haha, suppose, well i may be defending religion but ID still is daft... i like the idea of god creating us but all the same i really like the idea that we are from this earth and of its gift, life... how does evolution interfere with god... at the end of the day, who created the earth and the heavens.. the big bang and who started that... GOD...
"Well isn't atheism very pessimistic in nature?"
Please expound on this idea so we can understand what you mean. Thank you.
You see, I as an atheist see people of religion as "pessimistic," because they don't want to accept the simple fact that most life forms has a beginning and an end that is evident to our observations. Human life comes into being from a sexual relationship; some survive and some die off before they are born. Even giving birth doesn't insure any longevity on this planet, and many die within a few minutes, hours, days, weeks or years. If we're lucky, we can live to a ripe old age of becoming a centenarian. The life we have between life and eath is all she wrote. That's reality; no hopes, no wishes, or dreams of having an afterlife like christians or people of other religions that believe in reincarnation or heaven. The atheists are the realists; the people of religion are the pessimists that wants more than what is so obvious.
Michael Powell
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, September 28, 2005; Page A03 wrote:HARRISBURG, Pa., Sept. 27 -- Parents in federal court Tuesday described an atmosphere of intimidation and anger when school board members in Dover, Pa., last year decided to require high school biology teachers to read a statement that casts doubt on the theory of evolution.
Bryan Rehm, a parent who also taught physics at Dover High School, testified of continual pressure from board members not to "teach monkeys-to-man evolution." He said that the board required teachers to watch a film critical of Charles Darwin's theory of evolution and that board members talked openly of teaching creationism alongside evolution.
The atmosphere became so heated that neighbors began to call him an "atheist with . . . a lot of words added on to it," Rehm said. He said that "it was turning into a real zoo" and that students were quarreling about evolution.
I wonder how long this farce will go on before taxpayers get tired of paying to defend their kids education from christian fundamentalist propaganda.
Isn't it about time we turned this thing around and got really incensed that insanity like Intelligent Design is being rammed into public school science classes. How long are we going to play silly semantic word games in court while listening to people tell us that the moon is made of blue cheese.
spendius wrote:Well Mr Apisa-
Not too long ago you told us about a bit of a set to you had with two bints.
Now the only reason that could possibly be interesting is that it is sinful.Avant Gard if you prefer.A bit over the top of something or other.
Why would an SDer have any interest in such a trivial happening?
Would you furnish a translation of this so I can understand it and respond?
Hi Frank - how yah been! You're lucky its spendius chatting to you. Why did you have to let John Jones out of the philosophy section and into the science forums? JJ is only too keen to give his unique (sureal) views on reality and run scientific method into a reality distortion field that none of us seem able to penetrate...
Take him back with you - pretty please!
rosborne979 wrote:
Isn't it about time we turned this thing around and got really incensed that insanity like Intelligent Design is being rammed into public school science classes. How long are we going to play silly semantic word games in court while listening to people tell us that the moon is made of blue cheese.
If I was American I would be really embarrassed about this. Only yesterday I read that 42% of Americans believe in creationism of some sort.
Presumably thats the same 42% who think Europeans are aloof and patronising.
The whole nature of people is to design things until they are in their simplist maost beautiful form. it is a natural trait of our species. I think the golden formula fits in quite snuggly with our natural endeavor to recreate till it's right.
Acceptance of the theory of evolution increases with level of education for people of various religions (or no religion).
Come on wande.Strong/Not strong dichotomies are hardly proof of much.
And "level of education" is a bit of a nebulous concept.One can easily be led to "believe" that a high level of education is one which one's self possesses or aspires to or admires.
You have not yet answered any of the significant points I have raised and I'm sure will be raised in a courtroom.
You are nowhere near considering Spengler's notion of the opposition between causality and destiny.I get the impression that none of the SDers on here have ever heard of him.
spendius,
I understand how your points seem significant to you. However, your points do not seem relevant to the specific topic of whether intelligent design theory is a valid alternative to evolutionary theory.
wande-
Could you not give a brief demo of why those points don't bear on the debate.
I never said ID is a valid alternative to SD.Perish the thought.I am simply recognising the politcal,sociological and theological forces at work here and suggesting that going into court without having done so is like going into a big match with an unfit squad of players.
Where's the sense in being right and losing.If you put that visual aid up in court everybody would laugh.
spendius,
I can never tell whether you are being serious.
spendius wrote:I never said ID is a valid alternative to SD.
What is SD? I must have missed it back there in the thread somewhere.
