Can any creationist tell me ...

[Guy Threepwood]

Are you being serious?

are you? a sheet of light sensitive cells does you no good at all

 

[Faithofchristian]

Science doesn't acknowledge religion any more than it does any other non-scientific pursuit. Scientists also don't care whether you or I believe their conclusions, nor whether their conclusions contradict any beliefs generated by other methods.

Nor need you believe the scientists to enjoy and benefit from their discoveries, including evolution.



Scientists don't really care what creationists think or where their ideas come from. Those scientists that do, such as Sam Harris, Lawrence Krauss and Richard Dawkins, are not doing science when they speak out.



Much of the world is fairly uneducated and not well trained in evaluating evidence critically. As their level of education goes up, especially scientific education, belief in creationism falls and belief in evolution climbs:

The following is a little dated - the number of god-believers in the US has fallen below 90% to about 75% now (source), but the trend is undoubtedly similar:

"In the US, 90% of the population believes in a personal God that interacts with them in reality. As soon as we look at the percentages of those who graduated college the number drops to 60%. We then look at scientists, most of whom have masters or doctorate degree's and the number drops more - down to 40%. With the last group - the "elite" scientists such as heads of research projects, department heads - the number drops all the way down to a mere 7%. Isn't it obvious that the belief in that which cannot be proven is most prevalent with the less educated?" - anon



It is sufficient to produce litters or broods of the same number for gene pools to evolve.



Neither of those is the path evolution took.

Also, any argument that claims that the complexity observed in nature could not exist undesigned and uncreated has to explain how an entity that would be orders of magnitude more complex exists undesigned and uncreated

Also, your (implied) argument seems to be that the natural process of an eye or a cell evolving seems to complex to you to have occurred, therefore it is impossible, and that therefore, there must be an intelligent creator. That's not an argument with any persuasive power since its logically fallacious. The truth of an idea doesn't depend on one understanding how it can be true. I can't conceive of how Google searches so many files so quickly, but I'm not going to say that for that reason, it cannot, and that therefore divine intervention is required. I also can't conceive of a natural barrier to the speed of light, but so what?

The point is that both arguments from complexity, which are special pleading fallacies, and arguments from incredulity, are simply not good arguments against the science or for any religious doctrine.

All you haved said, bears no proof, about how things came to be 4.5 Billion years ago.
There were no one there to give evidence to the fact how those things started.

Unless you actually have someone that was actually there 4.5 Billion years ago, that can give us the proof.

Otherwise it's just someone's speculation and assumption.and that is all you have.

 

[Guy Threepwood]

Also, any argument that claims that the complexity observed in nature could not exist undesigned and uncreated has to explain how an entity that would be orders of magnitude more complex exists undesigned and uncreated

Also, your (implied) argument seems to be that the natural process of an eye or a cell evolving seems to complex to you to have occurred, therefore it is impossible, and that therefore, there must be an intelligent creator. That's not an argument with any persuasive power since its logically fallacious. The truth of an idea doesn't depend on one understanding how it can be true. I can't conceive of how Google searches so many files so quickly, but I'm not going to say that for that reason, it cannot, and that therefore divine intervention is required. I also can't conceive of a natural barrier to the speed of light, but so what?

The point is that both arguments from complexity, which are special pleading fallacies, and arguments from incredulity, are simply not good arguments against the science or for any religious doctrine.

so which is it? does it depend on how much you like the theory?


Again if a gambler plays 4 royal flushes in a row, do you assume luck? it's not impossible, but you correctly use your argument from incredulity to deduce that he probably cheated- unless you can utterly rule that out, which you can't

So too with a chance mutation spontaneously creating a functional eye in an individual, it's not entirely impossible, but chance has such a poor power of explanation, that you'd just have to utterly rule out any better explanation, which we can't-

 

[blü 2]

Religion most definitely works from evidence.
Take for instance the book of Isaiah on the bible, Now take what the archaeologist found in the cave at the dead Sea, which are called the Dead Sea Scrolls.

Isaiah is an ancient document from a particular time in Jewish history, and it expresses the beliefs and politics of its author or authors. If it should be shown to contain accurate facts of history, that's incidental to its purpose. Mainly it's another set of human opinions, something you said above that you disliked.

