Not really, no. The concept of Intelligent Design as an issue of science (which is how it was originated - as a method to have a "non religious" (but religious) explanation of the universe taught as part of science, so bypassing the constitutional block of having religious studies in state schools. I'm describing why that fails as a form of science. Your point there highlights why I find 'strong athiesm' to be a fairly silly position to have as well.. Professing there is absolutely no god is just as flawed a position as the one they rail against. I don't believe there is one, as I've never seen anything to suggest that's the case, but I won't discount the possibility as an impossibility - it's basically just irrelevant.
There could be no more relevant question then:
Does God exist?
Why does that cause need to be a conscious one, though? If you say this Designer has always existed, and brought the universe into being, could the same not be true of some other factor, without the need for the added complexity of some conscious sentience to do so.
You are welcome to describe a different causal agent that could be equally responsible, but you'll find that when you try, you will always arrive at the same place...
Dog breeding? We have centuries of evidence showing how inherited traits can be selected and passed on. We do the same with flower cultivars, breeding new species quite regularly.. As far as "proper", wild stuff goes, there's a finch in the Galapagos which has been observed and tracked since the late 70s in which we've witnessed an "immigrant" species arrive and spawn off a recognisably distinct species...
https://www.pnas.org/content/106/48/20141
If you want to "go large", with widespread whaling historically having vastly reduced its numbers, the Humpback Whale is split into two separate populations, in the North and South Hemispheres, which do not follow the same migration routes and so do not generally interbreed. They are growing distinctly different and there's some argument that they're genetically distinct subspecies already.
A dog becoming a different type of dog, is not proof that it can become a totally different animal.
Whales being whales does not prove that they can become seven-headed-hydras.
The concept of ID has been around for centuries, but it has always been in a theological context - all religions have some form of creation mythology. The term itself however was relatively unused until it was basically levered in to replace the term "Creationism" in the 1980s when teaching of that topic in US state schools was challenged and deemed unconstitutional, due to its overtly religious nature. The 'religious right' in the US adopted the new phrase, dropped out the overtly religious bits, and re-worked the idea to get around the ban and get it back in schools. The "something highly intelligent" creator you refer to is a god in all but name.
It's not mythology to know that somebody built my clock.
It's nothing but pure common sense to look at something with highly complex design, such as a web application, and know that it has been built by something intelligent.
Yes, and when you try to come up with another causal agent for the creation of the universe, you will face the same dilemma. It will just be God by another name.
Except that it isn't. Go look back on the history of it and you'll see the flaw. It's started with the answer it's looking for and then has worked backwards to find support. It's literally that guy at the murder scene you described, pointing at "a creator" and saying "he did it!", then finding the evidence that fits.
There is nothing wrong with making a proposition, so long as you test it, measure it, look for flaws, see if it holds up under scrutiny, and see if the evidence supports that proposition.
What if, in the above example, they take an honest look at all of the hard-evidence for 10 straight years, with 5,000 experiments conducted with a sincere attempt to prove it wrong, and not even one piece of evidence suggesting that it is wrong ever surfaces?
Intelligent design holds up excellently under scientific scrutiny, as it should, since it is the truth.
No. The simplest and best explanation for it is an agent. Doesn't have to be creative, doesn't have to be intelligent, doesn't have to be any sort of consciousness, just a 'thing'. That's adding complexity that need not be there. (For reference, M-Theory does kinda address what that thing might be.).
I'm sorry, but this is not correct.
I have not added any complexity.
How does a painter paint a painting without intelligence or consciousness?
I say this with full respect, but I do not believe I'm the one adding complexity to the discussion.
Stripping things away does not always equate to things being less complex. Sometimes it makes things even harder to understand.
Again, back to the puddle...
Ok, let's say for your example that it's possible for that computer to have spawned from chaos. Insanely unlikely, infinitesimally small odds, but theoretically possible.
The chances of you stumbling across it are similarly preposterous.
But in an infinite number of cases, it will happen, under some bizarre circumstance. What if those same, bizarre circumstances were the same prerequisites that were required for you and me to exist, be walking along that road and arriving at the computer?
