Intelligent Design?

[Skiergirl24]

I am a former Catholic. I no longer believe in the BS of the Bible. I woul dbe a complete athiest if it was not for one issue: who started/created this? I cannot imagine something coming from nothing...there HAS to be (in my mind) a start...a creator...something that created the first piece of matter. I've read a lot about the issue of intelligent design. Some say this world created itself...there is no mastermind behind it. I find that hard to believe...it is just SO COMPLEX! If anyone has answers as to how this world could be created without a mastermind or a designer...share them! I want to full scoop on the issue from both sides!

 

Thanks!

[Antlerman]

I am a former Catholic. I no longer believe in the BS of the Bible. I woul dbe a complete athiest if it was not for one issue: who started/created this? I cannot imagine something coming from nothing...there HAS to be (in my mind) a start...a creator...something that created the first piece of matter. I've read a lot about the issue of intelligent design. Some say this world created itself...there is no mastermind behind it. I find that hard to believe...it is just SO COMPLEX! If anyone has answers as to how this world could be created without a mastermind or a designer...share them! I want to full scoop on the issue from both sides!

 

Thanks!

A couple things. No scientist believes that everything came from nothing. It came from something, but that something certainly doesn't need to be magic. Everything in nature has a natural cause. So why suddenly derail the train and start imaging "supernatural" causes, "causes" that have their origins in mythology and not research?

 

The origin of god beliefs has natural causes, and served to fill the gaps of knowledge that we were unable to breach at the time due to the lack of proper tools of investigation. "God" explanations have not proved essential so far in anything we have investigated. Things we have attributed to gods have gotten moved further and further back away from the natural world, to the moment before the Big Bang, saying "since we don't know what that was, that proves God exists". This seems completely unnecessary, and motivated merely by a desire to find a place for God to continue to exist in our imaginations of how life works. He once answered why people got sick and crops didn't grow. Now all he does is explain what started the Big Bang. I see a pattern here.

 

As to complexity: Imagine how everything you have amassed in your mind through a lifetime of experiences were to be looked at by a child with only 5 years experience in life. To them, you are the smartest person in the world, but what you know has been the result of a long series of gradual bits of knowledge being added over a long period of time. Did your knowledge come naturally over time, or was it miraculously dumped into your brain overnight, complete in its complexity and subtle nuanses?

 

Likewise, when someone looks at the complexity of nature head on without taking into account the steps to that complexity, it looks like a great cliff towering far up above us. But, to borrow this analogy from others, if you go behind the cliff to the gradually sloping landscape leading up to it, it doesn't seem so "insurmountable". This is what Darwin's Theory of Evolution does. It makes scaling that cliff quite approachable and understandable. It's small steps to more and more complexity. Is it complex? Yes. Is it understandable, and even predictable? Yes.

 

Without the tools of science, then it can appear "a miracle", much like seeing a flashlight in the hands of an explorer would seem from the gods to the eyes of an isolated tribe in the jungle would. But the flashlight has an explanation that does not require magic or miracles, if you understand how its components work. And what happened to those explores who were discovered to be exploiting their ignorance of science, once they learned these guys weren't really gods? If memory serves, I think they ate them! (I see an anaology there)

 

There much, much more to be added to all this, but to start with that perspective should be a good starting point.

[Ouroboros]

I am a former Catholic. I no longer believe in the BS of the Bible. I woul dbe a complete athiest if it was not for one issue: who started/created this? I cannot imagine something coming from nothing...there HAS to be (in my mind) a start...a creator...something that created the first piece of matter. I've read a lot about the issue of intelligent design. Some say this world created itself...there is no mastermind behind it. I find that hard to believe...it is just SO COMPLEX! If anyone has answers as to how this world could be created without a mastermind or a designer...share them! I want to full scoop on the issue from both sides!

 

Thanks!

It's easy to crack the problem, just think about your statement: "it is just SO COMPLEX!"

 

Well, does that mean God is more or is he less complex that the Universe?

 

If he is less, then he isn't God. If he is more complex, then who created God?

 

If your answer is "no one created God", but then why do you think that a "SO COMPLEX" universe needs a creator, while a "SO MUCH MORE COMPLEX" God does not?

 

If the buck stops somewhere, it has to stop at a smaller point, not a larger point based on the argument that everything else is so large. Do you follow?

 

Put it this way. You see a machine that is extremely complex, and you argue that only a more complex machine can build that first machine because the first machine is so complex. Then that argument MUST apply to your second machine also, since it's not only very complex but even more complex than the first one. Or your other option is that argument from complexity isn't a correct way to go.

