Intelligent Design Theory: Science or Religion?

And Setanta said that "we" ignored my posts. That's one fatuous assertion from a materialist down in flames.

Obviously, with Friday night at the pub on the stocks I must await the morrow to render the respect I feel I ought to such an effort.

Thank for the good wishes. I take the spirit you intended to be that of a man with a ready opinion on everything who enjoys braying the sound of his own voice over a captive audience, and they don't come more captive than our esteemed readers, following a speaker who has just flummoxed him and who is as pissed as a fart and, hopefully, red in the face with the veins in his temples standing forth and pulsing.

That's all for now, folks. (soakie-soakies).

Spendi why do you want to try and link the (relatively) objective nature of the scientific disciplines with the (relatively) subjective nature of personal opinions? The two are worlds apart!

spendi wrote (with a staright face): Thank for the good wishes. I take the spirit you intended to be that of a man with a ready opinion on everything who enjoys braying the sound of his own voice over a captive audience, and they don't come more captive than our esteemed readers, following a speaker who has just flummoxed him and who is as pissed as a fart and, hopefully, red in the face with the veins in his temples standing forth and pulsing.

Forgive me a moment. I did a thought experiment in the bath. Not my usual sort but there it is.

Imagine say, 250 million Americans, leaving out infants, sitting watching a movie at the same time and being observed as we are here observing them using our own experience as a guide.

When the movie begins they all know it is a movie. After 10 minutes a proportion are "into it". As the movie continues more and more are drawn in assuming it's a good movie, like Titanic was. It nearly had me at one point. Meeting a girl like that has always been something I missed out on.

By the end of the movie most of the audience are captivated except one group of people. They are making notes about the movie's technical side from every point of view. They have ambitions in the movie business.

And they lose something. They may well gain something as well. But they lose something and that something is something to do with innocence and vulnerability and humility.

I just don't think that evolution theory is suitable for that whole range of people and yet I think it eminently suitable for those who wish to scrutinise life as the budding movie actors and lighting men might scrutinise a good movie. We owe both sets of people a vote of thanks for the improvements they have brought us.

Among a plethora of interesting scenes in Fellini's Amarcord, and the one in the school is one you all need to see, as well as the one with the parade of the new prostitutes, and the one at the dance (that's a killer), and the one with Volpina taking a leak etc etc there's one in a crude movie house. That audience is like the audience in my thought experiment and at some high point in the drama somebody shouts in the door "It's snowing" and they all rush outside to watch the snow fall.

That's serious self criticism eh? That's humble.

Chum wrote-



Precisely. And two different educations are required.

**************

Why do you Yanks hate elitism so much?

You have infinite patience Timber (either that or youre retired). Iread spendis last post and saw it was without any connection to reality and fact. He , I believe, is seriously parading about , secure that his posts are profound, when , indeed they are most frequently quite like a Quentin Tarrantino movie(except without some kind of a denoument of a plot)

. The interesting thing here is that spendi spits the word "materialism" around like many in the US pronounce "liberal" I think he means it to be a perjoritive when, indeed, the word is accurate. Whats his problem with a materialistic basis for science?? It appears to me as a more realistic dwelling place than the Religious worldview(those responsible for ID) As Christopher Hedges states ,"That which drives the religious right and all its anti medical research, anti science and, anti diversity, is DESPAIR not religiosity.

By the way, farmerman. Attorneys for the Association of Christian Schools predict a trial regarding their suit against UC should take place in Los Angeles this fall.

fm quoted-



That is an assertion and untrue. "Some of the religious right" is what you wanted in order to place a proper scientific emphasis. Is "despair" a pejoritive term there. Thus a smear. And the type of thing that is so arrogant because it makes an assumption by the perpetrator that we readers are too stupid to know any better due to his having become, seemingly, habituated to just such an audience in the past and obviously so because without that assumption it wouldn't have been uttered. Surely?

When I use the word "Materialism" I know exactly what I mean and have have explained that previously and there is no, repeat no, sense whatsoever (tautology for emphasis) of any scorrick of pejoritive nuance not nohow. No-way.

We all know that "liberal" can be used any way anyone wants to use it or take it and "materialism", as fm rightly said, in effect, has only has one meaning, one logic and one conclusion. So far I have hinted at about 0.1% of the facets of the logical conclusion which actually has no meaning because there's nothing to contrast it with. It's just there. A material object like an ant's nest with ant-eaters having been eliminated.

