Pastafarianism: Anti-ID Satire Run Amok

[Peter Nyikos]

After starting out as an anti-ID letter, Pastafarianism has become
a running gag whose public image has gotten so out of control
that it has actually been recognized as a religion in some countries:

It is legally recognized as a religion in the Netherlands[4]
and New Zealand – where Pastafarian representatives are authorized
to officiate weddings.[5][6][7]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flying_Spaghetti_Monster

Fortunately, a federal court in Nebraska has ruled otherwise:

The US District Court of Nebraska has denied a prisoner’s right
to practice Pastafarianism by ruling the Church of the
Flying Spaghetti Monster, or FSMism, is not a religion but a "parody."

Stephen Cavanaugh, a prisoner in a Nebraska state penitentiary,
sued the state in 2014 seeking $5 million in damages for
"deep emotional, psychological, and spiritual pain" over
the alleged breach of his right to worship the Flying Spaghetti Monster
or "His Flying Noodliness."
-- https://www.rt.com/usa/339519-judge-flying-spaghetti-god/

The printed judgment is a masterpiece of jurisprudence. In it, District Judge
John Gerrard deftly negotiates a minefield of legal booby traps, to which he
alludes early on:

This case is difficult because FSMism, as a parody, is designed
to look very much like a religion. Candidly, propositions from
existing case law are not particularly well-suited for such
a situation, because they developed to address more ad hoc creeds,
not a comprehensive but plainly satirical doctrine.
https://www.scribd.com/document/308299698/Cavanaugh-v-Bartelt

In other words: a global living out of a satire that originated in a letter
by a physics student to the Kansas Board of Education,
which concluded (except for a PS and a drawing) as follows:

I 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 (Pastafarianism),
and one third time for logical conjecture based on overwhelming
observable evidence.

Sincerely Yours,

Bobby Henderson, concerned citizen.
https://www.venganza.org/about/open-letter/

The above website continues the living out of the satire, with an ad at the top:

Want to be a Pastafarian minister? Official ordination certificates: $25 Get it now


An article, linked as [9] in the Wikipedia entry, makes a multiply false
claim about ID:

In particular, Mr Henderson was taking aim at the concept of
Intelligent Design, or ID, which provides a supposedly scientific
alternative to the Old Testament belief that God created the world
in six days and nights, but which dismisses most of the fossil record
as false and which relies on the Earth being far younger than
geological evidence shows.
-- https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/1498162/In-the-beginning-there-was-the-Flying-Spaghetti-Monster.html

If this kind of misrepresentation is widespread, it is no wonder that so
many otherwise knowledgeable people claim ID is a form of creationism.


Does anyone reading this know whether the Pastafarians are responsible for
that multiply false claim, or whether it is just due to sloppy reporting?


Peter Nyikos
Professor, Dept. of Mathematics -- standard disclaimer--
University of South Carolina
http://people.math.sc.edu/nyikos/

[Bob Casanova]

On Mon, 2 Jul 2018 09:02:12 -0700 (PDT), the following
appeared in talk.origins, posted by Peter Nyikos
<nyi...@bellsouth.net>:

I'm not sure what your complaint is; the quoted material
from the Telegraph seems to accurately summarize the
situation, and the District judge specifically acknowledged
it to be satire and a parody. There was someone here a few
weeks ago who treated The Onion as a "real" news source; is
that what you think happened in NZ and the Netherlands, or
do you think they just didn't feel like getting into the
dispute about what constitutes a "real" religion? If so, I
can't blame them at all; the issue of "cult" vs. "religion"
here is unresolvable by logic, only by decree, and whether a
parody can be an actual religion would be even worse. After
all, *any* religion can be considered parody (or a cult, or
a joke) by anyone not a member of that religion, which is
why the founders were especially wise in deciding to keep
government out of the "Religion Biz".

Since Henderson's original letter was satire so obvious that
even The Good DrDr would probably "get it", I fail to see
the problem.
--

Bob C.

"The most exciting phrase to hear in science,
the one that heralds new discoveries, is not
'Eureka!' but 'That's funny...'"

- Isaac Asimov

[Mark Isaak]

There are two potential problems with the judge's ruling. First,
religions always change from what they were when they started, so
starting as a parody does not mean the religion will remain a parody.
However, Pastafarianism is new enough that this objection does not apply.

More seriously, parody and religion are not mutually exclusive
categories. People who parody a religion are making the explicitly
religious statement that the religion deserves parody, and probably also
believe that elements of their religion (especially humor) deserve at
least as much veneration as mainline religion. I can accept that
Pastafarianism is not a religion, but it does not follow that
Cavanaugh's following it is not religious.

--
Mark Isaak eciton (at) curioustaxonomy (dot) net
"I think if we ever reach the point where we think we thoroughly
understand who we are and where we come from, we will have failed."
- Carl Sagan

[Peter Nyikos]

On Monday, July 2, 2018 at 1:10:03 PM UTC-4, Bob Casanova wrote:
> On Mon, 2 Jul 2018 09:02:12 -0700 (PDT), the following
> appeared in talk.origins, posted by Peter Nyikos
> <nyi...@bellsouth.net>:
>
> >After starting out as an anti-ID letter, Pastafarianism has become
> >a running gag whose public image has gotten so out of control
> >that it has actually been recognized as a religion in some countries:
> >
> > It is legally recognized as a religion in the Netherlands[4]

> > and New Zealand - where Pastafarian representatives are authorized

Then you are abysmally ignorant about what ID is like.

Do you seriously think that the leading ID proponents believe
either that the fossil record is mostly false or that the
earth is far younger than 4 billion years old?

If either claim about ID proponents were true,
Ron Okimoto could branch out from his broken
record routine of a decade or so against the Discovery
Institute (DI) and REALLY nail them for promoting a pseudoscience.

> and the District judge specifically acknowledged
> it to be satire and a parody.

Do you seriously think that a typical MAD magazine
satire on a movie adheres closely to the plot???

> There was someone here a few
> weeks ago who treated The Onion as a "real" news source; is
> that what you think happened in NZ and the Netherlands,

I have no idea what happened there. I haven't had the time to chase
down the references provided by the Wikipedia entry.

> or do you think they just didn't feel like getting into the
> dispute about what constitutes a "real" religion? If so, I
> can't blame them at all; the issue of "cult" vs. "religion"
> here is unresolvable by logic, only by decree,

IMO, Pastafarianism doesn't even deserve to be called a cult,
because many if not most of its adherents know that
it is just a parody. A cult typically has a large core
of people who take its teachings seriously.

> and whether a
> parody can be an actual religion would be even worse. After
> all, *any* religion can be considered parody (or a cult, or
> a joke) by anyone not a member of that religion,

Anyone can "consider" anything to be anything. The trick is,
to back it up. Are you game for calling Judaism a "parody"?

I almost wrote "Roman Catholicism," but it is safe to be
an anti-Catholic bigot right here in talk.origins. Just
look at the following reply to Martin Harran, a Roman
Catholic:

https://groups.google.com/d/msg/talk.origins/vh_5qLZ_2y0/cObpGZckBwAJ
Subject: Re: More Dawkins
Date: Sat, 23 Jun 2018 06:37:51 -0400
Message-ID: <1l8sidhi5kluhaiso...@4ax.com>

> which is
> why the founders were especially wise in deciding to keep
> government out of the "Religion Biz".

It's been forced into it via the back door, as in the recent
Supreme Court decision on the Christian baker who had to
fight a lawsuit which IMHO was just as frivolous as the
one by that Pastafarian prisoner.

And the Opinion of the Court was carefully worded to show
that the Colorado board in question had shown antagonism
towards the religion of the baker. It left open the question
whether the baker had a right to refuse to produce
what was called a "wedding cake" on religious grounds,
and on the grounds that the same-sex couple could easily
have gotten another baker to produce one for them.

> Since Henderson's original letter was satire so obvious that
> even The Good DrDr would probably "get it", I fail to see
> the problem.

The problem is with the misrepresentation of ID in the Telegraph
article, not with anything directly to do with Pastafarianism.

And it appears that you are unable to answer my question at the end,
but I hope someone else reading it can.

Peter Nyikos
Professor, Dept. of Mathematics -- standard disclaimer--
University of South Carolina

http://www.math.sc.edu/~nyikos/

[*Hemidactylus*]

Is this haphazard spleen vent about who is allowed to officiate a *wedding*
or get *married*, what free exercise means, or your odd defensiveness
toward ID given your alleged agnosticism and denial of cryptocreationism.

Pastafarianism points to the sad state of how mostly Judeochristian beliefs
are given carte blanche or automatic privilege in our society. There are
other ironic religions such as Discordians and Subgenius. What you should
be worried about is that one could make a very strong case for sincerely
held Satanism and there are Satanists fighting tooth and nail for fair
representation in the public square. Say what you will about Scientology,
but it also has a claim to free exercise protection under the 1st amendment
and does the heavy lifting for how a recent belief system can become quite
popular and influential. Compared to more accepted faith stances Mormonism
is still a baby.

[Peter Nyikos]

People wishing to take an advanced course in English Composition
might benefit from doing a warm-up by comparing and contrasting my
well-organized and purposeful post with Hemidactylus's rambling
reply whose purpose is not clear to me, at least.

Not haphazard at all: tightly focused, with economy of language,
and with several purposes.

> about who is allowed to officiate a *wedding*
> or get *married*,

More relevantly, about how easy it is to pull the wool over
the eyes of the highest government officials in more than
one country. But that might become a thing of the past.

Poland, perhaps drawing on the outcome and reasoning of *Cavanaugh v.
Bartlett*, filed 04/12/16, has rejected an attempt to
make Pastafarianism an officially recognized religion:

http://www.thenews.pl/1/11/Artykul/253501,Polish-court-rejects-%E2%80%98Pastafarian%E2%80%99-case
-- dated 05/19/16
Excerpt:
On Thursday, the Voivodship Administrative Court in Warsaw issued
a ruling saying that the ministry did not break the law when it
refused to register the religious organization.

Judge Jolanta Dargas argued that neither the country’s constitution,
nor international conventions were breached by the ministry,
stressing that Pastafarians (as followers of the Church are called)
still have the right to practice their faith in Poland.

> what free exercise means,

See above. The two things, official recognition and free exercise,
are two very different things. And if you think the $5 million
case had anything relevant to say about free exercise of Pastafarianism,
you really need to read the official document of the outcome
of the Nebraska District Court case:

https://www.scribd.com/document/308299698/Cavanaugh-v-Bartelt

> or your odd defensiveness
> toward ID given your alleged agnosticism and denial of cryptocreationism.

You simply have no idea of what "disinterestedness" means. I have a
low opinion of the current state of ID, but if it is to be defeated,
I want it to be done fair and square, not via massive misrepresentation.

And you can stow the "alleged" crap. You may have been conned
by Harshman voicing thoroughly insincere "suspicions" that I am
a closet creationist. I think this is his way of getting back at
me for the way I keep pointing out that his extreme brand of
cladophilia surrenders an important weapon against creationism.

>
> Pastafarianism points to the sad state of how mostly Judeochristian beliefs
> are given carte blanche or automatic privilege in our society.

Yeah, like beliefs against murder, stealing, and bearing false
witness. I do believe that you would like the last one done
away with: your actions speak louder than your words.

> There are
> other ironic religions such as Discordians and Subgenius.

I don't know anything about those, but I do know about Last Tuesdayism.
You often seem to be flirting with nihilism -- is that why you
didn't list it?

> What you should
> be worried about is that one could make a very strong case for sincerely
> held Satanism and there are Satanists fighting tooth and nail for fair
> representation in the public square.

Satanists are very well known. I prefer to focus on organizations
that work mostly below the radar screen of people in the Judeo-Christian-
Islamic tradition, and of the mass media.

And the Pastafarians are a very determined lot. Here are more
excerpts from that webpage on the Polish decision:

Church representative Piotr Podoba said that "the minister
asserts the right to judge the amount of faith in faith",
following the ruling's announcement.

“They have never taken part in any of our meetings, so I do not know
how they can claim that we do not believe in the Flying Spaghetti
Monster,” he added.

The Polish arm of the organisation announced they will file
an appeal to the Supreme Administrative Court, and possibly
even turn to international courts.

> Say what you will about Scientology,

I've said almost nothing about it in all my years of internet
discussions. If you are curious about that "almost," I'll gladly
let you know what it's about.

> but it also has a claim to free exercise protection under the 1st amendment
> and does the heavy lifting for how a recent belief system can become quite
> popular and influential. Compared to more accepted faith stances Mormonism
> is still a baby.

These are sincere belief systems. The plaintiff in the
$5 million lawsuit did not do a credible job of presenting his
alleged beliefs.


Peter Nyikos
Mathematics Professor -- standard disclaimer--

[Burkhard]

The full decision is here:
https://www.scribd.com/document/308299698/Cavanaugh-v-Bartelt

OK, hobby horse alert - I have published some papers on this, including
"The play's the thing wherein I'll catch the conscience of the King:
Religious and Political Affiliation in Online Games as Data Protection
Issue,

https://www.research.ed.ac.uk/portal/en/publications/the-plays-the-thing-wherein-ill-catch-the-conscience-of-the-king(9998d4f7-dc33-4ec4-ad8a-da3c8b19d238).html

It build on an earlier paper I did , Schafer/Abel, “All the world’s a
stage” – Legal and cultural reflections on the surveillance of online
games, Datenschutz und Datensicherheit - DuD, volume 38, issue 9, 2014,
pp. 593-600
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11623-014-0235-1


The judge in our case goes to some (procedurally problematic, in my
view) length to analyse pastafarianism on the basis of the FSM Gospel
book as "judicial notice" (i.e. this was not submitted by the
complainant). The discussion on the relation between ID and creationism
is interesting, detailed, and I'd say sound.

But the legal analysis of pastafarianism is problematic, for a number of
reasons. The first, and most important one, is the one you mention:
there is a genetic fallacy here. While FSM was born as parody, that does
not mean it can't be practiced now as a secular religion. The judge
correctly acknowledges that for the purpose of the law, secular
philosophies qualify - but tries to make a distinction without
difference between "proper" secular philosophies and "improper" ones
that arbitrarily adopt a secular work and then center around it (the "A
short history of time" reading circle as religious congregation). But as
applied here, that analysis goes way beyond United States v. Meyers,
(the religious exemption of dope smoking case), which would allow to
distinguish this through the absence of "communal rituals and observances".

If you look at pastafarian communities - e.g. their Kiva group here e.g.
https://www.kiva.org/team/fsm

I'd say they easily meet the test: there is a concern for "ultimate"
things" that comes up frequently in the discussions. True, it is often
formulated negatively ("there is no...") but as discussed with
Hemidactylus on an earlier thread, there is also an old tradition of
"negative theology" in both Christian and non-Christian mainstream
religions that do the same. There is communal activity - doing this
together for a better world. And there is collective observation of
rituals (talk like a pirate day is not only religiously observed n the
discussion boards, but also the day of a loanathon for fundraising), and
that ticks all the Meyers criteria.

Going down the genetic fallacy is obviously dangerous - will a court
next say that Joseph Smith was "obviously just making it up for a
laugh/money" and deny religious status to the Mormon Church? Again, the
court recognizes the danger ("Of course, there are those who contend
and Cavanaugh is probably among them— that the Bible or the Koran are
just as fictional as those books...".

The reason to distinguish these seems to be that in the case of FSM, the
self-declared believers themselves think of it as a parody and don't
take it seriously. But that is only partially true I'd say, and today
there are those who keep it as parody, and also quite a number of those
who found it to do a valuable job as a way to build a "religious"
identity (see Obadia, When Virtuality Shapes Social Reality. Fake Cults
and the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster. Online-Heidelberg
Journal of Religions on the Internet, volume 8, 2015) So contrary to
the court's explicit claims, it engages in theological interpretation.
It takes side in an issue that is dividing the FSM community, for
starters - it says that Cavanaugh's and his fellow travelers
interpretation is false. And one can again see the problems - when the
court argues that "is literal reading of the FSM gospel violates the
very message of FSM" - but of course, lots of theists here on TO argue
similarly that a literal reading of Genesis totally misunderstands the
literary category of the work. So a judge following this precedent could
argue that creationists also do not deserve the protection of religious
accommodation laws.

Another comment by the court in this respect is interesting - it
indicates it would come to the same result if a group adopted a religion
from a work of fiction, such as Vonnegut's Bokononism. That's where my
above cited papers come in, as part of that research, I looked into
empirical sociological studies on online gaming communities - and how
"in game religions" have for some players become "real". (Geraci,
Virtually Sacred: Myth and Meaning in World of Warcraft and Second Life,
Oxford University Press, Oxford 2014) There is a theoretical background
to this for me at least, in the theories of Marcuse, (One-Dimensional
Man: Studies in the Ideology of Advanced Industrial Society), Hanna
Arendt ((1958), The Human Condition ) and in particular Huizinga's "Homo
Ludens" - they all show just how important "game playing" and make
belief are for our cognitive development, sense of identity, and one of
the last places of freedom in modern capitalist societies.


Now I can see where the court is coming from - it thinks, probably quite
rightly, that the complainant is taking the piss. While that might well
be true, there is just no easy way to argue this in a doctrinally sound
way, that does not open the floodgates for much more extreme side taking
in matters theological. For me, that indicates that the problem is with
the laws, RLUIPA and RFRA - there is simply no way to interpret them so
that a) the results make sense and b) are consistent with the Bill of
Rights, so one or the other has to give. The court chooses a) over b) -
"I can't say what a religion is but I know it if I see one", at the
danger of setting a dangerous precedent.

[Bob Casanova]

On Mon, 2 Jul 2018 13:42:06 -0700 (PDT), the following

Thank you. This discussion is now over. HAND.

[Bob Casanova]

On Mon, 2 Jul 2018 13:01:24 -0700, the following appeared in
talk.origins, posted by Mark Isaak
<eciton@curiousta/xyz/xonomy.net>:

I don't claim he's not sincere, only that, as I noted, the
classification of "religion" vs. "cult" vs. "parody" is one
impossible to logically resolve; it can only be resolved by
decree. But see below:

One thing I failed to note: Peter complained that ID is not
"a form of creationism", even though the founder of ID
specifically stated that the "designer" was the Christian
God. Although it's possible that ID has mutated into
something else, it started as a way to get creationism past
the "religion sniff test", and until/unless it becomes
something else *by objective observation* (i.e., actual
scientific research instead of declarations of incredulity
and/or ignorance) it should *legally* remain as it started.

Just my 20 mills, and everyone else's opinion may not
concur.

[Peter Nyikos]

Burkhard may still have me killfiled, so I would appreciate
it if someone were to call reply to this post to his attention.
I promise not to make any negative personal comments about anyone
in talk.origins in any reply I make to him if he un-killfiles me,
at least temporarily.

This post is directed at the general readership as well,
so I make some comments about Mark Isaak's contribution
before my (very incomplete, at the present)
comments on what Burkhard has to say.

On Tuesday, July 3, 2018 at 11:15:03 AM UTC-4, Burkhard wrote:
> Mark Isaak wrote:
> > On 7/2/18 10:06 AM, Bob Casanova wrote:
> >> On Mon, 2 Jul 2018 09:02:12 -0700 (PDT), the following
> >> appeared in talk.origins, posted by Peter Nyikos
> >> <nyi...@bellsouth.net>:
> >>
> >>> After starting out as an anti-ID letter, Pastafarianism has become
> >>> a running gag whose public image has gotten so out of control
> >>> that it has actually been recognized as a religion in some countries:
> >>>
> >>> It is legally recognized as a religion in the Netherlands[4]

> >>> and New Zealand - where Pastafarian representatives are authorized

<snip>

> >> the issue of "cult" vs. "religion"
> >> here is unresolvable by logic, only by decree, and whether a
> >> parody can be an actual religion would be even worse.

Food for thought: Thugee was a cult, NOT a parody. It took a
Westerner (British, to be specific) to care enough about the ritual
murders to take steps to eradicate it.


<snip to get to a bit of Mark's reply>

> > There are two potential problems with the judge's ruling. First,
> > religions always change from what they were when they started, so
> > starting as a parody does not mean the religion will remain a parody.
> > However, Pastafarianism is new enough that this objection does not apply.
> >
> > More seriously, parody and religion are not mutually exclusive
> > categories. People who parody a religion are making the explicitly
> > religious statement that the religion deserves parody,

I would prefer to call this a "meta-religious statement".

> > and probably also
> > believe that elements of their religion (especially humor) deserve at
> > least as much veneration as mainline religion.

I think this is stretching the word "veneration" unduly; "respect"
is much more to the point, IMO.

> > I can accept that
> > Pastafarianism is not a religion, but it does not follow that
> > Cavanaugh's following it is not religious.

But I believe it does follow from the reasoning in the court
case, which can be accessed via the url that Burkhard
repeats next:

>
> The full decision is here:
> https://www.scribd.com/document/308299698/Cavanaugh-v-Bartelt
>
> OK, hobby horse alert - I have published some papers on this, including
> "The play's the thing wherein I'll catch the conscience of the King:
> Religious and Political Affiliation in Online Games as Data Protection
> Issue,
>
> https://www.research.ed.ac.uk/portal/en/publications/the-plays-the-thing-wherein-ill-catch-the-conscience-of-the-king(9998d4f7-dc33-4ec4-ad8a-da3c8b19d238).html

All the url took me to was an abstract and a rather mysterious bar
graph. The abstract talks about the distinction between people's online
personae [analogous to roles in role-playing games such as
Dungeons and Dragons] and their true personalities. This concept
might profitably be combined with analysis of other forms of
role playing, such as Cavanaugh's lawsuit.

> It build on an earlier paper I did , Schafer/Abel, "All the world's a

> stage" - Legal and cultural reflections on the surveillance of online

> games, Datenschutz und Datensicherheit - DuD, volume 38, issue 9, 2014,
> pp. 593-600
> https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11623-014-0235-1

This is paywalled, and I am too rushed for time now to see whether
the University of South Carolina has an institutional subscription.
The webpage does not make that easy to find out.

Tomorrow being the fourth of July, I may have to wait until Thursday
to find out. I may not even get the opportunity to post anywhere tomorrow;
we have a barbecue scheduled with quite a number of guests.

>
> The judge in our case goes to some (procedurally problematic, in my
> view) length to analyse pastafarianism on the basis of the FSM Gospel
> book as "judicial notice" (i.e. this was not submitted by the
> complainant). The discussion on the relation between ID and creationism
> is interesting, detailed, and I'd say sound.

I'll need to check this out carefully. If it is sound, it is
nothing like the benighted statement in the article by the Telegraph
that I quoted from.

> But the legal analysis of pastafarianism is problematic, for a number of
> reasons. The first, and most important one, is the one you mention:
> there is a genetic fallacy here. While FSM was born as parody, that does
> not mean it can't be practiced now as a secular religion. The judge
> correctly acknowledges that for the purpose of the law, secular
> philosophies qualify - but tries to make a distinction without
> difference between "proper" secular philosophies and "improper" ones
> that arbitrarily adopt a secular work and then center around it (the "A
> short history of time" reading circle as religious congregation). But as
> applied here, that analysis goes way beyond United States v. Meyers,
> (the religious exemption of dope smoking case), which would allow to
> distinguish this through the absence of "communal rituals and observances".
>
> If you look at pastafarian communities - e.g. their Kiva group here e.g.
> https://www.kiva.org/team/fsm
>

I saw no hint of the following on the webpage that comes up when
I click on the link:

> I'd say they easily meet the test: there is a concern for "ultimate"
> things" that comes up frequently in the discussions.

But here is the burning question: do these discussions have anything
to do with the practice of Pastafarianism?

Here at the University of South Carolina we had (and may still have,
I haven't checked in the last few years) a Pastafarian group, but
they always struck me as just another student organization. There
was never any hint that they styled themselves as a religion.

I attended one meeting of theirs, which focused on some televised
debate. Due to technical difficulties we missed most of it,
so I got to talking to some of the other audience members,
at least one of whom was a Pastafarian. I got the impression
that it was an agnostic society, not given to taking any stands
on religion.

> True, it is often
> formulated negatively ("there is no...") but as discussed with
> Hemidactylus on an earlier thread, there is also an old tradition of
> "negative theology" in both Christian and non-Christian mainstream
> religions that do the same. There is communal activity - doing this
> together for a better world. And there is collective observation of
> rituals (talk like a pirate day is not only religiously observed n the
> discussion boards, but also the day of a loanathon for fundraising), and
> that ticks all the Meyers criteria.

Halloween is like pirate day, even to the point of widespread raising
of money for UNICEF, but nobody ever suggested that observers of Halloween
constituted a religious cult.

And then there are Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, the tooth fairy,
the Sandman... each coming with a ritual.

> Going down the genetic fallacy is obviously dangerous - will a court
> next say that Joseph Smith was "obviously just making it up for a
> laugh/money" and deny religious status to the Mormon Church?

No, because the Mormons have very sincere beliefs of a rather
elaborate sort. There never was any hint of an intentional parody
anywhere in their history, AFAIK.

> Again, the
> court recognizes the danger ("Of course, there are those who contend

> and Cavanaugh is probably among them - that the Bible or the Koran are

> just as fictional as those books...".

That only reinforces the suspicion that these people don't take
their alleged beliefs seriously.


Remainder deleted, to be replied to later. Duty calls.


Peter Nyikos

[Mark Isaak]

On 7/3/18 11:08 AM, Bob Casanova wrote:
> [...]

> One thing I failed to note: Peter complained that ID is not
> "a form of creationism", even though the founder of ID
> specifically stated that the "designer" was the Christian
> God.

If I understand his position, Peter's conclusion that ID is not a form
of creation rests on his (not unreasonable) inclusion of directed
panspermia in the category of intelligent design. And with that
inclusion, I would agree that not all of intelligent design is
creationism. Since there are perhaps as many as five people in the
world who understand the term "intelligent design" to include
panspermia, we may say that ID is only about 99.99999% creationism, and
0.00001% not.

[Mark Isaak]

On 7/3/18 3:22 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> Burkhard may still have me killfiled, so I would appreciate
> it if someone were to call reply to this post to his attention.

Done.

Ignoring the out-of-sixteen-blocks-past-left-field Thuggee reference, I
will go out on a fairly sturdy limb and say that all cults are
religions, period.

> <snip to get to a bit of Mark's reply>
>
>>> There are two potential problems with the judge's ruling. First,
>>> religions always change from what they were when they started, so
>>> starting as a parody does not mean the religion will remain a parody.
>>> However, Pastafarianism is new enough that this objection does not apply.
>>>
>>> More seriously, parody and religion are not mutually exclusive
>>> categories. People who parody a religion are making the explicitly
>>> religious statement that the religion deserves parody,
>
> I would prefer to call this a "meta-religious statement".

I beg to differ. When one says, "Only a cruel mind could have invented
hell" (I think I'm misquoting Bertrand Russell), one is not making a
statement about religion, one is making a statement about specific
religions which include Hell. Pastafarianism makes a similar statement:
essentially, "Religions which accept intelligent design are really stupid."

>>> and probably also
>>> believe that elements of their religion (especially humor) deserve at
>>> least as much veneration as mainline religion.
>
> I think this is stretching the word "veneration" unduly; "respect"
> is much more to the point, IMO.

I see your point. I don't think it harms my overall argument.

Your sample size, though, is not sufficient for conclusions.

