Intelligent Design Theory: Science or Religion?

Is there a reason you try so hard to be mocking...to denigrate others at the least provocation?

Its a gift.

There is one subtle error in ID arguments: design is not detected by means of inference; design is recognized.

Everyone employs recognition. If you are reading this successfully, you are recognizing letters and words.

It is absurd to say a child infers its mother's face. The face is recognized, even the voice.

He who denies recognition shall be forced in very short order to betray himself by his deeds. Indeed, the process of issuing the denial presupposes someone will recognize the words used to express it.

But isn't recognition just inference going at too fast a speed to be seen by the naked eye? Or inference with enough practice to become second nature.

Do you think it has a genesis fm? Or were you born with it. Or, to be a bit more scientific, were you conceived with it?

There's not much to be said about that but if there's a genesis it might be interesting to explore it.

That's an interesting way to put it, but I wouldn't agree. That's a statement of certainty about something, and how would you make the determination with it "going too fast a speed to be seen by the naked eye"?

I think the usage is a result of carry-over, because they say inference is involved later in the reasoning: "When design is detected we infer a designer." This gets shortened to "Design inference" and then if you're not careful you end up with two inferences.

The actual detection we KNOW to be recognition. We do not know recognition to be a matter of inference... except that when it does not occur, in the rare borderline cases, we employ inference to try to determine on which side of the line a given example lies.

I don't see how there can be a line.

A Pavlovian experiment with a cat involved training it to go through a routine to get a reward of food and offering it 12 bowls of milk 11 of which were laced with alcohol. It always sought out the unlaced bowl.

Then it was punished instead of rewarded after performing the routine on some occasions. When it didn't know whether it was going to be rewarded or punished it began performing the routine in the wrong order or missing out some of the actions. In the sad state the scientist got it into after a period, weeks, of confusion it was offered 12 bowls of milk only one of which had alcohol in it. It always sought out the bowl with the alcohol.

We were assured that it was rehabilitated afterwards. But it was a film and anything can be proved with film.

Which, I suppose, was intended to explain alcoholism.

I saw the film on TV in the days when those involved in the medium had not yet discovered its power. I can't imagine it being shown today. The cat was got into a similar state as a human alcoholic: dishevelled is putting it mildly.

I must admit that I laughed at the thought of beefsteak and roast lamb eaters taking the considerable trouble to rehabilitate the cat and I don't know if I inferred or recognised that the cat was rehabilitated because the minister who authorised the funds to carry out the experiment was pre-empting potential future whistleblowers, like the TV company which screened the film, getting the nation's cat lovers down on his neck. One cannot imagine a beefsteak and roast lamb eating scientist feeling the need to rehabiltate the poor thing. That's utterly ridiculous given the amount of taxpayer's hard-earned money involved and most of them being beefsteak and roast lamb eaters themselves.

Whether the scientist was rewarded for conducting such an experiment I don't know but I can't see him being all that comfortable when some tender lady scientists start referring to him as "that awful man who did those terrible things to a poor little cat".

I wonder if he's hitting the bottle.

The ironies were in a right tangle. I assume the rehabilitation took as long as the process which caused the need for it and thus was as expensive.

Interesting, I suppose in its way, but how is it relevant?

The cat getting mixed up with inferring and recognising, getting neurotic and taking to the booze. It's real. People do it. Unlike baby/mother situations where the process becomes recognition by a less structured method and over a longer time.

I think that inferring design in nature comes after recognition of it and is a function of knowledge.

1 That's not a normal situation at all, and there is no inference of confusion which would apply to normal recognition

2 It's not the recognition process at all which became confused but the decision-making process: what to do. There's nothing suggesting the cat in your story had any problem recognizing which was which at any point.

Hi everyone,

I am a believer in scripture. When I say "scripture" I mean properly translated scripture. Biblical scripture is full of erroneous translations and is in no way inerrant. I believe in the universal redemption of all mankind. I am also a student of Intelligent Design. Just wanted to get that out in front so you know where I stand.

After being in these discussions for even the last few months, I have noticed that neither the arguments against Creationism nor FOR creationism are argued with understanding on either end. I find and can show that the creationists really do not know the scriptures and therefore carry on using erroneous arguments which are so easily picked off by the scientific community including its laymen. It is also true that the entire scientific community is also quick to assume these theological errors are what the scriptures are actually saying and then attack the scriptures due to the lack of scriptural knowledge on their part and the part of Creationists. This is true in many ways but the two that stand out the most to me I will outline below.

1: I often hear the young earth creationist argue that God created Adam and Eve and all mankind are descendents of these two, argued to be the first 2 and only 2 created in the beginning. My understanding and the claim of the scriptures reveals this to be untrue. Allow me to explain...

If Adam and Eve were the first 2 humans and there were none other when they had Cain and Abel, that would make 4 people in the earth. Cain killed Abel so now we have 3 left. Now God apparently cast Cain from among Adam and Eve and sent him out into the world. Cain complained that his punishment was more then he could bare because others would know that he had been cast out and would seek to kill him for his transgression. Okay, so here is the dilemma... If Adam and Eve and Cain are the only humans in the world. who are all these OTHERS who would seek to kill him?
So it is my view that since the Biblical Chronology dates Adam and Eve to be approximately 6000 years ago, we would have to have humans which have been on the earth much longer than Christian theology mistakenly claims. This brings me to the simple logical conclusion that the only reason Adam and Eve are the main focus is because they are the seed line to Christ, who is the focus and purpose of all scripture. So, old earth science and scriptural account are not in opposition.

