Posted on 05/17/2022 7:38:29 AM PDT by Kaslin
The theory that the universe was crafted intentionally explains many essential realities that theories based on spontaneous chance do not.
The scientific establishment is slowly beginning to allow scientists who believe in intelligent design to have a platform. Why? It may be because the theory that the universe was crafted intentionally explains many essential realities that theories based on spontaneous chance do not.
Perhaps the simplest and best argument for intelligent design is to clearly state what you have to believe to not believe in intelligent design, as I did in my book, “In the Beginning and Other Essays on Intelligent Design.” Peter Urone, in his physics text “College Physics,” writes, “One of the most remarkable simplifications in physics is that only four distinct forces account for all known phenomena.”
This is what you have to believe to not believe in intelligent design: that the origin and evolution of life, and the evolution of human consciousness and intelligence, are due entirely to a few unintelligent forces of physics. Thus you must believe that a few unintelligent forces of physics alone could have rearranged the fundamental particles of physics into computers and science texts and jet airplanes and nuclear power plants and Apple iPhones.
These four unintelligent forces of physics may indeed explain everything that has happened on other planets, but let us look at three essential elements of our human existence and examine whether the currently believed origin theory can explain them.
1. The Origin of Life
To appreciate that we still have no idea how the first living things arose, you only have to realize that with all our advanced technology we are still not close to designing any type of self-replicating machine; that is still pure science fiction. We can only create machines that create other machines, but no machine that can make a copy of itself.
When we add technology to such a machine, to bring it closer to the goal of reproduction, we only move the goalposts because now we have a more complicated machine to reproduce. So how could we imagine that such a machine could have arisen by pure chance?
Maybe human engineers will someday construct a self-replicating machine. But if they do, I’m sure it will not happen until long after I am gone, and it will not show that life could have arisen through natural processes. It will only have shown that it could have arisen through design.
2. The Origin of Advanced Life Forms
Furthermore, imagine that we did somehow manage to design, say, a fleet of cars with fully automated car-building factories inside, able to produce new cars — and not just normal new cars, but new cars with fully automated car-building factories inside them. Who could seriously believe that if we left these cars alone for a long time, the accumulation of duplication errors made as they reproduced themselves would result in anything other than devolution, and eventually could even be organized by selective forces into more advanced automobile models?
No, we could confidently predict that the whole process would grind to a halt after a few generations without intelligent humans around to fix the mechanical problems that would inevitably arise, long before we saw duplication errors that held any promise of advances.
The idea that it could even be remotely plausible that random mutations could produce major improvements relies completely on the observed but inexplicable fact that, while they are awaiting rare favorable mutations, living species are able to preserve their complex structures and pass them on to their descendants without significant degradation. We are so used to seeing this happen that we don’t appreciate how astonishing it really is.
But perhaps trying to imagine designing self-replicating cars, and trying to imagine that these cars could make progress through the accumulation of duplication errors, may help us realize that we really have no idea how living things are able to pass their current complex structures on to their descendants, generation after generation — much less how they evolve even more complex structures.
Lehigh University biochemist Michael Behe, in his 2019 book “Darwin Devolves,” writes:
Darwinian evolution proceeds mainly by damaging or breaking genes, which, counterintuitively, sometimes helps survival. In other words, the mechanism is powerfully de-volutionary. It promotes the rapid loss of genetic information. Laboratory experiments, field research, and theoretical studies all forcefully indicate that, as a result, random mutation and natural selection make evolution self-limiting. … Darwin’s mechanism works chiefly by squandering genetic information for short-term gain.
So, according to Behe, duplication errors, even when organized by selective forces, have the same effect on living species as we would expect them to have on self-replicating cars: only devolution and degradation.
Also, here we have not even discussed what is generally considered to be the main problem with Darwinism: its inability to explain the appearance of major new, irreducibly complex features that consistently appear suddenly in the fossil record. (I discussed this problem in my article “A Mathematician’s View of Evolution,” and in the second part of my video “Why Evolution is Different.”)
3. The Origin of Human Intelligence and Consciousness
Trying to imagine that the accumulation of duplication errors made by our fleet of self-replicating cars could eventually result in conscious, intelligent machines might help us to realize that the evolution of intelligent beings, capable of designing computers, science texts, jet airplanes, and Apple iPhones, is an especially monumental and unsolved problem.
In my video “A Summary of the Evidence for Intelligent Design,” I began my fifth point with a picture of three children in the 1950s. One of them is me, the other two are not. I saw the world from inside one of these children. I saw every picture that entered through his eyes, I heard every sound that entered through his ears, and when he fell on the sidewalk, I felt his pain. How did I end up inside one of these children?
This is a question that rarely seems to trouble evolutionists. They talk about human evolution as if they were outside observers and never seem to wonder how they got inside one of the animals they are studying. They consider that human brains are just complicated computers, and so to explain how we got here they just have to explain how these mechanical brains evolved.
But even if they could explain how animals with mechanical brains evolved out of the primeval slime, that would leave the most important question — the one evolutionists never seem to even wonder about — still unsolved: How did I get inside one of these animals?
