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Pastimes : Observations and Collectables -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: TimF who wrote (283)	9/16/2006 3:44:21 PM
From: Brumar89	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 17109

The reading I have done reveals to me that most evolutionary scientists claim as a matter of fact that human intelligence/sentience and morality/ethics, etc. all originated the same way different blood types, hairless bodies, and everything else. Perhaps MOST do think that way, but even ALL wouldn't be enough to show that belief in God and evolution are incompatible. My main relevant point is that they are compatible. Secondly I would say it certainly not ALL or even ALMOST ALL, although MOST seems likely. I suppose its a matter of how one defines evolution. This reminds me of the position of Francis Collins. He is a Christian who "believes in evolution" and opposes ID. Yet he also says elements of the human psyche could not have been produced by evolution (very close to ID - just non-biological) and accepts the anthropic principle (also pretty close to ID - again non-biological) and regards the big bang as an act of divine creation. I don't see the point of opposing ID if one is willing to accept divine origin of elements of the human psyche - one is just ruling out divine origin of biological structures. I see no reason to rule it out. The difference in complexity from a complex amino acid to the simplest prion, virus, or viroid is less than the difference in complexity between a pile of sand and an Opteron. Are prions, viruses, viroids even living things? Even if one were to claim they are, they're parasitical on life - and therefore things which couldn't live in an environment without living things? If so, they aren't a step toward life and are irrelevant to the issue of the origin of life. There's also a big chicken/egg problem - no nucleic acids could exist w/o a cell, no cell could come into existence w/o nucleic acid encoded to produce it. I don't think either "no nucleic acids could exist w/o a cell or no cell could come in to existence w/o nucleic acid" is reasonable as a default assumption. The former is esp. unreasonable. The first part would have been more reasonable if I'd said "no nucleic acids could come into existence in the absence of living cells", I think. Stated that way I think its reasonable. Again your getting the opinions of some supporters mixed up with the idea itself. The idea is either that no part has to be purposeful, or at most that no part is purposeful. I think you would get a majority of "anti-ID" people to except the later, and the former would probably include all "anti-ID people" (by definition). Some of them may go further and say that purposefulness is actually impossible, but if they say that they aren't making a scientific statement anymore. They are instead dabbling in meta-physics, religion, or pseudo science. Ideas are hard to separate from the people who hold them, and effectively create the ideas. I think I understand how almost all anti-ID folks think. I recognize there is a small minority that jump through intellectual hoops to believe in both 1) evolution driven by random purposeless mutation and in 2) a divine purpose for our existence. " But "not science" doesn't mean "proved wrong" or "can be assumed to be wrong." " Hardly anyone thinks that. What do you mean? I'm merely recognizing that when people make a point of saying that something is "not science" or "not scientific" they are also meaning that it is "not true". That is almost always the case.