intelligent design

[Michael Chocholak]

maybe this should be under commentary & editorials -

here is an open letter to the kansas school board in support of having intelligent design taught in the schools - including the theory of the Flying Spaghetti Monster deity -

http://www.venganza.org/

including responses from the board.

i wonder if this is what george had in mind when he said,"Part of education is to expose people to different schools of thought. . . . You're asking me whether or not people ought to be exposed to different ideas, and the answer is yes."

[seraph]

WOW

[blue hell]

Well the Noodly appearance of the FSM sort of appealed to me. And it's a beautifull web site, at least the kids should see the site. Better still : they should make such sites.

Jan.

[Kassen]

Saw it too a few days ago. I realy love that graph and the clasical style painting. I'm not so sure how well this will work in practice though. There is one side to it that's making fun of the silly law but I think it may well be seen by the religious right as making fun of religion which won't realy make those people listen.

I think a more sollid case could be made through demanding equal time for Islamic, Hindu and Budhist creation stories or concentrating on how religion should be found instead of tought. I'd realy like to see Gnostic concepts tought too but I fear Gnostisism is more offensive to the religious right then any amount of flying monsters....

This way it's a great site and good fun but mostly preaching to the choir. Scratch that, there must be a better analogy :¬).

[seraph]

http://uncyclopedia.org/wiki/Flying_Spaghetti_Monster

[Michael Chocholak]

[Kassen]

[Michael Chocholak]

yeah, well, it's too bad we lost Phil on this side...

but i guess now the forces on the other side must confront him directly - which is probably a whole different thing



btw - not familiar with angels raping noreah. google gives me enough secondary references (noreah press, etc) to let me know there's something out there somewhere...

can you point me towards the light?

[Kassen]

Well, according to Gnostic scripture Noreah was a very facinating lady.

You see, when this demiurge thought it would be best to drown all those silly humans except for the few that were on his side he put the Noah guy to work on a boat. Enter our heroine Noreah. According to most accounts a daughter of Sophia (like a riot grrl version Jesus, i suppose, except different) but she may or may not also have been Noah's wife. Well, Norea could breather fire (a good property in girls if ever there was one) and she set fire to the boat so Noah had to start all over again. They did that a few times because back in those days it was considdered important to do everything a few times to get the point across. I think Noah was the more persistent one for reasons that escape me at the moment.

Anyway, Norea was quite the rebelious one because this Demiurge had these angels and they'd get bored and would want some entertainment so they'd go down and go rape some of those silly humans that wouldn't fight back anyway. I suppose a fair amount of controll/submission and related issues were also involved. Noreah said "no" and they were quite upset about this.

I think. I was quite young back then and so I might not remember it all ;¬).

http://www.gnosis.org/library.html
Has the original texts or at least as close as you'r likely to get and makes for a good evening of red wine, heresey and reading from a monitor, if that's your thing.

[mosc]

http://www.actionbioscience.org/evolution/nhmag.html

This is an interesting bit of reading. I wonder why these so-called scientists that advocate the so-called intellegent design theory are all Americans. One of them is a professor at Lehigh University, essentially in my home town. He, oddly enough, uses a science fiction story to make one of his points. I never thought much of Lehigh; this just reinforces that view.

[Michael Chocholak]

[elektro80]

[Kassen]

[mosc]

These arguments for intelligent design seem pointless to me. If one believes in God, then it is certainly conceivable that He would create the universe in such a way that life would evolve all over the place in amazing and fantastic diversity. Certainly, we humans are at least marginally intelligent and we love building things that take care of themselves automatically. If we could design things that evolve, we certainly would.

In fact, with genetic programming, we can get positive results when developing algorithms which we don't conceive of in advance. This proves evolution to be a practical process. Evolution can certainly come up with things so complex we don't understand them. Soon even the G2 editor will use genetic algorithms.

My point is that evolution could be the product of intelligent design, but only limited intellects need to see it that way. It's pointless to try to disprove evolution in order to prove intelligent design. In fact, it's disrespectful of the Creator, if in fact there really is one. Does it not belittle God to assume that He thinks as we do?

What we consider intelligent - preconception and planning - will undoubtedly be considered quite primitive in the future. Why do I say that? I think the odds are favorable that our consciousnesss will evolve to higher levels given enough time.

Still, maybe these intelligent design guys have a point. We need to return to a more religious basis in our society. Maybe we need to return to the good old days when religious thought was more prevalent in our society. Lets round up all these intelligent design guys and burn them at the stake. How dare they blastpheme!

[Kassen]

[mosc]

Well, Kassen, that sounds good to me.

[dmosc]

I love NPR. I got a 2 hour conversation this between very educated people on my trip up to conneticut (sp). Anyway, the problem they have with evolution is the "random" mutations. They feel this implies an inherent lack of intent. Humans have souls, other things do not. This has to be due to direct intent. At no point in human development can their be 100% random evolution.

This is why they have a problem with it. It's the soul thing. They feel a doctrinal need to seperate human beings from the rest of the entire universe as demi-gods almost. We get eternal life through jesus, they get nada. Zip. Zilch. Zero.

[diskonext]

Even though I am nog a fan of intelligent design theory, there are some interesting gaps in evolution theory (and not just the fact that evolution has never been "observed", but always established after the fact)... I'm a bit hazy on the details but one of the arguments involves
a) the "evolution" of light-sensitive cells, surely a highly useful survival trait, to a fully working set of eyes
and
b) the fact that multiple animals share the same eye design, even though completely different species etc.

There is some other stuff, but I forget.

-diskonext

[deknow]

[mosc]

One problem with the intelligent design theory - if you give it that much respect - it that there is no indication as to where the designer stops microscopic control. If the creator made everything at once 5000 years ago, why would he stop micromanaging things now. Oh, some say he still gets involved answering prayers, but I see no evidence of this. Some prayers are answered and some aren't.

Certainly, looking forward human evolution will not be influenced as much involved by biology but cybernetics. We are headed towards a time when people will have bionics parts. It's already happening. I guess the intelligent design people would say this is proof that evolution isn't driven by random mutations.

Someday, we'll be conversing with computers that have personalities - maybe ones designed with genetic algorithms. I wonder what they will think about all this.

[dmosc]

Their doctrine is pretty straightforward. It centers on humans being "in god's image". We have souls, nothing else does. This would imply some very un-scientific points

1) Humans are done evolving.
2) Nothing besides a human has a soul. In other words a human embrio would have more rights than any artificial or alien intelligence.
3) We are the pinacle of creation. The entire universe was created for us.

so artificial life, or even a clone, would be animal-like at best in their eyes.

[mosc]

[ian-s]

The fundamental point that creationists have gotten wrong, is that without conscious intervention, everything tends toward chaos.
I think that the opposite is true, that left alone, things just tend toward order. This is just a natural law of the universe, like gravity.

[Monkeyfinger]

Here's a thought about how humans evolved.

Mammals carry their unborn above the pelvis bones.
The birth canal takes the baby through the pelvis bone and out.
For most quadruped mammals this orientation is well developed.
As early primates evolved into upright walkers, all the bone structure now had to accomedate all the vertical weight through the hips.
The pelvis became narrower and more dangerous to the baby during child birth.
Wouldn't an intelligent designer give us a better design?
A way that fit our bodies better?
Wouldn't the 'chosen' embodiment of the creator give his finest specimen the safest birth process not one of the most dangerous?

[mosc]