Re: "Intelligent design"

Mike Lyle wrote:
> Don A. Gilmore wrote:
> [...]
> > You're still missing my point, Mike. I'm saying that devices then
> > were on a relatively elementary level in comparison to modern
> > devices, like jet airplanes, robots and power plants, because they
> > built them without using science as we know it today: actual
> > documented and proven mathematical formulas, methods and theorems
> > that explain and predict the behavior of things in the real world.
> > This is science that must be painstakingly studied, learned and
> > practiced over many years' time before one can even come close to
> > designing modern, complex devices in today's engineering world.
> This
> > type of science is a very recent phenomenon in the course of
> history.
> > Of all the knowledge contained in the more than fifty engineering
> > books here on my bookshelf, virtually none of it existed as little
> as
> > a few centuries ago.
>
> I'm not trying to deny it, of course. I think I get defensive when I
> think people are underestimating the achievements of the old days.


Oh, I very much agree with you there, Mike. That's why I'm always
irritated by the people who theorize that the pyramids must have been
built by space aliens. They're not giving sufficient credit to
mankind. The Egyptians weren't Neanderthals, or Homo erectus, they
were thoroughly modern men, just like you or I. And they were
obviously clever as hell. They just didn't have access to the built-up
body of knowledge that we do.

I can picture archaeologists 5000 years from now digging up the remains
of the Twentieth Century. "How", they might say, "could these people
possibly have advanced from horse and buggies to air and space travel,
computers, televisions, microwave ovens, plastic vomit and spray cheese
in little more than a few generations? They *must* have had help from
extraterrestrial beings!" And that would make much more sense than the
same theory about a pile of rocks in the desert.

Don
Kansas City

.

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