Intelligent Design Theory: Science or Religion?

Harriet was intelligent and good looking as well as completely amoral like any self respecting monkey.What's the solution for the broad mass of women who can probably manage amorality quite naturally but are not endowed with the celebrity look or any special intelligence?

Oh yes-I know-scientists can give them face-lifts and flab tucks and wrinkle remover creams,gels and other poisonous substances too numerous to list.More stress of course.Science is "tense".

Long John Silver was fond of saying it too, a couple of centuries before Private Eye, I'll be bound. Otherwise, Spendy, you're smart as paint.

I'm not sure what to make of that Mac.

It is some useless information, for them as wants it, containing as it does three allusions to Treasure Island, and a gentle compliment.

After the Dover decision, Dembski again talked more about theology rather than science in an essay for Science and Theology News. He seems to emphasize ID's cross-cultural appeal in terms of theology and metaphysics. At the end of the essay, Dembski admits: "ID still has much to accomplish in developing its scientific and intellectual program."

The very point I have been trying to stress since I came on here.

Perhaps my emphasis on "cultural forces" will be taken a little more seriously in future.The discussion is sterile when they are ignored.

wandeljw posted[quote]ID is of growing interest to college and graduate students. Three years ago, there was one Intelligent Design and Evolution Awareness (IDEA) Center at the University of California-San Diego. Now there are thirty such centers at American colleges and universities, including UC Berkeley and Cornell. These centers are fiercely pro-ID. [/quote]
Theres one at Princeton and U Del also. None of these are associated with any science departments or the Colleges of Arts and Sciences, (nor engeering or Ag for Delaware)They are parts of "Ministries". Very little lab equipment associated with ministries, just collection buckets.spendius, in a carefully clipped quote posted[quote]Ultimately, the significance of a court case like this depends not on a judge?s decision but on the cultural forces that serve as the backdrop against which the decision is made. Take the Scopes Trial. In the minds of most, it was a decisive victory for evolution. Yet, in the actual trial, the decision went against Scopes (he was convicted of violating a Tennessee statute against teaching evolution). [/quote]
What you fail to recognize spendius is that in American history, the Scopes trial was a "set-up", a test of the law which was developed in a Dayton Tenn drug store by Scopes, the principal of the schools, and a lawyer working with C Darrow in which the ultimate goal was to ultimately knock down the ANTI_EVOLUTION LAWS that were then in effect in Tennessee and were stifling the teaching of the sciences . Your arguments just disappear when viewed against history, spendi

An aside, Hunters textbook . ACIVIL BOLOGY
,by todAYS STANDARDS , wouldn't be given a consideration by most school districts (obviously weve gone a light year from our understandings in the science since 1914) , The reason wed carefully exclude this book from the "short list" of texts is, its section on evolution is full of social Darwin statements and the references to the Kallikaks and "Gods hand". Its an amazing bit of fluff that shows , even when someone wished to teach evolution, one had to let all the baggage of the "Community centered values" be dragged along.

spendi,

I agree that Dembski is taking the same "culture war" approach that you have been taking. However, the Dover case focused on whether ID can be taught as science.

If Dembski wants to leave ID as theology, metaphysics, or socio-cultural philosophy that would be okay with me. Dembski should abandon trying to make a science out of ID.

Maybe I didnt explain myself well enough, but the book A CIVIL BIOLOGY, was the very text that SCopes used in his biology classes in Dayton Tenn.
A book, published in 1914, was used in class in 1925. Try getting away with that today. Well, maybe in Alabama

spendius

Who doesnt, initially take you seriously? not I. However when history has a countervailing event (or two) that show otherwise, we just have to bring it to your attention so you may backpedal a bit.

Yeah, like first, it oughtta develop some sorta - any sorta - "... scientific and intellectual program ... "; pretty damned hard to build on what ain't there.

Your arguments since this statment.

There is no such thing as a thinking man.









Your argument Spendius is a phantasmagoria. It is so ephemeral that it loses itself in the wisps of its own dull fog and trudges forlornly around Piccadilly trying to keep from strangling itself or tripping over its skirt.

Essence..........too strong a word? Essence, being defined as, 1. The intrinsic or indispensable properties that serve to characterize or identify something. 2. The most important ingredient; the crucial element 3.
The inherent, unchanging nature of a thing or class of things, is the right word to describe that property that defines the difference between science and any other discipline. Without persistent doubt, science would not exist.



You've given us a fine example here of the problem with your argument.....if we can call it that. Carousing bars and nightclubs may be a fine activity and for some it might be fun, but motivation to carry out a certain activity is not determined by pre-frontal lobe activity alone. Feelings and consideration of motivation is not a part of science. While it's true that it's impossible to totally illuminate the influence of personal preference, science is our best attempt. As a matter of fact, the requirement for test replication is the check on the taint of personal wishes on the part of the scientist.

