Intelligent Design Theory: Science or Religion?

ron has not expressed it very well but there are theories which support what I think he tried to say.

Religion goes beyond physical science into psychological states and is also the seed bed from which a particular type of science derives. Monotheism and infinite dynamic space are synonyms without which there is no calculus and thus no everything we take for granted.

It's a very complex picture. Spengler tried to do the subject justice in his Decline of the West (Der Untergang des Abendlandes) but he has detractors. I think that anybody who can write as well as he did deserves a respectful attention. But it is a very challenging book and very few are prepared to take it on. Putting it on Ignore is not an option for educated people.

One problem I have with the discussion of Intelligent Design from the perspective of atheists is that their arguments that science is discovering the "true" way that beings evolved...and those discoveries somehow establish the unlikelihood that a GOD was (is) involved in the process.

That kind of thinking requires that we unreasonably discard the notion that a GOD actually intelligently designed what we see now in existence...in precisely the way science is discovering.

It is possible that a GOD exists...and that the GOD chose to Intelligently Design life in a series of evolutionary processes such as science is currently establishing as what actually happened.

It is possible. I am not suggesting it must be that way. The evolutionary process seems to be a series of steps up a ladder from where we were...to where we are now. To suppose no GOD intelligent enough to design things this way seems rather arbitrary.

You would have to give me more detail here. Which and why would they not develope outside the arena of religion naturally? How could you even determine this? I am skeptical right from the get go because saying that, is like saying culture doesn't influence thought. It is obvious that religion plays a huge role on people but it has always been science who delivers the actual truth. Up to this point religion has been dictating what is true yet has been time and time again wrong. If anything science is replacing the need for religion.



I am very skeptical of this. I know how theists like to move the goal posts and now the god of the gaps exist in those pockets of physics that haven't been worked out yet.

I think there is a far better explanation of what is going on.

With the fact that we have self awareness, naturally we are going to be self inquisitive about our own self awareness. Like a mirror turned in on itself. Animals don't seem to be preoccupied with this because they don't have the level of self awareness that we do. I think this is where the inclination for religion begins.

Rather than forming actual connections between observations and theory, it just jumps to the conclusions about reality to answer the questions. For a long time this was acceptable by the people, although not always without force.

I can forsee a future where all religions take their proper places in the book of mythologies and false tales. We are probably no where near that time but I think it is inevitable because religion is too dogmatic and anti-reality. Where as science is flexible and willing to admit when it is wrong.

But what you are left with as a consequence is that this process is blind. It relies heavily on adaptation to determine success. Change one element in the environment and you could either lose an entire species or create a new one. This means that evolution is really blind and only has one goal, continue replacating. It doesn't matter how or what it becomes in the process as long as it can continue to do it.

In other words the god would have just set in motion the snow ball down the mountain and plays no role in which direction it goes or how big it will get at the end. I say if it is this removed then you might as well just remove it from the equation all together.

Sure you could make the argument that this god does get involved and secretly guides or makes adjustments but if that is the case, why didn't it just make it go the "way" it wanted from the start? Why would messing with it be required? You see you get into this conundrum of how much it get's involved.

You can say none but then no matter what the result is, it could be anything even unintential things. If you say it gets involved then why not just make it that way from the get go? I call it the ant farm experiment and essentially at the end, the more you **** with it, the less likely you will get the result you want. If you don't mess with it eventually you might get a result you weren't wanting.

Oh but I guess now the argument is, god knew the perfect way to set the ball rolling to get the result he wanted. Still it would be meaningless because it means that it all had been predetermined for the desired result so why not just snap the fingers and get the desired result? Unless it didn't have the ability to do that. But then you would have to question, did it even have the ability to start the process then? So on and so forth.

That betrays a lack of understanding of life Frank. There are no steps, there are no ladders and there are no ups and no downs. Even "process" is anthropomorphic. Direction is an illusion and the prime symbol of the Christian world. Perspective, cathedral spires, light patterns and even rocket take offs are Christian through and through and such things don't exist in other Cultures. Your post is fully Christian.

