Spotting Beretta's "designer" {Now only 1 summation message per member}

Thanks Percy -I downloaded Real Player with anticipation, right clicked on the video and it didn't give me that option. Any other ideas?

But God is not out of the picture. Man leaves him out of the picture because it suits him. Man likes to imagine that naturalistic explanations explain everything. God does not become irrelevant just because man likes to try and explain everything as if a creator was not required. It is self deception. The stories of how creation got started without a creator are imaginary and the more complex science becomes, as we investigate the micromachines within cells, it is not logical to assume that they made themselves. It was perhaps conceivable in Darwin's time, when a cell was imagined to be something really simple, that he could have believed that it was possible for it to have happened by chance but in view of the complexity of the cell that we now observe, it is no longer feasible that no intelligence was required to put a cell together. God got written out of the picture when Darwin (and others)came up with his alternative creation myth and tried to give it a mechanism.The stories they have to invent these days about how complex systems just made themselves by naturalistic mechanisms become more and more ridiculous which is why we call them 'just so' stories -they have no proof, they are just built on naturalistic presuppositions and the subsequent desparate attempts to make the possibility sound logical.How can naturalistic explanations render God irrelevant? If God created life, then naturalistic explanations are ridiculous because they are untrue. What I mean is that there are two possibilities, either God created life or life created itself. You can't just rule out the one possibility because then you have a philosophy not a science and you really have no need of evidence and anything found will be forced into the only possibility you are prepared to allow.You need to allow for both possibilities and test the evidence against both not just the one that you think must be right. Why should others believe that evolution happened when there are so many indications that this just may not be true. Evolution is a word based on a philosophy -how do you know that it happened? God didn't create the concept of naturalistic causes, man did.
It may appear to you that naturalism explains everything that exists but it is actually a belief based on whatever evolutionists can find to support or seem to support their presupposition. God isn't deceiving anybody, man does all the deceiving all by himself and then having deceived himself, deceives others into believing it.Evolution is a creation myth that does away with God.It was in the beginning when Darwin formulated it and it still is today.

Some of them may, others know exactly why I say what I do. The difference between me and some IDists is that I have decided for reasons apart from science who the intelligent designer is. Some IDists just decide that the evidence for evolution is not sufficient so they believe that there has to be a designer or a higher intelligence and they may have no idea who that would be.Some, like Berlinski believe that 'intelligent uncertainty' is a better option to evolution -in other words he hasn't decided for anything in particular but he is not convinced by the evidence that evolution is the explanation for the complexity of life.
I can be an IDist as well as believe in a specific God because ID is really about the scientific evidence for a creative intelligence and against mutation and natural selection as an explanation for everything that exists.
So ID as such does not propose any specific designer but believes that the evidence suggests that there is one. Who it may be is outside of science so they can get together in agreement for general scientific reasons and they don't mind who thinks what after that, they're all just about the evidence and go no further in their argument. Some IDists are creationists, others are theistic evolutionists, others have no clue beyond the general proposal. Creationists believe in God, Idists stick with what they can put forward as scientific evidence for creative intelligence and against evolution as a total explanation. They can be both but many are not.Even creationists often don't propose that creationism should be taught as science, but they do want the evidence against evolution to be taught. I do not believe in any way that the ID position is dishonest -they're just sticking with the science and saying that this is not a religious argument so don't start with Noah's ark because we are not interested in that -what we want to do is discuss the scientific evidence and the possible alternative explanations for what we have. Everyone has the same evidence, it's the interpretation of the evidence that often differs. Evolutionists are also not particularly keen on any evidence that doesn't support their position so they don't like that proposal at all. They want evolution taught as fact despite everything that can be brought out against it.I believe that a lot of evolutionists don't even hear about the facts that don't fit since nobody teaches those sorts of things because it's not convenient to raise doubt. Any doubtful evidence is just put in the anomalies bucket and ignored or they come up with a possible but unproven solution which then passes as fact along with the whole general picture. Well it should nonetheless be on the table for discussion because nobody can know that God didn't create life and nobody can prove that chemicals just arranged themselves by chance into a self replicating organism. So rather than saying that the one option is fact without being able to prove it, keep things open for debate. Well there's no doubt that one of us is wrong. Right so lets put all the evidence on the table, not ignore general stasis in the fossil record nor the sudden (in geological terms) arrival of practically every phyla in the Cambrian explosion.Lets not assume that there is no limitation on the portion of evolution that can be observed and then sticking with the real facts, all of them, lets put our models on the table and consider both not just the one that has become dogma amongst a good proportion of scientists. Nor is it scientific to ignore the very real possibility that God or some intelligent designer may be in the picture and that naturalism may not be the only 'reasonable' explanation to consider.

Thanks for the suggestion Granny Magda-it didn't work so I still haven't seen the video but it was a good idea nonetheless. That's possible of course but the analogy may still be apt. We can't know that for certain.

Hi Buzsaw,
I suppose really all I'm trying to do is put forward the case for a creative intelligence required for design of complex biological systems. Specifically which God I believe is responsible is no doubt pretty obvious however I don't have any doubt that step 1 is to get the whole concept out on the table -does the evidence point more to evolution or to intelligent creation. What is the evidence for a creative intelligence? What is the evidence against evolution? and if they can tell me something more (without the philisophical assumptions that evolution had to have done it)what exactly is the evidence that proves that evolutiondidit.Like I said to Percy, you can be an ID proponent and know which God you believe is responsible or you can be an ID proponent on logic alone without necessarily having worked out exactly who is responsible for it. Id however is just supposed to stick to the science as their primary argument -sometimes I wander a little beyond that but I do try to stick to that primary method of argument.

