Tuesday, December 15, 2009

The Ancient Origins of Intelligent Design



"Seek him that maketh the seven stars and Orion, and turneth the shadow of death into the morning, and maketh the day dark with night: that calleth for the waters of the sea, and poureth them out upon the face of the earth: The LORD is his name:" -- Amos 5:8

"The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of His hands." -- Psalm 19:1

"The lot is cast into the lap; but the whole disposing thereof is of the LORD." -- Proverbs 16:33

"He [God] directeth it under the whole heaven, and his lightning unto the ends of the earth." -- Job 37:3

"Because that which may be known of God is manifest in them; for God hath shewed it to them." -- Romans 1:19

"All things were mixed up together, then Mind came and arranged them all in distinct order." -- Anaxagoras, philosopher, 5th century B.C.

"Then I heard someone who had a book of Anaxagoras, as he said, out of which he read that mind was the disposer and cause of all, and I was quite delighted at the notion of this, which appeared admirable, and I said to myself; If mind is the disposer, mind will dispose all for the best, and put each particular in the best place ...." -- Socrates, philosopher, Phaedo, 360 B.C.

"Some people even question whether they [chance and spontaneity] are real or not. They say that nothing happens by chance, but that everything which we ascribe to chance or spontaneity has some definite cause ...." -- Aristotle, Physics, Book II, 350 B.C.

"... if chance were real, it would seem strange indeed, and the question might be raised, why on earth none of the wise men of old in speaking of the causes of generation and decay took account of chance; whence it would seem that they too did not believe that anything is by chance." -- Aristotle, Physics, Book II, 350 B.C.

"Certainly the early physicists found no place for chance among the causes which they recognized...." -- Aristotle, Physics, Book II, 350 B.C.

"There are some too who ascribe this heavenly sphere and all the worlds to spontaneity. They say that the vortex arose spontaneously, i.e. the motion that separated and arranged in its present order all that exists. This statement might well cause surprise. For they are asserting that chance is not responsible for the existence or generation of animals and plants, nature or mind or something of the kind being the cause of them (for it is not any chance thing that comes from a given seed but an olive from one kind and a man from another); and yet at the same time they assert that the heavenly sphere and the divinest of visible things arose spontaneously, having no such cause as is assigned to animals and plants. Yet if this is so, it is a fact which deserves to be dwelt upon, and something might well have been said about it. For besides the other absurdities of the statement, it is the more absurd that people should make it when they see nothing coming to be spontaneously in the heavens ...." -- Aristotle, Physics, Book II, 350 B.C.

"Spontaneity and chance, therefore, are posterior to intelligence and nature. Hence, however true it may be that the heavens are due to spontaneity, it will still be true that intelligence and nature will be prior causes of this All and of many things in it besides." -- Aristotle, Physics, Book II, 350 B.C.

"... Anaxagoras, who says that all things were together and at rest for an infinite period of time, and that then Mind introduced motion and separated them...." -- Aristotle, Physics, Book VIII, 350 B.C.

"... nor again could it be right to entrust so great a matter [nature] to spontaneity and chance. When one man said, then, that reason was present -- as in animals, so throughout nature -- as the cause of order and of all arrangement, he seemed like a sober man in contrast with the random talk of his predecessors. We know that Anaxagoras certainly adopted these views, but Hermotimus of Clazomenae is credited with expressing them earlier." -- Aristotle, Metaphysics, Book I, 350 B.C.

"As with these productions of art, so also is it with the productions of nature." -- Aristotle, On the Parts of Animals, Book I, 350 B.C.

"Empedocles, then, was in error when he said that many of the characters presented by animals were merely the result of incidental occurrences during their development; for instance, that the backbone was divided as it is into vertebrae, because it happened to be broken owing to the contorted position of the foetus in the womb. In so saying he overlooked the fact that propogation implies a creative seed endowed with certain formative properties. Secondly, he neglected another fact, namely, that the parent animal pre-exists, not only in idea, but actually in time. For man is generated from man; and thus it is the possession of certain characters by the parent that determines the development of like characters in the child." -- Aristotle, On the Parts of Animals, Book I, 350 B.C.

