Intelligent Design Theory: Science or Religion?

That is correct.

But being brain dead DOES make one brain dead...and you are brain dead.

I am being honest, Fresco. You ought to give it a try...you'd find out it doesn't hurt.



The objectives I have!



Nope!

Holy ****...finally an insight from one of the morons.

YES...c.i......it must have a god or a creator.

So...when I offer a suppositional scenario that begins with "IF THERE IS A GOD..."...

...what the **** do you think the supposition is?????

There is of course, the philosophical argument that we cannot know anything for certain. In that sense, life really could be a "dream" of sorts, and nothing is real. If a person chooses to take that philosophical stance, then agnosticism becomes the default basis for everything.

But there's a big difference between the possible and the probable. I think most people dismiss the arguments of what is (radically) possible, in favor of what is (rationally) probable simply for expediency. Unless you've smoked some really good weed at a college party

Render to epistemologists the things that are epistemologist's.



Is that so? Frank is saying that there is either no intelligent designer or there is an intelligent designer. That nobody can prove either or ever will. That what proponents of either view say has nothing to do with the argument. Or with him. Or anybody else outside of those proponents and those who they influence. That anybody who takes a dogmatic position that there is, or there isn't, an intelligent designer is as thick as a pile of $1,ooo bills worth $850 billion, (which we have been told is 8 miles), and that they are ploughing a furrow in the hope of a plentiful harvest of either money or status or self-validation of a position they took early in life and which they can't now go back on for fear of losing face.

I don't see how that is assailable. Perhaps you might enlighten me. I must not be less epistemologically ignorant, whatever that means, apart from it being another reverse invidious comparison reflecting glory and numina upon those who have been to the 20th century epistemology lessons you have attended.

So what Frank shows is that the debate about whether there is an intelligent designer has no point, and is a mere affectation on which to hang one's hat as we can easily see on here.

Now, as we have to do something we can either proceed as if there is an intelligent designer or on the basis that there is not or on the basis that the discussion is fruitless. The latter seems to me to lead to a form of catatonia given that most of the rest of society is proceeding from one or other of the remaining options as a political reality. He who sits in middle of road gets run over by traffic going in both directions. As Buddhist societies were.

So the question comes down to the practical usefulness of the other two options. Social consequences. However absurd both are. The intelligent sceptic may well think that religion is absurd but he would not abandon its practical value and thus he would either pay lip service to its absurdities or remain silent. As La Mettrie did after he was chased out of France. Plato is reported to have chosen the lip service.

We have direct evidence, in our everyday comforts, of the usefulness, assuming our sciences are deemed useful, of proceeding as if there is an intelligent designer. And of the drawbacks. We have no evidence of the usefulness of proceeding as if there is no intelligent designer. Even in the collapsed Soviet Union religion was not eradicated and is now resurgent. Communist ideology hardly touched the Russian soul. Stalin closed the churches but didn't demolish them. Mr Putin has been seen in one.

The atheist needs to show the practical usefulness of his creed. That is the place to begin the assault rather than name-dropping which only impresses the innocent. "Cant" derives from Kant. One might with profit substitute another letter. It means to "tilt from the level" , to " take a leaning position", " an insincere mode of speaking" and to speak "hypocritically with affected piety." An armchair revolutionary I suppose. A dissatisfied mind.



In a manner of speaking-yes. I can imagine not knowing that all the things in the universe are not of one piece--that the world is only what I can sense. I can imagine not knowing that the water and the earth and the flowers and the animals are all made of the same stuff. I can imagine not knowing the arts of priests, philosophers and scientists.

I can imagine not admiring a nice view and thinking only of necessities and of being frightened of unknown forces like thunder, floods, famines and pestilence. I can imagine doing things to try to placate the unknown forces thought of as behind those types of things. Unknown forces are still with us.

I can imagine personifying the unknown forces. I can't imagine not doing. I can imagine not knowing never knowing the beauty of final causes and the wondrous design of nature.

