Intelligent design (Introduction)

by Abel , Thursday, November 03, 2011, 21:13 (4747 days ago) @ David Turell

David: "I love your fanciful stories, but cannot take them seriously. They do not advance real study of true science. They are pseudoscience (but also great science fiction)"

I would never think of advancing the precepts of anything that I believed to be false (pseudo). I am a sincere believer in the truth and the power of reason conferred to those who use it exclusively. But our brains don't tend to work that way. Our left brain lies quite a lot and we of course believe it. Thus we have such curious and strange things as liberal and conservative interpretations of laws and other simple truths as our brain puts its' own "spin" on things. Now you can see why our Supreme Court (a group of "experts") can't agree on the meaning of the constitution, why the faithful can't agree on the meaning of a few teachings, and why the majority of scientists when presented with a simple theorum (not theory) detailing the strategic (not tactical) defeat of cancer, would naturally believe, "It can't be that simple" and many of them will die (some of cancer) believing that myth.

If our NASA scientists gave the same "twists" to math as we do to logic, all are rockets would as lost as we are. Fortunately our politicians and theologians have no say whether it is a liberal or conservative rocket that NASA is currently launching (and you know they'd argue about it).

It unfortunate that this corruption of the truth will tend to grow from generation to generation actually traveling further away from fact unless there is some empiric feedback that that truth is being corrupted. Without this feedback these flawed perceptions and understandings are passed from father to son as sins of knowledge and understanding. Many good men have died trying to correct those sins, and some were actually killed by the "faithful" as heretics and sinners.

Now I think that both you and I can agree that science is the only way that the future can be predicted. After all, we use science to predict the future all the time. If I mixed hydrogen and water and applied a spark, not only could I "predict" an explosion, heat, and the formation of water but by using chemical equilibrium constants I could predict the concentrations of all the reactants and products formed by that reaction. It's not magic. In a similar fashion, our NASA scientists "predicted" where our Mars rovers would land, long after they were launched. These men and women are certainly very bright, but no one would call them "prophets".

As you teach men that science is a way to "predict" what will happen, you can see how a simple explanation might (over the generations) be "expanded" by those without understanding into a "mystical" or pseudoscience. Astrology (initially just math and astronomy) is a fine example of this. A tool corrupted by fools with an incomplete understanding of science.

Men corrupt tools by nature. They turn things into weapons so that their ambitions will prevail. Thus such a simple thing as a hammer that can be used as a tool to build a house with 10,000 blows by a good man, can also be used as a weapon by an evil man to steal a house with just one.

The tool given to men to move huge stones easily was used not only to build homes and cities but to build such monuments of suffering as the pyramids. And if this was not enough, the device's intent was further corrupted when an accident doubtlessly catapulted some hapless soul hundreds of feet to his death. And thus, the catapult was born as well as the concept of the utility of such siege weapons.

Of course many don't believe this. Men turn tools into weapons by nature what a preposterous concept! To examine this I will utterly ignore those things that we would normally consider weapons, like Newtonian or nuclear physics. I won't even talk about our bio-weapons, chem weapons, gun, knives, swords, clubs, hammers, bows, darts, etc. that would not serve my point well. Let us talk about medicine, the noblest profession, whose creed "First do no Harm" is doubtlessly known to you.

The practice of medicine (the noblest profession) has been weaponized. Our pharmaceutical industry routinely extorts their living from our dying while our politician and theologians are silent (some do applaud). Perhaps it is just me, but this seems to violate that high ideal of "doing no harm" when it financially cripples the families of our sick and dying so that they cannot afford to feed and shelter themselves much less those they love. Though cancer can currently be cured with cheap, unpatentable medicines, those medicines have been financially "orphaned" while expensive new analogs of these drugs are developed. Millions of people in agony die every year simply because no one can yet exploit their suffering.

Since it seems to be your intent to become a doctor, these words to might guide you in perfecting the practice of your profession. I sincerely wish you the best of luck in the field.