>> True, it is often
>> formulated negatively ("there is no...") but as discussed with
>> Hemidactylus on an earlier thread, there is also an old tradition of
>> "negative theology" in both Christian and non-Christian mainstream
>> religions that do the same. There is communal activity - doing this
>> together for a better world. And there is collective observation of
>> rituals (talk like a pirate day is not only religiously observed n the
>> discussion boards, but also the day of a loanathon for fundraising), and
>> that ticks all the Meyers criteria.
>
> Halloween is like pirate day, even to the point of widespread raising
> of money for UNICEF, but nobody ever suggested that observers of Halloween
> constituted a religious cult.

Oh, I have heard plenty of noise from some of the Religious Right who
seem to feel that way. Which is ironic, since Halloween is a Christian
holiday.

> And then there are Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, the tooth fairy,
> the Sandman... each coming with a ritual.

Not all rituals are religious (school commencement ceremonies might be a
better example), but if the ritual comes with references to the putative
religion and with sacred and/or moral overtones, the ritualizing would
seem to me to be rather telling.

>> Going down the genetic fallacy is obviously dangerous - will a court
>> next say that Joseph Smith was "obviously just making it up for a
>> laugh/money" and deny religious status to the Mormon Church?
>
> No, because the Mormons have very sincere beliefs of a rather
> elaborate sort. There never was any hint of an intentional parody
> anywhere in their history, AFAIK.
>
>> Again, the
>> court recognizes the danger ("Of course, there are those who contend
>> and Cavanaugh is probably among them - that the Bible or the Koran are
>> just as fictional as those books...".
>
> That only reinforces the suspicion that these people don't take
> their alleged beliefs seriously.
>
> Remainder deleted, to be replied to later. Duty calls.

[*Hemidactylus*]

Mark Isaak <eciton@curiousta/xyz/xonomy.net> wrote:
> On 7/3/18 11:08 AM, Bob Casanova wrote:
>> [...]
>> One thing I failed to note: Peter complained that ID is not
>> "a form of creationism", even though the founder of ID
>> specifically stated that the "designer" was the Christian
>> God.
>
> If I understand his position, Peter's conclusion that ID is not a form
> of creation rests on his (not unreasonable) inclusion of directed
> panspermia in the category of intelligent design. And with that
> inclusion, I would agree that not all of intelligent design is
> creationism. Since there are perhaps as many as five people in the
> world who understand the term "intelligent design" to include
> panspermia, we may say that ID is only about 99.99999% creationism, and
> 0.00001% not.
>

I forget the exact percentage but isn’t Peter 10% creationist, designist,
or god botherer? Or does he hide that behind some bizarre story about
probes from Throom? He has a strange protective stance toward ID that is
suspect. Say something untoward about Behe and he goes all castle doctrine
on your ass in a way that would make Dirty Harry proud. His version of
panspermia is so far fetched it has to be a ruse to cover his true
proclivities. It is a very jesuitic concoction he has perfected where he
can criticize the overreach of evolutionists (mainly nemesis Harshman and
his cronies including me) without coming out as full blown ID creation
proponent. He can push his clout by criticizing obvious creationist
windbags such as Ray the OEC and DoubleDoc the YEC. Yet then he turns
around and attacks people who criticize ID creationism with such subtlety
you gotta wonder where he is coming from. He gets really worked up about
alleged misrepresentation of ID as when Ron posts his very pointedly harsh
criticism of ID scams or recently he was all worked up about pasta
worshippers misrepresenting ID.

[Burkhard]

Mark Isaak wrote:
> On 7/3/18 3:22 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
>> Burkhard may still have me killfiled, so I would appreciate
>> it if someone were to call reply to this post to his attention.
>
> Done.

And do you know what you have done, and take full responsibility ? :o)

OK, I'll answer yours here, and Peter's in his original post


<snip>

I'd be tempted to go further and say they make an even more obviously
theological point, if you look at the FSM first commandment: the god of
the creationists is either vain, obsessed with copyright or terribly
insecure. This traits are common in humans, but even there they can be
irritating. So a deity that expects constant praise and acknowledgement
for their creation, and so to speak "signs" all their work, is on
reflection not a particularly sound and overly anthropocentric deity.

I'd say agnostic "as a society", maybe, without expecting it from its
members In that sense similar to the Unitarian Universalists I'd say,
where individual members can self-- identify also as Christians, Jewish,
agnostic, etc , and as a group no collective stance is taken. Same with
FSM, according to the official website:
"We’re not anti-religion. This is NOT an atheists club. Anyone and
everyone is welcome to join our church including current members of
other religions. In addition to the Atheists, Agnostics, and
Freethinkers who have joined us, we have a number of Christian (and
Muslim, and Hindu and Buddhist …) members and I would love to have more.
Note to the religious: You are welcome here."

>
>>> True, it is often
>>> formulated negatively ("there is no...") but as discussed with
>>> Hemidactylus on an earlier thread, there is also an old tradition of
>>> "negative theology" in both Christian and non-Christian mainstream
>>> religions that do the same. There is communal activity - doing this
>>> together for a better world. And there is collective observation of
>>> rituals (talk like a pirate day is not only religiously observed n the
>>> discussion boards, but also the day of a loanathon for fundraising), and
>>> that ticks all the Meyers criteria.
>>
>> Halloween is like pirate day, even to the point of widespread raising
>> of money for UNICEF, but nobody ever suggested that observers of
>> Halloween
>> constituted a religious cult.
>
> Oh, I have heard plenty of noise from some of the Religious Right who
> seem to feel that way. Which is ironic, since Halloween is a Christian
> holiday.

Catholic, to be precise - it's all about the souls in purgatory. Though
people have argued that it was one of the many attempts to appropriate
an older pagan festival.

So yes, it would definitely fall under the scope of RFRA, provided that
you can show that it burdens unduly the exercise of a sincerely held
belief. That may be more difficult if you say you have to wear a mask
and go from house to house to ask for sweets (which is creepy in adults
anyway), but if it is about walking down the street with a bell and
shouting for people to remember the souls of the just departed, I'd say
a slam dunk.

>
>> And then there are Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, the tooth fairy,
>> the Sandman... each coming with a ritual.
>
> Not all rituals are religious (school commencement ceremonies might be a
> better example), but if the ritual comes with references to the putative
> religion and with sacred and/or moral overtones, the ritualizing would
> seem to me to be rather telling.

There is another problem here in the ruling that you identify. Not all
members of a religion typically belief all its inherited symbols and
rituals to the same degree. And you have arguably "secular" members of
what are essentially religious groups, at least originally.

The FSM addresses this directly:

"It {The FSM} s not a joke. Elements of our religion are sometimes
described as satire and there are many members who do not literally
believe our scripture, but this isn’t unusual in religion. A lot of
Christians don’t believe the Bible is literally true – but that doesn’t
mean they aren’t True Christians."

now depending on the country, the ratio between traditional believer vs
secularized member may be different between FSM and a mainstream
religion, but at least for much of northern Europe, I'd be doubtful
about even that. That does not mean that these entities stop to be
religions. For the purpose of the law, that means they still meet the
first test. But if in the individual case, the claimant can show that
their sincerely held beliefs are unduly burdened, the second step, is
another issue

I'd say the court would have been on much safer territory to deny only
that second step, the "undue burden", and not opine about whether or not
FSM is a religions.

[Burkhard]

Not quite, I'd say. First, it has been increasingly questioned if there
was such a thing as the Thugee cult, or if this was more of a British
invention, an expression of orientalism, more Indiana Jones than actual
fact. A typical example of this school of thought is e.g. Martine van
Woerkens "The Strangled Traveler: Colonial Imaginings and the Thugs of
India."

Even if one does not go down this route, it seems clear that they did
not commit their killings to perform rituals or because they claimed
Kali told them to - that was indeed just a British misconception. They
were on the whole desperately poor, and formed ad hoc and short lived
gangs to survive, which then killed victims for their money. In that
precarious existence, they would start to pray for the help of any deity
that was potentially sympathetic. (a bit in the way in which St Dismas,
the patron Saint of repentant thieves, was sometimes also prayed to by
practicing ones) So e.g. Mike Dash, who otherwise accepts that there was
such a thing as Thugee cult - see his Thug: the true story of India's
murderous cult"

>
>
> <snip to get to a bit of Mark's reply>
>
>>> There are two potential problems with the judge's ruling. First,
>>> religions always change from what they were when they started, so
>>> starting as a parody does not mean the religion will remain a parody.
>>> However, Pastafarianism is new enough that this objection does not apply.
>>>
>>> More seriously, parody and religion are not mutually exclusive
>>> categories. People who parody a religion are making the explicitly
>>> religious statement that the religion deserves parody,
>
> I would prefer to call this a "meta-religious statement".

Possibly, but most religions make statements like that as part of their
theology, including claiming that all other religions are false or at
least imperfect.

>
>
>>> and probably also
>>> believe that elements of their religion (especially humor) deserve at
>>> least as much veneration as mainline religion.
>
> I think this is stretching the word "veneration" unduly; "respect"
> is much more to the point, IMO.
>
>>> I can accept that
>>> Pastafarianism is not a religion, but it does not follow that
>>> Cavanaugh's following it is not religious.
>
> But I believe it does follow from the reasoning in the court
> case, which can be accessed via the url that Burkhard
> repeats next:
>
>>
>> The full decision is here:
>> https://www.scribd.com/document/308299698/Cavanaugh-v-Bartelt
>>
>> OK, hobby horse alert - I have published some papers on this, including
>> "The play's the thing wherein I'll catch the conscience of the King:
>> Religious and Political Affiliation in Online Games as Data Protection
>> Issue,
>>
>> https://www.research.ed.ac.uk/portal/en/publications/the-plays-the-thing-wherein-ill-catch-the-conscience-of-the-king(9998d4f7-dc33-4ec4-ad8a-da3c8b19d238).html
>
> All the url took me to was an abstract and a rather mysterious bar
> graph. The abstract talks about the distinction between people's online

The link is where it says "document" - there is an open lock next to it
to indicate open access

I'd say it's the other way round - again similar to the UU - discussing
this in a community is the practice, even if the outcome is more open.
But as secular and humanist philosophies are protected by the law in
question, it is difficult to see why these are not.

>
> Here at the University of South Carolina we had (and may still have,
> I haven't checked in the last few years) a Pastafarian group, but
> they always struck me as just another student organization. There
> was never any hint that they styled themselves as a religion.
>
> I attended one meeting of theirs, which focused on some televised
> debate. Due to technical difficulties we missed most of it,
> so I got to talking to some of the other audience members,
> at least one of whom was a Pastafarian. I got the impression
> that it was an agnostic society, not given to taking any stands
> on religion.

See also my answer to Mark. As a group, they are agnostic, in the same
way Unitarian Universalists are agnostic collectively - but individual
members can be Christian, Muslim, atheists, agnostics etc .

Here from the FAQ:

Q: A lot of Pastafarians seem to be anti-religion and/or atheists (why
is this?)
A: We’re not anti-religion. This is NOT an atheists club. Anyone and

everyone is welcome to join our church including current members of
other religions. In addition to the Atheists, Agnostics, and
Freethinkers who have joined us, we have a number of Christian (and
Muslim, and Hindu and Buddhist …) members and I would love to have more.
Note to the religious: You are welcome here

That is a very similar stance to that the UU takes" no official position
(and in that sense agnostic) but providing a framework for people to
discuss these things

>
>
>> True, it is often
>> formulated negatively ("there is no...") but as discussed with
>> Hemidactylus on an earlier thread, there is also an old tradition of
>> "negative theology" in both Christian and non-Christian mainstream
>> religions that do the same. There is communal activity - doing this
>> together for a better world. And there is collective observation of
>> rituals (talk like a pirate day is not only religiously observed n the
>> discussion boards, but also the day of a loanathon for fundraising), and
>> that ticks all the Meyers criteria.
>
> Halloween is like pirate day, even to the point of widespread raising
> of money for UNICEF, but nobody ever suggested that observers of Halloween
> constituted a religious cult.

Well, Halloween is originally a catholic holy day, and as such covered
anyway - no need for a group that participates in Halloween and only
Halloween.

And then there are quite a number of Christians that do indeed think of
participants to engage in cultic activity (some of them obviously think
that Catholicism is itself a cult, others that it is an old pagan holiday)

>
> And then there are Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, the tooth fairy,
> the Sandman... each coming with a ritual.

And potentially the first two activities are protected by RFRA and
similar laws, as they are part of or originate from recognized religions
- the issue would only be what exactly constitutes to burden unduly a
sincerely held belief with respect to them

Tooth fairy and Sandman would probably not qualify at present - simply
because they are not part of a belief system that concerns itself
with"the ultimate issues"- though there are elements of the Neil Gaiman
fan community where you can doubt this at least for the latter. The
Sandman comics come with a pretty elaborated philosophy and ethical
framework.

>
>
>> Going down the genetic fallacy is obviously dangerous - will a court
>> next say that Joseph Smith was "obviously just making it up for a
>> laugh/money" and deny religious status to the Mormon Church?
>
> No, because the Mormons have very sincere beliefs of a rather
> elaborate sort. There never was any hint of an intentional parody
> anywhere in their history, AFAIK.

That seems to me question begging. In the argument, Cavanaugh is denied
protection under the penal equivalent of RFRA even though he claims to
hold a sincere belief, because, so the argument, the religion was
"conceived by someone who did not take it serious himself" - that's why
it is a genetic argument, an argument from origins.

Now, applied to the Mormon example, the sincere belief of current
Mormons would not matter any longer, IF the claim would be made that the
founder, Smith, did not take it serious (not necessarily parody, "in it
for the money" would do). And I'd say one could easily see a non-Mormon
judge coming to this conclusion. That's why I think it's a dangerous
slippery slope - the sincerity of the group as it is NOW does not
matter, if the belief system was originally "conceived in jest" or in
some other non-sincere way.

>
>> Again, the
>> court recognizes the danger ("Of course, there are those who contend
>> and Cavanaugh is probably among them - that the Bible or the Koran are
>> just as fictional as those books...".
>
> That only reinforces the suspicion that these people don't take
> their alleged beliefs seriously.

Well, this is a statement by the judge about FSM, not a statement by
FSM. And of course people can take an anti-religious view of this type
very seriously - and that is all that is needed for RFRA protection.

To quote the official FSM position on this:
Q: Is this a joke?
A: It’s not a joke. Elements of our religion are sometimes described as

satire and there are many members who do not literally believe our
scripture, but this isn’t unusual in religion. A lot of Christians don’t
believe the Bible is literally true – but that doesn’t mean they aren’t
True Christians.

If you say Pastafarians must believe in a literal Flying Spaghetti
Monster to be True Believers, then you can make a similar argument for
Christians. There is a lot of outlandish stuff in the Bible that
rational Christians choose to ignore.

[Mark Isaak]

On 7/4/18 6:49 AM, Burkhard wrote:
> Peter Nyikos wrote:
>> [big snip]

>>> Going down the genetic fallacy is obviously dangerous - will a court
>>> next say that Joseph Smith was "obviously just making it up for a
>>> laugh/money" and deny religious status to the Mormon Church?
>>
>> No, because the Mormons have very sincere beliefs of a rather
>> elaborate sort. There never was any hint of an intentional parody
>> anywhere in their history, AFAIK.
>
> That seems to me question begging. In the argument, Cavanaugh is denied
> protection under the penal equivalent of RFRA even though he claims  to
> hold a sincere belief, because, so the argument, the religion was
> "conceived by someone who did not take it serious himself" - that's why
> it is a genetic argument, an argument from origins.
>
> Now, applied to the Mormon example, the sincere belief of current
> Mormons would not matter any longer, IF the claim would be made that the
> founder, Smith, did not take it serious (not necessarily parody, "in it
> for the money" would do). And I'd say one could easily see a non-Mormon
> judge coming to this conclusion. That's why I think it's a dangerous
> slippery slope - the sincerity of the group as it is NOW does not
> matter, if the belief system  was originally "conceived in jest" or in
> some other non-sincere way.

It might also be worth noting that, like Cavanaugh, Mormons were
actively denied freedom to practice their religion for several years
after their origin. For the Mormons, that including many murders and a
threatened attack by the US Army. I think it is safe to say that the
Mormons had sincerely held beliefs even during that period.

[Mark Isaak]

Peter has said several times that he wants to believe in God but has to
consider the prospect unlikely. (I consider him a devout Catholic
agnostic.) I think something like that applies to his creationism. He
*wants* to believe that Behe is not a sort of creationist and that
irreducible complexity is not total hokum, but unlike his theism, there
he has succeeded in convincing himself.

[Bob Casanova]

On Tue, 3 Jul 2018 18:19:23 -0700, the following appeared in

talk.origins, posted by Mark Isaak
<eciton@curiousta/xyz/xonomy.net>:

>On 7/3/18 11:08 AM, Bob Casanova wrote:
>> [...]
>> One thing I failed to note: Peter complained that ID is not
>> "a form of creationism", even though the founder of ID
>> specifically stated that the "designer" was the Christian
>> God.
>
>If I understand his position, Peter's conclusion that ID is not a form
>of creation rests on his (not unreasonable) inclusion of directed
>panspermia in the category of intelligent design. And with that
>inclusion, I would agree that not all of intelligent design is
>creationism. Since there are perhaps as many as five people in the
>world who understand the term "intelligent design" to include
>panspermia, we may say that ID is only about 99.99999% creationism, and
>0.00001% not.

That's essentially how I see it. And I'd point out that
while panspermia is indeed a sort of "intelligent design",
it still begs the question regarding the ultimate origin of
life, the one "classical" ID purports to answer.

[*Hemidactylus*]

I note one of the links in your OP was RT, a sad state propaganda arm of
Putinism. Russia is doing bad stuff to people with unorthodox beliefs.
Witness the JWs there have been pretty much criminalized.

https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/04/20/world/europe/russia-bans-jehovahs-witnesses.html

Compare that to the US where JWs are responsible for some major decisions
in SCOTUS jurisprudence, because they could.

Now you may not take colander-heads seriously as a faith stance, but would
you condone this:

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/humor-failure-russia-crackdown-pastafarians-shows-kremlin-church-ties-flna8C10995408

But a Russian pastafarian did win the right to don a collander for his DL
pic:

https://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/01/15/russian_pastafarian/

“However, Vladimir Kuzin, the deputy head of the Moscow State Traffic
Inspectorate, assured that the powers that be will demand Filin's strict
adherence to his religion. Kuzin told Russian media: "The next time he is
stopped by the traffic police, if he doesn't have a pasta strainer on his
head, his licence will be taken from him."”

Would such strict adherence be expected of a Muslim woman who chooses to
wear head attire as a matter of identity and solidarity yet decides not to
wear it all the time, especially when driving?

[Earle Jones]

On 2018-07-04 13:16:31 +0000, Burkhard said:

> Mark Isaak wrote:
>> On 7/3/18 3:22 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
>>> Burkhard may still have me killfiled, so I would appreciate
>>> it if someone were to call reply to this post to his attention.
>>
>> Done.
>
> And do you know what you have done, and take full responsibility ? :o)
>
> OK, I'll answer yours here, and Peter's in his original post
>
>
> <snip>
>>>
>>> <snip>
>>>>>> the issue of "cult" vs. "religion"
>>>>>> here is unresolvable by logic, only by decree, and whether a
>>>>>> parody can be an actual religion would be even worse.

*
A cult is not a religion.
A cult becomes a religion when it first receives its tax exemption from
the IRS.
See, for example, Scientology.

earle
*

[Kalkidas]

LOL! Yeah, It's so sad how "Judeochristian beliefs" are mandatory in the
curricula of all our schools, and how our governments are theocracies
ruled by them. And how the media are all corrupt and filter every story
through a "Judeochristian" bias.

Oh, wait.......

[Burkhard]

Earle Jones wrote:
> On 2018-07-04 13:16:31 +0000, Burkhard said:
>
>> Mark Isaak wrote:
>>> On 7/3/18 3:22 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
>>>> Burkhard may still have me killfiled, so I would appreciate
>>>> it if someone were to call reply to this post to his attention.
>>>
>>> Done.
>>
>> And do you know what you have done, and take full responsibility ? :o)
>>
>> OK, I'll answer yours here, and Peter's in his original post
>>
>>
>> <snip>
>>>>
>>>> <snip>
>>>>>>> the issue of "cult" vs. "religion"
>>>>>>> here is unresolvable by logic, only by decree, and whether a
>>>>>>> parody can be an actual religion would be even worse.
>
> *
> A cult is not a religion.

well, technically yes, as cult(us) is part of every religion, rather
than the religion itself, at least in the original meaning.

"Cultus" means simply worship, the external expression of a religion, it
is there to "cultivate" the gods (so Cicero, and following him Augustine).

The derogatory meaning is relatively young, and catholic theology e.g.
still uses the term to describe e.g. the veneration of the saints, each
of which has their own cultus.

[Burkhard]

Yah, people have short memories. Both the free speech maximalism and
also the rigorous enforcement of the religious freedom prong of the
first amendment (let alone the 14th) are very recent developments.

[Burkhard]

Mark Isaak wrote:
> On 7/3/18 11:08 AM, Bob Casanova wrote:
>> [...]
>> One thing I failed to note: Peter complained that ID is not
>> "a form of creationism", even though the founder of ID
>> specifically stated that the "designer" was the Christian
>> God.
>
> If I understand his position, Peter's conclusion that ID is not a form
> of creation rests on his (not unreasonable) inclusion of directed
> panspermia in the category of intelligent design. And with that
> inclusion, I would agree that not all of intelligent design is
> creationism. Since there are perhaps as many as five people in the
> world who understand the term "intelligent design" to include
> panspermia, we may say that ID is only about 99.99999% creationism, and
> 0.00001% not.
>

I'd say that's fair enough as far as it goes. Yes, there are possible
versions of ID that are secular (though I would not include e.g. Behe,
not because of lack of secularism, but total absence of any theory of ID).

But you get outliers in every theory/discipline, so if one took that as
standard, we could never use generalizations such as "physics is
about..." or "the theory of gravity is saying.." or "evolutionary
biologists believe...". There will always be a chap with access to a
website who disagrees.

On the specific issue, it is even more clear. Courts in common law
countries deal with the facts plead by the parties. It is not their job
to determine what ID, science etc "truly" are, only if what the parties
submitted is convincing. And they most certainly should not make up
arguments on behalf of the parties, even if these were sound arguments.
The Kansas school board did not suggest to teach directed panspermia,
it was a traditional "teach both sides" with references to a
non-specified creator. FSM called the bluff on that - had they been
serious in their neutrality, they could have led FSM in. But of course,
the last thing these type of ID proponents want are discussions of a
creator that looks different from the traditional Christian one - so
they decided to rather have no creator mentioned at all rather than the
danger of "false gods'. So it's perfectly correct for the court in the
present case to identify, for the purpose of the proceedings, ID with
creationism.

[Peter Nyikos]

On Wednesday, July 4, 2018 at 9:50:03 AM UTC-4, Burkhard wrote:
> Peter Nyikos wrote:
> > Burkhard may still have me killfiled, so I would appreciate
> > it if someone were to call reply to this post to his attention.
> > I promise not to make any negative personal comments about anyone
> > in talk.origins in any reply I make to him if he un-killfiles me,
> > at least temporarily.

Thank you for your response, Burkhard. Am I no longer in your killfile?

> > On Tuesday, July 3, 2018 at 11:15:03 AM UTC-4, Burkhard wrote:
> >> Mark Isaak wrote:
> >>> On 7/2/18 10:06 AM, Bob Casanova wrote:
> >>>> On Mon, 2 Jul 2018 09:02:12 -0700 (PDT), the following
> >>>> appeared in talk.origins, posted by Peter Nyikos
> >>>> <nyi...@bellsouth.net>:
> >>>>
> >>>>> After starting out as an anti-ID letter, Pastafarianism has become
> >>>>> a running gag whose public image has gotten so out of control
> >>>>> that it has actually been recognized as a religion in some countries:
> >>>>>
> >>>>> It is legally recognized as a religion in the Netherlands[4]
> >>>>> and New Zealand - where Pastafarian representatives are authorized
> >>>>> to officiate weddings.[5][6][7]
> >>>>> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flying_Spaghetti_Monster

<snip to get to something referred to below>

My understanding has been that they were doing human sacrifice
to honor Kali, not that they claimed Kali had told them to do it.

> - that was indeed just a British misconception. They
> were on the whole desperately poor, and formed ad hoc and short lived
> gangs to survive, which then killed victims for their money.

The two aims don't necessarily conflict. The Aztecs indulged in
massive human sacrifice, to appease what they believed to be
powers or deities, but they also indulged in cannibalism.

By the way, I consider what the Aztecs had to be a full fledged
religion, not just a cult as Thugee would be if the stories
about it had been true.

> In that
> precarious existence, they would start to pray for the help of any deity
> that was potentially sympathetic. (a bit in the way in which St Dismas,
> the patron Saint of repentant thieves, was sometimes also prayed to by
> practicing ones)

This sounds like a perversion of Christianity, just as it is a perversion
of some Romany ("gypsies") to claim that Jesus had given the
Romany permission to steal. This was based on a myth that one of
their number was at the crucifixion of Jesus and the two thieves,
and drops of Jesus's blood fell on the hands of the Romany and
turned into precious jewels. [Source: _The King of the Gypsies_,
by Peter Maas]

> So e.g. Mike Dash, who otherwise accepts that there was
> such a thing as Thugee cult - see his Thug: the true story of India's
> murderous cult"

> > <snip to get to a bit of Mark's reply>
> >
> >>> There are two potential problems with the judge's ruling. First,
> >>> religions always change from what they were when they started, so
> >>> starting as a parody does not mean the religion will remain a parody.
> >>> However, Pastafarianism is new enough that this objection does not apply.
> >>>
> >>> More seriously, parody and religion are not mutually exclusive
> >>> categories. People who parody a religion are making the explicitly
> >>> religious statement that the religion deserves parody,
> >
> > I would prefer to call this a "meta-religious statement".
>
> Possibly, but most religions make statements like that as part of their
> theology,

I don't recall any example where such a statement was said
to be part of the theology. Aren't you relying on unofficial
claims by individual members as far as the assertion
"deserving of parody" is concerned? "Let it be anathema"
is not that kind of statement.

> including claiming that all other religions are false or at
> least imperfect.

Those claims are part and parcel of any religion of which I know.
In particular, Christians are referred to as "infidels" by Muslims,
but Islam does give them and Jews a modicum of respect by
calling them "People of the Book" and giving a third alternative,
dhimmitude, to "Convert or die" [seldom enforced, of course, except
by Islamic fundamentalists such as "the Caliphate" as ISIL styles itself].

> >
> >>> and probably also
> >>> believe that elements of their religion (especially humor) deserve at
> >>> least as much veneration as mainline religion.
> >
> > I think this is stretching the word "veneration" unduly; "respect"
> > is much more to the point, IMO.
> >
> >>> I can accept that
> >>> Pastafarianism is not a religion, but it does not follow that
> >>> Cavanaugh's following it is not religious.
> >
> > But I believe it does follow from the reasoning in the court
> > case, which can be accessed via the url that Burkhard
> > repeats next:
> >
> >>
> >> The full decision is here:
> >> https://www.scribd.com/document/308299698/Cavanaugh-v-Bartelt
> >>
> >> OK, hobby horse alert - I have published some papers on this, including
> >> "The play's the thing wherein I'll catch the conscience of the King:
> >> Religious and Political Affiliation in Online Games as Data Protection
> >> Issue,
> >>
> >> https://www.research.ed.ac.uk/portal/en/publications/the-plays-the-thing-wherein-ill-catch-the-conscience-of-the-king(9998d4f7-dc33-4ec4-ad8a-da3c8b19d238).html
> >
> > All the url took me to was an abstract and a rather mysterious bar
> > graph. The abstract talks about the distinction between people's online
>
> The link is where it says "document" - there is an open lock next to it
> to indicate open access

Thanks, I'll check it out.

