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Author
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Topic: Evidence for Design
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Tennessee Elijah
Advanced Member
Member # 5277
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posted
Obviously, we are engaged in spiritual warfare here on Planet Earth. As far as our American schools are concerned, the latest issue of note should be resolved this way: Teach children the "Theory of Evolution," the "Theory of Creation," and the "Theory of Faith." It takes faith to believe in either Darwin or God. I prefer to believe that God is more credible.
Elijah Jesus Club
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DO A WEB SEARCH TO FIND JIGROP
Posts: 55 | From: Tennessee | Registered: Nov 2005
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chaoschristian
Advanced Member
Member # 5273
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posted
Hardcore:
My apologies! [insert embarrassed emoticon here]
I'll edit the post and duly it mark it as such.
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Why are you reading my bio when you should be paying attention to the post?
Posts: 109 | From: Snack Food Capital of the World (Hanover, PA for those of you who don't know) | Registered: Nov 2005
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hardcore
Advanced Member
Member # 4492
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posted
quote:
Originally posted by chaoschristian:
Hardcore has concluded his argument.
Rebuttal forthcoming.
Hey! Are you crediting my name to someone else? ![[cool_shades]](graemlins/cool_shades.gif)
Sincerely,
the "real" hardcore
Posts: 627 | Registered: Mar 2005
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chaoschristian
Advanced Member
Member # 5273
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posted
[Heavenstorm] has concluded his argument.
Rebuttal forthcoming.
<edited on 14.12.05 by chaoschristian to correct reference to other board member>
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Why are you reading my bio when you should be paying attention to the post?
Posts: 109 | From: Snack Food Capital of the World (Hanover, PA for those of you who don't know) | Registered: Nov 2005
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Heavenstorm
Community Member
Member # 5321
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posted
In the previous article I covered some problems with some ideas that we see in the ID movement, specifically the Young Earth hypothesis. Here is an overview of four possible approaches to the origin of life:
The naturalists approach the data from a worldview that there is no God, or that God did not actively create life or the universe. The universe and life is an accident of nature.
--The Bible is not inspired by God, but a man made book of religion.
Theistic evolutionists approach the data from a worldview that there is a God who intervened with nature and steered the process of naturalistic evolution for a purpose.
--The Bible may have errors in it that allows for a loose interpretation of Genesis 1 which describes creation.
A Young earth creationist’s worldview holds that the earth is about 10,000 years old, and that God supernaturally created life and the universe in 6 24 hour days creating everything from nothing.
--The Bible is God inspired and must be taken literally from our cultural and linguistic point of view. It is the truth and always error free. If this is true, then anything that contradicts what we read in the Bible and understand it to be through our cultural viewpoint is wrong.
Old earth creationists believe that God supernaturally created the life and the universe over a long period of time, possibly billions of years, creating the universe from nothing, allowing natural processes to occur, constantly supervising and intervening with periodic radical creation events where He used pre-existing materials to form life.
--The Bible is God inspired and must be taken literally, carefully studied to find the meaning of ancient writers from their cultural and linguistic perspective. The Bible is the truth, may have minor errors in it but none have yet been found conclusively in its meanings.
I come from the approach that the Bible is God’s truth, and that we can expect nature and the way our world works to line up with it. Because it’s the truth, we don’t have to force fit things into it. However it’s healthy to test the Bible for accuracy and consistency and expect to see accuracy where on the surface it might not appear to be accurate after studying it in depth.
My approach is the Day/ Age hypothesis which re-visits the popular interpretation of Genesis. We see that the original Hebrew text allows us to literally interpret the word Yome (Day) in the 6 days of creation as a literal 24 hour day, but can also be interpreted as a long, but finite period of time. (The Bible doesn’t necessitate 24 hours days of creation)
Studying the ancient texts allows us to interpret Noah’s flood as a global flood, but also as a universal flood where the early population of humanity existed in a small and finite region that was flooded to destroy humanity without covering the whole earth. (The Bible doesn’t necessitate a global flood)
What we see is a universe that is best supported by the Big Bang theory. Of course we have speculation surrounding its origins, but none of it has been confirmed. In fact we may find that the origin of the Big Bang is not scientifically confirmable as we cannot measure anything outside of the universe.
Our measurements confirm that the universe is over 13 billion years old. A Young earth creationist will argue that the measurements are wrong, and that the methods are not accurate or that something is distorting our measurements. So far we are finding this is not the case. They may argue that the scientific community is conspiring against Christians and outright lying to us. I don’t believe this at all.
Our geological record does record a global flood, but establishes it well before humans ever emerged, as well as extinction events and turbulent geological activity. This flood was part of a fine tuned creation process that took place about 4.5 billion years ago during the formation of the solar system as confirmed by modern hypothesis.
Perhaps God isn’t the kind of God they think He is. Perhaps love and perfection as we know it is different from God’s love. Perhaps the universe wasn’t made perfect. It is perhaps good and optimized to serve its purposes, but not perfect.
