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To: J. C. Dithers who wrote (4731)	3/25/2002 3:35:02 PM
From: Lane3	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 21057

If a person gets this far, then it is reasonable for them to search through the belief systems that constitute "religion," on the possibility that one or more of them are based on some revelations from a creator. You are describing a process, a perfectly natural process, for getting to where you are. I can understand how you get there. What you describe is not the only path, though. Nor can it be determined to be the true path. When it snowballs to the point where someone would rather die than eat pork, it's squirrelly. When it is taken so seriously that people would let children die rather than see them without head scarves, it's downright dangerous.

To: J. C. Dithers who wrote (4731)	3/25/2002 5:44:47 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 21057

Or, in the case of the "laws" of our existence, such as the conservation of matter and energy, one can logically deduce an immortality of the elements of our existence that seems more than a matter of chance. If matter and energy cannot (by law) be created or destroyed, but only transformed, one could rationally infer that the process we know as "death" does not necessarily, or even logically, mean the end of our existence. But death doesn't create or destroy matter/energy. It just transforms the matter from a living state to a non-living one. Tim

To: J. C. Dithers who wrote (4731)	3/26/2002 7:45:18 AM
From: thames_sider	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 21057

Evolution can be seen... as following some immutable course toward continual betterment. Fascinating idea. So, what comes after us - assuming, of course, that we don't render the world sterile? You're not proposing, I take it, that we are the peak, the exemplar, the apotheosis of all the designs of this ID? What do you believe the design might be? Is the end product known by the ID, or did it just light the touchpaper and stand back? Or is it tweaking and investigating and pruning as life goes on? - these questions aren't to get at you, but I've never discovered someone who argues rationally for ID so I'm curious to have the logic and rational underpinnings explained... BTW, is complex necessarily better? If matter and energy cannot (by law) be created or destroyed, but only transformed, one could rationally infer that the process we know as "death" does not necessarily, or even logically, mean the end of our existence. I think this is based upon a misapprehension, or possibly a misapplied simile. Matter is not destroyed per se (well, arguably in black holes, depending on how they are viewed). But although we're made up of stardust - quite literally: everything more complex than hydrogen is the remains of burnt-out stars - this does not mean that the stars still exist as stars. The atoms now in your body will continue to exist, probably until proton decay in ~10^71 years (or so)... this does not IMO mean that 'you' exist, any more than the shed skin and other bodily waste you have produced over the years is 'you'. I don't see how the conservation of mass-energy suggests that some non-material part of us exists, has non-corporeal existence, or continues such existence after our physical bodies die, decay and are broken down and the very atoms rearranged and incorporated into other living creatures. I do think the latter a more interesting supposition, if that's any consolation...? <edit> We all know where I stand on the likelihood, logic and rationality of ancient 'revelations from a creator'... but why would an ID creator not make more revelations now, to this more logical and rational world...?