Help me out with this “Intelligent Design” thingy:
So the idea is that everything that exists was designed by some intelligent designer thing, right?
Well, that designer is also an thing that exists, right? So what designer designed that designer?
And what designer designed the designer of the designer?
And what designer designed the designer of the designer of the designer?
And…. Auuugh! Well, you get my drift. This just goes on for ever.
I suspect this “Intelligent Designer” business is just a highfalutin way of saying “and then a miracle occurred,” because the I.D. argument has an infinite set of holes that can only be plugged by an infinite set of unobservable, unverifiable, unquestioned, assumed hypothetical designer thingies.
If your theory’s major mechanism is an infinite set of unobservable, unverifiable, unquestioned, assumed hypothetical thingies, then your theory is not scientific.
Because the designer appeared out of nowhere; has and will always exist!
And an omnipotent, perfect and intelligent being popping out of nowhere is so much more likely than a positive/negative charge or matter coming out of nowhere.
Duh!
Something can’t come from nothing but omnipotent beings can. Try pulling that one out of a hat.
HareTrinity,
Actually, something CAN come out of nothing. Research into particle physics regularly observes a pair of oppositely charged particles (e.g. an electron and a positron) appearing at randon and out of nothing. They usually exist for only a brief period of time before annihilating each other. In the vicinity of the event horizon surrounding a black hole, however, one particle can be sucked into the black hole and the other exits away from the black hole. A particle has just been created and now exists in the universe.
In addition, modern theoretical physics postulates that universes regularly form from existing universes. These new universes have an infinite variety of physical properties. Many will be unstable and will collapse upon themselves almost immediately. A very rare few, where the physical properties are just right, will continue to expand and will exist for long periods of time. Our universe is just such an example. National Geographic magazine published an excellent review of this idea earlier this year. I suggest you read it.
So Mark, the theories you refer to suffer criticism of the same sort that “ID” does: that they rely on unobservables, offer no test to assess a critical hypothesis, and therefore cannot be disproved.
And yes, scientists offer that criticism openly and often. This is a credit to the scientific community, and shows that they are as willing to harshly criticize untestable hypotheses originating from within their intellectual community as they are willing to harshly criticize untestable hypotheses (I.D.) originating from outside their intellectual community.
I knew that this would be your response. In the first paragraph I describe an observed phenomenon. So it is a fact (not even a theory) that matter can arise from nothing.
These ideas in the second paragraph are mathematically testable. They are derived from mathematical formulae that have been developed over the past several centuries and have proven themselves in real world physical experiments. Notice that I didn’t use the word ‘theory’ when I wrote about the creation of universes from other, existing universes. I used the word ‘postulates’. The difference is important! While there is evidence to support the idea, there is not enough to generate a theory about the creation of universes from existing universes. This idea may actually be testable, but our knowledge of physics in the 21st Century is not advanced enough to derive the tests necessary to elevate this idea to a theory.
Intelliigent Design, on the other hand, has no scientific evidence in support of it. By definition, one must rely solely on faith to believe that an omnipotent creator exists. There is no way to scientifically test this idea. That is why scientists such as myself are fighting so hard to keep ID out of science classes in our schools. If you want to teach ID, do so in your religious institution or in a philosophy class, but it is not scientific and so does not belong in a science class.
I think “out of nothing” is slightly inaccurate–as I recall, conservation of energy still holds; it’s just that the Uncertainty Principle says you can’t say exactly how much energy there is to conserve. In the vicinity of a black hole, when the particles don’t vanish immediately, it’s because the black hole’s gravitational field has provided energy to make up the deficit.
John, you may be right. I’m not a particle physicist, I’m a biologist. So my knowledge is limited.
Mark, you wrote “These ideas in the second paragraph are mathematically testable. They are derived from mathematical formulae…”
What this means is that they generate a mathematically coherent set of descriptions of how a system might work. There are lots of mathematically coherent models that have nothing to do with reality.
Carl Sagan does not exist.
-sorry, wrong post!
What designer designed the designer of the designer…? You’re stuck going around in circles unless you accept that there’s a designer who has always existed. Get it?
ID is very cleverly designed. By “leaving open” the question of who the intelligent designer is, they’ve made sure that the final biology lesson at your local public school is available at your local church. Oh, there’s plenty of information available about this “designer”–whoever he may be (wink wink). But, you know, “there are limits to what science can do.”
Now, could such an intricately structured sham as “intelligent design” just arise out of nowhere?
If the designer always was, what did the designer do for the infinite amount of time prior to designing the first thought or thing? (And don’t argue that the designer created other worlds or systems or universes because it will always come back to the time prior to creating the first thing.)
What will the designer do for the infinite amount of time after designing everything?
Presuming an infinite existance, what imperfection caused the designer to think about designing monkey-men in the first place? If there are imperfections in the ‘perfect’ designer how can the designer be perfect? There’s no need to change unless there are imperfections.
Can anyone show me a model of an infintite universe? And what do I put it in?
I was going to say a bag of holding…but, that doesn’t quite do it.
There are actually mathematical ways of envisioning infinite things. Think of calculus and limits and such. Oh my!
Mark,
Actually, beat you to it:
http://irregulartimes.com/board/index.php?topic=65.msg404#msg404
It’s all done with magnets once you get around to the level of magnets. Nothing is “solid” as we think “solid” means; we can’t even touch anything. Not really.
My last comment was mostly sarcasm. I do believe (negative/positive) charge was one of the first things about, but many Christians make it sound as if something coming out of nowhere is ludicrous, and then try to use that to support that an intelligent being coming out of nowhere isn’t likely to be impossible.
Of course, I also believe in an infinite universe, so in my opinion we’re one of the infinite numbers of Earths out there, and an infinite amount of times an intelligent being would come out of “nowhere”. This being would not be able to live more than a few seconds, though, due to the laws of physics, the only limits on the infinite universe.
Wow, isn’t this a fun topic?
I have my little thing answering the chicken and the egg question somewhere, too, if you people want that. And yes; there is an answer.
One thing ID proponents haven’t figured out yet is the fact that if there is an intelligent designer, it couldn’t possibly be God.
Let me explain:
Designing something means coming up with an idea, creating a plan for what will be created and how. Just like any other process, if the act of designing happens, it happens in time. There is a time before you make a design, a time while you are making a design, and a time after you made the design.
God has always existed, and he has always been omniscient. That means that there never was a time when he didn’t know what he was going to create in the future. That in turn means that he never could have made a design, since a design is nothing more than a detailed knowledge of what is going to be created in the future and how.
Saying God created a design implies that there was a time when God existed, but didn’t yet know what he was going to make in the future–then afterward he made a design and he gained that knowledge. But to make that claim implies that at one time there was knowledge God didn’t have, which is absurd because God is omniscient.
One might try to argue that God has always existed and his knowledge has always existed–and therefore that the design has always existed. But in that case too, God did not create the design, and therefore he is not the designer.
Therefore, logically, if we assume there is a designer, then contrary to what most ID proponents say, we CAN say something about the designer with certainty: It is NOT God!
Holy shit! I’ve seen logic not only chopped, it’s been PUREED’!
Damn fine job, guys!
Well Dave, didn’t God create time? So then there was no time before God created time. Right?
Hey, let’s cut and paste all this baloney into high school biology textbooks, ship them out to Kansas, and live on the royalties!
Then everybody can be taught “both sides of the story.”