26
Jul
The Last Word On Intelligent Design
Moderator: We’re here today to debate the hot new topic, evolution versus Intelligent Des—(Scientist pulls out baseball bat.)
Moderator: Hey, what are you doing?
(Scientist breaks Intelligent Design advocate’s kneecap.)
Intelligent Design advocate: YEAAARRRRGGGHHHH! YOU BROKE MY KNEECAP!
Scientist: Perhaps it only appears that I broke your kneecap. Certainly, all the evidence points to the hypothesis I broke your kneecap. For example, your kneecap is broken; it appears to be a fresh wound; and I am holding a baseball bat, which is spattered with your blood. However, a mere preponderance of evidence doesn’t mean anything. Perhaps your kneecap was designed that way. Certainly, there are some features of the current situation that are inexplicable according to the “naturalistic” explanation you have just advanced, such as the exact contours of the excruciating pain that you are experiencing right now.
Intelligent Design advocate: AAAAH! THE PAIN!
Read the rest of the only debate on ID that is worthy of it’s subject.
Really, the more I read, the more I despair of the human race, with this increasing clamour to give ID a place in the education curriculum, the insistence the world is only 6000 years old etc. Step outside people, and take a look at the planet around you - the evidence is all around for you to see.
I wish people would realise that the people who are advocating this crap at the highest level, are those who who don’t believe a word of it, but simply want to keep people ignorant and easily controllable. I don’t have the answers to everything, and for all I know there is a supreme being behind all of existence - being omnipotent and all, perhaps they were capable of inventing evolution, hmm? But aspects of evolution, and the age of the planet are facts that you can’t just ignore, so lets not pretend otherwise.
The guy who wrote the above article is as sharp as a tack, and deserves a much wider audience.
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July 26th, 2007 at 1:26 pm
One of the things that gets me about ID and any theology is the inability to listen to probability versus possibility. Okay, it’s POSSIBLE that there’s a supernatural superbeing out there controlling it all, but it’s not very PROBABLE. A lot of things are POSSIBLE (Thor, Zeus, the Force etc), but we don’t organize whole societies around them. I struggle to see how people can latch on to something so IMPROBABLE, without tangible or empirical evidence, and build a whole life and moral structure around it, when we can more usefully test, measure, and eventually predict and control the environment around us without the need for fantastical superbeings to plug the gaps on things we don’t YET understand. The Ancient Greeks managed it, why can’t the rest of us? Until we do, the human race is falling far short of it’s potential.
July 26th, 2007 at 2:27 pm
Not much I can add to that, other than to agree totally. It wouldn’t be so bad, except for the overwhelming need a lot of these people have to FORCE their beliefs onto the rest of us.
There may be a higher plane of existence, but 99% of organised religion is just about money and control of the masses.
July 26th, 2007 at 4:25 pm
Very funny bit.
Now, giving in to my natural buzz-killing tendencies, a serious response:
I am not a disciple of Bishop Ussher. (Ussher was the Anglican prelate who calculated that the world was created in 4004 B.C. On October 23.)
But… no less a scientist than Stephen Hawking has recognized there are places where science has no answers. At least not yet. (And, granted, for Hawking, that place is mostly in the first few nanoseconds after the Big Bang.)
I frankly think that religion and science should coexist and support one another.
Science is about what we know and what we can know. Religion is about what we don’t know and can’t know for certain. Both are about what we hope to know… some day. In this way the natural realm of religion shrinks as the realm of science grows… but if you’re willing to accept that God gave us free will and the ability to learn with the expectation that we would use these talents (and not bury them) that shouldn’t be a problem. Of course, that undercuts the ‘inerrancy’ of the Bible… and some people can’t handle that. This however shouldn’t taint all religions or all religious people.
You’re certainly entitled to be wary of charlatans and rogues in clerical robes trying to impose their narrow views on the masses — but let’s be wary, too, of the secular religion that some scientist wannabes have cobbled from their imperfect understanding of scientific method and scientific facts….