> > personae [analogous to roles in role-playing games such as
> > Dungeons and Dragons] and their true personalities. This concept
> > might profitably be combined with analysis of other forms of
> > role playing, such as Cavanaugh's lawsuit.
> >
> >
> >> It build on an earlier paper I did , Schafer/Abel, "All the world's a
> >> stage" - Legal and cultural reflections on the surveillance of online
> >> games, Datenschutz und Datensicherheit - DuD, volume 38, issue 9, 2014,
> >> pp. 593-600
> >> https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11623-014-0235-1
> >
> > This is paywalled, and I am too rushed for time now to see whether
> > the University of South Carolina has an institutional subscription.
> > The webpage does not make that easy to find out.

<snip>

> >> The judge in our case goes to some (procedurally problematic, in my
> >> view) length to analyse pastafarianism on the basis of the FSM Gospel
> >> book as "judicial notice" (i.e. this was not submitted by the
> >> complainant). The discussion on the relation between ID and creationism
> >> is interesting, detailed, and I'd say sound.
> >
> > I'll need to check this out carefully. If it is sound, it is
> > nothing like the benighted statement in the article by the Telegraph
> > that I quoted from.

Fortunately, nothing like the benighted claim in the Telegraph article
exists. On the other hand, the "Memorandum and Order" (as the judgment
is called) includes a misleading quote from the Opinion of the Court
in *Kitzmiller v. Dover*:

Fundamentalist opponents of evolution responded with a new tactic ...
which was ultimately found to be unconstitutional under the
First Amendment, namely, to utilize scientific-sounding language
to describe religious beliefs and then to require that schools
teach the resulting "creation science" or "scientific creationism"
as an alternative to evolution.

It is not made explicitly clear that this portion ONLY applies to the
unconstitutional behavior of the Dover school board. It certainly is
NOT true of ID. To his credit, Judge John M. Gerrard then gave
an almost completely accurate summing up of ID:

The concept of "intelligent design" was then promoted;
generally described, it maintains that Earth's ecosystem
displays complexity suggesting intelligent design by a
"master intellect." Id. at 718. But unlike its predecessors,
the "official position" of intelligent design is that
the designer is not expressly identified as a deity.

The only imperfection here is that "the designer" should read
"the hypothesized designer" since the leading ID proponents
do not claim to have proof of a designer, but only evidence.

But the following is more problematic:

The primary criticism of intelligent design -- and the basis
for excluding it from school science classes -- is that
although it purports to be "scientific," it is actually
"an interesting theological argument" but "not science."
Kitzmiller, 400 F. Supp. 2d at 745-46.

This is absolutely false. Fortunately, the actual ruling at the
end of the long *Kitzmiller* document was impeccable: the Dover
school district could not teach ID as an "alternative" to evolution.
In particular, there was no judgment against teaching it as
a SUPPLEMENT to evolutionary theory.


My next reply to your thoughtful post will pick up where
this one leaves off.


Peter Nyikos
Professor, Department of Math. -- standard disclaimer --

[Mark Isaak]

"A cult is a religion with no political power," said Tom Wolfe, and I
cannot improve on his definition.

[Peter Nyikos]

On Thursday, July 5, 2018 at 6:30:03 AM UTC-4, Burkhard wrote:
> Mark Isaak wrote:
> > On 7/3/18 11:08 AM, Bob Casanova wrote:
> >> [...]
> >> One thing I failed to note: Peter complained that ID is not
> >> "a form of creationism", even though the founder of ID
> >> specifically stated that the "designer" was the Christian
> >> God.
> >
> > If I understand his position, Peter's conclusion that ID is not a form
> > of creation rests on his (not unreasonable) inclusion of directed
> > panspermia in the category of intelligent design.

True, and it is based partly on the following statement by
one of the two original proponents of directed panspermia:

The senders could well have developed wholly new strains of
microorganisms, specially designed to cope with prebiotic
conditions, though whether it would have been better to try to
combine all the desirable properties within one single type
of organism or to send many different organisms is not
completely clear.
--Nobel Laureate Francis Crick, _Life Itself_
Simon and Schuster, 1981, p. 137

The "senders" to which Crick refers are hypothetical directed
panspermists: intelligent creatures of almost 4 billion years
ago who sent microorganisms to earth, which according to the
hypothesis had an ocean rich in amino acids and various
other organic materials but no living things as yet. He developed
this hypothesis together with Leslie Orgel another leading biochemist.
They didn't claim this is more likely or less likely than life
arising here spontaneously, precisely because neither of them knew,
nor does anyone living today know what the odds are.

> > And with that
> > inclusion, I would agree that not all of intelligent design is
> > creationism. Since there are perhaps as many as five people in the
> > world who understand the term "intelligent design" to include
> > panspermia, we may say that ID is only about 99.99999% creationism, and
> > 0.00001% not.
> >
>
> I'd say that's fair enough as far as it goes. Yes, there are possible
> versions of ID that are secular (though I would not include e.g. Behe,
> not because of lack of secularism, but total absence of any theory of ID).

Behe not only accepts common descent, he argues persuasively FOR it
in _The Edge of Evolution_. His theory there is that a powerful
designer sporadically caused sequences of mutations that are virtually
impossible, given the amount of time life has existed on earth.
Other than that, this hypothetical designer lets evolution run
its course untampered with.

.
>
> But you get outliers in every theory/discipline, so if one took that as
> standard, we could never use generalizations such as "physics is
> about..." or "the theory of gravity is saying.." or "evolutionary
> biologists believe...". There will always be a chap with access to a
> website who disagrees.

Behe is very important to the ID movement. He originally made
an attempt at a scientific theory that was little more than a gimmick,
involving the concept of irreducible complexity.

> On the specific issue, it is even more clear. Courts in common law
> countries deal with the facts plead by the parties. It is not their job
> to determine what ID, science etc "truly" are, only if what the parties
> submitted is convincing.

Didn't the judge in Kitzmiller v. Dover reject the claim that
ID was scientific based on a specific concept of what science
"truly is"? I have to wonder whether Judge Jones was daydreaming all
through Scott Minnich's testimony of an impeccably scientific
experiment establishing that a certain kind of bacterial
flagellum was irreducibly complex.

Did you ever read that part of the Dover transcript? IIRC the
Opinion of the Court makes no reference at all to Minnich's testimony.

> And they most certainly should not make up
> arguments on behalf of the parties, even if these were sound arguments.
> The Kansas school board did not suggest to teach directed panspermia,
> it was a traditional "teach both sides" with references to a
> non-specified creator.

WERE there any such explicit references? My understanding is that,
even before the Dover trial, the Discovery Institute (DI) actively
dissuaded teachers from mentioning ID, advising them to instead
focus on the weaknesses of current evolutionary theory.
[This is what Ron O calls "the switch scam".]

> FSM called the bluff on that

Where do you see that in Bobby Henderson's letter? It's such
a crass satire that I find it impossible to tell in most places
whether he is mocking a specific ID statement, or whether he
is just spoofing ID in general.

> - had they been
> serious in their neutrality, they could have led FSM in.

And risk a circus like that in a famous Chicago trial that pitted
Judge Julius Hoffman against a bunch of Yippees including Abbie
Hoffman? IIRC that was the trial in which Bobby Seale was bound
and gagged.

> But of course,
> the last thing these type of ID proponents want are discussions of a
> creator that looks different from the traditional Christian one

That disregards repeated assurances that ID makes no claims about
what the *designer* [1] is like, let alone what it looks like. All
that is claimed is that it is immensely powerful and intelligent,
which eliminates Hume's "belly of an infinite spider" from which the
world was spun, but not one with the outward form of a bowl of pasta.


[1]not to be confused with a hypothesized creator
of our universe, even though most ID proponents happen
to believe they coincide.

> - so they decided to rather have no creator mentioned at all rather than the
> danger of "false gods'.

You are missing the point. The point is that they are focused
on evidence for intelligent *design* and are not, *qua* ID theorists,
addressing any other attributes the designer has. Behe for one has been
quite explicit about that.

> So it's perfectly correct for the court in the
> present case to identify, for the purpose of the proceedings, ID with
> creationism.

As Ayn Rand was fond of saying, "Check your premises."


[I'm far from having a high opinion of Rand, but this formula of hers
fits your conclusion to a "t".]

Peter Nyikos
Professor, Department of Math. -- standard disclaimer --

U. of South Carolina at Columbia
http://www.math.sc.edu/~nyikos/

[Mark Isaak]

On 7/5/18 10:55 AM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> [big snip]
>

> But the following is more problematic:
>
> The primary criticism of intelligent design -- and the basis
> for excluding it from school science classes -- is that
> although it purports to be "scientific," it is actually
> "an interesting theological argument" but "not science."
> Kitzmiller, 400 F. Supp. 2d at 745-46.
>
> This is absolutely false.

To the best of my knowledge, nothing ever taught or proposed to be
taught under the heading "intelligent design" has ever been science, and
all of it comes with a pedigree linking it to theological argument.

What exceptions do you know about?

[Burkhard]

modeled on an older statement that a language is a dialect with an army
and a navy, I think

[Burkhard]

Peter Nyikos wrote:
> On Wednesday, July 4, 2018 at 9:50:03 AM UTC-4, Burkhard wrote:
>> Peter Nyikos wrote:
>>> Burkhard may still have me killfiled, so I would appreciate
>>> it if someone were to call reply to this post to his attention.
>>> I promise not to make any negative personal comments about anyone
>>> in talk.origins in any reply I make to him if he un-killfiles me,
>>> at least temporarily.
>
> Thank you for your response, Burkhard. Am I no longer in your killfile?

well, I guess I can simply ignore the other threads"manually", and see
how it goes here.

Both claims are made, but both seem to be the British imagination. Kali
is arguably an ambiguous goddess, especially for people used to
Christian God vs Satan dualism. But in the Devi Mahatmya she is a much
more nuanced and overall kind and benevolent deity - her fearsome aspect
is in her role as protector and slayer of demons.

>
>
>> - that was indeed just a British misconception. They
>> were on the whole desperately poor, and formed ad hoc and short lived
>> gangs to survive, which then killed victims for their money.
>
> The two aims don't necessarily conflict. The Aztecs indulged in
> massive human sacrifice, to appease what they believed to be
> powers or deities, but they also indulged in cannibalism.

True (though the role of cannibalism among the Aztecs as an "ordinary"
diet has also been called into question), but in the case of the
Thugees, there is scant evidence on ritual aspects to the killings.

>
> By the way, I consider what the Aztecs had to be a full fledged
> religion, not just a cult as Thugee would be if the stories
> about it had been true.
>
>> In that
>> precarious existence, they would start to pray for the help of any deity
>> that was potentially sympathetic. (a bit in the way in which St Dismas,
>> the patron Saint of repentant thieves, was sometimes also prayed to by
>> practicing ones)
>
> This sounds like a perversion of Christianity, just as it is a perversion
> of some Romany ("gypsies") to claim that Jesus had given the
> Romany permission to steal. This was based on a myth that one of
> their number was at the crucifixion of Jesus and the two thieves,
> and drops of Jesus's blood fell on the hands of the Romany and
> turned into precious jewels. [Source: _The King of the Gypsies_,
> by Peter Maas]

Inevitably, that sort of thing happens across religions, especially when
they get blended with folk beliefs. Cf e.g. the occasional appearance of
"sin eaters" in Cristian countries, as a straneg version of Christ's
sacrifice. My Sanskrit teacher told us about one sect (but I could
never find it anywhere else to be honest) that committed the most
outrageous crimes - to prove that they did not even any longer desire
Nirwana, and in that way escape the paradox that in order to achieve
Nirwana, you must be free of desires (and as a result also peaceful,
kind etc, as bad actions re the result of desires)

>
>
>> So e.g. Mike Dash, who otherwise accepts that there was
>> such a thing as Thugee cult - see his Thug: the true story of India's
>> murderous cult"
>
>>> <snip to get to a bit of Mark's reply>
>>>
>>>>> There are two potential problems with the judge's ruling. First,
>>>>> religions always change from what they were when they started, so
>>>>> starting as a parody does not mean the religion will remain a parody.
>>>>> However, Pastafarianism is new enough that this objection does not apply.
>>>>>
>>>>> More seriously, parody and religion are not mutually exclusive
>>>>> categories. People who parody a religion are making the explicitly
>>>>> religious statement that the religion deserves parody,
>>>
>>> I would prefer to call this a "meta-religious statement".
>>
>> Possibly, but most religions make statements like that as part of their
>> theology,
>
> I don't recall any example where such a statement was said
> to be part of the theology. Aren't you relying on unofficial
> claims by individual members as far as the assertion
> "deserving of parody" is concerned? "Let it be anathema"
> is not that kind of statement.

I'm afraid I'm struggling a bit parsing this. That's the founder in his
own words:

A: Some Pastafarians honestly believe in the FSM, and some see it as
satire. I would just make the point that satire is an honest, legitimate
basis for religion. Satire relies on truth to be effective. If it’s a
joke, it’s a joke where to understand the punchline you must be
conscious of underlying truth."

So yes, I'd say their use of satire is the form of "let it be anathema.."

I'd analyze both judgements a bit differently. Like all trials in common
law countries, Kitzmiller dealt with the facts as presented by the
parties - decisions especially by the lower courts tend to be very
context sensitive. So what is at stake is not "ID theory" as an
abstract, but "the specific way in which the board wanted biology to be
taught, which includes something they termed ID". If then the way the
board uses the term is the way you would use it, or even the majority of
people would use it, becomes largely irrelevant. Behe is not party to
the proceedings, he is merely a witness called by one party.

So that means that other boards may well find ways to introduce ID into
the curriculum that would not fall foul of the courts. I'm not sure
though that this difference is best characterized as the distinction
between alternative vs supplement, or at least it would depend a lot how
precisely you see that difference playing out.

Now, judges are not stupid. The moment where in a predominantly
christian country, the teachers say anything along the lines of "and
this shows there was some sort of designer involved. For legal reasons,
we are not allowed to say anything about that designer, but you may want
to ask your teacher in Sunday school, nudge nudge", the judge will not
be impressed by the disclaimer. They are perfectly capable of reading
between the lines.

Now, Kitzmiller lays down some criteria that give a guide on how such a
law compliant theory would look like: if you introduce designer as a
scientific concept, it has to play by the rules of scientific inquiry.
And that means you can't hide behind "and of the identity of the
designer we know nothing and this is not within the scope of research".
As Quine said, "no entity without identity" - if you introduce a concept
into science, you need to state clear identity criteria, and you need to
lay down your strategy by which you intend to come to more testable
statements about the designer as a bare minimum.

A purely secular panspermist account may well tick that box - "we think
it was an highly intelligent society from another planet involved in
bioengineering, and we will explore this further by sending probes to
other planets, which then should have life with similar DNA" would
probably pass the Lemon test. But it is of course the last thing the
Dover or Kansas school boards would have wanted. You don't need to go as
far as the FSM, merely arguing that IF ex hypothesis, a designer is
introduced, the evidence (predominance of design vs design in nature,
predator prey dynamics etc) indicates that there were multiple teams of
designers involved, who sometimes form alliances but are mainly
antagonistic. They had limited resources and knowledge, and probably
reached decisions through voting in committees. The moment a school
board want to exclude such an account, they need to give scientific
reasons why it fits the data less well than their preferred model.

[Mark Isaak]

On 7/5/18 2:56 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> On Thursday, July 5, 2018 at 6:30:03 AM UTC-4, Burkhard wrote:

> [...]

>> But of course,
>> the last thing these type of ID proponents want are discussions of a
>> creator that looks different from the traditional Christian one
>
> That disregards repeated assurances that ID makes no claims about
> what the *designer* [1] is like, let alone what it looks like. All

> that is claimed is that it is immensely powerful and intelligent, [...]

Which immediately gives lie to the assurance that ID makes no claims
about what the designer is like.

And if they were going by evidence rather than religious belief, their
claim would be that the designers were plural and of limited power.

[jillery]

On Fri, 6 Jul 2018 09:27:07 -0700, Mark Isaak
<eciton@curiousta/xyz/xonomy.net> wrote:

>On 7/5/18 2:56 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
>> On Thursday, July 5, 2018 at 6:30:03 AM UTC-4, Burkhard wrote:
>> [...]
>>> But of course,
>>> the last thing these type of ID proponents want are discussions of a
>>> creator that looks different from the traditional Christian one
>>
>> That disregards repeated assurances that ID makes no claims about
>> what the *designer* [1] is like, let alone what it looks like. All
>> that is claimed is that it is immensely powerful and intelligent, [...]
>
>Which immediately gives lie to the assurance that ID makes no claims
>about what the designer is like.
>
>And if they were going by evidence rather than religious belief, their
>claim would be that the designers were plural and of limited power.

... and often design against each other, like jealous co-workers.

--
I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.

Evelyn Beatrice Hall
Attributed to Voltaire

[Panthera Tigris Altaica]

On Tuesday, July 3, 2018 at 10:30:02 PM UTC-4, *Hemidactylus* wrote:
> Mark Isaak <eciton@curiousta/xyz/xonomy.net> wrote:
> > On 7/3/18 11:08 AM, Bob Casanova wrote:
> >> [...]
> >> One thing I failed to note: Peter complained that ID is not
> >> "a form of creationism", even though the founder of ID
> >> specifically stated that the "designer" was the Christian
> >> God.
> >
> > If I understand his position, Peter's conclusion that ID is not a form
> > of creation rests on his (not unreasonable) inclusion of directed
> > panspermia in the category of intelligent design. And with that
> > inclusion, I would agree that not all of intelligent design is
> > creationism. Since there are perhaps as many as five people in the
> > world who understand the term "intelligent design" to include
> > panspermia, we may say that ID is only about 99.99999% creationism, and
> > 0.00001% not.
> >
> I forget the exact percentage but isn’t Peter 10% creationist, designist,
> or god botherer?

Somewhat more than 10%, IMHO.

> Or does he hide that behind some bizarre story about
> probes from Throom? He has a strange protective stance toward ID that is
> suspect. Say something untoward about Behe and he goes all castle doctrine
> on your ass in a way that would make Dirty Harry proud. His version of
> panspermia is so far fetched it has to be a ruse to cover his true
> proclivities. It is a very jesuitic concoction he has perfected where he
> can criticize the overreach of evolutionists (mainly nemesis Harshman and
> his cronies including me) without coming out as full blown ID creation
> proponent. He can push his clout by criticizing obvious creationist
> windbags such as Ray the OEC and DoubleDoc the YEC. Yet then he turns
> around and attacks people who criticize ID creationism with such subtlety
> you gotta wonder where he is coming from.

I don't.

> He gets really worked up about
> alleged misrepresentation of ID as when Ron posts his very pointedly harsh
> criticism of ID scams or recently he was all worked up about pasta
> worshippers misrepresenting ID.

This was, and is, noticeable.

[Panthera Tigris Altaica]

I do not think that he has succeeded in convincing anyone else.

[Peter Nyikos]

On Thursday, July 5, 2018 at 8:05:03 PM UTC-4, Burkhard wrote:
> Peter Nyikos wrote:
> > On Wednesday, July 4, 2018 at 9:50:03 AM UTC-4, Burkhard wrote:
> >> Peter Nyikos wrote:
> >>> Burkhard may still have me killfiled, so I would appreciate
> >>> it if someone were to call reply to this post to his attention.
> >>> I promise not to make any negative personal comments about anyone
> >>> in talk.origins in any reply I make to him if he un-killfiles me,
> >>> at least temporarily.
> >
> > Thank you for your response, Burkhard. Am I no longer in your killfile?
>
> well, I guess I can simply ignore the other threads"manually", and see
> how it goes here.

Fine with me. I can certainly avoid anything negative and personal
about participants in direct replies to you. However, at the
moment I can't guarantee that will be true in replies to others.
Would that cause any problems for you?

I never took it seriously, but only cannibalism in the wake of
sporadic human sacrifice.

> but in the case of the
> Thugees, there is scant evidence on ritual aspects to the killings.
>
> >
> > By the way, I consider what the Aztecs had to be a full fledged
> > religion, not just a cult as Thugee would be if the stories
> > about it had been true.
> >
> >> In that
> >> precarious existence, they would start to pray for the help of any deity
> >> that was potentially sympathetic. (a bit in the way in which St Dismas,
> >> the patron Saint of repentant thieves, was sometimes also prayed to by
> >> practicing ones)
> >
> > This sounds like a perversion of Christianity, just as it is a perversion
> > of some Romany ("gypsies") to claim that Jesus had given the
> > Romany permission to steal. This was based on a myth that one of
> > their number was at the crucifixion of Jesus and the two thieves,
> > and drops of Jesus's blood fell on the hands of the Romany and
> > turned into precious jewels. [Source: _The King of the Gypsies_,
> > by Peter Maas]
>
> Inevitably, that sort of thing happens across religions, especially when
> they get blended with folk beliefs. Cf e.g. the occasional appearance of
> "sin eaters" in Cristian countries, as a straneg version of Christ's
> sacrifice.

I looked up the Wikipedia entry, and the fact that it takes place
in Christian countries seems actually less relevant than the fact that
leprechauns were invented in a Christian country. The only connection
with Jesus's sacrifice is the bare idea of taking on the sins of the
other person -- but not in a way consistent with what Jesus is
supposed to have done. Jesus portrayed himself at the last judgment
as doing something very different than taking everyone's sins on himself.

> My Sanskrit teacher told us about one sect (but I could
> never find it anywhere else to be honest) that committed the most
> outrageous crimes - to prove that they did not even any longer desire
> Nirwana, and in that way escape the paradox that in order to achieve
> Nirwana, you must be free of desires (and as a result also peaceful,
> kind etc, as bad actions re the result of desires)

I've heard vague rumors of this, but no reliable source.

> >
> >
> >> So e.g. Mike Dash, who otherwise accepts that there was
> >> such a thing as Thugee cult - see his Thug: the true story of India's
> >> murderous cult"
> >
> >>> <snip to get to a bit of Mark's reply>
> >>>
> >>>>> There are two potential problems with the judge's ruling. First,
> >>>>> religions always change from what they were when they started, so
> >>>>> starting as a parody does not mean the religion will remain a parody.
> >>>>> However, Pastafarianism is new enough that this objection does not apply.
> >>>>>
> >>>>> More seriously, parody and religion are not mutually exclusive
> >>>>> categories. People who parody a religion are making the explicitly
> >>>>> religious statement that the religion deserves parody,
> >>>
> >>> I would prefer to call this a "meta-religious statement".
> >>
> >> Possibly, but most religions make statements like that as part of their
> >> theology,
> >
> > I don't recall any example where such a statement was said
> > to be part of the theology. Aren't you relying on unofficial
> > claims by individual members as far as the assertion
> > "deserving of parody" is concerned? "Let it be anathema"
> > is not that kind of statement.
>
> I'm afraid I'm struggling a bit parsing this.

What I mean is, heretics in the strict sense are subject to the
formula, "If anyone says _______________ let him be anathema."
But every example I've seen did not just an expression of
skepticism, but outright claim that some doctrine is false.

"deserving of parody" is very different from that kind of pronouncement.

>That's the founder in his own words:
>
> A: Some Pastafarians honestly believe in the FSM, and some see it as
> satire. I would just make the point that satire is an honest, legitimate
> basis for religion. Satire relies on truth to be effective. If it’s a
> joke, it’s a joke where to understand the punchline you must be
> conscious of underlying truth."

This is sophistry. One can satirize "fake science" without being scientific
(or religious, for that matter)
.
One can also satirize religion without thereby performing a religious act.
District Judge John Gerrard made that point quite well.

> So yes, I'd say their use of satire is the form of "let it be anathema.."

That formula, as I said, had to do with heretics -- people who claimed
to Christians but denied some basic Christian dogma.

> >> including claiming that all other religions are false or at
> >> least imperfect.
> >
> > Those claims are part and parcel of any religion of which I know.
> > In particular, Christians are referred to as "infidels" by Muslims,
> > but Islam does give them and Jews a modicum of respect by
> > calling them "People of the Book" and giving a third alternative,
> > dhimmitude, to "Convert or die" [seldom enforced, of course, except
> > by Islamic fundamentalists such as "the Caliphate" as ISIL styles itself].

Pastafarianism is just the opposite. Some of its pronouncements
make it seem like the ultimate in syncretism.


<snip of things not commented on this time around>

> >>>> The full decision is here:
> >>>> https://www.scribd.com/document/308299698/Cavanaugh-v-Bartelt

<snip for the same reason>

Sure. But I stand by what I wrote. The statement is false as written
if it is applied to ID in general.

After all, it was part of the Opinion of the Court, and I could
point to some really benighted parts of the Opinion of the Court
in a number of cases that took place in my lifetime, including at least
one Supreme Court case where false claims were made about earlier court
cases.

> I'm not sure
> though that this difference is best characterized as the distinction
> between alternative vs supplement, or at least it would depend a lot how
> precisely you see that difference playing out.

The idea of it being taught as a supplement never was broached in the
whole proceedings AFAIK. That's partly why I said what I did. It
certainly was not mentioned outside the Opinion of the Court.

>
> Now, judges are not stupid. The moment where in a predominantly
> christian country, the teachers say anything along the lines of "and
> this shows there was some sort of designer involved. For legal reasons,
> we are not allowed to say anything about that designer, but you may want
> to ask your teacher in Sunday school, nudge nudge", the judge will not
> be impressed by the disclaimer. They are perfectly capable of reading
> between the lines.
>
> Now, Kitzmiller lays down some criteria that give a guide on how such a
> law compliant theory would look like: if you introduce designer as a
> scientific concept, it has to play by the rules of scientific inquiry.
> And that means you can't hide behind "and of the identity of the
> designer we know nothing and this is not within the scope of research".

Sorry, I can't go along with that. But this post has already gotten
very long, and I will be lecturing at a seminar tomorrow for which
I have to prepare. So I'll hold off further comment until Monday:
I almost never post on weekends.

I left the rest in, and will be commenting on it Monday.

Wishing you a nice weekend,

Peter Nyikos

[Martin Harran]

On Fri, 6 Jul 2018 19:11:44 -0700 (PDT), Peter Nyikos
<nyi...@bellsouth.net> wrote:

>On Thursday, July 5, 2018 at 8:05:03 PM UTC-4, Burkhard wrote:
>> Peter Nyikos wrote:
>> > On Wednesday, July 4, 2018 at 9:50:03 AM UTC-4, Burkhard wrote:
>> >> Peter Nyikos wrote:
>> >>> Burkhard may still have me killfiled, so I would appreciate
>> >>> it if someone were to call reply to this post to his attention.
>> >>> I promise not to make any negative personal comments about anyone
>> >>> in talk.origins in any reply I make to him if he un-killfiles me,
>> >>> at least temporarily.
>> >
>> > Thank you for your response, Burkhard. Am I no longer in your killfile?
>>
>> well, I guess I can simply ignore the other threads"manually", and see
>> how it goes here.
>
>Fine with me. I can certainly avoid anything negative and personal
>about participants in direct replies to you. However, at the
>moment I can't guarantee that will be true in replies to others.

Why not?

[...]

[*Hemidactylus*]

He has daemonic urges. Bad habits beget character flaws that he cannot
help.

