Intelligent Design Theory: Science or Religion?

The scientific logic is inexorable. There is nothing in Darwin to resist if you forget what a silly old buffoon he was all things considered.

The satisfying of evolution theory in this case is not happening in the wild. It is subject to human actions.

You what!!? They are the first things that would come to anybody's mind. It's hard to know what else could be in the frame unless it is the angel which picked out our blessed humble Mary.

Biological imperitive is constantly reacting with social expectation with a moving frontier. That's what arranges family size at 2.1 or 3.4 or something else. Would you arrange it, it does need to be arranged, by regulation passed in Congress. As in China. There's an atheist leadership there although lately they are having a slight wobbler on it. And Mr Putin was in church last week. And Mr Obama said-"God bless you" and "God bless America."

Would you like to define these two terms you are using. Are you talking females on heat or cash deals? Let's see what you can come up with.

Your feet, where they are right now as you read this, would not be where they are without Keynesian economics. You probably, very long odds on, wouldn't even exist. Is that proof? The chances of your feet being where they are now without Keynesian economics are greater than that of a monkey composing, say, Tom Jones. That's proof enough for me. Mine wouldn't. I'm sure of that.

A social contract is not only un-necessary in evolution but it cannot even exist. Unless might is right is considered a social contract. A school exists primarily to inculcate a social contract. The passage of information is secondary to that. Even an adult night class will have some elements of a social contract built into its system. Having separate toilets for example.

A social contract contradicts evolution systems in every respect. It is what it is for. It has no other reason for existing. The "missionary's position" is known by that name because the natives had never seen it before. Why would a special name like that be created if they had and were familiar with it.

Evolution teaching undermines the social contract. Actually, for those with the nerve, it liquidates it. I am aware that some professions will benefit from the consequences of that, indeed are doing and have done, but that's a partial interest and if it belongs on a science thread it should be under Economics or Psychology.

And I said that evolution was independent of social contracts. Not the teaching of it. That's when half-baked comes in. Evolution theory in frilly petticoats.

Shirakawasuna wrote:

spendius wrote:

How can a social contract sit next to evolution science when the latter has no social contract in its existence unless you want to discuss social evolution which none of the anti-IDers do.

Any social contract is contra evolution and is specifically designed to countermand evolution's exigencies. It would have no point otherwise.

Because schoolchildren can understand the difference between a general descriptive idea and one of ethical advocacy. This is apparently a difference between you and schoolchildren. Look up the is-ought fallacy if you'd like, but hell, the fact that evolutionary principles apply even if our education system struggled valiantly against them should give you an indication as to why you're wrong.

What ethical idea? How about that it teaches them what comes naturally and that resisting natural drives is bad for personal health, see Freud & co., and the social contract is thus killing them. But slowly enough for the medical profession to keep pace by dreaming up ever more elaborate treatments and which thus has an interest, see Ivan Illich, in the general procedure. Is that ethical notion in your mind.

Shirakawasuna wrote:

the fact that evolutionary principles apply even if our education system struggled valiantly against them should give you an indication as to why you're wrong.

I'm not exactly wrong.

I am merely dealing with the immediate future. Destiny will roll over us I feel sure and evolution will return to that Edenic state from which we emerged some disputed length of time ago. I gather the earth has about 4.5 billion years to go. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, if the whiskey don't get you, the women must. Yes-I'm wrong in the long run. I know.

But the argument works in reverse. It says the forces of evolution are powerful ones and we need strong measures to hold them at bay. You do want to hold them at bay don't you?

The reason you are scared of it is because...

...you know that if there is a pyschosomatic realm and that emotions do affect the health and happiness of individuals and societies then you need to take religion seriously because its dogmas, ceremonials and rituals do create emotional states for better or for worse. And I think the Christian religion, irrespective of what some have used it for, is for the better.

I think your atheisism and Darwinianism create emotional states which are negative for both individuals and society and thus should not be taught in classrooms unless the creation of those states is your objective. And it is easy to see that Media and the legal profession would favour that. They thrive on negativity. And the sale of palliatives which will never work and the settling of the tensions arising.

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The reason you are scared of it is because...

Isn't that called "begging the question?" You do that a lot, Spendius. Way too often for someone as intelligent as you say you are.

Wow…a guy who is a theist…thinking religion creates emotional states "for the better."

And I'm not a theist either. Like you I haven't the faintest idea. But a society of theists looks to be superior to a society of atheists in terms of power and providing things we approve of. And I only said that was my opinion. I didn't present it as a fact. I'm not 100% confident. It depends on time scales.

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Do you suppose, Spendius, that people who are agnostics or atheists think agnosticism and atheism sets up emotional states that are for the better?

I don't know what they think. The ones on here talk in superficialities. But knowing, as I do, where the mathematics of dynamic force comes from I cannot see how atheists could have arrived at it. The Epicurians of old held to such a position and to the view of anti-IDers on here that the interventions of the gods in human affairs were damaging fictions. It was their justification for wallowing in sensual pleasures and laziness. Cicero treated them with disdain in On the Nature of the Gods but I haven't read that. I'm taking the words of Professor Jordan of the University of Notre Dame as true. He claims they were held in contempt by Platonists, Aristotelians and Stoics alike.

The anti-IDers on here certainly do wallow in the pleasures of self flattery and not much could be lazier in the intellectual field than the conceit that having a slight familiarity with such a simple thesis as Darwin's allows them to consider themselves as spokespersons for the scientific method. (perish the thought) . We would be in the **** if they were. They haven't the nerve for the scientific method. Not even near to having.

They are simply poseurs who have been lording it over people with polysyllables and shouting and control freaks to boot. The use of Ignore in this debate constitutes a demand for a one-way megaphone. I don't even know why they came on Able 2 Know.

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Hey, you are a friend, so let me help you with that but giving you a HINT: Of course they do. You goddam right that agnostics and atheists think they are helped psychologically better than if they were into the superstition…and the fear that drives most religion.

I would want to know how thinking this existence is meaningless, pointless and mechanically determined can help anybody to do anything other than get comatose with narcotics. What meaning has A2K to such people.

Prof. Jordan wrote-

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Kant and Hegel by no means exclude religious topics or even religious sentiments. If neither seems quite an orthodox Christian, both labour to save religious conclusions and to open a space for religious experience. If Kant wants his reader to pass through a 'critique of all theology based on speculative principles' in order to reach what seems a positive moral theology (Critique of Pure Reason, 2. 3. 7.), many of his readers took only the negative lesson. If Hegel accredits Christian theology as a necessary misapprehension of higher truths, he condems it as a misapprehension.

With such misreadings the anti-religious philosophers such as Marx, Schopenhauer and Nietzsche made hay.

And not one anti-IDer on here would dare line himself up with any of those. Nietzsche went nuts after inventing Big Brother, Schopenhauer wrote his famous essay on women and Marx has almost screwed up the world. They might quote the names at dinner parties but ask them to stand up for what they wrote and they would run off with a thin brown slime emanating from the bottom of their trouser legs.

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So…what is your answer?

Don't ask silly questions Frank. This is street level on this forum.

I can understand "god" as nature, and nothing else.