My Independent arrival to ID, and my findings of a plan, and unexpected implication

Faith & Science Conversation
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I begin with my general background so that some may have a better understanding of how I arrived at my opinion and any possible underlying motivations. I am, de facto, a scientist by training and limited practice, which includes the attainment of advanced degrees. I somewhat infrequently attend, with my extended family, church services. I actually believe in behaving (albeit, not perfectly) as a Christian in my daily life and not publicly professing myself as a follower of Christ mainly in words only.

For brevity and getting to the point, my opinionated conclusion to date:

I believe, one can make a probabilistically strong argument for the existence of an intelligent plan of our world from a macro perspective (detailed below). However, while the ultimate source of this plan may be a spiritual deity, it could also be even more directly an enlightened alien life-form.

NetFlix video referenced is called ā€œFantastic Fungiā€ and is also available here https://vimeo.com/ondemand/fantasticfungi . I am not associated with either source provider of this documentary or with the work itself.

My support for an intelligent design of the universe from a philosophical vantage actually occurred to me spontaneously (and I actually have to looked up whether such a philosophy even existed). Unlike pure scientific studies which focus on chemical complexities and other micro aspects including DNA to arrive at a possible support of a larger intelligent design, I believe I found a much stronger argument that is patently obvious at a more macro level. For example, the integration of many ecosystems, for example, trees providing fruit for animals where the trees could not actually know that such other life forms exist (although, one could argue that genetic permutations among trees actually produce such phenomena). The strongest and the largest example I recently discovered is presented in a NetFlix video ( ). This marvelous work by scientists, Illuminated me as to the fundamental role of fungi on planet Earth. Namely, fungi fundamentally recycle dead organic matter back into their essential elements. That is, the role of fungi is primarily one of a recycling system. Now, random mutation arguments could account for the formation and growth of many ecosystems. However, the likelihood thatā€™s such an ecosystem, for its best sustainable advantage, would accidentally/randomly incorporate a highly efficient recycling aspect for its now deceased organic matter, is probabilistically highly unlikely, in my opinion.

Curiously, the ultimate source of this plan actually, in my speculative opinion, may not be a spiritual deity, per se, but could also be more directly an enlightened alien life-form. Arguably, supportive of the latter, are cave drawings depicting possible visits of alien spaceships. Also apparently, one does not have to go back in time to acknowledge the possible presence of extraterrestrial beings, as many world governments now acknowledge a UFO presence in our very skies.

This latter possibility, I must admit, presents an unexpected twist on my intelligent design quest.

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Pax Christi AJ, and welcome to our club!

I must ask you, because you entertain the notion of extraterrestrial intervention, how valid do you find panspermia as an answer to the riddle of how life began?

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Welcome to the forum!

That sounds like a fascinating documentary and itā€™s on my list to watch when I feel like paying for Netflix again. Different aspects of creation seem to have particular draws for different people, but itā€™s all fascinating. Why would you say this is highly unlikely though, or at least, more highly unlikely than any other interrelated organisms? Seems like a recycling operation makes perfect sense ā€“ most environments seem to have some kind of organisms that clean up after everything else, including the ocean floor.

Anyway, I agree with you about intelligent design from a philosophical perspective ā€“ I canā€™t think of any part of this world as an accident, whether Iā€™m aware of it all of its complexity or not. I just donā€™t see evidence that Godā€™s working in nature can be scientifically detectable.

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I would take this one step further. God has hidden His working in nature so it can never be scientifically detectable. Because if it could be proven scientifically without a doubt that God exists then the need for faith in God disappears and is replaced by faith in science.

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It occurred to me that my comment ā€œalthough, one could argue that genetic permutations among trees actually produce such phenomenaā€ is actually more weak as it is known that vegetation (inclusive of trees) long predates the present of animals (and mankind) on this planet. So, the ā€˜appleā€™ preceded man so why randomly would trees in nature engineer apples for not yet even existing possible animal consumption for furtherance of seed dissemination?

Also, my provided link to the cited video claims to be ā€˜freeā€™ albeit a subscription subject to cancellation may be in play.

Note, an example of a non-natural near total recycling occurs in space stations, a rare event.

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The fallacy of incredulity strikes again. Fed paradoxically by credulity in the utterly impossible.

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Fruit may have preceded humans, but not animals. Animals have been eating fruit for a long time, and seeds have many ways of spreading besides being eaten.

