Intelligent Design Theory: Science or Religion?

Science hasn't figured it out yet Ed but is confident that it will if enough funds are made available.

Then you've identified something which no other scientist on the planet has ever found. We would all be very interested in knowing exactly what laws of science cause impossibilities in evolutionary theory. Please start with the one that you think is the most compelling in your list. I'm sure we can sort it out for you (we've done this hundreds of times over the years). I'm really hoping you can come up with one we haven't seen before, that would be exciting.

spendius said

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I have expected nothing more from you spendi. Your past is evidence enough that you have not a single clue about what science is or how it is handled in a public school curriculum. Your mind is cluttered with too many Victorian refernces to allow it any room for analyses.
However, just so you dont get lonely when you throw one of your brain farts against the wall, I will repeat.
Often our court systems are called upon to make decisions based upon "best evidence". A judge , like Judge Jones, has heard the "best and the brightest" from both sides of a scientific issue and was merely being asked to provide a decision as to whether "Intelligent Dsign" IS worthy of being included in a science curriculum.Apparently they failed in this simple argument (according to you ID IS science). PErhaps you should have been making the argument if you were disgusted with the outcome. Unfortunately you constantly miss the footprint of the scientific method and evidence. Your obsession with minor philosophers of the past speaks reams about why you have never gotten the entire point of our court system and how we test our concepts with 1200 grit. The interesting thing was that the defendants in Dover could have(as was their right) mounted a legal defense and appealed the decision. Perhaps it could have been adjuticated at the SUpreme court level where the decision could have been overturned on appeal(or not). Well, somehow, reason prevailed,and an appeal was thwarted so teachers who refused to teach religion in science class were no longer punished for insubordination by the school board and the ID requirement was quietly lifted from the curriculum.

Now, since that only affects this Federal district, anyone else, in another region of the country, is allowed to carry their own case for ID in biology class through their fed district court. However the process and precedent on DOver does cast a nice shadow over any planned assaults on science by the Discovery Institute.

You seem to wish to tell the readers of your stuff that you could do a better job than was the outcome. I say that you wouldnt even m,ake it past initil filings, since none of your babbling has been fact based or contained even a single point of science

That's meaningless and contradicted by my posting of last week's article in the Sunday Times about Prof. Rees the president of the Royal Society. You ignoring that is nothing to do with anybody else.



He did not hear from the best and the brightest at all. And I have pointed that out often enough in the most polite terms I could manage. You chose to ignore all that too. You have had me on and off Ignore too many times to count. That's profoundly unscientific. Just once is enough.



I made an argument to that effect only the other day which remains unanswered.



The court would have been cleared with JJ running out fastest. And so would the offices of the DI. Where the "pussy whip" is operative the science of this subject is quietly veiled.

Your whole post is a farrago of assertions and bullshit and off topic.

If one is scanning an object one has an awareness of it. A second step is to employ another scanner in the brain to become aware that one is aware of oneself being aware of the object. Introspection. Often, with snobs, this second awareness is the main point.

But it is possible, with some mental effort, to employ another part of the brain to scan the scanner which is scanning oneself scanning the object. And so on and so on with an infinite regress. Which defeats common sense and also the most searching scientific enquiry.

It falls out, without question, that at some point there must be an unscanned scanner. The unconscious. The chicken sexer is often cited as the best example. I have met a chicken sexer and he confirmed the philosophy. He didn't know how he did it at the speed he did. Taking time to do it with instruments is unsuitable in practice. The cocks start crowing before you can get get 10% of the chickens sexed.

I suppose science has moved on and can now fix the sex of the eggs in the incubation units. That's not the point. The unscanned scanner is the point. The unconscious reaction to signals from the environment which we are unaware of and which can only be discovered from suck it and see science which is exactly the same science kids use to choose between candies.

The unscanned scanner is an irreducible complexity. Take the difference between scanning a lady with bare breasts carrying water in a jar on her head in Darfur and one with one breast showing at the Superbowl.

The unscanned scanner, as this is a materialist conception, consists of nothing other than physico-chemico reactions in the brain/mind/body/central nervous system or whatever label anyone fancies giving it.

And the process of managing 301 million of these unscanned scanners is a scientific operation called theology which is not yet perfected. Your science fm never gets beyond scanning the original object and refuses to contemplate (Ignore) scanning that scanning process because you might end up wondering what you are doing scientifically and losing confidence in your assertions which are based on the simple scanning of the limited number of objects you choose to scan and the blithe assumption that these objects will be scanned exactly how you scan them.

I've not explained that very well because I'm stuck for time. A materialist has nowhere else to go. How a complex of physico-chemical reactions arrives at a sense of "self" is an irreducible complexity.

a scanner darkly?

