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[t'Sade]

ctvca

An interesting little article about Intelligent Design. Now, in my case, I happen to believe in ID, but I don't feel that it belongs in the science room. It is religion and philosophy, pure and simple. I also happen to believe in evolution, I just think the random odds are rather high for getting something out of the pea soup. On the other hand, given a large enough mess of chemicals, carbon, and everything else, sooner or later, life would come out of it. I just happen to call that the divine.

I'm glad that the judge said no for it being shown in class. ID does not have a basis in science (yet, soon they will alter their arguments), and therefore doesn't belong in the class.

[Repentant Lurker]

I also happen to believe in evolution, I just think the random odds are rather high for getting something out of the pea soup.

This is actually one of the most fundamental misunderstandings about evolution. It is not random. Evolution relies upon cumulative selection. Each step my invlove a random mutation (or chemical alteration in the very early stages) but the process itsef is decidedly non random. Evolution will only progress if the mutation/alteration confers an advantage that leads to more successful replication.

Discussing odds is also interesting as while the events that led to evolution may very very unlikely one has to remember you are dealing with a timeframe of roungly 3 billion years (geolocal studies suggest it is unlikely that the conditions for life as we know it existed before this point). For the creation of life as we know it many scientists now belive the cirtical molecule was RNA as this is capable of self replication without the need of any other molecules (Although it does need a very specific RNA molecule that acts as an enzyme to catalyse the repliction http://www.arn.org/docs/odesign/od171/rnaworld171.htm). Once this complex self replicating molecule has evolved diferrent forms could easily (in relative terms) start to co-opt other molecules and start together the early beiginings of biological machinery. Once you have the basics that starts to become more complex, DNA starts to be created and being more stable than RNA becomes the dominat form for the storage of information and utilises RNA to perform the operations, small peptides start to be co-opted then proteins. The bundles become complex enough that to survive they need to seal themselves off from the outside world so those that 'randomly' co opt lipids gain an advantage. And what do you know you have a simple bacteria like organism.

All of this happens due to individual random events but it is important to remember that these are by the nature of evolution stored within the genetic code so they can be built upon by successive generations. 

Given that scientists have managed to create the basic components of RNA in the lab (Simply by using a primevil soup method not direct synthesis) and we have only been trying for the last 60 years or so its at least possible to imagine the same thing happening naturally in 3 billion.

Regardless of this what baffles me about the concept of Intellegent Design is the statememt. "It's all so complicated that it cant possibly have happened randomly there must have been something guiding it" If thats the case than what guided the creation of that intelegence, surrely infinately more unlikely to have evolved itself? But then I'm a godforsaken athiest .

If you haven't read it the Blind Watchmaker by Richard Dawkins is the definative text but he is rather pompus and his argument can get a little spurious at times.

See what happens when you encourage people to chat

[der Wandersmann]

t'Sade, dear, you're absolutely right about the difference between evolution and ID. The theory of evolution is science, which starts from facts in evidence (always bearing in mind that the facts, on closer inspection, may turn out to be mis-observed) and works, through testable reasoning, towards a final explanation, whereas ID starts from a conclusion and works backward, trying to find evidence to bolster its claim.

[t'Sade]

Yeah, how ID is represented is kind of ass-backwards. Nothing like a good sound, scientific principle to help you figure things out. Ignore those, and the factual evidence in the ground, pretty much is the same thing as wrapping saran wrap around your head and says "lalalalalala" until the logical words are no longer said. Of course, I come from a line of scientists, so I kind of believe in evolution because it has a foundation.

I see ID only from a philosophical side things. It fits my religious views, but, I also know that reality has nothing to do with it. It fits with my bigger picture. On the other hand, I don't think there is a "God" involved at all, regardless.

[KainX]

The funny thing about Intelligent Design is that people on both sides of the debate interpret it as being equivalent to "Christian."  ID is simply the belief that our existence and self-awareness cannot be completely explained through evolution alone -- that some external force was/is involved with how we became what we are today.  It may or may not be "science," depending on how you define that term, but neither ID nor evolution can be conclusively proven as the source of life because no one truly understands the nature of intelligence/self-awareness sufficiently to quantify when it came into being.  We don't even really understand to what degree animals think or feel, so how can we completely understand these things in ourselves?

