PeterS

I paid perfect attention. Quit infringing on individual rights and there is no reason for the state to push back against churches. That means whether your god likes fags doesn't matter. We are a secular society and homosexuals have the same rights as you or anyone else. And if you want your children to pray in school then have them pray. Good god do you think I wasn't praying before every math text? But you can't use our public schools to proselytize and I have a feeling that's what all your prayer in school nonsense really is all about. Or you could do what Muslims did and that's to request a room for which all devout Muslim children can conduct their prayers.

The point being Padre is that just about every instance of Christian discrimination is because you think for some reason you can dictate the rights of others. The function of the state is to protect our rights Padre. If you are getting stepped on it's because you are stepping on others...

Bad Bob Loc: Virginia

PeterS

I don't think science can disprove the Easter Bunny or the Toothfairy either. Science can only deal with the natural world and doesn't have the tools to deal with the supernatural. For that you need faith and if you have none there is not much I can do to help you...

Blade_Runner Loc: DARK SIDE OF THE MOON

I'll put it this way. You see, I acknowledge that Charles Darwin made a sincere effort to prove his theory of evolution, of natural selection, the survival of the fittest, and so on. I recognize that he neglected his medical education and spent the better part of his life struggling with complex hypotheses and scientific theories to produce an alternative explanation for the origin of life on earth. I also realize that throughout his attempt to establish what he felt was a viable explanation, Darwin encountered seeming improbabilities, gaps in the data, and issues left unexplained. Lingering doubts troubled Darwin, so much so, that he edited his Origin of Species from one edition to the next. Darwin came face to face with inexplicable mysteries and even admitted that his theory was "grievously hypothetical" and gave emotional content to his doubts when he said, "The eye to this day gives me a cold shudder." To think the eye had evolved by natural selection, Darwin said, "seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest possible degree." But he thought the same about something as simple as a peacock's feather, which, he said, "makes me sick. "

It is also interesting that after his long voyage around the world, Darwin continued his work while married to a Unitarian Christian woman who expressed many doubts about what he was doing. Still he pressed on. I recognize that he made a genuine effort in his life's work, and that he must be commended for such an incredible effort. This does not in any way imply that I accept his Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favored Races in the Struggle for Life as the singular explanation for life on earth. Not by a long shot.

Now, you stated you wanted to see "parts of Creationism that have been proven" and that you wanted "scientific proof behind Creationism that disproves (Darwin's) theory." So, I provided a few examples of scientific creation research and you come back with complete disrespect, mockery, obfuscation, and a disingenuous attempt to reject, even vilify, scientific explorations into the concept of a Creator. The fact is there are scientists who do extraordinary research on the hypothesis that a Creator, a "supernatural", or more accurately a transcendent being, was the cause and designer of our universe and life on earth. The universal constants alone are impossible to ignore simply because together they establish a compelling argument that the universe was created specifically for life to exist. The odds that this could have occurred by random chance are astronomical.

Scientific research in all fields has advanced exponentially since Darwin's time, science has made great strides toward uncovering the deeper mysteries of our world and the universe. Yet today, among many scientific research efforts, there is a problem. Many scientists and their research projects have been politicized. In many fields now ideologically driven scientists have corrupted the methodology, they draw a conclusion first, they establish a goal, then form a hypothesis they feel is suitable to attaining that goal, then they work the data. If the data fails to get them where they want to go, they do not rethink the hypothesis, restate it, or even abandon it, they simply rework the data, alter it, manipulate it until it satisfies or "proves" the conclusion. The AGW project is a perfect example of this. Other "junk science" projects are treading on extremely dangerous ground, and I won't get into those.

Yet, there are still many scientists in all fields that are sincere men and women, people of integrity and virtue, who have not abandoned or rejected empirical and objective methods in their studies and research. And because of the many failures of evolution theory to prove the hypotheses, because of the dead ends and seemingly insurmountable obstacles to establishing evolution as the sole viable explanation for life, a significant number of these reputable scientists have turned to the one field of research that reaches deepest into the mysteries of the universe--Creation. This is pursuit is compelling for many reasons and though it is a relatively new field of research, it is gaining in importance.

If you want to stick with Darwin or any other evolutionary concept, that is your business, but don't insult those of us who believe in God the Creator and have a sincere desire for scientific exploration in His direction by spitting in our faces and telling us we are all full of shit.

God had a very specific reason for creating the universe and life, a reason that is clearly stated throughout the Bible, the Word of God. If you don't believe it, so be it.