I believe Genesis 1 is a literal creation story that describes the creation process in order, and Genesis 2 and other creation accounts are not necessarily in order or literal but concern God’s laws and order for humanity. All creation accounts in the Bible concerning nature contribute to creation of this universe and this earth and are scientifically supportable and falsifiable.
From this we can expect that:
1. The fossil record, and geological record, and cosmology will line up with the order found in Genesis 1. So far that is what we observe.
2. We will see design that we can expect from an all powerful, all wise, all knowing God who can see the future, and whose designs anticipate future conditions. So far we do.
The designs appear to optimal for the conditions they experience, and adapt to changes in their environment as we would expect.
3. The universe was not created in and of itself, and is separate from God. It had to have a transcendent beginning from nothing. So far modern cosmological observations support this.
4. The Bible and science are compatible where the scientific claims of the Bible line up when the context of the claims in the passages is a literal because it is God inspired, and God has always knows about His creation, even before we discovered what we have today, and see claims that were ahead of their time. So far that’s true.
5. The purpose of humanity, its laws, orders, and the human design of mind and body established in the Bible line up with what we know works optimally in any society. So far that is true.
From a design perspective we observe not only evidence that supports this but we see a high degree of fine tuning where the laws of nature are very strict. Life can only exist within an environment where its attributes fall within an extremely fine range of parameters. There are so many of these parameters, and if any one of them falls outside of these narrow ranges for any reason then life cannot exist. It is so unlikely that the environment could have randomly occurred in the light of the refinement of these parameters that it is not reasonable to conclude what we are seeing is an accident. This not only accounts for the design of the universe, but for our galaxy, physics, solar system, and planet. Life itself contains a high information content and information density, going all the way down into the molecular level, demonstrating a mastery of design. As we learn more about life and the universe we learn more about the limitations of the ability of natural processes to support life. And the limitations that natural processes have to create life.
And we find it is so limited under the conditions of the early earth to be reasonable to conclude nature could have brought about life on earth. The information content and irreducible complexity of life systems are so complex that it’s reasonable to conclude there is a designer, a master designer who is arguably the God of the Bible.
So this is my conclusion. It is debatable. I was willing to change my perspective from young earth to old earth because that is what the data best supported. It might be harder for me to change from creationism to naturalism. It would take some very convincing data that directly supports the idea that natural processes must have created life.
So far, the data is totally opposite to that concept.
Chris
Posts: 19 | From: Douglas County, Georgia | Registered: Dec 2005
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chaoschristian
Advanced Member
Member # 5273
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posted
Chaoschristian wrote:
quote:
Heavenstorm:
OK, you're on:
Show the evidence that supports a logical, rational and scientific argument that proves ID/Creationism is better at explaining the origins of life than the theory of abiogenesis.
Heavenstorm I am reposting this to remind you of how we started this debate. I am waiting for you to meet your burden of proof in fulfilling the above conditions. While I do have rebuttals ready for your posts, I can tell you right now that you've not made a cohesive, clear and concise argument to back up your claims. I don't expect you post volumes of tabulated data, I do expect you to be able to articulate an argument based upon the initial conditions of this thread. And like I've said, you haven't done that so far. So, I'm waiting.
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Why are you reading my bio when you should be paying attention to the post?
Posts: 109 | From: Snack Food Capital of the World (Hanover, PA for those of you who don't know) | Registered: Nov 2005
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Heavenstorm
Community Member
Member # 5321
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posted
There are several other arguments for intelligent design that I won’t get into. Again I would like to encourage you to visit www.reasons.org as they present these arguments in light of the evidence much better that I can.
I hope the previous post is a good jumping off point for anyone interested.
They also present the evidence (go to the Evidence for Design Link) which is too numerous to post here.
The point I am making here is that there really is a viable alternative to abiogenesis with solid evidence, and solid arguments, and it is specifically the old earth theistic creationism approach where the Creator is the God of the Bible.
Where the universe and biological life is designed with a specific purpose which is found in the Bible.
Where the evidence and the Bible are in agreement with each other.
So why aren’t we seeing this kind of information being published and addressed in the public media surrounding creationism vs evolution?
I think there is a widespread approach to the theory of Intelligent design that is taking the wrong approach and damaging the credibility of Intelligent Design. This approach hypothesizes the earth is young and this seems to be more widespread than its alternative hypothesis – Day/ Age.
I may have mentioned in my last reply in Evidence for Macroevolution that there are several approaches to ID and theistic creationism. Though I’m not familiar with them all, I am familiar with the young earth approach. I used to be personally convinced that the earth is less than 10,000 years, as well as the universe.
Another point young earth creationists try to make is that Noah’s flood was global, and a feature we see in the geological record.
Though there are other arguments the Young Earth Creationists present that I think are wrong these two are the greatest threat to our credibility. The reason these two points are made is because they think that the Bible ought to be easy to read and that we can take what it says at face value. Therefore we can take the meanings of the words it contains from our socio-cultural perspective.
For example, the word Day in the book of Genesis must mean 24 hours.
