Darwin's Black Box - Michael J. Behe and Intelligent Design

And it also often prevents me from linking the stuff to other people unless I add something like "you have to ignore the Jesus stuff at the end". (Case in point: the video Gaby just referred to. 98% of it brilliant, then some false prophet bible mumbo jumbo...)
Exactly. So, maybe you can make it clear at some point that the same scientific attitude that deconstructs Darwinism ought to be applied to the questions about "designers" and that perhaps parameters of science ought to be expanded for that purpose.
Could one mention that there are researchers of the religious texts like the Old and New Testaments, the Torah, the Quran and others who have spent a great many efforts analyzing these texts and the historical circumstances that led to their appearance. These scholars of religion have looked the evidence from authors who lived in and artifacts made in the time of appearance of these texts. They have analyzed the historical and philosophical backgrounds of these texts and have arrived at well founded views on the historical contexts that surrounded and led to the appearance of these texts. The views held by many of these researchers of religion is similarly neglected by the religious leaderships be they Jewish, Christian or Muslim, just like at the present time the arguments coming from microbiology against Neo-Darwinism are still ignored, or even suppressed, by their opponents. When some of these videos contain 98 % brilliant and 2 % religious mumbo jumbo, could it partly be because they used 98 % of the exerts in microbiology spend 98 % of their time getting deep into what they know something about - microbiology? Perhaps one could provide some links, comments or ideas that on the one hand acknowledges that there are a few lines of mumbo jumbo, but that the views expounded by some of the scholars of microbiology might become more supported by the current available evidence, if they had the time and the willingness to consider the research and conclusions presented in link, link and link. Another possibility is to just acknowledge the 2 % but to add, that this does not detract from the brilliance of the insights in the 98 %. Such an approach might even provide a way out for those Neo-Darwinists, for whom the 2 % mumbo jumbo overshadows their reasoning to the point that they take this as confirmation the other 98 % are like these 2 %.

That said, I think it is difficult, at least so far I have not found a solution, when reposting, tweeting or FB sharing 98/2 material to comment on the 2 %. It is a bit like having to post "viewer discretion is advised". After all the 2 % is not adult content, it is often the version of religion offered from kindergarten and up.

Perhaps one needs some articles that address this 2 % issue, giving a few examples of what they say, what we think is erroneous in their statements and where we think it might be worthwhile looking for richer understanding not only of the origins of the religious views, but also of the workings of the mind and intelligence. I know Mandatory Intellectomy article Darwinism, Creationism... How About Neither? -- Sott.net Some has been mentioned in the shows of Mind Matters, articles on Sott and books by Laura.

This reflection of the 98/2 issue led me to image of the workings of the two stoke engine, used in some old cars, boats, motor bikes, garden and forestry equipment ...
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In a two stroke engine not only are their two strokes, but there is also a mix (incidentally) of around 98 % petrol and approximately two % oil. Unlike in a typical four stroke petrol engine, it is not sufficient to pour in pure petrol; one also needs 2 % oil for smooth going and in order to lubricate the pistons going up and down in the combustion chamber. This analogy is only partially useful in the present context. My point is not to say that there should be 2 % mumbo jumbo in the ID articles and videos under discussion, although some ID proponents might think so, but that one might need to address these 2 % in sufficient detail to avoid being misunderstood and in order to achieve an overall more powerful impact.
 
Exactly. So, maybe you can make it clear at some point that the same scientific attitude that deconstructs Darwinism ought to be applied to the questions about "designers" and that perhaps parameters of science ought to be expanded for that purpose.

Yes, it's like "OK, Darwinism is dead, now what?", and the ID people mostly go God/Jesus. And to be fair, in today's climate, a little more Jesus certainly wouldn't hurt. But truth seeking it is not.

I lately thought about how insidious this divide between the materialist religion and the old rigid religious belief systems truly is. In today's postmodern madness, where I personally sometimes find myself begging for a return of religion just to counter the insanity, it's easy to forget that religious folks were, and are, often pretty bonkers themselves.

