Cross Breeds

Are beautiful dogs, cats, and horses products of Darwinism or of intelligent design?

Just to clarify, artificial selection would be intelligent design, right?

Public Comments

1. They're neither products of a somewhat misnamed theory or "intelligent design". As Darwin pointed out, they came about via incremental evolutionary development worked upon by natural selection and then, in some cases, further developments added by human selection. Evolution by natural selection didn't begin with the theory. It was already reality way before being recognized.
2. They are the products of artificial selection and groomers.
3. Darwinism might be able to explain the breeds and the development of them but it can no more explain it's creation then it can explain the very essence of life in it's first form as a single cell created from nothing.
4. What about flowers? What would be the evolutionary purpose of flowers? Or all the colors of vegetables... red, yellow, green, purple, orange - beautiful to the eye and to the taste, for us to enjoy.
5. Every single DOMESTIC species on the planet =plant *&* animal=is MAN-MADE-by SELECTIVE BREEDING & CULLING for hundreds....tens of thousands ....of years.
6. Can't be anything but intelligent design. You look at the beauty of nature, the animals, flowers, mountains, everything and you can know it has to be God, and can't be anything else. He designed and created everything for us on this earth. We are his delight as long as we walk close to him and fellowship with him.
7. Partially natural selection, to get to the point of having a dog, a cat, and a horse. Partly artificial selection, to breed all the different varieties. I find it difficult to comprehend the mentality of anyone who would involve special creation in this when many of the breeds of these animals have been developed in historic time. We have the records to show it. Even before that, the evolutionary tree of the horse has been worked out as thoroughly as that of any organism. Considering the numbers of breeds of domestic animals and all the plants and animals that have ever lived, how big do you think the Garden of Eden was? Anything large enough to contain a pair of each species of whales plus each species of dinosaur, and so on, is just too big to be denigrated as a "garden".
8. Darwin's theory and Intelligent Design are antithetical, but Darwin's theory is not antithetical to the idea of design in the classical sense, and nor is it antithetical to the St. Augustine's understanding of Genesis' account of God's creation. Regarding beautiful animals, it will be helpful to define the term "beautiful". St. Thomas defined beauty as the splendor of all the transcendentals together. The transcendentals are: a) being (ens) b) unity (unum) c) reality or thingness (res) d) identity as something apart (aliquid) e) truth (verum) f) goodness (bonum) Now, let's take the hypothetical circumstance of God creating all things in their causes in one instant--the instant in which time began. Were you to go back in time to that moment, you might not see any of the things God had just created; you wouldn't see trees, dogs, cats, horses, dinosaurs, or people. But they would already have been created (apart from the immaterial soul of people, of course). The reason you wouldn't see them is because they would only exist in a potential state; the motion of God's universe would not yet have reduced that potential into act. The universe would be moving, however, and that movement would tend towards a definite end. It might take millions, or even billions of years, but if you were able to watch and see every cause and its effect, it would be clear that all of the "new" things you were seeing weren't really new; they were there all along, present in potency within the matter of the universe. While it is certainly possible that God performed a new miracle in the creation of each species, it would not be necessary for him to do so; he could create all things in their causes at the beginning of time, and allow the mechanisms he set in place at that moment to reduce into act all the many potential beings over the course of many millions of years. It is probable that we have never seen the most beautiful dog God created, and it may never be born at all. But its form exists in a potential state within the matter of the universe, and that potential may someday be reduced into act. Pax! +JMJ
9. I actually think it is a better example of evolution. That nothing just went "poof" here is a wolf and "poof" here is a dog and so on. Instead, one evolved out of the other to create a different an entirely different animal, and then different species... The only difference is along the way we began to observe it and figure it out how to nudge it along. But the process is there.
10. Good question! Darwinism is refuted Biblically and scientifically. Darwinism and Creationism are mutually exclusive. Does this mean that evolution doesn't happen at some level? The answer is that when God created "kinds" He created them with DNA that would allow them to "evolve" laterally... For example; God created a dog "kind" with sufficient DNA information that would allow dogs to "evolve" into different breeds. Same with horses, cats and all other kinds of animals. Many diehard Darwinists are beginning to question their beliefs about macro-evolution. Scientific advancements in the area of cell complexity are causing great problems in the area of Darwinist theories because of new evidence that even the design of cells represent an example of irreducible complexity. Darwinism is a catch-cry for those can't handle the truth of God and so they hide behind a smoke-screen of pseudo-intellect and hypothesis. They simply can't bring themselves to admit the glory belongs to God Science cannot deal with beginnings. Everything you mentioned is a study of something already in existence. Science cannot tell you your purpose and meaning in life. It knows nothing of love, mercy, compassion, justice or courage. Science doesn't know right from wrong. A man can no more diminish God’s glory by refusing to worship Him than a lunatic can put out the Sun by scribbling the word “darkness” on the wall of his cell – C.S.Lewis. God bless <)))><
11. Oh Bruce, Child I'm beginning to think that animals are developing intellect much greater than some people I've met here and elsewhere.....Are you beginning to see what I mean???lololol
12. They are neither. Their man made. We are more likely to Let the dogs and cats that we like the look of reproduce and so overtime the genes for those traits become more and more concentrated so that the traits become more and more pronounced. I guess you could say we are the Intelligent designers. Answer mine http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index;_ylt=AjzvcOcTClgL_648q59W4c7sy6IX;_ylv=3?qid=20100530110419AA5ldyG
13. The latter.
14. Intelligent design, but there are two aspects to consider. First, the breeding of beautiful lines of domesticated animals is intelligent design by humans. Animal husbandry is an ancient art that has been practiced since prehistoric times. Second, the origin of the species dog, cat, and horse is intelligent design by God. There is no reason to believe that these species morphed out of frogs, bats, worms, or bacteria. The most glaring evidence against the morphing myth is in the Cambrian explosion. In a geological moment of a couple million years, animals of every phylum appear in the fossil record, and there is no evidence of "ancestors" to these animals in earlier strata. If the history of the earth were one 24-hour day, all the phyla appeared in one minute.