Intelligent Design Theory: Science or Religion?

tkess wrote:

Foxfyre wrote:
And Lola cherry picks quotes to attack and ignores the supporting information to go with them. Like so many of the anti-I.D. crowd, her only tools are those which sound intellectual but which give only an unsupportable illusion of an indefensible position.

The best the anti-I.D.ers can come up with is I don't want to believe I.D. and therefore anybody who does is nuts or misguided or defensive or delusional or fanatic or.....insert your uncomplimentary adjective of choice here........

The best the pro-I.D. group can come up with, at least the I.D. group I am aligned with, is that our experience supports the theory and so far nobody has been able to use anything other than personal insults or a "because I said so' mantra to refute it.

Your theory is not science.

The entirety of ID is based on the assumption that, if there are some things which modern evolutionary biology cannot explain, GOD (or an intelligent designer) must have been responsible for these things.

As I have stated before, this is analogous to traveling back in time 150 years and saying "we cannot explain how electric fields work with current physics, therefore GOD must be creating them".

This is why the criteria of naturalism and parsimony are favored so highly in science. They stop nonsense like that at the door.

And you like all the other ID-ers keep missing the whole point re I.D. - it cannot be proved nor refuted using any known scientific principle or process. I have never even suggested that it could, and for that reason, I have steadily and repeatedly stated that it should not be taught as science.

Perhaps if you go back and read what I have actually said on this subject you might understand.

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fm wrote-

Quote:

2 Its a tale told about a campfire.

Yeah. Starting with Homer. What's up with tales around a campfire when there's no telly and no colour supplenents and no movies. It's not the tales it's the way you tell them. And anti-IDers tell a tale the essence of which is how wonderfully intelligent the teller is and you can hear tales like that in every bus queue any day of the week.

There's just no sense in anti-IDer's tales of any "oceanic feeling" and all the kids would fall asleep in no time if they were sat around a campfire listening to one of their boring bullshit. You need to make their eyes pop out in awe and wonder and scare the **** out of the little monsters or they'll have your guts for garters.

It's hard to imagine how a grown up person could arrive at any other conclusion than that Homer was taking the piss.

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Foxfyre wrote:

tkess wrote:
Foxfyre wrote:
And Lola cherry picks quotes to attack and ignores the supporting information to go with them. Like so many of the anti-I.D. crowd, her only tools are those which sound intellectual but which give only an unsupportable illusion of an indefensible position.

The best the anti-I.D.ers can come up with is I don't want to believe I.D. and therefore anybody who does is nuts or misguided or defensive or delusional or fanatic or.....insert your uncomplimentary adjective of choice here........

The best the pro-I.D. group can come up with, at least the I.D. group I am aligned with, is that our experience supports the theory and so far nobody has been able to use anything other than personal insults or a "because I said so' mantra to refute it.

Your theory is not science.

The entirety of ID is based on the assumption that, if there are some things which modern evolutionary biology cannot explain, GOD (or an intelligent designer) must have been responsible for these things.

As I have stated before, this is analogous to traveling back in time 150 years and saying "we cannot explain how electric fields work with current physics, therefore GOD must be creating them".

This is why the criteria of naturalism and parsimony are favored so highly in science. They stop nonsense like that at the door.

And you like all the other ID-ers keep missing the whole point re I.D. - it cannot be proved nor refuted using any known scientific principle or process. I have never even suggested that it could, and for that reason, I have steadily and repeatedly stated that it should not be taught as science.

Perhaps if you go back and read what I have actually said on this subject you might understand.

Sorry, not reading two hundred pages of stuff - but I apologize for misinterpreting you.

The anti-IDers need nothing more than a belief in Occam's razor to doubt ID.

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And Shakespeare.

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Foxfyre wrote:

You want to make the belief into something based on conjecture. I insist on making the belief based on experience as it is my experience to which you have no authority to address.

Leaving aside that this is an almost hopelessly muddled statement--you conjecture that your experience is evidence that there is a god, that ID is correct.

Quote:

A theory is indeed an exlanation of a phenomenon in which all the evidence supports and no evidence refutes. I have a 'cloud of witnesses' all testifying to the same experience to support the theory of I.D. And you have what evidence to refute it?

What experience do you have which is evidence supporting "intelligent design?" In fact, what you are saying is that you have had "experiences" which you conjecture is evidence of your imaginary friend god and that god's creation, from which you further conjecture "intelligent design." Unless, of course, you intend to increase the hilarity by asserting that your experience was that you met and talked with "god," and "god" told you that he/she/it had created the cosmos, and all life on this planet, using "intelligent design" as the modus operandi.

