Intelligent Design Theory: Science or Religion?

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Bernie-

Pass on to your wife my hearty congratulations on her success and my best wishes for her future.

Thank you Spendi. Now it's on with the show.

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Nova TV is a Croatian commercial television network launched in November 2000. It was the first commercial television network with national concession in this country and since 2004 it is fully owned by the Central European Media Enterprises.

From Wiki.

So how long was Judgement day when the ads were knocked out.

A TV company called NOVA has, it seems, caused a stampede of Romanies out of eastern Europe and into Canada.

Humane ethnic cleansing maybe. Flights are booked up for months and Canada, they say, can't turn them away.

I have been reading Bernie's links for the last couple of hours and will report shortly and please don't order me not to bother because you'll be wasting your time.

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Ref Bernie's link to JD.

I can trash Ms Aptsell.

It's the usual spiel about what virtuous and concerned people we are here at NOVA and how we aim to bring you the very best in cutting edge blather with some words from our sponsirs interlarded which have the sole purpurse of getting you all to consume more. A breakdown of the ads might be scientifically interesting as a sort of long range psychoanalysis of target couchies munching out of crinkly bags and a few other things varying in distraction quotients.

But they did think hard and long about it especially in the accounts section as they attempted to project the target audience and what sort of advertisers would like to reach them as they sit helpless on their arses and denying that they are influenced by ads which, were it true, would undermine the whole basis of market niche targeting which is, of course, profit.

But in the end we decided it was in the public interestsssszzzzsszzsszzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

WAKE UP spendi!!!!!

Right- It's a "hornet's nest" but only in "many ways".

What a nice name Theodosius Dobzhansky is. I'm almost overawed.

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Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution.

What about when Jennifer's ears go red when that handsome young millionaire footballer comes into the winner's enclosure to pat his horse that she is holding by the bridle. In any season. How do conditioned thoughts affect biological reactions?

And the film is bound to be "fascinating". She would get fired if she said anything else.

For "delving into the case" see Account's Dep't.

Don't miss the "perhaps" in this-

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Perhaps most importantly, the trial had great potential for altering science education and the public understanding of science.

She doesn't specify either the degree of alteration nor its nature. And it only has "great potential" anyway. And it is coming to something when the educational system of a Superpower is being altered by the decisions of a school board in a small town.

It's woffle without the "perhaps" and with it it's nonsense. On a science forum I mean.

I understood that 90 odd % of Americans questioned evolution in one way or another. Is that true or not. But even so I never heard of a 48% figure and just to demonstrate what the lady thinks of the TA's nonce she feels the need to tell us that 48% is "almost half".

As as many as that don't vote it is reasonable to think that they don't much care what is taught in biology as long as it doesn't give the kids any silly ideas about sexual matters.

We have always faced a crisis in science literacy and we always will.

Some of us are aware that anything which "could" threaten our progress and quality of life could, logically, also not. And progress and quality of life are meaningless words without some further guidance.

Why is she so careful with these words. She seems very fluent in their use. Practice maybe. But if it allows the TA to think she has said something that she hasn't then the goal is achieved. She daren't say that they "do" threaten those meaningless concepts because she knows she can't prove that.

Hey--

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We think ID got a fair shake.

We think notice, And we know we have heard that sort of thing a great deal. Bernie's always on about that. You lot just suspend your judgement when your own side is on its hindlegs and that's not in the least scientific.

Like fm allows other anti-IDers to get away with things he bollocks me for. (see above).

Shouldn't we be told what the "normal journalistic conditions that NOVA uses" actually are and which presumably caused Mr Behe and Mr Minich to refrain from appearing. It can't be because they have something to hide because they have been in the witness box under cross examination with reporters present. They must not have trusted NOVA to such an extent that the joys of appearing on telly were resisted.

She also blithely assumes that actors can give a fair portrayal just by knowing a very small % of the words in the 6 weeks Dover trial and when presented out of the context. All atmosphere and body language created to interest the TA. The actors are in another context with hardly a connection to the original courtroom.

And where have we heard --"We have worked hard" before. Except from just about everybody who is bent on pushing their own boat out based on unverifiable assertions. And it's the same with "pored over all 3,000 pages." Which seems a waste considering that the "attorney's summations" were the "key to what we finally selected" because they presented the "main arguments." As one would expect.