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There was animal life here on earth long before flowering plants evolved. And almost every plant we eat has been significantly shaped by artificial selection. Just look at corn!

I donā€™t know if you are interested in such things, but you might have a look at this short film:
Popped Secret: The Mysterious Origin of Corn

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I donā€™t think God is hiding anything. Science by its very nature can only discover things which are a part of the mathematical space-time structure of the universe. For science to discover God would mean that God can be manipulated by science and natural law, which is absurd. Demanding that science show God is very little different than demanding that you point to God with your finger, expecting that God be something you can see with your eyes. To say God is hiding himself is like saying an author of a book is hiding himself because you cannot find them in an examination of the letters of the words of the book. It is looking in the wrong place.

Otherwise this devolves back to the question of why God doesnā€™t show himself more obviously to people which is a question we have explored before: Why there is no proof of God, and this was my answer.

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I didnā€™t say God was hiding. He has certainly revealed Himself to us. I was referring to how God interacts with His creation. Which if you are not a Deist is required. It is those interactions that remain hidden to science.

Certainly agree with this.

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evolution is indeed intelligently designed. contrary to common belief it is not a random unguided process, but highly fine tuned to the propagation of life. It is a controlled process with regulating feedback loop with a rather long time constant, called survival fitness. unlike what non Christians want us to believe, it is not about who kills and fu**'s fastest that is the fittest, but the one who is best at loving his neighbour like his own (not himself). The resulting altruistic interactions make evolution an integrative process that causes increasing complexity of life forms as well as complex ecosystems. Problems arise when any element in a system fails thie rule and decides to love itself instead of thyself, thus destabilises the system which in turn will remove such elements as they drain the system.

If you want to believe that LUCA came to this earth from some other planet you may well be correct, but from a causality principle you are stuck with the same origin problem

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Hello welcome

I donā€™t know if youā€™ve heard of the infinite monkey theorem. It basically says that if we had an infinite number of monkey typing on type writer and a lot we would get the whole works of Shakespear. Basically given an large number of event even unlikely events are likely to happen at least once.

Now evolution in general is working with low probabilities. The likely hood of a change in our DNA being advantageous is incredibly unlikely but we have billions and billions of tries. Those that are disadvantageous die out, those that are advantageous multiply. So their is a filtering system favoring advantageous mutations.

Now it is true that we often focus on individual species when dealing with evolution as opposed to ecosystems but the same filtering mechanism exists their as well. When a mutation occurs the ecosystem is also impacted. Now ecosystems are fairly robust due to the number of species so they generally rebalance themselves but if enough damage is done the ecosystem can be destroyed and the species the caused that damage will also be destroyed, this is part of the reason we are so worried about invasive species. the inverse is also true if species enable a new ecosystem they will thrive.

So the question is not one of probability but one of functionality. Does an ecosystem work without a mechanism that enables the recycling of ressources. If the answer is ā€œnoā€ which I suspect is the case then evolution says that such an ecosystem canā€™t existe.

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Iā€™m not sure whether you mean to emphasize that evolution itself results in (ā€˜designsā€™) life forms well fitted to their environments, or, that the evolutionary process was not an intrinsic aspect of the cosmos but needed instead to be conceived of and added in by one very grand and powerful source of intentionality (ie, God). If the latter it begs the question why what is greater than the cosmos can simply be with no origination story required, but the cosmos and its potential for evolution cannot.

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Considering the eternal existence of life in God the question is how life can be sustained in the absence of matter. The equation of Einstein can be used to show the physical energy contained in physical matter, but it does not give any relationship between physical and metaphysical energy. The latter can move mountains as we know, but I donā€™t know how you could measure it or the forces involved. Life is the. ability to convert metaphysical energy into physical energy, e.g. to move matter or physical energy at will.

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Matter is as eternal as God, as is life. What is the value of your rather long time constant, called (by you and no one else) survival fitness?

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I am no biologist, but I can think of one ecosystem that doesnā€™t recycle resources.

So what happens when the answer is yes?

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which one ?

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So which ecosystem oxymoronically has no decomposers? Peatland accumulates carbon, true.

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I would hate to die and settle into a peat marsh where all my physical bits couldnā€™t get on the dance floor in other critters. I insist on recycling! :wink:

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I suppose their are slow leak here and their. Phosphorus is an other one which is slowly lost.
But the point still stand that most matter needs to be recycled to sustain an ecosystem. We also canā€™t ignore the global ecosystem.