Intelligent design (Introduction)

by dhw, Friday, October 28, 2011, 17:41 (4753 days ago) @ Abel

There’s a lot to digest in these posts, and I’m in no position to discuss most of the science with you as it’s way beyond my range. Perhaps David will engage with you on that level. However, I hope you won’t mind if I ask you to clarify some of your observations, because this may help me get a clearer overall picture.

You say that for abiogenesis to occur, the entropy induced by simple kinetics would have to be minimal (but not zero). Once the “crystals” are interacting, abiogenesis would be inevitable – given enough matter, time and energy – and “life in this type of matter would be easy living.” Then the simple cell would have evolved to become the first race, which “is complex and advanced”. My layman’s perhaps rather stupid question is: why? If life is simple, and if the environment is so stable that there is little need to “harness materials” and “repair structures”, why would such a simple organism need to evolve? At least current evolutionary theory includes the need for organisms to adapt in order to survive, but on your Planet X the fight for survival appears to play little part. Innovation, which is a major problem for some of us if it is attributed to random mutations, remains a major problem in your own theory. Why would sheer chance create all the organs and faculties necessary to make your first race so “complex and advanced” that they were able to create us?

Some scientists distinguish between dark matter and dark energy, but most seem to agree that the word “dark” is just another word for “unknown”. You will be relieved to hear that I have very little hair left to pull out, but in any case I have long since ceased to give any credence to figures like 83% or 99.9%. This has nothing to do with you personally – I just don’t see how anyone can possibly come up with such figures relating to a universe that they have barely begun to explore and to matter which they know virtually nothing about: See www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-14948730 for a recent shock to the theory.

I hope you’ll also be relieved to hear that your experiences with ghosts and visions do not make me think you are insane, and I also know many totally sane people who believe that Adam and Eve really existed. I have an open mind on people’s psychic experiences – and I’m intrigued by your “dark matter technology"! – but must confess to extreme scepticism when it comes to stories written by fallible humans about the words and deeds of their god or gods thousands of years after the purported events (if they ever took place). Much as I try to foster open-mindedness, it does have its limits, and when the tales contradict the general consensus of science, I go with science, however fallible that too may be. But strangely, although you do believe in Adam and Eve, you actually disagree with the bible, because you say they were “born of human mothers who were implanted with a modified and fertilized egg.” Again I don’t see how you can pick and choose which parts of the bible you accept and which you don’t, and you will certainly understand that I can’t base my own judgement on your “gift when it comes to spotting the truth”.

Equally strange for me is your next remark: “This is how all the apes were evolved into men.” It seems then that you accept random evolution from a simple cell to a race of advanced beings on Planet X, but evolution on Planet Earth had to be guided (the implication of your passive verb). Did this guided evolution also begin with a simple cell? This seems most likely, since the simplest forms still survive today, but if the first race evolved naturally from a simple cell, why couldn't the simple cell also have evolved naturally on Earth? I'm not arguing here against ID, but against the argument that life and evolution on Earth required ID whereas life and evolution on Planet X did not. So I've now come full circle back to my second paragraph!

I hope you won’t consider all of this to be in any way offensive. My position is one of almost complete ignorance, and I realize that I’m commenting on a theology which you have only just begun to explain. So please be patient with my scepticism!