Intelligent Design Theory: Science or Religion?

farmerman wrote:

Quote:
Bruce Chapman and John West: Are the Darwinists afraid to debate us?
(Dallas Morning News Opinion Section, April 10, 2007)

In case we forget, Bruce Chapman was(and maybe still is) the president of the Discovery Institute.

I think that most "real scientists" would love to see this Conference go on. Id love to have the time and free cash to blow a day and sit in and ask some questions of the debators.

It was not originally planned as a debate. The Discovery Institute paid SMU for use of their facilities for a conference where only their own people were scheduled to speak (another of their promotional events). SMU professors wrote letters to the SMU administration protesting the use of SMU facilities for a propaganda event. After the letters were published in various media, the Discovery Institute challenged SMU professors to debate them.

0 Replies

fm wrote-

Quote:

spendi'Quote:
How do you think evolution created out of nowhere, with no intermediate forms, this gulf between our delightful companions and what you see in the zoo?

. I have no idea in hell what youre even asking.
What gulf?

The gulf between, say, the Tierra-del-Fuegans that Darwin met and those ladies imagining how they will look wearing the lingerie they are perusing in Mark's and Spencer's. I would contend that Christianity is the sole cause of that gulf. And don't start on about the Pacific Islanders because I have read some stuff about them which goes contrary to that romantic view a lot of people have of the. It was so idyllic as they think.

Won't most viewers think that " What gulf?" suggests you are the anti-female component on this thread. Something you provided evidence for once when a guy started coming on to your wife. You responded as if he might have been trying to steal your lawnmower.

I read the posts of others.

Quote:

Perhaps if you concentrated on your own skills at communication rather than giving over to forced erudition, wed all see better.

I am coming to think that you don't know what an assertion is. They seem to flow out of you as naturally as slurry falls out of a sewage farm outflow pipe after the drinking water has been skimmed off.

Could you provide a short example, a parody if you wish, of a borderline case between forced erudition and unforced erudition. A somewhat forced erudition or possibly a somewhat unforced erudition.

Wouldn't unforced erudition only be possible without an educational system of any sort? ( Feral. Don't try getting me feral mate. )

There's another straight question. Answer that one. It's easy enough. Explain what unforced erudition is and then explain why you have picked me out from the millions who know nothing else as a target for your wit to practice on.

0 Replies

spendi, The truth of the matter is, my hormones have slowed down quite a bit at my age. I still continue to look at those pretty senoritas, but it´s all in the brain.

0 Replies

wandel

Quote:

It was not originally planned as a debate. The Discovery Institute paid SMU for use of their facilities for a conference where only their own people were scheduled to speak (another of their promotional events). SMU professors wrote letters to the SMU administration protesting the use of SMU facilities for a propaganda event. After the letters were published in various media, the Discovery Institute challenged SMU professors to debate them.

AHA, so, what we have here is an example of "spin doctoring" by the Discovery Instituters, cute.
Still, now that its out, why not have a go at this. The DI guys, are great showmen all, even though their science is wanting, Im sure theyll account for themselves in a debate. If the audience is "stacked" with true believers of ID however, Im sure they will need some sort of crowd control.

0 Replies

fm wrote-

Quote:

" If there was a designer, why did he have to keep redesignimng and replacing earlier forms, youd think he could have gotten it right the first time"

If She was the Joycian designer, if I may risk being accused of forced erudition again, who, as you may not know if you have been subjected to unforced erudition, is slowly refined out of existence and is graciously paring Her fingernails, in a similar if somewhat more dignified manner than an architect might who had finished a task and left it at the mercy of the other forces She had set in constant entropic motion. Human intelligence possibly not having been allowed for.

Now that's sophistry fm. That's sophisticated. That's why such a word is an insult.

I'm only concerned with human social consequences if you are able to cast your mind back to anyone of a large number of my posts which have told you that. I think anti-IDers are trying to shaft the social system and have the sort of advantage a bush-whacker has. You have your systems for processing us already up and running and only bona-fide anti-IDers will be running it. Power.

