Design Vs. Darwinism - A RARE FAIR & BALANCED DEBATE

[cole3454657]

i love the title. it dosent matter how many people one side has. its whether its right or not. just because creationists lose almost every single debate and then blame evolutionists for not being fair.

[ExtrackterYT]

@cole3454657 Well spoken. They are like sore losers in sports for ex. There are those that see their own shortcomings (they tend to reflect and getting better) and there are those that just not could ever be at fault - rigged game, lousy referee and whatnot...

[sweetmikser]

the childish and shallow drone Shermer does not grasp nor wants to grasp that there is EVIDENCE that the universe had an origin and a beginning.  Whereas the Self-Existent Intelligent Creator, that he pathetically, like all Atheist fail-tards desperately do, says "urrgh, well who made God" arf arf, HAD NO BEGINNING. And there's no evidence that He would. The Infinite "God" would be in a different class and category from finite created things. But evidence shows the universe had a beginning.

[Fishqueen1972]

Natural selection & mutations have been observed. This supports evolution. There is no evidence that a supernatural entity directed anything.

[owensphil]

@Fishqueen1972

Natural selection and mutations have been observed to produce small scale changes only.

There is evidence of an intelligent agent whether he is supernatural or not.

[Fishqueen1972]

@owensphil Many small changes add up to a big change over time. This is basic mathematics & why we use mathematics in science. Are you stating that a macro-change has never been observed because it can't be observed? Or are you stating that macro-change over time is impossible? Please provide evidence of an intelligent agent. This I have to see. And the assertion that because something looks designed that it is designed is not evidence.

[owensphil]

@Fishqueen1972

"Many small changes add up to a big change over time.

When one gets to the level of functions that require just 1,000 fairly specified residues working together at the same time, there simply are no examples of evolution "in action" mentioned in literature - none at all. All that there are, at this point, are stories about how evolutionary mechanisms of random mutation and function-based selection must have done the job.

[owensphil]

@Fishqueen1972

"Many small changes add up to a big change over time.

When one gets to the level of functions that require just 1,000 fairly specified residues working together at the same time, there simply are no examples of evolution "in action" mentioned in literature - none at all. All that there are, at this point, are stories about how evolutionary mechanisms of random mutation and function-based selection must have done the job.

[owensphil]

@Fishqueen1972

"Many small changes add up to a big change over time"

This notion is born out in literature. There are a whole lot of examples of mircoevolution/small scale changes "in action" when it comes to functions that require a minimum of only a few dozen residues or if the residue positions need not be very specified (antibiotic resistance, improved immune system specificity, phage infectivity, etc). (cont.)

[owensphil]

@Fishqueen1972

"Please provide evidence of an intelligent agent."

An intelligent agent can be a scientists, a computer programer, etc. Any act that requires intelligence, planning, foresight requires an intelligent agent. It would be absurd to conclude that just becuase we can't readily indentify the intelligent agent we're automatically left with nobody dunnit.

[Fishqueen1972]

@owensphil You have failed to connect the analogy that life needed an intelligent agent. No snowflake is the same, yet each one appears to be designed. Are you telling me that each snowflake requires planning & forsight?

[owensphil]

@owensphil

Water forming snowflakes is 'doing what comes naturally', given the properties of the system. There is no need for any external information or programming to be added to the system—the existing properties of the water molecule and the atmospheric conditions are enough to give rise inevitably to snowflake-type patterns.

[owensphil]

@owensphil

Complex structures fall into two categories: ordered complexity and specified complexity. A snowflake, although complex structurally, has little information and thus is considered an example of ordered complexity

[Fishqueen1972]

@owensphil The intelligent agent though is the product.

[owensphil]

@Fishqueen1972

"It is not necessarily easy to “see” macroevolutionary history; there are no firsthand accounts to be read. Instead, we reconstruct the history of life using all available evidence: geology, fossils, and living organisms."

- evolution berkley edu

[Fishqueen1972]

@owensphil We convict criminals all the time based on evidence even when one does not witness the crime. I fail to see your point here. Evolution is an explanation of the evidence. An ultimate intelligent designer does not fit with the evidence. If someone designed it given the fact that 99% of species are now extinct, the fact our mouths are not big enough to fit all our teeth, people choke every year because we use one hole to breath & eat. I would say the designer is an embicle.

[owensphil]

@Fishqueen1972

"An ultimate intelligent designer does not fit with the evidence"

Of course it does! The evidence for the origin of DNA shows foresight and planning. Absent in evolution. Genetic instructions/information has never been shown to arise from non -living matter. No code has ever been shown to arise from non living matter. If so, please name two or three.

[Fishqueen1972]

@owensphil Oh no, we are clay figures living in a dollhouse called the Universe...Yes, we are a computer program...You really don't make choices, the programmer just programmed you to think you do....or we are some science experiment.....or we are just robotic machines.......lol There is no code, just chemicals reacting to one another. These chemicals work on their own in the natural world.

