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To: Wallace T.
The theory of evolution is not as provable as the example you cite regarding the South Pacific islanders carving the Easter Island statues.

One may always question the sufficiency of the evidence, but the point is that we do not always have eyewitness testimony available to us - in fact, we usually don't have it available to us. Nevertheless, that does not prevent us from applying reason to the circumstantial evidence that does exist. Whether that evidence and reasoning is sufficient is for us to decide individually - heck, OJ found 12 folks who decided that the circumstantial evidence and reasoning in his case wasn't good enough. Whether their decision, or yours, is reasonable to others may be another matter, but nobody can make you believe something you don't want to believe.

Belief in supernatural revelation, specifically the propositions of the Bible, is not a denial of the physical realities of the universe. It is a presupposition, as much as is the naturalism of mainstream science.

Of course, but only one of those presuppositions is a part of science, and hence the other has no place in science class. Somewhere else in the curriculum, perhaps, but the scientific method is predicated on a procedural assumption of naturalism - it does not claim that the natural world is all that exists, merely that the natural world is all that science is equipped to deal with.

776 posted on 12/20/2004 9:37:51 PM PST by general_re ("What's plausible to you is unimportant." - D'man)
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To: general_re
The limits of natural science are those of the perceivable, tangible universe. However, if naturalism, which assumes the non-existence or non-relevance of a higher being, is a procedural assumption for a given scientist, has that scientist not started out with a bias? If some evidence exists that indicates that a higher intelligence is necessary to design life forms, is the naturalist not faced with the same dilemma as the young earth creationist who finds evidence that indicates that the earth is 4.5 billion years old?
816 posted on 12/21/2004 5:57:25 AM PST by Wallace T.
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