You don't walk into an empty workshop, see a fully made cabinet, some tools, wood, and assume that the tools and wood randomly created the cabinet. You assume that it was designed and built by somebody.
That's right. We don't walk into a place where we know things are made, spot objects we can identify from experience as having been made, or look similar to objects that have been made, see things we know from experience help "people" (who we know from experience are capable of making things) make things, and then suggest that the best explanation is that the objects which look made happened to fall together through chemical interactions.
But what we can do is look at the earth, where there are a bunch of chemicals (which we know interact in many complex ways all by their lonesome), and a variety of complex environments (which facilitate a variety of complex chemical reactions all on their lonesome), note that we have no evidence of any beings capable of manufacturing anything in the deep past, note that we have no indication that there were any tools for manufacture in the deep past, note that at one time in the deep past there was no biochemical life and then there was, note that evidence suggests life began in simple biochemical form and progressively became more complex, note that evidence suggests that life began in a single environment and moved to different environments, note that evidence indicates that they reproduced (which we have full experience of today), and that we have full evidence both changing environments and reproduction result in changes over time to a population, and then state that the best explanation fitting all of this evidence is abiogenesis, followed by evolution.
Now it is true that for us to say this explanation is exactly what happened and we damn well know it 100%... that would be working on pure faith. Future evidence may change what is indicated as the best explanation.
However at this time, to say that any other option, particularly one that involves an ID, is equal to or better as an explanation is not just faith, it is fraud.
Only a person that is uncomfortable with facts can assert there is some equality of "faith" required by both theories. One is the
best explanation we have, given the available evidence: that is abiogenesis, followed by evolution.
If you want to have faith that more evidence will come in later, that's fine. Just don't pretend it has before it has.
This message has been edited by holmes, 11-19-2004 05:04 AM
holmes
"...what a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.."(D. Bros)