Why or why not should you/you should believe in Intelligent Design?

Question

Just curious, and looking for a good answer

Answer 1

you should believe in intelligent design because if you think about it, the chances that the world and all of the diverse animal and plant life just "happened" are sooooooooo slim, it's pretty much impossible. an interesting book on the subject is "the evolution of a creationist". very fascinating...

another thing to think about- how can something come from nothing? scientists have tried to make something from nothing, and they have been unsuccessful.

Answer 2

You should not, because:

(A) It doesn't explain anything. It basically says "a deity did it -- just accept it." Talk about an unsatisfying answer.

(B) It's unprovable, untestable, and unobservable... unlike evolution. ("Just look around you!" isn't an observation, nor does it prove ID)

(C) When it comes down to it, the theory doesn't even make any sense. It claims that life is so complex that it must have been "created" by a "creator", but there are so many imperfections in life all over the world that would lead any normal person to believe that it WASN'T designed. Look at flightless birds. Junk DNA. The pointless existence of the appendix in human beings. And also, the countless species of animals that have gone extinct. It would only lead you to believe that either life wasn't designed, or it was designed very, very, very poorly.

(D) ID doesn't even give you the specifics of WHICH god did the designing. ID can only tell you that life was "designed." But by who? If the complexity of life really proves that life was designed, a Muslim could look at that same evidence and say, "Yep, Allah did it!" Someone believing in the Greek gods could look at that and say, "Yep, Zeus did it!" (I admit that this argument doesn't disprove the theory; I'm just saying that it's unfair to say that the Christian God obviously did the creating, because ID leaves the door open to other gods as well.)

(E) The entire scientific community supports evolution. Virtually all prominent non-Christian scientists condemn Intelligent Design. If ID was a worthwhile scientific topic, why don't more independent scientists without a religious affiliation give it any credit? That should tell you something.

Answer 3

Concerning the debate going on about intelligent design and evolution: is it possible that the final answer about which of these two seemingly opposite ideas is correct could simply be yes?

With one position firmly held by the believers and the other just as fearlessly defended by the non-believers, if you happen to be in a position somewhere near the middle, it does not look all that complex. From this position, you wonder why either-or has to be the answer.

If you believe that some higher being created the universe by intelligent design, what more elegant and intelligent design could there have been than a self-regulating system that continually checks its own errors and makes its own corrections in mid-stream as an integral part of the process.

This all seems quite logical to me although it probably won’t satisfy the believers because they are afraid to see any truth other than the one they have been told to believe in. Inversely it certainly won’t satisfy the non-believers because it leaves them stuck with a god that they are so obviously terrified of.

To sum up this view from the center, it might be most easily be explained by saying perhaps the designer was intelligent. Problem is, the designer was likely so intelligent that those seeking to prove that it is intelligently designed may be incapable of ever understand it well enough to see it for the elegant self regulating design that it has always been.

The nonbelievers will be similarly handicapped due to the internal terror the have about the idea that there may be a God. Neither side being able to leave their entrenched position for fear they may have to admit they were wrong. While the rest of us stand by trying to figure out what all the fuss is about. Personally I don’t think anyone is wrong, I just feel both sides are about half right.

Love and blessings
don

Answer 4

It would take a long paper to give you an in depth answer but maybe this simple cliche answer will suffice. If the Mars rover found a wrist watch on the surface of Mars no one would think that it came to be there from random chance. They would conclude that an intelligent being had constructed it and left it there. A single living cell is far more complex than a wrist watch. Multiply that by all of the complex biological "machines" that make up even a simple animal and the idea that there is a designer behind it seems rational.

Someone might say, "Yeah but a wrist watch on Mars is totally different. We know where a watch comes from and if it was on a planet like Mars with no natural environmental cause for it...."

That argument shows the presuppositions that evolutionists bring to the table to support their theory. Because we live here on Earth and we are so used to seeing living organisms all around us and we ourselves are living beings we take it for granted. But say that you had never heard of the theory of evolution and you were just some cosmic entity floating all alone through the space time continuum. You pass a planet with all sorts of complex creatures on it after having seen billions and billions of other life less orbs. You are probably going to wonder what created those beings and why that planet is so different. You aren't going to think that this is some "magical" planet where the laws of chance got so skewed that all of these plants and animals just "happened" to spring up out of the sea or the soil.

Answer 5

You should believe in intelligent design because the sun, the moon , and the heavens were created before man was even here. That same one Sun, has been there to warm us and all the people before us. It rises every morning, and sets every evening. Like clockwork. Sundials were the first clocks! They used the Sun to tell what time it was! It is a flaming ball of fire that hasn't burned out yet. I'd be curious to see some primordial ooze try to put it there without being fried to a crisp.

The moon has been there about as long as the sun, and there is only one of it too. The moon controls our tides here on earth. The tides also come in and go out like clockwork. This was the act of someone who knew cause and effect extremely well. Only someone of exceptional intelligence in the highest order, could have planned this, to continue until the earth ceases to exist.

Another fact is that both the sun and the moon are perfectly shaped single spheres, just like Earth. I'd love to see how either of them could have possibly evolved and got more power. From what? The big bang? Millions of years of astrodust formed two, no, at least three, perfect spheres? And that primordial ooze was intelligent enough to shape perfectly rounded spheres that control the day and night and tides and plantlife and ALL life for that matter. That theory just doesn't hold water. But guess what? The Earth, or as it is called, The Blue Planet, (because of all the water), does! I wonder how the big bang knew just the right sphere to put the water in? Coincedence? I don't think so.

