Darwin's Influence

[Mola Ram Suda Ram]

I'm starting to think that abiogenesis is incompatible with the gospel. The Book of Mormon states that without God there could have been no creation. Abiogenesis is the hypothesis that life can spontaneously come into being without intelligent direction.

Even Ken Miller believes that God played a role in the creation of life. However, if I remember correctly, he believes that God worked at a quantum or sub-quantum level. Yet somehow he opposes ID. Maybe he believes that God did it but He wasn't strictly necessary? It's kind of hard for me to understand what role one believes God played in creation if one beileves that evolusion (abiogenesis)is sufficient to explain the existence of life.

Before they hammer you I should correct on point on your post. Evolution is not abiogenesis even though at times it seems that they use them interchangebly. Mainly I have found the terms are interchangeable when they are talking about abiogensis at it's most basic concepts. Talking about how protiens form and then they make more complex protiens and that is evolution but it really is abiogenesis. Well atleast accourding to the wiki article I read.

If there is a creator or ID then abiogenesis is false. IOW abiogenesis can only exsist if there is no creator or ID.

[tsubotsubo]

I just want to mention that I actually have been taught other theories than Darwinism at school. In a Chemistry lesson, once, we looked at creationism for a short period of time. I thought it was really good, actually, because a lot of people clearly did not have a clue about creationism. They were asking questions such as "How could so much have been created in 7 days?" They know a bit more about it now, which is good.

However, I was only taught evolution in Biology, but I think this is because my Chemistry teacher was a Catholic, and my Biology teacher was a strong atheist (and I'm also thinking she's Islamophobic, judging by some comments she makes).

But, perhaps the other theories would be better off being taught in lessons/courses such as Philosophy, Religious Studdies/Education, or even something such as Sociology, PSHE, etc. depending on the theory.

[LeSellers]

Welcome to the 5th Century.

Assuming you were responding to my message*, I challenge you to show how parental control over their children's education would be a step back to the V.

*Why is it that nearly everyone else has mastered the "Reply" feature to help us follow the discussion, but you refuse to show the courtesy of keeping the discussion intact?

There are hundreds of thousands of XX~XIX children whose parents have not relinquished that control to the state who are more than adequately educated. They range from Douglas McArthur and Pearl Buck to my own children and grandchildren. None has a V education, and it is an easy thing to substantiate that most of them are much better fitted for life in the modern world than their state-incarcerated peers. The system you seem to advocate produces life-long illiterates and non-literates at up to 50% of their output, depending on the amount of money spent (and the greater that number, the more illiteracy results, as a rule).

Government is much less concerned about educating children than controlling them (and through them, their parents). Schools are marvelous control mechanisms, and the reasons for government to own and operate them are exactly the same ones used for any government/religious nexus.

Spurious connections between non-governmental solutions and some non-existent time when things were terrible (a typical statist ploy) is just a sophisticated infraction of Godwin's law.

Lehi

[LeSellers]

I've been in a country where the schools were run by donation. It was a really good set up. The "good" schools got Saudi money and taught Wahabism. The poor schools, usually the ones that allowed girls to attend, got regularly blown up.

Which has what, exactly, to do with the united States of America?

Countless schools in USmerica run without government money (and the attendant interference), and produce quality scholars. They run the gamut from the Sudbury Valley School(s) to half a million Family-Centered Education establishments in the homes of the teachers and students.

Your false and sinister implication that only through government involvement in education can we avoid terrorism is further belied by the decade-old examples of Kliebold and Harris here in Colorado and a dozen others across this (once) great land. The decline of education since schools came under the iron hand of government is indisputable.

Your comparison is little different from false accusations of "NAZI" that rightfully gets topics closed and posters banned.

Lehi

[thesometimesaint]

Lehi:

The major difference with public vs private schools, there are good and bad of both, is not the funding stream. It is exclusivity.

The public schools must by law take all comers, regardless of ability or motivation. The private can include or exclude based on any criteria they want.

