Intelligent Design Theory: Science or Religion?

aka wrote-

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Add the power of a God to your already bleak view of human nature and it's really terrible. At least Atheists cannot claim a higher power as justification for their immoral actions.

My bleak Sadean view of human nature is not down to me. Human nature caused that.

And atheists cannot do immoral actions. They can do illegal ones of course. It is well known in philosophical circles that pleasure can be derived from the exercise of virtues and thus no special merit accrues. Some philosophers think all pleasure is sexual. M. de Sade thought the obligations of gratitude to be intolerable. " A man by a gratuitous kind action puts himself above you, hurts your pride and causes you thereby to feel an unpardonable mortification."

That's why feminists hate us to open doors for them or buy them drinks.

Mailer phrases it differently but means the same.

I'm not going into bat against that crew.

A kindness from an atheist is a curved-ball or a googly, which is much trickier.

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----Yes, but perhaps the consent of the governed means something

What?? When you need a battery of expert commentators to attempt to explain the difference between the two choices on offer??

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The Princes also form a little, rather exclusive society amongst themselves. Athiests also know better than to marry their cousin-sister-mother-father.

You've missed the point. It doesn't matter a shite what the powerless and skint do in that regard as long as they supply cannon fodder and "hands". And you've oversimplified to suit your simple point.

When the crown (the purple) is at stake too many claimants cause weakness and strife on a grand scale. And you have forgotten the wives and concubines.

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I very seriously disagree with your assumption that Atheism has no morality.----I explained how morality came about in social animals. I seriously doubt the morality of anyone that claims morality issued forth from an imaginary Deity.

You didn't explain that to me. Morality doesn't issue forth from a Deity. It is said to. It's how it is said that matters. The rhetoric.

When the crown (the purple) is at stake too many claimants cause weakness and strife on a grand scale.

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That is a seriously debateable assumption.

Not to me. And not to any of the serious writers and movie-makers who have covered the matter in my experience.

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It would take too long to explain that dehumanizing persons is an accepted military tactic. Cowboys will be cowboys. I have no ready alternative to Guantanamo but I think something of this sort is regrettably necessary.

The apologetics of the sophists as predicted.

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Christian morality is often an oxymoron, and usually incomprehensible.

Assertions in a diluted form. The "often" and the "usually" are just loose talk. It often blows a gale and it's usually cold in December.

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Kosovo, Iraq, Somalia all put that paragraph down as simply wishful thinking that has absolutely no basis in observations.

Not at all as George pointed out in his gentle but firm manner. Deviations from Christian morality, and it is Christian morality I'm talking about and not others, say nothing to undermine the ideals of the morality. As I pointed out such things prove that the morality needs to be strengthened.

I think you are a bit weighed down by what Spengler called the "historical psuedomorphosis". You can't walk away from Christianity just by saying you have.

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Vengo wrote-

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Except when that higher power is that natural law that the strongest shall prevail.

What I wonder at, is Spendius alternating description of evolutionism as atheism and then as its own religion. It seems to me that he should pick sides, and decide whether evolutionism is secular and therefore in his view corrosive to society, or its own religion, and therefore, in his view, hypocritical.

I didn't describe evolutionism as atheism. I couldn't have done because the idea has never crossed my mind. Evolutionism simply offers a non-miraculous explanation of the development of life forms from the beginning of life without an explanation of the origin of the starting point. It thus leaves open a Divine originator. The atheist denies that. To him there is no Divine originator for anything. It is merely the pointless whizzbangpop of happenstance with no meaning.

