This “meme” came from reader Barry, and I don’t know where he got it. I hadn’t seen it before, either, but it’s so true.
Which gets me wondering: if Intelligent Design is agnostic about the nature of the Designer, why are they always defending traditional religion, and attacking people like me who criticize Christianity and Judaism?
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They’re liars for Jesus and they only maintain differently for a thin legalistic attempt at not tripping over the [whichever-th] Amendment to the US constitution.
Do Canuck or Turkish Creationist ID-ers bother with the rubber’s-thickness of pretence?
A perfect example of how the IDiots lie can be seen in the Dover Trial. The defense lawyer argued in his closing statement that ID had nothing to do with religion. After the verdict, his boss gave an interview with the press charging that the judge, in his decision, violated the religious freedom of the defendants.
nope, that’s not lieing to the court, committing perjury and all the other implied legal nastinesses. That’s just common or garden failure to communicate between Boss and Worker. Nothing actionable here. Surely?
Even if you just compare the books…Darwin’s is a solid and surprisingly not-outdated for its age scientific text full of evidence that can be independently verified, comparable to the seminal works of Newton, van Leeuwenhoek, Lavoisier, Mendel, Curie, Shannon, and other foundational figures of modern sciences. The Bible, on the other hand, opens with a story about an enchanted garden with talking animals and an angry wizard.
“One of these things is not like the other ones….”
Cheers,
b&
That sounds suspiciously like a rhetorical question, Herr Dr. Prof. CC!
I think they defend Christianity because they are Christians. However their arguments for intelligent design can only conclude that their is design. Similar to how as an engineer I can identify when a chemical process was designed but I cannot conclude the exact identity of the designer on the basis of the evidence.
I think that’s Jerry’s point. If they claim to be open to considering any designer, why are they constantly stumping for Jesus in particular?
The answer, I think, lies in representation of tone. To illustrate, I rewrite PCC’s question, with the necessary indications:
if Intelligent Design is “agnostic” about the nature of the Designer (wink wink, nudge nudge)…
Because they are Christians.However their arguments for design do not lead you to the conclusion of the particular nature and attributes of the designer. If I see a car and conclude its designed – I cannot then infer the designer was a woman or tall etc. My conclusion can only be there is an intelligent designer.
You can put lipstick on a pig but you probably won’t get into the Prom.
Dawkins hit the nail on the head when he called it the god “delusion”. These people are exceptionally delusional! I happen to deal with these people on a regular basis, and it’s really not uncommon for them to literally think that scientists are just there stroking each others egos. They don’t care about published papers. They think scientists are all in on some kind of atheist conspiracy. Or that they are mad at a god(s). They truly believe that opinions are all equal and if they can so much as come up with a single PhD creationist defending their absurd worldview, this PhD MUST be the correct one in the face of the majority of other scientists in that field. So having a paper published in a journal is meaningless to them. They think that the only reason their “scientists” don’t get published is because of a strong atheistic bias and that the leading scientists are trying to shut up the truth by preventing the papers from getting in mainstream journals. They would rather eat up anything Ken Ham’s scientists produce and accept that than actually attempting to understand the subject matter and why mainstream scientists view that bizarre outlook as specious. Many of these people seem to bask in their ignorance, at least from my experience.
To be fair, these are some genuinely skeptical people. Anything they hear in science they take with many grains of salt and assume it’s wrong, at least anything that might in some way pertain to their worldview. It’s a shame they can’t self reflect a bit and use some of that skepticism on their own beliefs.
Sorry, but are you saying they (creationist) are skeptical people? skeptical of reality maybe.
Therein lies the distinction between skepticism and “denialism.”
That was sarcasm. Theists *are* often skeptical of legitimate science. But, ironically, that’s not legitimate skepticism.
Anything they hear in science they take with many grains of salt…
And what’s most hypocritical about this stance is they’ll believe everything an MD tells them. I guess it’s just the non-medical science that is wrong. I’ve known some of the deluded to say medical based science is guided by the hand of g*d. Blech.
Or believe a con-man with a get-rich scheme, get-well scheme or get-me-elected scheme who wraps himself in religion.
Not to be confused with caterpillars wrapping themselves in exuviae and excrement…
Really? In my experience there are plenty of theists or woo-meisters who are skeptical of biological, geological, *and* medical science. Anti-vaxers?
I once wrote about one of them, Texas pastor Terri Pearsons:
“God punishes those who take medical advice from stupid pastors”
http://mayas-corner.blogspot.bg/2013/08/god-punishes-those-who-take-medical.html
Good points, but I don’t think it necessarily requires a “delusional” level of thinking to reject modern science. As you so well describe it, the creationists are simply putting both scientific knowledge and the scientific community into a much smaller box. They’re reducing it all to their own comfortable working level, as if they were dealing with squabbles between neighbors or family members. It’s the ‘folk-thinking’ mindset, inappropriately applied.
I recognize this. My New Age-y friends do the same thing — and yet they self-identify as ‘liberal’ and scorn fundamentalism and creationism. They think ‘physics’ has discovered that the Mind is a magical force, though. Water carries memories and has feelings. And yes — they’re into alternative medicine. They have their PhD’s. All criticism is met with the insistence that the sides are equivalent, to be replaced every now and then with the insistence that The Other Side is evil/stupid/stubborn/afraid — because it is so judgmental and close-minded.
