Intelligent Design

[barfo]

There is a blueprint when RNA works its magic on DNA, and a very similar one when H2 combines with O to make water.

Well, now you've just redefined the word "blueprint" to mean "law of physics". Similarly, there is a blueprint for why objects fall if you drop them, or for why iron filings are attracted to a magnet.

barfo

 

[barfo]

Or perhaps, planets are failed asteroids?

This is the Special Universe. Every heavenly body is a winner.

barfo

 

[Denny Crane]

Well, now you've just redefined the word "blueprint" to mean "law of physics". Similarly, there is a blueprint for why objects fall if you drop them, or for why iron filings are attracted to a magnet.

barfo

There are laws, like if you nail two pieces of wood together you join them together. From a blueprint you build a house or whatever from the wood and nails.

The law says you can join two atoms together based upon their valences. From a blueprint you build a water molecule from the atoms and valences.

 

[barfo]

There are laws, like if you nail two pieces of wood together you join them together. From a blueprint you build a house or whatever from the wood and nails.

The law says you can join two atoms together based upon their valences. From a blueprint you build a water molecule from the atoms and valences.

I'm not sure where you are going with this. If you want to define the set of physical laws as a blueprint, then go ahead, I guess. I don't think that choice of words makes intelligent design any more compelling.

barfo

 

[Denny Crane]

I'm not sure where you are going with this. If you want to define the set of physical laws as a blueprint, then go ahead, I guess. I don't think that choice of words makes intelligent design any more compelling.

barfo

I'm not suggesting a designer. That science seems to apply evolution to things like the sun, the solar system, the universe, the earth, etc.

Here's a good example:
http://burro.astr.cwru.edu/stu/advanced/stars_birth.html (birth of a star)
http://burro.astr.cwru.edu/stu/advanced/cosmos_death.html (death of the universe)

A star isn't alive, so it can't be born. The universe isn't alive, so it can't die.

This site talks about the evolution of the solar system:
http://www.physics.uc.edu/~sitko/Spring00/7-Solsysform/solsysform.html

 

[Eastoff]

I'm not sure where you are going with this. If you want to define the set of physical laws as a blueprint, then go ahead, I guess. I don't think that choice of words makes intelligent design any more compelling.

barfo

I think his point is that Hydrogen doesnt HAVE to bond to oxygen. and Oxygen doesn't have to bond to hydrogen. But in this case it does to make water. The laws that hydrogen want to pick up one electron are more like the hammer and nails being combined into a shape, not necessarily water or a house.

 

[julius]

I'm not suggesting a designer. That science seems to apply evolution to things like the sun, the solar system, the universe, the earth, etc.

Here's a good example:
http://burro.astr.cwru.edu/stu/advanced/stars_birth.html (birth of a star)
http://burro.astr.cwru.edu/stu/advanced/cosmos_death.html (death of the universe)

A star isn't alive, so it can't be born. The universe isn't alive, so it can't die.

This site talks about the evolution of the solar system:
http://www.physics.uc.edu/~sitko/Spring00/7-Solsysform/solsysform.html

So...my car isn't alive so it can't die?

Sounds like a semantic argument. Plus, "God" isn't alive, so he can't be born (or die).

 

[barfo]

I'm not suggesting a designer. That science seems to apply evolution to things like the sun, the solar system, the universe, the earth, etc.

Here's a good example:
http://burro.astr.cwru.edu/stu/advanced/stars_birth.html (birth of a star)
http://burro.astr.cwru.edu/stu/advanced/cosmos_death.html (death of the universe)

A star isn't alive, so it can't be born. The universe isn't alive, so it can't die.

This site talks about the evolution of the solar system:
http://www.physics.uc.edu/~sitko/Spring00/7-Solsysform/solsysform.html

Still not clear what you mean. Birth and death aren't evolution. In Shooter's world (oblong, 2 frozen moons), there is no evolution, but people are still born (or stillborn) and they still die.

Birth and death are metaphors as applied to stars and such, I don't think anyone thinks that stars are born in the same way as mammals. Do they?

barfo

 

[barfo]

I think his point is that Hydrogen doesnt HAVE to bond to oxygen. and Oxygen doesn't have to bond to hydrogen. But in this case it does to make water. The laws that hydrogen want to pick up one electron are more like the hammer and nails being combined into a shape, not necessarily water or a house.

That might be his point, but if so I don't see the point of his point.

If we assume that forming water is just like building a house, where does that get us?

barfo

 

[Denny Crane]

So...my car isn't alive so it can't die?

Sounds like a semantic argument. Plus, "God" isn't alive, so he can't be born (or die).