Evolutionism is not a religion because it limits itself to what it can prove, or thinks it can prove on the evidence it selects, and it therefore requires no beliefs. It can be used to justify anything except faith, hope, charity, love, art, beauty, self-sacrifice or anything else which allows humans to imagine themselves to have a vestige of dignity and it can only produce dignity from the exercise of power and preferably untrammeled power. Hence the constant use of assertions which are an effete form of King Kong beating his chest with his fists. And evolutionism asserts that the "progress" is upward towards ever more killing and destruction. Humility being incoherent obviously. Hence Jesus was mad and thus all his teachings worthless. And the longer the neck of a giraffe the more successful the giraffe was and thus more attractive to the ladies despite it taking aeons to extend necks like that and trees changing to shrubs at a far faster rate or even to grasslands where it performs with singular awkwardness and self-evident inefficiency. Better stick to fins becoming wings on the assumprtion that it is progress to fly rather than swim skipping conveniently over the uselessness for swimming of a fin which is half wing and the uselessness for flying of a wing which is half fin synergistically accompanied with the myriad other changes required to "relocate" from water to land and airwaves and all taking tens or hundreds of millions of years which renders the process unobservable (teleological explanations of carefully chosen fossils by expert, peer-revied, experts [it is said] - well paid at least - notwithstanding). {spendi has nurse rub eyelids with snake oil}.

It is so much easier to have God having done it with a magic wand and the first principle of evolution is the conservation of energy. Classier too. Saves us thinking we are grubs which allows us, some of the time, to behave in ways grubs don't. Some of us anyway.

An explanation of evolution by a young lady with a freshly minted teacher's certificate who just scraped through her exams to a class of bored and pissed off juveniles who are wondering who is going to start shooting is so laughable that one can only think that the subject is got up for adults in committees and legal offices to beat each other about the head with,get their names up in lights and follow the precepts in their source book-On The Origins of Invoices by Anon. It becomes tittering jellystuff when one thinks she blushes at a concise definition of smegma and is dreading finding an interested student with a high IQ and a taste for causing embarrassment.

It has been said (whoops) that the idea came from drawing an analogy with the progress of human life being achieved, under the guidance of the Church, to life in general, which is stretching analogy further than Auntie Bessie dare stretch her corsets. Having "discovered" the progress in nature ( an ability to feed on new things) the evolutionists then circled around to use their "discovery" to justify their social belief that it was right and proper, divinely sanctioned and perfectly natural for them to luxuriate in the productions of the less fit, whose noses were ground in the dirt, along with those of their children, the ones who survived such exposure, without reference to the chance of their birth.

Evolutionists assume that "adapted" means well designed which is pushing the boat out further that Auntie Bessie would risk at the theme park. Whenever I watch nature films I cannot help thinking what a bunch of silly sods these life forms are. Are their adaptations as good as all that considering the timescale they have had to get their act togetther?

Of course it's corrosive- it's anti-education. Education began in religious settings. The idea that not teaching evolution in schools will hold back the progress of the science of the Christian world is an idea that only the very simplest sucker would swallow. It's the idea of a person with such a low view of his fellow man that he could only have figured it out from introspection.

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spendius wrote:

I didn't describe evolutionism as atheism. I couldn't have done because the idea has never crossed my mind. Evolutionism simply offers a non-miraculous explanation of the development of life forms from the beginning of life without an explanation of the origin of the starting point. It thus leaves open a Divine originator. The atheist denies that. To him there is no Divine originator for anything. It is merely the pointless whizzbangpop of happenstance with no meaning.

Even without God, our universe still has meaning to me. How couldn't it? I live inside of it after all.

spendius wrote:

Evolutionism is not a religion because it limits itself to what it can prove, or thinks it can prove on the evidence it selects, and it therefore requires no beliefs. It can be used to justify anything except faith, hope, charity, love, art, beauty, self-sacrifice or anything else which allows humans to imagine themselves to have a vestige of dignity and it can only produce dignity from the exercise of power and preferably untrammeled power. Hence the constant use of assertions which are an effete form of King Kong beating his chest with his fists. And evolutionism asserts that the "progress" is upward towards ever more killing and destruction. Humility being incoherent obviously. Hence Jesus was mad and thus all his teachings worthless. And the longer the neck of a giraffe the more successful the giraffe was and thus more attractive to the ladies despite it taking aeons to extend necks like that and trees changing to shrubs at a far faster rate or even to grasslands where it performs with singular awkwardness and self-evident inefficiency. Better stick to fins becoming wings on the assumprtion that it is progress to fly rather than swim skipping conveniently over the uselessness for swimming of a fin which is half wing and the uselessness for flying of a wing which is half fin synergistically accompanied with the myriad other changes required to "relocate" from water to land and airwaves and all taking tens or hundreds of millions of years which renders the process unobservable (teleological explanations of carefully chosen fossils by expert, peer-revied, experts [it is said] - well paid at least - notwithstanding). {spendi has nurse rub eyelids with snake oil}.

