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  1. Laughing Coyote

    The validity of intelligent design

    That's true about selection, and Darwin explained it in terms of analogy with the selection by breeders of traits in animals and plants by limiting reproduction to those organisms best expressing desired traits. In nature, he identified it as internal to the development of life itself. What they...
  2. Laughing Coyote

    The validity of intelligent design

    Science also has its untestable premises. For example the claim that all truth is based on sensual experience or empiricism, a position taken by Rene Descartes because at that time rationalism was being used by the church to persecute early scientists and thus became associated with religion...
  3. Laughing Coyote

    The validity of intelligent design

    Though it is not science, I wouldn't say it is exactly nonsense as it has its own purposes and associated logic. It too is product of evolution.;)
  4. Laughing Coyote

    The validity of intelligent design

    Actually it was thought to have been archaea and bacteria. You may think of the laboratory they "set up" and which is continually evolving as being what we call the ecosphere. They may not have had a plan, but they selected possibilities made available with each change, which gave rise to...
  5. Laughing Coyote

    The validity of intelligent design

    Funny thing, neither did Darwin.
  6. Laughing Coyote

    God's Existence

    There are good reasons for belief in supernatural. Nature itself has many powers that we poorly understand but which are essential to the viability of human life. People often recognized powers at work and as means of recognition of them they give supernatural explanations to them: forests...
  7. Laughing Coyote

    God's Existence

    Actually it is a sign of several other things that don't require God. Mutations are relatively rare, the body is pretty good at fixing genetic mistakes when they happen, and environment affects people differently. I'll add that elevated rates of leukemia and brain tumors are found around golf...
  8. Laughing Coyote

    Other Than "The Bible Tells Me So," Your Single Best Argument for Creationism

    I'll add to your reply as well that in fact Charles Darwin did in fact predict just that in a wonderful discussion. It is a couple decades since I read the Origin of Species, so I may be grievously misquoting him, but basically he said that once a breakthrough is made in evolution, there is an...
  9. Laughing Coyote

    Other Than "The Bible Tells Me So," Your Single Best Argument for Creationism

    Devil's advocates are always appreciated. :) And people who are just being honest even if they aren't consciously taking that role even more so.
  10. Laughing Coyote

    Other Than "The Bible Tells Me So," Your Single Best Argument for Creationism

    And how do we know that what we don't know, because we can't detect it, doesn't have impact on reality and is irrelevant? We only can test things to the extent that we have capability to do so. The gradual unfolding of science has been a growing awareness that things we once assumed did not have...
  11. Laughing Coyote

    God's Existence

    Scientists call it the unity preceding the Big Bang from which all things issued and of which we all are a part. The mathematician, physicist, philosopher, theologian, Alfred North Whitehead called it the "primordial existence of God," and he went even further than you by theorizing a unity not...
  12. Laughing Coyote

    God's Existence

    But without Satan could there be God? Without contrasting colors can there be a rainbow? Without sorrow could there be joy? Without tears could there be laughter? Without death can there be life? Without different sounds could there be words? All things in the universe exist due to...
  13. Laughing Coyote

    God's Existence

    Your questions presume a certain preconception of God, as something that ought to intervene to mediate suffering or discomfort of humans, but that no such God intervenes neither proves nor disproves existence of God. It just means that if there is God, it is not one that necessarily intervenes...
  14. Laughing Coyote

    Orthogenesis

    You are right that orthogenesis might make more sense than a theory that life is a "random accident." However, such a theory has nothing to do with the theory of natural selection. The only thing random in natural selection is mutation, which through changes in the chromosome delivers new...
  15. Laughing Coyote

    Other Than "The Bible Tells Me So," Your Single Best Argument for Creationism

    When you say "anyone ..." you are introducing a common fallacy. Intellectual honesty, it seems to me, would be not inferring a particular conception of "before" when you don't know what came before and don't have a means at hand to apprehend what did. Obviously speciation exists whether or not...
  16. Laughing Coyote

    Other Than "The Bible Tells Me So," Your Single Best Argument for Creationism

    Why not a thread that creationists argue for evolution and people who accept evolution argue for creationism. Seems it would be more interesting. .
  17. Laughing Coyote

    Other Than "The Bible Tells Me So," Your Single Best Argument for Creationism

    One of the most common fallacies in science is that if we haven't see it then it doesn't exist. The best indicator of life on other planets probably will be that their atmospheres are not in an equilibrium state, with volatile molecules such as oxygen. Planetary scientists are as yet in the very...
  18. Laughing Coyote

    Can God change his mind? in otherwords do things like christianity and Islam make sense?

    God gets subjectivity through them. But anyway as far as all these religions go, all I see is that they were started around the words that these people supposedly delivered from God, by the survivors and successors, God didn't start them. And how can we be sure that God was the source of their...
  19. Laughing Coyote

    What God/Gods really are.

    What do you mean by believe? When people say they "believe," it implies to me they are excluding other possibilities. But how can you know them if you have decided that they are not of significance? What is peace? What is love? What is happiness and how should we know that we have it? And so...
  20. Laughing Coyote

    What God/Gods really are.

    This picture of science you give is modeled on Ricardian notions that underlay much of what is wrong with science by inserting their unsupported premises. 1. that things can be understood on their own terms: your 'natural state' presents an isolated individual and bases itself on a form of...
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