Intelligent Design Theory: Science or Religion?

Have you seen this?
The atheist's nightmare: the banana
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9zwbhAXe5yk

Warning: no food or drink allowed

Dawkins must have been taking the you know what. Who out of I'm not sure. But if I was one of his fans I wouldn't ignore the possibility that it might be me. But I'm not one of his fans so I needn't worry about that.

Except for diagnostic purposes such a load of rubbish wouldn't be making an appearence in any book I signed.

Something of a banana skin really.

SPENDIPUS

You talk of Zulu's and episodes of long forgotten history like an over excited scholar who has been locked in the school library for a week.

Due to your total lack of personal experience in life and the combination of your choice apathetic existence as a disciple of other also rans! You are indeed extremely naive, the condition is reflected in your posts.

The real Zulu's probably still dip their weapons in blood, to maintain the dogma of their tribal religious code.

Tamed! You think Christianity has tamed these people? That is a joke!
You need to get out there, go to Africa, Laos, Burma, Cambodia, you can gain first hand knowledge in being tamed! It's no good looking in your old books either, and the television only shows the nice bits.

I could let rip on here with fact that needs a certificate before going into print, I could show you a photograph or two as well, but I have the common sense to keep certain things I have witnessed to myself. Let me assure you though, cannibalism is still rife in one or two places on this planet.

There is only one god at present, it's called Oil.

During the fuel strikes and consequent shortages of fuel on this little island of ours, people were engaging in fisticuffs on the petrol forecourts. So much so that a senior ranked police officer was sent to each site with a constable and two local Borough Council Officials complete with day-glow jackets, clip boards and lots of forms, they all acted very diligently, the law was upheld.

This god which drives and lubricates our planet is perhaps on his last legs. Just try and imagine twelve months without electricity, let alone no cars, wagons, planes, boats and trains.

It will be a damn site worse scenario in the States too. No airconditioning to start with and that would be a real contention to accept.

There are some six and a half billion of us on this cinder, probably five billion plus too many. That is the answer to survival Spendi, culling, selective and well managed progeny. Real anti ID.

Oil discovery has fallen dramatically over the last forty years. In the sixties geologists discovered between fifty and sixty billion barrels per annum. Today that figure has dropped like a sinking stone to nine billion barrels per annum.

No doubt George and Tony are nicking as much as they can get out of Iraq twenty four / seven. The Yanks of course will be getting the lions share. They need the lions share. Regardless, economists see real problems for all of us by the end of the next two decades.

It costs a lot of lives too, but these guys are real anti ID bods, make no mistake about that. They thought kicking Sadams arse would instil fear into the other Arab States.. It hasn't, it's made them more resolute to get us all out of there. These insurgents don't appear to be struggling to get arms and bomb making materials in Baghdad as they desire.

Vietnam should have been a lesson never to have been forgotten by America, it obviously wasn't. We should have learned from the Colonial Days, The Sepoy Mutiny etc. obviously we didn't.

Some time back on a televised debate, Tony Blair was asked the question; "How many troops have we lost to date in Iraq?"

He had no idea! That effectively meant he didn't give a toss. George doesn't seem to care that much about young Americans being blown to kingdom come either. As long as the tap keeps running that is. Real Anti ID

So when you are ranting on these pages about so much nonsense,
I see it as a 'Trivia Thread Joke' your not really doing much at all, Nobody really gives a toss, from The President, The Prime-Minister down its all a load of bollocks Spendi. God is important, that black slushy sticky god we all rely on so much.

There is no god but oil!

Demand for oil in China is exceeding all expectations and not by a short hand either:- India wants it's share and very soon those honourable gentlemen in Moscow will be dictating prices with Opec like it's their turn to make hay whilst the sunshines, and who can blame them?

You might say; We are heading for a fall.

There were signs following Katrina, New Orleans cops throwing away their badges, raping, looting, maybe killing, cannibalism could have followed.

You cannot expect Darwinian Theology as you refer to it, to approve of anything at all! Evolution Darwininan style, needs oil.

Not Christianity, Buddhism, Islam, Judaism or any other form of crack-pot mind bending devious, smart arse, murdering, money grabbing machinery that was ever let loose on the planet.