I recently watched a little documentary about how "The Life of Brian" came to be, which was fascinating. You had a pretty bad religious thought police back then who wanted to censor the movie - ironically these peeps were somewhat similar to today's politically correct gender-zombies. Quite tellingly, the Monty Python guys later saw what was coming in terms of the leftists PC police already in the 90ies. I guess they recognized the same silliness as they witnessed in the Christian fundies when they made Life of Brian. Particularly John Cleese is a pretty smart observer of reality, here's a recent interview with him:


As a side note, I think what made Life of Brian so great was that the movie wasn't really mocking the essence of Christianity, quite the contrary. It was mocking the ridiculous aspects of Christianity, and in particular how people always twist the teachings, don't get it, are hypocrites and so on. (For example, in the beginning of the movie, Christ is preaching and they didn't change the words from the bible and didn't mock the message. What they mocked were those idiots listening to the sermon while engaging in their mechanical pettiness.)

Another side note: apparently they included some kind of Jewish Nazi gang in the movie (the guys who commit suicide at the very end of the movie), but THIS they had to cut out; almost the entire sub-plot was gone in the final version. Kind of interesting.

All I'm saying is that there's great value and wisdom in the Christian teaching properly understood, but its metaphysics, its more crazy elements, the nonsense that is literal interpretation and so on is pretty mad. So what is the truth? What was/is really going on? That's what we want to really know I guess.
 
And it's helpful to have a synthesis that doesn't creep behind the "god hypothesis."

Talking about that, can we hope to have a chance to understand who is the "designer" at our level ?

- ET : discarded because who designed them, it just pushes away the question
- I of course think about the morphogenetic fieds of Sheldrake, the theory of information, but don't really know how to articulate all that
- I think also about the "transient passengers" of the C's, but doesn't it get us back to "god" in a sense ? I guess it depends what one's mean by God anyway.

:huh:
 
Now that's true. It's pretty annoying reading all this stuff and watching presentations and getting to the last chapter or last two minutes where suddenly Jesus and the Bible pop up and I'm like, what the hell, you sounded perfectly smart until now! I always feel like it's a different person, suddenly talking nonsense. It's so weird. And it also often prevents me from linking the stuff to other people unless I add something like "you have to ignore the Jesus stuff at the end". (Case in point: the video Gaby just referred to. 98% of it brilliant, then some false prophet bible mumbo jumbo...)
Thinking about getting practical about the 2% Bible issues and how to address them, I will give it a try and use the case of James Tour and his two slides at the end of the video, of which the first slide has:
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The first statement about water is reasonable, but the second about agreement between science and the Bible is not obvious and appears to be in contradiction with statement three, because if scientific fact always changes and always is in accord with the Bible, then the Bible must also be changing, or??? About statement four, I think it is true, but the way James Tour comes across at the end leaves me in doubt of whether his idea of the truth of the Bible, (always in accord with theories that change all the time) is any better than the ideas of those he critizise. Then there is the last slide:
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Well there is a point of the need to choose the truth and not the lie. At the same time, we are surrounded by so many lies, but as one learns something new, and if this is more true, than what one believed, then one can make better choices.
Even if these verses from the Bible happens to embrace at least both Christian and Jews, how does James Tour expect to convince someone who has a different view of the Bible, and its concept of God and "his commands"? and why should the Bible be exempt from scientific enquiries? Of this I'm not sure, but then on the other hand in the previous slide he wrote: "Do not let professors, with their bold claims of "facts", upset you." Alright, so to get upset about his Bible facts is probably also not worth the trouble.

One way to bring up the 2% Bible, without directly addressing them point by point, could be to point a reader in the direction of shows like The Truth Perspective: Interview with Russell Gmirkin: What Does Plato Have To Do With the Bible? or Jesus never existed? Interview with Laura Knight-Jadczyk or from MindMatter Christianity's Victory of Reason or Why Physics Is Pointing to Mind As Fundamental and these were only possible examples.
 
