Intelligent Design Theory: Science or Religion?

Well, now weve gone full circle.

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farmerman wrote: "Well, now weve gone full circle."

Sorry to be the purveyor of bad news, but that "full circle" has been repeated multiple times already!

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I know, weve been like the "DNA helix" but obviously some people jump in and believe that the worlds news began with them.

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Quote:

but it's ultimately trivial

It sure is. It has no inspiration. You just look in a book for all your answers to everything and all you find is what Paul Williams called--"the hell of living in a state of cynicism where one follows nothing except the voice of one's own ego.....", where- "the 'search for love' " is "vanity, narcissism...."

The full blown position of a historical person, much like ourselves in many respects, almost identical biologically, known as The Marquis de Sade, a much maligned gentleman like Mr Tarentino is now although I have seen none of his movies so I can't judge respectably.

When I read Origins, as I do bits from time to time, I find all this poking about in the mud and the sediments gets a bit boring when you already know and accept the denoument which is boring as well. So naturally I'm against kids being exposed to it by some quasi-expert who bangs on about it endlessly because -well- because he's a quasi-expert in it. It's enough to render Jumping Jack Flash comatose. The kids don't know about all this stuff so, as I empathise with them having been one myself, I've sort of volunteered to represent them. Unofficially of course.

I prefer to allow them to grow up being abled to know how to dine in a restaurant rather than them masticating their way through the nutrition bed, the anti-ID position, and going to the powder room rather than evacuating the lower colon into the waiting hands of the water supply company with accompanying reduction of vapour pressure.

There's just no inspiration in anti-ID. It's a dead duck. The thread owner says it's all a joke.

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spendius wrote:

The thread owner says it's all a joke.

sophistry would be too mild a term

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I seen the skeleton of a fox, a rabbit and a cat right next to each other. God has no imagination.

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I remember Steve Martin saying "I'd like to jump on them bones". It was in The Man With Two Brains I think. It was a variation on the "no conscience" joke so familiar for the last 15,000 years which is a mere blink of the eye in evolutionary terms, assuming you can blink in micro-micro seconds.

I mean to say- 600 million years takes some getting your head round. It is nothing like £600 million. I could easy get my head round that.

Funny things are numbers.

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Thus Gilder offered a concession by way of a compromise: "Darwinism may be true," he said, "but it's ultimately trivial." It is not a "fundamental explanation for creation or the universe." Evolution and natural selection may explain why organic life presents to us its marvelous exfoliation. Yet Darwinism leaves untouched the crucial mysteries--who we are, why we are here, how we are to behave toward one another, and how we should fix the alternative minimum tax. And these are questions, except the last one, that lie beyond the expertise of any panel at any think tank, even AEI.

I think all those questions can be answered and not one of them will necessitate the intersession of a god or gods. It is the most common cop-out of the religious hacks to proclaim that a question is not only unanswerable but probably shouldn't even be asked.

Joe(piffle)Nation

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Joe Nation wrote:

Quote:
Thus Gilder offered a concession by way of a compromise: "Darwinism may be true," he said, "but it's ultimately trivial." It is not a "fundamental explanation for creation or the universe." Evolution and natural selection may explain why organic life presents to us its marvelous exfoliation. Yet Darwinism leaves untouched the crucial mysteries--who we are, why we are here, how we are to behave toward one another, and how we should fix the alternative minimum tax. And these are questions, except the last one, that lie beyond the expertise of any panel at any think tank, even AEI.

Yet somehow, the clergy are qualified to answer this question, eh?

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The last two posts gave me a good chuckle!

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They did me too. Possibly for different reasons than Chum though.

Both posts betray a complete lack of understanding, appreciation, tolerance and ability to keep up with this thread.

The word "can" in Joe's post is ridiculous in two ways. It is wildy unrealistic, crazy hubris in fact, and it is meaningless especially as Joe only thinks it anyway and it is contradicted by every scientist I have ever come across. Even Darwin accepted that . And all real art is posited on the unsolvable mysteries Mr Gilder speaks of.

And strikie misunderstands the role of the "clergy" and has failed to define who exactly he is referring to.

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Sorry, mother, may I?
May I cling to the notion that we are guided by some celestial teapot and therein contains our reason for being?

Oh good, now I may rest knowing I and all who gather here lie in the protection of, wait, maybe I should select some other deity to provide me comfort and love?

Joe(whither, wise ones?)Nation

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Joe wrote-

Quote:

May I cling to the notion that we are guided by some celestial teapot and therein contains our reason for being?

Indeed you may. But it is a mistake to persuade others to or even try to.

You're up early. Good judges fester in the pit until mid-afternoon when they can.

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Quote:

But it is a mistake to persuade others to or even try to.

Psst. pass that onto those who believe they are compelled to teach all nations.