I think that if you do come to power, which you well might without serious opposition, you can only safely manage it at the same pace the lower middle class did in outflanking the landowners. So patience is in order.

0 Replies

spendi

Quote:

Won't most viewers think that " What gulf?" suggests you are the anti-female component on this thread. Something you provided evidence for once when a guy started coming on to your wife. You responded as if he might have been trying to steal your lawnmower.

I read the posts of others.

However, you miss the points often. The point of that thread, Im afraid , went over your head. Actually I was kind of flattered when I got the sense of what the colloquialism referred to. My wife, when I told her about the statement, was flattered . She is often quite self critical about her appearance. So either you missed the point or else your just a damn liar.
You should really try to get into a relationship with another person. Your present relationship seems to be with your hand and that can not be too good in the long term

0 Replies

< Spendi: to what Wilhelm Reich did you refer who was a biologist? I'm looking through various sources now ... >

0 Replies

Darwin said-

Quote:

" If there was a designer, why did he have to keep redesignimng and replacing earlier forms, youd think he could have gotten it right the first time"

Right there dear viewers is a perfect example of the anti-IDers unbounded arrogance. To presume to question the Goddess is pretty solipsistic and then to assume what the "you" is also supposed to think is just plain bad manners. Why would I ever think She could have gotten it right the first time. It once took me a year to show a lady how to back out of a garage without knocking over some of the flowerpots she had arranged nearby.

Had She got it right first time I'm sure She would have designed a mechanism which prevented blokes like Darwin shagging 10 sickly kids into his long suffering wife.

0 Replies

Walt wrote-

Quote:

< Spendi: to what Wilhelm Reich did you refer who was a biologist? I'm looking through various sources now ... >

Don't chase your tail Walt. I don't quote people I haven't studied a bit.

He jacked in psychology for biology around the time he fled Europe. He was a mystic really and a far out one. And no mean stallion if some reports are to be believed.

He kept a large photograph of Freud on his opulent study wall to remind him, he said, of what chronic depression did to the facial muscles.

He taught me to beware of scientific wind-weaving.

What's this about the multi-trillion cyclotron blowing a gasket?

0 Replies

fm wrote-

Quote:

Your present relationship seems to be with your hand and that can not be too good in the long term.

You see folks- if anti-IDers come to power they will obviously proscribe anything which can not be too good (a euphemism for bad). The new puritans ride again.

From what I remember of Kinsey I think you have a mighty hill to climb on that particular aspect of human behaviour. Comstock with ten syllable words denigrating wanking. That's some political platform I must say.

A2K is one big thread to me. I'm not a pedantic twit.

With a little forced erudition you might have said-

Quote:

Your present relationship seems to be with the five-fingered widow and that can not be too good in the long term.

A number of other expressions I know would have been just as good. Maybe better. But "hand" is so er ..er.. naff. Especially when you are making an effort to be witty.

0 Replies

wandeljw wrote:

#7 is where we disagree, foxfyre.

Quote:
7) The fact that some would presume to deny the existence of or relevance of ID based on the fact that it cannot be proved nor disproved by science is a fallacious argument as is any intent to change my statements into something other than what I have stated.

My only concern was that the proponents of ID want it to be taught as science. This is what happened in Dover. It is relevant that ID can not be proved or disproved by science. Consequently it does not belong in science education where its proponents have tried and still are trying to put it.

I am a proponent of ID and I have neither tried nor am I trying to put ID into science education, so your objection is based on a fallacious assumption at the outset. Smile

If they were trying to teach ID as science at my kids' school, I would take him or her out of school if I could because I would know s/he was being taught both bad science and bad theology.

For exactly the same reason, I would take my kid out of school if s/he was being told by the science teacher that there is no such thing as ID.

And in both cases I agree that the fact that ID cannot be proved nor disproved via scientific principles is in fact relevent.

0 Replies

Spendi, I know who Wilhelm Reich is, but that's about it. He didn't get into the fields that most interested me.

