Intelligent Design Theory: Science or Religion?

"Well if ya ain't havin fun, ya ain't doin it right."

This debate is at least fun. Although I can't imagine posting disparagement alone as being fun.

What was it you said about "mendacity" Timber. I submit you are guilty of the same. Unless you can provide that your obvious ideology is any more substantive than mine.

He can't do that and never will be able to.

He can only assert it.

farmerman, Many people has gotten into trouble by not reading the small print on their insurance policies.

If it be an ideology, fisherman, then mine would be an ideology founded in fact, discovery, understanding, curiosity, and open-ended foreward thinking not a closed loop of ancient myths and traditions. There's the difference between the Middle Ages and the 21st Century.

On a lighter note (very lighter):I started watching this on the tube, can't say I'll have the gumption to continue though. Mind, this movie's "Voice Of Progress" could not likely be worse than ID's.

timber wrote-



But timber, you have been conditioned how to look, conditioned what to discover and what not to discover, conditioned how to understand so that the facts and the understandings satisfy your ego, and those to which you have been conditioned to look up to, conditioned what curiosity is and what to restrict your exercise of the facility to and conditioned to think of open-ended tautologically and self-complacently.

You are one smug cat.

You are so open-ended that you refuse to be curious about the social consequences of AIDsing despite having begun this debate claiming that the consequence of ID/Creationism is to damage American scientific competiveness which is an assertion and one seemingly contrary to the facts but which provides a practical demonstration of how you have been conditioned to only look at what your conditioned curiosity has any interest in and that is a closed loop par exellence.

I'm not clear that the differences between the Middle Ages and the 21st Century are easily distilled into the one facet you mention although I recognise how convenient such an asserted and absurd over-simplification is to your conditioned intellectualism.

There is no closed loop of ancient myths and traditions. That is another figment of your conditioned imagination. The subject is being constantly studied, researched and interpreted in many of the best seats of learning and hardly a movie script or fiction is written without recourse to the basic human lessons contained therein.

But it is noticeable how your "open-ended" approach has not seen fit to comment on the spiritual nature of the facilities found within establishments catering to the proper sense of decorum of that class of persons to whom such things are of great importance and to the massive expenditure of rescources employed to satisfy it.

Chum-

There's no need to go to such lengths as you have in order to provide yourself with a springboard for an asserted smear which could only have the effect you intend on those of a very tender age or the slow of wit and your use of such a tactic rather suggests that you choose your companions in discourse exclusively from within those categories in order that you avoid being the subject of ridicule and general hilarity.

You cannot garuantee that the audience on here is made up of similar types.

This entire thread began as a debate whether ID , as its proponents wish to assert, IS A SCIENTIFIC DISCIPLINE.
The rules that govern scien tific inquiry, namely the "method", repeatability, discovery, etc. were being pushed aside by a few to merely be replaced by "Incredulity". The ONLY thing that governs ID is some simple minded homily that has stated that
"The world is so complex that it must have had a designer behind it all"

Thats all that's behind ID, nothing more. Now, after having their day in court, the ID crowd is beginning to mutter that "The fix was in" and "The judge copied his rulings from the plaintiffs attornies briefs", and other such nonsense.

Since ID is heavily dependent upon Christian doctrine (cf statements by the likes of PAt Robertson and Cardinal Schonbron). It certainly cannot be objective in its practice. It relies heavily and solely upon these revealed "truths" to make its case. It has tried to display some badly boogered evidence (Development of organs in animals , or the concept of irreducible complexity). In all of its attempts , its failed miserably. Weve got most of our classrooms back in some form of order and magisterial control until another test case comes along. (Which may be brewing in California of all places).

Right now, the only notable events occuring from the professorates of ID , are :

1. Qoute mining of work done by real scientists--The evidence for environmentally induced gradualism MUST be dealt with as a failed theory. So, Creationists and IDers have teamed up in this arena to try to tear down the mountain of evidence by misquoting or taking quotes "out of context" and displaying them on Pbb boards.

2. Keeping up the Controversy--By misquoting a real scientist, the ID/Creation lobby usually gets a response from the scientist. This response is then mangled and further displayed on their pbb's to show that, indeed, a controversy among equivalent scientists is occuring

3. The Socialization of ID-- Casting doubt on the rules of biosuccession and biogeography and evolutionary dynamics in humans is a necessary component of the IDers trashing of Darwin.
They argue that, ID is , after all, the only way that a supreme being could suffuse a human population with concepts like, ethics, love, selflessness, and a few other signs of "higher being"

4Searching for Pattern and design-This has turned into quite an industry of late. We all know how the IDers have launched the Search for Design as a forma discipline in the US.

