Intelligent Design Theory: Science or Religion?

@spendius,

The Turin Shroud is supposed to be about 1300. Wasn't it a Veronica?

What was Dylan feeling when he wrote "Veronica ain't here and my car's not acting right".

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@spendius,

Just ran out of steam, poor little thread.
LIDOCANE! STAT!!

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@farmerman,

OD'd on spendi?

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@edgarblythe,

Possibly, you can see the deep cyanotic patterns around the eyes, just as if the air had been sucked out of the poor thing.

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I am sure it will undergo a rejuvenation, once the kryptonite that is spendi is allowed to fade a bit.

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Just for fun, here's an article from the Discovery Institute. Can anyone spot the initial logic flaw...

Quote:

Creating An Insult To Intelligence
WEDNESDAY, 29TH APRIL 2009
By Melanie Phillips

Listening to the Today programme this morning, I was irritated once again by yet another misrepresentation of Intelligent Design as a form of Creationism. In an item on the growing popularity of Intelligent Design, John Humphrys interviewed Professor Ken Miller of Brown University in the US who spoke on the subject last evening at the Faraday Institute, Cambridge. Humphrys suggested that Intelligent Design might be considered a kind of middle ground between Darwinism and Creationism. Miller agreed but went further, saying that Intelligent Design was nothing more than an attempt to repackage good old-fashioned Creationism and make it more palatable.

But this is totally untrue. Miller referred to a landmark US court case in 2005, Kitzmiller v Dover Area School District, which did indeed uphold the argument that Intelligent Design was a form of Creationism in its ruling that teaching Intelligent Design violated the constitutional ban against teaching religion in public schools. But the court was simply wrong, doubtless because it had heard muddled testimony from the likes of Prof Miller.

Whatever the ramifications of the specific school textbooks under scrutiny in the Kitzmiller/Dover case, the fact is that Intelligent Design not only does not come out of Creationism but stands against it. This is because Creationism comes out of religion while Intelligent Design comes out of science. Creationism, whose proponents are Bible literalists, is a specific doctrine which holds that the earth was literally created in six days. Intelligent Design, whose proponents are mainly scientists, holds that the complexity of science suggests that there must have been a governing intelligence behind the origin of matter, which could not have developed spontaneously from nothing.

The confusion arises partly out of ignorance, with people lazily confusing belief in a Creator with Creationism. But belief in a Creator is common to all people of monotheistic faith " with many scientists amongst them -- the vast majority of whom would regard Creationism as totally ludicrous. In coming to the conclusion that a governing intelligence must have been responsible for the ultimate origin of matter, Intelligent Design proponents are essentially saying there must have been a creator. The difference between them and people of religious faith is that ID proponents do not necessarily believe in a personalised Creator, or God.

As a result, both Creationists and many others of religious faith disdain Intelligent Design, just as ID proponents think Creationism is totally off the wall. Yet the two continue to be conflated. And ignorance is only partly responsible for the confusion, since militant evangelical atheists deliberately conflate Intelligent Design with Creationism in order to smear and discredit ID and its adherents.

On Today, Humphrys perfectly reasonably pressed Miller further. If ID was merely a disguised form of Creationism, he asked, why were so many intelligent people prepared to accept ID but not Creationism? Miller replied:

Intelligent people can sometimes be wrong.

Indeed; and it is Prof Miller who is wrong. Creationism and Intelligent Design are two completely different ways of looking at the world; and you don’t have to subscribe to either to realise the untruth that is being propagated -- and the wrong that is being done to people’s reputations -- by the pretence that they are connected.

Here's the root flaw: "This is because Creationism comes out of religion while Intelligent Design comes out of science."

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@rosborne979,

The first line that says "Creating An Insult To Intelligence." Nobody creates any insult to anybody's intelligence; they do it all by themselves.

Their claim that "intelligent design comes out of science" has never been proven and can never be proved. Intelligent design by its very description is an oxymoron.

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@cicerone imposter,

What they meant was that intelligent design comes out of science fiction.

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@Lightwizard,

speaking of governing intelligence, don't allow emotion to cloud your feelings on the subject

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Quote:

"This is because Creationism comes out of religion while Intelligent Design comes out of science."

Aint that a hoot. Its almost as if the DI folks want us to merely turn off theavailable evidence of history and merely "buy their fantasy".
The ID movement of today came out of the singly fertile mind of LAwyer Phillip Johnson who, after the Creationists of Louisiana took a nice pounding in the courts, and his own divorce,needed a break and took a trip to Europe and , after reading several books on Evolution, became a "Born again" Christian who became particularly pissed at "Methodological Naturalism" which restricts scientific predictions to focus upon cause and effect analyses to be totally within the realm of the Natural (as opposed to the SUprnatural). He then wrote a book,"DArwin on Trial, got famous, became a founding partner of the Discovery Institute, where he authored their WEDGE STRATEGY (Which is a totally theologically based document) and then he went off to author Dicky Santorums famous "SANTORUM AMENDMENT"

Now, being fair, Phillip suffered a bunch of strokes and has not been in trhe public spotlight for several years. The DI, when asked about his condition, will often hand out a hearty "we are all praying for his continued good helth".

Arent we known by our works? We can go around stating that we are descended from a scientfic base, but where, in reality, we are (speaking for ID) derived from a purely religious, Evangelical Christian background. The very author of the movement is NOT a scientist and his own writings are clearly religious so Mr Humphreys ( if hes the same Humphreys I know, IS a competent governmental geologist) is totally full of **** once again. We dont even have to interpret a fossil record on this one because the book reviews and newspaper articles about Johnson and his ilk are still available in newspaper archives.