All that complexity you see as being the result of some intelligent design has absolutely no need to be 'design'. Given a specific set of constants and interactions, it's actually impossible for that computer not to spawn from the chaos. If those same constants and interactions that produce that computer are the same ones that produce you and me on that street, then yes - it's an absolute fact that that computer spawned from the chaos. In an infinite cosmos, there are an infinite number of universes with an infinite number of variables. In one of them, is us, where computers randomly spawning from the aether is nonsensical... but there's another one out there where you can't take two steps without having to dodge a freshly spawned Macbook Pro.
You're viewing the universe as a place built specifically for you, and therefore seeing all this amazing 'fine tuning' to make it fit your needs, rather than yourself as the natural and logical product of that configuration.
The puddle takes the shape of the pothole, not vice versa.
No, I do not view this universe as a place specifically built for me. If it were such a place, there would also be at least a 50 to 1 girl to guy ratio on this planet. We'd also be able to exist in outer-space without instantly dying. I believe we are woefully underequipped to deal with the universe we have spawned into and it is full of tremendous suffering, misery, and death. This only serves to make it more miraculous that we are here.
It definitely looks to me as if we do not belong here, or have any right to be here.
I understand your puddle example and I can appreciate how you view the world.
But in my thoughts on puddles and potholes, we are not a part of that picture at all.
Nope, sorry. I have no idea what secular humanism proposes or teaches, I'm generally not that big into labels. I'd probably agree that life in itself doesn't hold any sort of 'value' you can measure. Again, you're delving in philosophy rather than science. As far as a philosophy of life goes, I'd say: Treat other people the way you'd like them to treat you, don't be an asshole (which goes back to a: ) and try to leave the world in a better state than you left it (which also goes back to a:, who wants to arrive to a mess?)
I've never argued that science teaches creeds on life. There must have been a disconnect at some point.
What I'm saying is that Secular Humanism teaches that life has no intrinsic purpose, meaning, or value.
As I have not been corrected on this, I think it is safe to say that we agree.
I'd say that's because morality is a completely subjective matter. It's based on your own personal conditioning to what is normal and what is not. I'd suggest most people would find the idea of a human sacrifice to be deeply objectionable and utterly immoral, yet to the Aztecs it was a noble and revered act of worship that people found great honour in. The morality of it is determined by those involved - it is subjective, not objective. So yeah, I'd be perfectly happy to say there is no objective moral truth. Morality is subjective by definition.
Yes, this is the secular humanistic stance. This stance is perhaps the most dangerous positive assertion the worldview makes.
My stance is that there are objective moral truths.
Intentionally torturing babies with intense physical pan for ones own entertainment, for example, will always be wrong, regardless of any cultural or environmental factors.
Have to say that that 'conservapedia' site (whose neutrality on the subject I'll take with a pinch of salt) references a single study. Here's another (emphasis mine):
Number one on that list of suicide rates is Lithuania. As someone with Lithuanian heritage, I can tell you it is a deeply catholic country. A quick check shows over 77% of the population identifies as Roman Catholic, and one of the notable tourist attractions it has is the 'Hill of Crosses', where people plant crosses to honour their dead. During the Russian occupation of the Soviet times, that hill was regularly bulldozed as part of the Russian efforts to stamp out the religious practices - the crosses were inevitably replaced overnight, and the russians eventually gave up on it. I'm not sure how he's drawing his conclusions there, but to me it would appear to fall at the first hurdle.
Not to diminish this one (I've seen suicides pretty close up, too), but what you've described doesn't really suggest his death was due to his athiesm, nor that it would have been avoided by religion. That's really not a conclusion you could form one way or the other. It may have helped him, it may not. Maybe any number of other things would have as well.
Oh I agree on all points.
There is no way to prove one way or the other.
I thought it was generally accepted science that there was a connection between depression and Atheism, but perhaps I was entirely wrong about that.
That makes sense.
I especially appreciated that study you linked.
