Spengler discovers Intelligent Design

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Typhoon
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Spengler discovers Intelligent Design

Post by Typhoon »

So called.

ATOL : Why 'Intelligent Design' subverts faith

Spenglerman is so far out of his element, his circle of competency, with this bit that he may as well be in Uranus.
There is a false premise in Voltaire's argument, namely that humankind is always and inevitably subject to the ravages of cruel and capricious nature. We now build cities able to withstand earthquakes; the earthquake and tsunami that hit Japan in 2011 killed 16,000 people in much more densely populated regions, a terrible toll, to be sure, but a fraction of the Lisbon dead.
No, the Tohoku tsunami struck a part of Japan with a relatively low population density.

The Sumatra–Andaman earthquake and tsunami of 2004 killed an estimated 230,273 people.
Despite numerous attempts, including one by the anti-religious polemicist Richard Dawkins, Darwinians have failed to create a model that can predict evolution. University of Texas mathematician Granville Sewell, an Intelligent Design proponent, surveyed the damning evidence in a 2000 essay for The Mathematical Intelligencer. The quarrel between the Darwinians and the Creationists comes down to a confrontation between a quasi-religious belief that nature is a closed system that self-evolves in the absence of a creator, and the explicitly religious belief that a creator directs the process. The South Park caricature of Dawkins got it exactly right
Nope. Both the observational and experimental evidence is overwhelming with regards to evolution.

Always a good idea to have a minimal grasp of the basics before pontificating: The evolution faq

Right on queue: Evolution of new genes captured

Spenglerman on earthquankes, tsunamis, and evolution = not even wrong
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Milo
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Re: Spengler discovers Intelligent Design

Post by Milo »

Oh he's mostly in his element here but I find it more than a little disingenuous that he talks about falsification for ID:

"If the Intelligent Design argument cannot be proved, as the Darwinians claim, neither can it be refuted. Science as such has no stake in the argument: Something that neither can be proved nor falsified does not belong to the realm of science in the first place."

but does not bring up the Darwin quote addressing this exact problem for evolution:

"If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed, which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down"

"So far, no alternative theory has provided the required demonstration to meet Darwin’s challenge." (I take the the quotes from 100 Essential Thinkers by Philip Stokes.)

So Spengler applies falsification rather unevenly I would say. He is a pretty good esoteric writer though, something that I imagine he took from Strauss.
anderson
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Re: Spengler discovers Intelligent Design

Post by anderson »

I'm not sure you understood the actual point of the article, Typhoon. It's not even about "Evolution vs ID." It's actually more about questioning the philosophical motivation behind the idea of ID and whether it even makes sense to feel a need to posit such a thing from a theological perspective.
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Enki
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Re: Spengler discovers Intelligent Design

Post by Enki »

Typhoon, but at the same time, fewer people die in more advanced nations than less advanced ones. The first responder network that exists in the first world cannot be compared.
Men often oppose a thing merely because they have had no agency in planning it, or because it may have been planned by those whom they dislike.
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Ibrahim
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Re: Spengler discovers Intelligent Design

Post by Ibrahim »

Spengler wants to be Christopher Hitchens so bad. Obviously they differ on the essential question of faith, but he wants to address all the same topics, with the same facility, and be accepted as a knowledgeable source by the same middlebrow audience.

Its not working.
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Parodite
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Re: Spengler discovers Intelligent Design

Post by Parodite »

Spengler disposes of ID for the obvious reasons that are both scientific (ID can't be proven or disproven scientifically) as well as theological (why did God design the world in such as way that we suffer random disasters like earth quakes etc?).

The rest is a theology where God, Man and Nature are all players in a script that at least sounds more pleasant and where the big Unknowns and Uncertainties won't keep anybody from making the world a better place:
As Rabbi Soloveitchik observed, the final perfection of nature is a messianic vision: In the prayers for the New Moon, for example, Jews look to the day when God will restore the moon to parity with the sun. But there is a great deal to do in the meantime. Man is not the passive victim of earthquake, flood, famine or disease. We can build defenses against natural disasters, cure disease, and eliminate hunger. Whatever harm befalls us today, we can change our destiny in the future. God does not reveal his infinite mind to us, except through an infinite procession of discoveries, to which we are led by intuition, or, if you will, inspiration.