I definitely never asked for your help, nor do I need it. Thanks anyway.

PeterS

Blade I could give a flip about Darwin. Evolution is the scientifically accepted theory that hit mainstream well over a century ago. If you want to disprove it by citing Darwin's hesitation that ship sailed when the biological sciences were built around it.

And there isn't a credible scientist alive who creates a theory to disprove another theory. It doesn't work that way. The stumbling block for ID is that it presupposes a supernatural being when science is only designed to deal with the natural world. You can't prove god using science--you can only 'infer' that you have no other explanation--which of course is an argument from ignorance but I'm becoming redundant aren't I. So disprove evolution all you like but until you have a theory that scientifically replaces it, evolution will be the theory that stands.

And who's to say that evolution isn't how god created man? Why would the earth need to be 4.4 billion years old when you have a god who can blink things into being with the twitch of his nose. If that's the case then 6,000 years would do just fine. You say there is a biblical explanation so what is it? Give it all you got.

And excuse me but do you think ID isn't politically or ideologically driven? How many liberal scientists do you have writing your papers? It sure as hell isn't being done for the science because if it was it wouldn't prefix itself by debunking Darwinism. I already know the mythology is corrupt because it centers itself around an 'argument from ignorance' and no theory based on scientific method and reason is going to use logical fallacies as it's conclusion...but I'm just repeating myself aren't I...

Morgan

Agreed 100%

Morgan

Peter, if I may interject here, you want proof according to science, stating..." when science is only designed to deal with the natural world." You are exactly correct here, our science works only within our own limited technology in our three-dimensional world, it is science, that has to catch up with the unknown, natures mysteries, the different planes of existence where faith lives.

You say it is irrational, but irrational to only those who live only within the constraints of the physical world. You want Blade to come up with a kind of scientific proof, that is a deliberate catch 22 because our science is still much too primitive. It's catching up yes, as it's now is better equipped to record energies that at one time were invisible. As a matter of fact, how many things were not visible to us until our science caught up, that hasn't changed. That never proved they didn't exist.


your quote: "You can't prove God using science--you can only 'infer' that you have no other explanation--which of course is an argument from ignorance."

You're correct we can't prove a divine entity because our level of investigative means is ignorant, like I said before but it doesn't prove it's non-existence either. In time, I believe the intersection will be found.

PeterS

I don't want Blade to come up with anything. There exists no proof for the supernatural so Blade and all his conservative minions can putter away from now to kingdom come and they will come no closer to a scientific proof than they are today. The biggest problem with Blades argument--and the argument made by ID--is that it depends on the logical fallacy-- "argument from ignorance"--where if we can think of any other other reason--THAN GAWD MUST HAVE DONE IT!!! No, what it means is that we simply don't understand how something works...YET! It doesn't mean a supernatural god did anything. It means we don't understand something and nothing more.

Blade and all the world of Fundamentalistic Evangelicalism are terrified of evolution because they think it attacks their beliefs in creation. My first two years in college were in a Catholic University and my mentor--a biologist and priest--had no problem believing in Evolution as the tool god used to create man in the form that he is in today. Blade told me that the bible supports a universe that is 13.77 billion years old so if that's the case then it also supports an Earth that is 4.4 billion years old which begs the question why does the earth need to be so old if god is simply going to twitch is nose and each species exists as it does today? Wouldn't then an earth that is 6,000 years old work just fine--just without all the hyperbole? It would seem so but such thought escapes the minds of our fundamentalistic friends.

What Blade doesn't grasp is that if there is a god then the universe serves no purpose--save to act as something pretty for Man to look at. So even though every element in our body can be found as part of the bi-product of a Supernova explosion--since god zaps every species into existence that fact is totally meaningless to the creation of life on this planet today. So are we to assume that the Universe has no meaning? That's what we are to expect if we believe in a god who blinks us into existence but still uses a universe to create every element necessary for life. Maybe the redundancy is for "just in case" but if he is a god wouldn't he know what the future would bring?

I've got an MBA and make no pretense of being a biologist fully versed in Evolutionary science. But I can recognize logical fallacies and I know that any argument made that contains one
automatically negates that argument as a legitimate scientific theory. You can't build a scientific theory around a logical fallacy and have it hold as a legitimate argument. Blade and his fellow Creationists don't seem to understand this.