[*Hemidactylus*]

Burkhard <b.sc...@ed.ac.uk> wrote:
> Peter Nyikos wrote:
>>
[Borgian Prince snip]

>>
>> Thank you for your response, Burkhard. Am I no longer in your killfile?
>
> well, I guess I can simply ignore the other threads"manually", and see
> how it goes here.
>

Rodrigo is peeling away an adversarial Cardinal (had him killfiled) who may
turn a blind eye to the continuing atrocities in the Papal States.
Micheletto Corella has gone missing (after his failed attempts on Hemi and
others). Ferrante (DoubleDoc) of Naples is claiming his assemblage of
embalmed enemies (including Foghorn, Elmer, Barbie) is not that old based
on carbon dating[1]. Local authorities may still ID the remains with
forensic methods Ferrante has overlooked, but ID is in shambles and easily
mocked by means of pasta. Yet that may be an old Berber ploy to get at us
through our taste buds [2].

[1] based very loosely on The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy by
Jacob Burckhardt

[2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spaghetti
“Some historians think that Berbers introduced pasta to Europe during a
conquest of Sicily. In the West, it may have first been worked into long,
thin forms in Sicily around the 12th century, as the Tabula Rogeriana of
Muhammad al-Idrisi attested, reporting some traditions about the Sicilian
kingdom.”

Note how pastafarians are all enthralled by pirates and one of our early
treaties establishing church/state separation was a result of Barbary
pirates. This reveals a deeper connection between FSM and piracy. FSM
wanted the Treaty of Tripoli. That’s why he introduced spaghetti to
Italians.

Hmmm...I think I may have lost the initial plot along the way. More coffee.

[Tim Anderson]

On Saturday, July 7, 2018 at 12:15:03 PM UTC+10, Peter Nyikos wrote:

<snip>

> I looked up the Wikipedia entry, and the fact that it takes place
> in Christian countries seems actually less relevant than the fact that
> leprechauns were invented in a Christian country.

Wrong. The name is a Christian-era invention (the "chaun" part is an Irish corruption from the Latin "corpus"), but the myth derives from the pre-Christian period.

> The only connection
> with Jesus's sacrifice is the bare idea of taking on the sins of the
> other person -- but not in a way consistent with what Jesus is
> supposed to have done. Jesus portrayed himself at the last judgment
> as doing something very different than taking everyone's sins on himself.
>

Anachronistically wrong. Jesus is a pre-Christian figure. Any call on "Jesus portrayed himself" relies on a later Christology. It is only the Christidolatry of the emerging church that elevates the Jesus figure's purported actions above "sin-eating".

In any case, have you forgotten that the Jewish tradition of that era had the well-attested ceremony of the scapegoat, which played an identical absolutionary role.

[Burkhard]

If you look at the party submissions, almost all of this came from the
pursuer - so the judge did not start an analysis of "true meaning of
science" sua sponte, he uses those parts of the party submission that he
considered persuasive. It would have been wrong, by contrast, had he
based his decision on say a structuralist (in the
Moulines/Stegmueller/Balzer sense) account of how a proper scientific
theory looks, or a more sociological one - not because they are
necessarily inferior conceptions, but because the parties did not argue
them. Similarity, it's not the job of the judge to come up with a more
acceptable version of ID if this is not what the parties plead. In both
cases, a third party observer might want to argue that this is not the
best account of science, or the best account of ID, neither would matter
as the court is limited to what the parties argue.

Now, where the court does come in is where it gives reason why they find
the party submissions convincing or unconvincing. Here Jones could have
in my view made his own life easier - the definition of science that he
adopts is pretty much identical to the one that as a matter of law
(post-Daubert), US courts in most states use to distinguish science from
non-science as a matter of routine. So a shorter and in my view neater
result could have been to argue that this is not mainly a question of
fact, but one of law - for the purpose of law, the relevant definition
of science comes from the FRE as interpreted by Daubert. And on
questions of law, as opposed to questions of fact, the judges have much
more leeway for their own analysis.

I have to wonder whether Judge Jones was daydreaming all
> through Scott Minnich's testimony of an impeccably scientific
> experiment establishing that a certain kind of bacterial
> flagellum was irreducibly complex.
>
> Did you ever read that part of the Dover transcript? IIRC the
> Opinion of the Court makes no reference at all to Minnich's testimony.
>

Definitely not asleep, for no other reason that he gives several
procedural rulings on Minnich's evidence. There are 40 or so references
to Minnich's testimony in the decision, but none I think on his detailed
discussion of irreducible complexity. And the reason that this is not
coming up in the decision is simply that almost all of it is simply
irrelevant. Whether or not there are ID systems as defined, whether the
definition of ID system is sound, and whether Minnich's method for
testing for ID is scientifically appropriate has no bearing on the case
- and that is the majority of his evidence.

What is the issue, for the court, if the subsequent inference "... and
hence design" is so obviously scientifically sound to lend a
"legitimate secular reason" to what looks otherwise for all intends and
purposes like Paley's argument.

And here Minnich does not help his side a bit - from thr court's
decision: "Irreducible complexity is a negative argument against
evolution, not proof of design, a point conceded by defense expert
Professor Minnich. (2:15 (Miller); 38:82 (Minnich) (irreducible
complexity “is not a test of intelligent design; it’s a test of
evolution”)."

But it is exactly that test for design that his side would have needed.
Now, Minnich asserts, rather than argues, that there is an "inference to
the best explanation" here - that would have been the place for him to
elaborate and show that the way he uses ItBE the way it is one in
science. He doesn't, and I'd say he could not. ItBE are a form of the
hypothetic-deductive model, and as such indeed central to empirical
research. BUT to be an inference to "the best" explanation, and not just
any abductive inference (which are after all strictly logically speaking
invalid), it needs not just the hypothetic part - the postulation of a
cause - but also the deductive part, that it testing if that cause
actually exists and what precisely its properties are. Neither Behe nor
Minnich do this, or even come up with a plausible scientific programe on
how it could be done.

One of the two relevant claims Minnich makes is in response to the
question if IC systems cannot evolve - where in his answer he switches
to "there is no detailed evolutionary process for them in the
literature". But that's of course not good enough, that is indeed just
an argument from incredulity something which in other parts of his
testimony he rejects.

The courts are having none of it. It reasons, quite correctly, that the
only thing Minnich's testimony shows is that there are things we do not
know - and that holds of course true for all sciences.

Now, there is a part of his testimony that is potentially interesting
and relevant - but his side does not follow it through to make it a
solid argument (and I don't think ultimately they could) That's when he
talks about bioengineering and what he calls "backward engineering" as a
new paradigm for doing biological research.

That, at least in theory, might have given his side a different way to
argue for the legitimacy of ID, provided that

- they can show that this approach leads to interesting new and testable
results (that is easy)
- AND, crucially, it requires reasoning about the designer, and only
"makes sense" if such a designer is acknowledged.

It is that second hurdle they would fall down I'd say - they would have
to show that Darwinists could not possibly use this method and stay
consistent. But that is of course false at the face of it, and Minnich
himself acknowledges as much when he describes the emerging field,
which has lots of people who don't believe in design at all. The reason
is that it is just standards analytic biology - tearing something apart
to see how it works. The "backward" in backward engineering is from the
observed function, not from the intention or plan of the designer - now
THAT would indeed have been a different approach.

>
>> And they most certainly should not make up
>> arguments on behalf of the parties, even if these were sound arguments.
>> The Kansas school board did not suggest to teach directed panspermia,
>> it was a traditional "teach both sides" with references to a
>> non-specified creator.
>
> WERE there any such explicit references? My understanding is that,
> even before the Dover trial, the Discovery Institute (DI) actively
> dissuaded teachers from mentioning ID, advising them to instead
> focus on the weaknesses of current evolutionary theory.

Which is why they did not want that trial - and as I said, what is at
stake here is not the DI, or Behe, but what the school board proposed
-and that was to refer to Panda and People, which indeed contains this
reference.

The note in question is :
"Intelligent Design is an explanation of the origin of life that differs
from Darwin’s view. Of Pandas and People, is available for students who
might be interested in gaining an understanding of what Intelligent
Design actually involves."

So according to the defendant, ID "is" exactly as described in Panda and
People - a book that among other issues included the claim that ID
("creationism " in earlier versions of the book) is “various forms of
life that began abruptly through an intelligent agency with their
distinctive features intact – fish with fins and scales, birds with
feathers, beaks, and wings, etc"

That is the definition of ID that is relevant for the Kitzmiller case.

> [This is what Ron O calls "the switch scam".]
>
>
>> FSM called the bluff on that
>
> Where do you see that in Bobby Henderson's letter? It's such
> a crass satire that I find it impossible to tell in most places
> whether he is mocking a specific ID statement, or whether he
> is just spoofing ID in general.

Crass maybe but I'm talking about the structure of the argument. It
challanges the cop out "ID does not say anything about the designer" -
if it says nothing, then anything goes, so the best way to combat any
unwarranted "nudge nudge" inference to a traditional monotheistic deity
is to be explicit about the range of explanations that ID permits.

>
>
>> - had they been
>> serious in their neutrality, they could have led FSM in.
>
> And risk a circus like that in a famous Chicago trial that pitted
> Judge Julius Hoffman against a bunch of Yippees including Abbie
> Hoffman? IIRC that was the trial in which Bobby Seale was bound
> and gagged.

Well, it would not have come to a trial in that case. But the comparison
is interesting - judge Hoffman was on all accounts a terrible judge,
long before the trial that made him infamous, which his hostility and
bias against defendants on open display. It took the Chicago seven
trial, and the subsequent "bench slap" he got from the appeal court
which vacated all his decisions in that case, to bring this into the
open. So sometimes a circus is what it takes.

>
>
>> But of course,
>> the last thing these type of ID proponents want are discussions of a
>> creator that looks different from the traditional Christian one
>
> That disregards repeated assurances that ID makes no claims about
> what the *designer* [1] is like, let alone what it looks like.

Well yes, it disregards them as essentially a cop out and either simply
dishonest or self-defeating.

As an analogy, if I promise you a car for £50000, and on delivery you
note that is doesn't have an engine, brakes, or wheels, you will feel
cheated. If I claim in my defense that I never promised you wheels,
engine and brakes, only a car, that will leave you unimpressed. And even
if somewhere in the small print, I have an explicit disclaimer ("this
car is delivered without engine, brakes or wheels, and should not be
used for driving), the law would disregard this, and rightly so.

So there is a choice to be made: claim to have an ID theory, and then
deliver something that has the property theories of a domain normally
have. In this case, this means testable claims about who designed what,
when, how and for what purpose. That is how every other scientific
discipline that reasons about design works (and Dembski at least makes
the claim ID is nothing but what forensic science, anthropology and
history also do)Note that what is required here is not necessarily
answers to these questions now, (all theories have gaps, or there would
be no research) but a research programme with well defined methodology
that is capable of answering them eventually, using accepted
methodological precepts

Or there is no ID theory, and it should be called by what it is - well,
in case of Behe and Minnich, essentially standard molecular biology
which the two personally think (but few scientists agree) might indicate
that some of our perfectly normal gaps in evolutionary theory will be
more difficult to plug than others. In which case there is no reason why
it should be included in the curriculum, and in any way Panda, the book
in question, goes way beyond that.

Current ID theorist do neither. They claim explicitly not to make
statements about the designer in some outputs, while at the same time
and in other fora loud and clearly say that it was the Christian deity,
and relying otherwise on the simple sociological fact that in a society
like the US, the children will be predominantly, and of the exclusively
be exposed to that specific conception of the non-natural (Minnich, in
Kitzmiller, explicitly) powerful etc etc entity. To which the judge said
rightly that meanwhile in the real world, the disclaimer is fooling
absolutely nobody.

All
> that is claimed is that it is immensely powerful and intelligent,
> which eliminates Hume's "belly of an infinite spider" from which the
> world was spun, but not one with the outward form of a bowl of pasta.

Yes, that's the point. All these would be compatible with ID. Its
proponents rely on the real social context, the "nudge nudge", to make
sure pupils will interpret it as a reference to the classical
monotheistic deity. To disentangle ID (in the legally relevant "Lemon"
sense) could mean to state the permitted range of designers explicitly -
giving equal time to all of them.

>
>
> [1]not to be confused with a hypothesized creator
> of our universe, even though most ID proponents happen
> to believe they coincide.
>
>
>> - so they decided to rather have no creator mentioned at all rather than the
>> danger of "false gods'.
>
> You are missing the point. The point is that they are focused
> on evidence for intelligent *design* and are not, *qua* ID theorists,
> addressing any other attributes the designer has. Behe for one has been
> quite explicit about that.

It's what lawyers call "venire contra factum proprium" - giving explicit
disclaimers in one fora and then acting against it in another. For the
purpose of the court case and the Lemon test, that is all that is needed
- not an abstract evaluation of the content of the theory, but how it
would affect the typical student, taken all of the context into account.
ID would then need an extremely strong and persuasive secular reason to
allow its inclusion in the curriculum that exceptionally permits it
despite the danger of the inference to some religions at the expense of
others.

And Behe's ID does not give you that, because even when looked at it
abstractly, it simply won't wash. In every scientific explanation, if
you posit a causal agent as an explanation for a range of phenomena, the
next step always and with necessity is to then derive from the
hypothesized properties of the agent new expected observations. If you
don't do this, then you don't have a theory, and you don;t adhere to the
methodological precepts of science.

[Peter Nyikos]

On Wednesday, July 4, 2018 at 9:50:03 AM UTC-4, Burkhard wrote:
> Peter Nyikos wrote:
> > On Tuesday, July 3, 2018 at 11:15:03 AM UTC-4, Burkhard wrote:

Picking up where I left off in my first reply to your post:

> >> But the legal analysis of pastafarianism is problematic, for a number of
> >> reasons. The first, and most important one, is the one you mention:
> >> there is a genetic fallacy here. While FSM was born as parody, that does
> >> not mean it can't be practiced now as a secular religion. The judge
> >> correctly acknowledges that for the purpose of the law, secular
> >> philosophies qualify - but tries to make a distinction without
> >> difference between "proper" secular philosophies and "improper" ones
> >> that arbitrarily adopt a secular work and then center around it (the "A
> >> short history of time" reading circle as religious congregation).

Are you referring to the late Stephen Hawking's best-selling popularization
of various facts and conjectures in cosmology, _A Brief History of Time_?
Reading circles abound, and it makes no sense to look upon them as
religions, if all they do is discuss the ramifications of what is written
in the works of the author.

> >> But as applied here, that analysis goes way beyond United States v. Meyers,
> >> (the religious exemption of dope smoking case), which would allow to
> >> distinguish this through the absence of "communal rituals and observances".
> >>
> >> If you look at pastafarian communities - e.g. their Kiva group here e.g.
> >> https://www.kiva.org/team/fsm
> >>
> >
> > I saw no hint of the following on the webpage that comes up when
> > I click on the link:
> >
> >> I'd say they easily meet the test: there is a concern for "ultimate"
> >> things" that comes up frequently in the discussions.
> >
> > But here is the burning question: do these discussions have anything
> > to do with the practice of Pastafarianism?
>

> I'd say it's the other way round - again similar to the UU - discussing
> this in a community is the practice, even if the outcome is more open.

The discussion in which I participated [see below] gave no hint that
Pastafarianism claims to be a form of religion. Similarly,
some people signing up passers-by for free personality tests
back in 1975 gave me no hint that these tests were under
the aegis of Scientology.

BTW, my previous knowledge about Scientology was under
its other name of "Dianetics" and so I would not have
suspected it was a pseudoscience (let alone a religion)
even if I had heard the term "Scientology".
What finally gave the game away was that I saw posters
of L. Ron Hubbard, founder of dianetics, on the walls
when I took some "lessons" based on the
(rigged, as I learned later from elsewhere)
outcome of the personality test.


> But as secular and humanist philosophies are protected by the law in
> question, it is difficult to see why these are not.

If the discussion in which I participated was typical of what goes on in
a campus meeting of Pastafarians, there is no need to invoke
any kind of protection for them except freedom of speech.

And if that is all that Pastafarianism is at the core, then it
is just like any other discussion/debating organization, and the
zany rituals are only gimmicks to call attention to the organization
and to entertain its members.

> >
> > Here at the University of South Carolina we had (and may still have,
> > I haven't checked in the last few years) a Pastafarian group, but
> > they always struck me as just another student organization. There
> > was never any hint that they styled themselves as a religion.
> >
> > I attended one meeting of theirs, which focused on some televised
> > debate. Due to technical difficulties we missed most of it,
> > so I got to talking to some of the other audience members,
> > at least one of whom was a Pastafarian. I got the impression
> > that it was an agnostic society, not given to taking any stands
> > on religion.
>

> See also my answer to Mark. As a group, they are agnostic, in the same
> way Unitarian Universalists are agnostic collectively

In their present form, perhaps. But if so, then both words
in the name are anachronisms.


> - but individual
> members can be Christian, Muslim, atheists, agnostics etc .

This sounds like the Freemasons, which do not claim to be a religion.

>
> Here from the FAQ:
>
> Q: A lot of Pastafarians seem to be anti-religion and/or atheists (why
> is this?)
> A: We're not anti-religion. This is NOT an atheists club. Anyone and
> everyone is welcome to join our church including current members of
> other religions. In addition to the Atheists, Agnostics, and
> Freethinkers who have joined us, we have a number of Christian (and
> Muslim, and Hindu and Buddhist ...) members and I would love to have more.
> Note to the religious: You are welcome here
>
> That is a very similar stance to that the UU takes" no official position
> (and in that sense agnostic) but providing a framework for people to
> discuss these things

I see no reason why the organization is called a "church" here.


My next (and maybe concluding!) reply to this post of yours will
pick up where this one left off.


Peter Nyikos

[Peter Nyikos]

On Saturday, July 7, 2018 at 8:25:03 PM UTC-4, Tim Anderson wrote:
> On Saturday, July 7, 2018 at 12:15:03 PM UTC+10, Peter Nyikos wrote:
>
> <snip>
>
> > I looked up the Wikipedia entry, and the fact that it takes place
> > in Christian countries seems actually less relevant than the fact that
> > leprechauns were invented in a Christian country.
>
> Wrong. The name is a Christian-era invention (the "chaun" part is an Irish corruption from the Latin "corpus"), but the myth derives from the pre-Christian period.

OK, but why do you think this is not more relevant than the fact that
sin-eating originated in a Christian country? I have heard about a myth
that the leprechauns were a somewhat cursed species due to neutrality
between the hosts of Satan and the hosts of St. Michael the Archangel.
Do sin-eaters invoke a similar myth connecting them to Christianity?

> > The only connection
> > with Jesus's sacrifice is the bare idea of taking on the sins of the
> > other person -- but not in a way consistent with what Jesus is
> > supposed to have done. Jesus portrayed himself at the last judgment
> > as doing something very different than taking everyone's sins on himself.
> >
>
> Anachronistically wrong. Jesus is a pre-Christian figure.

Are you questioning the existence of a person named Yehoshua ("Jesus")
who lived at the beginning of what is inaccurately called
the "Common Era" [1] and who was crucified during the Judean
governorship of Pontius Pilate, and about whom one Shaul of Tarsus,
later calling himself Paul, wrote extensively?

[1] I have nothing against BCE and CE except
for the fact that their official expansions are mildly insulting to
Muslims and Chinese and Orthodox Jews, and any other
culture that uses different dating systems.
This problem would not arise if BCE were understood to mean "Before
the Christian Era" instead of "Before the Common Era".

> Any call on "Jesus portrayed himself" relies on a later Christology.

"later" = within the lifetime of a great many who knew this Yehoshua
personally, who were also very well known to the aforementioned Paul,
whose I Thessalonians is rather reliably dated to within ca. two and
a half to three decades after the aforementioned crucifixion.

> It is only the Christidolatry of the emerging church that elevates the Jesus figure's purported actions above "sin-eating".

Is it not, rather, true that the only connection between this "sin-eating"
and Yehoshua IS what you call "Chrisidolatry" that connects Yehosua
with any kind of redemption?

> In any case, have you forgotten that the Jewish tradition of that era had the well-attested ceremony of the scapegoat, which played an identical absolutionary role.

No, I am very well aware of that ceremony, and also of a similar role
Isaiah ascribes to "the suffering servant of God". I was merely expressing skepticism of any real connection between sin-eating and Christianity.

Peter Nyikos
Professor, Department of Mathematics -- standard disclaimer--

[zencycle]

On Wednesday, July 4, 2018 at 9:50:03 AM UTC-4, Burkhard wrote:
>

> Well, Halloween is originally a catholic holy day, and as such covered
> anyway

As with every other catholic 'holy' day, halloween was co-opted from a traditional pagan worship - the Celtic Samhain. Catholicism has no original concepts, whatsoever. While christianity may have started as a cult, catholicism was a political movement, pure and simple. The christ figure has very, very little to do with catholicism - indeed, any resurrected figure would have sufficed.




- no need for a group that participates in Halloween and only
> Halloween.
>
> And then there are quite a number of Christians that do indeed think of
> participants to engage in cultic activity (some of them obviously think
> that Catholicism is itself a cult, others that it is an old pagan holiday)

> >
> > And then there are Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, the tooth fairy,
> > the Sandman... each coming with a ritual.
>

> And potentially the first two activities are protected by RFRA and
> similar laws, as they are part of or originate from recognized religions
> - the issue would only be what exactly constitutes to burden unduly a
> sincerely held belief with respect to them
>
> Tooth fairy and Sandman would probably not qualify at present - simply
> because they are not part of a belief system that concerns itself
> with"the ultimate issues"- though there are elements of the Neil Gaiman
> fan community where you can doubt this at least for the latter. The
> Sandman comics come with a pretty elaborated philosophy and ethical
> framework.

>
>
> >
> >
> >> Going down the genetic fallacy is obviously dangerous - will a court
> >> next say that Joseph Smith was "obviously just making it up for a
> >> laugh/money" and deny religious status to the Mormon Church?
> >
> > No, because the Mormons have very sincere beliefs of a rather
> > elaborate sort. There never was any hint of an intentional parody
> > anywhere in their history, AFAIK.
>
> That seems to me question begging. In the argument, Cavanaugh is denied
> protection under the penal equivalent of RFRA even though he claims to
> hold a sincere belief, because, so the argument, the religion was
> "conceived by someone who did not take it serious himself" - that's why
> it is a genetic argument, an argument from origins.
>
> Now, applied to the Mormon example, the sincere belief of current
> Mormons would not matter any longer, IF the claim would be made that the
> founder, Smith, did not take it serious (not necessarily parody, "in it
> for the money" would do). And I'd say one could easily see a non-Mormon
> judge coming to this conclusion. That's why I think it's a dangerous
> slippery slope - the sincerity of the group as it is NOW does not
> matter, if the belief system was originally "conceived in jest" or in
> some other non-sincere way.
>
>
>
> >

> >> Again, the
> >> court recognizes the danger ("Of course, there are those who contend
> >> and Cavanaugh is probably among them - that the Bible or the Koran are
> >> just as fictional as those books...".
> >
> > That only reinforces the suspicion that these people don't take
> > their alleged beliefs seriously.
>

> Well, this is a statement by the judge about FSM, not a statement by
> FSM. And of course people can take an anti-religious view of this type
> very seriously - and that is all that is needed for RFRA protection.
>
> To quote the official FSM position on this:
> Q: Is this a joke?
> A: It’s not a joke. Elements of our religion are sometimes described as
> satire and there are many members who do not literally believe our
> scripture, but this isn’t unusual in religion. A lot of Christians don’t
> believe the Bible is literally true – but that doesn’t mean they aren’t
> True Christians.
> If you say Pastafarians must believe in a literal Flying Spaghetti
> Monster to be True Believers, then you can make a similar argument for
> Christians. There is a lot of outlandish stuff in the Bible that
> rational Christians choose to ignore.

>
>
> >
> >
> > Remainder deleted, to be replied to later. Duty calls.
> >
> >

> > Peter Nyikos
> >

[Peter Nyikos]

You're really responding very helpfully, Burkhard, and so I go
on ignoring catcalls by others on this thread. [Tim Anderson
is someone of whom I do not have negative memories, and
I don't classify what he wrote as "catcalls," so I did
respond to his post today.]

By the way, Mark Isaak was very much exaggerating here. I doubt that
there are as many as 5000 people on earth who know enough about ID to
distinguish between misinformation, disinformation, and the truth about ID.

I even doubt that the majority of the Lehigh University colleagues
of Behe in his department know that much. I believe their unanimous
signing of a manifesto distancing themselves from him was a typical
instance of a herd mentality.

By "parties" do you mean only the defendants and the plaintiffs,
or do you include witnesses called up by either side?

> In both
> cases, a third party observer might want to argue that this is not the
> best account of science, or the best account of ID, neither would matter
> as the court is limited to what the parties argue.

But what about the testimony of the witnesses?

> Now, where the court does come in is where it gives reason why they find
> the party submissions convincing or unconvincing. Here Jones could have
> in my view made his own life easier - the definition of science that he
> adopts is pretty much identical to the one that as a matter of law
> (post-Daubert), US courts in most states use to distinguish science from
> non-science as a matter of routine. So a shorter and in my view neater
> result could have been to argue that this is not mainly a question of
> fact,

To what does "this" refer in this sentence?

> but one of law - for the purpose of law, the relevant definition
> of science comes from the FRE as interpreted by Daubert. And on
> questions of law, as opposed to questions of fact, the judges have much
> more leeway for their own analysis.
>
> I have to wonder whether Judge Jones was daydreaming all
> > through Scott Minnich's testimony of an impeccably scientific
> > experiment establishing that a certain kind of bacterial
> > flagellum was irreducibly complex.
> >
> > Did you ever read that part of the Dover transcript? IIRC the
> > Opinion of the Court makes no reference at all to Minnich's testimony.
> >
> Definitely not asleep, for no other reason that he gives several
> procedural rulings on Minnich's evidence. There are 40 or so references
> to Minnich's testimony in the decision, but none I think on his detailed
> discussion of irreducible complexity.

I'll have to look and see whether the refrences to Minnich's
testimony were accurate. The omission of IC certainly shows
they were inadequate.

> And the reason that this is not
> coming up in the decision is simply that almost all of it is simply
> irrelevant. Whether or not there are ID systems as defined, whether the
> definition of ID system is sound, and whether Minnich's method for
> testing for ID is scientifically appropriate has no bearing on the case
> - and that is the majority of his evidence.

It most assuredly is relevant to whether ID has a scientific
component or not. Behe's _Darwin's Black Box_ is centered on
IC systems as evidence for ID. Personally I think his case is
extremely weak, but the issue of whether something follows the methodology
of science is not decided by how successful that something is.

>
> What is the issue, for the court, if the subsequent inference "... and
> hence design" is so obviously scientifically sound

See my use of "successful" above. Behe is very careful, for most of
his book, to avoid such unequivocal claims. And I don't recall
any in his Dover testimony.

> to lend a
> "legitimate secular reason" to what looks otherwise for all intends and
> purposes like Paley's argument.

You would be on much firmer ground if you had put "Lecomte du Nuoy"
instead of Paley, who did not use probabilistic arguments. Behe
uses them freely, although he does not give numerical estimates,
only general judgments like "the universe can't wait that long"
for all the alleged mutations of Doolittle to take place.

>
> And here Minnich does not help his side a bit - from thr court's
> decision: "Irreducible complexity is a negative argument against
> evolution, not proof of design, a point conceded by defense expert
> Professor Minnich. (2:15 (Miller); 38:82 (Minnich) (irreducible
> complexity "is not a test of intelligent design; it's a test of
> evolution")."
>
> But it is exactly that test for design that his side would have needed.

If "test of" is meant as "proof of, if successful" then this is
setting the bar way too high. It's as though one were to claim
that "the fossils of the horse family are a test of common
descent of all animals."

As for the flip side - a negative answer providing falsifiability of ID -
that too is missing from the issue of whether something is IC or not.