"Yet even from this inferior intelligence of man we may discover the existence of some intelligent agent that is divine, and wiser than ourselves; for, as Socrates says in Xenophon, from whence had man his portion of understanding?" -- Marcus T. Cicero, philosopher, The Nature of the Gods, Book II, Chapter VI, 1st century B.C.

"Yet these people doubt whether the universe, from whence all things arise and are made, is not the effect of chance, or some necessity, rather than the work of reason and a divine mind. According to them, Archimedes shows more knowledge in representing the motions of the celestial globe than nature does in causing them, though the copy is so infinitely beneath the original." -- Marcus T. Cicero, philosopher, The Nature of the Gods, Book II, Chapter XXXV, 1st century B.C.

"Can any one in his sense imagine that this disposition of the stars, and this heaven so beautifully adorned, could ever have been formed by a fortuitous concourse of atoms? Or what other nature, being destitute of intellect and reason, could possibly have produced these effects, which not only required reason to bring them about, but the very character of which could not be understood and appreciated without the most strenuous exertions of well-directed reason?" -- Marcus T. Cicero, philosopher, The Nature of the Gods, Book II, Chapter XLIV, 1st century B.C.

"Again, he who does not perceive the soul and mind of man, his reason, prudence and discernment, to be the work of a divine providence, seems himself to be destitute of those faculties." -- Marcus. T. Cicero, philosopher, The Nature of the Gods, Book II, Chapter LIX, 1st century B.C.

"He [Anaxagoras] said that the beginning of the universe was mind and matter, mind being the creator and matter that which came into being. For that when all things were together, mind came and arranged them." -- Hippolytus, priest, 2nd century

Also see: Keener, C., Ancient Philosophers and Intelligent Design, Aug 2007

13 comments:

Jeffery Keown said...

Excellent! So you admit that ID is Creationism!

I'm proud of you.

KV said...

OIM, you attributed to Amos: Seek him that maketh the seven stars and Orion, and turneth the shadow of death into the morning, and maketh the day dark with night: that calleth for the waters of the sea, and poureth them out upon the face of the earth: The LORD is his name

WTF! Just about every life saw the same stuff, call night & day and seasons. Do you ever read and analyze? Of course not! Why? You have been beamfucked by whimps...

KV said...

OIM,

Change The LORD is his name to Beamfuckers are they!

KV said...

OIM,

Change The LORD is his name to Beamfuckers are they!

OilIsMastery said...

Excellent! So you admit that random uncaused chance is Pseudoscience!

I'm proud of you.

Quantum_Flux said...

What is "random uncaused chance" OIM?

OilIsMastery said...

Something that evolutionists say exists and I say doesn't exist.

All changes, whether natural selection or mutation, must have an intelligent cause.

In order for selection to occur an intelligent agent must be at work.

Therefore nature and intelligence are one and the same as stated by the Philosopher.

"There are some too who ascribe this heavenly sphere and all the worlds to spontaneity. They say that the vortex arose spontaneously, i.e. the motion that separated and arranged in its present order all that exists. This statement might well cause surprise. For they are asserting that chance is not responsible for the existence or generation of animals and plants, nature or mind or something of the kind being the cause of them (for it is not any chance thing that comes from a given seed but an olive from one kind and a man from another); and yet at the same time they assert that the heavenly sphere and the divinest of visible things arose spontaneously, having no such cause as is assigned to animals and plants. Yet if this is so, it is a fact which deserves to be dwelt upon, and something might well have been said about it. For besides the other absurdities of the statement, it is the more absurd that people should make it when they see nothing coming to be spontaneously in the heavens ...." -- Aristotle, Physics, Book II, 350 B.C.

"Spontaneity and chance, therefore, are posterior to intelligence and nature. Hence, however true it may be that the heavens are due to spontaneity, it will still be true that intelligence and nature will be prior causes of this All and of many things in it besides." -- Aristotle, Physics, Book II, 350 B.C.

