A splendid video about evolution

Intelligent Design is not a "very Jesusy, young earth creationistily vibed piece of propaganda" ~ that's just the usual disingenuous strawman I've heard time and time again... ID only asserts that life has all the hallmarks of being engineered by intelligent entities. Intelligent Design does not make any assertions about the nature of the engineer/s, because that's outside the scope of ID. Anything else is the personal interpretation of the individual.

ID has very strong scientific evidence for it, from my perspective ~ but the nature of the designer/s? No religion has the answers for me, as it's too biased towards human belief and dogma. I rather look towards mysticism and the god of philosophy.

I was specifically talking about the video from the OP, see my answer to David.
Gonna ask the same questions, did you actually watch the video? What do you think about the complete rebuttal in the video i posted?

I am not a Christian, nor do I adhere to any other faith.

I would describe anyone who

a) belives in the existence of an extra-universal being, specifically calling it a designer rather than a god or creator,
b) believes in the existence of spiritual dimensions,
c) and tries to rationalize away the fact that our lack of explicit knowledge about a designer or spiritual dimensions makes their existence highly unlikely,

as highly religious.

I would describe anyone who

a) belives in the existence of an extra-universal being, specifically calling it a designer rather than a god or creator,
b) believes in the existence of spiritual dimensions,
c) and tries to rationalize away the fact that our lack of explicit knowledge about a designer or spiritual dimensions makes their existence highly unlikely,

as highly religious.

It's very easy to toss around words such as spiritual without regard for what it might mean or relate to. For example, the experience of beauty, perhaps in standing in a landscape, or a feeling of awe at the scale of things such as a waterfall, these are purely material things in this world yet may evoke some powerful feeling, a shift in consciousness for a timeless moment. Yet this does not at all imply a person is religious.

Associating everyday experience with some concepts which perhaps a person might find distasteful I would say is an unnecessary step. One can observe and experience the world without such convoluted associations, without as an alternative, needing to - for example - deny that beauty or awe exist. I find it better to let the world be, it is what it is, unencumbered.

I would describe anyone who

a) belives in the existence of an extra-universal being, specifically calling it a designer rather than a god or creator,
b) believes in the existence of spiritual dimensions,
c) and tries to rationalize away the fact that our lack of explicit knowledge about a designer or spiritual dimensions makes their existence highly unlikely,

as highly religious.

I don't even know how one quantifies these probabilities, there are way too many ways to approach the question of spiritual realities.

But if you turn this same critical eye fairly toward the idea of a Multiverse and find it rightfully wanting, the designer can be a rationally accepted entity.

[Or to be clearer, "designer" here is an argument for some conscious entity or entities that had a hand in giving us the universe we live in.]

I would describe anyone who

a) belives in the existence of an extra-universal being, specifically calling it a designer rather than a god or creator,
b) believes in the existence of spiritual dimensions,
c) and tries to rationalize away the fact that our lack of explicit knowledge about a designer or spiritual dimensions makes their existence highly unlikely,

as highly religious.

A lot of people describe the non-physical realm as in some way timeless.

I don't believe in anything, but I suspect that we are spirits are also timeless, but at some point we decided to create a physical world in which cut down versions of our true selves could live for a while.

So maybe we ourselves designed this world and our bodies.

The problem with being religious, never mind highly religious, is that it seems to involve irrational beliefs which people force themselves to believe to earn brownie points.

David

That is why i am so surprised you promote this video, have you actually watched it?
Literally the first thing James Tour asks Rob Stadler is : "Do you believe in the resurrection of Christ".
A bit further Stadler starts with quoting the bible. then he continues using obvious young earth creationist tropes like using kinds instead of standard cladistic terms, referring to observable science etc... 

Of course I watched it! Sometimes one has to wade through some sh*t to get to the essence of an argument. I think the DI does a lot of good science, but unfortunately ties it to one particular religious myth.

Anyway did you watch the video i posted? It completely debunks this peace of nonsense.     


Doing OK, just reread an old thread on the old Skeptiko forum where we discussed (and buried IMO) the 'waiting time' anti-evolution argument.
I was surprised to see that a link to that discussion still worked?
It does take you to an unsafe website though.

I don't see a video except for Stadler's video. That man is not stupid, but he is wearing blinkers.