And what the dinosaurs bones which they haved dated to be Millions of years old.

Which the bible confirm's.

The ancient world had no concept of the age of the earth, its eons, evolution, no insight into fossils. The bible has no concept of dinosaurs.

You only look at the bible as only stories.

And folk-history, some of which may be accurate, moral tales, just-so stories, poetry, wisdom sayings, law, religion, politics and exhortation.

But like every ancient document, it has only the science of its time and place. It has a flat earth at the center of a rotating universe. It has no concept of earth as a rotating sphere. It has no concept of genetics, modern medicine, brain physiology, electricity, the periodic table, atomic and quantum theory, the Big Bang ...

But if stories are your thing, that's fine. What's true in reality isn't the question for everyone's taste.

 

[scott777]

I understand, and the vast vast majority of those mutations spread would be not (beneficial), far more likely to be deleterious - so natural selection still works, the fittest are selected, but would on balance, be less fit than the preceding generation.

If you photocopied an office memo from successive generations rather than a master copy, same thing right?; random errors are introduced and exacerbated in each generation. Beneficial errors are not impossible no, and would certainly be selected for, they are just far far less common than significantly deleterious errors. And so the trend is one that inevitably succumbs to entropy; decline, decay, disorder, decomposition, collapse, even while the 'best' (least corrupted) of each generation is being naturally selected at all times.

This is not what we see in life, which far better reflects the model of a master copy for each plan, which like any good design, comes equipped with a limited capacity for adaptation to variations in requirements or 'environment'

i.e. adaptation in both cases functions very well as a design feature, very poorly as a design mechanism




If we take Dawkins literally yes, all you need is a 'flat sheet of light sensitive cells' and the evolution of the eye is off and running

Point being; this does nothing to help a blind 'fish' avoid anything.

In order to have a practical sensitivity to light, each of these cells needs to have it's response; chemical / electrical, gathered and combined, sent via an optic nerve of some kind, to where it can be processed/ used to trigger a beneficial physical response- which in one of it's simplest forms, would be to at least reverse the direction of rotation on a bacterial flagellar motor

So as we began, all this, even the simplest functional eye, is an absurdly improbable thing to appear spontaneously in an individual by random mutation. And anything less offers no advantage to be selected for. This is a problem that has become far trickier the more we learn scientifically.

While Dawkins retreats in the opposite direction, the quaint, superficial, Victorian model of reality Darwinism was conceived in, where cells are amorphous blobs of mucus, which just naturally seem to take care of the tricky details somehow, so we can just skip over all that

Not quite, because you also need to think about other factors, such as environment which keeps changing. There will be periods when the environment favours a species and it thrives, even if the mutations are deleterious. Then when the environment change again to a more demanding one, those deleterious genes make a difference and the environment favours the minority with the beneficial mutations, so the proportions change within the local population.

Dawkins was not suggesting a patch of cells alone would help a blind fish. It was a demonstration that eyes could have evolved from things that were initially light sensitive patches connected to a nervous system, then through stages, prior to becoming eyes. You don’t know that brains or optical nerves are required in earlier stages. Animals may only need those things because eyes are complex and have to send a lot of complex data. You don’t need to have an animal with ‘half’ and eye.

 

[blü 2]

Who was more likely to believe in Piltdown man, canals on Mars, phrenology, steady state, string theory, big crunch...

It wasn't religion that corrected all these examples. Religion just sat there waiting to be told. The corrections came from science itself. Science is constantly rechecking, reexamining, searching for and setting out to correct errors. Religion can't do that because religion doesn't work with facts, only stories.

The track record of scientists isn't exactly stellar on the big questions

Got any important examples from this century? Especially examples that religion corrected?

Found Eden yet? How about evidence ─ any credible and persuasive evidence at all ─ for the Flood? Or better yet, special creation?

Got a clincher for whether there was an historical Jesus or not?

 

[Darkstorn]

Got any important examples from this century? Especially examples that religion corrected?

I find it somewhat funny that any attempts by him to discredit science this way just brings attention to the fact that if we're talking about "track records," the other camp does indeed perform even worse.

Way to pull attention to yourself, and your group mind's thoughts, Guy Threepwood.

