I'm all sad about the total and utter tainting of the term "Intelligent Design;" when I first heard it several long years ago, it sounded like a perfectly decent descriptor of people who both believe in God and are down with the Big Bang and evolution and all that smart thinky-people stuff
I'm with JZ. When I first heard of Intelligent Design, many years ago, it basically went something like this: there was a Big Bang, you betcha. But *who* do you think set the Big Bang into motion? That it's perfectly possible that an intelligent creator god designed this universe, and designed it *to evolve.*
I mean, it's scarcely possible that anyone who ever took a human anatomy class really believes that we were designed by an intelligent creator.
I took human anatomy, and, to the contrary, I think the design of the human body and all its systems is *proof* of an intelligent creator.
Your previous statement questioned the integrity of people very close to me by saying that either they don't know human anatomy woth a damn, or they're lying about their belief in a Creator.
Wolfram, I said nothing in general about belief in a creator. The structure of the human body tells us nothing about the existence or nonexistence of a creator. I said that human anatomy argues against the particular theory of ID.
It's entirely possible to believe in a creator without believing stupid things, as numerous Buffistas have demonstrated over and over.
While I'm happy to debate the existence of G*d for hours on end, I can tell you for a fact that some educated people actually and genuinely believe in His existence.
Belief in God is not the issue, though, it's that ID explicitly denies the possibility of macroevolution. But the human knee and back plainly show that we must have evolved from a four-legged animal. Ergo, ID is at odds with basic anatomy.
I took human anatomy, and, to the contrary, I think the design of the human body and all its systems is *proof* of an intelligent creator.
I’m curious about this Steph. If you consider the back, the knee, the appendix, or the thousands of failed “experiments” that we find recorded in our DNA, don’t these things seem more consistent with a gradual and imperfect process of evolution, a process that is constrained by its history, than they are with an a priori design by a supreme being? I mean, if we were designed so intelligently, why do we need a pharmaceutical industry?
Bob Bob actually did a lot of reading on ID in an attempt to understand it. I invited him to read this discussion in case he wanted to post. Hope you all don't mind.
Rick, you said:
I mean, it's scarcely possible that anyone who ever took a human anatomy class really believes that we were designed by an intelligent creator.
which sound a lot like faith and science are incompatible. But, if you meant to distinguish the particular foolishness of ID, then I'm on board. I'm not Catholic, but when the Vatican comes out says ID isn't science you'd think that would be the end of it. Sorry that I misunderstood.
It's entirely possible to believe in a creator without believing stupid things, as numerous Buffistas have demonstrated over and over.
Yup. It's all the stupid arguments set forth to
prove
creationism that make it that much more difficult to take religion seriously.
Another example of "questionable design" is our esophagus. You could argue that it wasn't really the best idea to have the esophagus be a passage for both food to the stomach and air to the lungs; however, for most animals it works OK. But because we have vocal cords, things are moved around for us humans, making us much more succeptible to choking - which begs the question: if there's a Creator, why didn't He redesign us with a separate passage for air and food? But under evolution, once evolution goes down a certain path (one esophagus) it's unlikely for things to be radically redesigned. So we gotta live with a modification of a previous design that's kinda' a compromise....
Another example of "questionable design" is our esophagus. You could argue that it wasn't really the best idea to have the esophagus be a passage for both food to the stomach and air to the lungs; however, for most animals it works OK.
Or, to paraphrase Woody Allen in a scene he eventually cut from "Annie Hall", where he meets God at the beginning of time: "Don't put the sexual organs too close to the excratory ones. It will only cause problems later on."
I'm not Catholic, but when the Vatican comes out says ID isn't science you'd think that would be the end of it.
Well, a lot the people who seem to tout ID most fervently don't think much of Catholics, either.