I'm not sure Judge Jones ought to have allowed alleged flawed testimony by "some" members of the school board to play a "huge role" in his decision. And I would be surprised if he did.

Obviously "science is not anti-religion".

It is the drift into a purely scientific world which is what concerns people and most scientists are not in the least concerned with such things. If they are they cease to be scientists. It is others who are running the show for non-scientific reasons related to money and power. It's the first rule of journalism--"Follow the money".

The lady says nothing to address that problem because the film is self evidently a component of that drift.

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spendius wrote:

Nova TV is a Croatian commercial television network launched in November 2000. It was the first commercial television network with national concession in this country and since 2004 it is fully owned by the Central European Media Enterprises.

Your research is far off the mark. This is one of the reasons that your comments are far off the mark, spendi.

The "Nova" responsible for the documentary on Dover is a television series on PBS.

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please let spendi go on and on. He reminds me of the "Yelling lady" who lives in the subway tunnel at the Philly suburban station.

He is an example of format over substance.
"If I caint ay anything that makes sense, Ill just fil in some pointless quote, and hope I can bullshit the poor Americans"

Thats why we beat the British at Yorktown, they were too busy looking up rules of engagement and proper means of defenses. We just payed the French to bottle em up and send em back home muttering about whos fault it ws.

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I think you are wrong on all points. Several of the posters here, yourself included, who merely continue reciting the same points without ever even appearing to consider different aspects of the issue presented by their interlocutors, would match the "yelling lady" metaphor just as well.

I certainly don't detect any attempt to provoke Americans in Spendi's admittedly expansive rhetoric. Much of it is entertaining and some very pointed, though it often appears that you simply refuse to acknowledge his points, preferring instead to stick to your own monotone arguements on the piece of the subject that interests you, to the exclusion of all others.

We won at Yorktown because Cornwallis' campaign of attrition in the South worked against him : it was his army that was depleted and exhausted, and not the colonial resistence. After Cowpens he desperately needed resupply and reinforcement. The second critical element was the daring and brilliance of Franch Admiral DeGrasse who took the French fleet from Martinique through the Bahamas channel, saving over 1000NM and arriving on scene to block the entrance to the Chesapeake before an otherwise superior British naval force from New York could reach the scene. When that happened both Cornwallis and Admiral Howe knew they were beaten.

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wande wrote-

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Your research is far off the mark.

It's a minor matter wande in relation to my comments about Bernie's link. Although I do so understand how nice and convenient my mistake is for you to jump all over it and carefully steer around the substance of the issue. Assuming it was a mistake. I Googled NOVA.

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Funding for NOVA is provided by The DOW Chemical Company, David H. Koch, the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, and public television viewers.

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David Hamilton Koch (born 1940) is one of the billionaire co-owners (with older brother Charles) and an executive vice president of Koch Industries, a conglomerate with major oil and gas holdings that is the largest privately held company in the United States. He lives in New York City and is that city's wealthiest resident.

I think Bernie should know that. My long post was directed at Bernie's link and you might address that instead of snuggling up with Teddy-typo.

fm prefers to ramble on about other matters I'm afraid.

I am surprised though that two TV companies are using the same name.

I read somewhere that the British and French top brass had dinner together after the skirmish and the Americans weren't invited for one or other reasons mostly to do with bad manners and inability to conduct civilised conversations.

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spendius wrote:

wande wrote-

Quote:
Your research is far off the mark.

It's a minor matter wande in relation to my comments about Bernie's link. Although I do so understand how nice and convenient my mistake is for you to jump all over it and carefully steer around the substance of the issue. Assuming it was a mistake. I Googled NOVA.

******************************

I am surprised though that two TV companies are using the same name.

One is a company, the other is not.

One of the reasons your opinions are ridiculed, spendi, is your poor grasp of simple facts.

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Or to quote your favorite plagerizer:

Freedom just around the corner for you
But with the truth so far off, what good will it do?
Jokerman dance to the nightingale tune,
Bird fly high by the light of the moon,
Oh, oh, oh, Jokerman

Fools rush in where angels fear to tread,
Both of their futures, so full of dread, you don't show one,
Shedding off one more layer of skin,
Keeping one step ahead of the persecutor within.

