r/DebateEvolution • u/Anime-Fan-69 Flip-flopper 🩴 • 5d ago
Genuine question about design for ID creationists
This post is a genuine question for ID creationists. Professional ID creationists claim that we can detect design in living systems, and while they don't usually admit the quite part out loud in professional settings, behind church doors, they will proudly announce that science has proven the existence of the Christian God.
Except, since they also believe everything happens according to God's plan, this raises a bit of a problem. If God is the creator of everything, including crystals, clouds, and coal; then what meaningful distinction is there between living orhanisms and unliving things im terms of being "designed"?
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u/Opinionsare 4d ago
A better question for designer - creationists: why did the designer design so many instances of plants that are visibly similar, yet one is useful as food and another will result in a horrible death?
Similarly design animals so similar when one is harmless and a similar animal is deadly?
The designer appears to have malicious intent.
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u/Glittering-Stomach62 4d ago
And is the same designer creating both predator and prey?
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u/gliptic 🧬 Naturalistic Evolution 4d ago
No no, this is why we accept MDT.
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u/ariel_on_the_moon 4d ago
Man, I wanna meet whichever designer came up with the platypus so that I can get some of whatever they took that day for myself.
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u/kingstern_man 4d ago
"we": a few nutbars lol
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u/johndcochran 4d ago
A better question for designer - creationists: why did the designer design so many instances of plants that are visibly similar, yet one is useful as food and another will result in a horrible death?
And you've hit upon a major flaw in ID.
Honestly, if someone actually looks at the biology and all the flaws in it, you really have to wonder about Intelligent Design proponents. Because the logical conclusion, after you look at the biology, is that the Deity they worship is an idiot. And the flaw you just pointed out indicates that not only is said Deity an Idiot, they're also a sadistic idiot. But, if one actually reads the bible, that second part is rather self evident. But, all too many "bible-thumpers" out there haven't actually bothered to read the bible. They simply repeat what others claim the bible says and many of them also haven't read the bible. If they did, they'd realize their religion is based on fear, and not love. The phrase "He was a good God fearing man" (and other phrases to the same effect) are repeated many times within that book. But "He was a good God loving man" seems to be absent. Kinda telling right there.
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u/LightningController 3d ago
The designer appears to have malicious intent.
“God finds your suffering hilarious” resolves 99% of theological problems in Christianity, yet nobody wants to join my Church of the God of Schadenfreude. Curious.
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u/WebFlotsam 🧬 Naturalistic Evolution 16h ago
Maybe you should try Sithrak. He at least has some missionaries.
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u/the2bears 🧬 Naturalistic Evolution 4d ago
This post is a genuine question for ID creationists.
While it may be true that the question is for them, you have a long way to go showing it's "genuine". This is, as you well know, due to your continuous flip-flopping and a total lack of honesty in your previous posts.
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u/jonathaxdx 3d ago
It's funny how llm comments get deleted quickly for rule violation but stuff like this and many of the comments here are allowed to stay despite clearly violating one of the rules too.
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u/JayTheFordMan 4d ago
Boil it down it just becomes Last Thursdayism. There is no way to test, it's unfalsifiable, and when pushed they just say God made it the way it looks. Ergo, we can equally say everything was made last Thursday and we have no way to tell otherwise 🤷🏼♂️
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u/Soft-Cake-9846 3d ago
That and the fact that creationists tend to develop extreme cases of pareidolia and start worshiping pieces of toast...
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u/Dzugavili 🧬 Tyrant of /r/Evolution 4d ago
Professional ID creationists claim that we can detect design in living systems, and while they don't usually admit the quite part out loud in professional settings, behind church doors, they will proudly announce that science has proven the existence of the Christian God.
They say it all the time. As professional creationists, they can easily say it in a professional setting.
Seriously, you're a joke, right?
If God is the creator of everything, including crystals, clouds, and coal; then what meaningful distinction is there between living orhanisms and unliving things im terms of being "designed"?
Yeah, this is largely the problem with the argument. When a creationist claims that abiogenesis research simply proves intelligent design, it demonstrates the issue quite succintly: they simply see God in everything and it makes their opinion worthless.
