snip, “So if creation was a “mechanical assemblage of parts”, somewhat knowable and predictable by scientific means; that diminishes God to you more so than if it was a magical assemblage of parts?”
Spirited: In order that the “mechanical assemblage of parts” be “knowable and predictable” the “cosmic machine” must be guided by an immaterial ‘something rational.’ Additionally, in order that this ‘rational’ knowing be intelligible and rational to the chemical processes and firing synapses in the material ‘brain,’ there must as well be ‘something rational,’ an unseen ‘ineffable force’ if you will, operating within the chemicals and synapses, which by themselves are irrational.
Now either this ‘rational something’ is a rational Creator who exists beyond the reach of men, their irrational firing synapses, and their microscopes, or this ‘rational something’ is not rational at all, for if all that exists is Nature, and nature is irrational-—as all of us know it is-—then, in order to be consistent with the tenets of Darwinism, we must not speak of rational ordering and predictability.
As well, an assumption of free will underlies the claim of ‘knowing’ while the use of personal pronouns, ie, ‘you,’ bespeaks one individual ‘choice-making’ individual spirit reasoning with another.
Additionally, in order for there to be ‘predictability,’ there must exist a history of past and similar occurances (patterns). Only through comparison of yesterdays’ patterns with todays’ occurances can we know something about predictability.
All of the foregoing not only shows the glaring contraditions inherent in Darwinism, but its’ need for magic-thinking and self-delusion.
Nothing in the theory of evolution through natural selection is dependent upon magic.
You must be thinking of the Incompetent Design movement (I.D.). They think things proceed about 90% of how Biologists say they do, but with a little extra “magic” thrown in somehow.
Nothing in nature is irrational. Nature speaks to the glory of God and the universe obeys rational and predictable laws when acted upon by natural forces.
It is “magic” that is is irrational and arbitrary and unpredictable.
I think your problem is with the definition of predictable.
If I state that the sun will come up tomorrow is that a prediction or an observation? I would call it an observation that the earth is spinning. If I state that you will die at some time in the future, again, is that on observation or prediction? I would call that an observation that everyone dies.
With that definition in place, is Darwinism (and Science in General) based on prediction or observation. I think it is pretty clear that Science is based on observation.
Religion on the other hand is based on the unobservable and claims to be able to make predictions. In fact it claims that its predictions are infallible prophecy. The fact though is that there have been no accurate prophecies from religion.
The reality is that religionist’s are the ones suffering from “magic-thinking and self-delusion”.
All of the foregoing not only shows the glaring contraditions inherent in Darwinism, but its’ need for magic-thinking and self-delusion.
Excellent post! The entire premise of Darwinism is predicated upon the absurd assumption that all sorts of random particles began to interact with each other one day and everything seemed to turn out okay because we are here today.
The irony is that the people who believe this worship science and everything we know about science tells us that the likelihood of everything going wrong is almost infinitely higher than everything turning out alright.
But ultimately, Darwinism has NOTHING to do with science or evolution or how the universe came about or anything else that they purport to care about. Darwinism is nothing more than an atheistic attempt to prove that nothing is more powerful than mankind's intellect and that those with the most "advanced" intellects somehow "deserve" to rule over the "lesser" intellects.