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@rosborne979,

It's a decent article. It shows that I am not alone in saying that Creationism and ID are incompatible. Enemies even.

Quote:

Creationism and Intelligent Design are two completely different ways of looking at the world; and you don’t have to subscribe to either to realise the untruth that is being propagated -- and the wrong that is being done to people’s reputations -- by the pretence that they are connected.

Those who connect the two for propaganda purposes have no reputation.

The flaw ros points to relies on ros's definition of science as not including psychology, sociology or psychosomatic considerations. With such a definition a human being is nothing more than a meaningless bag of physico/chemical processes.

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@farmerman,

I'm sorry effemm. I hadn't realised the discussion was limited to "The ID movement of today".

The thread title doesn't say that. Nor does it mention Mr Johnson.

Politicians often use that trick. It implies that the listener is completely stupid which, as we all know, is your fundamental position.

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@solipsister,

What governing intelligence -- and what emotion is clouding my feelings? Anger, fear, love? Nothing can cloud my feelings, they're all intact and healthy, thank you -- it's not even clouding my intelligence, either, as it's merely an insult to my intelligence. We'll leave all that up to the Creationuts and IDiots because that is their common goal -- to incite an emotional response and cloud their constituent's feelings and intelligence about science and evolution.

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I find spendius to be one of the few truly didactic informants on a2k, a man of great dimension as well as scholarship. A bloke anyone would gladly share a yard of ale with.

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@spendius,

Quote:

I'm sorry effemm. I hadn't realised the discussion was limited to "The ID movement of today".

Since the topic is several hundred pages long and the topic has pretty much been stated and revisted several hundred times, Im not surprised that you still dont get it. We live in the today, we dont try to get ID entered into school science programs based on the pronouncements of the reverends Paley and Wilberforce. So, all this hullaballew in the courts and in state legislatures are based upon what in your mind?
HAve you been setting your watch back 250 years again? If you just carry a cell fone it will give you the time , date and millenium.

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Id like to reach 1000 pages in this thread and have spendi still not "get the point".

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@dyslexia,

But you would still come out of the pub wondering what spendi has said all evening.

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@farmerman,

Quote:

So, all this hullaballew in the courts and in state legislatures are based upon what in your mind?

I told you that at the beginning. So did another poster who just said it once and then left. It's about money or power if you prefer. It's about legal fees, cheap copy for media to put on the backside of adverts. It's about careers. It's about PC.

Even Freud, that severe atheist, said in Religion as Illusion, that an illusion is not necessarily an error. It is conceivable that an illusion may be true. It is conceivable that there exists an intelligent designer just as it is conceivable that one doesn't. Atheism is just as much an illusion as ID is. Is Atheism science or religion.

I'll quote the great man--these beliefs, he said--

Quote:

which are given out as teachings, are not precipitates of experience or end-results of thinking: they are illusions, fulfillments of the oldest, strongest and most urgent wishes of mankind. The secret of their strength lies in the strength of those wishes.

Are you atheists a new kind of mankind to which the oldest, strongest and most urgent wishes of mankind do not apply. People who are so traumatised by the thought of helplessness, from which such wishes derive, that you are in denial of such helplessness as you believe it detracts from your personal worth.

Let me bring you the news eh? We are the most helpless babes in arms that ever existed in the whole of history. Nanny cubed is on every news broadcast. Leading us all to safety. She is even prepared for events like Katrina and the Swine flu and much else. Just feel dizzy and she's there with the oxygen. Just let your powerboat get into trouble and there's the coastguard with the helicopter and winches. With 85% of Americans not being atheists you are been cared for night and day by people who you have called names and insulted right along this and other threads. By rights you ought to refuse their services. They won't refuse to help you in times of distress.

You are the silliest bunch of people I have ever come across in my life.

This issue is connected to that wider society which powders your bottom and tends your wounds from the cradle to the ******* grave. And that wider society is profoundly religious and always will be.

I think you had better put me on Ignore again effemm because as soon as the snooker is finished I am going to put up Professor Vitz's explanations of the wish fulfillments involved in atheism and particularly of those militant atheists who attack the comforting beliefs of the mass of ordinary people who have the brains to sense their helplessness in the face of the world. And I don't think you will like them.

You and your little claque have spent too much time in the ring with opponents way below your weight category and it has gone to your head. In fact you search out easy opponents. Anybody else is just a troll or an IDjit or somesuch. I know no serious writer who attacks religion as you lot do.

Are you trying to prove that you are tough-minded, rugged and independent individualists. What a ******* illusion that is. I would sooner believe in Creationism than believe in bullshit of that density.

John Wayne was only acting you know.

How come you didn't respond to my comment about your mind having been totally engraved by graven image makers? You are always picking bits out of the Bible, bits you don't understand, but when I pick one out you run away with your tail between your legs.

I'm not trying to get ID into science classes and if you don't know that yet you must be completely illiterate. I want atheism out of science classes because I know what it entails. And if you did you would want it out as well. I've seen people like you anti-IDers teaching. The teaching profession is easy enough to infiltrate as it is without rolling out the red carpet for people who have an emotional connection to abortion, homosexuality, adultery, promiscuity, divorce &Co. What's the atheist's intellectual position on bestiality?

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@farmerman,

Quote:

Just ran out of steam, poor little thread.

How's that for defeatist negativity?

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And I don't carry a cell phone. Don't own one either. Never have. I'm not that dependent on the system.

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Intelligent Design Theory: Science or Religion?

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