Intelligent Design vs Evolution
What is an example of intelligent design? How about an airplane or an automobile? They are certainly too complex to have come into existence by accident. The automobile was invented or created in the 1890s, and after that it slowly evolved to the car of today. People saw the original car and little by little began to modify it. They added doors, headlights, bigger engines, power steering, radio, heating, and air-conditioning. These changes didn’t happen overnight. It’s taken about 100 years to from Henry Ford’s first car to the modern car. And of course the same process was at work in many other areas such as airplanes, radio, television, medicine, etc.
In all these areas evolution has been at work, not through natural forces but through the actions of man making changes that led to steady advances.
Of course machines are not alive, as animals are. And these machines, while complex are not as complex as the human body. For a really complex machine or structure you have to look at things like the US power grid, the worldwide internet, telephone systems, and stock markets. These systems were not created by anybody designing them. The basic parts were designed by men but the overall systems were not designed to end up as they are today. They were simply allowed to grow and get more and more complicated. Today’s supercomputers, for example, are so complex that no one person could actually design one. They have been created by allowing existing designs to keep expanding and changing, and allowing complexity to increase.
These systems are not alive in any sense but they were all created and evolved in a relatively short time--about 100 years or less. Considering the speed with which these complex systems has developed, why has it taken life so long to develop to it’s present stage? If we allow modern technology to develop and evolve for the next million years, what are we like to end up with? Artificial life? That’s what the Intelligent Design group seems to be implying. If a million years is not enough, how about a billion? The earth has been around for about 4.5 billion years, and it took a big chunk of that time for life to begin and evolve, so allowing technology a few million years to see what it can do is not out of line.
http://www.thelittlegreenie.com
posted by georgex5 @ Tuesday, September 06, 2005
2 comments
2 Comments:
The earth has been around for about 4.5 billion years, and it took a big chunk of that time for life to begin and evolve, so allowing technology a few million years to see what it can do is not out of line.
Actually, this statement is false. Simple life has been found in fossils from approx. 3.5 billions of years of age.
It is important to differentiate between abiogenesis, and evolution. Evolution is of course a staple of biology. Abiogenesis is far more speculative. Although there are many attractive hypotheses concerning the origin of life on our blue sphere(roughly sperical)
Forms of stromatolites are present today. My GF's brother is an evolutionary biologist studying stromatolites in the Carribean.
I'm an engineer, but the fact that ID is being offered as an alternative to the ToE appalls me. ID is not the opposite of evolution, ignorance is.
Todd--
Glad to get a comment. Actually, I am not in favor of ID. My little essay is meant to be only the first part of an exploration of the subject. I am an engineer too but not a statitician. I would like to find out how large the first living thing was, or even if there is a clear marker between say a mostly inert virus and something a little livelier. Or even how large the first viroid was (these are even smaller than viruses). Then, how much space is needed for the viroid to form and how long it would take? Then, what was the distribution of basic parts around the world?
For example, if one cc of space is needed, and 1 second of time, and if the entire surface of the ocean to a depth of one foot is available for creating the viroid, what are the odds that it can occur spontaneously? From another site, I learned that organic type material started raining down on earth about one billion years after earth was formed. Life definitely emerged before another 3.5 billion years passed. Then "cc"s times seconds in 3.5 billion years is a measure of how many chances the viroid has to form. And one cc may be way to big a volumn. One mol of water has 6xexp 23 molecules.
All the above numbers are just rough--probably very rough--estimates. Maybe some other people can come up with better estimates.
How many chances are needed before something possible becomes something probable or certain?
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