Darwinists Running Scared
- Thread starter phildwyer
- Start date
That's not entirely true Jo/Joe.
The argument goes more like "some of my favourite philosophers have entertained the idea of a God/intelligent deisgner therefore it must be true". Any attempt to disgree with this proposition simply highlights your ignorance of the questions being raised. ID is so obvious and on such a higher plane compared to evolutionary ideas, that is doesn't need such mere mortal materialist things as evidence or predictive power.
Back to the bunker! I see the Darwinist hoardes doing a last ditch suicidal charge against all that is ID.
The argument goes more like "some of my favourite philosophers have entertained the idea of a God/intelligent deisgner therefore it must be true". Any attempt to disgree with this proposition simply highlights your ignorance of the questions being raised. ID is so obvious and on such a higher plane compared to evolutionary ideas, that is doesn't need such mere mortal materialist things as evidence or predictive power.
Back to the bunker! I see the Darwinist hoardes doing a last ditch suicidal charge against all that is ID.
I think your judgement may be off a little.phildwyer said:
"Creationism in the biblical sense" ? Maybe the ID proponents believe in creationism in the non-biblical sense.phildwyer said:
If by redefining our understanding of what science is you mean the abandonment of evidence in theories and predictive power then I'd have to agree with you. If you want a redefined science, call it something else not science, as this word already has a perfectly usage.phildwyer said:
Have you conversed with Dr Jazz lately ? Tell us more of the Grand Conspiracy Of Journal Editors who wish to suppress the truth of ID.phildwyer said:
Considering ID on it's merits ? Well that shouldn't take long.
I bet you a dollar it isn't.phildwyer said:
I`ve an affinity for intelligent design mainly because my belief has always been that the universe itself is concious. How this ordered intelligent universe with its various levels of vibration came to be is probably a question we won`t have answered for a while.
Evolution to me is simply a byproduct of life itself, however it cannot account for the beginning of life, and once again IMHO neither can the maths. Perhaps if we were a simpler species I could believe it was an accident but theres something a bit special about us, all that creative power n` that. What worries me more are the consequences of such mass scale belief in our own beastial nature To me it seems a bad cue for progress.
Perhaps ID can`t hold its own under the imposed conditions of modern science but not all truth is found through the scientific method. The mere concept of ID is not necessarily evidence of creationism more a pointer to some greater knowledge we have not yet found. Some may believe this is knowledge of God and I remain openminded.
Evolution to me is simply a byproduct of life itself, however it cannot account for the beginning of life, and once again IMHO neither can the maths. Perhaps if we were a simpler species I could believe it was an accident but theres something a bit special about us, all that creative power n` that. What worries me more are the consequences of such mass scale belief in our own beastial nature To me it seems a bad cue for progress.
Perhaps ID can`t hold its own under the imposed conditions of modern science but not all truth is found through the scientific method. The mere concept of ID is not necessarily evidence of creationism more a pointer to some greater knowledge we have not yet found. Some may believe this is knowledge of God and I remain openminded.
Brainaddict said:
I'm familiar with them alright, I just think they're talking crap (it was Pascal's argument originally, BTW.) Any attmept to establish religion, or indeed anything else, on an irrational basis is probably doomed to failure and certainly unworthy of respect.
revol68
what, fucking what?
phildwyer said:
whilst an attempt to rationalise a belief in an imaginary figure with magical powers ilicits what kind of response?
Seriously I met a few existentialists christians at a meeting I was invited to, they wanted me and a friedn to talk about "anarchism", they seemd lovely people and there concept of god was something internal to themselves, a kind of humanist god. they seemed to see God as the unspoken totality between all humans and so were very sympathetic to the idea of anarchism as the freeing of humanity from the alienation vis a vis the commodity form.
Load of mystical balls if you ask me but still better than believing in some sort of Big Daddy figure.
axon said:
Don't be a twat axon, life's too short. Have a little think about the concept of alienation, and about alienated labor-power in particular. You'll soon see that these are entirely rational, and undeniably very important, concepts. Next, try to find out where these ideas come from, what their historical heritage is, and how they are manifested today. You'll find out some interesting things that will suprise you. Then think about the relation between alienation and empirical science. You'll have to do a bit of philosophy, but it will stop you from saying these silly things you're coming out with, and it will give you some understanding of our society and how it got here. You're more than capable of it.