2: I often see Creationists arguing that all of mankind eventually had to start over again following the flood by claiming that all mankind are descendents of Noah and his family of 8 and all animals are also descendents of those on the ark. I often found myself pondering the literalness of this event and began studying it further.
Lets just turn to a passage where the flood is the main context.

"Gen 6:4 There were giants in the earth IN THOSE DAYS (What days? The days of the flood right?); AND ALSO AFTER THAT (After what? The days of the flood right?), when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bare children to them, the same became mighty men which were of old, men of renown."

Now what and who these giants were is not the focus here but what is in focus is that these children/people/giants were not only here before the flood but also after the flood which means their seed line continued beyond the flood and were not wiped out by the flood.

Now, these people survived somehow without being on the ark so the flood must not have been as big as what Christan Theologians have assumed for centuries, possibly thousands of years.

In conclusion...

- We have others in the earth besides Adam and Eve in the creation story which just happened to not be the focus of the creation account outlined in the scriptures, most likely due to the fact that Adam and Eve were the direct seed line to Christ. That makes perfect sense since Christ IS the prime focus weaved through the whole of scripture. From the first Adam to the second Adam (Christ).
- We have others who survived the flood and (logically) we can assume animals and insects as well since there had to be unaffected land masses that provided sanctuary from the flood waters.

I felt it absolutely necessary to bring these points up due to Creationists being the laughing stalk of the scientific community. There are so many more theological problems associated with these debates, I wish I had time and space to go through them all. I find that through the acknowledgement of these errors in theology, we see science and biblical accounts merge more and more harmoniously.

I hope to continue discussion on this forum because I enjoy the openness of ideas and the exchange of knowledge.

Peace.
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Your belief does not address the science that puts the Earth's age at over four billion years.

You are purposely viewing your religious belief with false information and rationalizations that lacks logic or common sense. What are you so afraid of? Facts are in front of you if you care to view them with an open mind.

We all originated from Africa. We evolved from the primates. The earth is 4.5 billion years old. The "bible" is a fictional book created from myths. It was composed many decades after the so-called time of Christ, so no real record have been used to write the book. The reason the bible is so errant is based on knowledge that was very limited during that period; they had no concept of geological science. Even the sequence of the days of creation is wrong.

If the beginning is wrong, it's more than likely what follows is also wrong.

Why did you decide to believe in scripture in the first place? And how do you know which scripture is "properly" translated?

He creates his own translation to fit his "beliefs."

Probably. But people often have very creative rationalizations for this stuff. Always fun to hear what they come up with

You are going ass-backward TS. You are allowing, indeed encouraging, these materialistic atheists to plough your field and sow their own crops.

They have science to back them up. Science defined by them of course but nevertheless it chimes with those who also seek an atheistic society or those who simply want the Church out of the way regarding abortion, divorce, homosexuality, pre-marital sex, artificial contraception and eugenics.

Which is a serious coalition and not to be underestimated when it is egged on by those commercial interests, and they are many, which stand to benefit by the wider acceptance of those sorts of social arrangements.

Using their somewhat narrow definition of science, attacking what you say is a piece of cake and their attacks are welcome to those in the coalition. In fact, it being a piece of cake is not the least of its attractions. You will find if you care to look that edgar's, ci's and ros's contributions today are exactly the same as they were years ago when these threads began. Same simplistic ideas and even phrases. No doubt they were spouting the same things long before A2K existed.

But they chime in with a large number of people who have not had the full implications of such ideas explained to them. They rely on superficiality and ignorance.

And those who agree with you need no persuading. In which case all you are doing is providing a stage for them to strut their one-step routines upon.

But they also have a field. It is atheistic materialism. And rather than allow them the easy privileges of ploughing your field why don't you turn your attention to what their crops will be when the harvest of their efforts ripens and we are stuck with secular, atheistic materialism which cannot be anything else but mundane and crass.

While ever they can say that the earth is 4 billion years old, that the Bible is full of errors, which is a teleological and smug interpretation of it, and that your translation is not dependable, they have so habitually diverted attention from their own position to an extent that they are shocked and angry if anybody has the temerity to raise questions about it and its usefulness for the future.

And not only do I admit that it might have a usefulness but also that it might be a necessity. What I don't admit is their right to promote the materialist atheistic agenda without examination of its implications and they seem to believe that we ought to be prepared to do just that. They seek to abolish the Christian project without any consideration of what will replace it when they come to power as they assuredly will if they are allowed to continue in the same manner they have repetitively engaged in since the general idea came to them in pantsdown situations during their earlier years and which they feel no need to revise because of how easy it is to write the sort of posts you have allowed them to write.

Not that they would ever dream of allowing politicians to promote policies which are unexamined.

You are dealing with fools in other words.

I am not sure if you actually understood my post since my I made a scriptural case for an old earth. This could very well be billions of years. The scriptures are simply void of a specific time of origins.

Biblical scholars established the age of earth by the different events mentioned in the book. What's the support for your supposition?