Intelligent Design vs. Casino Universe

Scientific denial and all of its bastard children (like Intelligent design) simply fall away like a skein of lies in the exhilarating light of reality and human achievement.

Religion’s smart-people problem: The shaky intellectual foundations of absolute faith
Religious belief the world over has a strenuous relationship with intellectualism. But why?
JOHN G. MESSERLY

Should you believe in a God? Not according to most academic philosophers. A comprehensive survey revealed that only about 14 percent of English speaking professional philosophers are theists. As for what little religious belief remains among their colleagues, most professional philosophers regard it as a strange aberration among otherwise intelligent people. Among scientists the situation is much the same. Surveys of the members of the National Academy of Sciences, composed of the most prestigious scientists in the world, show that religious belief among them is practically nonexistent, about 7 percent.

Now nothing definitely follows about the truth of a belief from what the majority of philosophers or scientists think. But such facts might cause believers discomfort. There has been a dramatic change in the last few centuries in the proportion of believers among the highly educated in the Western world. In the European Middle Ages belief in a God was ubiquitous, while today it is rare among the intelligentsia. This change occurred primarily because of the rise of modern science and a consensus among philosophers that arguments for the existence of gods, souls, afterlife and the like were unconvincing. Still, despite the view of professional philosophers and world-class scientists, religious beliefs have a universal appeal. What explains this?

Genes and environment explain human beliefs and behaviors—people do things because they are genomes in environments. The near universal appeal of religious belief suggests a biological component to religious beliefs and practices, and science increasingly confirms this view. There is a scientific consensus that our brains have been subject to natural selection. So what survival and reproductive roles might religious beliefs and practices have played in our evolutionary history? What mechanisms caused the mind to evolve toward religious beliefs and practices?

Today there are two basic explanations offered. One says that religion evolved by natural selection—religion is an adaptation that provides an evolutionary advantage. For example religion may have evolved to enhance social cohesion and cooperation—it may have helped groups survive. The other explanation claims that religious beliefs and practices arose as byproducts of other adaptive traits. For example, intelligence is an adaptation that aids survival. Yet it also forms causal narratives for natural occurrences and postulates the existence of other minds. Thus the idea of hidden Gods explaining natural events was born.
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Are you aware that there is NOT ONE SINGLE INVENTION because of '
"modern physics'? NOT ONE! Something to think about

LIAR

Tha arguments have been made. Conclusively. You, as usual, ignored them totally. As you do all the arguments that show you are in fact the "emperor": that has no clothes. The LIAR charge remains in effect. Ad hominem or not, it is true

in any form is no fault of minTha aguments have been made and you've ignored them. As you've re[peatedly demonstrated, you have no idea of what a transitional fossil is. Your statistical "arguments" are totally bogus, as has been poinjted out to you. And modern physics is responsible for many inventions, not least nuclear power and bombs, and your computer (Emile Jacquard, Charles Babbage, Alan Turing, and John von Neumann laid some of the underpinnings, but personal computers are due entirely to developments in solid-state physics. Charles Babbage's gear wheels would have given us a computer the size of the Empire State Building and roughly as fast as a snail.) You're full of it, quahog. The original inedible stuffed clam..

INTELLECTUALLY DISHONESTAND A LIAR TO BOOT. THAT'S THE TRUTH.

Newton is quoted as saying, "if I have seen farther than others, it is because I was standing on the shoulders of giants," by way of thanking his predecessors for the contributions to science which made his Principia possible. Indeed, Newton's work represents the finale in a long chain of theory and discovery that evolved throughout the Scientific Revolution. The beginnings of progress had come in the sixteenth century. Nicolas Copernicus suggested that perhaps the ancient concept of the Earth's position in the universe was flawed. Giordano Bruno went one step further to claim that the universe itself was far different than the ancients and the Church perceived, and that it stretched out infinitely. Next, Kepler reduced the motions of the planets to intelligible mathematical rules. Galileo developed the system of earthly mechanics that he hinted might be applied to the heavens. Newton's work was the culmination of this chain of science, inspired by the ideas of these men and the methods and tools developed by them and others of his predecessors. The Principia linked the last two remaining pieces of the puzzle--Galileo's physics and Kepler's astronomy--and emerged with the 'grand design' so many before him had sought. The design seemed not to have been established by any planning or simple geography, but rather by the interaction of the forces of nature, principally gravitation, on an enormous scale.

I'm not sure how quahog is able to remain on a2k with his obvious denial of science. It's more than his stubbornness; it's a mental condition difficult to understand.

All theories are by scientific definition claims that have been proven true by reigning scientific standards.

Claim X has been proven to be untrue by reigning scientific standards.

"false theory" is an oxymoron

You must have missed this part...

Quote:

8. Occam’s Razor. This convenient rule-of-thumb urges us when faced with two hypotheses that explain the data equally well to choose the simpler.

Quote:

Glad to see that my calling attention to the fact that the atheists arguing here are as absent of logic as the theists...has been so effective

No youre merely throwing up another of your dead pony arguments and everyone here is telling you that youre arguing like an idiot. That's all.

HAving you announce that this argument is a "sham" is like Gov Christie telling me to stay away from the donuts.

There is noting here because of 'modern physics' Nothing!

Arrrgggghhhh. What was the sign on the gravitationl potential energy one picsecond BEFORE the big bang?.