Religion is science?

[Willum]

As we find out more, we refine our theories, I think this is agreeable.

So let's roll back the clock.
Isn't it reasonable the first scientific theories were that a father-like figure created lightning and made the crops grow?
That guided our fortunes,just like when we were children?

Then as we learn more, we need to explain less with mommy and daddy gods? and more and more with fundamental particles and evolution?

Aren't gods just a psychologically driven scientific model to describe non-psychological phenomenon?

[Guy Threepwood]

[Replying to post 18 by DrNoGods]

And what are those flaws? Are they enough to discredit the theory? Evidently not because it remains the most accepted and most evidenced theory for how life diversified on this planet.

actually according to the latest Gallup poll, belief in Darwinism (evolution with no guidance from God) is about 19% in the U.S.

And that's WITH massive school and media support for it.

No ... that is not what natural selection is. Modifications (mutations) may happen by pure blind chance, but the ones that persist and get transferred through generations are the ones that give the animal a benefit of some kind, however small initially, in survival and reproduction. If enough mutations occur a new species can result, and eventually a new "kind" as the theists like to call them (eg. fish evolving into amphibians, amphibians to reptiles, etc.). The "force" that caused fish to evolve into amphibians was a benefit to being able to survive out of water, and natural selection favored mutations that eventually enabled this via the development of lungs, legs, etc. This is not a "pure blind chance" process, even if the initial mutations are. Why do some cave dwelling fish that once had eyes, lose them after thousands of generations in a dark environment? It is not that some pure blind chance process eliminated them, but that being no longer needed the "cost" to maintain eyes in terms of energy and internal structures was a waste, and they "evolved away." Come back in a few thousand years and humans may not have wisdom teeth, or an appendix, for the same reason.

exactly-from Model Ts to Mustangs, a large array of design improvements were
implemented by design, and the better ones were naturally selected by customers- that's how automobiles evolved

But according to the theory 'pure blind chance' must provide the new model line up to chose from. That is mathematically problematic- because the VAST majority of purely random changes would be deleterious, not advantageous and so entropy quickly takes over

Your fish example illustrates this perfectly- we see fish LOSING eyesight, not gaining it. we see birds LOSING the ability to fly- humans LOSING wisdom teeth or appendixes if that's the plural!( appendicese?)

We all understand how chaos & destruction works. Nobody is debating how you turn a dinosaur into a muddy puddle- you throw a massive asteroid at them.
The far more interesting and difficult question is how you get the dino from the muddy puddle..

But nature can, and does, and this can be confirmed by analysis of the fossil record and via genetic studies. What you call "macro" evolution does not exist. It is a term coined by theists to separate small evolutionary changes (which many of them believe in) and larger evolutionary changes. But there is no such thing ... enough small changes result in a large change, as observed in nature.

It was tempting to extrapolate apples falling from trees into a comprehensive explanation for all physical reality also- but scales matter, things DO work differently depending on them.

I can randomly tweak the parameters in this text box and change colorand sizeof teh text with a reasonable chance at viable results- because the information system specifically supports this capacity

Just as control genes can differ the size and color of a dog

But if you understand why no amount of tweaking of text attributes can ever author a new software program, then you understand, in principle at least, the problem with extrapolating adaptation into evolution, or gravity into a model for universal physics. It is ultimately an insurmountable paradox inherent to hierarchical information systems

enough small changes result in a large change, as observed in nature

which is why this has never been observed

what the fossil record had already shown

Again, you didn't ask for any evidence of "macro" evolution in your original question. That only came up when you didn't like the examples given for evolution being observed in real time. But "macro" evolution is not a thing ... it is an artificial delineation theists have created to, yet again, try to discredit ToE.

As I said, ToE claims a single cell evolved into a human being through natural selection of random mutations, that is the extraordinary claim. A fish going blind or a bacteria remaining a bacteria is not- and nobody is debating that.


