Any favorites? Not too long, now!

Which questions? I'll answer yours if you answer mine.

I'm not a big fan or very knowledgeable but just browse through some of his shorter stuff - I always find a few lines I like - he was really a good poet with images and word sounds. Charge of the Light Brigade is a classic.

Was looking at his Wiki and found this, which I like:

The moan of doves in immemorial elms
And murmuring of innumerable bees.

It says Keats was one of his main influences.

You did do Goethe for G, correct?

No 'G'...it looks like this so far:

Richard Aldington, "At the British Museum"
Robert Browning, "Sordello" (excerpt)
Lewis Carroll, "Jabberwocky"
John Donne, "The Ecstasy"
T.S. Eliot, "The Hollow Men"
Robert Frost, "Good-bye and Keep Cold"
G, ?
Thomas Hardy, "I Travel Like a Phantom Now"
Henrik Ibsen, "The Miner"
J, ?
John Keats, "Ode on a Grecian Urn"
L, ?
Edna St. Vincent Millay, "A Visit to the Asylum"
Howard Nemerov, "A Primer of the Daily Round"
O, ?
Ezra Pound, "The River-Merchant's Wife; A Letter"
Q, ?
Edward Arlington Robinson, "Eros Turannos"
Percy Bysshe Shelley, "Ozymandias"
T, ?
John Updike, "Ex-Basketball Player"
Dmitri Varos, "Mind Games"
W, ?
Zhimo Xu, "Saying Good-bye to Cambridge Again"
William Butler Yeats, "The Second Coming"
Lisa Zaran, "Girl"

Need to review though; most are shaky.

J - Ben Johnson
L - Longfellow
O - Ovid or Omar Khyyam
Q - ?
W - Wordsworth

If you go through again make sure
C - Chaucer
D - Dante
H - Homer
M - Milton
S - Shakespeare

How can anything inside a designed universe be undesigned?

Wow guys, I know RGT is well known for threads that stray pretty far from the OP, but this line really takes the cake!

(not complaining, just think its funny...)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ad3Hzsy1-20

No, until you understand why he's right and why you're wrong. Go back to his water analogy. That sums it up well.

His water analogy just shows his ignorance of the design argument. Your like a creationist shouting "show me a monkey give birth to a human and I'll believe evolution" How do you refute an argument that is based on a clear misunderstanding and ignorance of the basics of the theory?

Actually after almost 700 posts, I find this thread to be surprisingly close to the OP. I think this is probably a RGT record.

Wait till you stop reading a thread and then peak in 3 pages later and you cannot even begin to understand how they got on the topic their on. It's almost an art form.

?

You said that, since the universe is an object made of objects, we can draw conclusions about its nature based the nature of the objects from which it is made. This is a claim which only requires one counter-example in order to prove that it is not a universal truth. The water example provides this, so your Fisher-Price line of reasoning is derailed, and it's left for you to demonstrate that this is the case with the universe.

It doesn't even make sense for you to say the water example 'shows my ignorance of the design argument'; it wasn't directed at the design argument, only one component of it.

Why do you think rocks aren't designed?

What were those questions of yours you said I didn't answer?

Once again, you are taking a position that I do not hold and then arguing against it. I never stated that if something had objects in it that this meant it was design. You entire defense has been one big strawman.

Why aren't monkeys giving birth the humans?

The one about language. Do you think that it is probable that hieroglyphics are just random markings? Do you think that it is impossible to differentiate between written language and random markings?

NotReady -

Ovid is a good call.

All-in Flynn, ILOVEPOKER929 -

Correct me if I'm wrong. But aren't you being berated for "failing to understand" an argument which itself fails to EXIST? The most generalized design argument I've seen (i.e. misuse of the Anthropic Principle) is still anthropocentric, and certainly doesn't claim to provide criteria for the 'design' of random objects. (Much less complex systems such as brains; which we intuitively want to describe as both highly 'designed' and highly 'random', in some sense.)

Yet Jibninjas weighed in on the 'design' of rocks, of all things...

Perception.

We should note, for example, that Paley's classic argument fails not because watches can be explained without watchmakers; but because watchmakers aren't nearly a complete explanation of watches!

Every system, as you zoom in or out, emphasize function or intention, can seem more or less 'designed' or 'emergent' or 'purposed' or 'random'...or very quickly: too complicated to label.

I have to admit I LOL'D

That sums it up perfectly.

Of course, that's not what I said you said. Which, all too ironically, makes this your strawman. You said:
The water example followed from the 'object made up of objects' line, which, whether you wanted it to or not, implies that since the universe is composed of objects, the nature of those objects can provide a solid framework for conjecture about the universe itself. If I've misunderstood, please do clarify.

Now then. You were asked by more than one person:
And responded:
And then I asked:
After no answer was received:
Nothing up my sleeves - I strongly suspect that the only two things you've ever encountered in your life which you infer are designed from the reasoning you've presented are life and the universe. I suspect that everything else you've ever encountered, which you've concluded to be designed, has led you through an entirely different reasoning process to come to that conclusion. That's why the question is important. Please answer. On to the quid pro quo:

Phylogenetically, it's because they're monkeys, not humans. In terms of shifts in allele frequency as part of a competing population of alleles, it's because (for a variety of reasons) shifts as major as required for that require many generations to be achieved. In terms of which theories are and are not in vogue, it's because saltationism is bull****.

Three answers. Now please give me just one.

Of course I don't think they're random markings. And let's suppose there aren't books on the subject, etc, and I'm looking at them for the first time, which I think is the kind of thing you're getting at. When I infer that they are not random markings, but are instead a form of language, I will do so when I have identified features of it which conform to features of what I have experienced as language. It would be difficult and very time-consuming to get into the specifics of it, and the relevant idea is this:

I would conclude that hieroglyphics were the product of an intelligence based on identifying features of hieroglyphics consistent with features of phenomena I know to be the product of an intelligence.

To pre-empt your probable first response, I would not infer that the stones on which the hieroglyphics are carved must be the product of an intelligence since that is where they are carved, for the same reason that we can't infer universal design from objects contained in the universe which we know to be designed.

So. Are you going to tell me why you think rocks aren't designed now? Please?

I will have to repeat myself again:

No, I would not like to think such a thing.

Why don't you think the snowflake looks designed?

I will repeat myself again, ironically from the post that you quoted.

to an extent yes. There are of course rocks that we can attribute design to, such as Mt. Rushmore, but that is something different then what we are talking about here.

So you agree that design can be justifiably detected, good. Why is it that you insist that something like the universe could not be compared to anything that we know. In other words, why can't the criteria we use for everything else be used for the universe?