Your favourite Sci-Fi contrivances

Yes, this is correct. Creationism assumes that the creation account of Genesis is literally true and rejects all scientific findings to the contrary (such as radiometric dating); it says the intelligent designer is the God of the Bible. Intelligent design is a minimal commitment to the idea of the existence of a mind behind the existence of the universe, nothing more.

 

I get that, but it's like saying "a difference without much difference." Would you say the same about the theories of Evolution and Natural Selection? Actually I'm not sure if those are even different, I know there are some slightly different theories, but not sure what they're called.

 

yes it is exactly the same, but to someone without critical thinking skills one sounds smart and the other silly.

either way, distinction without a difference is a fairly common phrase in english

 

I'm well aware of that. I was trying to point out the irony that you were doing the same because you're unaware of the fine distinctions involved here. You had essentially just implied that Creationism and Intelligent Design are synonyms. But perhaps I was tying to be too clever.

 

That makes sense to me, but that is not what you led with.

This suggest that creationism is completely separate from intelligent design, not a subset of. And while I will admit a degree of ignorance on the subject, I have never heard of empirical evidence that suggests a creator.

 

Well as an agnostic, they do sound pretty much the same to me.

 

We're just arguing over semantics now.

 

Isn’t that what I led with? Lol

 

I question the intelligence aspect of anyone who would combine waste disposal with recreation.

 

The way I see it, 'Intelligent Design' is merely an unscientific argument in support of 'Creationism' - i.e. how could complex biology, such as the eye, arise naturally?
Of course, the discovery of evolution has put paid to that idea. But evolution alone does not rule out a 'Creator'.

And 'Creationism' is not limited to the God of the Bible - all the religions of the world have their creation stories...

 

If you’re interested in learning more, this page (a bit long, but worth reading if only to understand how people who subscribe to this theory think) outlines some of the arguments: https://www.discovery.org/a/sixfold-evidence-for-intelligent-design/

But I usually just explain it to people by saying that when an archaeologist finds a stone tool in a cave, he sees it as proof that some kind of intelligence made it, and a living cell is far more complex than a stone tool—people without machines can design a stone tool, but even the world’s top biologists can’t design a living cell. No one calls it unscientific when the archaeologist says someone must have designed the stone tool, even though he can’t prove it by experimentation.

Again, this is not committing to any particular religion or even that this intelligence behind life, the universe, and everything is anything in particular, just that one exists. Just like the archaeologist is not committing to any idea of who designed the stone tool, only that such a being has existed at some point.

Creationism, on the other hand, assumes, with no evidence other than the religious writings of one particular religion (in the United States, usually the Christian Bible), that the religion’s creation story is true. While all creationists believe in intelligent design, it’s a completely different methodology. When creationists use science to support their idea, it’s largely about shooting down evolutionary theory rather than proving that the Bible or any other religious text is true and without error (which can’t be proven or disproven by the scientific method). Evolution doesn’t disprove God; if both exist, then it just means God made evolution. Creationism is a religious interpretation, not a scientific theory.

I hope all this makes sense.

 

An analogy is only as good as the two things being compared are alike. The archaeologist’s conclusions and intelligent design are not very similar. The archaeologist has plenty of direct evidence of creation of various tools by hominids over many thousands of years. The adherent of intelligent design has no scientific evidence whatever to support the leap to some kind of intelligent designer for life. There is simply nothing scientific about intelligent design.

 

It seems this thread has been derailed onto a tangent.

 

You assert your conclusion and assume the rest of us see it as self-evident. Can you elaborate? In other words, what evidence does the archaeologist have that the believer in intelligent design doesn’t?

 

I guess we should get back on track… the point I originally made was, I think people use numbers way too high for the Drake equation. I notice that people who are quick to say there’s no evidence for intelligent design aren’t giving the idea of extraterrestrial life the same scrutiny. I have already brought up arguments to support my idea, but I have yet to see anything that points to numbers for the Drake equation that would allow for many extraterrestrial civilizations in our galaxy.

 

Open a thread in the debate room and the conversation can proceed there. I find it interesting, if entered into in good faith.

 

Those two only seemed to be conflicting with each other because of our inherent limit in scope of observation.

Fermi paradox assumes that we, as a very limited observer, knows all possible conclusive evidences of intelligent life out there (and possesses all means to measure or otherwise recognize them).
Drake's equation, in a similar manner, assumes that the parameters being used to estimate possible worlds with communicative civilizations are correct and sufficient to do so.

In short, the way to resolve it is to assume limitations in human ability.

 

I haven't watched this from beginning to end, but what I've watched was pretty good on the topic. I agree this should probably be broken into a different thread.

 

An interesting video. He makes a valid point about the lack of evidence. But he seemed to be dismissive in the section on chemistry. He completely skipped any discussion of exoplanets in the goldilocks zone. The other thing that stood out were several references to an academic paper he wrote, which made me wonder if the video might be a sales pitch for his paper.

 

A surprisingly persuasive argument

I’ve been thinking about this and trying to find a way to articulate my thoughts. One of the items from the article:

The following gives a sense of the degree of fine-tuning that must go into some of these values to yield a life-friendly universe:​

• Gravitational constant: 1 part in 10^34

​

What I am going to say is to refute the idea that these constants are set at such an unlikely value as to suggest intelligent design. I am going to suggest some things that may sound overly provocative, but I encourage open minds here.

I feel sometimes people mistake an abstraction of something for the thing itself. When the thing in question is observable and tangible, maybe less so. No one mistakes a picture of an apple for an actual apple; no one mistakes blueprints for a building. But when the thing is unobservable or not tangible in the same way as a physical object, I think we are more likely to treat the abstraction as a real thing.

Sometimes we even go so far as to mistake tools of abstraction as real things. Take numbers. Numbers don’t actually exist. You can’t pick them off a tree or dig one up from the earth. They literally only exist in our minds and as glyphs on paper or electronic machines. But this purely imaginary construct has cured many diseases, split the atom, enabled modern economies, built skyscrapers, and put men on the moon.

Gravity is in between numbers and apples. We can observe it, but for the most part it is invisible to us. So I think it is easy to confuse the abstraction of gravity (G*m1*m2/(r^2)) with actual gravity (the attraction between massive objects).

So when these people say “the universal gravitational constant is 6.6743 × 10-11 m3 kg-1 s-2, and even a tiny deviation from that value would render the observable universe impossible” I think they are making the same mistake.

there is no universal gravitational constant. That is merely part of an abstraction, a tool to help us define and measure and model and predict. So saying its value is unlikely is a nonsensical statement.

 

You assert this, but you haven’t given anything that proves that this is true. I think we should stick to the facts in this case rather than assumptions. You found the stone-tool argument “surprisingly persuasive” (and I’m glad you did); if we find one item that decides the issue definitively in favor of one side or the other, then we don’t need to bother with other arguments.

 

Here’s an idea, you prove it does exist. Take a picture of it and post it here.

that is the dumbest thing I ever heard, and a sure fire road to confirmation bias.

 

Or we discuss provable things if you’re more comfortable with that.

There are hundreds of proofs of the Pythagorean Theorem. If I show you one, and you agree that it proves the Pythagorean Theorem, do you really need me to walk you through all the others before you’ll believe it? That’s what I mean. I’m not sure what you thought I was saying.