Intelligent Design Theory: Science or Religion?

@rosborne979,

It was his last novel. I believe he spent more than 10 years writing it.

@Setanta,

Setanta wrote:

It was his last novel. I believe he spent more than 10 years writing it.

He wrote a lot of good stuff, but I thought his observations and views on religion were particularly enjoyable.

And the ending of Mysterious Stranger could be one of the better philosophical sic-fi stories written, even today. His language is precise and unambiguous (which gives it power), but it's also a bit haunting in how close it comes to reality.

It's always interesting to see that people of the 1800 had many of the same thoughts and observations that we do today. It reminds me that the human brain hasn't changed much in a hundred thousand years. Even back when all we could do was build a fire and a spear there must have been people just as smart as we are, but without our accumulated knowledge. Astronomers and physicists hunting in the tall grass, their minds just as sharp as ours.

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@rosborne979,

That's a good observation. I suspect that many of the early shamans were just guys (or girls) who looked around, saw both what an amazing place the cosmos is and just how superstitious, ignorant and fearful their companions were, and realized they were set for life.

So, Thag . . . you're quite the hunter, i see . . . but if you look up there at the great bear, you can see that he's not happy with you. I'll see what i can do to help you out, but you'll need to give me something to sacrifice to the great bear.

Uhm, right . . . so whaddaya think, shoulder roast, rump roast?

Thag, Thag . . . this is no time to be a cheapskate. I think a nice rack of ribs might do it . . . and the liver . . . i . . . er, i mean, the great bear really loves liver. Say, your wife does some really nice buckskin tunics, right?

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@farmerman,

Quote:

Einstein, in his "God dont throw dice" phrase, actually shows how little Einstein understands because it appears from (Franks own admission re: ID), a god DOES play dice.

Farmerman, I never said "god does play dice"...I inferred that IF there is a GOD...it could pretty much do whatever it wants. IF there is a GOD...it could play dice IF it wants.

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These macho bozos like to play in the twee zone. It must generate a sense of self-importance and superiority over that miniscule number of A2Kers who don't know these things.

The manner in which they put references to our intelligently designed sexual politics on Ignore and divert themselves into their comfort zones in order to pretend the subject is less important than what they assert shamans got up to in primitive societies speaks volumes for those sensitivities they are conditioned to which are unknown within the discipline of scientific methodology.

They have learned their lines and pointedly refuse to try to learn any new ones. They turn away from references to the fuss over alpha females in Oxbridge selling their eggs at £700 a go or that one involving the experimental trials of GM wheat in large fields in the open air located in prime agricultural territory.

Neither fuss has so far involved overtly religious spokespersons. The matters are being called into question by other scientists. And both processes come easily within the "suck it and see" style of the scientific method. (And it is a style).

We have to assume that anti-IDers on here are in favour of both activities taking place and possibly being expanded.

When you think about it the alpha females are the ones who can fairly easily, I'm assuming the process is easy, pay their tuition fees off before completing their education. And I suppose they are all sufficiently intellectual as to be able to avoid ever wondering what their few dozen sons or daughters are like and what they are doing. Whether the skenny-eyed, knock-kneed stringbean alpha females can command £700 I have no information on. I suspect not.

We are supposed to be debating which route to take from here.

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@spendius,

Hitler was a bit too crude but what else can be expected of an ex-corporal with a great deal on his mind. And not having any scientists to spare to deal with a policy which could be comfortably achieved by a less expensive method.

I presume it is possible to remove a fertilised egg from a female so I expect those with professorial DNA added in tutorials for advanced courses will bring a good deal more than £700.

With business efficiency being all the rage these days it will probably not be necessary for the buyers of the succubus to be infertile. They may simply wish for children to raise their own status in the world and avoid all that driving the little monsters on which is really very tiresome and quite contrary to evolutionary forces.

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@Setanta,

The whole panoply of human nature was probably there. I'm sure there were snake oil salesmen as well as engineers huddled around the campfire.

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@gungasnake,

Quote:

Claiming that there are a certain number of characteristics of living organisms which logically cannot be construed as having arisen via evolution and which, taken as a whole, indicate that our living world was designed is another question. THAT is science

If you hve data and evidence to support that claim then , yes, it would be arrived at scientifically. However, knowing you, I recall NO such arrivals at your conclusions by any scientific inquiry, only blind acceptance of late night talk radio.

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@farmerman,

Just observe folks the alacrity with which fm jumps onto the easy questions and with an answer he has had rehearsed so long that it is more or less fossilised.

And he assumes, as usual, that late-night talk-radio is giving out bullshit and he starts from that proposition in order to arrive at his conclusion; which is fat-head fatuity.

