The UC San Diego’s The Guardian has a good article on the Intelligent Design movement / controversy.
Intelligent design assumes that the world is so complex, that it is so statistically unlikely for humans to have formed, that God or some other higher power must have designed it. Even assuming that the two ideas are equally valid explanations of the world, evolution does not require the additional belief, a massive leap of faith, in a mystical higher power in its explanation. However, intelligent design suffers from an utter lack of positive evidence in its favor and thus is as valid of a scientific theory as the notion that a Flying Spaghetti Monster, the subject of a well-known satire of intelligent design, created the world.
Link to the article.
Welcome Arthur,
We will shortly commandeer a pirate fleet. The plan is to have a science vessel in it. Those on board will create biological weapons of mass destruction. For instance, we have a fast-progressing project to manipulate the DNA of a virus so that it will make people vomit whenever they eat even the smallest quantity of an unclean, unholy dish (like that most evil of menu inventions ever visited upon mankind by Satan: rice!). Care to join the science vessel?
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@Arthur,
A small extra thought to convince you: one of everyones favourite wenches, Nikkiee, is on it too!
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@DPG. I warned you about those mushrooms didn’t I! I distinctly remember saying “red with white warts! Not a good idea!”
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Ricin cake anyone :)
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@Alchemist
Relax, I wasn’t trying to steal your wench when talking to Nikkiee!
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@ DutchPastaGuy
Yeah, at the moment I’m in the process of changing majors from computer science to biology; all the lovely rants you’ve seen (and will see in the near future) are completely from reading I’ve done in my spare time with books I bought with my own money. There’s more job opportunities in compsci, but it’s just so boring now…
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Looking at becoming a bio professor, actually. It’s a long road there, but I’m already a decent teacher (American Red Cross training) and I think I’m pretty good at explaining complex scientific ideas in ways people can understand them.
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If someone wants a SERIOUSLY long read, my name should have a link to my Myspace page; one of my more recent blogs (”Ownage” or something) has 30+ pages of a biology/general atheism vs Creationism debate I had with a troll in the A&A group. If you’ve got like an hour to kill then go check it out.
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*goes to check the Blackbeard ship thing, since it’s local*
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Correction: upon checking, the blog title is “Longest Blog Ever”. The working title was “Ownage”. :-D
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@DPG – Good thing too! Otherwise it would be frying pans at dawn :)
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@DPG – are you inviting Arthur to join our non-existant world domination conspiracy?
Cos , if you are I think he may have missed the hint!
If you aren’t, nevermind, as you were….
And while I am at it, can anyone tell me why alcohol is so bloody fattening? S’not fair!
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@Alchemist
AHHHRG!! FSM have mercy on me, not the frying pans! I repent. I confess al my sins. Especially since you’ve probably become resistant to frying pan blows by now. Skulls evolve too, don’t they?
@Arthur
I may take time to read it, I’m not allergic to lengthy posts.
Computer skills can be enormously valuable in a fields like genetics, right? I do computational materials science and some of the people who take away the biggest slices of supercomputer time from me have been biologists.
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@DPG Hahahahaha
“…Skulls evolve too, don’t they?…” Usually. Not too sure about the goo inside mine though =))
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@Alchemist
“Not too sure about the goo inside mine though =))”
Put your trust in the FSM. He is the never-fading light that will guide you, even when all around you there is nothing but darkness. Never dispair, or let yourself be tempted into eating rice. No matter how hungry your soul is. When Satan tries to lure you with fried rice with spices or tasty sweeteners sprinkled on top, just say ‘Ha, I will not be tempted, for the FSM is my Saviour, and thanks to His great mercy, for He is mercifull indeed, my mind will always be filled with the richest spiritul menu, which is never overcooked or too salty’. It is pure bliss to be touched by His noodly appendages!
RAmen.
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@Booty Mar 4th, 2007 at 2:17 am “I am a nurse, and believe me, human bodies are VERY random and chaotic! If God designed them he did a really crap job – a lot of them are a total frigging disaster! I wouldn’t trust him to change a lightbulb!”
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I LIKE this… The very first time I heard (actually read) about ID, was in an article in “Le Canard Enchaîné”, and the author’s traditional satirical conclusion was something in the line of: “If the actual U.S. president has also been designed by this Intelligent Designer, that gives a pretty poor idea of that Designer!” About to use the expression “ID” in an e-mail, I had this article very vaguely in mind. Looking it up brought me at Wikipedia, and there was (is) line about a “counter-theory”, something called Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster… Strange way to finally meet a bunch of nice, intelligent people, harrassed sometimes by a couple of loudmothed fundie-type café-reasoners… Didn’t know the word “Wench” before that… now it happens to slip into my daily conversation… hahahahaaaargh!
