Intelligent Design Theory: Science or Religion?

farmerman wrote:

Quote:
Explain how you will measure the temperature of a stove that I touched yesterday or last week. I have no doubt that it was hot because I touched it. How do you use any scientific principle to verify or disprove my experience with the stove?
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. One of the points in scientific evidence is repeatability. If we can repeat the experiment that you experienced last week by touching a hot stove over and over again and measuring it under controlled circumstances. Neither would Science accept the millions of people who experience a God. If someone really cared enough, theyd wire you up and let you tell us when you experience it again, and then compare your eeg's or whatever , then we establish it as evidence. We dont just take your word for it and say that its acceptible data. That would be bunkum. As I said before ,its all about repeatability of the experiment. It should be the same over and over, then we can establish the Foxfyre theory of hot stoves, or deities . Until that point , its merely a bunch of tales for the campfire.

However, as far as ID goes, the proponents are busy TRYING to set up experiments and observations so they can establish a boxful of evidence on their behalf. Now if they would believe as you, they wouldnt be spending any time on data collection methods, theyd just say that millions belive in ID and that should be good enough. Science is a little more demanding and hard headed.

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and you aint listening. The seeds of ID falsification is built into the concept itself. Everything that ID is doing is counter to what you say it is. (Its busy trying to prove itself science) , so , in essence you are giving false cred to what ID is not trying to do all along. We all can accept ID as a philosophical belief system that has a history and is an attempt to explain life's development.But , after that, where does your point go? (I will not use an emoticon because they are merely a passive aggressive cartoony way of saying nyah nyah in a contentious point) .

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Fox, I find your posts as one of the more intelligent on a2k, but your position concerning belief in god for all the reasons you've explained falls short of your usual high level of reasoning.

The best explanation I found about belief in religion is equated to "love." There's no way to prove it or disprove it; it's just there.

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Are we all now in denial that id is a social and psychological phenomenum with economic consequences.

If so you are all in the play pen rattling your little coloured beads. You are of no consequence to the debate. You are abdicating responsibility.

I can't imagine why you post. I assume that the quacking of ducks fulfills some function or other but this process seen here has no function other than at a personal level. It is individualism run rampant. That is understandable for anti-IDers, they have nothing else, and they must think the Narcissus myth is devoid of meaning.

I'm surprised at an IDer taking such an irreligious stance. Obviously no-one has bothered with my Joubert quotes. Too inconvenient I suppose.

According to the Interpreter's Dictionary of the Bible, a Nashville publication in 1962, the principle theme of the source book of all Western art is "God's deliverance of mankind from the power of sin, death, and Satan through his (sic) action in Jesus Christ; ..."

The power of sin, death, and Satan is self evidently animality. That is the mightiest theme of Destiny which can be imagined. Tooth fairies and hot stoves have nothing to do with it.

"I said, 'Stop the boat, I wanna get off!"
The Mate said, 'That's the limit!! '
He stuck out a plank over the ocean wide
He said, 'You want freedom boy? Get in it!' "

That's a verse from an unpublished song someone I know wrote over 20 years ago. It's a long song.

How do we prevent the resurgence of animality without religion? By keeping our fingers crossed I suppose.

Care for the future is the prime symbol of Western culture. And the kids are the future.

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Foxfyre wrote:

Lola, please name me a single scientist who has the ability to use any scientific principle or process to determine whether I felt a hot or cold stove or any stove at all last week.

As farmernan said above. An EEG might be in order.... But I'm not debating the question of whether you experienced God or heat. I'm addressing the question of "can the temperature be measured?" If you experienced the stove as hot when it was, according to all possible scientific measurements, actually cold and your EEG was normal, most of us would probably assume that you experienced it as hot, but we don't know why. The why question is not addressable by the scientific method.

Unlike Rosbourne, I have known quite a few people who firmly and consistently believe in gnomes and faries. They too smile when they encounter another whose beliefs are the same as theirs. Sometimes medication changes their beliefs and sometimes not. I'm not equating your experience of God with that of a psychotic in order to question your reality testing. My point is that in this aspect both beliefs (experiencing gnomes and faries and experiencing God), while they are different in many ways, are alike in at least one defining way. They are both reported experiences and are therefore not questions that can be addressed by science.

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spendius wrote:

Are we all now in denial that id is a social and psychological phenomenum with economic consequences.

I'm not in denial about this point. I agree. But in what way has accumulated knowledge or improved communications been in different over the ages? Change happens. Cultural change lags, as the sociologist William Ogburn said:

http://trustimage.org/more/onCulturalLag.html

This lag is necessary and predictable. People need time to adjust over generations. But that's the way it is. Change will be with us, free world or not.

