Creationists: Why does complexity require intelligent design?

Question

I want to know why complexity requires a conscious designer. Why couldn't a set of laws (without conscious design) create complexity?

Partial credit will be given to those who show their work...

I don't think I explained myself well. Even if there is a law-giver, why would the law-giver need to be conscious? (I'm not attacking the concept of design, I'm wondering about why we need "intelligent" design.)

Bubbha Jo: I think emergent properties are epiphenomenal, and therefore incoherent. If you'd like to know what I mean, I suggest reading Stephen Pepper or Jaegwon Kim.

If you have a response to them, I'd love to hear it.

Answer 1

It's backwards logic. Something is complex and difficult for man to comprehend/replicate, therefore it must have been a deliberate design by something more intelligent than us.

An analogy...my bedroom is painted black with red, yellow, and blue paint splattered on it. Much like looking in the clouds and finding shapes, I can look at my wall and see shapes in the splatters. One looks distinctly like a horse. So were these deliberately laid out and designed to make these designs? No...paint landed on the wall, and as more paint was added over time, shapes/designs were created.

Over millions of years, cells and organisms can evolve...make one little change...then make another little change...and eventually end up in the shapes/designs they are now. The end result was not known by some higher creator...it was just the end result of many, many small changes over the course of many, many years....the resulting shape after enough paint splattered on the wall to form something recognizable.

Answer 2

I believe God created the universe, but I'm not sure about the complexity argument. Sometime when a complex theory is reduced to a simple one, that takes incredible insight, revelation, and discovery. After all it took some insight in order to understand the planets moving in elliptical orbits rather than the Ptolemaic system's epicycles.

Answer 3

I don't think complexity requires a designer. However, irreducable complexity and specified complexity, do. Look at the work by William Dembski for an explination of these terms. It would take up too much space to write them out here. Hope that helps you.

But, if all the splatters on the wall looked just like perfect horses, you would know that someone actually painted them. It is possible for some complexity to be generated randomly, but not if it's recognizable as information.

Answer 4

"No evolutionist would contend that an inanimate house could build itself. But he is dogmatic that an inanimate universe did—a universe with unknown millions of galaxies, each galaxy with million and millions of stars, and all moving in awesome grandeur with split-second timing.

And much more than that. On earth, say the evolutionists, all the myriads of living organisms constructed themselves out of their ancestors, this continuing all the way back to an original first parent of everything, which spontaneously constructed itself out of nonliving chemicals. Neither is the evolutionist deterred from this course by the appalling complexity and the intricate and purposeful design found in all these living things."

Is accident and chance really what gave so many fundimental requirements for life to exist on earth a roll of a dice?
The combinations would be trillions to one. Since science says the Big Bang was 12-14 billion years ago the earth has been around at least a third of that time. Pretty quick for all those accidents and chances not only for the earth being the right distance from the galactic center and right distance away from the Sun and having the right kind of Moon with the right kind of atmosphere with the earth having plenty of water for life with accidents of evolving creatures to what we are and the Universal constants all being just right for the Universe to exist and support life. I am sure there are many many more variables I could add to this equation and all of this by a spin of chance.

Consider the complex workings of a powerful silicon chip processor. It takes the world's best engineers and scientists years to create the technology, the best brains are behind it. Yet a much more complex and sophisticated human body cell could of been built with no intelligent help? Would that be logical?

That takes a great deal more faith to me than that of an intelligent designer. The Universe was purposed it like a house was planned and built. The luck system requires a large amount of faith when you take it all in the whole picture.

Hebrews 3:4
. . .Of course, every house is constructed by someone, but he that constructed all things is God.. . .

Answer 5

To have a state where laws exist such as in the universe (gravity, thermodynamics, math, etc.) there must also exist the state where laws do not exist. Science itself has proven that things do not exist without first there being either the existence of matter or energy and then something to take that energy or matter out of homeostasis (also a law -- everything moves towards a place of balance) to allow for that energy or matter to become something more, but what occurred to take the original state of existence for the Universe out of balance to create a big bang putting everything else into existence. Chaos theory holds to the notion that out of seeming chaos there emerges order, in other words, nothing happens by just mere chance -- there must be specific events occur that precipitates the change. So the question is did there ever exist a time when matter and energy did not exist?...Out of nothingness comes nothingness. So then since logic dictates that for a state of complex laws to exist there first must be a state of no laws, one must conclude that something outside of the Universe acted upon the universe to set the events in motion to even support the theory of evolution. Complexity does not mean there is a creator, but even the laws of nature dictate that something outside of the existence of our universe acted upon the energy and matter that now is our universe...so either alternate universes exist or a God exists...since science tells us that the universe is constantly expanding like a balloon being inflated and that nothing exists outside of our universe then there must be a God/Creator of it all....

Answer 6

The universe, our galaxy, our Solar System and the Earth-Moon double planet system demonstrate some remarkable evidence of intelligent design. Taken separately, each characteristic is highly improbable by random chance. When taken together, the probability is so small as to be impossible - by random chance. The alternative explanation, design by an intelligent Creator is a more realistic explanation. Either way, one must admit that we are a product of a miracle - either a miracle of chance or a miracle of design.
Miracles of chance are why insurance companies are billion dollar corporation.
Miracles of chance are why casinos are billion dollar companies.
The design aspect comes into play not because it did, but because it works.

Answer 7

hi Ben you have raised an thrilling factor. It makes me ask - why shouldn't evolution be held as much as close scrutiny? And do you truly believe that clever layout isn't scrutinized by utilising that's critics? I say to all of us who desires to scrutinize identity "circulate top forward! Please." the reality isn't threatened; that's going to postpone under close scrutiny. you assert that to verify that identity to compete as a proof that's going to be required to justify the mechanism utilized by utilising the author. i will concede that's authentic - if an identical call for would be required of the concept of evolution. Evolutionist have a stressful sale to pitch. they could desire to reconcile how that's that a cellular can only be synthesized in accordance to the code of that's DNA with the reality that DNA does no longer and can't exist outdoors of that cellular. there's a fowl and egg situation. that's the essence of irreducible complexity; and the difficulty won't circulate away. yet another migraine headache for evolutionist: Polystrate timber. those are chanced on vertically, status by quite a few strata that's meant to span "hundreds of thousands" of years of geologic time. If it took hundreds of thousands of years to deposit those layers, then how can those timber fossilize?

Answer 8

There's no work to show, as "just because" is the IDiot's explanation why somethings are too complex to have occured naturally.

They never offer a means of measurement or testing, or a way to tell something "just barely too complex" from "just barely not too complex".

Answer 9

possibly because some people have a need for simple explanations for complex subjects, even if the complexity is beyond any simple explanation

Answer 10

Read up on emergent properties.