Is Intelligent Design Really Intelligent? A paper I had to do for english

I was given the opportunity to do a paper in my English class on Intelligent Design. I only had 2 1/2 hours to write it and this is what I came up with. I had very limited use of the internet and it was NOT a research paper. The professor is (I think) Christian and knows that I am an Atheist. She was very excited to read my paper. I am posting it here because I would like feed back on the arguments I presented. I told her without proper research my ideas might have a few holes in them and she understood completely, again this was for an English paper.

Any help on the ideas I presented would be greatly appreciated :) I hope this is in the right forum.....

Is Intelligent Design Really Intelligent?

Is life on earth the result of intelligent design or did it all happen by chance? Intelligent design (or ID) is the theory that a superior being put the universe into motion. The majority of people who believe in intelligent design also believe it goes further than that, that God has a hand in our every day life. A smaller percentage believe that we are here due to evolution, that everything happened by chance. From my point of view Chance seems more logical. The ideology of Intelligent design does not justify birth defects; it can not be proven in the science lab; and is not an adequate argument for “gaps” in science.

A disturbing problem with the theory of Intelligent design is the overwhelming amount of birth defects, both structural and functional/developmental. Birth defects are caused by defects in our genes as well as environmental hazards. Intelligent design, with the accompanying belief in God, is that humans should be perfect. We were made by God in his image. Perfect. If that were true then our genetic code would not mutate. Hence there would be no birth defects and/or genetic mutations/mishaps. This however is not the case. The Center for Disease Control states that 120,000 babies in the United States are born with birth defects each year. If you look at this situation through the scope of evolution you will see that mutations in genetic code fit very well into the science of evolution.

The way our species has evolved over time has brought us to become a science dependant race. Everything from understanding our place in the solar system, to the atoms and molecules that make up our bodies, to the types of foods we can safely ingest, we got from scientifically testing theories, which is the reason we have the answers to those questions. Intelligent design is not a probable or acceptable theory due to lack of being able to test it which is why the scientific community does not recognize it.

There are some who view science as a great tool of the human race, however they can not let go of the emotion that accompanies Intelligent Design. They see the gaps in science as unexplainable and therefore attribute these unexplainable instances to ID. This is called using the God of Gaps rationalization. Using this argument is not conducive to science because everyday science is understanding more and more about the universe and the world in which we live. At one point in time science thought the earth was flat, but due to exploration, we came to the conclusion that the earth was in fact round. This is the way that science works.

Intelligent design, as fascinating as it might seem to some, is not a theory of scientific measures at this point in time. It simply plays on the emotions, as opposed to the intellect, of humans. So in the words of Christopher Hitchens I leave you with this “Exceptional claims demand exceptional evidence.", and Intelligent Design does not give exceptional evidence.

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Permalink Reply by Dave G on February 22, 2011 at 8:11pm

If you are getting your information from Answers in Genesis, then my statement that you lack a basic understanding of evolutionary theory not only stands, but is validated. Note that ignorance is not inherently a bad thing. Everyone is ignorant about something and ignorance is easily remedied by education.

Willful ignorance, however, is another story. When someone is presented with evidence and rejects it due to a desire to adhere to a state of ignorance or because that evidence contradicts a belief that the person is unwilling to reevaluate, then that person has surrendered the right to be considered intellectually honest.

As for your claim that you were not discussing natural selection, YOU are the one who said 'mere chance', Elizabeth, not I. Specifically, presenting mere chance as the sole element regarding the development of the eye. If you cannot be honest in your discussions, you will continually get called out on it.

Finally, you misunderstood my analogy. To put it plainly, if someone wishes to have a discussion on a topic, it would behoove them to learn the basic facts regarding that topic, rather then attacking a false version of it. That is known as a straw man fallacy and is one of the more common fallacies seen in debates.

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Permalink Reply by Elizabeth Johnson on February 22, 2011 at 8:26pm

You have a point when it comes to my wanting put my belief in God above my belief in science. But if you're suggesting that science is the be all end all "the buck stops here" brick wall you claim, then you are mistaken. Science is an ever-changing, evolving if you will,
Scientists are forever repeating the mantra "we now know.....such and such".
Top scientists, in their day, believed that bleeding people was a cure for all manner of ailments. We know know that blood is rather essential to maintaining one's health. And in the future scientists will discover they were wrong about this thing or that thing, I will gladly place my "faith" in something higher.

I am not being dishonest in my discussion, I flub along now and then but as to the bigger question of weather or not there is or there is not a God who made the earth and we who live here, you are not answering my simple questions.

What if you were born a street child somewhere, and lived a horrible life with no way out, where would your beliefs lie then? Would you hope for more, even when you died of AIDS, or any number of scenarios, or would you a spouse that there is no God, no one truly loves me, I am a worthless lump, meaningless, and then I'm snuffed out, without so much as a by your leave?
Can anyone give me a good and valuable alternative to this. Because it happens millions of times everywhere every day.

