Panic doesn't know what the truth is, so what gives him the right to decide who is pursuing the truth properly?

Apparently you are the arbiter of truth Rick, as you are able to discern that "Panic doesn't know what the truth is," and yet you ask "what gives him the right to decide who is pursuing the truth properly?"

Rick Reuben wrote:

newberry wrote:There is a plethora of scientific evidence to support Evolution. Where is the evidence to support ID? If it exists, someone please tell me where to find it.

You're staring right at it. Evolution is intelligent design in disguise. If you walked into your front yard in the morning and found every rock stacked into the shape of a pyramid, would you believe that it was a random occurence caused by blowing winds? No. You'd believe that somebody built you a pyramid. Refusing to see that pyramid as designed is the same as seeing all the varieties of species on the planet and then believing that they all popped out of some molecular pinata and then proceeded unguided from there.

Scientific evidence, Rick.

Rick Reuben wrote:Evolution looks planned, so it is a safe assumption that it is planned.

This is not science, Rick.

If an uninformed assumption is all you have to offer, your position is pretty weak. You are indeed slipping, I expect more from you.

Rick Reuben wrote:Evolution looks planned

No it doesn't. At all. That's the whole point.

If you looked at it as a design process, then it's one completely lacking in foresight. It's the accumulation of colossal numbers of small changes, chosen to favour whatever was most beneficial to survival and reproduction at the time, with no long term plan in mind. Consequently, the current results of the process are riddled with inefficiencies, redundancies, and bad design choices, many past designs proved to be outright failures, and very similar end results have been achieved time and again by following vastly different paths.

Rick Reuben wrote:Evolution is too orderly to be presumed to be random

This is why no one presumes it is random. It's a process of selection from a pool of randomness, according to the simple rule of 'things that are good at surviving and reproducing are more likely to get picked than things that aren't'. It's non-random, in the same way that the artificial selection process used by dog breeders is non-random.

Rick Reuben wrote:

Mark Van Deel wrote:a process of selection from a pool of randomness,

What evidence do you have for the 'randomness' of this pool?

Uhhh ... statistical analysis of the variation within populations?

Rick Reuben wrote:What does that have to do with whether or not the ingredients in the original pool appeared randomly?

It'll tell you whether the distribution of the 'ingredients' in that pool (you know I mean pool in the statistical sense, not, like, a swamp, right?) shows signs of order or not.

Rick Reuben wrote:How? If you open a box with six chocolate donuts and six jelly donuts, how do you know if the donuts appeared in that ratio randomly or by design?

You can't know for sure. But if that ratio was intentional, and we're talking about a much larger population than six donuts, and that ratio is the same as a random process would have produced, then the intelligence or otherwise of the designer is irrelevant, because their choice has no influence on subsequent events. A designer whose choices perfectly mimic entropy is a pretty ineffectual designer.

Rick Reuben wrote:Of course it does. If you put gas in your gas tank, do you expect the engine to run?

Does it need a particular arrangement of petrol molecules to run, or will any random arrangement do?

The system works, so the designer is the total opposite of 'ineffectual'. The system represents genius, not an imitation of entropy.

You've lost track of what we were talking about. I said evolution involves non-random selection from a pool of randomness. You disputed whether the distribution of that pool is truly random. I'm saying it doesn't matter, in this case, if the pool is truly random, or just looks like it is. The important part is the selection process. As long as the pool contains 'good' choices, the selection process will favour them. The 'designer' achieves nothing by putting just as many 'good' choices in there as a random process would. The ecosystem is still the product of a completely unconscious system of selection.

Rick Reuben wrote:

Mark Van Deel wrote: I'm saying it doesn't matter, in this case, if the pool is truly random, or just looks like it is. The important part is the selection process.

Nope. The explanation for the existence of the matter is more valuable than any assumptions made about their behavior afterwards.

I never mentioned matter or how it appeared. I'm talking about evolution - living things reproducing, changes in populations over time etc. Maybe I should be clearer. I'm saying that if, for example, half the kids in a generation have slightly longer fingers than their parents had, and half have slightly shorter fingers, it doesn't matter to natural selection whether this was God's doing or not. It'll still tend to pick the long fingered kids, if long fingers help them live longer and get laid more.

If God is only controlling the apparently random part, i.e. mutation, in a way that mimics actual randomness, it doesn't make him an 'intelligent designer'. The 'design' is achieved by a completely natural, unconscious, un-god, but still non-random, selection process. So if you're arguing that the results of evolution show signs of intelligent design, can you explain what part God plays in non-random natural selection?