Intelligent Design VS. Evolution (Be Convinced of the Truth)

[Pygoscelis]

and this in my opinion is a big gap in the evolution theory, that can only be solved by the intelligent design.

This is what is commonly referred to as the "god of the gaps" fallacy.

Evolution doesn't theorize how it all started, so yes, it does leave a big gaping hole of uncertainty. But that doesn't mean you can just fill that hole with God, just because you have no other explanation. Just because you don't know how something works, doesn't mean the supernatural is involved.

 

[root]

Evolution doesn't theorize how it all started,

I agree with this 100%

so yes, it does leave a big gaping hole of uncertainty. But that doesn't mean you can just fill that hole with God, just because you have no other explanation.

If evolution is the study of change in alelle frequencies overtime then that is the area of study known as evolution. To ask how life started in the first place and/or it's origin then that is a completely different science altogether which includes theories from abiogenesis and/or panspermia. They are not part of the evolutionary theory and are theories by thier own right. However much the creationists like to get hung up on gaps, as for the origin evolution does not have one.

Kinds like revising your physics skills for an english test?

Just because you don't know how something works, doesn't mean the supernatural is involved.

Agree 100% creationist history is littered with "this system is so complex it could not have evolved", when they are proven wrong, they simply move to the next apparently too complex system. Creationists do always seem to be moving on with this respect.

 

[Hemoo]

well people, i hope you all have watched the Documentary Film because this is the main Purpose of this thread.

then you can post your criticism of the film, this way the thread will be more usefull.

 

[ranma1/2]

well people, i hope you all have watched the Documentary Film because this is the main Purpose of this thread.

then you can post your criticism of the film, this way the thread will be more usefull.

Fair enough.

I apologize if my critic is kinda random. I was grading papers while listening to the film.

A basic setup of who is who and where this conference of 14 people took place.
１９９３　pojaro dunes
http://www.geocities.com/CapeCanaveral/Hangar/2437/designhistory.htm

Micheal Behe
biochemist
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_J._Behe
irreducible complexity
Michael Denton
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Denton
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution:_A_Theory_in_Crisis
Phillip Johnson
] professor of law
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phillip_E._Johnson
Dean Kenyon;
evolutionary biologists. Chemistry alone not origin of life.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dean_Kenyon
Paul Nelson
philosopher of biology.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Nelson_(creationist)
William Debmski
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Dembski
Jonathan Wells
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_Wells_(intelligent_design_advocate)

Video summary, review and occasional response.

10 minutes, suggests that a growing number of scientists challenge “aspects” of ToE,
Reply, no problem that’s normal for science. Of course the growing number part is suspicious. At this point I suggest looking at project steve.

10:30 Paul nelson admits natural selection is a real process.
Suggests it only works for small scale change. Roughly arguing there is no macro evo only micro.
My reply
Macro is the accumulation of these small scale changes, thus allowing for something’s great, great, great, great, great,……………………………….. offspring to be completely different. Evo implies gradual change, You will never see a duck give birth to a non duck under evo, but you will see a duck give birth to a slightly different duck from its parents..

13:40 behe suggests that evo is not the whole explanation for life.
18:15 and 21:30 suggests that scientists have not offered any detailed explanation for flagellum.
“ I’m curious what they mean be detailed, science has offered explanations.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irreducibly_complex#Flagella
18:30 begins the argument of irreducible complexity
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irreducibly_complex
an example they give is the mouse trap.
And a good reply to the mouse trap argument.
http://udel.edu/~mcdonald/mousetrap.html
of course IC ignores the fact that things can evolve with different functions that can later change to other functions as it is better at performing those newer functions.
Of course here are some ideas as to how the flagellum evolved.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution_of_flagella
24:30 roughly goes over the idea of Co-option.
I would have been really disappointed if they left out co-optation.

30:00 Attacks evolution that it doesnt explain how life began.

Evolution does not discuss how life started but rather what happened after life began. Evolution tries to explain the diversity of life.
Some ideas of how life began.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abiogenesis
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panspermia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panspermia#Directed_panspermia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origin_of_life

35:00 Still discussing the creation of life and not evolution.
40:00 discusses the problems with genetic information. Still not discussing evo nor has the video given any evidence so far for intelligent design. The only thing they have done is use the god of the gaps argument at best.

