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To: cracker
"4. Your application of Occam's razor is faulty. At the simplest, the tally is thus:
Evolution
1. The observed universe exists.

I.D.
1. The observed universe exists.
2. A designer exists independent of the observed universe."

First, it wasn't my idea to use Occam's Razor. I only illustrated in Post #194 how Occam's Razor would appear if one insisted upon applying Occam's Razor to choose between Evolution and Intelligent Design.

With that said, most Evolutionists insist that for Evolution to occur in an appropriate environment, one must have Natural Selection and Random Mutations.

You seem to have ommitted those items from your version of Occam's exercise, however. Do you honestly hold that you can have Evolution without Natural Selection and Random Mutations, or did you merely omit them so that you could force-fit Occam's Razor to unscientifically support your pre-disposed "answer"?

354 posted on 03/05/2002 9:59:06 AM PST by Southack
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To: Southack
You seem to have ommitted those items from your version of Occam's exercise, however. Do you honestly hold that you can have Evolution without Natural Selection and Random Mutations, or did you merely omit them so that you could force-fit Occam's Razor to unscientifically support your pre-disposed "answer"?

Natural Selection occurs and is observerd. Therefore it is part of the observable universe and is covered in both sets of assumptions. Mutation is also observed, and is covered in both sets of assumptions.

You are splitting hairs. As noted, there are also a few more assumptions I could add to ID in equally arbitrary fashion: that the Designer can create the universe, that the designer can change the universe, that the designer can cause the 'spark of life', that the designer can create species, that the designer created billions of independent separate speices, etc.... There, now that's three more for ID. But this is again, hair splitting.

Your whole defense of ID has been "well, ID can explain everything just as well as evolution." Except that ID ends up explaining that the world looks exactly like evolution predicts. It offers no additional explanatory power, and still requires that fundamental super-natural assumption of a designer.

I ask again - what does ID predict that is different from what evolution predicts? How would you falsify ID?

358 posted on 03/05/2002 10:10:09 AM PST by cracker
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