[owensphil]

@Fishqueen1972

"There is no code, just chemicals reacting to one another."

Oh ok. When you get a chance look up "DNA code"

[Fishqueen1972]

@owensphil Your analogy fails. Humans create language or codes which are created by an intelligent agent, then received or interpretted by an intelligent agent. This is not what happens at the level of the cell. DNA does not need an intelligent agent interpretting them in order to create the body system. Molecules bond naturally. In the same way you admitted the water cycle is natural & how snowflakes form. Since these proteins do what they do in chemistry there is no need for an outside agent.

[Fishqueen1972]

@owensphil What is funny is that you are placing limits upon your god designer. Why couldn't an intelligence set up a Universe where non-directed evolution could occur? Where non-living matter can spontaneously create living matter on its own without direction & occuring naturally. Who are you to place limits upon a God if one exists?

[owensphil]

@Fishqueen1972

"Why couldn't an intelligence set up a Universe where non-directed evolution could occur?"

It's illogical to state that a God would direct an undirected process.

[Fishqueen1972]

@owensphil No. I said that he set up a world where non-directed evolution could happen. If God created nature then he set that up. Evolution occured naturally. There is nothing illogical about that. You compare God to humans & have difficulty distinguishing between the two. That is why you compare us to machines and GOd to a machine maker.

[Fishqueen1972]

@owensphil Besides, Evolution is not just by chance. Evolution is a type of design. No one is disputing that there is design in the natural world.

[owensphil]

@Fishqueen1972

There can be no design with function without a designer.

[Fishqueen1972]

@owensphil We are not a computer program and that is what you are comparing us to. Genetic instructions is not information in the same way we create codes for a computer. The DNA is part of nature. It replicates on its own without the need for an outside source. These have been seen in more primitive forms. Have you ever heard of a primitive cell? Who are you to say that it couldn't have come about naturally?

[owensphil]

@Fishqueen1972

A sender/receiver scheme is found in the DNA encoding system. The intended outcome requires that the receiver use the message to produce proteins, which then act in a variety of manners to allow or hinder formation of additional proteins or to create enzymes or tissue necessary for the organism. The message leads to far more that a reflexive or mechanistic outcome. The genes on DNA store intention as to a complicated final goal to be met.

[owensphil]

@Fishqueen1972

The source of the coded messege for DNA isthe most sophisticated code ever designed. Every code known to man involves an intelligent agent. It is totally illogical therefore to atribute the most sophisticated code to undirected natural processes.

[Fishqueen1972]

@owensphil The chemistry of DNA works on its own naturally. Just because we assign a language to it which is what human beings do in order to understand it doesn't mean we created the very essence of NATURAL chemistry.

[owensphil]

@Fishqueen1972

DNA functions as a code. You can deny it all you want. Try googling DNA code and see what you get.

[Fishqueen1972]

@owensphil I understand it functions as a code, but the essence of the material is grounded in nature unlike that of codes created for manmade machines. Intelligence or other words the mind is one of the complex products of this design. To say a mind created a mind doesn't answer the question. And really provides nothing beneficial to the area of scientific inquiry.

[Fishqueen1972]

@owensphil Scientists have discovered a heterotrophic flagellate that engulfs a unicellular green alga that lives freely in the water. Once inside, the alga loses its flagella and cytoskeleton; the host loses its feeding apparatus; the host switches from heterotrophic to autotrophic nutrition (photosynthesis); the host becomes capable of phototaxis.cont.....

[owensphil]

@Fishqueen1972

"Scientists have discovered a heterotrophic flagellate that engulfs"

Your point?

[Fishqueen1972]

@owensphil This is an example of a symbiotic system happening naturally without an outside intelligent agent telling it to do so. This natural process caused change in function.

[owensphil]

@Fishqueen1972

The origin of the two have everything to do with an intelligent agent.

[Fishqueen1972]

@owensphil So when the genetic info of bacteria changes & bacteria become resistent to antibiotics, that is a because an intelligent agent causing it? Micro-organisms can exchange DNA. And with primitive cell walls, proteins can be exchanged naturally. Again, you are arguing a negative. You can never say that it is impossible for life to happen naturally. Amino Acids are part of the essence of nature. Quite diffferent from humans creating computer chips. Your analogy is flawed.

[Fishqueen1972]

@owensphil And so I go back to the fact that you are having difficulty understanding the difference between a computer chip & DNA. The building blocks of DNA is grounded in the essence of nature where as a computer chip is not.

[Fishqueen1972]

@owensphil cont....When the host divides by mitosis, only one daughter cell gets the plastid. The other cell regrows the feeding apparatus and is ready to engulf another alga.