I don't think he dare allow that the living organisms which need explaining might be the homoess sapieness in her modern, Christian incarnation. Her only similarity with the women of evolution is to the odd Roman Empress or European King's mistress. And she has many advantages over them.

Those who think the Christian religion is anti-woman should compare our ladies with everything that went before. They just want even more of their own way.

fm, gunga, can easily use scientific enquiry to explain living organisms because he thinks that the flagella can be compared to a foot pump and they are simple to explain.

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@spendius,

Im tired of jumping all over your stuff. Youve been praticing the same etude since 2004 and youre just flat boring .

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@Setanta,

I liked the Capt Stormg=fileds Visit to heave. A late life ashort story that is of the similar weft as "Mysterious STranger" Since MS was pub's [posthumously, it was bound into several editions of collected Twain work (one of which I have :ie "The AMerican Artists Edition of Harper &Brothers 1921). Try "Capt Stormfield, it too shows Twains disdain for the god squad)

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@rosborne979,

Quote:

And the ending of Mysterious Stranger could be one of the better philosophical sic-fi stories written, even today. His language is precise and unambiguous (which gives it power), but it's also a bit haunting in how close it comes to reality.

Since it was pub'd posthumously, I always understood that Twain never finished it and others composed the ending from his notes. No?

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@farmerman,

I don't know. Perhaps Setanta knows.

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@farmerman,

Quote:

Im tired of jumping all over your stuff. Youve been praticing the same etude since 2004 and youre just flat boring .

That's just "with a bound Jack was free" shite. Are you not prepared to commit to GM crops or the sale of human eggs derived from alpha females? You're trying to make out that challenging questions are "flat boring" in order to justify your wobblies on the subjects. Subjects concerning food and eugenics too. As if those can ever be boring.

You stick to Mark Twain. Another writer who married into wealth. And he lost the lady's money. He was into parapsychology and science fiction. A hopeless writer. Asexual. Fell in love with a photograph.

And he had a moustache.

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@rosborne979,

Aggghhhh. My creative spelling caused me to post some nonsensical title again. The story I was referring to was
"Captain Stormfield's Visit to Heaven"

It is another tale re: Twains feeling about religion and spirituality, but done with some humor. In Twains collected works series, Mysterious STranger, Capt Stormfield,a Horses Tale and a short story about burglar alarms were in the same volume. The Artists series was the one that was also illustrated by N C Wyeth.

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@farmerman,

Quote:

Twain formed a club in 1906 for girls he viewed as surrogate granddaughters, the Angel Fish and Aquarium Club. The dozen or so members ranged in age from 10 to 16. Twain exchanged letters with his "Angel Fish" girls and invited them to concerts and the theatre and to play games. Twain wrote in 1908 that the club was his "life's chief delight."

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@rosborne979,

I believe the published version was a pastiche of several manuscripts he had written on a similar theme, and that at least one was a manuscript unfinished at Clemens' death. However, i believe it was all pieces-parts, all written by Clemens, and assembled by mere editorial mechanics.

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@Setanta,

Setanta wrote:

The idea that God is an oversized white male with a flowing beard who sits in the sky and tallies the fall of every sparrow is ludicrous. But if by God one means the set of physical laws that govern the universe, then clearly there is such a God. This God is emotionally unsatisfying... it does not make much sense to pray to the law of gravity.

-- Carl Sagan.

Here's something which is actually on topic. This was in a response to Frank. Sagan might have called himself agnostic, but there is no room for an "intelligent designer" in that definition.

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I think we all are aware that Sagan was one who also said that extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof. Here is a tidbit I lifted off of Wikipedia which I found interesting.

Sagan warned against humans' tendency towards anthropocentrism. He was the faculty adviser for the Cornell Students for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. In the Cosmos chapter "Blues For a Red Planet", Sagan wrote, "If there is life on Mars, I believe we should do nothing with Mars. Mars then belongs to the Martians, even if the Martians are only microbes."

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@Setanta,

So now Setanta is deciding what is on topic. In such cases we are all bound to come to Setanta's conclusions.

This is on topic too--

Quote:

I had rather you read fifty "Jumping Frogs" than one Don Quixote. Don Quixote is one of the most exquisite books that was ever written, and to lose it from the world's literature would be as the wresting of a constellation from the symmetry and perfection of the firmament--but neither it nor Shakespeare are proper books for virgins to read until some hand has culled them of their grossness.

The inculcation of Christian morality is mostly aimed at virgins. Presumably virgins should also be protected from the grossness of science. Which explains the absence of response to most of my questions. Anti-IDers are pretending a virginal purity. And quoting Mark Twain who, as the quote makes clear, are to be deceived.

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Intelligent Design Theory: Science or Religion?

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