Other factors include such things as accountability issues, socialization issues, and the like.

[LeSellers]

The major difference with public vs private schools, there are good and bad of both, is not the funding stream. It is exclusivity.

The public schools must by law take all comers, regardless of ability or motivation. The private can include or exclude based on any criteria they want.

Like all those private shoe stores that refuse to sell to left-handed midgets?

This is a strawman.

Other factors include such things as accountability issues, socialization issues, and the like.

Strawmen all.

Lehi

[Mordecai]

It makes no predictions

Simply not true. I posted a list of about a dozen predictions ID makes in the Stephen Meyer thread.

[Mordecai]

In philosophy class. I'm sure you understand what a scientific theory is. Unless a theory can qualify as "scientific" (by following the scientific method), it has no place in science class. It is not the appropriate venue for what you suggest.

How is Darwinism following the scientific method more than ID is, when it comes to the origin of species (and not micro-evolution)? Current scientific knowledge suggests Darwinism can't produce any increases in complexity in DNA. The current model of the universe suggests that only an intelligence could increase complexity in DNA, based on statistics and observations. Also, what about Darwinists predicting that there would be large amounts of junk DNA and, that having been disproven, Darwinism is still a "fact"? I guess if you're the only theory on the block, no amount of evidence against you puts a dent in total unquestioning-acceptance of said theory.

Furthermore, how is this not a scientific hypothesis: "Intelligent design is the best explanation for some aspects of biological systems." You say that philosophy class is the place to deal with this, but all of science is underpinned by philosophy. There is, in fact a philosophy of science.

[Luigi]

How is Darwinism following the scientific method more than ID is, when it comes to the origin of species (and not micro-evolution)?

ID is based on the idea of attributing phenomenon which is not understood to human-like beings with consciousness and intent. The same principle was used by the Greeks to attribute lightning to Zeus. It is not a scientific principle. There is no evidence of any intellligent being existing roughly 1 billion years ago when life appeared on earth or in any time around then to attribute to creating life nor does the propagation of life appear to require the help of an intelligent agent.

Current scientific knowledge suggests Darwinism can't produce any increases in complexity in DNA.

Darwinism doesn't produce complexity in DNA, random mutations do.

The current model of the universe suggests that only an intelligence could increase complexity in DNA, based on statistics and observations.

When has intelligence been observed to create complexity in DNA? What evidence is there that the same process was responsible for the origins of life?

Also, what about Darwinists predicting that there would be large amounts of junk DNA and, that having been disproven, Darwinism is still a "fact"?

Geneticists still think there is junk DNA-just less than originally thought. There is still DNA which, if reactivated, can produce ancestoral traits such as teeth in chicken.

I guess if you're the only theory on the block, no amount of evidence against you puts a dent in total unquestioning-acceptance of said theory.

If you or any other scientist can offer reliable scientific evidence against scientific claims, even the only theory on the block, I think most of the scientific community would be ecstatic to hear your evidence (once it has been through appropriate peer review) and willing to abandon the theory. I personally would be happy to abandon evolution if I thought there was reaosonable cause to do so-I have no personal interest in maintaining belief in it.

[Rob Osborn]

Here is a line of reasoning truth-

If LDS believe in the Creator, then they must believe in intelligent Design.

LDS doctrine teaches us that we were created in the image of God. This means that our physical bodies in all of it's biological complexities was patterned and designed to come forth just as is Gods physical body. What does this mean? It means that God directed and controlled our physical bodies into existence through a process of intent, purpose and design. This is exactly waht ID proposes- that our complexity did not randomly come into existence without an intelligent cause guiding the process.

[David Hume]

Simply not true. I posted a list of about a dozen predictions ID makes in the Stephen Meyer thread.

Link? I searched the board, but could not find any such list.

[katherine the great]

Here is a line of reasoning truth-

If LDS believe in the Creator, then they must believe in intelligent Design.

I completely believe in God as our creator. That has nothing to do with Intelligent Design not meeting the criteria that would enable it to be taught in school as science.