Jokerman dance to the nightingale tune
Bird fly high by the light of the moon,
Oh, oh, oh, Jokerman.

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spendi et al

God needs a break. I'd suggest between the fourth and fifth vertebrae. Just rediscovered this wonderful chandler bit on blondes.

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"There are blondes and blondes and it is almost a joke word
nowadays. All blondes have their points, except perhaps the
metallic ones who are blonde as a Zulu under the bleach and as to
disposition as soft as a sidewalk. There is the small cute blonde
who cheeps and twitters, and the big statuesque blonde who
straight-arms you with an ice-blue glare. There is the blonde who
gives you the up-from-under look and smells lovely and shimmers
and hangs on your arm and is always very very tired when you take
her home ...

"There is the soft and willing and alcoholic blonde who doesn't
care what she wears as long as it is mink or where she goes as
long as it is the Starlight Room and there is plenty of dry
champagne. There is the small perky blonde who is a little pal
and wants to pay her own way and is full of sunshine and common
sense and knows judo from the ground up and can toss a truck
driver over her shoulder without missing more than one sentence
out of the editorial in the Saturday Review. There is the pale,
pale blonde with anemia of some non-fatal but incurable type. She
is very languid and very shadowy and she speaks softly out of
nowhere and you can't lay a finger on her because in the first
place you don't want to and in the second place she is reading
'The Waste Land' or Dante in the original, or Kafka or
Kierkegaard or studying Provencal. She adores music and when the
New York Philharmonic is playing Hindemith she can tell you which
one of the six bass viols came in a quarter of a beat late. I
hear Toscanini can also. That makes two of them ..."

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The main reason why most of my posts are ridiculed is that you have no other answers. You have not got the mental capacity or chutzpah to respond to any of the points I raised about Ms Apsell's spiel which, do not forget, was a part of a link Bernie provided. I daresay you haven't read his link. You boo on auto-pilot.

"Well, the rifleman's stalking the sick and the lame,
Preacherman seeks the same, who'll get there first is uncertain.
Nightsticks and water cannons, tear gas, padlocks,
Molotov cocktails and rocks behind every curtain,
False-hearted judges dying in the webs that they spin,
Only a matter of time 'til night comes steppin' in."

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I will say, if only to demonstrate my even handed approach to this issue of Bernie's link, that I couldn't imagine Bertha Spahr ever allowing herself, as a professional educator, to knowingly and intentionally misrepresent subject matter or curriculum and especially not in relation to biological subject matter suitable for adolescents at such a sensitive stage of their lives. She looks much to innocent and straighforward to engage in such underhand tricks.

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georgeob--When someone asks for the time, you, instead,
explain how to make a watch.

What was wrong about my abbreviated discussion of the Yorktown campaign. If you dont understand that it was an attempt at humor , rather than , like your post, amore detailed discussion of the end of the campaign. Well, I guess we see the word "wit" differently. As far as...

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I certainly don't detect any attempt to provoke Americans in Spendi's admittedly expansive rhetoric. Much of it is entertaining and some very pointed, though it often appears that you simply refuse to acknowledge his points

. Key word is "EXPANSIVE. Spendi'd view of his own abilities is shared by very few, He doesnt even understand the point of this entire thread and therefore has substituted his"own reality". You may be easily impressed , I am not. Hes like what someone said about Joe Biden
"I really enjoyed the first four hours of his speech"

I truly worry about spendis lock on reality. Merely by posting names (without context-and yes weve all read most all of his referred mnaterails often in the original languages) but SO WHAT? whats is point? what has he added to advance any discussion. Hes become the discussion and here, by my wasting time, hes become the point again.

Youre smarter than that, spendis clothes are transparent.

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fm wrote-

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Spendi'd view of his own abilities is shared by very few,

Oh yeah!! Thank you fm. You have no idea what such a compliment means to me.

Stendhal said exactly the same about his own literary efforts all those years ago, during which many a tear has been shed, but I'm not as big-headed as he was and I would never allow myself to indulge in such solipsistic remarks. Had I been on the retreat from Moscow, as he was, maybe I would have been tempted.

