Unfortunately, you are mistaken. I'd say most of the creationists we debate are YEC.
But again, the irrational fear to even discuss the notion of DESIGN IN LIFE is pervasive throughout academia and therefore any debate must be stamped out by those in academia. Do you deny this is what is happening?
I'm sensing bias. . . We have not found evidence of design. We have found plenty of evidence that complexity can evolve. We've also know that proposed irreducibly complex systems are not irreducibly complex. You're claiming evidence of design exists, but there is no evidence for that. The rule in science is to look for natural explanations. So far we have not run into anything that requires an unnatural explanation and suggests a supernatural designer.
I thought science is to be open to all possibilities?
Science is concerned with the observable. If we find something has no observable natural explanation, than that topic will fall outside the purview of science. We have not seen this to happen.
Having done the calculations myself (although not exactly the same as this next inference), I had serious reservations as to how a 4.5 billion year old spinning, orbiting rock could still have a magnetic field. Fact is, earth cannot have one unless we assume the field strength increased (not decayed) throughout most of pre-history.
First of all, earth is not a rock, secondly, the magnetic field has oscillated (switching directions) many many times in earth's history. I'm more interested in biology, so probably someone else could tell you more about that.
Well, it's a darn good thing I am an engineer
That's interesting. It's been noted that while many engineers are evolutionists, the scientists who are creationists are very frequently engineers, much more often than one would expect. I think there is an underlying personality trait, perhaps an interest in organization and design, that predisposes some people to both go into engineering and believe in a suopernatural designer.
Let me leave you with a serious question, one that even RA danced around.
To rephrase, you say that since life is complex and organized and is thought to have evolved, how can we assume a complex and organized signal from outer space is from an intelligent species rather than from a natural process.
I don't see how the two are analogous. Life is organized because organisms reproduce with variation, and natural selection weeds out certain phenotypes and promotes others. Since nonlife does not go through this process, we can't iteratively build a nonbiological complex signal from simpler ones.
Purely mechanical causes certainly are the first alternative considered (as science demands) when we note a signal from space. For instance, pulsars produce signals at regular intervals. The first pulsar was originally named LGM-1 for Little Green Men!
I should eat dinner already. Apparently I'm so hungry I'm thinking of soup and losing my ability to spell.
We need to poll this on a future thread so we can get a break-down on where the creo-Freepers fall.
We have not found evidence of design.
Yet all I see is design, i.e. program source code, function and procedure code, data arrays, replication code, etc. But I write software for a living, so that is a strong bias in how I see the world.
Science is concerned with the observable.
Like macro evolution.
You have evidence that the earth's magnetic field strength increased during the polarity fluctuations?
..that predisposes some people to both go into engineering and believe in a suopernatural designer.
Perhaps. This is not something I'd chose to try to find out. It would be interesting to see the percentages of graduates that belief in evolution break down among physicists, chemists, biologists, engineers and mathematicians. I'd wager the mathematicians are the least accepting of evolution as fact.
You seriously cannot make the analogy between SETI and evolution? Do you believe the very first life form on earth had complexity? Did this life form possess the ability to reproduce/replicate itself? Now, if it could, would this not imply some complexity existed in life at it's very earliest form, at it's inception? If a quirk of luck, a convergence of natural phenomenon, or whatever it was that created this first life form on earth occurred, the fact therefore remains that this entity of life was at least complex enough to reproduce and/or replicate itself.
Whatever the unknown event(s) in earth's pre-history that allowed life to come into being or to create life itself were, I'm sure you'll agree that the cause was natural. Therefore, if the first life has a natural causation, and this life form has the ability to reproduce and replicate itself, or at a very minimum the ability to consume energy with which to sustain itself long enough for it to develop the ability to reproduce itself. One must conclude that purely natural events created life. Since this life arose on earth somewhere as the result of natural causes, it's fair to say that purely natural systems in the universe can give rise to initial complexity. Similarly as you suggest, this life-form evoles and acquires more complexity as it evoles.
Therefore, one cannot assume that an ordered signal from outspace automatically has an intelligent cause when at the same time, more complex minimal life on earth came from purely natural causes. It could well be that an organized signal from a point in space came about from some unique (or not) set of events that are purely natural. Therefore, if evolution is true, no scientist can turn around and tell me that organized signals from outer space are necessarily an indication of intelligent life, since for life forms, we believe otherwise.
Let me ask you this, at a minimum, what complexity existed in the first life-form that Darwin says we all came from? Did this first life form possess any DNA? What capabilities/functions did this first life form possess? Please spare me the abiogenesis has nothing to do with evolution. It has everything to do with evolution, because non-creation based evolution depends entirely upon this event first occurring.