Intelligent Design Theory: Science or Religion?

Spendi, c.i. only said you sounded like a junior nerd.

sorry wande, I think Im going to close out recieving mail updates on this thread. Its too much spendi and not enough of the good stuff. See ya around .

Thanks for everything, farmerman. You gave us a lot of great information.

(I could have closed this thread a long time ago, but spendi needs a place to go to. Apparently, some posters are willing to chat with him.)

I've been telling you lot for months and months he's bloody daft, but you kept encouraging him!

Now he's blown you all into space... I'm surprised at Farmer doing a runner though.


10/1 say's it's a fiddle though, and will still be running at Christmas.

spendi: "...if it wasn't for the etiquette problem which your grown up sensibilities are no doubt accustomed to..."

spendi, I have a clue for you. I have probably heard almost everything that can be considered "insensitive" to the aged ear. Besides, I think you'll share your thoughts as you see fit.

Well- let's see this "good stuff" then. I'm as keen as anybody for some of that.

One can't simply assert that there's some "good stuff" going missing without specifying what it is and providing some. It's pie in the sky otherwise.

To try and shove the onus on me to cover up an inability to answer any proper questions is pathetic. Religion is entirely a social issue and reducing its influence or removing it entirely cannot be discussed seriously with considering the consequences.

I am mildly surprised at the notion that we have the power to close a thread once we have set it running.

Anti-IDers are a busted flush. And some of the things they have said about ordinary Americans who have religious beliefs are a disgrace to civilised discourse.

I have been on my own throughout and have merely presented the arguments, the milder ones, which should have been presented at Dover. They are only words after all.

There are plenty of places to go wande. The internet is a wild and wonderful thing.

It would be easy for me to keep posting on here assuming the thread stays alive. There's plenty of jumping off points up above which can be quoted as starting points for an exploration of this important subject. If no-one viewed them they would still be on the record in case someone might in the future.

Vengo wrote-



Yes I know but I am entitled to a reply I think. I didn't agree that I did sound like that. I think it was just a gratuitous insult and not just to me but to the kids in college who might well be emptying c.i's bedpan in the not too distant future or being part of the aircrew facilitating his safe travel.

spendi, Ofcoarse you are entitled to a reply. Isn't that what chat boards are all about?

What's anti-ID got to do with abolishing religion in society? Anti-ID simply says there is no "God, Allah, Jaweh" etc. that created life here on earth. Religion is wonderful for keeping society in check....er....most of the time anyway, if it's run by smart people.

I think "run by smart people" and "keeping society in check" is an oxymoron.

We're not doing so bad c.i. Have you any idea of what it's like when we are not in check? I know there's some difficulties here and there and media play it all up because vice is more interesting than virtue and give a distorted picture but all in all seeing as what we are like underneath that Christian veneer it's not too bad. I think we are improving taking everything into account. It's a long haul.

You can guarantee that the Vatican hierarchy are pretty smart. No nepotism there. No promotions beyond abilities.

Look at the aid we give out to the world. Maybe it's not enough but it's a mighty pile of stuff. Which other culture ever did that?

Yea, and in Los Angles, the church paid out something like 630 million dollars to people they sexually abused. That's pretty good change in anybody's pocket.

A story like this illustrates the difference between scientific endeavor and religious dogma. Science is ready to change with new information; the religious change nothing, except rhetoric.

African fossils paint messy picture of human evolution


By SETH BORENSTEIN
Associated Press
WASHINGTON ?- Surprising fossils dug up in Africa are creating messy kinks in the iconic straight line of human evolution with its knuckle-dragging ape and briefcase-carrying man.

The new research by famed paleonoloigst Maeve Leakey in Kenya shows our family tree is more like a wayward bush with stubby branches, calling into question the evolution of our ancestors.

The old theory was that the first and oldest species in our family tree, Homo habilis, evolved into Homo erectus, which then became us, Homo sapiens. But those two earlier species lived side-by-side about 1.5 million years ago in parts of Kenya for at least half a million years, Leakey and colleagues report in a paper published in Thursday's journal Nature.

