Physics

» kaos42 - Science and Religion

In response to Science and Religion posted by BrianTubbs:
Personally, I think that intelligent design is a religious belief. Intelligent design is a weak theory for explaining the origins of the universe. Its main argument is that the universe is too complex to have originated through natural processes, and that an intelligent creator designed everything and in certain versions, continues to affect the universe. There are big problems with this argument which is why the vast majority of scientists easily reject it. Here are a few of the main problems:

1) If an intelligent designer continues to affect the present universe, by what process does this occur? There is no physical evidence of any such process.

2) Who created the creator? By what process did the creator come to be? If a creator always existed, why?

3) Although there are many physical processes in the universe that we don't understand, it's because we've barely begun to scratch the surface, not because we are stuck. We are far from throwing up our hands and blaming life, the universe, and everything on an intelligent creator

4) Intelligent design is rooted in the Christial bible, written and canonized thousands of years ago, by men, with extremely limited knowledge of the physical universe. As such, the bible offers potentially useful information about the nature of human society, but is unsatisfactory when it comes to explaining the origin of the universe. For instance, how do you reconcile M Theory with biblical origin? Or for that matter, anything that's happened in physics after 1905.

Personally, my main issue with intelligent design is that by offering a pat explanation, it requires believers to stop asking questions about how the universe works. Even if an intelligent designer created all of the branes in the multiverse, I think it is still important to ask how and why, and explore all of the nitty gritty details.

I think that atheism is not a religion since most atheists do not organize in communities. It could however be considered a spiritual belief system.

-- posted by kaos42