Intelligent design should not be respected as much as the theory of evolution

>"The genetic code" writes Richard Dawkins, "is truly digital, in exactly the same sense as computer codes." As Dawkins shows, each DNA molecule is an algorithm in biochemical code with a built in capacity for transcription and replication... The cell in another words shows the marked signature of design. It is crucially important to recognize this basic template of life, with all its intricate machinery of RNA and DNA, came fully formed with the first appearance of life. It is true that different parts of a cell do have different functions. So do tributaries for large rivers like the Mississippi. Those tributaries serve the purpose of moving water to the Gulf of Mexico, while the parts of a cell serve the function of replicating it and allowing it to survive to the point that it can do so. Function != design. Almost everything can be said to "serve" a "function." It depends only on how you define function. Rain serves the "function" of recycling water from the sea back to the land, and yet very few people seriously contend that it is anything other than a combination of evaporation and condensation on a large scale. And the combination of RNA and the proteins capable of transcribing and building RNA is not nearly as improbable as ID advocates believe. Stanley Miller is one of the scientists that conducted the Miller-Urey experiment that showed that environmental conditions that resembled primordial earth were capable of synthesizing complex organic molecules from inorganic precursors. He Miller conducted another experiment in which he froze some of the same precursors, ammonia and cyanide, for 25 years. When he thawed his frozen samples and tested them, he found that they had formed amino acids and nucleobases. The article can be found http://discovermagazine.com...= >Evolution cannot explain human rationality or morality. This was first pointed out by Alfred Russel Wallace, who proposed simultaneously with Darwin a theory of evolution by natural selection. Evolution can account for how brain size got larger and conferred survival benefits of creatures with larger brains. This is patently false. Morality is fundamentally group oriented. If there were only one person in the world, there would be no "other" to abuse or worship. Most mammalian species display group behavior. "Human" morality is also ape and lion morality. Any serious study of human history would make this quite obvious. There's a reason the categorical imperative wasn't conceived until Immanuel Kant came around. >By rationality is more than this. Rationality is the power to perceive something as true. We can include in rationality the unique human capacity for language, which is the ability to formulate and articulate ideas that comprehend the world around us. As Steven Pinker puts it "Our brains are shaped for fitness, not for truth." So where did the we humans get this other capacity to figure out not only what helps our genes make it into the next generation, but also to understand what is going on in the world? All animals have a concept of truth. Birds will chase an insect when they have reason to believe that the proposition that an insect exists to be caught is true, or, more simply, when they see an insect. If animals had no concept of truth, then their behavior would be utterly incomprehensible. Deer would attempt to mate with logs and fish would beach themselves in hopes of finding fish larger than themselves to eat. As for their lack of Cartesian symbolic logic, you are certainly correct. No brain, human or otherwise, is founded on the use of Cartesian symbolic logic. In fact, many artificial intelligence researchers believe that it is impossible for any living thing to be built out of Cartesian symbolic logic. The brain is a pattern recognition engine, and it does not care whether or not the patterns conform to symbolic logic. All the same, all creatures have a form of what we shall haphazardly call "rationality". >Intelligent Design does not state "guiding", intelligent design states that a supernatural being put the universe in motion, and designed that universe and its components, and let nature take over from there. Essentially, ID is the start, natural selection is the guiding process. Intelligent design is an ill-defined concept. It does not specify where, or even how, the designer enters into the picture. What you speak of is deism, a concept which I will attack later on. >By my opponent's explanation, he is conceding the complexity of cells and organisms. He quickly goes through the processes, but lets look at the transcription part. Turn this argument against him. You typed this in response to my slime mold example. My example did NOTHING to support the complexity of organisms. It assumed the existence of cells and held up slime molds as an example of an ad-hoc multicellular organism whose growth and development was utterly unregulated by anything but the desire to find food on the parts of the individual cells. >"Polymerase accessibility to chromatin is a limiting step in both RNA and DNA synthesis..... I don't know what you're trying to prove with this. This is just a description of a process. A circular process. It declares nothing but the details of the phenomenon the paper was written to describe. >I never stated that the designer is perfect or benevolent. E.g. Computer programmers make mistakes in games all the time. These are called "glitches". Almost all creations and designs have imperfections to them, ID never says that it doesn't. Most computer design glitches are misplaced for loops and characters out of place. The automotive equivalent of the food-and-air-go-in-the-same-hole mistake would be for the fuel and radiator fluid to go in the same hole. No vehicle has ever been created with this design flaw, and yet every human has been "cursed" with the equivalent of it. >The universe is far too simple and mathmatically consistent....really? Yes. Things fall down. An object in motion will stay in motion until acted upon by another force. Sections of an orbit containing equal amounts of area will be traversed in equal amounts of time. Even time dilation can be mathematically quantified. Simple, consistent, mathematical. >There exist recent suggestions on a unifying treatment of these two aspects within the concept of spatiotemporal complexity of dynamical systems driven out of equilibrium. This last sentence suggests there could be a mathematical model for these disparities. >Furthermore, turn the mathematical consistency part against him because how can a universe that was someone created sporadically in-tune with perfect math. What kind of universe would have to not have been designed? In my mind, a logically consistent universe would require MUCH less celestial fiat than an arbitrary one. If both logical and arbitrary universes are proof of a creator, then your stance is unfalsifiable. >Anything can be falsified. If a designer can be disproven, i.e. by way of proving that the universe was either infinite or created. A designer hypothesis would need an empirical rather than rationalistic disproof because it is a hypothesis about physical, empirical reality, not a theorem that can be drawn out in mathematical symbols. This is why deism, your concept of intelligent design, is untenable. Since it makes statements about something that presumably exists before/beyond the perceptible, it is unfalsifiable and beneath consideration.