Messages

welcome back, cainam ^_^ I just arrived back a short while ago as well, though I'm (clearly) not on as much as I used to be.

~kakkarot

by the way, someone said they didn't know of any straw man arguements used against pro-IDers, but one example is in treating ID through the evolution vs creationism theories of life debate.

Intelligent Design doesn't only refer to the idea of an intelligent being having created life, but at least partially also refers to the idea that an intelligent being created the non-living universe around us. To support their arguement they say that it's silly to believe the universe just kind of randomly "fell into" the order that it exists within, and that it's highly improbable that the "rules" by which the universe works so fluidly just spontaneously emerged from .... what? the big bang? (yes, in a previous post I talked about chaos->order->chaos-etc but is such an idea true of vast time expances and vast distance expanses as well?)

They go a more theoretical route that isn't really science in that it's not discovery of nature, but so far much of what is labelled science regarding the "origins of the universe" is theory as well. But the point of this post was simply to say that the anti-IDers also attack incorrect arguements or ignore arguements made by their opposition.

~kakkarot

how would anyone think that's a ghost? maybe some sad girl sitting at her parent's grave in the middle of the night, but how a ghost? or a person planted there to further the play...

and such poor quality too. and the cheezy music and sound effects XD when's the last time you ever heard a deep noise when someone turned their head? or music playing in a graveyard? I dunno, maybe my city is too small to bother putting in loudspeakers to comfort the dead with "creepy graveyard" musics because I walk through my city's graveyard almost daily and the only sounds there are the natural ones ^_^

~kakkarot

damnit, I missed another one?! >_< Someone set an alarm for the next one, or something (and don't let me hit the snooze button)

btw, who made that prediction?

~kakkarot

I think you meant evolutionary science vs. religion.

LOL XD Yes, yes I did ^_^;

ID proponents are trying to convince children

Aye, that is yet another thing I abhor about christians today, they indoctrinate their children towards certain beliefs because they read in the bible that they're supposed to "bring your children up in the ways of the LORD" but fail to realize that statement is talking about teaching kids morality, caring for other people, and DOing good things for others rather than just sitting around "wanting to do" for good things others.

~kakkarot

[facts and evidence]

oi vey, the entire debate about evolution vs science is fundamentally flawed anyway, on both sides.

The ID proponents can just keep saying "well, God created the universe and everything in it, so even if science can explain something that doesn't mean it's because something other than God made it that way." It leaves no room for falsification so it's annulled as a debate point in that it cannot be argued against, though one should not take this to mean that it is the correct viewpoint as there is a lack of unbiased evidence to support it (ie, simply saying "the earth exists so it must have been God who created it" is not evidence of ID).

The anti-IDers can just keep saying "well, just because we don't know how something works NOW doesn't mean we never will. We'll figure everything out eventually, and we don't need God to do it" and this is fallacy as it's based on the assumption that just because something can be understood by us humans that it means that God didn't make it that way.

You should also note that unlike many people believe abiogenesis is not a part of the theory of evolution. The explanation of how the first living cell came to be is not a part of evolutionary theory.

Aye, straw man arguements abound on both sides. One sides says "A is true" and the other side says "No you silly maggot, stop saying B is true when it's clearly not! C is true and you should look at that" and the first side says "You apes! D isn't true! How can you even think that? It's A!". A and C may both be true, but if people are arguing against B and D rather than A and C, which I've often seen, then the debate goes nowhere.


It just goes round and round, everyone trying to be right by biasing the evidence towards their beliefs, and so many missing the actual evidence for what it is without trying to bias it into what it isn't.

Based on the actual evidence, there is no conclusion to the debate, so it's rather pointless to debate it until further evidence is discovered.

I personally think that ID should not be taught in school but that the facts and evidence relating to the debate should be emphasised so that kids understand the basis of such a largely debated issue.

~kakkarot

Actually, for the "premises" you listed in the quote from that other person (actually, they are a logical slippery slope and not real premise), there is evidence to remove support for intelligent design.

"The universe is ordered so God must have created it" - this could be disputed due to the nature of chaos and order flowing into one another; it has been "observed" that order eventually leads to chaos and chaos eventually leads to order. One might throw this into philosophy rather than science because there are no instruments and machines involved in the observations and the conclusions are drawn from watching reality rather than empiracally testing it but one must never forget that science is the methods of learning in general and need not *rely* upon machines.

As well, the statement about order coming from God could be disputed on the question "IF there is a god, why would it HAVE to create an ordered universe? What if the 'creation god' has characteristics more akin to those ascribed to Loki?"