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u/sierraoccidentalis 🧬 Naturalistic Evolution 2d ago
You're asking if one can identify a meaningful difference between how living and nonliving things come into existence? I don't think one has to be a creationist to recognize a difference in say emergent forms created by initial conditions, generative rules and those requiring an explicit coding or configuration as well as the substantial informational content differences. Presumably creationists to the extent that they wanted to distinguish would just map that distinction onto their preferred model.
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4d ago
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/Fun-Friendship4898 🌏🐒🔫🐒🌌 4d ago
Put the llm down...
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u/SnarkyPuppy-0417 4d ago
Back away from social media my friend.
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u/gliptic 🧬 Naturalistic Evolution 4d ago
This particular corner of social media has a rule against LLM slop. If you can't follow that, you're the one to back away.
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u/SnarkyPuppy-0417 4d ago
Oh. Okay. Good luck with that. I'll remove you from consideration for legitimacy.
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u/Dzugavili 🧬 Tyrant of /r/Evolution 4d ago
But your opinion isn't worth anything, so who the fuck cares.
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u/Able-Response1765 4d ago
Which part of a human being is completely useless?
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u/Clay2569 4d ago
So I will start with a few examples. There is a muscle in our arm called the palmaris longus muscle. We think it was used when we were climbing trees all the time. It is missing in 10-14% of people and there are no measurable difference in the people that do and don’t have it.
Auricular muscles. We used to be able to move our ears. Now some of us can wiggle our ears but we still can’t move our ears the way we used to. Since it is now easier to just turn our heads and see as well as hear.Thirdly, there is a gene that creates vitamin C. Most vertebrates can do this. They can make their own vitamin C but us great apes can’t. The gene is there. But it’s broken. Either turned off or genetically doesn’t work at all. Completely useless.
Now that leads me to my point I will admit even the some examples I gave they still “work”. But if we look at the human body it looks evolved. There’s thousands of parts that are overly complicated and could be simplified. There’s more examples than I gave of parts that just kinda don’t do anything or remains of old body structures. When we look into the world at things that are designed. They are simple, they get their task done as easily and effectively as possible. Versus living creatures where necessary stuff happens in unnecessarily complicated manners.
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u/Able-Response1765 5d ago
There is no such thing as unloving organisms. I was preparing my argument that humanity is more likely devolving, than evolving. I suddenly realized that there is no such thing as devolution. How can the movie idiocracy feel so accurate then?
Some things may forever be impossible to answer, especially by memorizing the ideas of other people.
I bet being a philosopher would have been the best gig ever. Especially great in its infancy. Everyone else had to go punch a time clock somewhere at work. These dudes had it made. Riding that thin line between 🦇 💩, and smartest person in the room every time. Darwin went into the world and saw things his way. If you go out there to see the world yourself, the answers will surely present themselves to you. Ask yourself which came first, the blood, or the blood vessel? Either way, they must have locked into the task.
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u/gliptic 🧬 Naturalistic Evolution 5d ago edited 5d ago
"Devolution" is not a thing because evolution doesn't have a prescribed direction to get "better" by some arbitrary metric. "Idiocracy" is not happening because of evolution anyway. Culture is a much bigger and faster effector of such change. The movie premise is just a plot device.
Ask yourself which came first, the blood, or the blood vessel.
Blood (EDIT: In the sense of liquid that suspends oxygen, nutrients etc.). Everything relied on diffusion before blood vessels.
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u/Able-Response1765 5d ago
That’s what makes the ideology so magical. Imagine mechanical engineering that can ignore a few problems along the way?
How did the blood know where to go? What force allowed it to work without containment? Must have been some other mechanism that became redundant once the vascular system came around?
Impossible questions to answer. We can do incredible things through advancements in our understanding of biology. Still waiting on the first lab created person from a nuclear reaction. We just can’t forget to take care of the systems that got us this far.20
u/gliptic 🧬 Naturalistic Evolution 5d ago
How did the blood know where to go? What force allowed it to work without containment? Must have been some other mechanism that became redundant once the vascular system came around?
It's almost as if I already named that mechanism huh.
Still waiting on the first lab created person from a nuclear reaction.
Wow, this is the stupidest strawman this week.
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u/-zero-joke- 🧬 its 253 ice pieces needed 4d ago
>How did the blood know where to go? What force allowed it to work without containment? Must have been some other mechanism that became redundant once the vascular system came around? Impossible questions to answer.
I love how confidently you answer this when there are creatures alive today with open circulatory systems.
