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Evolution vs. Intelligent Design |
Christian cults are trying to promote a notion called "intelligent design" as if it were some kind of science. Intelligent design as it's called is just a thinly veiled cover for creationism and that God created the universe some 7000 years ago. The idea is to promote the belief that people like us didn't "just happen" and therefore had to be designed by some higher power.
Of course it raises the uncomfortable question - "Who created the higher power?" And of course - which higher power are we talking about?
But - we'll skip that for now and look at the issue of what is real here. What do we know about our existence and what does the evidence point to. If there was a creator, we should be able to look at the creations and determine what the design criteria and methods of creation were. What were the design goals? On the other hand - if we evolved then the final product(s) should reflect evidence of that process. So let's look at life and see what we have.
- Eating - All life on this planet other than plant life kills other organisms for food. Even in the plant world many plants only grow in the dead carcasses of other plants, or on other living plants. Why would a designer create a world based on killing and eating? Why not have some machine or something that produces food? We live in a world based on life eating other life. To me this suggests evolution. In evolution the lower forms of life - plants - are powered by sunlight - and everything higher eats plants or eats each other. Species evolve based on their ability to kill and eat.
- Sex - For those who think that mankind is higher than the animals there's nothing like sex to remind us that we are as driven by mating instincts as all the other critters that crawl on the dirt. If anything, when it comes to mating we're pretty lame. If God created that - and then subsequently made it a mortal sin - it makes you wonder what he had in mind. Because sex is required for reproduction and we are the descendents only of those who had sex that led to pregnancy - and that we do it like the animals - this looks like evolution to me.
- DNA - Are we different than the animals? Are we created in God's image? Not if you look at DNA. Humans and Chimps have a 98% DNA match. And looking at all other life forms, our DNA is extremely similar to the DNA of all other life on this planet, including the DNA of species long extinct. We have DNA that is left over from eons ago. We carry DNA that define what kind of fins we would have if we were still sea creatures. And the more we learn about DNA and the more we can trace it back and compare it - the more it points not only to evolution but exactly how we are all connected. Again - evolution wins.
When you look around and you see evolutionary processes at work everywhere and you see how life on this planet all ties together, it's pretty obvious how it is we got here. Evolution wins. If God created life would he have created us with an evolutionary DNA history that all ties together in a way that looks like evolution? Maybe God hates smart people and faked dinosaur bones to confuse those non-believing faithless scientists so he can punishing them in Hell for their intellectual arrogance. It appears that the omnipotent deity who chooses to remain hidden is hiding the secrets of creation by making it look like evolution.
I say that you can tell something about the designer by the work the designer produces. When I look at life on this planet and ask myself if this is the result of a supreme being - obviously it is not. The work is too sloppy. Life on this planet has a sloppy design because it's self built from the struggle to survive over eons of time.
One thing that a lot of people are confused about is that all species that exists now are all equally evolved. We didn't come from monkeys. Humans and monkeys had a common ansestor. A cockroach is as highly evolved as we are and being smart isn't key to it's survival. Yet the cockroack is highly adapted to it's environment in that it can find food, run away from things, and even though it is easilly caught as food, it reproduces in sufficient numbers to perpetuate the species. If I were to take a bet on which species would be around 100 million years from now between humans and cockroaches, my money would be on the roaches.
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Evolution 