We are not the passive victims of nature. We strive to establish human dignity by mastering nature. We are neither gods who can grasp the infinite mind of the God of Creation, nor mere animals for whom evolution is destiny. We do not need to worry whether there is an Intelligent Design, nor whether we might grasp such a design if it indeed exists: As creative beings, we are part of the design. We do not know the full scope of the design, because we do not know what we have yet to accomplish. God does not need us to justify his position as creator; our task is nobler, and incomparably more challenging, namely, actually to advance his work of creation.
A shorter version of this idea from the Rolls Royce Guru Rajneesh Chandra Mohan ("Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh"):

~ The world is not a creation, but a creativity
Deep down I'm very superficial
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Taboo
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Re: Spengler discovers Intelligent Design

Post by Taboo »

I was actually pleased with Spengler's rant. Regardless of the intellectual dishonesty of equating ID with evolution, the final message was rather uplifting: "if you don't like how the world works, get off your ass and try to make it better." That's something I can agree with.

As to the ID and evo criticism, "evo theory" cannot make predictions -- in a sense, it's a fair cop -- Evolutionary theory cannot predict what species will dominate the Earth in 100 million years. But I don't see him arguing that because we can't predict earthquakes, "devil rattling" theory of earthquakes should get equal standing.

Of course, the fundamental problem -- the real world out there being a rather nasty place for human life --- remains unaddressed. But for Spengler to notice that he did not after all singlehandedly solve the problem of theodicity is too much to hope for.
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Moon Parity with the Sun........ BAD idea.....

Post by monster_gardener »

Parodite wrote:Spengler disposes of ID for the obvious reasons that are both scientific (ID can't be proven or disproven scientifically) as well as theological (why did God design the world in such as way that we suffer random disasters like earth quakes etc?).

The rest is a theology where God, Man and Nature are all players in a script that at least sounds more pleasant and where the big Unknowns and Uncertainties won't keep anybody from making the world a better place:
As Rabbi Soloveitchik observed, the final perfection of nature is a messianic vision: In the prayers for the New Moon, for example, Jews look to the day when God will restore the moon to parity with the sun. But there is a great deal to do in the meantime. Man is not the passive victim of earthquake, flood, famine or disease. We can build defenses against natural disasters, cure disease, and eliminate hunger. Whatever harm befalls us today, we can change our destiny in the future. God does not reveal his infinite mind to us, except through an infinite procession of discoveries, to which we are led by intuition, or, if you will, inspiration.

We are not the passive victims of nature. We strive to establish human dignity by mastering nature. We are neither gods who can grasp the infinite mind of the God of Creation, nor mere animals for whom evolution is destiny. We do not need to worry whether there is an Intelligent Design, nor whether we might grasp such a design if it indeed exists: As creative beings, we are part of the design. We do not know the full scope of the design, because we do not know what we have yet to accomplish. God does not need us to justify his position as creator; our task is nobler, and incomparably more challenging, namely, actually to advance his work of creation.
A shorter version of this idea from the Rolls Royce Guru Rajneesh Chandra Mohan ("Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh"):

~ The world is not a creation, but a creativity

Thank you VERY Much for your post, Parodite.

Just a nuance.....
In the prayers for the New Moon, for example, Jews look to the day when God will restore the moon to parity with the sun.
THANK G_d for unanswered prayers!!!! Please NO!........ Some people really don't think things through...........

Others do..............
Remembering a story from Chinese Mythology where multiple suns at the same time had to be taken down post haste...

1 Sun where it is is quite enough......... More than one burns up the earth.......

Also problematic if you achieve parity by reducing the Sun to the Moon's luminosity.......

