Intelligent Design Theory: Science or Religion?

They say, although I don't know, that if a flock of sheep is passing through a narrow defile, to be sheared or dipped, say, and the herdsman places a stick before the leader so that it jumps over it the rest of the following sheep will jump in the same place even though the stick has been removed.

Possibly, though I am inclined to doubt it, there will be the odd scientific sheep which, seeing the evidence that there is no stick, will disdain leaping aloft for fear of looking foolish, or simply from a desire to be different, or a gesture of impatience with the leader, but whether, having performed this unevolutionary feat, for there must be some evolutionary cause for the seemingly pointless imitation of the leader as evolution wastes no energy, such a sheep is proud of itself and is looked up to by the other sheep and thus installed as the new leader is something of a moot point concerning which I have not the evidence to settle.

"The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. He makes me lie down in green pastures; He leads me beside quiet waters. " Psalm 23.

And there you are sailing the briny just for fun with all mod cons. On the White Sauce run. The sheep that got its own stick when the leader hadn't jumped.

I suppose one might expect one or two anti-IDers laying down a testosterone induced challenge to the leader but when there are thousands of the buggers it bodes ill for the future should the leadership become vacant due to exasperation and cause a mass testosterone rush and a resounding clash of microphones, handouts, press releases and Ignore button stabbings.

Anti-ID seems profoundly anti-evolutionary to me.

What does everyone else think it's about?

ros knows very well what his anti-ID cohorts think of it and as I am the only party offering an alternative and he has me on Ignore I cannot see the point of his question unless it is that he might bask in the complimentary confirmation of the position he already takes. A sort of intellectual group chucking under the chin.

I will say however that I am entirely in favour of protecting the value of science as a productive methodology for understanding the world around us except insofar as its researches might cause us to bite our own arses.

I presume that ros witters along his way complacently not including those things that might bite us in the arse in his devious expression "the world about us". Such things as the inclusion of hidden messages in children's cartoon programmes, the sale of worthless securities and lying by omission. Such things are entirely in accord with evolutionary principles where dog eats dog and let the devil take the hindmost and thus perfectly justifiable from a scientific standpoint.

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Such things as the inclusion of hidden messages in mythical biblical programmes, the sale of worthless bibles and lying by omission. Such things are entirely in accord with creationists principles where dog eats dog and let their God take the hindmost and thus perfectly justifiable from a creationists blinkered viewpoint

I can describe the hidden messages in cartoons tf. There are technical articles on the subject. I can offer tales of the sale of worthless securities enough to make a man hide his face in shame at having a biological connection to it. And my previous post provides a very typical example of lying by omission where the "world about us" is only a part of that world and a carefully selected part of it at that.

You need to cite examples my dear. What hidden messages do you see in the Holy Book. The hidden messages in the cartoons, and possibly in other movies, are not seen. They would not be hidden otherwise.

The Holy Book is an open book. Even the decorated letters, illuminated letters, which begin passages in many books, the Book of Kells for example, are there to be studied. It is not a hidden message that they represent the artistic impressions of men who loved and feared God and whose Angelus bell dolefully tolls in memory of the virgin having being put in the club by a mysterious spirit. Advertising signs are the artistic impressions of those who don't love and fear God and whose interest in the virgin is of a purely practical nature of the type one sometimes sees in wildlife programmes made by Sir David Attenborough and from which I turn away in shame and self-disgust. One can see those sorts of things aplenty on You Tube. Some winged creatures efforts have to be shown in slow motion such is the seemingly infinitessimal time it takes, to the human eye, to complete the operation. Others, such as the mature Galapagos turtle, are of the oppsite disposition. Monkeys are the most entertaining though. Possibly because we share so much DNA with them.

So it becomes a question of artistic taste. If you prefer the illuminations in the calligraphy of sacred texts to advertising signs and the exterior facades of cathedrals to those of modern buildings then I would guess you are a religious person at heart. From an artistic point of view I mean. I wouldn't wish to be thought guilty of lying by omission or not having in mind the plagues and famines of the periods when books were illuminated to while away that enormous period of spare time resulting from hiding away from ladies. Although that is well known not to apply to those who builded the cathedrals, and whose self-portraits can be still seen today. They came from all parts with their seperate skills and, as is equally well known, were followed by a train of ladies with a relaxed attitude to virtue and purity.

The calligraphy of advertising signs and the facades of modern buildings are associated with bulging hypermarkets, busy doctors who offer painless living, and prim and proper puritanical tenderfeets who wallow in a cornucopia of a lot more than just corn, vital though corn is, and never cease whinging and moaning and groaning and making all us men dizzy trying to keep up with their incessant demands to shine forth in the general melee in which they circulate with their rivals.

So kindly offer some evidence of your assertions if you would. It is too easy to allege things: common practice though it is around here.

