Intelligent Design Theory: Science or Religion?

So its ok to insist that School childeren do not "need" to be taught ID ? And you seem to be stipulating that wants or needs are irrelevent?

Schoolchildren don't need to be taught ID because it can't be taught.

It is a feeling. To nurture the feeling a certain style of education is necessary.

A mechanical materialist style education inhibits the feeling but cannot eradicate it.

That is partly because it might be ineradicable in human nature and partly because the formal education system is not the only source of learning in our countries as it is in , say, N Korea where any expressions of it are directed towards The Great Leader and semblences of his divinity.

The silly, old tosspot.

I agree. I guess my point was simply, why would a materialist care?

In the sense they are employed by proponents of the Creationist/ID-iot proposition, the terms "Materialist" and "Materialism" are phantoms, boogeymen, "not like us", "scare the kiddies" buzzwords; they are but manufactured "enemies of all that is moral, righteous, and good"; signal example of the characteristic mendacity which reveals and typifies the foundtionally insurmountable illegitimacy of the proposition itself.

That's half-baked timber and you know it.

I use the word as exactly as I can. It's all been thrashed out years ago. IDers can have variations of style and committment but materialists are just materialists.

They demand solid evidence for every proposition and solid evidence is only in material. It is no bogeyman to scare anybody with. It is scary as a fact.

Anyway, you should make your own case and desist from asserting the motives of your opponents. In my case your assertion is false. Thus it is only true for those IDers who it is true for and that's tautology.

Get out of that.

Humorous Timber. And just another apologetic of your own faith evidenced by your fear of facing the issue by accusations and assertions. Instead of informing me of my motives, answer my query regarding your motives.

PRECISELY - and hardly that word alone.


Get out of that.

In reference to the matter here at discussion, my motive self-evidently and unambiguously is to expose Creationism/ID-iocy for the fraudulent, illegitimate, duplicitous scam it is.

I submit, fisherman, you err grievously in your appraisal; neither fear nor faith are operative in my philosophy, quite to the contrary, in fact, by form and function. I submit further that your commentary indicates failure to differentiate between faith and understanding, belief and knowledge.

I will try to make it more clear for you - whether or not there may be or even if there be a god or gods, creator(s) or designer(s), style the concept however you will, is moot, irrelevant, immaterial, entirely beside the point; the point is that no compelling, let alone valid, argument for any proposition thereon dependent - Creationism/ID-iocy signal among the lot but by no means alone - has been put forward in this discussion and its like on these boards.

That is not to say that for said propositions no plausible, perhaps even, to some extent or other, compelling argument can or may be made any more than it is to say there be or not be any god or gods, creator(s) or designer(s), it simply is to say no valid argument for any such, and by necessary extension for any propostion proceeding therefrom, has been presented on these boards.

Finally, I submit that you cannot demonstrate, objectively, logically, empirically, in academically sound, forensically valid manner, that faith, most specifically faith in the religious sense, be differentiable from superstition.

timber-

You know as well as I do that the practice of deference has a component of due form.

A waiter in a restaurant for example is required to perform the mechanical functions of showing you the menu, taking your order and bringing your dishes to the table in a manner which shows that he has had to undertake special training but which adds nothing to the mechanical functions involved.

Generally speaking the posher establishments require waiters to have undergone a more arduous and protracted training than what is expected of less salubrious establishments such as a truck-stop diner.

The manners employed in the latter, even though they are just as efficient, and often moreso, than in the former would jar on the refined sensibilities which are catered for in the sort of establishment well paid scientists are known to frequent often in the company of their wives who are also expected, as befits servants, to put in evidence proof of a long and arduous training in deportment and whatnot.

To the extent that all this training of servants adds nothing to the mechanical efficiencies of the services being ostensibly rendered, which is a sort of worship of the master of ceremonies, they are a waste of time and thus run counter to that most basic evolutionary principles; namely that nothing is wasted and everything has a function, except the appendix,

Thus it might be said that the appreciation of this severe waste of time in order to proclaim forth to all spectators the worth and esteem of the scientist at trough has a purely spiritual substance, to those who believe in its existence, the reality of which can be physically felt whenever any shortcomings in the manner in which the different services are carried out takes place.

The pretty patterns on the china serve a similar spiritual need but, thankfully, those who wasted their time on those are well out of sight and possibly even of mind.

One might easily say that the whole ambience (French style pronunciation) of the sort of restaurant even a modestly successful scientist might patronise, he is paying through the nose to patronise, is intensely spiritual.

A national denial of the spiritual realm would require a great deal of demolitions, redevelopments and relocations of labour and I'm inclined to think it would be frowned upon by any decently well trained scientist.

While an upscale repast in a refined establishment has value as occasional entertainment, for good coffee, tasty, plentiful, ribsticking meals, and prompt, efficient service, you just flat out ain't gonna beat a decent truckstop.

Of course the simplicity of the illustrations just given should not be taken as implying that the principle illustrated falls short of being widespread and pervasive in society and one upon which is erected mighty corporations.

It's BIG man!

And it is posited on a spiritual principle which is so incoherent that it prefers to impede the efficiency of the mechanical services in its expression.

From a scientific economic point of view it is anti-matter. Some real matter somewhere has to expend itself to neutralise the effects of it.

It is the most profound disproof of evolution theory applied to man and right under your very eyes.

I can look into any establishment providing nosh and say which choir of angels it is designed for. Roughly.

Truffaut has Bernard say, in L'Homme Qui Aimez Les Femmes, that restaurants are threatening places for men. I used to think he meant that women took a bite out of your hard earned wages in them but now I know that they estimated how mad a man was who put his faith in a spiritual substance with a negativity quotient.

I'll leave soft furnishings and Saville Row for another time.

It's Sat. Wobbly nite.

Timber, I respectfully submit that at this point you are merely dodging.



I'll ask again. Why would you care?

Oh dear, is this still going on?

I find it somewhat suspicious that the idea of intelligent design was developed as a reply to the growing conviction of the vast majority of intelligent people that belief in a greater being or creator is nonsense.

Did I miss anything important?

I see that spendi is still as witty as the small print on an insurance policy.

I submit I am not 'dodging", and if you care for even more blunt elucidation, I willl say I "care" because I care very much to not see frauds, liars, peddlars of ignorance and superstition, prosper and proliferate.

I submit also you are dodging - demonstrate, objectively, logically, empirically, in academically sound, forensically valid manner, that faith, most specifically faith in the religious sense, be differentiable from superstition.

Eiadio wrote-



If you have a problem with it as "Oh dear" suggests why don't you f**k off into the lounge where they are playing Barry Manilow tracks on the whatsit.

fm wrote-



Gee fm. That's the best compliment I have been paid since Elsie Banks told me that she had never felt anything like that before.

what was that, revulsion?

timber wrote-



Gee timber, you have my utmost sympathy. It must be very trying for you.

Have you no answer to the problem of the spiritual nature of the psychological effect on scientists of dining in restaurants where the protracted and arduous training of proper etiquette has the appropriate "bang for bucks" buzz despite it causing the functional mechanical efficiency of the nosh to be undermined?

fm wrote-



How would I know?

I don't presume what women think.

I know better than that.

Her eyelids were fluttering though and her ears were dark pink.