Creationists are always carping about that darned methodological naturalism and how we don't make room for supernatural explanations. How about if we make a deal: we'll reserve the boring ol' natural explanations for things like Tiktaalik, and the creationists can move on to bring their deep knowledge of the supernatural to bear on more relevant questions, like Divine Evolution? That should keep them occupied for a while.
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Rall gets at one of the (many) things that has always bothered me about the ID'ers: by saying that life is too complex to have arisen "naturally", it seems they are begging the question. I mean, what is more complex than the designer of all that complex stuff? If complexity could only come about as the result of design, who designed the designer? Why is the propeller on some paramecium's butt too complex to come about naturally when what they're positing to solve that problem is an entity vastly more complex than that? Why not cut out the middle-man?
The term "Divine Evolution" reminds me of Utah state senator Chris Buttars and his "Divine Design".
Ohh, ohh!!! Does this mean we get to create our own version of creation? Short stories? Creative writing? LMAO... I'm sure we could come up with some good ones, after all, those fundies don't have the best imagination in the world, unless of course it involves imagining hell for others.
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, please pick up the courtesy phone.
Going after God would be the ultimate exobiology. Sort of like capturing a live giant squid. I think Ghostbusters gives some interesting suggestions for the materials and methods part.
I wrote an essay on my site discussing this problem and the advantages of natural/supernatural designers.
http://immunoblogging.blogspot.com/2005/07/turtles-all-way-down_1120705…
I've never seen a satisfactory answer to this problem.
Remember! Don't cross the streams!
I've run into a few different answers to the God creation problem:
1. God has always existed, so he didn't need to be created.
2. God is supernatural, and the rules are different in the supernatural realm.
3. The most common answer: God is simple. God is pure love, he isn't complicated at all.
This is also the 'answer', if you can call it that, to the turtles all the way down objection. The never ending series of IC natural alien designers just doesn't cease until you bring up a supernatural entity. Supernatural entities require no 'design' because they ignore natural problems and that would include IC. Hence, an IC supernatural designer would require no designer itself.
Who said ID wasn't religious?
Yep. Asking them the "who made God" question is pointless. They just respond with something like "He didn't need to be made, he's GOD!"
Might as well try to engage a trash can in conversation.
This reminds me a of "Intelligent Design of Intelligent Designers" (which is not far off from mormon theology) from David Brin's article in this quarter's Skeptic:
http://skeptic.com/the_magazine/featured_articles/v12n02_other_ID_theor…
Panspermia is much more fun to say though.
You would like Rall. Both his thoughts and "talent" (an insult to that word for it to be associated with him) are childish. It's like he craps on a piece of paper, smears it around a bit and calls it a cartoon.
You would like Rall. Both his thoughts and "talent" (an insult to that word for it to be associated with him) are childish. It's like he craps on a piece of paper, smears it around a bit and calls it a cartoon.
You worship Ann Coulter and you're preaching to us about 'talent' and 'childishness'?
That's why I love wingnuts, lots of self-awareness in that community.
Ann Coulter (whom I don't worship, thanks) is more talented and mature than Rall or any of you far-left "reality-based" nitwits here. She runs mental circles around you guys and the best retorts you can come up with are based on her looks ("Mann Coulter" is quite popular these days) or some half-assed "racist" or "neo-con" insult.
So how mature was it when she suggested someone put rat poison in Supreme Court Justice Stevens food? Or was that a case of 'mental circles'?
I assume her racial epithets against Arabs are a similar example of her subtle intellect.
Seriously, if you guys have backed yourself into the corner of having to defend a psycho with Tourette's Syndrome like Coulter, your community has become far more dysfunctional than you think.
So how mature was it when she suggested someone put rat poison in Supreme Court Justice Stevens food?
How mature is it of you to omit the fact that that was a joke?
"That's just a joke, for you in the media."
Or was that a case of 'mental circles'?
Yup.
I assume her racial epithets against Arabs are a similar example of her subtle intellect.
Again, yes. She doesn't say those things because she's racist. She says (and writes) things to get a rise out of liberals, and it works because she's smarter than you.
Of course, you complaining of Ann's epithets on a blog that uses nothing but epithets when it comes to Christians is hilariously hypocritical.
Seriously, if you guys have backed yourself into the corner of having to defend a psycho with Tourette's Syndrome like Coulter, your community has become far more dysfunctional than you think.
