Intelligent Design Theory: Science or Religion?

@Lightwizard,

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Scientific American on Ben Stein's small-minded film "Expelled" -- he should stick to American money-grubbing topics.

This is a key issue. Money-grubbing was the fundamental policy of the Manchester School to which Darwin was connected by intimacy of a singularly repetitive nature.

The assumption is that the over-riding aim of a nation is to produce wealth. All sentimental factors are abrogated and thus workers can be worked to death by those who have the might to say what is right.

J.A. Froude wrote that " a nation with whom sentiment is nothing is on the way to cease to be a nation at all". And sentiment is as absent from the theory of evolution as it is from Manchester School economics (see Brass) and the foundation of The Grauniad newspaper.

To the extent that anti-IDers have sentiments they separate from anti-ID proper and their anti-IDism, as I have said many times, is a mere affectation.

He went on to say, in Oceana, that the "prosperity of a nation depends in the long run on the mental and physical qualities of the individuals that compose it, and it is obvious that" ....(money-grubbing)...is, "not calculated to maintain the qualities that have made the race what it is."

And--"If Manchester triumphs England will be threatened by the fate of Rome."

One would expect Scientific American, a direct descendent of the Manchester School, to bet on an exclusively economic future. It has nowhere else to turn but to Orwell's "stick rattling in a bucket" once it liquidates religion and follows the economic materialism of Darwin and his fat pals.

And others can rattle sticks in buckets too.

One might say that Scientific American is a misleading misnomer on two counts. It is neither scientific nor American.

How can a scientific view of human activity dismiss sentiment from its considerations without us all ending up zombied automata? And how can American apply to a policy which risks America ceasing to be a nation at all and engaged solely in underselling products and becoming an aggregate of producers, consumers and taxpayers?

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@farmerman,

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the film was a total ass bomb that only barely cleared expenses

Pure Manchester School is that effemm. It is not even considered that other motives were involved besides turning a profit.

I tried to bring Manchester School ideas to bear on your recent adventures on the briny and you were appalled.

Which side are you on? You seem to be sentimental when you want to be.

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@farmerman,

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Darwin's theory isnt about how we "Admire" organisms.

Don't the females "admire" the males they choose to mate with and human females admire money and fame and ol' Ben has more of those than most.

We are not envisaging doing ourselves in. If we were why bother about education? Or anything. Have you not read On The Beach?

Of course it makes sense. Asserting it doesn't makes no sense.

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@Lightwizard,

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Anyone laughing and believing the two idiots on that show over Peter Schiff is just another one of the herd of cows who dumbly walked right over the cliff.

Look LW-- being a professional bear is a career. If Schiff's 2007 prediction impressed you so much you should be loaded from selling the market short in rapidly geared transactions. There are professional bears now. If they are wrong they'll be forgotten and if they are right they will be selected by you to make some point or other. You can't go wrong with hindsight.

I'm still bearish but not as strongly as I was in early 2003. If I could be bothered with the hassle I would buy land now. In Scotland probably.

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Did Pope Splendious XXX follow all the economy pundits advice and run out to buy real estate, bank stocks, et al? If he did, my condolences.

No I didn't. Can't you read? Your condolences are figments of your brain fever.

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So sayeth "The Count"

FOUR, FOUR POSTS IN A ROW"
AAH HA HAHAHAAAAA ( cue Thunder and lightning)

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@farmerman,

The first one had a touch of class though. You must admit that effemm.

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@spendius,

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m7Zct9faY5c

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@farmerman,

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I think that Dr Dawkins is increasing his rate of rising irrelevance.

and LW wrote-

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Even science ultimately has to have its own nut cases and Dawkins is it.

I don't see how you two can distance yourselves from Prof. Dawkins as easily as that. Atheist scientists must, by definition, all think the same surely? Everything is cut and dried and peer reviewed I have been assured.

On what basic principle do you disagree with him to justify those two statements?

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@spendius,

Quote:

On what basic principle do you disagree with him to justify those two statements?

