Intelligent Design Theory: Science or Religion?

@spendius,

Quote:

I do not see how an atheistic society of any seriousness could have anything other than regultory commands at the disposal of the elite which is composed of human beings. Hence our endless fascination with immorality among elites.

Well religious societies have regulatory commands at the disposal of the elite which is composed of human being, aslo...

...unless you are prepared to prove that a GOD exists.

For all we know...there is no GOD...and that is exactly what is happening in religious societies...except that in agnostic societies the "elite" would be people living today rather than people dead for thousands of years.

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The chart which is elsewhere on this forum of the percentage of Americans believe in evolutions has changed drastically from those out-of-date polls:

From Live Science online:

History
Survey: 61 Percent Agree with Evolution

By LiveScience Staff

02 January 2008 11:57 am ET

Americans would rather hear about evolution from scientists than from judges or celebrities, according to a new survey that finds a majority agree that evolution is at work among living things.

A coalition of 17 organizations reacted today to the survey by calling on the scientific community to become more involved in promoting evolution and other aspects of science education.

The coalition, including the National Academy of Sciences, the American Institute of Physics and the National Science Teachers Association, released this statement:

"The introduction of 'non-science,' such as creationism and intelligent design, into science education will undermine the fundamentals of science education. Some of these fundamentals include using the scientific method, understanding how to reach scientific consensus, and distinguishing between scientific and nonscientific explanations of natural phenomena."

Link for rest of article:

http://www.livescience.com/history/080102-evolution-teaching.html

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One can continue to endorse the anti-evolution, God fearing, religious fundamentalists:

With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion.
- Steven Weinberg

or stay on the same level a well-known IDer:

[It's] time for the human race to enter the solar system.
- Dan Quayle

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@Frank Apisa,

Quote:

Well religious societies have regulatory commands at the disposal of the elite which is composed of human being, aslo...

Not at all. They have the revealed word of God. Kings have worn sackcloth and ashes and done penance before the altars.

An agnostic, Frank, doesn't really know what to think. Voltaire blew agnosticism out of the water. And Confucius, he say, he who sits in middle of road gets run over by traffic going in both directions.

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@Lightwizard,

So you live in a more and more God-forsaken land.

Is that a price worth paying for you to be shown to have known the score?

Media want you to be God-forsaken so that they can be where you have to look for your wisdom. Left, right and centre. Big Brother hates rivals.

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@spendius,

Quote:

Not at all. They have the revealed word of God.

Well they certainly claim to have "the revealed word of god"...but the best guess is that they are using 2000+ year old human bullshit for their moral compass.

And nobody has ever blown agnosticism out of the water! But it is entertaining to see that you are deluded that way.

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@Frank Apisa,

Two assertions Frank. Dearie me.

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@spendius,

Dearie you, indeedie do!

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I do not know if there is God...or if there are no gods.

Blow that out of the water!

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@Lightwizard,

Good article LW:

Quote:

"The bottom line is that the world is round, humans evolved from an extinct species and Elvis is dead," Weissmann said. "This survey is a wake-up call for anyone who supports teaching information based on evidence rather than speculation or hope; people want to hear the truth, and they want to hear it from scientists."

I hope he's right.

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@rosborne979,

Nobody wants to hear the plain unvarnished truth. I've proved that.

They just like saying they do. What time is the train due is okay.

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@Frank Apisa,

I wouldn't even try Frank. That isn't the point.

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@spendius,

Well get that Voltaire guy over here...and let him have another shot at it.

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@Frank Apisa,

He was on his deathbed Frank. You have to take that into consideration.

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@rosborne979,

We all know that isn't what people believe; their religion has confused their brains to an irreversible level, and our children will end up paying dearly for their ignorance. They continue to introduce new ways of imposing creationism into our science curricula.

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@cicerone imposter,

Quote:

We all know that isn't what people believe; their religion has confused their brains to an irreversible level, and our children will end up paying dearly for their ignorance. They continue to introduce new ways of imposing creationism into our science curricula.

This Christian religion of which you speak so authoritatively ci. has been confusing Western brains to an irreversible level (an admission of the hopeless nature of your quest) for a very long time and has developed slowly out of an indeterminate period during which life was not worth living to the point where even an ordinary toss-pot such as yourself has a million dollar house, four holidays a year, in car entertainment, pull top beer cans and a medical profession which can temporarily set right the consequences of a gross and gluttonous diet indulged in over many years.

Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni himself went to great pains to depict on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel the facial expressions of people who lived without Christianity and millions of people trek every year to have a look at them.

When you say that "our children will end up paying dearly for their ignorance" would it be too much trouble to ask you to explain the mechanisms by which your prediction will come to pass and to offer a route of your own which will garuantee that "our children" won't end up looking like that great artist depicted the physiognomy of the human being if they follow your wise guidance and reject the thinking which has resulted in your enjoyment of those luxuries I mentioned above along with a host of others.