What exactly is the waiting time argument? The argument against evolution is probably best put by Behe:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Darwin-Devolves...B079L6RTNT

His quite a subtle argument which shows that natural selection would in fact weaken a species by causing a progressive loss of diversity. This would happen long before a single new protein could be created.

If you are at all interested, I suggest you read Behe's book.

David

I would describe anyone who

a) belives in the existence of an extra-universal being, specifically calling it a designer rather than a god or creator,
b) believes in the existence of spiritual dimensions,
c) and tries to rationalize away the fact that our lack of explicit knowledge about a designer or spiritual dimensions makes their existence highly unlikely,

as highly religious.

None of your statements have anything to do with religion specifically. Someone can believe in a spiritual dimensions and god-like entities without being religious.

Besides, lack of explicit knowledge about a designer or spiritual dimensions does not make their existence "highly unlikely" at all. It just doesn't logically follow.

We talk about the concept of a spiritual designer because it is implicitly recognized as needing to exist because of the recognition that the sheer complexity biological life just so far outstrips even our very best engineering capabilities that we therefore need engineer/s who are far more capable than us. Those are the spiritual designers, albeit identity unknown. But we would necessarily recognize them as being deities or deity-like.

None of your statements have anything to do with religion specifically. Someone can believe in a spiritual dimensions and god-like entities without being religious.

Besides, lack of explicit knowledge about a designer or spiritual dimensions does not make their existence "highly unlikely" at all. It just doesn't logically follow.

We talk about the concept of a spiritual designer because it is implicitly recognized as needing to exist because of the recognition that the sheer complexity biological life just so far outstrips even our very best engineering capabilities that we therefore need engineer/s who are far more capable than us. Those are the spiritual designers, albeit identity unknown. But we would necessarily recognize them as being deities or deity-like.

While on this topic, you should look up James Tour - a friend of Stadler.

Once again you have to skip past his religion to the essence of his message. He is a top organic chemist and he points out how fallacious it is to think of life developing in some sort of 'soup' to be found on the primitive earth.

One immediate problem with the soup idea, is that anyone who does much organic chemistry is well aware that after most or all steps one needs to purify the intermediate product. This may require several crystallisation steps, distillation, or even extraction using chromatography. Suppose on average 30% of the reaction makes the 'wrong' chemical. If you just go on to the next step, the problem simply compounds - soon you end up with a useless soup of chemicals!

David

[Laird]

I would describe anyone who

a) belives in the existence of an extra-universal being, specifically calling it a designer rather than a god or creator,
b) believes in the existence of spiritual dimensions,
c) and tries to rationalize away the fact that our lack of explicit knowledge about a designer or spiritual dimensions makes their existence highly unlikely,

as highly religious.

Be that as it may, it's clearly a different sense of "religious" to that which David is using. He's clearly talking about religiousness in the institutional sense, relating to those organised faith traditions which have a fixed set of beliefs and rituals, and typically also a formalised clergy and places of worship - traditions like Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, and Jainism.

"Religious" is a word with different senses. There is even a sense according to which Einstein, an agnostic who rejected a personal God as well as life after death, described himself as "religious", a sense to which he referred as "cosmic" religiousness, based on a sort of awe at "the nobility and marvelous order which are revealed in nature and in the world of thought".

We need to be careful not to conflate the different senses of "religious", and recognise and respect the senses in which others are using the term, rather than ignoring those and imposing our own sense onto them. That serves no productive purpose and in fact is corrosive to good-faith discussion.

A lot of people describe the non-physical realm as in some way timeless.

I don't believe in anything, but I suspect that we are spirits are also timeless, but at some point we decided to create a physical world in which cut down versions of our true selves could live for a while.

So maybe we ourselves designed this world and our bodies.

This is exactly the kind of thing I was referring to when I said "highly religious." Not in the sense of church attendance or hymn singing, but in the sense of embracing elaborate metaphysical narratives that aren’t grounded in evidence, yet still somehow feel true or meaningful.

While you may reject the label, the style of reasoning fits the bill. It’s not about incense and altars. It’s about confidently entertaining explanations for existence that are untethered to what we can actually know. Call it spiritual, intuitive, or poetic if you like.