Everybody has a worldview, we all believe that either godditit or nothingdidit. The thing is, which viewpoint is better supported by the evidence? Evolutionists have been fed nothing but evolution all the days of their lives or else if they had any Christian or other faith type input, their upbringing was overcome by mass media persuasion that evolution obviously did it and they weren't able to argue their point so they lost their faith or put the two together into an incomprehensible compromise position.
Actually evolutionists are the ones that will twist anything to fit their conclusion, they know there is no creator so they have to twist a story out of everything about how evolutiondidit one way or the other. Their conclusions are based on their interpretations of the evidence which are based on the all powerful explanatory filter of their worldview.

But atheists say there is no creator so that makes you an agnostic surely? Deism is about non-interventionist gods, they say a god may have created the universe but he's a hands-off type god. Theism is different which is why you can't really be a theist and believe in evolution because god isn't involved in the creation then. That's true, you could believe in a god and still have every confidence in evolution but it wouldn't be the Christian God because that God is involved in His creation. Why would 'smarter' gods not have to 'tinker' -what's the point of God if he just causes the universe to come into being and then steps back and leaves everything to carry on? would that be smarter or not? Which was built on an interpretation of the evidence while ignoring all those things that don't fit.Over the decades there have been a number of stories of what happened to the dinosaurs and every decade that changes and whatever becomes consensus next, gets taught as fact (according to the new evidence of course). Actually I'd call evolutionism a cult built on a false premise that material causes are the only possible causes...and it is dogma.(a belief or set of beliefs that a political, philosophical, or moral group holds to be true) ...in some people's interpretations of the facts. No, people fool themselves -the fossil record doesn't support gradualism; embryonic development doesn't support evolution and we can't see it happening now unless you limit it to variations and strike out the extrapolation to all of biology - so no God is not trying to fool anyone. Neither were mine Christians.

Must I submit a paper or can we just discuss points as they come up -you must be getting a fair idea of my alternative framework surely?! Well of course there's the evidence against evolution which, in a general sense in any case, is support for ID -apart from that -the fossils, the embryos, biological complexity ....we've been discussing these as we go along.

Well how about the'evolution in the gaps' fallacy represented by the Cambrian explosion. Suddenly many many complex forms appear fully formed and evolutionists have to imagine that somehow evolution happened before that anyway. They reserve the right to fill the gap with unfound fossils of which there is no evidence. Aah but of course, evolution is true so they must have been there -we just can't find them. There's more than enough reason to criticize -if gradualism is true -why can't we see it except in a few very questionable cases.Where are all the simpler forms leading up to the Cambrian complexity? It's one thing to say we can't find them, it's quite another to reserve the right to fill the gaps with your pet myth that evolution did happen -evolutiondidit, we just know it's true.

The Cambrian explosion is evidence for creation.

Michael Denton and David Berlinski Evolution is also a religious belief -matter is all there is; everything can be explained in terms of natural law -that's dogma.

The artifact hypothesis squashed by the discovery of perfectly preserved soft bodied embryo fossils below the Cambrian in China. The suggestion that the precursors to the cambrian were soft bodied and thus not preservable no longer holds as an hypothesis. He didn't

No gradual increase in complexity as predicted by the tree of life analogy,all major life forms appear suddenly and fully formed in a small fraction of 'geologic' time. This explosion of complex life forms is only about 0.25% of the vast range of time secular scientists provide for the supposed evolution of life.Yet the theory predicts slow gradual change and there should be billions of intermediates leading up to these. Even if billions couldn't be found, at least a good few showing some sort of link to the sudden appearance of so many life forms would be nice.
Since mutations that are passed on are rare in the first place and it is even rarer that they are of any benefit to an organism, evolution can't reasonably account for the Cambrian.
Dawkins maintains that 'given enough time' gradualism can account for any degree of simplicity to any degree of complexity while Stephen Jay Gould maintains that complex life did arise with startling speed near the base of the Cambrian.
Chinese paleontologist, Chen, states that Cambrian fossils found in Chengjiang in China revealed the fossils to be upside down from the expected evolutionist view. "The base is wide (at the bottom of the Cambrian)and gradually narrows -so there is an upside down arrangement compared to what would have been expected. He maintains that no transitional body parts were found and since there was an abundance of sponges and soft-bodied sponges found, then soft bodied transitional forms should have been found if there were any.Perhaps these creatures didn't evolve, perhaps they were created as distinct types. Perhaps they require a creator rather than a vast period of time.

How about separately created since they bear no similarities to the multitude of forms found in the Cambrian.

Well I am struggling to get the time for this particular subject so don't see myself going near bloodclotting for a while but since I have read up about the blood clotting some time ago I just remember that it did seem unlikely that that such a complicated whole series of events could have been worked on gradually since one factor missing allows bleeding not clotting so it makes sense that you would bleed to death during the millions of year it supposedly took to get the pathway right.Maybe I should just pop over there and check the argument out sometime soon.Thanks for the vote of confidence -you may think I'm crazy, I can live with that but it's at least nice not to be accused of intentionally lying for a change!