As for the fossil record- what has it shown? that the Cambrian explosion was NOT an artifact of an incomplete record as Darwin predicted, but a real event- which is becoming ever more explosive the more we learn.

If I dig down and find similarities, some jumps, gaps, periods of stasis, some dead ends, vestigial features and even some regressions- but a general progression towards increased sophistication over time..

what does this evidence suggest to you about the mechanism at work?

[Guy Threepwood]

[Replying to post 19 by marco]

You are reminding me to take a neutral stance, accepting ignorance on both sides. I've no problem with that. But then you suggest that the contest is between accepting a God explanation and accepting some present theory as though, if the theory is wrong, God is right.

as I said regardless of which is true- .. materialism tends to resist opening whole new cans of scientific worms, where theism tends to say 'bring it on!- we never liked that theory anyway'

i.e. whether nature is ultimately the executor of God's laws, or the multiverse's, investigating the more 'abstruse' and hence often perceived as 'God supporting' theories seems to be the more fruitful strategy!

My position is that we are too young in our science to place correct answers on the table; the answers we supply may well be as imperfect as inventing a giant supporting the Earth or begetting it.

There are other ideas that as yet are too abstruse to be investigated, but they may well be correct. In any case, your assumption that a moment of instantaneous creation, whatever that means, implies the existence of an intelligent agency of that creation is made because you assume that the consequences of lifeless matter forming a soup would not give rise to intelligent life. It seems so; but the probability of things happening need only be a non-zero fraction, however small, for the event to occur, since we are dealing with something close to infinite time, where an infinite number of failures may have occurred.... given time has meaning.

But we don't need to argue in this way, though as a mathematician I see no problem here. We can simply say: "We don"t know." Then take tea with Socrates or hemlock.

I take your point and agree, we don't know- I certainly don't claim any 'undeniable fact' here.

In terms of probability, let me pose this analogy to you:

IF you see HELP spelled out in rocks on a deserted island beach, with no sign of anyone ever being there, do you assume the random action of the waves did it? why not?

[DrNoGods]

[Replying to post 20 by Guy Threepwood]

actually according to the latest Gallup poll, belief in Darwinism (evolution with no guidance from God) is about 19% in the U.S.

And what does that percentage become when you eliminate all the Christians in the U.S. who reject evolution due to their religious beliefs? And what fraction of the scientific community accept evolution, regardless of their religious beliefs? These are far better comparisons than including a large group (in the U.S.) who practice a religion having a core belief that ToE can't be true because it destroys their holy book's story about the creation of man (and plants, animals).

But according to the theory 'pure blind chance' must provide the new model line up to chose from. That is mathematically problematic- because the VAST majority of purely random changes would be deleterious, not advantageous and so entropy quickly takes over

Your fish example illustrates this perfectly- we see fish LOSING eyesight, not gaining it. we see birds LOSING the ability to fly- humans LOSING wisdom teeth or appendixes if that's the plural!( appendicese?)

You're describing the process as if a "new model" is created first, then nature chooses one. That is not how it works. Deleterious mutations more often result in the organism not reproducing, so those mutations work themselves out of the population and future generations don't have them. Beneficial mutations remain and are passed down, because those organisms can reproduce to make that happen. So over long periods of time the deleterious mutations vanish while the beneficial ones remain, and if enough of these occur a new species can be produced. It's not like some creature is produced by nature in one fell swoop, then natural selection chooses one, as in your car analogy.

And what is wrong with organisms losing features? That is perfectly consistent with ToE, which does not say that that things have to become more complex over time. My point was that natural selection works in response to the environment and changes in the environment, and to things which may benefit survival and reproduction. If that means losing features then that is what happens, if it means a different type of eye, or multiple eyes, etc. then those things can happen. You didn't make any specific point with the sentence about LOSING features so I'm not sure why that was included, but losing features is not inconsistent with ToE.