No, not really what I meant if that's how it came across. I see religion as being a way of making sense of things we don't otherwise understand. It's the caveman witnessing a sunrise and trying to explain it, without any concept of a solar system or orbital mechanics. It's cowering from a thunderstorm without being able to understand thermodynamics and electricity. It's finding answers to fill in the blanks, that satisfy our curiosity. That's all I mean by "taking comfort" - it's providing some sort of working answer to a nagging and possibly disquieting question.
I totally get how you feel.
As I said (or.. maybe I edited it out? I've lost track), There's no reason religion and science need be in opposition. Science does not seek to give meaning for things, only what is and what is not. The only time they conflict is when science provides an answer to one of those 'caveman questions' which we've previously answered through religion, and the dogma is 'challenged'. In general though, at their fundamental levels, they are completely separate schools. I see religion as a form of philosophy - where we look to explain our human foibles.
And yet the notion strongly perpetuates that anyone religious despises science.
It is groanworthy to hear it every single time.
Correct. Now: Why does that 'causal agent' need to be intelligent? Why do you feel our universe need be 'designed'? In an infinite multiverse, our universe is just a single example, and we are the natural products of that example - as the same seed in a computer-generated 'random' number will always return the same result, we are the inevitable result of the same conditions that spawned our universe. No intelligence, no design, just mathematics.
Mathematics are not causal by nature.
Where did the timeline for the math to operate come from?
Where did the space for the math to operate within come from?
The moment you remove the word 'intelligent' or 'conscious' from the picture, you just squash the whole thing into drivel.
The reason that the universe is designed is because you can put a gorilla on a typewriter and it will never write the book Tom Sawyer...
I'd suggest that's a lot less to do with the content of the religions themselves, and a great deal more with the power of the institutions behind them. I'd say the Christian domination of Latin America has little to do with whether Jesus or Quezalcoatl had the more persuasive arguments, and a lot more to do with Spanish gunpowder.
Religion seeps deeply in the mind. Different religions have different effects. Religions are not all of equal or similar power.
Christians being sent to their death by lions in Rome would sing joyfully as they were being devoured. Vikings would run joyfully to their deaths in battle, knowing that dying in a fight would mean Valhalla for them. Religion just takes things to another level.
While I'm sure that they spread through physical and cultural means as an assisting factor, I believe there is another power element about religion that overshadows those things.
This is the bit we keep circling back to. You see design where there is none. Given the right 'seed', this is the only way our universe can exist. Change the seed just a little, and we're no longer who we are, we're now coloured purple, breathe liquid iron and are having this same discussion from our homes in the atmosphere of a gas giant - all of which are absolutely normal things - and in an infinite multiverse, exactly that is happening.
If you change the seed just a little, we're not colored purple, we are just dead, along with the rest of the universe.
The effect of recalibration in any significant degree yields either cataclysm or non-existence.
So what you're saying is that it's not intended for anyone other than the long-dead Corinthians to whom it was written?
No, I would never say that.
I'm saying that it was a letter written to people in Corinth, nothing more.
Corinth was a unique place with a lot of unique problems.
What I was saying is that it is effortless for someone to take things out of context if they so desire.
Then we should probably stop having people read it out every Sunday, then. If these teachings are no more than a product of their times as you suggest, then let them remain as that and stop trying to hold them up as some sort of universal truth.
I would not minimize the teachings in such a manner. I was suggesting the opposite, that people's reactions to them in 2020 are a product of the times.
Often, the things we read in history are highly relevant to today.
However, they need to be read through a history lens, putting the culture of the times in context, if we are to understand what they mean on any sort of level. If a new story from one week ago can be easily misunderstood, what do you think will happen if we treat 2000 year old stories recklessly?
Why would we stop teaching such valuable stories that have stood the test of time?
To make room for WAP twerking as a much higher priority?
Would you rather your daughter listen to "The Prodigal Son" or listen to "there's some whores in this house" on repeat?
Society today is so woefully underequipped to raise children.
All society mostly teaches is twerking, pursuit of fame, lust for money, and thirst for power.
The deeper meanings of the stories in religious books can help guide a child to make good life decisions for decades.
If you do not fill a child's head with life-enriching stories, they will find life-corrupting stories to take their place.