Intelligent Design Theory: Science or Religion?

Ridiculous.

The sort of thing which might have an effect on a bunch of kids.

If an obviously influential section of the Missouri legislature is to be designated "stupid" it might be reasonable to conclude that there are other states in the US suffering under the same handicap.

Methinks the intellectual insights relating to Flying Spaghetti Monsters and levitations serve to avoid the need to try hard.

In relation to invisibilty the following appeared in one of our national rags-

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Harry Potter's invisibility cloak could become a reality, scientists said yesterday. New meta-materials can create an electromagnetic force which will allow them to bend light around objects. And objects are only visible because they reflect light back to the eye. Salford University has been given a £1 million grant to design materials that can hide solid objects. Professor Allan Boardman said: "Magnetism does strange things to light."

BTW- did you know that the psychologists have a special word, which I have forgotten, for people who give their children names which have novel spellings or striking constructions not found in the traditional canons such as Allan or Eorl. The category is supposed to denote pushiness, the rejection of tradition, attention seeking and an attempt to generate cachet with a quick stroke of a pen.

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Contemptible ghoul #2: Evolution and atheism are to blame for the school shootings at Virginia Tech?
Category: Politics Religion
Posted on: April 16, 2007 8:36 PM, by Orac

PZ Myers has identified contemptible ghoul #1, Debbie Schlussel, who has decided that it must have been a Muslim terrorist who carried out the horrific school shooting today at Virginia Tech (and is now backing off as more information comes out, as she claims that students should have been allowed to have guns on campus).

Here's contemptible ghoul #2, Ken Ham over at Answers in Genesis, who blames the evil of the school shooting on atheism--wink, wink, nudge, nudge--evolution, even though he "isn't saying that," if you know what I mean:

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We live in an era when public high schools and colleges have all but banned God from science classes. In these classrooms, students are taught that the whole universe, including plants and animals--and humans--arose by natural processes. Naturalism (in essence, atheism) has become the religion of the day and has become the foundation of the education system (and Western culture as a whole). The more such a philosophy permeates the culture, the more we would expect to see a sense of purposelessness and hopelessness that pervades people's thinking. In fact, the more a culture allows the killing of the unborn, the more we will see people treating life in general as "cheap."

I'm not at all saying that the person who committed these murders at Virginia Tech was driven by a belief in millions of years or evolution. I don't know why this person did what he did, except the obvious: that it was a result of sin. However, when we see such death and violence, it is a reminder to us that without God's Word (and the literal history in Genesis 1-11), people will not understand why such things happen.

Despicable. Ken Ham couldn't even wait until tomorrow to start blaming godless secularists and evolution for this crime, just as he blamed the Columbine shootings on evolution and atheism.

http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2007/04/contemptible_ghoul_2.php

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It's a woodwork effusion xingu.

Has no interest to me.

Except maybe that on reflection there are probably lots of other theories and reactions to them and you have specifically selected this one to try to make some point or other. Just as the characters portrayed have.

It's elementary propaganda technique No 1 in the Goebell's handbook "Shagging Them Over Made Simple".

It's hardly suitable for Science and Mathematics. It's dealing off the bottom.

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Eorl wrote:

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(e) Include intellectual diversity concerns in the institution's guidelines on teaching and program development and such concerns shall include but not be limited to the protection of religious freedom including the viewpoint that the Bible is inerrant.

This is the interesting clause, one I suspect may be all that's needed to destroy this stupid bill.

Yes indeedy . . . in the majority opinion in Epperson versus Arkansas, 1968, written by Mr. Justice Fortas, the court held:

The law's effort was confined to an attempt to blot out a particular theory because of its supposed conflict with the Biblical account, literally read. Plainly, the law is contrary to the mandate of the First . . . Amendment to the Constitution.

Of greater significance is the 1987 decision in Edwards versus Aguillard, which dealt with a Louisiana law requiring creationism to be taught whenever evolution is taught. Writing for the majority (7-2), Mr. Justice Brennan:

The preeminent purpose of the Louisiana Legislature was clearly to advance the religious viewpoint that a supernatural being created humankind...The Louisiana Creationism Act advances a religious doctrine by requiring either the banishment of the theory of evolution from public school classrooms or the presentation of a religious viewpoint that rejects evolution in its entirety.