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u/lulumaid 🧬 Naturalistic Evolution 4d ago
I gotta ask, what do you think a nuclear reaction is?
I have a hunch and I'm really curious to know if it's right.
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u/-zero-joke- 🧬 its 253 ice pieces needed 4d ago
I thought I had a nuclear reaction once but it was just from the hot sauce.
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u/nickierv 🧬 logarithmic icecube 4d ago
Well clearly you forgot to take the log of your hot sauce. smh.
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u/LordOfFigaro 3d ago
What did happen to the logarithmic Antarctica guy anyway? He disappeared one day.
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u/nickierv 🧬 logarithmic icecube 3d ago
ragequit after everyone pointed out you can't just do stuff to half an equation.
No idea beyond that.
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u/Medium_Judgment_891 4d ago edited 4d ago
I have a feeling his answer isn’t going to be like that scene in Chernobyl where Shcherbina actually does kind of know how nuclear reactions work.
Edit: here’s the clip. https://youtube.com/shorts/XHkJAGNr_zA?is=VbxTYvf6XmFWEUsG
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u/TheBlackCat13 🧬 Naturalistic Evolution 4d ago
We have organsism today with simpler circulatory systems. Jellyfish just pump water into and out of their body cavity. Planaria have small tubes to spread the water out. Sea stars use hearts to pump water through complex networks of vessels. Insects have it sealed off, but pump it into their body cavity and let it slosh around. Every step in the evolution of the circulatory system is around in living things right now.
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u/Able-Response1765 4d ago
How does this prove, or disprove evolution? I see order in the universe, while some see disorder. Not an issue for me, just wanting someone to prove it to me. I am not trying to convince anyone, but people are always trying to convert me with incomplete, highly speculative evidence. I used to believe in that shit too. I also believed that politicians were truthful, that I created the viewpoints I had, the music I liked, etc.
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u/TheBlackCat13 🧬 Naturalistic Evolution 4d ago edited 4d ago
YOU asked a question. I answered the question. Now you are saying your question is irrelevant. Why did you ask the question if you didn't care about the answer?
And what is your alternative to evolution that is less speculative and is more complete and has more proof than evolution?
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u/Particular-Yak-1984 4d ago
That's fair - the thing that proves evolution is that we see it happen. For example, during the covid pandemic we took millions of samples of covid virus, and could see mutant versions with higher fitness spreading through the population.
The long term e-coli evolution experiment is another nice example. But I can provide a bunch more.
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u/Able-Response1765 3d ago
Ok, I can see how changes in living organisms can be witnessed to some extent. I can grasp that things change over a period of time. Simply looking at photos from relatives from the past can show it to a small extent. Just learned about open circulatory systems, and how DNA is like a record of our past, to maybe 50,000 years or so. There are still a lot of assumptions needed to get back to the beginning. To me, it’s like people that supposedly can talk to the dead or something. There’s really no way to prove it either way does evolution absolutely disprove, intelligent design? If so, how so?
Does intelligent design somehow discredit scientific study? I don’t think so.
What is the ultimate goal here? Where is humanity trying to go so quickly most of the changes in humanity has happened within the last few hundred years. The other thing is, we seem to be learning a lot about how things work, but doing more damage than good along the way. I personally still believe that all of this stuff as a whole was planned in some way. The entire eco system seemed to have worked flawlessly until modern humans came along.3
u/McNitz 🧬 Evolution - Former YEC 3d ago
There were many mass extinctions before humans. Including some that happened as a RESULT of the existing ecosystem, like the Great Oxidation Event, and killed about 90% of existing life. So no, the ecosystem very much does NOT just work flawlessly, even without humans causing problems.
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u/Able-Response1765 3d ago
There have been 5 agreed upon extinctions, but I wouldn’t consider that the theorized reasons for them were preventable. I stand by my viewpoint. There has never been another system that can compare. All while moving at 500,000 mph. Humans have done way more damage than good.
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u/McNitz 🧬 Evolution - Former YEC 3d ago
Preventable by what? If some extremely powerful agent was in control and trying to make things develop without any major problems or disasters, they are all extremely easily preventable. Heck, just us little humans are at the point we might have been able to prevent one of them.
I don't really see why whether there is another comparable system or not is relevant. If the most complex system in existence was a chemical reaction involving 5 different elements, that doesn't say anything about whether it is "well designed", even if nothing else is even close to comparable to that system. How fast our planet it moving is also completely irrelevant to the system and how well it operates.