Have you the faintest notion of what it was like on the retreat from Moscow as a junior officer. The history books use expressions like "they retreated back to Paris" but who exactly are this "they".

The kids at Dover of course. Humans in the abstract as a toy for inflamed egos. The ones you have all forgotten about as you fight like cocks in a sack. The one's who will change your bedpans.

I hope they tell you to go **** yourselves.

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fm wrote-

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Youre smarter than that,

I hardly think our viewers need any reassurances about how smart they are. I certainly don't. I know quite well what a useless, stupid toss-pot I am. I'm unflatterable. Somebody flatters me and I automatically think, as Mr Mailer taught me, what the **** is this **** up to. I usually keep my hand on my wallet as well.

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Well- Mr Miller said it was the sensible thing to do.

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For those of you who may be interested, and there isn't much to be interested in anyway, I have, as Bernie's lovely link invited me to, just to make my time more easy passing so to speak now that I'm "expansive" or even "EXPANSIVE" and feel an impulse to live up to my reputation, indeed, would feel it remiss of me not to, I have perused the "The teachers' response, delivered in a memo to Dover school superintendent Richard Nilsen:"

and I must say I don't ever remember reading such pompous-arsed twaddle in all my life: it fair thrummed with indignant self-importance and presbyterian righteousness. It wasn't easy to get through, my eyes being brimming with tears most of the time. I read some of it to a couple of pals and it had them in stitches. They sound like the very worst sort of barrack room lawyer and such types reflex on dropping everybody else in the **** something like what this lot did to the Dover taxpayers only usually less painfully. Not to mention the kids whose education was on hold whilst this unseemly squabble went on in front of the eyes of the world. The Chamber of Commerce probably couldn't believe its collective luck assuming it was luck of course as I would be the last man to suggest otherwise being so worldly and all as I am...but I'm getting expansive again. I'll try to cut it out.

One thing they said that is true though is "Central to the teaching act and our ethical obligation is the solemn responsibility to teach the truth.[/quote]

But each betrays distinct signs, in the photograph they have allowed us to see of them, of vanity. Of presenting themselves not as how the biology and psychology text books will insist on having them but as a manifestation of the thought "how shall we present ourselves for the picture that the TV company is beaming worldwide". Not Mark Twain at all nor Denis the Menace or even Keyhole Kate or Popeye's girlfriend with the witty name. Bertha seems to have put in the greatest effort but shaping a beard is considered in some circles pretty vain when the contortions one has to go through to get the symmetry aligned is taken into account. I don't suppose they only took one photograph so somebody must have chosen that one and it follows, on the causality principle, with some motive to energise the impulse to point to one and a discussion to begin. Anyway, Bertha upstages the others in my view. She should have been a milkmaid who picks flowers for the altar. I think she's boss.

Were relations between the science department and others all sweet and light before this pickpocket job took off. All Agatha Christie would tell you at the beginning is that there were these short paragraphs of tosh which would come and go on the kids in much the same way that most of the stuff teachers say does and $5 million vanished in dribs and drabs. Well- not vanished actually. Transferred shall we say.

Here's your movie. Do you want a script?

Judgment Day is a movie. And everybody is presenting a false picture of themselves as they would have also been in the court.

Teaching the truth is a mere assertion. And the likes of Proust, Joyce, Dylan, Miller, Mailer, Fielding, Flaubert etc,etc --I hate leaving some out--have explored the challenge and the dignity of the human experience at great length and with expert eyes and I hardly think that the teacher's exploration will come anywhere near that as "truth". I think they would run off at the first whiff of the "truth".

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Teaching the truth is a mere assertion. And the likes of Proust, Joyce, Dylan, Miller, Mailer, Fielding, Flaubert etc,etc --I hate leaving some out--have explored the challenge and the dignity of the human experience at great length and with expert eyes and I hardly think that the teacher's exploration will come anywhere near that as "truth". I think they would run off at the first whiff of the "truth".

The best of all possible paragraphs, spendi. How could one fail to concur. As I believe I mentioned earlier, I refuse to drive a loaded schoolbus over a bridge designed by anyone but a poet. And I adamantly insisted, so well as I could in my weakened state, that those stents not be jammed into my ticker until a Russian playright was available to lead the procedure.

Which isn't to say I'm not fond of you.