 

[Guy Threepwood]

Not quite, because you also need to think about other factors, such as environment which keeps changing. There will be periods when the environment favours a species and it thrives, even if the mutations are deleterious. Then when the environment change again to a more demanding one, those deleterious genes make a difference and the environment favours the minority with the beneficial mutations, so the proportions change within the local population.

To be clear though, the vast vast majority of 'random' mutations are never going to be beneficial in any environment, they are going to make something work less well- if not destroy it altogether,. There are just so many more ways to make a design worse than better- there is no way around that

But this is where we start to get into adaptation v evolution. A limited, supported capacity for adaptation is a perfectly logical, often essential feature of almost any reasonably sophisticated design you can think of.

This software allows us to alter the size, shape, color of text- (just as animals can vary their size shape and color) we could even tweak these parameters using random values, and allow the best to be naturally selected- a large percentage of these combinations will be viable, because the strict limitations on adaptation are specifically designed to keep it that way.. But you understand why tweaking these parameters is not a mechanism to write the very software which supports that very capacity. That's the paradox we run into trying to extrapolate micro adaptation into macro evolution, and the identical paradox we ran into trying to extrapolate classical physics to a comprehensive explanation for all physics

Dawkins was not suggesting a patch of cells alone would help a blind fish. It was a demonstration that eyes could have evolved from things that were initially light sensitive patches connected to a nervous system, then through stages, prior to becoming eyes. You don’t know that brains or optical nerves are required in earlier stages. Animals may only need those things because eyes are complex and have to send a lot of complex data. You don’t need to have an animal with ‘half’ and eye.

evolved 'initially' from light sensitive patches, producing a signal which is gathered and connected to a nervous system which triggers an advantageous response? That's not prior to being an eye, it's a fully functional fully integrated eye- all being granted 'initially' in one fell swoop.
And not just in one miraculous spontaneous 'random' mutation- , but many times, independently in different species


The premise was that Dawkins 'perfectly' explained the evolution of the eye in that vid..

Then I can make one perfectly 'explaining' how to build a computer, you just make a box and stick an array of buttons on it, don't worry too much about what they're connected to, it's not important

 

[SkepticThinker]

are you? a sheet of light sensitive cells does you no good at all

Says you.

https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/thoughtomics/animal-vision-evolved-700-million-years-ago/

 

[scott777]

To be clear though, the vast vast majority of 'random' mutations are never going to be beneficial in any environment, they are going to make something work less well- if not destroy it altogether,. There are just so many more ways to make a design worse than better- there is no way around that

But this is where we start to get into adaptation v evolution. A limited, supported capacity for adaptation is a perfectly logical, often essential feature of almost any reasonably sophisticated design you can think of.

This software allows us to alter the size, shape, color of text- (just as animals can vary their size shape and color) we could even tweak these parameters using random values, and allow the best to be naturally selected- a large percentage of these combinations will be viable, because the strict limitations on adaptation are specifically designed to keep it that way.. But you understand why tweaking these parameters is not a mechanism to write the very software which supports that very capacity. That's the paradox we run into trying to extrapolate micro adaptation into macro evolution, and the identical paradox we ran into trying to extrapolate classical physics to a comprehensive explanation for all physics




evolved 'initially' from light sensitive patches, producing a signal which is gathered and connected to a nervous system which triggers an advantageous response? That's not prior to being an eye, it's a fully functional fully integrated eye- all being granted 'initially' in one fell swoop.
And not just in one miraculous spontaneous 'random' mutation- , but many times, independently in different species


The premise was that Dawkins 'perfectly' explained the evolution of the eye in that vid..

Then I can make one perfectly 'explaining' how to build a computer, you just make a box and stick an array of buttons on it, don't worry too much about what they're connected to, it's not important

We can certainly agree that the vast majority of 'random' mutations are never going to be beneficial in any environment. But once a large number of ‘neutrally beneficial’ genes have spread during an ‘easy period’, when the environment changes, a small proportion of beneficial ones will spread and the bad ones will diminish, then assuming a long enough period of similar environment, the good genes will dominate. It’s only a matter of time, and time has been sufficient.

You’re missing the point about the eye. Dawkins was simply breaking down the complete eye into stages. Not tiny stages, but stages, demonstrating that you don’t require half an eye.

