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#1
12-23-2004, 12:30 PM
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The Case For Intelligent Design
Do we have evidence for the theory of Intelligent Design?
I will use science as the basis for evidence. Science is based on direct observation and testing so everthing here will be based on those 2 premises. A) Although we cannot percieve an Intelligent Designer firsthand we can however look at ourselves and say that we are intelligent, creative, and we design using the natural environment to make our designs from. logically if we exist and we have these powers then it is not beyond reason to assume the existance of an I.D. that may be beyond our ability to percieve just as we are beyond the perception of an ameoba. We will now see if there is any secondhand evidence. Evidence of an I.D. would be something that we could not infer as a result of natural occurance, so what can we observe that would not be the result of purely natural happenings? B) Instinctual Information Every species appears to have information instinctually inherent from birth. It has been observed that each and every specie has the perfect instinct to not only survive but to do basic hygene and some exhibit very specifc defensive behavioral instincts (hawkmoths) all based on their physical structure. How can we determine if Instinctual information is by design? answer - the same intinct would always exist regardless of environmental factors since a designed attribute would only apply to the environment the creature was designed for, otherwise there would be easily proveable that as a creature evolves its instinct would need to evolve at the same time. testing has been done to see if "soft inheritance" was possible and after many tests it was proven to not exist, this supports the concept of I.D. since as anyone knows a anything we have designed doesn't adapt beyond its design specifications and since no observation of instinctual adaptation beyond design has ever occurred we count this as evidence of I.D. C) cellular Information Information has been shown to exist within cells (DNA). the sole purpose of DNA is to encapsulate and protect the information to build the entire creature to which the cell belongs and not just the cell itself. Information is not something that randomness or chance would ever be able to construct nor would randomness ever create a special specific envelope to contain and protect this information, the existence of a special translator (RNA) for translation of the information contained in DNA also goes against randomness. Observation of nature and nonlife show no tendancy nor an instance of specific complex information for any purpose. D) Design Boundaries There has been no instance of observed life changing beyond the boundaries of its initial design. this is a fact of observation by science. Life appears to follow a set program in the same way as we could design a robot to replicate itself and survive a specific environment. A robot would never "evolve", it would follow its program and stay within the boundaries set by the designer for that specific environment and just as we can adapt to a degree within our specific design so could the robots program be set to allow it to adapt and respond within a certain range of environmental variables. E) Geological Record If life was a design and not the buildup of random mutation over time then we would logically expect to see evidence in the geological record, and what might this evidence look like? logic would dictate that if life is designed then we would see it appear fully formed and complex from the beginning rather than gradually evolving with small changes over time and we would see the biodiversity remain constant until the environment changed beyond the capacity of the design to cope/adapt at which point it would go extinct. according to the observation of science; The fossil record indicates that for 3.3 billion years there were only single-celled creatures and long chains of similar single cells. Then suddenly 543 million years ago species with specialized organs, joints and appendages appeared. During this explosion of life, called the "Cambrian explosion", more than 70 PHYLA APPEARED, all 30 phyla in existence today, and including 40 or more now extinct and not one had any ancestral buildup evidence. All this probably occurred within less than 3 million years and in the following 540 million years NO NEW PHYLA APPEARED. Recent analysis of the marine invertebrate fossil record reveals that biodiversity peaked soon after the onset of the Cambrian explosion and has remained constant since then. Biodiversity appears to have reached a ceiling level almost immediately after complex animal life first appeared on the scene. It has been claimed that the Cambrian (oldest) fossils are simpler than modern creatures. But is that really true? Eyesight is a complex process that requires significant evolutionary advancement. Trilobites, which appear in some of the oldest fossil bearing rocks, have fully developed eyes as complex as any we find in living creatures. If you look at the fossil