His argument is no longer one regarding the science involved. Hes now merely an attack dog on scraping the scab of the Evangelicals.
I feel that Evangelicals need to modify their creed to accomodate their worldview with the realities of scientific evidence. We dont really need some degreed chihuahua to kick them while theyre down.

Ive nothing against any religious belief so long as it doesnt keep pushing its nose under the tent of good scientific curricula. There are many shades and measures of "atheistic scientism". Mine surrounds the concept wherein any scientific training acquired from the rubricians of "EVANGELICAL SCIENCE" is invalid and incompetent to compete in the scientific arena. WOuld you take a flu shot developed under a Creationist bio labs direction?
Even the director of NIH labs, who is a devout Evangelical Christian, recognizes the science of Evo/devo biology and the truths it embodies.
Id rather have the points of science curriculum be delivered by this Evangelical rather than DAwkins.

You seem too be half smart spendi, I dont know why you are having difficulty in understanding the Wiz and me.

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@farmerman,

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His argument is no longer one regarding the science involved. Hes now merely an attack dog on scraping the scab of the Evangelicals.

I don't know about his argument having transcended the science now more than it ever did but you anti-IDers have certainly done plenty of scab picking on the Evangers.

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I feel that Evangelicals need to modify their creed to accomodate their worldview with the realities of scientific evidence. We dont really need some degreed chihuahua to kick them while theyre down.
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I don't see how they are going to modify their creed or have much interest in doing so. And they are not down.

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Ive nothing against any religious belief so long as it doesnt keep pushing its nose under the tent of good scientific curricula.

Well--it is going to continue nose pushing on some issues so the seeming tolerance of your first bit is a cheap shot at being popular.

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There are many shades and measures of "atheistic scientism".

A bald assertion. How can there be when,as I said, it is cut and dried and peer reviewed.

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Mine surrounds the concept wherein any scientific training acquired from the rubricians of "EVANGELICAL SCIENCE" is invalid and incompetent to compete in the scientific arena.

How many accepted scientists have you now declared invalid and incompetent? I know "rubricians of "EVANGELICAL SCIENCE" is a get out clause but I'm addressing the impression you're seeking to create rather than the literal interpretation.

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WOuld you take a flu shot developed under a Creationist bio labs direction?

I don't take flu shots. But if I did and they had been approved by the FDA I wouldn't care where they came from. They could be brewed in a cauldron in a forest clearing for all I would care.

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Even the director of NIH labs, who is a devout Evangelical Christian, recognizes the science of Evo/devo biology and the truths it embodies.

Why not? All the samples are from organisms that don't do abortion, birth control, homosexuality or monogamy; either permanent or serial. Religion is about human behaviour. Monkeys wouldn't eat fish on Fridays just because the Pope invested in a fleet of fishing boats. Evo/devo is bound to prove that with no religion you eat raw, unspiced cuisine.

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Id rather have the points of science curriculum be delivered by this Evangelical rather than DAwkins.

Is he a pal of your's by any chance. The points of a SC can be delivered by a recording. Are you suggesting that your man has a way with words which Dawkins hasn't. Is a better teacher I mean.

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I dont know why you are having difficulty in understanding the Wiz and me.

Oh--I understand you both effemm. You're both good Christians underneath.

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It has been a tiresome aspect of this thread that religion, and in particular the Christian religion to which we all owe such a debt of gratitude, has been responsible for violence and bloodshed.

This is what a real historian had to say on that score-

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Religious precepts are easily obeyed which indulge and sanctify the natural inclinations of their votaries; but the pure and genuine influence of Christianity may be traced in its beneficial, though imperfect, effects on the barbarian proselytes of the North. If the decline of the Roman empire was hastened by the conversion of Constantine, his victorious religion broke the violence of the fall, and mollified the ferocious temper of the conquerors.

As it still does.