Consider Box Jellyfish which have twenty ocelli (simple eyes) that do not form images, but detect light and dark. They also display complex, probably visually guided behaviors such as obstacle avoidance and fast directional swimming. They do NOT have brains.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Box_jellyfish#Anatomy

Having light sensitive patches and a nervous system is nothing like having an eye. It has no lens, it has no eyeball, it has no optic nerve, there is not necessarily a brain to interpret the data. But if you insist of breaking down the stages even more, how about this:

Hydras (no not the mythical thing, the Genus) do not have brains as such, nor eyes, but they have simple nervous systems with nerve nets that connect to sensory photoreceptors.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydra_(genus)

So the point here is – if you use your imagination, what creatures may have existed long ago which fill in every single gap and explain every stage of eyes?

 

[Jose Fly]

I find it somewhat funny that any attempts by him to discredit science this way just brings attention to the fact that if we're talking about "track records," the other camp does indeed perform even worse.

Way to pull attention to yourself, and your group mind's thoughts, Guy Threepwood.

Fascinating, isn't it? Creationism hasn't contributed a single thing to our scientific understanding in well over a century, yet creationists act like they have the superior model? The level of delusion and cognitive dissonance is staggering.

 

[It Aint Necessarily So]

Fascinating, isn't it? Creationism hasn't contributed a single thing to our scientific understanding in well over a century, yet creationists act like they have the superior model? The level of delusion and cognitive dissonance is staggering.

I have repeatedly asked why we would throw away a scientific theory that unifies and accounts for mountains of data, included a mechanism, is falsifiable by virtue of predicting what kinds of things can and cannot be found in nature but has never been falsified, and has led to technological advances that have improved the human condition for an idea that can do none of that.

I'd say that the silence speaks loudly.

How about it creationists? Why would we do that?

All you haved said, bears no proof, about how things came to be 4.5 Billion years ago.

Proof is not our standard for believing, nor that of the faith based thinker. And you ignored the comment about how much of your personal history I can assert with confidence even though I wasn't there to see any of it. We know about the history of the earth using the same method: reason applied to evidence.

There were no one there to give evidence to the fact how those things started.

That's just as irrelevant to me just as it is to you. Nobody saw a god create anything, either.

Why do you offer an argument that you would reject yourself? If I told you that nobody was there to witness a god creating the universe, the earth, and the life on it, would you abandon your present position?

Of course not. So why make similar arguments to others?

Who was more likely to believe in Piltdown man, canals on Mars, phrenology, steady state, string theory, big crunch... scientists? or free thinking people?

I don't get your point. The history of science includes exposing frauds and disproving false conjectures. That is among science's many virtues.

The track record of scientists isn't exactly stellar on the big questions

Actually, the track record of science is stellar at every level, which validates the method it uses.

The track record of theologians is what is abysmal. What useful ideas about our world have they ever given us? It's a rhetorical question at this point. I've asked it dozens of times ad never get an answer. The silence is the answer. Intelligent Design's track record is the answer.

How about it creationists? What of value has that world given us? What is the sine qua non of a wrong idea if not that it can't be used for anything?

it's just someone's speculation and assumption.and that is all you have.

No, what we have is the stellar record of science, which has made our lives longer, healthier, safer, easier, more comfortable, and more interesting. Those are pretty good credentials. That's a pretty reliable indicator that the way science proceeds is valid.

a chance mutation spontaneously creating a functional eye in an individual, it's not entirely impossible, but chance has such a poor power of explanation, that you'd just have to utterly rule out any better explanation, which we can't-

Actually, if it's possible, it would be pretty much inevitable given the time that has passed and the number of living organisms that have existed

And there is no better explanation than unguided,naturalistic evolution. A third point that creationists simply refuse to address is that it is illogical to claim that complexity cannot exist undesigned and uncreated, and then propose an entity that would need to be orders of magnitude more complex, also undesigned and uncreated to account for it. That point defeats arguments from complexity.

The premise was that Dawkins 'perfectly' explained the evolution of the eye in that vid..

Dawkins indicated a possible path for the evolution of the eye, one with incremental improvements that could and would likely be selected for.

 

[Guy Threepwood]

The track record of theologians is what is abysmal. What useful ideas about our world have they ever given us? It's a rhetorical question at this point. I've asked it dozens of times ad never get an answer. The silence is the answer. Intelligent Design's track record is the answer.