We all understand how chaos & destruction works. Nobody is debating how you turn a dinosaur into a muddy puddle- you throw a massive asteroid at them.
The far more interesting and difficult question is how you get the dino from the muddy puddle.

Change "muddy puddle" to "single celled organism" and we have that answer. It is called ToE. We don't know how the first single-celled organisms came about as that is still an open scientific problem. But that has absolutely nothing to do with ToE which only requires that this first organism arrived by some means, not HOW it arrived.

But if you understand why no amount of tweaking of text attributes can ever author a new software program, then you understand, in principle at least, the problem with extrapolating adaptation into evolution, or gravity into a model for universal physics. It is ultimately an insurmountable paradox inherent to hierarchical information systems.

This is irrelevant to a discussion of ToE, and just another way of phrasing "micro" evolution (adaptation) vs. "macro evolution" (what you are apparently call evolution). And the example given of gravity vs. universal physics doesn't describe the situation. Science didn't just stop at Newton's gravity and accept that as a done deal, with a requirement that all of physics had to be explained by it in some way. Micro and Macro evolution are artificial inventions of the anti-ToE crowd and don't exist. There is no extrapolation needed for, as you put it, adaptation vs. evolution. It should be obvious that with enough small changes, piled onto each other over a long period of time, a much larger change can result. At what point you decide to call it a new creature is a matter of classification. You seem to be putting forth the standard, textbook anti-ToE position that small evolutionary change is OK because it doesn't violate religious dogma, while the accumulation of such changes to the point where a new creature is produced can't happen because it does violate religious dogma. That appears to be the main reason for opposition to ToE by theists, who only complain about the components that are at odds with their religious beliefs and OK with anything that isn't, even if they are ultimately the same thing (ie. "micro" vs. "macro" evolution).

which is why this has never been observed

But is has been observed, repeatedly. Simply stating that it hasn't doesn't change the facts.

As I said, ToE claims a single cell evolved into a human being through natural selection of random mutations, that is the extraordinary claim. A fish going blind or a bacteria remaining a bacteria is not- and nobody is debating that.

Why is this an extraordinary claim? If you go back just a measly 10 million years ago there were no humans on this planet. Go back another ~1 billion years and there were the first multicellular sponges or similar creatures, and before that only single-celled organisms. And we can see in the fossil record and geologic column how these developed over time, although fossilization is rare and there is no 100% complete record. But there is enough to tell the basic story, and that is what ToE does. Single celled organisms evolved into simple, multicellular organisms, who evolved eventually into primates, the great apes, and humans (and humans aren't the "end" of the chain ... just the creature that most theists have a problem with). Makes perfect sense and is consistent with observation and evidence. Nothing extraordinary about it.

If I dig down and find similarities, some jumps, gaps, periods of stasis, some dead ends, vestigial features and even some regressions- but a general progression towards increased sophistication over time..

what does this evidence suggest to you about the mechanism at work?

Perfectly consistent with ToE. No one believes today that it was some perfectly smooth, uninterrupted process with continuous and predictable change over time, without gaps or imperfections. Every year we find more fossils, and more pieces to the puzzle (eg. the recent Homo nedeli find), and these new finds always support the basic ToE whether in the Homo line, or elsewhere. The evidence in support of ToE just continues to support it year after year, and it does not go in the other direction. Until that changes, ToE is the best and most consistent explanation we have. Certainly far more consistent and believable than that some imaginary creature of some sort was responsible.

[Guy Threepwood]

[Replying to post 22 by DrNoGods]

And what does that percentage become when you eliminate all the Christians in the U.S. who reject evolution due to their religious beliefs? And what fraction of the scientific community accept evolution, regardless of their religious beliefs? These are far better comparisons than including a large group (in the U.S.) who practice a religion having a core belief that ToE can't be true because it destroys their holy book's story about the creation of man (and plants, animals).