Below is the definition for an Argument from Ignorance:

Argument from ignorance (from Latin: argumentum ad ignorantiam), also known as appeal to ignorance (in which ignorance represents "a lack of contrary evidence") is a fallacy in informal logic. It asserts that a proposition is true because it has not yet been proven false or a proposition is false because it has not yet been proven true. This represents a type of false dichotomy in that it excludes a third option, which is that there may have been an insufficient investigation, and therefore there is insufficient information to prove the proposition be either true or false. Nor does it allow the admission that the choices may in fact not be two (true or false), but may be as many as four,

1. true
2. false
3. unknown between true or false
4. being unknowable (among the first three).

Intelligent Design was developed as a complement to Creationism to use science to add 'fluff' to the argument that god created life on our planet by zapping it into being not through the evolutionary process. What they don't get is that evolution didn't say there isn't a god only that life was created through evolution and survival of the fittest. If you have an open mind than it isn't a stretch to say that evolution is the tool that god used to create life on earth. But if you are closed minded like Blade and his fellow fundamentalists than it is impossible to see creation in any other light than god zapping every species as it is today without any change.

Well Blade and his fellow fundamentalists are welcome to think as they like but they are using this logic as a means to challenge Evolution in public schools even though ID and Creation have no footing in Scientific theory. So does this mean that evolution is to be taught in our Churches and religious schools? Of course not! Our churches are safe from secularism. This has nothing to do about equity but to force Creationism on ALL of our children in our public schools. No doubt this will MAGA even though it was secularism that allow this country to acheive the freedom that we enjoy today...

Blade_Runner Loc: DARK SIDE OF THE MOON

You are contradicting yourself. You said Darwin's theory stands unchallenged.


Oh, good Lord, such ignorance of science is not only stunning it is inexcusable. In the first place, throughout the history of scientific exploration, innumerable scientific conclusions have been refuted or significantly changed by further exploration and research.

There was a time the earth was flat, then it became a sphere, the earth was once the center of the universe, then it was the center of our solar system, then a couple of scientists proved the earth and planets orbited the Sun, then we discovered our galaxy, then we found more galaxies, then Edwin Hubble discovered that the universe had a beginning some time in the distant past, and so on. It is a physical fact that anything that begins to exist must have a cause, and by its very nature, that cause transcends physical existence.

The purpose of scientific exploration is to seek the truth, the ultimate goal is to find it. The scientists involved in Creation research never set out to disprove evolution theories, they are seeking the truth about our universe and life itself. What in God's name is wrong with that?


I already have, numerous times on this forum.

Yes, you are the poster boy for the scratched record. Repetition ad nauseam is a logical fallacy.

X is true. X is true. X is true. X is true. X is true. X is true... ad infinitum.

The scientists involved in Creation research do not, under any circumstances, frame their hypotheses around argumentum ad ignorantiam and logical fallacies. They work with the scientific building blocks already established, such as in the field of cosmology, the phenomenally fine tuned universal constants and in the field of microbiology, the mystery of DNA coding, RNA transfers, and the nanotechnology of intricately complex cellular machines such as the Flagellum.

No, Creation research is not politically or ideologically driven. Scientists involved in this include Christians, Jews, agnostics, and atheists. With every discovery about our universe and our lives, with every advancement in scientific research, new, refreshing and challenging mysteries present themselves and are the engines of further research. Humans are curious creatures, and it is our curiosity that drives our search for the meaning of existence and life itself.

It seems to me that you are using evolution theory as a crutch with which to rationalize your belief there is no Creator, no transcendent creative intelligence, no God. If that is the case, if you have no curiosity, no desire, to go beyond what your five senses tell you, then God forbid that I or anyone else should attempt to derail you. IOW, you do your thing and we'll do ours. Sounds fair to me.

Carol Kelly

God, the father is not a snake handler. Rather, Satan is and he has handled you well.

Carol Kelly

Darwin’s theory is still exactly that ... a THEORY.

PeterS

So is the theory of gravity. Would you care to step off a ten story building to see if it's true?

PeterS

No, I didn’t. I said it will stand until replaced by a better theory. ID, however, is a logical fallacy. You can’t replace a scientific theory with an argument from ignorance.


But you aren’t talking about further exploration or research. ID is the product of Creationists who view evolution as a challenge to their belief system. You are trying to save your belief system. You aren’t trying to establish a valid scientific theory.


And you built a theory out of a house of cards to support the case that a supernatural being is responsible for creation. Why, Cuz you can’t think of anything else that it can be. As someone who holds a Masters in English, what kind of a fallacy would that be Blade?


