Intelligent Design Theory: Science or Religion?

spendi says "we are christian". Of course, that is utter bullshit unless his community doesn't allow darkies and people with odd clothes and non-understandable speech to inhabit the place. What spendi means to say is that he is a christian and that his childhood was marked by comfortable uniformity which he feels others must need as much as he does.

Bernie wrote-

Quote:

spendi says "we are christian". Of course, that is utter bullshit unless his community doesn't allow darkies and people with odd clothes and non-understandable speech to inhabit the place. What spendi means to say is that he is a christian and that his childhood was marked by comfortable uniformity which he feels others must need as much as he does.

More self-serving assertions. I don't speculate about your childhood. Are you inviting me to? After all, you have just granted me the right to do so by speculating on mine. Needless to say your speculations are up the pole.

I trust those unfortunates in the world with dark skins, odd clothes, non-understandable speech and access to cheap airline travel will now feel that an open-armed welcome awaits them in Oregon.

All of these are alike in that they do not permit scientific examination, understanding and prediction.

Next to them the "god hypothesis" as Thomas terms it seems rather tame.

The writers of Genesis, as the Reverend William Sloane Coffin has pointed out, who wrote about the creation of the world in seven days, knew nothing about the process of creation. They believed the earth was flat with water above and below it. They wrote that God created light on the first day and the sun on the fourth day. Genesis was not written to explain the process of creation, of which these writers knew nothing. It was written to help explain the purpose of creation. It was written to help us grasp a spiritual truth, not a scientific or historical fact. And this purpose, this spiritual truth, is something the writers did know about. These biblical writers, at their best, understood our divided natures. They knew our internal conflicts and battles; how we could love our brother and yet hate him; the oppressive power of parents, even the best of parents; the impulses that drive us to commit violations against others; the yearning to lead a life of meaning; our fear of mortality; our struggles to deal with our uncertainty, our loneliness, our greed, our lust, our ambition, our desires to be God, as well as our moments of nobility, compassion and courage. They knew these emotions and feelings were entangled. They understood our weaknesses and strengths. They understood how we are often not the people we want to be or know we should be, how hard it is for us to articulate all this, and how life and creation can be as glorious and beautiful as it can be mysterious, evil and cruel. This is why Genesis is worth reading, indeed why the Bible stands as one of the great ethical and moral documents of our age. The biblical writers have helped shape and define Western civilization. Not to know the Bible is, in some ways, to be illiterate, to neglect the very roots of philosophy, art, architecture, literature, poetry and music. It is to fall into a dangerous provincialism, as myopic and narrow as that embraced by those who say everything in the Bible is literally true and we do not need any other kind of intellectual or scientific inquiry. Doubt and belief are not, as biblical literalists claim, incompatible. Those who act without any doubt are frightening.

My childhood, marriage, sexlife, chances of entering the pearly gates and the health of my colon are all within the speculation-allowed zone.

georgeob1 wrote:

All of these are alike in that they do not permit scientific examination, understanding and prediction.

Agreed. The Big Bang hypothesis and the parallel universe hypothesis are not scientific, even though it was scientists who came up with them. Personally, I'm agnostic about both.

The Big Bang theory and the M-dimension Theory are all based on observations and mathematics. We didn't just say "hey, i think everything came from a little super-dense mass, what do you think?"

Actually Thomas, for it to be science, it has to be falsifiable.

First by mathematics

secondly by observing cosmic background radiation and its patterns, which are in the same pattern as we should expect if Big Bang was true.

What pattern of background radiation would have convinced you that there wasn't a Big Bang?

georgeob1 wrote:

All of these are alike in that they do not permit scientific examination, understanding and prediction.

Agreed. The Big Bang hypothesis and the parallel universe hypothesis are not scientific, even though it was scientists who came up with them. Personally, I'm agnostic about both.

georgeob1 wrote:

Next to them the "god hypothesis" as Thomas terms it seems rather tame.

I emphatically disagree. Although the two hypotheses are not scientific explanations, they are at least explanations, unlike the God hypothesis. The Big Bang and the parallel universes, if true, would help us understand something enormously complex -- the cosmos we observe today -- in terms of something much simpler. That makes them honest-to-goodness explanations, albeit not scientific ones.

The God hypothesis, by contrast, resolves one mystery by postulating an even greater mystery. It tries to explain the cosmos in terms of a supernatural intelligence which, at the least, makes universes and decrees the laws under which they act. Moreover, according to the religions most people believe in, this intelligence also listens to prayers, selectively acts on them, forgives sins, and sometimes commits genocides when people disobey Its will. An entity like this, whatever else it is, must be enormously complex. Thus, when you try to explain the world by postulating it, you are creating a greater mystery than you resolve.

