Intelligent Design Theory: Science or Religion?

@shanemcd3,

Don't let Spendius know this because he thinks that he is mentally advanced! He is in some areas just not this one! Wink

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@reasoning logic,

shane is still in short pants intellectually rl. Logic and reason says that culling the unemployed and the seniors would reduce unemployment and solve the debt crisis.

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OK so let's give a moments thought to the idea of Intelligent Design as an alternative to Darwinism - it will only take a moment because it is obvious that this design ie. homo sapiens is extremely flawed - we have teeth that decay and fall apart, we breathe and swallow using a shared tube (extremely dangerous) we procreate and excrete from organs only inches apart - etc etc the whole design is not at all intelligent.
You can protect yourself from reality by suspending rational thought and you can suspend rational thought by adopting a religion that promotes ideas that are only constructed to perpetuate itself, it's founders and their power. Presumably in the hope that you too will rise through the ranks and acquire the same power.
It's a road to nowhere and it is certainly not intelligent.

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@teddytail,

Sheesh!!

If you said that to me in the pub teddy I would simply stare uncomprehendingly at you, shake my head slowly from side to side and sidle away.

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The great Goethe, in defining tragic drama, wrote about the effects of a great action upon a person unfit for the performance of it.

There can be no greater actions than the displacement of Christianity by materialism. The question is whether the materialists can perform this action. The displacement is not the action. The materialist life is the action.

Quote:

There is an oak-tree planted in a costly jar, which should have borne pleasant flowers in its bosom: the roots expand, the jar is shivered.

And Christianity is a very costly jar which should bear pleasant flowers but often bears evil ones due to the atavistic, evolutionary instincts in mankind.

To lay the responsibility for the evil flowers on Christianity is to completely misunderstand the case. In the average person it is a delusion but for an intellectual it is cheating.

If Christianity can't prevent the evil flowers in its own backyard how can materialists be expected to do? There's the possibily of mitigation with Christianity; with materialism there is none.

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In an essay on Macbeth, in Shakspere (sic) His Mind and Art, Professor Dowden wrote--

Quote:

But it is also by no means difficult to believe that in the mere matter of superstition, in all that relates to presentiments, dreams, omens, ghost belief, and such like, Shakspere would have failed to satisfy the requirements of enlightened persons of today, (1901), who receive their reports of the universe through the scientific article in the newest magazine:

"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy."

"They say miracles are past" (Lafeu is speaking in All's Well That Ends Well) : "and we have our philosophical persons, to make modern and familiar things supernatural and causeless. Hence is it that we make trifles of terrors; ensconsing ourselves into seeming knowledge, when we should submit ourselves to an unknown fear." However we may account for it, the fact is unquestionable that some of the richest creative natures of the world have all their lives been believers, if not with their intellect, at least with their instinctive feelings and their imagination, in much of the old-wives' lore of the nursery.

There's some stuff about Scott's Gothic mythology and Goethe's alchemy and a reference to the necklace of Zarea in George Eliot about which the Prof says--

Quote:

.... and in that poem the science of modern psychology accepts certain of the facts of old superstitions--accepts them and explains them. We slighter and smaller natures can deprive ourselves altogether of the sense for such phenomena; we can elevate ourselves into the rare atmosphere of intellectuality and incredulity. The wider and richer natures of creative artists have received too large an inheritance from the race, and have too fully absorbed all the influences of their environment for this to be possible in their case. While dim recollections and forefeelings haunt their blood, they cannot enclose themselves in a little pinfold of demonstrable knowledge and call it the universe.

So it is art, as I have said, that is under attack from anti-IDers. Religion being an art of course.

Anti-IDers can only elevate themselves, by the bootstraps, into faked intellectuality. It is easy to be incredulous. You only need say so.

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@shanemcd3,

shanemcd3 wrote:

science is based on logic and reason, religion is based on faith, and the dictionary definition is "Belief that does not rest on logical proof or material evidence" and the definition of delusion is "an idiosyncratic false belief that is firmly maintained in spite of incontrovertible and obvious proof or evidence to the contrary" so basically the more faith you have, the more deluded you are

"The more faith you have, the more deluded you are." - That pretty much sums it up.