We don't live in a materialist world quite yet despite a bunch of attention seekers claiming we do to make a big name for themselves. We live moving towards a cliff of materialism. There are no big leaps. There's just a step further or a step back. Or stand still knees knocking if you're in despair or laughing like a maniac if you're not.

Literary style is a guide to the despair/joy continuum. And there's a continuum on the materialist/oceanic feeling gradient too. And I know which way Darwin shoved a big weight.

spendi, Materialism is here to stay. Your use of thie word is an oxymoron any which way one wishes to view your opinion.

Spendi is the secret love child of Werner Heisenberg and Jane Goodall!

c.i. wrote-



Both assertions are incorrect.

I did promise to return to timber's post No 2494157 but now that I have read it through I have decided to allow it to rest as it consists of nothing but undiluted woffle.

Oh Dear.

Running out of steam?

Not at all. We've hardly got started. Where's your steam?

It was woffle and what is more just a rehash of oft stated positions which have all been amply covered. Shredded even.

Not one of the points I had raised was even remotely answered. timber's post contained more assertions that an average knitting circle discussion.

Wandel, I will be watching myNCSE updates to see what will be happening in the U Cal case.

spendi wrote: Both assertions are incorrect.

Explain to us how and why?

Spendi,
I hope you know I was just teasing ya as per my last post.

There is a philosophical difficulty in all this because the very fact of the knowledge that we humans are at the end of the evolutionary process (for now) conditions how we look, know and understand the world and thus evolutionary thinking is tautological.

Giambattista Vico, a very influential philosopher, said that the natural sciences can only yield approximate truths (timber allowed himself the luxury of floating gently past the point earlier) based on our attempts to imitate nature in experiments because we can only truly know for certain that which we have created.

The human sciences can offer exact knowledge because human societies are our creations.

And just as there is a struggle for existence in the organic world so also there is a struggle between ideas in the social world and the "fittest" idea is the one with the most successful social consequences and nothing to do with speculations, assertions or even empirical knowledge which purports to be exact.

It is a question of what America wants to bet on and any betting which takes no account of the result (social consequences) is plainly ridiculous and doubly so when competing ideologies are brushed aside with jejune insults which necessarily then must insist that social consequences are of no account.

America has confiscated and burned books for this very reason.

Obviously, the struggle in the organic world is based on a combination of random mutations and environmental conditions ( possibly only the latter) whereas in social evolution it represents a response to felt need and is, hopefully, directed towards it by intelligence rather than blind forces.

In general humans value things in terms of their capacity to maintain and ensure the survival and success of the social group and failure to achieve that in no way undermines the soundness of the principle.

The use of such terms as "absurd" or "ID-iot" by the self-appointed spokespersons for science constitutes a claim that the "group" they purport to represent, and its way of seeing things, is superior in regard to the objective of social success and if that is true, which it logically must be if opponents are absurd and idiotic, it ought rightly to be entrusted with power.

In the absence of any proof that the materialist project is the best way to ensure the future survival and success of the whole social group, or even there being any need to provide such proof, it is obvious the arrogance in the shape of insults and self-serving assertions must stand in to fill the vacuum and this is truly absurd objectively and especially so when it is being inhibited by culturally inherited forces, habits of thought, which it has already deemed absurd and idiotic.

This means that materialists needs must demand full-blown materialism and provide guidance at the very least on the social consequences of it.

Accepting any limits on itself is patently intellectually absurd which probably explains why so few genuine scientist go into bat for it and are content to leave the debate to self-publicists whilst they get on with their scientific endevours.

* The word "group" is a complex idea when used as I have done because it entails a range of concentric circles of psychological force around the agglomeration of isolated egos which politics exists to control. In actual fact, within the materialist project there is no politics because all decisions are taken on a rational basis and alternatives to them don't exist.

And Gulags are on the end of that. Along with a few other beautifully coherent scientific rationales.

c.i. wrote-



Naturally I replied-



To which c.i. replied-



Materialism is nowhere near its possibilities. It is not even here yet never mind here to stay. You are playing games with the word. I'm not. In materialistic terms no other ideas can exist than those of materialism.

As materialism is a contradiction free circumstance it cannot be an oxymoron. You are imputing a usage to me which you hold and not myself and that has nothing to do with me.

I did a post on materialism which you either haven't read or haven't understood.

Chum- What else could you have been doing .cept teasin'?

Who is Jane Godall?

DR. Jane Goodall, DBE - the woman who redifined mankind.

Timber, I agree.

Jane Goodall has her feet planted firmly on the ground, and unlike a number of other humans does not have her head in the clouds.