The God hypothesis, then, is a non-scientific non-explanation of the world we live in. By contrast, the Big Bang hypothesis and the multiverse hypothesis are at least non-scientific explanations.

we noticed that the universe seems to be moving, expanding in all directions from a central point.

. Not to know the Bible is, in some ways, to be illiterate, to neglect the very roots of philosophy, art, architecture, literature, poetry and music.

The "god theory" is based on absolutely no observation other than a book of an unknown origin, written by unknown men and translated so many times that there really is no way to know what the original said.

I want to memorialize this post of Thomas'. It is the only example of transparent sophistry I have yet seen from this very lucid, knowledgable, rational and amiable guy. Indeed I have often felt he is my superior in several of these areas, as I know too well my own past indulgences. Now I find he is just one of us. Well, OK - welcome friend, to the club.

How is it that the singulatrity - or an infinity of parallel universes, or even an infinite regression of creation and destruction through black holes and anti universes constitutes an "explanation" - by any standard?

In the same vein hypothesizing parallel universes, while an intriguing way of restating the double slit paradox, is no explanation either. Further, there is very little that is simple in human terms about these notions (unless you suppose that human experience has analogues to aleph 1, 2 and beyond infinities).

I won't argue that postulating a creator in any way constitutes a scientific explanation

Thomas wrote:

georgeob1 wrote:

All of these are alike in that they do not permit scientific examination, understanding and prediction.

Agreed. The Big Bang hypothesis and the parallel universe hypothesis are not scientific, even though it was scientists who came up with them. Personally, I'm agnostic about both.

georgeob1 wrote:

Next to them the "god hypothesis" as Thomas terms it seems rather tame.

I emphatically disagree. Although the two hypotheses are not scientific explanations, they are at least explanations, unlike the God hypothesis. The Big Bang and the parallel universes, if true, would help us understand something enormously complex -- the cosmos we observe today -- in terms of something much simpler. That makes them honest-to-goodness explanations, albeit not scientific ones.

The God hypothesis, by contrast, resolves one mystery by postulating an even greater mystery. It tries to explain the cosmos in terms of a supernatural intelligence which, at the least, makes universes and decrees the laws under which they act. Moreover, according to the religions most people believe in, this intelligence also listens to prayers, selectively acts on them, forgives sins, and sometimes commits genocides when people disobey Its will. An entity like this, whatever else it is, must be enormously complex. Thus, when you try to explain the world by postulating it, you are creating a greater mystery than you resolve.

The God hypothesis, then, is a non-scientific non-explanation of the world we live in. By contrast, the Big Bang hypothesis and the multiverse hypothesis are at least non-scientific explanations.

I want to memorialize this post of Thomas'. It is the only example of transparent sophistry I have yet seen from this very lucid, knowledgable, rational and amiable guy. Indeed I have often felt he is my superior in several of these areas, as I know too well my own past indulgences. Now I find he is just one of us. Well, OK - welcome friend, to the club.

How is it that the singulatrity - or an infinity of parallel universes, or even an infinite regression of creation and destruction through black holes and anti universes constitutes an "explanation" - by any standard? You assert that these notions posess a simplicity that the idea of a creator does not, and that because of that they are "explanations' (albeit unscientific ones), while "the god hypothesis" certainly is not one. In the first place you know very well the mathematical definition of a singularity - an undefined domain, about which nothing can be said or inferred. This is no "explanation" scientific or otherwise. It is, instead the affirmation that no explanation, whatever is offered. In the same vein hypothesizing parallel universes, while an intriguing way of restating the double slit paradox, is no explanation either. Further, there is very little that is simple in human terms about these notions (unless you suppose that human experience has analogues to aleph 1, 2 and beyond infinities).

I won't argue that postulating a creator in any way constitutes a scientific explanation of the problem, or even that it is more "simple" than the others. However, it does open a new door for dealing with both the rational unanswered (and possibly unanswerable) questions of science and as well the more subjective questions of human existence. Spendi's points about rational and experience-based knowledge are particularly relevant here. On that basis I suggest it is a more satisfying and useful choice, and, more to the point, there is no reason whatever to prefer the singularity to it. One may well still prefer the singularity, but the basis for that choice almost certainly lies in the subjective area: it is not compelled by the rational.

georgeob1 wrote:
I want to memorialize this post of Thomas'. It is the only example of transparent sophistry I have yet seen from this very lucid, knowledgable, rational and amiable guy. Indeed I have often felt he is my superior in several of these areas, as I know too well my own past indulgences. Now I find he is just one of us. Well, OK - welcome friend, to the club.

Always happy to increase the self-respect of timid people like you, George.

Fair enough -- the singularity itself doesn't explain anything. What does explain the history of the cosmos is a set of mathematical models, and these models contain the Big Bang as a byproduct.