On the other hand, the almost universally accepted claim that
life on earth originated here on earth could be falsified if
we discovered numerous life-bearing planets, all of them having
life based on minor modifications of our genetic code.

This would make panspermia (directed or undirected) the
hypothesis of choice, thus greatly strengthening the current case
for DP without providing a "test of it" in the above sense.

> Now, Minnich asserts, rather than argues, that there is an "inference to
> the best explanation" here - that would have been the place for him to
> elaborate and show that the way he uses ItBE the way it is one in
> science. He doesn't, and I'd say he could not. ItBE are a form of the
> hypothetic-deductive model, and as such indeed central to empirical
> research.

Does ItBE refer to the stylized procedure known as "the scientific
method"? Many sciences - anthropology archeology, astronomy, cosmology,
evolutionary theory, and paleontology come to mind - cannot fit
into that procrustean bed.

> BUT to be an inference to "the best" explanation, and not just
> any abductive inference (which are after all strictly logically speaking
> invalid), it needs not just the hypothetic part - the postulation of a
> cause - but also the deductive part, that it testing if that cause
> actually exists and what precisely its properties are. Neither Behe nor
> Minnich do this, or even come up with a plausible scientific programe on
> how it could be done.

As I said, Jones's judgment against teaching ID as an ALTERNATIVE
to evolution was impeccable, but it left the door wide open
for teaching it as a SUPPLEMENT to evolutionary theory.
Minnich and Behe certainly would not have asked for any better
"be it so ruled" concluding remarks of Judge Jones.

>
> One of the two relevant claims Minnich makes is in response to the
> question if IC systems cannot evolve - where in his answer he switches
> to "there is no detailed evolutionary process for them in the
> literature". But that's of course not good enough,

For what? certainly not for "testing ID".

> that is indeed just
> an argument from incredulity

No, it is far more than that: it is a sign that the issue
of whether the bacterial flagellum was designed is UNRESOLVED.

Sure, there is not proof that the flagellum is designed;
but equally, there is no plausible argument that it was
NOT designed.

And, in anticipation of a probable objection, let me
remind you of what I wrote above about abiogenesis:

the almost universally accepted claim that
life on earth originated here on earth
could be falsified

> something which in other parts of his
> testimony he rejects.

If Minnich rejected the claim that his was
"just an argument from incredulity," he was standing
on very solid ground.

>
> The courts are having none of it. It reasons, quite correctly, that the
> only thing Minnich's testimony shows is that there are things we do not
> know - and that holds of course true for all sciences.

"things we do not know" is generalizing beyond reason
from the specific issue in question. See above about
abiogenesis.

Even apart from that -- why is the hypothesis that the flagellum
was designed excluded from science? If earthly abiogenesis is
falsified as suggested above, then this hypothesis is greatly
strengthened. And its IC nature would become relevant for
the first time, thanks to the great strengthening.


Remainder deleted, to be replied to later, probably only tomorrow.

Peter Nyikos
Professor, Department of Math. -- standard disclaimer --

U. of South Carolina in Columbia
http://www.math.sc.edu/~nyikos/

[*Hemidactylus*]

Peter Nyikos <nyi...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
>
[snip]

>
> As for the flip side - a negative answer providing falsifiability of ID -
> that too is missing from the issue of whether something is IC or not.
>

IC is a mirage, an argument from ignorance veiling a preferred God gap. You
see a mirage and think it is water because you thirst for God. The whole
point of the panspermy angle is to make it sound nonreligious and therefore
legit, a backdoor in Jefferson’s wall.

>
> On the other hand, the almost universally accepted claim that
> life on earth originated here on earth could be falsified if
> we discovered numerous life-bearing planets, all of them having
> life based on minor modifications of our genetic code.
>

That’s a mighty big what if. How are we supposed to do that without science
fictiony arguments? Unwarranted speculation masquerading as argument.

>
> This would make panspermia (directed or undirected) the
> hypothesis of choice, thus greatly strengthening the current case
> for DP without providing a "test of it" in the above sense.
>

Pipe dream. IF we found organisms in our solar system bearing similar
genetic code we could merely figure in what direction. Did life form here
and a fragment breakaway that seeded another locale or vice versa. No
intelligence. No design. Outside our solar system is a pipe dream.

[Joe Cummings]

On Wed, 4 Jul 2018 14:16:31 +0100, Burkhard <b.sc...@ed.ac.uk>
wrote:

>Mark Isaak wrote:

>> On 7/3/18 3:22 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
>>> Burkhard may still have me killfiled, so I would appreciate
>>> it if someone were to call reply to this post to his attention.
>>

>> Done.
>
>And do you know what you have done, and take full responsibility ? :o)
>
>OK, I'll answer yours here, and Peter's in his original post
>
>
><snip>
>>>

>>> <snip>
>>>>>> the issue of "cult" vs. "religion"
>>>>>> here is unresolvable by logic, only by decree, and whether a
>>>>>> parody can be an actual religion would be even worse.
>>>
>>> Food for thought: Thugee was a cult, NOT a parody. It took a
>>> Westerner (British, to be specific) to care enough about the ritual
>>> murders to take steps to eradicate it.
>>

>> Ignoring the out-of-sixteen-blocks-past-left-field Thuggee reference, I
>> will go out on a fairly sturdy limb and say that all cults are
>> religions, period.

>>
>>> <snip to get to a bit of Mark's reply>
>>>
>>>>> There are two potential problems with the judge's ruling. First,
>>>>> religions always change from what they were when they started, so
>>>>> starting as a parody does not mean the religion will remain a parody.
>>>>> However, Pastafarianism is new enough that this objection does not
>>>>> apply.
>>>>>
>>>>> More seriously, parody and religion are not mutually exclusive
>>>>> categories. People who parody a religion are making the explicitly
>>>>> religious statement that the religion deserves parody,
>>>
>>> I would prefer to call this a "meta-religious statement".
>>

>> I beg to differ. When one says, "Only a cruel mind could have invented
>> hell" (I think I'm misquoting Bertrand Russell), one is not making a
>> statement about religion, one is making a statement about specific
>> religions which include Hell. Pastafarianism makes a similar statement:
>> essentially, "Religions which accept intelligent design are really stupid."
>
>I'd be tempted to go further and say they make an even more obviously
>theological point, if you look at the FSM first commandment: the god of
>the creationists is either vain, obsessed with copyright or terribly
>insecure. This traits are common in humans, but even there they can be
>irritating. So a deity that expects constant praise and acknowledgement
>for their creation, and so to speak "signs" all their work, is on
>reflection not a particularly sound and overly anthropocentric deity.

>
>>
>>>>> and probably also
>>>>> believe that elements of their religion (especially humor) deserve at
>>>>> least as much veneration as mainline religion.
>>>
>>> I think this is stretching the word "veneration" unduly; "respect"
>>> is much more to the point, IMO.
>>

>> I see your point. I don't think it harms my overall argument.

>>
>>>>> I can accept that
>>>>> Pastafarianism is not a religion, but it does not follow that
>>>>> Cavanaugh's following it is not religious.
>>>
>>> But I believe it does follow from the reasoning in the court
>>> case, which can be accessed via the url that Burkhard
>>> repeats next:
>>>
>>>>

>>>> The full decision is here:
>>>> https://www.scribd.com/document/308299698/Cavanaugh-v-Bartelt
>>>>

>>>> OK, hobby horse alert - I have published some papers on this, including
>>>> "The play's the thing wherein I'll catch the conscience of the King:
>>>> Religious and Political Affiliation in Online Games as Data Protection
>>>> Issue,
>>>>
>>>> https://www.research.ed.ac.uk/portal/en/publications/the-plays-the-thing-wherein-ill-catch-the-conscience-of-the-king(9998d4f7-dc33-4ec4-ad8a-da3c8b19d238).html
>>>>
>>>
>>> All the url took me to was an abstract and a rather mysterious bar
>>> graph. The abstract talks about the distinction between people's online

>>> personae [analogous to roles in role-playing games such as
>>> Dungeons and Dragons] and their true personalities. This concept
>>> might profitably be combined with analysis of other forms of
>>> role playing, such as Cavanaugh's lawsuit.
>>>
>>>
>>>> It build on an earlier paper I did , Schafer/Abel, "All the world's a
>>>> stage" - Legal and cultural reflections on the surveillance of online
>>>> games, Datenschutz und Datensicherheit - DuD, volume 38, issue 9, 2014,
>>>> pp. 593-600
>>>> https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11623-014-0235-1
>>>
>>> This is paywalled, and I am too rushed for time now to see whether
>>> the University of South Carolina has an institutional subscription.
>>> The webpage does not make that easy to find out.
>>>

>>> Tomorrow being the fourth of July, I may have to wait until Thursday
>>> to find out. I may not even get the opportunity to post anywhere
>>> tomorrow;
>>> we have a barbecue scheduled with quite a number of guests.

>>>
>>>>
>>>> The judge in our case goes to some (procedurally problematic, in my
>>>> view) length to analyse pastafarianism on the basis of the FSM Gospel
>>>> book as "judicial notice" (i.e. this was not submitted by the
>>>> complainant). The discussion on the relation between ID and creationism
>>>> is interesting, detailed, and I'd say sound.
>>>
>>> I'll need to check this out carefully. If it is sound, it is
>>> nothing like the benighted statement in the article by the Telegraph
>>> that I quoted from.
>>>

>>>> But the legal analysis of pastafarianism is problematic, for a number of
>>>> reasons. The first, and most important one, is the one you mention:
>>>> there is a genetic fallacy here. While FSM was born as parody, that does
>>>> not mean it can't be practiced now as a secular religion. The judge
>>>> correctly acknowledges that for the purpose of the law, secular
>>>> philosophies qualify - but tries to make a distinction without
>>>> difference between "proper" secular philosophies and "improper" ones
>>>> that arbitrarily adopt a secular work and then center around it (the "A

>>>> short history of time" reading circle as religious congregation). But as

>>>> applied here, that analysis goes way beyond United States v. Meyers,
>>>> (the religious exemption of dope smoking case), which would allow to
>>>> distinguish this through the absence of "communal rituals and
>>>> observances".
>>>>
>>>> If you look at pastafarian communities - e.g. their Kiva group here e.g.
>>>> https://www.kiva.org/team/fsm
>>>>
>>>
>>> I saw no hint of the following on the webpage that comes up when
>>> I click on the link:
>>>
>>>> I'd say they easily meet the test: there is a concern for "ultimate"
>>>> things" that comes up frequently in the discussions.
>>>
>>> But here is the burning question: do these discussions have anything
>>> to do with the practice of Pastafarianism?
>>>

>>> Here at the University of South Carolina we had (and may still have,
>>> I haven't checked in the last few years) a Pastafarian group, but
>>> they always struck me as just another student organization. There
>>> was never any hint that they styled themselves as a religion.
>>>
>>> I attended one meeting of theirs, which focused on some televised
>>> debate. Due to technical difficulties we missed most of it,
>>> so I got to talking to some of the other audience members,
>>> at least one of whom was a Pastafarian. I got the impression
>>> that it was an agnostic society, not given to taking any stands
>>> on religion.
>>

>> Your sample size, though, is not sufficient for conclusions.
>
>I'd say agnostic "as a society", maybe, without expecting it from its
>members In that sense similar to the Unitarian Universalists I'd say,
>where individual members can self-- identify also as Christians, Jewish,
>agnostic, etc , and as a group no collective stance is taken. Same with
>FSM, according to the official website:

>"We’re not anti-religion. This is NOT an atheists club. Anyone and
>everyone is welcome to join our church including current members of
>other religions. In addition to the Atheists, Agnostics, and
>Freethinkers who have joined us, we have a number of Christian (and

>Muslim, and Hindu and Buddhist …) members and I would love to have more.
>Note to the religious: You are welcome here."
>
>
>>
>>>> True, it is often
>>>> formulated negatively ("there is no...") but as discussed with
>>>> Hemidactylus on an earlier thread, there is also an old tradition of
>>>> "negative theology" in both Christian and non-Christian mainstream
>>>> religions that do the same. There is communal activity - doing this
>>>> together for a better world. And there is collective observation of
>>>> rituals (talk like a pirate day is not only religiously observed n the
>>>> discussion boards, but also the day of a loanathon for fundraising), and
>>>> that ticks all the Meyers criteria.
>>>
>>> Halloween is like pirate day, even to the point of widespread raising
>>> of money for UNICEF, but nobody ever suggested that observers of
>>> Halloween
>>> constituted a religious cult.
>>
>> Oh, I have heard plenty of noise from some of the Religious Right who
>> seem to feel that way. Which is ironic, since Halloween is a Christian
>> holiday.
>
>Catholic, to be precise - it's all about the souls in purgatory. Though
>people have argued that it was one of the many attempts to appropriate
>an older pagan festival.


Nitpick:

Halloween is All Saints' Eve. "Hallow"- probably an Ablaut of "Holy"

The poor sods burning in Purgatory are remembered on All Souls' Day,
Nov.2.

Back to sleep, now.

JC
>
>So yes, it would definitely fall under the scope of RFRA, provided that
>you can show that it burdens unduly the exercise of a sincerely held
>belief. That may be more difficult if you say you have to wear a mask
>and go from house to house to ask for sweets (which is creepy in adults
>anyway), but if it is about walking down the street with a bell and
>shouting for people to remember the souls of the just departed, I'd say
>a slam dunk.

>
>>
>>> And then there are Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, the tooth fairy,
>>> the Sandman... each coming with a ritual.
>>

>> Not all rituals are religious (school commencement ceremonies might be a
>> better example), but if the ritual comes with references to the putative
>> religion and with sacred and/or moral overtones, the ritualizing would
>> seem to me to be rather telling.
>
>There is another problem here in the ruling that you identify. Not all
>members of a religion typically belief all its inherited symbols and
>rituals to the same degree. And you have arguably "secular" members of
>what are essentially religious groups, at least originally.
>
>The FSM addresses this directly:
>
>"It {The FSM} s not a joke. Elements of our religion are sometimes

>described as satire and there are many members who do not literally
>believe our scripture, but this isn’t unusual in religion. A lot of
>Christians don’t believe the Bible is literally true – but that doesn’t
>mean they aren’t True Christians."
>

>now depending on the country, the ratio between traditional believer vs
>secularized member may be different between FSM and a mainstream
>religion, but at least for much of northern Europe, I'd be doubtful
>about even that. That does not mean that these entities stop to be
>religions. For the purpose of the law, that means they still meet the
>first test. But if in the individual case, the claimant can show that
>their sincerely held beliefs are unduly burdened, the second step, is
>another issue
>
>I'd say the court would have been on much safer territory to deny only
>that second step, the "undue burden", and not opine about whether or not
>FSM is a religions.

>
>>
>>>> Going down the genetic fallacy is obviously dangerous - will a court
>>>> next say that Joseph Smith was "obviously just making it up for a
>>>> laugh/money" and deny religious status to the Mormon Church?
>>>
>>> No, because the Mormons have very sincere beliefs of a rather
>>> elaborate sort. There never was any hint of an intentional parody
>>> anywhere in their history, AFAIK.
>>>

>>>> Again, the
>>>> court recognizes the danger ("Of course, there are those who contend
>>>> and Cavanaugh is probably among them - that the Bible or the Koran are
>>>> just as fictional as those books...".
>>>
>>> That only reinforces the suspicion that these people don't take
>>> their alleged beliefs seriously.
>>>

>>> Remainder deleted, to be replied to later. Duty calls.
>>
>>

[Peter Nyikos]

On Monday, July 9, 2018 at 1:50:02 PM UTC-4, *Hemidactylus* wrote:
> Peter Nyikos <nyi...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
> >
> [snip]
> >
> > As for the flip side - a negative answer providing falsifiability of ID -
> > that too is missing from the issue of whether something is IC or not.
> >
> IC is a mirage, an argument from ignorance veiling a preferred God gap.

As usual, you substitute polemic for reasoned arguments.

> You see a mirage and think it is water because you thirst for God. The whole
> point of the panspermy angle is to make it sound nonreligious and therefore
> legit, a backdoor in Jefferson's wall.

Utterly false, and unsupportable. Directed panspermia (DP) is quite simply
a scientific hypothesis that was originated by atheist Francis Crick
and Leslie Orgel [religious affiliation, if any, unknown to me].

I have never treated DP as anything other than a scientific hypothesis
for how life on earth began.

> > On the other hand, the almost universally accepted claim that
> > life on earth originated here on earth could be falsified if
> > we discovered numerous life-bearing planets, all of them having
> > life based on minor modifications of our genetic code.
> >
> That's a mighty big what if. How are we supposed to do that without science
> fictiony arguments?

Evidently you do not know enough about the philosophy of science,
where "falsifiable" means "falsifiable, in principle, by empirical
methods."

"In principle" refers to the fact that we do not, AT PRESENT,
have the wherewithal to investigate life on other planetary systems.

But if you had actually read my FAQ on Directed Panspermia,
you would know that we have the technological know-how to make such investigations a reality over the next five thousand years.
It is only because of the great distance between stars, and
constraints on the speed it is possible to attain
[the speed of light being one of them, but there are others]
that the human race will have to wait that long.

> Unwarranted speculation masquerading as argument.

Pure polemic masquerading as reason.

> >
> > This would make panspermia (directed or undirected) the
> > hypothesis of choice, thus greatly strengthening the current case
> > for DP without providing a "test of it" in the above sense.
> >
> Pipe dream.

Quite the contrary, see above.

>IF we found organisms in our solar system bearing similar
> genetic code we could merely figure in what direction.

Which is why I talked about other planetary systems. In
our solar system "undirected" panspermia would be the
more likely explanation, thanks to reasonings of Hoyle
and Wickramasinghe. But when huge interstellar distances
are involved, directed panspermia is a much bigger contender.

> Did life form here
> and a fragment breakaway that seeded another locale or vice versa.

> No intelligence. No design. Outside our solar system is a pipe dream.

Wrong, see above.

Peter Nyikos
Professor, Department of Math. -- standard disclaimer --
U. of South Carolina

http://www.math.sc.edu/~nyikos/

[Peter Nyikos]

On Thursday, July 5, 2018 at 8:05:03 PM UTC-4, Burkhard wrote:
> Peter Nyikos wrote:

Picking up a bit before I left off in my first reply, to
include some context:

> > Fortunately, the actual ruling at the
> > end of the long *Kitzmiller* document was impeccable: the Dover
> > school district could not teach ID as an "alternative" to evolution.
> > In particular, there was no judgment against teaching it as
> > a SUPPLEMENT to evolutionary theory.

<snip to get to the part I did not discuss in detail>

> Now, Kitzmiller lays down some criteria that give a guide on how such a
> law compliant theory would look like: if you introduce designer as a
> scientific concept, it has to play by the rules of scientific inquiry.
> And that means you can't hide behind "and of the identity of the
> designer we know nothing and this is not within the scope of research".

As I said, I can't go along with that, and now I say why:
police can certainly show "beyond a reasonable doubt" that
some deaths were murders without knowing who the murderer was.

In all but the most spectacular examples of alleged ID, it
is not necessary to posit a supernatural designer. A natural
one, well within the scope of science, could have produced the
"design" in question. My favorite example is the bacterial
flagellum, and I am continuing to explore the connection with ID
in my post of less than an hour ago in reply to Hemidactylus.


Here comes the part I didn't address at all:

> As Quine said, "no entity without identity" - if you introduce a concept
> into science, you need to state clear identity criteria, and you need to
> lay down your strategy by which you intend to come to more testable
> statements about the designer as a bare minimum.

"design" is a concept well known in archeology and anthropology.
It is not at all easy to tell the differnce between a primitive
"hand ax" and a stone chipped away by undesigned means. The means
used by professional anthropologists and archeologists to judge
whether design is involved are not necessarily the ones that
rank amateurs give in talk.origins.

>
> A purely secular panspermist account may well tick that box - "we think
> it was an highly intelligent society from another planet involved in
> bioengineering, and we will explore this further by sending probes to
> other planets, which then should have life with similar DNA" would
> probably pass the Lemon test.

There is no "probably" about it. See my reply to Hemidactylus.

> But it is of course the last thing the
> Dover or Kansas school boards would have wanted.

These school boards are not run by experts on the subject of ID.
And while what you say is certainly true of the Dover school
board, I'm not sure about the Kansas one. I get the impression
from the letter by Bobby Henderson that the strategy there
was to voice criticisms of evolutionary theory without
making any claims about design at all.

If I am right about this, then the Kansas board might welcome
the DP hypothesis about the bacterial flagellum. After all,
Behe devoted at least one page to directed panspermia in _Darwin's
Black Box_, mentioning Francis Crick and praising him for his
cleverness.

> You don't need to go as
> far as the FSM, merely arguing that IF ex hypothesis, a designer is
> introduced, the evidence (predominance of design vs design in nature,
> predator prey dynamics etc) indicates that there were multiple teams of
> designers involved, who sometimes form alliances but are mainly
> antagonistic.

That excludes the role of evolution, which is why I capitalized
"SUPPLEMENT" up there. It also misses the point that even
ONE example of ID would then be a needed supplement to evolutionary
theory, even if almost every other alleged example turned out to be
a false lead.

> They had limited resources and knowledge, and probably
> reached decisions through voting in committees. The moment a school
> board want to exclude such an account, they need to give scientific
> reasons why it fits the data less well than their preferred model.

Like I said, I doubt that the Kansas School board would have
wanted to exclude such an account. Just look at Hemidactylus's
(unfounded) suspicions about my motivations for my keen
interest in DP. Similarly, it could be that religious school boards
would welcome DP under the mistaken impression that it is a "stealth"
religious argument.

Peter Nyikos
Professor, Department of Math. -- standard disclaimer --

U. of So. Carolina at Columbia
http://www.math.sc.edu/~nyikos/

[Mark Isaak]

On 7/9/18 2:46 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> On Thursday, July 5, 2018 at 8:05:03 PM UTC-4, Burkhard wrote:

> [snip to a single point]

>> Now, Kitzmiller lays down some criteria that give a guide on how such a
>> law compliant theory would look like: if you introduce designer as a
>> scientific concept, it has to play by the rules of scientific inquiry.
>> And that means you can't hide behind "and of the identity of the
>> designer we know nothing and this is not within the scope of research".
>
> As I said, I can't go along with that, and now I say why:
> police can certainly show "beyond a reasonable doubt" that
> some deaths were murders without knowing who the murderer was.

If the police cannot show beyond a reasonable doubt that the death was
not caused by a virus or a lightning bolt or a wolverine, then they will
not call it murder. ID "researchers" cannot narrow it down even to that
level of (lack of) specificity.

[Mark Isaak]

On 7/9/18 9:41 AM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
>>> [big snip]

>>>>> And with that inclusion, [panspermia]

>>>>> I would agree that not all of intelligent design is
>>>>> creationism. Since there are perhaps as many as five people in the
>>>>> world who understand the term "intelligent design" to include
>>>>> panspermia, we may say that ID is only about 99.99999% creationism, and
>>>>> 0.00001% not.
>
> By the way, Mark Isaak was very much exaggerating here. I doubt that
> there are as many as 5000 people on earth who know enough about ID to
> distinguish between misinformation, disinformation, and the truth about ID.

No exaggeration. The numbers are based on the number of Americans who
understand ID well enough to express a favorable opinion of it. If one
included only those who distinguish misinformation, disinformation, and
truth, there would be no such thing as ID, and the whole discussion
would be moot.

> [more snip]
>
>> And the reason that this [Minnich's testimony] is not

>> coming up in the decision is simply that almost all of it is simply
>> irrelevant. Whether or not there are ID systems as defined, whether the
>> definition of ID system is sound, and whether Minnich's method for
>> testing for ID is scientifically appropriate has no bearing on the case
>> - and that is the majority of his evidence.
>
> It most assuredly is relevant to whether ID has a scientific
> component or not. Behe's _Darwin's Black Box_ is centered on
> IC systems as evidence for ID. Personally I think his case is
> extremely weak, but the issue of whether something follows the methodology
> of science is not decided by how successful that something is.

I'll leave the legal aspects to Burkhard and note simply that "extremely
weak" is extremely generous to Behe. IC says absolutely nothing about
whether something is evolved, and IC says absolutely nothing about
whether something is designed.

[Mark Isaak]

On 7/9/18 1:52 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> [...]

> Evidently you do not know enough about the philosophy of science,
> where "falsifiable" means "falsifiable, in principle, by empirical
> methods."
>
> "In principle" refers to the fact that we do not, AT PRESENT,
> have the wherewithal to investigate life on other planetary systems.
>
> But if you had actually read my FAQ on Directed Panspermia,
> you would know that we have the technological know-how to
> make such investigations a reality over the next five thousand years.
> It is only because of the great distance between stars, and
> constraints on the speed it is possible to attain
> [the speed of light being one of them, but there are others]
> that the human race will have to wait that long.

Notwithstanding such philosophy, I still think you need to get that
5,000 years down to 100 years or so before you can take Directed
Panspermia out of the realm of science fiction and into the realm of
science.

[jillery]

On Mon, 9 Jul 2018 20:54:44 -0700, Mark Isaak
<eciton@curiousta/xyz/xonomy.net> wrote:

>On 7/9/18 1:52 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
>> [...]
>> Evidently you do not know enough about the philosophy of science,
>> where "falsifiable" means "falsifiable, in principle, by empirical
>> methods."
>>
>> "In principle" refers to the fact that we do not, AT PRESENT,
>> have the wherewithal to investigate life on other planetary systems.
>>
>> But if you had actually read my FAQ on Directed Panspermia,
>> you would know that we have the technological know-how to
>> make such investigations a reality over the next five thousand years.
>> It is only because of the great distance between stars, and
>> constraints on the speed it is possible to attain
>> [the speed of light being one of them, but there are others]
>> that the human race will have to wait that long.
>
>Notwithstanding such philosophy, I still think you need to get that
>5,000 years down to 100 years or so before you can take Directed
>Panspermia out of the realm of science fiction and into the realm of
>science.

DP makes a similar logical error as disproving evolution by 2LoT.
Pseudo-skeptics claim 2LoT disproves evolution because entropy, but
don't address that evolution assumes external sources of energy. In a
similar way, DP assumes an origin of life external to Earth, which
"kicks the can" of the origin of life to those external sources. DP
needs to show that life was more likely to have origins elsewhere *AND
THEN* migrated to Earth within the time window we know life on Earth
appeared. It's that second part which makes DP a less-than-best
inference.

[Peter Nyikos]

On Monday, July 9, 2018 at 8:10:02 PM UTC-4, Mark Isaak wrote:
> On 7/9/18 2:46 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> > On Thursday, July 5, 2018 at 8:05:03 PM UTC-4, Burkhard wrote:
> > [snip to a single point]
>
> >> Now, Kitzmiller lays down some criteria that give a guide on how such a
> >> law compliant theory would look like: if you introduce designer as a
> >> scientific concept, it has to play by the rules of scientific inquiry.
> >> And that means you can't hide behind "and of the identity of the
> >> designer we know nothing and this is not within the scope of research".
> >
> > As I said, I can't go along with that, and now I say why:
> > police can certainly show "beyond a reasonable doubt" that
> > some deaths were murders without knowing who the murderer was.

The inference should be clear: one might be able to infer
design without any idea of what the designer or designers
might be.


Isaak considers only the anti-design side of the argument:

> If the police cannot show beyond a reasonable doubt that the death was
> not caused by a virus or a lightning bolt or a wolverine, then they will
> not call it murder.

Similarly, if the "Mother Earth did it" (abiogenesis) cannot show
beyond a reasonable doubt that life on earth originated within
our solar system, then they SHOULD not call it "not due to design."

> ID "researchers" cannot narrow it down even to that
> level of (lack of) specificity.