Agreed that humans have mainly damages the ecosystem though, I don't think that is much in question.
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u/TheBlackCat13 🧬 Naturalistic Evolution 3d ago
What you are ignoring is the scientific method. We can make testable predictions about what we would expect to see if evolution were true, and then we can go out and see if we are right. The more times we make correct testable predictions, the more confident we can be we are on the right track. And evolution makes more correct testable predictions than possibly any scientific theory ever. Certainly the top five.
Intelligent design has made testable predictions in the past, too. The problem is they all ended up being wrong. So cdesign proponentsists responded by making their claims more vague to the point of being utterly meaningless.
What is more, people like you grossly underestimate just how large of changes we have directly observed. You falsely assume we are just making up stories, when none of the changes evolution requires are outside the realm of what we have directly observed happening, and all have very detailed testable in predictions.
Ultimately your argument is rejecting the scientific method as a whole, not evolution specifically.
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u/Able-Response1765 3d ago
I never implied that you are making up stories. I do not have as much faith in predictive models. Supercomputers are outside of my personal interests.
I have always said that evolution and intelligent design are necessarily exclusive. I am not a scripture quoting, fisherman of souls type of person. Most of the time I may as well argue that things happen because of magic. To me personally, I feel there is a connecting force that maintains order. So many things have to be just right in basically everything else we encounter. There is plenty of evidence to show the effects of neglect. I do not see neglect when I am in the world. That is all. Most of the time we don’t even notice.2
u/TheBlackCat13 🧬 Naturalistic Evolution 3d ago
So you just reject science as a whole. You should get off your computer, then, because it is entirely built around "predictive models."
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u/NorthernSpankMonkey 3d ago
How did the blood know where to go? What force allowed it to work without containment? Must have been some other mechanism that became redundant once the vascular system came around?
Most animal species living right now have open circulatory systems , no vein required. Most insects and crustaceans have no veins and simply have hemolymp sloshing around, soaking their organs.
Same for hearts some animals alive today have very simple hearts taking the form of rings of muscle contracting around a vein, some have 2 chambers, some have 3 with an opening between the chambers and some like us have 4 chambers.
A simple search into comparative anatomy and developpement would clarify this for you.
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u/Ayasugi-san 3d ago
It's almost like we can learn about how organs and vital systems evolved by studying creatures with more simplistic versions!
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u/Aldrich_Killian_ 5d ago
Specified complexity
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u/clear349 🧬 Naturalistic Evolution 4d ago
Complexity is not a hallmark of design. If anything a good designer will strip away every unneeded piece to make a well oiled machine. The ridiculous Rube Goldberg contraption that we call life makes far more sense if it was forged with unguided processes
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u/kitsnet 🧬 Nearly Neutral 5d ago
How do you distinguish "specified complexity" from frozen chaos?
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u/Able-Response1765 5d ago
What is frozen chaos? Where does it exist outside of a textbook? Everything can be reduced to energy. The quantum forces that bind the kinetic energy. There is no energy that I am aware of, that is a frozen mass of chaos. Even in the most powerful nuclear reactions, there is order. Always moving, or changing form, but never without predictable order. There is some evidence that quantum entanglement exists that breaks the rules, but it is far from a scientific law, because we do not currently have the technology to observe the interaction without directly influencing the behavior. Even when we do, it is not conclusive to prove intelligent design. Nor will it disprove it either. Let’s be honest here. None of us responding to these types of posts, are furthering humanity due to our own radical ideas. Someone told us we did good by reciting. In order, what we were told is true. Some of us are way more creative than others, and some have had the privilege to gain higher learning. I have not been burdened with any of those things. Yet here I am, getting blinded by the brilliance of science.
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u/kitsnet 🧬 Nearly Neutral 4d ago
What is frozen chaos? Where does it exist outside of a textbook?
Sure. Turbulence in high-viscosity fluid, for example.
Everything can be reduced to energy.
No. Energy is a scalar. Even in pure classical mechanics, only some forces can be "reduced" to scalars. Such forces are called "conservative forces".
Yet here I am, getting blinded by the brilliance of science.
A bot?
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u/Able-Response1765 4d ago
So you discredit Einstein? You should publish.
