Is Evolution the only option in a Naturalistic point of view ?

Well, here's something to ponder. Consider what we might call a pure philosophical theist/supernaturalist: one who believes that there is a God, that God is the author of the universe, and that God can supervene the laws of nature. Let us also stipulate that our theist is highly intelligent, since the question is not what such a man might think given such a philosophy, but what he should think.Now, my question is, to what extent should the conclusions of this theist differ from those of the naturalist?The answer is: not that much. If the supernaturalist inexplicably loses his spectacles, he will suppose, and act on the supposition, that there is a naturalistic explanation for this, just like the philosophical naturalist. In trying to hypothesize what happened to them, he will be a methodological naturalist.Unlike the naturalist, he need not reject a priori the idea that God sent an angel to bear his spectacles up to heaven, and will admit it as a philosophical possibility, but he will not attach very much weight to this. We stipulated that our theist should be intelligent, and this means that he will not commit the God-Of-The-Gaps fallacy.No, the difference between them will be that the naturalist would tend to reject positive evidence of a miracle, such as actually witnessing the angel carry his spectacles up to heaven. In that case, he would tend to dismiss it as a hallucination; if there were corroborating witnesses, he might appeal to the notion of "mass hysteria" --- or, which is psychologically more likely, he might stop being a philosophical naturalist. The supernaturalist, meanwhile, might more readily accept the observation of an angel (especially if independently corroborated) as proof that there really was an angel.When we look at the history of science, we see the attitude I have described in action. It is likely that some theists looked at a rainbow and uttered the Creationist mantra: "I don't understand it, so Goddidit" --- but their names are not recorded in the history of science. It is certain that some theists (the smart ones) looked at a rainbow, said "I don't understand it", and then went and found out.Now, the relevance to the particular question in the OP is this. Any data that are really sufficient to lead a naturalist to conclude that evolution took place ought to lead the supernaturalist to the same conclusion. He might maintain the theoretical reservation that perhaps a miracle was involved, but he would need a good positive reason to suppose that this was the most likely explanation. For a mere belief in the possibility of miracles does not lead a reasonable man to make them the default explanation for phenomena.That this is not invariably what theists conclude I attribute to two causes.First, we supposed that our theist was intelligent. This is not always the case. The God-Of-The-Gaps fallacy has a powerful appeal to the human mind.Second, of course, is the fact that theists do not usually start being theists because they have come to hold the philosophical position that I set out in the first paragraph of this post, nor are their further religious beliefs derived from these principles. Rather, they are taught from infancy to equate the existence of God and the truth about him with the correctness of their pastor's preferred interpretation of his favorite book.Nonetheless, it is the case that a thinking theist will always (provisionally) accept that the causes of any phenomenon are natural unless he has a positive reason for supposing otherwise. Hence, as I have said, any data sufficient to convince a naturalist of (in particular) evolution, should be sufficient to (provisionally) convince the supernaturalist of the same thing.Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

I don't have a dossier on it, I just knew what it was called and googled it.I have the impression that not much is known. If you think about it, it must be fiendishly hard to study. It only happens rarely, and when it does happen, by the time you've noticed that it happened it's already happened.The only way to study the mechanism in humans would be to take thousands on thousands of recently-diagnosed patients, deliberately not give them treatment, study the heck out of all of them with as many tests and observations you could make, and hope that at least one of them undergoes spontaneous remission. Issues of ethics and costs prohibit this approach.Maybe something could be done with rats.Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

No. Since slevesque posited that the miracle involved violation of the law of conservation of energy, he is obviously not positing that the mass of the tumor disappeared by being converted into energy.There are many reasons to think that his hypothesis is wrong, but clearly this isn't one of them.Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

Let's do a thread. I have some ideas on this subject ...Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

This is by the way, but:(a) I have read Popper's Logic of Scientific Discovery, and that is the complete opposite of what he said. Have you read Popper?(b) The idea that Darwin was inspired to think of evolution by the species now known as "Darwin's finches" is a complete myth. This is not entirely the fault of creationists, you can see the same myth promulgated in some junior-level biology textbooks. Nonetheless, it is in fact complete rubbish. As a matter of fact, Darwin collected the first specimens of "Darwin's finches" when he was very young, and didn't know much about birds, and he didn't even realize that they were all finches. When he found out that they were, he didn't make much of it: he never even mentions them in The Origin of Species.The whole thing about the finches is just a made-up story about How The Great Genius Got His Big Idea, kind of like the story about Newton and the apple, except that we know from reading his notebooks that the thing with Darwin and the finches never happened, whereas the thing with Newton and the apple might conceivably be true.

Well then, I guess you'll come to this topic with a fresh and open mind.I was starting to write some stuff on this topic. There are various questions that one might ask, depending on whom one was talking to, whether it was a theist who believed in fiat creation, or a theist who believed in evolution, or an atheist who believed in evolution.Here are the questions that I'd like to start out by asking a creationist. If you find this discussion interesting, please let's start a new thread: I would have other remarks to address to the evolutionist who believes in God, and the evolutionist who doesn't. I'd be happy to discuss these questions with you.---By the way, you maintain that English is your second language, and that you are only nineteen years old. If this is true, then I should like to point out to you that you are very obviously a person of superior intellectual talents --- and I say that as someone who thinks that pretty much everything that you've posted is wrong. Even as someone who is obstinately wrong, you are far more intelligent and coherent than 99.9% of creationists, and if you're achieving that at nineteen in a language that is not your own, then you have my admiration. I hope that you are putting that brain of yours to good use.

Ah, that's more like it. You originally suggested that scientists did experiments to prove a theory. But of course if the experiment produced the opposite result, then it would disprove the theory.Scientists do experiments to test a theory. One way or the other. (Popper would say that you can't prove a theory even by doing a zillion experiments which confirm it. I would disagree with him, but that is a subtle philosophical issue.)