Do you believe in intelligent design?

Question

I'm curious of what you think.

Answer 1

NO.

How intelligent was it to design knees the way they are? Even when they work right, they hurt.

How intelligent was it to design a back with three curves, which generate back pain sooner or later?

How intelligent was it to design man as a mammal? It would have been a lot less painful to keep man a marsupial.

How intelligent was it to leave in the appendix? It serves no purpose and kills people when it gets infected.

How intelligent was it to allow recessive genetic diseases?

If this is all intelligent design, then I would say we got a pretty stupid creator doing the design.

But if he just started life with a single speck of life, knowing it was going to evolve in all kinds of ways, well that is pretty intelligent.

Answer 2

I like to think of it as Snake Oil 2.0.

The introduction of intelligent design was an excellent example of the more troubling problems of the elementary and secondary educational problems in this country.

I think that the concept of intelligent design should now and forever be brought up in science classrooms for children to learn especially when you are introducing the basic scientific principle.

The reason I think this, is that primarily the intelligent design theory fails several of the basic requirements for scientific principle vs. speculative fantasy , superstition or intelligent design.

Science is an imperfect mechanism but it is the only one that humans have invented for explaining in a rational way how things happen in the world around us.

One of the primary requirements for science is that if you think something is so, you should be able to have someone else come along and replicate the experiment. Essentially be able to PROVE to their own satisfaction that what you are stating is a fact.

Every theory in science works this way, whether it's the theory of gravity or the theory of relativity, the theories surrounding stellar spectroscopy and even evolution. They can be tested, and shown to have repeatable results over time.

We cannot do this with intelligent design, specifically because operative argument with the intelligent design movement invokes the ultimate unprovable circumstance, were humans or any other life-forms "created" or altered or whatever by a creator or intelligent designer.

This is literally to suggest to children or to many adults for that matter, that while there may be a mechanism for the underlying system that we are observing.

Intelligent design simply states that it is unimportant that we invest in understanding what that mechanism is, we should simply be uninterested and unwilling to understand or endeavour TO understand what that mechanism is , we simply suggest that that someone else did it.

I suggest we rename the intelligent design theory to the very lazy thinkers theory. Don't study how this complicated thing works, just assume somebody (and we're too not sure who that person is either) at some point in the distant past did it and move along.

This is not just intellectually lazy or a receipe for disaster for our future national, industrial or scientific interests, but it harms children directly and particularly, for it is meant to dull whatever sense of curiosity may exist, in the children exposed to it. It literally says "don't worry that's too complicated for us to understand".

So it sells the our species short altogether on the one thing which truly separates us from other animals , our drive for curiosity and ability to innovate.

It certainly shows no possible respect or concern for the values or beliefs of good Christians or any considerations for the invaluable philosophical and scientific contributions of members of the church both today and in the past. Many Christians have been unfortunately misled into believing this farce of a debate furthers their interests when in fact it denigrates them and their beliefs since it does not espouse a belief in a creator but rather that simply someone else could have done it.

It makes no suggestion that that somone is God and to imply that is a mistake on the part of Christians , it is the smooth sales job to bring religious concern to bear on this issue. What it does is to Christian faith is slowly reducing God to some part-timer that occasionally noodles around the edges but as soon as hard science comes along and solves that problem , God doesn't have to be invoked anymore. God did this other fiddly little bit over there ... until the next discovery. and so on.

In the capacity in which the Discovery Institute offers the concept of intelligent design it serves both the religious and scientific communities equally well, which is to say EXTRAORDINARLY BADLY.

Answer 3

I believe that God created the universe and everything in it. I believe people did not evolve from monkeys, but were created directly by God as it says in the Bible.

As for the rest of the details, they really don't matter too much to me. I know they are important to some people, but we all have our different interests.

What is important to me is relationship with Jesus. As long as a person is saved, the rest is not as important. We'll get answers on all the details when we get to heaven, so I'm not overly concerned with figuring out all of it here.

Just like I don't really care how electricity works. I turn on the switch, and voila! I have light! I don't need to understand how the light came to be, because I can see, and that is what is matters.

There is too much in life to understand everything in detail.

Overall, if I had to choose a side in the debate between "intelligent design" and "evolution," I'd choose intelligent design, because I know there is a Creator. Understanding just HOW He created everything doesn't rate high on my list of personally important things. That's my opinion.

Answer 4

Is 'believe in' the phrase you seek? In my opinion, 'intelligent design' is no more than 'creative science' cleaned up a bit in the wake of creative science's reputation as utter garbage. For the life of me I do not understand why Fundamentalist Christians are so eager to appear ignorant. ID is a crock which cynical religious hucksters cut-and-pasted together in an attempt to attract the gullible whose checks clear the bank.

Answer 5

Anyone who believes in Intelligent design has NO concept of actual science. they are being brainwashed. You don't have to be an Atheist to accept Evolution. Sadly the Intelligent Design smear campain has made every effort to make it seem like it is.

Answer 6

If things evolve depending upon their environment and there is natural selection and survivial of the fittest; isn't that a form of intelligent design itself? When computer programmers write artificial intelligence programs that stumble about until they learn to walk, isn't that intelligent design on the part of the programmers?

Answer 7

i think if you do believe in it you have to be willing to explore the possibility that there was more than one designer. as i pointed out in a previous question, if you were walking through the woods and you came upon a log cabin, you would reason that certainly something as complex as that cabin had a creator. however, it would seem highly unlikely that only one person could create that cabin by his/herself. certainly, it's more probable that many people worked together to create that log cabin. the same could be said for intelligent design. if you're going to go out on a limb and say the universe must've had a creator, the you must also be willing to accept that it is more likely that in the infinite complexity of the universe that it is much more likely that there was more than one creator.

Answer 8

Evolution requires natural selection. Natural selection requires genetic reproduction. Genetic reproduction requires an organism that can reproduce, has DNA, and a nutritive system. Such an organism...evolved? No, because evolution cannot take place until such an organism exists. Such an organism...was produced by random chemical interactions? That is mathematically absurd. Such an organism...was produced by a pre-existing, intellectual power? Something like God? This explanation is logical, it conforms to theology and much of philosophy, and it conforms to scripture. The only thing it does not conform to is the pride of those who refuse to submit to the divine order.

Answer 9

Only when there is an intelligent designer involved in the project.

Answer 10

Intelligent Design is the religious right's code for the creation story. It does not exist in science or reality.