Intelligent design. Philosophy of ignorance.

I don't think so - if he did he would have no point. I really think that he would rather deny that people can influence each other's ideas than admit that he could be wrong.At the heart of it, memes are just ideas that people pass on to other people. Sometimes they change in transmission. We could, for instance consider a language as a meme. So I think that memes are largely an abstraction and development of the analogy between biological evolution and the evolution of languages.

This statement represents the "disneyfication" of nature at its worst. Also, all of this can be far more clearly understood in other ways. Exactly. That's where ID fails. It cannot be tested. Memetics can and will be put to the test. It is a relatively new idea and it will stand or fall depending on the evidence that scientists are able to find in support of it. No one has "faith" in it. Your haste to denounce it is more of a reflection of your prejudices against it than it's failings as a hypothesis.In any case, memetics aside, you are still having to ignore all the other evidence in support of evolution to sustain your "science as faith" argument. I notice that you have made no comments about Tiktaalik, for instance.

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'.

Better yet, the idea of memes is itself a meme. Thus if GDR is right he can't know what a meme is. Thus the only way he could possibly be right would be if he didn't know what he was talking about !

I don't deny for one minute that people can influence the ideas of others. I don't have a problem with this either. My problem is with those that use a meme as a physical replicator of ideas. What is scientific about that. For that matter, a meme could just as easily be metaphysical as it could be physical. Is an idea physical or metaphysical. If I teach my kids that Atheism represents the truth of our existence have I participated in a physical or a metaphysical process, and how can I through empirical testing come to a conclusion?If one considers the concept of memes to be scientific then they have no argument to use to say that ID isn't scientific. In my view, neither are.

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Everybody is entitled to my opinion.

It may be able to understood in other ways, but those other ways aren't scientific either. Memetics as the study of cultural evolution is fine by me. It is those like Dawkins, (who coined the term "meme" to replace Cloak's term of cultural replicator), takes this study and uses his scientific credentials to promote his faith in Atheism, or his belief that only the physical exists. As I said earlier, if there is such a thing as a meme, there is no way of proving whether it is physical or metaphysical. I have no argument with evolution, and I certainly don't hold that science is faith. What I am saying is that when scientists or anyone go beyond what is scientific then it does become an issue of faith. Basically, Dawkin's idea of a meme holds that an idea or an emotion is a physical entity whereas a theist such as myself is inclined to the believe that they are metaphysical.Edited by GDR, : I had missed your last paragraph

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Everybody is entitled to my opinion.

I do. ThanksGreg

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Everybody is entitled to my opinion.

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I don't deny for one minute that people can influence the ideas of others.

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But by objecting to the idea of memees you really are saying that ideas cannot be passed on between humans. Sp what exactly is the issue ?

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I don't have a problem with this either. My problem is with those that use a meme as a physical replicator of ideas.

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The "physical" part isn't a necessary part of the idea (although it's probably true that ideas are physically represented in the brain).

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Dawkins in "The Selfish Gene" writes:

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Just as genes propogate themselves in the gene pool by leaping from body to body via sperm or eggs, so memes propogate themselves in the meme pool by leaping from brain to brain by a process which, in the broad sense of the term, can be called imitation.

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What's your problem with it ? I don't beleive that Dawkins was even trying to be strictly scientific. But I see nothing you could reasonably object to in the concept that ideas are passed around.

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For that matter, a meme could just as easily be metaphysical as it could be physical.

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As I say that isn't an essential part of the concept. Dawkins is probably right but objecting to a peripheral point is hardly a serious issue. If you wan to insist that the mind is metaphysical go ahead. It won't discredit memes at all.

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If one considers the concept of memes to be scientific then they have no argument to use to say that ID isn't scientific.

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Why not ? It seems that there is some genuine science dealing with the concept of memes while ID has come up empty. Edited by PaulK, : No reason given.

