Intelligent Design Theory: Science or Religion?

ros-

It's a pity you spoiled that with a distasteful flinning.

Here's a bit of dialogue from the cutting edge of natural selection.
It's from a series of single-minded genre Avon adverts which are sort of inverted commas around each part of Footballer's Wives;a 90 minute series of some fame in 5 parts.A 10 second Avon ad appears immediately before and immediately after each part and so they are also commas around the other ads all of which are classy and befitting the general tone.
The same two girls are putting on or taking off the make-up which is probably an Avon product but they are only acting.

On this one they are putting it on and the beaut on the left (a signifier) says,as she gently creams her smooth left cheek,the one on her head I mean,unfortunately,-

"This feels like there's nothing there."

To which her friend replies-

"Enough about Dan,what about the foundation."

And they both giggle really girlishly.

The scene is dead cool;sepia,lush,orange lamp,flowers etbloodycetera and they are both looking into the same dead mod mirror.

10 secs and it's done.

Now-what's going on? It's not very complimentary to Dan is it?Our representitive.

It reminded me of a passage in Desmond&Moore's 800 page DARWIN.

"Enthusiasts were still buffing bullfinches and dyeing white doves for him,testing female ardour to it's limit.The situation had a new urgency with Argyll's criticisms snowballing through the press.What of Darwin's vaunted selection if it could not produce 'the japanned peacock and the Bohemian pheasant'? wondered the Edinburgh Review.Selection required utility,but there was none in gaudiness.Darwin had to prove that birds could choose their mate' fine feathers to prevent a holy Haberdasher from being invoked."

Of course ros he meant females choosing males for their "bling".

But in our secular world it looks like this situation has been reversed if Footballer's Wives is anything to go by and it's a serious cult series in which Ms Collins is supposed to be appearing but she's making a late entrance it seems.

Now who or what could have thought of that.Reversing the basic evolutionary principle of sexual selection on which so many reputations rest.

The next comma was the blood-coloured nail varnish fannying with-

"And it lasts 14 days.......About as long as your relationships!"

More girlish giggling.

Now ros-when society was less secularised than it is now such things as I have sadly had to describe were unthinkable.Absolutely.

If it gets more secular than it is now then who knows....At least the direction seems clear.

I know that a causal connection between secularisation and this particular trend can't be objectively proved but it is possible to believe in it,as with all good hypotheses,and to look for evidence for it before coming to even preliminary conclusions as wande's sig. recommends.There may well be an irreducible complexity or,at least,there might be for some.

Whatever-we men are in the petri-dish and the anti-IDers seem quite relaxed about it.

I record the programme and it takes me a few hours to watch it due to having to keep rewinding to see or hear things clearly so fast does the original go.Observation is no good unless one puts some discipline into it.

wande wrote-



Why not make a video of fm,set and timber shouting" it's a load of crap!!!"whilst stamping their feet and gnashing their teeth.

If it's convincing on here with grown-ups it should work with the innocent little minds of students.And it would be cheap to make.Cost effective.

Agreed. I was commenting purely on any *social* value it might have, not ecucational or scientific value (of which it has none; because it's not science).

spendius,

I do not think you can handle normal conversation.

wande wrote-



Oh-I don't know about that wande.It would depend what "normal" meant anyway.If you mean your "normal" is actually the definitive definition of normal then I suppose I'm equally entitled to say that about you.Which I never would of course.

And even then you need to distinguish small talk from serious conversation.

This exchange-



is small talk as far as I'm concerned.I'm not sure I would class it as conversation.It goes nowhere.There's nothing to think about.It's predictable.It actually means nothing.One can imagine it being declaimed at a PTA meeting.It is nowhere near the classroom.The classroom is an abstract concept,as are the students,utilised for the purpose of sounding off.

I like to think that one or two of our viewers might think about my parable about secularisation and the "who has the pants on now?" game.

It's clarification to make sure both people understand each other. I'm not surprised that you (Mr. Pancake Bunny) don't consider clarity a necessary part of conversation.

ros wrote-



Well-you see ros-

The subject under discussion on this thread is extremely opaque.It asymptotes with a pea-soup fog.

