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Intelligent Design and Evolution. How do you decide?

  
  

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skolld
23:42 / 22.09.05
robertrosen,
Is there any evidence outside of a translated text, that can verify the existence of God as the creator? I don't say this to bait, but the issue is about science, not Faith. My personal beliefs are in God, but science is a tool for understanding the natural world, whether created, or evolved, or both, or neither, science should be about 'how things work'. I personally feel that scientists who believe in a Big Bang, or any other theory about the origin (or pre-origin) of the universe, are struggling with faith issues of their own. I think it's speculation and not verifiable, at least not yet. the origin of the universe, i think is outside the scope of the tools we have available to us at the moment. At some point maybe that will change.
Any Idealogical motivation i view as suspect. While i don't always agree with either side, i firmly believe in a seperation of Church and State. without it there's no way to protect either.
 
 
robertrosen
00:52 / 23.09.05
Lurid Archive, I cannot disagree with your logic.

Skolld, the texts were translated from originals. They all basically say the same thing.

I agree with separation of church and state. I believe that eventually we will be able to scientifically and mathematically prove the existence of God. Until that time, science is science and faith is faith and I should not make scientific statements about God that I cannot prove or intelligently defend.

I would like you both to consider why it is I believe so strongly in a higher power. I believe with all my heart and soul in a God. Not because I want to or need to. Why then this incredible faith beyond reason? That is the question that cries out for an answer. Was it my environment? I don't believe so. A genetic tendency that came into existence over thousands of years of fear and therefore worship by my ancestors, maybe. I believe I have received direction from some higher power several times in my life when I had lost my way. When you ask "God" to send you a sign, and several seconds later it happens, you wonder. When this happens many times, you begin to believe. So, I am either insane or receiving advice from an intelligent source. This source has always sent me in a direction that resulted in positive outcomes for those I love. I realize the mind is a complicated thing. I realize I have no proof and probably never will. I realize I have no right to attempt to force my feelings or beliefs on others. I just feel that others are missing out on something very special. When I say this, please don't be offended. People always get offended when I tell them how wonderful it is to be watched over and given a helping hand when you need it most. He lifts me up when I need it and carries me when I need to be carried. If this is my own mind, then the mind is incredibly powerful. Some would say that you either believe or you don’t believe. I disagree strongly. Faith is something you have to work on all the time. Evil is so powerful in all of us that it makes one question the idea of goodness and of God. The power of positive thinking and therefore the mind is also an obvious possibility. The problem I have is that I know what I feel and the feeling is amazing!!!!!!! When He touches me it is like no other feeling known to man. You can get upset with me, I understand. You can laugh at me, I will understand. Faith without evidence cannot compete with logic and science when dealing with non-believers, but non-believers do become believers. This happens when God touches them!!!! Some would say touched, yes, but not by God. Touched in the head!! You will know when it happens, if it happens. Until then, impossible.

I realize this is not the place for this, so you have my apologies. I wish God's blessings for you all whether you want them or not with no ill will intended!!!!! I wish this for you and your loved ones.
 
 
Evil Scientist
07:09 / 23.09.05
Faith in a supernatural force I have no problem with, it's not for me but you go ahead. Christianity, when practised according to the words of Jesus rather than trying to create a mesh of Christian philosophy and old testament scripture (as a lot of fundamentalists do) is actually a pretty benevolent religion.

But Intelligent Design wants to have it's cake and eat it. It proposes a scientific model that proves the existence of a sapient creator, however the majority of it's proponents refuse to accept this creator as anything other than the Christian God (mainly due to the fact that it's strongest supporters are Christian). But there is absolutely no evidence for this. If I.D. is true then it's just as likely we were created by Zeus or the Flying Spaghetti Monster.
 
 
robertrosen
16:06 / 23.09.05
I am in agreement. I’m a Christian that believes in one God for all. People should have the right to worship in any way they wish as long as it doesn't hurt others. Using religion to force your ideas on others is not only dangerous, but the exact action that my God would frown upon.
 
 
grant
19:46 / 26.09.05
The Dover, Pennsylvania, school board is bringing Intelligent Design before a federal court.