Ipse dixit. Q.E.D.

Quantum_Flux said...

To quote you OIM "All changes, whether natural selection or mutation, must have an intelligent cause."

Is it an intelligent cause when somebody gets cancer?

Jeffery Keown said...

All changes, whether natural selection or mutation, must have an intelligent cause.

Dead wrong.

A mutation is beneficial, neutral or harmful based on environmental factors.

You think environmental factors have an intelligent cause? How does anything in nature occur? Do these aliens you attribute everything to have their fingers in everything?

All those whales were molded over millions of years not by environmental pressure but by aliens? Malaria's reproductive cycle is harmful to humans because of Intelligent Design? Amino acids assemble themselves incorrectly, not by mischance, but by the subtle manipulation of ET?

Excellent! So you admit that random uncaused chance is Pseudoscience!

I suggested no such thing. What does that have to do with the discussion? It's just another dodge by someone who knows less about evolution than my cat.

Evolution is a fact. Mutation is random, environmental pressure is not. You don't understand that.

That's why this blog is so full of fail.

OilIsMastery said...

Jeffery,

"A mutation is beneficial"

There is no such thing as a beneficial mutation.

"Mutation is random"

DNA isn't.

Jeffery Keown said...

There is no such thing as a beneficial mutation.

Really? How about the ones that gave our ancestors bigger brains? Or the ones that made whales move easier in water, or the ones that allowed communication between individual cells in colonies a billion years ago or the ones that allowed the metabolization of oxygen by bacteria, or maybe I should stop counting at 50,000?

Or any mutation that improves an organism's fitness for it's environment?

A specific 32 base pair deletion in human CCR5 (CCR5-Δ32) confers HIV resistance to homozygotes and delays AIDS onset in heterozygotes. The CCR5 mutation is more common in those of European descent. One possible explanation of the etiology of the relatively high frequency of CCR5-Δ32 in the European population is that it conferred resistance to the bubonic plague in mid-14th century Europe. People with this mutation were more likely to survive infection; thus its frequency in the population increased. This theory could explain why this mutation is not found in Africa, where the bubonic plague never reached. A newer theory suggests that the selective pressure on the CCR5 Delta 32 mutation was caused by smallpox instead of the bubonic plague.
--Galvani A, Slatkin M (2003). "Evaluating plague and smallpox as historical selective pressures for the CCR5-Δ32 HIV-resistance allele". Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 100 (25): 15276–9. doi:10.1073/pnas.2435085100. PMID 14645720.

Try really hard, you might just say something that makes you sound like less of an idiot, but I don't think you can... you have no understanding of evolution.

Jeffery Keown said...

(On Randomness)
DNA isn't.

Imagine a bizarre effect that produces a random string of nucleotides. It couldn't be used to code for the proteins a critter needs, or be used to gestate into a viable fetus, bacterium or seed.

DNA that becomes random cannot reproduce itself. It dies out. If a genome's fitness (an arbitrary measure, I assure you) in an hypothetical environment falls below a certain level, it ceases to be competitive. The organism dies. DNA self-selects in this fashion.

So, why is modern DNA so seemingly perfect? Because it needs to be competitive. Truly random sequences wouldn't produce the right balance of proteins, cells or a proper critter in the first place and is thus eliminated.

You don't see this point as valid, thus, you fail again. Further proof that you simply do not get it. Somehow, despite your intellect, which, make no mistake, I recognize you as having above average intelligence, but not right about very much (two very different things).

It's like you're smart, but blindingly stupid all at once.

Quantum_Flux said...

To quote OIM "There is no such thing as a beneficial mutation"

The word "beneficial" is relative. Little people, for example, can fit into small spaces and they weigh less, plus they make better horse jockeys too. Giants, on the other hand, make better basketball players. Albinos are benefitted by being able to hide better in snow storms and are easier to find in a movie theatre. Savants make better inventors, people with ADHD make better rock stars. I would even go as far as to say that hypochondriachs are better actors and that pathological liars are better politicians....each of those mutations are beneficial.