Lois & Clark Forums Forums General Discussion Fun with Polls Evolution contra Intelligent Design

Well, since I unwillingly set off the discussion whether one or the other is more likely, I decided to try myself at a poll.

I chose the (I think) fourth option--the one where it says life was created intelligently, but not entirely sure. But I can't really explain myself any better than the book Earth: In the Beginning by Eric N. Skousen .

So, since I started this topic - and already offered my opinion (well, sort of), I can out me directly.

I think that evolution is a fact of life. Why, some might ask. Well, I did study biology for a while, and I'm still interested in the subject, so I do have some in-depth knowledge most other people don't. And there is something I realized: The deeper you delve into the matters of life, be it genetics, fossils, cytology, bacteriology, or the way enzymes are built and work, the more you start to understand how things must have developed. Which is gradually. Trial and error.

I just asked for the subject to be dropped over in the other thread, because while we can post our opinions neither "side" will be convinced to think differently. It's a pointless debate and I think you're asking for a flame war--although, admittedly, chances of a civil discussion are higher on these boards than others.

Anyway. I'll just avoid this thread from this point onward. Have fun.

Well, being a researcher in the field of evolutionary anthropology, my answer is pretty obvious

So, yeah, I believe in all the facts we have about being related to apes and that we all came from the ocean once upon a time and stuff...

But I really liked that Flaying Spaghetti Monster idea
That'd be the only intelligence design idea I'd accept

Bye,
Jana

I believe in a little bit of everything. If we're going to start mucking around in the origins of life, everything came from something. And fact is, we weren't around to observe when that something took place, or what the something is, or who put that something there. I'm always open to theories and suggestions, but in the end I think I'll find out where everything came from when I reach that Big Keg Party in the Sky.

JD

Well, I picked that I absolutely believe in Intelligent Design. But had there been another option, I would have chosen that. Because yes, while I believe in intelligent design, I also believe in evolution. If we didn't have evolution then how would we explain different breeds of dogs, etc? How would we explain that fact that nearly all humans were only about five feet tall about 2000 years ago? But I don't believe that idea that *bang* all the sudden life just occurred without a superior being guiding this. I once had a very wise professor in college who said that the more he found out about biology, genetics, etc, that the more he believed in God. I also feel like that. The more I find out... The more I believe in God. The workings of one single cell is so miraculous to me that I cannot imagine a superior being not having had a hand in that. And I also think that many people assume that Intelligent Design automatically means right wing Christians - it doesn't.

Thanks for starting a new thread, Olympe. I was thinking it would be a good idea, but hadn't gotten around to it yet. (Have limited net access down here...)

My beliefs on belief:

1. There is no way to prove or disprove the existence of a creator. A creator, by definition, must have an existence outside of the known universe.

2. Given that there's no way to prove things, your guess is as good as mine. I may not agree with your beliefs, but you have as much right to them as I do.

3. The beliefs you come up with for yourself are very personal and very important. It is wrong to press your own beliefs on someone else unasked, and accepting a system of beliefs from any external source without stopping to question them is dangerous at best.

On Evolution:

It's not perfect. There's a lot we don't know. But there is a lot of compelling evidence for it. We've seen species grow, change, and adapt. We've seen fossil records that show traits being passed on from one species to another. Links between modern birds and primitive reptiles. Traceable genetic markers. Evidence that marine mammals had land-based ancestors. Modern species with vestigial traits (things that did their predecessors good, but which no longer serve any real purpose... the human appendix, for example).

The details and the mechanics as we currently have them may not be entirely correct, but I don't see any good reason to question the basic principles.

On ID:

Faith is, by definition, not science. In order for a theory to be scientific, it must be testable and observable, with predictable results. "God did it, for his own mysterious reasons" is not testable. It is not observable. It does not have predictable results. You're free to believe it, but don't call it science.

Pointing out that existing theories can't explain everything is not reason to throw them out. It's a reason for further investigation. "God did it" is not a helpful answer. It is an answer that discourages further exploration. It is, quite frankly, the easy way out. People used to believe that lightning was caused by the anger of the gods. They simply lacked any other plausible explanation. Now we know better.

If you want to say that there is a god of some sort, that's your business. If you want to be a scientist with that belief, go right ahead. In that case, science becomes a question of "how did he/she/it/they do it?" ID, however, tries to give "God did it" as the ultimate answer.

FSM has been mentioned. If you're going to claim ID as a valid scientific theory, then the pastafarians are right. You have to give them equal credence. At least they have scientific evidence which doesn't boil down to replacing "I don't know yet" with "God did it, and I don't know why." Now, some may point out that it's more likely that a correlation between the number of swashbuckling pirates and the average global temperature has more to do with the industrial revolution, but that's a matter of scientific debate...