I'm surprised to hear you say that evolutionism restricts itself to what it can prove, and dispenses with beliefs.

I think you're falling into an interesting fallacy though, when you talk about how evolutionism is unable to justify what makes life dignified. Evolution isn't about explaining human dignity. It's about trying to explain how life developed, and develops. Natural selection is certainly not up for debate, even hardened creationists accept the fact that animals that can survive will reproduce, while animals that are ill-suited to their environments will not, leaving only the anti-bacterial resistant bacteria in the petri dish.

spendius wrote:

It is so much easier to have God having done it with a magic wand and the first principle of evolution is the conservation of energy. Classier too. Saves us thinking we are grubs which allows us, some of the time, to behave in ways grubs don't. Some of us anyway.

Easier to accept, but far more difficult to understand.

spendius wrote:

It has been said (whoops) that the idea came from drawing an analogy with the progress of human life being achieved, under the guidance of the Church, to life in general, which is stretching analogy further than Auntie Bessie dare stretch her corsets. Having "discovered" the progress in nature ( an ability to feed on new things) the evolutionists then circled around to use their "discovery" to justify their social belief that it was right and proper, divinely sanctioned and perfectly natural for them to luxuriate in the productions of the less fit, whose noses were ground in the dirt, along with those of their children, the ones who survived such exposure, without reference to the chance of their birth.

Evolutionists assume that "adapted" means well designed which is pushing the boat out further that Auntie Bessie would risk at the theme park. Whenever I watch nature films I cannot help thinking what a bunch of silly sods these life forms are. Are their adaptations as good as all that considering the timescale they have had to get their act togetther?

Your assertion about what adapted means to evolutionists is misguided at best, and your observation about the social "change" that was "brought about by the discovery of evolution" is only change in the sense that the justification for the state of things changed.

spendius wrote:

Of course it's corrosive- it's anti-education. Education began in religious settings. The idea that not teaching evolution in schools will hold back the progress of the science of the Christian world is an idea that only the very simplest sucker would swallow. It's the idea of a person with such a low view of his fellow man that he could only have figured it out from introspection.

Education began in religious settings with the intent of teaching people how to read the bible and better understand church philosophy regarding the order of the universe. Things have changed since then.

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You're wobbling Vengo. It is admirable. Running away I despise. I understand face saving.

Vic, my mate in the pub, had a leaflet through his door this morning. I get them myself but I clear them out every now and again. Vic reads them. Even those from hopeful window cleaners and tree surgeons.

It announced an Evolution gig coming to a theatre near me. I asked him to bring it in tomorrow night. I might go and wait for the "Any questions" at the end.

The maestro whose coming is proclaimed in the leaflet probably thinks that a dump like I live in contains nothing else but blokes who love watching professors on Discovery, or other "scientific" programmes, explaining theories they think they understand as it allows them to flatter themselves that if only they had been more disciplined at school they might have become professors themselves and that it was therefore nothing to do with them being congenitally stupid and lazy.

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Spendi,

Top of page 1209. Definitions of and the showing of circumstances that would result in actions and mindsets of a moral nature in humans.

Sorry that I had to qualify "Christian Morality" I just mean that sometime-someplace some Christian may have hit upon an idea that was unknown to prehistory but I doubt it. Moral ideas may come and go mostly due to the size of the group and the availability of calories, but as I pointed out they were necessary in some form to the survival of a social animal.

It is often cold in December and often windy. Those are just facts.

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Have you studied the cave paintings aka? They are all we have left of the newspapers of those days. They are not simply brilliant drawings.

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Doesn't take brilliance to understand that one should not sow discord in whatever society you are dependent on for your needs-wants.

Basically ethical acts are ones that are not detrimental to society as a whole. Moral acts are considered to benefit the society. Sometimes this society may be defined self defined as a God. Idea

Thats probably how religion got into the morality business. I aver that morals were probably pretty well established long before somebody got the idea to set up religion.

IMO we nowadays can explain morality and enforce it without recourse to the supernatural. Regrettably we often don't.