I've been reading Moby Dick so you should take that into account.

Spendiouse.

I do find it difficult to read your posts and have a lazy unthinking need to re word your difficult ideas when they match what I think about religion, you have such a sarcastic way of wording things and this is right up my alley. As for there being no hidden words in the bible, I can understand that you can't find em, unlike the mob that say that God speaks in mysterious ways. I must say I agree with that mob whole heartily. As for facts or scientific knowledge on the subject I have absolutely zilch, or perhaps I could say-- as much proof as you have that there is a god or that he wrote the bible, not that it matters a dam.

Spendiouse.

I do find it difficult to read your posts and have a lazy unthinking need to re word your difficult ideas when they match what I think about religion, you have such a sarcastic way of wording things and this is right up my alley. As for there being no hidden words in the bible, I can understand that you can't find em, unlike the mob that say that God speaks in mysterious ways. I must say I agree with that mob whole heartily. As for facts or scientific knowledge on the subject I have absolutely zilch, or perhaps I could say-- as much proof as you have that there is a god or that he wrote the bible, not that it matters a dam.

Spendiouse.

I do find it difficult to read your posts and have a lazy unthinking need to re word your difficult ideas when they match what I think about religion, you have such a sarcastic way of wording things and this is right up my alley. As for there being no hidden words in the bible, I can understand that you can't find em, unlike the mob that say that God speaks in mysterious ways. I must say I agree with that mob whole heartily. As for facts or scientific knowledge on the subject I have absolutely zilch, or perhaps I could say-- as much proof as you have that there is a god or that he wrote the bible, not that it matters a dam.

Hey!! sorry about that didn't think it had gone.

That's not the only thing; over the couple of thousand years, there were so many translations of the bible, how did those hidden messages get translated into English?

That's the kind of magic I would expect from any god!

It would be fascinating to be able to read all the scriptures from original manuscripts before Constantine's order to collect them into one book -- whether he knew how much editing actually went on and where in the world they got the shredder to dispose of what they didn't want in the book, who knows? Fortunately much of that survived and it makes the actual Bible more perplexing than modern clerics can explain. By the time it was translated into English, I doubt it was at all a comprehensive amalgamation of all the "stories." The word story doesn't just mean an account of incidences or events, it also means lies. The Bible is the appointed priests who compiled it in secret and decide which parts of the myriad stories were truth or lies. Obviously, it was also a decision as to what was "the word of God" and what wasn't. A camel is a horse designed by a committee.

ID tries to link the fantasy of the Bible with the hard science of evolution and geological history of planet Earth and there just isn't just the one Discovery Institute version -- all their supernatural theories are in constant disagreement even amongst themselves.

Another open book tf is the one I am reading at the moment. It is Moby Dick.

That also is an open book. There are no hidden messages in that either.

You can read in on Google. I refer you the Chapter CXII The Blacksmith with special reference to one of our number who has taken to the high seas in a small and fragile craft. You can read it in five minutes

And there it is in the annals of our greatest literature. Are not the hidden messages those of the ones who ignore such compositions for the simple purpose of not being thought unfriendly to the A2Ker involved in a venture risky enough for him to have drawn attention to the dangers himself, taken elaborate precautions against them, and verged on glorying in them despite them, in extremis, risking the lives of lifeboat men and helicopter pilots as well as his own? In order, in short, to curry favour with him and inspire in him an urge for reciprocating compliments. As if Chapter CXII of Moby Dick does not exist. As if Jesus does not exist.

How can the book contain hidden messages, as I have explained. Those are words invented by persons who wish to suggest a sinister aspect to the book and thus drive others from it. The real hidden messages are from those who select and interpret and ignore. Their motives are hidden. They are the real hidden message merchants.

I bet we would find that the bible stories become more obscure as we go back in time, rather than more precise. Obviously the "origin" stories never happened, but there is good evidence to the fact that most of the bible is based on pre-existing religions and myths. The bible as it exists today is the embellished solidification of a collection of neolithic myths.

Constantine is getting a bad rap here. There is actually no evidence that he was a Christian himself (his wife and mother-in-law were, but there is not contemporary evidence that he was--just the claims of later, Christian writers). He convened the council at Nicaea to get peace among the Christians of the eastern part of the empire, where they had become an important force in the Hellenistic world which still existed there. The members of the council chose Eusebius of Caesarea to write up the creed they would adopt, and his version of the accepted canonical gospels was formally adopted.