Brainaddict
slight system overdrive
I seem to remember Pascal proposed accepting the truth of god because it was a good bet given the risks and potential pay-offs. This is not at all the same as what the existentialists proposed - that the irrational 'leap of faith' takes you into a world of new reference points that make more sense than the old ones.phildwyer said:
And let's get this straight: first you said that there were no proper theologians after Luther. Now you're admitting there are some - you just don't happen to agree with them. Do you see how that's different?
You reveal new levels of ignorance and dishonesty (with yourself as much as anyone I suspect) with every word you post.
fractionMan
Custom Title
does you argument still consist of:
I believe X to be true, and have no proof
You believe Y to be true, and have proof
X is as true as Y?
I believe X to be true, and have no proof
You believe Y to be true, and have proof
X is as true as Y?
So basically you are refusing to tell anyone what your oh-so-impressive qualifications are? And in an attempt to avoid the question you simply attack me?phildwyer said:
Would you like to remind everyone who is the one argung in favour of irrationalism and make-believe and trying to claim it is equivalent to science?
You might even like to actually enumerate your reasons that I am "a loony" - other than I have called you a fraud and a troll.
maomao
普費斯
What would be really good at this point from Phil would be a link (or a reference, I'd go down the library for this) to a piece of work on ID that didn't consist solely of either a) an example of something really complex from nature in order to argue that it was too complex to have evolved or b) a major inconsistency in the fossil record rather than just gaps.
I don't think he's deliberately trolling. I believe he really is an arrogant prick.
I don't think he's deliberately trolling. I believe he really is an arrogant prick.
Bernie Gunther
Fundamentalist Druid
The key theoreticians (as opposed to PR tacticians) of ID are Dembski and Behe, you can find summaries of their argument by both sides easily enough. I've only really gone into the Dembski stuff in any detail and I think his maths is broken.maomao said:
The world we can all see isn't the real world then? What is it?
And as you are fully aware, I meant that peddlers of hocus pocus such as ID are trying to impress upon individuals concepts that need to be taken as an article of faith.
If you know of a way to experience god phil, I'm all ears.
alco said:
So I checked the link. And, it says that for something to be falsifiable, it has to be possible in principle to make an observation that would falsify the theory.
So, how would you go about falsifying the theory of evolution by random mutation and natural selection? By finding examples of non-random mutation, presumably.
Mcdougall and others' experiments, explained earlier briefly, and cited in Sheldrake's book - A new science of life- do just that. Rats tested for intelligence by solving mazes, divided into smart and dumb, but the descendants of both smart and dumb rats all got smarter at maze-solving, as if their adaptation was intelligently tailored to the experience of their ancestors. And if in such a short space of time, (22 generations) all the rats are solving mazes faster than the fastest rats of the original generation, it certainly looks like there's some non-random factor in the adapation, and it looks like intelligent adapation. Not that it says anything about the origin of the intelligence, it could just as well be guided by the rat intelligence as by "God's" intelligence.
But Intelligent design could mean a lot of different things. It could mean that biological consciousness causes intelligent rather than random mutation, which is supported by experiments reported by Sheldrake. Or it could mean that the original DNA from which life on this planet evolved was designed by intelligence. That intelligence could be Fifth-dimensional ET's or God, or whatever. Of course materialism favours the "simplest" explanation, in this case, as it suits their worldview, and the simple explanation, is that DNA came together by random combinations of molecules in what is known as the primordial soup. However, this theory is no more falsifiable than the ET explanation, without a time-machine to go and make an observation of the primordial soup. So by arguments that most people on this thread have supported, the scientific view of the origin of DNA is no more a "scientific theory" than the ET view or the God view, or the comet-seeding view.
Its only merit is that it doesn't resort to any kind of explanation based on some non-human intelligence, it leaves the process as entirely accidental.
