Intelligent Design Theory: Science or Religion?

Shows a systematic and symmetric lack of knowledge about both history and biology

Cripes! Not again.

Another sodding assertion which means nothing.

Justify it for a change. I know doing that is not usually considered necessary in the world you obviously move in but this is a www job and we expect a little more than such banalities.

Some of us find find them insulting and the ones who don't are irrelevant.

spendi, I think that, hereafter, I shall just poke fun at you, OK?

I presume you mean by that that you can't justify your assertion. It is in the realm of "I was abducted by aliens".

Just to elaborate a bit more on FM's succinct observation.

Read Malthus as to the problems of overpopulation.

Any successful organism whether it be human or virus will breed to the carrying capacity of it own niche, whether it be a continent or a kidney.
The carrying capacity of any niche is expanded by technology.
Any reference to human overpopulation must be related to the levels of technology available

All land masses on Earth were filled to the limit of their capacities long before the modern era. With humans, flies, bacteria or whatever.

Consider how much land it would take to support your family (basic reproducing unit) as a hunter gatherer As a primitive farmer As a modern human

Also consider the effects of disease and weather with respect to population densities. Consider epidemics and the succeptible populations with respect to the densities necessary to support an epidemic.

Just for grins think about what would happen to the populations of Europe without the pumps and pipes necessary for sanitary reasons

Now remove vaccines and antibiotics

Jared Diamonds book "Gun, germs, and steel" is a good read, and I highly recommend it as good background for one who would wish to discuss populations.
Despite the fact that Malthus isn't as popular with the highly moralizing set as he should be the fact remains that on the whole humanity as a species isn't too bright. Amoebae act in much the same manner

And that differs from your response to Spurious over the last few years how?

aka wrote-



I presume you mean "sucks with instinct" which is quite natural for monkeys.

fm made a trite observation about overpopulation which was due to a misreading of something I had said.



I have done. So have many others. Pretty simple stuff actually.



Guffawing is better than grinning according to Rabelais and New York is what you need to consider for that.



Check out my member profile and compare it with fm's. You'll soon see which is the highly moralizing set.

Do you think that the lust and reproduction controls of the Christian world should be removed and allow natural methods of population control to operate instead. There is evidence that such a policy regarding humans would result in depopulation.

**********

In Richard Ellmann's biography of James Joyce, the greatest literary biography of the (20th) century Anthony Burgess called it, there is this-



So beware the compliments. Anti-IDers are putative revolutionaries.

It is well known in intelligent circles where men gather to mull over the way things are that having strenuous opposition strengthens one capacities and that flattery weakens them. The principle even applies to domesticated animals. Being nice to people is very rarely in their best interests; they get sloppier and complacent and stupider and stupider,

I always feel on the balls of my feet when Settin Aah-aah has a go at me and I guess the feeling is reciprocated.

One thrives on the resistance one can stimulate in sport as well as in debate. Compliments are for fops and have an effect on the intellectual centres similar to that of saturated fat on the arteries caused by complimenting the palate.

Settin' Aah-aah wrote-



That ought to annoy fm.

It comes over as a joke but I don't think most of it has been intended as one otherwise there would be no need for his announcement which is merely a weak response to the challenge to justify one of his latest assertions. (Some hopes of that.) Him being ejected from a religious meeting place for causing a disturbance must have been quite funny.

set

I would, in the past, come to his defense when all about were accusing him of being full of ****. I would say that ,"No that is an untrue statement for, he does sport additional space for fecal accumulation".

Set
I would agree with your "selected in" comment. Like I noted on a remote scale all humanity acts similarly to an amoeba. Not surprising considering that all species must have the same basic imperative

There is an evolution of societies similar to evolutions of individual species. The Judeo-Christians and the Judeo-Islamics currently are fine examples of successful societies. And, as the bible says, one society will always attempt to dominate the others. This shows simply that competition is necessary for survival. And this is simply a slightly different version of fitting a species for the niche in which it finds itself.

