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Politics : Sharks in the Septic Tank

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To: Neocon who wrote (10391)	4/4/2001 4:30:01 PM
From: epicure	Read Replies (2) of 82486

Ever since Darwin's theory of evolution the idea that the world has been designed by an intelligent mind (God) has come under increasing attack. Although we can reconcile evolution with the Christian teaching that God created the universe (see The Cosmological Argument) there is no necessary reason to presume the latter exists. Evolution is a self-contained process. The fact that the world displays order does not require us to posit the existence of God but shows us that evolution is an ordered (and structured) process. We merely exist today because the right conditions for our existence came about in the past. However, these conditions were not necessarily created in order for us to exist. For example, evolution did not 'think', "I must evolve an eye" and then set about creating the right conditions for an eye to evolve. The human eye exists because it evolved under this present structure of biological conditions (i.e. these are the conditions in which an eye could evolve, has evolved, and in which humans are genetically 'programmed' to keep it). Thus the existence of order/structure (life) in the universe does not require us to posit an intelligent 'designer mind'. In the end though the design argument flounders in the same way the cosmological argument does. One may chose to say order/structure in the world reveals a creator (but one can't prove it in any way- so it's simply faith) but it does not then lead us to the Creator (who may have 'died'/burnt-out in the act of creating). Furthermore, which Creator (in the many religious options available today) and which process of creating would we chose (Out-of-nothing? Emanation? etc.)?

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