@Frank Apisa,
Quote:If there is the possibility of a god...there is the possibility of Intelligent Design.
That's not a tautology Frank. It is logically correct. It was the substance of an early post of mine on this thread to the effect that the possibility opens the door for the use of ID for efficient social control which is closed off by there being no possibility. If there is no use of ID in that way then there is either no social control or a secular alternative is called for and, in regard to sexual activity, that is difficult to legislate and police because the legislators and the enforcers are controlling their own sexual behaviour or hiding it behind walls and security systems. The same applies to fraud.
Saying that there are myriad blunders in the design and concluding that it is unintelligent is a tautology because "myriad blunders" means unintelligent. It is also a
non sequitur because "myriad blunders" doesn't necessarily prove the lack of intelligence. Blunders may be deliberate to allow chaos to produce diversity.
It is also anthropomorphic because a microcosmic person is defining the blunders which began as macrocosmic divine.
fm does it all the time. He says something is bullshit and thus it shouldn't be taught in schools. Obviously it shouldn't if it is actually bullshit. But fm has defined what bullshit is. So it is banal as well. We all agree that assuming it is bullshit means an assumption that it shouldn't be taught in schools. It really means that fm decides what is taught in schools. And he is educationally influential in a state where a school district has gone broke if last night's CBS report is true. It isn't a question of what text books are used. It's a question of having any text books at all.
Bullshit can be useful. A world with no bullshit is impossibly utopian and, I would assert, unworkable.
If there is an attempt to verify that it is bullshit by selecting certain evidence and ignoring other evidence then the conclusion is implicit in the selection and thus meaningless. A tautology.
Anybody watching stock car racing who was unaware that the objective is entertainment could easily prove that it is bullshit by offering all the wrecks as evidence.
Opponents of ID have been repeatedly challenged to either recommend no control of sexual behaviour or to provide a secular alternative. They have just as repeatedly declined to respond. They proceed with the science as if there is no social system and all the facilities of their proceedings are entirely dependent upon a social system.
They are in a position where the clear logic in their own head, which can't be faulted because it is circular, is offered as proof of how society should be organised. And society is outside the circle. And you can bet your boots that their circularities are subjectively derived. A thrice married man like Prof. Dawkins is using circularities to undermine the sanctity of marriage. Well- he would wouldn't he? as Mandy Rice-Davies said when told that the minister denied having shagged her in what were considered at that time to be somewhat esoteric circumstances. He might well look askance at the prospect of the whole population being divorced 200 times a year to get at the different partner every night envisaged in Brave New World.
One might say that it is a bullshit competition and anti-IDers are losing.
The bullshit Bible is only the world's most famous and best selling piece of literature, the book chosen for the Guttenberg debut and the book that every major writer has studied. If it is bullshit the wisdom of the many is discredited and democracy with it.
But it's obvious that anti-IDers are totalitarians.