In your very well performed function as pleasant and entertaining thorn in the side of those attempting serious argument, you are performing very well. And I suggest you keep it up. As an artist, you are very well accomplished. As provocateur, you excel. And your contributions do add flavor to the thread. Where would we be without you? But your insistence on the corruption of science by politics does not advance an argument that addresses the subject.

And btw, I do believe that the social sciences are indeed science......but that's another debate.

Love ya, Spendi. Nice to see you.

From the scientific perspective, sociology the science holds that religion is that aspect of humankind's collective consciousness which strives to hold accountable that which contemporary technology leaves unexplained, to provide basis for authority moral, ethical, and civil, and establish a framework for community identity. Religion, wholly apart from any epistemologic consideration, is entirely a human construct, reflecting the times and cultures in which it occurrs.

I am permanently backpedalling.The discussion is in a very polite stage just yet.

I made a mistake earlier.It was Innocent V111 not 111 who published the Bull- "Given at Rome,at St Peter's,on the 9 December of the Year of the Incarnation of Our Lord one thousand four hundred and eighty-four,in the first Year of Our Pontificate."

The Scopes trial is a very paltry affair in comparison.The Bull is thermo-nuclear to that squib.Making a big deal out of Scopes is making a big deal out of yourselves.It was an incident.A Dayton Tenn drug store back room bit of ****-stirring.

Not to be compared to a Papal Bull from "Innocent,Bishop,Servant of the servants of God,for an eternal remembrance."

But one does understand how compartmentalised egos cut off from nature,and Central Park ain't nature,in the realms of pure scientific intellect would think its own incidents of great importance.

I'll quote Spengler again-

"The sovereign waking-consciousness,cut off by walls and artificialities from living nature and the land about it and under it,cognises nothing outside itself.It applies criticism to its imaginary world,which it has cleared of everyday sense-experience,and continues to do so till it has found the last and subtlest result,the form of the form--itself: namely,nothing. With this the possibilities of physics as a critical mode of world-understanding are exhausted, and the hunger for metaphysics presents itself afresh. But it is not the religious pastimes of educated and literature-soaked cliques,still less is it the intellect, that gives rise to the Second Religiousness.Its source is the naive belief that arises,unremarked but spontaneous,among the masses that there is some sort of mystic constitution of actuality (as to which formal proofs are presently regarded as barren and tiresome word-jugglery), and an equally naive heart-need reverently responding to the myth with a cult.The forms of neither can be forseen,still less chosen--they appear of themselves, and as far as we ourselves are concerned,we are as yet far distant from them. But already (1922) the opinions of Comte and Spencer,the Materialism,and the Monism and the Darwinism,which stirred the best minds of the nineteenth century to such passion,have become the world-view proper to country cousins."

Decline of the West.Volume Two.Perspectives in World-History.Chapter 1X,Problems of the Arabian Culture.Pythagoras,Mohammed,Cromwell.

One could write reams of irony if one had the time.

Okay, spendi. If you and Dembski want to relegate ID to a socio-cultural-theological subject area, that would be fine. Most of us only object to ID being disguised as science.

"Papal Bull"...not being an American, I never thought of it that way before. Thanks (and sorry to briefly lower the tone of an interesting if incomprehensible in parts correspondence)

Gutt eefenink sweet Queen of the smoky Manhattan canyons.Thank you for your kind words and encouragement although I doubt many on here approve.

On your statement-



I think there is a connection.Isn't a unified nation a mystical idea.It uses mystical symbols of many sorts.

How do you justify the secrecy surrounding certain types of research.Scientific knowledge disconnected from politics and thus from the mystical idea of nation, is supposed to be freely available to the world scientific community is it not?
That is why there are scientific journals and conferences.The Klaus Fuchs defence.

Thus we have a mystical notion in control of science and that does relate to ID particularly if it really catches fire after finding a charismatic leader.

wande-



Isn't everything in disguise.

"Sometimes even the President of the United States must have to stand naked."

That line gets a big cheer everytime Dylan sings it and has been doing for 40 years and in half the countries of the world.

No leader, no matter how charismatic, can change religion into science. And if one could, we would have to pay Rumpelstiltskin's rather too high price.

And Dempski is sure not the one. Dempski is and Schaeffer was a little bit pixilated, off their rockers. They would like to impose their brand of religion on the entire world, and they are/were trying to do it by convincing the uneducated that creationism is science. Speaking of an inflated over self-confidence, exposure to nature or not.

I love your poetry, Spendi......and your knowledge of all things refined and cultured, especially the use of words, but declaring ID theory to be what it is which is not-science does not take your art away from you. Now you know that really, don't you?

You're just funnin' with everybody. Come on, admit it.