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Intelligent Design Theory: Science or Religion?

 
 
cicerone imposter
 
  1  
Tue 22 May, 2007 01:22 pm
spendi's run-on sentence of 79-80 words is a new achievement on A2K.
Congrats, spendi!
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spendius
 
  1  
Tue 22 May, 2007 02:35 pm
I can do a lot better than that c.i.

I once spent a whole long hot summer under the trees studying Proust. I chopped as much again out of it.

What did you think of what was said? It was a reasonable example of something fast, plain and simple. Others can judge its nobility. It was intended to provide a brief glimpse of a certain type of sense of humour.

Shakespeare kills me. He was some cynic. He didn't do the melodramatics with the best characters. Just with the complete barmpots.
But it was a bad time to be around. Not like now Eh? It was grisly then.
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cicerone imposter
 
  1  
Tue 22 May, 2007 03:04 pm
I don't doubt how you spend your long, hot summers.

I chuckled at your post, so I must have found humour in it.

But then, I do most of your posts.

Shakespeare is one of English lit's most famous; most of us have been exposed to him in high school and/or college.

Keep the faith. Or, should that be "face."
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Mathos
 
  1  
Tue 22 May, 2007 03:06 pm
Indeed, you are making a 'Right Burke' of yourself today Spendi!
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spendius
 
  1  
Tue 22 May, 2007 03:29 pm
c.i.-Two things to remember about Old Bill are these-

1 There was virtually no middle-class then. The audience was posh and hoi polloi and coarse hoi-polloi at that and you could get strung up for going too far for the likings of the posh.

2- He tangled, at 18, with an experienced woman 10 years older than himself. Dylan did a fair bit of that in his Greenwich Village persona. Some were considerably older in Bob's case.

The theory is that their boyish charm brought out the motherly instinct.

I bet you don't mention those things in your Shakespeare lessons. A lot of those lessons steal Shakespeare away from kids by boring them to death.

Oh-he was from a Catholic family which was hair raising enough on its own without being a satirical comedy writer on top. And the stakes were high and he loved money and he hated the idea of being hung, drawn and quartered at the junction of 56th and Vine.

Donald Wolfit and Vincent Price could do it.
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cicerone imposter
 
  1  
Tue 22 May, 2007 04:07 pm
Loved Vincent Price in all the movies I saw of him. He had a mystique about him that exemplified danger and mischief.
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spendius
 
  1  
Tue 22 May, 2007 05:02 pm
That's right c.i.

You see- I'm not a contrarian at all. Shovelling bullshit out of the way is not being contrarian. It's being sensible.
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farmerman
 
  1  
Tue 22 May, 2007 07:03 pm
It is being contrarian when all of spendis self congratulation is done at the expense (or what he thinks is at the expense) of others. Spendi is some poor schmuck with a philosophy degree and all he can say with his training in the real world is "do you want fries with that?"

On A2k, he can be whatever he wishes and he feels that all things orbit about him.
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gustavratzenhofer
 
  1  
Tue 22 May, 2007 07:06 pm
I guess I never realized the disdain people hold toward Spendius and I have heard myself called on numerous occasions, "The American Spendius"

All this time I thought it was a compliment.
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xingu
 
  1  
Tue 22 May, 2007 07:09 pm
gustavratzenhofer wrote:
I guess I never realized the disdain people hold toward Spendius and I have heard myself called on numerous occasions, "The American Spendius"

All this time I thought it was a compliment.


Gus, I think your jealous. Being Spendius Jr. must be tough to take.
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gustavratzenhofer
 
  1  
Tue 22 May, 2007 07:28 pm
We need to talk more, xingu. I know so little of you. American? Teenager?

These questions have been haunting me.
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spendius
 
  1  
Wed 23 May, 2007 04:14 am
fm wrote-

Quote:
On A2k, he can be whatever he wishes and he feels that all things orbit about him.


I know what all things orbit around. Frank Harris taught me that. He got it off a professor at the Sorbonne who probably got it off Rabelais who probably got it off Ovid who probably got it off Homer who got it from the distant past. It pays to be adaptable.

It's original ideas you have to watch out for.

Quote:
The French chick isn't moving in! Dangit! -littlek
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wandeljw
 
  1  
Wed 23 May, 2007 05:43 am
Welcome to this thread, Gus! Maybe you can take over one of the duties performed by Timber on this thread. Timber had the ability to penetrate the meaning of posts written by spendius. Thus, Timber was somewhat of a restraining influence on spendius. Could you do the same for us?
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spendius
 
  1  
Wed 23 May, 2007 06:17 am
I restrain myself wande.

I wrote a nice post late last night concerning the exhuberance with which the Marquis de Sade assimilated the full-baked anti-IDism of Julien Offroy de La Mettrie who was the founder of a number of other new directions as I have already explained.

I didn't submit it because on reflection I felt it might offend certain delicate sensibilities as it stood. I will try to find a less forthright tone later on for the benefit of those seekers of the truth whose penetrating empiricism we have come to admire.

I'm afraid that your two assertions are utter nonsense but hey- nothing untoward about that eh?

But I too welcome Gus to our deliberations. His ironic use of the word "haunting" does show promise I'll admit.
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wandeljw
 
  1  
Wed 23 May, 2007 09:06 am
CREATION MUSEUM UPDATE

Quote:
Cleaning the T. Rex cage must have been interesting
(Marty Russell, Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal, May 23, 2007)

I would hate to have been the guy whose job it was to round up and herd a couple of T. rexes onto the ark.

This Memorial Day weekend marks the opening of the new Creation Museum in Petersburg, Ky., which purports to tell the history of the world based on creationism instead of evolution.