Are you suggesting that we should avoid the changes by muzzling science? Surely not.

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Lola wrote:

Foxfyre wrote:
Lola, please name me a single scientist who has the ability to use any scientific principle or process to determine whether I felt a hot or cold stove or any stove at all last week.

As farmernan said above. An EEG might be in order.... But I'm not debating the question of whether you experienced God or heat. I'm addressing the question of "can the temperature be measured?" If you experienced the stove as hot when it was, according to all possible scientific measurements, actually cold and your EEG was normal, most of us would probably assume that you experienced it as hot, but we don't know why. The why question is not addressable by the scientific method.

Unlike Rosbourne, I have known quite a few people who firmly and consistently believe in gnomes and faries. They too smile when they encounter another whose beliefs are the same as theirs. Sometimes medication changes their beliefs and sometimes not. I'm not equating your experience of God with that of a psychotic in order to question your reality testing. My point is that in this aspect both beliefs (experiencing gnomes and faries and experiencing God), while they are different in many ways, are alike in at least one defining way. They are both reported experiences and are therefore not questions that can be addressed by science.

But we are not talking about temperature. We are talking about a reported experience. Yes just about everybody can measure or even guess moderately accurately what the temperature is. But nobody can measure an experience. In other words as what one reports as experience after the fact can no more be evaluated scientifically than can an experience with God. And if you go back and read my comments from the beginning in this thread, I have in no way and at no time suggested that God and/or I.D. can be proved nor disproved using any known process or principle of science.

You might want to think about whose friends are more reliable here though. I don't know ANYBODY over four years old who believes in gnomes or fairies, and I've spent a lot of years working with folks addicted to some powerful stuff. Smile

(One person who became a close friend was driven to A.A. when he saw God in the windshield of his car however. Said God looked just like John L. Lewis. He never took another drink until he died some 20 years later.)

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Foxfyre wrote:

Lola wrote:
Foxfyre wrote:
Lola, please name me a single scientist who has the ability to use any scientific principle or process to determine whether I felt a hot or cold stove or any stove at all last week.

As farmernan said above. An EEG might be in order.... But I'm not debating the question of whether you experienced God or heat. I'm addressing the question of "can the temperature be measured?" If you experienced the stove as hot when it was, according to all possible scientific measurements, actually cold and your EEG was normal, most of us would probably assume that you experienced it as hot, but we don't know why. The why question is not addressable by the scientific method.

Unlike Rosbourne, I have known quite a few people who firmly and consistently believe in gnomes and faries. They too smile when they encounter another whose beliefs are the same as theirs. Sometimes medication changes their beliefs and sometimes not. I'm not equating your experience of God with that of a psychotic in order to question your reality testing. My point is that in this aspect both beliefs (experiencing gnomes and faries and experiencing God), while they are different in many ways, are alike in at least one defining way. They are both reported experiences and are therefore not questions that can be addressed by science.

But we are not talking about temperature. We are talking about a reported experience. Yes just about everybody can measure or even guess moderately accurately what the temperature is. But nobody can measure an experience. In other words as what one reports as experience after the fact can no more be evaluated scientifically than can an experience with God. And if you go back and read my comments from the beginning in this thread, I have in no way and at no time suggested that God and/or I.D. can be proved nor disproved using any known process or principle of science.

(One person who became a close friend was driven to A.A. when he saw God in the windshield of his car however. Said God looked just like John L. Lewis. He never took another drink until he died some 20 years later.)

I'm sorry Foxfre, I haven't read every 1000 and something pages of this thread. I've been in and out because I have to work to earn money. I've been starting a business. So indulge me, if you will.

Is your point about past history not being provable about Darwinian theory? Because Darwinian theory does not address how it all began. Since I last checked (a couple of years ago at the "Big Bang" video at the New York Museum of Natural History, no one knows and certainly haven't been able to prove any theory about this.

Maybe I'm making assumptions, but I doubt that children in science class are taught anything about what caused that little particle that arrived on the scene that did the banging or from whence it came. Harrison Ford certainly didn't mention it in his reading of the script. But I'm stepping into an area that I'm not well informed about. Maybe some of you will clarify this point for me. I'd be grateful.

Quote:

You might want to think about whose friends are more reliable here though. I don't know ANYBODY over four years old who believes in gnomes or fairies, and I've spent a lot of years working with folks addicted to some powerful stuff.

I wouldn't call those psychotic folks I have known friends. I call them patients since it was during their stay at the psychiatric hospital where I was working when I made their aquaintance. If you want to meet a few, visit your closest state runinpatient mental health facility. Smile

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Lola, I think you have quite a few misconceptions about my position on I.D. and science and the whole God thing, and since you don't seem to understand what I'm saying directly to you, I doubt you would understand if I retyped the detailed arguments I've already made.