I just returned from a week at work down South and was surprised at how ID is being pushed in South America. Entire "think tanks" just like our own little Discovery Institute are being formed with money to sponsor such IDiotic reearch. I was reading some of their propoganda and the discussion about the Irreducible Complexity of the eye has fostered some research into how "the Designer" has spread this feature around.

I dont take a position when Im in a neighboring country. I kept my yap shut and hoped that all our clients earth scientists werent so trained.

Thanks for the excellent summary, farmerman. It is also interesting to hear about an ID movement in South America. The United States has "Discovery Institute", UK has "Truth in Science", and Russia has an anti-evolution public relations firm called "Spiritual Heritage".

wandel- I sincerely believe that the Catholic Church, in an alliance with the quickly growing(mostly US-conference sponsored) Evangelical churches is promoting much of the ID growth down there.

fm wrote-



That is not true. It is another simple-minded assertion and unwordly.

The main thing the governs the ID position is the consequence for social organisation of the position that the world is purposeless and meaningless and each of us equally so in all our actions and that the idea, which can never be proved or disproved, of a designer is the last ditch in which to fight that position for those who think that the social consequences of a population which has been scientifically conditioned to know themselves to be purposeless and meaningless would be disastrous and consitute cultural suicide.

The obvious fact that AIDsers on here, a fair acronym for IDers to use because they believe that anti-ID is cultural AIDS, refuse to discuss the social consequences of their position, apart from asserting that it will make the US more competitive, is evidence enough that they are unable to contemplate those over-ridingly important aspects of the matter at hand.

Instead they revert, like the proverbial dog, to one tired-out mantra which they seem content to repeat over and over as if the other side have failed to understand it which is not the case.

This, besides facilitating a crude dodge from questions about the spiritual beliefs of vicarious leisure put in evidence on a grand scale, perhaps a ruinous one, directed towards the furtherance of the master's fullness of life and his unique importance, saves the AIDser from thinking and from taking social responsibility and allows him ample scope to insult the intelligence of his opponents in a manner so crude that it's vulgarity is a very sad reflection on the educational system which produced him.

Science is a tool of society not its governance and like all tools it is used when required.

ID is also a tool in the service of preventing the logic of its opposite, which is available in La Mettrie's Man A Machine and all through de Sade's works, from bringing a powerful nation to its knees which is what IDers think will be the result given known scientific data about human beings.

To dismiss this position with contempt and with recourse to the sort of false assertion quoted here is to not be a proper participant in the debate.

To dismiss the issue of ideology, including your own, as it pertains to this debate is to recuse yourself from the debate defined by most advocates of ID. When distilled the debate and battle is between world views. Your convincing will have to begin there. Otherwise, you are only flattering yourselves.

There may be differing worldviews involved, fisherman, but in the matter of science education it is much simpler than that. I want my children to be taught science as science and religion as religion. To try to teach how nature works, science education should resrict itself to natural explanations. Religion deals with issues that transcend nature (my children have learned about that at bible study.)

Hi There Splendy!

Just returned from the lounge (by the way I prefer listening to The Edinborugh Police Pipe Band playing "Entry into Crater" rather then Barry Manilow)

Oh dear, your last post was really over the top,old chap...

So we must have a purpose? Why?

So ID is in fact a last ditch stand to prevent the end of civilization as we know it?

We must be saved from ourselves, must we?

I suggest you forget the lounge and take a very cold bath before you do yourself an injury.

Eiadeo wrote-



I'm not sure I said "must" or even implied it. Having a purpose helps us to maintain a social and mental equilibrium. By "us" I mean the general mass of the population, one of which is born ,they say, every minute. Their average IQ is exactly 100 and there are as many who register 80 as there are who register 120.

There are a few refined intellects who can seemingly do without this illusion but whilst they may well make an important, even decisive, contribution to society, they do not keep it running and defended which those who believe in it may well cease to do once they perceive they have been fooled into thinking they have a point and a purpose.

I'm not sure I predicted the "end of civilisation" either but we have erected an edifice where even 1% growth, rather that the 3% we are addicted to, a large amount in reality, would send the FTSE into a tailspin and pensions would go titties up being so highly geared as they are.

It isn't so much that we need saving from ourselves but from the internal contradictions tradition and usage have conditioned us to and which are mere institutions containing habits of thought.

It is a habit of thought to think one has said anything meaningful when one enjoins another person to take a cold bath in the service of preventing injury. It is no different from the habits of thought which cause young girls to push out their tongue. I thought it was an American disease but it seems those putting themselves forward as representitives of our capital city suffer from the same problem.

It is incumbent on elitists to get on with the benefits of their attenuated positions rather than undermining the processes which bring them those luxuries which are, obviously, beyond their comprehension.