And as above, what does the percentage become when you eliminate all the school curriculum and pop-science media declaring Darwinism as 'unquestionable'? or atheists that as Dawkins puts it find Darwinism intellectually gratifying?

to be very very generous, I'd call that a wash!

You're describing the process as if a "new model" is created first, then nature chooses one. That is not how it works. Deleterious mutations more often result in the organism not reproducing, so those mutations work themselves out of the population and future generations don't have them. Beneficial mutations remain and are passed down, because those organisms can reproduce to make that happen. So over long periods of time the deleterious mutations vanish while the beneficial ones remain, and if enough of these occur a new species can be produced. It's not like some creature is produced by nature in one fell swoop, then natural selection chooses one, as in your car analogy.

Likewise a random error in the blueprints for an automobile, which rendered the car useless, would never make the market. And as we also agree, a significantly superior design occurring by one round of errors... is absurdly improbable.

So that leaves us with the slightly advantageous and slightly deleterious errors. Again the deleterious VASTLY outnumber the advantageous (if actually truly random). The only mechanism which filters out the deleterious ones in ToE is called anthropomorphism, it only exists in thought experiments - nature has no ability to discern the future potential pay off of an insignificant advantage- no ability to retain it over any others.

And what is wrong with organisms losing features? That is perfectly consistent with ToE, which does not say that that things have to become more complex over time. My point was that natural selection works in response to the environment and changes in the environment, and to things which may benefit survival and reproduction. If that means losing features then that is what happens, if it means a different type of eye, or multiple eyes, etc. then those things can happen. You didn't make any specific point with the sentence about LOSING features so I'm not sure why that was included, but losing features is not inconsistent with ToE.

if, as ToE posits, a single cell evolved into a human being through random mutations, then yes, it absolutely does demand that things 'became more complex over time' by this process. And as above, creating new sophisticated emergent properties and systems... through purely random mistakes... is a far trickier question than 'how does random chaos destroy stuff?' Nobody debates the latter because it is an unambiguous fact of life. aka s*** happens..

This is irrelevant to a discussion of ToE, ).

Perhaps in the 19th century it was, but in the 21st? oh- it's relevant all right!

Bill Gates — 'DNA is like a computer program but far, far more advanced than any software ever created.'

Richard Dawkins:"The machine code of the genes is uncannily computer-like. Apart from differences in jargon, the pages of a molecular biology journal might be interchanged with those of a computer engineering journal."

^ you may have more insight than either of these guys, but I agree with them entirely here. Mathematical algorithms are the closest thing we have to an objective measure of anything. And everything ultimately boils down to information and information systems. DNA operates as a digital code just like this software, albeit a quaternary v binary system, though it also uses a binary code in parity bit error checking- which is very clever. In the information age, many of the Victorian age Darwinian assumptions are already long outdated.

If I dig down and find similarities, some jumps, gaps, periods of stasis, some dead ends, vestigial features and even some regressions- but a general progression towards increased sophistication over time..

what does this evidence suggest to you about the mechanism at work?


Perfectly consistent with ToE. No one believes today that it was some perfectly smooth, uninterrupted process with continuous and predictable change over time, without gaps or imperfections. Every year we find more fossils, and more pieces to the puzzle (eg. the recent Homo nedeli find), and these new finds always support the basic ToE whether in the Homo line, or elsewhere. The evidence in support of ToE just continues to support it year after year, and it does not go in the other direction. Until that changes, ToE is the best and most consistent explanation we have. Certainly far more consistent and believable than that some imaginary creature of some sort was responsible.

I was taking about excavating an automobile salvage yard. i.e. nothing in this pattern says anything about accidental design changes whatsoever, they are all also perfectly consistent with natural selection operating on intelligent designs. In fact thats the only mechanism proven to produce this pattern.

Not to say blind luck is entirely impossible, but it's not looking too promising I submit to you..

