Intelligent design (Introduction)

by Abel , Wednesday, October 26, 2011, 23:41 (4777 days ago) @ Abel

But since the topic of this post is intelligent design, I thought I might include a few of my comments that I made to a skeptic on another site.

"Many scientists subscribe to the theory of intelligent design, not because it conflicts with the theory of evolution, but because it complements it. It fills in the gaps nicely (and there are huge gaps).

I have already touched on the concept of abiogenesis being ludicrous given what we know of chemistry, odds and simple physics. This is the first gap in evolutionary theory.

The second gap is the life/death gap. Of course people don’t talk about this one much, but it is quite simple. If something is dead, it stays dead. So if I had a simple bacteria that, for the sake of argument, self-assembled by a process of chance from lifeless chemicals, that bacteria with all of its’ structures in place and intact would still be lifeless until its’ figurative battery was charged and its’ fuel tank filled.

We’ve certainly seen lots of dead bacteria and animals, but have we ever seen what is in effect a cellular AAA? No we have not. Dead things are dead and they stay dead. Atheistic scientists certainly possess quite a deal of faith when they chose to believe this happened at one time in history, and ironically deny the faith of theists when they say that Christ was raised from the dead too.

Now I will address some the gaps in evolutionary theory itself. There are a number of structures with the cell that constructed from components that have no function unto themselves. Why would they evolve separately when they only make sense as an assembly? Molecular motors, rotors, dimeric and tetrameric proteins, etc, are examples of these.

In the evolutionary record itself, there are huge gaps where life seems to take a leap from one form to another without any intermediates.

Intelligent design logically addresses all of these observations. It does not make any stipulations about the nature of the engineer(s). Whether it was an all-powerful God (as theists believe) or a race of beings whose technology is so advanced (and strange) that it appears to be magic (my belief) is not a part of that theory.

The vast majority of scientists reject this theory because of politics and faith, certainly not because of good science.

Consider this, if the Mars rover found words etched into a rock that said “welcome to mars, zebo was here first” would we believe this was eroded into the rock by the action of wind and sand? What if we found a tool as simple as a kitchen knife? Would we believed it evolved? If we did find those things on Mars and a scientist suggested they “evolved’ there, he/she would be laughed out of the room.

I have done the calculations to determine the odds of randomly assembling an mRNA strand coding for a functional 300 AA protein, using a racemic mix of RNA. That number quite easily exceeds the number of seconds that the universe has existed, multiplied by the number of bosons in the known universe. Given that life appeared on earth about 200 million years after it was cool enough to even possibly support it, it seems that we won a cosmic lottery with the very first ticket we bought. I don’t believe it for a New York minute, and any scientist that does is a good candidate to buy the Brooklyn Bridge.

When abiogenesis occurred it happened in a much larger pool of matter, over a much longer period of time, someplace where entropy was not tearing every macromolecule to shreds before the first chapter of the book of life could be written. The beings that evolved on that world are the ones that seeded this one and tried to guide evolution (it’s like herding kittens) to create the intelligence that they desired. Call this race the first race, the ancients, the Elohim, God, god(s), ET’s, angels, archangels, whatever you want, the archaeological evidence of their existence is in the tools that they made."