Re: New breakthrough in science hints at Intelligent Design

For the sake of argument, I will take an oppositional view.

There certainly is proof of Intelligent Design which contradicts the theory of all species having been derived from other species through the process of evolution as you have purported.

http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/tech/science/discoveries/2010-05-21-genome21_ST_N.htm

****PWN****

lol, well there was certainly some intelligent designing going on there. But let's think about what the really did. No one has ever created life from scratch. In this example a bacteria was modified to accept a "man-made" DNA sequence. This was made possible because we know what DNA is and how it functions in evolution. Indeed this experiment is another confirmation of evolution.
In the future perhaps there will be a truly synthetic life form. If that happens then intelligent design will be a real thing, but it wont change our history of having evolved. To a biologist, all living things are the same living thing. I don't know why, but a DNA molecule started replicating in the past. It is still doing it and has branched into many species. Plants, animals, fungi, all are the same and one can even swap DNA between them. We are going to see some crazy things soon.

Look, I already knew how you were going to respond. In so doing you admit that I have refuted your prior argument. That was easy because it was "classical Darwinism". Then you proceed to admit the future holds "crazy things". So we are in agreement.

However, you can't duck and dodge the matter, even though you've tried. Neither is it proper to 'shift the goalposts' regarding the assertions of the religous ID crowd in order to substantiate the scientific approach and accomplishments.

Look, the problem is not in a scientific approach to Intelligent Design - it's with a religious approach. We have had and will have Intelligent Design, period. We've had a little of it and we're going to have boatloads of it.

When I say this, it means I don't need to refute your other statements, because we agree on the fundamentals. Let me know if you think that sums it up nicely.

I'm not sure I totally understand. You are drawing a distinction between those who are interested in ID for religious vs. scientific reasons? Because science is open to any question. "Could all this be created by an intelligence?" is a fair question, but I am not aware of any result indicating it. And I am not disputing that genetic engineering is a kind of "intelligent designing" in nature. Now that evolution it is understood at a chemical level it can be tinkered with. That is all based on Darwin's work. The main thing that has changed since his original theory is that more mechanisms for evolution have been found. Darwin noticed "natural selection". Which is still recognized as the primary driver in nature. Does all that mean we agree?

Maybe. We might assert that scientists see ID as the future, where fundamentalists see it as the past. Further, that fundamentals see ID as the work in the past of a supreme being, and refuse to consider other sources of intelligence which may exist in the universe as causative.

Therefore, the argument of a religious fundamentalist on ID is flawed in the premises (God is the only cause of ID) and in the method (ID is shown to exist) and then the conclusion (God exists).

But this is NOT an argument against ID, only against it's abuse.

(ROFL here....)