[DrNoGods]

[Replying to post 23 by Guy Threepwood]

And as above, what does the percentage become when you eliminate all the school curriculum and pop-science media declaring Darwinism as 'unquestionable'? or atheists that as Dawkins puts it find Darwinism intellectually gratifying?

It really doesn't matter what percentage of people in various groups accept ToE and what percentage don't. This has no relevance to whether or not the theory is valid. That is determined by the evidence that supports it vs. the evidence against it, and nothing else. Opinions don't matter ... yours or mine. So when it comes to evidence in support of ToE vs. evidence against it, it is no contest. No one has yet falsified the theory by showing even one instance of a failure, which is all it would take. No one has ever showed that what you call "macro" evolution does not occur as the ToE predicts. And there are literally many tens of thousands of published science papers covering all aspects of ToE, including the refinements over the decades as new fossils are found, new genetics results obtained, etc. If you want to write off all of ToE-related science and declare it invalid solely because it is at odds with certain religious beliefs, that is not a reasonable position to take.

nature has no ability to discern the future potential pay off of an insignificant advantage- no ability to retain it over any others.

Nature doesn't need to discern the future potential pay off. Natural selection does this by the very nature of how it works. If a mutation allows an insect to better evade predators, or better catch prey, this advantage will allow it to be more successful in surviving and reproducing, and passing on the beneficial mutation to its offspring. There is no need or reason for nature to "know" that this mutation will happen to be beneficial. And what does anthropomorphism have to do with ToE? From Wikipedia:

Anthropomorphism is the attribution of human traits, emotions, or intentions to non-human entities.[1] It is considered to be an innate tendency of human psychology.[2]

I don't see how this "filters out deleterious errors", or has anything at all to do with ToE.

if, as ToE posits, a single cell evolved into a human being through random mutations, then yes, it absolutely does demand that things 'became more complex over time' by this process.

No it doesn't. Obviously a human being is far more complex than a single-celled organism, but between these two are billions of other organisms over about 4 billion years showing all degrees of complexity, and transitions to both more complex and less complex along the way. There is nothing inherent in ToE that demands that complexity must increase over time. Daphnia (a water flea) has about 31,000 genes compared to a human's ~23,000. And there are plants with a genome 40x larger than the human genome. Evolution is not a one way street in terms of complexity over time.

I was taking about excavating an automobile salvage yard. i.e. nothing in this pattern says anything about accidental design changes whatsoever, they are all also perfectly consistent with natural selection operating on intelligent designs. In fact thats the only mechanism proven to produce this pattern.

What "pattern" are you referring to here? I see no earlier reference to "patterns" so have no idea what this comment is about or how it relates to anything being discussed. I hope you aren't referring to the old "tornado in a junkyard producing a 747", or any of those sorts of nonsense analogies. So-called "intelligent design" only works if there is an intelligent "thing" behind it, and no such thing has ever been shown to exist, or (probably more importantly) is needed to explain nature, although many thousands of versions of gods have been invented by humans over the millennia. They all appear to be pure inventions of the human imagination.

[Guy Threepwood]

[Replying to post 24 by DrNoGods]

the huge majority of the scientific community accept this to be the case

It really doesn't matter what percentage of people in various groups accept ToE and what percentage don't

I agree with your revised statement regarding various opinions

No one has yet falsified the theory by showing even one instance of a failure,

Piltdown man

If a mutation allows an insect to better evade predators, or better catch prey, this advantage will allow it to be more successful in surviving and reproducing, and passing on the beneficial mutation to its offspring. There is no need or reason for nature to "know" that this mutation will happen to be beneficial. And what does anthropomorphism have to do with ToE? From Wikipedia:

Anthropomorphism is the attribution of human traits, emotions, or intentions to non-human entities.[1] It is considered to be an innate tendency of human psychology.[2]

It's a good question

We already established that significant advantageous and deleterious mutations are set aside. The former is too improbable and the latter does not survive to reproductive age.