record, you just don't see any progression from simple to complex. You see simple and complex Cambrian fossils. You see simple and complex modern creatures. Many highly complex animals appear very early in the fossil record and many “simple” animals thrive today. The earliest fossils known, which are believed to be those of cyanobacteria, are quite similar structurally and biochemically to bacteria living today. Yet it is claimed they thrived almost as soon as earth formed. (Schopf, 1993; Galtier et al., 1999) Estimated at 3.5 billion years old, these earliest known forms of life are incredibly complex, Furthermore, remarkably diverse types of animals existed very early in earth history and no less than eleven different species have been found so far. A concern Corliss raises is “why after such rapid diversification did these microorganisms remain essentially unchanged for the next 3.465 billion years? Such stasis, common in biology, is puzzling” (1993, p. 2) (The Guardian Weekly, 26 Nov 1978, vol 119, no 22, p 1) "One of the unsolved problems of geology and evolution is the occurrence of diversified, multicellular marine invertebrates in the Lower Cambrian rocks on all the continents, and their absence in rocks of great age... For when we turn to examine the Precambrian rocks for the forerunners of these early Cambrian fossils, they are nowhere to be found. (D. Axelrod in Science) F) Intermediate Fossils In addition to (E) the inability ot find Intermediate Fossils i.e. (fossils that show the stepped changes from one phyla to another, such as from fish to land animal) in the fossil record is observable support that life is created specific and cannot change beyond the boundaries set by the designer. it is beyond reason to assume that for every phyla that existed we cannot find an intermediate set of fossils for even one if they evolved. The history of most fossil species include two features particularly inconsistent with gradualism: 1) Stasis. Most species exhibit no directional change during their tenure on earth. They appear in the fossil record looking much the same as when they disappear; morphological change is usually limited and directionless. 2) Sudden appearances. In any local area, a species does not arise gradually by the steady transformation of its ancestors; it appears all at once and 'fully formed'." (Gould, S.J. (1977), "Evolution's Erratic Pace", Natural History, vol. 86, May) "If life had evolved into its wondrous profusion of creatures little by little, Dr. Eldredge argues, then one would expect to find fossils of transitional creatures wihch were a bit like what went before them and a bit like what came after. But no one has yet found any evidence of such transitional creatures. This oddity has been attributed to gaps in the fosil record wihch gradualists expected to fill when rock strata of the proper age had been found. In the last decade, however, geologists have found rock layers of all divisions of the last 500 million years and no transitional forms were contained in them." END PART 1 
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#2
12-23-2004, 12:30 PM
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PART 2 OF 2
G) Homology - Structural similarities between different species are called "homology" in biology. Because we see similar structures in very dissimilar species we can assume an Intelligent Agent used similar designs as it pleased him and how do we know that these similarities are not the result of a passed on evolutionary trait, we are glad you asked: Darwin thought that creatures with similar (homologous) organs had an evolutionary relationship with each other, and that these organs must have been inherited from a common ancestor. According to his assumption, both pigeons and eagles had wings; therefore, pigeons,eagles, and indeed all other birds with wings were supposed to have evolved from a common ancestor. Homology is a deceptive argument, advanced on the basis of no other evidence than an apparent physical resemblance. This argument has never once been verified by a single concrete discovery in all the years since Darwin's day. Nowhere in the world has anyone come up with a fossil remain of the imaginary common ancestor of creatures with homologous structures. Furthermore, the following issues make it clear that homology provides no evidence that evolution ever occurred, but rather it supports and Intelligent Designer. 1) One finds homologous organs in creatures belonging to completely different phyla, among which evolutionists have not been able to establish any sort of evolutionary relationship; There are a number of homologous organs shared by different groups among which evolutionists cannot establish any kind of evolutionary relationship. Wings are one example. In addition to birds, we find wings on bats, which are mammals, and on insects and even on some dinosaurs, which are extinct reptiles. Not even evolutionists posit an evolutionary relationship or kinship among those four different groups of animals. Another striking example is the amazing resemblance and the structural similarity observed in the eyes of different creatures. For example, the octopus and man are two extremely different species, between which no evolutionary relationship is likely even to be proposed, yet the eyes of both are very much alike in terms of their structure and function. The American biologists Dean Kenyon and Percival Davis make the following comment: "According to Darwinian theory, the pattern for wolves, cats, squirrels, ground hogs, anteaters, moles, and mice each evolved twice: once in placental mammals and again, totally independently, in marsupials. This amounts to the astonishing claim that a random, undirected process of mutation and natural selection somehow hit upon identical features several times in widely separated organisms." 