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aka wrote-

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Doesn't take brilliance to understand that one should not sow discord in whatever society you are dependent on for your needs-wants.

Maybe atheists should keep quiet then judging by all the polls I've seen.

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Basically ethical acts are ones that are not detrimental to society as a whole.

That's a bit of a generalised platitude if ever I saw one.

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Thats probably how religion got into the morality business.

Phew!! No need to study history after that one.

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IMO we nowadays can explain morality and enforce it without recourse to the supernatural.

Explain it then aka. I'm always willing to be enlightened as I'm sure others are.

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OK, Spendi,

Basic Morality-- Mothers do not normally eat their babies. Neither do other species that the young of require nuturing. This is despite the fact that the young are a lot of trouble and would taste good.

The abandonment of children is also considered immoral. Other nuturing species don't do it either.

How is consanguinity immoral? Because it affects the survival of the next generation.

How is adultery immoral? Again it affects the survival of the next generation, whereas polygamy or polyandry in some economic situations may improve the survival of the next generation.

How is lieing to members of your society immoral? It isn't considered immoral to lie to members of competing societies. Then it's called diplomacy. but lieing to your family or group is immoral. This is simply because it will affect the survival of the group (society)

You will find all honest or real morality is aimed at insuring the survival of the species or group. Most dishonest or religious morality is aimed at acquiring and preserving a privileged position. Some of it is simply used as glue to hold a society together, or to provide a recognition mechanism.

Mennonite women wear little caps, Amishmen wear pants without zippers. Goats put urine on their heads, Dogs smell under their tails. Just recognition rituals. All species have them, and probably all societies.

As I said, it doesn't take a rocket scientist or God to tell me why it's not a good idea for me to marry my cousin-brother-father-mother. Nor lie to my kids, nor sleep with the neighbors wife, nor steal from my society.
You see damaging my society in any way damages the next generation.

That's the quick lesson on morality as an evolutionary necessity for a social animal.

Do you need to know the mechanisms that have evolved to reduce consanguity in other animals? Naturally they have them. Our are different simply because of our intelligence. I doubt that a grizzly bear would be much impressed if his father told him not to breed his sister. A bit past his ability to understand. I doubt that a preacher would do much better explaining to him either :wink: But the male grizzllies that didn't roam left fewer descendents. Most male bears use the process of roaming large territories in order to minimize inbreeding. By the time his daughter or sister is ready to breed he is likley to be miles away. Beavers and horses also use a similar system.

Many pages ago I remarked that human societies, once formed, acted much the same as a species, with similar requirements. These requirements could easily have been seen by Darwin had he chose to look at human social constructions.

I'd keep quiet but the abuses of humans by those who place artificial and imaginary distinctions on them are simply too awful for a practical person to contemplate silently Crying or Very sad

Remember that If I don't accept Jesus as my Lord and Savior I will not get to heaven. How much more abusive can you get than to deny a paradise to a fairly decent human Question

IMO natch

The morality mechanisms exist. They differ only in the equipment that each animal has. Since even a beaver has some I'd expect to find some in humans. And I do Exclamation

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Below is an excerpt from "One Universe, Under God" by Liza Lentini in the current issue of Discover Magazine. It describes how creationism is taught today in the United States.

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That would amuse the College of Cardinals no end. Although there might be a lacuna in the general jollity on-

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kind voice that never alters, even when she needs to use a firm hand.

I'm trying to compose a polite answer to aka and this levity is distracting.

"He" is as good an explanation as any I've heard and it stops you looping the loop.

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Spendius
Maybe you should go to New Zealand

NZ women most promiscuous: survey

October 13, 2007 - 8:34AM

Advertisement
New Zealand women have the most sexual partners in the world, according to a global sex survey reported on Saturday.

They have an average of 20.4 sexual partners, according to a survey by condom-maker Durex - well above the global average of 7.3.

The Durex Sexual Wellbeing Global survey, which questioned 26,000 people in 26 countries, found that Austrians topped the male list with 29.3 sexual partners, more than twice the global average of 13.2.

New Zealand was the only country where women were more promiscuous than their men, who averaged 16.8 sexual partners, The Press newspaper said, reporting the survey.

