two important questions for Servant

wrongly placed post-sorry my bad[This message has been edited by Brad McFall, 04-21-2004]

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I am going to get into this rather slowly this time so that perhaps by speaking slowly"" you might be one of those who can and do pick up on what I said,say but I will agree with Crashfrog on this one.
So I will explictly NOT go back to the thread head until next post.Did you see"" AMERICAN IDOL last nite? Well unlike the Music Industry $ do not control reality (whether creatively interpreted or not)so where Simon was able to discern BOTH the "safe path" and an ALTERNATIVE in Fantasia's singing Creationism (not as creative writing as creative singing is...) IS A VIABLE ALTERNATIVE. Someone like Crashfrog needs it cross footed for his slimyness to "get it". I will try to see if you really want to understand this natural repose or not. It's OK to ignore me and perhaps I will be shown to be a fool"" if the e-mail from RUSSIA was really only a spoff off spun and spining from this one out of many threads. Time will tell.Creationism is NOT infavor of "order for free" but Gould's characterization of work on autocatalytic sets is unless we(scientists) have already 'designed' such freedom or liberty INTO the job order. I can EASILY see after some terminological frusion of Gladyshev's sybols and whatever "signs" I can record the attachment of calculations IN such sets BEFORE the philosophy of C/E is broached but first we must man the breach. The only question I have for you is if you are willing to stand in this gap or gulf?sorry I posted in under my name originally

Hi Percy,
Thanks for your post.I wish to point back to the request at the head of this thread which is "Can you please provide a scientific theory of Creation that accounts for all the evidence just as well as or better than tToE. It must also be falsifiable and have positive evidence to support it."1) The request was for a scientific theory of Creation - which I gave. This is not my view - it is an answer to the request.
2) I am using the same evidence that tToE uses - not faith. My proposal says that things seem to have a common ancestry because the DNA was continiously built up - before, not after, life started.
3) Theistic evolution proposes that God started with single-celled life and let evolution take it's course. My proposal shows a way that every baseline plant and animal could have been designed before any life was created. The two proposals are very different.
4) I am not presenting scientific evidence for God; I am working to prove that Quetzel's first rule of evidence (all theories must be falsifiable) results in an absurdity. Sharfinator simply restated that portion of the rule so I again countered.I hope this clears up the matter for you.Very best wishes,
Bob, Alice, and Eve

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2) I am using the same evidence that tToE uses - not faith.

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Except that you do use faith to propose that a Creator is involved.

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My proposal says that things seem to have a common ancestry because the DNA was continiously built up - before, not after, life started.

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What is the positive evidence that suggests this?Also, what do you mean by DNA being "built up"?

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3) Theistic evolution proposes that God started with single-celled life and let evolution take it's course. My proposal shows a way that every baseline plant and animal could have been designed before any life was created.

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Please define "baseline plant and animal".Be specific.

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4) I am not presenting scientific evidence for God; I am working to prove that Quetzel's first rule of evidence (all theories must be falsifiable) results in an absurdity. Sharfinator simply restated that portion of the rule so I again countered.

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How is falsifiability an absurdity?In science, we have to have a way of correcting errors and adding to our knowledge, and the tenet of falsifiability allows this.Without falsifiability, science would be forever unchanged dogma.I suggest that you read the following essay on science. It contains a good explanation of the basic tenets and why they are part of the method.science - The Skeptic's Dictionary - Skepdic.com

As far as I can see your theory is just one more that relies on an either incompetent or mendacious God. An omniscient and omnipotent being has no excuse for the shoddy sort of genetic arrangement seen in so many living organisms. There are so many instances both generally and in genetics particularly of suboptimal designs that God must have really been slacking on the day he created living things.Either God designed all the organisms to look as if they had common ancestry (mendacious) or else he was so incompetent that he could only work by slavishly using his original starting genetic material and using techniques such as duplication and indels and bp substitiutions in such a way as to produce a whole panoply of life which just appears to have all the genetic trademarks of having evolved from a common ancestor.Do you propose that God held these plans in abeyance until a certain point and then poofed that particular species onto the planet at just the right time to produce what we see in the fossil record, sounds like that good old mendacious God to me.TTFN,WK

This post covers "faith", "built up", and "baseline", Scharfinator. I will do "falsafiability" and "evidence" in another post. Thanks for your patience.First, "faith". You said: My theory is a direct response to your request which is: Faith would be involved/used only if God had told me to post that theory. Faith is doing what God asks with no physical evidence to support the why. Are you suggesting that God told me to post the theory?Now, the second and third item of this post.
I have extended my theory and begun to add clarification. This is a result of questions and critiques presented by my peers.See part 3.a in my theory for what I mean by "built up".
See part 3.c in my theory for what I mean by "baseline" (and 3.e for a why).
I am also adding corallary (sp?) 3.e and item 3.f (3.f for Wounded King) and part 4. 3.e could adapt and vary
That this can and will happen is, of course, because of 3.b and 3.d
3.f was capable of dying
4 - God's completion of the earth (not yet relevant to this discussion)More to come,
Bob Alice, and Eve

So does your theory have any predictive power? It is easy enough to retroactively make a theory and modify and tweak it until you have explained away any apparent inconsistencies, but unless that theory is actually useful for predicting future discoveries all you are really doing is saying 'I think this happened and you can't prove that it didn't because my theory fits in with the known facts.' which is true but not very enlightening since you specifically tailored your theory to fit in with known facts.As far as it being equal to evolution, well that falsifiability thing is still an issue if you want your theory to be scientific.TTFN,WK