[Mordecai]

Link? I searched the board, but could not find any such list.

Here is a copy of it. It wasn't in the Meyer thread, as it turns out but in LDS Beliefs and Evolution.

List of some predictions made by ID, from Stephen Meyer, PhD

*No undirected process will reveal that sources of active information are responsible for putatively successful computer-based evolutionary simulations.

*Informational accounting will reveal that sources of active information are are responsible for putatively successful computer-based evolutionary simulations.

*Future experiments will continue to show that RNA catalysts lack the capacities necessary to render the RNA-world scenario plausible.

*Informational accounting will reveal that any improvements in replicase function in ribozymes are the result of active information supplied by ribozyme engineers.

*Investigation of the logic of regulatory and information-processing systems in cells will reveal the use of design strategies and logic that mirrors (though possibly exceeds in complexity) those used in systems designed by engineers. Cell biologists will find regulatory systems that function in accord with a logic that can be expressed as an algorithm.

*Sophisticated imaging techniques will reveal nanomachines (turbines) in centrioles that play a role in cell division. Other evidence will show that malfunctions in the regulation of these machines are responsible for chromosomal damage.

*If intelligent design played a role in the origin of life, but not subsequently, prokaryotic cells should carry amounts of genetic information that exceed their own needs or retain vestiges of having done so, and molecular biology should provide evidence of information-rich structures that exceed the causal powers of chance, necessity, or the combination of the two.

*If a designing intelligence acted discretely in the history of life, the various subdisciplines of biology should show evidence of polyphyly.

*The fossil record, in particular, should show evidence of discrete infusion of information into the biosphere at episodic intervals as well as a top-down, rather than bottom-up, pattern of appearance of new fossil forms.

*If an intelligent (and benevolent) agent designed life, then studies of putatively bad designs in life--such as the vertebrate retina and virulent bacteria--should reveal either (a) reasons for the designs that show a hidden functional logic or (b evidence of decay or originally good designs (!).

*If the flagellar motor was intelligently designed and the type-3 secretory system devolved from it, the genes that code for the bacterial flagellar motor should be OLDER (!) than those that code the proteins in the T3SS, and not the reverse. Alternatively, if the T3SS and the flagellar motor arose by design independently, T3SS should have unique (nonhomologous) genes that are not present in the genome for the flagellar motor.

*The functional sequences of amino acids within amino acid-sequence space should be extremely rare rather than common.

Well, there are a set of predictions made by Meyer, PhD in philosophy of science, which fulfills one requirement for something to be a scientific theory. While it is not a theory, it obviously has predictions that are scientifically disprovable. So that judge who says it's not science is at least half wrong.

[Mordecai]

ID is based on the idea of attributing phenomenon which is not understood to human-like beings with consciousness and intent. The same principle was used by the Greeks to attribute lightning to Zeus. It is not a scientific principle. There is no evidence of any intellligent being existing roughly 1 billion years ago when life appeared on earth or in any time around then to attribute to creating life nor does the propagation of life appear to require the help of an intelligent agent.

The "phenomenon which is not understood" is what, exactly? What phenomenon are you talking about? If you're talking about information or specified complexity, then that is fairly well understood.

You say there is no evidence of any intelligent being existing 1 billion years ago [i think it was more like 3.5 billion, when abiogenesis occurred]. But if we found something like writing or an alien artifact and were able to date it to 3.5 billion years ago, we would say that is evidence of perhaps aliens or a time traveler. Well, how do you know that writing or an alien artifact represents intelligence? Clearly, we must have some methodology to determine if writing is naturally produced or random, right? That methodology involves specificity (a pattern) and complexity (or something that is extremely unlikely to occur randomly). Since Darwinian processes can't produce increases in complexity, and there are no other observed phenomenon that can produce specified complexity, we can infer that intelligent design was responsible. That is scientific.

I gave this example before:

An apple falling from a tree with no observable, physical power acting directly upon it, is comparable to planets revolving around the sun. Scientific hypothesis: the same phenomenon is responsible for apples falling from trees and planets revolving around the sun, i.e. gravity.

