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Politics : View from the Center and Left -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: TimF who wrote (28315)	9/8/2006 8:24:13 PM
From: neolib	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 541273

OK I didn't include genetic drift and gene transfer but "mutation, natural selection, artificial selection, sexual selection, genetic drift and gene transfer" gets pretty clumsy. Even my more limited phrase was longer than ideal. But that is the whole point. The Discovery Institute gets scientists to sign a statement which looks like they oppose evolution, but in reality, any modern scientist could sign it. There is very lively debate amongst evolutionary biologists as to the relative importance of these different mechanisms. Natural selection is only one of quite a number considered important now. However science is about naturalistic as opposed to supernatural causes. Naturalistic causes cover all the modern accepted mechanisms of evolution. That's the usual argument but it isn't an inherent part of ID. Strip it out and ID looks even weaker but you can believe in intelligent design without believing evolution is generally impossible or that any specific claimed evolutionary change is impossible. You are incorrect. ID is predicated on somehow proving that at least one piece somewhere bears the stamp of a designer. But the arguments to date have been useless in finding this. Read up on Specified Complexity, Complex Specified Information, and Irreducible Complexity. This is Dembsky and Behe at work. They have nothing else, and none of these ideas are worth anything either. If God directly decreed each evolutionary change that would be an example of intelligent design as the sole real source of the diversity of species No, this is were you get it wrong. Theistic evolution lets God replace "Random". But you are not left with any tell-tale traces. ID claims there are detectable tell-tale traces which allow us modern humans to understand that there was a deity. There is no confusion between the two. Big difference. In another you are denying the reality of the suffering and death of millions of people. Tim, think about this for a minute. Far more people have died if evolution is true than if you think all humans descended from Adam and Eve only 6-10K years ago. Yes, denying evolution denys FAR more human deaths AND lives than denying the Holocaust. That was not a good example.