Well, nothing if you can do it without using fallacies. But you can’t which means you will never be able to find the truth.


Snip>>>
Intelligent design (ID) is a pseudoscientific argument for the existence of God, presented by its proponents as "an evidence-based scientific theory about life's origins". Proponents claim that "certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause, not an undirected process such as natural selection." ID is a form of creationism that lacks empirical support and offers no testable or tenable hypotheses, so it is not science. The leading proponents of ID are associated with the Discovery Institute, a fundamentalist Christian and politically conservative think tank based in the United States.

Though the phrase "intelligent design" had featured previously in theological discussions of the design argument, the first publication of the term intelligent design in its present use as an alternative term for creationism was in Of Pandas and People, a 1989 creationist textbook intended for high school biology classes. The term was substituted into drafts of the book, directly replacing references to creation science and creationism, after the 1987 United States Supreme Court's Edwards v. Aguillard decision, which barred the teaching of creation science in public schools on constitutional grounds. From the mid-1990s, the intelligent design movement (IDM), supported by the Discovery Institute, advocated inclusion of intelligent design in public school biology curricula. This led to the 2005 Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District trial in which U.S. District Judge John E. Jones III found that intelligent design was not science, that it "cannot uncouple itself from its creationist, and thus religious, antecedents," and that the school district's promotion of it therefore violated the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution.

ID presents two main arguments against evolutionary explanations: irreducible complexity and specified complexity. These arguments assert that certain features (biological and informational, respectively) are too complex to be the result of natural processes. As a positive argument against evolution, ID proposes an analogy between natural systems and human artifacts, a version of the theological argument from design for the existence of God ID proponents then conclude by analogy that the complex features, as defined by ID, are evidence of design.

Detailed scientific examination has rebutted the claims that evolutionary explanations are inadequate, and this premise of intelligent design—that evidence against evolution constitutes evidence for design—is a false dichotomy. It is asserted that ID challenges the methodological naturalism inherent in modern science though proponents concede that they have yet to produce a scientific theory.
The key part of this Blade is that ID offers no testable hypothesis and without something to test there is no scientific theory.

And if that’s not enough: Intelligent Design: The Glass is Empty
The latest ploy of "evolution deniers" is the notion of "Intelligent Design", being promoted as a "scientific theory" worthy of (a) replacing the theory of evolution, and (b) sitting alongside Newton's mechanics as one of the great ideas of science.

It has a few problems.

The Intelligent Design (ID) argument doesn't qualify as a proper scientific theory.
The ID argument has the trappings of a logical argument, but it is full of logical gaps and holes. It is "pseudo-logic".
No scientific evidence specifically supports the assumptions of the theory. Any evidence seemingly supportive of it could equally support countless other fantastic theories, even contradictory ones.

The argument uses words in deceptive ways, without carefully defining them.
As an argument purportedly about "intelligence", ID is pretty "dumb". Upon careful examination it is revealed as a "con", so cleverly constructed that it's hard to see it as anything but a deliberate fraud. It is something like the magician's illusion, distracting and misdirecting the attention of the audience, while hiding the nature of the deception and the hanky-panky skillfully executed where the audience doesn't notice. And the result is—a miracle! Like all magicians' tricks, the result is, as perceived by the audience, an apparently impossible event. That's the definition of a miracle.

The intelligent design hypothesis, stripped to its essential core, is this: Physical and biological systems observed in the universe result from purposeful design by an intelligent creator.

And you are right about one thing—I can just keep going on because there are article, after article, after article detailing how ID is nothing but a con. Rub your little brain cells together as hard as you possible can and you can’t think of any other explanation for creation than GAWD! I get it Blade I really do

ID exists because the theory of evolution challenges your belief system. And please name the atheists involved in ID. Can you not recognize idiocy when you write it?


How does the theory of evolution provide a proof that there is no god? There is nothing in the theory to say that god couldn’t have used evolution to create life on this planet.

Evolution challenges fundamental Creationism. That be you…not me…

to go beyond what your five senses tell you, then God forbid that I or anyone else should attempt to derail you. IOW, you do your thing and we'll do ours. Sounds fair to me.

Kazudy

Well then the government should teach both Creation AND evolution in the public schools or neither. That is the only way to keep the Church and State separate.

Bad Bob Loc: Virginia

Yeah, they don't need to learn no science, we know the earth is flat.