I could, and did, in what is a purely scientific hypothesis,
as I told Hemidactylus.


It will probably take 10,000 years before either the "Mother Earth did it,
or MAYBE some other body in our solar system did it" crowd [1] OR the
"directed panspermists did it" crowd [2] wins a decisive victory even to
the extent that common descent has won out among scientists and myself
and people in both of these crowds.

This is an elaboration of what I said in that reply to Hemidactylus.

In a rejoinder, you implied, in effect, that it is "science fiction"
to think the human race will advance in its space exploration to that
extent, EVER. Do you think we are headed for a collapse so complete,
it will take us back to the middle ages until the human race becomes
extinct?

[1] This includes Hemidactylus and, by the look of things, yourself
and the majority of talk.origins regulars.

[2] This does not include t.o. regulars at present AFAIK. I am pretty evenly
divided between the directed panspermist hypothesis and the hypothesis of
the first crowd, thanks to the "MAYBE" clause. OTOH I doubt that the
majority of t.o. regulars cares enough about the abiogenesis issue to
have thought much about the "MAYBE" clause at all.

In fact, I think most t.o. regulars bring with them the default
assumption of their youth, which is that the Miller-Urey experiment
shows that probably "life is as inevitable as quartz" on any body
which has the means to propagate that life, once started.

Peter Nyikos
Professor, Department of Math. -- standard disclaimer --

U. of So. Carolina in Columbia
http://www.math.sc.edu/~nyikos/

[*Hemidactylus*]

Peter Nyikos <nyi...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
> On Monday, July 9, 2018 at 8:10:02 PM UTC-4, Mark Isaak wrote:
>> On 7/9/18 2:46 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
>>> On Thursday, July 5, 2018 at 8:05:03 PM UTC-4, Burkhard wrote:
>>> [snip to a single point]
>>
>>>> Now, Kitzmiller lays down some criteria that give a guide on how such a
>>>> law compliant theory would look like: if you introduce designer as a
>>>> scientific concept, it has to play by the rules of scientific inquiry.
>>>> And that means you can't hide behind "and of the identity of the
>>>> designer we know nothing and this is not within the scope of research".
>>>
>>> As I said, I can't go along with that, and now I say why:
>>> police can certainly show "beyond a reasonable doubt" that
>>> some deaths were murders without knowing who the murderer was.
>
> The inference should be clear: one might be able to infer
> design without any idea of what the designer or designers
> might be.
>
>
> Isaak considers only the anti-design side of the argument:
>
>> If the police cannot show beyond a reasonable doubt that the death was
>> not caused by a virus or a lightning bolt or a wolverine, then they will
>> not call it murder.
>
> Similarly, if the "Mother Earth did it" (abiogenesis) cannot show
> beyond a reasonable doubt that life on earth originated within
> our solar system, then they SHOULD not call it "not due to design."
>

There is so much primordial bias built into that argument. Let’s start with
the anthropomorphic projection that gave us deification, which was the
default until Darwin. You are reverting to default because of difficulties
in understanding abiogenesis.

>
>> ID "researchers" cannot narrow it down even to that
>> level of (lack of) specificity.
>
> I could, and did, in what is a purely scientific hypothesis,
> as I told Hemidactylus.
>
>
> It will probably take 10,000 years before either the "Mother Earth did it,
> or MAYBE some other body in our solar system did it" crowd [1] OR the
> "directed panspermists did it" crowd [2] wins a decisive victory even to
> the extent that common descent has won out among scientists and myself
> and people in both of these crowds.
>

Why do we need to give the directed panspermists a seat at the table given
the far fetchedness of the notion. There are insurmountable distances,
time, and cost-benefit from POV of designers to be overly charitable.

>
> This is an elaboration of what I said in that reply to Hemidactylus.
>
> In a rejoinder, you implied, in effect, that it is "science fiction"
> to think the human race will advance in its space exploration to that
> extent, EVER. Do you think we are headed for a collapse so complete,
> it will take us back to the middle ages until the human race becomes
> extinct?
>

Possibly.

>
> [1] This includes Hemidactylus and, by the look of things, yourself
> and the majority of talk.origins regulars.
>
> [2] This does not include t.o. regulars at present AFAIK. I am pretty evenly
> divided between the directed panspermist hypothesis and the hypothesis of
> the first crowd, thanks to the "MAYBE" clause. OTOH I doubt that the
> majority of t.o. regulars cares enough about the abiogenesis issue to
> have thought much about the "MAYBE" clause at all.
>
> In fact, I think most t.o. regulars bring with them the default
> assumption of their youth, which is that the Miller-Urey experiment
> shows that probably "life is as inevitable as quartz" on any body
> which has the means to propagate that life, once started.
>

Is this Crick’s version of vitamin C?

[Peter Nyikos]

On Tuesday, July 10, 2018 at 3:45:03 AM UTC-4, jillery wrote:
> On Mon, 9 Jul 2018 20:54:44 -0700, Mark Isaak
> <eciton@curiousta/xyz/xonomy.net> wrote:
>
> >On 7/9/18 1:52 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> >> [...]
> >> Evidently you do not know enough about the philosophy of science,
> >> where "falsifiable" means "falsifiable, in principle, by empirical
> >> methods."
> >>
> >> "In principle" refers to the fact that we do not, AT PRESENT,
> >> have the wherewithal to investigate life on other planetary systems.
> >>
> >> But if you had actually read my FAQ on Directed Panspermia,
> >> you would know that we have the technological know-how to
> >> make such investigations a reality over the next five thousand years.
> >> It is only because of the great distance between stars, and
> >> constraints on the speed it is possible to attain
> >> [the speed of light being one of them, but there are others]
> >> that the human race will have to wait that long.
> >
> >Notwithstanding such philosophy, I still think you need to get that
> >5,000 years down to 100 years or so before you can take Directed
> >Panspermia out of the realm of science fiction and into the realm of
> >science.

I rebutted Mark's claim a few minutes ago:

https://groups.google.com/d/msg/talk.origins/5F6WtDhlRgU/koeniDJdBQAJ
Subject: Re: Pastafarianism: Anti-ID Satire Run Amok
Date: Tue, 10 Jul 2018 07:41:19 -0700 (PDT)
Message-ID: <c4cd3f96-5cf1-4ffc...@googlegroups.com>

>
> DP makes a similar logical error as disproving evolution by 2LoT.
> Pseudo-skeptics claim 2LoT disproves evolution because entropy, but
> don't address that evolution assumes external sources of energy. In a
> similar way, DP assumes an origin of life external to Earth, which
> "kicks the can" of the origin of life to those external sources.

Exactly so: DP is a scientific hypothesis about how life began ON EARTH.
The three main biological issues [1] on talk.origins are:

1. The origin of life, period.

2. The origin of life on earth.

3. Evolution, once life got started on earth.

Any number of t.o. participants are keen on discussing 1. and 3.
but their attitude towards 2. usually ranges between indifference and disdain
for the ones who do not conflate it with 1.


[1] then there is the non-biological issue:

0. The origin of our universe, with its extreme sensitivity of
basic physical constants as far as life is concerned and

> DP needs to show that life was more likely to have origins elsewhere

There will be no such need until about 10,000 or more years from now.
Then we might have enough evidence to lift issue 2. out of the "no
compelling data either way" realm. See my reply to Mark linked up there.

> *AND THEN* migrated to Earth within the time window we know life on Earth
> appeared.

"migrated" suggests UNdirected panspermia. [2] DP is all about "was sent"
with only microorganisms sent except to the closest systems.
Never a hint about the senders migrating to earth.

> It's that second part which makes DP a less-than-best
> inference.

I dealt with that issue at length in my FAQ draft, to which you
only paid token attention.


You do not mention what your alleged best is, perhaps
because you have no opinion one way or the other as
to whether comets brought life to earth from Mars
or Ceres or some other body that Oxyaena suggested in
an OP to a thread devoted to the beginning of life on earth.

[2] Comets are the preferred "vehicles" for undirected panspermia,
thanks to the influence of Hoyle and Wickramasinghe.

Peter Nyikos
Professor, Department of Math. -- standard disclaimer --

U. of So. Carolina
http://www.math.sc.edu/~nyikos/

[Mark Isaak]

On 7/10/18 7:41 AM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> On Monday, July 9, 2018 at 8:10:02 PM UTC-4, Mark Isaak wrote:
>> On 7/9/18 2:46 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
>>> On Thursday, July 5, 2018 at 8:05:03 PM UTC-4, Burkhard wrote:
>>> [snip to a single point]
>>
>>>> Now, Kitzmiller lays down some criteria that give a guide on how such a
>>>> law compliant theory would look like: if you introduce designer as a
>>>> scientific concept, it has to play by the rules of scientific inquiry.
>>>> And that means you can't hide behind "and of the identity of the
>>>> designer we know nothing and this is not within the scope of research".
>>>
>>> As I said, I can't go along with that, and now I say why:
>>> police can certainly show "beyond a reasonable doubt" that
>>> some deaths were murders without knowing who the murderer was.
>
> The inference should be clear: one might be able to infer
> design without any idea of what the designer or designers
> might be.

The inference should be clear: One might be able to infer design once
one narrows down the mechanism of origin to include only a set of designers.

> Isaak considers only the anti-design side of the argument:

Actually, my side *is* the more pro-design side. Your side makes design
meaningless.

>> If the police cannot show beyond a reasonable doubt that the death was
>> not caused by a virus or a lightning bolt or a wolverine, then they will
>> not call it murder.
>
> Similarly, if the "Mother Earth did it" (abiogenesis) cannot show
> beyond a reasonable doubt that life on earth originated within
> our solar system, then they SHOULD not call it "not due to design."

Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn whether they call it design or
not. My interest is finding the mechanism. Which makes my interest
diametrically opposed to the so-called design side.

>> ID "researchers" cannot narrow it down even to that
>> level of (lack of) specificity.
>
> I could, and did, in what is a purely scientific hypothesis,
> as I told Hemidactylus.
>
> It will probably take 10,000 years before either the "Mother Earth did it,
> or MAYBE some other body in our solar system did it" crowd [1] OR the
> "directed panspermists did it" crowd [2] wins a decisive victory even to
> the extent that common descent has won out among scientists and myself
> and people in both of these crowds.
>
> This is an elaboration of what I said in that reply to Hemidactylus.
>
> In a rejoinder, you implied, in effect, that it is "science fiction"
> to think the human race will advance in its space exploration to that
> extent, EVER.

That is a lie; I never said that. I said the hypothesis of directed
panspermia is science fiction, and will be so until the prospect of
testing it is actually foreseeable in practice.

> Do you think we are headed for a collapse so complete,
> it will take us back to the middle ages until the human race becomes
> extinct?

I don't know. That's why your 5000- or 10,000-year view is science fiction.

[Mark Isaak]

On 7/10/18 8:27 AM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> On Tuesday, July 10, 2018 at 3:45:03 AM UTC-4, jillery wrote:
>> On Mon, 9 Jul 2018 20:54:44 -0700, Mark Isaak
>> <eciton@curiousta/xyz/xonomy.net> wrote:
>>
>>> On 7/9/18 1:52 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
>>>> [...]
>>>> Evidently you do not know enough about the philosophy of science,
>>>> where "falsifiable" means "falsifiable, in principle, by empirical
>>>> methods."
>>>>
>>>> "In principle" refers to the fact that we do not, AT PRESENT,
>>>> have the wherewithal to investigate life on other planetary systems.
>>>>
>>>> But if you had actually read my FAQ on Directed Panspermia,
>>>> you would know that we have the technological know-how to
>>>> make such investigations a reality over the next five thousand years.
>>>> It is only because of the great distance between stars, and
>>>> constraints on the speed it is possible to attain
>>>> [the speed of light being one of them, but there are others]
>>>> that the human race will have to wait that long.
>>>
>>> Notwithstanding such philosophy, I still think you need to get that
>>> 5,000 years down to 100 years or so before you can take Directed
>>> Panspermia out of the realm of science fiction and into the realm of
>>> science.
>
> I rebutted Mark's claim a few minutes ago:

That is, you lied about it.

> https://groups.google.com/d/msg/talk.origins/5F6WtDhlRgU/koeniDJdBQAJ
> Subject: Re: Pastafarianism: Anti-ID Satire Run Amok
> Date: Tue, 10 Jul 2018 07:41:19 -0700 (PDT)
> Message-ID: <c4cd3f96-5cf1-4ffc...@googlegroups.com>

>
>
>>
>> DP makes a similar logical error as disproving evolution by 2LoT.
>> Pseudo-skeptics claim 2LoT disproves evolution because entropy, but
>> don't address that evolution assumes external sources of energy. In a
>> similar way, DP assumes an origin of life external to Earth, which
>> "kicks the can" of the origin of life to those external sources.
>
> Exactly so: DP is a scientific hypothesis about how life began ON EARTH.
> The three main biological issues [1] on talk.origins are:
>
> 1. The origin of life, period.
>
> 2. The origin of life on earth.
>
> 3. Evolution, once life got started on earth.

In fact, I agree with Peter up to here. DP is a live hypothesis. I
just think being a hypothesis does not in itself make it science.

> Any number of t.o. participants are keen on discussing 1. and 3.
> but their attitude towards 2. usually ranges between indifference and disdain
> for the ones who do not conflate it with 1.

Rest assured, Peter, my disdain is solely for you, not for DP as a
hypothesis.

[snip brief digression into non-biology]

>> DP needs to show that life was more likely to have origins elsewhere
>
> There will be no such need until about 10,000 or more years from now.
> Then we might have enough evidence to lift issue 2. out of the "no
> compelling data either way" realm. See my reply to Mark linked up there.
>
>> *AND THEN* migrated to Earth within the time window we know life on Earth
>> appeared.
>
> "migrated" suggests UNdirected panspermia. [2] DP is all about "was sent"
> with only microorganisms sent except to the closest systems.
> Never a hint about the senders migrating to earth.
>
>
>> It's that second part which makes DP a less-than-best
>> inference.
>
> I dealt with that issue at length in my FAQ draft, to which you
> only paid token attention.

That FAQ is another reason to regard DP as science fiction (or more
accurately, the same reason manifested in different form). I recently
read Hal Clement's _Mission of Gravity_, a classic of hard science
fiction. Clement speculates about life on a planet whose surface
gravity ranges from 3g at the equator to 660g at the poles because it
spins so fast. He worked hard to get the science right so that it could
all be possible. Nyikos's FAQ reads a lot like that, except without the
characters and plot. He builds a possible scenario, but effectively
gives no evidence that it anything more than just a possibility. (Peter
actually does list evidence, but what he gives is discredited, and he
omits all the evidence *against* his scenario.)

> You do not mention what your alleged best is, perhaps
> because you have no opinion one way or the other as
> to whether comets brought life to earth from Mars
> or Ceres or some other body that Oxyaena suggested in
> an OP to a thread devoted to the beginning of life on earth.
>
> [2] Comets are the preferred "vehicles" for undirected panspermia,
> thanks to the influence of Hoyle and Wickramasinghe.

[jillery]

On Tue, 10 Jul 2018 07:41:19 -0700 (PDT), Peter Nyikos
<nyi...@bellsouth.net> wrote:

>On Monday, July 9, 2018 at 8:10:02 PM UTC-4, Mark Isaak wrote:
>> On 7/9/18 2:46 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
>> > On Thursday, July 5, 2018 at 8:05:03 PM UTC-4, Burkhard wrote:
>> > [snip to a single point]
>>
>> >> Now, Kitzmiller lays down some criteria that give a guide on how such a
>> >> law compliant theory would look like: if you introduce designer as a
>> >> scientific concept, it has to play by the rules of scientific inquiry.
>> >> And that means you can't hide behind "and of the identity of the
>> >> designer we know nothing and this is not within the scope of research".
>> >
>> > As I said, I can't go along with that, and now I say why:
>> > police can certainly show "beyond a reasonable doubt" that
>> > some deaths were murders without knowing who the murderer was.
>
>The inference should be clear: one might be able to infer
>design without any idea of what the designer or designers
>might be.

The inference is an IDiot PRATT of a false equivalence. ID
distinguishes between unguided natural processes and a supernatural
Designer. Police establishing an act of murder distinguish between
unguided natural processes and a human agent. Police don't need to
know the specific person or persons until later in the investigation.

You have argued that your DPists are not supernatural, but they are
unknown, unseen and undefined, which makes them functionally closer to
a supernatural Designer than a human agent, so your DP hypothesis
replaces one meaningless explanation (God) with another meaningless
explanation (DP).

[jillery]

I read it. My impression is "rebutted" doesn't fit; "obfuscated" is
more accurate. You and other cdesign proponentsists make much of the
fact that we don't know how life on Earth started, so you can't
reasonably invoke evidence you know you don't have about your DPists.

>> DP makes a similar logical error as disproving evolution by 2LoT.
>> Pseudo-skeptics claim 2LoT disproves evolution because entropy, but
>> don't address that evolution assumes external sources of energy. In a
>> similar way, DP assumes an origin of life external to Earth, which
>> "kicks the can" of the origin of life to those external sources.
>
>Exactly so: DP is a scientific hypothesis about how life began ON EARTH.

That's exactly the logical error which I identified above, which
disqualifies DP as a scientific hypothesis about how life began ON

EARTH.


>The three main biological issues [1] on talk.origins are:
>
>1. The origin of life, period.
>
>2. The origin of life on earth.
>
>3. Evolution, once life got started on earth.
>
>Any number of t.o. participants are keen on discussing 1. and 3.
>but their attitude towards 2. usually ranges between indifference and disdain
>for the ones who do not conflate it with 1.

Not so. To the contrary, when discussing 2, then by definition, the
discussion is limited to possible processes ON EARTH. Since you
mention DP, you're discussing 1, not 2. You can't reasonably invoke
DP as a cause for life ON EARTH without explaining how those DPists
originated so much sooner *AND THEN* managed to seed life on Earth in
such a narrow time window.

>[1] then there is the non-biological issue:
>
>0. The origin of our universe, with its extreme sensitivity of
>basic physical constants as far as life is concerned and

Of course, life's "extreme sensitivity" to basic physical constants is
conjecture, not fact. Recall puddles in potholes.

>> DP needs to show that life was more likely to have origins elsewhere
>
>There will be no such need until about 10,000 or more years from now.

Since you assert DP now, your need exists now to show that life was
more likely to have origins elsewhere. You don't get to duck this
question just because you have no compelling evidence.

>Then we might have enough evidence to lift issue 2. out of the "no
>compelling data either way" realm. See my reply to Mark linked up there.
>
>
>> *AND THEN* migrated to Earth within the time window we know life on Earth
>> appeared.
>
>"migrated" suggests UNdirected panspermia.

Not the point; replace it with whatever word you want. The point is
there is a narrow time window, between when Earth first could have
supported life, and when life actually existed on Earth. Too soon and
whatever your DPists sent would have burned up. Too late and whatever
your DPists sent doesn't explain the evidence.

>[2] DP is all about "was sent"
>with only microorganisms sent except to the closest systems.
>Never a hint about the senders migrating to earth.
>
>
>> It's that second part which makes DP a less-than-best
>> inference.
>
>I dealt with that issue at length in my FAQ draft, to which you
>only paid token attention.

Again not so. To the best of my knowledge, you have never explained
how your DPists might have managed to seed life on Earth in such a
timely manner. Prove me wrong.

>You do not mention what your alleged best is,

Since you mention it, because it's not relevant to my objections to
your advocacy of DP and ID. You're welcome.

>perhaps
>because you have no opinion one way or the other as
>to whether comets brought life to earth from Mars
>or Ceres or some other body that Oxyaena suggested in
>an OP to a thread devoted to the beginning of life on earth.
>
>[2] Comets are the preferred "vehicles" for undirected panspermia,
>thanks to the influence of Hoyle and Wickramasinghe.
>
>
>Peter Nyikos
>Professor, Department of Math. -- standard disclaimer --
>U. of So. Carolina
>http://www.math.sc.edu/~nyikos/

[Bob Casanova]

On Mon, 9 Jul 2018 17:09:35 -0700, the following appeared in
talk.origins, posted by Mark Isaak
<eciton@curiousta/xyz/xonomy.net>:

>On 7/9/18 2:46 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
>> On Thursday, July 5, 2018 at 8:05:03 PM UTC-4, Burkhard wrote:
>> [snip to a single point]
>
>>> Now, Kitzmiller lays down some criteria that give a guide on how such a
>>> law compliant theory would look like: if you introduce designer as a
>>> scientific concept, it has to play by the rules of scientific inquiry.
>>> And that means you can't hide behind "and of the identity of the
>>> designer we know nothing and this is not within the scope of research".
>>
>> As I said, I can't go along with that, and now I say why:
>> police can certainly show "beyond a reasonable doubt" that
>> some deaths were murders without knowing who the murderer was.
>
>If the police cannot show beyond a reasonable doubt that the death was
>not caused by a virus or a lightning bolt or a wolverine, then they will
>not call it murder. ID "researchers" cannot narrow it down even to that
>level of (lack of) specificity.

Actually, all police need to tentatively designate it as
murder is a scenario (knife in the back, gunshot in the head
with no gun present, etc) in which murder is the likeliest
conclusion, since we have ample evidence that murderers
exist.

Of course, that doesn't save ID from being pure conjecture,
since, in contrast to our knowledge of murder and murderers,
we *know* of no advanced aliens or deities, we *know* of no
process by which DP could have been implemented in the
timeframe in question (a minor point), and we have
increasing evidence regarding how abiogenesis could have
taken place, none of which violates anything we know of
science.
--

Bob C.

"The most exciting phrase to hear in science,
the one that heralds new discoveries, is not
'Eureka!' but 'That's funny...'"

- Isaac Asimov

[Alan Kleinman MD PhD]

On Tuesday, July 10, 2018 at 7:45:03 AM UTC-7, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> On Monday, July 9, 2018 at 8:10:02 PM UTC-4, Mark Isaak wrote:
> > On 7/9/18 2:46 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> > > On Thursday, July 5, 2018 at 8:05:03 PM UTC-4, Burkhard wrote:
> > > [snip to a single point]
> >
> > >> Now, Kitzmiller lays down some criteria that give a guide on how such a
> > >> law compliant theory would look like: if you introduce designer as a
> > >> scientific concept, it has to play by the rules of scientific inquiry.
> > >> And that means you can't hide behind "and of the identity of the
> > >> designer we know nothing and this is not within the scope of research".
> > >
> > > As I said, I can't go along with that, and now I say why:
> > > police can certainly show "beyond a reasonable doubt" that
> > > some deaths were murders without knowing who the murderer was.
>
> The inference should be clear: one might be able to infer
> design without any idea of what the designer or designers
> might be.

And here are a couple videos where Behe and Meyer make their case for ID.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k-fVpctlERU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ETYiIzlB__k
I am not a defender of ID but I clearly understand their logic. My role is to correctly describe the mechanisms of evolution (in particular, rmns) and show why these mechanisms cannot evolve these irreducibly complex systems.
<snip>

[Tim Anderson]

On Tuesday, July 10, 2018 at 1:10:03 AM UTC+10, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> On Saturday, July 7, 2018 at 8:25:03 PM UTC-4, Tim Anderson wrote:
> > On Saturday, July 7, 2018 at 12:15:03 PM UTC+10, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> >
> > <snip>
> >
> > > I looked up the Wikipedia entry, and the fact that it takes place
> > > in Christian countries seems actually less relevant than the fact that
> > > leprechauns were invented in a Christian country.
> >
> > Wrong. The name is a Christian-era invention (the "chaun" part is an Irish corruption from the Latin "corpus"), but the myth derives from the pre-Christian period.
>
> OK, but why do you think this is not more relevant than the fact that
> sin-eating originated in a Christian country?

Because leprechauns are mythical creatures, while sin-eaters are a well-attested human phenomenon (and not just from "Christian" communities - there was a similar class of people in Aztec society.

> I have heard about a myth
> that the leprechauns were a somewhat cursed species due to neutrality
> between the hosts of Satan and the hosts of St. Michael the Archangel.

Yes, so what?

> Do sin-eaters invoke a similar myth connecting them to Christianity?

I have no idea, but since the central tenet of Christianity is Jesus' supposedly redemptive sacrifice, it seems that the two behaviours are at least analogous and certainly comparable.

>
> > > The only connection
> > > with Jesus's sacrifice is the bare idea of taking on the sins of the
> > > other person -- but not in a way consistent with what Jesus is
> > > supposed to have done. Jesus portrayed himself at the last judgment
> > > as doing something very different than taking everyone's sins on himself.
> > >
> >
> > Anachronistically wrong. Jesus is a pre-Christian figure.
>
> Are you questioning the existence of a person named Yehoshua ("Jesus")
> who lived at the beginning of what is inaccurately called
> the "Common Era" [1] and who was crucified during the Judean
> governorship of Pontius Pilate, and about whom one Shaul of Tarsus,
> later calling himself Paul, wrote extensively?
>

1. No, only that the accounts of his life are post-hoc, partisan and unverifiable
2. Irrelevant semantics about period naming
3. That would be Paul who never met Jesus and whose canon of writing contains a great many documents of dubious provenance

> [1] I have nothing against BCE and CE except
> for the fact that their official expansions are mildly insulting to
> Muslims and Chinese and Orthodox Jews, and any other
> culture that uses different dating systems.
> This problem would not arise if BCE were understood to mean "Before
> the Christian Era" instead of "Before the Common Era".

And that meaning would not be "mildly insulting to Muslims and Chinese and Orthodox Jews, and any other culture that uses different dating systems"? The use of Common Era seems to me to be a reasonable compromise between using "Christian" dating and social sensitivities.

>
>
> > Any call on "Jesus portrayed himself" relies on a later Christology.
>
> "later" = within the lifetime of a great many who knew this Yehoshua
> personally, who were also very well known to the aforementioned Paul,

Hang about sunshine.

1. It takes less than a generation for committed believers to turn a non-miraculous life into a miraculous religious legend
2. There was this thing called the Jewish Revolt in CE 66-74. The hills of Galilee were covered with crucified rebels. Finding anyone by the time that the Gospels were being compiled who remembered the facts of Jesus' life seems highly improbable to me.
3. Who were these "great many people"? Names and dates please.

> whose I Thessalonians is rather reliably dated to within ca. two and
> a half to three decades after the aforementioned crucifixion.
>
>
> > It is only the Christidolatry of the emerging church that elevates the Jesus figure's purported actions above "sin-eating".
>
> Is it not, rather, true that the only connection between this "sin-eating"
> and Yehoshua IS what you call "Chrisidolatry" that connects Yehosua
> with any kind of redemption?
>

Absolutely correct. In other words, the early Christians made it up!

>
> > In any case, have you forgotten that the Jewish tradition of that era had the well-attested ceremony of the scapegoat, which played an identical absolutionary role.
>
> No, I am very well aware of that ceremony, and also of a similar role
> Isaiah ascribes to "the suffering servant of God". I was merely expressing skepticism of any real connection between sin-eating and Christianity.

So the Jews have a tradition of redemptive sacrifice, and you are skeptical of any connection to the reported history of an apocalyptic messianist? Forgive me for thinking that your special pleading is showing

[Burkhard]

Not sure about this. In Scotland (where we had sin eaters until a few
decades ago), the custom seem to have started in the 16th century, so
comparatively late.One explanation is that it grew out of the turmoil of
post -reformation Europe, where rural populations in formerly catholic
countries re-invented (now outlawed) catholic rituals with new
explanations/justification - so sin-eaters as replacement for the
sacrament.