Along the same lines, we have to give equal credence to the theory of Intelligent Falling. Scientifically, we can't prove that gravity exists. There's a lot of empirical evidence for it. There are some interesting ideas about matter warping space. But we can't prove that there is gravity or completely explain why it works the way it does. And there are some big problems with it, too. The numbers don't add up right. That's why they had to come up with the idea of "dark matter." IF can explain things without having to resort to such far-fetched and complicated theories.

Looking at the human body (with the aforementioned appendix, nipples on a male, extremely poor energy efficiency, incredibly high sensitivity to changes in temperature and humidity - performance drops off very quickly outside of a very small range, general fragility, dual mode plumbing, lethal allergies - there are a large number of people out there who could literally die from inhaling a bit of peanut dust, a now-unhealthy craving for things like fat, salt, and sugar which have been available in abundance for a significant amount of time, and numerous other flaws), I find I must call into question the intelligence of any purposeful designer.

Paul

I must have a totally different idea of what Intelligent Design is than you do. My understanding is that it simply means there was an intelligence at work when everything was started... Not that the answer to everything is “God did it”. That sounds more like far right winger fundamentalists (not necessarily Christians only) that don’t won’t to accept any science what-so-ever. Heck the ‘intelligence’ could have been aliens from Krypton for all we know.

And as for Flying Spaghetti Monsters... Let people believe what they will... Everyone has that right.

Wikipedia says this about intelligent design: is the concept that "certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause, not an undirected process such as natural selection. I believe the first part of this statement... not the second. And I’d bet to say that many others believe that way, too. (And remember that wikipedia is not always ‘fair’ in it’s assessments. It’s written by anyone who so desires to add to it. I’ve even seen incidents of them locking certain sections because of controversy.) So perhaps I do misunderstand what is meant by intelligent design. I simply believe that a superior being (god, aliens, or whatever you want to call it) had a hand in the whole thing. I don’t believe that rules out natural selection or evolution. In my previous thread, I mentioned an instructor:
I also had another instructor who said: How do we know that God didn't plan for evolution to happen?


As I said in another thread, I think the biggest problem that some people have about teaching evolution etc. is that it is not taught as a theory. I have no problem with that being taught… but I want it made clear that it is partly still a theory and not that everything about it is an absolute fact. And as an alternative, I wouldn’t want kids taught that it’s absolute fact that there *is* intelligent design. I see nothing wrong with teaching kids about both sides of this. And throw in some spaghetti monsters to boot…

Exactly. This is why kids need to also be told that evolution cannot be proven. Some schools teach it as a fact.

Sorry. I guess I misspoke.

My understanding is that ID states that evolution is a process with a purposeful creator behind it.

Which is fine. At times, I've wanted to believe that myself.

If that's what makes sense to you, then I have no right to question that.

But ID as a "scientific theory" is an attempt to explain away evolution as a product of some sort of unprovable superior being. Fundamentally speaking, it's not science.

I can respect faith. I certainly respect your right to it. And you can be a scientist and a person of faith at the same time.

But faith is not a scientific theory.

As for actual scientific theories... Descartes' meditations show us that we can't even prove that the physical world exists. All I can say for sure is that, at this moment, as I write this, something is happening. Some being (which I'll name "Paul") is thinking. Therefore, though I can't be sure of his exact form and position, I know that, at this moment, "Paul" exists.

Anything beyond that is guesswork. Everything you learn in science class is a theory, which could be changed or disproven at any point by new evidence or replaced by an entirely new theory.

What they teach in science class is our current best guess. As guesses go, evolution is a darned good one, with a lot of solid evidence to support it.

You can call it into question. You can bring up new evidence. Point out potential contradictions and pitfalls. That's science.

But there's a movement to have ID recognized as not only a scientific theory but as one of equal validity.

What I'm saying is... It's not. It's faith. Faith has its place, and it's an important one. But that place does not fall under the heading of "scientific theory."

Paul

Yes, I suppose some people might see ID as a scientific theory, but I’m not sure how they could if they read about it. But it is a concept that should certainly be considered. And evolution should not be presented as fact... it should be presented as a theory. Again, I think that is why some people object to it being taught.

Exactly… All you know is that you exist. Everything else might not be real

My big problem with ID is that it implies a short-sighted and sadistic creator. Most aspects of the process are cruel, and many results that in the short term work, are in the long term a problem. Things like the way the oesophagus crosses the windpipe - which is the result of all vertebrates being descended from one particular family of proto-chordates that just happened to survive where others were wiped out - would have been a trivial thing for an intelligent creator to fix but kill hundreds of people every year.

