Month: March 2019

Intelligent Design: The Universe

Proponents of the theory of ID like to cite a fallacious argument that the universe was created for us, because when considering all the factors involved, if you vary some of these factors by any amount at all, life, at least as we know it, could not even exist. Therefore because the universe is so complex they see god as the mechanism by which these factors came to be as they are, giving rise to life.

At its core the, this is an example of an argument from ignorance fallacy, essentially asking how do we explain the amazing complexity of the universe and it’s ability to spawn life if not for a god?

The answer as it turns out appears to be by entirely natural causes, some of which are known to science, and some of which are not.

In addition, when one considers the true immensity of the universe as we have come to understand it, and how 99.99999999999% of it is entirely uninhabitable, saying it was all intelligently designed for us seems like the most self centered egotistical absurdity possible.

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Another intelligent design argument is a rebuttal to evolution known as “Specified Complexity.”

Specified Complexity is a term that was made up for this particular argument, and is not pre-existing the intelligent design assertion.

The term as it is used in this instance is not accepted by mainstream academics in part because “Specified Complexity” is a necessarily “circular” argument. It is therefore logically fallacious.

In this context what is meant by “specified” is selected by some intelligence, as opposed to selected by natural causation (by nature).

If the claim is “Specified Complexity is valid evidence for proof of intelligent design,” then substitute “selected by some intelligence” in place of “Specified.” or… Intelligently selected complexity is valid evidence for proof of intelligent design

Circularly pointing out intelligence is proof of intelligence. Defining the premise to include the conclusion.

If you start by saying “specified” complexity, you have already inserted an intelligence as part of the premises.

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The actual concept of specified complexity was also shot down in the dover vs. Kitzmiller trial, where scientific data and evidence was explained in great detail to the court showing conclusively that the whole concept of Specified Complexity is wrong on its basic premise, that some structures found in nature are too complicated to form via naturally occurring processes alone.

The conservative federal judge assigned to the case and who was appointed by George W Bush was openly Christian, and amazingly did a great job with his ruling, ultimately declaring in a lengthy and well supported decision that Intelligent design was just creationism, an unsupported religious claim not to be taught in our schools.

There you have it! According to the federal Judge ruling on the case, the the official ruling is, Intelligent design is not science!

Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District
End date: December 20, 2005

On December 20, 2005, Jones issued his 139-page findings of fact and decision ruling that the Dover mandate requiring the statement to be read in class was unconstitutional. The ruling concluded that intelligent design is not science, and permanently barred the board from “maintaining the ID Policy in any school within the Dover Area School District, from requiring teachers to denigrate or disparage the scientific theory of evolution, and from requiring teachers to refer to a religious, alternative theory known as ID.”

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Intelligent Design Vs. Evolution.

ID proponents tell us that we are perfectly designed. Yet there are in fact plenty of problems with our design they like to ignore. Why do men have nipples or do we each have an appendix, it could become inflamed, burst and kill you, but if you remove it you will live a long and healthy life without serious repercussions. We are not the strongest animal, or the fastest, or the animal with the best sense of smell or the best eyesight, or hearing. We cant fly, or reproduce at will simply by replication. We are not the longest living life forms. We think we are the smartest creature on the planet, but can’t be sure at this point that is even true. It would be extremely unlikely, in light of what we know about the universe, that we are the smartest form of life in the cosmos.

If you were the designer of everything in the universe, would such an imperfect being be your crowning achievement? I’m a designer by trade and if I have in my tool box the ability to design and create all the life forms found in the universe, my crowning achievement in the filed of life form design would take all the best abilities I can bestow on a life form and make it the fastest smartest longest living strongest, best seeing, hearing, most powerful being I can come up with.

But that isn’t what we find in nature. Instead we see a huge random assortment of ability’s distributed over many different life forms coming from as many different environments and demonstrating the amazing diversity of life. That is exactly what is predicted by evolutionary theory, that all animals including us evolved to have the traits we do because of how are environments selected naturally for them.