Oh, okay. I guess I should switch parties and defend psychos with Tourette's like Howard "Screaming Weenie" Dean, Ted Kennedy, Al Franken, Janeane Garawfulo, John Kerry, etc. ad nauseum.
So how mature was it when she suggested someone put rat poison in Supreme Court Justice Stevens food?
How mature is it of you to omit the fact that that was a joke?
Oh good, she's not really a murderer. I feel better. She just thinks it's funny to talk about murdering liberals. That certainly proves she's better than liberals.
It speaks volumes that she thinks it was so funny and that you think it's so brilliant. I assume that if Al Franken advocated someone killing Scalia, would laud it as a splendid joke that proved his intelligence?
Or was that a case of 'mental circles'?
Yup.
Joking about murdering liberals. Cool. That's what it takes for you guys to find someone intelligent. Shame we can't be as witty as you guys.
Again, yes. She doesn't say those things because she's racist. She says (and writes) things to get a rise out of liberals, and it works because she's smarter than you.
So she repeatedly says racist things, you claim she doesn't mean it (I fail to see why that's obvious), she only says them to piss people off, and this is your evidence of how 'smart' she is. Supposedly insincere racebaiting.
Shit, no wonder you people worship George Bush.
Oh, okay. I guess I should switch parties and defend psychos with Tourette's like Howard "Screaming Weenie"
"Screaming Weenie". Were you able to come up with that phrase because you're so smart, too? Since, you know, outside wingnut circles, it sounds like something an adolescent would say.
Dean, Ted Kennedy, Al Franken, Janeane Garawfulo, John Kerry, etc. ad nauseum.
Last I checked they weren't jocularly advocating the murder of people they dislike. Tho I doubt you'll get the distinction. Julius Streicher had his fans, too.
Great to see that Ann Coulter is doing her part to promote reasoned, informed, and intelligent debate in this country. After all, getting "a rise out of liberals" is much more conducive to such things than giving sincere consideration to the position of those with whom you disagree.
Tell you what, JMcH, do the following thing when you get home tonight: when you sit down at the dinner table with your wife, start making jokes about how someone ought to beat her up or poison her. When she reacts with horror, tell her that of course you were joking, and the fact that this 'got a rise' out of her proves how much smarter than her you are. Write me back tomorrow if she fails to laugh at the joke.
trolljacked!
please do not feed the troll. anymore.
And now, back to our regularly scheduled discussion of Ted Rall and Uncaused Causes . . .
Of course, because the answerer doesn't understand the meaning of the word `complicated', you can't say anything that will dent this obvious insanity. (Excuse me, I love my family yet I haven't found any sign that I'm creating universes around them. Perhaps it's really hard to spot...)
Lately I've pondered if reality is God, and there is no reality but God. Nothing supernatural, maybe some supernormal stuff beyond our ordinary senses, but the scientific method is a great tool for illuminating that which lies beyond our senses. Yes?
OTOH, I'm wondering if Freyja will be smiting those blasphemers who so obscenely display the one eyed kitten. But then, she's an intermediate form between the elder spirits and elves (not to mention PYGMIES + DWARFS), so maybe she won't be smiting so much as giving out a few bad hair days or making Creationists fall for the ugly chick at the bar.
"Divine evolution" - of course. That explains the gnostic religion where an evil old testament god was replaced by a nicer young testament good. No doubt by cross-breeding, as Rall says.
Joseph,
I don't think the argument of turtles all the way down is inherently faulty. Infinite time is a property of most of the proposed cosmologies that embeds our big bang in modern cosmology. It's the big bang itself that imposes that the chain of natural creators must end.
I appreciate why you say a supernatural creator doesn't need another creator. But I'm not sure that this is the most 'supernatural' :-) theory, since ID already demand IC being designed. Proceeding parsimonously one would get something analogous to Rall's scenario, 'gods all the way up'. ID is an infinitheistic religion.
Tree, Unitatian biologist: A Mr. Spinoza would like to talk to you.
Keith:
Yes, exactly. The post was just a (probably too) subtle way of saying that there are belief systems that don't rely on an anthropomorphic deity separate from nature. The cartoon was hysterical because one can show a clear evolution about the concept of God (Joseph Campbell, among others, made a fine living at it), but it's incongruous to apply a scientific theory to beings that don't have evidence of a physical existence. (But then, it always kills the joke to explain it.)