Intelligent Design Theory: Science or Religion?

I don't think that is the case. I think ID rests on the proposition that the social consequences of anti-ID are unacceptable. That is why anti-IDers refuse to discuss those social consequences.

Once anti-ID is agreed as unacceptable, as is the case, then ID is the only alternative. What form it takes is a matter for political agreement.

ID itself doesn't wish to discuss the social consequences of anti-ID because it can soon get embarrassing, especially to the wives, daughters and aunties etc of judges and well paid counsel for either defence or prosecution although not to owners of low bars in dock areas of major ports. And so it invents quasi-scientific ideas in the hope, presumably, that the population is savvy enough to know why it is doing that. Unfortunately our A2K anti-IDers are not savvy enough or are pretending not to be.

It is very rare for conservatives to attack socialists at their most vulnerable point (international socialism) because doing so raises issues which neither side wish to examine. IDers and anti-IDers have a similar problem with these embarrassing questions, what the Texas senator referred to as "controversial issues" in one of wande's paste-ups, so they have a sort of gentleman's agreement to focus on such things as irreducible complexity which can be batted back and forth for ever and which, as a bonus, lead to opportunities to scam lucre and cut a dash in media.

I assume that lady science teachers, lady members of school boards and lady journalists who support anti-ID are blissfully unaware of these difficulties as well they might be if they have been well brought up as one might expect they have been in order to occupy such important positions of responsibility. This will also apply to men in those positions who have been brought up under the strict surveillance of their respectable Moms and have not yet undergone a trip round the world or the Grand Tour as it used to be known as in posh circles.

Precisaely the point made by Fritjof Capra in "The Web of Life".

No. That argument is still couched in an anthropocentric "concern with control" paradigm. As Capra points out (ref above to FM) the current concern with "deep ecology" is effectively a shift of focus away from "social control" to "whole planet focus". "Control" is seen as a potentially pernicious and chauvinistic aspect of "progress" to date. Prigogine's work on spontaneous strucures and the application of "systems theory" effectively kicks simplistic notions of "purposeful creation" and "ID" into touch.

You're not implying that religion is a system of control?

Skepticism, like chastity, should not be relinquished too readily.
- George Santayana

Of course ! It is both a system of social control and a "control safety net" which ensures the individual against his own "lack of control" of "this life and the hereafter".

I'm afraid I find that a form of pie in the sky. Or talking for talking's sake.

What are the essential differences between "social control" and "whole planet focus"?

And what on earth is "potentially pernicious". And what's the problem with "progress" being connected to chauvinism. It is connected. There was no progress under the long sway of the matriarchy.

Since when has anthropocentric concern been set aside? How can it be set aside?

The more one studies your post fresco the more it sounds like the empty noise of chattering class Big Dicks or wannabee Big Dicks.

What current concern with "deep ecology"? That's been a mere fashionable conceit of the aforesaid chattering classes in times of hubris who like nothing better than to rabbit concernedly about saving the planet whilst being in the forefront of the 1% of the earth's population who are busy ******* it up and who have nothing to say about important practical matters which they know nothing about and have no chance of getting themselves elected to any office in which their control freakery can express itself.

You must have been socialising with too many uppity ceiling busters and the self which seeks to worm its way into their expensive underclothing (Made in China) has swallowed the drivel they spout for strategic reasons so often that it has been positively conditioned to their way of thinking.

"Whole planet focus" implies that for homo sapiens apparent "short term progress" can lead to "long term disaster". That is not my argument, it's Capra's and the ecologists.

What does make sense to me is the the highlighting of the arrogance of homo sapiens in the cosmic scale of things, religiosity perhaps being the epitome of such arrogance.

I agree; most animals have the same physiological makeup such as bone, fat, skin, eyes, ears, nose, legs, arms, and mouth - and our sex organs.

I'm not even sure human's have better brains; we are the most destructive of all animals.

We probably belong at the bottom of the animal kingdom rung.

Obviously fresco you are unaware of Bentham's concept of the "felicific calculus".

It is derived from Plato's explanation of moral judgments as quantifiable in terms of trade offs between pleasure and pain. This is done routinely in relation to the obvious pleasures of taking drugs and the painful consequences of doing so. And so with surgery. Or the extra pint of beer and the hangover.Very many aspects of life.

