I've also always wondered if those creationists who deny the power of chance think that victory or defeat in the church bingo games are predestined.
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A: Pay a fourth old lady to yell "Bingo!".
The outcomes of Church bingo games are predestined, but that is only because they are rigged.
No, they do not believe a bingo win is predestined, this is why they pray:
As I lay me down to slumber
All I need is one more number
When to the big game I go
I pray the Lord I yell BINGO
I know my Bingo fortunes are predestined. Every time I play at the county fair in September or whenever the damn thing occurs, I win 40 dollars. After paying 60.
Ah, destiny.
Markets work.
but peons work harder
... the only thing I know about bingo:
"Lady, you can't cheat at bingo. If you could, I would, but you can't. I won because I was lucky...
"Lucky to wind up in a town full of losers."
--'Satan', in Highway 61
I remember early on in my investigation of ID, I heard Dembski talk about an unusually protracted winning streak at dice (or something) as an example where we would not draw a design inference, and I remember thinking, "well, why not?" Why wouldn't the Designer jiggle those dice, if baby needs a new pair of shoes?
I know!!! Evil LOTION!! You immoral darwinistics, you!
It's a classic abusive relationship they have with their god. He sends hurricanes, forest fires, terrorists and George Bush to torment them, and they become dependent on him. So they seek out the petty torment of losing at bingo as a way to prove to themselves that he still cares for them.
'Course, what with their abuser being imaginary and all, that puts another layer of complexity on the fruit-cake.
Have they started pushing the idea that genetic drift is "proven" not random yet? I am so waiting for that one to come up.
"It's a classic abusive relationship they have with their god. He sends hurricanes, forest fires, terrorists and George Bush to torment them, and they become dependent on him."
And that's just lately. The stuff they think he did in the past is even worse.
I'd really like it if the http://beyondbelief2006.org/
received tons of donations! I loved watching Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris speak there, along with all the other scientists. I'd like to hear PZ Myers there.
I didn't know creationists were all bald with no noses.
"I didn't know creationists were all bald with no noses."
Um, they were designed that way . . .
(ducks and runs for cover)
Say, it occurred to me, they say that god created evil to give us free will. Did it create diseases to give evolution something akin? I mean, what purpose cancer? I had a friend lose three kids to leukemia. Some sort of higher purpose to that?
I had a friend lose three kids to leukemia. Some sort of higher purpose to that?
Posted by: mikmik
Nope... no purpose at all; in fact their deaths are inconsequential.... random and purely a matter of 'chance'. I know it would be easy (for the less enlightened) to consider these events as 'unfortunate' and/or sad. However, the fact of the matter is; that's life. I realize that this may come across as 'cold hearted' or whatever.... But there isn't any reason, as far as I can see, that would justify considering these events as a "tragedy". Oh sure you can 'feel' bad about it..... that's fine, but it doesn't change reality. These kids had a go at it and didn't make it very long. Oh well.... Waste your time with your "feelings" if you wish.... No big deal.
The outcomes of bingo games are random, but God knew ahead of time what the outcomes would be.
And if the outcome had been something different, God would have known that.
And please don't bother responding to this comment, because God has already revealed to me what you're going to say, and it's tendentious and boring.
Of course the IDist would say that God might have made "creation" to be written as "evolution", "evolotyon", "evolytian", or any number of other possibilities. That is, it always becomes theology with those dolts, for who are we to tell God how to write "creation"?
And it's precisely because they don't care in the slightest about science that "evolotoon", "evolution", "evolataon", or even "creation" is just as good as any other answer. Because they don't intend to do science, so that "best explanations" have no bearing on their beliefs. Can you do biology with ID? Only the peripheral stuff (Egnor's work, which is at least somewhat derivative of evolution but not so much that he can't ignore that theory). Hell, it might even turn out that the answer is "evolityon" and not "evolution" (but it won't be "creation"), we're just going with the best answer to fit the evidence.
And yes, I think that's why the creationists are less of a potential threat to science, because at least anyone with a half-wit and just a crack open to their mind can see how wrong the creationists are. The IDists are saying that anything is as good as anything else, and that science is meaningless chatter. They are, perhaps, the worst version of anti-science to become a major force in the West at any time.
Glen D
http://geocities.com/interelectromagnetic
There; fixed it for you.
Pacifier, you're vicious, dishonest, and resentful. And that's clear after only 3 posts that I've read.
Why would anyone here want what you have to offer, after seeing what it does to you?
Why on the planet do you equate "has no purpose" with "we shouldn't be sad about it"?
Why does anyone want to have a purpose??? Do you want to be a wheel in a machine? I just don't get it.
Why can't life be spare time? Why can't life be just simply interesting?
I'd much rather have something bad just happen to me because that's the way it is than to have someone do something bad to me on purpose, especially if it's someone who has the power to make everything right without any effort at all.
I'll take a purposeless world in which we make our own meaning over a world in which the master controller spends the day helping someone in Little Rock find their fucking car keys while letting over 2500 people die of malnutrition any day.
Hey, Carlie, I live in Little Rock, and I can tell you nobody's helping me with my fucking car keys. Also, all my teams are losing, and not only can I not hit the lottery, we don't even have a lottery. So don't blame me.
Well, they are predestined. Deterministic chaotic system, not a stochastic system, (modulo quantum fluctuations and our pending of that whole quantum measurement issue, but no one seriously thinks that's going to break determinism.)
If that's what you call "chance", one conclusion might be that chance and predestination are not incompatible.
Unless you can tell the difference between say, a series due to "chance" and a "predestined" series, anyway, it's meaningless semantics.
Well said RavenT #20.
The believers I know think the big guy dinks with every little thing. I wonder if they don't get so bent about the part "random" events play in evolution and science because to them, random events are god's main vehicle for acting in this world.
I overheard a discussion the other day about how god determined the outcome of the church soap box car race. They discussed each placing and why that person deserved it. Turned out that god did it just right. Amazing.
Excuse me? Radioactive decay is completely random -- and can have an influence on the macroscopic world. How is that deterministic?
Because El Christador is determined to be a horses ass!
Pacifier: You are a piece of work. I missed your earlier post here at the time, but it of a kind with your tone on the other thread! There you said you were agnostic.... apparently that carries over into ambivalence in every aspect of your life.
RavenT got it right, and it's worhty of repeat:
Sorry, Archaeopteryx, Little Rock was just the first place that popped into my mind. I could just have easily said "helped my aunt find her car keys" and been much more accurate.
Why on the planet do you equate "has no purpose" with "we shouldn't be sad about it"?
Why does anyone want to have a purpose??? Do you want to be a wheel in a machine? I just don't get it.
Why can't life be spare time? Why can't life be just simply interesting?
Excuse me? Radioactive decay is completely random -- and can have an influence on the macroscopic world. How is that deterministic?