[owensphil]

@Fishqueen1972

Eventualities need to be anticipated and all resources for repair and energy need to be prepared in advanced. Can an undirected process do this? No! Random processes cannot generate coded information; rather, they only reflect the underlying mechanistic and probabilistic properties of the components which created that physical arrangement

[owensphil]

@Fishqueen1972 Any attempt to form a model or theory of the evolution of the genetic code is futile because that code is without function unless, and until, it is translated, i.e., unless it leads to the synthesis of proteins. But the machinery by which the cell translates the code consists of about seventy components which are themselves the product of the code.

[Fishqueen1972]

@owensphil The code could have a different function depending on the context. An analogy would be the function of a wing. Ostriches have wings that serves as a different function other than flying. So an eagle & an ostriche has the genetic code for wings, but each has a different function. You can't argue a negative. You can't say that there was no previous function simply because you don't have knowledge of it.

[owensphil]

@Fishqueen1972

"The code could have a different function depending on the context."

It's still a code and codes don't evolve. Codes require forethought and planning, absent in evolution.

[Fishqueen1972]

@owensphil Excuse me, so when the genetic code of a bacteria changes which results in the resistence to antibiotics, there was some intelligence with forthought & planned to help the bacteria become resistent to antibiotics. Is that what you are saying?

[Fishqueen1972]

@owensphil And please explain pseudogenes & retro-virus DNA markers that we share in common with other species in the context of an intelligent designer.

[Fishqueen1972]

@owensphil ANd to further this point. If there were not flightless bird species alive today & we never discovered any fossils of one. Your stance is that because we don't have knowledge of flightless birds, then that must mean that flightless birds cannot exist or never existed. That is an argument from ignorance. An atheist could never say for a fact that God does not exist. You can't prove a negative. For this reason, you can't say that life could not have formed naturally.

[owensphil]

@Fishqueen1972

No, the argument is from knowledge, not ignorance, knowledge what we know about the code. It is you who is arguing from ignorance for the origin of the code when all evidence says otherwise. That codes require a sender and a receiver.

[Fishqueen1972]

@owensphil But the sender & receiver are not individual intelligent agents. They function naturally by making copies of themselves. This is not the way machines work that we know are designed by an intelligence. We have to create each car from scratch. The way a car functions is not part of the essence of nature. In other words, cars are unnatural. That is the complete opposite of organic matter. Life is the product from the essence of nature. Why can't U distinguish life from inanimate objects

[owensphil]

@Fishqueen1972

"given the fact that 99% of species are now extinct,"

How do you know that 99% species are now extinct? Scientist are still discovering living species that the didn't know existed. How in the world can they speak to specieces that no longer exist?

[owensphil]

@Fishqueen1972

"the fact our mouths are not big enough to fit all our teeth, people choke every year because we use one hole to breath & eat. I would say the designer is an embicle."

1) An arguemnt for bad design isn't an argument against design.

2) If the designer is an embicle and you couldn't come up with anything better, what does that make you?

3) Most people breathe through their nose and eat with their mouth. You should try it.

[Fishqueen1972]

@owensphil ok. if you want to compare yourself to a mindless machine then be my guest, but don't expect everyone else to

[Gods0n1]

the bible awnsers the question about who created the creator. its says God has always existed before time began . 1 corinthians 2:7

[Fishqueen1972]

@Gods0n1 The Bible was written by bronze age people. There is nothing in the Bible that could not have been written by people of that time.

[owensphil]

@Fishqueen1972

"The Bible was written by bronze age people'

If the bible was indeed written by people of primitive thinking, how is it that you today in the year 2010 cant write a better book?

[Fishqueen1972]

@owensphil That is subjective. I think the Bible is crap & think history speaks for itself. People can't agree with the meaning of its contents which proves the BIble is not written clearly which means very ambiguous (open to interpretation). Fact, the social influence of it has evolved over time. The Xtians & Jews of today do not think the same way as the Xtians & Jews of the past. Yet, it is the still the same book. The Bible is not a good book for moral unity. The Constitution is better.

[PatrioticEagle50]

@owensphil Can't write a better book? Lets see what makes a better book. A good book has no contradictions. (the bible has many of those) No plot holes. (The bible has many of those) I can name several books better then the bible. Here are some examples. Of Mice and Men. White Fang. Call of the Wild. And many many more.

[Gods0n1]

@PatrioticEagle50 the bible contains historical events and geneologies. if u wrote a book in the year 2010 and you said you love your brother. that statement itself would be open to contradiction. people would either think you are gay or express feelings of incest. we are talking about a book that is supposed to speak to all of mankind. its the number 1 seller in the world for a reason.

[Fishqueen1972]

@Gods0n1 That is why people have used it as an excuse to torture and kill people. The Bible does say to kill a witch. Who are you to tell the people that burned women alive for 500 years that they were wrong?