Intelligent Design Theory: Science or Religion?

One doesn't need to be brutal Bernie.

Sergeant Rock is Going to Help Me is an old song. Romance is rape the feminists say. All men are rapists Professor Greer said on her route to her academic post. Talking about brutality is a bit of a cop out. We all object to that.

Valentines can't buy her.

I think that Bernie's post went over your head LW.

Perhaps gender is obscuring the matter. Let's stipulate that rape is a non-meaningful word when applied to women and that those brutal rapes referred to involve Christian males. With parasites, of course.

And that's over my head Bernie. Care to explicate your meaning precisely?

It will save us beginning to think you are becoming a little confused in your dotage. It will me anyway although I do anticipate that your anti-ID colleagues will consider it otherwise. They might even take it upon themselves to congratulate you on putting me down so mysteriously.

They never say a word of criticism of each other. Not in years. It shows how unified they are don't you think. How much they fear my exploiting any chinks in their under-the-stairs cuoboard door like I do over the sea food in effemm's bowthrusters or his barbecued brisket from the Mart. ros has been very crafty in this regard. He is General Secretary material. There can be no other explanation of the repetitive stupidity of his posts than that it is done deliberately.

Do you think that if we had them running the educational system, thought of in its widest context, we could all end up in unison with their thinking, as they seem to be, and never even thinking to criticise each other as what each of them say they all already agree with. So you can imagine what committee meetings would be like.

Like when Uncle Joe was in his prime. And whatever you say about Stalin you can't deny him his magnificence.

Our august Augustus was reported to have gouged someone's eyes out with his fingers but I can't vouch for that, history books being what they are. He also exiled two close female relatives for unreformable lasciviousness. And exile was a sad fate for ladies of such character. That's pretty certain I gather. And he exiled Ovid as well for reasons still being discussed in the Ivory Towers where such matters are pondered over at great length. That's certain in most respects. We have Ovid's bleatings to vouch for it.

But we were discussing Mr Hovinid's milking machine which is being persecuted for tax violations and not for its displays, literature, gift shop, tickets, car park charges and ice-sundae counter retail sales figures. Maps of Poland. A remaindered consignment. There's always someone with a Polish connection who will buy a map of Poland for $1.99 when mooching about at a loose end. If the new motorway is not shown what does it matter. Godzilla badges. (I wish I had more time for this.)

Why don't you try your hand Bernie at a description of Mr Hovinid's enterprise on a busy Sunday afternoon. I suggested that because I know which way you would go if I chose an damp rainy Tuesday. You used to have a way with words in the old days. It's loving playing with them that does it. Don't people who put more emphasis on the meaning of what they are saying than on the style in which they say it get on your nerves? Not that the meaning is unimportant mind you. I wasn't necessarily belittling their meaning. Experts are working on what meaning means. The odd thing is that the ones who put style first, second and third. like Flaubert, have the best meaning. A meaning about how to withstand the vicissitudes of life with Christian forebearance.

Take W.C. Fields for example. What style.

Or Laurel and Hardy. And Olive Oil.

That's a falsehood. Why would I read further?

Oh no! A falsehood from Spendi! Tell me it ain't so!

I'm sorry Bernie. You might be right.

What I meant to say was that I had never seen sight nor sound of anti-IDers being critical of each other in any way related to the subject of the threads they infest.

Now that I've apologised for my carelessness it is the gentlemanly thing for you to accept it and thus do me the honour of engaging your attention with the post you claim to have been rendered stationary in when you detected a falsehood.

"spendi could hardly be expected", my counsel would say, " to be a party to all remarks made about anti-IDers by their fellow travellers. It would be scientifically impossible. Embarrassing in some cases. It was fairly obvious that he was referring to remarks made which came to his attention and not any others. Of the former he has never detected a breath of criticism relating to philosophical positions, such as they are, rote learned gobbets of dross more usually, regarding the debate about the infiltration of aetheism into our Christian society.

"Aetheism" -- is that a new form of atheism, or just the proper British pronunciation (sounding it out, it seems like a someone downed a few too many pints)? If I were you, I wouldn't criticize others for their own version of a user name.

From: Good Science, Bad Science: Teaching Evolution in the States

Look LW--I was on a strange computer and I hadn't got my reading glasses with me. In the circumstances I did rather well in my estimation. If you check back you will find that I have always had the correct spelling for the word before this unavoidable error.