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@ DPG
I know how to use a computer pretty well; the courses I’m taking are aimed at programming computers, not using them. It wouldn’t help me use them any better really, except in knowing how the computer work (and it wouldn’t be a very noticeable improvement).
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Why is the conspiracy only non-existent? :-D
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Alchemist and Wench Nikkiee, are you guys dating? Sorry to be nosy but it’s a small ship and I WANNA KNOW!
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‘The banana an athiests nightmare!’
Please view : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aiZYyN6Yp68
I feel that this is absolute evidence of the existance of ‘His Noodlyness’ and his creation of everything and a banana. Eventhough the speakers seem to believe in their ignorance that it is some lesser known heathen deity was responsible. I think it is our moral duty to call around to their house about teatime and tell them the good news.
Yarrr to ye all
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@ Wench Beth & Arthur
Apart from content – I feel I must praise your tone! You’re meeting Bob the Goth with the same respect I would like too see from fundies, atheist, pastafarians, regular squarepants et al. Do unto others etc.. wich relates to next paragraph.
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@ Wench Nikkiee, Batman & Avatar
I’m not up there with Arthur yet when it comes to knowledge of biology and pedagogic skills – but I have a thought regarding atheist messing up old ladies and their blue hair. I didn’t think survival of the fittest related to just one singular individual – but to groups and species. Hitting an old lady will not promote the fittest – only if we take care of each other humans will we survive as species in the long run. The atheist standpoint means also that we need to take care of our complete enviroment – for the fittest to survive they better make sure they’re not depleting their resources, polluting air and water, killing of important elements in the biological system.
Survival of the fittest therefore means – take care of the young because they can serve your species later on – and be nice to the old lady because she can give you candy on halloween.
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S
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Intelligent Design vs. Evloution
Why must they fight?
I believe in both.
God guided Evolution.
or maybe the FSM did.
I dunno.
RAmen.
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@nowis
“Apart from content – I feel I must praise your tone! You’re meeting Bob the Goth with the same respect I would like too see from fundies, atheist, pastafarians, regular squarepants et al.”
Yeah, when discussing such matters with people who just seem genuinely confused on the issues (especially with the name Goth KID) then I try to keep my sarcasm down to a 4:1 ratio of fact to mockery. If the issue is pressed too much and they take it too far, however, those ratios might start to slip closer to the 2:1 ratio.
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“I’m not up there with Arthur yet when it comes to knowledge of biology and pedagogic skills”
*blush* Aw, thanks!
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There are a few points with your survival of the fittest part that sound contradictory, but I’ll try to explain them as best I can (they do mesh together at the end, so bear with me).
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“but I have a thought regarding atheist messing up old ladies and their blue hair. I didn’t think survival of the fittest related to just one singular individual – but to groups and species.”
In regards to the survival of the fittest referring to individuals and populations, it’s both; the individual organisms will survive varying lengths of time and reproduce a different number of times depending on their level of fitness to their environment (for those who missed it, “fitness” doesn’t mean “strength” here, since it seems pretty clear that the mentally advanced humans took over the world instead of, say, gorillas and bears). However, when a fit individual survives longer than the lesser fit among the population, those more capable genes are passed down to more progeny (animals who live longer have more kids) and eventually that spreads throughout the population. So natural selection applies to both.
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“Hitting an old lady will not promote the fittest – only if we take care of each other humans will we survive as species in the long run.”
Not only will not hitting an old lady fail to promote the fitness of a population, but even spending extra resources and time to help her can benefit a group of people. If you have x number of organisms in a group who are fighting fit, and one old lady, it would seem that the chain is only as strong as the weakest link; the old lady might not be able to contribute much to hunting or gathering, may have problems helping around the campsite of early humans, needs someone to get food for her (by virtue of being unable to get it herself), and may even need assistance in escaping if something goes wrong at the camp. All these extra resources being given to a single individual would seem bad for the group. However, she still can provide help for the group; the simplest example is that of caring for the young in the group. Now instead of individual father and mother sets watching over their kids and tying up that many more resources (since they can’t babysit and hunt/forage/defend/etc.), you have one group member watching over the children of a whole group, allowing more group members to take part in more obviously “useful” activities (like those mentioned before). Other examples abound, but I’m already getting a long-post rep so I’ll move on.
