Posted on 12/18/2006 8:12:55 AM PST by SJackson
Right, and that's why I can understand why people are turned off to certain (or all) organized religions. But to immediately conclude that there is no God based solely on the fact that certain organized religions are made up of bad people...well I don't think that's wise. The question regarding the existence of God, a philosophical question, is separate from any question regarding the correctness/incorrectness of a particular religion.
Anyone who attempts to outlast someone who is willing to take the time to excavate a tyrannosaurus rex buried in a rock formation in the middle of a desert with little more than a dental pick and a small brush is doomed to failure! ;-)
None of us except new-age whackos can remember our past life though, so I'm left to assume we're all on our first, and last.
"Wow, that is a HUGE leap. Because you don't know something, the supernatural is the only answer? Why study anything at all? What if aliens implanted the first living cell?"
What if they did? All it would mean is that the origin of life is pushed off to a different location. The basic problem of *how* it happened would still remain.
And you still don't get the basic idea. The problem is not just that we "don't know how life originated." The problem is that we know with near certainty that it couldn't have happened by purely natural processes. If it couldn't have happened by purely natural processes, how else could it have happened? You only get one guess.
If you're saying that it takes several hundred years for scientific theories to be revised once objectively verifiable evidence is available that the current theory is wrong, I say you're full of it.
Not because the "Luddites" were more knowledgeable than assumed. – Far from it.
It was because the same “Luddites” would come back thread after thread with the same "dumb as a stump" previously refuted arguments who then proceeded to hijack every science thread that remotely could have shaken their worldview.
That's the real reason.
I don't think anyone has a problem with the change in alleles part of evolution. I think people have a problem with the postulation of near-infinite plasticity of evolution, and the moral implication of humanity's purpose if we have evolved from lower life forms.
I won't deal with the second, but is there any evidence that there is anywhere close to near-infinite plasticity within any species? Evolution depends on this. Imagine a map of evolutionary paths on a map of craters and mountains. There are pools of paths that intersect for each crater, which represents a species, but there would be few that go from one species to another, or over a mountain. Otherwise we would not observe the stability of species we see today. Or do you see things differently?
Flapdoodle!
This is why:
This is what the scientists who used to be on FR were trying refute. Like it or not, this is becoming the mainstream perception here in the US.
Actually. My post deserved to be pulled. I basically told off ES.
The great divide?.. LoL.. So TRUE..
I don't know about Adam and Eve that story could be a metaphor or not.. but I do wonder where the (3rd)third human being on this planet came from.. If not from two other humans now THERES a newsflash, a blockbuster of a story.. A human coming ((NOT)) from two other humans but born in some other fashion.. Its absolutely DNAilicious.. would rival the birth of Jesus..
But I don't wish to argue about/against evolution. It is clear to me that the universe and all its constituents evolve in time and space.
What I want to know is: What is the ordering principle or natural law that accounts for this?
This is precisely the question that modern-day neo-Darwinism refuses to engage. Even though there are voices in other scientific disciplines that strongly suggest that such an accounting must be made -- in order for science to be science, consistent with the integrity of its own methodology.
The life sciences cannot shut its doors to inconvenient facts as adduced by other sicentific disciplies without putting blinders on, and "braces on its brains." FWIW
Science is never a "done deal." It never reaches conclusions that may never be challenged. If it did, it wouldn't be science anymore, but something else entirely.
Karl Marx specialized in that sort of thing: that is, the forbidding of questions. But this sort of thing is not appropriate for people who claim to be scientists.
I honestly lost your argument as I read your post. Not one of us (AFIK) ever said science was static and TOE was an absolute. I do see that from the creationist side however.
If you say so, fine shuckmaster.
I frankly haven't seen many scientific conservations over at DC in my recent visits. The site transparently promotes itself as a place where the like-minded can gather, construct straw-man arguments, and abuse people who dissent from the DC-accepted views. In short, it gives every impression of being an "interest group," not a place where scientific issues are actually discussed.
People over there at DC who relate to that sort of thing probably don't have much to contribute here.
Jeepers, RA. if that's all you saw, you really missed a lot.
So, as you have stated, we have the atheists and agnostics and then all the rest, the idiots.
Is that what you meant?
LOL.I see where you might get that, but no. The atheists and agnostics are the idiots I was referring to.
Guess I better work on my skills of putting thoughts on paper.
I agree.... but then there would have to be more involved for we all observers.. All of us.. Even those of us that think they/we are totally objective.. To be totally objective you would have know everything.. You know like God.. {LoL.. snort}..
Unfortunately I did not miss it. I was there. I am not trying to stir all this up again - far from it actually. However, this thread was designed to do just that and I hate seeing folks get hammered who no longer have a voice here.
Interesting. One of my very good friends was an F-15 fighter pilot for 6 years and is now a staff scientist with a PhD in physics who happens to be an agnostic.
Do you really think he is an idiot?
I miss Ichneumon's posts. Brilliant guy.
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