Which explanation do you subscribe to?

Evolution.

I probably should have said "and why", shouldn't I?

The first two, I suppose. I accept the validity of evolution due to the scientific evidence, which is all in its favor from what I've read. I believe in creationism because it is unintuitive to me that meaning should arise from meaninglessness (note that this is different from "something from nothing").

How is that different from intelligent design?

<sarcasm>Don't believe the scientists Hydrogen! They're out to decieve you and perpetuate the heresy of Darwin! They know they're wrong! There's tons of evidence against it! The Bible is the best piece, it's the most scientifically accurate book of all time!</sarcasm>
Now, on a more serious note, why do you think there's meaning? Near as I can tell, there's no real purpose for us being here.


ID (in the form used by the largest organization that promotes it, the Discovery Institute) is basically Genesis reworded to remove any mention of God or the Bible.

None of them. We don't know enough yet to try and successfully explain how life works.

Maybe. Evolution works for me because it is tangible. I have always wanted faith in the unknown but have never been able to find it.

^^ I find it funny that "god" is a registered username.

Also I believe in evolution.

I believe in evolution, big bang, etc. One of the big reasons I believe in God is to serve as an explanation for the origin of matter and energy.

That seems like a logical concept to me, I believe a god may exist in that sense. Creationism on the other hand seems incredibly unlikely.

Evolution, just because I find the idea of God unreasonable.

We differ in that respect then. I view even our subjective perceptions of meaning to be significant in an objective way. Given that there could have been beings capable of perceiving things or there could not have (and the latter seems somehow more plausible), it seems probable to me that the meaning we attach to things like life, morality, love, etc. was intended to be. Maybe this extrapolation is foolish, or maybe it's not. I don't claim to know, but I do know what I believe.



That's right, and that is why I made the distinction. The term "Intelligent Design" has become associated with a political movement which in my opinion endorses weak theology and pseudoscience, so I prefer not apply it to my beliefs. I do believe in (lowercase) intelligent design, as a theistic evolutionist, but I avoid the term in order to avoid confusion with the previously mentioned ID movement.

And that is a certain challenge to deal with, but it can lead into what was before god.

The problem there, as you hint, fragglerocks, is that the explanation begs the question. We have no reason (aside from perhaps our intuition) to believe that the universe could not have spontaneously come into existence or that the universe has always been. And if we did, such a reason could also apply to God. One of Aquinas' five arguments (which in my opinion are really more like three) was causality - there must be a first cause. However, we can only know that causality applies to things within the universe, not to the universe itself. Therefore, arguments for God that rely on him as an explanatory factor for unexplainable phenomenon x (such as the very existence of the universe) tend to be circular, holding no more credence than an atheistic alternative.

Once again you can try to drive yourself crazy with the philosophy of it all but, when you look at all three, you can see that there are fatal flaws in all of them.

What's the fatal flaw to evolution?

I think we know exactly how life works. Biology is a pretty mature, well-understood matter. What's really at contention is where life came from, and how we have the diversity of life that we do.

Furthermore, only two of those options claims any kind of absolute truth. The third (can you guess which one that is?!) merely claims to be the best explanation given the empirical evidence at hand. Choosing Creationism or Intelligent Design is making a religious choice, a commitment, while recognizing evolution is no different than recognizing the atom theory or the heliocentric model of the solar system.

I'd gladly stop believing in evolution if a more compelling explanation came along, but strict Creationists already deny science, and are 100% committed to their belief. I think taking the route of logic and open-mindedness is the best we can ask for in anyone, whatever conclusions that mindset leads to.

I have very little knowledge of creationism and Intelligent design. Is there any simple way to describe the two?

Creationism is the idea that God or some other deity/deities created the universe through miraculous means. Intelligent Design is the idea that evolution through natural selection is insufficient to explain the complexity and diversity of life; therefore God must have intervened miraculously at various points in evolutionary history, making small miraculous adjustments here and there.

Edit:

More generally, intelligent design (note caps) is the idea that the universe has an intelligent creator, i.e. that it was designed to some extent.

I believe that the universe was created in seven days, exactly as the Bible says.

The Bible says in literal terms that the universe was created in six days. And why do you believe that? How do you reconcile this belief with science?

Evolution should be something everyone believes in, honestly. It's the origins of life that get messy.

Suppose we found other intelligent beings in the Universe, who were completely different from us. Maybe they have 5 genders, 3 eyes, and other weird things. Would this ever change your view on the origins of life?

Well according to physics, the universe has always existed and always will. It was never 'created'persay it was just always there. So really in that sense The universe *is* God.

Personally I believe that to an extent that *we're* God, because we have the ability to observe. Why would the universe exist if no one was there to see it?