Harsh Truth: If Intelligent Design is Untestable . . .

[Mohammad Nur Syamsu]

Cancers have a large genetic component. In any case you'd think that a infinitely intelligent designer would be able to protect the human body from all these nasty diseases, so are you suggesting that God messed up?

It's just a small side issue. You come up with something better than man and woman, then we can talk about you being a better desisgner.

 

[Rick O'Shez]

It's just a small side issue. You come up with something better than man and woman, then we can talk about you being a better desisgner.

Cancer, disease, infant mortality, ageing, death....those aren't "small side issues".

 

[Revoltingest]

That ain't bone, though - I've got three shark jaws around here somewhere, a little one, a middle-sized one and a great big one (passed on by a friend who many years ago had one of them fixed to the bonnet of his Land Rover, until it took a chunk out of his arm when the bonnet closed. He reckons he must be the only person to be savaged by a dead shark, halfway up a mountain)

Technically, you're right.
But hard calcium compounds in a cartilagenous matrix sure do function like bone.

 

[philbo]

But hard calcium compounds in a cartilagenous matrix sure do function like bone.

You could look at that as something like convergent evolution: sharks haven't evolved bones (especially the complex structures that make up bones) yet there are some (don't think it's "all" - I don't remember there being any calcification in the dogfish I dissected at school) which have got similar calcium compounds hardening bits of their cartilagenous skeletons - after all, if it gives a survival advantage, and can be inherited, it only has to show up once..

 

[Mohammad Nur Syamsu]

Cancer, disease, infant mortality, ageing, death....those aren't "small side issues".

Death and ageing seems to me a good thing. A story has a beginning, middle and end. Not a beginning, and then a middle, and more middle, etc.

Small side issues when you see what has been achieved overall. Which is shown by that you broadly actually only seek to protect creation, meaning that you think it is a very good design. Why don't you come up with something completele different?

 

[Monk Of Reason]

You already know how silly that is.

Why do we need to abandon all sense of knowledge to believe in a Creator? You assume that science and God are incompatible...I assure you they are not.

Evolutionary science is merely a "religion" for those who have no religion. It suits people to lose a God who might require something from them.
Alternately it is the compromise that some reach when they swallow science's explanations as fact, and feel the need to surrender some of their beliefs to this other belief system. I will not wave a white flag to science.

I do not have to surrender anything to believe in an intelligent and powerful Creator. The knowledge he provides in his word is sufficient for those who have a relationship with him. If you have never known him, you will never understand what I mean. Nor will you understand why the world is the way it is.

Evolution is part of science. It is in no way shape or form a religion. Calling it a religion has merely been a cop out for people who wish to bring it down to their own petty level of sheer belief and nothing to substanciate it to.

Believing in god doesn't require a suspension of all human knoweldge but my response was to your post. In your last post you spoke about how you were not able to trust human knowledge about sciences involving eovlution. I wondered if you worried about humans being wrong in all other areas as well. Especially in ones not as well understood as evolution.

You are as ignorant about God as you accuse me of being about science.

Really really doubt that but irrelevant and I"m not here to get into a pissing contest with you.

How many life threatening situation on earth at present are the direct result of man's misuse of science?

How about we start with atomic weapons?....and nuclear power plants that have no way to safely dispose of their waste, except to turn it into more weapons of mass destruction?

Food crops are poisoned by deadly pesticides and herbicides that are consumed by unsuspecting people buying produce from their supermarket. Food is grown in biologically dead soil, making mineral deficiency a major factor in lifestyle diseases.

Air pollution....water pollution...the plastics that are clogging up vast areas of oceans and killing a great many marine creatures.

The drugs that are used to treat disease, consumed by the ton in the human populations around the world, that end up in sewerage treatment plants and are dumped into the oceans causing malformation in marine creatures.

The hormones fed to poultry and cattle that end up causing problems to human growth and early onset of puberty.

Science has taken planet earth to the brink of disaster. Climate change and man's mismanagement of our earth will be our undoing if we do not act to put a stop to what science is doing to the only home we have.

Why do I have a problem with science? Because everything in the natural world is recycled in a beautiful system that is designed to replenish the earth and clean up waste without anyone having to lift a finger. God put all those systems into operation and he designed them to successfully perpetuate the processes that he put in place, without any intervention from him.