They'd made a proposal that a school official would come in before science classes started their "evolution" section and read a statement saying 1. evolution was only a theory; 2. there are some anomalies this theory cannot explain; and 3. there are alternatives to this theory, including Intelligent Design.

What interests me about what I've heard about the case is that the proposal itself seems really innocuous, but there's a record of the debating on the school board leading up to the proposal that includes board members saying things like, "2,000 years ago, a man died on a cross for us -- is anybody going to stand up for Him today?"

Which kind of vexes the carefully religion-neutral language of the proposal.

I do think they're falling into the trap of using "theory" to mean something other than what it means in a scientific sense.
 
 
Our Lady Has Left the Building
16:53 / 27.09.05
Well if they do bring this in then they can cut RS and RS staff from American schools because their work will be done by the science department. Make the time kids used to have RS now extra science time. Similarly maths is just a load of greek symbols anyway so get rid of the maths department and make kids do mandatory Greek.
 
 
quixote
20:10 / 28.09.05
There's a great Non Sequitur cartoon which addresses some of the issues:
[Broken image][Apparently it turns into "premium content" after two weeks. Idiots. It was an image of a guy at a bar explaining to his friend that (from memory, not verbatim) "the whole thing was so huge, so complex, and full of so many gaps, that it must have been designed by a supernatural power." The subtitle was "Ed explains the tax code."]

The whole ID vs EV argument is beyond stupid. Evolution is the basis for an amoral worldview? Bullshit. Science is a method, not a religion. It can't give you any worldview, amoral or otherwise. It can't tell you why Aids exists, but it can (someday) cure it. Religion can't cure Aids (although, God knows, some of its more braindead representatives do try), but it can find you a place in the universe, whether or not you have Aids.

As several commenters have pointed out, the essence of science is that ideas must be testable. There also has to be a way to measure them. Try measuring God, or love, or happiness. Those just are not in the realm of science. We wouldn't want to live without one or more of them, but they are not science.

Another point, and I'm not sure this one has been raised, is the problem with how scientists use language. A hypothesis is an idea to be tested in a specific, repeatable way. Once it has been confirmed 19 times out of 20 (in biology), it's accepted as a hypothesis that's worth testing again. After it's been tested over and over, and never been even slightly doubtful, it becomes a Theory. Evolution is a Theory. When the probability of the Theory not working approaches zero, it becomes a Law. Gravity is a Law.

ID is a theory (English sense, meaning anything down to wild guess), and evolution is a theory (science sense), and the two are not even in the same universe.

I'm an evolutionary biologist (when I'm not being a science fiction author), so this whole can of worms is near and dear to my heart. (You never know what a biologist will take a fancy to.) I have a longer screed along these lines in my post You can't believe in evolution
 
 
The Falcon
00:17 / 29.09.05
Science has nothing to say about morality, and is a contingency of materialism, so - you know - it's not hard to make a case for amorality, as in lack thereof. Certainly bioscience, anyway.

Social science an' t'ing, you can create models that are beneficial to more people, which is my idea of 'moral'.
 
 
P. Horus Rhacoid
21:20 / 10.10.05
rot
Dinosaur Comics takes a crack at ID.
/rot
 
 
lonely as a cloud...
06:55 / 22.11.05
The Vatican has come out and said that id is not science. Which is interesting, though it'll probably mean squat to those who are campaigning to have it added to school curricula...
 
 
Spaniel
22:50 / 22.11.05
Science has nothing to say about morality

Not sure that's entirely true, Dunc. At least, I'm not sure that the implications of scientific theory don't have anything to say about morality.

There's a topic in this, actuallyally.
 
 
Dead Megatron
10:21 / 23.11.05
Hey, can I believe in both?
Personally, i think God intelligently designed evolution...
 
 
Aertho
15:19 / 23.11.05
When did God design evolution, then?
 
