. And all archangels pray that these creatures may speedily be endowed with the personal indwelling of the gift of the spirit of the Universal Father."​

63:0.3 Andon is the Nebadon name which signifies "the first Fatherlike creature to exhibit human perfection hunger." Fonta signifies "the first Sonlike creature to exhibit human perfection hunger." Andon and Fonta never knew these names until they were bestowed upon them at the time of fusion with their Thought Adjusters. Throughout their mortal sojourn on Urantia they called each other Sonta-an and Sonta-en, Sonta-an meaning "loved by mother," Sonta-en signifying "loved by father." They gave themselves these names, and the meanings are significant of their mutual regard and affection.​

Which is just shear nonsense. How would anyone know that the first two humans were twins named Andon and Fonta?

The evidence is simply not there that there was a sudden jump to creatures that were fully human 1,000,000 years ago in Asia. Rather, what we see are creatures that incrementally get closer and closer to humans, and it happens in Africa.

I take the UB literally, I believe it's the 5th epochal revelation to our world. It contains a massive amount of historic and spiritual information about earth and the universe. Some of what it reveals was not known by science at the time of it's inception but has been validated.

The "out of Africa" theory has been under challenge in the last few years for various reasons. The UB reveals that all of the evolutionary races of color came from one family in the vicinity of modern day India. The Indigo race preferred the warmer climate and migrated to Africa where they stayed until the slave trade. So it was out of Asia and into Africa as well as other parts of the world.

This is a basic pictorial chart of the evolution of man based on the UB:http://www.squarecircles.com/studyaids/manandape/primates_pictorial.pdf

 

[xianghua]

No. Functional organization alone is not evidence of design.

so if we will find self replicating (organic) cars on mars, we cant conclude that aliens exist?

 

[xianghua]

What car would that be?

like a normal car. but with a self replicating system and organic components.

 

[xianghua]

Isn't that basically a dog?

basically they are in the same line of evidence for design.

 

[xianghua]

In this case this object doesn't fit the definition of a car anymore. You'd have to give it a new name.

why? a car isnt a car if it can replicate itself?

 

[bhsmte]

like a normal car. but with a self replicating system and organic components.

Not a normal car.

 

[Speedwell]

so if we will find self replicating (organic) cars on mars, we cant conclude that aliens exist?

No. Functional organization is not, in itself, evidence of design. It does not matter how many different examples of functional organization you come up with.

 

[Colter]

What do you mean "sudden" mutations? Are there non-sudden mutations?




Mere assertion.

Yes a mutation is sudden, your reply is just argumentative.

 

[Colter]

No, I guess we cannot accept 'gifts' from middle eastern numerologists and their borrowed tales - why would we?

Thanks for admitting that there is no evidence for non-natural reality.

Creation via evolution is natural, the creators of life don't use magic.

 

[Colter]

The Vulnerability of Materialism


"The very claim of materialism implies a supermaterial consciousness of the mind which presumes to assert such dogmas. A mechanism might deteriorate, but it could never progress. Machines do not think, create, dream, aspire, idealize, hunger for truth, or thirst for righteousness. They do not motivate their lives with the passion to serve other machines and to choose as their goal of eternal progression the sublime task of finding God and striving to be like him. Machines are never intellectual, emotional, aesthetic, ethical, moral, or spiritual."


Gods purpose in evolution:

"Evolution unerringly achieves its end: It imbues man with that superstitious fear of the unknown and dread of the unseen which is the scaffolding for the God concept. And having witnessed the birth of an advanced comprehension of Deity, through the co-ordinate action of revelation, this same technique of evolution then unerringly sets in motion those forces of thought which will inexorably obliterate the scaffolding, which has served its purpose."

 

[Jimmy D]

In reading and re-reading a bunch of ID publications recently, this is something where ID is frustratingly vague.

There are a lot of ID arguments that center on basic biological machinery in the cell including the very formation of DNA. This makes ID sounds like an origin-of-life argument. And life began on Earth over 4 billion years ago.

But some of their other arguments around higher order organisms calls into question when and where the 'designer' was doing its designing.

For example in this paper, Meyer argues that Cambrian-era life has hallmarks of design. That was over 500 million years ago or about 3.5 billion years after the origin of life on Earth.

In another paper, A.C. McIntosh tries to argue (poorly) that feathers and avian respiration are evidence of design. Based on fossil evidence, feathers have been around since at least 160 million years ago.

In yet a third paper, author Joseph Kuhn specifically references various systems in the human body that they describe as "infinitely complex" (as an aside, what the heck is "infinite complexity" supposed to even mean?); although many of these systems are also found in other animals.

All of this begs the question of what the designer actually did. Did they start life 4 billion years ago, sit around for 3.5 billion years twiddling their thumbs before deciding to zap in a bunch of new life? Did they decide to engineer feathered dinosaurs 160 million years ago? And then over a hundred million years later start engineering humans?