The road to perdition looms before you, if you want salvation, Get Digging, my little surplice, ruff wearing alter boy (I'm assuming you were an alter boy at some stage of your indoctrination by all of those Priests)your god is subservient to Oil. He can't keep the wolf from the door. Christianity is purely instrumental, like tinsel on the Christmas Tree and everybody pretending they are celebrating the birth of Christ, when it's all a big piss up!

Your a dreamer Spendi.. Get in the real world.

By the way, one cannot tame Lions or Tigers, it's impossible, you can rear them from cubs in a domesticated manner, and amuse yourself with them and scare the living shits out of the neighbours. That's all!

Foxfyre:
What you have written above is a well thought out, reasoned response and I thank you for it. It is, however, a far more rosy view of the current, I hesitate to use the word battle because some of the heat has been taken out of the ID camp's activities so I will say, argument.

Any science teacher who would dare to say that Intelligent Design is untestable, even though it IS untestable, in front of say someone like a Monica Goodling, would spend the rest of the semester defending that statement of fact in the classroom and probably in some court. Remember there is a supposed war on religion going on in the United States, ask Bill O'Reilly, and the soldiers of Christ have decided not to play nice anymore.

It is an educational disaster that is looming, at just the moment that this nation needs millions (not an overstatement) of new engineers, technicians and scientists to provide us with the knowledge and ideas for the future, these IDers and their ilk are doing everything in their power to undercut the work Science does.

And it's a very easy thing for them to do. It's about answers. Because people of faith have all the answers, (the answer to every question is the power of God.) any question not answerable by Science is believed to be a confirmation of their belief. Of course, it's not, Science would say that research will find the answers, it just hasn't found them yet. That's not good enough for people of faith.

People of faith are never wrong, the answer is always God, science is often wrong and wrong-headed and stupefying off course, but that is part of the work to find the facts. People of faith, having never been wrong, see trial and error as a flawed process.

Now, if you are a kid in school and you are presented with the idea that there is an easy answer to everything or you might have to really do some work to discover the actual facts, which do you think the kid will choose??

In the past five years, while we are engaged in this debate over whether there is such a thing as an irreducible complexity pointing to the existence of a supernatural power the nations of China and India together have produced a million degreed engineers and scientists.

Per year.

That's according to the author of The World is Flat.

Joe(but that probably not of any consequence, right?)Nation

Mathos wrote-



After reading that incomprehensible tripe I decided in half a micro-second not to bother my head proceeding any further with what could only be a continuation of the same.

If you would like to begin again in a proper manner I will consider what you have to say on the matter of "Total anti-IDism". Failing that you have only an audience of assertion maniacs at your disposal.

Such an introductory sentence would be laughed out of any serious debate and, as we had been discussing future education policy, that is what this debate is rather than a vehicle for your personal rants.

You can't handle it Spendipus....A pity........ not a surprise!

Joe wrote-



Once again "these IDers" are being defined by you Joe. If they are "doing everything in their power to undercut the work Science does", that is only to be expected since that is how you define them.

It is possible that there are other causes for the "educational disaster that is looming", if indeed it is looming and not simply being asserted to be.

"When the soul, growing clearer,
Sees God no nearer,
The arch-fiend Pride
Mounts at her side,
Foiling her high emprise,
Sealing her eagle eyes,
And, when she fain would soar,
Make Idols to adore,
Changing the pure emotion
Of her high devotion,
To a skin-deep sense
Of her own eloquence."

Matthew Arnold.

By their fruits ye shall know them, spendius, I haven't defined anyone except by what their words, thoughts and actions have shown them to be.

And,

Golly, did anyone say anything about a sole cause? As to the looming, you can sit back and relax.

Joe(right where the rest of the world wants you to be.)Nation

And here you seem to me to make the typical presumption claimed by most 'liberals' and even a few 'conservatives' that you possess special clairvoyance and/or other gifts to know what somebody's words, thoughts, and actions show them to be based on a post you don't like on A2K.

You might at least be smart enough to qualify such a statement that so-and-so appears to you to be.... and/or gives you the impression that..... rather than claim insights or perception that you simply do not have. It would also probably provide more accuracy in perception from time to time too.

That Joe(doesn't have the insight into poofism)Nation is a contradiction in terms. How does one support poofism without the necessary evidence in logic and common sense? Just because IDers claim only they can see it?

All I can say, gentle friends, is that Jesus didn't qualify his statement.

