Is the argument between Evolution and Intelligent Design valid?

Question

Is the argument between Evolution and Intelligent Design valid, i.e. are the foundations of each so different that the argument is really about something else, such as the existence of God? Is there adequate scientific theory behind each? What do you think?

Answer 1

i don't know... but i don't believe in evolution. i'm a human, not a monkey of some sort. all i know is that God exists.

the thing is, if humans evolved from monkeys, monkeys should be extinct by now because all of them became humans.
don't tell me that not all of the monkeys didn't evolve. all of them has to evolve, they have to adapt to their surroundings or they'll die(and i think that's one reason why monkeys should be extinct by now. if they didn't evolve, they would die or the monkeys who became humans will kill them for food and it will contribute to their loss.).

so yeah, i guess i don't believe in that stuff...(=

Answer 2

I think there is less to the debate than what you may guess by watching the news. The word 'theory' gets thrown around a lot and I think much of the misunderstanding is due to the difference between what the public feels that word means and what science thinks it means.

In science a theory is a proposed framework for understanding some phenomenon. It seeks to explain the mechanism behind the observable qualities of the subject.

The popular meaning is closer to a "guess."

When science says that evolution is a theory and that it isn't proven, they really mean something more along the lines of: the basic mechanism of evolution, the inheritance of traits, and the greater likelihood of an organism to pass on highly adaptive traits, are well established. Science is working on small little bits that won't change that overall picture.

Most of the Intelligent Design movement has an interest in undermining the basic veracity of evolution in order to open the way for teaching a religion-based science curriculum.

Answer 3

No, no, no, and NO! Intelligent design is not evea a theory technically. Do some reasearch on what a theory actually is. Evolution has been verified and support by overwhelming evidence. Evolution is as much a fact as is the fact that green plants use photosynthesis. We don't have ALL the details sewn up on either evolution, photosynthesis, or how our minds operate for that matter. But it Does NOT mean that psychology is all wrong, or that evolution is wrong. We don't have all the answers to all mathematical issues, but I doubt if anyone would say that mathematics is invalid simply because we don't know it all, Yet!

Check out the recent news story on the evolution of finches on the galapogas islands. We actually do see evolution IN PROGRESS there!
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WASHINGTON - Finches on the Galapagos Islands that inspired Charles Darwin to develop the concept of evolution are now helping confirm it — by evolving.

A medium sized species of Darwin's finch has evolved a smaller beak to take advantage of different seeds just two decades after the arrival of a larger rival for its original food source.

The altered beak size shows that species competing for food can undergo evolutionary change, said Peter Grant of Princeton University, lead author of the report appearing in Friday's issue of the journal Science.
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Answer 4

Darwin’s Origin of Species offers a straightforward theory regarding speciation (i.e. a scientific explanation for the diversity of species) called the theory of natural selection. This is not a theory regarding the origin of life. Natural selection does not address the origin of the universe. It is not a cosmological concept. It is not the same as the philosophy of naturalism, which proclaims the physical to be the totality of existence. The Theory of Natural Selection in its present form accounts for the origination of new species from common ancestral forms by the repeated process of “genetic mutation, natural selection (with regard to Malthusian principles), and hereditary transmission, whereby the frequencies of newly altered, repeated, and old genes in a given lineage can cross ecological, structural, and behavioral thresholds that radically separate one species from another” (Gould, S.J., Wonderful Life, 1989). In one sense, this can be summed up in a syllogism, which must be true if we make the basic and essential act of faith that logic itself is true: survivors survive. Given enough time, variation among the genes of individuals, variations in habitat in space and time, the process by which genes translate into proteins, tissues, and organs, and the thresholds that define biological species, all of which can be observationally verified, the principle of the “survivors survive” syllogism must bring about a huge branching of different kinds of life. Evolution is the physical phenomena that the theory on Natural Selection is attempting to explain.

Then there is the tautology, “Intelligent Design holds that life had to have been created by an intelligent force [a superhuman controlling power] because it is too complex to have happened otherwise.” (Evolution: A Theory in Crisis, M. Denton, 1985). Or this: “The leading scientists and scholars researching and advancing the theory define Intelligent Design as: [sic] The theory of intelligent design holds that certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause, not an undirected process such as natural selection. Intelligent Design theory does not claim that science can determine the identity of the intelligent cause.” Discovery Institute web site (“Discovery Institute is the leading think-tank researching intelligent design”).