2) The genetic codes of some creatures that have homologous organs are completely different from one another. In order for the evolutionist claim concerning "homology" to be taken seriously, similar (homologous) organs in different creatures should also be coded with similar (homologous) DNA codes. However, they are not. Similar organs are usually governed by very different genetic (DNA) codes. Furthermore, similar genetic codes in the DNA of different creatures are often associated with completely different organs. Michael Denton, an Australian professor of biochemistry, describes in his book Evolution: A Theory in Crisis the genetic impasse of the evolutionist interpretation of homology: "Homologous structures are often specified by non-homologous genetic systems and the concept of homology can seldom be extended back into embryology." A famous example on this subject is the "five digit skeletal structure" of quadrupeds which is quoted in almost all evolutionist textbooks. Quadrupeds, i.e., land-living vertebrates, have five digits on their fore- and hindlimbs. Although these do not always have the appearance of five digits as we know them, they are all counted as pentadactyl due to their bone structure. The fore- and hindlimbs of a frog, a lizard, a squirrel or a monkey all have this same structure. Even the bone structures of birds and bats conform to this basic design. Evolutionists claim that all living things descended from a common ancestor, and they have long cited pentadactyl limb as evidence of this. This claim was mentioned in almost all basic sources on biology throughout the 20th century as very strong evidence for evolution. Genetic findings in the 1980s refuted this evolutionist claim. It was realised that the pentadactyl limb patterns of different creatures are controlled by totally different genes. Evolutionist biologist William Fix describes the collapse of the evolutionist thesis regarding pentadactylism in this way: "The older text-books on evolution make much of the idea of homology, pointing out the obvious resemblances between the skeletons of the limbs of different animals. Thus the "pentadactyl" limb pattern is found in the arm of a man, the wing of a bird, and the flipper of a whale, and this is held to indicate their common origin. Now if these various structures were transmitted by the same gene couples, varied from time to time by mutations and acted upon by environmental selection, the theory would make good sense. Unfortunately this is not the case. Homologous organs are now known to be produced by totally different gene complexes in the different species. The concept of homology in terms of similar genes handed on from a common ancestor has broken down... Another point is that in order for the evolutionary thesis regarding homology to be taken seriously, the periods of similar structures' embryological development or in other words, the stages of development in the egg or the mother's womb-would need to be parallel, whereas, in reality, these embryological periods for similar structures are quite different from each other in every living creature. Many evolutionary biologists had thought they could roughly see the beginnings of life's three kingdoms... When full DNA sequences opened the way to comparing other kinds of genes, researchers expected that they would simply add detail to this tree. But "nothing could be further from the truth," says Claire Fraser, head of The Institute for Genomic Research (TIGR) in Rockville, Maryland. Instead, the comparisons have yielded many versions of the tree of life that differ from the rRNA tree and conflict with each other as well... In short, as molecular biology advances, the homology concept loses more ground. Comparisons that have been made of proteins, rRNAs and genes reveal that creatures which are allegedly close relatives according to the theory of evolution are actually totally distinct from each other. A 1996 study using 88 protein sequences grouped rabbits with primates instead of rodents; a 1998 analysis of 13 genes in 19 animal species placed sea urchins among the chordates; and another 1998 study based on 12 proteins put cows closer to whales than to horses. Molecular biologist Jonathan Wells sums up the situation in 2000 in this way: Inconsistencies among trees based on different molecules, and the bizzarre trees that result from some molecular analyses, have now plunged molecular phylogeny into a crisis. To