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Mr Johnson speaks another language.

His contribution is worth a little effort. It's a pity he got a bit bogged over finch's beaks and humans having chimps and didn't elaborate on the "moral anarchy" when discussing that most important matter; social consequences.

Bits I've picked out for those who don't wish to bother with Bernie's link are--

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Now, if the intelligent cause turns out to be supernatural, that's a determination that is outside of science. But that you need intelligence is not a determination that's outside of science.

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So that's been going on all these years, and yet the people are not convinced. Why is this? The mandarins of science, the high priests at the university level, will tell you it's because the people are ignorant and prejudiced.

And those non-scientists who cosy up to science for self-esteem purposes mimic them, as we have seen, and possibly for no other reason than they enjoy invidious comparisons with themselves and are using a smattering of science to indulge this pleasure.

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The crisis that they have to recognize is that they have failed to convince the public. They assumed that by this time they would have marginalized all the opposition and the public would be convinced. After all, they now had virtual control of the educational machinery from primary school on up through the Ph.D. level to do that. Plus all those documentaries on television and in the movies where the orthodoxy is put forward.

And they'll never convince the public either. Battering them down is a possibility.

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As an expert, you know a lot that other people don't know. But also in the course of all your expert training, you pick up a worldview and a set of prejudices that you then become completely dependent on in order to continue to be an expert.

See my little essay on it "undoing the buttons of their being" to be found in error of judgment.

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As for the judge and the opinion, the problem is that the judge didn't just decide the local case in front of him. He decided that he wanted to become a national figure by deciding the whole question of evolution and creation for the country in one opinion. So he wrote an opinion as big and broad as a starry sky, saying that the notion of intelligence, that one of these two hypotheses, was not eligible for consideration because it was religion and hence by definition not science. So any attempt in that direction was unconstitutional. He is being rewarded for that opinion with all the accolades that the mandarins of science have at their disposal.

And he had a "Have gavel-will travel" plate on his auto which has probably been traded in by now for something more in keeping with his new found status as a national figure of eminence and renown.

I recommend Mr Johnson's contribution to this thread.

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As for the judge and the opinion, the problem is that the judge didn't just decide the local case in front of him. He decided that he wanted to become a national figure by deciding the whole question of evolution and creation for the country in one opinion. So he wrote an opinion as big and broad as a starry sky, saying that the notion of intelligence, that one of these two hypotheses, was not eligible for consideration because it was religion and hence by definition not science. So any attempt in that direction was unconstitutional. He is being rewarded for that opinion with all the accolades that the mandarins of science have at their disposal.

I lov e this "shut up and deal" attitude that Phil,Johnson forwarded. His ID clan had a burden of proof upon them (an issue that they thought was a slam dunk, until Ken Miller disassembled ID by phenomenological reason. Then all the "Big Guns" of Phil Johnsons own stable , The Discovery Institute, dropped out of the case, they started their smear campaign on Judge Jones. See, the dirty little secret was that the ID crowd felt that, since Jones was a Christian Conservative and ws reccomended By Ricky Santorum and nominated by Bush (both of whom were supporters of "equal time for ID", they thought that they couldnt lose. Well, the arguments on behalf of science were so persuasive, and the judge then got around to considering how much more time wasting in this issue alone are the court dockets all stopped up with. HE decided to broaden his opinion because the DEFENSE, opened the door . Phil Johnson's an old lawyer and he should recognize that lawyers never ask questions to which they dont already know the answers. The question of Mike BEhe about astrology being science is covered in Behes own book.

SO, Phil Johnson can bitch all he wishes , and spendi may incorrectly think hes got merit in his POV. My admonition is that "I wont practice law, and Phil Johnson shouldnt practice science" These are specifict areas that , respectively, neither of us are trained.
Spendi, you should , if youre going to opine about these things, please read more of Phil Johnsons catechism. Its a scary world of religious zealotry and "Christian Renewal" that he wants.
His motives are clearly non-scientific , and his methods are legal double talk.

In his Book "Darwin on Trial" He speaks for both sides with noone like a Huxley to debate. Whenever hes come up gainst a real opponent in the scinces , hes not fared too well.

But he has made himself wealthy by his ID scam.

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Intelligent Design Theory: Science or Religion?

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