Intelligent design. Philosophy of ignorance.

I like to think of memes as units of information that live and die in the ecosystem of the mind instead of the physical environment. The networking of minds create a different fitness function.Actually i think the concept of a meme are attacked because of who originated the idea and that it is basically an abstraction and extrapolation of evolution thought. If Dembski had originated the idea the ID people would propagate the "theory" that we are wonderfully and miraculously designed to transmit 'memes'.

The concept (meme) of a meme has no relationship to atheism or theism. It describes a mechanism of information preservation and transmission. A meme can be quantified in terms of information content - that is physical. If you want to discuss this I would suggest one of us start a new topic.Contrary to what you have said before, Memetics does deal with empirical data. If Memetics is on shaking ground as a science it may because of the less than precise terminology and there is some question of if it is falsifiable. Memetics is a new field, let's see what the future holds, I would predict that it will yield further understanding of the way the universe ticks. ID on the other hand will retreat to ever smaller and smaller crevises as the boundary of our understanding grows.Again I am not even sure why you want to compare meme's to ID, they are not even mutually exclusive. I suppose one could level this criticism against Einstein in the advent of Relativity.Edited by iceage, : One last thought

A Meme is an idea -> An idea can be described by a single word or phrase -> A word can be considered a physical thing.For example, a new scientific term can be a meme. There are papers that track the emergence of a new scientific term within published papers. The frequency of appearance and usage of the term can be modeled and predicted.When was the last time ID made a prediction that was useful?In addition, an idea is an artifact of the mind. So is most of psychology. For example, can you point to a physical component of obsessive compulsive behavior or cleptomania? Will you argue that ID and Psychology are on the same footing?

When you look at the long journey of human discovery, ascribing to God(s) the explanation of phenomenon has a terrible track record - so why is it a reasonable candidate now.Edited by iceage, : No reason given.Edited by iceage, : No reason given.

I think you misunderstood schraf. Saying "I don't know" is not the same as saying "I don't want to know". Maybe I misread you but from prior comments it appears that you are happy with the thought that there are things that god did and that is good enough for you - which is the opposite of saying "I don't know".For example Questions like "why do we have a moral code" are slowly being answered in social evolutionary biology - you want to resist saying "I don't know" and hand that off to some intelligent designer while the scientific minds says "I don't know" but lets try to find out.I will agree that humans tend to resist saying "I don't know" and scientist can be guilty of this weakness also. However, the religious minded resort to explanations in god(s), shamans or in "sacred texts". End of exploration, end of questioning - a dead end.An interesting aside is that "sacred texts" have to have a certain prerequisite antiquity before they are granted such sacred status and are considered sufficiently authoritative to explain the contemporary unknowns - a humorous contradiction if you think about it.The phrase, "I don't know" is actually modern. It is the bedrock motivation behind the scientific way of knowing. It admits the truth of the situation and rejects the well-worn knee-jerk reaction to invoke fictitious god(s), spirits, pixies, arrangement of the stars to explain things for which we have as yet no reliable explanation.So in a sense one of the grandest accomplishments of the modern scientific era is the admission that we don't know some things.Recently I read somewhere that the Pope (the prior Pope i believe) told Stephen Hawking that one should not delve into the earliest moments of the creation of the universe - since that is God's domain. This adequately demonstrates the old way, the Pope was perfectly happy with the explanation that God did it. Edited by iceage, : No reason given.

This is off topic and I should not respond but....I have been around people all my life that have made similar claims. However whenever you lift the hood and have look at what knowledge, predictions and tenuous historical claims you realize that they are participating in self and group deception. I even personally knew a group that believe 1988 was the end being a generation past the "budding of the fig tree" (Israel as a nation). Have you read the likes of David Wilkerson? Pure unaltered ego-driven bunk. I recommend you start a thread or two on your realized prophetic derived knowledge. No offense Buzz but this knowledge is useless. Show me how this knowledge ever cured a leper, feed the poor, designed an airplane or heated the water for a morning shower?Edited by iceage, : No reason given.