Homer has no religion. The tension between the nobility and the priesthood is settled in favour of the former. Maybe that is due to priestesses. It was forbidden to disclose their mysteries on pain of death. The Divinities of the peasants in the countryside, Dionysus and Demeter, went unsung by Homer.

But the peasant is eternal. BUT-- our science could change that. You are seeking to change that. Nothing else ever destroyed the eternal peasant. Anything can happen in cities they shrug to each other.

It's the tension between deeds and contemplation. The castle and the cloister. And the castle exhausts itself in fighting. It has no direction.

I know you won't like this but the masses are irrelevant.

How does a sexually active man concerned with money, predation and being different get around to pure contemplation. He's bound to be subjective. And impatient. The whole image of contemplation is timeless patience. The illuminated scrolls were done with pen and ink. Have you seen some of them. Just one letter of the alphabet taking a few years. Incomprehensible to Jumpin' Jack Flash.

And absent contemplation we are back with castles. Armed camps either at war or preparing for war. But what do we do if we have to make war to prevent it. Think of the scope that leaves for the dilettante to make specious and spurious propaganda and to show his ignorance of evolution and our sort of science.

The interesting question is how he came to need to make specious and spurious propaganda. My hypothesis, which is not all that tentative, nor original, is that it derives from pantsdown mode and the search for a less inconvenient method of getting your rocks off than that of Christian morality.

This whole matter is at the root of the Leveson Enquiry into the ethics, culture and practice of the press. Ethics and culture cannot derive from Jumpin' Jack Flash. Such things need long contemplation. The Enquiry has been going on for months and is on TV live and being streamed to lap-tops. It has months to go. Lord Mandleson compared the problem to wrestling with a crocodile.

A picture emerges from the mysterious background. The press is extremely competitive. It thus selects in, in the good old evolutionary sense, JJFs, who have no ethics but do have fantastic technology. If they don't winkle the small change out of your pocket or purse they are carbonised. So the JJF mentality more and more pervades the general population and if you want that---well---that's what you want.

The JJFs who can look ethical best are employed to read the news on TV or comment to camera on the goings on. So urgently that there is no time for contemplation.

Which begs the question--what are ethics when even the lingerie has been stripped off? It's just a word people are fond of using to try to establish their ethical credentials in the eyes of their fellow men. Oh--and women.

Ants behave as if they have ethics. I don't anticipating us ever finding out whether they are aware of having ethics.

There are circumstances where taking women by force, or buying and selling them, have been ethically correct. Sacrificing 5,000 prisoners during the Feast of The Moon Goddess was an ecstasy of ethical good form.

But, Krumple, you can also say that the GOD might be more interested in what happenstance might yield than what would come of it providing more direction that merely setting the ball in motion.

Maybe there is a GOD that just wants to see what happens if things are allowed to occur according to an arbitrary set of circumstances.

I do not ever intentionally kill any living creatures, Krumple, but when I mow the lawn I am not concerned with the ants and bugs. When I shower I am not concerned with the living creatures that live on my skin.

And while you may say you can "remove it from the equation altogether"...the bottom line is that if the REALITY is that there is a GOD...and the GOD set a ball in motion...it DID set it in motion.

The telling answer is that they didn't develop except in the one specific Culture that developed our science and it was Christian. The beginnings, which I suppose are about 5000 years ago, are very messy and many expert university departments are endowed to look into the situation.

The mess was gradually got slightly on top of, a project I'm sure you approve of, and about 1,000 years ago something happened. What it was we can only speculate about. But the Romance of the Courts of Love faded off the scene, though not entirely forgotten, and we emerged in the transcendent glow of the Gothic dawn. And here we are.