To think clarity can be easily achieved in this respect is to so vastly underestimate the difficulties that it may just as well not be attempted.Everybody knows what the vision through the windscreen looks like when headlights are switched on in a pea-souper.And the 150 year long controvesy is a guide to how dense this fog is.

But underestimation is quite common.Once the subject is underestimated it is easy to provide clarity in congruence with the underestimation.Such clarity leads to NO understanding and then there is NO conversation.It degenerates into a noise.

Wouldn't you think it useful,at the least,to try to see what your fellow conversationalist is attempting to throw a little light on.Or would you rather underestimate him and readily provide yourself with a quip.Could you not bring yourself to see that an elliptical approach might be called for in a case like this.My little confection about Footballer's Wives is a very simple and easy to follow example of such an approach.

An ellliptical approach is your only hope Spendi. Because when one examines the facts, it clears up that fog and shines a lot of light on the ID theory. ID can't withstand scrutiny. That is the point that has been made repeatedly here and you can't seem to understand.

The scientific method has a set of rules. You can't make those rules go away no matter how much you accuse the other side of shouting or not following your rules.

parados-

How can you misunderstand so comprehensively.
I'm not trying to shed any light on ID.It is not a theory,it is a beliefNot a thing light can be shone upon except regarding its effects..A belief might be said to consist of a collection,complex or otherwise,coherent or otherwise,of thoughts.

Now what is a thought from the scientific point of view.In your head is a range of things.When you think "spendi is an idiot" those things are arranged in a particular pattern,geometrically and electrically,and they will arrange themselves differently if you think "I'd like a nice glass of beer."
A bit like different patterns in a DNA molecule.Very small differences in DNA patterns causes a remarkable range of characteristics some of which are "good" and some of which are "bad" and some of which,probably most,you don't assess.And it's the same in chemistry.

So if the thought is a thing,transient though it may be,like electron energy jumps,could it not be that certain thoughts might be "good" such as "Jesus wants me for a sunbeam"and others "bad" such as "spendi is an idiot".I'll not attempt to define good and bad here because it is a complex matter and is dependent upon the position of the organism in relation to its environment and its needs and desires, which vary a great deal.

Would you dispute the idea that a thought is a thing which,if it is a thing,has the potential to be poisonous or to be neutral or to be beneficial.And that,as a thing,it is in your body.

One might look then at the collection of thoughts in a belief that a invisible hand is guiding us and one where that is denied and see if any statistical correlations can be found showing one or the other to be beneficial to the individual and to society which is beneficial to the individual if it is healthy.

Have I broken any scientific rules with that?

parados wrote-



When have I said I had any rules.There's enough rules without me adding any on.I think the shouting is a well documented fact.

Professor Robert Pennock, one of the experts who testified at the Dover trial, has written an essay explaining why ID proponents should give up their fight:

wande-

Why put Pennock on this thread.Are you trying to kill it.

We've done all that more often than is good for you.

Are you simply trying to attach his prestige as a prof to the anti-ID side.

Why have you all turned your faces away from my Footballer's Wives post.Are you really scared of pushing the social function argument that much.

I quoted from DARWIN for goodness sake.I asked some significant questions.

Pennock's piece is not worthy of an undergraduate.Especially the last paragraph which is bilge in intelligent company.

He says-



and then uses "reason" in a way that says it is what he says it is.And "pramatic heads" when he means his pragmatism and he isn't even slightly pragmatic if he hides from social function.

So Judge Jones concludes ID is not science.Big deal.We all know anyway.Obviously it isn't science.
That's not what this debate is really about.
It's about whether a secularised society works better than a society with some basic religious beliefs which are not at the forefront of everybody's minds all day long but which provide a cultural stock of feeling and orientation.

Is that really so hard to understand.One can discuss the mechanics of nuclear weapons without any reference to their effects when used.It's cosy.
And trivial too.

spendi, not only have you asked no significant questions, you've made no significant contribution to this discussion ... apart, perhaps, from the merriment your opaquely Joyceian prose from time to time has provided.

spendius wrote:


This is one of the arguments used by ID proponents. However, it is government that is secularised, not society. A secular government ensures freedom for all religions. Parents do not want a specific religious view to be taught in government-operated schools. Parents want to decide where and how their children learn about religion.