The intelligent design idea of most christians falls short, I agree, because it's based heavily in doctrine and wishy-washy beliefs, but that doesn't mean all variants of intelligent design have to be so shoddy.

In the end, though, the unanswered question still remains "What is the origin of the universe?", and science hasn't yet given a "proper explaination" you can't simply throw out the intelligent design theory because religious nuts abuse it.

~kakkarot

*sighs* There's a number of different theories about evolution which get thrown under the umbrella terms "the theory of evolution" and just plain "evolution", some of those theories are just as dogmatic as certain christian ideas and theories whereas others are not so.

If the christian idea of intelligent design "relies on false dualism" as Jonathan mentioned then the theory should be modified such that it's not making an illogical blanket statement saying "if not a, then b" when there is no logical reason to believe that. However, this does not throw out the *possibility* of intelligent design right there, just as saying that our current species of man didn't evolve from apes doesn't destroy the theories of evolution.

There are also variations of the intelligent design theory, so to say that it relies upon false dualism is somewhat misleading as there are variants which do not rely upon such.

~kakkarot

PS I agree that religion should not be taught in schools. And yes, I am a christian. If people want to know Christ, they can look for themselves rather than being spoonfed a bunch of lies by dogmatic-yet-unknowledgable people who merely claim the title "christian".

Call me bob, b0b, PirateBoB, kakkarot, moron... whichever you prefer

Not many people still active who I recognize (Gandalf, RunLola, and Nay are the majority of those I remember ^_^; )

Thanks for the welcome (back)

~kakkarot

Gandalf: It is not a projection of "my own issues" but a misinterpretation of the word "here" due to it's vague nature. I meant it to reference the entire astralpulse forums because I have been seeing quite a bit of anti-christian remarks (not strong, but still there) in various threads on the first pages of a few subforums, most notably the religious subforums.

I apologize for not making the meaning I was using more clear, but my statement still stands

~kakkarot

ps. see, I won't be posting lots this time around

[The pdf contains the practice excercises]

For those who've not yet found a good source for practicing elemental magic (not *just* theory and ideas), try http://forums.vsociety.net/topic/5141.0 this article,

*and be sure to download the pdf at the end of the article-post because it has the rest of the article that wasn't included in that post. The pdf contains the practice excercises*

~kakkarot

I was wondering, why would spirits, demons, whatever WANT to help you in your magic tricks.

I don't believe in magic, for me it's all placebo but I hear a lot of people saying they need to call upon X or Y to do Z.

Why should these powerful entities, if they exist, actually care ?

Don't they have anything better to do ?

For the newbies at magic, much of the "magic" they do is nothing more than psychological placebo.

However, there are 7-ish billion humans on the planet right? How many spirits are there? Could be ten for every human, could be a thousand for every human, could be a thousand humans for every one spirit. So why would they help? Well, why would you help someone with something if they asked you for help? (boredom, of course )

Now, that is just counting on the spirit's own motivations to help you, but a stronger magician can command a spiritual entity into service (though out-right domination is generally a bad idea as spirits have a lot more free time to get you back in a thousand ways you'd never think of). It is generally preferred by magicians, both of the Left Hand Path and the Right Hand Path to either get help from entities out of the goodwill motivation of the entity's own desires or to make pacts with entities, for rather common-sense reasons (ie, they're not ticked at you, won't be continually trying to "dodge" or rewrite-into-a-different-understanding every request/command you give them, etc).

They probably do have other things to do, but then so do magicians. It's mostly a matter of where the path of the magician and the path of the spirit cross

Of course, this only applies in summoning magic. The various forms of other magic out there don't even have to touch upon the existance of spiritual beings at all.

~kakkarot

Wow, quite a lot of anti-christian sentiment around these forums these days

Realistically, the purpose of the original post seemed to be more to show that Christmas has it's origins in things other than Christianity, which is true.

However, the holiday means to you whatever you get out of it. To me, it's just another time of the year when my family gets together, except this time there's snow and we give stuff to each other ^_^

So, why do you celebrate this time of year?

~kakkarot

The forums said my old account was inactive or something, and since the email I used to register kakkarot is no longer working I had to start with a new nick, yar ^_*

I probably won't be posting *anywhere near* as much as I did back then, but I'm sure that'll just make you gladder to see me

well, I'm off to work now, so I'll actually post stuff later. Just wanted to say hi (and yes, I'm using capitals now! XD)

~kakkarot

ps Jakarta?! That's what it wants to change my beloved "kakkarot" to XD