KC

The key here is that IDT posits that design can be detected regardless of its purpose. ID advocates insist that the nature or purpose of the designer doesn't concern them, at least in the "science' dealing with the theory.

This way, of course, the uncomfortable realities behind the nature and motivations of the designer can be ignored.

Cheers,

KC

WWSD

Well, I give them this much, they realize the weakness of thier own "theory" enough to evade the core issue before it even gets started.

So, if they don't care who the designer is, why do they care to demontrate the designer's existence?

Interesting question.

Let's assume that one day they provide "proof" for thier designer. The question that will immedietly arise is "who is it and what was/is its intentions?"

until then I suppose my argument is going to have to wait in the wings to spring forth and demonstrate that the designer wasn't a benevolent, nice guy god.

Hey, myabe I should be an IDer, I could use parasites to prove my point! I wonder how that would sit with the rest of the ID world?

WinAce

Go for it. Rip off Sagan and write 'The Demon-Created World: Intelligent Design as a Flaming Torch of Reason'. Argue that we're obviously the result of a totally twisted, sadistic mind who couldn't care whether we live, die, or kill each other off in his name. Then write that it's up to science to find this horrible thing and kill it, effectively solving the problem of evil once and for all.

Heh, that would piss off some people but would make a great book to send my relatives next time they claim how 'this noted scientist, Dr. Behe, has disproved evolution'.

Principia

Question addressed <a href="http://www.arn.org/cgi-bin/ubb/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=13;t=000197" target="_blank">here</a>.

WWSD

Can this argument be used to separate xtians from ID unless they use the fall?

Is it useful to do so?

That is what I am really getting at I think. Seperate theists from ID.

Let the IDers have thier vagueness, but don't let anyone else use ID to claim existence.

I think it might divide the anti-evolution camp a little.

lpetrich

This parasite argument can be extended to the occurrence of conflicts in ecologies past and present.

Predation is an obvious one; evidence of it extends back to the Cambrian, where some trilobites show evidence of Anomalocaris bites.

In predator-prey relationships, predators are adapted to hunt their prey, while their prey are adapted to escape being hunted. Protective coloration is a well-known example of such an adaptation; prey animals that resemble their surroundings are much harder to spot than those that do not. And predators that resemble their surroundings can avoid alerting their prey until it is too late for them.

Here again, if adaptation indicates design, then there are most likely multiple designers.

Albion

I thought IDers accepted that evolution existed and were just trying to find evidence for the God of the gaps (sorry, an intelligent designer) in complex biochemical structures rather than in whole organisms. In that case, they can put parasitism down to evolution or the effects of Satan or whatever flavour of philosophy they prefer.

WinAce

Parasites are most often irreducibly complex, though. They have to have lots of complicated systems to efficiently evade their victim's defenses. So, the ID'iots are stuck--they can't just say those evolved because it would be shooting themselves in the foot, and admitting their designer is the equivalent of the guy from Frankenstein would lessen their support from mainstream evolution-deniers...

Hey, they play politics so why can't we?

MrDarwin

Yes, parasitism and any other complex biological system in which one organism harms another poses an enormous problem for creationists; they love to point to adaptations and complex systems as examples of "design" even while claiming that the "designer" did not want its creations to suffer or harm one another. If such things were not "designed" before the fall, then surely they were designed after, but either way it demonstrates a deity that has no problem whatsoever with creating a monstrous, pain-filled world of suffering.

Of course, since this deity is supposed to be both omnipotent and omniscient, and created everything from scratch, knowing just how it would turn out, we have to assume that everything we see in the world around us is precisely as this deity wanted it. Satan rebelled because God wanted Satan to rebel; Man fell from grace because God wanted Man to fall from grace; suffering entered the world because God wanted suffering to enter the world; and the inescapable conclusion is that billions of souls will be damned and suffer eternally because God wants billions of souls to be damned and suffer eternally.

scigirl

Yes, good point. If God didn't want his creation to eat each other, inflict pain on each other, or suffer, He sure did a crappy job. What a lousy creator He is!

scigirl