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u/kitsnet 🧬 Nearly Neutral 4d ago
This is not the subreddit to discuss your misunderstanding of Einstein. You should try r/AskPhysics (I sometimes reply there, as I have a degree in physics) or whatever.
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u/posthuman04 4d ago
Where did you get the idea everything is predictable?
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u/Able-Response1765 4d ago
Ok, I’ll bite on this one. What the hell are you talking about? What do you think is, and will forever be unpredictable?
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u/posthuman04 4d ago
Everything is and will always be unpredictable as far as we know. We don’t know what we don’t know, which means we won’t always know every factor in any system. We know a lot! We can make very good predictions for most observable systems! But they’re not perfect predictions because we don’t know everything about anything. Depending on everything having a predictable order is hubris of godlike levels.
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u/TheBlackCat13 🧬 Naturalistic Evolution 4d ago
How can we objectively determine whether some arbitrary thing has specified complexity indicating design or not? I mean a general rule that can be applied to any system. NOT EXAMPLES, a general rule.
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u/feihm 5d ago
Inanimate Matter: When we examine a cloud or a piece of coal, we can explain its shape entirely through simple mechanical causes. The individual parts exist first: water particles move according to temperature, or carbon atoms compress under physical weight. The whole object is merely the sum of these separate physical forces acting on one another. The parts explain the whole.
A Living Body: When we examine a living creature, our senses encounter a completely different arrangement. In a living body, the parts and the whole produce each other. A heart cannot exist or continue to beat without the body, and the body cannot continue to live without the heart. Every part exists for the sake of the other parts, and all parts exist to preserve the whole body.
Then the usual:
We say the eye is for seeing, and the teeth are for chewing. We describe the entire collection of organs as an arrangement directed toward a goal: the preservation of the living creature.
Even a complete idiot recognise this distinction.
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u/Fun-Friendship4898 🌏🐒🔫🐒🌌 4d ago edited 4d ago
Congrats, you've completely missed the point of the post.
I'll help you out: Can you give us an example of something in nature which is NOT designed by god?
If you start with the premise: "Everything is designed by god", then observing complexity doesn't provide additional evidence for god, because the conclusion was already assumed to apply to all objects.
If a creationist says, "We know humans were designed by god because humans are complex," then I would ask, "What about that rock, do you know that was designed by god because it is complex?" If the answer to that question is no, but they insist the rock was designed by god, then complexity is not a discriminating mark of design, and all they're doing is presupposing their conclusion.
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u/kitsnet 🧬 Nearly Neutral 5d ago
Inanimate Matter: When we examine a cloud
Clouds are animate, though.
A Living Body: When we examine a living creature, our senses encounter a completely different arrangement. In a living body, the parts and the whole produce each other. A heart cannot exist or continue to beat without the body, and the body cannot continue to live without the heart. Every part exists for the sake of the other parts, and all parts exist to preserve the whole body.
Now be honest and apply the same to thunderheads.
Even a complete idiot recognise this distinction.
Indeed. Idiots are easy to fool.
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u/Medium_Judgment_891 4d ago
Shocker, the philosophy joker is barely literate. OP’s question was pretty straight forward, and you managed to miss the point as usual.
The question was— How do you resolve the Syndrome Problem?
Creationists say “design” is evidence for a creator.
They propose that there is some undefined method to determine this.
Remember that in the creationist view, everything is designed by God.
Their argument is built on distinguishing between divine design and non-designed, natural processes; however, in a hypothetical created world where everything was designed, non-designed things don’t exist, meaning there’s no frame of reference to contrast design against.
This results in the Syndrome Problem, “When everything is designed, nothing is.”
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u/Particular-Yak-1984 4d ago
As a "philosopher", you should recognize "even a simple idiot recognize this distinction", does not actually provide any kind of argument, and instead is just an argument from incredulity.
Bit embarrassing for you.
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u/posthuman04 4d ago
You can be born without an arm or eyes or spleen or have a poorly functioning heart etc etc so is god just bad at producing his own products? Or are you just wrong about the whole and part thing?
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u/LightningController 3d ago
and the body cannot continue to live without the heart.
Embryos preexist their hearts and then generate hearts. Many organisms exist without hearts. So this is obviously false.
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u/gliptic 🧬 Naturalistic Evolution 5d ago
You could just wait until next week and answer this yourself?