Intelligent Designers, Gods and Supernatural Beings, and business are merely tools by which one particular society attempts to subdue another. ie, survive to reproduce
Sponges have a similar method.

You'd think that we could do better; but perhaps not

PS,

I didn't see it as a misreading.

aka-

I presume you are addressing yourself to my posts.

I referred to the regulation of lust and reproduction which fm took to mean something to do with overpopulation. That was a misreading.



I don't agree with you. I don't think Christian society acts that way. But I'm not sure what you mean by "on a remote scale". The phrase places you, it seems to me, in metaphysical territory and this is a science forum.

Christian morality seeks to control the basic imperatives of our animality. Are you saying that ultimately we are wasting our time with that and should let it all hang out as a Darwinist really ought to do.



But the evolution of societies is controlled by intelligence whereas the evolution of other species is controlled by blind forces. But the word "similar" offers so many possibilities that it renders the statement pointless.



Doesn't monogamy, or even polygamy, remove competition. Do you mean that monogamous arrangements are ultimately doomed. Doesn't nepotism remove competition. Is nepotism a route to ruin?

I hardly think any Darwinist anti-IDers on here are quite that extreme. I see them as cuddly little teddy-bears with a contrarian agenda.

It seems to me that we are doing quite well under the circumstances. Are you a bleak pessimist?

Set,

If you stand back far enough to see any given society as a whole you will notice that the behavior of any society of intelligent beings is formed by the same imperatives as any other grouping of animals only more so.

This I don't think it is metaphysical at all. Statistically one can predict with some assurance the behavior of the group without necessarily knowing what each individual will do.

Consider world Jewery. It has remained as a society despite being broken up as the various Diasporas took effect. And as long as any portions of the society remain as a viable breeding population the "society" will be relatively intact.

Consider a sponge (or most of them anyway) They are actually a colony of similar animals with somewhat different functions and as long as it is not broken up to the point of being unable to reproduce there will always be sponges. The "society" will be relatively intact.

Since history has been observing the Jews for some four thousand years there is some reason to believe that a given change in environment will cause a response similar to one that has already happened to the society in the past. The Egyptian Exile, The Babylonian Dispersal, and the Nazi "final solution" will all provide clues as to the behavior of Jewish society as a whole.

So therefore by observing the Jews I think it possible to extrapolate their experiences to some other more or less exclusive societies. The Anabaptists and Shakers come immediately to mind but I am certain a historian could come up with many more examples.

I beg to differ also on this point. I do think Christian society acts that way, as much as any other. That is in a manner necessary to insure its survival.
It must act that way if it is to survive. That's how it works, the protestations of priests and philosophers and moralizers are meaningless when confronted with facts.

"But the evolution of society is controlled by intelligence"
I differ again. Intelligence is simply an asset in the battle for survival. Of little more importance than the neck of a giraffe or the four stomachs of a cow.

"Doesn't monogamy or even polygamy remove competition"

No it doesn't. It intensifies it with respect to the individual but it is beneficial with respect to the society. Anyway most modern societies use war to remove enough individuals to maintain whatever equilibrium that it finds satisfactory. Doesn't matter much how a soldier is conceived. A forest tree is self pruning. An oak tree must kill literally thousands of it's descendents. An amoeba must kill many other amoebae or starve itself.There are only so many rocks for a sponge to live on.
The human animal is not much different. When viewed as individual societies there is no real difference. I won't even mention that monogamy in humans is honored more in the breach than in life.

You or a lion or a horse or a tree or a bacterium stand a far greater danger of being damaged by one of your own species than any other cause. That's the way it is. And that IS how it works

No, I am not a bleak pessimist. I hope that one day we can control our societies well enough to "reach for the stars". I'll admit that the last 50,000 years have not inspired much optimism

Despite my long wind there are many more aspects of societal competition as a factor in the development of societal groups that still could be mentioned. I won't

akaMech, Interesting perspective; will have to digest what you wrote, and try to make some sort of response to your thesis.

aka-

Like c.i. I too will have a think before responding.