Well there is a point of the need to choose the truth and not the lie. At the same time, we are surrounded by so many lies, but as one learns something new, and if this is more true, than what one believed, then one can make better choices.
Even if these verses from the Bible happens to embrace at least both Christian and Jews, how does James Tour expect to convince someone who has a different view of the Bible, and its concept of God and "his commands"? and why should the Bible be exempt from scientific enquiries? Of this I'm not sure, but then on the other hand in the previous slide he wrote: "Do not let professors, with their bold claims of "facts", upset you." Alright, so to get upset about his Bible facts is probably also not worth the trouble.

I think this can all relate back to the discussion several pages back on target audiences. I think for the most part we just have to accept that there is a LARGE portion of the population that will never get out of the mental prison of simplistic, literal-minded religious dogma. Just like there will be a large portion of Darwinists who will never change. So there's no point trying to convert them. You may be able to find some common ground, but that's probably the extent of it.

But there are always some people that fall between the extremes and who are open-minded. I don't think any of us would be here if there weren't any such people! ;) I think the best way to reach them is simply to present our perspective, in as many ways as possible. A dozen people writing on the same topic will write in a dozen different ways, and those unique takes on the subject will resonate with different people.

Perhaps Socrates had the best strategy: Corrupt the youth! :halo: If you can present a reasonable "third option", I think a lot of young people would be able to get on board with it - before their minds have had the chance to harden into the shape of true believer in either Darwin or "Jesus wrote my DNA". But even that might be wishful thinking.
 
Perhaps Socrates had the best strategy: Corrupt the youth! :halo: If you can present a reasonable "third option", I think a lot of young people would be able to get on board with it - before their minds have had the chance to harden into the shape of true believer in either Darwin or "Jesus wrote my DNA". But even that might be wishful thinking.

Speaking of corrupting the youth, I recently came across and interesting phenomenon online called "Street Epistemology." It was coined by Peter Boghossian and popularized by Anthony Magnabosco. From the About page of their website:

  1. Street Epistemology is the application of epistemology (the study of knowledge) outside of formal academic contexts.
  2. Street Epistemology is a fun and effective way to talk to people about what's really true.
  3. Street Epistemology is a conversational tool that helps people reflect on the reliability of the methods used to arrive at their deeply-held beliefs.
  4. Street Epistemology is the process of identifying, understanding, and challenging belief claims by asking questions.
  5. Street Epistemology is dialectically-based, grounded in the Socratic method, and enhanced by recent evidence-based advances from a wide spectrum of disciplines, such as motivational interviewing, applied philosophy, and cognitive behavioral therapy.
They are a branch of what could certainly be considered the New Atheist types, but are much more about using the Socratic Method and developing rapport with people to get them to take questions the Street Epistemologist asks more seriously. The goal is to get people to question some of their beliefs, while also ensuring that they feel that the conversation itself is a positive experience on the whole. In their How-To Manual they try and emphasize rapport, and also humility in the event that a person on the street successfully justifies their belief or gets the questioner to question their own beliefs.

A part of me is intrigued by it, if only for learning how to do Street Epistemology to question people's beliefs about Evolution. 😈
 
Hammer away my friend,Let see where they are gonna run to.

Many interesting things were happening everywhere. Kangaroos randomly evolved pockets for no reason, but they sure came in handy for carrying their young. Talk about luck! Deer randomly evolved antlers, goats randomly evolved horns, turtles and snails accidentally evolved shelters to hide in, zebras and tigers randomly evolved stripes, plants evolved photosynthesis (which may seem really smart, but it was an accident), dinosaurs-soon-to-be-birds randomly mutated their mouths with teeth into beaks, porcupines accidentally evolved quills, cactuses randomly evolved spines, some snakes randomly made new genes that accidentally coded for new proteins that happened to produce various kinds of venom, which turned out to be unexpectedly helpful, flytraps randomly evolved fly traps, ants randomly evolved a complex social structure, octopuses randomly evolved tentacles from whatever they had before, some planthoppers randomly evolved gears, one cog at a time, whales randomly evolved singing, spiders accidentally learned to make webs out of a material that randomly popped out of their bodies, and pandas randomly evolved cool make-up. The platypus accidentally evolved features of ducks, beavers and otters all mixed together. (To be fair, that really does look like an accident.)