Joe(including this)Nation

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Joe Nation wrote:

Quote:
Thus Gilder offered a concession by way of a compromise: "Darwinism may be true," he said, "but it's ultimately trivial." It is not a "fundamental explanation for creation or the universe." Evolution and natural selection may explain why organic life presents to us its marvelous exfoliation. Yet Darwinism leaves untouched the crucial mysteries--who we are, why we are here, how we are to behave toward one another, and how we should fix the alternative minimum tax. And these are questions, except the last one, that lie beyond the expertise of any panel at any think tank, even AEI.

I think all those questions can be answered and not one of them will necessitate the intersession of a god or gods. It is the most common cop-out of the religious hacks to proclaim that a question is not only unanswerable but probably shouldn't even be asked.

Joe(piffle)Nation

Maybe it escaped you, but what may be 'religious hacks' are the very ones asking the questions and it is the anti-ID-ers who do not seem to wish to include any questions that cannot be answered by science. So who is 'copping out'?

From the beginning, my argument is that Darwin should be taught as science because there are concrete scientific principles that can be applied to Darwinism. ID should not be taught as science because, while not necessarily denying any scientific principles, it is much larger in scope than what can be limited to mere scientific principle and cannot be tested, supported, nor disproved using any known scientific principles.

My purpose in making the argument was to state that no science teacher/professor worthy of the title would presume to teach ID as science. Conversely, no science teacher/professor worthy of the title, regardless of his personal views, would presume to teach science students that ID is an implausible concept and should not be even considered, much less believed.

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P.S. to Joe: You really think all those questions can be answered? By anybody alive on Earth today? My god, man, why are you living a normal life posting on A2K? You should be enshrined in some mega lab someplace enlightening the world with answers that have been asked without answer for at least tens of thousands of years.

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Foxfyre wrote:

Maybe it escaped you, but what may be 'religious hacks' are the very ones asking the questions and it is the anti-ID-ers who do not seem to wish to include any questions that cannot be answered by science.

If they can't be answered by science, just how do you propose to 'answer' them at all?

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Let us try an obtuse way of understanding the "clergy".

I saw an ad on TV for a mattress. It said that if you bought one and were not "absolutely delighted" you could return it and get a full refund.

Now we all know that is bullshit.

But the mattress industry has improved our comforts no end in the last 100 years.

Everything about everything is 100% about social consequences. If bullshit is required to take us from abject, loin-clothed, short-lived, famished, pain-wracked, frightened rats (say the Dark Ages) to where we are now lets have more of it is what I say.

The only real bullshit is pretending social consequences are unimportant compared to what one thinks and wishes to spout about the Heavenly Father (or Mother if you prefer).

The "clergy" have my vote of thanks and I don't care if every word they utter is bullshit.

And if anti-IDers only speak from the empirical facts and run us back into the hell-hole, which is what I think they will do if they get the chance, which they won't, they are the sweetest poison ever discovered.

I'm a practical man not a bloody visionary.

Analyse a wedding to its core and the whole ceremony is bullshit. I went to one recently. I shocked my sister-in-law, the bride's auntie, by nodding cynically over at the bridegroom's side and saying- " has that lot any money or land or anything?" Then, on making further enquires concerning the bride's virginity, it turned out that the lovely couple had been shacked-up together for two years. I had a chat with the priest in the bar at the reception where he was bought a double whisky by all the leading players in the pantomime on the assumption of his pauper status and it transpired that I am only an amateur cynic.

And yet he made it all pass off with grace and aplomb, despite the organist who was well pissed, and faces were saved all round. That's almost as good as walking on water given the sordid nature of the transaction. The bar prices were really sordid.

Do anti-IDers really wish to have nothing but bare-assed reality simply because their pride is offended by a bit of useful and harmless leg-pulling. Well- go to it boys- but leave the rest of us alone and especially the kids. We like being deluded. It's romantic.

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Ignorance is bliss, knowledge is power.

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rosborne979 wrote:

Foxfyre wrote:
Maybe it escaped you, but what may be 'religious hacks' are the very ones asking the questions and it is the anti-ID-ers who do not seem to wish to include any questions that cannot be answered by science.

If they can't be answered by science, just how do you propose to 'answer' them at all?

I neither presumed to answer them no suggested that anybody could. But they are valid questions nevertheless. My interest on this subject is for teachers to leave open ended those things that science cannot answer. If students are spoon fed only what we already know and are discouraged from opening their minds to ALL yet unknown possibilities, we are only indoctrinating kids and not educating them.

A science teacher of course should not include in science curriculum anything that cannot be supported or that will likely someday be supported by known scientific principles/procedures. But any science teacher who presumes that we know all the science that we will ever know now, or that science is capable of answering all human questions is not educated enough himself to be teaching kids.

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Intelligent Design Theory: Science or Religion?

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