"Stupid Design" , thats what Ive been getting out of ole spendi-speak.
spendius makes idiosyncratic references. i am not sure if even he knows what they mean.
The New Monkey Trial Begins
By Michelle Pilecki
09.27.2005
So what's the big deal about evolution anyway? The Washington Post has the best explanation I've seen in the mainstream press thus far. The scientific theory -- "that a smidgeon of cells 3.5 billion years ago could, through mechanisms no more extraordinary than random mutation and natural selection, give rise to the astonishing tapestry of biological diversity that today thrives on Earth" -- is bolstered by new advances in the understanding of genes and DNA, and technology that makes it possible to document and catalog the random changes as they happen inside cells, in real time.
Exciting stuff, science in action.
Although WaPo writers Rick Weiss and David Brown don't make the connection, it's very much like how the invention of the telescope helped to bolster the Copernican Theory. That the Earth moves around the Sun, not the other way around, could not really be "proved" to the satisfaction of skeptics in Copernicus' day, but it certainly was accepted even by non-scientists well before the space race started. Scientists are having a little more trouble selling the American public on the theory of natural selection. Many Americans don't want their kids to learn about it, or at least be told that it's just an unproven hypothesis. Scientists think evolution is pretty well proven:
Evolution's repeated power to predict the unexpected goes a long way toward explaining why so many scientists and others are practically apoplectic over the recent decision by a Pennsylvania school board to treat evolution as an unproven hypothesis, on par with "alternative" explanations such as Intelligent Design (ID), the proposition that life as we know it could not have arisen without the helping hand of some mysterious intelligent force.
Yes, the Post's informative article gets its news hook from Kitzmiller et al. v. Dover Area School District, in which the American Civil Liberties Union is representing the parents suing the district for trying to push intelligent design into science classes. And, yes, it's time for my usual full disclosure: I'm a board member of an ACLU affiliate working on that case (though I, personally, am not), so please excuse an extra plug. The ACLU has collected much of the intense and international coverage of the case on one site, and has set up a blog, Speaking Freely, for daily trial updates, posts, links and public comments.
It is Stupid Design, but it outs ID at all levels. Look what fundamental christians are trying to push on the rest of society; a unprovable theory that has no possible way to prove, and yet Stupid Design wil allow them to continue their war on science.
wande-life is too short and too absurd to be serious.
ros- SD is short-hand for one side in this battle.ID is short-hand for the other.They are just labels like New York Yankees is a label for a bunch of people.
fm-Stupid Design is okay by me.Take the freeway out of Houston last week for example.
wande-I know what I mean.What do you want clarifying?
BBB-My user profile,entered before Post 1,says-"Well evolved microbe."Just like the rest of you.The monkey stuff is posh.Snobby.SDers are really posh.It's a status badge.
Where do you get "astonishing" from?It's all just there.Inevitable.People knew the earth went round the sun thousands of years ago.Where our language developed you just were not supposed to say so.
And how has evolution itself evolved?Well I would say it is going backwards when you get sentences like -"Scientists think evolution is pretty well proven".I've read Origin Of Species and there is unlikely to be a sentence like that in it.
I enjoyed "practically apoplectic" I must say.
And if I was fighting the SD cause I wouldn't call c.i. to the witness stand.
My problem with SD is artistic.SD is mechanical and ID is organic.SD is about cognition and laws of causality.ID is about inner experience and emblems like the Stars and Stripes.In ID there is an evolution toward inward fulfillment whilst SD is about "progress" like the Arctic ice melting.ID reads its idea "out of nature" and SD reads it "into" nature.Teleology.And Darwinism is just a trifle too easy to understand which may explain its attractions.
I think you would all be better off if you read some more and knocked off piss-balling about with jibes.
Jibes are to intellectuals what baby talk is to nurses.
SDers should have Stockhausen etc in their record collection rather than Mozart if they are not up for being called half-baked.Shakespeare and Dylan and Flaubert and Stendhal and many others are unimaginable under SD.
Now I get it! (SD means Shakespeare and Dylan)
Associated Press has reported on this morning's testimony in the Kitzmiller trial:
Quote:HARRISBURG, Pa. - The concept of "intelligent design" is a form of creationism and is not based on scientific method, a professor testified Wednesday in a trial over whether the idea should be exposed to public school students in science class.
Robert T. Pennock, a professor of science and philosophy at Michigan State University, testified on behalf of families who sued the Dover Area School District. He said supporters of intelligent design don't offer evidence to support their idea.
"As scientists go about their business, they follow a method," Pennock said. "Intelligent design wants to reject that and so it doesn't really fall within the purview of science."