[*Hemidactylus*]

Tim Anderson <timoth...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Tuesday, July 10, 2018 at 1:10:03 AM UTC+10, Peter Nyikos wrote:
>>

[snip]

>>
>> Are you questioning the existence of a person named Yehoshua ("Jesus")
>> who lived at the beginning of what is inaccurately called
>> the "Common Era" [1] and who was crucified during the Judean
>> governorship of Pontius Pilate, and about whom one Shaul of Tarsus,
>> later calling himself Paul, wrote extensively?
>>
>
> 1. No, only that the accounts of his life are post-hoc, partisan and unverifiable
> 2. Irrelevant semantics about period naming
> 3. That would be Paul who never met Jesus and whose canon of writing
> contains a great many documents of dubious provenance
>

Umm..., Paul had a “vision” of Jesus on the road to Damascus, no? That may
qualify depending upon what is meant by “met Jesus” and the dubious
(super)nature of the alleged event.

>
>> [1] I have nothing against BCE and CE except
>> for the fact that their official expansions are mildly insulting to
>> Muslims and Chinese and Orthodox Jews, and any other
>> culture that uses different dating systems.
>> This problem would not arise if BCE were understood to mean "Before
>> the Christian Era" instead of "Before the Common Era".
>
> And that meaning would not be "mildly insulting to Muslims and Chinese
> and Orthodox Jews, and any other culture that uses different dating
> systems"? The use of Common Era seems to me to be a reasonable compromise
> between using "Christian" dating and social sensitivities.
>>

Peter has strange nuances for an agnostic who alleges his beloved ID is not
necessarily connected to Paley’s God.

>>
>>> Any call on "Jesus portrayed himself" relies on a later Christology.
>>
>> "later" = within the lifetime of a great many who knew this Yehoshua
>> personally, who were also very well known to the aforementioned Paul,
>
>
> Hang about sunshine.
>
> 1. It takes less than a generation for committed believers to turn a
> non-miraculous life into a miraculous religious legend
> 2. There was this thing called the Jewish Revolt in CE 66-74. The hills
> of Galilee were covered with crucified rebels. Finding anyone by the time
> that the Gospels were being compiled who remembered the facts of Jesus'
> life seems highly improbable to me.
> 3. Who were these "great many people"? Names and dates please.
>

Not sure of corroborating existence of Historical Jesus, but there were
Peter and James:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/James,_brother_of_Jesus#The_Jerusalem_Church

“The Jerusalem Church was an early Christian community located in
Jerusalem, of which James and Peter were leaders. Paul was affiliated with
this community, and took his central kerygma, as described in Corinthians
1:15, from this community.”

[Tim Anderson]

Peter is making a species of special pleading that the sin-eating sacrifice of Jesus is in some fundamental way different from the sin-eating sacrifice of the Jewish scapegoat, or from the post-Reformation sin-eating tradition of western Europe.

So much, so good. That is simply my opinion.

It seems to me that the core of his position relies on the age-old argument about the verifiability of the accounts of Jesus' life.

He knows, as well as you and I do (or at least I hope he does), that there is no reliable account of Jesus' life. It is all after the fact, written by partisan Christians and enforced by ecclesiastical power in the post-Constantine world.

Yes, there were sin-eaters on the fringes of the Christian world in the 18th and 19th centuries. So what? There are new-age believers who think that their bodies are coursing with energy channels. Should we give them any credit because there were cultures in the past that also thought so?

I think that would be foolishness, which is also why I think that Peter's Christidoliatry is also foolishness, and also an intellectual dishonesty.

[Alan Kleinman MD PhD]

And here's a particularly interesting video from Behe on how to falsify ID.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N8jXXJN4o_A
He is right on point on what the reptiles grow feathers crowd does. Just give it enough time and some reptile will start growing feathers. But why is it so difficult for hiv to evolve to 3 targeted selection pressures simultaneously targeting just 2 genetic loci when evolution to any one of the selection pressures at a time can occur in a week or so?

[Peter Nyikos]

I see I still have a lot to get caught up on here, Burkhard.
Unfortunately, it will be catch as catch can for the rest of the
week, and I may even need to take a posting break next week
I have some really intensive research to do for the next
two weeks.

Unlike my posts of the last two days, which focused on ID, this
one returns to the legal status of Pastafarianism.

On Wednesday, July 4, 2018 at 9:20:03 AM UTC-4, Burkhard wrote:
> Mark Isaak wrote:
> > On 7/3/18 3:22 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> >> Burkhard may still have me killfiled, so I would appreciate
> >> it if someone were to call reply to this post to his attention.
> >
> > Done.
>
> And do you know what you have done, and take full responsibility ? :o)
>
> OK, I'll answer yours here, and Peter's in his original post
>
>
> <snip>
> >>
> >> <snip>

[snipped attribution lines restored:]

>>> On Tuesday, July 3, 2018 at 11:15:03 AM UTC-4, Burkhard wrote:
>>>> Mark Isaak wrote:

> >>>> On 7/2/18 10:06 AM, Bob Casanova wrote:

> >>>>> the issue of "cult" vs. "religion"
> >>>>> here is unresolvable by logic, only by decree, and whether a
> >>>>> parody can be an actual religion would be even worse.
> >>
> >> Food for thought: Thugee was a cult, NOT a parody. It took a
> >> Westerner (British, to be specific) to care enough about the ritual
> >> murders to take steps to eradicate it.

> > Ignoring the out-of-sixteen-blocks-past-left-field Thuggee reference, I
> > will go out on a fairly sturdy limb and say that all cults are
> > religions, period.

How do you feel about this comment, Burkhard? If Thuggee *had* been the
kind of cult I thought it was, would you class it -- along with
all other cults -- as a religion? It did not seem to be separate
from the syncretistic religion known as Hinduism.

> >> <snip to get to a bit of Mark's reply>
> >>
> >>>> There are two potential problems with the judge's ruling. First,
> >>>> religions always change from what they were when they started, so
> >>>> starting as a parody does not mean the religion will remain a parody.
> >>>> However, Pastafarianism is new enough that this objection does not
> >>>> apply.
> >>>>
> >>>> More seriously, parody and religion are not mutually exclusive
> >>>> categories. People who parody a religion are making the explicitly
> >>>> religious statement that the religion deserves parody,

> >> I would prefer to call this a "meta-religious statement".


> > I beg to differ.

Mark's "explanation" for the "difference" fails completely to explain it:

> > When one says, "Only a cruel mind could have invented
> > hell" (I think I'm misquoting Bertrand Russell), one is not making a
> > statement about religion, one is making a statement about specific
> > religions which include Hell.

Mark is confusing the issue here; the issue is whether Bertrand
Russell had been making a religious statement, and he was not
(unless the context was very unusual). And so, statements about
religions -- whether specific ones or religions in general --
that do not themselves appear religious could reasonably be
called "meta-religious".

> >> Pastafarianism makes a similar statement:
> >> essentially, "Religions which accept intelligent design are really stupid."

That is even more obviously meta-religious in my sense.

> I'd be tempted to go further and say they make an even more obviously
> theological point, if you look at the FSM first commandment: the god of
> the creationists is either vain, obsessed with copyright or terribly
> insecure. This traits are common in humans, but even there they can be
> irritating. So a deity that expects constant praise and acknowledgement

... is not the God of the Bible. One of the prophets even has God
saying that he is disgusted with burnt offerings and wants to
see decent behavior instead. In another place, either God or a
prophet says, "rend your hearts, not your garments."

And Jesus warns against vain repetitions of prayers in one of the
Gospels. If you must talk about "constant praise and acknowledgement,"
you would be better off talking about the prayer wheels of some
Eastern religions.

> for their creation, and so to speak "signs" all their work, is on
> reflection not a particularly sound and overly anthropocentric deity.

"all their work" is one extreme. To give no sign at all of one's
work is the opposite extreme. "The heavens declare the handiwork of God"
is one "sign" that even Kenneth Miller, an implacable foe of
Intelligent Design, appreciates. He could hardly be the object
of attack by militant atheist Jerry Coyne, were it otherwise.


<snip of things not leading to new comments>

> >>> But the legal analysis of pastafarianism is problematic, for a number of
> >>> reasons. The first, and most important one, is the one you mention:
> >>> there is a genetic fallacy here. While FSM was born as parody, that does
> >>> not mean it can't be practiced now as a secular religion.

"can't" and "isn't" are two separate issues. You and I are still
unresolved on the "isn't" part, you know.

> >>> The judge
> >>> correctly acknowledges that for the purpose of the law, secular
> >>> philosophies qualify - but tries to make a distinction without
> >>> difference between "proper" secular philosophies and "improper" ones
> >>> that arbitrarily adopt a secular work and then center around it (the "A
> >>> short history of time" reading circle as religious congregation). But as
> >>> applied here, that analysis goes way beyond United States v. Meyers,
> >>> (the religious exemption of dope smoking case), which would allow to
> >>> distinguish this through the absence of "communal rituals and
> >>> observances".

I hope that isn't a definitive criterion.

> >>> If you look at pastafarian communities - e.g. their Kiva group here e.g.
> >>> https://www.kiva.org/team/fsm
> >>>
> >>
> >> I saw no hint of the following on the webpage that comes up when
> >> I click on the link:
> >>
> >>> I'd say they easily meet the test: there is a concern for "ultimate"
> >>> things" that comes up frequently in the discussions.
> >>
> >> But here is the burning question: do these discussions have anything
> >> to do with the practice of Pastafarianism?
> >>
> >> Here at the University of South Carolina we had (and may still have,
> >> I haven't checked in the last few years) a Pastafarian group, but
> >> they always struck me as just another student organization. There
> >> was never any hint that they styled themselves as a religion.
> >>
> >> I attended one meeting of theirs, which focused on some televised
> >> debate. Due to technical difficulties we missed most of it,
> >> so I got to talking to some of the other audience members,
> >> at least one of whom was a Pastafarian. I got the impression
> >> that it was an agnostic society, not given to taking any stands
> >> on religion.
> >
> > Your sample size, though, is not sufficient for conclusions.

No, but until someone comes up with anything different, "we go with
what we got," as they say in the Army.

> I'd say agnostic "as a society", maybe, without expecting it from its
> members In that sense similar to the Unitarian Universalists I'd say,
> where individual members can self-- identify also as Christians, Jewish,
> agnostic, etc , and as a group no collective stance is taken. Same with
> FSM, according to the official website:

> "We're not anti-religion. This is NOT an atheists club. Anyone and
> everyone is welcome to join our church including current members of
> other religions. In addition to the Atheists, Agnostics, and
> Freethinkers who have joined us, we have a number of Christian (and
> Muslim, and Hindu and Buddhist …) members and I would love to have more.
> Note to the religious: You are welcome here."

As are the un-religious, presumably. So why is the website calling
Pastafarianism "our church"?


Continued in next reply, to be done soon after I see that this one
has posted.


Peter Nyikos

[Peter Nyikos]

On Wednesday, July 4, 2018 at 9:20:03 AM UTC-4, Burkhard wrote:
> Mark Isaak wrote:
> > On 7/3/18 3:22 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:

In this second and final reply, I add a bit of context from my
first reply to your July 4 post:

>>> On Tuesday, July 3, 2018 at 11:15:03 AM UTC-4, Burkhard wrote:
> >>> I'd say they easily meet the test: there is a concern for "ultimate"
> >>> things" that comes up frequently in the discussions.
> >>
> >> But here is the burning question: do these discussions have anything
> >> to do with the practice of Pastafarianism?

By the way, what does "concern for ultimate things" mean as a
matter of law? I hope it doesn't mean what Paul Tillich called
"ultimate concern" = "whatever one takes seriously, without reservation."


Now, on to where I left off in my first reply:

> >>> True, it is often
> >>> formulated negatively ("there is no...") but as discussed with
> >>> Hemidactylus on an earlier thread, there is also an old tradition of
> >>> "negative theology" in both Christian and non-Christian mainstream
> >>> religions that do the same. There is communal activity - doing this
> >>> together for a better world. And there is collective observation of
> >>> rituals (talk like a pirate day is not only religiously observed n the
> >>> discussion boards, but also the day of a loanathon for fundraising), and
> >>> that ticks all the Meyers criteria.
> >>
> >> Halloween is like pirate day, even to the point of widespread raising
> >> of money for UNICEF, but nobody ever suggested that observers of
> >> Halloween
> >> constituted a religious cult.
> >
> > Oh, I have heard plenty of noise from some of the Religious Right who
> > seem to feel that way.

"seem to feel that way -- I wonder what "that way" is supposed
to signify here. Were you able to figure out what Mark meant, Burkhard?

> > Which is ironic, since Halloween is a Christian
> > holiday.
>
> Catholic, to be precise - it's all about the souls in purgatory.

It is All Souls' Day, the day *after* Halloween, that is canonically
about that. Halloween is just the Vigil of All Saints' Day, coming
after sundown the day before. This harks back to the ancient Jewish
practice of counting the evening of the day before the Sabbath as
being already part of the Sabbath. Hence the haste with which Jesus
was buried on the original Good Friday.

It just now occurred to me that "All Hallow's Eve" suggests
hallowed saints, and not just run of the mill dead -- not even
the souls in purgatory. I'll have to ask a priest whether this
is a correct understanding.

> Though
> people have argued that it was one of the many attempts to appropriate
> an older pagan festival.

Yes, zencycle has done that right on this thread. But the word the RCC
typically uses is "baptize" -- in the figurative sense, of course --
rather than "appropriate."

> So yes, it would definitely fall under the scope of RFRA, provided that
> you can show that it burdens unduly the exercise of a sincerely held
> belief. That may be more difficult if you say you have to wear a mask
> and go from house to house to ask for sweets (which is creepy in adults
> anyway), but if it is about walking down the street with a bell and
> shouting for people to remember the souls of the just departed, I'd say
> a slam dunk.

As long as you don't get arrested for disturbing the peace. :-)

> >
> >> And then there are Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, the tooth fairy,
> >> the Sandman... each coming with a ritual.
> >
> > Not all rituals are religious (school commencement ceremonies might be a
> > better example), but if the ritual comes with references to the putative
> > religion and with sacred and/or moral overtones, the ritualizing would
> > seem to me to be rather telling.

I'd like to see some indication of that in the official writings
of the movers and shakers of Pastafarianism.

> There is another problem here in the ruling that you identify. Not all
> members of a religion typically belief all its inherited symbols and
> rituals to the same degree. And you have arguably "secular" members of
> what are essentially religious groups, at least originally.
>
> The FSM addresses this directly:

...but very incompletely, hence inadequately:

> "It {The FSM} is not a joke. Elements of our religion are sometimes

> described as satire and there are many members who do not literally
> believe our scripture, but this isn't unusual in religion. A lot of

> Christians don't believe the Bible is literally true - but that doesn't

> mean they aren't True Christians."

To belabor the obvious: if they do not believe the Bible is literally
true, it takes more than just saying "I am a Christian" to make one
a "True Christian". And the capitalization suggests a nod-nod-wink-wink
at the "No True Scotsman" fallacy.

> now depending on the country, the ratio between traditional believer vs
> secularized member may be different between FSM and a mainstream
> religion, but at least for much of northern Europe, I'd be doubtful
> about even that.

I would doubt it, until I see two ratios: (1) between Pastafarians
who do NOT think of it as a religion -- whether by ignorance as in
my case formerly, or by conscious design -- and those who do and
(2) those of the latter who do not take the scripture literally,
and those who do.

> That does not mean that these entities stop to be
> religions. For the purpose of the law, that means they still meet the
> first test. But if in the individual case, the claimant can show that
> their sincerely held beliefs are unduly burdened, the second step, is
> another issue
>
> I'd say the court would have been on much safer territory to deny only
> that second step, the "undue burden", and not opine about whether or not

> FSM is a religion.
>

So far, I don't see why the court wasn't on quite solid ground even
the way the judgement reads. You had noting to say about what
I wrote below, so the words "much safer territory" don't seem
to apply to what you wrote next:

> >
> >>> Going down the genetic fallacy is obviously dangerous - will a court
> >>> next say that Joseph Smith was "obviously just making it up for a
> >>> laugh/money" and deny religious status to the Mormon Church?
> >>
> >> No, because the Mormons have very sincere beliefs of a rather
> >> elaborate sort. There never was any hint of an intentional parody
> >> anywhere in their history, AFAIK.
> >>
> >>> Again, the
> >>> court recognizes the danger ("Of course, there are those who contend
> >>> and Cavanaugh is probably among them - that the Bible or the Koran are
> >>> just as fictional as those books...".
> >>
> >> That only reinforces the suspicion that these people don't take
> >> their alleged beliefs seriously.

Peter Nyikos

[Peter Nyikos]

On Monday, July 9, 2018 at 12:15:02 PM UTC-4, zencycle wrote:
> On Wednesday, July 4, 2018 at 9:50:03 AM UTC-4, Burkhard wrote:
> >
> > Well, Halloween is originally a catholic holy day, and as such covered
> > anyway
>
> As with every other catholic 'holy' day, halloween was co-opted from a traditional pagan worship - the Celtic Samhain.

Halloween itself is not a holy day, but only the eve of the holy
day known as All Saints' Day. This was pointed out to Burkhard
by both Joe Cummings and myself.

It seems that All Saints' Day goes back a lot further than
than the transformation of its eve in the British Isles, at least
according to Wikipedia. It only traces the latter back to
the 8th century, but has this to say about the holy day itself:

But the Church, feeling that every martyr should be venerated,
appointed a common day for all. The first trace of this
we find in Antioch on the Sunday after Pentecost.
We also find mention of a common day in a sermon of
St. Ephrem the Syrian (373), and in the 74th homily
of St. John Chrysostom (407). According to Ephrem,
this feast was observed at Edessa on 13 May, and
John Chrysostom says it was on the Sunday after Pentecost
in Constantinople.[18] As early as 411 there is
in the Chaldean Calendar a "Commemoratio Confessorum"
for the Friday after Easter.[19]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_Saints%27_Day


> Catholicism has no original concepts, whatsoever.

On what do you base this sweeping judgment? just how far back
does Catholicism go, according to you?


> While christianity may have started as a cult, catholicism was a political movement, pure and simple.

I wouldn't go so far even with the Orthodox, who are often associated
with caesaropapism. It is true that Constantine gave Christianity
legal status, and even ordered the Christian leaders to have a
Council of Nicaea to settle the Arian question. The council condemned
Arianism, but when Constantine was baptized (very close to death),
it was a bishop who was, at best, a sympathizer for Arius and,
at worst, an Arian himself, who baptized Constantine. See:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eusebius_of_Nicomedia


> The christ figure has very, very little to do with catholicism - indeed, any resurrected figure would have sufficed.

This statement actually makes me wonder how you define catholicism.


You didn't comment on the rest of what you preserved, but I left
it in below just in case you want to refer to it in any reply you make.


Peter Nyikos


> - no need for a group that participates in Halloween and only
> > Halloween.
> >
> > And then there are quite a number of Christians that do indeed think of
> > participants to engage in cultic activity (some of them obviously think
> > that Catholicism is itself a cult, others that it is an old pagan holiday)

> > >
> > > And then there are Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, the tooth fairy,
> > > the Sandman... each coming with a ritual.
> >

> > And potentially the first two activities are protected by RFRA and
> > similar laws, as they are part of or originate from recognized religions
> > - the issue would only be what exactly constitutes to burden unduly a
> > sincerely held belief with respect to them
> >
> > Tooth fairy and Sandman would probably not qualify at present - simply
> > because they are not part of a belief system that concerns itself
> > with"the ultimate issues"- though there are elements of the Neil Gaiman
> > fan community where you can doubt this at least for the latter. The
> > Sandman comics come with a pretty elaborated philosophy and ethical
> > framework.

> >
> >
> > >
> > >
> > >> Going down the genetic fallacy is obviously dangerous - will a court
> > >> next say that Joseph Smith was "obviously just making it up for a
> > >> laugh/money" and deny religious status to the Mormon Church?
> > >
> > > No, because the Mormons have very sincere beliefs of a rather
> > > elaborate sort. There never was any hint of an intentional parody
> > > anywhere in their history, AFAIK.
> >

> > That seems to me question begging. In the argument, Cavanaugh is denied
> > protection under the penal equivalent of RFRA even though he claims to
> > hold a sincere belief, because, so the argument, the religion was
> > "conceived by someone who did not take it serious himself" - that's why
> > it is a genetic argument, an argument from origins.
> >
> > Now, applied to the Mormon example, the sincere belief of current
> > Mormons would not matter any longer, IF the claim would be made that the
> > founder, Smith, did not take it serious (not necessarily parody, "in it
> > for the money" would do). And I'd say one could easily see a non-Mormon
> > judge coming to this conclusion. That's why I think it's a dangerous
> > slippery slope - the sincerity of the group as it is NOW does not
> > matter, if the belief system was originally "conceived in jest" or in
> > some other non-sincere way.

> >
> >
> >
> > >
> > >> Again, the
> > >> court recognizes the danger ("Of course, there are those who contend
> > >> and Cavanaugh is probably among them - that the Bible or the Koran are
> > >> just as fictional as those books...".
> > >
> > > That only reinforces the suspicion that these people don't take
> > > their alleged beliefs seriously.
> >

> > Well, this is a statement by the judge about FSM, not a statement by
> > FSM. And of course people can take an anti-religious view of this type
> > very seriously - and that is all that is needed for RFRA protection.
> >
> > To quote the official FSM position on this:
> > Q: Is this a joke?
> > A: It's not a joke. Elements of our religion are sometimes described as

> > satire and there are many members who do not literally believe our
> > scripture, but this isn't unusual in religion. A lot of Christians don't
> > believe the Bible is literally true - but that doesn't mean they aren't
> > True Christians.

> > If you say Pastafarians must believe in a literal Flying Spaghetti
> > Monster to be True Believers, then you can make a similar argument for
> > Christians. There is a lot of outlandish stuff in the Bible that
> > rational Christians choose to ignore.

> >
> >
> > >
> > >
> > > Remainder deleted, to be replied to later. Duty calls.
> > >
> > >

> > > Peter Nyikos
> > >

[Peter Nyikos]

On Wednesday, July 4, 2018 at 12:25:02 PM UTC-4, *Hemidactylus* wrote:
> Peter Nyikos <nyi...@bellsouth.net> wrote:

> > On Tuesday, July 3, 2018 at 11:15:03 AM UTC-4, Burkhard wrote:

> >>>> On Mon, 2 Jul 2018 09:02:12 -0700 (PDT), the following
> >>>> appeared in talk.origins, posted by Peter Nyikos
> >>>> <nyi...@bellsouth.net>:
> >>>>
> >>>>> After starting out as an anti-ID letter, Pastafarianism has become
> >>>>> a running gag whose public image has gotten so out of control
> >>>>> that it has actually been recognized as a religion in some countries:
> >>>>>
> >>>>> It is legally recognized as a religion in the Netherlands[4]
> >>>>> and New Zealand - where Pastafarian representatives are authorized
> >>>>> to officiate weddings.[5][6][7]
> >>>>> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flying_Spaghetti_Monster
> >>>>>
> >>>>> Fortunately, a federal court in Nebraska has ruled otherwise:
> >>>>>
> >>>>> The US District Court of Nebraska has denied a prisoner's right
> >>>>> to practice Pastafarianism by ruling the Church of the
> >>>>> Flying Spaghetti Monster, or FSMism, is not a religion but a
> >>>>> "parody."
> >>>>>
> >>>>> Stephen Cavanaugh, a prisoner in a Nebraska state penitentiary,
> >>>>> sued the state in 2014 seeking $5 million in damages for
> >>>>> "deep emotional, psychological, and spiritual pain" over
> >>>>> the alleged breach of his right to worship the Flying Spaghetti
> >>>>> Monster
> >>>>> or "His Flying Noodliness."
> >>>>> -- https://www.rt.com/usa/339519-judge-flying-spaghetti-god/

<snip for focus>

> >>>>> An article, linked as [9] in the Wikipedia entry, makes a multiply false
> >>>>> claim about ID:
> >>>>>
> >>>>> In particular, Mr Henderson was taking aim at the concept of
> >>>>> Intelligent Design, or ID, which provides a supposedly scientific
> >>>>> alternative to the Old Testament belief that God created the world
> >>>>> in six days and nights, but which dismisses most of the fossil
> >>>>> record
> >>>>> as false and which relies on the Earth being far younger than
> >>>>> geological evidence shows.
> >>>>> --
> >>>>> https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/1498162/In-the-beginning-there-was-the-Flying-Spaghetti-Monster.html
> >>>>>
> >>>>>
> >>>>> If this kind of misrepresentation is widespread, it is no wonder that so
> >>>>> many otherwise knowledgeable people claim ID is a form of creationism.
> >>>>>
> >>>>>
> >>>>> Does anyone reading this know whether the Pastafarians are
> >>>>> responsible for
> >>>>> that multiply false claim, or whether it is just due to sloppy
> >>>>> reporting?

<snip for focus>

> >> Again, the
> >> court recognizes the danger ("Of course, there are those who contend
> >> and Cavanaugh is probably among them - that the Bible or the Koran are
> >> just as fictional as those books...".
> >
> > That only reinforces the suspicion that these people don't take
> > their alleged beliefs seriously.
> >
> >

> > Remainder deleted, to be replied to later. Duty calls.
> >

> I note one of the links in your OP was RT, a sad state propaganda arm of
> Putinism.

RT? Could you be referring to

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/1498162/In-the-beginning-there-was-the-Flying-Spaghetti-Monster.html

I made no commitments one way or the other as to the reliability
of the source. If anything, I was negative, as you can see
if you scroll up to where the url appears originally.

What's a UK webpage got to do with Vladimir Putin
[the worst putin since Ras]?


> Russia is doing bad stuff to people with unorthodox beliefs.
> Witness the JWs there have been pretty much criminalized.
>
> https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/04/20/world/europe/russia-bans-jehovahs-witnesses.html
>
> Compare that to the US where JWs are responsible for some major decisions
> in SCOTUS jurisprudence, because they could.
>
> Now you may not take colander-heads seriously as a faith stance, but would
> you condone this:

Where do you get this "condone" stuff? Are you suggesting that,
just because I quoted from the Telegraph, I am condoning the
persecution of JWs???????


> https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/humor-failure-russia-crackdown-pastafarians-shows-kremlin-church-ties-flna8C10995408
>
> But a Russian pastafarian did win the right to don a collander for his DL
> pic:
>
> https://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/01/15/russian_pastafarian/
>
> "However, Vladimir Kuzin, the deputy head of the Moscow State Traffic
> Inspectorate, assured that the powers that be will demand Filin's strict
> adherence to his religion. Kuzin told Russian media: "The next time he is
> stopped by the traffic police, if he doesn't have a pasta strainer on his
> head, his licence will be taken from him."
>
> Would such strict adherence be expected of a Muslim woman who chooses to
> wear head attire as a matter of identity and solidarity yet decides not to
> wear it all the time, especially when driving?

I don't condone any of this kind of trampling on
freedom of speech/religion. I condemn it.


On the other hand, will you go narrowly legalistic on me and condemn
the bakers who refused to decorate cakes commemorating a "marriage"
that goes against their religious beliefs?

Specifically, will you claim that the US Constitution only
prohibits governmental constraints on free exercise of religion,
but makes it perfectly OK for civil courts to award enormous punitive
damages to same-sex couples who are denied a "wedding cake" by
a baker of their choice?

Unlike you, I have good grounds for asking questions like this:
you have been supportive of Sean Dillon (and, IIRC, Mark Isaak)
in their condemnation of me for not approving of the word
"marriage" for legal civil unions granting all the rights of
marriage. All I want is that the civil union license not
call the union a "marriage."


