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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
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To: aruanan
There are many scientists who are naturalists, but naturalism isn't science.

And if science does not work on the assumption of naturalism, what is it doing instead? Working with divine revelation, scripture, and other religious dogma?

A search on google of "define: science" produces a lot of junk (such is the internet today), but one definition which may be more accurate is:

A systematic field of study or body of knowledge that aims, through experiment, observation, and deduction, to produce reliable explanations of phenomena, with reference to the material and physical world.

Key parts of this definition are "material and physical world" -- and if you don't agree that this is what science works with, what would you put in their place.
83 posted on 08/31/2007 10:59:53 PM PDT by Coyoteman (Religious belief does not constitute scientific evidence, nor does it convey scientific knowledge.)
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