I will say, being a magnanimous man, as I am, that that's an excellent post ros has brought to our attention. If I were to be a finicky editor I would excise the word "intellectuals" and use the plural of liberal even though it is hardly the right word to apply to a bunch of costive-minded bigoted illiterates who have been operating on very little explanatory boxes ever since I first had the pleasure and the privilege of their acquaintance.

It is a simple formulation of my fundamental position.

That's precisely what I took your meaning to be. It's a falsehood born out of laziness and your apparent desire to argue using strawmen. Carelessness doesn't interest me even as a personality trait. You waste a good mind and it's a sadness that you do.

The opposite of "intellectual" is, unfortunately, "dumb."
Why that word has been used as a biased slur is to be expected from a dummy, even with a contrived articulation of expertise with the English language but being, in reality, gobbledigook

Bollocks. I am, and obviously so, referring to these threads concerning evolution and the teaching of it and its darker soulmate atheism. I read those with care and attention and it is noticeable that anti-IDers do not criticise each other. I have remarked on the matter a few times during the course of the discussions.

Perhaps you not having read these threads is the cause of your confusion. I invite you to do so. They are more interesting than they appear to be.

If you will point me to a few instances where they have criticised each other in any way significant to the discussions I will concede the point. I have written unanswered posts pertaining to the very issue.

Hence I reject the base charge you level of falsehood. Doing so leads me to say that with no falshood nothing had been born of laziness or my desire to argue using strawmen: which is non existent unless you go the whole philosophical hog on the meaning of meaning. Which silences us all.

Your post is ridiculous and nothing but straw.

And it attempts to be very ******* patronising. What on earth does it mean when you say that I " waste a good mind and it's a sadness that I do."

That is an all purpose response to anything. It is absurd.

For example Bernie--

LW wrote--just now--



No anti-IDer will step forth to inform him that such a statement is meaningless.

That it is meaningless cannot be questioned. It is self evident. There is no way a secular liberal can be an intellectual. I didn't use the word as a slur. I merely said it was used incorrectly.

And the opposite of intellectual is not dumb. There are a great many very intelligent people who are not intellectuals. And don't wish to be.

It is a knitting of assertions. All flattering to LW and his cohorts. It's heckling. It is anti-intellectual as you will find if you read that book you recommended properly.

No anti-IDer will tell LW that. Nor that his statement is meaningless from other points of view. It would make a linguistics analyst laugh. Or at least smirk.

I think it's about protecting the value of science as a productive methodology for understanding the world around us. The core challenges to evolution are actually challenges to the philosophy of methodological naturalism within science (at least as expressed by the ID'ers in Dover and the DI).

When Behe said that his definitions would not exclude astrology it should have become clear to everyone that the ID viewpoint being expressed was going to be damaging to the core underpinnings of science.

As opposed to fucked up personal dicktionaries (sic), the definition has been distorted and twisted to be a label thrown about surreptitiously like a used tissue. That's where the organic snot in the evolution science mixed with Creationism and ID is likely cultivated.

Intellectual simply means (the Oxford dictionary is almost idential)

* Main Entry: 1in·tel·lec·tu·al
* Pronunciation: \ˌin-tə-ˈlek-chə-wəl, -chəl, -shwəl, -chü(-ə)l\
* Function: adjective
* Date: 14th century

1 a : of or relating to the intellect or its use b : developed or chiefly guided by the intellect rather than by emotion or experience : rational c : requiring use of the intellect <intellectual games>
2 a : given to study, reflection, and speculation b : engaged in activity requiring the creative use of the intellect <intellectual playwrights>

So go blow it out your nose but please dispose of the tissue under your moss-laden bridge.

The definition is reasonable. Not particularly severe.

My position is that the anti-ID position derives from emotions. No intellectual component of any sort. (Tautology for emphasis.)

Its actually quite the opposite. ID is a position that is entirely vested in emothion and "Belief". Science is totally objective and dispassionate about natural selection. Its a body of knowledge that is evidence based and is a working utility to make accurate predictions.
ID and Creationism have NEVER been able to say the same. They are myths, parading as science in which the students are more correctly termed "Believers".