| | And pushing it back caused another problem: if a god was the cause of the lightning, then who or what was the cause of the god? Another god? And the cause of that god? Seemed like this wasn't an explanation so much as an infinite regression; an excuse for not simply admitting, when faced with utter ignorance of the seemingly incomprehensible, "I just don't know." Nothing wrong with not knowing, but an awful lot wrong with just making stuff up to cover your ignorance.
The explanation provided by primitive man to 'explain' things is still with us -- God did it! -- even as the reasons for honestly saying "I don't know" have diminished exponentially.
You make a fair observation about ontological circularity, for lack of a better phrase, in religion. But this conundrum plagues objectivism as well, or any other philosophical system.
There are two mutually exclusive possibilities:
Existence was created
Existence is innate, and was not created
If you believe the former, you have the problem of who created the creator that you pointed out. But if you believe the second, you have the problem of what's holding existence together.
Being does not do whatever it wants. Objects don't fall down, then fall up. Water doesn't randomly turn to ice, then to vapor. Objects in your home don't turn green, then red, then blue, then purple. Your body will not spontaneously combust, then turn into a million spiders.
There is order to the universe: rules, laws, principles. Matter and energy will not act in contradiction to these rules. All which physically exist is subject to these rules. Physical phenomena did not create these rules. Else you would have the arbitrary bizarro-world described above, where physical phenomena did whatever it wanted.
These rules and thoughts are ideas. As the etymology of the word suggests, ideas necessitate identification: someone has to say "this is that". Identification necessitates an Identifier. If we follow this course of reasoning, we must conclude that a Consciousness exists which created all the rules from which all matter the universe functions.
"Whence the Identifier?" "Whence this Consciousness?" "Whence this God?" you have asked. I don't know, I can't know, and as you admit, there's nothing wrong with not knowing. I am a part the physical universe, though able to perceive it, subject to its laws, though able to identify them. God does not exist in this physical universe and is not subject to the law he made. Are you an atheist? So am I. Do you believe that God does not exist? So do I. God does not exist in this physical universe, but having created it, "hyper-exists" independently of it. I have no words to express God's nature, nor can there be words to express concepts to explain God, since God created "concepts".
I am willing to reconcile myself with these mysteries. Not only do you appear unwilling to do the same, but you those who do with words such as "idiocy" "ignorance" and "blah, blah, blah, blah, blah." Is the above the writing of an idiot? Or someone using his faculty of reason to his utmost ability to answer some of life's toughest questions. The IDers you criticize are doing the same.
You conclude that Intelligent Design as wrong and evolution is right. Implicit in that conclusion is the premise that the two are mutually exclusive, which IDers are not necessarily claiming. But even if we ignore this fallacy, your theories of "complex systems form simple systems" do not hold up under one basic question: Where did the simple systems come from?
To rebut ID theory, you quote Orr stating the following:
The logic is very simple. Some part (A) initially does some job (and not very well, perhaps). Another part (B) later gets added because it helps A. This new part isn't essential, it merely improves things. But later on, A (or something else) may change in such a way that B now becomes indispensable. This process continues as further parts get folded into the system. And at the end of the day, many parts may all be required.
Where did this "part A" come from which comes to life and does this "job"? What is this job? Why does there need to be a job? Who or what determined that there would be a job? Who or what added "Part B"? By what standard does it "improve things"? By what standard are all parts now "indispensable" and "required"? All of what is described necessitates movement set in motion by some force and rules pre-established by some rulemaker.
If a high school handed the above statement into a writing class, the teacher would mark it down for too much passive voice. Yet the entire materialist version of the theory of evolution depends on the passive voice. It depends on inanimate atoms of matter one day getting up and deciding to turn themselves into cells, plants, bugs, monkeys, and nuclear physicists. You claim to reject mysticism, but this scenario of spontaneous generation would make the most Spirit-filled Pentecostals laugh with incredulity. And they are.
Intelligent Design is the admission of a prime mover in biological processes. The materialist evolution theory ignores this evident phenomena.
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