Intelligent Design Theory: Science or Religion?

Lola wrote-

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It's up to those of us with benevolent and uncritical consciences, those of us who are not too frightened to think in abstractions, to help society become ready for the disappearance of ID and the sooner the better.

One cannot argue with that just like one cannot argue with the notion that the sooner the mountain ranges have been levelled and tarmaced and lanes provided for the different classes of style and bravado the better.

I fully understand the position. Electronically guided stretch limousines with darkened windows and no pot-holes in the road and the occupants popped up to their eyeballs and beginning a love affair which it is illegal to continue tomorrow. Love it. Bring it on.No unfortunate dispositions.

That should stop 'em nagging once and for all.

The trick is doing it in the non-abstract world. One could easily describe somebody tightroping across the Niagara Falls in a diving bell suit whilst playing a violin sonata by Mozart in B flat minor with a dim 7th and lighting his farts at each 100 merte mark.In the abstract it's a piece of cake.

On the other stuff it sounds like Bernie's chalk mark got washed off and it has surprised him.

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summarizing spendi

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One cannot argue ... one cannot argue ... the mountain ranges have been levelled and tarmaced(sic)... for the different classes of style and bravado

I understand ....guided limousines ,... darkened windows and pot... up to their eyeballs and ... it is illegal... Love it. Bring it on.No ...dispositions.

That nagging .

The trick is doing it . One could (be) tightroping across Niagara Falls in a diving bell suit whilst playing Mozart in his farts at each 100 merte(sic) mark.In the abstract it's a cake.

On the other stuff it sounds like Bernie's chalk mark got washed off and it has surprised him.

It made more sense to me this way, spendi.

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(University of Kansas Press Release, July 28, 2006)

The Commons, a new venture involving the University of Kansas' Hall Center for the Humanities and Biodiversity Institute, announces the first in what will become an occasional lecture series designed to foster informative and civil dialogue on difficult and volatile issues in American society. The inaugural series of lectures and informal discussions takes as its theme the proper roles of reason and faith in the human enterprise.

Throughout the fall semester, six distinguished speakers, many of whom played active roles in the landmark Dover, Pa., intelligent design case, will present divergent views on the relationship between science and religion in today's world. In addition, each speaker is slated to participate in an audience-guided dialogue on the morning following the formal lectures. The series concludes with a panel discussion on "Knowledge: Faith & Reason" featuring local leaders from the university and state.

All events in the "Difficult Dialogues at The Commons" series are free and open to the public. All lectures will begin at 7:30 p.m, and the additional dialogues will begin at 10 a.m. on the morning following the lectures in the Hall Center Conference Hall.

Kenneth Miller, a professor of biology at Brown University, will speak about "God, Darwin, and Design: Creationism's Second Coming" on Sept. 7 in the Kansas Union Ballroom. Miller, the author of Finding Darwin's God: A Scientist's Search for Common Ground Between God and Evolution and co-author of several high school textbooks, has argued that science and religion are not mutually exclusive.

John E. Jones III, judge of the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania, will discuss "Judicial Independence and Kitzmiller v. Dover, et al" on Sept. 26. In this landmark case, Jones ruled that the school district's mandate requiring the teaching of intelligent design in science classrooms was unconstitutional in that it violated the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment. The lecture will take place in Woodruff Auditorium in the Kansas Union.

On Oct. 3, Os Guinness will speak about "A World Safe for Diversity: Living With Our Deepest Differences in an Age of Exploding Pluralism" in Woodruff Auditorium. Guinness, a theologian and co-founder of the Trinity Forum, has written or edited more than 30 books. His major concern is to bridge the chasm between academic knowledge and popular knowledge, taking things that are academically important and making them intelligible and practicable to a wider audience, especially as they concern matters of public policy.

Appearing jointly in the Humanities Lecture Series, Richard Dawkins will discuss "The God Delusion" on Oct. 16 at the Lied Center. Dawkins, the Charles Simonyi Professor of the Public Understanding of Science at Oxford University, is an internationally renowned evolutionary biologist, atheist and author of numerous bestsellers, including The Selfish Gene, The Blind Watchmaker and The Ancestor's Tale. His newest book, bearing the same title as this lecture, is scheduled to appear in the fall.