Here's a proper quote-

Discussing Darwin writing The Struggle for Existence.

"Here he would show how the variants were weeded,how endless numbers fell in the 'War of Nature'.His new theory of divergence created a chilling image.Nature became a seething slum,with everyone scrambling to get out,rushing to break from the rat pack.Only the few survived,bettering themselves by creating new dynasties.Most remained trapped on the breadline,destined to struggle futilely,neighbours elbowing one another aside to get ahead,the weak trampled underfoot.Sacrifice and waste were endemic,indeed necessary.Nature was abortive,squandering,profilgate.Her failures were discarded like the breeder's runts to rot on some domestic dump."

A justification for fascism.

It goes on-

"There was a baseness about it all." and

This said by Darwin himself-

"What a book the Devil's Chaplain might write on the clumsy,wasteful, blundering low & horridly cruel works of Nature."

and his brother Erasmus-

"One great slaughter-house the warring world."

And last night Planet Earth started-nothing but a killing field.

Where is the anti-IDers notion of beauty when according to evolutionists,with their objectively peer-reviewed facts,nature is a brutal and merciless battlefield?

The great spreading chesnut tree is organised to "greedily" take all the light and starve other life forms beneath.What a metaphor for the rich and powerful.What a perfect justification-that it is nature's way-its law.And sure enough science says it is.
How about humanity then?

What comfort for the weak and meek there is in the anti-IDers pedantic and sterile severities.

How do we humans transcend this horrifying scenario which I have barely begun to describe.

If nature is horrible,as it is,then we humans,as its highest manifestation,must be the most horrible.

Read The Sermon on the Mount.Which anti-IDers think they can discredit by denying other aspects of the Gospels.Compare that to the mild picture I have tried to paint.

Creation myths,and there are many,are an attempt to make us feel better about ourselves.A sort of psychological grooming.

Suppose an anti-ID teacher sets a homework project-"What evidence of evolution do you see in your daily life?"

Which seems reasonable.

Then imagine a student like Mailer giving it the gun.He could turn the teacher's hair white.

You are playing at self-defeating status games I fear.

And the idea of confining ID to "philosophy" or "religious studies" is ludicrous.

timber-is that not a question.

Was not that whole Footballer's Wives post not one BIG question.The programme is a question.

If you can't see that what am I supposed to do?

From The Sunday Times-



An answer to-



What do parents know?They have an average IQ of 100 and the busybodies even less.They are using their kids to flog some idea of their own.What do they know about conditions in 30 years?

(That's another question timber-don't just assert I haven't asked any.I must have asked near a 100.)

Straw man again, spendi; I haven't said you haven't asked ANY questions; I have said you have asked no SIGNIFICANT questions.

I can, however, appreciate that the distinction might be unclear to one of the mindset evidenced by the style and substance of your postings to this and related discussions. I must assume you're doing the best you are able with what you have.

Okay-

Will the increased secularisation of society lead further down the road on which Footballer's Wives is travelling.I tried in my short post on that subject to give you an idea not just of the general tone but the ONLY tone.

It looks like you skimmed it or it was beyond you if you don't think it significant.

I have asked you to describe the secularised society of the future which you seem to want.Is that not a significant question.

I think you have your head in a light and soundproof bag.It seems to be an abstract argument you are pursuing.I'm concerning myself with the actual future of these kids.I'm not playing ping-pong.

Gotta wonder how much more straw your camel's back can support, spendi. Society and government are not the same things, nor should they be. That government be divorced from religion is essential to the free practice thereof by society. There is no justification to, logic behind, or excuse for any agenda which seeks to governmentally impose any religious concept on society. One's own sprirituality is one's own spirituality, a personal matter, and by no rationale binding on others. One is to be accorded the right and respect to believe as one wishes, whether or not one's beliefs themselves merit respect - another distinction with which I imagine you might have difficulty.