Do you really find it compelling that our existence came by chance and not intent?

What do you wish to accomplish by telling me this?

 

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Do you know what's inside a man's heart/mind? I can answer that for you, no you don't.

 

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So you seek reasons to believe whether someone who claims to be a doctor, a lawyer, or a mechanic, really is a doctor, a lawyer, or a mechanic -
but you don't apply this scrutiny when it comes to religiousness.

Any crook could come by and claim he is religious, and you would believe he is religious.

Why?

 

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If you look at the natural laws of chemistry, there are inherant designs within these laws, even before the designs exists in reality. For example, if you went to a planet that contained high temperature steam in its atmosphere, I predict that when that planet cools liquid water will condense. This phase change design was set even before there was liquid water on that planet, since water condenses at 100C.

The design called the condensation of water is not random. In other words, cooling the steam will not result in endless phases of water. It results in liquid water; very specific. It would not be a very intelligent design if each time it was different; that would be dumb design.

Even when the universe was inflating from the BB, isotopes of hydrogen would eventually be used for nuclear fusion. If we did it again, we get the same phase change design. That design was already there (predictable by the nature of matter), even before subparticles became hydrogen. The fact that we can predict, implies there is already a cause and effect at work, even before it occurs.

 

What you call design I call the laws of physics. Again (for the umpteenth time) if infinite complexity (God) can exist without a cause, then so can the laws of physics (the universe).

Forget about God for a moment and elevate the universe itself to the top of the hierarchy. It is "god" (albeit it one without a personality).

You are not required to believe this of course, but it serves to demonstrate the impotency of your argument.

 

:shrug:

 

but that really doesn't have anything to do with intentional design. it just can appear to be. the way certain laws interact with their properties will have a cause and effect.

hypothetically, we could say the laws of this universe were an accident which for what we can tell is a four dimensional universe. perhaps the so-called big bang was an accident or the result of a collision.

perhaps another universe has a million dimensions or only one. taking this view we can clearly see that it does not have to be an intentional design. it may not be a design at all but just a result.

 

Aye - as the great Douglas Adams once said:

"This is rather as if you imagine a puddle waking up one morning and thinking, 'This is an interesting world I find myself in - an interesting hole I find myself in - fits me rather neatly, doesn't it? In fact it fits me staggeringly well, must have been made to have me in it!' This is such a powerful idea that as the sun rises in the sky and the air heats up and as, gradually, the puddle gets smaller and smaller, it's still frantically hanging on to the notion that everything's going to be alright, because this world was meant to have him in it, was built to have him in it; so the moment he disappears catches him rather by surprise"

 

Because it is irrelevant to me. I don't attach any special attribute to claims of being religious.

 

As Signal noted, well said birch.

And thanks for getting us back on topic.

The attribution of intent to any system is always fraught with problems. We can barely (logically) do it ourselves for our own artifices, let alone something of natural origin. Nonetheless, the notion of an evolved order is much more 'compelling' a concept than the alternative.

 

I thought you would, given what you said earlier -

 

You mean Sarkus.

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Any attribution is potentially fraught with problems.

At the same time, we have a keen sense that something is empowering, or demoralizing; and that demoralization is morally undesirable.

Humans are moral beings too, not just scientific ones.

 

I know many religious people who are not trying to change the science cirriculum. It seems to be a small but vocal minority of the fundamentalist branch of Christianity that wants to force their beliefs down everyone else's throat.

FWIW - All religious people are not alike... just like everyone else.

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If I read you correctly, intelligent design is not the same as creationism.

Yes - the theory of intelligent design is simply an effort to empirically detect whether the "apparent design" in nature acknowledged by virtually all biologists is genuine design (the product of an intelligent cause) or is simply the product of an undirected process such as natural selection acting on random variations. Creationism typically starts with a religious text and tries to see how the findings of science can be reconciled to it. Intelligent design starts with the empirical evidence of nature and seeks to ascertain what inferences can be drawn from that evidence. Unlike creationism, the scientific theory of intelligent design does not claim that modern biology can identify whether the intelligent cause detected through science is supernatural.
Honest critics of intelligent design acknowledge the difference between intelligent design and creationism. University of Wisconsin historian of science Ronald Numbers is critical of intelligent design, yet according to the Associated Press, he "agrees the creationist label is inaccurate when it comes to the ID [intelligent design] movement." Why, then, do some Darwinists keep trying to conflate intelligent design with creationism? According to Dr. Numbers, it is because they think such claims are "the easiest way to discredit intelligent design." In other words, the charge that intelligent design is "creationism" is a rhetorical strategy on the part of Darwinists who wish to delegitimize design theory without actually addressing the merits of its case.

 

But originated from, and is pushed by, creationists.

ID is not a scientific theory.

ID has no merits.

 

What would be an example of a "natural" intelligent designer?

 

Consider two eagle chicks. One is normal while the other has a mutation that means it is blind. Which eagle chick is the more likely to survive and have offspring, the sighted chick or the blind chick? Is this result random? That is natural selection. It is not random and it is not intelligent.

Put some soil through a sieve. Small pieces fall through while larger pieces do not. Not random and not intelligent. Natural selection is like a sieve; DNA which reproduces passes through to the next generation, DNA which does not reproduce does not pass through to the next generation.

This is interesting: Seems like purpose is involved here.

Like Products, Plants Wait for Optimal Configuration Before Market Success

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/03/110329134343.htm

ScienceDaily (Mar. 30, 2011) — An international research team led by Brown University has amassed the largest evolutionary tree (phylogeny) for plants. It has learned that major groups of plants tinker with their design and performance before rapidly spinning off new species. The finding upends long-held thinking that plants' speciation rates are tied to the first development of a new physical trait or mechanism.

more...

 

Could you try answering my question?

 

http://ts-si.org/horizons/28708-us-high-school-biology-resists-evolutionary-biology

University Park, PA, USA. The majority of public high school biology teachers in the U.S. are not strong classroom advocates of evolutionary biology, despite 40 years of court cases that have ruled teaching creationism or intelligent design violates the Constitution.

There is considerable research showing that supporters of scientific methods and evolution — and even reason itself — are steadily losing out in America's classrooms, according to a new analysis by Michael Berkman and Eric Plutzer, professors of political science at Penn State. Their analysis appears in the journal Science.

 

From your own link: