Girl saying the tsunami in Japan is an answer to her prayers.

I just think it's cute! And also living proof of the fact that the universe is weirder than we can conceive.

We just keep looking. There are a lot of phenomena that science could not find the answer to... until it did.

Frankly, I find the idea of basic interacting chemical reactions of inanimate matter randomly organising and evolving into some complex self-sustaining chemical reaction of animate matter called "life" very plausible. I mean, just look at Prions.

Just because it doesn't right now, does not mean it never will. Have a little faith... in science. I know you do. After all, you are willingly surrendering yourself to surgery. And I have faith that you'll come through alright.

Golems?

"God", "guiding hand"; same thing. I think that evolution based on natural selection explains life just fine. It is just that it involves principles and concepts that most people don't think of or can't get their heads around. Emergence, chaos theory, reiteration, Langston's Ant, all that stuff. A lot of it is counterintuitive, yet happening all around us every day --if you know what you're looking at. Moreover, it is a universal principle --it does not only apply to living things. So, I personally find it absolutely inconceivable that life could not ever emerge from the chemical reactions of inorganic, inanimate matter.

Looking for God is not the same as looking for proof of God. You believe that God exists. It gives your life meaning and purpose. That should be enough. What we believe should not matter to you. Proponents of Intelligent Design try to prove God's existence to the world. I wonder who it is they are really trying to convince.

I LOL'd.

 

Actually The US court has stated that Intelligent Design IS a cover for creationists so the stigma does have a very real reason.

 

Proponents of Intelligent Design are not trying to prove any specific deity's existence. They are trying to prove that life and the origin of species could not arise without a helping hand. It's not religious at all. Just because the media (or insists that Intelligent Design is religious doesn't mean it is.

For me yes. For Intelligent Design no. Intelligent Design is a branch of science not religion (whether or not you agree or if mainstream scientists agree or not). It is scientists studying data, performing experiments, and forming hypothesis' just like any other scientist; the only real difference that I see is that mainstream scientists disagree. They do not assert who or what the Intelligent Designer is or was or whatever, just that there must be a designer.

"No physical hypothesis founded on any indisputable fact has yet explained the origin of the primordial protoplasm, and, above all, of its marvellous properties, which render evolution possible—in heredity and in adaptability, for these properties are the cause and not the effect of evolution. For the cause of this cause we have sought in vain among the physical forces which surround us, until we are at last compelled to rest upon an independent volition, a far-seeing intelligent design." - George James Allman (in an address to the 1873 annual meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science)

This quote I think sums up the main idea of Intelligent Design fairly well.

Completely agree.

I don't understand how it went from biogenesis to "life is not the work of a divine creator". I'm not trying to challenge your idea, just trying to understand it.

 

"is not to prove that God exists but that the origins of life and the progress of species had to have a guiding hand."

so you're saying its not wrong because of god - it is in fact just wrong full stop.

 

If it was a cover for creationists then why are there agnostics who support it?

I'm not sure I understand what you're saying, can you rephrase that somehow?

 

Just because they don't name the identity of the 'guiding' or 'helping' hand doesn't alter the fact that Intelligent Design's aim is to promote the existence of a supernatural creator. Sounds pretty religious to me.

No, Intelligent Design is not science as much as it's proponents would like to claim it is. You asked earlier why people question your knowledge and understanding of science/scientific method; it's because of comments like the one above. In order for something to be considered science it has to fulfil a number of criteria such as being empirically testable and falsifiable, correctable and dynamic, consistent, able to explain observed phenoma and provide predictions and open to experimental testing and not an assertion of certainity. Intelligent Design doesn't meet any of these criteria and as such is not science.

 

Intelligent Design

 

What exactly are you trying to show/prove with this link? That the Discovery Institute are insistent that Intelligent Design is science? That's hardly a surprise but doesn't do anything to alter that fact that it's not science.

Altho I am amused to see they're still banging on about irreducible complexity even tho it's been shown to be complete nonsense.

 

I have never really bothered to look into the claims of intelligent design, so I'm a bit confused. Why can't this "guiding hand" be selection pressure and leave out the higher being altogether?

 

Because Intelligent Design's purpose is to promote the existence of a supernatural creator. If you take out the higher being then there's nothing left for them.

 

Exactly, why is their guiding hand different? Isn't it just natural selection, but with a "creator" tacked on the end. So this creator is a undefined presence behind selection pressure as well as all the other things that makes this universe/reality the way it is. Thus making the ID argument pointless... they are just relabeling what is already known.

 

Not really, they're adding an extra layer, i.e. an intelligent creator/designer, on top of what is already known. You say it yourself when you say "this creator is a undefined presence behind selection pressure", it's an additional entity that natural selection neither has nor needs. Then you also have things like their claims about irreducible complexity which takes natural selection out of the picture completely.

 

They suppose a supernatural creator. Same thing.

No. Science is very familiar with the "Rosenthal effect", basically: you always find what you are looking for. In order to safeguard against this, science tests its hypotheses by trying to disprove them. The basic assumption is always that whatever you think is happening, is not happening.

Only when all your attempts to disprove the hypothesis, either by showing that it is not happening, or by showing that there are alternative explanations for what is happening, then you assume the hypothesis to be true.

So in the scientific discipline, if you want to prove intelligent design, you have to:
1. try to disprove it;
2. try to find alternative explanations that can explain your observations equally well.

What ID proponents do, however, is try to find proof for irreducible complexity; i.e. they try to prove their hypothesis. Of course they (think they) find what they are looking for. It is not until other scientists come along with disproof and alternative explanations that fit the data equally well that their hypothesis is blown out of the water.

No no no! Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence! And in any case, that was 1873. Since then we have had Sidney Fox's experiments in the 1950's and 1960's.

Whoever said that obviously does not understand how it works. I on the other hand find it inconceivable that life could not spontaneously arise.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raëlism

 

What do you use when you create something? And what preceded that which you created?

What makes you believe that God, as you put it, would be "humanoid"?
How could that consciousness, the creator, possibly shrink itself down to such a minute scale as to a "bearded man" in the sky?


The universe is a rather vast place, isn't it?

This could serve as a representation of scale...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bcz4vGvoxQA

Very good point, I've made an example of this a few posts back myself.


There are many ways one can look at it, both from a scientific point of view, religious view, and spiritual view.

 

I may have missed you somewhere but what? I have to assume you're not looking for the answer of 'tools' and 'raw materials'.

What makes you think such a conciousness could appear out of nothing? Or is there a creator of the creator? And then a creator of that creator and so on?

Look at what?

 

Silly catholics
Seriously though, she's just like every other religious extremist who lived who thought they could be the one closest to "god" by comitting or saying something silly like this.

 

I think that's what I meant to say, but you put it much better. Selection pressure doesn't need another driving force behind it to work. As for irreducible complexity, you have no arguments from me there.

 

That there are people agnostics who support it is indeed a thing in its favour, however the most part of the supporters are creationists but they have their fun making lists of people that do not support evolution, and if you want to make lists here is one for Evolution. the main difference? this petition only includes people by the name of Steve as the name Steve only accounts for about one percent of the scientists in the world. In the end the amount of biological scientists that support evolution contra the ones that doesn't, leaves the Intelligent Design people short by a few hundred factors.

But regardless, this is no evidence for either side.

If believe was evidence then consider that here are plenty of people in the world that believe that some races are superior, that women should be circumcised, or that they have been abducted by aliens.