How about it creationists? What of value has that world given us? What is the sine qua non of a wrong idea if not that it can't be used for anything?

There are some scientists who are/were notable skeptics of atheism, - who also happened to give us the greatest validated scientific discoveries of all time, like the Big Bang & Quantum mechanics, by being open to concepts others were taught to consider religious pseudoscience.

But most 'useful' discoveries don't come from 'academic' scientists at all, Thomas Edison, the Wright Brothers, Bill Gates, were all academic failures- useful real world discoveries generally require working in, and understanding the real world.

 

[Skwim]

Thomas Edison, the Wright Brothers, Bill Gates, were all academic failures-

Guess this would depend on one's definition of "academic failure."

Thomas Edison
In 1854, Edison’s family moved to Port Huron, Michigan, where he attended public school for a total of 12 weeks. A hyperactive child, prone to distraction, he was deemed "difficult" by his teacher. His mother quickly pulled him from school and taught him at home. At age 11, he showed a voracious appetite for knowledge, reading books on a wide range of subjects. In this wide-open curriculum Edison developed a process for self-education and learning independently that would serve him throughout his life.

_________________________________________________​

Orville Wright
By 1884, the family was back in Ohio, where Orville enrolled at Dayton Central High School. Never especially studious, Orville was more interested in hobbies outside the classroom than school, and, thusly, dropped out of high school during his senior year and opened a print shop.

-----------------------------------

Wilbur Wright
Wilbur was a bright and studious child, and excelled in school. His personality was outgoing and robust, and he made plans to attend Yale University after high school. In the winter of 1885-86, an accident changed the course of Wilbur's life. He was badly injured in an ice hockey game, when another player's stick hit him in the face.

Though most of his injuries healed, the incident plunged Wilbur into a depression. He did not receive his high school diploma, canceled plans for college and retreated to his family’s home. Wilbur spent much of this period at home, reading books in his family’s library, and caring for his ailing mother. Susan Koerner Wright died in 1889 of tuberculosis.

__________________________________________________

Bill Gates
Bill was a voracious reader as a child, spending many hours poring over reference books such as the encyclopedia. Around the age of 11 or 12, Bill's parents began to have concerns about his behavior. He was doing well in school, but he seemed bored and withdrawn at times, and his parents worried he might become a loner. Though they were strong believers in public education, when Bill turned 13, they enrolled him at Seattle's exclusive preparatory Lakeside School. He blossomed in nearly all his subjects, excelling in math and science, but also doing very well in drama and English.

While at Lakeside School, a Seattle computer company offered to provide computer time for the students. The Mother's Club used proceeds from the school's rummage sale to purchase a teletype terminal for students to use. Bill Gates became entranced with what a computer could do and spent much of his free time working on the terminal. He wrote a tic-tac-toe program in BASIC computer language that allowed users to play against the computer.

Gates graduated from Lakeside in 1973. He scored 1590 out of 1600 on the college SAT test, a feat of intellectual achievement that for several years he boasted about when introducing himself to new people.

Gates enrolled at Harvard University in the fall of 1973, originally thinking of a career in law. But his freshman year saw him spend more of his time in the computer lab than in class. Gates did not really have a study regimen. Instead, he could get by on a few hours of sleep, cram for a test, and pass with a reasonable grade. Much to his parents' dismay, within two years Gates dropped out of college in 1975 to pursue his business, Microsoft, with partner Paul Allen.
source for all
.
​

 

[Guy Threepwood]

Guess this would depend on one's definition of "academic failure."

Thomas Edison
In 1854, Edison’s family moved to Port Huron, Michigan, where he attended public school for a total of 12 weeks. A hyperactive child, prone to distraction, he was deemed "difficult" by his teacher. His mother quickly pulled him from school and taught him at home. At age 11, he showed a voracious appetite for knowledge, reading books on a wide range of subjects. In this wide-open curriculum Edison developed a process for self-education and learning independently that would serve him throughout his life.

_________________________________________________​

Orville Wright
By 1884, the family was back in Ohio, where Orville enrolled at Dayton Central High School. Never especially studious, Orville was more interested in hobbies outside the classroom than school, and, thusly, dropped out of high school during his senior year and opened a print shop.