If design has been ongoing, how were they accomplishing all this? Did they spontaneously engineer brand new species out of thin air? Did they take existing species and re-engineer them, inserting bits of DNA as they went?

Is there evidence of such things happening today? Are there brand new species being created at this very moment? Can we find evidence of a designer making new things in nature?

Of course the ID literature is maddeningly silent on this. They seem content to make what amount to little more than grandiose arguments from incredulity when arguing for design. As I re-aquaint myself with ID literature, I am reminded that the entire argument boils down to "X is complex, we don't know how X evolved, therefore DesignerDidIt".

Yet there is absolutely nothing to be found on where, when and how the designer did any designing. In effect, it explains absolutely nothing.

An excellent post, I must have missed it first time round.

 

[TagliatelliMonster]

I don't know of any convincing evidence for life implantation on earth. What seems like common sense to me doesn't seem like common sense to others. But then there is the gift of revelation, but materialists reject that out of hand, so there isn't much we can do.

"Common sense" is of no use in questions about the unknown.

If Einstein would have used "common sense", then he would not have come up with the relativity of time.

Quantum mechanics, for example, is the very opposite of what "common sense" would lead us to believe.


"Common sense" only works with knowledge that you already have.

For example, it's "common sense" that jumping from the Eiffel Tower without a chute is a rather bad idea if you value your life and health. But it's ONLY common sense, because you know what gravity is.

 

[Colter]

"Common sense" is of no use in questions about the unknown.

If Einstein would have used "common sense", then he would not have come up with the relativity of time.

Quantum mechanics, for example, is the very opposite of what "common sense" would lead us to believe.


"Common sense" only works with knowledge that you already have.

For example, it's "common sense" that jumping from the Eiffel Tower without a chute is a rather bad idea if you value your life and health. But it's ONLY common sense, because you know what gravity is.

Maybe what I'm calling "common sense" is innate to the mind of faith.

Without the gift of revelation man can't help but to create an irrational universe. Your technique for accepting spiritual truths or not is your own business.

 

[TagliatelliMonster]

Maybe what I'm calling "common sense" is innate to the mind of faith.

No, common sense isn't "faith based" either.

Faith is a beast on its own. It's what you invoke when you wish to accept a proposition as true, when you have no actual valid reason to do so.

Without the gift of revelation

"revelation" being 1 or more persons claiming to have had wisdom "revealed" to them. The medium of which are things like "dreams" and "visions" and so on.

Since you seem a fan... common sense would inform you that that is not how we gather knowledge or wisdom about anything

man can't help but to create an irrational universe.

Man doesn't create universes - rational or otherwise.

Your technique for accepting spiritual truths or not is your own business.

What "spiritual truths"?
What makes them "spiritual" and how can they be verified to be "truths"?

 

[Colter]

No, common sense isn't "faith based" either.

Faith is a beast on its own. It's what you invoke when you wish to accept a proposition as true, when you have no actual valid reason to do so.



"revelation" being 1 or more persons claiming to have had wisdom "revealed" to them. The medium of which are things like "dreams" and "visions" and so on.

Since you seem a fan... common sense would inform you that that is not how we gather knowledge or wisdom about anything



Man doesn't create universes - rational or otherwise.



What "spiritual truths"?
What makes them "spiritual" and how can they be verified to be "truths"?

Faith is an endowment of spirit born mind which is a gift from the creator of life, the mind that made mind.

Man develops concepts in order to have rational thoughts, but those concepts are to a greater or lessor degree erroneous.

Spiritual truth is spiritual truth.

Spiritual truth comes from the spirit as opposed to the mathematical cosmos.

 

[TagliatelliMonster]

Faith is an endowment of spirit born mind which is a gift from the creator of life, the mind that made mind.

Sounds like complete gibberish. I have no idea what that means.
It is my observation that whenever someone claims to believe something (anything) on "faith", what they are really saying is that they have to invoke "faith" because they don't have an actual valid reason instead. After all, if they HAD a good reason, they'ld just give me that particular reason, instead of invoking faith.

It is also my observation that generally, all those people will typically NOT believe anything else on faith. For all other things in their life, they suddenly require rational evidence.

Man develops concepts in order to have rational thoughts, but those concepts are to a greater or lessor degree erroneous.

And the way to find out which concepts are accurate or "erroneous", is by seeing/testing if they match reality.

Spiritual truth is spiritual truth.

Well, that was a pointless tautology....
Care to try again?

Spiritual truth comes from the spirit as opposed to the mathematical cosmos.

Still have no idea on what it means.
Nore have you clarified how they can be verified to be actual truths.

It seems you're just making bare claims.