If Life On Mars Is A Big Religious Question, Should Government Fund The Search?

http://post-darwinist.blogspot.com/2...t_archive.html



Friday, December 08, 2006

MORE Quick posts: Recent events in the intelligent design controversy


I have decided to give up apologizing for being absent a couple of days
at a time. Basically, blogging is a volunteer activity. When I am not
here, I am off making a living as a writer somewhere. Recently, for
example, I have been researching the importance of zero as an integer
on the number line. I'm glad to know that something in the universe
besides my bank account usually corresponds to zero. Things are not as
crazy as they seem.

¦ The Britrags (British media) are outdoing themselves to report all
sorts of irresponsible crap about the Brit ID group, . And, of course,
the educrats, terrified by the prospect that materialism is not the
default religion of - oops, did I say Britain? - of the EU, are
abetting whatever nonsense blows through.

I have been meaning to blog on this, and here is my view:

- materialism is collapsing. The big project to explain everything in
materialist terms is not working, and ever crazier theories ensue.
Bureaucrats attempt to keep this fact from students, like it was a
family scandal or something. Well, come to think of it ...

Mind cannot be reduced to matter and mathematics cannot be reduced to
turnips. However, many turnips will be injured in the attempts ...and
worse still, the integers will come out unscathed - talk about
injustice!

- Vast numbers of Brit educrats, adminbots, and pols basically know
that their duty is to front materialism to the public. Go here, here,
and here for examples.

Actually, it wouldn't matter what the facts suggest. All these people
merely know that science is nothing but applied materialism, and they
are justified in collecting taxes from a non-materialist public to
promote it as such. For their own good.

¦ Today's Word of the Day from Merriam-Webster was "retronym",
which means a noun with a modifier (adjective) which references the
original meaning of the noun. The example given is "rotary phone." You
young ones may never have seen a rotary dial phone, but that's how we
used to do it in the Age of Analog. The dictionary records as the first
evidence of use of the term the practice of then-president of National
Public Radio, Frank Mankiewicz, of collecting what he calls
"retronyms," identified by William Safire in a 1980 New York Times
column. I wonder when Darwinism and other -isms will collect retronym
adjectives like " twentieth-century natural selection" to describe some
entirely improbable series of events in the history of life that are
supposed to have been naturally selected.

¦ Recently, there has been a bit of a puff about what life found on
Mars would mean for old time religion. Well, what would it mean?
Surely, that largely depends on what the life in question turns out to
be?

Would you change your religion if sand dollars fossils were found on
Mars?

You would? Oh give it a rest! You really wanted an excuse to change
your religion to one that allows you to two-time your sweetie-hoo, but
doesn't allow him/her to do the same thing. Hey, Aunt Denyse knows what
you do when she's not around.

As C.S. Lewis pointed out over sixty years ago, religion is primarily
concerned with the choices made by conscious beings with free will. We
actually don't have anything to discuss until we find such beings that
are not from this planet. And then we need to see how their history
relates to ours.

A friend raises an interesting question, though: If life on Mars is a
big religious question, should governments fund the search for an
answer? Why? Apart from religion and philosophy, why does it matter if
there are bacteria fossils on Mars? I don't mind paying for an answer
to the question, but I am not sure how to justify it to fellow
taxpayers who - understandably preoccupied with more pressing problems
- do not really care.

Reality check: Life on Mars will likely turn out to be bacteria,
possibly the result of contamination between Earth and Mars during the
early period when the planets were less stable and bacteria were
already on the scene, amazingly enough.

¦ Recently, I was on a radio show with someone who insisted that many
of the 600-plus scientists who signed the Discovery Institute's
statement dissenting from Darwinism (not from evolution, mind, but from
design-free Darwinism) were not "really" scientists, but engineers. As
a matter of fact, degrees in systems engineering at the University of
Waterloo are called degrees in "applied science." I will hardly be
surprised to learn that that is true of many engineering degrees.
Personally, I have been fascinated to see how many engineers have
spoken up about the implausibility of design-free theories of evolution
- but then engineering is the science of design.

¦I keep hearing comments about the nutout in the Brit media about the
prospect of intelligent design being taught in the school system. And
this in a nation that has given us the soccer yob. I wish the Brit
school system could persuade all yobs that the intelligent design of
the universe guarantees that on their tenth offence against their
fellow citizens, they will be eaten by intergalactic black holes. Look,
I don't care what you tell them, as long as they believe it, tremble,
and shove off.

¦ And while we are here, legacy media, when covering the ID
controversy, often assume when they see a headline such as "Important
new evidence for Darwinian evolution: Canadian squirrels thrive in
Washington DC" that some "important new evidence" has in fact been
discovered, that evolution is taking place before our very eyes.