None of this has to do with anything we were discussing?

Man, on the other hand, has polluted everything he's touched. When man ignorantly interferes with the eco-system, disaster follows. Look back over the last few centuries and see where science has led us.....the planet is heaving under the weight of man's arrogance and greed and interference. Yet he refuses to stop what he's doing.

And the head of many of these organizations bringing the world to disaster are being supported by the religious conservative groups of America. Strange how it is the liberals that want to stop it even though they are considered godless by many. This doesn't really have anything to do with religion or with the topic at hand except you brought it up. Does your point round back at some time?

We are all free to believe and accept whatever we wish. You are entitled to keep your views but they do not impress me one little bit.

I don't care if it impresses you or not. If you wish to reject science and knowledge in the face of unsubstantiated belief that is your problem. But I will debate you here over any claims of truth you have.

Of course it does.....if you have never had a relationship with God, this is not surprising at all.

I have confidence that the God who has the power to create the universe, has the power to preserve his own instruction manual. You may not think so. But I believe it contains more wisdom than all the science used in man's world.

I shall repeat. There is no evidence tha the bible is correct. Coming from an ex-christian who was a full believer and a young earth creationist at one time. There is no evidence for it. And if what you want to call evidence is in fact evidence then there would be an equal amount in every other religion on the planet.

There is plenty of evidence for us....you just can't see it and will not acknowledge it. That is your right of choice.

But we all know deep in our hearts that the life we live, is not the life we are programmed for. Science may satisfy a few whims, but it has caused more harm than good.

Why do you think we all have a collective expectation that life should be so much better than it is? Why do we see the inhumanity being expressed in the world today and want to stop all this rot? Yet no one is.....

The Bible explains all of what is happening right now and tells us what the outcome will be. Believe it or not. God forces no one to listen.

It will all conclude exactly as the Bible says it will....with us or without us.

What of the evidences that Muslims have? What do you make of it?

 

[Monk Of Reason]

Is this a comedy thread ?.

It looks like it doesn't it?

 

[dust1n]

Are atomic bombs not designed, because they kill people?

Any given flaw the atom bomb may have is understandable, since human flaws are bound to happen.

This is a bit different in the instance of a supreme being who is the smartest, strongest, most lovingest entity that ever was and ever will be.

Heck, it'd take getting hit by atom bomb over muscular dystrophy any day.

 

[metis]

Metis, there is no man-made test for the Creator. No method invented by mere humans could possibly test for his existence, let alone scientifically prove that he doesn't exist.

How exactly does one go about somehow proving that something doesn't exist somewhere in our universe?

All that means is that scientists (educated by other scientists) have no known test......it doesn't mean that the Creator can't exist....only that puny humans have no evidence that are set by their own limits, for his existence. Many also have an agenda....almost a strongly motivated need, to prove that he doesn't exist.

Science works on the basis of objectively-derived evidence, and if there is no objectively-derived evidence for something, then we definitely cannot accept it as a fact. This doesn't mean it isn't a fact, only that we cannot assume that it is.

Since you note that there is no objective test for your theistic beliefs, are you willing to go to the point of believing you could be wrong?

I'm not making any claims one way or the other about whether there's a god or gods, but you are. Therefore, it is up to the one making such claims to provide objectively-derived evidence if they are determined to make any scientific claims. The ToE is based on science and not some religious-belief system, and if anyone's beliefs are to deal with science, they must provide objectively-derived evidence.

 

[dust1n]

Death and ageing seems to me a good thing. A story has a beginning, middle and end. Not a beginning, and then a middle, and more middle, etc.

Small side issues when you see what has been achieved overall. Which is shown by that you broadly actually only seek to protect creation, meaning that you think it is a very good design. Why don't you come up with something completele different?

Signs and symptoms

• Progressive muscular wasting
• Poor balance
• Drooping eyelids
• Atrophy
• Scoliosis (curvature of the spine and the back)
• Inability to walk
• Frequent falls
• Waddling gait
• Calf deformation
• Limited range of movement
• Respiratory difficulty
• Joint contractures
• Cardiomyopathy
• Arrhythmias
• Muscle spasms
• Gowers' sign[10]

Cause
These conditions are generally inherited, and the different muscular dystrophies follow various inheritance patterns. However, mutations of the dystrophin gene and nutritional defects (with no genetics history) at the prenatal stage are also possible in about 33% of people affected by DMD.[11] The main cause of the Duchenne and Becker types of muscular dystrophy is the muscle tissue's cytoskeletal impairment to properly create the functional protein dystrophin and dystrophin-associated protein complex.

