[extropy-chat] intelligent design homework

[Adrian Tymes]

--- Robert Lindauer <robgobblin at aol.com> wrote:
> Damien Broderick wrote:
> > Nice line from 
> > http://www.themorningsun.com/stories/080505/loc_column001.shtml :
> >
> > Although this kind of announcement might have generated genuine 
> > outrage, it isn't the first time the president has said this kind
> of 
> > thing. So, it only generated some lazy anger, perhaps best summed
> up 
> > by The Editors at Thepoorman.net, with this:
> >
> > "The silver lining is that school is going to be a lot less
> stressful 
> > when the answer to every question on the midterm is 'because it is 
> > God's will.' So there is that."
> >
> Not that different from "because it gives them an evolutionary
> advantage".

Not really.  "Evolutionary advantage" has to be useful in some manner.
(Granted, there can be and are all manner of odd uses, but they are
uses; this excludes some paths of development.)  "God's will" is a
looser requirement (it does not get across the concept of "can" versus
"can't": absolutely anything can be justified as "God's will",
including things that are provably useless - which then extends to
non-evolutionary things, for instance "kill the heathens" can be
justified as "God's will" when, if viewed without a supernatural lens,
it would be clear that it's just murder which is going to make a bunch
of people angry).