Intelligent Design Theory: Science or Religion?

Naturalism can simply refer to a methodology instead of a worldview. The purpose of evolutionary theory is merely to explain biodiversity and how organisms develop within different ecosystems.

this isn't at 1k pages yet?

Your fascination with round numbers is fascinating Goshi. How did you get such an obsession with magic numbers? It partakes of superstition.

Perhaps you will explain to us the difference between p 999, p 1,000 and p 1,001. Scientifically I mean. Leaving out that each one is one more than the previous one.

Need another 80 posts or so.

44 surely fm.

Funny you should say that. In 2007, we celebrated when this thread hit a thousand pages (the format at the time was 10 posts per page). In 2008, Robert Gentel changed the format to 20 posts per page (throwing our page count out of whack).

We'll get there. This horse ain't dead yet.

Wish it were true. It seems to be pressed into service for much greater tasks, though, don't you think? Those who support 'a scientific worldview' will generally assume that any philosophy must have a biological basis, otherwise it will be relegated to the realm of subjectivity (or personal reality). Hence the neverending streams of books and papers on evolutionary ethics, psychology, religion, etc etc. In all of this, the only real criteria is that whatever we are talking of can be seen as advantageous in the struggle for existence.

It is what I call 'Darwinian rationalism'.

Most of that is just reductionist thinking. I like it when some wag concludes that everything , EVERYTHING defaults back to physics. I really dont think that many of these authors, when pushed to the wall, support their own theories with much more vigor than an attorney trying a case. After its ovr, they move on.

Yes Im cynical. I also firmly believe in the compartmentalization of issues since so many different rules apply.

Come off it fm. Of course EVERYTHING defaults back to physics. How could it not? Are you becoming pious?

Obviously you firmly believe in the compartmentalization of issues. It's your default position because you can have anything any way you want it.

As for you being cynical--sheesh!!!

Only teeny minds or Evangelicals think that way. WHich one are you?

Jesus. Philosophy is subjective. Only someone obsessed with the excellence of their philosophical views could believe that there is any such thing as a personal reality. To take a page from Dr. Johnson, go kick a rock.

If you have a big mind fm I'll settle for teeny.

I don't think you understand the content of the subject, then. 'Subjective' is not a terribly useful word, but where it is useful, is as an adjective which describes something peculiar to oneself i.e. 'a subjective judgment' or 'a subjective view of the situation'. But on the other hand, first-person experience or knowledge does not necessarily have to be subjective; there is a sense in which the nature of reality is subjective, in that it has to be experienced by someone. So this leads to the central questions of philosophy, namely, what is the nature of this experience, and the extent to which the supposed objects of experience exist 'in themselves', as distinct from being 'represented in conscious experience'.

Now it is exactly these kinds of questions which evolutionary theorists frequently do not care to address. Why? Because the naturalist worldview assumes that the world of experience is the starting point. It assumes a position of naive realism. (Where this is starting to change is in the very interesting discipline of embodied cognition, which tries to understand consciousness as it is situated in a living organism, in an environment. This approach draws on phenomenology and non-Western models of conscious functioning. A related field is neuro-anthropology.) But the mainstream of evolutionary theory still commences with the assumption that any attribute we might have can only be rationalised by how it has contributed to our survival as a species. And this often translates to guys in white coats from the biology department barging into the philosophy department to tell us all why we think the way we do. But we do perfectly well in understanding this, without their assistance in the matter, thanks (even though they do hit upon the occasional novel insight.)

Very interesting jeepie. I'll study it tomorrow. I've just got back from the pub watching a 7 stone lady with bare Olive Oil legs in a shortish flower print frock dancing to the beat. There was a little bow on the back of her frock just about where you might expect it to be. You can't expect a chap like me to respond until after I've been studying an aspect of evolution like that.

But you should know that Setanta is a romantic. He knows nothing worth bothering about about French classic literature of the 17th century. He thinks Ages of Reason are the ones he happens to have heard of whilst waiting for his order to be filled at the deli counter.

He is not aware that one might accept that everything is subjective, as monkeys do, and caterpillars, whilst proceeding as though it isn't on the grounds that it is much more interesting to do so. And far more useful to boot as you will see if you take a conducted tour of an abbatoir.

Who decided that the word 'intelligent' needed to be added to this concept?

It wasn't me.

Water above Mountains?


Is there enough water to cover all the earth’s pre-flood mountains in a global flood? Most people do not realize that the volume of water on earth is ten times greater than the volume of all land above sea level.

Most of the earth’s mountains consist of tipped and buckled sedimentary layers. Because these sediments were initially laid down through water as nearly horizontal layers, those mountains must have been pushed up after the sediments were deposited. [See
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If the effects of compressing the continents and buckling up mountains were reversed, the oceans would again flood the entire earth. Therefore, the earth has enough water to cover the smaller mountains that existed before the flood. (If the solid earth were perfectly smooth, the water depth would be about 9,000 feet everywhere.)

The Seemingly Impossible Events of a Worldwide Flood Are Credible, If Examined Closely.

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I informed those who scoff at flood mythology (race memory fancifully related by storytellers over many generations) of those simple and obvious scientific facts, Pahu, a long while ago, but they persist in ignoring them. I think they need to hold on to their fond beliefs for various personal reasons.

How many years can a mountain exist, before it is washed to the sea?

Hi Pahu, Everyone is entitled to their own "science" While you are entitled to your beliefs, I certainly dont share any of them.

The big thing that you miss is that there is nowhere on the earth ANY evidence of a global flood. There was an example of a global (almost entire globe) glacial era prior to the Ediacaran Erathem. It was called the Cryogenian and there is sufficient evidence from contemporaneous glacial grooves, scrathches and ancient glacial moraines that lie on top of Grenvillian(Mesoproterozoic) shield rocks. As far as evidence of a contemporaneous worldwide flood, Im afraid that your "Creation Science" folks are pulling your leg.