I think one of the reasons folk-thinking is so easy to fall into here is a real ignorance of what goes into a scientific conclusion. The enormous scope of the competition is reduced to what we deal with on the personal level. It’s as if we’re talking to people who think space travel to other galaxies is really going to be as easy as they see in the movies, sort of like going to visit your sister Clare all the way out in Kansas. “Mainstream scientists” are like that committee that wouldn’t let you put up a shed because they said it was a “house.” Everyone knows that’s so stupid they must have an agenda. Common sense. Dealing with the familiar.
Absolutely, there’s a religious (or spiritual) motivation, but it seems to me it’s coupled not with an active delusion so much as a lazy simplicity.
Very well put, and so apropos of a Christian I’ve been in discussion with recently. One extreme are those who buckle down, think they have the “Absolute Divine Truth” in specifics in hand, and call other views error. Another extreme is the ultra-credulous epistemology, where it’s seen as either mean-spirited or small-minded to think one person may have any truths in hand
that another does not. For instance, to counter typical Christian apologetics that Resurrection or other miracle beliefs would be unlikely to arise during or near Christ’s lifetime, if eyewitnesses didn’t really see such things, I point to all manner of other counter-examples, such as Sathya Sai Baba’s followers claiming to eyewitness the same type of miracles.
The reaction of this Christian, like some others I’ve encountered, is to simply expand the circle of credulity: “Well who says Sai Baba DIDN’T perform those miracles?” And any other counter examples are met with the same “hey, that could be true too” response, without any inclination to work out all the contradictions. All the alternate supernatural claims to Christianity don’t serve to imply to these people that falsehoods abound concerning supernatural beliefs; instead they just say something about the close-mindedness of atheists.
Raging ecumenicists seem to have blinded themselves to the fact that facts are supposed to be … well, facts. The Ultimate Truth of the Universe is treated like someone’s personal lifestyle or matter of taste. Not only is anything possible, but one religion may be right for someone even if it’s not right for you so who are you to tell them otherwise?
It’s a sort of pro-faith militant agnosticism.
That was the most concise I’ve ever heard it put.
The final question in this post is excellent.
ID is about as agnostic as a strong atheist who believes that there is no god of whatever sort.
As for sourcing the cartoon, I’ve had it for a while, and show it at http://www.atheistmemebase.com/2014/07/20/evolution-debate/
However, that now goes to a boring page that seems to indicate that the atheistmemebase domain is for sale, which may mean that the archive is no longer accessible.
I was able to locate another on-line source for the cartoon here: https://onsizzle.com/i/evolution-facebook-the-debate-between-evolution-and-creationism-150220
The style of the cartoon is familiar; I just can’t place it right away.
It reminds me of the webcomic “The Order of the Stick”.
I find it hilarious to imagine a world where students pore over the Origin of the Species trying to winnow out the “hidden” meaning of each word to obtain a science degree. Meanwhile their Professors and mentors rush to consult the Origin whenever debates arise over technical points in Biology, the losers being ostracized or burnt at the stake.
Perhaps fundamentalists would fight bloody wars over the interpretation of the “holy” text.
A Canticle for Liebowitz ?
They fail to recognize that biological science has moved on since the Origin was published 157 years ago. Reading the Origin to understand biological evolution is like reading Newton’s Principia to understand modern physics. The world has move on since Newton. Darwin knew nothing of modern genetics, Newton knew nothing of concepts like the Uncertainty Principle.
“If Intelligent Design is agnostic about the nature of the Designer, why are they always defending traditional religion, and attacking people like me who criticize Christianity and Judaism?”
Because they are not agnostic about the nature of the designer, obviously.
And if what you discover about our place in the world utterly contradicts their firm belief of our place then you have a problem.
It would be cool if everyone could talk about this sensibly, a communal coming together where we ask each other stuff like “Hey, do you see what I see?” “No? Ok, let’s check it out. Oh yes? Well then maybe we’re on to something…”
But it won’t happen any time soon and you will continue to be attacked. Clearly in the beginning the designer was rather parsimonious in handing out common-sense and sensibility
Carl Kruse
They’re not really agnostic about the designer… they didn’t care for the ‘Invisible Tinkering Warrior Army’ proposal much. It makes ID sense, though, because competing invisible designers constantly warring and tinkering better explains the evolutionary ‘arms race’ we see in nature.
That about sums it up. Meanwhile, a friend of mine posted on FB that he lives only 20 minutes away from the new ‘Ark Park’ in Northern Kentucky. I hope he’s upwind of it.
Don’t worry. They have a non functional life size model of something that could dispose of imaginary manure, maybe. There’s no mention of such a thing in the Bible and they have no experience of using it with real manure. It likely wouldn’t work for long until it plugged up.
The only animals in that ‘ark’ will be humans and they will have the usual flush toilets and the electrical lighting to see what they are doing. Unlike Noah.
Reblogged this on The Logical Place.