ID / UD and the War on Materialism

http://ncse.com/files/pub/creationism/The_Wedge_Strategy.pdf

Governing Goals

To defeat scientific materialism and its destructive moral, cultural and political legacies.
To replace materialistic explanations with the theistic understanding that nature and human beings are created by God.

http://www.uncommondescent.com/about-2/

Uncommon Descent holds that…
Materialistic ideology has subverted the study of biological and cosmological origins so that the actual content of these sciences has become corrupted. The problem, therefore, is not merely that science is being used illegitimately to promote a materialistic worldview, but that this worldview is actively undermining scientific inquiry, leading to incorrect and unsupported conclusions about biological and cosmological origins. At the same time, intelligent design (ID) offers a promising scientific alternative to materialistic theories of biological and cosmological evolution — an alternative that is finding increasing theoretical and empirical support. Hence, ID needs to be vigorously developed as a scientific, intellectual, and cultural project.

At its (theistic) core, ID and creationism is angry with materialism / philosophical naturalism. Denyse, as “News”, is quick to assault any mainstream science she can find through her powers of misunderstanding. KF advocates (but can’t defend or explain) immaterial process that enable minds and contemplation. And yet, like our own WJM, they are all functional materialists.

Of course, in a sense science (and naturalism) is their enemy. It has explained the actual mechanisms of many phenomena previously attributed to the divine and is incredibly successful in a real word / pragmatic way. It has reduced holy books to allegories and myth collection when they were before held as historical accounts. As time progresses, the number of phenomena that have natural explanations increases, the number that we don’t understand decreases and the number that have been shown to have supernatural explanations remains at zero. Of course as knowledge progresses, we’ll discover new things. ID will of course assert they are supernatural, but history teaches us they’ll ultimately be disappointed.

71 thoughts on “ID / UD and the War on Materialism

  1. Gralgrathor,

    You don’t want evidence. You cover your ears so you don’t have to hear evidence. Every time you are given evidence, you guys just flap your jaws and say, that doesn’t count, that doesn’t count, it changes nothing, what difference does it make, it doesn’t affect the theory, we already knew that, no one believes Darwinian evolution anymore anyway, its the modern synthesis!

    Heck Alan was bust typing that Eric Hedin wasn’t censored before he even knew who he was.

  2. phoodoo:
    Gralgrathor,
    You don’t want evidence.You cover your ears so you don’t have to hear evidence.Every time you are given evidence, you guys just flap your jaws and say, that doesn’t count, that doesn’t count, it changes nothing, what difference does it make, it doesn’t affect the theory, we already knew that, no one believes Darwinian evolution anymore anyway, its the modern synthesis!

    We apologize for actually understanding the subject matter and being able to show how IDproponents only produce a constant stream of fallacies and misrepresentations.

    We regret that we have to demonstrate over and over again how this all is done because of the fundamentalist religious worship of what can best be described as an american christian version of the taliban.

    Case in point, wedge strategy document. It’s all about god. Praise the LAWD!

  3. Rumraket,

    I will include you in the camp with Omagain and Walto, as being unable to think because you are too worried about Jesus.

  4. Gralgrathor:
    Robert Byers,

    So, still the same ancient texts, misrepresentations and appeals to incredulity in stead of actual evidence, then?

    Well we talked about ACTUAL BIOLOGICAL SCIENTIFIC evidence for evolution and I creationists won . There ain’t any.
    The bible is a witness in good standing until the witness is shown to be a liar.

  5. phoodoo: I will include you in the camp with Omagain and Walto, as being unable to think because you are too worried about Jesus.

    Jesus Jesus Jesus! What’s to worry about when you’ve got Jesus!

    Yeah, I got bored of waiting for your alternative to random chaos and went to a revival and got the same bug as you! The Jesus bug!

  6. Robert Byers: The bible is a witness in good standing until the witness is shown to be a liar.

    Exactly! It twas Jesus wot done it! He did all the evolutioning. All the gaps, he dun filled them!

  7. phoodoo: Heck Alan was bust typing that Eric Hedin wasn’t censored before he even knew who he was.

    I know, right! Trying to bring the light of Jesus into those kids hearts during a physics lesson should have never been a problem!

    It was Jesus wot done it and the kids need to know this!

  8. Robert Byers: we talked about ACTUAL BIOLOGICAL SCIENTIFIC evidence for evolution

    I did, at least. As I recall, you didn’t even come close to understanding what ‘evidence’ means in scientific context, and why. I expect you haven’t improved your understanding since then, and I won’t try to make you.

  9. Rumraket: We apologize for actually understanding the subject matter

    Well, if it’s classical biology I can cite a paper or two. But have you seen the threads on philosophy BruceS and walto are conducting? It’d take me months to get up to speed on that shit.

  10. phoodoo:
    Rumraket,
    I will include you in the camp with Omagain and Walto, as being unable to think because you are too worried about Jesus.

    Thank your for confirming my statements so lucidly. It’s about shoving Jesusism down the throats of everyone, not about science or evidence.

    Have a nice day 🙂

  11. Robert Byers: The bible is a witness in good standing until the witness is shown to be a liar.

    “The testimony of the witness is entirely hearsay. The jury is ordered to ignore that testimony.”

  12. Even if the Bible were considered a credible witness (never mind that Dennett’s recent study has indicated that those who go to divinity schools and study the matter closely end up not believing this themselves), it would be thrown out for its hundreds of inconsistencies. Clarence Darrow demonstrated that wrt the Old Testament some time ago. And Samuel Butler did the same for the New Testament with his _Fair Haven_ before that.

    Y’all have to get out some time. It’s actually not the twelve hundreds anymore.

  13. Neil Rickert: “The testimony of the witness is entirely hearsay.The jury is ordered to ignore that testimony.”

    There’s a goblin in your butt unless you can prove there isn’t!

    Burden of proof, just one more thing Robert has trouble with.

  14. Neil Rickert: “The testimony of the witness is entirely hearsay.The jury is ordered to ignore that testimony.”

    No. the witness has given it in written form from oral form as is admissible in courts.
    The world must reject the witness but not ignore someone said such and such happened.
    So there is no reason to ignore a witness until one has shown they speak falsely.

  15. Robert Byers: So there is no reason to ignore a witness until one has shown they speak falsely.

    There was no worldwide flood.

    Witness dismissed!

  16. Robert Byers: No. the witness has given it in written form from oral form as is admissible in courts.

    Only when properly taken in a deposition with authenticated witnesses.

  17. walto:
    Witness cannot both speak truly and contradict themselves, Robert.

    Not entirely true. Witnesses typically say things that contradict “objective” evidence like videotape. Police training used to include demonstrations of witness fallibility.

    Most of the Bible is written hundreds of years after events, and not based on eyewitness accounts, but on stories about witnesses.

    Still, it requires a lot of hoop jumping to accommodate passages like:

    Verily I say unto you, There be some standing here, which shall not taste of death, till they see the Son of man coming in his kingdom.

  18. Oh you’re just not using your Fundy powers enough:

    “Verily I say unto you, There be some standing here, which shall not taste of death, till they see the Son of man coming in his kingdom.”

    Easy. They are still with us, two thousand years older, waiting. Like the highlander.

    Remember kids: Bible = correct, twist reality to compensate.

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