Who else could have done it. How could it have been done without centralised and stern authority. Every rule was contrary to evolutionary principles, assuming evolution has principles, which it hasn't of course, but you know what I mean. We were designed. So obviously we would have a God who is like us.

And if atheists had been running the show you would be running around barefoot carrying a clay pot of water to do your ablutions and looking for a stone to lift so you could press the soles of your burning feet to the cool sand for a few moments happiness. Even if you had to wait until 30,000 AD for your turn.

Atheists couldn't run a piss up in a brewery. And agnostics would never be able to decide to organise one.

Then what would we call it? certainly not "Intelligent Design". Itd be more "random " or , wait a minute.... HOW about NATURAL SELECTION?

Noone is going to try to convince you that perhaps "Gods need not apply". You have to be able to spend a bit m9re time with evidence of how occurences ion the evolutionary chains of events seem not to follow any "upward and onward" principles, other than an old chestnut called "Dollow's Law" that states that things dont "reevolve". (However, Dollo was found to be in werror when several species were found to "reinvent" single characters that had gone before).

The information that the genomes of organisms contain is built upon and "filed" for future reference.

Having a God involved in the mix is jst too time consuming and basically, an inefficient means to establish a running order 0of living things.

"Theistic Evolution" is a kind of weak tea equivalent to your position of agnosticism. Its a means where actual thinking osnt required to reach a conclusion. Everyone can be involved in theistic evolutionary reearch (However, only a few who dont subscribe to it can actually apply the information to other fields)

You missed Krumples point that m ost evolution is adaptive. Adaption to what? The smallest or largest changes in the environment of a planet is still going on today in the cosmos.
If we find examp[les of life on MArs, we will see how the loss of MArs molten core and much of its atmosphere has wreaked havoc onto its early life and, extinguished it. Gods in action? or merely planetary geochemistry and physics?

Trying to unravel the mysteries of life ascending on this planet is fun for science geeks. If you want to add gods to the mix, you are certainly welcome to do so, but there probably wont be much conversation that youd buy into or understand concerning mechanisms and durations. Use of gods in that mix is so damn easy to pick apart item by item taht I think youd be bored. (The geek story is detailed and full of interacting branches of inquiry) Gods "In Control" has only one and its a real yawner (and conflicting with evidence).

Hardly a "bottom line". Its rather a quaint reflection based upon some Pleistocene campfire story that had developed into miles of creed and a bunch of Union Work Rules for priests and Rabbis.
Its rather funny that, most of the big established religions, once they embrace the tenets of organicevolution, the more they appeal for a "Trascedent deity" who maybe wasnt involved in the process at all. Sorta like a Night watchman who only does one or two things.
If you read Ken Miller, a noted evolutionary biologist and a Roman Catholic lay deacon, his entire thesis is one of trascendency of a Trinity and a pretty firm denial of a "genesis" story.

That sounds like it is happening outside our control and that is not the case. We can choose it or not. The consequences of abolishing religion and relying on science have not been explained. In fact they are being avoided and explanations are confined to details, carefully chosen, which take us in the direction you say.

We have a pressure group called Take Back the Flower which is having a big demo outside a fenced off patch of Hertfordshire where GM crops are to be grown in the open air. There is no obvious religious component in what their spokespersons are saying. And they all look very middle-class.



Which reality? Once you use such an expression your conclusion is implicit in your premiss. There is a reality in organising social systems which is far different from organising inorganic matter.

Of course, the Materialist Theory of Mind is a factor but it reduces us to inorganic chemical and electrical processes and while it is very plausible I hope they don't ask me to sell it. It's strictly for folks who like to be really, really different. Kinky one might argue in certain important respects.

If there is a GOD that wants to work in that way, Farmerman, it doesn't much matter what we would want to call it. It would be the work of the GOD (if such a GOD existed...and if such a GOD would want to set things in motion that way.)