In 2000 Leakey found an old H. erectus complete skull within walking distance of an upper jaw of the H. habilis, and both dated from the same general time period. That makes it unlikely that H. erectus evolved from H. habilis, researchers said.

It's the equivalent of finding that your grandmother and great-grandmother were sisters rather than mother-daughter, said study co-author Fred Spoor, a professor of evolutionary anatomy at the University College in London.

The two species lived near each other, but probably didn't interact with each other, each having their own "ecological niche," Spoor said. Homo habilis was likely more vegetarian and Homo erectus ate some meat, he said. Like chimps and apes, "they'd just avoid each other, they don't feel comfortable in each other's company," he said.

They have some still-undiscovered common ancestor that probably lived 2 million to 3 million years ago, a time that has not left much fossil record, Spoor said.

Overall what it paints for human evolution is a "chaotic kind of looking evolutionary tree rather than this heroic march that you see with the cartoons of an early ancestor evolving into some intermediate and eventually unto us," Spoor said in a phone interview from a field office of the Koobi Fora Research Project in northern Kenya.

That old evolutionary cartoon, while popular with the general public, keeps getting proven wrong and too simple, said Bill Kimbel, who praised the latest findings. He is science director of the Institute of Human Origins at Arizona State University and wasn't involved in the research team.

"The more we know, the more complex the story gets," he said. Scientists used to think H. sapiens evolved from Neanderthals, he said, but now know that both species lived during the same time period and that we did not come from Neanderthals.

Now a similar discovery applies further back in time.

Leakey's team spent seven years analyzing the fossils before announcing their findings that it was time to redraw the family tree ?- and rethink other ideas about human evolutionary history, especially about our most immediate ancestor, H. erectus.

Because the H. erectus skull Leakey recovered was much smaller than others, scientists had to first prove that it was erectus and not another species nor a genetic freak. The jaw, probably from an 18- or 19-year-old female, was adult and showed no signs of any type of malformations or genetic mutations, Spoor said. The scientists also know it isn't H. habilis from several distinct features on the jaw.

That caused researchers to re-examine the 30 other erectus skulls they have and the dozens of partial fossils. They realized that the females of that species are much smaller than the males ?- something different from modern man, but similar to other animals, said study co-author Susan Anton, a New York University anthropologist. Scientists hadn't looked carefully enough before to see that there was a distinct difference in males and females.

Difference in size between males and females seem to be related to monogamy, the researchers said. Primate species that have same-sized males and females, such as gibbons, tend to be more monogamous. Species that are not monogamous, such as gorillas and baboons, have much bigger males.

This suggests that our ancestor H. erectus reproduced with multiple partners.

The H. habilis jaw was dated at 1.44 million years ago. That is the youngest ever found from a species that scientists originally figured died off somewhere between 1.7 and 2 million years ago, Spoor said. It enabled scientists to say that H. erectus and H. habilis lived at the same time.

All the changes to human evolutionary thought should not be considered a weakness in the theory of evolution, Kimbel said. Rather, those are the predictable results of getting more evidence, asking smarter questions and forming better theories, he said.

Loved the-



joke Ed.

I'll read the rest tomorrow when I hope to have stopped laughing.

Methinks this one giggles to himself quite a lot!

I hope we all note that Ed's story may allow for a possibility of some cross breeding between two closely related but separate species.

Crossbreeding would also jibe rather conveniently with Genesis.

Modern humans may simply be the terminal cross.

Ask any beef farmer about "crossbred vigor" and how it affects his bottom line.

Welcome to this thread, edgarblythe. The article you posted is the most interesting contribution we have had in several days.

In what way wande? Let me into the secret. I must be missing something.

Why "surprising".

How can these fossils be creating anything?

What are "messy kinks"?

What's an "iconic straight line"?

And "brief case man" sounds like the article is just for the chosen few who are presumably the pinnacle of evolutionary development the rest of us part way back to the knuckle draggers.

What's scientific about digging in the muck?

I don't know that Mr Leakey is "famed". I'd bet most folks have never heard of him. I have one of his books and that's pretty dire.