There is also another belief, which is theological, asserting that the fall of man had to take place before plant and animal death could take place, or before decay could occur in the universe. Their reasoning is that a God who is good and just would not have a world in which violent and catastrophic events could take place (such as like what we see in the geological record) or animal suffering and death (as we see in the fossil record), unless evil was brought into the world, since God cannot cause evil.
So we must conclude that what we see in the record of nature must have taken place before the fall of man. Which must have taken place after the creation of man, and after the six days of creation.
And the global flood we see in the geological record must also have taken place after the creation of man.
So what we see is the production of pre-suppositions that go before the study of the natural record. And these young earth scientists are trying to build their model on this foundation, even though tests are being conducted they are trying to fit the results into their model.
And what we see in the record of nature significantly contradicts their model. As far their theology behind it, I think they fail to proper study the Biblical texts. For one thing these texts are translated from Hebrew from an ancient culture, and the translation into English is not always the best to express the ideas from the original texts. The next article will cover the Day Age Hypothesis.
Posts: 19 | From: Douglas County, Georgia | Registered: Dec 2005
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chaoschristian
Advanced Member
Member # 5273
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posted
Patiently waiting for Heavenstorm to conclude. Posting this just to keep the thread active.
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Why are you reading my bio when you should be paying attention to the post?
Posts: 109 | From: Snack Food Capital of the World (Hanover, PA for those of you who don't know) | Registered: Nov 2005
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Heavenstorm
Community Member
Member # 5321
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posted
As I mentioned above, I conceded to the argument that Intelligent Design as it stands today is not ready for the public school system.
Right now we have several major arguments for design that I know of.
1. Irreducible Complexity
Irreducible complexity is a logical argument based on the idea in order for a system to function it must contain all it’s parts. For example a light bulb is an irreducibly complex system containing a filament, conductors that supply power to the filament, a protective envelope that creates an non-oxidizing environment to prevent the filament from burning, and contacts to transfer power through the conductors into the filament causing it to heat and emit light.
We consider it to be irreducible because the system cannot be further simplified. If any of these parts are removed the light bulb will not function.
What makes it relevant to Intelligent design is that it is highly improbable that a complete system can occur in nature that has a complex function.
This system is simple, yet complex enough that it is improbable that we would see such a system constructed by natural processes. In fact it is so improbable that it is unreasonable to expect it a light bulb to occur from natural processes.
Probability of an event relies on the laws of physics.
2. Consistent Laws of Physics
Probability is the likeliness something will occur. What makes something improbable or probable depends on a number of physical conditions.
Those conditions exist within a universe with physical laws that govern those conditions. The universe allows for certain things to happen, and does not allow for certain things to happen, depending on what the condition is at the time.
It is reasonable to conclude that if I throw a coin down onto a table it will land on either heads or tails. It is unreasonable to conclude that if I throw it down that it will land on its side.
Laws of physics will also determine that if I throw the coin a number of times in a random fashion that it will land on tales 50% of the time, and heads 50% of the time. And a test may be conducted to conclude this, and I’ve actually done it. And if you do the test, providing your coin throwing method will result in a random distribution, you will make the same measurements.
That’s because we experience life within a universe that is consistent in the way things behave. Not only is it consistent over time, but also in space. So it’s the same for everyone, everywhere, all the time.
Not only that, but we have evidence that supports a universe with physical laws that haven’t changed since the beginning, 13.7 billion years ago.
Our experience and observations show us a universe that is high in order, predictable over time and space, and hostile to complexity where the random occurrence of a complex system is highly improbable.
And as we observe, living organisms, even the tiniest most basic known form of life is not only irreducibly complex, but highly complex, and have always existed in a universe that is hostile towards life’s systems.
And as we learn more about the disciplines of sciences relevant to biological origins and the universe’s origins it becomes more compelling that there has to be a designer in order to explain what we observe.
3. Watchmaker argument
This is an argument from analogy, although a relevant one. It makes sense that on this earth if one happens upon a pocket watch laying in the dirt that it would have to have a maker. It would have to have a designer. It is not reasonable to conclude that it came about from natural processes. It just doesn’t make good sense.
A pocket watch shares a lot of the same features as systems we see inside of living organisms. It contains a way to store energy, regulate its motion relative to energy release, possesses a protective case, and mechanisms that are interdependent to serve a function. It also has a purpose to exist, and many more.
If it’s not reasonable to conclude that a watch can occur in nature, then it is may not be reasonable to conclude a similar system can occur in nature.
And when we compare the mechanisms of the watch to living organisms, we find similar systems that reside inside.
This argument holds true for other designed manmade systems such as a radio, or a TV, or even something similar such as a piece of jewelry.
So we ask ourselves what is it about manmade items that makes it unreasonable to conclude they occurred by chance? And what is it about manmade items that makes it reasonable to conclude it has a creator?
I’ve run out of time but there are other arguments that can be applied to this evidence.
There really is too much evidence to list here, but I know where you can find a large collection of evidence carefully catalogued and updated as new discoveries are made. I strongly suggest you read the articles on this site as well. You can find it at:
www.reasons.org
Chris
Posts: 19 | From: Douglas County, Georgia | Registered: Dec 2005
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