Vorkosigan

For example. What ever possessed molecules to decide the only planet in our solar system that life can form on, will have a molten iron and nickel core, that produces an electromagnetic force that prevents a sun that is perfectly placed compared to the Earth from incinerating the planet?

Magus, you can't be serious.

There is nothing science can ever discover, than can explain these mind boggling questions. There is such minute detail in the universe that its incomprehensible to Humans, yet molecules did it on their own when they aren't even living.

Their called "selection processes." The first paragraph above is an excellent example of how they work. Life formed on earth because it was protected to a certain extent. On other planets where similar conditions did not obtain, life did not appear. Once you look at the millions upon millions of planets that exist in the universe, it is hardly surprising that some will have the conditions for the emergence of complex self-replicating systems.

The universe had to have an architect. Its irrational to say there isn't one. Matter exploding from a singular point to end up creating a design so incredibly complex as the human body, where humans don't even understand it fully is like putting a giant pile of wood and bricks on the ground, detonating the pile with TNT and having it form the White House.

Selection processes, Magus, can account for all of this. That is why science has not opted for some kind of evil Designer in all of this. Design is the position of people who refuse to face how selection processes actually work.

Vorkosigan

Jobar

Refractor:
A primary cause, for example, would be a person creating a car directly. The car's creation wouldn't exist if not for the direct effort of the person, and that person alone.

Are you trying to say that one person could do such a thing? Alone? I hope not, because it's impossible; only the organized effort of many, many men, using many centuries' worth of accumulated tools, knowledge and skill, are capable of creating a car. Human societies are self-organizing systems, with cars as one of a vast number of emergent consequences.

So this is not an example of a primary cause. Want to give it another shot?

Godot

My, aren't WE the arrogant one? First assuming that an established heirarchy with homo sapiens at the pinnacle IS evolution and second that humans are intelligent.
I just don't know where to begin here....

MrDarwin

Magus, that's quite a lot you have to say about "intelligent design"! What makes you so darn smart? Did the Dead Sea Scrolls tell you all this?

AndresDeLaHoz

They're called Chemistry and Physics.

Magus55

Hmm, yes and molecules just happened to create the laws of Chemistry and Physics on their own ( no scientists didn't create the laws, they only discovered them - the laws have existed since matter has existed).

Enai

Half right. These laws existed before molecules, stars and scientists did.

Enai

Edited to add: You can call the natural laws "creator of the universe", if you will. I believe nothing we'll ever discover will come closer to any creator than the laws of physics and chemistry.

Mageth

Hmm, yes and molecules just happened to create the laws of Chemistry and Physics on their own ( no scientists didn't create the laws, they only discovered them - the laws have existed since matter has existed).

I differ a bit on my perspective of this from Enai, perhaps. I think the "laws" of chemistry and physics are our descriptions of the interactions between "particles" (to refer to elements at all the levels of matter/energy, from quantum particles to galaxies). I don't think you can separate the "laws" from the particles, e.g. to say the particles created the laws or that the laws existed before the particles. Where you have such particles, you have interactions; where you have such interactions, you have particles.

From these basic interactions emerged all of the complexity we see around us.

Mageth

Even under extremely controlled environments under the direct influence of scientists (intelligent designers), scientists are unable to manufacture a living organism out of the non-living, raw materials.

So does this indicate that "intelligent designers" are not able to account for some of the complexity we see around us, since intelligent designers are not able to duplicate that complexity?

Mageth

It seems to me that the ID argument:

1) is essentially an argument from ignorance (as in Magus' "Matter exploding from a singular point to end up creating a design so incredibly complex as the human body, where humans don't even understand it fully is like putting a giant pile of wood and bricks on the ground, detonating the pile with TNT and having it form the White House.")

2) indicates a lack of imagination on the part of the proponents, or perhaps even willful blindness, as they tend to discount the observed ability of self-organizing principles to generate incredibly complex systems.

And then there's the fact that, as an alternative explanation, they pose some even more complex external designer to account for the complex systems we observe.