51:00 goes back to the discussion of evolution ”somewhat”. The speaker complains that scientists don’t give the ID theory a chance. Why? Because they have 0 evidence. None, natta, zip, zero , zilch. Then they go back to origins of life.

53: Dembski tries to discuss how we determine whether things are designed. Pretty much just goes over man made objects.
56: tries to associate the criteria Dembski suggested for design with information and via that DNA.
1:00:00 suggests that ID is the best explanation for the “information” in DNA.
Information can be shown to exists all over the place without ID. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information . We as humans tend to see human design in things. That’s the only ID we have evidence of apart from what other animals create.



Over all
This video is just the god of the gaps argument.
We don’t understand how this was done so God did it. “were not even gonna think about what made god”

They provide no evidence for ID. They only say we don’t understand this so it must be created by ID.

They confuse the origin of life with the origin of the species and the diversity of life.

They confuse human sources of information with natural ones.

 

[ranma1/2]

So basically,

I see none of ID supporters ideas to have any evidence. The entire video was god of the gaps. We dont know how something workds so god did it.

They seem to confuse abiogenesis "origin of life"and evolution "origin of the species".

Even if we had a some sort of ID creator we would then have to figure out their origin.

Of course the main problem i have with the video is that they provide no evidence for ID what so ever. The closest they got was suggesting that DNA is information that can only be created by Intelliegence. The only examples of design they gave were of human creations that we can verify in general being human designs. They could give no example of any information that was not man made.

Ironically enough they then started to talk about SETI and the search for ETs. I wonder how that would effect their view on Humans being made special....

 

[maroon1]

tell me what is this theory telling about the first kind of life that existed on earth, how this kind of life even existed?[/QUOTE]

Science is improving day by day, don't expect that science will be able to answer every question you ask...

The first form of life was very simple, most life forms where unicellular, I would say that the first life form evolved from less complex molecules (non-living things that have less complex structure)

how can something be created from nothing?

What has this to do with evolution ??!! Evolution doesn't say that things comes from noting !!

If noting can come out of noting....then from where did god come from ? I can use the same logic against you.....

can you create something or anything from nothing in labs?

Read the above

and as scientists in the video talked about the dna and its structure inwhich the DNA is like a huge DATAbase of information and instruction for the cells to act upon.

how did this information come to be formed ?

Step by step from mutation and natural selection

if you left your computer opened for millions of years even if there is a program wich generates random codes, what is the chances that this random codes will form an intelligent Operating system or even a dumb system like Windows ?

Natural selection is not applied to computer programs, nature has no effect on computer programs.

Evolution is natural process that happens slowly, step by step, by mutation and natural selection. It can be derived (in theory) from physics......


.................

To make the story short, here's an example of how natural selection works.

At anytime, at any fecondation, some mutation most probably happens. That is why no one looks exactly half his mother and half his father, ANYWAY, most mutations are unnoticed, and many are ineffective (not every genetical modification leads to a morphological modification)

First let's take something as universally agreed. If we have a floor colored in brown, and we have 2 mice on it, one brown and one white. Also, we have a hawk peeking from 20 meters high. Which mouse would most probably be noticed? Of course the chance will not be 50-50. If we do that experiment 1000 times, we will notice that a very high number will show that the white mouse will be noticed instead of the brown one that is hardly to identify on the brown floor.

I guess no one will have an issue in accepting that in this case, the brown mouse has a better probability of survival.

Now let me go back to the example, once there was a forest of trees having light colored (white-grey) trunks, in that forest there were a type of butterflies that have one of the two colors white or black. They are the same type, except that mutation led to have a different colored type. Those butterflies usually rest on the tree trunks, and in that forest it has been seen that the white butterflies exceed the black ones in numbers at a VERY HIGH ratio, it makes sense, because they can blend in the color of the trunks very easily, while the black ones have a less survival chance because they can be easily perceived.

What happened later is that a fire occured in that forest, and the trees became covered with a black layer from the fire. Guess what happened in the time that came later? The population & rate of survival of the white butterflies went to almost ZERO, while the place became abundant of black butterflies.