-----------------------------------

Wilbur Wright
Wilbur was a bright and studious child, and excelled in school. His personality was outgoing and robust, and he made plans to attend Yale University after high school. In the winter of 1885-86, an accident changed the course of Wilbur's life. He was badly injured in an ice hockey game, when another player's stick hit him in the face.

Though most of his injuries healed, the incident plunged Wilbur into a depression. He did not receive his high school diploma, canceled plans for college and retreated to his family’s home. Wilbur spent much of this period at home, reading books in his family’s library, and caring for his ailing mother. Susan Koerner Wright died in 1889 of tuberculosis.

__________________________________________________

Bill Gates
Bill was a voracious reader as a child, spending many hours poring over reference books such as the encyclopedia. Around the age of 11 or 12, Bill's parents began to have concerns about his behavior. He was doing well in school, but he seemed bored and withdrawn at times, and his parents worried he might become a loner. Though they were strong believers in public education, when Bill turned 13, they enrolled him at Seattle's exclusive preparatory Lakeside School. He blossomed in nearly all his subjects, excelling in math and science, but also doing very well in drama and English.

While at Lakeside School, a Seattle computer company offered to provide computer time for the students. The Mother's Club used proceeds from the school's rummage sale to purchase a teletype terminal for students to use. Bill Gates became entranced with what a computer could do and spent much of his free time working on the terminal. He wrote a tic-tac-toe program in BASIC computer language that allowed users to play against the computer.

Gates graduated from Lakeside in 1973. He scored 1590 out of 1600 on the college SAT test, a feat of intellectual achievement that for several years he boasted about when introducing himself to new people.

Gates enrolled at Harvard University in the fall of 1973, originally thinking of a career in law. But his freshman year saw him spend more of his time in the computer lab than in class. Gates did not really have a study regimen. Instead, he could get by on a few hours of sleep, cram for a test, and pass with a reasonable grade. Much to his parents' dismay, within two years Gates dropped out of college in 1975 to pursue his business, Microsoft, with partner Paul Allen.
source for all
.
​

That's what I mean, the Wrights were high school dropouts, Edison was home schooled, Gates flunked college

They were arguably too smart, curious, ambitious, to ever be models of Academic success, which by definition means immersing yourself in conventional academic wisdom, rather than using your own talents to reach beyond that

 

[Skwim]

That's what I mean, the Wrights were high school dropouts, Edison was home schooled, Gates flunked college

Interesting that being home schooled denotes academic failure. Don't think many people will agree with you.
And as a matter of correction, Gates didn't flunk out of college, he dropped out.

They were arguably too smart, curious, ambitious, to ever be models of Academic success, which by definition means immersing yourself in conventional academic wisdom, rather than using your own talents to reach beyond that

This is indeed arguable, although it doesn't interest me enough to do it.

So, if one doesn't immerse oneself in conventional academic wisdom, whatever that is, for the entire term of their schooling they're not an academic success, but what, an academic failure?

.

 

[Profound Realization]

Fascinating, isn't it? Creationism hasn't contributed a single thing to our scientific understanding in well over a century, yet creationists act like they have the superior model? The level of delusion and cognitive dissonance is staggering.

Actually, Nature/cosmos created everything and still is. So, creationism has contributed the totality of all. Everything has been created since as far back as observed.

Any scientific understanding was created via intelligence. The creationist(s) of said scientific model, was and are being designed intelligently. I doubt that they are superior to creation, or created their own existence, or created the stuff that they use out of stuff that they created.
Also, are you claiming superior intelligence of one model while simultaneously disbelieving in no superior intelligence?

Correct, the level of delusion and cognitive dissonance is quite staggering.

You're nothing more than a self-admitted and believed random accident claiming to be superior and all-knowing to what Nature/the cosmos created while calling others deluded and cognitive dissonant.

 

[Profound Realization]

That's what I mean, the Wrights were high school dropouts, Edison was home schooled, Gates flunked college

They were arguably too smart, curious, ambitious, to ever be models of Academic success, which by definition means immersing yourself in conventional academic wisdom, rather than using your own talents to reach beyond that

I would perceive that as wise. Using their inate talents and potential derived from little to no-academics.

