If a 12th Century person was introduced to your computer with internet...

[Tom Yossarian Joad]

He would believe it an act of God...

Or at least intelligent design. No matter how well you described the machine. Due to his limited experience and socioeconomic experiences, he would have to declare it the work of God or the Devil.

That seems to have been a trait of mankind since the beginnings of history. If you can't explain it, it must be magic.

It's time we grew up.

[aden_nak]

1. He would also spend the next three weeks masturbating.

But you do have a point. Intelligent Design has, as an underlying principle, that we as humans are so damn smart that anything we can't figure out right now must be "a miracle". It reeks of arrogance. And not even the amusing kind.

[Inland]

5. No, first he would have to be shown the miracle of the credit card. nt

[aden_nak]

6. Credit Card? Wait, you don't PAY for your porn, do you?

/wink

[Inland]

9. Free porn!?! Finally, there IS proof of God!

And proof he loves me!

[Javaman]

2. Just ask moron*...internet(s)...

[mike_c]

3. tom-- with all due respect...

...your computer IS the result of intelligent design, albeit human design. I do understand your point of course-- that we tend to attribute that which we don't understand to supernatural causes-- but the essence of the intelligent design argument is that examples such as the one you've cited justify doing so.

[Inland]

7. The point is, something like that

is so miraculous and complicated and marvelous that only God could create it.

So our biological structure is to DNA what a computer is to humans. Since the uneducated have no idea how anything works, their first instinct is to assume that the former couldn't possibly be created by the latter.

Religion and a lack of an inventor merely allows the I.D. people to remain ignorant in the way we did not allow the hypothetical 12th C. person.

[Occulus]

15. which is why the right has been demolishing public education

"Since the uneducated have no idea how anything works, their first instinct is to assume that the former couldn't possibly be created by the latter."

The neocons, and the right, have been destroying or bending to their whim public education in as many areas as possible for a long time now. Arts and music were really the first ones I remember being actively cut; this was in the Reagan era, I believe. Heard it happening all over the place. The civics class I later took in high school was woefully undertaught; math and science has yet to be affected.

The latest push is for "standardized testing", and lots of it. This is very simple to understand when one takes into account the underfunding of public schools in general at the neocons' hands: if students are not taught critical thinking skills, which previous generations have been taught, they will lack the ability to be able to question what they are told; they simply will not know how to do so effectively and will be less likely to know when they are being fed a pile of steaming crap.

Standardized testing only further cements this; not only are they not being taught to critically analyze what they are told, they are also being preconditioned through widespread standardized testing to memorize, and to repeat. The same repetition techniques they are being taught to use in schools to pass tests are then used in the "popular" media, the right's media machine. FOX, Rush, Hannity, et al all saying the same things at the same times on the same days, over and over.

People are being taught in school like that as well, thanks to standardized testing. I think we would do well to consider the effect of that.

[Tom Yossarian Joad]

8. That's part of the point.... To paraphrase Pogo:

I have seen the intelligence and he is us." I can see your point as well, but to bolster my POV, I would compare the introduction of technology to an earlier civilization with the concept of the thinly veiled religious tenents being called "intelligent design" to a magician's sleight of hand making an elephant disappear to nuclear fusion. (wow, that's a f'd up sentence).

They aren't talking Von Danekin's Chariots of the Gods BS, they are talking a branded infinite creator.

:toast:

[TreasonousBastard]

4. Before he saw the computer...

he would have a heart attack in the cab ride from the airport.

At any rate, this goes back to Aristotle's Prime Mover and the idea of a higher intelligence still has merit, even among some cosmologists. Last year's Templeton prize winner, a highly acclaimed cosmologist, proposes that the universe itself has an innate intelligence.

I do not for a minute defend the creationists out there who are perverting these philosophical inquiries into the design of the universe, but the idea itself deserves discussion.

It does not, however, deserve to be taught in schools as a thinly disguised version of Genesis. Nor do the genuine discussions deserver to be ridiculed.

[Taxloss]

23. Ah - the harmonic universe.

The concept is attractive in its beauty, but any intelligence on that level would be absolutely incomprehensible.

[TreasonousBastard]

24. Many of us nasty, ignorant "religionists" believe...

that the concept of God is a necessary one, bur we really have no idea what God actually is. The entire idea of God is of something so beyond us as to be inscrutable-- a god we can fully understand is no god at all. Over the years, we have anthropomorphized our gods so we can understand them to some degree, but the real prophets knew that the scriptures and dogma were only works of art.

An intelligence that does not know time and space as we do and moves effortlessly through ten or twenty dimensions is not something we can understand.

If, indeed, there is such an intelligence-- of that we can only speculate.

[Taxloss]

27. I don't think you're nasty or ignorant.

Do you feel that I do?