Later edit - forgot to say that I believe fairly strongly in evolution, if that wasn't already apparent. As noted above, it isn't always pretty and it doesn't always produce the best possible results, but there's a hell of a lot of evidence that it works and more is being found all the time. Should also add in the cause of fairness that my science training was mainly in zoology, with a natural bias in the evolutionary direction since without it there's no useful way to approach the subject. A lot of what I was taught about evolution thirty-five years ago is now known to be wrong; scientists have for the most part corrected their errors, assimilated the new data, and found that for the most part the results still support evolution, but it is a much less efficient process than was originally thought, and that there are a lot more evolutionary blind alleys than successful results.

Else.

But probably because of the wording of the first option:
"fact" is a such a definite, 100% word.

And "sure". That sounds an awful like a commitment.

Then op 3 said "believe". Not 'think', but *believe* - so that brings us back to faith, rather than reason. So....

Not sure there's anything I take as fact. In this, I was influenced years ago by my Geography prof. He was, at that time, the President of the North American branch of the International Flat Earth Society, a group he had joined, he said, because it fostered skepticism.

So sure, sort of. 99%. Based on my limited understanding of things.... or whatever.

c.

I chose the fourth because I still sit on the fence as far as the whole thing is concerned even after years of studying biology and physics and also as a Christian I'm taught to believe in the creation story. At the moment even The Big Bang is still a theory and this theory is a concept of something being created out of nothing. Dan Brown's book Angels and Demons (which is actually supposed to come before The Da Vinci Code deals with the concept of antimatter reacting with anything to create a mass of energy in the form of light so in theory you can recreate the 'Let there be light' sequence from Genesis)

I often try to steer clear of two discussions one is politics and the other is evolution because those who know me know how opinionated I can get and believe me I'm quite capable of starting huge debates. Antimatter is the opposite of matter and according to theories in quantum mechanics (which I really won't get into I still can't wrap my head around it and I've done it for six years) everything has an opposite.

I'm getting off topic and if you are looking for a book on whether ID is feasible as another theory into eveolution I suggest that you read a book titled The Case for a Creator by Lee Strobel. Christians will know this former legal journalist turned teaching pastor from this book entitled The Case for Christ which if you have not read I suggest you do it's a great read whether you are Christian or not. In this particular book Strobel meets and interviews many leading scientists in the field of human evolution and eveoultion as a whole and discovered that many of these people who had previously been adamant that Darwin's Origin of Species was entirely correct now started to think God's hand was involved because there were significant gaps in the evolution tree.

There are those also who believe that the previous methods used to prove that species evolved over time are now false. The most famous of which is in the field of embryology in which similarities were found in several veterbrates during the development stage.

Like I said I sit on the fence, I'm not inclined to entirely believe in evolution because right now we have more questions than answers. And as far as ID goes, I believe God must have done something to kick start the development of our world. I think the best way this whole debate was put into words was this question posed by a former classmate of mine in religious study. 'Maybe God created the world in seven days however, he could have also chosen the path of evolution we can't be too sure.' I have to say I agree with that and besides a little mystery isn't bad is it?

I agree that it's kinda pointless for us to have this debate. But I have wanted to maybe point out some things that people haven't been aware of; there's tons of misinformation about both ID and evolution floating around. I'm not trying to convert anyone, just maybe clear up a few things or get someone to look further into the issues.

I'm not opposed to teaching about the theory of evolution, btw; it's just all the lies and outdated information in our textbooks that annoys me. There are experiments & other "proofs" that have been discredited for twenty years or more, but which still show up as fact. That's not good science. If you're going to teach evolution, please include the very real problems with the theory.

PJ

I will post just one reply here, and it won't be lengthy. I believe that evolution is a fact, although there are of course details of it that aren't known.

Nevertheless, if it turns out that an alternative theory gives better answers to the existence of life than evolution, then I must give up my belief in evolution and accept the other theory instead. However, I will only accept other scientific theories. A theory is scientific if it can be tested. For example, evolution says that various species have evolved from a common ancestor. If so, species which can be assumed to be closely related because they *look* rather similar should have more fundamental similarities as well, such as great similarities in their DNA. Using evolution as a starting point, we might predict that humans and apes should have very similar DNA. Nowadays it is possible to test the genetic code of various species very accurately, and it turns out that 99% of human DNA and simian DNA is indeed identical. This is not something that naturally follows if you believe in intelligent design. An intelligent designer who designed human beings to be extremely special might instead have chosen to give humans an extremely special kind of DNA, a DNA that differs radically from the DNA of all other species on the Earth. This, however, turns out not to be the case.

