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But extrapolations that extend far beyond what the data allows are usually not acceptable in science.
The problem with your analysis is that it minimizes the gobs of evidence that evolution has in its favor. Scientists do not extrapolate from 'micro-changes' to Mozart. You could fill libraries with the information used to make those extrapolations. To wit: the extrapolation does not extend further than the data allows. This is why most scientists support and defend the theory.
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People who believe that this degree of extrapolation is justifiable (and evolution advocates do) practice a kind of "science" that I never once learned or practiced (and for good reason).
You might also think about ditching astronomy and, say, the last hundred years of physics. Evolution has far more evidence than has either of these fields.
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However, aside from the 'science' of evolution there does exist the evolutionary paradigm which IS a metaphysic.
Aha... So there is a new character in the play. Exactly what is the
evolutionary paradigm? Can you describe this metaphysic?
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I rest my case.
Do you now?
I am not a materialist. Which part of the enchilada is that?
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Evolution justifies naturalism by providing an intellectually defensible position against creationism.
hmmm.... creationism isn't intellectually defensible, so why would one need an intellectually defensible position against it? Does one need a defensible position against the idea of pink elephants? Not hardly.
The goal is to find an intellectually defensible position-- period.
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Just ask Richard Dawkins.
If I could only express how little I care what Dawkins has to say...
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If, as you say, naturalism doesn't require the ToE then what else would naturalism suggest as its explanation for earth's ultracomplex biota?
There doesn't have to be an answer. Like when your wife asks "Where are my keys?" and you reply "I don't know." Or, less trivially, when someone asks "Why does God allow suffering?" and you respond "I don't know."
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If "naturalism requires explanations based upon accessible evidence" then where is this "accessible evidence" to uphold that space, time, matter and energy are able to account for everything including life and consciousness?
There isn't any, but you are missing the point. Asking the wrong question, I think.
If we reason not upon accessible evidence, then we reason based upon what? INaccessible evidence? Evidence we don't have? Information we don't know? Data that does not exist? Naturalism, as I see it, is the not unreasonable idea that we work with what we've got rather than what we don't. The assumption is that anything of importance will influence our experience, our perceptions, including of course inferences we can make. Or, conversely, why bother with what might exist but does not influence the world we inhabit? Notice that God and the supernatural is not excluded, assuming that God influences the world we inhabit. I looked it up in my Encyclopedia of Philosophy and this view is supported therein. Maybe there is a copy online somewhere, but I haven't looked.
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