 
Dead Megatron
21:52 / 23.11.05
I don't know, exactly. But my guess it sure was sometime before the first 10x-43 second after the Big Bang/Fiat Lux-thingy
 
 
astrojax69
02:49 / 24.11.05
i thought god evolved through intelligent design - i mean, how much cleverer can you be than to design god into your plan?? brilliant...
 
 
Our Lady Has Left the Building
13:45 / 24.11.05
How ridiculous to make evolution the enemy of God. What could be more elegant, more simple, more brilliant, more economical, more creative, indeed more divine than a planet with millions of life forms, distinct and yet interactive, all ultimately derived from accumulated variations in a single double-stranded molecule, pliable and fecund enough to give us mollusks and mice, Newton and Einstein?
 
 
astrojax69
19:24 / 24.11.05
one without evil, despair, pain, desolation, death and tragedy?
 
 
Our Lady Has Left the Building
10:31 / 25.11.05
But then what would emo bands sing about?
 
 
Dead Megatron
21:00 / 29.11.05
To be honest, I think about intelligent design every time I see a naked woman. All that hotness cannot be an accident...

... which is also why I believe God is a dude, dudes.

(PS. this post is just a joke, mind you)
 
 
Atyeo
12:29 / 30.11.05
I was having a drunken arguement with my friends (as usual) about the fact that I'm agnostic and not an atheist. All my atheist friends were accusing me of not commiting to their non-belief while I was doing my typical logical-positivist stance of suggesting that you can't even ask the question of God's existance. Then someone came up with a very interesting arguement...

Friend: How was the universe created?

Me: You can't answer that because we have no way of obtaining any evidence.

F: Would you agree that there are several explanations for the universe?

M: I guess so...

F: There seems to be three obvious solutions that God created the Universe, it has always existed or that it arose spontaneously with no external influence.

M: Yeah...

F: Therefore, even from these 3 solutions you have already reduced the likelyhood of God's existance to 33%.

At that point, I was stuck. Where is the fallacy in that line of thought? I'm sure that Wittgenstein will be spinning in his grave with my inability to smash that arguement into pieces.
 
 
Lurid Archive
13:46 / 30.11.05
It is, of course, ridiculous to assign probabilities in this way. But, that said, agnosticism does require you to have "god" as a somehow favoured set of explanations - most agnostics I argue with these days seem to think that this is self evident, although of course it isn't.

The reason I say that this is a requirement for agnosticism is that there are always infinitely many explanations for pretty much everything. These explanations are, on the face of it, impossible to categorically reject. But no one is agnostic about these....this is where invisible pink unicorns and teapots floating around Mars usually pop up, but its important to remember that any decent conspiracy theory also fits (because a decent conspiracy theory is impossible to disprove)....I can't disprove that Bush is a shape changing lizard, but I am not agnostic about it either. Unless you think that agnosticism is the correct response to *every* question, then I suspect you implicitly accept this point as it applies in other contexts.

So saying you can't disprove something is a pretty poor argument for being agnostic about it. Usually what you do is see if there are any reasons for believing it to be plausible. Here, someone like Russell concluded that there just wasn't any real evidence for "god". Some, who might take the faith of the many religious people who have been convinced through subjective experience that there must exist some kind of god, think that there is such evidence.

I'd suggest something along those lines....either that or, as seems to be increasingly popular, putting religious belief more on a par with a certain sensibility than any crude statements about existence. That way, being agnostic is just a way of saying that you aren't committed to the asthetic trappings of religion, but do see some value in them.
 
 
Mirror
14:15 / 30.11.05
I've always thought of myself as agnostic in a more classical sense: the gnostics were those seeking esoteric, transcendent knowledge.

In calling myself agnostic, all that I state is that I am not seeking.
 
 
Atyeo
15:54 / 30.11.05
You are saying that it is ludicurous to assign probabilities like that. I think I agree but I'm not sure why. Why can't you assign probabilities like this?

Isn't that logic the same as someone using the Spaghetti Monster meme that we all know and love?