As far as I understand intelligent design, it is either not possible to test it scientifically, or if it is, evolution gives better answers (and comes up with better predictions) than ID. Evolution paints a truly grand, coherent and majestic picture of the evolution of terrestrial life, which has existed on our planet for at least three and a half billion years.

Evolution strongly suggests that if life takes hold and evolves somewhere, it will evolve in a relatively random way. This very strongly suggests that the life that evolves on one planet will be totally unique to that world. Which means that if Superman's species has evolved on Krypton, then he, Superman/Clark Kent, will not only be absolutely incapable of procreating with Earth females, but he will quite possibly be totally unable to even survive in the Earth's biosphere. Since this is an idea that I don't like, I will suspend my belief in evolution when it comes to Superman.

Ann

No one is going to be surprised that I chose ID .

But I agree with Pam. We are not going to change any minds here, more than likely.

And I dislike that there is sooooo many 'evolutionary proofs' that have been proven wrong, yet still show up in our books .

I look at the complexity of life and the universe and have to believe there is omnipotence, omniscience, omnipresence, and omnibenevolence God that made & controls everything.

John 1:1-5

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not understood it.

Exactly my thoughts. It would be the mother of all coincidences if the universe was just a happy accident. Who can say that God isn't a scientist?

I agree whole-heartedly. So, I chose ID.

I don't think that ID or Evulution necessarily mean that there is God or that there isn't.

ID can't do without a designer, granted. But is he really the allmighty God that the Christians, Jews and Muslims believe in?

And what about Evolution? That the process isn't intelligent doesn't necessarily mean that God couldn't have started it in the first place.

I think the whole thing is about the question: what was first? Hen or egg, matter or intelligence?

And what kind of theory are we talking about anyway? Is the earth four billion years old, as the scientists say or about 6000 as the bible claims?

Personally, I believe in evolution. I've learnt a lot about how our body works and I can tell that there is no process of the metabolism intelligent in any way. And I agree with the scientists that there are a lot of hints that the theory about evolution isn't wrong.

Did you know that diabetes is a part of the genome in some individuals because it helped our ancestors in the stone age to survive?

And what about the mitochondria? That's a part of cells that's closely related to bacteria. They share almost the same genes. But acording to the theory some of them immigrated long ago into cells of other beings and helped them to survive.

It might be still a theory, but to me it sounds logical. And I don't think that evolution is contradictory to the excistence of an allmighty presence, however you want to call it.

Don't forget about plants' plastides (like chloroplasts). They're supposed to be descended from some sort of cyanobacterium.

I agree. I don't know why people keep thinking about both being mutually exclusive. *shrug*

Paul has made some really great points. Kudos to him. I really enjoyed reading his post and agree with a lot, if not all, of what he said.

It boils down to me to the simple fact that science tells us "how," but that "why" is still left open (and will always be). If you ask "why" enough, chances are things will stop being science and start being some sort of belief system. Which is fine, but I think the distinction should be made.

alcyone

The good thing about being away from the board for long enough to miss most of the debate is it means I can just swoop in, agree with some of the well-written posts, and not have to come up with one of my own.

I agree with almost everything Paul said. While I do think that God's existence can be proven, I don't think that proof is at all scientific in nature. Insufficiently objective and repeatable. And I absolutely believe that however the universe and our planet came about, it was guided by God's hand. The available scientific evidence most strongly supports evolution as the means, but is absolutely silent on the question of whether an intelligence (God or super-intelligent aliens or anything else) was the cause.

Clasicalla, if you don't think that the supporters of ID are claiming that it is a scientific theory which should be taught in public schools, then I think it may be you that needs to read more about it.

I chose Else, because each option didn't quite fit what I think. It's a bit of everything.

I believe that we're all just God's Great Science Experiment. He started the chain reaction, and is watching to see where it goes. Therefore, a bit of ID *and* evolution.

However, I also believe not path is correct. And it will never be. No matter how many proofs and theorums people throw out, something new will be found down the road. Just like I don't believe any one religion has it right. Sure, everyone's on the right track (well, except for those who start wars in the name of their god, but those are the delusional ), but no one has it completely right.

But that's just my own personal beliefs. And I know I don't have it right.

Well said, Sue. God is a scientist.


Also well said, Rivka.


Could be. As I said, it was my understanding of it.


And just in case anyone misunderstood what I was saying, let me say this plainly as my bottom line:

That at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven, and things in earth, and things under the earth; And that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. Phillipians 2: 10 - 11