Mumble, you seem like someone who would really enjoy reading God's Debris. It's fiction, he admits it's fiction, but it's a damn good read anyway.

I did a bad job in a good seminar on Luther and Erasmus around '92 or so, and I could swear that my prof (who looked quite like Luther himself) insisted that the man had a jolly streak. He certainly loved his beer and his wife, which combination makes a good sense of humour seem plausible.

Oh my stars and garters! I've been a regular Dilbert reader since my short tenure in a software shop. Mr. Adams might have sucked me into paying for a book whose intro has lines like "My experience tells me that in this complicated world the simplest explanation is usually dead wrong. But I’ve noticed that the simplest explanation usually sounds right and is far more convincing than any complicated explanation could hope to be." But it's apparently so weird he's just giving it away...

(Stupid broken quote tags...)

Merry Christmas to you, too.

I don't read ID sites or evolution sites.  I don't get my information from the internet.

Have I read about evolution?  I already stated that I have.  I have read all of Darwin's writings.  I pointed you to Stephen J. Gould.  I read the book by those evolutionists that won a prize a while back (their work on the galapagos finches) - their names elude me at the moment.  I've read more about evolution than anyone I've ever met, which includes some people with advanced degrees in biology.

Some people have the attitude that they don't read about that which they disagree with.  I have the opposite attitude.  My rationale is 1) how do you know that you disagree with it if you don't study it, and 2) how will you be able to argue your disagreements with it if you don't study it?

I know this wasn't directed to me, but I'll bite.

To be honest, I read through the bulk of the chapters and wasn't impressed. It's just a laundry list of Big Ideas, none of which, with the exception of the convoluted explanation reconciling religious and scientific explanations for the origin of the universe, are novel. I realize that the author's stated purpose isn't to answer these Big Ideas, but to generate thought, but, in many cases, it seems like the chosen starting point doesn't allow for innovation (see everything on Freedom of the Will).

A lot of my unhappiness comes from the disconnect between the book's form and content. I am deeply sympathetic to authors who leverage the form of their writing for the benefit of the content. J.M. Coetzee's Elizabeth Costello is a good example of this. Here, the form seems completely irrelevant to the content. The reader's imagining the particular thought experiment doesn't add to the appreciation of any of the ideas expressed. It seems like the author tries too hard to be profound. The introduction, in which the author expresses his thoughts conventionally, is much more interesting than anything else in the book.

To be honest, you're probably better off getting your information from internet or popular science sources than you are from classic evolutionary texts, as long as the sources are legitimate ones. (That said, there's a lot of historical and social value in reading Darwin's writings. Props to you for having done so.)

I'm sure there are religions that perhaps do not get so hung up on the heaven and hell thing but I'm not familar with those.

Also my reference to money is more applicable to TV evangelists who do in fact take the lion's share of contributions as their pay. But even if it isn't about asking for money I find the combination of religion and politics really obnoxious. I still believe that the US in particular has far more to fear from fundlementalist christians than it does from fundlementalist muslims.

But all in all I will admit that religions are more of a positive than a negative. They tend to promote good behaviour over bad. Just as long as people don't stick the ostentatious display of their religion in my face then what they do on their own time and own places of worship doesn't bother me. But on the other hand some of the most extreme horrors known to man have been promulgated on the basis of one religion or the other. I find fanatical anything somewhat disconcerting.

Doh. Wouldn't be the first time an intro had been the best part of a book for me, and I gotta admit I've never thought of Scott Adams as, well, a writer. Gary Trudeau is another matter entirely. If I didn't largely hold prizes and awards in contempt, I'd say he should be the first to receive a Nobel lit prize for an ongoing graphic novel. I'm having 'terribly good fun' this week on account of him having chosen Mark (the gay NPR host) as the avatar for outraged disappointment from my neighborhood of the party. Here's hoping Mark gets around to biting the hand that feeds him hard enough to escape the treacly cluthches of his limousine liberal workplace...

Wow - you're still peeved that your stuff on packaging services didn't hold up to actually looking up prices/costs et al? That's been - what, a year, two years?

Get over it Psychoak. Read a book, see a movie, listen to Rush the band and not the Limbaugh.

Wow, just . . . Wow!

