intelligent design

okay... so this didn't really go where i had hoped... what i was actually hoping for is what people actually want taught as "intelligent design" and not another "id vs darwin" thread.

vp at one point sort of went where i was hoping with:

"What I believe is that God created the different species types and then stepped back and allowed them to evolve. I believe that the Earth has been around for billions of years and when it was right to take the next step, God took it."


so how about expanding on that. when did god create the different species and what species did he create? how did god get the earth to take the "next step"? was it quick or did it take a long time?

 

If, as evolution proposes, life became increasingly complex all on its own, then you would expect to find some of the animals that trace that. To simplify, where are the species were reptiles were turning to birds? Or birds turning to mammals?

Also, it would be crucial to answer the question of WHY this happened - when, in many cases - the "evolution" was actually a step backward in the potential of teh animal to survive and would only become beneficial much later down the road and then only if certain outside factors came to pass.

 

For me, it simply means that God provided the impetus for that next step. When the time was right for man to come down out of the trees, he provided that idea or impetus. Same with all the other transitions.

 

bump for S_N

 

this is a part of the epigenesis debate

 

Three words: Flying Spaghetti Monster.

 

Two words: Ockham's razor

 

it isn't theorized that birds became mammals. birds split off from reptiles as did mammals. looking at generic skeletal features, you can make a really good case for the lineage.

looking for a transtional species is somewhat fruitless. in large strokes, amphibians bridge fish with reptiles. but then we've got the problem of what's between amphibians and fish or amphibians and reptiles. as soon as you give something a name, it becomes "different" and therefore needs a transitional species to get there. but naming that transitional species something creates the same issue.

so how does id deal with this dilemma? are there simply no transitional species because the creator made new ones spontaneously?

i think it's a bit naive to think that there's an absolute measure of what is a good mutation and what is a bad mutation that we can somehow quantify.

and besides, outside factors not coming to pass is what killed off the millions of animals that don't exist today.

so what is id's answer? that the creator made animals that he didn't actually want to survive?

 

for you? i don't understand. i thought id was being proposed as a theory. most theories aren't quite so subjective.

and what do you mean by "impetus"? or is that as far as you want to go with the idea? you'd rather the vagueries of natural selection be replaced with the vagueries of id?

 

Please refrain from getting vp's theory mixed up with ID.