The "true gospels" as they are known in modern times were chosen by an early church scholar named Origen. Origen was subject both to persecution as a Christian and within the church. Jews and Christians brought most of their troubles on themselves, because they would not go through the motions with the official, civic religion of the empire. More often than not, this lead either the local residents, who feared reprisals, or local officials to carry out the persecutions. The empire was actually very tolerant, far more tolerant than the world would become in succeeding centuries. So long as you paid lip service to the civic religion, which usually involved buying a chicken to take to the temple and mumbling along with the priests, you were free to practice any other religion you chose. The cult of Mithras was the most popular, and especially among the legionaries. The cult of the Jews who were becoming known as Christians was looked down upon with contempt as a religion of slaves, of the poor, of women.

Origen of Alexandria lived at the end of the second and in the first half of the third century. Because he was frequently in trouble with church leaders in Alexandria, which was already a site of strife between the Greeks and Jews, and which strife became more acute as more and more Greeks became Christians, Origen was obliged on more than one occasion to get out of Dodge. Pamphilus of Beirut, who became a devotee of the work of Origen, made it his business to collect the works of Origen (remember, all such works were individually hand-copied in those days), and established a library at Caesarea Maritima for early church documents, the works of Origen and the "true" gospels. He was a patron of Eusebius, and in fact, Eusebius called himself Eusebius Pamphili--Eusebius, the friend of Pamphilus.

It is obvious from the writings of Origen which survive that he was using a corrupt copy of the Septuagint. This was the translation of the Hebrew bible into Greek. It contains books which don't appear in the modern Hebrew Bible, and most Protestant sects don't use those books. The Catholics use some of them, and the Orthodox church uses all of the additional books. In addition to "editing" the Septuagint, Origen "edited" the existing gospels and declared several of them fraudulent. One wonders if he did not grow weary and say that this or that "book" was unreliable just because he didn't want to tackle it. Despite being in trouble with church authorities for most of his adult life, as well as being on the run from imperial authorities, Origen became very popular with scholarly members of the church. His versions of the Septuagint (warts and all) and of the "gospels," as well as his pronouncements on which texts were "true" and which were not became standard within the early church, because his authority was so great with scholars (such as Pamphilus and Eusebius) no matter how often he had been in bad odor with the church fathers.

In science, every fragment of the available texts would be assembled, and were evidence lacking, no judgment would be made about the authenticity of any particular account. A scientific view of the "gospels" would also note the gross errors of geography and history contained therein, and they would be considered suspect, just as Origen rejected certain accounts as suspect. But religion doesn't work that way, and what was accepted at Nicaea became the accepted canon, because it had the imprimatur of the emperor. When, several years after the death of Constantine, Christianity became the state religion of Rome, the canon became as though set in stone.

Subsequent scholars have made some changes, and the Protestants were particularly prickly about the "true" books of the bible. But all of them were using the "majority text" from Koine Greek, and that dates, unsurprisingly, to the late third and early fourth centuries--the period in which Origen's version of the accepted canon was being taken up by scholars throughout what we now call the middle east.

Constantine was cool. I remember seeing that biography about him starring Keanu Reeves, where he kicked some demon ass and met the devil. Somehow they left out all this other stuff you mentioned.

If history repeats itself, the movies of today may become the religious Canon of the future. And as wild as that sounds, it makes you wonder just what the people of 2000 years ago would think of our present day Bible.

The babe in that movie was hot, too . . . there were some rather obvious lacunae in the historical accounts if they left out cool **** like that . . .

Keanu's films are too often uneven romps through some often ridiculous concepts. He's only got the original Matrix under his belt as a true hit. "Constantine" made a modest profit as well as "The Devil's Advocate," but it had Al Pacino chewing up the scenery and drastically upstaging Keanu.

Setanta is correct -- I didn't mean to malign Constantine for being a Christian and have explained it before that although he in appearance was empathetic towards the Christians, he still clung to the old Roman gods. The fact that the council (always a euphemism for a committee) which planted the seed lead to the later compilation of the Bible by yet another committee means he got the ball rolling. The King James version of the Bible is quite different from the tome they cooked up. It's still way more enthralling to look at Emperor Julian's reign and Gore Vidal's novel is a good start.

Also this doesn't leave out the fact that the various factions of a "theory" of ID are trying to reconcile Earth's origin in its' geological evolution and then trying to squeeze a round peg into a square hole with the origin of Man, mainly aimed in defiance of Darwin even though he only outlined the origin of man, paying small attention to geological details and admitting the science was still not advance enough to explain some surrounding forces to the evolution of man, natural selection and evolution from lower forms of life. That has slowly but surely revealed itself in testing with positive results that natural selection works. There's only a very small handful of scientists who wish to adamantly deny any supernatural hand in all of this.

I think Quentin Tarentino has shown where we really are in evolution and I'm getting ready to go see "Inglorious Basterds," which looks like he outdoes Mel Brooks in portraying Nazism as a bunch of officious clowns.

Especially as biographies.

Herman Melville.

You lot should bear that in mind when you engage in the ridiculous superficialities to be seen following after my last post.