Permalink Reply by Dave G on February 22, 2011 at 8:49pm

Yes, science does change. This is one of it's great strengths. As we learn more, our knowledge increases and our theories become more refined, more accurate. This is a good thing. We do not know everything, not even close, and science has never claimed to. In fact, a core tenet of science is that all knowledge is provisional and subject to modification upon new evidence.

Or to put it simply, science basically says "this is how things work, as far as we can tell".

The fact that life is not fair and it is comforting to believe that there is something more is not evidence that there is something more, just that beliefs (true or not) can be comforting. If a child is in an abusive home it may comfort them to believe that they are adopted and their 'real' parents will come and take them away, but that does not make it true.

Note that I am not saying that such beliefs cannot be a comfort. We're not discussing comfort, we are discussig whether there is or is not a god. And the undisputed fact that people believe something does not make it true. Ifmit did, you would have to concede that Allah is real (street children in Muslim cultures believe in him), Shiva is real (Indian street children), and so forth.

My alternative would be to attack the root cause. The poverty and ignorance that propagate the despair that necessitates such a belief to get through their lives. Food, clothing, medical care, education. These do far more to improve lives than a belief that things will be better after you are dead.

Permalink Reply by Dark Star on February 22, 2011 at 11:05pm

The arrogance of pretending to know what a God might actually want is off-putting.

The only thing you know is that you read a book -- a book that was written 30-60 YEARS after the supposed events. Major events which, amazingly, went utterly and completely unrecorded by every historian contemporaneous with the alleged time period. And your books are not even eye-witness accounts.

You want eye-witness accounts? There are MILLIONS UPON MILLIONS of people in India who have witnessed thousands of 'miracles' performed by sathya sai baba in India. http://www.sathyasai.org/ Of course, just like EVERY OTHER CLAIM OF MIRACLES he is a fraud. But you can find millions of eye-witnesses who will swear he has performed miracles. Can you prove he isn't god?

With ALL of our knowledge today these people are still duped by parlor tricks, I really must get me some of those magic robes. Can you imagine how easy it must have been 2000 years ago?

They didn't even need a real person to go around and perform the tricks -- they just wrote some stories about what REALLY happened '30 years ago'. Take a few tales from Judas of Galilee, jazz them up a bit and then sit around abusing women and children for 300 years until Constantine needs some military backup against a larger group of Pagans, and voilà!

Oh, but I bet you've had a personal experience right? http://iconoclasm2000.blogspot.com/2011/02/but-i-had-personal-exper...

There is NO evidence that the biblical claims about Jesus or God are at all true.

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Permalink Reply by Johnny on February 22, 2011 at 8:34pm

Logically... Coming from primordial soup seems more likely than a wizard scooping together some dust and blowing on it to make a man.

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Permalink Reply by Elizabeth Johnson on February 22, 2011 at 8:39pm

Better God than no other reasonable explanation at all. Meaninglessness is NOT next to Godliness.
And before you say it, yes I think God is a reasonable alternative to atheism. Deal with it.

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Permalink Reply by Dark Star on February 22, 2011 at 10:10pm

So... The universe, unfolding mechanically as best we can observe, being the basis of existence is 'Ludicrous' because the body and eye are too complex to 'just exist'... But... an infinitely powerful creator god who watches us masturbate just existing = Solid Reason?

Do I have your logic there right? Look up the logical fallacy of Special Pleading.

And if you are at all serious in learning things, I posted a short review of a TINY fraction of the current information about abiogenesis: http://iconoclasm2000.blogspot.com/2010/12/abiogenesis-part-i.html

Huge progress have been made in the past 50 years in understanding the kinds of processes that must have been involved.

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Permalink Reply by Dan Sanders on February 22, 2011 at 5:48pm

Don't have to. I'm not making a claim that there isn't one, just that there's zero proof of one, and no reason to therefore believe in one.

These are all really BASIC things that any visitor to a site called "ThinkAtheist" should have been over already.

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Permalink Reply by Elizabeth Johnson on February 22, 2011 at 5:54pm

What are you saying, I'm too stupid to discuss these things. Just because they are BASIC doesn't mean they are without merit. There are many reasons to believe in a real living God. Hope, for one, I need something better than what atheism has to offer in order to exist in this crap hole of a world.

But if this discussion is to elementary for you, then by all means refrain from replying.

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Permalink Reply by Elizabeth Johnson on February 22, 2011 at 6:06pm

Your beliefs are as unsubstantiated as mine. And please don't go blaming all the problems of the world on religion. Dude read a history book, there's plenty enough blame to go around. Mao, anybody?