Evolution as a process can be conclusively proven and demonstrated.  The emergence of intelligence through evolution has not (yet).  Nor has it been conclusively proven that, given 4 billion years or so, random elements can come together to form living beings.  So if one wants to be pedantic about science, neither of these things should be taught.  The simple fact is that we don't completely understand how we wound up where we are, which makes any theory valid.

ID is true if God created the heavens and the Earth as stated in the Bible.  It is also true if Xenu cast millions of thetans into a volcano.  It is also true if the Flying Spaghetti Monster made us out of meatballs.  It's even true if Earth and Nature are alive as Gaia.  The ONLY way it's not true is if the universe went from expansion to planetary assembly to amino acid formation to biological life to intelligence over the course of billions of years without the influence of external (or internal) intelligence of any kind at any point.  Is it possible that could've happened?  Many think so, but we don't know for sure.  It's a far better gamble that it didn't.

In this day and age, with the power of our modern computers, why not set up a simulation to see if random genetic mutations, chemical reactions, and so forth could reasonably be expected to result in life after a few billion years?  Even that can't conclusively prove or disprove either theory, but it would give a strong indication one way or the other.

PS:  Hi t'Sade!  We miss you!

[t'Sade]

That is why God isn't my belief of ID. In my case, I believe in the Machinations of the Universe in that everything has a place and purpose in the universe and I think that is related to ID. Just a small part of my growing corpus (I love that word) of beliefs of how I think the universe runs. I do think that we'll only figure it out if we actually see it ourselves, but at that point, we are basically going to be creating intelligent life. And that will get into this WHOLE mess of "We are god!" and then violent retractions, fighting, and everything else, much like the human cloning stuff right now.

On the PS, it's been a really busy couple of months for me. I have not had a lot of chance to write, though I do have a commission about to go up for Dragon Pink and the Slave-Knights. I'm hoping to get another short story in, I owe someone a "nothing" story and that is next on the request list. Mostly, I'm getting distracted with everything in the world but here.

[KainX]

That is why God isn't my belief of ID. In my case, I believe in the Machinations of the Universe in that everything has a place and purpose in the universe and I think that is related to ID. Just a small part of my growing corpus (I love that word) of beliefs of how I think the universe runs. I do think that we'll only figure it out if we actually see it ourselves, but at that point, we are basically going to be creating intelligent life. And that will get into this WHOLE mess of "We are god!" and then violent retractions, fighting, and everything else, much like the human cloning stuff right now.

By the time we make it to the point of true understanding and "transcendance" of a sort, we will have grown beyond the less fortunate parts of our nature.

On the PS, it's been a really busy couple of months for me. I have not had a lot of chance to write, though I do have a commission about to go up for Dragon Pink and the Slave-Knights. I'm hoping to get another short story in, I owe someone a "nothing" story and that is next on the request list. Mostly, I'm getting distracted with everything in the world but here.

That wasn't the "we" I meant.  Or have you forgotten about me?  I guess it has been a few years....
*huggles*

[t'Sade]

*blink*
*blink*

KainX!

Okay, it has been a while and I've been really bad about abandoning #e. Plus, the name didn't register at first. How have you been in this long periods of time? Doing anything interesting?

[KainX]

*blink*
*blink*

KainX!

There's my t'Sade!  :-)

Okay, it has been a while and I've been really bad about abandoning #e. Plus, the name didn't register at first. How have you been in this long periods of time? Doing anything interesting?

Well, I got married, so I guess that's interesting.

I just happened by the other day and figured since you hadn't been back to #E in a few years, I'd see what was up.  Looks like my days of proofreading your stories for you are over!   Congrats!

Back to the topic...I'm interested in more on the "machinations of the universe."  Do you believe that the universe itself is conscious/intelligent? or perhaps that consciousness exists outside it?

[t'Sade]

Congratulations on being married. And that is interesting.  Marriage is one of those really interesting things in life, its done well for me for six years now.

And you are always welcomed to edit one of my stories. One of the advantages of the MediaWiki site for http://tsade.com/ is that I can actually allow people to edit my stories and I can see the changes to update my local copy. Assuming people want to do that. Lately, I haven't had much luck with friends doing it, mainly because it is a fair amount of work.