That leaves us with insignificant advantages and disadvantages:

When we empty our pockets at the end of the day- we discard the candy wrappers and retain the loose change, not because there is any immediate significant advantage - but entirely because of an anticipated, accumulated consequence. The change will eventually add up to some useful cash, and the wrappers would end up shredded in the washer.

Now remove the benefit of anticipation, and we would more likely throw away the heavy uncomfortable coins, and ignore the wrappers that are causing no immediate problem.

Two opposite results depending on whether or not anticipation is a factor.

The problem is that everything we do is in anticipation of future consequences, so it is extremely difficult, impossible I would say, to remove this anthropomorphic bias entirely from our thought experiments.

But it can be done in cold hard algorithms, which is why they utterly fail to demonstrate the efficacy of natural selection operating on random mutations, with our creative capacity and anticipation of potential benefits removed; entropy reigns- we see devolution- as in fish going blind, birds losing flight, light moths becoming extinct and leaving only dark moths. Leaving us with the opposite phenomena still unexplained.

I was taking about excavating an automobile salvage yard. i.e. nothing in this pattern says anything about accidental design changes whatsoever, they are all also perfectly consistent with natural selection operating on intelligent designs. In fact thats the only mechanism proven to produce this pattern.


What "pattern" are you referring to here?

The pattern you identified as that of the fossil record

shared traits, sudden appearances, gaps, jumps, periods of stasis, vestigial features, some regressions, dead ends, but a general progression towards increased complexity over time.

we know for sure this pattern is produce by natural selection (a given) working on intelligent designs.

Whether it can also be produced working on blind chance? it's an interesting hypothetical question, but mathematically far more problematic, certainly not scientifically verified at this point- far less being a ' default explanation'

[DrNoGods]

[Replying to post 25 by Guy Threepwood]

Piltdown man

That is your example of a falsification of ToE? Piltdown man was a hoax and outed as such. Try again.

We already established that significant advantageous and deleterious mutations are set aside. The former is too improbable and the latter does not survive to reproductive age.

Another fail I'm afraid. Significant mutations of either type can't be "set aside" and brushed off as too improbable. A mutation can have a signficant beneficial effect and still be just a minor substitution. Several known major human diseases are caused by just one base substitution or deletion (point mutations):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Point_mutation

Are these so improbable they can be ignored? The rest of the comments on candy wrappers and loose change relates to humans and how we think, which has nothing to do with how natural selection works. There is no analogy between how humans think about things and how ToE works. "Devolution" as you call it (losing features or characteristics) is perfectly compatible with, and predicted by, ToE, and is not "unexplained." If sight is a useless function for a dark cave dwelling fish, it is highly inefficient to expend the energy to maintain eyes and they very slowly disappear over generations as a result.

we know for sure this pattern is produce by natural selection (a given) working on intelligent designs.

The "intelligent designs" hypothesis is far less interesting as it has no supporting evidence, unlike ToE. It is proposed by theists in order to maintain their belief that a god of some sort (depending on one's religion of course) is responsible for creation and the operation of the universe, etc. The problem with this idea, from a scientific perspective, is that it simply has never been shown to have any validity via observation and experiment, so has never advanced to the status of a formal scientific theory as the ToE clearly has. It only lives in the minds of theists, and is supported only by faith.

[Guy Threepwood]

[Replying to post 26 by DrNoGods]

That is your example of a falsification of ToE? Piltdown man was a hoax and outed as such. Try again.

It's just one of many instances of failure, when a theory drives the 'evidence' rather than the other way around- that's a major failure.

