Intelligent Design Theory: Science or Religion?

Coolwhip wrote-

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Well, after some 12 000 posts I really think we're making progress on this thread!

I agree. We do seem to have lost those who debate with ignorant, blurted assertions and replaced them with a more open and thoughtful cast of mind. That would constitute progress but the question is whether the topic will retain interest from any A2Kers who are seriously involved in American educational policy.

It is a cliche here that when America sneezes we catch a cold. I would consider that an exclusive teaching of evolution in American schools would cause a dose of chicken flu and I do not see anyway of teaching it in schools that have any religious or artistic content in their curricula. It is not a half-way measure. Scientific methodology brooks no alternatives.

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The rejection of religion, allowing for a moment that human nature in its mass manifestations could or would tolerate such a thing, cannot ever be piece-meal. The supports of religion have to be rejected along with the restraints. Scientific methodology has no other position as Mr Huxley almost dared to show.

It is a similar situation to that of the "ideal" immigrant from Europe to America who saw himself as escaping from discriminatory laws, rigid social structures, compulsory military service, limitations on enterprise and aspirational goals and restricted physical space. His rejection of the country of his ancestors likewise could not be piece-meal. He had to become "American" and give up his past, his language and the thoughts which that language expresses and even his ways of eating and dressing and living.

One supposes Walt Whitman, Sam Clemens, Thorstein Veblen, Andrew Carnegie and W.C. Fields to approximate to the "ideal" immigrant type but I don't know for sure. Oliver Hardy even. General Patton.

Not all immigrants would be "ideal" of course.

To give up religion, which exclusive scientific teaching requires, is, perhaps, an even more dramatic alteration than giving up the country of one's birth because it involves much more than the simple change of the geographical position of the body. It represents a whole new way of thinking and feeling. It may even represent the abnegation of feeling as well.

The anti-IDer (on here) seems to me to be arguing for the abandonment of the restraints of religion whilst at the same time taking advantage of the supports it provides without acknowledging their existence either consciously as a cynic (in it for the money) or unconsciously as a clown.

I would not attempt to argue with an anti-IDer who recognised the supports of religion and still favoured abandoning them along with the restraints on any other grounds that those of social consequences. It is a ridiculous idea.

I would expect such an "ideal" anti-IDer to be eminently sexually selectable by the ladies and would understand and sympathise with his personal situation. What little we know of requests to sperm banks run on business principles I cite in evidence.

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Spendi,

I "believe" that the restraints on behavior that now a days are reputed to be provided by religion are in actuality determined by the necessities required to have the society that we belong to survive.

As such the behaviors are "selected for" by the society, with no more thought necessary than that utilized by an algae that joins up with a fungus to form a society of lichens.

The Godhead, whatever one calls it, is merely a shorthand expression for the authority of that particular society.

Since there are at least four major societies kicking each other around the world today that do have some minor differences in how they treat their members and their opponents it would appear to the disinterested observer that it doesn't really make much difference.

Evolution has its rules and survival, whether of an individual, or a specie, or a society will adhere to them.

Idea

IMO the sooner we quit claiming some "Divine Authority", Designer, or "Creator" for our problems or rewards the quicker that we can get on with other things.

I think it simply foolish that the best and highest efforts of mankind are concerned with killing other men. Not intelligent at all Exclamation

We have already had some fifteen thousand or more years of this foolishness. Isn't it time to recognize and reconsider our supersticions Question

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cicerone imposter wrote:

spendi: I don't think ID should be taught at all. Nor evolution theory. Not to kids.

Nor Creation Theories either

Probably children should not be allowed in bars, whorehouses or churches either till they are at least fourteen or so.

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I agree with almost all of the last two posts.

My only quibble is with-

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I think it simply foolish that the best and highest efforts of mankind are concerned with killing other men.

I don't think "foolish" is quite the right word. The less men there are the better is my position.

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Are you sure you mean that "probably".

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Spendi,

My hypothesis is simply that there ought to be a better way than raising our kids with all the attendant bother and expense just to have them killed because of evolutionary necessity.

We should be smart enough to be able to figure out some better way rather than use wars, starvation, and pollution as our "default setting".

So far we don't seem to be Crying or Very sad

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You could try not having kids. (See This Be The Verse by Philip Larkin).

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In order for that strategy to work it has to be accomplished by all societies.

Aye, there's the rub.

If our religious and political leaders cannot even agree on the name of an imaginary Godhead what's the chances of them agreeing on "birth control".

Since obviously our leaders are not intelligent enough to limit births then we are left with the default option.

This is not intelligent Exclamation

Nor even too bright Crying or Very sad

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spendius wrote:

If you are not aware of the arguments for removing evolution theory from classrooms for underage people, which Vengo has been brought to agree with, along with millions of others, perhaps you might consider reading the thread where a few of the milder ones have been given an airing.

Oh please, I was hardly brought to agree with that viewpoint. That suggests that you won an argument, not that you just brought up a point that I happened to agree with.

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aka --

I was simply making a suggestion in response to

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there ought to be a better way

which is a version of

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something should be done

Every US baby, living 80 years, will consume 2,100 barrels of oil. Which basically means, by your own argument, that if you want babies you want some of them to be killed out of US evolutionary necessity.