Machinations of the Universe. The idea of mine came from when I was doing a fair amount with Kabbalah. I can't spell it right, but I got this book on it. One of the ideas was of the machinations of the universe, or the universal machine. It was some point a year after I got started that I got a epiphany about it, so I consider it one of those major things in my life.

I don't believe that the universe is conscious or intelligent. However, I believe it is infinitely complex with every piece inside of it performing its task or duty. Even spiritual enlightenment is the purpose of a component of the universal machine (UM). In some ways, it is a reflection of ourselves since, at the biological level, we are just a complicated machine that happens to have a semblance of intelligence because of the neural net that functions inside our brains and through the rest of us. Its our complexity that creates intelligent and self-awareness.

So, a system magnitudes more complex, since it includes what we call our own intelligence, has the appearance of intelligence that is magnitudes more complicated. So, that is what I call the "intelligence" behind ID. People can call it God, spirits, or whatever , but it is mainly a way of focusing on one small part of the UM that we can understand or at least try to understand. I don't think we are capable of viewing the entire UM in its whole, in the same way bacteria can't really comprehend us. It is almost impossible to see from the outside of something you are inherently inside of.

The "design" part of it comes from purpose. We have a purpose. Our lives, everything we do, even the fact we have choice and free will is part of the machine. It is our purpose in the universe and I have never felt otherwise in a long time. But, since we are designed to fit as a little cog in the UM, we have a design. We need to fill a goal but sometimes, we don't know our goal and our goal isn't really set in stone, we just happen to naturally follow most of it just because of our nature.

Of course, that usually leads into a discussion of free will verses destiny. I happen to believe in both.

As a bit of silly fact: Tsade is actually a letter in the Hebrew alphabet. However, when I came up with the name, I had no knowledge of that or even had a clue. I came to t'Sade (or Tsade as some people write it) by entirely different purposes, but it was a bit of serendipity that I always found amusing.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsade

[KainX]

Congratulations on being married. And that is interesting.  Marriage is one of those really interesting things in life, its done well for me for six years now.

Glad to hear it.  How is $SIGNIFICANT_OTHER?  (Reply privately if you like; I don't know how much you publicize.)

And you are always welcomed to edit one of my stories. One of the advantages of the MediaWiki site for http://tsade.com/ is that I can actually allow people to edit my stories and I can see the changes to update my local copy. Assuming people want to do that. Lately, I haven't had much luck with friends doing it, mainly because it is a fair amount of work.

I do it naturally as I read.  It's my curse, I think.  So it's actually more work for me to notice it, not be able to fix it, and get frustrated than it is to just fix it.   

Machinations of the Universe. The idea of mine came from when I was doing a fair amount with Kabbalah. I can't spell it right, but I got this book on it. One of the ideas was of the machinations of the universe, or the universal machine. It was some point a year after I got started that I got a epiphany about it, so I consider it one of those major things in my life.

I don't believe that the universe is conscious or intelligent. However, I believe it is infinitely complex with every piece inside of it performing its task or duty. Even spiritual enlightenment is the purpose of a component of the universal machine (UM). In some ways, it is a reflection of ourselves since, at the biological level, we are just a complicated machine that happens to have a semblance of intelligence because of the neural net that functions inside our brains and through the rest of us. Its our complexity that creates intelligent and self-awareness.

So, a system magnitudes more complex, since it includes what we call our own intelligence, has the appearance of intelligence that is magnitudes more complicated. So, that is what I call the "intelligence" behind ID. People can call it God, spirits, or whatever , but it is mainly a way of focusing on one small part of the UM that we can understand or at least try to understand. I don't think we are capable of viewing the entire UM in its whole, in the same way bacteria can't really comprehend us. It is almost impossible to see from the outside of something you are inherently inside of.

The "design" part of it comes from purpose. We have a purpose. Our lives, everything we do, even the fact we have choice and free will is part of the machine. It is our purpose in the universe and I have never felt otherwise in a long time. But, since we are designed to fit as a little cog in the UM, we have a design. We need to fill a goal but sometimes, we don't know our goal and our goal isn't really set in stone, we just happen to naturally follow most of it just because of our nature.

Interesting.   Thanks for sharing.

