'Intelligent Design Creationism and Its Critics': Supernatural Selection

The New York Times ^ | 14 April 2002 | JIM HOLT

[Quila]

For reference, plase show this model with detailed math.

[Quila]

Might makes right. The State is the ultimate enforcer of rules.

I like this one. It's always been that way, and it was usually quite nasty when the State was the Church.

[Quila]

I believe that you cannot go from the order in the cell to the Russian Orthodox practice of triple baptism.

But isn't this exactly what ID people support; that things always go downhill? :)

[Quila]

Yes What do you think about Occum's Razor?

Ockham's/Occam's Razor is "entities are not to be multiplied beyond necessity."

So in the spaceman/no spaceman case, we have two options:

1. Life developed on another planet, then was transferred to this planet
2. Life developed on this planet

Or, put it another way for IDers:

1. God came into existance and then developed life on this planet
2. Life developed on this planet

In either case, we're 2 to 1 on ID vs. evolution with the entities. Evolution wins the Ockham test.

[Quila]

I found this website that goes into great detail concerning this issue

I'm reading it now, seems pretty standard stuff you've already seen in English at talk.origins. Quite well put together though.

[Quila]

Dank für das komplette und lesbare website. Offensichtlich sollte jeder auf FreeRepublic es lesen.

Unfortunately, the web pages are too long for the Babelfish to translate the whole thing into English.

[PatrickHenry]

Cloaked & lurking ...

[xzins]

You've followed my comments and seem a fair observer. The question is this: Do you think there's higher intelligent life elsewhere in the universe?

As far as the model, I'll get back with you. Are you willing to buy the book? I'll send you the source address if you are.

[Quila]

You've followed my comments and seem a fair observer. The question is this: Do you think there's higher intelligent life elsewhere in the universe?

I see it as completely possible, although not necessary. Ockham again.

I just finished this morning my budgeted monthly big book purchase at Amazon, so the book will have to wait, but I've got this bookmarked.

[xzins]

Why think that the simplest (Occum's Razor) has to do with a highly complex development on this planet. The simplest explanation can easily be a "seeding and guiding" by ETI. That wouldn't be hard to argue at all.

[VadeRetro]

Ja aber babelfishdeutscher ist viel besser :-)

Babelfisch English ist Scheisse, aber!

[Quila]

Why think that the simplest (Occum's Razor) has to do with a highly complex development on this planet. The simplest explanation can easily be a "seeding and guiding" by ETI. That wouldn't be hard to argue at all.

Because then you just transfer the origin question one step further back, adding one more entity to your argument. I'm not saying it's not possible, just that it's not necessary. If there were scientific evidence for it, I'd be more interested in the possibility, but all there is so far are fairly lame attacks on an existing theory rather than evidence for ID. Unless your math says something new.

[BMCDA]

Yepp, it's quite good for the laymen to get familiar with this topic and to gain some deeper insight into the matter.

What I found curious however, was that a guy from Europe compiled these pages since there doesn't seem to be a significant Creationist movement on the old continent.
Or have you encounterd any Creationists in Heidelberg? ;-)

[F16Fighter]

'The drugs/religion connect is well known though. That's how a lot of people "saw God"...[I] suppose there's a rather mundane explaination...for most religious phenomena.'

The theories expounded on by Hunt are the subconscience's suseptibility to spiritual hijacking (so to speak) during drug induced trances OR hypnosis OR even meditative trances in the quest to "see God."

BTW, your "supernatural" example of the Oracle of Delphi's ethylene gas booby trap is reminiscent of that scene from the 'Mummy', isn't it?

[F16Fighter]

"[M]uch of Catholicism is taken from local pagan practices...Hunt lays it out pretty well?"

While it is true many Catholic rites and "Christian" holidays are derived from pagan origins, Hunt reveals :

-- The subtle incursions and stealth subterfuge of the "occult" (aka Satan and his forces) not only through the Catholic Church, but through other "Christian" churches as well.

-- How Satan's (if you happen to believe he exists) lies are being taught behind the academic respectability of Science

-- How demonic activities are presented as the path to "enlightenment though "alien" contacts and paranormal experiences

--How pagan religions are being promoted through ecology (see Al Gore) and "we are one" philosophies

--How evil is being reinvented as good by psychology AND the legal system...

Good book even if you aren't a Christian ;-)

[PatrickHenry]

Lurking ...

[The_Reader_David]

The "argument-from-no-design" is my way of describing the sociology of Darwinism not as science but as a dogma of materialistic atheism. I have before observed that the Darwin-fish-with-legs is a very odd phenomenon if Darwinism functioned merely as a scientific hypothesis.

Once one has a nice orderly system of differential equations governing the dynamics, the presence of a stochastic element in the genesis of biological diversity no longer makes a compelling counter to argument from design. Particle physics as presently understood has a stochastic element in the collapse of the wave function, but has such a beautiful, elegant feeling that no atheist brings it up as an anti-design polemic--it looks too much like the product of a brilliant mind.

My only real quarrel with Darwinism as science is the fact that its practitioners tend to formulate it in a non-falsifiable way (and I am a Popperian). My quarrel with certain Darwinists is that they are appealing to our ignorance of the non-stochastic part of what should be turned into a proper scientific theory (in the Popperian sense) when they draw philosophical inferences (the non-existence of God, the purposelessness of human existence, etc.) from the sketch of a scientific theory Darwin provided.

[Virginia-American]

I have before observed that the Darwin-fish-with-legs is a very odd phenomenon if Darwinism functioned merely as a scientific hypothesis.

It's a scientific theory that's under political attack from people with another kind of fish on their cars. Think of the Darwin fish as a Sore-Loserman type parody.

[Virginia-American]

...a compelling counter to argument from design...

There is no argument that could in theory counter design; **Any (living) thing** could have been designed. What observation could show otherwise?

Are you saying that evolution is true, but since it may one day be described by more-or-less elegant equations, the equations themselves are evidence of some sort of 'design'?

[xzins]

If there were scientific evidence for it, I'd

How about countless UFO sightings and suggestions throughout history? Seems like ETI still keeps an eye on us.