Let us just imagine, for a moment, that the intelligent design people were right (they're not, they're not, but just suppose, ok?), and that the flagellum of some bacteria couldn't have evolved. Picture yourself like a detective interviewing a burglar caught red-handed at the scene of a crime, who anyway keeps saying "I didn't do it". You wait patiently, knowing that before too long he has to agree that yes he did do it. OK -- you are being patient. You say to the flagellum man -- ok, ok, I believe you, that must have been designed (yet it does evolve, you think, fingers crossed behind your back) not evolved, now what?
You see these people have been picking away at the dozens of organs in all the 1.8 million or so species in the world for a long time now. They thought the human eye was too complex to have evolved, forgetting that Darwin himself had shown this not to be true 150 years ago. And so they get down to the bacterial flagellum. All of the other organs in all the other species are apparently ok as the outcomes of evolutionary processes, all except this one organ in one particular group of species.
Now if I was a creation scientist (which god forbid) I think I would be tempted to say, at this point, if I was a swearing man and not a saint, WTF? Is this the best god can do -- a FLAGELLUM? And why bother? If evolution has worked perfectly well to produce all the other features of all the other species on the planet, why on Earth would god even bother to stick his oar in (so to speak) to give this particular species a hand with getting a flagellum designed?
Are these bacteria particularly god-fearing creatures? Did they go to bacterial church every Sunday and pray for a flagellum which just couldn't get evolved? And as a creation scientist, do you deduce from the presence of one designed organ that all organs in all species were therefore designed even though there are perfectly good evolutionary explanations for their presence? Or do you, returning for a moment to rational thought, conclude that, yes indeed, as evolutionists have found, the flagellum does have a perfectly rational evolutionary pathway too?
I know, I know, Darwin himself said "If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down ", but he was wrong, really, wasn't he? What he was saying was this -- given that so little biology (or physiology, or anatomy, or biochemistry, or ecology) is known in 1859, given that so few species have been described at all, let alone in detail, and given that huge areas of the world are virtually unexplored, it would be premature to think that in 1859 I am providing the last word on evolution. It is quite possible, he may well have thought, that somewhere in the Amazon basin, for example, are hundreds of species which give clear evidence of having been designed, not evolved, and if that happens then we will need to do some rethinking. What he was emphatically not saying was, if, in 150 years time, after tens of thousands of biologists have studied hundreds of thousands of species in great detail from all parts of the planet, and some fundamentalist religious person says ah ha, I think this organ in this species couldn't have evolved, we toss the whole thing in and admit that god did it all.
Conversely, since only one example is purported to exist, it might be incumbent on the creationists to suspect that THEY might have got this wrong. Or do they really believe in an imaginary being who would go to the trouble of allowing evolution to bring into being everything we see today except the bacterial flagellum?
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I thought scientists were supposed to reject a theory when the null hypothesis is proven, but then I learned that they just disregard contradictory data if the rest are good enough to make some money. It's easy to see how a so-called scientist would be motivated to cheat like this when some of the data contradicts his worldview.
I just took a look at your post, "Superagnosticman III: Dark Matter." Comments there are closed, but this sentence caught my eye:
"Now, in a god-driven universe none of that could be true."
In other words, "There is no God because if I were God I would've done it differently."
Does that actually make sense to you?
Yep, that's the science I learned in school but no longer trust.
When faced with valid data that doesn't fit my theory, I've always been one to revise my theory. Horton apparently scraps data so he can pretend the theory works. I've never known how to respect people like that.
In any case, the question of evolution is a minor issue. If atheists can show life arising spontaneously from matter, I'll be a little impressed, though not convinced. Having seen God face to face, how do I dismiss that piece of data?
In any case, the basic premise of evolutionary theory does not contradict God at all. The invocation mantra of Isopanishad states that God made the world complete; and considering that, one would be surprised to find numerous kinds of things needing 'supernatural' help to get along.
The Hortons of the world imagine God as some kind of idiot. Does it make them feel good? I don't know. But it makes them look terribly ignorant to those who know something about God.
All the bickering in the world will not answer the question.
BUT, if there is a god, s/he won't let us *totally* fuck up the planet, will s/he?
Guess we'll just have to wait & see.
The ignorance of supposedly educated people never ceases to amaze me.
Definitely an ape.
Faith in an "invisible Designer" doesn't require proof or evidence, otherwise it wouldn't be faith. So trying to prove evolution and disprove "intelligent design" is inherently futile.