This is ONE aspect of natural selection, it's a very slow behavior, and it is NOT voluntary. It just happened that there were 2 types of butterflies, but the one with the most favorable color remained and the other was on its way to extinct (in that area).

 

[maroon1]

You may be right. God could have created a self-sustaining evolutionary process, but I can't imagine how the creation of something advanced (humans) from something very basic (bacteria) could happen without direct intervention by a Higher Power.

My friend, Evolution happens slowly step by step. It is just like a person climbing a huge mountain, he would climb the mountain step by step, then you will suddenly see him on the top of the mountain. Evolution works in the same way...and humans, monkeys, elephants and all those complex creatures are the result of billions of years of evolution.

could happen without direct intervention by a Higher Power.

This what religious people always say when they don't find an explanation to a phenomena......

 

[MustafaMc]

My friend, Evolution happens slowly step by step. It is just like a person climbing a huge mountain, he would climb the mountain step by step, then you will suddenly see him on the top of the mountain. Evolution works in the same way...and humans, monkeys, elephants and all those complex creatures are the result of billions of years of evolution.

Give me a single example where even a single point mutation that caused the substitution of a single nucleic acid in a strand of DNA that resulted in the substitution of a single amino acid of the polypeptide chain made the resulting 3-dimensional protein more efficient than the original form. The example that you gave about black and white butterflies (actually moths I think) is showing how natural selection exploits variability that already exists. We see the same thing with insecticide resistance in insects and herbicide resistance in weeds. The use of pesticides did not make the mutations rather they selected for survival of individuals with resistance genes.

Take the example of 3 bricks lying on the floor. How many times would you have to throw them up in the air for them to come down standing on end and stacked small end to small end 1 after the other like this:

[]
[]
[]

This extremely low probability bit with enough time guarantees its certainty just doesn't fly.

 

[MustafaMc]

The first form of life was very simple, most life forms where unicellular, I would say that the first life form evolved from less complex molecules (non-living things that have less complex structure)

So, all of the components of a single living cell came together by chance - yeah, right.:rollseyes

What has this to do with evolution ??!! Evolution doesn't say that things comes from noting !!

If noting can come out of noting....then from where did god come from ? I can use the same logic against you.....

Allah is outside of our ability to understand.

Read the above


Step by step from mutation and natural selection

Natural selection is not applied to computer programs, nature has no effect on computer programs.

Evolution is natural process that happens slowly, step by step, by mutation and natural selection. It can be derived (in theory) from physics......

.................

To make the story short, here's an example of how natural selection works.

At anytime, at any fecondation, some mutation most probably happens. That is why no one looks exactly half his mother and half his father, ANYWAY, most mutations are unnoticed, and many are ineffective (not every genetical modification leads to a morphological modification)

No, mutations don't explain why offspring don't appear as "half his mother and half his father". This is simple genetic recombination through sexual reproduction - AAbb (mother) X aaBB (father) > AaBb (offspring).

 

[ranma1/2]

So, all of the components of a single living cell came together by chance - yeah, right.:rollseyes


Allah is outside of our ability to understand.

No, mutations don't explain why offspring don't appear as "half his mother and half his father". This is simple genetic recombination through sexual reproduction - AAbb (mother) X aaBB (father) > AaBb (offspring).

So lets here one and all. Put down those dirty books and forget about the world and repeat after me.

God did it.

No need to understand things, God did it.

That darn Yawn of yours is caused by satan.

etc.. etc.. etc..

god did it.

 

[wilberhum]

So lets here one and all. Put down those dirty books and forget about the world and repeat after me.

God did it.

No need to understand things, God did it.

That darn Yawn of yours is caused by satan.

etc.. etc.. etc..

god did it.

If you have a three letter answer for everything, laying:
it seams total lack of knowledge about every thing follows. :uuh:

 

[Pygoscelis]

So lets here one and all. Put down those dirty books and forget about the world and repeat after me.

God did it.

No need to understand things, God did it.

That darn Yawn of yours is caused by satan.

etc.. etc.. etc..

god did it.

MY god did it.

 

[جوري]

[QUOTE ]

maroon

My friend, Evolution happens slowly step by step. It is just like a person climbing a huge mountain, he would climb the mountain step by step, then you will suddenly see him on the top of the mountain. Evolution works in the same way...and humans, monkeys, elephants and all those complex creatures are the result of billions of years of evolution.

