Heathen Dawn

Intelligent design is intuitive. Watches and computers are the product of intelligence, so living organisms - much more complex than any computer - must be. However, intuition is not necessarily a good clue to truth.

It is intuitive that the earth is flat. We sleep on flat beds, not on ball-shaped beds, so it makes sense that the bed itself is situated upon a flat earth.

Basically, when creationists make an argument for intelligent design, they're in effect saying that the only type of design possible is the way we humans design things. But that's a fallacy. And anyway, computer simulations have shown how evolutionary design works and what wonders it can work. Non-intelligent design is another type of design; not the type of design an omnibenevolent, personal creator would use, but design nonetheless.

Intelligent design is therefore the same old geocentric, anthropocentric fallacy committed by those who opposed Galileo. It's very nice to be at the centre of the Universe, and to be the pinnacle of God's creation, but being nice doesn't make it true.

The monotheistic origins scenario - creation by divine fiat - must needs cave in to the new, natural pantheistic origins scenario in which the creator (nature) and creation (nature) are one and the same. The monotheistic origins account, just like old geocentrism, belongs to the past of mankind's narcissism.

Science and religion - specifically theistic religion - are in contradiction. Face it.

[ October 07, 2002: Message edited by: Heathen Dawn ]</p>

lpetrich

There is more to be said. A LOT more to be said.

First, flat-earthism is derived from elementary observation -- on average, one's surroundings do look rather flat. It's only when one considers distance scales of more than a few tens of mi/km that one decides that the Earth is approximately spherical.

And as to "intelligent design" itself, that may be a common human vice: anthropomorphism. Consider all the pet owners who anthropomorphize their pets, talking to them and stuff like that. However, a dog may not really know its name; it might simply interpret the saying of its name as a command to get its attention.

This may be some instinct associated with being social; if one is social, one has to interpret the actions of others in one's group. Furthermore, instincts, like other adaptations, need not be perfect in order to be functional; all that has to happen is that they misfire in ways that are not excessively troublesome.

As to "Intelligent Design", I do not consider that an absolute impossibility. Visitors of other planets could well have done some genetic-engineering experiments on our planet long ago. But unless there is positive evidence for such engineering, there is little reason to take seriously such a hypothesis.

And as how to detect design, that is easier said than done. The mainstream scientific community has actually grappled with that question on some occasions. In the late 19th century, the biologist George Romanes had suggested that much animal behavior was the result of intelligent design by the animals themselves; spiders design their webs, honeybees design their honeycombs, beavers design their dams, etc.

However, over the 20th century, research into animal behavior has discredited that idea in the large majority of cases -- behavior is almost always some mixture of instinct and simple learning, though sometimes some very complicated one.

There are exceptions, like chimpanzees, that can perform "insight learning". As first shown by Wolfgang Koehler (Ko"hler) some decades ago, a chimp will sometimes solve problems by pausing for a while and then implementing the solutions, such as stacking crates to reach otherwise-inaccessible bananas. So what the chimps could be doing is experimenting in its mind with mental representations of those crates in order to work out how to reach those bananas. Which may be interpreted as performing intelligent design.

This may be a roundabout sort of inference, but IMO it is a very reasonable one.

Heathen Dawn

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Once again, you can see gradualism achieves what seems to be impossible. Gradually, over great distances, the Earth curves; and gradually, over long times, life evolves. Intelligent design is more an expression of human impatience than anything else.

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I once thought evolution was the result of intelligent design. I thought we were the work of a programmer (or multiple progammers; can't discount that theory either) building living organisms on the source code of each other, much like new Linux kernel versions are built. It would then be logical to assume human.dna being built upon chimpanzee.dna and then compiled. My "intelligent evolution" theory was one I was very proud of, and seemed to explain both complexity and similarity in living organisms. However, more than anything else, it was a cover for my inability to believe blind evolution could achieve what it achieved. An article here at Infidels corrected that:

<a href="http://www.infidels.org/~meta/getalife/" target="_blank">http://www.infidels.org/~meta/getalife/</a>

Evolution is just a jab in the flesh of anthropocentrism as heliocentrism was: "Expect the unexpected".