The problem with fundamentalists who are so vehemently opposed to teaching science in school - without teaching that there are millions of nonscientists who disagree - is that for them, God is the unknown. Don't know how stars shine? There's God. Don't know how trees grow? There's God again. And so forth and so on, such that the more you know, the less God becomes. That's THEIR problem with THEIR faith. It's nothing than can be taught in school.
What's most important for both sides to remember is that science can say neither that God exists nor no God exists. It's not in the realm of the observable for science to make such a claim.
Straw man! In the realm of observable science, there is not a shred of evidence for the existence of the fundamentalist's god. THAT is the most important thing for both sides to remember.
Like what? What evidence of an omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient, invisible, invincible God would you expect science to "prove." Or, in my case, "disprove." I'm not trying to prove to you God exists. By that same token, I'm not sure you can prove to me he doesn't. But, you can try.
Besides, I read/heard that idea somewhere in some argument about teaching evolution or intelligent design in school and basically, science can neither prove nor disprove the existence of God. The argument of intelligent design crusaders is that something had to be present to start everything off. Science isn't able to investigate what may have or may not have taken place before the first flagellum came to be. That's all I'm saying.
Oh, and lastly, fundamentalist's don't rely on observable science for evidence of their god. And science has some interesting questions to answer on its own - like all the natural laws. How'd they come about?
Oh, wait, it's both. Just like this whole evolution/creation argument. Microevolution is beyond debating, and shows itself to be true in many many ways, macroevolution, however, is much more difficult to prove. People say, "there's a missing link," probably not thinking that evolution can happen in jumps and not just increments...but that's because consciousness evolves form, not the other way around. Why is there basically one kind of human on this planet? Sure we have skin color differences and some other minor things, but, looking at all the animals and their various types, why do we stand here, the only type of human? And just for fun, ask yourself, is evolution an Intelligent idea? A smart design? Look at the dna; it's incredibly complex, but that doesn't mean that the great white god of the bible just put it here. But don't think science has all the answers either. Can we make water? Can we understand and utilize gravity? Why are we still using combustion engines to propel rockets into space--one of the most inefficient ways we could do it--but it works. Our society is still somewhat primitive in many ways, and if you think this issue is settled and you've got your mind made up, I hope you will at least consider my opening question. Truth is, very often, stranger and broader than any comfortable fiction we could argue about.
What I have found most interesting about the whole intelligent design POV is that it assumes that what humans do in design is somehow different from evolution. In fact, what we call intentional design is really just another form of evolution -- of things. Most 'designers' are really just making modifications to previous designs that move them along incrementally. As far as I know no new kind of widget has appeared on the designer's table full blown and in intricate detail. Even Thomas Edison had to experiment around with existing equipment in order to invent new ones.
Where we get confused is in thinking that our brains are so clever they can just invent stuff de novo. What we really are good at is being a force for selection! We have a capacity to see functionality that we desire to have in forms not necessarily originally used for that function. This is called 'affordance'. Thus Hollerith saw how Jacquard used punched cards to control the weaving of a loom and realized that the same idea could be used to control a tabulation machine.
The intelligent designers give humans too much credit for, well, intelligent design. Every machine we have in our modern world literally evolved to its present form with humans providing the tinkering (mutation) and the selection (did it work better). Even the Rev. Paley's watch in the heath could never have been brought forth in full glory from bits of metal by an intelligent arrowhead maker. It took centuries of trial and error and selected refinement to get time pieces so clever.
I say, yes, speciation is a result of intelligent design as long as you realize that intelligent design is actually evolution at work!
V.
Evolution isn't intelligent in any sense. Like a small child, it simply lives for the moment (forgetting yesterday, and heedless for toorrow), but it makes that moment the most perfect it can be, and then for the next moment, and so on, through billions of years. There is no intelligence because there is no plan, no end point which is being aimed for. All that is happening is that at any point you care to examine, the organisms then alive will be adapted to the maximum possible extent to the habitats they are living in. Have to be because they will reproduce faster than the ones less well adapted.
But also not intelligent becaue at any point evolution can only work with the raw material that is there. If you were setting out to design organisms you wouldn't finish up with what we have now. All kinds of organs are cobbled together using whatever was available. Functions lost in earlier times are regained (if needed) by the use of different structures. Structures (and bits of genetic code) no longer needed, if they do no harm, can hang around for millions of years (eg the appendix). So no design, but the most stringent application of "market forces" (environmental forces) to selection of the best adapted organisms.
On the other hand while design of (say) watches and cars, does "evolve" over time, they don't keep old bits for no reason. Intelligent designers, although building on earlier models, nevertheless make each new watch out of the best materials then available. I could go on, it is a very interesting topic, but time for others to step in.