Intelligent Design...
About the "Intelligent Design" theory, I really dig monger's suggestion about the snowflakes. The point is this: every snowflake has an intricate, symmetrical design that might suggest a requisite "designer". Every raindrop assumes a lovely, elongated "teardrop"/airfoil shape on its way to the ground. People who believe in intelligent design see these, the patterns of the solar system, the entire galaxy, and sub-microscopic particles, and conclude that there must be a pattern-er.
I want to start by saying that intelligent design (ID) is one of the most well-thought-out answers to evolution (which many people don't really understand as it has taken on new meaning in our language, equivalent to the word "progress"). Like many religions, it attempts to satisfy our feeling of being alone in the universe. (When was the last time you had a debate with a non-human living organism?) It's HARD to be alone, so we look for UFOs and invisible fathers who always love us. It's HARD to imagine that life has no purpose, and a great burden on us to find it ourselves. But I digress!
As I think monger also mentioned, there are self-organizing systems in the universe. Physicists understand that gravity (and a little relativity) explains the orbits of the spheres. Even that is open to change, pending new information. Why does a design imply a designer? Does anyone know what fractals are? They are infinitely (as far as we know) complex pictures resulting from simple mathematical formulas. That's right, INFINITE... Most people are familiar with the Mandelbrot set, it comes from this formula:
Z1 = C, where C is a complex number a+bi
Zn = (Zn-1)^2 + C
(And n takes integer values=1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6... etc.)
Don't take the word "complex" there too seriously, although it is a bit complex to explain... erm. It's the square root of negative one, a term that often results from many practical physical calculations like population growth, and polar vectors. This may sound complicated, but compared to the formula for calculating the strength of gravity and many other equations that fit our natural world, it is very simple. Take a number, square it, and add a value to it; use the result as your original number and repeat. You can use any numbers in the formula, most all give you a fractal. (Fractint is a great program online to play with these...
http://spanky.triumf.ca/www/fractint/fractint.html )
The complex formula for gravity results in (essentially) simple elliptical orbits.
The simple formula for fractals gives (essentially) infinitely complicated designs reminiscent of the things we see everyday - trees, for example. They remind many people of sea creatures, like seahorse tails and coral. To the truly devout (meaning believers in ID), this should REINFORCE your beliefs - there IS a design!
Simple repetitions of the abovementioned "self-organizing" processes result in absurdly complex results. This seems to lead to a number of conclusions. Given a long enough timeline, it makes enough sense that these processes could progress to the point of complexity that exists today, in us. And if you want to call the algebraic method used to create fractals the "design", that means that God created the universe based on a mathematical model! If you want to debate the idea of the naturalness of recursion (the process of calculating the fractal formula, and of repeating it to get the designs) then you would have to explain why the solar system "design" so closely resembles the atomic "design" which also resembles the galactic "design" - it seems a clear case of natural recursion to me! Also, the physics formulas for determining gravitational attraction AND electromagnetic force are basically IDENTICAL, more proof of natural recursion. Another example is the sphere - the list of spherical objects include: Sol (the sun), the earth, bubbles, cellular nuclei, coccal bacteria, and presumably protons and neutrons, and possibly their component parts, which of course make up all of the above.
To explain recursion to those who may not know what it means, think of a map of a continent. Looked at from space, you could measure the mathematical circumference (the "outer edge") of the continent. Go down into the atmosphere and you start to see more details, little bays and such not visible from higher up. This increases the circumference. Down lower, and you see many rivers going out into oceans. This increases the circumference a great deal because now you have to measure the lengths of the rivers, to, around, and back from their sources. Down to crop-dusting height and you see little creeks flowing into the rivers, and the circumference again must be increased. Then if you stand on the ground yourself, you see that the shores are made of various sized rocks. Go around that edge, and again the circumference increases dramatically.
The closer you get, the more complicated things seem. Obviously there is a boundary between earth and water, we know that intuitively. It is also a chemical fact that I think even the pope would agree with... or he would be using Holy Dirt. lol! Holy SH*T! ROTFL!! Anyway...! Recursion is the process of getting closer (in my analogy), following a pre-determined set of instructions that can be as simple or as complex as you wish, and doing it a LIMITED number of times. Hope y'all got that!
The 'pattern' or 'design' of the universe, and living organisms seems to be recursion. Which is a mathematical process. So God must be a mathematician, and therefore we can figure out his equation. Somehow I don't think the ID people will agree with that.