[TreasonousBastard]

28. No, but perhaps the..

original poster might, and there are quite a few others on this board who seem to have no tolerance for any form of religion at all.

Ny apologies if it appeared aimed at you.

[Ready4Change]

10. I think he would consider it magic. Not necessarily "God."

His main concern might be whether it was miraculous, magic, or demonic magic.

He would view our learned ability to use such a device as having learned to use that magic. We would be, in his mind, magicians and sorcerers. He might fear for our souls. He would certainly fear for his own when we offer to show him how to use the computer.

I'm assuming this person comes from the areas we now call Europe or the Middle East, where Judaic/Christian belief had some effect.

In other places the effect might be the same, but rather than seen as heavenly vs hellish, it might be seen as good/bad magic. a subtle difference, but maybe resulting in a less fearful reaction.

I think, in most cases, the learning curve for using it would be steep. We take typing for granted. Not only would it be a mystery to people of that era, writen language itself is likely to be a mystery, unless you've lucked out and grabbed a royal, or monk, or other learned sort. Most people in the 1200's were illiterate.

Mousing and clicking is only slightly more accessible. Movement of the mouse corresponding with movement of the mouse pointer is likely. Clicking a picture likely. But clicking on text is likely to be pure guesswork, since, as mentioned above, your average person can't read.

[politick]

25. Great post!

Thanks

[AntiCoup2K4]

11. My dad thinks computers are the work of Satan, and he's not 12th century..

...Stuck in the early 1950's perhaps, but not 12th century.

[Hong Kong Cavalier]

12. "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."

-Arthur C. Clarke

[Tom Yossarian Joad]

13. Heh. Leave it to Clarke.

Succinct and to the point.

[KittyWampus]

14. Intelligent Design Does NOT Presuppose A Designer Being. Why Can't You

get that through your head?

Why is this so hard to grasp?

Intelligent Design posits a Natural Intelligence with a predisposition towards Design.

NO Being necessary any more then Natural Selection necessarily means there's a Being doing the Selecting.

[Tom Yossarian Joad]

16. It's okay....

A plant that leans toward the sun could be called intelligent, I guess.

[Inland]

17. Shit on stilts. nt

[Redleg]

18. Tell that to the fundies who will be pushing for ID in science classes.

And what the hell is "natural intelligence?"

[Kraklen]

20. Nobody's buying it.

You've been dishing out this nonsense for God knows how long.

Nobody's biting.

Why can't you get that through your head?

[Taxloss]

22. Arrant twaddle.

No designer? No design.

[charlie]

29. I don't know why you keep doing this

The purveyors of "intelligent design" do posit a God, specifically Jesus and Jehovah. You're yelling at the wrong people. You oughta be mad at the crowd that co-opted the name for something different than your flavor of intelligent design.

Unless your intent is to align yourself with those disingenous assholes, quit acting as if the phrase has a generic meaning, it doesn't. It's a brand, like "pro-life" is a brand.

[StayOutTheBushes]

19. Check out ole Albert....

A child in the sixth grade in a Sunday School in New York City, with the encouragement of her teacher, wrote to Einstein in Princeton on 19 January I936 asking him whether scientists pray, and if so what they pray for. Einstein replied as follows on 24 January 1936:

I have tried to respond to your question as simply as I could. Here is my answer.

Scientific research is based on the idea that everything that takes place is determined by laws of nature, and therefore this holds for the actions of people. For this reason, a research scientist will hardly be inclined to believe that events could be influenced by a prayer, i.e. by a wish addressed to a supernatural Being.

However, it must be admitted that our actual knowledge of these laws is only imperfect and fragmentary, so that, actually, the belief in the existence of basic all-embracing laws in Nature also rests on a sort of faith. All the same this faith has been largely justified so far by the success of scientific research.

But, on the other hand, every one who is seriously involved in the pursuit of science becomes convinced that a spirit is manifest in the laws of the Universe -- a spirit vastly superior to that of man, and one in the face of which we with our modest powers must feel humble. In this way the pursuit of science leads to a religious feeling of a special sort, which is indeed quite different from the religiosity of someone more naive.

It is worth mentioning that this letter was written a decade after the advent of Heisenberg's prin ciple of indeterminacy and the probabilistic interpretation of quantum mechanics with its denial of strict determinism.

[sweetheart]

21. Perhaps, were they chinese

They might have understood the principals of an adding machine.

Maybe they might be very philosophically wise in their observatons
of our fragmented degenerate society. This presumption that a 12th
century person is demented to truth is rather ethnocentric.

[Lannes]

26. With all due respects to Frank Sinatra..

"’cause it’s witchcraft, wicked witchcraft
And although, I know, it’s strictly taboo..."