DNA, which represents a code and produces function and is extremely complex is comparable to writing, in that they are both specified and complex. Scientific hypothesis: the same phenomenon is responsible for the genetic code and writing, i.e. intelligence.

Darwinism doesn't produce complexity in DNA, random mutations do.

Look up synecdoche in the dictionary. Please don't play dumb.

When has intelligence been observed to create complexity in DNA? What evidence is there that the same process was responsible for the origins of life?

When Newton theorized that planets revolve around the sun due to gravity, when had gravity been observed to have caused entire planets to change their course? What evidence was there that gravity was responsible for planetary orbits?

Geneticists still think there is junk DNA-just less than originally thought. There is still DNA which, if reactivated, can produce ancestoral traits such as teeth in chicken.

What's your point? Irrelevant to the debate. If there is a tiny bit of junk DNA, O.K. But that is still better support for the ID prediction than the Darwinian prediction.

If you or any other scientist can offer reliable scientific evidence against scientific claims, even the only theory on the block, I think most of the scientific community would be ecstatic to hear your evidence (once it has been through appropriate peer review) and willing to abandon the theory. I personally would be happy to abandon evolution if I thought there was reaosonable cause to do so-I have no personal interest in maintaining belief in it.

There is a lot of scientific evidence against Darwinism:

The Deniable Darwin by David Berlinski.

No such thing as Junk DNA.

Forty thousand generations of e-coli with imposed selective pressures do not increase complexity.

Central Dogma [of Darwinism] Revisited.

Have fun!

[David Hume]

List of some predictions made by ID, from Stephen Meyer, PhD

*No undirected process will reveal that sources of active information are responsible for putatively successful computer-based evolutionary simulations.

Why would an undirected process reveal anything? People who acknowledge the fact of evolution don't say this. I think you're trying to say something else here, but I can't tell what it is.

*Informational accounting will reveal that sources of active information are are responsible for putatively successful computer-based evolutionary simulations.

ID doesn't necessarily make this prediction. ID is only compelled to make this prediction when ID is defined as I have done above, to mean "anything we can't currently explain must have been effected by intelligence". But that definition has already been proven false, so ID would have to fall back to the "some things we can't currently explain have been effected by intelligence". By this latter definition, ID isn't required to say that active information is responsible for putatively successful computer-based evolutionary simulations. But this formulation of ID is also unfalsifiable, because as long as there's something unexplained by naturalistic processes, the intelligence-of-the-gaps will have a place to hide.

*Future experiments will continue to show that RNA catalysts lack the capacities necessary to render the RNA-world scenario plausible.

*Informational accounting will reveal that any improvements in replicase function in ribozymes are the result of active information supplied by ribozyme engineers.

*Investigation of the logic of regulatory and information-processing systems in cells will reveal the use of design strategies and logic that mirrors (though possibly exceeds in complexity) those used in systems designed by engineers. Cell biologists will find regulatory systems that function in accord with a logic that can be expressed as an algorithm.

*Sophisticated imaging techniques will reveal nanomachines (turbines) in centrioles that play a role in cell division. Other evidence will show that malfunctions in the regulation of these machines are responsible for chromosomal damage.

See above. The same criticisms to the "Informational accounting will reveal..." point apply to each of these.

*If intelligent design played a role in the origin of life, but not subsequently, prokaryotic cells should carry amounts of genetic information that exceed their own needs or retain vestiges of having done so, and molecular biology should provide evidence of information-rich structures that exceed the causal powers of chance, necessity, or the combination of the two.

But ID doesn't preclude tinkering by the Designer after the original Creation -- it's compatible with theism as well as deism -- so this is all moot. And this isn't a prediction, because we already know that prokaryotic cells exhibit these features. It's at best a post-diction -- and an uninteresting one, because evolutionary theory also makes this post-diction AND accounts for a lot of facts that ID can't explain without being modified on an ad hoc basis.