If it ain't broke think twice before trying to fix it........
For the love of G_d, consider you & I may be mistaken.
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Farcus

In Memory of ID

Post by Farcus »

"Are God and Nature then at strife,
That Nature lends such evil dreams?
So careful of the type she seems,
So careless of the single life;

That I, considering everywhere
Her secret meaning in her deeds,
And finding that of fifty seeds
She often brings but one to bear,

...
Man, her last work, who seem'd so fair,
Such splendid purpose in his eyes,
Who roll'd the psalm to wintry skies,
Who built him fanes of fruitless prayer,

Who trusted God was love indeed
And love Creation's final law —
Tho' Nature, red in tooth and claw
With ravine, shriek'd against his creed —

Who loved, who suffer'd countless ills,
Who battled for the True, the Just,
Be blown about the desert dust,
Or seal'd within the iron hills?

No more? A monster then, a dream,
A discord. Dragons of the prime,
That tare each other in their slime,
Were mellow music match'd with him.

...
O life as futile, then, as frail!
O for thy voice to soothe and bless!
What hope of answer, or redress?
Behind the veil, behind the veil."

-- Tennyson, 1850
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Zack Morris
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Re: Spengler discovers Intelligent Design

Post by Zack Morris »

Maybe a little bit OT (not having to do with this particular article) but it would be really neat if someone gathered all of Spengler's predictions over the years and analyzed which ones came true and which ones did not. I seem to recall a lot of zany stuff about Egypt on the verge of mass starvation, Turkey on the verge of economic collapse, an so on. Goldman also has a consulting practice and when I last checked his web site (a year and a half ago, I think), he linked to some of his articles. I wonder if he's been editing those links :)
anderson
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Re: Spengler discovers Intelligent Design

Post by anderson »

Zack Morris wrote:Maybe a little bit OT (not having to do with this particular article) but it would be really neat if someone gathered all of Spengler's predictions over the years and analyzed which ones came true and which ones did not. I seem to recall a lot of zany stuff about Egypt on the verge of mass starvation, Turkey on the verge of economic collapse, an so on. Goldman also has a consulting practice and when I last checked his web site (a year and a half ago, I think), he linked to some of his articles. I wonder if he's been editing those links :)
Spengman inherits this tendency from some of his associations from earlier on in his life. Make drastic, imminent predictions. Walk away, act as if it was never said. Repeat.
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Typhoon
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Re: Spengler discovers Intelligent Design

Post by Typhoon »

anderson wrote:I'm not sure you understood the actual point of the article, Typhoon. It's not even about "Evolution vs ID." It's actually more about questioning the philosophical motivation behind the idea of ID and whether it even makes sense to feel a need to posit such a thing from a theological perspective.
I didn't address the main point of the article, only took exception to stuff that Spenglerman was wrong about in the course of making his argument.

However, point taken.
May the gods preserve and defend me from self-righteous altruists; I can defend myself from my enemies and my friends.
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Azrael
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Re: Spengler discovers Intelligent Design

Post by Azrael »

anderson wrote:
Zack Morris wrote:Maybe a little bit OT (not having to do with this particular article) but it would be really neat if someone gathered all of Spengler's predictions over the years and analyzed which ones came true and which ones did not. I seem to recall a lot of zany stuff about Egypt on the verge of mass starvation, Turkey on the verge of economic collapse, an so on. Goldman also has a consulting practice and when I last checked his web site (a year and a half ago, I think), he linked to some of his articles. I wonder if he's been editing those links :)
Spengman inherits this tendency from some of his associations from earlier on in his life. Make drastic, imminent predictions. Walk away, act as if it was never said. Repeat.
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Farcus

Post by Farcus »

Azrael wrote:
Spengman inherits this tendency from some of his associations from earlier on in his life. Make drastic, imminent predictions. Walk away, act as if it was never said. Repeat.
" University of Texas mathematician Granville Sewell, an Intelligent Design proponent, surveyed the damning evidence in a 2000 essay for The Mathematical Intelligencer. "
"Joseph Soloveitchik, the leading mind of 20th-century Orthodox Judaism"
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