Quote:
Originally Posted by Kipper is King
It's not intelligent design three-card monty. The idea is that it's a possibility, just like the Big Bang is. Nor is it necessarily an "alternative viewpoint". The two ideas could well be presented together without creating conflict.
I believe that God created this all, and that the Big Bang could have been what occured when He decide to. Like I've been saying all along, science makes sense, but to me so does God.
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If I may, I'd like to try to clear up some misconceptions in this thread. I may be completely mistaken, but I think I can help clear up some of the semantics problems this thread is experiencing.
First off: creationism vs. Creationism. The idea that god may have created the existed the big bang is what I'd term little-c creationism. I don't believe it because there's no evidence for it, but I don't have evidence to reject it either, so if that's what you believe, I have no problems with that. Regardless, that's a different debate. Then there's big-C Creationism which is that God created the world in seven days, for which there is tons of evidence to reject it.
Second: intelligent design vs. Intelligent Design: little-i intelligent design is that the universe had an intelligent creator, and is very close to little-c creationism. Again, I don't believe it, but I don't reject it either, and this sounds like what you believe. Then there's big-I Intelligent Design, which is what this thread is (was?) about.
Intelligent Design is the concept that the church created to replace big-C Creationism when it became clear to them that big-C Creationism was not a viable possition to sustain and would hurt their credibility and power. Intelligent Design is theoretically incompatible with big-C Creationism, but compatible with small-c creationism.
Intelligent Design is not an alternative to evolution. Intelligent Design is an alternative to natural selection and the other generally accepted methods by which evolution occurs. Intelligent Design is the idea that God used evolution to create Man, amongst other things. (One problem that immediately becomes apparent with this is that we are not the end product of evolution.) Intelligent Design says that natural selection could not have produced some of the things that evolution has created, therefore there must be some intelligent outside force who has made evolution happen the way it did.
An example of an argument for Intelligent Design: look at the eye. It has a lens, a receptor. No random mutation would produce both of these at the same time as they are far to complex for that. Yet they cannot have evolved seperately as their is no selective pressure for evolving one part without the other. Therefore, God must have made the eye develop one mutation at a time knowing what the end product would look like for it to exist.
If you believe the eye could have been created without the active involvement of God, by something like natural selection or any other known or unknown physical process, then you do not believe in Intelligent Design. You may still believe in intelligent design, that God created the big bang and the laws of the universe in such a way that it would eventually form the world today. I get the impression that you accept evolution as being driven by natural selection, so you are in fact arguing for something you do not actually believe in because you do not understand exactly what it is.