Intelligent Design or unthinking blasphemy?

I wonder where you are getting that. It seems almost opposite to what mitchellmckain appears to be saying.Hmm! Perhaps by "the current paradigm concerning evolution" you mean the creationist view of evolution, If that's what you mean, then I guess that could be an implication of what mitchellmckain writes. I don't read that at all. I see mitchellmckain as having commented specifically on life and living things, and as not having said a word about the creation of space/time/energy/mass. LOL. You seem to have quoted too much, and missed putting a quote box around what you have quoted. I guess you just informed us as to the timezone settings in your profile.

But mitchellmckain has not said that God is incompatible with trial and error. What he has argued, is that God does not use trial and error as part of a method of design. Based on what mitchellmckain is arguing, there would be no problem with God designing evolution as a process. But he would deny that God was the designer of the organisms that thus evolved. At least that is my reading. But that is not relevant to the point that mitchellmckain was making.Earlier, in Message 54, he wrote: That seems to summarize well the point he is making. The incompatibility he is seeing, is between "designed" and "living".

If the future is not determined (i.e. determinism is wrong), then the future is unknowable. Does omniscience require knowing what is, in principle, unknowable? Or is it sufficient to know all that is knowable?

A wasted effort, actually. It is pretty much beside the point.What you quoted is traditional theology. It is theology invented by theologians an an attempt to explain away problems with other parts of theology (also invented by humans). Newcomb's paradox poses a serious problem for the idea that you could have free will and a knowable future. That people have invented theologies supposedly explaining how it works doesn't answer Newcomb.In any case, the question I raised was whether omniscience requires knowing what is in principle unknowable. A simple yes/no response would have sufficed. Your introduction of theology just evades the question.

Maybe you should, since we have drifted far and wide from what should be in a science forum.

That's a good summary of the debate. Thanks.I think most non-theists don't really have much of an argument with theists as to whether there was creation. They have a difference of opinion, but not real argument. Most will admit that they cannot disprove that there was a creation.The argument they do have, is with the claim that "Intelligent Design" is science. They also have an argument against YEC (Young Earth Creation), since the evidence is strongly against it. Yes, I agree with you over that. I have long thought that biological organisms seem to be very different from designed things, so I have never found the watchmaker argument to be convincing.

We are probably just disagreeing on who we call atheists. You are correct with respect to outspoken atheists. But what about all of the people who just mind their own business and avoid religion? They live their lives without theism, so they are atheists in that sense of the term. I agree.