Jonnan

Oops, quite right - I should'a said peptides, which where another place where they went to this well.

Nonetheless my point stands - these (never actually sourced) statistics have been made before, and disproven before.

Jonnan

Kharma, I get the impression you're avoiding my discussion.

You have not addressed 'who designed the designer', regardless of whether or not that designer is supernatural.

You have not addressed now the supernatural can be modeled by science and remain supernatural.

You have not provided any obeservations or data that can be falsified, therefore you haven't even begun to make a scientific argument.

I don't see any indication yet that you have a real understanding of what science is.

Good point.

Completely impossiblr, no doubt. I should probably just give up my argument in despair.

pain and despair, despair and pain, woe is me.

Have I mentioned my despair?

Jonnan

Wow - you're still peeved that your stuff on packaging services didn't hold up to actually looking up prices/costs et al? That's been - what, a year, two years?

Get over it Psychoak. Read a book, see a movie, listen to Rush the band and not the Limbaugh.

Wow, just . . . Wow!

Jonnan

End of quote

Is your ego really that big?  If so, I guess I'll have to continue downgrading my view of you.  Next time you should just use some lube before trying to argue in favor of government efficiency.

This will not be a commonly held viewpoint, having relatives that have gone through seminary, it's most definitely not held by the Baptist associations.  I've read enough to guess it's not held by any major religious sect, but can't be sure on that.

The bible regularly lists Christians as the living, frequently pointing out that, upon death, it's a one way trip to the afterlife.  In the book of Revelation, it states that the dead are called up from their graves and judged based on their deeds in life.  By this information, Christians are those that do not die, but not all who are not Christians would be damned.  Why the fire and brimstone preachers haven't grasped it, I don't know.  They definitely read the passage often enough.

Kharma is avoiding the discussion.

Off course being christian impacts your way of seeing evolution. I bet that if the bible said that everything consisted of crystallized sugar we would have had a discussion about how atoms are an dogma and nukes coverups and are actually conventional explosions with lots of actors. 

I don't think it's that uncommon among upper- and middle-class progressives. A lot of people have issues with soteric salvation. 

A sugar bomb, now that sounds nice.

Sorry, I was less than clear.  That was a qualifier on the following statements, not a response to the quote.

I never got into Doonesbury. When I was a kid, I hated it because it wasn't as funny (for me) as Hagar the Horrible, Beetle Bailey, Lockhorns, etc. I've always avoided it for that reason.

No worries. You're certainly right that it's an unpopular view in Christian orthodoxy. Maybe I hang out with the wrong crowd, but it's always seemed like there were plenty of folks who practice Christianity without believing what they perceived to be the nasty bits.

Maybe you can help me out here. I've never understood why anyone believes that this is a knockdown argument against creationism or intelligent design.

My understanding of 'who designed the designer' is that it's supposed to function as an internal critique of the argument from design. The intelligent design proponent claims that: (1A) certain complex features in the natural world entail the existence of a more complex designer. Promoters of 'who designed the designer' argue that this implies that: (1B) any complexity, whether natural or not, entails the existence of a more complex designer; and (2B) therefore, the designer must have a more complex designer.

But 1B doesn't obviously follow from 1A. It's always seemed to me that promoters of 'who designed the designer' read more into the argument from design than it actually contains, which explains why 'who designed the designer' is so unconvincing to anyone who believes that there could have been a supernatural first cause, ie. the people whom the argument is supposed to convince.

This is all really fast. I can explain all of this in greater depth if needed. This blog post goes some way in explaining these differences in how design proponents and non-design proponents handle the problem of infinite regress.

Doonesbury was never for kids. You might like it now, and you can get to an extensive (complete?) archive somewhere on the page for the daily strip. I don't have a sharp idea of Trudeau's personal politics and I don't want one, but the strip is a remarkable rendering of what I wish was the US 'mainstream' or whatever. The novel so far includes characters ranging from a Hunter S. Thompson nightmare made real to a hometown hero who served in Vietnam as a kid, made it through OK, and then volunteered again for Iraq, where he lost most of a leg and still more combat buddies. And Trudeau can write for wimmin too! Not that I'm a groupie or anything...