It's not exactly semantics, but more of an analogy. To use your words, all that's missing is the semantic DNA.

 

[Denny Crane]

Still not clear what you mean. Birth and death aren't evolution. In Shooter's world (oblong, 2 frozen moons), there is no evolution, but people are still born (or stillborn) and they still die.

Birth and death are metaphors as applied to stars and such, I don't think anyone thinks that stars are born in the same way as mammals. Do they?

barfo

I think the last link is the key to my point. It's about evolution being applied to things that aren't alive.

 

[barfo]

I think the last link is the key to my point. It's about evolution being applied to things that aren't alive.

I don't think it is. It is true that the page is titled "FORMATION AND EVOLUTION OF THE SOLAR SYSTEM" but it doesn't discuss anything like biological evolution, just the history of the solar system. And I'm pretty sure they meant evolution in the more general sense of development.

barfo

 

[TradeNurkicNow]

It's about evolution being applied to things that aren't alive.

I don't see what the harm in that is. To me, evolution is just change over time. Biological evolution is a specific kind of evolution. So, applying evolution to things that aren't alive seems okie-dokie to me.

 

[Denny Crane]

I don't think it is. It is true that the page is titled "FORMATION AND EVOLUTION OF THE SOLAR SYSTEM" but it doesn't discuss anything like biological evolution, just the history of the solar system. And I'm pretty sure they meant evolution in the more general sense of development.

barfo

The wikipedia page on evolution talks about how it's a mistake to confuse the colloquial meaning of the word with the biological use of the term. However, I am not confusing the two.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution_(term)

However, the word has a number of different meanings in different fields, from evolutionary computation to chemical evolution to sociocultural evolution to stellar and galactic evolution. It can even refer to metaphysical evolution, spiritual evolution, or any of a number of evolutionist philosophies.

And specifically:

In colloquial contexts, evolution can refer to any sort of progressive development, and often bears a connotation of gradual improvement: evolution is understood as a process that results in greater quality or complexity.

Now, I find the wikipedia page flawed because they suggest that devolution is not improvement, yet in the biological sense if devolution means survival, it actually is improvement.

The first bit I quoted is very much my point - science calls it all evolution, it's a form of impression - putting the inanimate things in the same context as the live things.

It may be a natural thing for people to do that sort of thing because it agrees with our experience as individuals and through history.

 

[Denny Crane]

I don't see what the harm in that is. To me, evolution is just change over time. Biological evolution is a specific kind of evolution. So, applying evolution to things that aren't alive seems okie-dokie to me.

I'm not suggesting there's any harm at all. Just that all that's missing is applying the concept of DNA (the intelligence, the blueprint, the carrier in the stepwise progression that is evolution).

 

[barfo]

The first bit I quoted is very much my point - science calls it all evolution, it's a form of impression - putting the inanimate things in the same context as the live things.

It may be a natural thing for people to do that sort of thing because it agrees with our experience as individuals and through history.

So your point is that we use words to mean different things in different contexts?

I certainly can't disagree with that.

And yes, it is natural for humans to analogize.

Are you saying these linguistic observations are good, bad, or what?

barfo

 

[barfo]

I'm not suggesting there's any harm at all. Just that all that's missing is applying the concept of DNA (the intelligence, the blueprint, the carrier in the stepwise progression that is evolution).

Rather than ascribe intelligence to non-biological evolution, I'd be more inclined to point out there is no intelligence in biological evolution. There isn't some master plan (sorry Shooter). There are just a bunch of individuals fighting to survive and some of them do and some don't.

barfo

 

[Denny Crane]

If humans evolved from amoeba over billions of years, then we're just stupid creatures like every other animal on the planet, wandering around eating, drinking, and sleeping, and then eventually dying. Period. There's nothing to hope for after this life, and we all just die and that's the end of our existence.
.

I just had to respond to this one.

What he wrote is pretty much how I see it. Though we're smarter than every other animal on the planet, simply because we at least know what a calendar is and what time means.

 

[Denny Crane]

Rather than ascribe intelligence to non-biological evolution, I'd be more inclined to point out there is no intelligence in biological evolution. There isn't some master plan (sorry Shooter). There are just a bunch of individuals fighting to survive and some of them do and some don't.

barfo

Where have I ascribed intelligence to any of this? I've ascribed design to it.

 

[barfo]

Where have I ascribed intelligence to any of this? I've ascribed design to it.

I'm not suggesting there's any harm at all. Just that all that's missing is applying the concept of DNA (the intelligence, the blueprint, the carrier in the stepwise progression that is evolution).

barfo

 

[Shooter]

Micro-evolution happens over and over again until the changes can be considered significant enough to make a new species.