The survey showed that Austrians were the youngest to lose their virginity at an average of 17.3 years, followed by Brazilians (17.4), Germans (17.6) and New Zealanders (17.8).
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2007/10/13/1191696214489.html

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No chance. I''m okay right where I am. It took a longtime working that out but I got there in the end.

You go to NZ if you like promiscuous women. They have a tendency to give a chap the crabs is what I was taught in the military. And that involves a red hot needle up the pipe according to the Casanovas I have had something other than contactless sociability with.

Most of your aquaintances have probably not mentioned it to you. Especially the occasion when a sensible medic has intended taking the opportunity to teach them a lesson.

You can't get something for nothing. Every clunker knows that.

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The worst atrocity you agree to will be your Nirvana.

A~Amen

We love The Dark Ages! Dugeons and Dragons,,,, Oh Mary! Look OUY!

We DarKAGE Lovers are and have been creating Cathedrals as we were Tortured and Hanged in them since The Beginning of Time. That's How we Create. Amen.! Cool

Amen

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Proud atheists
Steven Pinker and Rebecca Goldstein, America's brainiest couple, confess that belonging to one of America's most reviled subcultures doesn't mean they believe scientists can explain everything.

http://www.salon.com/books/feature/2007/10/15/pinker_goldstein/

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ykw wrote-

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The worst atrocity you agree to will be your Nirvana.

And the Marquis de Sade wrote-

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The greatest pleasures are born from conquered repugnance.

in Juliette. Chap V1.

The cry of the libertine and an absolute anathema to a Christian.

and

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...it is only by enlarging the scope of one's tastes and one's fantasies, by sacrificing evrything to pleasure, that that unfortunate individual called man, thrown despite himself into this sad world, can succeed in gathering a few roses among life's thorns.

in Philosophie dans le Boudoir. Chap 1.

In fact the aura of horror which surrounds the name of the Marquis de Sade derives from the idea that by a wilful intellectual effort we should extend our possibilities for pleasure and his fantastic elaboration of such a notion which the Christian idea of sacrifice and love is opposed to most fiercely.

In other spheres besides the sexual our society considers the cultivation of a wider taste to be most praiseworthy. In the arts and in gastronomic activity, and many other areas of life.

But as all pleasure may be deemed to be sexual in the last analysis these others are actually equally reprehensible which is why plain fare is enjoined on the good Christian and would have had the approval of Socrates.

It is in the eschewing of wordly pleasure that the contemplation of spiritual ideas is encouraged and hence the creation of Science and our world.

The Dark Ages we left behind.

You're all mixed up ykw and you can shove your atrocities up your fundament as far as I'm concerned. Just to be clear about it.

Anti-ID is Sadean to its bone marrow when it ceases to be a plaything of half-baked ideas and gets real. That's why it's a dead duck.

But one can easily see that media likes the idea and prostitutes its novitiates in propagandising your subversive statement. Those young ladies who write the articles wande often quotes attacking ID, and religion generally, would faint with horror if they knew what was on the end of their fork- the Naked Lunch in Mr Burroughs's famous phrase.

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blatham wrote:

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Proud atheists
Steven Pinker and Rebecca Goldstein, America's brainiest couple, confess that belonging to one of America's most reviled subcultures doesn't mean they believe scientists can explain everything.
http://www.salon.com/books/feature/2007/10/15/pinker_goldstein/

That was interesting -- as expected from an article about Steven Pinker.

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Bernie-

It was all a bit simple old boy. Even the "sweet" hint of femdom at the end was coy. It looks like neither have read Venus in Furs.

I would have asked Steven a few more difficult questions than the ones that were put to him which he had possibly prepared himself.

Chattering class fodder I'm afraid. The contactless sociability of neurotics.

Novelists are the way to go Bernie.

Have you ever noticed the similarity between the proliferation of high sounding titles in Academia and the Byzantine Court. I daresay you can easily provide the modern equivalent of "Your excellent and wonderful Magnitude and illustrious Highness. ( and that was sweeper up).

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Novelists are the way to go Bernie.

Yes. That's why I simply refuse to go cross any bridge designed by someone not a novelist.

Novels are pretty things. "Ouch!" in filigree.

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Intelligent Design Theory: Science or Religion?

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