Intelligent Design?

Question

"Intelligent Design suspects that there is an outside source that created or designed the universe." Who or what is the designer of the universe? Is the answer to this question part of the empirical evidence that is necessary to prove Intelligent design as a scientific theory? To what degree is it important to answer this question? Is it possible to simply accept that the Universe exhibits examples of design and intelligence in its design without going to the next step of hypothesizing a theory that this means that there is a designer?

Answer 1

I believe most humans would like to believe in an intelligent design of our Universe. Perhaps the designer is not necessarily a "who or what." In order to grasp the concept of our, "designer," we need to allow our perspectives to expand infinitely, as does our Universe. There are some incredible balancing acts taking place in order to allow life to exist. Human experiences and intuitions also account for something. If we are intelligent beings, it is egocentric to think that we are the only intelligent beings in the Universe. I also believe we are overly confident in our ability to perceive every angle of existence and experience. There are so many different elements in existence that our bodies have not developed sensory organs for. Certain sound waves we don't hear, x-rays we don't see, electrical impulses we don't sense, so on and so forth. We know they exist, and we can detect them with devices we have created, but how many others are there? Unfortunately, what we know as science, has a narrow set of parameters. I don't believe traditional scientists are going to be able to accept intelligent design as a legitimate theory with our standard forms of measurement. I enjoy science, but I feel it has it's limitations. I prefer to consider other possibilities to develop my overall perspective. Therefore, I believe it is absolutely possible to accept that the Universe exhibits examples of design and intelligence!

Answer 2

Accepting intelligent design is not necessary for realizing that there is some sort of design to the universe (like rotation caused by gravitational pulls for example...) It took human beings a long time to realize that almost everything is tied together by math, and if not math then by some sort of science. I doubt in creating the universe that some higher being had thought about all the complexities that make up the universe. At best something gave the universve the "little push" to get it going, and let everything else be(i still find it hard to comprehend what caused the big bang, even with my relatively minimal college education in astronomy...). Personally I don't think god created man, but I do believe there is some interconnecting force between us all (probably energy, science, similarities, or some combination of the three and much more...) I dont pretend to understand it all or have an answer to explain it all, I accept and love it as is and don't need some superficial explanation to do so.... but some people want or need this, and to each their own, right? No need to criticize or question others believes let them accept it and accept them for it.

Answer 3

Intelligence is as intelligence does. ( that just popped into my head ... haha)

I thought this out slowly so you might want to read it that way too.

Well, as I see it, there is intelligence in everything. If you pick up a rock, you could say that it has intelligence......... it has enough intelligence to be what it is, a rock.
Then the same would hold true for a plant, it has enough intelligence to do what it needs to do to survive and procreate with it's like kind.
Animals do likewise.
This intelligence also includes operating within the systems of degeneration and regeneration that get carried out. This pretty much covers life on Earth.
Think then, about what kind of intelligence it takes to be a Planet, a solar system, and then a galaxy.
A Universe.
From this point of view, which I hold for myself and do not expect anyone else to accept, one can see that there is intelligence in the universe,but that it is not something that is external to the person, place or thing that holds it. Somehow or other mankind has developed the idea that that which created this is something outside of it, something that watches from the outside.
I don't agree. As I see it, the Designer and the Designed, the Creator and the Created, are one and the same thing, it's purpose for doing this .............having the ultimate experience of creation.

Answer 4

intelligent design (and scientific creationism) fails because it tries to solve the problem of complexity by positing complexity. Your last question (above) implies this. If complexity must be explained, then it does not matter whether it is the complexity of an eye or of god. If complexity requires an explanation, then the simplest answer will always be the most desirable. And it will always be a simpler answer to hypothesize complexity without an even more complex creator. I would say in answer to that question that it is not only possible to accept "examples" of design and intelligence without postulating intelligence, it is necessary unless you are going to contradict yourself. If the complexity of the eye requires a creator, then the complexity of god must require a creator even more so. In its essence the argument from design reduces to some form of the ontological argument (which claims that god is necessary.) The argument from design, without the ontological argument, is simply absurd. And all of this is totally assuming that the complexities in nature cannot be explained by simple phenomenon.

If you understand this then you will understand that no degree of empirical evidence will support intelligent design. This is because any evidence of intelligent design will posit a greater degree of complexity than the evidence itself - if a complex eye must be explained, but cannot be accounted for by simple, naturalistic processes, it will not be evidence of an even greater degree of complexity. In other words if complexity is the problem that scientific investigation must solve, greater complexity cannot be the answer. It will be more scientifically valid to always assume that that eye came together at random (which, i should probably add, is not what evolution claims.)

So no amount of empirical evidence will ever be sufficient to establish intelligent design. This means that the answer to your first question is fundamentally not scientific, and the answer to your third question is that scientifically this question is not important at all.

Answer 5

I have a problem with the notion of intelligent design, sometimes known as the Problem of Evil: If there is such a thing as an author of ID--an intelligent designer--what are we to make of the many instances in which there is either nothing to indicate what the design is, or there're signs of bad, even evil, design? There are times--we seem to be having many, many of them these days--when I think the designer, if there be one, is simply incompetent--maliciously so--and should be called to account.

There's one answer I tend to lean toward: There is an all powerful, but all evil, Designer, who put a little good into his, her or its design to torture the sensitive.

As you can see, I wind up with more questions than answers. It's what philosophers are famous for. Or is it infamous?

Answer 6

These theories are so laughable.

The same evidence can be used to demonstrate that life on Earth is a failed science experiment by some advanced being long ago. The same way that a scientist might leave bacteria to proliferate in a petrie dish with a growing medium.

The same evidence can be used to support a theory that we are a freak of nature that shouldn't have happened but did. In the same way that the discovery of penicillin was accidentally found in mould.

What our species is willing to delude ourselves about is quite fascinating.

Answer 7

Things are together for a purpose. Slight disfiguration or deviations will dysfunction the objective of its creation. Looking at the jigsaw of a beautiful portrait has insight that things do not just exist, but connections that serve a completeness.

Answer 8

Even if we were to accept for a second that there is intelligent design where is the intelligence about it?

Answer 9

Its really fun and wonderful to wander around in the fields of intellect now and then, but look what's being missed in the process and look what most people step in while doing it!!! A lot of time is wasted on such things.... but then again its "your" time. Good luck.

Answer 10

You make me think of a microbe who has no apparatus to discover anything more than a microbe might, about its surroundings. The microbe in point doesn't have the apparatus to worry about it as much, though.