webolife wrote:If you believe the universe is fundamentally material and deterministic, then you will overlook, disregard, or disrespect any evidences that there is intelligent design at work, and you will be stuck with a theory like macro-evolution that has no power to create the structures, functions and forms we see today even if you gave it 100 billion years, including its unbridgeable gaps, and imagined original spontaneous generation. If you believe the universe is fundamentally supernatural, that it was intelligently designed, then you will see order where others see chaos, and information where others see pseudo-patterns.
(bold mine)
On unbridgeable gaps: If you look at the history of science and trying to understand complex phenomenon, revelation and "some God did it" has been replaced with understanding of natural laws through the scientific method. Yet when confronted with gaps in scientific knowledge, we again here cries of "God did it!" This is God of the Gaps.
On intelligent design: One of the arguments in favor of evolution is the
bad design we see in nature. Evolution goes in steps from what is already there and is limited by common descent, resulting in bad designs. An "intelligent designer" would come up with a better solution without being limited by common descent.
Funny you should mention the reptilian-jaw-to-mammalian-ear transition. I use this particular evolutionary claim as a key attack against the total illogic and powerlessness of macro-evolution. To analogize the point, let's play a game: Take the phrase REPTILIAN JAW and try transposing one letter at a time until you end up with the phrase MAMMALIAN EAR -- Not a hopeless task, you may imagine, as some of the pieces are already in place... oh, did I mention the rule of natural selection must apply at all times, so each transposition of letters must result in a viable word or phrase structure. Oh, and the letters to be deleted or added must also be randomly selected, kind of like picking scrabble letters out of a bag. Oh, and the "natural selector" must not determine viability of letters with the goal of "mammalian ear" in mind. Well, the nice part is that you have a million years to accomplish your task, so take your time. And have fun. When you're finished, you will have proven the possibility that macro-evolution could have occurred, but not that it did. The actual transformation process depends on thousands of shifts in structure and function, not just 7 as in this game.
Your rules of the game are broken. Evolution didn't start with the goal of turning a reptilian jaw into a mammalian ear. There are countless paths evolution can take. Looking at
one particular path that resulted in a successful design and saying "impossible!" is to ignore all the possible outcomes. I turn this challenge around to you, and ask why an "intelligent designer" would take the route as shown in the fossil record. Why would there be these transitional forms at all, instead of just having the ear magically appear on the scene?
More generally, rather than picking on what you perceive as weaknesses in evolution, why don't you address the positive evidence for evolution as laid out in the
video I've linked to before? Or the
Evidences for Macroevolution website if videos aren't your thing. Looking at the
whole of the evidence, does intelligent design make more sense or evolution?