Eugenie C. Scott, the executive director of the National Center for Science Education, will appear on Nov. 16 in the Kansas Union Ballroom. Her lecture, "Faith, Reason, and Assumption in Understanding the Natural World," will be drawn from her experience directing a nonprofit organization that seeks to protect the theory of evolution in science classrooms while excluding the teaching of creationism or intelligent design. Scott's book, Evolution v. Creationism: An Introduction, was published in 2004.

Michael Behe, author of Darwin's Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution, will discuss "The Argument for Intelligent Design in Biology" on Nov. 30 in the Kansas Union Ballroom. A professor of biology at Lehigh University, Behe argues that biochemical living organisms are irreducibly complex and therefore inexplicable by science in general and Darwin's theory of evolution in particular.

To conclude the series, a panel discussion titled "Knowledge: Faith & Reason" will convene at 3:30 p.m. Dec. 7 in the Hall Center Conference Hall. Panelists will be Sue Gamble, a member of the Kansas State Board of Education; Scott Jones, bishop of the United Methodist Church, Kansas Area; Richard Lariviere, KU provost and executive vice chancellor; Derek Schmidt, Simons Public Humanities Fellow and majority leader in the Kansas State Senate; and Edward O. Wiley, professor and senior curator in the KU Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology.

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Look wande-

That stuff goes on round here. You see it pinned up in the hallway of the library when you're looking through the notice board to see if any ladies are seeking help to improve their creative writing skills. Bits of it, with just the names changed, and the subject under discussion, appear in what are known as election addresses and editorials, which, as you possibly know, represent the editor's disinterested advice and sometimes torn into four can be spotted fastened on a nail in the lumberjack's temporary shithouse though I will forbear on this occasion teleologising into being a route by which they might reach such an esteemed position.

Nobody takes any notice of them except that class of persons to whom the type of language in your quote is seemingly second nature, although I do sometimes suspect some of them pulling our legs a bit. They can switch from making a speech in those terms in the most idealistic fashion you can think of to tellling you that their son is at university before the next speaker has got half way through her first sentence.

The real problem wande is the language itself. As we concentrate on all this stuff about God's imaginary friend we are off our guard. And we imbibe that type of language like we imbibed our first language blissfully unaware we were doing so and if we overdo it we can easily end up talking like that ourselves and then we are on our way into that class
of persons in whose company we feel ourselves more and more at home in and before you know it it's "on your guard" handbags when the journalists are not looking. And it's not God- it's votes. And if God doesn't approve why is he rewarding us like this?

Could you not study the piece and give us your version of it?

Remember what Yossarian said when Shwarzkopp (?) was pinning a sheet of paper to the notice board. "Announces" should ring a bell and Mailer said something about announcements too.

That class of persons, The Chattering Classes as we call them, don't go in pubs. They need an attentive audience. They have dinner parties. To settle how to stitch a common enemy up. And the first invitation is a big day. You need to defer to the existiing structures and sweep the floor as a loyalty test.

You are mainlining us on that style of language.

It is,of course, axiomatic that they haven't a clue what they are talking about. They are following the latest book they've read and buzz phrases like "hotbutton" which, I presume is a Micheal Heseltine joke.

I'm immune as you have probably guessed. I was just warning your readers or, if you like, giving them a tip.

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Liked you last piece fm. Unique.

What size straightjacket are you most comfortable in?

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Lola wrote-

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I'll also look for a new argument in favor of ID.

It's alive Lola.

You have now. You have before and you have after. Consciousness makes that unavoidable.

Science studies the before, the become, the dead, the dust. All it's literature is dead because it's about the gone. It looks back for goodness sake.Zillions of years.

Intelligent Design represents the purloining of the phrase "intelligent design".

"All non-believers and men stealers talkin' in the name of religion."

I don't care whose head they purloin it out of as long as it's not mine or those of my pals. It's a way of thinking not a policy. One supports the policy on the grounds that that way of thinking is more likely to be encouraged by IDers than by anti-IDers who are out to destroy it.