Also, I find it really interesting that not only is the Earth mostly comprised of water, but so are we humans! Sounds like a devine plan for the continuation of life on Earth to me. Seems like we were made for Earth, or Earth was made for us. It was an intelligently designed plan. So we are supposed to believe that this all is just a coincedence, and we just evolved over time, and appeared. Okay, since the age old question was, Which came first, the chicken or the egg? We should now update it to, Which came first? Man or woman? Or, how about, Which came first? Mother or child?

And finally, since scientists are proposing that man evolved from primates, wouldn't we then have the same most common blood type?
The most common blood type for humans is O.
The most common blood type for apes is B.
The most common blood type for chimps is A.
In apes and chimps, there is almost no occurrance of O!
This proves that man could not have possibly come from primates. Check this out with the national blood bank.

Answer 6

The universe is far too complex to have been intelligently designed. Design processes can result in relatively simple things, but just look around you - where is design the source of anything as complex as even a single life form, let alone an entire ecosystem?

Imagine yourself walking along a beach, and suddenly you see a watch laying in the sand. The watch -a relatively simple device - is obviously the product of a designer, while the sand, and seaweed and seagulls and the like all around are FAR too complex to also be the product of intelligent design. All of that stuff must be the product of a natural, nonintentional process.

Answer 7

The universe is so complex, just look at the different animal and plant lifeforms , that we still don't know everything about anything. Even most scientists now agree that a single cell organism has a lot of amazing abilities. We even improve our technology by copying nature. If we came upon a statue, we wouldn't assume that the rain and wind had formed it by blowing on rock and sand. Likewise, the earth and everything on it are so both beautiful and functional, that a designer had to be responsible for it.

Answer 8

For your question, you should. Why live and obey rules and regulations if you will only exist for a few years??? Would it not be more exciting to just live reckless??

Intelligent Design would dictate order, and laws, since there are many types of laws from physics to human hygiene that is stated in the bible, then a person has to think gee if i go against any so called law that i did not even want to obey like gravity would there be a consequence? Of course nobody has to be a Dee Dee Dee......Therefore you should, someone had to make all this up... since when has your room ever cleaned itself.. the only big bang is a kids parent belting ya.

Answer 9

If man came from monkeys and monkeys from other smaller species, they would still be doing it. Evolution is a fact, but only following creation of Intelligent Design. Today, we have species die off and new ones formed all the time from cross breeding, but nothing today becomes human with a human mind. People tend to group together and inbreed. They come up with the likeness of one another in a single area as they intermingle. No new humans show up born of something else, though.

Answer 10

If you haven't seen the movie "The Privileged Planet", you are missing out.

Way cool, and wow are these rocket scientists smart...

They gave the best scientific, non-religious answers I've ever heard.



The PRIVILEGED PLANET
A 60 minute video documentary

There is an opinion, common among scientists and intellectuals, that our Earthly existence is not only rather ordinary, but in fact, insignificant and purposeless. The late astronomer Carl Sagan typifies this view in his book "Pale Blue Dot":

Because of the reflection of sunlight the Earth seems to be sitting in a beam of light, as if there were some special significance to this small world. But it’s just an accident of geometry and optics.


Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.


But perhaps this melancholy assumption, despite its heroic pretense, is mistaken. Perhaps the unprecedented scientific knowledge acquired in the last century, enabled by equally unprecedented technological achievements, should, when properly interpreted, contribute to a deeper appreciation of our place in the cosmos.


In this 60-minute video documentary we will explore a striking feature of the natural world. A feature as widely grounded in the evidence of nature as it is wide-ranging in its implications: the conditions that allow for intelligent life on Earth also make it strangely well suited for viewing and analyzing the universe.


The fact that our atmosphere is clear; that our moon is just the right size and distance from Earth, and that its gravity stabilizes the Earth’s rotation; that our position in our galaxy is just so; that our sun is its precise mass and composition: all of these factors (and many more), are not only necessary for Earth’s habitability; they also have been surprisingly crucial for scientists to measure and make discoveries about the universe.


Mankind is unusually well positioned to decipher the cosmos. To put it more technically, “measurability” seems to correlate with habitability.

But is this correlation between the existence of complex life and our ability to make scientific discoveries simply a coincidence or the result of blind chance? Or does it point to a deeper explanation? The Privileged Planet will examine these questions in a remarkable search for evidence of design and purpose within the universe.

Utilizing stunning computer animation and the visual archives of NASA, the Hubble Space Telescope Institute, the European Space Agency, and leading observatories throughout the world, the program will present a spectacular view of our planet, galaxy, and the entire cosmos.



Review of The Privileged Planet

By: Staff
Science & Theology News
January 15, 2005


The Privileged Planet.
Guillermo Gonzalez and Jay W. Richards.
Washington, D.C. Regnery Publishing Inc., 2004.
446 pages. $27.95 hardcover.

Do we owe our existence on Earth to chance or design? Do we occupy a privileged spot in space and time, primed for life and discovery?

Astronomer Guillermo Gonzalez and philosopher/theologian Jay W. Richards firmly stand in the design camp. In The Privileged Planet, the authors have produced a comprehensive, richly illustrated and heavily notated book.

Gonzalez and Richards counter the prevailing notion among scientists that Earth is merely an average rocky planet revolving around an ordinary star on the outskirts of an undistinguished galaxy. The authors present evidence that suggests life in the cosmos is a rarity due to a variety of prerequisite conditions, such as the unique properties of water, the peculiarities of the Earth-moon system, the sheltering effects of Jupiter and Saturn, and the fine-tuned nature of the universe. The authors maintain that these same conditions allow mankind's significant discovery of the structure of physical laws and the universe. The appendices examine a revised Drake Equation and tackle the idea of "panspermia" - the seeding of life on Earth.