[Alamo-Girl]

Thank you so very much for your challenging post!

Second, is that (the anthropic principle) really the reason you're going to keep on bashing your opponents by characterizing their position with your bumper-strip misrepresentation "Nature did it!"?

No it is not the "reason" I invert the "God did it" to "Nature did it" and throw it back at the ones who hold that disdain for the believers, whether YEC or ID. The anthropic principle is merely a symptom of scientific materialism's bull headed determination to stay away from any hint of metaphysics.

Truly I can understand the desire to avoid another Galileo fiasco - but the pendulum has swung too far in the other direction.

There are several disciplines of science where scientific materialism hinders progress by the "Nature did it!" presumption. These include cosmology, information theory, theoretical physics, studies of consciousness/mind and historical sciences.

And it is not limited to the non-religious studies either. In Biblical Archeology, the presumption is that prophesy is impossible and therefore any reference to an event which actually occurred is used to date a manuscript after the date of the event. In this case, the archeologists were caught flat footed when, based on the ancient manuscripts of Enoch speaking of Herod’s reign, dated them to after Herod’s birth – only to have that presumption refuted by the later discovery of a copy of the manuscript in the Dead Sea Scrolls, carbon dated to 200 B.C.

[PatrickHenry]

I invert the "God did it" to "Nature did it" and throw it back at the ones who hold that disdain for the believers ...

Well, okay. I understand you better. But the bumper-strip version of the scientific view of those who aren't philosophical materialists would be be "Not necessarily." (In my always humble opinion.)