Hey Schraf. Nice meeting you. Here is the response back from your initial post. Im learning on here and love your opinion. You can email me if you want to talk there. Thanks SOS
Sorry, he doesn't use (quotes)
Re: Naturalism in Science
I realize the necessity for small n naturalism in scientific inquiry.
I’m also not a creationist. I don’t ask supernatural revelation be imposed upon science at all. That would dilute our ability to understand the subject of study.
However, the need to keep science limited to our senses does not support a Naturalist world view — and yetthat is what I’ve been told by many ardent Darwinists.
In fact, many prominent Naturalists (Gould, Dawkins, etc) have admitted Darwinist evolution provides scientific ‘evidence’ of Naturalist assumptions, and this is what I’m talking about.
If there are forces and actors outside our realm of sensory experience which have effect within, they are real even if we cannot measure them. I’m open to the idea of eternal (timeless) existence — We can conceptualize such a dimension (ever see the first episode of ST DS9?), but if there is an eternity, how can beings such as ourselves comprehend it? It would be like asking a being that exists with only width and length to describe height.
But I digress.
We agree science must rest on the quantifiable, and yet You would agree emotions are real — love, for instance is real? Can you quantify and measure love scientifically?
Re: My strawman
I’m having trouble with your logic here.
I always understood natural selection to be another way of saying random natural forces.
First, there are random mutations. Then those mutations which benefit the organism ‘select’ it to survive. Nevermind the absurd notion that nature ‘selects’. To select something implies an actor and unless you are going to tell me nature chooses and acts with intent, then it seem logical natural selection is a misnomer for random forces.
It isn’t just that the idea that the variety and complexity of life arose by ‘naturalistic’ menas is difficult to believe — it is difficult to believe because of science, in my opinion.
And what do you mean by ‘naturalistic’ means? Aren’t you saying undirected random natural forces? Is that not what ‘naturalistic’ implies?
Re: Flavor of Creationism
The disingenuous association of ID as a subset of Creationism sets my spidey senses a tinglin. The scientist in the growing Intelligent Design movement have published what they can to be peer reviewed, but look at what happened at Baylor to the chap who set up the ID center for study.
Darwinists dominate the journals which you require for ‘peer review’ and so far as I have read, have only offered ad hominem critiques of ID, or snidely dismissed their work as a ‘flavor of Creationism’, as if the association is enough to discredit their arguments.
I’m not AT, please spare me the arrogance, okay?
There is plenty of positive evidence for Intelligent design, which I’ll get to in a bit.
Re: ToE and Abiogenesis
For the uniformed, Abiogenesis is the study of how life began, the Theory of Evolution is how that life specialized (Origin of Species).
It would be intellectually dishonest to deny that Darwinism and the notion that all life arose entirely within the natural realm are essentially the same.
Watch Discovery Channel on cable sometime. In every presentation Darwinist theory is dominant and unchallenged by alternate theories. This is the problem folks like me have with Darwinist dogma being taught in government schools. It is one sided and I don’t recall any of my science classes in HS or college ever presenting critical evaluations of Darwinism.
That science can only approximate what we think conditions were like on Earth hundreds of millions of years ago lessens the credibility of any experiment purporting to show life could arise from the inorganic, doesn’t it?
I mean, we know conditions everywhere on this planet are volatile and constantly changing. What kind of giant leap must one make from simple amino strings forming under certain controlled lab conditions to the same forming in our volatile environment?
Moreover, there is the question of the coding of DNA.
DNA is a patterned code, SoS. A CODE
What is it our boys over at SETI are listening for among the random radio noise in the galaxy? A PATTERN.
Why? Because a pattern or code indicates INTELLIGENCE!!!
Suppose you have a mountain in your area that has human characteristics — a protrusion that looks like a nose and hollows which look like eyes. Maybe some trees form a hairline of sorts. Say it looks like an American Indian and is called Indian Head Hill by all the locals.
Now, say you compare this hypothetical mountain to Mt.Rushmore. On the one hand, we have a mountain that, because of erosion and tectonic upheaval looks somewhat like an Indian. On the other hand, Mt Rushmore clearly had a designer behind its shape!
Are you familiar with the idea of irreducible complexity?
Self replication of certain molecules seems a weak answer to this line of inquiry. DNA is a code, but I repeat myself. I’m sure we’ll expand our discussion on this issue in the future. It is getting late.
Answering your questions
First, I think I have quite handily rebutted your last post to me. You seem guilty of some faulty logic, as evidenced by your claim that natural selection is the opposite of random selection.
I’m going to have to read you initial post. I stopped after the first scroll down because it was so dang long and I have so little time.
Actually, what I’ll do is read down to the first few questions and address them as I can. But not tonight.
My point in asking you to defend ToE was to make the point that there are plenty of holes in it, logical as well as evidentiary.
There is plenty of evidence for design, which I’ll be happy to expand upon if you like.
There is precious little in the way of evidence for organic life as we know it arising from the non-organic. This is what AT means when referring to ROCKS.
Well, I’m approaching the babbling stage of the day and must retire.
I look forward to your response.
H
[This message has been edited by sonofasailor, 09-04-2002]
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