Another is the Cambrian explosion, explicitly predicted to be an artifact of an incomplete record, to be filled in and smoothed out as more fossils were discovered. The exact opposite happened

Another fail I'm afraid. Significant mutations of either type can't be "set aside" and brushed off as too improbable. A mutation can have a signficant beneficial effect and still be just a minor substitution. Several known major human diseases are caused by just one base substitution or deletion (point mutations):

you misunderstood, I'm merely stating what was already agreed- very deleterious mutations cause death and are not passed on. very beneficial (sprouting functional wings in one go) is too improbable- we are left with those in the middle ground- where small changes must accrue over time- that's hardly controversial

Are these so improbable they can be ignored? The rest of the comments on candy wrappers and loose change relates to humans and how we think, which has nothing to do with how natural selection works. There is no analogy between how humans think about things and how ToE works.

my point exactly, you cannot accurately replicate the algorithm in your imagination, because it is hard wired to anticipate future consequences, ToE cannot anticipate- every advantage must be immediately significant to be selected over others- and there's the catch 22: significant benefits are extremely difficult to come by one on generation- disadvantages would be overwhelmingly more common.

"Devolution" as you call it (losing features or characteristics) is perfectly compatible with, and predicted by, ToE, and is not "unexplained." If sight is a useless function for a dark cave dwelling fish, it is highly inefficient to expend the energy to maintain eyes and they very slowly disappear over generations as a result.

Yes, again we agree, ToE explains devolution perfectly- take any set of instructions and degrade them with random errors, and they will lose functionality- fish lose sight, birds lose flight, etc- and that's the sort of change we can actually observe.

So what remains unexplained, unobserved, is how they acquired them in the first place. The more we learn, the more it's looking like random errors are not responsible for these acquisitions as once believed

David Raup, renowned paleontologist & Curator of the Chicago Field Museum, was one of the first to highlight this observation- the causes of change we can identify in the fossil record occurred mainly through destruction/extinction events, not the gradual appearance of new adaptations- it is very difficult to identify any cases of that. According to him the record is far less Darwinian than we are led to believe and a lot of fiction had crept into the text books

The "intelligent designs" hypothesis is far less interesting as it has no supporting evidence, unlike ToE. It is proposed by theists in order to maintain their belief that a god of some sort (depending on one's religion of course) is responsible for creation and the operation of the universe, etc. The problem with this idea, from a scientific perspective, is that it simply has never been shown to have any validity via observation and experiment, so has never advanced to the status of a formal scientific theory as the ToE clearly has. It only lives in the minds of theists, and is supported only by faith.

The intelligent design hypothesis is used by archaeologists to distinguish between artifacts and natural objects, or forensic scientists to identify crime v an accident.

If you dig up the Rosetta stone and conclude intelligent design, are you using a theistic/ faith based method to determine this?- no you simply identifying the fingerprints of intelligent design.

Remember that being perceived to be a 'theistic argument' is exactly what held the BB back for so many decades- we should follow the evidence where it leads, not where the preferred implications lie. Don't you agree?

[WPG12]

[Replying to post 1 by Willum]

Sceince is not religion and religion is not science.

Sceince is the study of the physical, or this carnal world.

Religion could be considered the study of the spiritual world.

Too often, carnally minded Christian's try to use the Bible as a textbook, for science, or history. It's not, and using it to explain a physical creation destroys everything about the creation it talks about.

Science and religion may parallel in the process by which they operate, but they do not cross.

[Guy Threepwood]

[Replying to post 1 by Willum]

Sceince is not religion and religion is not science.

Sceince is the study of the physical, or this carnal world.

Religion could be considered the study of the spiritual world.

Too often, carnally minded Christian's try to use the Bible as a textbook, for science, or history. It's not, and using it to explain a physical creation destroys everything about the creation it talks about.

Science and religion may parallel in the process by which they operate, but they do not cross.

Same goes for science v athiesm. Especially when it comes to 'creation'- the very notion was dismissed and mocked by athiests as 'religious pseudoscience' and 'Big Bang' before it became proven beyond most reasonable doubt.

Science is the method of learning about creation. Theism and atheism are two possible conclusions about the ultimate nature of creation, right?- most of us put our money on the former, but a little competition is a good thing!

'Nature is the executor of God's laws' Galileo