 

Why Isn't it harder to believe there is a un-created God that existed from eternity, outside the billions of lightyears large Universe?

I know why it is easier. Because I've seen that for most people fantasy is easier to accept than reality.

[WilliamFWN]

I am a former Catholic. I no longer believe in the BS of the Bible. I woul dbe a complete athiest if it was not for one issue: who started/created this? I cannot imagine something coming from nothing...there HAS to be (in my mind) a start...a creator...something that created the first piece of matter. I've read a lot about the issue of intelligent design. Some say this world created itself...there is no mastermind behind it. I find that hard to believe...it is just SO COMPLEX! If anyone has answers as to how this world could be created without a mastermind or a designer...share them! I want to full scoop on the issue from both sides!

 

Thanks!

There are many ways to refute the argument from design and all of its formulations.

 

One must realize it's simply a poor-man's philosophical argument first given by the theologian St. Thomas Aquinas (as many here probably knew, but I shall assume Skiergirl24 did not; that is, it's not a scientific argument, no matter the formulation: simply a very bad philosophical one). The Aquinas's argument refutes itself, but theologians would say God is a "self-caused" being (to justify this theological argument, of course, despite the fact that it is patently ridiculous). The causa sui assumption is more idiotic than the argument from design, as it refutes the design argument that it tries to justify.

 

Another criticism I can make is that the argument from design is based on grammar rather than meaning (i.e. "creation" requiring "creator"). The language in the argument is structured in such a way as to make the "designer" grammatically necessary, but not in any semantic sense. One cannot assume that any "creation" requires a "creator", except by way of grammar.

 

There are more problems with it, but if all of the other responses and my own seem inadequate, then I don't really know whether you'll accept any of the argument's many refutations.

 

In short, no one really knows how the universe started, but one cannot posit something in the spaces of the unknown (the infamous "god-of-the-gaps" argument).

[Grandpa Harley]

"it is just SO COMPLEX!"

 

In who's opinion?

[godlessgrrl]

Why does there have to be a "start" in the first place? Why can't the universe be eternal?

 

If there was a "start", why does that "start" have to be the responsibility of an intelligent director?

 

Note that I didn't use the term "designer". I'm a designer for a living. I can tell you right now: complexity =/= good design. In fact it usually amounts to overengineered crap.* Good design is clean, simple, easy to interpret, and straightforward - unlike the universe.

 

If god turned in the universe for his senior thesis, he'd flunk out of design school. If he presented the universe to a client, he'd be fired.

 

 

 

*For my favorite example, see this video.

[Antlerman]

Why does there have to be a "start" in the first place? Why can't the universe be eternal?

 

If there was a "start", why does that "start" have to be the responsibility of an intelligent director?

 

Note that I didn't use the term "designer". I'm a designer for a living. I can tell you right now: complexity =/= good design. In fact it usually amounts to overengineered crap.* Good design is clean, simple, easy to interpret, and straightforward - unlike the universe.

 

If god turned in the universe for his senior thesis, he'd flunk out of design school. If he presented the universe to a client, he'd be fired.

 

 

 

*For my favorite example, see this video.

Hey yes, this is true. The best design is when you can't even see it. This designer seems more like an American car designer with poorly thought out layouts and impractical designs. Definitely not designed with the end-user in mind. They should be careful trying to say too much about design happening here if they hope to promote their God at the other end of this.

[godlessgrrl]

Something that always kind of gets me about the ID "it's so complex!" argument is that people seem to equate complexity with effectiveness or efficiency, which couldn't be further from the truth. ID proponents seem to have this pie-in-the-sky awe and wonder at how amazingly put together the universe is, how everything works "perfectly" or "just right"... that whole thing about the Earth being just the right distance from the Sun, and somehow that demonstrates the perfection of the universe, that shit just irritates me. I mean really, isn't the Sun supposed to turn into a red giant someday and swallow the Earth up? Doesn't sound so perfect to me.

 

Really, human beings don't "work" terribly well. We're full of moving parts that wear out and cause us pain and suffering. We're felled by a host of diseases. Our own genetic makeup betrays us with disorders like depression or panic disorder or OCD. We have an entire industry built around the manufacture and sale of medications to make our bodies perform better than they do - why would we need that at all, if we were designed so beautifully, if everything worked?

 

Viruses, on the other hand - now there's some intelligent design. Basically just a protein shell with some nucleic acid in 'em - simple, hardy, tenacious, elegant. They even get other organisms to do their reproducing for them. Maybe ID proponents should focus on virology for their case, and stay away from the rest of the universe.