This fails the "Lemon Test," which was formulated by Chief Justice Warren Berger in the 1971 Lemon versus Kurtzman case, which struck down Rhode Island and Pennsylvania laws which supplemented the salaries of teachers teaching secular subjects in schools supported by organized religions. Mr. Justice Berger formulated the basis upon which a law can be seen as not violating the establishment clause:

First, the statute must have a secular legislative purpose; second, its principal or primary effect must be one that neither advances nor inhibits religion; finally, the statute must not foster "an excessive government entanglement with religion."

The portion of the bill's language to which you have pointed clearly violates the Lemon test.

I know you live upside down in a remote and savage portion of the planet, so in case you are unfamiliar, the establishment clause refers to the first portion of the first amendment to the United States Constitution, highlighted below:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

The religious nut jobs always whine that such decisions impair their "free exercise" of religion, but, of course, this is false, since they can get up any lunacy they desire in the privacy of their homes or in their churches.

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Settin' Aah-aah wrote-

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The religious nut jobs always whine that such decisions impair their "free exercise" of religion, but, of course, this is false, since they can get up any lunacy they desire in the privacy of their homes or in their churches.

I heard that in many states certain practices quite common elsewhere, and often flagrantly displayed, are illegal even in the privacy of a home.

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spendius wrote:

It's a woodwork effusion xingu.

Has no interest to me.

Since when should I care what interests you.

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I never claimed you should. A riposte like that translates as having nothing to say.

It isn't of the slightest interest to me what anyone with a fixed attitude either thinks or says. Not all viewers on here are set in stone.

If you think you can discredit IDers by pointing out some minor matter relating to a tiny fraction of extreme publicity seekers taking advantage of a tragic incident you are underestimating the intelligence of those viewers.

Even if the poor guy was a practicing Buddhist it would still say nothing about Buddhism. Buddhism, like ID, is miles too big for anything like that.

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You guys are all silly. Don't you know that God works in mysterious ways? He sends a 23 y.o. Korean "probably terrorist" student to murder 33 young people and injure 15 others (many of whom are probably Christian) in order to set the stage for the end times.

According to Foxfyre, we can have confidence in God's existence because so many report an experience with God. God only throws in the many anti-IDers who dare to look into the horse's mouth for some mysterious reason. Being only lowly humans, his creations, we're not able to understand his complex plan (as wonderful as it is). To try to understand is an act of oh ye of little faith. God's loving plan, as manipulative and coercive as is seems to some is intricate and all works out very nicely in the end, after the rapture, the anit-Christ who is probably born and rising to power as I write), Armagedon, and the tribulation. I've worried for years, unable to decide if the tribulation comes before the 1000 year rule of the anti-christ or after. It's a hotly contested point of major importance for those in my family who don't believe now but will when the rapture occurs. They'll see.

This recent mass murder is obviously part of a plot of those anti-IDers who have been trying for years to convince us to lay down our guns. Once again there's talk of gun control. These same anti-IDers have arranged similar mass murders hoping we'll give in. I've even heard that the anti-IDers of the New World Order are secretly building concentration camps in abandoned public facilities for those of us who will not voluntarily give up our weapons and refuse the mark of the beast (which will turn out to be in the form of credit cards or social security numbers). They think we don't know that we need more and more of these machine guns and bazooka shooters to fight them when they come to get us. Weekly I stand outside of my local abandoned public facility and think, "What are they building in there?"

Oh ye of little faith, save yourselves, count your numbers and compare them to those of believers. This would be a scientific method (if you must have science) for determining if you should believe in God and come to the concertration camps with us.

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Hi Lola-

Listen kid- if you pierce the paper with a pin a few times it doesn't have quite such a dramatic effect.

Are you in favour of muzzling science or not? Yes or no. No ifs or buts. Just to get the principle established. We can argue about which areas to muzzle once you say yes but there is no argument if you say no.

It is a question you asked me and I answered yes.

It's hardly an indecent proposal.

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Set, post Justice Scalia's Minority opinion from Edwards. He predicted these days Smile

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I notice fm that you have managed to restrain yourself from answering the question I posed for Lola.

May I seek your view on the matter?

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you may hold your breath while I come up with one.

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It is impossible to hold one's breath whilst coughing and spluttering after a tittering fit for only a very short time and I can't see you coming up with an answer quick enough.

It is well known that it is impossible also to asphixiate oneself in a free standing position which would be necessary to allow you the amount of time you will need if I were to hold my breath in anticipation of your verdict.

The viewers will draw their own conclusions I imagine. That is the essence of debate; a civilised argument on a serious subject in front of an audience interested in the matters, even a few disinterestedly.

