Itâs good to laugh your ass off. 
The mot juste, stop panzying around and start making sense!
Sure, but as Calrid pointed out it is a common rhetorical device when discussing evolution with lay people. Normally, that is sufficient to get the point across so that further knowledge can be gained but in some cases (see: creationism and other âobjectionsâ to Evolution) those rhetorical devices are analyzed, broken down, and revealed to be wanting. That isnât altogether surprising, as they are not rigorous analyses of what is going on but then the rhetorical device designed to enlighten becomes a hindrance to the cause in which it seeks to serve. We need to remind ourselves of this occasionally because the simplified version that we present may be used against us later on. Thatâs all. Basically, it is a call to refine our rhetoric because, unfortunately, people will be that nitpicky.
omg. Intelligent design is dead.
Who killed it?
The persons who are not ignorant.
Well turtle, we all are ignorant in one area or another. Itâs when we get too big for our cerebral breeches that we must watch out for.
Indeed. And in such a situation it behooves us to pay attention to our superiors, donât you agree? At which point, it becomes a rather critical skill to distinguish what makes an authority valid. Intellectual Design and another pseudo-intellectual movements are based on people mistaking a good authority in one area for a good authority in a separate, unrelated field. At best, it is a cynical ploy preying on the uninformed.
Young Earth Creationism, now I can get behind that. Not that I believe in it, but I can clearly see how that conclusion is arrived at based on very explicitly expressed premises. At its best, it is a clear example of an argument that is sound but not valid. Intelligent Design, on the other hand, lacks even that virtue and is neither sound nor valid. Irrespective of your own sentiments, it is best not to even bring it up in the same way it is best not to bring up that you donât believe that worms arenât borne of the rain or that physics lies when it claims that when you push down on the Earth, the Earth also pushes up against you.
that sounded a bit fishy to me, so i looked up soundness.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soundness
merriam-webster.com/dictionary/soundness
hopefully 3 sources isnât overkill. enjoy your evening.
Strictly speaking, yes. However, colloquially âsoundnessâ refers to whether or not the structure of the argument is valid (irrespective of how absurd its premises may be) and âvalidityâ refers to the premises and their truth-value. It is the sort of thing that doesnât pass the muster in a classroom but does fine in a discussion section (or internet chatroom). Itâs slang.
i donât think so. the part i underlined especially. anyway, it looks like youâre saying that the slang form of the words has the definitions switched around. i really have a hard time thinking this is legit.
and the part i italicized makes your statement still nonsensical. âsound but not validâ doesnât make sense if something soundness refers to if itâs validâŚ
Thatâs what Iâve encountered colloquially. There have actually been arguments about it on this site, I could probably dig them up for you. A particularly spergy poster would argue in favor of your position, whereas pretty much everyone else in the thread would agree that, yes, technically, he was correct but that isnât how the terms are used in an informal setting. Though I do agree that my word-choice was poor. However, in trying to avoid usage of the verb âsoundâ in my definition of âsoundnessâ I used âvalidâ whose meaning in non-philosophical contexts means âacceptable or trueâ.
Irrespective of this aside, do we agree on the point which I was making? That, while the premises of Creationism are clearly incorrect, the actual argument derived from those premises is logically acceptable whereas arguments for Intelligent Design do not properly follow from their premises and the premises in question are wrong.
i donât know, what are the premises and what is the syllogism?
ID is harder to diagram, though Iâll do my best in a bit. YEC Creationism, on the other hand, is very easy:
A) Everything written in the Bible is literally true.
B) The Bible describes a seven day creation with man created on the last day and then God rested.
C) Based on the lifetimes of men in the Bible, the world is 4000 years old. (This is a compact point which, properly, ought be broken down to demonstrate the calculation. I donât have that available but I could probably find a variety of them quite easily).
Therefore, the world was created in seven days (A and B) and the world is 4000 years old (A and C).
A is clearly false, but given A the other conclusion is pretty easy to come by.
As I said, ID is harder to represent as a syllogism because, well, its premise is best represented as, âCreationism is true but we canât say that for Constitutional reasons so weâll provide a crappy alternativeâ. But what they appear to be are:
A) Everything requires a creator.
B) Mutations are always deleterious (this is Beheâs big thing)
C) Micro-evolution is distinct from macro-evolution (This isnât really a premise or a conclusion, though it is closer to a premise since it is basically creating definitions out of thin air).
Therefore, life was created by an intelligent designer and only micro-evolution occurs.
In this case, it isnât just that I disagree with the premises, but I utterly fail to see how the conclusion is reached from them outside of some vague hand-waving.
but specific people who believe in ID can just use the syllogisms of their respective religions to make it valid (but not sound).
Yes, they can. However, the whole point of ID is to avoid precisely that situation. Otherwise it would just be a flavor of Creationism (which, in fact, it is). You see the problem.
i do. very clever.
Minor point, its 6000 years old, so that makes it all ok as a sound scientific theory right? 
Mutations are always deleterious, my big fat harry arse! 
ID is easier to ridicule though as there is more cannon fodder. For example the FSM movement does it brilliantly:
âI think we can all look forward to the time when these three theories are given equal time in our science classrooms across the country, and eventually the world; One third time for Intelligent Design, one third time for Flying Spaghetti Monsterism, and one third time for logical conjecture based on overwhelming observable evidence.â
~ Bobby Henderson (pasta be upon him)
I agree though Creationism has merely mutated into a more insidious form, pity they run a foul of the law eh. =D>
Oh and micro and macro evolution are as fuzzy as species, something else that IDiots find hard to comprehend, that its hard to dissect nature precisely, therefore God did it. Palpably stupid stuff.
When you are talking about evolution why are you referring to the bible? That is old stuff. Letâs talk about the randomness of molecular variation.
because IDiots are, although they dress it up vaguely differently.
Essentially if we canât explain something, then God or The Bible can by way of an intelligent designer is the answer after all if we found a coke can inside a dinosaurs gut, that would prove evolution wrong. Smart designer given he was blind and directionless and life seems to have no purpose or goal beyond just living.
Why canât we just ignore that stuff. It doesnât make sense. It will fade away with time.