OK, who's going to start dumping alligators in the lakes? Or will the coelocanths go first?

All will be fine until winter when the cold and snow wipe out the immigrants from Africa. Then there's the little problem of the lack of mastodons. But that's why there's cloning I guess.

Fantastic! Think of the big-game hunting opportunities!

[Dead-bang SERIOUS about this]

I caught the public radio piece on this today. The greenie-wacko who was pushing it was talking about megafauna predators being needed to keep things in balance. Of course this is a non-starter. Cheetahs and cougars are bad enough if you are small or a child, or appear stressed, like a jogger. Panthera leo is whole other ball of wax. Ditto cape hunting dogs. There would be more at stake than stock losses.

Therefore, exoctic mega fauna would have to be controlled by hunter ecology. There would be no other way to do, other than chasing them around to fit them with some kind of birth-control.

Count me in. Just what I needed: an excuse to buy another gun.

During the campaign to introduce imported Canadian wolves to Yellowstone, supporters would go on and on about how all they wanted to do was to "restore" the ecosystem. Restore it to what? A perfect, never changing fantasy which excluded the hand of Man (in the form of Indians who hunted and started fires in the area.) And what time frame? Why, right before the Evil White Man extended his influence over the area. So consideration was given to the fact that during the Pleistoscene, just ten thousand years ago, the area was covered in ice, yet they didn't talk about restoring that ecosystem. (Or how about a half million years ago when the area was recovering from the last caldera collapse.) Then their plan assumed that once this perfection was achieved, Nature itself would cooperate and not change in any way, good or bad. And of course, since then, any deviation is solely the fault of Humanity and the Bush Administration's lack of funding.

This from people who believe in Natural Selection and Evolution and the Gospel According to Darwin and sport Darwin Fish on the backs of their vehicles and make fun of Creationists for believing in silly fantasies.

Raoul:

"This from people who believe in Natural Selection and Evolution and the Gospel According to Darwin and sport Darwin Fish on the backs of their vehicles and make fun of Creationists for believing in silly fantasies..."

...and throw like girls?

Orrin,

I agree - the word 'evolutionary' is misplaced. Sloppy journalism.

Good journalism--bogus theory.

Brit:

Fun, isn't it?

The prairie is in perfect evolutionary balance. The wooly mammoths, giant ground sloths and saber-tooth cats lost the evolutionary challenge to North America's mega-predator, Man. What's there to restore?

Robert:

You're an IDer?

OJ:

Not as a full-time occupation. That would be tragic...

Brit:

Believe me, it's easy.

It's Beckettian.

Except that your Godot never comes.

Not your finest ever riposte, that.

I'd have gone for "Yes...Happy days."

Do you want to leave it a bit and come back with a better one?

Folks are never bitchier than when the point slides home.

What a load of Krapp.

No American's ever read more than Godot and that only because it's a class assignment. Beckett is Eurodrivel.

Folks are never bitchier than when forced to read Eurodrivel.

I don't know if they do throw like girls, but they are incapable of applying their beliefs to the real world, or even recognizing when their actions and come into conflict with those beliefs. Because it's all a pose to show their superiority and intimidate anyone who might disagree with those beliefs.

(I guess I'm just thick and uneducated, cause I don't get the references.)

OJ:

Nobody likes losing a game of ping-pong, but tinkering with people's comments is just low.

just finishing your thought.

No ID needed. We evolved big brains, they didn't, they lost.

"Good journalism--bogus theory."

The theory of evolution does not contain the concept of "evolutionary health", certainly not an artificially created one. The phrase in the article is simply sloppy journalism.

Regarding your response to Robert - what do you think is ID about "The wooly mammoths, giant ground sloths and saber-tooth cats lost the evolutionary challenge to North America's mega-predator, Man. What's there to restore?"?

He's talking about evolution, pure and simple. No Intelligent Designer in sight.

In this and in some other recent posts it seems you've taken to equating even primitive man with the Intelligent Designer. Not any old intelligent being is the Intelligent Designer.

Man is an intelligent designer. We decided to get rid of such creatiures and it's entirely up to us whether they survive or not.

"Man is an intelligent designer."

Yes, but that's not all that significant, since Man is not the Intelligent Designer that the notion of ID is positing. You keep conflating the two.

There is no Intelligent Designer posited by Intelligent Design.

There may not be much to the notion of Intelligent Design, Orrin, but this is kinda pushing it, don't you think?

Okay, so what does ID posit, if not the existence of an Intelligent Designer?

creeper:

They posit that when you find Intelligent Design it's safe to assume that it was designed by intelligent beings.

Do they not also posit that the world around us is Intelligent Design?

The term "Intelligent Designer" refers to the intelligent being(s) doing the designing in this scenario.

Unless you want to claim that IDers are happy with the assessment that the world around us is not the product of Intelligent Design, I find it difficult to see how you can say that they do not posit the existence of an Intelligent Designer.

Could you point me to an IDer that claims there is no Intelligent Designer?

If there are equally likely intelligent designers, as you acknowledge, then there is no need of an Intelligent Designer in the theory.

The Intelligent Designer posited by ID is by definition an intelligent designer. The converse is not true: an intelligent designer is not automatically the Intelligent Designer that is posited by ID.

Whether "Intelligent Designer" refers to an individual entity or a group is irrelevant. It merely needs to be an intelligent entity, whether supernatural being or alien race or whatever.

Why do you think there is no need of an Intelligent Designer in ID? How else do IDers propose the world around us came to be? Are there any IDers who claim there is no Intelligent Designer?

OJ, you're just being obtuse on purpose. Creeper and I have backed you into a corner, and you just can't accept losing. You're just knocking over the checkerboard now.

creeper/Robert:

i'm not disagreeing with you. Intelligent Design says nothing about the nature or identity of the one or ones doing the designing. It could as well be a race of aliens as a god or gods. It is simply false to say that it posits an Intelligent Designer.

Yes, Designer doesn't have to equate to God, but it does have to equate to an intelligent being. But ID is used to explain how biological beings came to be, not how they went extinct. Any old fool can kill off a species.

No, it could be many biological beings. It could be one or many deities. It could be something in a parallel universe. We have no way of knowing who or what does the designing, we can just see that Nature can't do it.

Orrin,

So far it has not been shown that Nature can not do it.

"It is simply false to say that it posits an Intelligent Designer."

Not at all. It is correct to say that ID posits an Intelligent Designer but is not specific about the nature of the Designer - which can be just about anything, as long as it is intelligent and capable of designing: many biological beings, many deities, something in a parallel universe, whatever. There is no point in getting hung up on singular or plural when ID is so astonishingly vague and skimpy anyway.

creeper:

Exactly.

Glad we agree, Orrin.