quote:
Scientific evidence cannot prove or disprove God UNLESS your worldview is intruding.
I'm not sure that any of the other posters here disagree
with this -- even us pesky athiests ... and I'm not sure
that there are that many here anyhow ... quite a few
agnostics though.
quote:
I agree with Perakh, that randomness carries the dual message that a Creator is not involved. However, I believe that atheists who observe the animal kingdom to evolve via a mindless and random and purposeless process are observing and reporting what they see accurately, where we depart is the ultimate origin of this process. I credit God to have created and programmed the process to operate exactly the way "the atheists" say, on the other hand, the atheists are defective in the dual meanings of the words they use to describe the process due to the wrath of God/sense/insight removal.
If you are talking about any kind of 'God started it and let it
run.' concept, then I, even as an athiest, admit that that
possibility cannot be discounted. I just don't beleive that.
You have to remember that you have no more evidence for your
side of THAT question than I do ... we all come to our beliefs
via the same processes, we just reach different conclusions.
quote:
Like Perakh has said, anyone who does what I just did renders the entire debate meaningless. This is why worldview/philosophy is king and not science. The entire EvC debate boils down to worldview which cleary supercedes the scientific.
The EvC debate is not Evolution Vs. a Creator, it's Evolution
Vs Creationism, where creationism is taken to mean a belief that
the world and all that's in it was created 'whole and intact'
in a single creation event (possibly lasting 7 days, possibly lasting
millions of years) and that evolution played NO part.
And the arguments forwarded against ID, for example, are not
saying 'Thus there is no god.' they are saying 'These
arguments are not evidence of an intelligent designer'.
quote:
You can claim evolution is the correct theory as long as whatever interpretation of the scientific does not explicitly or implicitly exclude the God of the Bible.
Evolutionary theory doesn't explicitly exclude god, and only
implicitly excludes him/her/it from the direct creation of
life FORMS.
quote:
If you say evolution challenges Genesis then I agree. How does the actual scientific evidence disprove the God of Genesis ? There are eons and eons of time between 1:1 and 1:2.
It doesn't disprove any god (or anything for that matter), it
simply makes god an unessecary addition to the explanation.
That doesn't mean he/she/it is absent, only that the current
state of the universe can be explained without mentioning god(s).
quote:
If you say evolution is a fact, are you also saying the God of the Bible is not the Creator ? Yes you are. Once again how does the evidence disprove God ? I realize I am going round and round.
No. One is saying that the diversity of life of earth appears to
have come about via natural processes, and that a god is not
required.
That does not mean there is no god, only that it is not a
necessity for the diversity that we see.
If god set the universe up, and it runs by the rules
he/she/it set, then that's fine and completely compatible
with ToE ... if you are saying that god created life as
we see it, whole and intact, evolutionary theory (or rather
the evidence that supports it) seems to say otherwise. NOT
because we are all atheists and unwilling/unable to see
the 'truth of god', but because the evidence is not in favour
of a 'creationist' concept.
[This message has been edited by Peter, 03-03-2004]
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