The argument for intelligent design could not be simpler or clearer: Unintelligent forces alone cannot rearrange atoms into computers and airplanes and nuclear power plants and smartphones, and any attempt to explain how they can must fail somewhere because they obviously can’t. Perhaps this is the best way to understand why explanations without design will never work, and why science may finally be starting to recognize this.
He sure did.
He brings up points that I’ve thought about for a long time, but I like my questioning better.
1. The Origin of life.
Let’s say we accept that life burst into being from a primeval soup. That is, the temperature, the atmospheric pressure, the chemical mixture, etc. was just right so that a living creature was formed from it, a single-cell, very basic creature.
Here’s my question: How did these creatures make the leap from being a one-time occurrence that lives briefly and then dies out to being able to reproduce themselves and maintain the population after the primeval soup is different?
2. The Origin of Advanced Life Forms.
Suppose there are creatures that can reproduce copies of themselves. How did these creatures make the leap such that reproduction requires a sexual mating? And the creatures can’t go back to not needing a mate for reproduction? And why are there no creatures that require 3 (or more) different individuals to produce one new creature with the variations that would occur from requiring the multiple individuals?
DON’T PANIC.
Also, don’t forget your towel.
Surely you aren’t so egotistical to not realize that God indeed gave us wings?
Everything that we are, everything that we know, everything that we create was given to us by God. He gave us our intelligence and our free will. All that we have derives from that gift. The wings of a plane created by man were given to us by God.
The first mistake here is the assumption that hairless monkeys, only a few million years from screeching through the treetops and flinging shit at each other have the capacity to comprehend the nature, intentionality, and purpose of the universe. The propensity for humankind to anthropomorphize a creator and then reason backwards is the pinnacle of hubris. If people simply treated each other better we could dispense with all these campfire stories (which they are) and settle on a simpler working model that doesn’t just make people smug because they think they know something you don’t, and foment centuries of bloody war, instead of just accepting our predicament and making the best of it.
Another question along those lines: the Earth is huge compared to primordial life so why didn’t different combinations of base pairs evolve into different types of RNA and then DNA and then animals with different DNA?
If birds were not suppose to fly God would have made them all chickens.
We can create incredibly complex machines from the material world, yet as far as I know, we do not seem to be able to create even the most basic organic life form. Yet, we are to believe that original life was created spontaneously and randomly. And it was able to reproduce itself. Such a premise defies logic, and science as we know it.
I don't know of any human who has these characteristics. The idea that God is an old man with a long gray beard is just a pale imitation that some artists have resorted to and most atheists utilize as a strawman for their faulty arguments.
Similarly, God gave us cupholders for our morning commutes.
Do you drive?
On the other hand, if the bible is any guide, it would seem that humans have devolved, as outside of some modern improvements in understanding and curing human ailments, humans live relative short lives compared to the length of lifetimes given early in Genesis. Maybe it is also true for other living species. The idea poses an interrupting question to both intelligent design and evolution. Is it all another reason for the Messiah’s intervention?
Indeed, and in fact, man cannot fly. Man’s machines can fly, only with outside inputs,unlike flying animals all of all kinds. They are able to do so all by themselves, because of their design.
Man cannot fly.
God will not be mocked
Wing shapes
Define and explain “treat each other better”.
Where does a concept of “ treat better” come from?
Morality? Expediency?
Atoms know no morality. Bacteria know it not, too.
Why humans?
That describes the Panspermia theory very well. And the reason why that theory came around was that the statistical origins of life forming by chance were determined to be on the orders of trillions of trillions of trillions to 1.
the fact that a giraffe can eat from the ground and raise up again without having his head filled with blood, illustrates unique design to me...
3,500 years ago the book of Genesis said God created man from the dust of the earth. This was before it became chic for the Greeks to say that everything is made from the same elements (of course they had just 4 elements, but I'll cut them some slack for living a long time ago). Genesis was also before we had the periodic table of elements, with us now believing mankind to being carbon based. Some "wizard", huh?
You call this "compelling evidence?!" This is the forensic-level proof and Aristotelian Logic you proffer to support your supposition?! "Man was made from dust," and you claim that this comports with Modern Science?! Puh-leeze!
It's also fascinating to me that modern archaeology supports the sequence of animals appearing in the Genesis text (plants, fish and birds, land animals, man).
In the first Biblical account (Genesis 1:1-2:3), mankind is presented as the climax of God’s creation after He created vegetation and animals.
In the second account (Genesis 2:4), God first creates man, then plants and vegetation in the Garden of Eden, then makes animals, and finally creates woman. This does NOT comport with Modern Science!
Further, Genesis claims that the creation of the Earth preceded the formation of the Sun. This contradicts Modern Science!
And where do we believe the first human civilization was? Mesopotamia was in the Fertile Crescent in modern day Iraq -- where Genesis says the Garden of Eden was between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers.
Very weak argument. There was no single "Cradle of Civilization," and the Indus Valley and Egypt likewise vie for the title.
You have also liberally indulged in "cherry-picking" - i.e., you've cited only those items which seem (I'm being very charitable here) to support your side.
Regards,
Yes by copying his design of wing shape.
The rocket that flew to the Moon in July of 1969 did not copy any bird anatomy!
Regards,
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