Posted on 05/25/2005 3:41:22 AM PDT by billorites
It does happen, however, your example notwithstanding.
So if a human didn't observe it, then evidence of something isn't enough?
Well that would prevent you from believing a lot of things. Like whether OJ did it.
I have to agree with you. You would, in my humble opinion, not have all that much more luck finding a "simple-mindedly pious audience" in Kansas than in any other sizable region in the world.
In fact, theres more likelyhood of finding an audience that at least appears simple-mindedly pious in places like Turkey, where standing up to argue a scientific viewpoint in the wrong company is more likely to result in physical violence and even death threats than in Kansas, where the likely results of arguing evolution's case with its opponents are frustration and incredulity at displays of wilful ignorance.
If you are applying the standard of observation to creationism then why not evolution? LOL but look at what you just said. 'If a human didn't observe it, then evidence of something isn't enough'. Wow hey that's what I've been saying all along about creation and the existence of God. Thanks for saying that.
"The standard methodology of creationists is to find some phenomenon in nature which Darwinism cannot readily explain."
It's not evolution, but I am still seeking a scientific explanation for the Big Bang. How could all the matter in all the galaxies and the universe come from a single point, the size of the head of a pin?
Creation makes more sense to me.
Yeah, I've read that explanation before, and I'm not buying it. It's an erotic love poem, one of the most beautiful ever written, but a lot of people need to see it as something else simply because they're uncomfortable with anything so frankly sensual being in their bible. Those folks need to stop and think-- God created us as sexual beings. God likes sex-- after all, he invented it. ;)
Isn't the trend from order to disorder? At least it is in my desk drawers :-)
They are not in any way the same.
First, there isn't nearly as much evidence to back up GW as evolution. And much of that is contradictory, whereas there is really no genuine evidence in favor of any theory other than evolution.
Second, there is a power constituency for GW. Just one example is the UN, which has discovered that it can use GW as an excuse for extortion of money from the West.
There is no constituency that seeks to profit from evolution, except perhaps the people who are fighting it and taking money from the collection plates on Sunday morning to support their effort.
True, but his attitude is not just a random daily function. At least, I don't think so.
Science doesn't have an "explanation".
God did it.
"Could you point me in the direction of this research? And what, exactly, would this data look like?"
Yes, read some of Michael Behe's work in microbiology and biochemistry. How familiar are you with DNA structure and function and the processes by which DNA/RNA is transcribed for polypeptide/protein production?
One of the things that folk like Dawkins do is obsfucate on the meaning of the word 'evolution'. At one moment they will use it to mean that allele frequency is subject to dynamics (an observable and undoubted fact) with its corollary that phenotype frequency is subject to dynamics, at another they mean the theory of common descent (which is as well-verified a scientific theory as can be at the level of grand explanations in a domain where experiment is essentially impossible, and thus also counts as a fact), at another they use it to mean the claim that the neo-Darwinian synthesis provides a complete account of all observed organismic traits and all biological diversity (a much shakier claim, particularly, if, like Dawkins you want 'random' variation to mean ontologically random, not just 'governed by laws we don't understand').
Now, as I am wont to point out, the idea that a stochastic model, or even stochatic elements in the dynamics of a system imply that the system or its dynamics are not the result of intent is simply false. (A futures market with a single founder and director who can call trading halts still has a dyanmics best modeled by Black-Scholes; in annealed metal crystal sizes are increased by a thermal process, but here (bizarrely, when one hears both Dawkins and the creationists natter on) the presumption is that a bit of annealed metal is an artifact.) Dawkins invokes this assumption to reason from Darwinism to atheism; creationists invoke the contrapositive to reason from theism to the falsity of evolution (which they, too muddily fail to define). Both lines of reasoning are false because the implication they take as an axiom is false.
Now something on the lighter side...
I sleep, but my heart waketh: it is the voice of my beloved that knocketh, saying, Open to me, my sister, my love, my dove, my undefiled: for my head is filled with dew, and my locks with the drops of the night.
I have put off my coat; how shall I put it on? I have washed my feet; how shall I defile them?
(5:2-3)
Translation: "Not tonight, dear... I have a headache."
And how did you arrive at this transparently false conclusion?
I'm familiar with Behe's work, but I fail to see how it in any way helps to "prove" Creationism.
It's true that not every theory withstands the test of time and goes on to be considered a fact by nearly all of the scientific community, but evolution is one that has.
I will not argue the fact that all evidence so far has pointed to evolution as fact. However , I wonder why evolutionists are unwilling to admit they don't have all the answers and they could be wrong. It wouldn't be the first time science made a mistake. After all we are only human.
Not only did the Fathers of the Church regard creation as beginning with something smaller than a mustard seed, the Jewish scholar Nachmanides, was of the same view.
Now, if you are a short-canon protestant, you are under no compulsion on the basis of the Scriptures to believe in creation ex nihilo (since the only Scriptural basis for the doctrine is in Second Maccabees, in the exhortation of Solomonia to her sons to accept martyrdom rather than renounce the Torah), but most Christian and Jews accept the doctrine. I would point out that the most refined theoretical model of the Big Bang, Hawkings null initial condition model, looks remarkably like a mathematical model of what a universe created ex nihilo, with time itself created, would look like from the inside.
I of course said no such thing, nor was my comment dependent upon any such assumption. Narby, as I said, you are only inviting more such red herrings by engaging in discussion with people whose purpose is to troll these threads instead of engaging in honest discussion.
Did you read the article? Researchers do admit they don't have all the answers; however, they are reluctant to do it in public because your average creationist charlatan (the ones who make money off the gullible) will jump on the statement and say, "see, they can't answer it, therefore Goddidit."
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