*If a designing intelligence acted discretely in the history of life, the various subdisciplines of biology should show evidence of polyphyly.

Again, this is also compatible with evolution. But there's not even a reason to suppose that a designing intelligence would have acted discretely, so this is another ad hoc rationale that makes ID less parsimonious than evolution.

*The fossil record, in particular, should show evidence of discrete infusion of information into the biosphere at episodic intervals as well as a top-down, rather than bottom-up, pattern of appearance of new fossil forms.

This first part suffers from the same flaw as the "prediction" above: there's no reason given for assuming that a designer would have necessarily acted discretely. I'm not sure what the whole "top-down, bottom-up" stuff is supposed to mean.

*If an intelligent (and benevolent) agent designed life, then studies of putatively bad designs in life--such as the vertebrate retina and virulent bacteria--should reveal either (a) reasons for the designs that show a hidden functional logic or (b evidence of decay or originally good designs (!).

No, this is only true if the intelligent agent is presumed to be omnipotent, which ID doesn't necessarily do. ID doesn't even presume that the intelligent designer is benevolent.

Interestingly, though, there are plenty of instances of suboptimal "design" that haven't been explained away as actually productive, so if this were actually a prediction made by ID, as you say it is, then ID would be disproved. And how could one show that a design was "originally good," anyway? That's just another papering over of a crack in the theory.

*If the flagellar motor was intelligently designed and the type-3 secretory system devolved from it, the genes that code for the bacterial flagellar motor should be OLDER (!) than those that code the proteins in the T3SS, and not the reverse. Alternatively, if the T3SS and the flagellar motor arose by design independently, T3SS should have unique (nonhomologous) genes that are not present in the genome for the flagellar motor.

There are too many conditionals in this set of sentences for it to constitute a potential falsification of ID.

*The functional sequences of amino acids within amino acid-sequence space should be extremely rare rather than common.

There's nothing contradictory about the commonness of amino acid functional sequences and the idea that the life was designed.

[Mordecai]

Why would an undirected process reveal anything? People who acknowledge the fact of evolution don't say this. I think you're trying to say something else here, but I can't tell what it is

An undirected process, like microevolution, reveals what it can and can't do when we observe it, obviously. I am not trying to say this. This is a prediction made by advocates of ID, as in scientists. It's from Meyer's book Signature in the Cell.

ID doesn't necessarily make this prediction.

Actually, ID does necessarily make this prediction, because it predicts that only an intelligence can produce specified complexity. The alluded to computer simulations produced specified complexity. If it is proven that evolution or some other natural process can produce specified complexity, there is no ID theory. It's dead. So ID must therefore predict the computer simulations to be guided by intelligence and not a true representation of Darwinian processes.

But ID doesn't preclude tinkering by the Designer after the original Creation -- it's compatible with theism as well as deism -- so this is all moot.

This particular prediction does preclude tinkering by the designer after the original creation. So this particular prediction is not moot.

And this isn't a prediction, because we already know that prokaryotic cells exhibit these features. It's at best a post-diction -- and an uninteresting one, because evolutionary theory also makes this post-diction AND accounts for a lot of facts that ID can't explain without being modified on an ad hoc basis.

I think it's a prediction ID has to make, ad hoc or not. If you already know this about prokaryotic cells, then Darwinism has been proven wrong as Darwinism predicts that evidence will show that prokaryotic cells were produced via a combination of chance and necessity. So you say you know that Darwinism is proven to not be the explanation for these characteristics in prokaryotic cells?

Again, this is also compatible with evolution. But there's not even a reason to suppose that a designing intelligence would have acted discretely, so this is another ad hoc rationale that makes ID less parsimonious than evolution.

Well, pretty much nothing is incompatible with evolution, so that means nothing. Darwinists certainly didn't necessarily predict it. There's no reason to suppose a designer would have acted discretely? Of course there is. It's discrete in that thought takes care of the work instead of natural selection. Pretty hard to find evidence of thought in the fossil record. It's part of the nature of intelligence. Hardly ad hoc since thinking is obviously discrete, which forces one to make the prediction that a designer's influence would be more discrete than Darwinian processes.

