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To: js1138; ZX12R
ZX12R:I see no reason to exclude science or God from the debate.

js: How do you go about testing the God hypothesis?

That's changing the subject.

Having scientists demand that God not be considered as even existing is excluding God from the debate. Same as demanding that even if He did exist, He does not play any role in nature now.

Newton, Pasteur, Faraday, for that matter virtually all those famous scientists who laid the foundation of what we know as modern science, didn't exclude God from consideration.

It was INCLUDING God in it all that enable Newton to determine that an orderly God created an orderly, predictable universe capable of being studied in a logical, rational manner. That concept came from religious belief and scientists are riding the coattails of that conclusion.

While most things have natural explanations, that doesn't preclude supernatural ones at all. There could be supernatural ones as well. Perfectly true, perfectly valid, perfectly unknowable by the scientific method, but perfectly real.

Acknowledgment that God could be behind something inexplicable instead of dogmatic dicta that it is not possible, period, end of story, would be a good first step.

So what if it turns out God really did supernaturally create all life spontaneously as is recorded in Scripture? That doesn't change what we DO know about genetics and variation within species. Neither does it negate the research being done nor the progress made in science that have used THOSE concepts.

783 posted on 01/06/2009 12:23:50 PM PST by metmom (Welfare was never meant to be a career choice.)
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To: metmom
Having scientists demand that God not be considered as even existing is excluding God from the debate. Same as demanding that even if He did exist, He does not play any role in nature now.

I keep asking for some way to include God in science, and I get no answer.

What is your suggestion for research that includes God as a causative agent?

785 posted on 01/06/2009 12:28:14 PM PST by js1138
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To: metmom; js1138
"So what if it turns out God really did supernaturally create all life spontaneously as is recorded in Scripture? That doesn't change what we DO know about genetics and variation within species. Neither does it negate the research being done nor the progress made in science that have used THOSE concepts."

It's interesting that you say this, for this is exactly what is recommended to be done, if not actually done. It's not that God is excluded from consideration as an explanation for the existence of things, it's just that in order to study how things relate to, and affect each other, we have to start from the point where God has left off.

Now here, from earlier in the same post, these are also your words.

"Having scientists demand that God not be considered as even existing is excluding God from the debate. Same as demanding that even if He did exist, He does not play any role in nature now."

Essentially, what we do these days is to avoid the flowery and pious phraseology of a bygone era, in order to more simply and directly get to the point.

"By the Grace of God, and the Mercy of His Provenance, we assemble here to examine the deceased carcass of Drosophila Melanogaster, which being the sad remains of a dutiful servant of the Lord."
But I would not altogether suggest that God has entirely left the playing field. By my lights, the last time God left a possible fingerprint was but a few years ago, as he and a researcher were having a quiet walk on the beach.

That researcher came back from his walk with the image of PCR seared in his mind, and the world of DNA research has not been the same since.

841 posted on 01/06/2009 5:07:02 PM PST by NicknamedBob (If you translate Pi into base 43 notation, it will contain this statement.)
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