And what is a "wayward bush" or "stubby branches"?

That's just the first two short paragraphs. It's drivel. It's nowhere near as interesting as that post I put on which caused strong reactions in some of our viewers.

The only interesting thing about Ed's post is his introduction which I hope to be able to focus on this evening.

Can you imagine all these guys poring over these old stones on $100,000 a year and your bridges are falling down and your army under equipt.

The great Christian leap to the heavens from the Cape hardly got a mention. We are so good its routine and here's you lot with bloody old bones which you know nothing worth knowing about and sit there teleologising anthromomorphic theories into existence so you can pretend to be scientists.

Pure bollocks.

Fancy saying-



on a Science forum.

And then talking about grand-mothers and great grand-mothers.

And "Leakey's team spent seven years analyzing the fossils" could easily be translated into a less flattering construction involving snake oil, smoke, snow, wires, brass bands and friendly journalists.

I'm pushed for time.

Another thing wande-

Ed has been on here before. A few times I think.

I don't recall you extending your gracious welcome to OGI or mapsie and they are recent posters.

Ed introduced the spiel, anything contentious in the press is spiel, with this-



That is short term talk. Within Ed's lifetime. The spiel is concerned at the "unimaginable" level of time. The two ideas are not comparable.

The statement is too generalised and thus not scientific. The idea that "science is ready to change with new information" is not always true. There is the muzzling question which anti-IDers have baulked at dealing with. And the questions raised recently about the control of lust and reproduction which (IMO) is the real reason for fm's departure. Masters and Johnson and Reich, even Freud, are effectively shelved.

But having said that I'll accept that science is ready to change when newly discovered facts emerge in lay terms and when the statement is not subject to severe scrutiny.

In the last 20,000 years religion has changed a lot of things. That is particularly the case with the Christian religion. Other religions such as the ancient Egyptian and Aztec and Maya cultures have, I think it is agreed, led to the destruction of the society in which they had influence.
A too obsessive interest in the journey after death in the one case and human sacrifice in the other being the main agents. Both religious issues. The Pagan religions of the Classical world forbade study of the infinite and the infinitesimal and indefinite numbers on pain of death and were thus condemned to failure.

The subject is far too complex and raises too emotive issues to be examined here but the Christian religion is the intellectual field in which the science of dynamics has arisen. That cannot be disputed. The mechanism or combination thereof being subject to debate but monotheism was possibly the catalyst. Spengler's book and the leads he provides is the best guide I know to this subject but taken seriously they are a lifetime's study.

What I'm trying to say is that the subject can not be studied in the media or in schools and what can be studied in those is not sufficient to justify Ed's statement.

Science has produced Viagra which is utterly demeaning of the feminine. We now have millions of post-menopausal women being subjected to five times a nighters when they don't even wish once in order to satisfy male self-esteem. An erotic act is being transformed into a robotic one. A religion promoting female chastity would be opposed to such a "change" on the basis of the natural facts of their sexuality so a refusal to embrace such a change would self-evidently be approved of by right thinking people.

Science has given us factory farming and that has led to passages like this appearing in our newspapers-



The Catechism of the Catholic Church, (No 2415) reads-



The chickens, a sacred bird in the cradle of civilisation, described above by India Knight in the Sunday Times, is treated in that manner by the billion not for food but food cheap enough to have money left over for gee-gaws. So are cattle and pigs and many other animals whilst the pet dog or cat is pampered out of its very nature. Likewise in the case of women regarding birth control, abortion and the use of Viagra.

Religion doesn't change much Ed because nature doesn't. Judging by our scientific methods of animal husbandry science provides no check to disgust and indignity and has no capacity so to do.

So you suit yourself really whether you favour science over our religion just so long as you know what's on the end of your fork and don't allow some old bones to distract you from what it is to be truly human in the religious sense.

A properly reared chicken here costs $20. So now you know what it is that saves you 17 of them and you do want the empirical truth don't you?

you're not really one to be commenting on what is and is not drivel. i barely understood half of that last rant. and i assure you, it isn't for lack of trying or education.