After all, a casual wave of your arm over the future and a sweet, self-comforting easy phrase hardly weighs against 2000 years of human endevour. I'm not for betting on it anyway especially when it is remembered that after 70 years of life and nearly twenty years of expensive education you can barely read and write and are still blurting nonsensical absurdities over anybody who comes within range.

Do your friends and neighbours get up collections to pay for your holidays abroad?

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@spendius,

Quote:

He (Voltaire) was on his deathbed Frank. You have to take that into consideration.

Spendius, you asserted that “...Voltaire blew agnosticism out of the water.”

Voltaire died in 1778,

The term “agnosticism” didn't come into being until Thomas Huxley coined it 1869...almost 100 years later.

You've got to take that into consideration.

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@Frank Apisa,

I think the word "wanking" only came into acceptable usage in fairly recent history but that by no means means that nobody ever wanked in previous times. Not by a long stretch I should think.

Actually Voltaire believed in both the argument from cosmology and the argument from design for the existence of God. So it is said anyway.

He was in dispute with the Church and its doings. But presumably he was aware of Pascal's Wager.

Quote:

Pascal's Wager (or Pascal's Gambit) is a suggestion posed by the French philosopher Blaise Pascal that even though the existence of God cannot be determined through reason, a person should "wager" as though God exists, because so living has everything to gain, and nothing to lose. It was set out in note 233 of his Pensées, a posthumously published collection of notes made by Pascal in his last years as he worked on a treatise on Christian apologetics.

Historically, Pascal's Wager was groundbreaking as it had charted new territory in probability theory, was one of the first attempts to make use of the concept of infinity, marked the first formal use of decision theory, and anticipated the future philosophies of pragmatism and voluntarism.

Once again a Christian contributes to science in a manner far more important than Darwin ever could have.

He said that " if reason cannot be trusted, it is a better "bet" to believe in God than not to do so."

It is difficult to maintain that there was "nothing to gain" when one looks at the mighty edifice of thought that Christianity has brought into the world. And what it promises.

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@spendius,

Quote:

I think the word "wanking" only came into acceptable usage in fairly recent history but that by no means means that nobody ever wanked in previous times. Not by a long stretch I should think.

Actually Voltaire believed in both the argument from cosmology and the argument from design for the existence of God. So it is said anyway.

Spendius...Voltaire never blew agnosticism out of the water...as you suggested. A ethical way to handle this would be for you at least to acknowledge that...although an acknowledgement that you were wrong or had overstated the case would be nice also.

Quote:

Actually Voltaire believed in both the argument from cosmology and the argument from design for the existence of God. So it is said anyway.

He was in dispute with the Church and its doings. But presumably he was aware of Pascal's Wager.

I am not in the least interested in Voltaire's guesses about the Reality of existence.

Quote:

He was in dispute with the Church and its doings. But presumably he was aware of Pascal's Wager.

I have written several essays about Pascal's Wager...which I consider a silly proposition....mostly because it requires both hypocrisy on the part of the wagerer...and a conviction that a deity could be fooled by an agnostic into thinking that serious doubt does not exist where serious doubt does exist.

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Of all religions the Christian is without doubt the one which should inspire tolerance most, although up to now the Christians have been the most intolerant of all men.
-- Voltaire

If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him. - Voltaire

Which is more dangerous: fanaticism or atheism? Fanaticism is certainly a thousand times more deadly; for atheism inspires no bloody passion whereas fanaticism does; atheism is opposed to crime and fanaticism causes crimes to be committed.
-- Voltaire

The truths of religion are never so well understood as by those who have lost the power of reasoning.
-- Voltaire

On Pascal's Watchmaker Analogy

Voltaire

Voltaire (1694"1778) was fond of the argument from design, but also seemed aware of its limitations and treated it gingerly. In his unpublished A Treatise on Metaphysics (1736) Voltaire considered the watchmaker analogy and concluded that it probably indicated the existence of a powerful intelligent designer, but that it did not prove that the designer must be God.

"[One way] of acquiring the notion of a being who directs the universe...is by considering ... the end to which each thing appears to be directed... [W]hen I see a watch with a hand marking the hours, I conclude that an intelligent being has designed the springs of this mechanism, so that the hand would mark the hours. So, when I see the springs of the human body, I conclude that an intelligent being has designed these organs to be received and nourished within the womb for nine months; for eyes to be given for seeing; hands for grasping, and so on. But from this one argument, I cannot conclude anything more, except that it is probable that an intelligent and superior being has prepared and shaped matter with dexterity; I cannot conclude from this argument alone that this being has made the matter out of nothing or that he is infinite in any sense. However deeply I search my mind for the connection between the following ideas " it is probable that I am the work of a being more powerful than myself, therefore this being has existed from all eternity, therefore he has created everything, therefore he is infinite, and so on."

" I cannot see the chain which leads directly to that conclusion. I can see only that there is something more powerful than myself and nothing more.

" Voltaire, From Chapter 2 of A Treatise on Metaphysics, second version, 1736. Translated by Paul Edwards

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Intelligent Design Theory: Science or Religion?

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