I don't think what ought to be done can be settled over a coffee table table discussion the gist of which is that something should be done with a car park full of SUVs and hearts all a bleeding and the hands all a wringing.

Vengo- I didn't win any arguments. The argument wins the argument. I didn't invent the argument. I was just taught it. It's obvious.

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You didn't present any arguments that I agreed with, you presented a single idea and didn't back it up, but it is an idea I agree with.

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Vengo-

You wrote-

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I guess I can get behind the notion that neither theory should be taught until students can get a full grasp on it. You don't see people teaching calculus to students who only know how to add and subtract.

I'm sorry if I misunderstood that.

Had you read the thread, which I have, you would know that I opposed the teaching of evolution theory in schools for reasons which I gave. I didn't give some reasons on account of the sensitivities I expect to operate on a site such as A2K. I also argued on many occasions that ID theory not only should not be taught but could not be because it isn't a theory at all. It is a complete mystery glimpsed through art.

I can't be expected to rehearse arguments I have previously given for every new entrant to this thread.

I pointed out that information had been given on here which showed (I presume it was correct) that many biology teachers leave evolution alone and that I agreed with that position.

I thought you had agreed as well. I apologise if I read you incorrectly.

One needs to be aware that some students are exceedingly bright and influential within their peer group. What might seem innocuous dry science to most is not to all to those and particularly not to those who might have read some Freud.

I have just read Geoffrey Gorer's The Americans and I can see now more clearly the difficulties you are under with such a dynamite topic.

A first, and admittedly crude oversimplification, might be that from that book and from other books I have read, as well as posts on A2k, anti-ID is decidedly "un-American". Whether or not it becomes "American" is really what this debate is about.

I have no view on whether it should or shouldn't. If Mr Gorer's analysis is anything to go by the tenets of evolution are not accepted in practice by Americans. If one teaches a theory applicable to higher animals and that humans are higher animals and that, according to Freud, and many others, to live in opposition to one's evolved nature is the cause of most ill-health both physical and mental, a bright student might come to certain conclusions and communicate them to his peers in language they can understand and relating to matters they have the keenest interest in.

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Here are some real anti-ID ideas.

This is the Marquis de Sade defending materialism-

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People offer us as an objection that materialism makes man simply a machine, which they find very derogatory to humanity; will that humanity be much more honoured when you say man acts under the secret impulsions of a spirit or something which animates him somehow?

The esteem which so many people have for spirituality seems to have its only motive in the impossibility in which they find themselves of defining it in an intelligible manner.....when they say to us that the soul is finer than the body they tell us nothing except that that of which we have absolutely no knowledge must be far more lovely than that of which we have some faint idea.

He does, of course, deny the existence of free will as also does the modern Materialist Theory of Mind (see DM Armstrong, Ryle, Amaldi & Co).

He places the argument against free will in the mouth of Cardinal Bernis which is too long to quote here.

The divine Marquis also gives his Mother Superior the task of defining "reason" in her instruction of Juliette-

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It is the faculty given to me by nature to determine me in favour of one line of conduct as opposed to another, according to the pleasure or pain involved; a calculation obviously determined by the senses. Reason.......is the balance with which we weigh objects and by which...we know what we ought to think by their mutual relation.....The first effect of reason is to assign an essential difference between the object that appears and the object that is perceived. Representitive perceptions of an object are again different. If it shows us objects as being absent, but formerly present, that is called memory. If it shows us objects without warning us of their absence that is called imagination, and that is the true source of all our errors....in that we suppose a real existence in the objects of these interior perceptions and believe that they exist apart from us, since we conceive them apart from us. To make this distinction clear I will give this branch of ideas the name of "objective idea" to distinguish it from a true perception which I will call a "real idea"....The infinitesimal point, so essential to geometry, is an "objective idea"; bodies and solids are "real".....Before proceeding further it must be remarked that the confusion of these two groups of ideas is extremely common....People were forced to imagine general terms for groups of similar ideas; and they called "cause" any thing which produces some change in a body independent of it, and "effect" any change produced by a cause. As these terms call up for us a more or less confused image of existence, action, reaction, change, the habit of using them has made us think that they correspond to a clear and distinct perception....People are unwilling to reflect that since all things act and react on one another incessantly they produce and undergo change at the same time.

Mr Gorer, whose quotes I am quoting adds here-

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This idea has considerable importance in his (de Sade's) analysis of sex and other instincts.

It follows from this that words should be examined with the greatest caution.

Then de Sade again-

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Like all the fools with the same principles you will reply to me that all these [problems of the soul, etc.] are mysteries; but if they are mysteries you understand nothing about them, in which case how can you decide affirmatively about a thing of which you are incapable of forming any idea? To believe in or affirm a thing one must at least know what one is believing in and affirming. To believe in the immateriality of the soul is equivalent to saying that one is convinced of a thing of which it is impossible to form any "real" notion; it is believing in words without attaching any meaning to them; to affirm that a thing is what one says it is is the height of folly and vanity.

One might say that assertions are thus religious beliefs in which one's own ego is the divine authority.