Well, it could be, of course. But in reality, the story is usually just
some nonsense, no different from inflated or minimized war statistics -
with the critical difference that media have largely SET ASIDE our
customary skepticism. Journalists need to be challenged to claim
skepticism back in this area. But I do not pretend that the process
will be easy. The failure rate will be very high because so many need
to believe Darwinism fr reasons unrelated to facts.



My other blog is the Mindful Hack, which keeps tabs on neuroscience and
the mind.


If you like this blog, check out my book on the intelligent design
controversy, By Design or by Chance?. You can read excerpts as well.

On Wed, 03 Jan 2007 05:09:09 -0800, Sound of Trumpet wrote:

materialism is collapsing.

In your dreams.

--
Mark K. Bilbo a.a. #1423
EAC Department of Linguistic Subversion
------------------------------------------------------------
If their omnipotent, omniscient (so they say) god wants me to
believe in him, then he should know what would prove his
existence to me. He hasn't done so yet, so there is no reason
to believe in him. - Woden

Sound of Trumpet wrote:

http://post-darwinist.blogspot.com/2...t_archive.html

Well now, I hardly know where to begin!

You seem to be using the creationists' favourite ploy of equating
religious belief with creationism. Not true: the Roman Catholic and
Anglican churches are comfortable with the theory of evolution, and so
are a substantial percentage of US Christians. Creationism is primarly
the obsession of the fundamentalist wing of US Christianity, with some
minor offshoots elsewhere. So if people are turning from materialism to
religion (for which there is no evidence here in the UK at any rate) it
does not at all follow that they will accept creationism.

As far as I'm concerned, there is no controversy over "intelligent
design"; it's just a devious ploy by fundamentalists to get around the
ban on teaching creationism in US schools, as was pointed out - with
some force - by the judge in the Dover school board case.

Tony Williams
The Foresight War: http://www.quarry.nildram.co.uk

"Sound of Trumpet" wrote in message
ups.com

Martians were obviously not Jews, any more than Venusians are Catholics,
although being Islamic/Muslim or perhaps Cathar seems perfectly doable.
-
Brad Guth


--
Posted via Mailgate.ORG Server - http://www.Mailgate.ORG

"Tony Williams" wrote in message
ups.com

As far as I'm concerned, there is no controversy over "intelligent
design"; it's just a devious ploy by fundamentalists to get around the
ban on teaching creationism in US schools, as was pointed out - with
some force - by the judge in the Dover school board case.

You've got to be kidding; "there is no controversy over intelligent
design" ????????

The Old Testament thumbing simply isn't ever going to buy into any part
of "intelligent design", and that's because only the species of
terrestrial Jews are intelligent to begin with.
-
Brad Guth


--
Posted via Mailgate.ORG Server - http://www.Mailgate.ORG

Well, life on Mars is either there or it is not, and if we find it, we
will be able to tell.

This isn't like religious questions, where each religion has its own
claims and they are accepted by adherents without proof.

John Savard

wrote:
Well, life on Mars is either there or it is not, and if we find it, we
will be able to tell.

Are you asking if we are certain to instantaneously
recognize life on Mars, after we find an example?

If so, I think it is an excellent question. Recognizing
life implies we already know, in advance, what life could
consist of, and that has not been shown to be the case, by
any other trials, yet. We have no track record at
recognizing extraterrestrial life. We might make some
serious mistakes.

wrote in message
oups.com...
Well, life on Mars is either there or it is not, and if we find it, we
will be able to tell.

This isn't like religious questions, where each religion has its own
claims and they are accepted by adherents without proof.


Life elsewhere isn't a religious question???

The ultimate goal of science and religion are exactly
the same. To understand the nature of our creation
existence and reality.

Finding life elsewhere is ....THE...answer to the questions
of religion and science.

And if we should find an independent creation of life
the very /first place/ we look for it, on Mars, that tells
us something rather wonderful.

That life is not a fluke of chance, but the norm.
That not only are we not alone, but that the
universe is teeming with life.

Finding life elsewhere is the path to ending the
millenia old scism between science and religion
that has torn this world apart for ages.

And allows a single unified view to emerge
that is consistent with both science and
religion. Which is a view based on nature
and the simplicity of creation.

Finding life elsewhere is the path to world wide
salvation.





John Savard

Jonathan wrote:

And allows a single unified view to emerge
that is consistent with both science and
religion. Which is a view based on nature
and the simplicity of creation.

Incorrect. The finding of life elsewhere does not equate to it's
having been created, it will only prove its existence. It is science
that will figure out how it got there, not religion.


--
L. Raymond

Mark K. Bilbo wrote:

Sound of Trumpet wrote:

materialism is collapsing.

In your dreams.

I dunno, there isn't much left for them to steal.