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Well actually, if we use the Occam's razor method here, I.D. is a much more simple concept than the method used by science to explain the origins of the universe. Smile

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Foxfyre wrote:

And you like all the other ID-ers keep missing the whole point re I.D. - it cannot be proved nor refuted using any known scientific principle or process. I have never even suggested that it could, and for that reason, I have steadily and repeatedly stated that it should not be taught as science.

Given that, one does wonder why you have decided to plague this thread.

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Foxfyre wrote:

Well actually, if we use the Occam's razor method here, I.D. is a much more simple concept than the method used by science to explain the origins of the universe.

If it were not evident before, it is now evident that you don't understand Occam's razor--entia non sunt multiplicanda, causes are not to be multiplied. If god created the universe, who created god? If you assert that god is eternal, it is only necessary to apply Occam's razor and eliminate the middleman--the universe is eternal, and no god is necessary to account for it.

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Settin' Aah-aah wrote-

Quote:

Leaving aside that this is an almost hopelessly muddled statement

How wise. It is much easier to leave it aside rather than explain. It's the line of least resistance which monkeys are pretty good at.

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foxy

Quote:

I.D. is a much more simple concept than the method used by science to explain the origins of the universe. [Smile]

Then you run smack into showing evidence that this is even reasonable.

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Settin' Aah-aah also wrote-

Quote:

What experience do you have which is evidence supporting "intelligent design?"

What an impertinent question to ask a lady? Especially as I have already provided a satisfactory answer earlier in the piece.

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farmerman wrote:

foxy
Quote:
I.D. is a much more simple concept than the method used by science to explain the origins of the universe. [Smile]

Then you run smack into showing evidence that this is even reasonable.

Example: You see the sun come up. You are alone. Where is your evidence that you saw the sun come up? What is your proof? Oh you can't prove it? How absolutely ridiculous and irrational of you to say that you did. I won't believe it until you prove it.

You see the above is your entire argument re the experience that I claim. So who is more unreasonable? The one who claims the experience that he or she has had? Or the one who refuses to believe it because it cannot be proved or falsified?

But lots of people see the sun come up, you say. Therefore it is more credible that you had that experience than it is credible that I would refuse to admit the possibility.

Now if I was the ONLY one claiming the experience, it still would not be provable or falsifiable, but it could rationally be more suspect as a figment of my imagination or whatever. I might even question it myself in such a case.

But then there is that 'cloud of witnesses' that includes millions of individuals all reporting the same experience. That, if nothing else, affirms my experience.

And it makes your continued denial of my experience all the more irrational.

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Foxfyre wrote:

Well actually, if we use the Occam's razor method here, I.D. is a much more simple concept than the method used by science to explain the origins of the universe.

Nope. ID multiplies unknowns in a way evolution doesn't. If you say "God did it!" then this begs the question:

How? What mechanism did he use to interact with the physical world? When and where did he do so?

None of these can be answered in any way. Additionally, nothing in science DEMANDS the existence of God, so (by Occam's razor) his existence shouldn't be favored.

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Foxfyre wrote:

The Sun's rising can be shown to anyone - i.e., it's a duplicable experiment. Also, it's consistent with the observation that things don't tend to spontaneously appear in one location - they tend to move gradually, over space.

Your religious experiences are not duplicable - you can't force me to have one, for example. Additionally, no other phenomenon demands that your experiences be "true". And, lastly, there's a wealth of scientific evidence to suggest that religious experiences are merely products of brain chemistry.

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We also have the problem of Fox's perceptive abilities. The sun does not rise; rather, the earth turns so that we are able to see the Sun.

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tkess wrote:

Foxfyre wrote:
Well actually, if we use the Occam's razor method here, I.D. is a much more simple concept than the method used by science to explain the origins of the universe.
Nope. ID multiplies unknowns in a way evolution doesn't. If you say "God did it!" then this begs the question:

How? What mechanism did he use to interact with the physical world? When and where did he do so?

None of these can be answered in any way. Additionally, nothing in science DEMANDS the existence of God, so (by Occam's razor) his existence shouldn't be favored.