us this shows that a great designer can apply the same idea any way he likes. although this is not all the evidence for an Intelligent designer it is some of the most proveable when using pure scientific methodology and unbiased observation. The GOD of ISRAEL indeed created all things and with his ability to see the end from the beginning he knew people would vainly try to take the glory of creation from him and try to attribute it to something stupid, so in his wisdom he created each creation with some similarities to other creations but he also made sure that they were unique and no and no matter how people try to take the glory of GOD and attribute it to the randomness of thier gods (nature & chance) he has forseen each attempt and by simplicity he routes the intent of those who deny him. 1Co 1:27 But God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise; and God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty; And base things of the world, and things which are despised, hath God chosen, yea, and things which are not, to bring to nought things that are: That no flesh should glory in his presence. Isa 29:13 ... their fear toward me is TAUGHT BY THE PRECEPT OF MEN:Therefore, behold, I will proceed to do a marvellous work among this people, even a marvellous work and a wonder: for the wisdom of their wise men shall perish, and the understanding of their prudent men shall be hid.Woe unto them that seek deep to hide their counsel from the LORD, and their works are in the dark, and they say, Who seeth us? and who knoweth us? Surely your turning of things upside down shall be esteemed as the potter's clay: FOR SHALL THE WORK SAY OF HIM THAT MADE IT, HE MADE ME NOT? OR SHALL THE THING FRAMED SAY OF HIM THAT FRAMED IT, HE HAD NO UNDERSTANDING?
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#3
12-23-2004, 12:44 PM
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__________________
if G-d ( G-d is not 'X' for all 'X' )
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#4
12-23-2004, 12:44 PM
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This will probably be one of my final posts in this online forum since freedom of speech is not allowed here so I will be seeking an online forum that deals with creation / evolution that does allow freedom of speech. if anyone knows of a decent site pm me or just post in this thread.
This final thread is intended as a help for those who I will leave behind here that will be attempting to carry on the arguement for I.D.. The arguements listed are solid foundational science based points and you can use this to add to the case for I.D.
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#5
12-23-2004, 12:46 PM
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Quote:
__________________
if G-d ( G-d is not 'X' for all 'X' )
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#6
12-23-2004, 12:51 PM
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__________________
if G-d ( G-d is not 'X' for all 'X' )
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#7
12-23-2004, 12:52 PM
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kbc what is your source that you cut and pasted the ID theory from ? can you cut and paste it please?
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#8
12-23-2004, 01:03 PM
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of course your opinion is based on your bias being in opposition to my thread. however evolutionist have based evolution (in part) on the fact that many creatures are pentidactyl so the assumption is that they have a common ancestor and your opinion while attempting to invalidate a part of my thread would if justified invalidate a heavy assumption (Homology) by evolutionist as well so your opinion holds no merit Assumption based on observation is the meat and potatoes of any good scientist, so the fact that we exist and are intelligent should allow an assumption that intelligence could exist that is greater than our own. for you to say that it is impossible for there to be an intelligence other than our own would make you a very poor scientist.
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#9
12-23-2004, 01:10 PM
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#10
12-23-2004, 01:22 PM
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Many animals share the same instincts, this is true, but many have different ones as well. For instance, carnivours have different instincts than herbivours. Also, some animals have different 'intensities' of instinct, if you will. For instance, humans do not rely as heavily on instinct as a cat. In this sense, instinctual adaptation has occurred. Due to the lack of necessity, instinct in humans has become dulled and at times, silent. Quote:
Needless to say, DNA replication can get pretty complicated. I could go into this further, but surface evidence aganist ID suggests that an intelligent designer would have created a much more efficient system that didn't generate so many errors. Your last sentence here is a bit confusing, by the way. What exactly do you mean? Quote:
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