On the record of this thread the anti-IDers are far more religiously inclined that I am and by some distance. It is just that they are their own divinity in the service of self interest but, one hopes, not in its sensual aspect, and naturally jealous of other divinities.

The thing though about agreed "mysteries" is that they provide for certain human needs which materialism can never do and it is irresponsible of materialists not to recognise the fact of those needs and to provide explanations of how they will satisfy them.

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How about this Anti-ID idea: If ID is to be accepted as science, we have to allow science to get its hands on God for the purposes of testing. who what when where why and how does God act, science asks these questions of every force in the universe.

The problem there, is that the bible itself is full of passages objecting to the testing of God, and passages that tell us things like "even the wise won't know the coming of the lord." One of the gospels even stresses that the disciples, the people closest to Jesus during his stay on earth, didn't know him. Practically everything he does is followed by baffled disciples wondering what exactly it is that they're dealing with.

From a religious stand-point, I see no reason why we can't just accept that God made the universe in all of its glory, and leave science to wonder at the mechanics of His creation.

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spendius wrote:

Vengo-
Had you read the thread, which I have, you would know that I opposed the teaching of evolution theory in schools for reasons which I gave. I didn't give some reasons on account of the sensitivities I expect to operate on a site such as A2K. I also argued on many occasions that ID theory not only should not be taught but could not be because it isn't a theory at all. It is a complete mystery glimpsed through art.

I can't be expected to rehearse arguments I have previously given for every new entrant to this thread.

I pointed out that information had been given on here which showed (I presume it was correct) that many biology teachers leave evolution alone and that I agreed with that position.

I thought you had agreed as well. I apologise if I read you incorrectly.

No, I agreed. I've just only been watching the thread long enough to see nothing more than combative arguing between two sides that define themselves as the opposite of the other.

I think you might have a bit too much trust in america's school teachers though. In general, I would only defer to their judgment in matters of no importance.

spendius wrote:

One needs to be aware that some students are exceedingly bright and influential within their peer group. What might seem innocuous dry science to most is not to all to those and particularly not to those who might have read some Freud.

Yah, I know exactly what you're talking about. Even outside of the classroom, whenever a new study comes out that could be construed to say something controversial everyone jumps on top of it and starts yelling things like "This study says having fat friends makes you fat! THIS IS RIDICULOUS!"

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Vengo-

There's no-one on this thread saying that ID should be accepted as science except insofar as to say that the social sciences might study the social consequences of various belief systems. In which case science does have its hands on "God".

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From a religious stand-point, I see no reason why we can't just accept that God made the universe in all of its glory, and leave science to wonder at the mechanics of His creation.

But others can see reasons. It's a way to get on TV for a start. I see no reason why Islamic terrorists can't just accept settling down and behaving like well brought up bourgeois car washers and amuse themselves with golf.

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I think you might have a bit too much trust in america's school teachers though. In general, I would only defer to their judgment in matters of no importance.

That's a shocking thing to say. Do you advise the kids that way. I probably agree though, "in general" and for reasons I have given.

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Yah, I know exactly what you're talking about. Even outside of the classroom, whenever a new study comes out that could be construed to say something controversial everyone jumps on top of it and starts yelling things like "This study says having fat friends makes you fat! THIS IS RIDICULOUS!"

I think that's a bit of a cop-out after I had brought in Freud. I was alluding to the scientific theory that when a female is biologically ready to mate inhibiting her from doing so can cause health problems. All Freud's patients had been inhibited. A bright young man could add that to his list of techniques after a few lessons in evolution theory which has no such concept as age of consent or parental disapproval or long term concern for the welfare of offspring. He can take a bus out of town.

Are you on board with the Marquis's take on materialism and reason? Perhaps you missed the discussion on La Mettrie from whom de Sade derived those ideas and who was the only martyr I know of to the anti-ID cause.

I have never been "arguing".

I read today about the propensity of Americans to "get the hell out of here" as soon as they sniff defeat.

Great speech from Mr Bush I thought.

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spendi: On the record of this thread the anti-IDers are far more religiously inclined that I am and by some distance. It is just that they are their own divinity in the service of self interest but, one hopes, not in its sensual aspect, and naturally jealous of other divinities.

Prove your statement that anti-IDers are far more religiously inclined.

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I already did.

When someone actually believes in an assertion, which is a secret impulsion of a spirit or something which animates him somehow and satisfies and comforts him, and which bears no relation to reality, it is a religious sentiment.

I think if you care to examine the thread you will find anti-IDers have made litanies of such things and that I have been careful to avoid them.

I think you are all quite pious actually. Apart from Vengo who is only pious some of the time.

I now know how it has arisen thanks to reading The Americans. And, as I have said before, the American success story justifies it. Mr Bush made note in his speech today that women have been given the vote in territories the US has influenced.

I wasn't complaining.

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Gee, spendi, you've been on the hootch again! How in the world did you arrive at your conclusion that anti-IDers have a "secret impulsion of a spirit?" You need to refer to any good dictionary and look up "athiest."
We don't believe in "poofism."

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Intelligent Design Theory: Science or Religion?

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