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To: Alamo-Girl
No doubt some resist because they are unwilling to give up the tenet that "Nature did it!" - though I would not put everyone in that group.

Permit me to raise a quibble with your terminology. You seem to be contrasting "God did it!" with "Nature did it!" as if these two phrases expressed the two conflicting positions. They do not. Sometimes it's not possible to boil a thing down so that it fits on a bumper strip.

"God did it!" is, I think, a fair (although somewhat abbreviated) statement of creationism. "Nature did it!" is, however, nobody's position. Instead, the scientific position is something along the lines of: "Here is a demonstrable way in which this thing happened naturally." (Observe that there is no reification of "nature.")

The distinction of this position is that a scientific claim (or its underlying evidence) is demonstrable, testable, and thus falsifiable. These factors are, by definition, absent from the "God did it!" position.

So the actual positions aren't "God" vs. "nature." That's reducing the situation to what amounts to sloganeering. The actual conflict is between: (a) declaring something in this world to be an inexplicable miracle; or (b) explaining the thing in a way that can be demonstrated, comprehended, and tested.

78 posted on 04/10/2005 12:35:54 PM PDT by PatrickHenry (<-- Click on my name. The List-O-Links for evolution threads is at my freeper homepage.)
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To: PatrickHenry
Thank you so much for your quibble post!

"God did it!" is, I think, a fair (although somewhat abbreviated) statement of creationism. "Nature did it!" is, however, nobody's position. Instead, the scientific position is something along the lines of: "Here is a demonstrable way in which this thing happened naturally." (Observe that there is no reification of "nature.")

If you can get science to give up the anthropic principle then I'll be happy to drop the capital "N"!

155 posted on 04/10/2005 9:37:47 PM PDT by Alamo-Girl
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To: PatrickHenry; Alamo-Girl; Cyrano; shaggy eel; Tennessee_Bob
"Nature did it!" is, however, nobody's position.

Ok OK, Evolution did it.

We have a sort of drinking game here, Cyrano and me... we watch PBS or Discovery documentaries and whenever we encounter a phrase which is a permutation of "Evolution did it" or "evolution must have...." or "evolution created" or "evolution designed..." or.... you get the idea... we take a shot.

Never takes too long to get plastered, if we're using real adult beverages.

157 posted on 04/10/2005 9:41:41 PM PDT by Terriergal (What is the meaning of life?? Man's chief end is to glorify God and to enjoy him for ever.)
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