I, too, think God is some entity or concept of greater dimension than that in which we exist.  The best explanation I have encountered for the phenomenon would be to imagine a 2-dimensional creature trying to comprehend humans when it can only sense ("see," if you will) a 2D slice of us at any one time.  Because God exists outside what we can comprehend, we may never truly understand it.  One theory of mine is that God is, in part, the sum of all consciousness, and that consciousness exists outside our 3-dimensional (or 4, depending on how you count Time) universe.  There are a number of concepts which can be explained by separating corporeal form from consciousness.  It was even suggested as a possible source of hidden variables in quantum physics.

Of course, that usually leads into a discussion of free will verses destiny. I happen to believe in both.

If time is truly a dimension, it would make sense that one could travel through it.  But I don't believe that anything can excuse us from taking responsibility for conscious choices in the name of predestination.

As a bit of silly fact: Tsade is actually a letter in the Hebrew alphabet. However, when I came up with the name, I had no knowledge of that or even had a clue. I came to t'Sade (or Tsade as some people write it) by entirely different purposes, but it was a bit of serendipity that I always found amusing.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsade

Did you also know that Eterm was written by a professional boxer?  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eterm
 

[KK]

I dont believe in God or any kind of religion.
I don't even believe that we (or the universe) inherently have a purpose.
We just are.

If we want a purpose, we have to find it ourselves. And I think that is just fine.

[KainX]

I dont believe in God or any kind of religion.
I don't even believe that we (or the universe) inherently have a purpose.
We just are.

If we want a purpose, we have to find it ourselves. And I think that is just fine.

No one is talking about religion.

Nothing, not even the universe itself, can "just be."  There has to be some explanation for how we got here, how and when we became self-aware beings, etc.  The topic of Intelligent Design is about how we got to where we are now, either by random evolution out of elements from a universe whose true origins we still don't understand (not ID), or some other way (ID).  Which do you believe?

[t'Sade]

Well, I'm sort of talking about religion. I mean, for me, religion is basically the dogma, rituals, and ceremonies around a specific methodology or framework to understand the Unknown. In my case, my view of the Universal Machine is basically a self-created framework to understanding it. ID is basically my view that the UM shapes us and gives us a position. However, that position is fluid, but more in the aspect that glass is a liquid. You can resist your destiny, as it were, since that is basically "programmed" into you, but it takes a fair amount of effort until a new purpose is given to you. I've had a couple of situations in my life that lead me to that conclusion.

Now, our purpose is very vague. I see it as basically like the purpose of a plant: grow, enjoy, be eaten. It isn't that specific. In a way, it is "just be" but I like to think of it as a mass without motion. You don't really advance yourself, society, or the whole (the UM) really by just "being." I don't think there are many purposes (for us least enlightened folks :p) beyond go up, explore life, pay taxes, die. It is possible to try forging a new path, but that really is the path least traveled and it results in a path that is very painful, lonely and difficult to travel. But, once you get there, you managed to find a higher route, as it were, and your position changes to compensate for it. Call it a beneficial mutation if you want. Likewise, you can insist on following a darker, more destructive path. It can be something as innocent as self-abuse or flat out genocide. That could be seen as dragging your position lower, or more like a cancer.

ID, at least for me, consists of that vague purpose in life, but also the ability to handle the changes we make as free willed individuals. The UM is capable of handling changes we make in it, just like we are capable of handling changes in our own body.

I completely agree with the 2D analogy. I read it in a few of my books, but I couldn't really express it yesterday.

(It's been a long time since I talked about this, so I'm still a bit rough.)

[der Wandersmann]

OK, folks ... it's time to take a gander at THIS:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18061154/site/newsweek/

I still find it a touch difficult to believe that people can swallow such tripe, but I get evidence of it every day.

The best I can do to explain this type of psychology is to say that people who insist on this sort of rigid belief system are very badly frightened of life and everything that it entails ... so they have to have ANSWERS, by all and any means ... real, true, exact answers, in black and white, no greys allowed, so there's no danger of them making a mistake. It's the same sort of emotional defence system that results in all sorts of cults (did anyone catch the "Jonestown" special on The American Experience on PBS last week?), radical political movements (National Socialism, f'rinstance, or "Moral Majority"), and a host of other simple, but wrong, ideas.

And it's kinda scary. I think I'm more scared of scared people than anything else. Asteroid impacts can't hold a candle to the destructiveness of scared human beings.