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

Please demonstrate one place where someone has said that there is a physical replicator here - direct from Dawkins would be a good start .... or have you created a straw man in your mind that bears no relation to reality? Certainly that is what your whole argument seems to be based on.Memes are ideas, ideas are transmitted. Birds do it, bees do it, many undereducated animals do it. The japanese macaque previously mentioned were shown to do it. Dolphins, elephants and whales do it. You can observe it in humans and other animals, you can document it and measure how it spreads within a population, and how it changes over time; you can make working hypothesis on how this happens, make predictions from those hypothesis and test them: anything you can quantify, measure, hypothesis, predict and test is scientific. Show me how to observe, document and measure ID and see how it changes over time; show me what working hypothesis have been developed with the predictions based on those hypothesis and the tests for validity that have occurred: demonstrate that you can quantify, measure, hypothesis, predict and test ID.Personally I think the idea "meme" is just a cute shorthand way of saying that ideas can travel, mutate, grow in popularity and die out in popularity in a way similar to gene propogation within populations. It's not really necessary though, as we can equally talk about ideas.Just like ID is a cute shorthand for god-did-it.Enjoy.

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we are limited in our ability to understand
by our ability to understand

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RebelAAmericanOZen[Deist
... to learn ... to think ... to live ... to laugh ...
to share.

I think that Dawkin is aware that memes live and die inside people`s mind. So, I really think your point is mute here.

There have been many comments in this thread that have said that the study of memes is scientific. Dawkins goes so far as to draw parallels between genes and memes. In my view, genes are scientific and memes aren't. If memes are scientific then they have to function within the physical or natural world. What empirical test is there to prove that such a thing as a meme exists?I'm out of time so I'll just post what I have.

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Everybody is entitled to my opinion.

Isn't this a bit like disclaiming the existence of emotion on the basis it is non-physical?As a meterialist I would claim that ultimately both emotions and memes have a material basis within the neurology of the host brain.However I would not necessarily want to reduce "happiness" down to neurons in order to usefully study it as a phenomenon. The psychology of human happines as a thing in itself seems a perfectly scientific possibility for investigation to me.Would you claim that because happiness is not physical as such that we cannot study happiness as a phenomenon scientifically?

(1) this does not even address the question asked -- I'll take that as evidence that such does not exist and that your position therefore IS a straw man of your own making unrelated to reality.(2) this is a restatement of your position and has not added anything new to the debate, as such it is a waste of bandwidth, and(3) your opinion is not a guideline for what is scientific, nor is your understanding of science. They do. Ideas function very well, they enable us to understand and thus give us power to manipulate our world. You could see if an intelligent organism, say a japanese macaque, comes up with a novel idea, say washing food in water, and then observe whether this idea spreads in the population. Gosh, it did! Compare that spread to another population of macaques to see if they spontaneously generate the idea as well. Nope.How did it happen that the {idea\meme} was transmitted from one intelligent organism to another within a population but not outside that population? No comment needed.Enjoy.

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we are limited in our ability to understand
by our ability to understand

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RebelAAmericanOZen[Deist
... to learn ... to think ... to live ... to laugh ...
to share.

Rather than try to go through everyone's post and try and answer each point, (it is midnight), I'll just try to quickly summarize my position and let it go at that.It appears to me that there is a double standard for those who argue the Theistic or Atheistic point of view. Proponents of ID sometimes will try and argue that their position is scientific. Frankly I agree that it isn't. At any rate that POV is not given any credence at all because there is no scientific evidence for the existence of a metaphysical intelligent designer.Atheists such as Dawkins however seem to get a free ride when the espouse views for which there is no scientific evidence. Certainly, there are studies that show the cultural evolution occurs. Ideas are passed around within a family or within a given culture. However to assign the idea of a meme as a cultural replicator and call it science is in my view no different than calling ID science.Some posters have said that a meme is merely an idea. If that is the case then I would agree that I don't have a point. However, the quotes of Dawkins that I've already given indicate that he believes a meme is more than just an idea. He theorizes that a meme functions in many ways like a gene, as he compares meme pools to gene pools.

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Everybody is entitled to my opinion.