I suppose you could check out styles of music favoured by either side against your own to see to which side you really belong.

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spendi

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What size straightjacket are you most comfortable in?

I dont know, Im a 42 L, can One of yours fit me?

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Oh no fm. I'm good at acting like a sound salt of the earth type of citizen. I once actually went into a supermarket and bought something and you can't get more respectable than that.

Did you see this-

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Charity wants people to lend a hand...

LONDON (Reuters) - Hundreds of Britons are being urged to attend what is being branded as Europe's first "Masturbate-a-thon," a leading British reproductive healthcare charity said Friday.

Marie Stopes International, which is hosting the event with HIV/AIDS charity the Terrence Higgins Trust, said it expected up to 200 people to attend the sponsored masturbation session in Clerkenwell, central London, Saturday.

"It is a bit of a publicity stunt but we hope it will raise awareness," a Marie Stopes spokeswoman told Reuters.

"We want to get people talking about safer sex, masturbation and to lift taboos."

Participants, who have to be over 18, can bring any aids they need and can take part in four different rooms -- a comfort area, a mixed area, along with men and women only areas.

However, the rules on the event's Web site states there can be no touching of other participants nor are people allowed to fake orgasms.

"The amount you raise will be determined by how many minutes you masturbate and/or how many orgasms you achieve," the Web site said.

The Marie Stopes spokeswoman said local religious groups had been initially outraged, but after people had heard what the event was about, most had approved it.

Police had also given it their approval.

Similar events have been staged in San Francisco for the last six years raising $25,000 for women's health initiatives and HIV prevention. If successful, Marie Stopes said it could take place elsewhere in mainland Europe next year.

That is a tame and genteel harbinger of things to come when the number of people who cease to believe in a mysterious designer, intelligent or otherwise, rises to more than 23.45% of the population.

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Better get George W Bush over there to judge this competition. He may have something to say about the "lives lost."

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yes, what better than to ahve this contest judged by a real "jerk off"

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shpendi, on his fifth pint

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That is a tame and genteel harbinger of things to come when the number of people who cease to believe in a mysterious designer, intelligent or otherwise, rises to more than 23.45% of the population.

Or itd just a bunch of Brits celebrating the Birthday of Onan the Barbarian.

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Frankly, I dont' see what that has got to do with people not beliving in an intelligent designer, Spendi, as Evolution has nothing to say on manners and proper etiquette. If you must associate all of society's ills on Evolution, then may I suggest you buy this bridge I have?

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wolf-

Does society have "ills"?

I'm sure I don't know what you mean. Society is a thing:a concept. One can only usefully use the word to mean the carrier, at one infinitesimal moment in time, of the culture. Whatever it is. (Goodies+Mayhem).

Like the FTSE is a moment to moment measure of perceptions in the field of money so also is the loading on the electricy grid, which is also measured from moment to moment, a guide to general activity within society. At 3 am, for instance, it is reasonable on seeing the dial at a low figure to estimate that "society" is tucked up in bed sans its waking consciousness whilst allowing that a small segment of it is not: an increasing segment it is worth noting and one having variations which coincide with important events taking place at 3 am such as an England/Brazil World Cup Final taking place in South America. It is well known that at the centre of the web the staff know when the commercial break in Coronation St has started because 15 million put the kettle on.

If one were to view the M-a-thon in this way, as I obviously do, it is statistically insignificant as 59,999,800 of the population are inexplicably failing to attend and it has been left to the valiant 200 to find the media something to excite us all with in the masurbation genre which it seems to have discovered is an effective method of selling flattened out wood pulp with ink inserts and promoting the careers of those who have obviously felt their careers to be languishing and have stooped into first layer of the bottom of the barrel and fished out a Wankfest: and all good solid bourgeois citizens too. Framed Constable print on the dining room wall and tart's knickers curtains at all the windows,including the khazi, sort of thing. Air freshener by ICI Ltd.

This is the point at which subjectivity comes in.