It is interesting as far as the scientific study of the life process with reference to the evolution of human beings and their social organisation.

I take it you think that civilisation is like the carapace is to turtles and some marine animals.

And that you believe in inevitable destiny in a way that Spengler might sometimes have done. That there's nothing we can do.

I can see the intellectual point of such views but not their practical use.

I'm a social consequences sort of guy, as Mr Blair might have said. I'm not too enamoured of abstractions however sophisticated and abstruse.

The Naked Lunch is what's on the end of your fork.

Spendi, and CI

I'm hoping that my point is than societies, once formed, take on a life of their own and as such can only be turned to the service of humanity with the diligent application of intelligence. This seems to be sorely lacking

The RC Church or the U.S.Senate all have as their prime purpose the survival of the organization. Any benefits to humanity are purely incidental compared to their survival.

The same can be said of a cow

If we cannot understand that even with the best of intentions any society becomes basically a separate organism and as such it's behavior and its requirements closely parallels the requirements of a sponge. Or any other living thing for that matter. A bit quicker though

The sad thing is that humans as a whole do not seem to realize this. We frequently allow the organism to become the master with the same results as the bacteria getting into the wine.

I am not that pessimistic. If we understand how societies work then that is a first step in harnessing them for further use, or at least limiting the collateral damage they inadvertently (?) cause.

Re Philosophy comment--
Figuring out and demonstrating how things work is a properly scientific endeavor.

akaMech, I've given your post some thought, and the following is the best i can come up for now.

Here's my .02c worth; I think the Jewish experience is only one of many that tells us about the human-animal story. We can't possibly arrive at any human imperatives by just studying the Jews. History is replete with the migration of homo sapiens beginning with the first human migration from Africa.

Genghis Kahn, Columbus, Captain Cook, Charles Darwin, Mao Zedong, Hitler, Alexander the Great, Edison, Copernicus, Galileo, Gandhi, all had an impact on humanity beyond their borders and their lifetimes.

The only common thread we have with other animals is the need for water and food.

The governing power of any culture influences how humans live. Animals do not have governments.

Most of us live and die in the same country of birth. That's true for some land animals, but not all.

The size of our planet seems to shrink for humans; animals do not have that perspective unless they are living in the poles (shrinking ice) or lands where their water and food source seems to dry up..

A lot of how we live is an accident of birth. Most animals don't have a choice.

aka-

One of the problems is phrases like-



and-



and the way you use "society".

How far back? How much assurance? Is there a "society" of those endangered species we keep in pens?



I know the argument. It cannot be refuted. It can be rejected. We can intelligently choose to reject it in the service of survival as we still do with atheism. And the doctrine of the survival of the fittest. We are not going to allow a silly fact to do us in. It would be unintelligent. It would make our design look wonky.

And what about the societies that didn't work?

Did they not think that they were acting in a manner necessary to insure their survival?

You are right to say that " there are many more aspects of societal competition as a factor in the development of societal groups that still could be mentioned".

And you are philosophizing and moralizing yourself. Don't you think that your general drift is self-defeating? Shouldn't you be spaced out somewhere not giving a shite about anything. Isn't coming on A2K philosophizing and moralizing meaningless by your own argument.

Or are you just browsing in the top branches or chewing the cud?

It's a pleasant change though. I was getting fed up of shooting sitting ducks.

My mind is already boggled enogh! Speculation is fine, but I love the simplicity of knowing the estimated age of our planet and the fundamentals of evolution. Life forms have a funny way of regenerating itself into more complex ones. That's enough for me!

wande quoted-



The universe, as we call it, isn't "just anything". It isn't right and it isn't wrong and it isn't "out there". If one was to personify it I should imagine it would be quite startled to discover that Mr Davis finds it "just right". I can't see what's "fishy" about it either. Wittgenstein would have wet his pants and then wrote a thesis on humour.

It sounds a great book though for anybody who wants to be more confused that he already is or to get up some fancy wordplay with which to impress at social gatherings.