Is the human organism, intelligent engineering or an accident of the evolutionary process?

Question

Please explain your answer. If your are comfortable, please include you age. Just a little research.

Answer 1

I think it is a little bit of both -- an engineered accident. :) I am 14.

Answer 2

30.

It is an accident, but not a random accident. The human organism is the product of hundreds of millions of years of evolution. It is an accident in the sense that there is no intelligent force guiding evolution and there is no guarantee that human beings would exist if we were to wind back the clock and start the evolutionary process over from the very beginning.

However, it is not an accident in the way that creationists typically portray it. Everything that we are comes naturally from the world around us in an amazing progression. It's not as though there was some morning, a million years ago, where a chimpanzee gave birth to a human child. That scenario is utterly absurd and did not happen.

Answer 3

19

Yeah, I'd have to go with the latter answer, for any number of reasons that I don't necisarily feel like typing out since an answer of sufficient depth was provided already on the subject. So, since I don't feel like supporting my views, I shall attack other's views to give reason they are insufficient for me.

For one, why the hell would an intelligent being leave slowly changing bone records from before we were made? Boredom? Was he just revising the design for the dolphin when he made a doglike creature that swims that eventually changed into all aquatic mammals? Were bonobos a rough draft (99.4% or so of the same DNA as humans) that he left around? Why were we given such a crappy design?... I mean if the human eye is an inteligent designist example, why the hell didn't he design it to give me some infrared? And what about claws? Seriously, I mean why give us thumbs, then start giving out all the cool stuff right after like claws and horns, did he not love us enough? If we were special we should at least get our own unique skeletal structure, I mean sure, a new head and spine turned a different way are nice at first glance, but were we some super-creation in some creator's image, you'd think wouldn't have to steal a rib cage from fish...

Answer 4

I am 57 and a ethologist interested in canid behavior.
Intelligent engineering? We see no evidence of this and I have yet to see one peer reviewed paper that even intimates the " mechanisim " of this intelligent design. When you posit a intelligent designer as the answer to your design problem your explanation gives bigger explanitory problems explaning the intelligent design engnieer. There is not a scintila of evidence for this intelligent design engineer, except arguments from ignorance, from incredulity and god of the gap arguments.

An accident of evolution? You, by your phraseology, give yourself away as a proponet of ID/creationisim. Random chance mutations are not really accidents, as copying errors, at least, are going to happen. Not in any numerical order, though. We have a good estimation of random mutational rates, though. Then, there is natural selection; no accident that, not even random, but a natual process that incrementally stacks up benificial changes over time in a population of organisims. Intelligence arising in humans has several selective theories, including spandrel theories. For simplicity; I hold with the social interaction theories, They state that intelligency rose basicly because humans a social and have many complex interactions to track. They are persuasive of fellow humans and use subtrifuge to gain advantage. This is a very simplistic outline. Tool making, standing upright and a few other theories are extant. This is science; they all have explanotory power and may not be mutually exclusive. Religion, on the other hand, has no explanitory power worth two cents and is very exclusive of it's dispartate members.

Answer 5

First I am not a superstitious person.
In your terms an "accident".
64 male Canadian

If were an intelligent design .....this design is flawed.

I grew up with religion all around me.

I grew up asking questions and not being able to accept the answers. The more I was told about the great and powerful - loving invisible man in the sky - the proof was all around me it cannot be true.......my questions as the years passed grew more and more mature and the answers grew less and less mature. As I looked into various religions - the similarities were amazing - but always the same results for the believers.......KILL in the name of their particular religion. One thing that struck me always and I don't know why it continues to be a craw in my mind.........priests from various religions (especially Christianity) refer to their followers as "flocks" my minds eye sees sheep going to church. Just a low grade thought that always has me wondering if that was an inside joke between priests.....like lambs to the slaughter.

Oh well that's all I wish to say on this topic for tonight.

Answer 6

Since we cannot distinguish a process from an intelligently engineered process that is designed to seem accidental, the question isn't really answerable in strict terms.

What I can say is that it doesn't seem to add anything to the result if I choose either option, since both would appear the same and both would have the same consequences, that is, all that I see would be just as I see it.

So, it's better to dodge the question altogether and just keep on with whatever activity you are making progress with.

46

Answer 7

I'm 22, working on my PhD in Evolution and Paleontology, so I bet you can guess which side I fall in. I just feel that the evidence for evolution is incredibly compelling. The fossil record, though not perfect, is astoundingly complete and though there are omissions, everything that is there points towards evolution. Also, microevolution is so obvious on a small scale. It seems improbable that these mechanisms would arise post-creation.

Also, I think it makes more sense for humans and life to rise randomly in a dimly linear fashion over the past, say, 2 billion years by the processes of adaptation and selection than for God to arise alone, first, out of nowehere with NOTHING ELSE SHOWING UP and no precursors, after which he decided to make everything else. It just doesn't make sense to have that impossibly perfect being showing up out of nowhere first, and it has always seemed inconsistent to me that people can believe God was just there, and not that evolution could work.

Answer 8

Little of both

You look at the human anatomy and it's crazy. Learning about the body systems, it's so complex, the sequence that events must occur in, yet it all seems to keep itself organized.

And then.. well

Whats the best thing we ever did? Stand up of course!

Answer 9

30
no mater how much we humans discuss evolution/creation theories
were never gonna come up with an answer that pleases everyone ...
it doesnt matter if you give people scientific prouf right in front of their eyes... they'll always beleve whatever they want... like
men coming from out of nowhere... from sand or dirt...

i mean:
god is all knowing, all powerfull,
were we really made in his image?
yet he made us
slower than sheetas
we cant fly like the eagle and have their telescopic vission
we are not as strong as a bear.. and we cant breathe under water..

Answer 10

If there is intelligent design, then how do you explain so many defects found in humans? Deformity, mental illness, hereditary disorders?