Interesting idea, but unfortunately there is absolutely no evidence for it.

This is what I don't understand about the intelligent design crowd. Say you could prove that the universe is intelligently designed: okay, by who? By which god? By how many gods? Intelligent design says nothing of religion, yet it is championed by Christians who assume it's their god who did the designing.

I call bullshit.

Call it whatever you like. There's this book called the Bible, which has been around for a long, long time, and it describes the act of creation. Christians put a lot more faith in that version of reality than Charles Darwin's study of finches on the Galapagos Islands, which proves very little and certainly doesn't answer any of the big questions about our origins.

 

[TradeNurkicNow]

Interesting idea, but unfortunately there is absolutely no evidence for it.

Dude, what I described is called speciation, and there's tons of evidence for it. Unless you choose to disregard the plethora of scientific studies done on the topic and choose to believe that god created each and every individual species from the start.

Call it whatever you like. There's this book called the Bible, which has been around for a long, long time, and it describes the act of creation.

There are hundreds of creation stories from all over the world. Is it not just as likely that any one of those stories are true, that some other god (or gods) intelligently designed the universe?

Christians put a lot more faith in that version of reality than Charles Darwin's study of finches on the Galapagos Islands, which proves very little and certainly doesn't answer any of the big questions about our origins.

Darwin's study of finches doesn't seek to answer any of the "big questions" of our origins, it was merely a study in geographic isolation and its effects on a species.

 

[Denny Crane]

barfo

I meant intelligence in the form of a creator, the designer.

 

[julius]

I'm thinking shooter is just responding because he's expecting people to over-react to what he's saying.

As for the bible being some kind of proof, I would hope that he isn't being serious. Because there are so many contradictions in the bible, and portions that have been ignored (or decided not worth following) that you might as well say "an invisible being told me this is how it is. I have no way of proving that it's true, other then my story telling you it is."

Wait, that is pretty much what he's saying.

Why isn't what the aboriginals of world belief the 'truth'? Because they didn't write it down?

Did the "evolutionist" create those towers of Buddha?

What about Hinduism, and it's age? Was that all a political plot to discount your God?

Which is harder to believe...an invisible thing made us, where there no proof of his existence, or that things evolve over a long period of time?

One involves blind faith, where you can just answer everything by saying "it's gods way", and the other has tests to prove or disprove something. We can look out in space millions of years. We can see pictures of galaxies being created, and we can see planetary systems far far away.

Are those all just an elaborate plan to discount your version of god and creation?

If it's intelligent design, why are some people born with debilitating handicaps? Why are some people born with birth defects that doesn't allow them to live? Why are some people taller than others?

What the hell is a donkey, if not evolution? Sure, man-made, but it's still evolution. What about a liger? Or a zebra and a horse? that's a new species, and who knows, it might end up being a replacement species in the long run (although that seems doubtful. Ligers and tiglons (a mix of tigers and lions..yes, that's real. Look it up) tend to have sterility issues, which I guess could be "gods way" of not letting that kind of evolution happen).

I don't know how anyone can take someone serious who claims that the

Call it whatever you like. There's this book called the Bible, which has been around for a long, long time, and it describes the act of creation.

As if there aren't books (called science books) that describe the "act of creation". You may say that no one was around to see the "big bang" so therefore it couldn't be. No one was around to see your god create the heavens and the earth. It was a story passed down to explain something people didn't have the knowledge base to explain. You come up with a creator. Every culture has one, why is yours the winner? Because it's popular?

 

[drexlersdad]

ummm, im pretty sure that dinosaur bones were just put in the earth by god to weed out the non-believers.

i still vote intelligent alien experiment.

 

[TradeNurkicNow]

ummm, im pretty sure that dinosaur bones were just put in the earth by god to weed out the non-believers.

God was fucking with you! Giant flying lizards... you moron! That's one of God's easier jokes!







... it seemed so plausible! ahhh!

 

[Ed O]

ummm, im pretty sure that dinosaur bones were just put in the earth by god to weed out the non-believers.

i still vote intelligent alien experiment.

I personally prefer that we're all living in a simulation. Nothing that we know is even "real" to someone or something outside of the simulation.

Like the Matrix, but different.

Ed O.

 

[mook]

If there's a sci fi solution out there, my bet is on Isaac Asimov's "The Last Question", a real mind-blower of a short story.

 

[Fez Hammersticks]

[video=youtube;gyyYYeAXihk]

 

[SlyPokerDog]

Wow, I missed this thread previously. That's some crazy shit you believe Shooter. Add that to the fact that you're a Christian who beliefs in karma...