The intelligent design debate has attracted lot of attention lately. Even after the kitzmiller v dover trial, it`s proponents still gain a significant popularity. I`m wondering what you all think of this secular version of creationism. What do you think about the future of intelligent design? Is it valid? Will it stay valid?
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The validity of intelligent design
- Thread starter Nirvana
- Start date
HonestJoe
Well-Known Member
I wasn’t aware anyone had presented a “secular” version of Intelligent Design. Wouldn’t that require a hypothesis for the existence of a non-divine creator, something I’ve never seen proponents even attempt?
The whole idea retains its historical link with religiously motivated assertions for creationism, with so many people claiming a intellectual distance from that but hiding faith-based platforms for their positions, so I think any truly scientific approach to the idea would need to start from first principles and work all the way through to a complete and coherent hypothesis for a creator (or creators) with their methods and processes which could then be independently tested. The age-old like of “This looks designed to me therefore creator *cough*God*cough*” isn’t going to cut it.
The whole idea retains its historical link with religiously motivated assertions for creationism, with so many people claiming a intellectual distance from that but hiding faith-based platforms for their positions, so I think any truly scientific approach to the idea would need to start from first principles and work all the way through to a complete and coherent hypothesis for a creator (or creators) with their methods and processes which could then be independently tested. The age-old like of “This looks designed to me therefore creator *cough*God*cough*” isn’t going to cut it.
Skwim
Veteran Member
It isn't a secular version of creationism. It's creationism renamed. As illustrated here, its modern day use came about as re-branding creationism in the creationists text book Of Pandas and People, the focus of the Kitzmiller v Dover Area School District.
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Terrywoodenpic
Oldest Heretic
A nonsense remains a nonsense who ever supports it or however it is named..
Altfish
Veteran Member
Evolution is NOT random.
So what happened, the maple trees set up a laboratory and designed the oak tree. Or did the frogs design them?
Twilight Hue
Twilight, not bright nor dark, good nor bad.
One look at the periodic table of elements and atomic shells should dispel any notion of intentional plan or design. At least as far as a centralised version of some key intelligence making everything as we know it.
Why because creation was designed with a few autopilot features?
Altfish
Veteran Member
Ignorance of the thing that you are criticising is not overcome by sarcastic remarks.
"There is no mechanism known as yet that would allow the universe to begin in an arbitrary state and then evolve into its present highly ordered state"---Don M. Page
IMO, it is a an important and valid concept and it will remain so as long as thrre are differing opinions on the existence of God.
Twilight Hue
Twilight, not bright nor dark, good nor bad.
Because that's all there is.
There's plenty of evidence around as to how random interactions work involving elements, making chains of molecules, and how molecules form into organic and inorganic material under a variety of conditions.
Can't be said for Id. There's no such coordination in nature that would even begin to suggest that things are directed through intelligence.
Oh I agree completely that nothing is so simple that proves there is Gods hand controlling everything. You really have to do some contemplation on it. That there is a method to the madness. Fishing is a good place to contemplate these things.
Guy Threepwood
Mighty Pirate
Creationism - especially young earth- is a fairly minority belief, at the other extreme; belief in Darwinism likewise is about 19% in the US, (according to Gallup)
Most of us are somewhere in the moderate middle ground, we believe in evolution if defined as 'change over time' , but not that the changes are driven by random chance.
Darwinism is still very popular in atheistic academic circles, but not so much among skeptics of atheism, so a strong ideological component is one of the few facts of evolution we can nail down here!
On it's future, yes I think the weight of scientific evidence will prevail against Darwinism eventually, but the unfashionable implications of ID will be re-worked somehow- just as the big bang or QM, all the specific finely tuned information predetermining, guiding how species developed... will likewise be written off to chance creation, sure that might require an imaginary infinite probability machine, but that leap has already been taken for physics.
I wouldn't call ID a secular version of creationism. In fact, I consider the terms synonymous. Isn't the Genesis creation story, like all other creation stories, the account of an alleged intelligent designer.
At least two prominent ID proponents have said that the ID movement is about whoever they mean by "God." Being Christians, we can assume that they mean the god of the Christian Bible.