Joe(I don't remember claiming any special powers, when did listening to what someone says become extraordinary?)Nation

Joe wrote-



It isn't that Joe. It is that you are picking your own versions of ID out and then using them to attack all non-materialist conceptions.



If you read Veblen's Higher Learning in America you might discover a much more serious cause to what you fear which, incidentally I don't fear. It is you who presented ID as the cause. Not me. I am relaxed.



That looks to me, if not you, as defining IDers as those who are doing "everything in their power to undercut the work of Science". And that isn't true for all. I'm opposed to that myself.

c.i.- If you can bother yourself with the trouble you might usefully engage with Spengler's thoughts on money theory and the discovery of double-entry book-keeping. Then you might realise that modern capitalism was "poofed" into existence by an intelligent (or otherwise, depending how it turns out) designer/s. I presume you grasp the concept of "gearing". The evidence and logic is there for you to see.

Mathos wrote-



There was nothing to handle. You had failed to handle the Zulu post. Why would I bother with a reply to something I hadn't said?

If the modern economy was "poofed into existence," what would have been the consequences without that happening? No beer for you! LOL

SPENDIPUS SAID


There was nothing to handle. You had failed to handle the Zulu post. Why would I bother with a reply to something I hadn't said?


The Zulu stuff is school boy stuff Pussy-Cat, it's Rorkes Drift sentimentality for yester-year.

You are trying to keep the kids heads full of tripe and indoctrinate cock-a-hoop gods into their skulls, simply because you are afraid to acknowledge your own weaknesses and failings.


You feel you have a responsibility to ensure the world of your no doubt pleasurable youth is seen to continue for eternity, wishful thinking with pie eye technology Puss.

Then there is the guilt factor, most Catholics have this, they get older and reflect on all the pomp and spleandour of mans making in the name of a non-existent god, it brings tears to their eyes. They rummage in drawers for old crucifixes and rosary beads and repeat the Hail Mary, you remember that don't you ? The Act of Contrition it was referred to, and what about your Communion, I bet that has the sentimental tears flowing. They seek absolution, absolution from what Pussy-cat, tell us about your sins and how you long to make a confession! I bet Zimmerman's knocking on heavens door is right up your street, with your catholicism and the silly confessional box! Tell me about Father who or whatever he was, with the grace of god shining down on him, giving him the power to forgive sins! It makes me want to puke.

The cross my dear floundering little innocent is in The Ball Park.

Mathos, my leetle lurve,

The Zulu post was not about Zulus. I could have chosen any number of religious dogmas to make the point.

You are supposed to be informing us what "Total anti-ID" looks like. Your post could just as easily have been written by any anti-Catholic religious fanatic. An IDer of another stamp. Luther, Calvin and Zwigli did that stuff centuries before Rorkes (sic) Drift. If you think Rorkes(sic) Drift is old-fashioned you should read up on that lot. They make your stuff look like an editorial in Woman's Home Furnishings, which is a defunct magazine specialising in selling nails with which to nail blokes up on the cross of female hegemony and tart's knickers curtains at all the windows.

A militant Islamic mullah or an Old Testament nutter might well agree with everything you vomit.

Did you not know that auricular confession is the starting point of the Western style of auto-biography and all of our Western art which so distinguishes us from all the rest of recorded humanity.

Tell us what an anti-ID world would look like.

We will decide whether to buy into it or not when you have outlined its major characteristics.

apendi, once again attempting to show us that obtuseness is fashionable

No matter how you posture and whine to the contrary, there is but 1 ID movement extant (at least for now). It comes to us from Paley, through the writings of Richard Owen, then Henry Morris, and finally it is revived as a work around to the series of stunning defeats handed to "Creation SCience" and "Flood Geology". The most recent flogger is Phillip Johnson and his henchpeople .
To borrow from Judge Overton"If ID were science, why would you need a law to teach it?"

Hadn't heard of Judge Overton before now, but he's a mental giant based on his statement. Repeated: "If ID were science, why would you need a law to teach it?"

Without a doubt! Great overall post BTW.

It is sad isn't it?

But he is right about ID not being the only problem with American education although I never said that it was. (That's called thought-shifting)

The proponents of Intelligent Design have their work cut for them. They must do the research and find the evidence that proves, or, at the very least, indicates that what they postulate as true is true. That might take awhile.

Joe(until the twelfth of never)Nation