Oh I see, you want ID to be taught yet you fail to agree with the best their side can offer. You do have your work cut out for you old girl.



Probably because you are inable by virtue of genetics and environment working hand in hand.

Thats the working hypothesis, Unfortunately noone has been able to track such Irreducibilities to their starting point. Every biomolecular and enzymatic reaction thats been forwarded has been tracked and traced to related species enzymatic reactions down the evolutionary scale. It appears that the compex enzymes responsible for mammalian blood clotting CAN be tracked down the line to the simplest chordata. Might I ask for a specific Irreducible complexity of the day? Your side has been particularly absent in this early debate over whats "irreducable"? I think that the Discovery Institute qwill try next to redefine theor own terms so its not so embarrassing to them.

Why is it that everytime I make a point fm responds to it in a such a way that I feel I need to go back to the beginning and try another way.

I never said I wanted ID taught in schools. And if fm was paying attention he would know it.

And right away he goes off again scanning the object. The mammalian whatnots whatever they are. It's pub time,

You are the master of

1. The bloody obvious and

2. Evasion of any direct responses

Oh yeah. So obvious that CS posts a pic like that in response. Your stuff is obvious to anybody familiar with the subject and incomprehensible to those unfamiliar with it.

You said--"Unfortunately noone has been able to track such Irreducibilities to their starting point." And that was right after I had traced one irreducible back to the unscanned scanner/s and also after I posted the report about Lord Rees, president of the Royal Society and thus, one hopes, an unimpeachable peer-reviewer. What are you ranting about fm?

The thing about the unscanned scanner is that it is a material state of the brain and thus capable of causing behaviour despite our being unaware of it. Those elementary aspects of the brain which are aware of objects, seemingly the only one you possess, and the ones aware of the awareness, etc, introspection, are just as much part of the environment as everything else is to that unscanned scanner. (s)

Freud was working backwards from the behaviour and teleologising descriptions of the unscanned scanner, the unconscious, and was working with problem people. I'm talking about normal people which I define as people not in need of psychiatric treatment.

I don't suppose you remember fm but I posited such unconscious causes of behaviour long ago in a post about how the female might choose a male to mate with and the egg surface might choose a sperm to enter based on the effect of the environment upon the unconscious. It was a hypothesis but it was scientific and it aimed to show how sexual selection might work rather that just assuming it did as the Darwinians do. The whole of Darwin is dealing with the elementary scanner which scans the objects which impinge upon its senses and not only that but most of the objects scanned have been selected as a vehicle to puff up its grandeur and are a minute fraction of the objects there to be scanned. And teleologising conclusions.

When two bull buffaloes are shown fighting over a harem of what one supposes are classy broads in buffalo-speak it is only the last round of the choosing. That's because the de-selection of other males is not very exciting television and more difficult to explain.

Now-if the unscanned scanner has an effect on behaviour what are the comparative effects on behaviour of unconscious signals picked up in religious ceremonies and those in the ceremonies of the materialists. You spend all your time teleologising from what your elementary scanner picks up. The surface of things. By doing so you reduce yourself to the level of a scientific instrument and, by extension, your companions.

I want to know the A2K anti-IDer's explanation of the fuss over the Superbowl tit. I can explain it and justify it. I'm at a loss to see how you can.

If arrangements have been set in place based on a scientific study of human behaviour (theology) on a long term "suck-it-and-see" basis it is necessary for the materialist, before seeking to disturb these arrangements, to offer his own explanations and solutions.

Judge Jones should have been faced with a few weeks of this sort of stuff handled by people with more expertise and time than I have. Dover was a farce to protect the sweet reputation of American womanhood from an onslaught from those who understand why society ladies fainted away on hearing Darwin explain his theory in a public meeting. It was pitched at the beta minus level or the lower middle class if you prefer.

Let's see how you evade that little lot you lower middle class twit.

If this was supposed to be some discussion of ierreducible complexity, then you are attempting to make your debut as a stand up comedian. Your "unscanned scanner" bullshit may have filled you with some satisfaction, but was not even worthy of a sneer. What baody part is an "Unscanned scanner" what sort of bauplan does it follow?
I see that you are still quite delusional .
Seek professional help and take up knitting why dont you.

If you wish to merely construct these irrelevancies and continue your rude interchange with people who are interested in this topic, then you shall find yourself only able to communicte with Ionuis .
I think Ive been polite and in this recent unveiling I believe I have been quite patient as I waited for some signal that you would spend some time in the world of reality. Apparently not. You really dont give a rats ass about decent interchange unless someone is kissing up to your posts. I (and quite a few others) arent so easily fooled at your weak diversions. What you consider as relevant submissions are a waste of keyboard time.
Lets face it, I am your primary target of derision for some reason and I certainly dont like it because I think that the topic is being short circuited by these silly sidebars

You may go back to playing with yourself as I guess Im just going to let you babble on your own. It makes no sense to even acknowledge that youre on the board.