I can imagine accidents and deaths and cold and drought and pain and suffering, which are to the modern epistemologist the main difficulty of admitting the idea of an intelligent designer, and I can imagine those horrors being the only argument for such a supreme being.

I can imagine "being" without the sophisticated affectations of the modern, suburban epistemologist who, having his ass wiped for him, has become bored and so resorts to mind games as a way of making the time more easy passing and of using those games as a means of perceiving himself as above the common herd of humanity the members of which it is well known are born at the rate of one per minute.

I can imagine making the time more easy passing by carving a piece of stone into the shape of the Venus of Willendorf or painting patterns on surfaces and leaving a shot of my hand as a signature.

Yes- in a manner of speaking I have been there. I can almost say I am there now. I'm a well evolved microbe as I said in my first message on A2K. When someone praises a scenic view or a sunset I scoff. When an effete epistemologist scoffs at Wayne Rooney I feel sorry for him. When I see someone moving the lawn I smirk. When I see a psychiatrist or an advice bureau or a news reader looking all concerned about financial meltdowns and credit crunches I grin sheepishly. I'm unimpressed. I'm vulgar. I'm sadly deficient of reason. I'm common. I'm a dipshit. Scientists have said so and they can't be wrong. I'm a dickhead. I'm a wanker. I'm a dipsomaniac. It's all in the scientific record on here. If any of that is incorrect then what else is incorrect that is said by our scientific claque? I judge wine by its alcohol content. I presume they put the % on the bottle for that very purpose. I judge ladies on their willingness.

**** Kant and Kuhn. (Who's he when he's at home?)

But then, some who smoke weed think they can fly too! LOL

Are you wobbling Frank? I thought it was 100%. What chink of light have you identified. Share please.

I go further that just scoffing at that ridiculous institution.

It's a supposition without any "hard" evidence. It's invisible; by any other name, it doesn't exist.

Not wobbling at all, Spendius.

For me...the part where they claim "there may be an ID" (even if they do not express it that way)...is the .01%.

That part to me rings true...that there MAY be an Intelligent Designer.

How the Intelligent Designer, if it exists, would design...to me, they have completely wrong.

As I see it...IF there is an Intelligent Designer...obviously the ID, for one reason or another, does not want to confirm its existence, for if it did, it would already have done a better job of confirming it.

And IF there is an ID...and IF the ID, as I suspect, does not want to confirm ITS existence...the kind of Design it would have incorporated into ITS creation would be the kind science seems to be discovering right now. Creating beings full blown would blow ITS cover...so to speak.

Please Spendius...please tell me that this all makes sense to you.

Obviously you are not bright enough to understand how hypotheticals work...so go back to knitting or whatever else you were doing.

My hypotheticals are just fine, thank you! I don't believe in invisible spaghetti monsters who may have created this planet and the universe.

You obviously do not understand how hypotheticals work.

Thank you for sharing your blind guesses about gods.

Your hypotheticals works like this: I don't know, so my guess is maybe.
My hypotheticals works like this: I don't see it, so it doesn't exist for me. When I see it, I'll believe it.

Supposition: "If there is a god...."

Also, "If there is a spaghetti monster...."

They are both the same "suppositions."

I've said, more than once, that your position is unassailable assuming the debate is not concerned with social consequences, as it isn't apart from my contributions which are dealing with nothing else.

I've said that anybody who thinks it is assailable, logically, something I don't care about, is as thick as an 8 mile high pile of $1,000 bills. If logic mattered to me I would hide under the stairs reading my favourite books.

What more do you want?

Not only that. It is my birthday.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY!

Hey, right, Happy Valentine Birthday (love thyself as you love your neighbor)

No, you ******* moron...that is not how hypotheticals work.

My hypothetical had nothing to do with my agnosticism. But you are too ignorant to see that.

But why bother to explain it to you again...you are simply not intelligent enough to understand.