Intelligent Design Theory: Science or Religion?

Yeah, Dr. Sober is pre-eminent in the fields of philosophy of science, philosophy of biology, and philosophy of mind - with a most impressive CV incorporating weighty credentials both scientific and philosophic along with a 30-plus year history of publishing, awards, accolades, major collaborations both in research and in publishing (academic/scientific and general market), and an all but endless list of citations of his works throughout the past generation's body of serious scientific and academic literature across many diverse disciplines; a giant, a major influence in contemporary philosophy and contemporary science alike, for sure. I'm thoroughly unsurprised Dr. Sober fails to meet spendi's criteria of significance; by long (and tedious) familiarity with same, I have no reason to have expected other from spendi than continuing (tip o' the hat to Judge Jones) "Breathtaking inanity".

I've read some of Dr. Sober's books, lots of his lectures, essays and papers, and I've heard speak him via NPR and podcasts and that sorta thing, but no, sadly, though I guess I've had opportunity to do so, I've gotta admit I've never attended one of his talks in person. I'm gonna stay on the lookout for the next opportunity (within a couple hours drive or so, anyhow :cool: ) to remedy that; I'd love a few minutes of post-lecture one-on-one chat with him.

"I'm thoroughly unsurprised Dr. Sober fails to meet spendi's criteria of significance;"

I'm not either. spendi will refute anything that contradicts his own beliefs. He'll swim with difficulty and squirm; fun to watch.

Spendi's a pussycat. Hes just not familiar with rules of scientific evidence, and he keeps tryting to circle back to his comforter.

he is cute

you should see him after a couple of pints of Tetleys smooth round the local.

just dont mention the Spectator

or a2k.

timber wrote, occasioning the usual glee from the usual suspects-



I have by my side right here the 1000 page Oxford Companion To Philosophy edited by Ted Honderich (1995). I'm afraid that Mr Sober is not mentioned despite 249 contibutors from eminent positions inside Academia.

I would like to ask whether Judge Larry Seidlin has the same status in American legal circles as Judge Jones. We have been shown footage recently of Judge Seidlin behaving in a rather odd manner by our standards. He seemed a bit burdened by the momentous nature of his decision.

Steve. I was on quite friendly terms with The Spectator when it was owned by Conrad Black and edited by Dominic Lawson and the much missed Auberon Waugh ran amok in it. What followed is another matter.

Bron waugh now there is a name to conjour with,

what was your pen name in the Spectator Spends?

was it his father who nearly cut himself in two with a machine gun?

No. It was Bron himself. In Cyprus when the EOKA brigade were "freedom fighting". He was stood on the fromt of a JEEP type thing messing with a Bren Gun which one of his men had said was stuck. It went off. He famously said that he didn't feel a thing to reassure those who fear getting shot. But he felt it the day after. The Govenor General's wife nursed him until he was fit to fly home for a spell in hospital and a number of operations. He was shot bad. He wrote like a man who was grateful for all the minutes he thereafter lived and I loved him for it. I think his injuries were what killed him but he had a good run for second time around.

He signed his book The Last Word, which is about the Thorpe trial, for me with the words "I hope ********** will make a few quid out of this".

His father was great as well. Do you know the banana story?

Mr Waugh's auto is called Will This Do? Ain't that humble?

They are both real judges. Jones , as a conservative, was a favored appointment by the Bush Admin (Thats why the IDers originally felt that they would have an ally on their case with him). Seidlin is some Orphans court or Common Pleas (Im not sure) kind of elected judge who can be unelected as well. TV news has been saying that Seidlin is jockying for his own "judge Judy" show . I havent seen any of the proceedings but I hear that (despite the melodramatic vignettes) its often quite funny. I dont think our judicial system should be funny, I find that a bit of a problem.

We don't have a problem with that regarding those cases they show on our news which are by no means all the cases grinding through the process.

They are presumably selected for us for the precise reason that they are amusing and that they usually are. We are still smarting from Jefferson's stuff about forgetting and new paths to glory. It's in our veins. The Jackson trial was ace. We pissed ourselves over that. How that much money could be generated starting from zero. Or, rather, could be sent swirling faster. Obviously the money is generated elsewhere. Anybody can start up the scale. The first real settlers, the fortune hunters, not the fanatics who spied out the land, started from zero. It makes a difference starting from zero. Actually it was less than zero. There were obstacles to get to zero. Aborigines and the weather.

The self made man. Anybody can be President. Heap big medicine.

Has that died? Greil Marcus seems to think so. That Dylan sings a nostalgic dirge for it on The Basement Tapes.

Don't forget fm that we have seen a lot of dramatised American court scenes. And life imitates art they say.
Like The Scream.

I think, in our case " art imitates life", would be more accurate.

All good questions Spendi. As Sobor points out, if you want to question the "No designer worth his salt" argument then you open yourself up to having ID questioned.


It seems again you are trotting out an argument that Sobor has answered.

Nothing new there, parados; as you can see, its not like spendi actually reads and understands anything before responding to it.

It's a moot point fm.

Aristarchus is supposed to have suggested that the earth went around the sun. The view fell into disuse and was forgotten, probably designedly, because the Greeks felt it was dangerous.

When it reappeared with Copernicus and Bruno etc the profession of faith in the infinite (what the Greeks and the Church were afraid of) was already established in the Gothic cathedral, which can be thought of, amongst other things, as a light machine.