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“The atheist standpoint means also that we need to take care of our complete enviroment – for the fittest to survive they better make sure they’re not depleting their resources, polluting air and water, killing of important elements in the biological system.”
I feel the need to point out that what you’re talking about is a humanist standpoint; as hard as it is to separate sometimes (since a lot of the ideas are tied together), those don’t really fall under the “atheist standpoint”, which in its entirety consists of “I have no belief in deities”. Humanistic morals and values are those derived from human-based sources and generally take the mindset of “humans are the cause of most of our problems, so it stands to reasons that humans are the solution to them as well”, as opposed to “God will help us through this!”. Look to thyself in times of need on a planetary scale. Also (on a personal note), the environmental movement can be taken too far sometimes; part of the reason we’ve so completely conquered the globe on the macro organismic scale (micro organisms still kick our asses on a regular basis) is our ability to affect our surroundings so completely; the ability to change your environment to suit your needs instead of the other way around is pretty unique in the animal kingdom. I agree that steps need to be taken to preserve the environment and fix what damage we’ve caused it, but extremists of any mindset cause more problems than they solve; this extends to environmentalists just as much as the fundamental religious types.
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/rant again
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@Arthur
De nada – you’re just enforcing my early impression. I also like to dish out sarcasm to the left and right – but almost never on the internet where it’s easier to misinterpret.
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I don’t think my head is as filled with contradictions as my last post – it’s more the case of “I better be working than giving a complete review of my mind on Venganza”. When it comes to survival of the fittest – individuals, groups, species – of course they’re all in there – I just didn’t bother to extemporate. When it comes to the misconception of “strength” being “fitness” – I belive that it is far to widespread. If more people understood that distinction I think ID would have a harder time getting it’s message through.
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The granny example of being “fit” is one of my favorite examples – not many other species have as many generations living at the same time as humans. The nursing granny can free other resources benefitting the group. Human “fitness” is of course mainly positioned in our brain..
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You’re completely right – I muddled up atheism and humanism there a bit. Thank you for understanding why. I took the route via atheism to evolution to survival of the fittest to humanism – so it’s not a direct jump though. Most atheist believe in ” survival of the fittest” – and in order to survive one important factor is to take better care of our enviroment. As you say, some “enviromentalists” go to far – becoming a sort of “fundie” if I may say so. Taking care of the enviroment is not living in caves eating nuts – it’s making use of progress, technology, knowledge etc to make things work.
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When it comes to humanism and moral I will have to come back to you later – I just started reading some research regarding moral as a product of evolution/survival of the fittest. Many say that moral is a learned trait in a social context, but now some studies are proving.. well, what I belive we just discussed in the “hitting old lady”-scenario above…
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S
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@nowis
“When it comes to humanism and moral I will have to come back to you later – I just started reading some research regarding moral as a product of evolution/survival of the fittest. Many say that moral is a learned trait in a social context, but now some studies are proving.. well, what I belive we just discussed in the “hitting old ladyâ€-scenario above…”
I don’t think these are even recent studies; it’s a pretty well accepted idea these days that societies undergo a similar natural selection to their individual members; a tribe of people that works together in times of need will do better than a tribe of people who work only with themselves. Stealing from one another causes lack of trust within groups and will lead to problems working together in the future, and may lead to violence within the group. I think the things like that are called “memes”; individuals pass genes through the species, and societies pass memes among themselves. Besides that they work on the same principles; successful memes lead to successful cultures that thrive more and spread further, while unsuccessful memes lead to unsuccessful cultures that die out more quickly. Dawkins has some great stuff on memes if you’re interested. Morality is a direct result of evolution, just not quite in the way one is used to thinking about it. The idea that morals can only come from God is why atheists have such a bad reputation in matters of ethics, despite that on average we have better morals than those who claim Christianity.
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@ Arthur
Yeah, I don’t think it’s a new theory – it’s just some newer research. But I haven’t read much about morals or memes in regards to natural selection here on venganza earlier – I thought that it would have been a valid answer to those fundies who claim only god dishes out moral. That and then the classic map showing how more crime is commited in countries with religious leadership.
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we’ve been round this argument before. i still fail to see how a believer who has their moral code imposed on them under threat of dire consequences can possibly cliam to have better morals than a pastafarian who follows a moral code because they’ve thought about it and decided it’s better to be that way…
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Few things.