I'm not sure which is scarier, that children will be exposed to a very unscientific view of how we came to be here or that private individuals ponied up $27 million to build this museum. It's scary to think that there are enough uneducated individuals out there with that kind of money.

In the museum's view, the Earth is just a few thousand years old. But to explain away those pesky dinosaurs that keep popping up in the fossil record, the museum admits that dinosaurs were real but that they shared the planet with us humans and were probably among the animals saved by Noah's ark.

Spare me. If humans and dinosaurs had lived side by side we wouldn't be here today. We'd all be dino snacks. But aside from the logistics of trying to eke out a living while dodging huge reptiles, science has proven that the dinosaurs lived millions of years ago and died out about 65 million years ago.

You can't argue with carbon dating because it's how we all got here since dating is essential to the survival of us carbon-based life forms.

The museum, founded by the group Answers in Genesis, claims it is not targeting public school children in an attempt to circumvent the teaching of evolution and failed attempts to include creationism in those teachings.

But as many as 3,000 educators, mostly college professors, have signed petitions protesting the twisted and highly inaccurate portrayal of the Earth's history. Their concern, and rightfully so, is that exposing young children to such teachings is tantamount to telling them that Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny really are real.

Adults can believe anything they want, but children need to be told the truth. And the truth doesn't mean having to abandon your religious beliefs. Evolution, though a natural process, is still every bit as mysterious and wonderful as the idea that someone created all of this in a week and then took a day off.

I suspect that the Creation Museum will be as extinct as a dodo bird in a short time because I believe the vast majority of people in this country are smart enough to know that evolution has a lot more scientific foundation than creationism and they won't buy it or the $10 admission ticket.

And I also suspect that a large number of the people who do will do so more for a good laugh than an educational experience.
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cicerone imposter
 
  1  
Wed 23 May, 2007 09:09 am
Wandel, People will pay the $10 admission ticket, because they want to reinforce poofism in their own minds. With like-minded believers attending, they will support each other's ego that it's gotta be right, because I'm not alone.
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spendius
 
  1  
Wed 23 May, 2007 11:08 am
What one needs to remember, scientifically speaking, is that the Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal consists of rolled out wood pulp with ink inserts in it and derives the bulk of its income from advertising and premium rate phone schemes of one sort or another. The need to fill up the space on the backsides of the adverts is an expense and the best way to keep that as low as possible, something of a priority, is to employ people who are not fit for much else. The shrine at Lourdes is France has attracted over 200,000,000 visitors on the promise of miracle cures for the sick. At today's prices the cost of making a visit is probably of the order of, say, £400, on average. Which comes to about £80,000,000,000 or $ 160,000,000,000. (about). Which makes $27 million look like a small bag of potatoes.

What that Hadj thing they have in Mecca involves is possibly incalcuable.

I had always thought dinosaurs were vegetarians on the Darwinian principle that they had great difficulty is sneaking up on any prey.

I had always also thought that people who felt scared were best advised to call one of the emergency services.

Quote:
You can't argue with carbon dating because it's how we all got here since dating is essential to the survival of us carbon-based life forms.


That makes my Mum and Dad sound like two pieces of coal or possibly one piece having had a fall of soot dumped on it.

Quote:
The museum, founded by the group Answers in Genesis, claims it is not targeting public school children in an attempt to circumvent the teaching of evolution and failed attempts to include creationism in those teachings.


On the strength of the number of assertions we are asked to believe on this thread, God knows how many there must be in daily discourse, it would be unreasonable to exclude that one on the basis of prejudice.

What is funny is imagining people in NE Mississippi sat reading that stuff on their porches after dinner and thinking it is of the slightest significance.
0 Replies
 
rosborne979
 
  1  
Wed 23 May, 2007 01:22 pm
wandeljw wrote:
CREATION MUSEUM UPDATE

Quote:
Cleaning the T. Rex cage must have been interesting
(Marty Russell, Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal, May 23, 2007)

The museum, founded by the group Answers in Genesis, claims it is not targeting public school children in an attempt to circumvent the teaching of evolution and failed attempts to include creationism in those teachings.

But as many as 3,000 educators, mostly college professors, have signed petitions protesting the twisted and highly inaccurate portrayal of the Earth's history. Their concern, and rightfully so, is that exposing young children to such teachings is tantamount to telling them that Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny really are real.

Adults can believe anything they want, but children need to be told the truth. And the truth doesn't mean having to abandon your religious beliefs. Evolution, though a natural process, is still every bit as mysterious and wonderful as the idea that someone created all of this in a week and then took a day off.


People still have the right to raise their kids any way they like. Our society frowns on child abuse, but hasn't yet gone so far as to equate disinformation and bad advice from parents, as a form of child abuse.

Many many people still believe in pseudoscience and urban legends and they propogate those ideas to their kids. Creationism is just another in a long list of irrational concepts carried by the general population. I don't believe we will ever get to the point (nor do we want to) where parents are prohibited from exposing their kids to certain ideas.

wandeljw wrote:
CREATION MUSEUM UPDATE

Quote:
Cleaning the T. Rex cage must have been interesting
(Marty Russell, Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal, May 23, 2007)

I suspect that the Creation Museum will be as extinct as a dodo bird in a short time because I believe the vast majority of people in this country are smart enough to know that evolution has a lot more scientific foundation than creationism and they won't buy it or the $10 admission ticket.


Maybe, but I wouldn't bet on it.
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Chumly
 
  1  
Wed 23 May, 2007 01:46 pm
spendius wrote:
I restrain myself wande.
I've heard about your self-restraint.
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spendius
 
  1  
Wed 23 May, 2007 03:10 pm
It isn't voluntary Chum I assure you. They didn't used to wring blokes necks when I was young at anywhere near the same rate they do now. When you see as many blokes get burned as I have you really can't ignore it.
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