And St. Albert Gore stretched out his mighty hand and lo! He created a concert on each of the continents with many fading artists. And he summoned the believers to come and listen to the music that they might believe that he knew the way to save the Earth.
And the believers came. They came in their SUV’s and their smoke-belching beater cars all alike. And they came with their styrofoam cups and their bottled water in plastic bottles. And they came with their snacks in plastic and foil wrappers.
And they assembled at the concert on many continents and St. Albert pronounced it good. And he told the believers that in this way they have reduced carbon emissions and helped stop global warming….
I’ll probably be burned at the stake for this.
July 26th, 2007 at 6:15 pm
Nothing wrong with any of that Curmudgeon.
I don’t consider myself knowledgeable enough to say ‘there is no God’ but I’ve yet to see any proof there is.
The only thing for certain is that we will all find out one day, one way or t’other. But those who advocate 6000 year old Earth, and no evolution are either ignorant, misled or deliberately obstructive. You have to ask yourself what their agenda is.
As for organised religion, too much evil has been committed in it’s name for me to want any part of it. I stick to looking after my family and doing no ill to others, and if that sends me to hell, so be it.
Anyway, back to stupid YouTube videos
July 27th, 2007 at 12:48 pm
Without wanting to start an argument (!), I’d probably have to disagree with The Curmudgeon. I don’t think those definitions of science and religion are quite there.
Science (IMHO) is not quite “what we know and what we can know”. I’d say science (or the motivation behind science) is what we know, what we are learning, and what we aspire to know. I think it’s probably counter-productive to science if it lived by the premise that “it can only know ABC but not DEF, therefore it won’t try to understand DEF”. I think science should not be restricted by such limits. It should continue the pursuit of testable, empirically-proveable knowledge unbounded.
I also don’t think that “[religion] is about what we don’t know and can’t know for certain”. Religion, unlike science, means different things to different people. My personal opinion is that it is not about knowledge at all (assuming science and religion share the same definition of knowledge), but more about faith, and faith has no need for knowledge, by definition.
And (sorry, I’m going on a bit) I don’t think that science and religion should support one another either. Science should in no way be influenced by theology - it should be entirely independent. If science does one day prove that God exists, it must be on it’s own terms, uninfluenced by anything other than fact.
Just my two-peneth worth! Sorry to be argumentative Curmudgeon!
July 27th, 2007 at 8:50 pm
No apologies necessary from here.
I think your definition of science may be better stated… but — give me credit! — I did say that both religion and science are also about what we hope to know someday. That’s aspirational, I think.
You fall into a dangerous trap if you limit religion only to matters of “faith.” Religious thought — like any thought — requires reason.
If all matters of “faith” are foreclosed to investigation or inquiry, then science has very limited room to move. Galileo would still stand condemned and Aristotle would remain at the summit of science. (And, yes, the Church limited science, thwarted science, fought with science… back “in the day” — having only gotten around recently to vacating Galileo’s conviction…. I would submit that these errors were caused by people who failed to examine their faith in the light of reason. And also, in specific cases, because of narrow, partisan political considerations… but that’s another story.)
And why shouldn’t science be “influenced” by theology? I’m clearly not saying that science must accept as fact October 23, 4004 B.C. as the date for the creation of the world or that Adam and Eve once lived in a garden apartment in Eden… but should a scientist pursue every possible line of development without taking morality or ethics into account? If they’d been real people instead of fictional characters, Dr. Frankenstein or Dr. Moreau might have had second thoughts on that… too late for them. And surely even if you do not ascribe morality and ethics to the exclusive province of religion, you must acknowledge religious influence on morality and ethics. (Even if sometimes good influence… and sometimes bad.)
To say that science and religion can support one another may be going too far. How about this, then? Science and religion can compliment one another. They are not at odds, if each is properly understood.
How’s that, Mr. Pinksy?
July 28th, 2007 at 1:25 pm
Pinksy, you’re arguing with a lawyer, run!
For me the big problems come when either side deals in absolutes without solid evidence.
“There is no God”
“Evolution does not exist”
That said, not many scientists have burnt people at the stake, or strapped semtex to their backs…..