The FSM is not a version of intelligent design, its ‘unintelligent’ or ‘very drunk’ design. As the FSM while all knowing and all powerful is rarely sober, and yes the FSM can drink enough that someone all powerful can get drunk
On Evolution
1) Beginning of life, this is not actually covered by evolution which has a starting point of basic life. There are theories on how life begins but they are not related to evolution as such. There is overwhelming evidence of evolution /noodle interaction life itself is still up for discussion
2) Pretty similar with the origins of the universe. Most versions of the big bang fail to be able to discuss the early nano-seconds of the universe. You can call it ‘god’, I prefer more work on quantum theory and relativity
Writing from Paris, missing London
Jon
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@ Arthur,
Instead of becoming a biology professer, did you ever consider becoming a teacher? A good teacher, who makes the subject easy to understand can make all the difference to young minds which could otherwise be drawn to the ID hypothesis by the comforting security blanket of religion.
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Teachers are one of the most valuable resources on the planet. They change lives, literally. They should all be given raises… as long as they agree to include the teachings of the FSM in their religion classes and add His Noodly Name to the Pledge of Allegiance.
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Good teachers are a valuable resourse, bad and condesending ones can make you hate the subject, I had a brilliant biology teacher and always paid her attention, but even though I was good at english, that teacher was such a condesending bitch it was the only class I ever skipped (it was impossible to leave my school during the day without walking by the principles window so we had to just go hide),
in the leaving cert. my best subject was biology and worst was english, surrise surprise
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I’ve never been so offended in my life. How dare they say that the FSM is merely a satirical response to intelligent design.
THE FSM DOES EXIST AND IS RESPONSIBLE FOR LIFE!!!!!!
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They’re christians and don’t know any better, they’ve been lied to their whole lives, poor things
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Ah, i love you guys, im gonna start posting here. FSM forever, RAmen.
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@Banjo
Welcome to the Church of the FSM. As a new convert, may you be touched by his noodly appendages.
RAmen
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Hi, I’m a new pastafarian, i have just been pastafied,
let’s all of us join my brothers in spreading the truth.
whoever has done this, is a freakin genius.
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Welcome to you too Pastafarian. Indeed, spread the word to all your friends!
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Is anything new in Pastafarian land? Was out last night, can’t tell what all I missed.
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=)
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Check it, im not going to claim the “FSM” as my god or anything, but the concept is genius and i do agree that the pastafarian beliefe is just as valid as any other based on the true absence of a better explanation, so respect to its profit and any followers, there is no way to discredit what you say and I think “The Man” hates you just as much as they do any other minority, maybe more…
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@Tagliatellius, i am a black belt in origami too!
I summon paper minions that kill whoever I wish!
may his noodly appendages touch your heart
raMEN
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you guys are the dumbist fuckers on the goddamn planet, r u smoking crack, if i saw a giant plate of spagetti, id fucking eat it u dumb basterds, WHAT THE HELL IS UR PROBLEM, i mean come on, u worship spagetti, ur lucky i dont come over to all of ur houses and kick all of ur asses, u spaggiti lovin faggots, i mean, mormons are smarter than u, and i hate mormons, i hope u get bombed by osama bin laden, and i hope u “pastafarians” all get cancer, ur all stupid, gay, mammas boys, who probably whack off three times an hour u fuck tards.
love, ur moms lover
p.s. ur all gay!!!!!
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Hi your moms asshole.
By jove I think you might be my moms asshole, same thing anyway.
The only thing that comes out is shit.
Good job! your moms asshole!
Ramen
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but shit isnt what goes into her ass my dick does bitch
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Why do ID supporters argue the the world is too complex to have happened by chance? Isn’t equally as likely as some great all-powerful being appearing from nothing? You might as well say that the intelligent designer had an intelligent designer…..
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Nice cartoon.
P.S. @your moms asshole
No wonder your name is asshole…
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Spagatelli, that is what ID is, it’s false, but people who follow religion don’t usually change their beliefs. ID is religion and therefore is illegal, thanks to my favorite amendment of my favorite document the first amendment to the constitution and the establishment clause. To all religion, and pseudo science practicers or creationists disguised, suck my constitutionally protected secular balls.
-J.T.S.
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Thank You and Thanks again, you’ve just made my day. It’s so heard to find quality articles these days on the net. Maybe i’m not looking where i should or people just don’t care anymore about what they post, i don’t know…anyway thx bro!
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