Intelligent design

[ZenFred]

I am hoping for some help thinking through the arguments for and against intelligent design. In my own thinking on the topic I'm stuck not being able to see how either premise could be true.

This is where I'm stuck. Take the example of the water cycle. If there is no designer then how could this system necessary for life (along with 100s of equally interdependent systems) arise independently? Especially inorganic systems which can not use natural selection.

On the other hand if there is intelligent design using the same example, why is that the same system needed for life so often goes amiss with tragic consequences with draughts and floods? A compassionate designer would certainty fix it. If not floods than at least childhood cancer wouldn't exist.

Thoughts?

-Fred

[fiveworlds]

Put it this way the two staple meats where I live are pork and beef. Religion says I can't eat either however people here have eaten the meat of these animals for thousands of years. Why would we let ourselves starve not eating the main source of protein here?

[dimreepr]

http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/70827-this-is-rather-as-if-you-imagine-a-puddle-waking

 

“This is rather as if you imagine a puddle waking up one morning and thinking, 'This is an interesting world I find myself in — an interesting hole I find myself in — fits me rather neatly, doesn't it?”

 

[Phi for All]

This is where I'm stuck. Take the example of the water cycle. If there is no designer then how could this system necessary for life (along with 100s of equally interdependent systems) arise independently? Especially inorganic systems which can not use natural selection.

 

Most of these systems have emergent properties, wondrously fantastic events like fire and lighting, that only happen when the right amount of oxygen, combustibles, and heat occur. Small things and processes that combine to make something much bigger happen.

 

These types of system don't need a designer. They're inevitable when the right conditions exist. It's the nature of water to do what it does in the presence of other materials and conditions. Raise the heat and it evaporates, lower it and it freezes. Mix it with dirt and you make mud. Add heat and the mud dries back to dirt in the shape you formed it in.These systems don't need to be designed, they just behave predictably when you subject them to various pressures.

 

Life is also an emergent property. Take away any of the conditions and materials necessary for a specific life form to support life, and it dies. Not enough oxygen, an imbalance in electrolytes, improper blood flow/containment, anything that jeopardizes one of the myriad systems within our body can threaten our life cycle.

 

Btw, it's one thing to talk about a creator who designed everything, and another to mention Intelligent Design. ID is specifically the movement fostered by creationists to teach religion in public schools. If you keep calling it that, you're going to get some automatic pushback on political grounds. The US, at least, separates Church and State.

[ZenFred]

Phi,

Hmmm... Emergent properties does make more than sense than things at first glance. Imagining the vast scale of billions of years and immense number of particles (6.02 x 10^23 per mole immense) is impossible and it does make it possible and in a way inevitable that patterns and interdependencies would arise. The buddhist teaching of dependent origination makes a lot of sense in this context.

And thank you, I don't mean what the creationist do by the term intelligent design. Yet, the term "God" is very loaded as well.

[Phi for All]

Phi,

Hmmm... Emergent properties does make more than sense than things at first glance. Imagining the vast scale of billions of years and immense number of particles (6.02 x 10^23 per mole immense) is impossible and it does make it possible and in a way inevitable that patterns and interdependencies would arise. The buddhist teaching of dependent origination makes a lot of sense in this context.

And thank you, I don't mean what the creationist do by the term intelligent design. Yet, the term "God" is very loaded as well.

 

And as dimreepr alludes to with the Douglas Adams quote, it's a mistake to view phenomena backwards from the perspective of how nicely it works out for us. Start with how the water cycle works, how it does what it does and how that developed. It's a bit easier to see it wasn't designed for us, we and other species merely take advantage of it as an adaptive measure.

[Wolfhnd]

You can't disprove intelligent design as faith based arguments are by definition not subject to falsification by evidence. What you can do is prove that all the supporting evidence is bogus.

[ZenFred]

Thanks, I suppose all of this helps. The idea that my body and evolutionary history as a whole and the biological world are just vechiles for who we truly are as humans is so ingrained in culture. That the world is designed so we can be who we are. But I think that perhaps there is no driver in the driver seat and what we think is our choices and individuality is the product of our biological programming. At very least our thoughts and feelings do not arise out of thin air and we are deeply conditioned and predisposed.

Wolfhnd,

You cannot disprove faith based arguments I agree. I am just pondering what seems the most plausible given the available, directly experienced evidence.

[Gees]

ZenFred;

 

Please consider my following thoughts.