An Evolutionist has no choice but to see the barrel consistently. No one thing is any more dignified than any other, objectively viewed. The Wankfest is equal to a traditional dance performed by the prettily costumed and blushing village girls on a warm summer afternoon with the flags gaily fluttering from the poles holding up the beer tent and children rolling in the grass to an Evolutionist surely. Manners and proper etiquette simply do not exist to an Evolutionist. The extent that they do exist is directly proportional to the half-bakedness of the Evolutionist or his/her use of them as cynical strategies, the latter being my preferred option.

In other words, to keep it short, an Evolutionist (anti-IDer) has no sense of dignity and an IDer has. To the IDer the Wankfest is from the murky depths of the barrel which have lain undisturbed for ages. One might have a Dignity scale like the FTSE as an IDer. This is denied the Evolutionist who is full-baked.

The Wankfest can be seen as a beginning. There was once the first measured current delivered to houses. There are no prizes for guessing where those houses were located. Not too far from Clerkenwell.

To those of us who think that the Wankfest is exploring the lower end of the Dignity scale we worry slightly that subsidiary wankfests might begin to appear in the towns and villages of our country. After all this one is said to have been imported from California which, I believe, has educational science standards you approve of, and which exports other products of a similar nature as a matter of course. Wanking for charity is a combination just waiting to be tried after the idea of a sexual Olympic Games has become well known in polite society.(A segment). One could hardly refuse to participate when the Charity has shown us the plight of those on whose behalf the wanking is taking place. Only a deep felt Christian shame could inhibit such a potent force.

The trouble is that when Wankfests are ten-a-penny (an optimistic valuation really according to Dr Kinsey and he didn't know what "top-shelf" meant in modern parlance) participants won't be at the cutting edge of modern evolutionary theology and will not be judged as stringently as this Wankfest will be and will start "touching" and faking orgasms and having it off in the comfort rooms and forming relationships and getting married (We met at Mrs Guthrie's Wankadoodle) and having babies and they won't want them growing up seeing people wanking on the bus or behind the counter in the pie-shop, especially the little girls, and will agitate to have it all stopped and not knowing how to they will beg for the principle IDers to do it for them.

I presume you will be attending or have you another more pressing engagement? You are a mover and shaker aren't you?

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spendius wrote:

wolf-

Does society have "ills"?

I'm sure I don't know what you mean. Society is a thing:a concept. One can only usefully use the word to mean the carrier, at one infinitesimal moment in time, of the culture. Whatever it is. (Goodies+Mayhem).

So... you've never heard of the phrase "society's ills" then? Or is it that you hate the phrase and would like me to use an alternative?

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An Evolutionist has no choice but to see the barrel consistently. No one thing is any more dignified than any other, objectively viewed. Manners and proper etiquette simply do not exist to an Evolutionist.

Wrong. An Evolutionist cannot see one living being as more dignified than any other, not thing. Survival of the fittest and all that actually falls under natural selection, not evolution. Evolution is speciation through natural selection.

Manners and proper etiquette are the only way for a person to survive properly in this world. The society is based on such things. Only a person with proper manners and etiquette can rise through the ranks. They're the ones getting the jobs, the girlfriends etc.

I disagree with you on everything you've stated so far regarding the connection between Evolutionists and no manners and no etiquette, and think this is just another one of your off-topic posts to rant about something you despise.

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You are confusing your world with "this world" I'm afraid to say wolf.

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Manners and proper etiquette are the only way for a person to survive properly in this world.

As you might guess if you read my last post with care your statement is an argument for ID. If you read a recent post addressed to Lola you will get an idea of what I mean by intelligent design. It is seemingly not the same as your meaning for Intelligent Design.

Yes- I do dislike the phrase "society's ills". It has a looking down the nose from a pedestal feel about it. It leads to sloppy thinking and easily coined sentimentalities which go down well in certain quarters if accompanied by the appropriate rhetorical skills. I try to avoid both as best I can although I'll admit I am not always successful. Society, to the Home Secretary, is 60,000,000 morons who's votes he needs and to a tramp all that **** going down over there which his body forces him to connect to from time to time. In Chiantishire it is something to use to get a higher salary and increase the risk of an official from HM Customs seeking to have a view of the inner rectum. It means something different to everybody and a dinner party discussing society's ills is much like a startled flock of geese making a predictable noise which might well mean something to them, individually I mean, but that meaning is lost on the rest of us who are too busy boozing, whoring and fighting.

