Replies

Yawn.

You are putting the cart before the horse.

Let's first see creationism and its Trojan horse offspring ID show that they should be treated in any way as science.

That's the real issue here; religion wants back in the public schools, and it is trying all sorts of schemes to get there.

And "Darwinism" as religion? What a joke.

Here are a couple of good definitions of religion from my FR homepage:

Religion: Theistic: 1. the belief in a superhuman controlling power, esp. in a personal God or gods entitled to obedience and worship. 2. the expression of this in worship. 3. a particular system of faith and worship.
Religion: Non-Theistic: The word religion has many definitions, all of which can embrace sacred lore and wisdom and knowledge of God or gods, souls and spirits. Religion deals with the spirit in relation to itself, the universe and other life. Essentially, religion is belief in spiritual beings. As it relates to the world, religion is a system of beliefs and practices by means of which a group of people struggles with the ultimate problems of human life.

Do you see science in there anywhere?

You got it backwards. I asked you to give a logical explanation. Not only do you *not* do this, you also continue to break the rules by using argumentum ad-hominum. You also refuse to give a logical validation of your premises.

Again, you are assuming that Darwinism is science and ID is not. These are premises for which you have yet to give logical support for.

If you wish to continue play this game, please do so by the rules (which I thought you agreed to when you indicated that my challenge was "Fair enough").

Since it now appears that you are a three exclamation point evolutionist, I would suggest that you either have to logically prove the fallacy of ID or accept the fact that your's is merely a religious belief. Of course, you could concede the point and admit ID has validity. Yeah, and it could snow here in the valley in the next five minutes too - but I doubt it. If you are not a three exclamation pointer, then you still need to show your points by, at the very least, induction.

It is off topic a bit, but I did not actually state that Darwinism is a religion, though it certainly could be. Or, to put it another way a faith-based belief.

I have to admit though, that this response of yours, though disappointing, is not entirely unexpected. First you agree to logically show ID is a bunch of bunk. Then when you will not (or cannot), you change the rules of the game and say that it up to me to show whether or not ID is scientifically valid.

Sorry, but that is a cop-out and is not intellectually honest. First, this is a logical exercise as I've indicated time and again. Second, you were supposed to be able to defend yourself logically.

Instead, you hide behind a sophism. This is not about whether or not I can or even desire to defend ID.

If you can't or don't know how to develop a logical construct to support your position, just admit it. That would be, at the very least, honest. Such an admission wouldn't be to your discredit either. Such a logical answer is not easy to come up with, by either side. I seriously doubt that many people could. Certainly not Dawkins who seems to be more interested in shutting down debate than answering uncomfortable questions.

To be taken seriously, you need to come up with a logical explanation as the linchpin of your argument. This especially important since evolutionism uses many hypotheses regularly which haven't met the tests that you postulate are needed for the acceptance of ID (e.g. Open and Closed Darwinian paths). BTW, I merely used the Darwinian paths to make my point about common use of constructs within evolution which are neither falsifiable nor testable. I did not do it as a critique on the tools themselves. That is beside beside the point since we are doing a logical only analysis.

And "Darwinism" as religion?

Yep. When one considers the mathematical odds of all the transitions in the paleontological record which are unrepresented by fossil evidence, from the first coacervate droplets to protozoa, to metazoans, to vertebrates, to Homo sapiens, and all the missing ancestral forms and apparently fully developed mutations which must have occurred in order for humans to evolve, however circuitrously from inorganic compounds, it seems a far greater leap of faith to believe in human genesis through evolution than to believe in the presence of a Creator/Designer.

YMMV