Ow. My head hurts.
 
 
SiliconDream
23:24 / 30.11.05
You are saying that it is ludicurous to assign probabilities like that. I think I agree but I'm not sure why. Why can't you assign probabilities like this?

Two somewhat-related reasons. First, it's completely arbitrary how you categorize the possibilities, and you can get any sort of probability as a result:

A deity exists or no deity exists. Probability of no deity = 50%.
One deity exists, multiple deities exist, or no deity exists. Probability of no deity = 33%.
A deity was there to create the universe but is now dead, a deity was there to create the universe and is still around, or no deity ever existed. Probability of no current deity = 66%. Et cetera.

Second, even if you have an "objectively reasonable" and finite list of possibilities, there's no reason to assign equal probabilities to all of them. There's no particular reason not to, either, but that's the point. If someone asks for the probability of a six-sided die landing on a given side you automatically say 1/6, but that's because you know dice are designed to land that way. Were the die non-cubical, or very slow to rotate, or weighted on one side, or possessed of any number of attributes, you'd be wrong.

Here's an analogous case. I'm thinking of a number. You know nothing of me or my psychology. What's the probability that the number I'm thinking of is 5?
 
 
sdv (non-human)
12:28 / 01.12.05
An interesting letter in the guardian over last weekend - argued that the US form of seperation of church and state is a mistake - because it has allowed religion to force itself into other areas of the curriculum. Whereas where religion is taught in schools (i.e. in the UK) then it is treated as a completely seperate subject and consequently is not allowed into the scientific curriculum.

An interesting thought that only an american needs to have - unless of course you attended one of the horrible religious schools that ruin the landscape... of the uk
 
 
sdv (non-human)
12:34 / 01.12.05
Atyeo/Lurid

Isn't the probability you are discussing in reality - directly related to Pascal's justification for Pascal maintaining his catholic faith ?
 
 
Atyeo
13:41 / 01.12.05
Silicon, to answer your question, I suppose the proabability that your thinking about 5 is '1 in infinity'.

Whilst in danger of going massively OT, you've made me think of an interesting proabability question regarding these unknown probabilities. If I told you that I had some blue balls and some red balls in an infinitely large box, and that there was at least one blue and one red ball contained within, what would be the probability that you picked out a blue ball?

As you have no idea how many balls there are in total in the box could you say that the probability is 50/50 until you open the box and find out the contents or does it just not qualify for a probability.

This is beginning to look suspiciously like Schrodinger's Cat...

Sorry, I should really start a new Agnostic themed thread.
 
 
Lurid Archive
14:40 / 01.12.05
Excellently explained, SiliconDream, and I like the illustrative example you picked. Atyeo's answer deserves some comment,

Silicon, to answer your question, I suppose the proabability that your thinking about 5 is '1 in infinity'.

which is 0, usually. Since "5" was arbitrary here, you have just concluded that Silicon can't have picked any number at all. In effect, you've said (that is, taking your argument further, I'm saying that you would have implied...) that it is impossible for him to think of a number. Nonsense like this is one of the reasons why you can't use probabilities in this way.

Isn't the probability you are discussing in reality - directly related to Pascal's justification for Pascal maintaining his catholic faith ?

Yes and, as I've made clear, I think the argument is pretty weak.
 
 
Atyeo
15:06 / 01.12.05
Could you not say that not picking a number was also possible then and was valid. So he could have equally chosen 5 or not a number. Therefore, the possibility of him chosing 5 was still '1 in infinity'. You can't chose an infinite amount of non-numbers, can you? (knowing the little advanced maths that I do, this wouldn't be a surprise )
 
 
Atyeo
15:29 / 01.12.05
Hmmm, reading your post again Lurid, I think that your interpretation of infinity and zero is incorrect. If he had told me he was thinking of a number the probability of me guessing the number would have been '1 in infinity' but that wouldn't have meant that the chance of me guessing correctly was zero. I think that it would have been 'converging' on zero which is subtley different as I there is still a possibility that I would have guessed it, it's just this probability would have been tiny.