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Here is a great article:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/10/10/giant-kraken-lair-south-dakota_n_1003515.html?1318270323&ncid=edlinkusaolp00000009

The mythical kraken might not have been around long enough to take down ships, but it very well may have been able to feast on dinosaurs larger than school buses.

Mount Holyoke College paleontologist Mark McMenamin has found evidence to suggest that the Ichthyosaur, a snaggle-toothed creature that grew to be larger than a school bus, was actually prey for a far more mythical sea monster: the kraken. According to the Geological Society Of America (GSA), McMenamin believes the nine 45-foot-long skeletons found at Nevada's Berlin-Ichthyosaur State Park were victims of the creature.

The researcher's theory stems from the unique behavior of some modern octopi, which arrange the bones of their prey in an organized fashion.

From the GSA's press release:

In the fossil bed, some of the shonisaur vertebral disks are arranged in curious linear patterns with almost geometric regularity, McMenamin explained.The proposed Triassic kraken, which could have been the most intelligent invertebrate ever, arranged the vertebral discs in double line patterns, with individual pieces nesting in a fitted fashion as if they were part of a puzzle.
Prior to these developments, the best guesses scientists had about the deaths of these nine Ichthyosaurs focused on environmental causes, including stranding or toxic plankton. The GSA also states that it wasn't until a few years ago when a pacific octopus was observed killing sharks in an aquarium that scientists ever considers this other possibility. That observation grants further credence of McMenamin's theory.

Think an octopus taking down a shark sounds a little ridiculous? Well you can actually see it for yourself below.

McManamin's evidence to suggest a kraken-like creature killed the Ichthyosaurs found in Nevada:

Photo shows shonisaur vertebral disks arranged in curious linear patters with almost geometric regularity. The arranged vertebrae resemble the pattern of sucker discs on a cephalopod tentacle, with each vertebra strongly resembling a coleoid sucker. (Used with permission of Mark McMenamin.)

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@edgarblythe,

McMenamin expected his theory to raise eyebrows. But, after advance word got out, he was surprised to see people streaming into his session at the geologists' gathering to hear the theory for themselves. "That's never happened before, I can tell you that," he told The Times.

He also wasn't expecting so many jokes.

"That theory is kraken me up," one wag told McMenamin. "Smokin' kraken?" was the headline on a dismissive story at Discovery.com.

McMenamin says he's not the least bit offended. Such skepticism and batting around of theories is an integral part of the scientific process. He says his theory can stand up to it all.

"We were expecting a very skeptical response to this, and rightly so. It is a kind of bold theory," he said.

The key to the site, he said, "is the double row pattern" of fossils arranged in a deliberate fashion. The remains from one or more animals were sorted for size and arranged from smallest to largest, not unlike that distinctive pattern on an octopus' tentacle.

"There is a puzzle piece fit to it," he said. "I cannot conceive of a physical process that would do it, it's some kind of intentional process," he said. And it's not a prank, either, because the excavation of the site, which has been well documented and photographed, has puzzled experts from the beginning.

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@rosborne979,

Quote:

"The more faith you have, the more deluded you are." - That pretty much sums it up.

Sure it does. But who can bear not being deluded? ros only thinks he can. It's a pose based on the idea that being deluded is a sign of idiocy.

ros has me on Ignore to avoid risking me showing him how deluded he is about more personal matters than flying spaghetti monsters.

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@edgarblythe,

It's a pussy whip joke ed. Kraken de whip. Geddit? A creature that can lay low the killers. (see Shampoo).

It can do better than double row patters. Watch soft furnishings. Parking Meters are out of date.

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@edgarblythe,

Quote:

And it's not a prank, either, because the excavation of the site, which has been well documented and photographed, has puzzled experts from the beginning.

Non sequiturs don't bother these guys. They know that few of their readers are aware of philosophical fine points.