Quote:

Main Entry: Oc·cam's razor
Function: noun
Pronunciation: 'ä-k&mz-
Etymology: William of Occam
: a scientific and philosophic rule that entities should not be multiplied unnecessarily which is interpreted as requiring that the simplest of competing theories be preferred to the more complex or that explanations of unknown phenomena be sought first in terms of known quantities

Now if you can cite a scientific process or principle for the origins and evolution of the universe in fewer words or in a simpler theory than "God did it!", you might have an argument there. Smile

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Foxfyre wrote:

tkess wrote:
Foxfyre wrote:
Well actually, if we use the Occam's razor method here, I.D. is a much more simple concept than the method used by science to explain the origins of the universe.
Nope. ID multiplies unknowns in a way evolution doesn't. If you say "God did it!" then this begs the question:

How? What mechanism did he use to interact with the physical world? When and where did he do so?

None of these can be answered in any way. Additionally, nothing in science DEMANDS the existence of God, so (by Occam's razor) his existence shouldn't be favored.

Quote:
Main Entry: Oc·cam's razor
Function: noun
Pronunciation: 'ä-k&mz-
Etymology: William of Occam
: a scientific and philosophic rule that entities should not be multiplied unnecessarily which is interpreted as requiring that the simplest of competing theories be preferred to the more complex or that explanations of unknown phenomena be sought first in terms of known quantities

Now if you can cite a scientific process or principle for the origins and evolution of the universe in fewer words or in a simpler theory than "God did it!", you might have an argument there.

Funny. The definition doesn't rely on the number of words in a theory, and there's no evidence you read the above post in which I noted that "God did it!" is actually not a simple theory. I'm starting to seriously doubt your reading comprehension abilities.

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tkess wrote:

Foxfyre wrote:
tkess wrote:
Foxfyre wrote:
Well actually, if we use the Occam's razor method here, I.D. is a much more simple concept than the method used by science to explain the origins of the universe.
Nope. ID multiplies unknowns in a way evolution doesn't. If you say "God did it!" then this begs the question:

How? What mechanism did he use to interact with the physical world? When and where did he do so?

None of these can be answered in any way. Additionally, nothing in science DEMANDS the existence of God, so (by Occam's razor) his existence shouldn't be favored.

Quote:
Main Entry: Oc·cam's razor
Function: noun
Pronunciation: 'ä-k&mz-
Etymology: William of Occam
: a scientific and philosophic rule that entities should not be multiplied unnecessarily which is interpreted as requiring that the simplest of competing theories be preferred to the more complex or that explanations of unknown phenomena be sought first in terms of known quantities

Now if you can cite a scientific process or principle for the origins and evolution of the universe in fewer words or in a simpler theory than "God did it!", you might have an argument there.

Funny. The definition doesn't rely on the number of words in a theory, and there's no evidence you read the above post in which I noted that "God did it!" is actually not a simple theory. I'm starting to seriously doubt your reading comprehension abilities.

You who went wading into the discussion on an assumption of what I had said instead of what I had said now doubt MY reading comprehension abilities?

That's cool.

I am beginning to seriously doubt that you intend to seriously debate here but instead rather intend to bait. I think I'll choose not to bite, if that's okay with you.

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You passed several posts on your way to mine explaining exactly why your question was invalid, and opted to ignore them.

I saw that 20 pages of stuff had been posted since last time I was here, addressed a question, then skipped to the last page. When I saw you defending ID and making the claim that anti-IDers don't have a solid foundation for their doubt, I responded.

There was no way for me to know that your position is not ID, but that you're using ID to refer to it. (Typically, ID implies the theory that there's a scientific basis on which to ground belief in an intelligent designer, not the belief that "hurr I had a religious experience ergo God exists". That's religion, not ID.)

Feel free to assail me for not correctly interpreting your misuse of terminology, but the bottom line is that you read and willingly ignored arguments. Don't you have a bridge to go hide under?

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tkess wrote:

You passed several posts on your way to mine explaining exactly why your question was invalid, and opted to ignore them.

I saw that 20 pages of stuff had been posted since last time I was here, addressed a question, then skipped to the last page. When I saw you defending ID and making the claim that anti-IDers don't have a solid foundation for their doubt, I responded.

There was no way for me to know that your position is not ID, but that you're using ID to refer to it. (Typically, ID implies the theory that there's a scientific basis on which to ground belief in an intelligent designer, not the belief that "hurr I had a religious experience ergo God exists". That's religion, not ID.)

Feel free to assail me for not correctly interpreting your misuse of terminology, but the bottom line is that you read and willingly ignored arguments. Don't you have a bridge to go hide under?

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Intelligent Design Theory: Science or Religion?

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