A theory ties things together. It explains and predicts. Intelligent Design does neither. It doesn’t explain why part of our history seems intelligently designed and part of it doesn’t. Why are our feet and our back muscles poorly designed for walking? Why are we afflicted by lethal viruses? Why have so many females died in childbirth? ID doesn’t explain these things. It just shrugs at them. “Design theory seeks to show, based on scientific evidence, that some features of living things may be designed by a mind or some form of intelligence,” says Michael Behe, an ID proponent. Some? May? Some? What kind of theory is that?

Answer 5

Once again, you capitalize "God" while writing in English. That suggests a connotative assumption that I cannot address given the information contained within your question.

Nevertheless, I am comfortable suggesting that science is founded in the concept of obtaining reproducible results. Does religion? Probably not, though I honestly cannot purport to be an expert in the "results" of the actions of any god or God, since I (barely ;-) am not an entity of such caliber.

Let's see a god or God do that design thing again, and maybe then we can talk about scientific theory.

If God was perfect, after all, why would he need to fool us or repeat himself?

Answer 6

High five to you smiling4ever you really gave a very elegant exhaustive analysis challenging the so called theories of evolution. This so called idea of evolution was used to promote Social Darwinism in which hundreds of people were unlawfully sterilized and murdered. Studies of microbiology and very basic theories of Physics do not support the idea of chromosomes in complex organisms being able to change to favorably survive in a hostile environment. Back then, Darwin and associates were tripping around on the wooden beagle boat, postulating lineage based on phenotypes. Since then science has proven that appearance does not necessarily correspond to classification. There could be another explanation for the people who are purported to have preceded Man, e.g.; Homo ergaster, Homo erectus, Homo neanderthalensis, etc. Perhaps these were people who took on a difference of appearance due to isolation and consanguinity. When you have an isolated population without ways to bring in new genes into the pool, there is a possibility for mutations that significantly change the characteristics of an organism genotypically and phenotypically. Perhaps these people started out as man as we know it now and changed in appearance due to gene variations.

Answer 7

No. Evolution isn't concerned with god only reasonable explanations. Is multiple drug resistant TB intelligently designed by a caring god, or did it evolve naturally? Evolution is empirical and can be disproved whereas ID cannot. ID is more of a philosophy that helps some theologians reconcile their beliefs with modern science.

There is no adequate science behind ID because it cannot offer any experimental evidence.

Answer 8

Evolution is qualified as a theory of science. Intelligent Design is the theology of the religious. You would think that it was an argument about God, but it is not an argument about God. Quite contrary, it is about an argument between man. Man is not quite mature enough to understand this world. As he has always postulated God in his ignorance, he would seem to be religious and holy to me and my friends. However, I am a holy too. But, I do not beleive that God exists.

Answer 9

No, intelligent design is a Trojan horse filled with creationists who can't agree with each other, except in their theologically based denial of biological evolution.

There is no central theory of intelligent design. One proponent may say that life is only 6000 years old while another will stick with the scientific age for the origin of life. One may say that other living things evolved over billions of years but that humans were created, as is, in the not too distant past. There is no mutually agreed upon time-line of natural history.

Answer 10

i would venture that it is a valid argument. based at the very least on the Anthropic Principle.-->The Anthropic Principle says that the seemingly arbitrary and unrelated constants in physics have one strange thing in common--these are precisely the values you need if you want to have a universe capable of producing life. This alone is enough to begin the questioning. Further,the ability of H2,NH3,and CH4 to form simple organic compounds such as glycine,alanine...etc AMINO ACIDS, which are able to polymerize "become linked in a chain" with other amino acids. in a nutshell,the chemistry allowed resulting from from this principle seems to suggest a chemical desire to assemble into living systems having order and the ability to create comlex structure as well as intelligent behavour. Together,these interesting little tidbits are BEGGING the argument to begin. Our exsistance has the appearance of being DETERMINED. So how? why? and by whom?

Answer 11

Actually NO. Neither side has the fundamental answer.
Evolutionalists cannot answer "where and how" did the big bang come from. How was the nearly infinite energy/mass in nearly infinitely small space form and where and how did it come to exist.
Theologians cannot answer where did God come from. Who created God. If he made everything in the universe, where is he. Ah!, universe is the God's physical body and his soul/intelligence makes things happen (i.e. creation of human species). Oh my God, what if Da Vinci Code is real...Jesus was a plain human Jew with great wisdom, sort of like Einstein but a genius in philosophy and ethics, spirituality. There goes mysticism out the window.