In fact the outrage expressed on this thread, and presumably in private conversations, about violence and bloodshed resulting from imperfections in the influence of Christ's message and residual barbarism implicit in human nature as an evolved organism in a struggle for existence, would have been inexplicable to people from before the Christian age which is to say that that expression is essentially Christian and that those expressing it are good Christians despite their denials.

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Another nail in the coffin of intelligent design.

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@rosborne979,

I've already read about it and it's more of a spike than a nail in the coffin, splintering it into a thousand pieces. So we'll just have to ignite a funeral pyre and, laughing our heads off, begin throwing copies of "Of Pandas and People" into the inferno.

I promise not to end this by inserting an uncredited quote from Gibbons from those tired, old tomes.

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Don't these guys take us forward into the sunny uplands of incoherence and total incomprehension where the sound of their voices is the meaning we are all searching for.

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@Lightwizard,

adding to Millers talk, the latest findings in the structure of the epigenome has added so many sites b7y which the environment can interact with the genome and thus affect minor changes. However, the environmental effects that are actually "inheritable" gives Lamarck a new batch of credibility.

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@farmerman,

Of course, there's more to come -- it's just like putting together a case for court. Evidence further corroborating previous evidence, corroborating previous evidence, and so on until there's a stack to bury Behe and the Discovery Institute under tons of evolution and natural selection weight for oblivion. It will happen.

Behe is likely already listing to the right and still being propped up by the silly Fundies as we write. There will come a deafening crash.

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@Lightwizard,

Im not so sure. Epigenetics has lept forward and taken completely over . It seems to be making evolution stand up and reconsider many old chestnuts that were considered "settled scioence"

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@farmerman,

Quote:

However, the environmental effects that are actually "inheritable" gives Lamarck a new batch of credibility.

Lamark ascribed mutability to a drive from within organisms in response to the environment rather than natural selection working on blind chance. When Lamark's word besoins was translated as 'desires', or conscious wishes, instead of 'needs' which were subconscious his reputation tanked.

Lamark's second Law in Invertebrate Zoology (1815) reads-

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The production of a new organ in an animal body results from a new need (besoin) which continues to make itself felt, and from a new movement that this need brings about and maintains.

Which might be said to be a metaphor for the process which is still not understood.

In later editions of Origins Darwin inserted after 'natural selection' the words 'aided in an important manner by the inherited effects of the use and disuse of parts'. Which is a lean towards Lamark although Darwin didn't feel the need to say so having slagged Lamark off previously. And possibly played down the work of Lamark and others (Buffon and Erasmus) in order to exalt his own.

Darwin left the cause of variation unexplained and proceeded with the fact of it as a given. And the possible causes are basically meaningless accident or intelligent design. And nobody will ever determine which.

Hence-there is only one discussion for grown ups. It relates to the social consequences of the two positions as I have said from the start. We can see the social consequences of the intelligent design position from our windows but we cannot see the social consequences of the meaningless accident position and the proponents of that stance are not even prepared to speculate about them which calibrates their fear of doing so.

C.H. Waddington in A Century of Darwin (1958) suggested that natural selection may favour organisms with a gene-structure which has a "tendency to be modified in directions which are useful in dealing with environmental stresses". So that lets anti-IDers out.

When I was teaching I liked to claim in the staff rooms that my bottom line was inculcating a capacity to face change without getting wobbly for The Times They Are A Changin'. And they sure have.

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@spendius,

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When I was teaching I liked to claim in the staff rooms that my bottom line was inculcating a capacity to face change without getting wobbly for The Times They Are A Changin'. And they sure have.

Then you are a fool as well.
The discovery of the structure and function of the epigenome has not changed the basis for the structure of Darwins theory but has added a new evidence for a MECHANISM of the heritability and transfer of edaphic factors to within the organism. From pinpoint exciusions in the epigenetic "fluff" effects of environmental stresses were displayed in descendents several generations later . It isnt that Lamarckianism will suddenly revive. Its more that many aspects of Lamarck can be incorporated within evolutionary mechanics.

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Intelligent Design Theory: Science or Religion?

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