[1] From the Wiki on co-founder and program advisor of the Discovery Institute's Center for Science and Culture Phillip Johnson's Wedge Document:
"milestones for the intelligent design movement, with its governing goals stated in the opening paragraph: "To defeat scientific materialism and its destructive moral, cultural and political legacies" and "To replace materialistic explanations with the theistic understanding that nature and human beings are created by God"
[2] From William Dembski (senior fellow at the Discovery Institute's Center for Science and Culture):
"I believe God created the world for a purpose. The Designer of intelligent design is, ultimately, the Christian God."
"milestones for the intelligent design movement, with its governing goals stated in the opening paragraph: "To defeat scientific materialism and its destructive moral, cultural and political legacies" and "To replace materialistic explanations with the theistic understanding that nature and human beings are created by God"
[2] From William Dembski (senior fellow at the Discovery Institute's Center for Science and Culture):
"I believe God created the world for a purpose. The Designer of intelligent design is, ultimately, the Christian God."
As you probably know, the movement is dead in the scientific community, and has been declared religion and pseudoscience in the American court system, where its teaching in public schools has been banned.
But this movement isn't going away as long as it can attract funding and politically powerful allies. The religious community is intent on reaching children, including the children of parents uninterested in Christianity, and so the schools are targeted.
Unveiled Artist
Veteran Member
This caught me when I read the definition of Intelligent Design. "[It's says that] nature categorically cannot be explained through natural causes; it requires the guidance of an "intelligent agent."
If not natural causes, what is nature of the agent that's separate from the cause of the universe-energy?
I actually think, given christian science, that it is an attempt to keep god in schools without directly referring to him. It's still a form a control of a child's education to be wrapped around christian views (rather than say Hindu, Islamic, Toasist).
The future? It depends on the state, really. In VA, US creationism isn't taught in any form to children. In college, it is only referred to as a comparison, and then they go into evolution or evolving of the specials from animal to human.
As for intelligent design, I don't know what that is. I don't care for christian ideas as a foundation for societal, educational, and legal morals so any implementing any idea like that regardless the name they use, I disagree with and the passive use to put christianity in schools may cause more harm than good later on. (As seen by indoctrinated children leaving their home religion because they didn't have a chance to explore to understand what works for their soul not for their parents when they are teens).
Guy Threepwood
Mighty Pirate
Agreed! all the changes needed to morph a single cell into a human being could not be blundered upon by chance, but that's exactly what the ToE proposes- it made a lot more sense 150 years ago before we knew about the complexity of the cell/ DNA etc
metis
aged ecumenical anthropologist
It appears that all material objects change over time, and our universe and our genes are material objects. Because of this, all sorts of different combinations may occur, so evolution simply is the recognition of that process.
So, how did this all start? Was there a "designer"? I don't know, so I'm not willing to speculate, especially since "infinity" is an option that cannot be discounted.
There will always be an element of truth to creationism, because we live in an orderly universe. Unfortunately its famous proponents are lazy in their observations, and they accuse good scientists. Many try to restrain scientific research as if it were evil. Are they the only people who opposed good scientific research? No, they are not. Scientific research threatens many positions from time to time. Do Scientists fail to recognize the order in the universe? They sometimes have to forget it in order to continue seeing what is in front of them. Its part of remaining detached from a desired result, and creationists refuse to do that. Thus they seem unable able to tow the line of research, and all the mudslinging against scientists is unacceptable.
Spontaneous Generation -- creationists fought Pasteur. They just wouldn't accept his reasoning against spontaneous generation.
Astronomy -- creationists insisted it was against the Bible, the church and the established understanding of the universe.
Evolution -- creationists insisted it was an evil plot to overthrow the Bible and many still do today though that has changed a lot in the last 20 years.
Macromolecules -- creationists insisted it was impossible to produce macromolecules without a hidden 'Living element', holding back research.
Spontaneous Generation -- creationists fought Pasteur. They just wouldn't accept his reasoning against spontaneous generation.
Astronomy -- creationists insisted it was against the Bible, the church and the established understanding of the universe.
Evolution -- creationists insisted it was an evil plot to overthrow the Bible and many still do today though that has changed a lot in the last 20 years.
Macromolecules -- creationists insisted it was impossible to produce macromolecules without a hidden 'Living element', holding back research.