The pleasures of a piss-up are not morally objectionable as pleasures. A calculus is in play in regard to the amount of pain which results. The pain of surgery or athletic training are not intrinsically good but are good if the pleasure of the result outweighs the suffering.

Thus the correct conduct of life depends upon expertise in the science, yes science, of the " felicific calculus". Which conduct produces the greatest amount of pleasure as a book-keeping exercise with a column for pain and a column for pleasure. Dickens' equation of the sixpence.

It is said that the skill in the exercise of this scientific expertise is akin to measurement of things with rulers and weigh-scales. And seen in terms of quantities and durabilities. No doubt you will tell your students that eschewing the pleasures of partying for a few years and getting down to some grinding and painful study of the bullshit you teach them will result in many years of pleasure in well paid occupations with fat pensions and permission to order people about. And, incidentally, this is where control arises. If the hedonistic students carry on partying, the authorities, in order to keep up appearences in regard to the academic excellence of their institution, pass them anyway and so we get "experts" who are not experts but who think they are because they have a certificate which says so and have had a pat on the back from the Minister of Education for showing what a successful steward she is of our national education which costs £80 billion a year I believe. Additional advantages are flogging them a cap and gown, a frame for the certificate, a video of the presentation, the sight of the proud parents lapping it all up and a good end of term banquet and booze-up, when they have taken their offspring away to exhibit to their friends and neighbours as proof of the superiority of their genetic material, and a three months holiday in Tuscany looms large.

Socrates said that the skill in the "felicific calculus" is the guiding principle of life.



Protagoras 356-7.

Coming from somebody who wed Xanthippe and was executed it is quite funny really but I presume he adhered, as no doubt you do yourself, to that other doctrine of "do as I say and not as I do".

Anyway- the point is that it is the task of theologians to calculate these matters and because the common man or woman is not able to understand such exquisite refinements, as is also the case with the calculus of mathematics, it is necessary to find other methods of persuading them to adopt the "right opinions" even though they lack the knowledge of why. Hence religion.

With the decline of the influence of theologians the only alternatives are those secular "experts" with educational qualifications of the sort I mentioned above and who are very determined to make the most of them in any field they can think of such as organising bans on foxhunting, smoking in pubs and controlled drinking.

It might be worth adding that all the anti-IDers on these threads do hold, more or less, the "right opinions" which theological tradition has conditioned them to. I have seen no sign of them breaking with those moral imperitives and adopting an approach conditioned by a knowledge, such as it is, of evolution. That is why I think their anti-IDery is a mere affectation chosen for its attention grabbing and trouble making usefulness.

Spendius,

A parochial reply don't you think. Most of us have moved on from the verbal fallout of student bar chat.

I know old boy. It's always a clincher to have "moved on". It saves answering the points raised. It's a form of imperious disdain. A female pregrotative IMHAHO.

Spendius,

You surely don't need me to answers your "points". Try googling "evolutionary ethics" .

Yes, but this is a debate and there is an audience. I think you should answer the points. The site is called Ask an Expert. I don't need you to answer the points. It is the putative audience which might be interested.

Your response undermines the site. It has no point if every question asked is referred to Google. And there's the entertainment value of your style in answering to consider.

Is there such a thing as "evolutionary ethics"?

I didn't expect two crude evasions in row from you.

Fresco, if you think a little bit about "evolutionary ethics", you'll see it is an oxymoron.

Unless you assume there's an ethical, intelligent designer behind the concept...

Cute, but did you even bother looking up what it is Francis? Educate yourself.

T
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Another glib phrase from a half-baked anti-IDer. Real anti-IDers must wince to see their viewpoint defended so ineptly by people who have theologically approved "right opinions" but neither know they have them nor how they got them.

Wow, another good point Spendi. I never thought of it like that before!

T
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I'm trying, I'm trying.

But if I fail, I'll ask you to help me out...

Well you wouldn't have would you seeing as how you're a good little puritan who has swallowed the Protestant work ethic and who pirouettes around the ladies like a dancing master in lieu of riffling a wad of twenties under their noses like any sound anti-IDer in tune with evolutionary principles knows to do.

Fascinating.

T
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