Have a nice life and do get some help old boy.
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I do have one question though. DO you not have a real life? Is your entire being rolled up in posting irrelevancies and ciutting remarks and counter statements of someones quotes? Or do you have a life away from thiside of you?

The big question is whether Origin of Species actually is a scientific hypothesis, and if so, is it sufficient to explain all human attributes. If you think about it, the complete description of the hydrogen atom still eludes us. The existence of life is considerably more complex than hydrogen. So I think it is highly questionable that we actually have a science which accounts for the existence of life, and why it has evolved in the way it has. What I think we have is a theory of the development of species, although even that is somewhat problematical as the process of speciation is still a very hard thing to document.

So if we had actually created a scientific hypothesis which describes those who created it, this would actually be a rather significant event in its own right. It would mean that the set of rather simple principles that Charles Darwin devised - reproduction with variation, competition for scarce resources, and the others - would then, somehow, be understood as being logically prior to all of the other philosophies of human nature. Everything, then, becomes subordinated to the rather mundane fact of sheer survival and if any philosophy, or any religion, is to be understood, it can only be understood in terms of how it served the purposes of survival.

This elevates survival to a rather privileged position in the pantheon of intellectual idols, does it not? I have always felt that there is rather more to life than surviving; that in fact, within the difference between living, and mere surviving, lies a great deal of what makes us human. So if all of it is to be rationalised in terms of what enables us to survive, it does make one wonder, what was the point?

The realities of Nature are independent of our views of morality.

As you recall, the full title of Darwins 1859 work is "On the Origin of Species by means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured RAces in the Struggle for Survival"

This work, in its 6 editions , gives an outline for a theory of a Process by which evolution occurs.(we know today that much of it was wrong) It contained no mentions of "higher faculties". Even in his later "The Descent of MAn and Selection in Relation to Sex" and "The Expression of EMotion in Man and Animals" these books are pretty much presented opinion-free re: what more life has to offer us. I think Darwin focused his entire Post-Beagle years on a clinical, fully objective and yes, naive view of the process of change in organisms.

What a silly mush you are fm. I said it was an irreducible complexity which is something inexplicable. How on earth do you expect me to explain something of that nature. You're the one who denies irreducible complexity. It is your task to explain it. And dismissing something you can't explain as non-existent is as unscientific as it gets. The "unscanned scanner", the unconscious, is a materialist conception. I explained the intellectual derivation of it as a means of avoiding the infinite regress of scanners scanning scanners scanning the brain scanning exterior objects. Freud was an atheist.

The rest of your post is absolute drivel. How on earth can I avoid having a real life? Do I have to phutter around the shoreline of the NW Atlantic shitting over the taffrail and constructing an authentic currach out of DIY store kit to have a real life. I run a fairly busy business in tree butchery.

Who "kisses up" to my posts? I've faced a battalion of anti-IDers all on my own. Ionus is no help. More a hindrance in fact. As I told him. He's on your side. Your kissing up jibe is ridiculous. A fantasy.

You're not interested in the topic. You are only interested in a fixed answer to the question posed and putting forth cliche ridden elementary aspects of a specialism which relies on few others specialising in it to sound technical and expert.

I'm not bothered whether you think yourself polite and patient. And I'm not bothered whether you come on the thread or not. I'm not targeting you personally. I'm targeting anybody who comes on arguing your position. It's the position I'm targeting. If you take it personally you shouldn't be here.

It isn't very polite to use the "get a life" trick. In fact it is one of the most stupid and ignorant conversational gambits I have ever heard.

Prof D.M. Armstrong, a real materialist unlike you domesticated poseurs wrote--



Even psychical research. And we know how carefully you anti-IDers have considered that.

As far as I'm concerned fm you have no scientific credentials and I don't care how much authentication you have.

That is worth quoting again in order to remark that anti-IDers only consider, if such may be said, of evidence least likely to undermine their view. In fact they jump on it like a bald eagle does on a mouse. Any offerings in the most likely category are just shoved on Ignore.

Armstrong is saying that the sitting duck arguments are for wimpies. The serious people start with the big game.

indeed they are. This view seems to introduce a radical separation between man and nature. So those who are pressing the 'evolutionary view of human nature' as a rational basis for self-understanding need to ackowledge this.

You're wasting your time with ros jeep. He only does acolytes.

To be more precise, it introduces a separation between a collectively understood view of Nature and various particular views of morality.

And in so doing, doesn't it sever the link between them? Morality no longer has an ontological ground, and there is barely a distinction between morality and civil law.