I'm not sure what the whole "top-down, bottom-up" stuff is supposed to mean.

Top-down means that greater innovation occurs first with less variation as time goes on. We can see this pattern with technology and art. The fossil record reflects almost all phyla (which do represent the greatest innovation) appearing at the Cambrian explosion.

No, this is only true if the intelligent agent is presumed to be omnipotent, which ID doesn't necessarily do. ID doesn't even presume that the intelligent designer is benevolent.

The designer or designers wouldn't be PRESUMED to be anything, much less omnipotent. It's inference. Do you think a stupid designer could produce the genetic code or the human brain? Obviously, if a designer is involved, the designer is highly intelligent. As far as benevolence, that is by necessity, because a designer who purposely produced bad designs would be hiding evidence of intelligence. Since the idea of ID is, "Some things in biology are best explained by intelligence," the hypotheses that fall into the realm of ID must necessarily predict there will be evidence.

Interestingly, though, there are plenty of instances of suboptimal "design" that haven't been explained away as actually productive, so if this were actually a prediction made by ID, as you say it is, then ID would be disproved. And how could one show that a design was "originally good," anyway? That's just another papering over of a crack in the theory.

Yes, there are many examples to study, making it an interesting scientific prediction. No, ID would not be disproved, unless it were proven absolutely that the design was bad. How could one show that a design was not originally bad? The same way Darwinists prove that something has degenerated. They can find ancestry, like with the flagellum.

There are too many conditionals in this set of sentences for it to constitute a potential falsification of ID.

That's totally non sequitur. In fact, it's a great example of ID being science. Behe suggested that the best explanation for the flagellum is intelligence. Darwinists went about trying to disprove it. They predicted, in fact, that the type 3 secretory system would be ancestral in order to disprove Behe's hypothesis. But it turned out the flagellum was ancestral. Great example of ID being science.

There's nothing contradictory about the commonness of amino acid functional sequences and the idea that the life was designed.

But if it's common, that's not evidence of ID. It therefore is evidence against the hypothesis that ID is the best explanation.

[cdowis]

Darwinism doesn't produce complexity in DNA, random mutations do.

Is this merely your opinion, an assertion, or you provide proof of this statement.

This is a CFR request.

[thesometimesaint]

Lehi:

A waves of your hand is not a substantive rebuttal.

Ps. What need do we have for the little brown criminals to learn anyway. All we want is cheap Blueberries.

http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/young-children-working-blueberry-fields-walmart-severs-ties/story?id=8951044

[Mordecai]

Someone posted on here that ID has been around since the 70's and therefore has had sufficient time for acceptance by the scientific community. However, this is not the case. Intelligent Design is science because of its positive assertion and is not a "god of the gaps" argument like creationism or even creation science was. In fact, Intelligent Design came into being in the early nineties, with Behe's book, Darwin's Black Box and Dembkski's theories about identifying intelligent design. Just wanted to clear that up, because it wasn't even until the mid 80's that creation science was around. It, however, lacked the scientific fundamentals of Intelligent Design.

[LeSellers]

A waves of your hand is not a substantive rebuttal.

Ps. What need do we have for the little brown criminals to learn anyway. All we want is cheap Blueberries.

Typical.

None of your "examples" has any basis in fact at all.

Private schools do not all discriminate (many government schools use them when they admit they cannot handle certain problem children), and among those that do, there are all sorts of discriminations that tend to cancel each other. I.e., one school admits only girls, another only boys, or one with a "lily-white" student body is countered by another with a chocolate hue.

Your assertions (or intimations) are false or mere cherry picking.

The whole issue of where a child attends school (if he attends at all) should be the exclusive concern of his parents, not of bureaucrats or politicians.