MI i think you have found your niche topic and your hammer is getting heavier.We are here to cheer you along.
 
MI,

It really seems like you are having fun with the writing and we are enjoying the reading so why not just keep going as long as you are having fun too. There may be other topics that catch your interest later and you can change course "as needed". :thup:
 
It really seems like you are having fun with the writing and we are enjoying the reading so why not just keep going as long as you are having fun too. There may be other topics that catch your interest later and you can change course "as needed". :thup:

Yeah, that's the plan. This will be the year of ridiculing Darwinism. Once I've read all the books on that topic and dismantled evolution properly, I can start making fun of other things. Satan knows this world is full of retarded shit that constantly needs attacking. Materialism will probably be my next target. I think the implications of materialism can be shown to be ridiculous in the same way I did it with evolution in this article. No free will, you're a robot driven by genes, and your thoughts are just a delusion... so what are we even doing here? People arguing for materialism are just being programmed by their genes to do that... so why listen to that? It's all absurd. I like how John Cleese laughed at the idea that consciousness is an effect of the brain in that video luc posted. He said lots of cool things in that interview.

Here's a sort of outline of what I have prepared. Three articles are written, but I'll be improving them until publishing time:

• The Probability of Evolution
This goes deeper into the calculations of the probability of making proteins and other things. What would be needed to make a living cell and how likely each part is and what are all the things that complicate it. In the end it's clear that for all intents and purposes, the probability is zero.

• Darwinism Is Anti-Science
This is fairly short but I think significant. It's basically a bullet-point summary of all the reasons why Darwinism can't even be called science. (Which is what they like to use against the Creationists.) From proposing mechanisms that have never been observed to defying entropy, and so on. I've got about 13 points, and maybe I'll come up with more.

• Misconceptions about Evolution
This is about some ideas that are promoted by evolutionists, and a lot of people believe them, but they're false and disconnected from reality. Like the fact that there's no survival of the fittest in reality, or saying 'viruses evolve' instead of 'viruses mutate', thus implying something different from what's really happening.

Then the plan is for one about evolution and entropy, probably one about common ancestry and one about natural selection. These are things I've touched upon in the previous ones, but I want to go into more detail for each topic. This then gives us an opportunity to link to each specific article when we want to explain that one topic to someone. Linking to my first article has a high chance of 'TL;DR', so this should be more useful in that regard.

Then there needs to be one article basically making fun of Dawkins in every possible way. He totally deserves it. He's been bullshitting young generations for decades and done a lot of damage, IMO. I pretty much ridicule him in every article I write, but he ain't seen nothing yet!

I was also thinking about the topic of why people are so scared of the ID idea. Haven't thought that one through yet, but I think there's some potential there. A lot of the Darwinian insistence on blind evolution seems to be literally due to fear of ID.

I've got more notes outside of these topics, and new material piles up as I read more books, so there will probably be more. If you have any good ideas about what else should be addressed, I can look into them.

Thanks for the support, everyone. I've always had an inclination for writing but never had a good outlet, so this seems to be working for everyone. I can write about the things that I think matter and have the best possible audience.
 
Recently I have been watching the first series of 'Blue Planet'. The incredible diversity of life forms and the sometimes just completely bonkers designs of some species has really brought home to me how unlikely it is that they all were brought into being by a random genetic mutation :rolleyes:. Some of the designs are just so out there I think whoever came up with them was just making them for a laugh.
 
Recently I have been watching the first series of 'Blue Planet'. The incredible diversity of life forms and the sometimes just completely bonkers designs of some species has really brought home to me how unlikely it is that they all were brought into being by a random genetic mutation :rolleyes:. Some of the designs are just so out there I think whoever came up with them was just making them for a laugh.

That's what I think. I watched a video of kangaroos in the wild the other day, and those critters are just BEEE-ZAAR!!!
 
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