Elsie: "Ok, I'll bite. Just how many 'mutants' have humans 'created' that came about from -- response to situational pressures?"
VadeRetro: "Gee, that would be easily dismissable as another example of ID, wouldn't it? After all, every experiment just proves ID. Then consider that nothing is science unless it's replicable in an experiment. Therefore, we've already got the whole experiment thing Catch-22ed if you're impressed by such semantic monkeyshines."
Hahahaha - Read it and weep:
"I lobbied the NABT board of directors to make the change because of both my respect for science and my respect for the philosophy of humanism that draws so strongly upon it. To explain requires me to reflect a bit upon both religion and science.
Therefore, I agreed with the two theologians http://www.leaderu.com/truth/3truth02.html who asked NABT to take the words "impersonal" and "unsupervised" from its statement on evolution. NABT was making a philosophical statement outside of what science can tell us. Plantinga and Smith wrote:
[I]t is extremely hard to see how an empirical science, such as biology, could address such a theological question as whether a process like evolution is or isn't directed by God.... How could an empirical inquiry possibly show that God was not guiding and directing evolution?
And they were right. If we are to say to postmodernist attackers of science that they should not confuse science with positions or philosophies derived from science, then we must be consistent and not equate science with materialist philosophy.
Now we get down to the nitty-gritty of science and religion, and why I lobbied to take the words "impersonal" and "unsupervised" Out of the NABT statement.
Consider: If to test something scientifically requires the ability to hold constant certain effects, this means that omnipotent powers cannot be used as part of scientific explanations.
....if science is limited by methodological materialism because of our inability to control an omnipotent power's interference in nature, both "God did it" and "God didn't do it" fail as scientific statements.
Properly understood, the principle of methodological materialism requires neutrality towards God; we cannot say, wearing our scientist hats, whether God does or does not act.
I could say, speaking from the perspective of my personal philosophy, that matter and energy and their interactions (materialism) are not only sufficient to understand the natural world (methodological materialism) but in fact, I believe there is nothing beyond matter and energy.
This is the philosophy of materialism, which I, and probably most humanists, hold to.
I intentionally added "I believe" when I spoke of my personal philosophy, which is entirely proper.
"I believe," however, is not a phrase that belongs in science. ..."
Science and Religion, Methodology and Humanism
by Eugenie C. Scott
[In May 1998 Dr Eugenie C Scott, NCSE'S Executive Director, was awarded the American Humanist Association's 1998 "Isaac Asimov Science Award". What follows is excerpted from her acceptance speech. Ed.]
http://www.ncseweb.org/resources/articles/391_science_and_religion_methodol_5_1_1998.asp
*
Leading Darwinist philosopher Michael Ruse:
"I allow - I insist - that, from its very birth, evolutionism has been used for more than mere science.
In this wise, it is often appropriate to speak of evolution as a form of religion, meaning a faith system with a moral message that makes sense of life's ultimate meaning.
You have only to look at the writings of a nineteenth-century figure like Herbert Spencer to see that this is true.
Or a twentieth-century figure like Julian Huxley (brother of Aldous Huxley the novelist). This second evolutionist even went so far as to write a book entitle Religion without Revelation!
There is all sorts of stuff about evolution being the key to the mysteries of existence and that kind of thing. Moreover, this brand of secular proselytizing is going on into the twenty-first century.
Look at Harvard entomologist and sociobiologist Edward O. Wilson's recent best-seller Consilience.
I should say that it is by no means the case that evolution-as-religion is anti-Christian.
Sometimes it is. The English biologist Richard Dawkins (author of the Selfish Gene) is a fiery atheist, speaking of Christians as afflicted by an "unconscionable flabbiness of the intellect."
Sometimes it is not. The French, Jesuit, paleontologist-priest Teilhard de Chardin thought that evolution leads up to the "Omega point," something he identified with Jesus Christ. .." - Michael Ruse
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/CreationEvolutionDesign/message/8517