I work for a living too and need to get back to it.

But nice chatting with you anyway.

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Lola wrote-

Quote:

Are you suggesting that we should avoid the changes by muzzling science? Surely not.

We already muzzle it. A muzzle is generally used to prevent biting.

Anyone not in favour of cloning humans is muzzling science. Some scientists are itching to try it.

If you consider Iranian nuclear research and effort to be science, rather than technology, we are attempting to muzzle the science of one race of people. We are all over the place with embryo research. We have ethics committees agreed to by the people we elected.

The storing of infant body parts after death created an almighty furore here a few years back. Scientists were discovered to have allowed grieving parents to bury only part of their loved one. There was an overwhelming consensus in favour of muzzling that particular aspect of science despite it being undertaken to help prevent infant deaths in the future. We muzzle scientists in the field of research using animals. The very fact of the legislation implies that the scientists needed to be muzzled to satisfy a Christian conscience. Non Christians have been seen to be experimenting on humans in unspeakable ways.

Science is a human tool. One might use a hammer to put up the bunting for the May festival or to stove somebody's head in. I'm not in favour of muzzling hammers because somebody uses one for the latter purpose.

Explain, if you will, how anti-IDers would justify those muzzlings without a Christian conscience however flawed it might be.

Your own Government muzzles aspects of stem-cell research. Why would the British courts rule against a woman who wanted to use an ex's frozen sperm.

We muzzle, I heard, subliminal advertising.

I'll answer that- Because they see a bigger picture.

I'll put the question back to you. Are you in favour of unmuzzled science.
Unmuzzled is unambiguous.

Quote:

This lag is necessary and predictable. People need time to adjust over generations. But that's the way it is. Change will be with us, free world or not.

All that is a bit obvious Lola love.

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Foxfyre wrote:

Lola, I think you have quite a few misconceptions about my position on I.D. and science and the whole God thing, and since you don't seem to understand what I'm saying directly to you, I doubt you would understand if I retyped the detailed arguments I've already made.

I work for a living too and need to get back to it.

But nice chatting with you anyway.

good idea

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Foxy wrote-

Quote:

But nice chatting with you anyway.

Is it really just entertainment? I thought it was about clarifying issues relating to the socialisation of those who will have to work to provide our pensions and what those pensions will buy.

Still- Lola has agreed that id is a social and psychological phenomenum with economic consequences. That's a bit of progress.

Now- what sorts of social and psychological phenomena are best suited for the economic progress you favour?

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spendius wrote:

Lola wrote-

Quote:
Are you suggesting that we should avoid the changes by muzzling science? Surely not.

We already muzzle it. A muzzle is generally used to prevent biting.

Anyone not in favour of cloning humans is muzzling science. Some scientists are itching to try it.

If you consider Iranian nuclear research and effort to be science, rather than technology, we are attempting to muzzle the science of one race of people. We are all over the place with embryo research. We have ethics committees agreed to by the people we elected.

The storing of infant body parts after death created an almighty furore here a few years back. Scientists were discovered to have allowed grieving parents to bury only part of their loved one. There was an overwhelming consensus in favour of muzzling that particular aspect of science despite it being undertaken to help prevent infant deaths in the future. We muzzle scientists in the field of research using animals. The very fact of the legislation implies that the scientists needed to be muzzled to satisfy a Christian conscience. Non Christians have been seen to be experimenting on humans in unspeakable ways.

Science is a human tool. One might use a hammer to put up the bunting for the May festival or to stove somebody's head in. I'm not in favour of muzzling hammers because somebody uses one for the latter purpose.

Explain, if you will, how anti-IDers would justify those muzzlings without a Christian conscience however flawed it might be.

Your own Government muzzles aspects of stem-cell research. Why would the British courts rule against a woman who wanted to use an ex's frozen sperm.

We muzzle, I heard, subliminal advertising.

I'll answer that- Because they see a bigger picture.

I'll put the question back to you. Are you in favour of unmuzzled science.
Unmuzzled is unambiguous.

Quote:
This lag is necessary and predictable. People need time to adjust over generations. But that's the way it is. Change will be with us, free world or not.

All that is a bit obvious Lola love.

Spendi sweetie, honey pie

Questions of ethics have to be worked out of course. Some people adapt more quickly than others. But obviously, if certain scientific knowledge or activity is clearly immoral or destructive, then efforts should be made to control or regulate how or if it is used. The hard part of course has to do with questions of religious or magical belief. In that case, we will have to struggle to make head way.

But knowledge, once it's out is very hard to shut down.

