Intelligent design (Introduction)

by dhw, Tuesday, November 08, 2011, 16:14 (4742 days ago) @ Abel

Abel has begun to respond to my attempt at summarizing his beliefs.

You say: “Life has a greater chance of overcoming the erosive effects of entropy in a low entropy environment”. Obviously. But that doesn’t explain abiogenesis – it only explains a longer lifespan for existing creatures.

Your statistical argument – billions of planets here, there and everywhere – is precisely the one used by Dawkins to prove that life was bound to happen somewhere, so who needs God? Your theory is that it happened elsewhere first. That doesn’t mean that beings from elsewhere must have come to Earth and created us! Nor does it make abiogenesis inevitable on Planet X but impossible on Planet Earth.

Having assumed that there is such a place as a low-entropy, dark matter Planet X, you reckon the gods could have a life span of 40,000 years or more. It’s believed that life started on Earth approximately 3.7 billion years ago. So if your gods created life on Earth, they are now into at the very least their 100,000th generation since they created the first bacteria. It took them thousands of generations to get to us, by which time you’d have thought they’d have been pretty badly affected by our high entropy. Or do you think later generations guided evolution by remote control from…wherever they went to after their sun(s) had died and they’d visited Earth? And how the heck did they find out about our laughter, stories, songs, creativity etc.? Intergalactic TV (invisible to earthlings)? And how do you know they never laughed or told stories or sang songs? You are now talking of “heaven”, which has all kinds of religious connotations, but your gods are mortal and they come from a dark-matter planet, so I don’t understand this sudden reference to “heaven”.

There is no need for you to answer these questions, as they are only meant to illustrate why I find the whole scenario unconvincing to the point of being unbelievable. David has dismissed it all as science fiction, and asks for proof of your claims. You have told us that your knowledge is based on “direct experience, observation and deductive reasoning”. Observation often varies according to the observer, and deductive reasoning has led David to believe in God and George to disbelieve, but “direct experience” might be more enlightening. May I be so bold as to ask you outright precisely what “direct experience” you have had in support of your claims.