Your theory proposes a supernatural mechanism, God. This means your theory is not scientific. This is how the discussion got around to the falsifiability of God, because you need evidence for your proposed mechanism.Even aside from falsifiability, if God is a fact as you implied in Message 89 then you must have evidence of this fact in the form of observations. But as I asked previously, do you really want God to be an issue of evidence rather than faith, and even further, to be subject to falsifiability?By the way, facts *are* falsifiable. There is nothing sacrosanct about facts. Facts are just data gathered by people, who are not infallible. For example, as anyone who has gathered data in classroom experiments can attest, there are always those data points that have to be thrown out as experimental error. Sources of potential error are multitudenous, from reading a ruler or timepiece wrong to data entry errors to fluke happenstance to poor experimental procedure and on and on.The fallible nature of both theory *and* facts is why replicability is required in science. One scientist's results are intriguing, but they only become accepted after being replicated by other scientists, thereby confirming the facts. Which though more certain now, are still not 100% certain. Nothing is ever that certain in science.--Percy Fix spelling. --Percy[This message has been edited by Percy, 04-23-2004]

Beautifully said, Percey.While I will be working mostly with "Scharf", this deserves a thank you, and I do thank you.And we agree that I am not trying to prove to others that God exists.Bob, Alice, and Eve

Hi Wounded King (and Schrafinator),Thanks for your gental and instructive response. Like Percy, you deserve special thanks. Thank you.My point was to show that Schrafinator's request is invalid and I think that has been done by those who responded.Schrafinator (and Quetzal by inference) and anyone else, does not a serious problem remain then? We agree that tToE can be proven false. If it is proven false then will the conclusion be that we do not exist?All other scientific theories could be replaced with another should one be proven false. It seems to me that tToE is so all-encompasing that there is no scientific alternate available. I would be interested in knowing what you see as the alternative to tToE. You may say that we can worry about that when it happens (tToE == FALSE) but what if tToE is proved false to everyone by God's appearance.And here, as I see it, is the absurdity produced by the falsifiability rule. God can not be proved false - according to scientific definition. tToE can not be proved true - according to scientific definition. One or the other must be true because we exist - unless you see an alternative explanation. So, while tToE is a great game, tToE produces nothing of value.As always, I appreciate in advance, your thoughtfullness.Quetzal, if you are around, the library sent me a booklet on hair care. I thought that was quite funny.Bob, Alice, and Eve

No, the conclusion will simply be that the diversity of life on Earth can't be explained by changing allele frequencies due to natural selection and random mutation. Just because nobody can think of one doesn't mean that couldn't exist.But after all, why should it? The theory has yet to be falsified, so why bother constructing an alternative? While there could be observations that would falsify evolution, those observations haven't been made yet. Who would go to the trouble of developing theory to explain observations that haven't been made yet? Theories exist soley to explain observations and make predictions. Therefore any alternative theory to evolution would depend entirely on whatever observations had falsified evolution in the first place. Since those observations haven't been made, how can you expect people to imagine a theory to explain them? Except, of course, for useful biological predictions, advancements in medical science, better engineering techniques, and an unparalleled degree of clarity brought out of the panopoly of living things on Earth.It's a marvelously useful theory with great explanitory power.

One or the other? Why? One can conjecture any number of different ideas to replace both.There are a whole bunch of different Gods suggested over history. Any one might do.Alien intelligences could be the source of any "design" that is thought to be there. They could either be the source of the universe itself, life or actually be dropping by to tweak things now and then.If fact, we could be that intelligence, if we develop time travel in the far future.It maybe that there is a gestalt intelligence in viri or bacteria that tinker with the genes of all so-called "higer" life forms to provide interesting homes for them.There are possbilities of modest (or more) modifications to the current ToE. At some point it might diverge enough from what we know now to be a "different" theory. E.g., perhaps the junk DNA isn't junk. Perhaps it "controls" in some unknown way the occurances of mutations makeing them not random.Of course all of the above are evidenceless speculations that are better in science fiction than elsewhere. But if any evidence arose to suggest problems with our current understanding then who knows where it might lead.What is clear is that there are a lot more than 2 choices.[This message has been edited by NosyNed, 04-24-2004]

Or, just as likely, what if the Big Guy shows up and says, "Yeah, I did it all with evolution. Those bronze-age sheepherders made all that 'six days' stuff up on their own."

I wouldn't say that. In order for your proposal to be scientific, you must have evidence for your mechanism, which is God. Providing evidence of God must be part and parcel of your proposed theory.--Percy

And, BTW, evidence of the supernatural is not acceptable (Rule 1 if I remember correctly)! I will continue to fight against rules 1 and 2 in the context of EvC.And S/He/It could show up and say "I did it with evolution" and I would accept that just as easily as I would accept "Adam and Eve were your first parents and were specially created." One or the other will happen.And there are only the two ultimate possibilities!! Right now the evidence appears to favor evolution. When S/He/It appears will evidence for the supernatural suddenly become scientific?Unless logic has completely failed, the seeming abundance of gods does not prove that there is no God.If evolution is proved false will all the proposed benefits disappear? Are the proposed benefits really that closely tied to evolution?Thank you for your posts. If I failed to respond to anyone then I will post again. While I think that I have proved that Schrafinator's request was impossible to respond to in a meaningful way, you may not so I will respond to new posts also.Bob, Alice, and Eve