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Quote:

spendius wrote: Are we all now in denial that id is a social and psychological phenomenum with economic consequence

You give it more clout tha it deserves. Assuming that it is all you say it is(and you obviously disagree with its own authors), where do you then go? Id cannot even prove that its what it wants to be-- ascientific discipline. SO like the fairies and goblins, there is ID. The only difference is that, unless they consider Dover, youll never see any movies about ID. So where does spendi go? is there even some application to all this IDism? Is it merely a scam to raise money from the Aranson Trust? Its really not even a complete philosophy because it cannot even test for itself.

So , as Judge Jones so eloquently said...

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spendius wrote:

Foxy wrote-

Quote:
But nice chatting with you anyway.

Is it really just entertainment? I thought it was about clarifying issues relating to the socialisation of those who will have to work to provide our pensions and what those pensions will buy.

Still- Lola has agreed that id is a social and psychological phenomenum with economic consequences. That's a bit of progress.

Now- what sorts of social and psychological phenomena are best suited for the economic progress you favour?

You talkin to me?

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I'm running late-

Lola wrote-

Quote:

Some people adapt more quickly than others

Almost always the beautiful people. The body fascists I have heard them called. The Alphas say. Anti-ID is an Alpha self-serving philosophy. One would think it would suit their purposes and they would keep quiet about it. Perhaps talking about it signifies a Beta Minus wannabee fantasy.

That might be a deep structural problem in meritocracies. When the whole population starts behaving self indulgently, as Alphas do, will the infrastructure still function?

But I gotta go. I'll be back.

Hey- I was chatted up last night by a 22 year old. I think she was trying to pick my brains. But don't worry- I didn't grass. She wasn't persuasive enough. It was good fun though. An Irish drunk and myself ended up singing her parts of various Dylan songs in sweet duets. Gee- everybody says he's a complete idiot. I think I'm the first pal he's had in years. If it turns out he owns a building company I'll be on easy street. He knew Shelter From The Storm perfectly. I was astounded. Had read Joyce too.
A bloody, incoherent mumbling drunk. It's a funny old world.

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Lola wrote-

Quote:

Questions of ethics have to be worked out of course.

.

From where might I ask would a not incompletly baked anti-IDer derive such delightful things as ethics from. An Alpha by definition.

It would have to be The Regulations surely. And that would open up quite a large number of cans of worms. Already has done in fact.

I think on balance most people would agree that The Pope is more easy going than The Regulations what with all these lawyers about these days. There's a scene in Naked Lunch about the prospects of that sort of thing when it changes, as you pointed out it will, further in the direction already well established. I incline to the view myself at about 44.99 rec degrees of angle.

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Foxfyre wrote:

There's plenty of room for flat-earth-ism and science, as well as any other idea completely unsupported by empirical inquiry and science. But they can still be dismissed outright on the basis that there's no real reason to posit them as true.

I think I see your point better - that ID isn't science, but that to call ID stupid, nonsensical, etc. and say that it shouldn't be believed, even on nonscientific grounds, because it's unsupported by science, is stupid. My argument, though, is that no kind of rational inquiry supports it, either. You should have some reason for holding such a belief - unless that reason is faith, in which case it's quite fruitless to discuss it with the unfaithful.

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tkess wrote:

Foxfyre wrote:
There's plenty of room for flat-earth-ism and science, as well as any other idea completely unsupported by empirical inquiry and science. But they can still be dismissed outright on the basis that there's no real reason to posit them as true.

I think I see your point better - that ID isn't science, but that to call ID stupid, nonsensical, etc. and say that it shouldn't be believed, even on nonscientific grounds, because it's unsupported by science, is stupid. My argument, though, is that no kind of rational inquiry supports it, either. You should have some reason for holding such a belief - unless that reason is faith, in which case it's quite fruitless to discuss it with the unfaithful.

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Eorl edited that which Foxfyre wrote:

No, it is more than faith. It is knowledge obtained through experience, but it is an experience that cannot be taught to another--each person has to experience it to know it. If I was the only one professing such an experience, it could neither be verified nor falsified using any scientific principle, but it could reasonably be suspect. But when you draw in that 'cloud of witnesses', millions and millions of them, who share the same kind of experience, then a conclusion can be reasonably drawn that magic is at least a popular theory of the origins and evolution of the universe.

Again, acknowledging that millions of people believe in magic based on their individual experiences is still not a reasoned argument for teaching magic as science. And I will continue to strongly object to it being taught as science.

It is, however, a reasoned argument for allowing magic and Darwin to co-exist peacefully without getting our knickers in a twist about it. It also is a reasoned argument for accepting that magic and Darwin do not need to cancel each other out or be in conflict.

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Intelligent Design Theory: Science or Religion?

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