WHEW! Lots of background to make that bold statement, and I got a million of 'em! Just thinking about the world around me, and how it contradicted the things I was taught as a christian.... you know? So in a roundabout way I am answering the question of what life would be like if Jesus would have never lived, we would have observed the world around us with our natural curiosity, some other 'messiah' would have come along with profound parables (and wisdom, I'll give JC that) and people would have worshipped him.
Just a few other things that make me question standard notions of religion:
1) I think I was created when my parents had sex.
2) I created my daughter by having sex.
3) If god somehow "puts" a soul into babies, would that mean a human clone had no soul?
3a) If not 3, then does god "do it" (put the soul in) while you are having sex?
3b) If not 3a, then my sperms have souls?
3c) If god created all creatures why don't plants have souls?
3d) If plants have souls, and every 'cutting' is a clone, can souls be cloned?
3e) Or are cloned plants against the will of god because they have no soul?
3f) If a human clone had no soul... and it believed in Jesus, and was faithful, would god put a soul in it so it could be saved, as per scripture?
Now you see why christians can't tolerate clones... they just eat them.
4) We seem to have been created "in the form of" monkeys. Does god have hair?
4a) If we were created in god's image... then god has to eat and take a dump just like I do. He also has sex like us, right?
4b) If not 4a, then we were created in the spiritual image of god. Wouldn't that mean that he has all of our flaws, ie greed, lust, sloth, gluttony, etc.?
5) Before Pasteur, it was commonly believed that maggots came to life spontaneously from rotten meat. I think this was called animism, and it's related to why the chemistry of carbon compounds is called "organic" chemistry. The biblical accounts of creation PREDATE this by centuries. Why aren't they outdated?
6) The pope has accepted the account of creation in Genesis as a METAPHOR (for something akin to the Big Bang). Why not the whole book? That would be fine with me.
7) Lust is the biological imperitave that allows us to "be fruitful and multiply and replenish the earth". Why is it sinful?
7a) What about when the earth is overpopulated? Won't that be outdated?
8) If the meek will inherit the earth, why do the strong rule it in the name of christendom?
9) Old standby... where is heaven, again? Doesn't that word mean "sky"?
I think that's enough, I know this is not a forum for all my metaphysical questions. I don't expect answers to them, either, but any attempt do do so will be greatly enjoyed! These are the questions I ask myself over and over, and I feel that faith alone is insufficient to answer them. I don't have to get into the carbon dating problems to counter-argue ID. I even have another argument...
If god designed all the patterns we see, and remember that it SNOWS on other planets and moons too... then he's an artist. The artist is certainly 'larger' than his creation. Put it another way. If he is omniscient, then he knows everything, including the quantum state of every particle in the universe, which is actually enough to describe all of reality as we know it. In order to hold all of that information, he would have to be equal in either 1) size, or 2) energy (interchangable), to the rest of the universe. In essence, he would be an entire seperate universe to himself, possible including stars, planets, etc. Or he could BE this universe, something akin to pantheism and deism.
I actually like that last answer, because it would explain how we are all "children of god". The alternative means that he had sex with our ancestors. In other words, simply by existing, being part of the universe, we are all a part of each other. Just like we all crawled out of the water together, and probably huddled in crevices together (as some kind of rodents, no doubt) to hide while the dinosaurs died. Isn't this enough to tie us all together?
A lot of people may think this is dry and technical, but I find it VERY spiritual and rewarding. We all seem to share a common quest for meaning, for a purpose in our lives. That seems to be the point of religion to me, to offer people a pre-determined meaning and purpose, so they can get on with living instead of constantly questioning and wondering like I do! I suspect that is also why many non-believers look down on pious people, from our point of view, they took the "easy way out" and just put their faith in a book or a messiah. Why bother searching for something when you can have it spoon-fed to you? Even non-deistic (no gods, like buddhism) religions offer a path, a method to search for meaning and purpose. I can't blame anyone for that, as long as they don't try to push me onto their path, which a lot of christians have done.
BTW, carbon dating can be adjusted to fit new data about the earth and the universe, even a decaying speed of light. That's what science is all about! It provides a model that we can use to predict and understand the world. When the model gets outdated, it has to be adjusted. This happened when quantum physics superceded Newtonian physics, which still applies to things on a human scale. In fact, a sort of "rule" of quantum physics calculations is that if they are carried through to the human scale, the answers need to come out the same as (reduce to) the Newtonian calculations. In common terms, the new rules have to be AT LEAST as good as the old rules.
That doesn't happen in religion. New methods are typically rejected. New information is not absorbed into the system, it is rejected. Anyone familiar with thermodynamics should know what happens to a completely closed system, eventually...
peacelovehope!
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