And, I re-iterate, your original post on the matter was an infraction of the Godwin's Law rule. Even were it not, this "racist" assertion (in your current message) most certainly is. Race is not, nor ever has been, a concern of mine as it comes to educating children. My observation is that poor, and particularly poor minority children, are the most seriously injured victims of government-run, tax-funded schools. As evidence, I give you "inner-city" schools. No amount of money can possibly rescue the youth of Washington, Chicago, or Detroit. The problem is that government, not freedom, rules in the departments of education, and it is the children (and their families), that suffer for it. Freedom is the answer, but freedom is inimical to the goals of the power brokers and their minions in offices and bureaus the world around.

If a parent wills that his child learn Darwinism or Creationsim or that Odin gave up an eye in the organization of the universe, it is of no concern of mine or yours: The parent has the most invested in the child and his future and the most to gain from his child's education. Politicians, bureaucrats, and do-gooders ought simply butt out.

Lehi

[Mordecai]

The whole issue of where a child attends school (if he attends at all) should be the exclusive concern of his parents, not of bureaucrats or politicians.

Strongly agree, sir. I was reading some of the text of an old supreme court decision. It was saying, "Whom you choose to marry is as much a right as choosing which school your children should go to." I am increasingly angered by our totalitarian school system.

[Tchild2]

Simply not true. I posted a list of about a dozen predictions ID makes in the Stephen Meyer thread.

If Intelligent design, why do species go extinct, even before man came on the scene? Why is an "intelligent" designer creating (tens of thousands to millions) of species that end? Please elaborate Mordicai.

[cdowis]

Darwinism doesn't produce complexity in DNA, random mutations do.

Is this merely your opinion, an assertion, or you provide proof of this statement.

This is a CFR request.

Luigi, can we assume that you have withdrawn your statement. It has not been demonstrated that random mutations have the capability to produce complex DNA structures as found in, for example, higher intelligence.

Some other mechanism is obviously at work here.

Would you like to respond?

[Mordecai]

If Intelligent design, why do species go extinct, even before man came on the scene? Why is an "intelligent" designer creating (tens of thousands to millions) of species that end? Please elaborate Mordicai.

My question is, why wouldn't species go extinct before man came on the scene? Care to elaborate on how and why an intelligent designer(s) would create species that never die or don't decay or degenerate? People, who are intelligent (to varying degrees), make all kinds of things that break down and decay. It's perfectly consistent with what we know about intelligent design.

If you're asking a theological question that has nothing to do with ID theory, just ask, "Why would God create so many species that went extinct prior to man being on the scene." In the Christian creation accounts, after God creates animals and plants, God "saw that it was good." So those creations are good in themselves, even if man isn't living on earth. Perhaps you're assuming anthropocentrism, that Christians believe God only cares about people. Apparently, God cares about sparrows and lilies as well.

Why do they die? Well, according to our scriptures, they die because of a choice Adam and Eve made (or in the case of creatures that came before Adam and Eve, they die because of the choice Adam and Eve would make. You could add a new subject to the forum asking about that. I'm not sure I have a very good answer as to why animals must also die (although I have some tentative answers).

[RenegadeOfPhunk]

Someone posted on here that ID has been around since the 70's and therefore has had sufficient time for acceptance by the scientific community. However, this is not the case...

In fact, Intelligent Design came into being in the early nineties...

That someone was me.

...and this is directly from the Discovery Institute website Mordecai:

http://www.discovery.org/a/7471

The modern theory of intelligent design was not developed in response to a legal setback for creationists in 1987. Instead, it was first proposed in the late 1970s and early 1980s by a group of scientists - Charles Thaxton, Walter Bradley and Roger Olson - who were trying to account for an enduring mystery of modern biology: the origin of the digital information encoded along the spine of the DNA molecule.

Are you telling me I shouldn't believe the Discovery Institute website now?

...if you are, I'll take that as progress...

Yes - they have had ample time to gain a scientific consensus. And yet after 30 years they still haven't managed to gain a consensus that it is even a valid scientific theory!

...heh - let me guess - a vast atheistic conspiracy in a mainly theistic world-wide scientific community?!