In what way was my last post "really over the top". It was deliberately fashioned to be understood at quite an elementary level. It was not "really over the top" on the evidence of you saying it was. Have you any objective evidence for your assertion. (see para 5).

wande wrote-



But science says religion is nonsense wande. Do you want your children to become confused?

"I got mixed up confusion,
Man, it's a killing me."

Bob Dylan.

spendi-speak. There can be a host of things that "Govern" ID boss, you have failed to disprove that ID is based upon nothing more than a saying, a bumper sticker , and baseless at that.

If , for example, design is intelligently driven, then why is the vertebrate eye "inside out"?. Surely a designer could have done a better job.

Go ramble upon your heath with the Reverend Dr Paley.


Im still rather jet-lagged so Ill go nappy till I see some new drool from IDers who still assert that they are really a discipline of science. You just keep trying to dodge the topics issue and take the conversation hard to port.

another one from spendi.
Science is silent on religion. Maybe some of the practitioners have personal opinion, but they speak only for themselves. As I can learn from the recent hiostory of ID, IT, not science, has been trying to jam its presence into curricula where it doesnt fit.
You have short term memory problems? you keep failing to recall DOver and ATlanta and KAnsas and Ohio. I wonder why? Probably because , in order for you to pontificate, you have to kill all strands of memory.

Come off it fm. Dover was a dive either consciously or not. It it was conscious it was a money or attention seeking scheme and if it wasn't those defending ID were unfit for purpose.

It is you who have memory problems I'm afraid or possibly chicken ones. You won't even try to answer recent posts and resort, time after time, to repetitive and very well known mantras as distractions and thus continually bring the debate back to the simplicities you understand and render it stationary.

They don't distract me.

It is evolution proponents who seek to jam their presence into schools in communities which conventionally practice religious observances in respect of baptisms, weddings, funerals, church meetings, chaste behaviour, neighbourliness, job opportunities, Sunday Best displays, and polite discourse. Media, and its controlling master advertising, can get nothing out of religious observances and it does not like something going on which it can't get a cut out of. QED.

Veblen said that illegitimacy represents a triumph of the hormones over the proprieties and that can hardly be argued against. Heredity rights in property are hardly conducive to a high illegitimacy rate which is surely what you would get with no proprietries and when hormones determine behaviour alone. But what a honey pot for the legal profession eh? of which Judge Jones is at least a bishop.

How would science prevent the hormones and the pleasure/pain continuum being the only determining factors in an irreligious society. Enforced regulation is one possibilty.

Evolution theory is the vanguard of the materialist cause so stick up for the cause not the beach-head.



That's naive. Of course science is silent on religion. How do we debate with the silent ones.

It is only the practitioners, if such they be, who have personal opinions and who purport to represent science, which they don't even if they flatter themselves that they do, who can be debated with.

And the ones on here really do have personal opinions which are in their very nature unscientific and which rely for their validity on a stupid audience being beaten into submission by continuous repetition of the same old things with but slight variation of the manner of expression as with any cudgel.

Can't you see that you are insulting the intelligence of our esteemed viewers or do you think that their having the privilege of reading your 200th, possibly more, recital on a theme already washed white by some names which we are all supposed to be in awe of is one they should thank you for?

I am not pontificating. I am simply trying to provide viewers on here with a wider view on these matters than that from inside your box.

When it gets to the USSC those wider views will be heard. Whether they prevail or not I don't know. The money interest is on your side.

I get a chuckle when ID'ers foist one religious dogma to the exception of others, with no sensible jusisifation whatsoever. If ID'ers are going to argue equality, then all religious dogma must be treated equally.

Chum-

I said that yesterday in discussing the spiritual nature of vicarious leisure and vicarious consumption and no takers have appeared.

The ceremonials and ambience of any posh restaurant has a large number of similarities to those inside a church. Each serves a different spiritual function in that they both allow participants to feel better about themselves and provide an example of civilised behaviour and genteel modes of thinking, feeling and acting.

That the posh restaurant can inculcate a superior tone without any reference to the food and solely by the rituals, which must on economic grounds detract from the food and its preparation, is an entirely spiritual consideration and involves a belief so deep that it isn't noticed.

In which case those arguing against religious observances are remiss at not including posh restaurants (a symbol by the way of a vast and profitable process reaching into every decent American home
) in the scope of their criticism and are thus proven guilty of ignoring your strictures on religious dogma.

Is it not spiritual that a woman feels superior in a French fashion house frock (some rags stitched together in a novel way) to a young lady wearing a cheap frock from off the racks ( some rags stitched together conventionally in order to be mechanically efficient?).