0 Replies

Foxfyre wrote:

And in both cases I agree that the fact that ID cannot be proved nor disproved via scientific principles is in fact relevent.

Gnomes and Fairies can't be proved or disproved by scientific principles either, do you think that is also a relevant fact worth telling everyone about?

0 Replies

rosborne979 wrote:

Foxfyre wrote:
And in both cases I agree that the fact that ID cannot be proved nor disproved via scientific principles is in fact relevent.

Gnomes and Fairies can't be proved or disproved by scientific principles either, do you think that is also a relevant fact worth telling everyone about?

It depends. We have what the Bible describes as a "cloud of witnesses" who have experienced God who will testify to certainties based on that experience.

When we have a similar cloud of witnesses who can testify to experience with gnomes and fairies, then we would have to think about that wouldn't we?

0 Replies

I have found another gulf for fm to explain.

I saw a bit of film about bees doing the "wiggle dance", not that the bees would know that, to show other bees where the juice is. When they wiggled the other bees could read off the co-ordinates and get to work for the good of the hive and its Queen.

Now with human intelligence when someone does our seemingly unlimited versions of the wiggle dance to show the rest of us where the juice is so we can get to work for the good of the tribe we don't trust them to be telling us the whole truth. Not in anyway comparable to the trust the bees have in their communicator. "To live outside the law you must be honest".

What were the intermediate stages in the development of that dramatic realignment of natural trustworthy communication within a gregarious species and which resulted in us just going to the shops in our wheels rather than buzzing around sucking up to pretty flowers for ever and bloody ever? Are we actually gregarious creatures? The religious meeting tries to tell us we are. Clint Eastwood and all that.

Religion obviously. Give a biological explanation but please make it at least half-way plausible to the common man.

0 Replies

Foxfyre wrote:

When we have a similar cloud of witnesses who can testify to experience with gnomes and fairies, then we would have to think about that wouldn't we?

No, we wouldn't. I'm sure there are already a "cloud" of people who believe in Gnomes and Fairies, but that doesn't mean we have to consider Gnomes and Fairies as relevant science, any more than ID should be considered relevant science.

0 Replies

Forget gods and fairies and gnomes; the most fun are UFOs and some of the "highly credible witnesses". UFOs knock all the gods, fairies and gnomes right out of the ballpark in terms of modern "confirmed manifestations".

0 Replies

rosborne979 wrote:

Foxfyre wrote:
When we have a similar cloud of witnesses who can testify to experience with gnomes and fairies, then we would have to think about that wouldn't we?

No, we wouldn't. I'm sure there are already a "cloud" of people who believe in Gnomes and Fairies, but that doesn't mean we have to consider Gnomes and Fairies as relevant science, any more than ID should be considered relevant science.

The one thing that you Chumly, Farmerman, Wandel et al can't seem to get through your head is that NOBODY is arguing that ID is relevant science.

As far as that 'cloud of witnesses' goes though, I know hundreds and hundreds of people by name who believe in God and believe in ID--I'm guessing most also believe in natural selection--but I don't know a single soul who believes in gnomes and fairies. Where was that cloud of witnesses again?

0 Replies

spendi

Quote:

Clint Eastwood and all that.

The above clip is not even a sentence. As for your present fascination with bee communication, Id witnessed that "dance" but never could decode it. Nor have I the slightest idea about its means of development of this trait. ALL I know is that bees were in the fossil record at about the time angiosperms were similarly noted. Quite a "Red Queen" coincidence no?

0 Replies

Foxfyre wrote:

The one thing that you Chumly, Farmerman, Wandel et al can't seem to get through your head is that NOBODY is arguing that ID is relevant science.

The Greys came to me a fortnight ago and relayed the drama that spendi was abducted as a youth and an anal probe was used to release the hidden Primeval secrets of his lizard brain; thus dooming mankind to subservience as we are no longer masters of our destiny.

Both my text and Foxfyre's text are bizarre, the difference being my text is more plausible.

0 Replies

Intelligent Design Theory: Science or Religion?

Related Topics

Quick Links

My Account

able2know