 

I am hoping for some help thinking through the arguments for and against intelligent design. In my own thinking on the topic I'm stuck not being able to see how either premise could be true.
This is where I'm stuck. Take the example of the water cycle. If there is no designer then how could this system necessary for life (along with 100s of equally interdependent systems) arise independently? Especially inorganic systems which can not use natural selection.

 

This is a problem that I worked over for many years, then one day I read a story about a scam artist that put it all in perspective for me. So I will tell you the story in the hopes that it will help you.

 

A man, who may have been a stockbroker, because he knew the lingo, got a list of 80 older people, who invested in stock. He called up 40 people and told them that a specific stock would go up, then called the other 40 and told them the stock would go down -- then he waited. When the stock moved, he called the correctly informed people back, and told 20 that another stock would go up, but told the other 20 that it would go down -- then he waited. When that stock moved, he called the correctly informed people and told 10 that another stock would go up, and 10 that it would go down -- then he waited. When that stock moved, he told five of the correctly informed people that a stock would go up, and told five that it would go down.

 

When that stock moved, he called the five correctly informed people and talked them into letting him invest their money. They were happy to do so since he was obviously a genius, who had correctly interpreted the rise and fall of stock four times in a row. They could not possibly have known about the other 75 people, who were given the wrong predictions, so they were convinced of his abilities. He disappeared with hundreds of thousands of their dollars for a few hours of phone work.

 

The universe is more than 13 billion years old, so how many of those 50/50 splits would it take to convince us that there has to be intelligence behind this 'creation'? The five people, who were swindled, thought the stockbroker was a genius after only four splits. So I think that like the five people, we are very limited in our perspective, so we see intelligent design. But that does not make it real.

 

On the other hand if there is intelligent design using the same example, why is that the same system needed for life so often goes amiss with tragic consequences with draughts and floods? A compassionate designer would certainty fix it. If not floods than at least childhood cancer wouldn't exist.
Thoughts?
-Fred

 

Once we think that we see intelligent design, then we assume a mind or intelligent designer, then we anthropomorphise that mind to think like we do and value the things that we do. But, as you pointed out, there is no evidence of this.

 

What there is evidence of, is that it is the nature of nature to self balance. We see evidence of this in the galaxies, the solar systems, in ecosystems, in life, and in the atom. This is why the billions and billions of splits that happen every day may look like chaos, but they self balance back into stability. Compassion has nothing to do with nature.

 

Compassion is an emotion, and as such it is relevant to religion, as religion studies emotion. So I think that maybe the words of Jesus, Give unto Caesar that which is Caesar's, and give unto God that which is God's, applies here. Give unto science that which is science's (the universe) and give unto religion that which is religion's (emotion and God).

 

In my opinion

 

Gee

[ZenFred]

Gee,

That is a good story/example with the con artist. The human mind has an amazing ability of self deception.

I would disagree that religion and science are separate spheres of study and that science taken broadly isn't concerned with emotion or ethics. Religion is interested in or at least shouldbe in how the universe works. Richard Dawkins makes this point, it's not orginal. Religion and science are seeking answers to the same questions. In zen thought this is even more so. There isn't a direction between truth of "mundane" reality that can be observed in a lab and Truth with a capitol "T". Truth is truth. So what is this truth? Emptiness.

[Strange]

Take the example of the water cycle. If there is no designer then how could this system necessary for life (along with 100s of equally interdependent systems) arise independently?

 

That seems to presuppose that water (and the water cycle) exists because it is necessary for life. But it is the other way round: life took advantage of the existence of these things in the environment.

[MigL]

If the assertion is that the world/universe is so complex that it must have had an intelligent designer, then we must assume that the designer is even more complex.

So the intelligent designer must have had a designer !

And so on, and so on,...

 

Isn't that the old "turtles all the way down" argument ?

[ZenFred]

MigL,

Sorry for the delayed response. You make a very good point about who designed the designer. An anthromorphic diety would require human like experiences to at lease some degree in order to be human like. Something closer to the Greek pantheon of gods that were born, experienced time linearly, and were finite in understanding and moral character. Otherwise, a "God" that is eternal, omnipresent, omniscient, ect would be nothing like us at all. We being made in his image would be taken only in the vauguest of senses not in everyday similarity. So the western view of a God designing the universe as a clockmaker or an artist might falls apart. It is also not supported by present reality. I don't think this means there is no transcendent reality, but traditional views are poor descriptions.

Edited August 4, 2015 by ZenFred