Peter Nyikos

[Peter Nyikos]

On Wednesday, July 11, 2018 at 5:05:02 PM UTC-4, Peter Nyikos wrote:

[to Hemidactylus:]

> On the other hand, will you go narrowly legalistic on me and condemn
> the bakers who refused to decorate cakes commemorating a "marriage"
> that goes against their religious beliefs?
>
> Specifically, will you claim that the US Constitution only
> prohibits governmental constraints on free exercise of religion,
> but makes it perfectly OK for civil courts to award enormous punitive
> damages to same-sex couples who are denied a "wedding cake" by
> a baker of their choice?
>
> Unlike you, I have good grounds for asking questions like this:
> you have been supportive of Sean Dillon (and, IIRC, Mark Isaak)
> in their condemnation of me for not approving of the word
> "marriage" for legal civil unions

I meant: for same-sex couples [see use of "same-sex" above].

[Earle Jones]

*
I don't want a marriage license.
I want a learner's permit.

earle
*

[Peter Nyikos]

On Monday, July 9, 2018 at 2:56:12 PM UTC-4, Joe Cummings wrote:

> Nitpick:
>
> Halloween is All Saints' Eve. "Hallow"- probably an Ablaut of "Holy"

As in "hallowed be thy name"? Interesting.

Thanks for posting this, Joe. I could have saved a bit of time
in my reply to the same part of Burkhard's post, had I scrolled
down and seen this.


> The poor sods burning in Purgatory are remembered on All Souls' Day,
> Nov.2.

"burning" is metaphoric, I hope. The few passages in the Bible
which suggest purgatory [including Maccabees II in the Catholic
canon of the OT, based on the Septuagint] do not suggest fires.

The idea of purgatory goes back to the ancient Hebrew concept of Sheol,
which was very much like the Greek concept of Hades. A dismal place to be sure,
but not a place of torture like Tartarus.

> Back to sleep, now.
>
> JC

I do hope to see you wake from time to time, though. :)

Peter Nyikos

[jillery]

And yet these irreducibly complex systems exist. So how do you think
they originated?

[Bob Casanova]

On Thu, 12 Jul 2018 11:16:10 -0400, the following appeared
in talk.origins, posted by jillery <69jp...@gmail.com>:

The same way as mammals and feathers, obviously.

[Alan Kleinman MD PhD]

On Thursday, July 12, 2018 at 8:20:02 AM UTC-7, jillery wrote:
> On Tue, 10 Jul 2018 13:30:47 -0700 (PDT), Alan Kleinman MD PhD

> wrote:
>
> >On Tuesday, July 10, 2018 at 7:45:03 AM UTC-7, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> >> On Monday, July 9, 2018 at 8:10:02 PM UTC-4, Mark Isaak wrote:
> >> > On 7/9/18 2:46 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> >> > > On Thursday, July 5, 2018 at 8:05:03 PM UTC-4, Burkhard wrote:
> >> > > [snip to a single point]
> >> >
> >> > >> Now, Kitzmiller lays down some criteria that give a guide on how such a
> >> > >> law compliant theory would look like: if you introduce designer as a
> >> > >> scientific concept, it has to play by the rules of scientific inquiry.
> >> > >> And that means you can't hide behind "and of the identity of the
> >> > >> designer we know nothing and this is not within the scope of research".
> >> > >
> >> > > As I said, I can't go along with that, and now I say why:
> >> > > police can certainly show "beyond a reasonable doubt" that
> >> > > some deaths were murders without knowing who the murderer was.
> >>
> >> The inference should be clear: one might be able to infer
> >> design without any idea of what the designer or designers
> >> might be.
> >And here are a couple videos where Behe and Meyer make their case for ID.
> >https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k-fVpctlERU
> >https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ETYiIzlB__k
> >I am not a defender of ID but I clearly understand their logic. My role is to correctly describe the mechanisms of evolution (in particular, rmns) and show why these mechanisms cannot evolve these irreducibly complex systems.
> ><snip>
>
>
> And yet these irreducibly complex systems exist. So how do you think
> they originated?

Not by rmns. It is clear that simply changing the frequency or the number of a variant cannot produce these type of systems and as you know, my favorite example of an irreducibly complex system is the DNA replicase system. These molecular machines are clear examples of design.

[Peter Nyikos]

You don't need a permit to learn what is going on between me and
a few people like Hemidactylus, but judging by all your past
history that I've seen, you aren't interested in going that route.

But if perchance you do want to learn, my reply to Hemidactylus here [1]
is a good place to start learning about him, and I can direct you
to more if you happen to be interested.

[1] I mean the following post:

https://groups.google.com/d/msg/talk.origins/5F6WtDhlRgU/PSg5CJdPBAAJ

The post to which you are replying here is a follow-up to it,
clarifying a possible source of confusion at the end of it.

Peter Nyikos

[*Hemidactylus*]

That was the post where you had forgotten (charitable assumption) you had
cited Putin’s mouthpiece RT in your opening post?

[Panthera Tigris Altaica]

Dr. Nyikos never forgets anything, especially a slight. In particular he never forgets a slight which exists only in his mind.

[Peter Nyikos]

As usual, you ignore everything that went on in that post, including
the part preserved above.

And I really do mean EVERYTHING:

> That was the post where you had forgotten (charitable assumption) you had
> cited Putin's mouthpiece RT in your opening post?

I didn't forget what you had written about that, and you are being
just as UNcharitable (indeed, obnoxious) towards me
as when you first went on a rampage over "RT" (whatever that is).

Here's what I wrote about that:

___________________ excerpt____________________________

RT? Could you be referring to

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/1498162/In-the-beginning-there-was-the-Flying-Spaghetti-Monster.html

I made no commitments one way or the other as to the reliability
of the source. If anything, I was negative, as you can see
if you scroll up to where the url appears originally.

What's a UK webpage got to do with Vladimir Putin
[the worst putin since Ras]?

================================== end of excerpt =================

The webpage has the banner, "The Telegraph." What does "R" stand
for in "RT"?

If you are referring to some other link in my OP, please post it here
instead of keeping everyone (and I mean EVERYONE) in the dark
about which link was to "RT".

Peter Nyikos

[Peter Nyikos]

Not obviously, not by a long shot. Kleinman's reply to you talks
about the DNA replicase "system" [I'm not sure what the last word
encompasses] and that would be a part of prebiotic, *biochemical*
evolution. It is only when powerful enzymes appear that can
tremendously speed up reproduction that true biological evolution
can be said to begin.

Peter Nyikos

[Peter Nyikos]

You talk as though you knew a great deal about me, but that is
belied by the content of your remarks here.

> In particular he never forgets a slight which exists only in his mind.

You have described Ron Okimoto beautifully here, whereas your
comments miss me by a country mile.

But I'm sure you don't want to learn why your remarks fit Ron O.

After all, he and Hemidactylus are like two peas in a pod.
And I'm sure you don't want to learn the truth about THAT either.

HAND.

Peter Nyikos

[Alan Kleinman MD PhD]

On Thursday, July 12, 2018 at 1:30:03 PM UTC-7, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> On Thursday, July 12, 2018 at 1:55:03 PM UTC-4, Bob Casanova wrote:
> > On Thu, 12 Jul 2018 11:16:10 -0400, the following appeared
> > in talk.origins, posted by jillery <69jp...@gmail.com>:
> >
> > >On Tue, 10 Jul 2018 13:30:47 -0700 (PDT), Alan Kleinman MD PhD

The word "system" simply encompasses the set of proteins that make up the machinery which replicates (and does error checking) DNA. Two of the proteins are helicase and gyrase which unwind the double helix for replication. Ken Miller of Brown University and author of the text "The Flagellum Unspun" as a refutation to Behe's concept of irreducible complexity argues that the proteins which make up flagella arose from repurposed proteins. I questioned Miller about this in an email several years ago and asked him what the purpose for helicase and gyrase were before DNA existed. His answer was, "That's a good question!"

[Peter Nyikos]

I suppose these are indispensable, but to show that the system
meets Behe's rather exacting criteria for IC, you have
to list all the parts of the system and show that EACH AND EVERY ONE
is indispensable to DNA replication.

There is also a requirement that these various parts of the
system are interacting with each other. Perhaps, by including
DNA itself, one could make a case for the members interacting
with each other in "well-matched" fashion. But does that still
hold if DNA is not considered part of the system?

If not, then the right thing to which to compare the DNA
replicase system is the system for nucleotide synthesis
described by Behe in a separate chapter where he talks about
systems that behave in many respects like IC systems.

In particular, they behave in a way that is generally
dismissed by an analogue of "God of the gaps":

Exaptor of the Gaps:
Short version:
"The ____________[enzyme, structure, system] you are
skeptical about was exapted from another, which was exapted from another, ..."

> Ken Miller of Brown University and author of the text "The Flagellum Unspun" as a refutation to Behe's concept of irreducible complexity argues that the proteins which make up flagella arose from repurposed proteins.

How does Miller deal with Minnich's arguments about the Type III system
from which the flagellum was supposedly exapted (repurposed)?
And how does Miller deal with the argument that, EVEN IF THIS IS TRUE,
this only kicks the IC-ID can down the road from the flagellum
to the Type III secretion system?

> I questioned Miller about this in an email several years ago and asked him what the purpose for helicase and gyrase were before DNA existed. His answer was, "That's a good question!"

Ah, then he was just giving an extended version of Exaptor
of the Gaps:

"A random protein A, catalyzing reactions z1, ...zn [don't ask me
what n is] whose nature I cannot begin to guess, was exapted via a
string of mutations, while still serving some of these functions
[don't ask me which ones it was still serving at the end of the
string],

"exapted, I say, to give us a protein B, catalyzing reactions y1, ...
y_m [don't ask me what m is] whose nature I cannot begin to guess,
which in turn was exapted, via a string of mutations...

...

"...which in turn was exapted to give us a protein Z, catalyzing the
replacement of U with C that corrects any ribozyme transcribing DNA
into mRNA but erroneously putting a U where C belongs."

Peter Nyikos
Professor, Dept. of Mathematics -- standard disclaimer--

University of South Carolina
http://people.math.sc.edu/nyikos/

PS to political animals like Hemidactylus who read this:
Kleinman is full of inept and sometimes grossly fallacious
arguments, but if a Dr.Dr. argument is to be defeated,
I want it defeated fair and square, and NOT (e.g.)
by flaming me with personal attacks calling Kleinman
(e.g.) my minion just because I don't lambast every
single thing Kleinman says.

[*Hemidactylus*]

Really? You don’t know what you yourself posted?

>
> If you are referring to some other link in my OP, please post it here
> instead of keeping everyone (and I mean EVERYONE) in the dark
> about which link was to "RT".
>

Are you really that clueless about your own OP on this thread? I’m invoking
Hanlon’s razor on this one. OMG. Do I have to hold your hand on a journey
back into your own post? Here goes nothing:

“Stephen Cavanaugh, a prisoner in a Nebraska state penitentiary,

sued the state in 2014 seeking $5 million in damages for
"deep emotional, psychological, and spiritual pain" over
the alleged breach of his right to worship the Flying Spaghetti Monster
or "His Flying Noodliness." --

https://www.rt.com/usa/339519-judge-flying-spaghetti-god/“- Peter Nyikos OP
this thread.

For the love of humanity don’t click that link. Who knows what weaponized
Kremlin malware resides deep within. The ideological malware is bad enough.
I recall bemusement watching their America bashing TV programming that
never turned a mirror back on Russia and the guy with his hand up the Trump
puppet’s nethers.

https://www.gocomics.com/tomthedancingbug/2018/06/15

You’re welcome.

[Alan Kleinman MD PhD]

There are dozens of proteins involved in the replication of DNA (or RNA in the case of hiv for example). The system varies between different replicators. For example, the replicase system for hiv does not have the error checking proteins which causes a higher mutation rate for this replicator. I've never done a study for the minimum set of protein necessary for DNA replication. But the idea that any of these proteins could exist without the existence of the DNA to produce them stretches credulity.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DNA_replication

>
> There is also a requirement that these various parts of the
> system are interacting with each other. Perhaps, by including
> DNA itself, one could make a case for the members interacting
> with each other in "well-matched" fashion. But does that still
> hold if DNA is not considered part of the system?
>
> If not, then the right thing to which to compare the DNA
> replicase system is the system for nucleotide synthesis
> described by Behe in a separate chapter where he talks about
> systems that behave in many respects like IC systems.
>
> In particular, they behave in a way that is generally
> dismissed by an analogue of "God of the gaps":
>
> Exaptor of the Gaps:
> Short version:
> "The ____________[enzyme, structure, system] you are
> skeptical about was exapted from another, which was exapted from another, ..."
>
>
> > Ken Miller of Brown University and author of the text "The Flagellum Unspun" as a refutation to Behe's concept of irreducible complexity argues that the proteins which make up flagella arose from repurposed proteins.
>
> How does Miller deal with Minnich's arguments about the Type III system
> from which the flagellum was supposedly exapted (repurposed)?
> And how does Miller deal with the argument that, EVEN IF THIS IS TRUE,
> this only kicks the IC-ID can down the road from the flagellum
> to the Type III secretion system?

My discussion with Miller was limited to that single question. I was questioning his notion of repurposing proteins by taking it to the extreme. How do you repurpose proteins that are necessary for replicating the DNA which is necessary to make that protein?

>
>
> > I questioned Miller about this in an email several years ago and asked him what the purpose for helicase and gyrase were before DNA existed. His answer was, "That's a good question!"
>
> Ah, then he was just giving an extended version of Exaptor
> of the Gaps:
>
> "A random protein A, catalyzing reactions z1, ...zn [don't ask me
> what n is] whose nature I cannot begin to guess, was exapted via a
> string of mutations, while still serving some of these functions
> [don't ask me which ones it was still serving at the end of the
> string],
>
> "exapted, I say, to give us a protein B, catalyzing reactions y1, ...
> y_m [don't ask me what m is] whose nature I cannot begin to guess,
> which in turn was exapted, via a string of mutations...
>
> ...
>
> "...which in turn was exapted to give us a protein Z, catalyzing the
> replacement of U with C that corrects any ribozyme transcribing DNA
> into mRNA but erroneously putting a U where C belongs."

I don't think he was making that argument. I think he was finding a way to say I don't know without saying it. If you read the Wikipedia page on DNA replication, you get a sense of how many complex proteins are necessary to reproduce DNA. Yet it takes DNA to make those proteins. This is the conundrum of evolutionism and one of the most striking examples of design.

>
> Peter Nyikos
> Professor, Dept. of Mathematics -- standard disclaimer--
> University of South Carolina
> http://people.math.sc.edu/nyikos/
>
> PS to political animals like Hemidactylus who read this:
> Kleinman is full of inept and sometimes grossly fallacious
> arguments, but if a Dr.Dr. argument is to be defeated,
> I want it defeated fair and square, and NOT (e.g.)
> by flaming me with personal attacks calling Kleinman
> (e.g.) my minion just because I don't lambast every
> single thing Kleinman says.

We all can't be the masters of logic like you. I happen to be open-minded enough to listen to arguments like those given by Behe. I even listen to the arguments of the reptiles grow feathers crowd. But when they say their arguments are irrefutable, I take that as an admission that they can't defend their arguments. And I can assure you that I am not your minion. I just thought if you were going to talk about ID, why not listen to the arguments from those who have developed the theory? They certainly don't deserve the name calling from people like SlowO.

[jillery]

I knew you were going to repeat your non-answer. You just can't help
yourself.

>It is clear that simply changing the frequency or the number of a variant cannot produce these type of systems and as you know, my favorite example of an irreducibly complex system is the DNA replicase system. These molecular machines are clear examples of design.

These things you claim are "clear" are merely baldly asserted facts
not in evidence. Even if you had shown that the DNA replicase system
is IC, you have not shown that IC is evidence of design.

So once again, how do you think IC systems originated?

[jillery]

Incorrect. You baldly assert a unique claim about "true biological
evolution". In fact, the speed of evolution is irrelevant to the fact
of evolution. As long as there is reproduction with mutation and
selection, true biological evolution happens.

More to the point, the point of my question is to show once again the
good DrDr's failure to provide any alternative explanation for the
existence of these things he baldly asserts could not have evolved.
Not sure who is aping whom here.

>Peter Nyikos
>Professor, Department of Math. -- standard disclaimer --
>U. of So. Carolina
>http://www.math.sc.edu/~nyikos/

[jillery]

Do you disagree with Ken Miller, that your question isn't good? If
so, I agree with you, because your question has nothing to do with the
bacterial flagellum.

OTOH if you had asked Ken Miller about IC generally, then your
question about helicase and gyrase would have been relevant. And in
that case, he might have asked you why you think helicase and gyrase
must have existed before DNA did. Of course, he didn't know that you
don't answer questions.

[Mark Isaak]

On 7/12/18 3:30 PM, Alan Kleinman MD PhD wrote:
> On Thursday, July 12, 2018 at 2:45:02 PM UTC-7, Peter Nyikos wrote:

>> [...]
>> I suppose [helicase and gyrase] are indispensable, but to show that the system

>> meets Behe's rather exacting criteria for IC, you have
>> to list all the parts of the system and show that EACH AND EVERY ONE
>> is indispensable to DNA replication.
> There are dozens of proteins involved in the replication of DNA (or RNA in the case of hiv for example).

But of course there is no reason to assume that replication began with
DNA. In fact, there is reason to believe that RNA came before it. And
of course there is no reason to assume that replication began with RNA.

[...]

> If you read the Wikipedia page on DNA replication, you get a sense of how many complex proteins are necessary to reproduce DNA. Yet it takes DNA to make those proteins. This is the conundrum of evolutionism and one of the most striking examples of design.

Actually, it is a conundrum only to design theorists who have neither
thought about the subject very long nor done their homework.

--
Mark Isaak eciton (at) curioustaxonomy (dot) net
"I think if we ever reach the point where we think we thoroughly
understand who we are and where we come from, we will have failed."
- Carl Sagan

[Mark Isaak]

On 7/12/18 11:41 AM, Alan Kleinman MD PhD wrote:
> On Thursday, July 12, 2018 at 8:20:02 AM UTC-7, jillery wrote:

>> [...]

>> And yet these irreducibly complex systems exist. So how do you think
>> they originated?

> Not by rmns.

I guess you missed the fact that, decades before Behe, irreducible
complexity was *predicted* to exist, because we would expect evolution
("rmns" to you) to produce it.

[Alan Kleinman MD PhD]

On Thursday, July 12, 2018 at 6:45:02 PM UTC-7, jillery wrote:
> On Thu, 12 Jul 2018 11:41:23 -0700 (PDT), Alan Kleinman MD PhD

Then what is IC evidence of?

>
> So once again, how do you think IC systems originated?

It is clear that "natural selection" didn't do it.

[Alan Kleinman MD PhD]

On Thursday, July 12, 2018 at 6:50:03 PM UTC-7, jillery wrote:
> On Thu, 12 Jul 2018 13:25:16 -0700 (PDT), Peter Nyikos
> <nyi...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
>
> >On Thursday, July 12, 2018 at 1:55:03 PM UTC-4, Bob Casanova wrote:
> >> On Thu, 12 Jul 2018 11:16:10 -0400, the following appeared
> >> in talk.origins, posted by jillery <69jp...@gmail.com>:
> >>
> >> >On Tue, 10 Jul 2018 13:30:47 -0700 (PDT), Alan Kleinman MD PhD

Why isn't the rate of evolution important? If a population cannot evolve quickly enough to adapt to a particular environment before the environment changes, then how can adaptation occur? For example, if Lenski changes his environment by changing his stressor before the next beneficial mutation occurs to a different stressor, how can a lineage accumulate the beneficial mutations? And I'm always hearing how the natural environment is always changing. The empirical evidence shows that type of changing environment is not conducive for evolution to occur.

>
> More to the point, the point of my question is to show once again the
> good DrDr's failure to provide any alternative explanation for the
> existence of these things he baldly asserts could not have evolved.
> Not sure who is aping whom here.

I'm explaining how evolution works, you should seek your own new explanation about the existence of these things because evolution doesn't explain it.

[Alan Kleinman MD PhD]

On Thursday, July 12, 2018 at 6:50:04 PM UTC-7, Mark Isaak wrote:
> On 7/12/18 3:30 PM, Alan Kleinman MD PhD wrote:
> > On Thursday, July 12, 2018 at 2:45:02 PM UTC-7, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> >> [...]
> >> I suppose [helicase and gyrase] are indispensable, but to show that the system
> >> meets Behe's rather exacting criteria for IC, you have
> >> to list all the parts of the system and show that EACH AND EVERY ONE
> >> is indispensable to DNA replication.
> > There are dozens of proteins involved in the replication of DNA (or RNA in the case of hiv for example).
>
> But of course there is no reason to assume that replication began with
> DNA. In fact, there is reason to believe that RNA came before it. And
> of course there is no reason to assume that replication began with RNA.

You can speculate all you want. But it is a fact that proteins require DNA to be produced and DNA requires proteins to be produced.

>
> [...]
> > If you read the Wikipedia page on DNA replication, you get a sense of how many complex proteins are necessary to reproduce DNA. Yet it takes DNA to make those proteins. This is the conundrum of evolutionism and one of the most striking examples of design.
>
> Actually, it is a conundrum only to design theorists who have neither
> thought about the subject very long nor done their homework.

So you think that given enough time the DNA replicase system will spontaneously appear and that no matter how much time passes, your Isaakerator will keep collagen fresh for an eternity. Once again Mark, you have proven yourself to be a blithering genius. You should have done your homework for your graduate level population genetics course.

[Alan Kleinman MD PhD]

On Thursday, July 12, 2018 at 6:55:02 PM UTC-7, Mark Isaak wrote:
> On 7/12/18 11:41 AM, Alan Kleinman MD PhD wrote:
> > On Thursday, July 12, 2018 at 8:20:02 AM UTC-7, jillery wrote:
> >> [...]
> >> And yet these irreducibly complex systems exist. So how do you think
> >> they originated?
>
> > Not by rmns.
>
> I guess you missed the fact that, decades before Behe, irreducible
> complexity was *predicted* to exist, because we would expect evolution
> ("rmns" to you) to produce it.

Another blunder by the reptiles grow feathers crowd. They failed to predict the success of combination therapy for the treatment of hiv. They should have figured out how rmns works first before making these predictions. If they had read Tatum's 1958 Nobel Laureate Lecture, they might have gotten a clue.

[zencycle]

On Friday, July 13, 2018 at 8:30:03 AM UTC-4, Alan Kleinman MD PhD wrote:
>
> Then what is IC evidence of?

Nothing. IC is a ruse that you have swallowed, hook. line, and sinker, and it's all because you have deluded yourself into thinking that a very small probability means impossible.

[zencycle]

On Wednesday, July 11, 2018 at 4:30:02 PM UTC-4, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> On Monday, July 9, 2018 at 12:15:02 PM UTC-4, zencycle wrote:
> >
> > As with every other catholic 'holy' day, halloween was co-opted from a traditional pagan worship - the Celtic Samhain.
>
> Halloween itself is not a holy day, but only the eve of the holy
> day known as All Saints' Day. This was pointed out to Burkhard
> by both Joe Cummings and myself.

A distinction without a difference.....

>
> It seems that All Saints' Day goes back a lot further than

<snip>

> for the Friday after Easter.[19]
>
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_Saints%27_Day

um, yeah, that article also says "In the British Isles, it is known that churches were already celebrating All Saints on 1 November at the beginning of the 8th century to coincide or replace the Celtic festival of Samhain."

as I wrote - just another co-opted pagan celebration.


> > Catholicism has no original concepts, whatsoever.
>
> On what do you base this sweeping judgment? just how far back
> does Catholicism go, according to you?

Go back as far as you want. There are no original ideas in catholicism. Jesus was a jew who found spirituality in Buddhism. His philosophy is a blend of Buddhist pacifism and judaism. The council of nicea merely put political structure to a cult religion.

> > While christianity may have started as a cult, catholicism was a political movement, pure and simple.
>
> I wouldn't go so far even with the Orthodox, who are often associated
> with caesaropapism. It is true that Constantine gave Christianity
> legal status, and even ordered the Christian leaders to have a
> Council of Nicaea to settle the Arian question. The council condemned
> Arianism, but when Constantine was baptized (very close to death),
> it was a bishop who was, at best, a sympathizer for Arius and,
> at worst, an Arian himself, who baptized Constantine. See:
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eusebius_of_Nicomedia

I'm not doubting there were man people associated with the formation of the catholic religion that were devout believers. I'm stating the catholic church was a political regime.


> > The christ figure has very, very little to do with catholicism - indeed, any resurrected figure would have sufficed.
>
> This statement actually makes me wonder how you define catholicism.

If I wasn't clear enough already, Catholicism was a political movement. The political powers at the time saw christianity as a tool that could be used to subject the masses, and the catholic church as a seat of legislative and judicial authority was established.

If Ramen Noodles were available at the time, pastafarianism might well have been the basis for catholicism and you'd be sipping from a ramen bowl as the sacrament for communion instead of gagging a poorly made wheat thin.

> You didn't comment on the rest of what you preserved, but I left
> it in below just in case you want to refer to it in any reply you make.

nothing else really appealed to me.

[Alan Kleinman MD PhD]

So you think the DNA replicase system is a ruse? And you are the one who is deluded if you think that billions of low probability events occurring is reasonable. I've shown how natural selection can make a small number of low probability events occur but it only works under very limited circumstances. And the more complex the selection conditions, the far less likely the evolutionary process will occur.

[Mark Isaak]

On 7/13/18 5:51 AM, Alan Kleinman MD PhD wrote:
> On Thursday, July 12, 2018 at 6:50:04 PM UTC-7, Mark Isaak wrote:
>> On 7/12/18 3:30 PM, Alan Kleinman MD PhD wrote:
>>> On Thursday, July 12, 2018 at 2:45:02 PM UTC-7, Peter Nyikos wrote:
>>>> [...]
>>>> I suppose [helicase and gyrase] are indispensable, but to show that the system
>>>> meets Behe's rather exacting criteria for IC, you have
>>>> to list all the parts of the system and show that EACH AND EVERY ONE
>>>> is indispensable to DNA replication.
>>> There are dozens of proteins involved in the replication of DNA (or RNA in the case of hiv for example).
>>
>> But of course there is no reason to assume that replication began with
>> DNA. In fact, there is reason to believe that RNA came before it. And
>> of course there is no reason to assume that replication began with RNA.
> You can speculate all you want. But it is a fact that proteins require DNA to be produced and DNA requires proteins to be produced.

No, that is your assumption, not fact. And if you think about it, it's
a pretty stupid assumption. We know that amino acid oligomers can form
without DNA.

[Mark Isaak]

On 7/13/18 5:54 AM, Alan Kleinman MD PhD wrote:
> On Thursday, July 12, 2018 at 6:55:02 PM UTC-7, Mark Isaak wrote:
>> On 7/12/18 11:41 AM, Alan Kleinman MD PhD wrote:
>>> On Thursday, July 12, 2018 at 8:20:02 AM UTC-7, jillery wrote:
>>>> [...]
>>>> And yet these irreducibly complex systems exist. So how do you think
>>>> they originated?
>>
>>> Not by rmns.
>>
>> I guess you missed the fact that, decades before Behe, irreducible
>> complexity was *predicted* to exist, because we would expect evolution
>> ("rmns" to you) to produce it.
> Another blunder by the reptiles grow feathers crowd. They failed to predict the success of combination therapy for the treatment of hiv. They should have figured out how rmns works first before making these predictions. If they had read Tatum's 1958 Nobel Laureate Lecture, they might have gotten a clue.

Now Alan thinks making a prediction that is later verified is a blunder.