Sorry, I'm not following the logical step between me saying this and implying that he can't think of a number...

Cheers for the info sdv, I'm googling/wikipediaering it now as I type.
 
 
Lurid Archive
16:14 / 01.12.05
If the probability of him picking 5 makes sense, then this probability is a number. Something "'converging' on zero" isn't a number, and certainly isn't a "tiny" number.

Actually, I'm being a little unfair. It is possible to assign "probabilities" to this kind of thing where the probability of having any single number is 0...but it is quite unintuitive.
 
 
astrojax69
18:49 / 01.12.05
picking probabilities in this way is erroneous, as all yoiu are really doing is assigning the ratio of participation to each member of ther set of things you want to include in the 'competition' to find the outcome [winner]. having three items doesn't at all equate to each of those items' likelihood of being the 'winner' - eg me racing michael schumacher - two drivers, fifty / fifty chance of me winning? no!

so having no real evidence as to the indicative qualities of the items leave you with assigning a proportion of elements in the mix - as it were - and not a probability. that would be just absurd. probability equates to chance. therer is nothing in the mere description of an item that indicates its effective chance.
 
 
SiliconDream
22:27 / 01.12.05
Hmmm, reading your post again Lurid, I think that your interpretation of infinity and zero is incorrect. If he had told me he was thinking of a number the probability of me guessing the number would have been '1 in infinity' but that wouldn't have meant that the chance of me guessing correctly was zero. I think that it would have been 'converging' on zero which is subtley different as I there is still a possibility that I would have guessed it, it's just this probability would have been tiny.

A "1 in infinity" probability would still be zero, though. Your notion of convergence is a good one, but probabilities don't converge--rather, the observed event frequency should converge to the probability. In this instance, a probability of zero doesn't mean you couldn't guess correctly, it just means that if you guessed a whole lot of times the fraction of correct guesses would converge to zero.

But all that's kind of beside the point because, actually, "1 in infinity" isn't the correct answer. There can't be a correct answer, because you know nothing about the probability distribution describing my choice. Maybe I really really like 5, and it's 100% likely that I'll pick it. Maybe I'm only thinking of integers between 0 and 999, so it's .1% likely that I'll pick 5. It's tempting to say, "Well, if I don't know how he makes his choice, I should just assume a uniform probability distribution over all numbers," but there's absolutely no mathematical justification to doing that. Indeed, in this case it's impossible...you can't have a uniform probability distribution over all real numbers. (Still less could you have one over all possible deities!)

People tend to resort to intuitive probability calculations in the face of ignorance, but it's really no more suited for blind guesses than a deterministic theory. Either way, you've gotta have prior data if you want to say something useful.
 
 
Atyeo
07:37 / 02.12.05
Ok, so the probability is zero but it can still happen.

Slightly confusing but my A-level maths course never really got round to this subject so I'll take your word for it Silicon/Astro/Lurid/sdv.

Been reading a bit on Pascal's Wager and it seems Pascal made the same mistake by assuming a 50/50 split on the existence of God. Idiot.

So an agnostic's scientific rationale for his\her position would be that you can't assign probabilities to situations where you have no meaningful data. Skirted Hume and Logical Positivism last night on the interweb and I think I'm 'converging' on that.
 
 
Hieronymus
19:45 / 08.12.05
Intelligent Design is so last year.

Say hello to Incompetent Design:

"No self-respecting engineering student would make the kinds of dumb mistakes that are built into us.
All of our pelvises slope forward for convenient knuckle-dragging, like all the other great apes. And the only reason you stand erect is because of this incredible sharp bend at the base of your spine, which is either evolution's way of modifying something or else it's just a design that would flunk a first-year engineering student.
Look at the teeth in your mouth. Basically, most of us have too many teeth for the size of our mouth. Well, is this evolution flattening a mammalian muzzle and jamming it into a face or is it a design that couldn't count accurately above 20?"
 
  

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