Intelligent Design POLL

[questor]

it must be that now people use words to mean what they want them to mean, rather than rely on dictionaries. this makes for misunderstanding and misquoting. i agree with Buffy that this subject has been beaten to death. i'm sure that no minds have been changed, so whatever the belief system one has will continue until we know the truth (by scientific investigation).
P.S. a large percentage of words in the English language have Latin roots. we
use them every day in conversation. this is a scientific fact!

[ughaibu]

but is it evidence?

[KickAssClown]

Well, it would seem that discussing this topic is truely pointless. Rather than attempting to understand it, the majority of the people here out right simply reject it without first attempting to understand it.

The Question as I read it is:
"Do you believe in Intelligent Design??"

The answers I have heard are good, but the reasons I have heard for those answers come down to personal Bias. My interest in it was weather or not it had merit. This was not discussed.

Instead it ultimately came down to the Drawn out equivilant of "La La La... I'm not listening." Which is fine, however it is not proper and I will keep it in mind for discussion of future topics. It seems to me that it is a perfectly valid stance on this site to reject something on face value, rather than rationally try to understand what is being said and then making value judgement based on as Objective of a view as possible.

Just my opinion of all this.

[ughaibu]

Of course it's "merit" has been discussed, it has been clearly shown to have none. Have you read the Damocles posts on the thread I pointed out to you?

[KickAssClown]

Ok, For the Record.

I do not Believe in Creationism, nor do I believe in ID.

However I do believe in fair representation of a given subject.

Something akin to:
Innocent until proven guilty.

What I have seen here, short of what I read of Damo, is the opposite to good debate tactic.

something akin to:
Guilty until proven innocent.

I always try to go into learning about something, irregardless of origin, with the idea that maybe this has something new to teach me, if I give it a fair chance.

If I don't then of course it will contribute nothing to me, I have already rejected, pridefully, any gifts it may hold. Therefore It has ZERO merit.

I wasn't talking about it's scientific merit either. It is already been established that it is not a scientific creature, what I was looking for is does it have any Philosophical or Religious Merits, as I am interested in discussing those. Rather than beating a dead horse with a stick.

I am an empty tea cup, always ready to learn more. When you reject the possibility that you may know nothing, then you are free to learn everything.

The one who knows without doubt that they know all, is the one who has fooled one's self into believing that they are a full tea cup and is incapable, by virtue of pride, of learning more.

[ughaibu]

Buffy:
Summing up
1) Intelligent design has no supporting evidence
2) Intelligent design fails to simple and obvious logical objections
3) Intelligent design doesn't explain anything
4) Intelligent design can not be researched or investigated
5) Intelligent design has no implications for man or beast, it is irrelevant
6) Intelligent design relies on the assumption of unknown and illogical fantasy elements

It is impossible for any alternative to intelligent design to be less satisfactory on points 1-5 as intelligent design has absolutely nothing going for it.
On point 6, for an alternative to be superior to intelligent design, it merely has to employ known elements, even if they are illogical. Accordingly, "cigarette stubs" is a better explanation than intelligent design, so are "bicycle tires", "heavy snoring", "dirty laundry", "lopsided grin", et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Intelligent design is utterly worthless, the only interesting thing about it is that human beings have come up with and espouse, sometimes quite obsessively, such a daft idea.

[Zythryn]

Originally Posted by KickAssClown

...I wasn't talking about it's scientific merit either. It is already been established that it is not a scientific creature, what I was looking for is does it have any Philosophical or Religious Merits, as I am interested in discussing those. Rather than beating a dead horse with a stick.

I am an empty tea cup, always ready to learn more. When you reject the possibility that you may know nothing, then you are free to learn everything.
...

KAC, that is commendable. The world would be a better place if everyone were more interested in absorbing knowledge.

I would respectfull recommend, when bringing up ID, that you emphasize the first paragraph quoted above.

ID has been used, for some time, to try to crowbar in a religious alternative to evolution. Many have also tried to have it taught in science class instead of or along side of evolution.

I would also be interested in learning more about ID if there is anything else to tell about it. I fear you may be asking for information that simply doesn't exist. What little has been posted about it, may be all the substance it has.

[sebbysteiny]

Originally Posted by kissassclown

I do believe in fair representation of a given subject.

Something akin to:
Innocent until proven guilty.

Unfortunately, this is not so with science. With science it's guilty until proven innocent. By guilty we mean pure nonsence and by innocent we mean a valid explanation. If you have 'innocent until proven guilty' then you can have literally hundreds of thousands of useless 'explanations' most of them along the lines of little elf creatures who make all measuring instruments wrong. However, only a select few theories have been proven true by the vaste weight of evidence. Those theories represent science. Those theories rejected represent either bad science (ie rejected theories), mataphysics or just plain religion.

And one thing that is true above all other things on this debate: lack of evidence is just that, lack of evidence, not support for one theory. ID has no evidence but is compatible with the literal teaching of the bible, modern science has a mountain of evidence proving, among other things, the literal teachings of the bible to be wrong. Take your pick.

[pgrmdave]

I must disagree with those who feel that ID is invalid because it is based on the bible. It is not based on the bible, it is based on flawed logic. The logic goes as thus:

We usually assume that highly organized systems are designed by some sort of intelligence.

Life is a highly organized system.

Thus, we should assume that life is designed by some sort of intelligence.


The fault in that logic is that it is based on assumption. Hundreds of years ago it would have been a very valid theory, but when Darwin explained it using fewer unknowns, fewer variables, his theory of evolution became the more logical. Yes, many ID proponents are simply trying to use it as a way to elbow religion into school, but don't mistake the theory for the theorists.

One more thing - I have seen people 'debunk' creationism based on the question "Who created the creator?". I think that this question misses the idea, and doesn't stand up to simple logic. Look at the computer in front of you. It was built by a person, designed by a person. It could even be said that it was created by a person, but we have no problem with the creator. It is not necessary for us to take it back more levels than that. Just like evolution does not deal with the origin of life, creationism does not deal with the origin of a creator.

[ughaibu]

<opening sentence deleted> Creation is the production of something from nothing, a creator is not nothing. A computer exemplifies thousands of years of evolving ideas and accumulating technologies, it involves the labour of hundreds of people in diverse fields, it involves surveying, mining, oil refinery, etc, etc and it still doesn't involve creation, your analogy <edit> seems inappropriate.