Intelligent Design Theory: Science or Religion?

Face it, there are millions of missing links in the evolutionary records... Is the missing link one big link that is missing at the same time in prehistory from all fossil records or does the record break and become missing at different times "only" when a species is about to transform in a radical manner?

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timber wrote-

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Whether "white magic" or "black magic", public or private, to whatever end, by whichever practitioner, they are the same artificial, stemming from nothing more concrete than preference-driven afoundational assumption; they are fear-avoidance mechanisms.

I think you'll find I covered that.

You asked for a difference to be demonstrated in the meaning of the two words.I did that.I agreed both had aspects of supernatural powers being invoked.If you had asked the difference between oxygen and nitrogen I could have supplied you with it.But in certain ways they are identical too.
You are saying,in effect,that the language had no need to have two distinct words if religion is superstition and vice-versa.I think most people would have a vague idea at least of a difference in meaning but I have heard an Easter Sunday mass celebrated in St Peter's square by the Pope before thousands called "superstitious mumbo-jumbo" but only by people who like to outrage the sensibilities of others.One word to cover that and sticking pins into a clay figure meant to represent another person in order to harm the other person and carried out in privacy is patently ridiculous.

Football and fashion modelling could be brought together under one word if one wished to be pedantic enough.Essdeeoids are nothing if they are not pedantic.Employment say.Or money-grubbing.Engaged in for fear of being skint or of not being in the public eye or of being lonely.Arrive there and nobody will know what anybody else is talking about.

I think you resist this simply for effect.

An old Russian superstition recalled somewhere by Tolstoy is that the more people there are who know that a woman is in labour the more pain she will experience.Howard Hughes held a view similar to that.So do I. I suppose it is a bit like stage-fright causing muscle tension.

If the proverb is correct then this superstition is scientific.

Roget divides "Superstition" into 5 sub-divisions.They are-credulity,ignorance,error,heterodoxy and idolatry.
Each of these can be looked up in the main body of the text for their near familiars.
It divides religion into 3 sub-divisions which are-religion,piety and public worship.

So you are batting against Roget which is to say that you are a fully paid up member of the awkward squad.Which is good fun I'll admit.

I think that if you persist with your confounding of the two words it does suggest that you haven't studied religion enough despite having done so more than most which isn't saying much.

But essentially you are missing the main points.

That superstition engenders pride and separation of the ego from the group consciousness and religion,true religion I mean,not what some jumped-up,flash Harry snake-oil salesman peddles,engenders piety and sublimation of the ego into the group consciousness.The former is lonely and the latter integrates and brings togetherness.(Ideally I mean.)

There is a bigger point but it will be better to leave it out here.I'll just say that a spiritual attitude to certain things has healthy effects generally which can never be achieved easily even beginning with the piety and sublimation and has no chance without it.Hence all the hierarchies of religious adepts and stages of initiation.

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RexRed wrote:

Face it, there are millions of missing links in the evolutionary records... Is the missing link one big link that is missing at the same time in prehistory from all fossil records or does the record break and become missing at different times "only" when a species is about to transform in a radical manner?

RexRed,

If early hominids had the foresight to invent natural history museums, we would have a complete fossil record.

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Rex-

I raised the "missing link" a while back.

It was ignored then so I expect it will be now.When the essdeeoids can't answer a point they just pretend it hasn't been made and play their only record over again.

Or they try this sort of thing-

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If early hominids had the foresight to invent natural history museums, we would have a complete fossil record.

Stop tittering at the back.

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I think the earth once maybe had a greater synergy with life on the planet... It was able to radically diversify the DNA in one generation.. The earth did this by plant/chemicals produced and introduced in the diet along with natural selection... People expect gradual change when genetic change is much more radical. Survival is only needed after the transformation...

This natural chemical/plant/diet synergy between earth and biology has been lost... Maybe through the study of chemical interaction with biology/DNA we will someday be able to produce a synthetic recreation of many of these DNA changing serums...

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Darwin's observations and the theory he constructed based on them have to do with the selective development of variations that benefit the survival of self-replecating organisms. There is truly little basis on which to doubt the veracity of his theory, and confirming evidence for the truth of it is abundant - there are no seriously competing theoretical descriptions. \

To my knowledge however the origin of life, even in its simplest unicellular forms, is a feat not replecated or even fully understood by science. Moreover, unless some analogous self replecating process, also subject to the self-organizing process described in Darwin's theory can be found at the chemical/molecular level, there is no 'evolutionary' explanation for the origin of life, the creation of the first protein or organism. Others here have somewhat contemptuously dismissed this argument and the related thesis of "irreducible complexity". However, I at least, am not convinced that science has yet developed a more likely model than intelligent design for this crucial element of the process.

An analogous argument can be put forward with respect to the origin of the cosmos and our existence itself. We have a pretty good model of the laws of physics that appear to apply throughout the visible universe. Despite that we have virtually nothing with which to explain its origin.

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george, You are wrong; there are many scientists looking into the origins of life at the molecular level. That they (the scientists at many levels) have so far not been successful is not a reason to write it off this early in their investigation. New technologies to seek answers and evidence are very young in this research of a planet that is some 4.5 billion years old. Your bias is showing.

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Georgeob's last paragraph highlights the fact that there are actually 2 intelligent design hypotheses: biological intelligent design and cosmic intelligent design.

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wandeljw wrote:

RexRed wrote:
Face it, there are millions of missing links in the evolutionary records... Is the missing link one big link that is missing at the same time in prehistory from all fossil records or does the record break and become missing at different times "only" when a species is about to transform in a radical manner?