Is God really all powerful? If so, can God create a rock so heavy even he can’t lift it? Can God create a burrito so hot even he can’t eat it? These questions show the logical contradictions of a being that is all powerful. The most common theistic apologetic response is “God is as powerful as logically possible.” This is an admission that even God is subject to the laws of logic.

In light of this understanding, let’s examine the theistic claim that atheists just think “something came from nothing?”

Science has never claimed “something can come from nothing,” nor have we ever had an example of a true nothing to examine going all the way back to the theoretical singularity.

Can God create something from nothing? If you think so, then you believe that under the right circumstances something can come from nothing; if not, then you are acknowledging that God must have been working with preexisting material (matter that preexisted the current state of the universe).

Scientific observations appear to confirm for all new things which come into being each is actually a new arrangement of preexisting atoms or sub atomic particles. In a completely naturalistic view, matter is always required to make something. The matter we see in this universe is never really created or destroyed, and the base parts of all the matter that came out of the expansion of the singularity may have for all intents and purposes been eternal. It appears that nothing is ever created from truly nothing, and as far as we know there has never actually been truly nothing.

Our universe is expanding and it is now understood that 13.78 billion years ago all the matter in the universe was most likely compacted into a single point known as the singularity. Einsteins extremely well supported and predictive theory describes that from the singularity, as the expansion we colloquially call the big bang occurred, space and time came into existence together as what we now refer to as spacetime. “Before there was space and time,” is a nonsensical statement, as it is not logical to speak of things existing before time, as existence is necessarily temporal. If there is a God, then he to must have come into existence only after there was time to exist, after the start of spacetime, aka the universe, and therefore this being cannot be the cause of the universe.

Many use the loaded term creation to describe our universe and/or everything in it. Of course presupposing everything is created is fallacious and a better term is just to call it reality. Reality is something we all share even if we don’t agree on how it came to exist. According to theists God created all of reality. If God can’t do anything that isn’t logically possible, then he can’t create a universe which includes all of space and time, all of reality, from inside it, after it existed. God must have been outside reality, outside of existence, and the only logical conclusion is that God can’t be part of reality or existence. A universe creating god is quite literally not real and does not exist.

For added consideration:

Scientists do not know for sure where the initial building blocks of matter actually came from but they do have several hypotheses. A well known example is the testable observation described by Lawrence Krauss that virtual particles continuously pop into and out of existence in empty space and that given enough time (perhaps less time or even no time under the right conditions) an entire universe worth of matter could actually effervesce into existence and that it may just be inevitable for it to do so because true nothingness is likely inherently unstable.

Starting with the earliest moments of the universe coming into its current form via the expansion event of 13.78 billion years ago scientists Have been able to model the processes by which the materials in the universe cooled, coalesced and ultimately formed the first clumps of atoms of hydrogen which powered the first generation of stars and galaxy formation. We also have a thorough understanding of how stars and subsequent generations of stars have created all the heavier elements found in the periodic table. We now understand how purely natural forces like gravity, can create all the stars and planets we see simply from the natural interactions of preexisting matter.

We now understand that our planet formed out of the same accretion disc as our sun which is a third generation star that is just around five billion years old. Using telescopes, radio telescopes, spectroscopy, and other tools, we can see star formation happening right now in huge gas nebulae. Over 100 billion stars are in an average galaxy and there are more than 200 billion galaxies in the visible universe. Our planet is like a single spec of dust when compared to all that exists.

Given how much we do understand about the nature of the universe, the idea of a preexisting deity conjuring all of this up from absolutely nothing via some kind of supernatural power is an extra and unnecessary piece of the explanation that actually violates what we do understand about the realty we live in. The creator hypothesis is totally unsupported by the evidence. And the idea that this deity created all this just for us, when at least 99.999999999999% of the universe would kill us instantly, is absolutely laughable.

If you simply think this is a good time to say “God works in mysterious ways” which is an admission you can’t understand him, please see this post which demonstrates why you can’t possibly believe something you can’t understand.