So in a sense it's simpler. But there's no more evidence for it than there is for the spaghetti monster you all find so funny, there can't be, as it happened at a time from which we can't get any records. (though it's easier to see that randomness is still more plausible than spaghetti monsters, which is interesting in itself, as it shows we do have ways of making plausibility judgements without evidence.) So it's only really possible to say that it's the more scientific view, if you make the assumption that for a view to be scientific, it necessarily rules out explanations of phenomena based on the idea of non-human intelligences. Which is a point of view, but not one that seems to have any merit, and it only wins the argument by defining science fairly narrowly, and making a distinction between truth and science. So there's not a lot of sense in it, as the original merit of science was as a means to truth, not as an end in itself.
Earlier I said that some eminent physicists think Sheldrake's ideas are far from unthinkable. I also said that various findings by physicists support the idea that "magic" is possible. To which kropotkin replied that he was a qualified physicist, and this statement made him want to kick me in the nuts.
Kropotkin may be a qualified physicist, but he's not an eminent one. Here's a few views from some physicists who possibly are better qualified than Kropotkin to be taken seriously.
Einstein said that he would not believe in the possibilities suggested by some early investigations into subatomic processes, as it was spooky, and implied telepathy.
Niels Bohr :"Anyone who is not shocked by quantum theory has not understood it."
Erwin Schrodinger :"The sum total of all minds is one." - "Mind, I submit, simply does not exist in the plural."
David Bohm has acknowledged that the kind of cosmology suggested by quantum mechanics seems more consistent with oriental monism, than with materialism, and has said that the implications of quantum mechanics support ideas like Jung's synchronicity, and Sheldrake's morphogenetic field, and that he suspects Sheldrake may be right. (Revision - Fall 1982)
6 January 1983, New Scientist. - two new sets of experiments by Alain Aspect, to prove Bell's theorem. These re now generally regarded as conclusively vindicating the Bell's theorem, (which suggests non-local connectedness)
David Bohm: 20 Feb 1983, in the Times: He was interviewed because he was the most distinguished physicist in London at the time. Maybe these days they'd interview kropotkin, but I doubt it.
"It may mean that everything in the universe is in a kind of total rapport, so that whatever happens is related to everything else, or it may mean that there is some kind of information that can travel faster than light; or it may mean that our concepts of space and time have to be modified in some way that we don't now understand."
When you put Bell's theorem that suggests non-local -instantaneous- connectedness between any two particles that have previously interacted, with the evidence for the big bang origin of the universe, then the total rapport option, certainly looks like the most simple and plausible view to take.
It's a very big universe.... Total rapport...instantaneous connection between every molecule in it.. Sounds pretty damn iclever to me.
And I think it's pretty obvious that it's more plausible that something that clever was designed by intelligence rather than by accident. And I don't need any evidence to make that judgement.
But I reckon most of you know this is true, so why do you bother to deny it.. ?
Good Intentions
Pst Mdrn Cntxt Mnstr
I expect you'll have the same luck asking him as I have.maomao said:
The most I've managed to accomplish is to make him stop talking about that Appleyard piece. But like plugging the holes in a dam with one's fingers. I'm sure phil would love to think of his arguments as a flood of divine madness sweeping aside our misguided materialism, but heaven knows how much luck I've had guessing what he is really trying to do.
Good Intentions
Pst Mdrn Cntxt Mnstr
No they're not.phildwyer said:
Of course you want us to go into another 10 pages talking about why they don't, doing the minimum to stoke the fire.
Why isn't this trolling?
Good Intentions
Pst Mdrn Cntxt Mnstr
Might I offer the opinion that those quoted above are writers of scientific papers, and not koans, aphorisms, mantras and other one-line answers to reality.ZWord said:
You're missing the one I find the most interesting - Planck, who started quantum theory out of pure desperation to find a result, any result. He found this and it seems like nobody has really put their heads around it yet.
Not quite a koan expanding consciousness, 'k?
Good Intentions
Pst Mdrn Cntxt Mnstr
Planck found that light moves in packets, which he called quanta. Which, in turn, could only accurately be described statistically. If that sounds like a contradiction to you, you are in agreement with about every physicist ever, until they just accepted that reality is not completely knowable. And they didn't accept it without a fight.ZWord said:
How could you even take a step towards understanding the above statements (especially Bohr's) without knowing the work? I'm not claiming that I can discuss these matters very fluently, and I'm willing to bet that I've spent a few more hours studying electron movements than you. It's work like this which only seems simple until you actually work with it.
