There's actually a very good book on the evolution of the brain and how our genes are able to produce an organ that is capable of such complex thought and functions. It is titled The Birth of the Mind: How a Tiny Number of Genes Creates The Complexities of Human Thought by Gary Marcus.

Genes create the brain, not the thoughts. If that were the case, chimpanzees, having 97% our dna might also write beautiful music and ponder the meaning of it all, no?
I think my ego demands there must be more to me. Am I nothing but meat that perish apon death?

I beleive the mind/persona/self/awareness is a separate entity from the brain.
A car has a motor, (analogy to the brain), you provide fuel (analogy to food) and it functions, BUT, not without a driver!
Yes it can be started and sit idle, but its like a person in a vegetive state, it cant go anywhere, cant choose direction.
If we are just meat with electrical activity, nothing more , why are we different? why do I like certain things, not others?
The brain doesn't even have sensation, it relies on nerve impulses sent to it, its like a computer processer, brilliant, but useless without input, a monitor, keyboard, phiperals and software.
How does meat have personality?

[edit on 28-2-2010 by wayaboveitall]

3% difference is a huge difference when we're talking about DNA. The development of an organism is dependent on proteins being produced at a specific time. This production is controlled by a person's DNA. If the wrong protein is produced at the wrong time it can have disastrous effects on an organism. A human has 23,000 protein-coding genes. If you alter even one of these genes it can produce a deadly disease like Huntington's. Now imagine the effects if you changed 690 of these genes. You can expect to have a much different organism that bears very little, if any, resemblance to the original.

The phrase "intelligent design" is yet another man made phrase that means nothing - it was created as a way to further denounce and dismiss "God" aka Jesus Christ as our divine Creator.

When will society stop buying into everything that is attempted to be shoveled down their mouths. Sigh.

Satan is having a hay day with this new generation.

If a Christian were to actually invent anything, it would be in direct violation of their religious beliefs. It is the invisible law of that faith that thinking, questioning, creating, modernizing, or changing anything is evil. So I would doubt that anything that we have in existence that benefits or helps mankind in any way shape or form would be the work of a "true" christian.

Originally posted by TheWalkingFox
Intelligent design isn't an argument about origins (though it tries, with the aforementioned "all-powerful, all-creating, all-controlling entity that I'm not SAYING is the christian god, wink wink nudge nudge") but rather an attempt to explain the diversity of species, as a counter-argument to evolution.

Incorrect.

Intelligent Design says that life was designed -- thus it's clearly a statement regarding the origins of life. Speciation was simply a resulting and likely planned effect of the original design.

I.D.-denialists may strategically skirt around the issue of life's origins or insert their chance-of-the-gaps, but I.D. embraces it based entirely on inductive reasoning and parsimony leading to the logical inference of design -- all science, all of the time.

I.D.'s only beef with evolution is "blind watchmaker" evolution, the kind of evolution which has become a religion of militant atheists like Richard Dawkins. We find it to be both archaic and a plea to ignorance. What I mean by that is, we feel it strongly under-appreciates the current discoveries in biology. The more we learn the more it's clear that life operates under a set of guidelines no different than our own universe. While I.D.ists want to discover these laws and fully understand how the designer did it, including how life evolves, Darwinists would rather not. They'd rather claim it's all random, thus unpredictable, throw out some vague references to natural selection, and call it a day.

I.D. is the more intellectually stimulating theory, and it also better confers with the evidence, meaning if it were to became the mainstream paradigm, it would almost certainly be more fruitful than the b.s. we currently have.

As for the designer being the Christian God, those who are both Christian and followers of I.D. believe that to be the case (duh). Unfortunately it's something which is currently lacking in concrete evidence, thus it must remain an open question.

A Christian is free to believe that the designer is their God, however they're not free to insist that to be the case.

Intelligent Design's not a massive Christian conspiracy but the modern-day resurgence of a scientific mindset that goes back millenia and clearly precedes Christianity, as the O.P. shows.

It's perfectly safe to now remove your tin-foil hat.

Originally posted by TheWalkingFoxNo, because again, the aliens and life would have come from something, and ID would be left trying to explain the "creators" creator. Same as it currently does. ID is a paradoxical loop with no resolution.

Life was either designed or it was not. The origins of any purported designer(s) would be a secondary question with zero bearing on the original query.

What you're suggesting actually places scientific progress in a straight-jacket. You're saying that because all of the pieces haven't yet been found, that science can't even begin to put together the puzzle. That's not how science works, friend. We put together what pieces we do have and work from there, in a step-by-step fashion.

Step one is to accept the reality that life was designed (which upsets you, I know).

Step two is to figure out how life was designed, and how it has progressed towards an obvious goal (humanity) over the past 3.7 billion years.

Step three is to discover just who did the designing and, if we dare, ask why?

I.D.ists have taken step one and are now on step two. Unfortunately step two requires many resources, resources I.D.ists are currently lacking. This is because mainstream science won't even take that first step due to personal agendas and worldview dogmatism, and as a result I.D. must work from an extreme disadvantage, including a lack of government funding. Since the evidence supports I.D., that means all of science is suffering, too.

[edit on 2-3-2010 by Mista Kool]

Great OP, thank you!

After reading through it has become the expected unfortunately.

Creationism vs. Evolution or in this case ID vs. Evolution

I thought the premise or point of this thread was to suggest that Christians did not create the idea of ID? As most evolutionists contend it is a mask to propogate the christian god.

And to that suggestion, I agree whole heartedly that ID is a stand alone "theory" which can be incorporated into religion but does not need religion or have to rely on it.