Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

To: aruanan; Shryke; Boxen
Just because someone can't tell who set the fire doesn't mean that arson can never be detected. Who set it and his motives for doing so aren't required for the task of detecting the arson. This doesn't mean that all cases of arson can be detected or that something that looks like arson may not actually be just a natural occurrence or a case of arson made to look like a natural occurrence.

To use your analogy, the difference between Science and Intelligent Design is that the scientist does want to know who set the fire while apparently you would have us believe that the ID proponent couldn't care less.

79 posted on 08/31/2007 1:10:48 PM PDT by Non-Sequitur (Save Fredericksburg. Support CVBT.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 77 | View Replies ]


To: Non-Sequitur; Shryke; Boxen
To use your analogy, the difference between Science and Intelligent Design is that the scientist does want to know who set the fire while apparently you would have us believe that the ID proponent couldn't care less

You're incorrect. And, as so many do, you're begging the question by equating naturalism with science. There are many scientists who are naturalists, but naturalism isn't science.

The naturalist scientist wants to know the materials used to get the fire started while positing a scenario that excludes from the start any possibility of a who as the originator of the fire. The naturalist scientist would say that it may appear that the fire was deliberately set but that since we know there could have been no deliberative agent to set it, the appearance to the contrary must either be chance or projection. For the scientist who is a believer in naturalism, how something something has come to be and how it operates are relevant, but "who" and "why" (in the teleological sense) are simply not in the picture since all is but an unbroken chain of cause and effect back to the beginning of the universe (or just back and back into an unending universe). The naturalist may say that we do see things that appear to have been designed, but that is just illusion imposed on what we see because ours is a mind that seeks similar patterns that it is itself capable of generating, though all of this, including our minds and thoughts and illusion of self, are yet just other links in the unending, nonrational chain of cause and effect.
82 posted on 08/31/2007 10:49:55 PM PDT by aruanan
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 79 | View Replies ]

Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article


FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson