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Politics : Sharks in the Septic Tank -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Lane3 who wrote (7118)	3/2/2001 10:55:22 AM
From: Neocon	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 82486

Actually, IDT is not particularly specious at all, as "specious" implies a false plausibility. Nor is it necessary to examine biochemical processes to raise obvious questions. Evolution cannot adequately explain why we have multicellular animals, rather than several varieties of paramecia floating about. When one considers the phenomenon of cell differentiation leading to complex systems (skeletal, nervous,cardiovascular, for example), it strains credulity to believe they developed incrementally, much less randomly. If, in fact, it is impossible for them to come into being incrementally, than there is no choice but to believe in Intelligent Design. I will, however, wave that, and simply say that Intelligent Design is a plausible theory, and should give anyone pause......

To: Lane3 who wrote (7118)	3/2/2001 11:03:17 AM
From: E	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 82486

I think it's politically advantageous to those who want to shoe horn religion into the schools. It is a way of obfuscating that could be effective, in the short run. But there may be a danger to their side in this approach, I think. Pure faith may be a better way to go with fundamentally flawed proposals at "explanation" in the long run. I call it "flawed" if it doesn't answer a question, but merely pushes the question up one level. That is, it becomes, Then who or what made the intelligent designer? In what resides "His" intelligence? Does "He" have a brain? A body? With what religion is "He" most closely affiliated? How could we know what "He" had, or has, in mind? What is "He," exactly? Why should "He" be worshipped? Is "He" good or evil, given what "He" allows to happen to innocents? etc... It's nice, though, to see the Creationists being abandoned by their "scientists." It had to happen this way. BTW, I won't be around later today, or tonight. (For all I know, i won't be around for longer than that, lol!)

To: Lane3 who wrote (7118)	3/2/2001 11:48:05 AM
From: average joe	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 82486

I think commonality offends most of us. I was in Vancouver a few years ago for a conference and happened to get front row tickets to see The Rolling Stones concert. Going back to the airport the next morning the Sikh cabbie asked me what I was doing in Vancouver, I said a mining conference and to see the Stones. He said, "I was there to, the Stones are veery veery good, Jagger is soo vital". I was shocked that this guy was at the same concert I was and probably enjoyed it as much as I did. He was also wearing a t-shirt they were sold out of that I wanted to buy. I realized my thoughts were slightly racist. It was also slightly racist that I enquired where his seats were and was happy I had a much better view. I asked him when he dropped me off what the worst thing about driving in Vancouver was, without one hesitation he said "Chinaman in Volvo" so I guess we are all slightly racist. I've seen the Stones four times, the best time was in Fargo, North Dakota.

To: Lane3 who wrote (7118)	3/2/2001 12:00:14 PM
From: cosmicforce	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 82486

Actually some scientists think of IDT as the "nose of the camel" problem. The fear is that if we allow intelligence then we allow God. I've been a proponent of a distributed quantum intelligence. Its relationship to Earth-bound life is like that of the neuron in your brain to the whole of your brain. I doubt that the neuron in your brain is aware of much of anything other than the immediate connection machine of which it is part. But that is speculation. My example of IDT is that of homologous structures that arise in many animals without a common genome (like the eye of the squid and those of vertebrates) or the morphological similarity to the kelp "forests" and the land forests. There is a counter argument that there are only so many ways to accomplish a design. I'm not sure I'm convinced. My screen name is a homage to what I believe is a separate non-physical space (the information space) which I call the Cosmic Force (with capitalization). This fits very nicely with the Gaia hypothesis regarding the global awareness of the planet. This animistic notion scares some pure science types and they argue that no such mechanism is needed. I think that many processes are simplified (such as the apparent spontaneous arrival of intelligence in many species) if we allow that information is a transcendent form of the matter-time-existence producing what we call life. One of the consequences of this pet theory of mine is that intelligence is no longer constrained to things with neural tissue. Even amoebae seem to be trainable (without benefit of neurons). My model allows and even predicts such behavior. One of the other consequences is that matter becomes simply the recording medium of this intelligence. It is an interesting, if speculative, notion. BTW, AJ had criticized me that these were not original ideas in other threads where I posited this. I recognize that many cultures and philosophers seem to have discovered this relationship independently. I remember my first independent discoveries. Anyone that has had these experiences knows that it evokes a powerful sense of connection with the original (credited) discoverer. It is a very cool feeling to make an information contact with someone who is long since departed.