RexRed,

If early hominids had the foresight to invent natural history museums, we would have a complete fossil record.

Wandel

How could it be that the earth left the exact same records out for every species?

Would not the earth have also recorded the tender moments when a species is changing over to another.

Yet it indiscriminately leaves this record out in every single case across the board...

What is the explanation for that?

How can this part of history not be buried if there was not some catastrophe that wiped out discriminately a vast slice of the earth's history without a single record of it's passing...

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cicerone imposter wrote:

george, You are wrong; there are many scientists looking into the origins of life at the molecular level. That they (the scientists at many levels) have so far not been successful is not a reason to write it off this early in their investigation. New technologies to seek answers and evidence are very young in this research of a planet that is some 4.5 billion years old. Your bias is showing.

Perhaps you should rephrase that to say that you believe that I am wrong, and that you believe that science will one day unravel this mystery - both for the origin of life and the origin of the cosmos. However neither event has yet occurred, and, based on my own imperfect understanding, science is as yet a very long way from either answer.

Thus, these are open questions, even in a strictly scientific context. A basic principle of science is not to arbitrarily rule out any possibility not inconsistent with what is known. Why do you take such an unscientific position now?

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Okay, Rephrase my language; and I'm sure many will agree scientists are still a long way from finding answers, but that's much different than "never." That was my only point.

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cicerone imposter wrote:

Okay, Rephrase my language; and I'm sure many will agree scientists are still a long way from finding answers, but that's much different than "never." That was my only point.

Then we agree. I didn't say "never" either. My point is that from a scientific perspective alone the questions are still open. Specifically - evolution does not explain the origin of life, and physics does not explain the origin of the cosmos. Why then should our children be taught that they do -- and in a science class of all places?

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Curiosity is what will advance science.

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c.i. wrote-

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george, You are wrong; there are many scientists looking into the origins of life at the molecular level. That they (the scientists at many levels) have so far not been successful is not a reason to write it off this early in their investigation.

The simple fact that they will never crack that problem nor the one about cosmic origins should not be allowed to stand in the way of them wasting their time and taxpayer funded skills trying to do so in the nice,comfy well paid niches they have managed to snuggle into in true Darwinian fashion with the fawning support of essdeeoids who admire them so much for their own self-serving reasons.

And these days hardly anybody besides themselves have the faintest idea what they are talking about which is why they make "pop" science programmes to keep their supporters on board.

It's just the way it is I suppose.

If they did find out how to start life out of inorganic substances the cat would really be in with the pigeons.

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I'm happy to stress "NEVER".No chance.

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George wrote-

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Then we agree. I didn't say "never" either. My point is that from a scientific perspective alone the questions are still open. Specifically - evolution does not explain the origin of life, and physics does not explain the origin of the cosmos. Why then should our children be taught that they do -- and in a science class of all places?

It's been put to them over and over George. They won't answer it.They can't answer it.

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georgeob1 wrote:

To my knowledge however the origin of life, even in its simplest unicellular forms, is a feat not replecated or even fully understood by science. Moreover, unless some analogous self replecating process, also subject to the self-organizing process described in Darwin's theory can be found at the chemical/molecular level, there is no 'evolutionary' explanation for the origin of life, the creation of the first protein or organism.

It is true that no scientist has reproduced the abiogenesis of a cell. This is to be expected, as evolution occurs over millions of years, and modern science has only been around for a few hundreds. It is not true, however that scientists have not found evolutionary pathways that lead from anorganic chemical compounds to cells. On the contrary, the problem is that they have found too many such pathways and can't figure out which one nature has actually taken. Talkorigin.org maintains several Probability of Abiogenesis FAQs, each of which points to a cornucopia of peer-reviewed primary literature on the matter. If you are interested in a textbook, a full description of the evolution from the primeval soup to modern humans is John Maynard Smith: The Origins of Life: From the Birth of Life to the Origin of Language. Oxford University Press (2000)

georgeob1 wrote:

However, I at least, am not convinced that science has yet developed a more likely model than intelligent design for this crucial element of the process.

When you say "more likely", do you mean more likely even after accounting for ID's "who created the creator" problem? It's easy to explain a mystery if you wrap the explanation's hard parts into an even larger mystery.

georgeob1 wrote:

An analogous argument can be put forward with respect to the origin of the cosmos and our existence itself. We have a pretty good model of the laws of physics that appear to apply throughout the visible universe. Despite that we have virtually nothing with which to explain its origin.

It strikes me that centuries ago, an open-minded Flat-Earther could have made a similarly thoughtful argument against this new, trendy theory that the Earth is a sphere: "We have a pretty good model of the features of geography that appear to occur throughout the regions we know. Despite that we have virtually nothing which to explain what lies north of the North Pole".

If Einstein was right about space-time being curved, "what happened before the Big Bang?" is just the four-dimensional equivalent of "what lies north of the North Pole?" While the question sounds like a deep mystery, and while it feels threatening to think it may be just shallow nonsense, this seems to be exactly what it is.

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cicerone imposter wrote:

Curiosity is what will advance science.

Why not total and absolute denial? Smile

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There were plenty of people who knew the earth wasn't flat in ancient times.

Flat Earthers are nothing to do with this topic.Some people believe or pretend to believe all sorts of things to make waves.

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Rex talks like a true IDiot.

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Intelligent Design Theory: Science or Religion?

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