Just about the only thing I despise is bad art and bad science.

Oh- And anybody who thinks they know anything worthwhile and has thus lost to urge to find what is worthwhile.

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Evolution in Kansas comeback
(Dale McFeatters, Nashua Telegraph, August 6, 2006)

The teaching of evolution to Kansas high-school students seemed to be headed back toward 1858, the year before Charles Darwin wrote "On the Origin of Species," but after an election Tuesday it appears that biology instruction in the state will remain in the 21st century.

Voters installed a moderate 6-4 majority on the state Board of Education, ousting the margin of conservative Republicans who had promulgated standards for the teaching of science that seemed intended to establish that the theory of evolution, the foundation of modern biology, is wrong, flawed or should be given equal weight with intelligent design or creationism.

Critics of evolution have not fared too terribly well in their efforts to derail Darwin. Ohio's state board of education dropped plans to require skeptical teaching of evolution. And in Dover, Pa., voters ousted a school board that ordered that students be referred to materials on intelligent design. In the meantime, a federal judge, in what may be the definitive ruling on the issue, found that intelligent design was religion, not science.

Critics of evolution tend to rely on a slippery definition of "theory," using it in the broad sense of conjecture or speculation rather than in its scientific sense as a testable hypothesis explaining a given set of facts. For the overwhelming number of scientists and their professional organizations, evolution is settled biology.

But because of voter apathy and low turnout, state and local boards of education are susceptible to agenda-driven politics. The creationist-minded Dover board was ousted only when the parents became aroused. Kansas' board has gone back and forth three times between pro- and anti-evolution majorities. The turnout in Tuesday's pivotal election, admittedly affected by the heat and vacations, was only 18 percent.

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G'day wande,

Who owns the Nashua Telegraph?

It's a "slippery" definition our opponents use is it? Which of course implies that the writer's definitions are not "slippery" and thus more trustworthy.

Like how they appoint journalists at the Nashua Telegraph. You can see just by looking that Dale's piece is a copy and paste job and his own presence is confined to such things as-

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not fared too terribly well

and-

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only when the parents became aroused.

I'll not dignify "derail" with a proper quote.

And what's this about "18%"?

It was 40 the other day.When fm was crowing.

Is that because 18% makes it easier to run "agenda-driven" politics like the "moderates" must have done according to Dale. According to Dale the winner can be assumed to be up to its collective neck in agendas.

But taking into account the heat and the vacations and voter apathy and the state and local boards of education being susceptible to agenda-driven politics I think the voters deserve commendation for managing to muster up 18% most of whom were registering approval or disapproval of Mr Bush if what goes on here is anything to go by. And the 18% are representitive of the "awkward squad" end of the Tolerance spectrum which,like the Dignity spectrum I mentioned, cannot be shown to exist but we all know what it is. Except Evolutionists of course. Everything to them is a mere matter of calculation like it was for Scrooge. (That's a better smear than "slippery" any day of the week. And maybe a prophesy to boot.)

I think anti-IDers will have to improve their writing skills to have any hope.

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spendius wrote:

G'day wande,

Who owns the Nashua Telegraph?

I am not absolutely certain but I believe it is Bob Dylan.

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spendius wrote:

Just about the only thing I despise is bad art and bad science.

So, you despise Intelligent Design yet support it?

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I have explained wolf that Intelligent Design is not intelligent design. The former is a label for something I don't yet understand. Maybe I never will.A trade name sort of. The latter is a notion which varies from person to person.

I don't see how you can assert that ID is bad art or bad science at this stage. If you could prove it is either I would, of course, despise it.

Art and Science both have high-value utility. In a school disinfected of religion I don't see how you would teach art. Drawing maybe or ordered daubings but not art. I think the Russians put it to the test.

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Intelligent Design Theory: Science or Religion?

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