Nothing exists without a reason for existing as far as I am aware of in my understanding of science, nature, and reality.

no that makes sense...I see what you are saying....You're basically saying that for something to be an accident implies that something else was intended that was not the accident itself.

For me to spill milk and that be classified as an accident I must have had some different intent with the milk other than spilling it







just a side note....i then proceed to cry

Yeah it seems like to have an accident there has to be an original intent in the first place even if its for a certain accident not to occur. Am I making any sense to anyone besides myself? :\ I'm new to a lot of this.:brickwall:

no that makes sense...I see what you are saying....You're basically saying that for something to be an accident implies that something else was intended that was not the accident itself.

For me to spill milk and that be classified as an accident I must have had some different intent with the milk other than spilling it







just a side note....i then proceed to cry

Please tell me what you mean by 'accident'.

Selective pressures on accidents produce apparent design.

Exactly.

This doesn't look like an accident to me either:

http://i.livescience.com/images/ig35...akes_01_09.jpg

Who thinks its an accident?

You mean, you think that the appendix is there as a result of design?

Is it so that doctors could make more money taking it out when it goes bad, so they would not have to suffer with only driving E Class Mercedes, and could instead drive S Class Mercedes? Or did god just like giving humans more opportunities for pain and suffering because he is a sadist?

And do you think that the complexity and unreliability of the eye is by design? Did god want most eyes to fail to work properly, or is he an incompetent manufacturer?

Please explain how the high-maintenance, low-reliability human body shows evidence of design. It is a cobbled together mess.

I think that your question is referring to the fact that the human body is very elaborate and it seems very unlikely that we were created like this. I guess the answer is in our ancestors. If we evolved from very simple organisms over time than it does not seem very hard to believe. For myself at least. I dunno.

Some time ago, I had an episode. I'd been studying cardiac anatomy and physiology and after having worked and worked to see it, all the sudden the whole functioning of the heart appeared in my mind. It's a complex dual pump for a pressurized system. But to understand the heart, you also have to bring in kidney, nervous, and hormonal function. It was a WOW moment.

Your statement is too vague.

1) I have reasons for living, but I couldn't have had those reasons before I was alive

2) the pile of books on my computer exists for the reason that I put them there, but not for any purpose

3) the reason that the ashtray exists in front of me is so that I can neatly dispose of ash and dog ends

4) anything mathematically random exists for no reason, for example, the binary string entailed by whether my sentences contain even or odd numbers of letters, but I have reasons for saying and writing what I do.

Fail - unconvinced.

As this is your response to all my suggested interpretations of "reason", and you haven't given a different interpretation, for the moment, I'll conclude that there was no meaning.

"reason" = intentional. "Intentional" can only mean from intelligence.

This is a question for those who believe life is an accident.

Looking at the human body; it doesn't look like an accident to me.

Please explain.

No. I am a Darwinist, however, evolution looks more like a plan than an accident to me.

So, when I see a certain rock that has fallen from the cliff side, your hypothesis isn't that the reasons for it having fallen are to be found in geological considerations and gravity, but that intelligence was involved and it was intentionally moved from the top to the bottom of the cliff?

ETA: a crucial missing "not" added.
ETA: I must be really tired, unnecessary "not" removed.

The appendix? All it has to do is get infected and it can potentially kill the person.

If this was intelligently designed it must just have been a kill switch for god to smite the person easier. Right?

What about the lack of the ability to synthesize Vitamin C? Almost all other animals have the ability yet the human lacks it. If a human goes too long without it, it can become sick with scurvy.

There is a huge list of defects as far as I am concerned with the functioning or problems of the human body.

Instead the human body developed along a path of what worked and was passed on.

Even though the human body has many shortcomings it works enough to pass on it's genes.

The human body evolved over millions of years, in the form of other species. We have within our genetic code the ability to grow wings, but it is dormant.

Fail. Unconvinced.

Exactly.

This doesn't look like an accident to me either:

http://i.livescience.com/images/ig35_snowflakes_01_09.jpg

Outside of living cells, there is nothing in nature that encodes information. There are plenty of patterns, but no codes. Patterns don't cause anything to happen. Codes do.

This is untrue, patterns of static electric charge cause lightning to follow a course from A to B. Whether those patterns constitute information or codes is a matter of how the terms are defined.

However, even though there is no explicit conflict between the Darwinian account of evolution and the various Indian creation myths, the idea that life arose fortuitously would still be regarded, generally, as 'a wrong view', because it would seem to imply that there was no real foundation to the ethical law ('dharma').

---------- Post added 03-31-2010 at 05:56 PM ----------

Incidentally I am not a creationist. But I think it is a mistake to believe that life occurred fortuitously.

the ideas of chance vs design, accident vs destiny, are philosophically very interesting..

By purpose I simply mean the reason for a things existence. Nothing exists without a reason for existing as far as I am aware of in my understanding of science, nature, and reality.

By what standard do you critique the "supreme-ness" or lack thereof of the design of the human eye? Without the design specs so to speak how can we know how well something is designed?

I may look at a toothpick and say, "hey that toothpick seems to be poorly designed because look how easy it breaks", but a toothpick is not designed to withstand breaking, so while my observation may be correct in one sense, it still fails to demonstrate the poor design of the toothpick per what it is supposed to be.

We don't need to look at design specifications to know that an extremely unreliable car is crap. If the design specs involved intending for it to be crap, then it was fulfilling the design, but it is still crap.

So, you think the eye is designed for something other than seeing well? If so, you have a very unusual take on the subject. And if not, then if the eye is designed, it is a very poor design, because it is extremely unreliable. Hence the need that most people have for glasses, contact lenses, eye surgery and drugs, to correct the errors of "design".