What Settin' Aah-aah doesn't seem to understand is that all that stuff he piles up was done and dusted by dead people. Our forbears. They lived in a totally different world than that we live in. They could afford such problems to be academic and to be the exclusive preserve of the elite in their discussions. We are further ahead of 1920,say, that 1920 was of 1800. I know one or two who would use 1960 rather than 1920. ( Okay - a few are still alive such as Judge Jones. ) (I wonder if he bothered with that question I posed Lola and now fm.) And Science, to its very great credit has played a large part. But Science is only an aspect of a culture. It is not The Culture. Man really does not live by bread alone like monkeys do. And Sheesh man we have bread coming out of our arses because our digestive system is too slow for our eating habits.

Don't all the rich get arty-farty. ID is to help trickle-down. By example, not preaching or anything. Science is artless. It has no muse.

Or has it?

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A new study to be published in PNAS (Proceedings of the National Academy of Science): "Stepwise formation of the bacterial flagellar system" by Renyi Liu and Howard Ochman

Below is an abstract:

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Elucidating the origins of complex biological structures has been one of the major challenges of evolutionary studies. The bacterial flagellum is a primary example of a complex apparatus whose origins and evolutionary history have proven difficult to reconstruct. The gene clusters encoding the components of the flagellum can include >50 genes, but these clusters vary greatly in their numbers and contents among bacterial phyla. To investigate how this diversity arose, we identified all homologs of all flagellar proteins encoded in the complete genome sequences of 41 flagellated species from 11 bacterial phyla. Based on the phylogenetic occurrence and histories of each of these proteins, we could distinguish an ancient core set of 24 structural genes that were present in the common ancestor to all Bacteria. Within a genome, many of these core genes show sequence similarity only to other flagellar core genes, indicating that they were derived from one another, and the relationships among these genes suggest the probable order in which the structural components of the bacterial flagellum arose. These results show that core components of the bacterial flagellum originated through the successive duplication and modification of a few, or perhaps even a single, precursor gene.

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Here's a great clip from Ken Miller, called the collapse of Intelligent Design.

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Can't be bothered reading it ros. More wishful thinking I imagine. Like with the National Lotteries we should all be so proud of. The Global Raffle.

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wande quoted-

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The bacterial flagellum is a primary example of a complex apparatus whose origins and evolutionary history have proven difficult to reconstruct.

Not for those who have it taped wande. fm knows everything there is to know, he's reduced the complexity to his own satisfaction I gather, about the bacterial flagellum. It is relatively simple you see compared with the organisms which inhabit the wine bars of the financial centres when the DOW has put on another 200 points.

Does the bacterial flagellum show any signs of utter delerium as it wallows helplessly in the test tube and in danger of being washed down the drains when its usefulness has expired.

Don't we have sprays to get rid of such things?

How long has it been evolving exactly? Is it making any progress?

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I have decided to leave the rest of wande's quote to those who are more qualified than I am to make head or tail of it. I truly, truly hope it makes them feel really, really better about themselves.

It reminds me of a midden near a bull concentration camp.

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It shoots another argument of ID, namely, irreducible complexity, in the ass. If Ir Complexity isnt so "irreducible" then its a fake argument. "Common ancestors of genic bases for flagella, common to all those early and later bact and animalcules. HM MM MMMM, poor Dr Behe's gonna have to knock out another chapter of his book. Its getting so , that Behe has only an intro and a conclusion left. He might as well stick a Bible in the middle and make an
ID hoagie

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farmerman wrote:

It shoots another argument of ID, namely, irreducible complexity, in the ass. If Ir Complexity isnt so "irreducible" then its a fake argument. "Common ancestors of genic bases for flagella, common to all those early and later bact and animalcules. HM MM MMMM, poor Dr Behe's gonna have to knock out another chapter of his book. Its getting so , that Behe has only an intro and a conclusion left. He might as well stick a Bible in the middle and make an ID hoagie

Ken Miller's presentation was interesting not just because it dismantles ID as well as IR, but also because it so clearly demonstrates the attempted fraud perpetrated by the people behind the ID push (Discover Institute to name one).

The ID push is not only inaccurate, it's also criminal. It's a clear and premeditated attempt to break constitutional law. Judge Jones's decision seems to recognize this.

It's a great presentation to listen to. Miller does a good job of keeping the subject matter flowing.

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Intelligent Design Theory: Science or Religion?

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