 

[Profound Realization]

I have repeatedly asked why we would throw away a scientific theory that unifies and accounts for mountains of data, included a mechanism, is falsifiable by virtue of predicting what kinds of things can and cannot be found in nature but has never been falsified, and has led to technological advances that have improved the human condition for an idea that can do none of that.

I'd say that the silence speaks loudly.

How about it creationists? Why would we do that?



Proof is not our standard for believing, nor that of the faith based thinker. And you ignored the comment about how much of your personal history I can assert with confidence even though I wasn't there to see any of it. We know about the history of the earth using the same method: reason applied to evidence.



That's just as irrelevant to me just as it is to you. Nobody saw a god create anything, either.

Why do you offer an argument that you would reject yourself? If I told you that nobody was there to witness a god creating the universe, the earth, and the life on it, would you abandon your present position?

Of course not. So why make similar arguments to others?



I don't get your point. The history of science includes exposing frauds and disproving false conjectures. That is among science's many virtues.



Actually, the track record of science is stellar at every level, which validates the method it uses.

The track record of theologians is what is abysmal. What useful ideas about our world have they ever given us? It's a rhetorical question at this point. I've asked it dozens of times ad never get an answer. The silence is the answer. Intelligent Design's track record is the answer.

How about it creationists? What of value has that world given us? What is the sine qua non of a wrong idea if not that it can't be used for anything?



No, what we have is the stellar record of science, which has made our lives longer, healthier, safer, easier, more comfortable, and more interesting. Those are pretty good credentials. That's a pretty reliable indicator that the way science proceeds is valid.



Actually, if it's possible, it would be pretty much inevitable given the time that has passed and the number of living organisms that have existed

And there is no better explanation than unguided,naturalistic evolution. A third point that creationists simply refuse to address is that it is illogical to claim that complexity cannot exist undesigned and uncreated, and then propose an entity that would need to be orders of magnitude more complex, also undesigned and uncreated to account for it. That point defeats arguments from complexity.



Dawkins indicated a possible path for the evolution of the eye, one with incremental improvements that could and would likely be selected for.

You act as if Science is a God. Science does absolutely nothing. It is the intelligent mind that does. It came from Nature/the cosmos.

Explanation also comes from an intelligent mind which Nature/the cosmos created.

So what we truly have is a stellar record of the intelligent mind, created from Nature/the cosmos.

A "possible" path... of course. Natural selection is the all-powerful God that has no limits and it not bound by anything and can do everything....... it is a force in and of itself that can do anything an intelligent mind wishes it to do blindly and unguided and accidentally even. If there is no evidence for such... just say natural selection did it, a few genes flung from here to to there, species banged every other species in sight with no limits... case closed.

How did the intelligent mind evolve? Well, natural selection did it. Everything stupid and completely non-intelligent emerged to create intelligence. Case closed.

 

[blü 2]

You act as if Science is a God. Science does absolutely nothing. It is the intelligent mind that does. It came from Nature/the cosmos.

Science isn't a god.

Scientific method is however the best system, by a great margin, for answering questions about reality ─ something religion is only occasionally interested in.

Except for creationism, of course, which makes a great many falsifiable assertions about reality, which have been falsified, usually without difficulty, by science. And for the more intelligent creationists, Jose Fly's reminder above, about cognitive dissonance, is right on the money.

Explanation also comes from an intelligent mind which Nature/the cosmos created.

I regret to tell you that the argument from incredulity is a fallacy.

Natural selection is the all-powerful God that has no limits and it not bound by anything and can do everything....... it is a force in and of itself that can do anything an intelligent mind wishes it to do blindly and unguided and accidentally even.

Tell me: in an epidemic, which animals (including humans) are more likely to survive, and so pass their genes to the next generation: the ones whose immune systems cope better with the infection, or the ones who cope worse?

Tell me: in a primate society (including humans) where survival is enhanced by your place on the social ladder, based on one-to-one relationships, which primate is more likely to survive and pass their genes on to the next generation? The ones who are more intelligent and able regarding social relations, or the others?

Natural selection is as simple as that. It's not a deep mystery, it's just common sense.

If there is no evidence for such... just say natural selection did it, a few genes flung from here to to there, species banged every other species in sight with no limits... case closed.

What specific examples do you have in mind when you say this?

If you have no examples, on what ground do you say it?