I haven't addressed it because, first of all, it is an irrelevant question to the discussion.  If we dug a time machine out of the earth tomorrow, I wouldn't know who the designer was, and I wouldn't know who designed the designer, but I would know the machine was designed.  Funny thing is, you'd know it too, but either you wouldn't admit to knowing it, or you'd try to say "well, it's different."

Second of all, irrelevant question or not (and it is), I haven't the foggiest clue about the designer or designers, so why on earth would I speculate about who designed him/it/them?

Third of all, as I've already said, all the theories on "your side" of the debate have the same issue.  "Oh, so evolution doesn't say how life got started, it just says how life changed into new life.  Well how did the first life get there?"  Or, "So a point of infinite density exploded into the big bang.  Well how did the point of infinite density get there?"  On and on.

If you would state that evolution doesn't address how the first life got there, or that the big bang doesn't address how the point of infinite density got there, then I would state that my theories don't address how the designer got there.

What?  What makes you think I give a rat's ass about the supernatural?

1. You haven't provided any observations or data that can be falsified either, and

2. I don't need to provide anything of the sort.  If your theory is wrong, I can just say your theory is wrong.

LOL.  Pot calling the kettle.

LOL.  Be sure to let me know when they win the nobel prize for evolving their first life form.  We are all waiting.

Caves are actually quite nice once you sweep the floors.

National Geopgraphic article 2/28/07:

Simultaneous warming on Earth and Mars suggests that our planet's recent climate changes have a natural—and not a human-induced—cause, according to one scientist's controversial theory.

Earth is currently experiencing rapid warming, which the vast majority of climate scientists says is due to humans pumping huge amounts of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. (Get an overview: "Global Warming Fast Facts".)

In 2005 data from NASA's Mars Global Surveyor and Odyssey missions revealed that the carbon dioxide "ice caps" near Mars's south pole had been diminishing for three summers in a row.

Habibullo Abdussamatov, head of space research at St. Petersburg's Pulkovo Astronomical Observatory in Russia, says the Mars data is evidence that the current global warming on Earth is being caused by changes in the sun.

Temperature increases on Triton (a moon of Neptune), Pluto, and Venus as well as Mars have all been documented and reported by MIT, NASA, and various other institutions that study astronomy. Somehow I doubt that there are people on these planets and moons creating CO2.

^ Ive been saying this for a while. Jupiter is also showing signs of global warming, losing a few of its rings and one of its eyes.

But Humans are arrogant. And think that because shit is changing that they are the cause of it. Reminds me of people of ancient times blaming crops being destroyed by locust as a punishment sent from the gods for our own actions. Science has just become our cultures new Religion. And the masses follow it just like their ancestors followed the bible and their deities.

A propos Allegiance86.

It it not irrelevent, you are completely sidestepping the fact that if we were created by something, because we are too complex to have arisen by ourselves, the it clearly follows that whatever designed us was also designed, unless you invoke something supernatural.

I'm not sure if you're being obtuse deliberately or not...

Clearly, the explanation doesn't just begin with our appearance, does it? Evolution, the origin of life, the formation of earth, and the formation of the universe are all valid areas for scientific inquiry.

We absolutely are interested in the Big Bang and how it got there, our theories on it are not yet complete enough to tell us (yet). We absolutely are interested in how life originated, but our theories are not yet complete enough to tell us how it happened. We are making every effort we can to turn the clock back as far as possible over all events.

So, you absolutely do have to address how the designer got there, sooner or later. I would first focus on developing a model that shows we were designed.

You said science doesn't discriminate between the natural and supernatural. I told you it filters the supernatural out, or the supernatural becomes natural. I'm trying to guage if you really know how science works at the fundamental level.

I'm actually asking questions about the philosophy of science. Pay attention. You are the one claiming evolution is wrong because of x,y,z, and that you think everything was just designed, but you refuse to supply the one thing you need to begin scientific equiry: observation or data. At least evolution has a fossil record and a ton of models that have been posted here already.

And yes, you can just say a theory is wrong because you think it's wrong, but that doesn't make you right. In this case, I think until you can back up your claim you just look like a crackpot. To disprove a theory, you have to come up with a better model and show it works via experimentation. Otherwise, it's not science, it's a different philosophy.

Nice try. Merry Christmas.