But it might not have been fear that lead the Greeks away from the infinite. It might have been temperment. Aristarchus still retained the idea of his system contained within a world as seen and appreciated inside a sphere which Archimedes imagined filled with grains of sand of a very large number but not an infinite one. The idea simply bored them. They were only interested in the here and now. The small and solid. What they could see and measure. In the Greek case art imitated life and in our case life imitates art.

We find the far away and light itself fascinating and the art that expresses it. We reach for the infinite. We yearn for it. The Greeks reached for another plate of food. Insofar as evolutionists focus on the here and now in the shape of the fossils under their scrutiny, the readings on the print-outs, the paper with the interpretations of these things and the salaries and praises which accrue they are ancient Greeks who fear religion.

The id idea can be accomodated to science just like Aristarchus's heliocentic theory could have been accomodated to Greek religion but the fascination of the Faustian with the far off and refusing limits does not bore us and will thus be retained in some form. It seems to me that evolution theory is seeking to crush Faustianism whilst pretending to be Faustian itself. In my wilder moments I see it as an enemy of science which id is not. It is just looking at what's in front of you.

To suggest that id is Creationism by the back door is a political idea similar to the swirling money out of nothing notion of my last post and, as such, a classic American game plan.(Starting at zero). It works so long as money generation keeps pace with the demands of the game players who consider work demeaning on the Veblen principle that waste= status and use= odium. Hence immigration to generate the money to be sent swirling by the elite which by tradition is white and male.

It is fitting you should use "our case" for art imitating life as it did in ancient Greece and that I should use our case as well for life imitating art
in our scientific world.

No progress can come from art imitating life. That is what was missing at Dover in my opinion. The art was lacking. Both sides were ancient Greeks by temperment. Philistines I should think.

Evolution is so "known". We boldly go etc..........

spendi wrote: Evolution is so "known". We boldly go etc..........


...and that's what science is all about.

Elliot Sober's essay makes several interesting points. Here is my favorite:

timber wrote-



I understand what you lot are going to say before you've said it. You represent the dead hand of pedanticism and the what we have we hold position. I read everything until I hit drivel. That's how I choose books. I open them anywhere and if I don't hit drivel in 5 minutes I buy it.

parados wrote-



Are you kidding? Have you not read the thread. I've been surrounded by ****-hit fans for years. Question away.

At least I don't read the opposite of the poster's intention as c.i does with-



Faustians go into the unknown. Evolution is so "known". So ancient Greek.So comforting. What could be more comforting than admiring a 600m year old fossil of a bat's knuckle bone in fm's toned-down flash office and offering opinions about it. If bats had souls all Heaven would be laughing.

Silly

If bats dont have souls, is all life segregated into that which has a sould and that which doesnt? How does the Creationist/IDer develop their scientific worldview?

Apparently there is no deduction, reason, or evidence required by Creationism/ID. Its all one big giant assertion that , as opposed to the scientific, requires an untraceable unknown, unverifiable SUPER being at its center.

Quite a "barren interzone", which , in stratigraphy gives us the problems and the needs to dig even deeper to correlate. For the Creationist?IDers, its from where their entire science doctrine springs. They "love them gaps"

They sure do. The very last thing they want is the tramlines of determined existence. They ain't presbyterians.

They have "cool".

An "untraceable unknown, unverifiable SUPER being at its center" is pretty cool. Paring His fingernails as James Joyce said.

What I want to know is this-

If we allow the AIDsers to win this argument and accept their scientific simplicities and complications of extension what would somebody like me do in 100 years regarding the finer things in life.

After all, if they win this one they won't all go home and water their gardenias will they? They'll just push harder. The pushing is the main thing. And there's nothing like winning a pushing match to make one want to have another go.

I can't think of one writer worth reading who didn't have a religious feeling of some sort. Leaving out instruction manuals and TV listings and suchlike. Or composer. Anything that gets you floaty.

The "star" atheist writers would be stars because they were the rightest scientifically and would have no aptitude for humility, as we have seen, or ambiguity in respect of the human condition. Even puns would be hard to imagine.

Books would be only useful for assigments and status symbols. They would all be in mint condition unlike my books.

The idea of entertainment, and they do say that all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy I think, or learning how to locate oneself, and others, scientifically, as an expendable non-entity of as much consequence as the reciprocal of the population, contrary to what Mom had instilled into one during the formative years, would become impossible. There would be nothing but Wittgensteinian severities, Pavlovian reflex mechanisms and the cellular interface energy transferances of Mr Armstong and the like (see Talcott Parsons) with which to describe an orgiastic piss-up or even how the strategic ceremonials which take place in "pretty nice" restaurants work.

I wonder if the process by which Catholics are conditioned to love God helps them to love other things in a similar manner and to easily recognise all those forces which seek to diminish such a beneficial characteristic.

To love God as something you can't get anything out of is a different type of love, although often complacently conflated in the lazy mind, to that which loves solely in the service of its own satisfactions which is really the only position a materialist can embrace as de Sade and others have shown.

What is there, assuming AIDsers go from strength to strength, to prevent Materialism resolving itself into a stew of mechanical, vulgar, commercial and destructive poison when those qualities are put to use to justify themselves. They already look to be more than half way there.

Isn't Religion the only thing? Appealing to our better natures has never been known to work. "It's the economy, stupid!"