If you feel comfortable "calling" it NATURAL SELECTION...go ahead and call it NATURAL SELECTION. If a GOD designed it...it will still be Intelligent Design.

We had a discussion about this once before, Farmerman.

I had written something like:

If there is the possibility of a GOD...there is the possibility of Intelligent Design. (I was seconding something Spendius had written.)

As I remember it, you went ballistic about it.

Mind you, I did not say there was a GOD...

...I did not even say there was the possibility of a GOD...

...I merely offered a hypothetical saying"If there is the possibility of a GOD..."

Frankly, Farmerman, if you cannot even concede that hypothetical, there is precious little chance of a reasonable discussion on the issue.

But you know me...I am always willing to give it a try.

Yeah, farmerman. I am waiting for you to admit that a pig can get pregnant by a moose and the resultant offspring will an ostrich.

It has been part of European intellectual thought for about 100 years that Natural Selection is a synonym for God.

Did you not know that Frank?

It's obvious from the absence of response to posts dealing with these matters. NS is merely a Pagan religion of hedonism which seeks to shed, respectably, Christian inhibitions regarding pantsdown positions. Applicable to both sexes now that women wear pants more than they used to.

Same old tired 'science can't be right.' Why not? Because I have a feeling about it.

I notice you did not address that remark to anyone in particular.

Any chance that was because no one here is actually saying that?

Science can be correct, Edgar, and still atheists like you can be mistaken that there are no gods.

As nearly as I can tell, no "science" has established that there are no gods.

Frank are you still hear beating up on everyone?



Frank Is that what you are waiting for, "for science to clear all this up for you?

Do you really think it requires that to be pretty certain, that there is no God? There could be one hiding under your bed so you better watch out. and by the way you cant prove that there is not one hiding under your bed.

How did you like what Dawkins had to say?

Hey, RL.



Not really. Just saying "hi" to some people.


Nope. I really do not think science can establish that there are no gods.



I cannot imagine anyone thinking it is pretty certain that there are no gods...especially someone intelligent as you. But, if that is where you are...that is where you are. I support your right to think that just like I support my sister-in-law's right to be certain there is a GOD (the one from the Bible, yet!)



Could be! Sister George in Sunday School back in the 1940's used to tell us that her god was EVERYWHERE. Under my bed is part of EVERYWHERE, so if Sister George was right...there he is.



I appreciate the invitation to view that tape, RL, but I honestly cannot get into listening to a lecture when I cannot present a rebuttal. If there were any points he made that you especially like, present them and I will comment on them as though you are making them. Once again, thanks for the link...but without an opportunity for rebuttal, I just don't want to view it.

If this, then that. Youre still jerkin off Frank

Ive been rather restrained with you Frank, for I recall it was you who, about 2 years ago, went totally berserk and was calling everyone motherfuckers and actually left A2K(noone else in that thread did I believe) . Since your return,I was rather pleased that your anger management classes had apparently "taken". However, lets not try to reinvent history . If I were to go "ballistic" it was never a continuing pathology. I often yell at someone who claims things counter to evidence

All you are doing herein is reinforcing the statement made at the opening of this thread. You seem to agree with everyone cept spendi that ID is a religious postulate, not a scientific theory.

Other than that, your still dsncing to your only song. As oe who claims his disbelief in deities, you spend an incredible amount of time trying to convince yourself .

If you dont accept that some sorts of deities exist, then why bother with trying to create some sort of statistical significance that one(or more) actually DOES?

An Ostropigamoo is an animal that needs some godly intervention to produce.
I dont believe that one exists but , of course, I cannot deny that one does exist somewhere on or in our planet. Can you see the validity of my logic and my clear thinking?

You obvioulsy need a crash course in quantum chemistry, wherein several states of the same atomic weight can exist at the same time.
Machinery that detects unknowns and quantitates em, that use quantum mechanics works> "Working" is a condition of existence that I subscribe to to define my corner of reality. When something works, its real, when it dont, it aint.