AtmaWeapon
04-28-2008, 11:48 PM
Charles Petzold is a legendary Windows programmer, and I've read many of his books. I started following his book blog, and despite the fact he hates e-books and thinks they're going to fail and we're all going to throw them away in favor of toting 80 pounds of technical manuals around, he's got a good head on his shoulders. He's very well-read, and is passionate about classical works.
Naturally, I was fascinated when I saw he posted about intelligent design.
http://www.charlespetzold.com/blog/2008/04/Old-Design-Argument-Now-Politicized.html
See how great thinkers such as Cicero and Newton misinterpreted natural phenomenon and were later proved wrong? Everyone has their "oops" moments I guess. The big take-away from this article for me was it gave me some nice historical context about why Darwin's work was so Earth-shattering which I didn't have before. Also about why I don't need to waste my time seeing the stupid Intelligent Design movie. This is where my post about Charles Petzold ends.
Intelligent Design, in my opinion, first must make the assumption that God exists. Then, it observes some kind of natural event that is somehow works too well to have happened by random chance, then we proclaim that since God exists, and this could not have happened randomly, then God exists! Oh... wait... we can't use q to prove q. Crud.
Even assuming that some intelligent creator exists damages the validity of the argument. The goal is to prove a creator exists; you can't argue with a claim that "If a creator exists, this is proof of it!" It's a watchmaker analogy (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watchmaker_analogy). I've seen the quote regarding whether advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic before, and it's true. If I take a laptop that can run Quake III to some tribal community that has never seen technology and tell them I am a god and this machine is my magic, they have no choice but to believe me. So, how do we know that $naturalOccurance is something that definitively implies that it had to be created purposefully?
I believe in a creator, but I don't believe everything has to be magic. I see a lot of things in nature that just seem too well-meshed to have happened by accident. But at the same time I admit that the things that happen today are the result of billions of years of adjustments made by nature, and I'm not arrogant enough to claim I know enough to authoritatively state what nature can accomplish by itself.
Why do people defend intelligent design when it's not even a good way to prove if a creator exists, and it doesn't even matter if things evolve over time because it doesn't disprove the creator exists? Sand could possibly erode rock into a form that looks like a statue; does that disprove that sculptors exist? Does the fact that sculptors exist somehow make it impossible for nature to create a sculpture?
I find myself constantly in disagreement with Beldaran, but honestly this is one issue on which I think I might agree with him (though not as violently). Strong belief that intelligent design theory is a logical approach to creation and/or the proof of a creator is, to me, a sign of problematic thinking.
Naturally, I was fascinated when I saw he posted about intelligent design.
http://www.charlespetzold.com/blog/2008/04/Old-Design-Argument-Now-Politicized.html
See how great thinkers such as Cicero and Newton misinterpreted natural phenomenon and were later proved wrong? Everyone has their "oops" moments I guess. The big take-away from this article for me was it gave me some nice historical context about why Darwin's work was so Earth-shattering which I didn't have before. Also about why I don't need to waste my time seeing the stupid Intelligent Design movie. This is where my post about Charles Petzold ends.
Intelligent Design, in my opinion, first must make the assumption that God exists. Then, it observes some kind of natural event that is somehow works too well to have happened by random chance, then we proclaim that since God exists, and this could not have happened randomly, then God exists! Oh... wait... we can't use q to prove q. Crud.
Even assuming that some intelligent creator exists damages the validity of the argument. The goal is to prove a creator exists; you can't argue with a claim that "If a creator exists, this is proof of it!" It's a watchmaker analogy (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watchmaker_analogy). I've seen the quote regarding whether advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic before, and it's true. If I take a laptop that can run Quake III to some tribal community that has never seen technology and tell them I am a god and this machine is my magic, they have no choice but to believe me. So, how do we know that $naturalOccurance is something that definitively implies that it had to be created purposefully?
I believe in a creator, but I don't believe everything has to be magic. I see a lot of things in nature that just seem too well-meshed to have happened by accident. But at the same time I admit that the things that happen today are the result of billions of years of adjustments made by nature, and I'm not arrogant enough to claim I know enough to authoritatively state what nature can accomplish by itself.
Why do people defend intelligent design when it's not even a good way to prove if a creator exists, and it doesn't even matter if things evolve over time because it doesn't disprove the creator exists? Sand could possibly erode rock into a form that looks like a statue; does that disprove that sculptors exist? Does the fact that sculptors exist somehow make it impossible for nature to create a sculpture?
I find myself constantly in disagreement with Beldaran, but honestly this is one issue on which I think I might agree with him (though not as violently). Strong belief that intelligent design theory is a logical approach to creation and/or the proof of a creator is, to me, a sign of problematic thinking.