[/QUOTE]

I think these two rather long and well researched papers on evolution from a 'statistical physics', as well as the 'probability of randomly assembling a primitive cell on earth are an excellent measure of the 'step by step' process you speak of and seek? but in the way of conforming with modern principles and methods used in science rather than the awkward and bumpkinly vernacular account of various members...
Both authors have no interest in proving 'intelligent design' or G-d so to speak ( your inferences are your own!).. just plainly, the possibilities and improbabilities by means of modern science!...
I think it is better to read something worth while than deal in the usual pedantic rant which some members are only so and well equipped at disgorging! .. I don't know that I can handle another sharp rejoinder from the regular three stooges! :sarcasm smiley:

peace
http://www.iscid.org/papers/Mullan_PrimitiveCell_112302.pdf
http://arxiv.org/ftp/q-bio/papers/0603/0603005.pdf

 

[Trumble]

Question for any creationists and ID fans who have read Melkikh's article (confession... the math rather passed me by; I'll take his word it!);

Do you consider it possible that God could have designed the "mechanism of deterministic evolution" Melkikh suggests, i.e by establishing the properties of proteins and nucleotides that predetermine the species possible? If so, would you accept that, logically, having done so there would be no need for subsequent intervention by God in the evolutionary process?

 

[جوري]

^^^ a petitio principii-- what is the point of this?

 

[Trumble]

^^^ a petitio principii-- what is the point of this?

No it isn't. Please read more carefully.

 

[جوري]

No it isn't. Please read more carefully.

I know you seek some sort of conclusion from this ( or I assume) I just would like to know what it is in advance-- That we are Petri dishes to a creator derelict in his duties ?

peace!

 

[Trumble]

That we are Petri dishes to a creator derelict in his duties ?

Hehe... no. Not exactly.

I've said before that I'm puzzled as to why people are so reluctant to dismiss the theory of evolution (accept in the case of man; I know there is a Qur'anic reason for that) when I see no reason that, if there is a God, the evolutionary mechanism itself could not be His creation. The argument repeated ad infinitum is that such and such could not have happened by 'chance', but if God 'designed' evolution no 'chance' is involved. If evolution is a reality, but the process was designed by God, then there is no reason why that mechanism alone should not be sufficient to create whatever species God wanted created... indeed assuming the usual properties assigned to God it is illogical that anything else (such as subsequent intervention) would be necessary. I think it just comes down to the automatic (but incorrect) association of evolution with atheism made by some posters - indeed one or two even seem to think 'evolutionist' and 'atheist' are synonyms!

I find Melkikh's article of particular interest as it puts a little 'meat on the bones' of the idea that the evolutionary mechanism could have been designed and what such a design might actually require in practical terms - although he does not suggest divine design himself, of course. I was just curious to see if something more concrete might have made people more receptive to the idea.

 

[InToTheRain]

A rational mind would lead to belief in God.

an Imaginative mind would lead to the belief in evolution

Im sure even as athiests undertand that if a plate has no chance of breaking perfectly in half; no matter how many times you smash it on the floor hoping it would. Therefore its quite rational to think that the earth and all things around us which has a far more complicated mechanism and origin has no chance of being the way it is without predetermined processes to facilitate its current design.

In my opinion, I believe no matter what the evidence is provided for or against the existence of God it cana never be 100% proof without a considerable shadow of a doubt because Life is a test and Allah(SWT) has given us freedom of choice to follow him or not; by giving undeniable proof that objective would be defeated as we would have no choice but to aknowledge him and obey his commands. Thus to maintain the purpose of the test and freedom of choice Allah(SWT) with his superior wisdom has made a balance such tht we can do as we please while leaving guidance or those who seek it.

 

[wilberhum]

Therefore its quite rational to think that the earth and all things around us which has a far more complicated mechanism and origin has no chance of being the way it is without predetermined processes to facilitate its current design.

But you assume the current condition is by design. You assume that all of this is the product of a multi billion year plan.
I assume that we are the result of billions of billions of random chances.

I believe no matter what the evidence is provided for or against the existence of God it cana never be 100% proof without a considerable shadow of a doubt because Life is a test and Allah

See my signature.