Intelligent Design Theory: Science or Religion?

When Darwin wrote Origins, there were no "missing link" fossils to help him reach his conclusions. Now there are many and this latest find is going to make IDiots and Creationists very nervous (whether they acknowledge it or not with their often platitudinous "so what?"), and many have already posting incredibly stupid accusations online that it's another fake that shows up every few years. Remember the TV clown BOZO? They're trying out for a revival of that show aimed at those who still cling to the beared old man in the clouds taking "his" six days to create the Universe and then having to "rest" on the seventh. Actually, even though it is Sunday, I'm still working on bringing up the rain forest lighting system up to par today (changing out to LED's to save energy). Technological evolution is fun to work with too.

But --- But ---- Evolution is EVIL. It leads to mass murder and Rosie O'Donnel.

...and people like PS XXX.

I don't see how you can avoid giving Christianity the credit for it Wiz. Whether you acknowledge it or not makes no difference. It is a fact.

Credit for Sundays too and your treble time.

Have you every thought about not having a day set aside for worship?

Ethologists deal with the problem of behaviour in terms of the struggle for existence and the survival of the fittest species except that they think of cultures as types of species. Ireneus Eibl-Eibesfeldt said that " Cultures behave like species and can be compared as if they were." We are in competition with other cultures for the opportunity to pass on our genes.

Why do you wish to change a winning team? What sort of culture do you want?

Oh--I almost forgot--you have consequences on Ignore in the service of your personal desires. Which grants permission for everybody else to do the same. You really should be on the What I want from Santa Claus thread. Not a science thread.

Creationism picks up steam ... but not in Kansas.
http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2009/10/25/in_the_muslim_world_creationism_is_on_the_rise/?page=full

Joe(Please, effendi, what is this Genesis you refer to?)Nation

It's been on the other thread Joe.

How do we know that Ardipithecus ramidus was not on the way out rather than the other way? There seems to be some assumption that it's a step to us rather than to extinction.

Ignore the noise from the right who didn't bother to read the article and that the author's main idea is the rise of creationism in Islam (anyone ever ponder on the fact that if you drop the a and the o, it becomes cretinism?) Ardi suggests that our most distant ancestors were not similar to chimpanzees. Hey, they are still digging! Give them time to add to the fossil record. There's nothing in the discovery that disproves Darwin or evolution. To begin with, where does Darwin positively conclude that our most distant relatives in the past were chimpanzee-like? What evolution scientists had positively concluded they were cimpanzee-like? Lucy and her clan suggested it but the conclusion was a malleable geneology.

Scientists are skeptics based on reason and logic, religious cranks are skeptics based on supernatural beliefs.

Yes Wiz-we know that. But numerous philosophers have concluded that reason and logic are supernatural categories. At least religious cranks are being honest.

You just made the assumption.

nihtawewest maliseet. Ktokehkimolon YAQ

I can understand this display of incoherence. It stems from discussing subjects about which you don't actually know anything of significance and are merely batting your personal subjectivities which have been distilled by purelyselfish motives, as befits materialists.

You seem to believe that Christianity has been foisted upon the western world by a bunch of crooks against the wishes or interests of the population. A sort of bogeyman coming to get you in the night.

In fact it was chosen by the population because it best answered to their spiritual needs as a whole which, as materialists, you can't recognize as having any validity. But so long as you behave in a Christian manner, which I feel sure you do, it doesn't much matter what you think.

But to try to lay a whole cultural tradition in the ground in order to answer to your ego needs and to use science as an excuse stinks. It more than stinks when you are not prepared to offer any alternatives except to continually assert that those who have spiritual needs are lunatics.

And don't allow yourselves the luxury of thinking that not answering this--



has gone un-noticed and that your flannel has in some magical way has hidden it from view.

As I stated before, once in a while I can see some valid concepts in Spendius usually belligerent prose.

This one, as a limitative statement, is a reflect of what happened mostly in Europe, but also, partly, in the Americas.

Not that I agree with the underlying idea, though..

Actually, that extends to most cultures/countries where the population choose to satisfy their religious needs. Italy = Catholics, most of Asia = Buddhists, South America and North America = Christians, Middle East = Islam.

This sounds like a Verizon ad.
"Who is your spirituality provider might I ask?"

I'm pretty autarkic in that field..

That's pretty much how they market (proselytize) religion in America. It's Buddhism vs. Christianity 7.

I would be interested in the other times when you don't see valid concepts in my prose Francois. I welcome being set straight at all times.



The underlying idea is to do with how we take ideas from other places and put our own sense into them. We pick and choose and appropriate and ignore the rest. The choice is concerned with us and not the original locations. Those things don't "influence" us--we creatively absorb what suits us. We can have no knowledge of the real lives which produced the originals. Otherwise we have confused life itself with the means by which it expressed itself in a particular place.

If Plato read what we understand of his works I imagine he would be astonished.

We give a name to a system of expression forms and it conjures up for us a complex of relations. Once we allow this imagined complex of relations to represent the lives of those who used those forms to express themselves we are deluding ourselves.

Take the "influence" of black music for example. What do we know of the origin of the form? What lives did it spring from and from no other? We take it as a given and have appropriated it. Other aspects of the life that formed it we don't appropriate. We haven't explained it by naming it although we might like to think we have.

Christianity as we know it appropriated from many sources what it wanted. Thesis-antithesis-new thesis.

But I find it very difficult to explain or even understand. It requires the capacity to put ourselves in the other's place. As Flaubert tried to do in Salammbo. We can't even say he was successful. Mailer tried in Ancient Evenings. They both studied the words and arts of the cultures they sought to depict with some diligence. In doing so they experience something already there in themselves but can they relate that to the experience the creators of those forms lived themselves. Spartacus played by Kirk Douglas is mere pantomime.

A currach built in a certain place at a certain time to carry out a certain task and made with local materials worked with available tools is not the same thing as one built in a barn in Pennsylvania for entertainment. It's form might be similar but the experience is the opposite to that of its originators for whom I imagine it was a chore to make.

The idea is that Christianity borrowed old forms and theology fit certain chosen ones into a pattern which was accepted and which led to western science and our world. There can be no sensible debate about wiping it out overnight whatever the NCSE might say and however logical and reasonable its arguments.

I saw this posted a few days ago and I thought "Well, that is revealing." What it reveals is the cavalier suspension on the part of the questioner of his own education. Sad, isn't it? If this question had been asked by a child or someone who had declared himself completely ignorant of what processes are used to determine the taxonomic and cladistic positioning of a particular specimen, it would be considered simply naive. This is not the case here. Sadder is the knowledge that, like every good lawyer, the questioner already knows the answer.

The questioner's deep belief in superstition and deeper, perhaps, suspicion that scientific study is somehow as cursory as the attention he pays to balancing his checkbook are what brings such a question up. It is a deliberate and pathetic pose in a game of "Let's Pretend".

The researchers are not playing here. They are pursuing evidence in a painstakingly slow and focused manner, knowing that any statements they make will be subject to long term scrutiny by people who are as dedicated as they are to determining scientific facts.

Pardon me, but get serious.
Joe(or shut up.)Nation

Joe(tothepoint)Nation has it spot on!