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@spendius,

most people interested in scientific discoveries are able to process several unrelated pieces of evidence and information without going into verbal tailspins like your tidbits seem to evidence.

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@farmerman,

I saw no evidence of any scientific discoveries which, as you know, require peer-reviewing.

I have been asking you lot from the beginning to process evidence which I don't think is unrelated but you do. You put it on Ignore as if that's a feather in your caps.

Being "able to process unrelated evidence" partakes of sorites which is to say it is meaningless without some evidence. It is a very easy thing to assert and is more a verbal tailspin that I ever get into. It's a straight down plunge.

But I don't recommend you study the concept of sorites because it might have the effect that putting your noggin into a mental polarity reversal machine would have if such a machine might be conjured up in order that the point might be more clearly understood.

Finding out that your assertions are a ball of **** being endlessly rolled uphill might well bring you to a standstill.

And "most people interested in scientific discoveries are able to process several unrelated pieces of evidence and information" is just such an assertion and, if this thread is anything to go by, I would assert that most people interested in scientific discoveries are completely unable to process several unrelated pieces of evidence and information and that they couldn't make a decent tidbit out of a verbal tailspin for all the tea in China, as my old man often used to say about a horse with no chance, so they will be without that facility whether they would or no in which case doing without it is hardly a claim to fame. It's making the best of a bad job.

After all, babies are interested in scientific discoveries. More than most I would have said. The fact that they don't know they are scientific discoveries is neither here nor there although it might point to an idea that a thrumming self-consciousness of scientific discovery is actually inimical to science and that being more like infants would serve science better just as Einstein must have done to think of himself riding a light beam.

And babies never stop processing unrelated, to them, pieces of evidence and information. That's why they sleep a long time. The evidence and information being so confusing in an age of child welfare fantasies that they need a lot of time to make any sense of it and even then it usually proves insufficient.

Those who think that fm said anything meaningful or interesting should take some lessons in reading and comprehension. It was a tidbit sans tailspin.

That's not a bad tailspin. Take it how you will. But don't knock it for being a tailspin. If that catches on literature ends.

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@spendius,

http://thewisecracker.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/Inbread-cat.jpg

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@spendius,

Quote:

I saw no evidence of any scientific discoveries which, as you know, require peer-reviewing

Tell that to Alfred Nobel. Discoveries dont require anything but a curious mind . Pweer review is merely the process by which the rest of the trade says "Oh I get it"

I love how you try to back aay from your previous posts by claiming that I was doing it first.

NB, I was the one that reminded you that the ability to entertain conflicting opinions and evidence is not a weakness.
Ive taken you off ignore until you start getting boring, so far so good, lest not fall back into the spendi pace of refuting every previous contiguous post.

I hadda look up "sorites" I thought it was some kind of potato crisp.

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@farmerman,

Well now you have looked it up and had a few days to meditate upon the meaning of a concept as important as that will you explain what "teaching evolution" means in terms of the paradox of the heap? How big a heap would a militant atheist make of it when heaping up the ideas of evolution theory?

If you say not a big enough one to frighten the maiden aunts I can say that it is a big enough one to cause them to reach for the smelling salts.

Sorites is the paradox due to vagueness and vagueness is not scientific and does not belong in science classes.

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I don't recall reading much of this thread, but can anyone reasonably deny that Intelligent Design Theory (IDT) is a religious enterprise? Like theology in general, IDT attempts to conscientiously build a case for some conclusion. Science does no such thing, unless it is willing to be censored as failed science.

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@JLNobody,

Well, there youd be caught in an argument with many proponents of this "theory". It, like all the other subdisciplines of Creationism is built entirely upon incredulity, and the only thing that the IDers do, is just skip over the discussion about who or what is the "Intelligence"

Many argue that the intelligence is an inherent property of matter and so ID "could be" self directed. (This is the ICan "theory"). Yet, no evidence has ever been forthcoming even though the self directed propertyists all default to the "scientific method"

Ya gotta love it.

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@JLNobody,

Because IDT is often used as a religious enterprise does not necessarily mean that it always is.

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Intelligent Design Theory: Science or Religion?

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