Muscular dystrophy - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

[Mohammad Nur Syamsu]

Signs and symptoms

• Progressive muscular wasting
• Poor balance
• Drooping eyelids
• Atrophy
• Scoliosis (curvature of the spine and the back)
• Inability to walk
• Frequent falls
• Waddling gait
• Calf deformation
• Limited range of movement
• Respiratory difficulty
• Joint contractures
• Cardiomyopathy
• Arrhythmias
• Muscle spasms
• Gowers' sign[10]

Cause
These conditions are generally inherited, and the different muscular dystrophies follow various inheritance patterns. However, mutations of the dystrophin gene and nutritional defects (with no genetics history) at the prenatal stage are also possible in about 33% of people affected by DMD.[11] The main cause of the Duchenne and Becker types of muscular dystrophy is the muscle tissue's cytoskeletal impairment to properly create the functional protein dystrophin and dystrophin-associated protein complex.

Muscular dystrophy - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Be still my bleeding heart. The only reason these things are terrible is because the creation of man and woman is so great.

 

[FearGod]

Signs and symptoms

• Progressive muscular wasting
• Poor balance
• Drooping eyelids
• Atrophy
• Scoliosis (curvature of the spine and the back)
• Inability to walk
• Frequent falls
• Waddling gait
• Calf deformation
• Limited range of movement
• Respiratory difficulty
• Joint contractures
• Cardiomyopathy
• Arrhythmias
• Muscle spasms
• Gowers' sign[10]

Cause
These conditions are generally inherited, and the different muscular dystrophies follow various inheritance patterns. However, mutations of the dystrophin gene and nutritional defects (with no genetics history) at the prenatal stage are also possible in about 33% of people affected by DMD.[11] The main cause of the Duchenne and Becker types of muscular dystrophy is the muscle tissue's cytoskeletal impairment to properly create the functional protein dystrophin and dystrophin-associated protein complex.

Muscular dystrophy - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Natural selection wasn't a good refiner then, but in general and having in mind that the nature is an inanimate stones then it was a great job indeed.

 

[jonathan180iq]

Thank you for the links.....though I am not sure what you thought I would learn from them that I don't already know.

You asked for links and references, and I gave them to you. As for what I thought you would learn from those links? Well, you said sharks had bones, for one.

"Where did cartilaginous fish come from, and when?

According to fossil evidence (primarily based on shark teeth, which get preserved much more readily than any other part of a shark), the earliest sharksevolved about 400 million years ago. 'Modern' sharks arrived starting around 35 million years ago, and megalodon, white sharks and hammerheads came about 23 million years ago. Read More About Shark Evolution"

Can you tell me how something that takes millions of years to "evolve"....."arrives"?

The time that something "arrives" in the fossil record is the first known appearance and evidence of it. Unless you would have the entire world use the English language only as you see fit, I don't see why you keep bringing up these games of semantics. All of these wording arguments have already been put to rest. Read some books from higher sources and you'll see the wording is quite common and has not the connotation which you assume.

Not sure what this is proving.....many creatures have a pelvis......

Land creatures have a weight-bearing pelvis which require bones and joint structures suitable for handling movement and loads. Fish "kinds" do not, as you can see with the shark pelvis. The occurrence of vestigial, weight-bearing, pelvis joints in oceanic mammals is just one part of the evidence which refers back to their land dwelling heritage. You should read more about vestigial organs, and not focus solely on trying to pick apart each minute aspect of a greater body of work. The whale is only one example. There are hundreds of others that we know of.

As a side note, you mentioned sharks as part of the fish "kind". Using creationists logic then, and having already admitted that adaptation occurs, you'll have no problem agreeing that this little fish, and this huge shark, are only separated by micro-evolutional changes since, as you say, they are of the same "kind", right?

Science can use its imagination as to how these things came to be...and so can we.

Just because you don't like the implications of something doesn't make it imaginary.

Your entire argument here is based on the idea that if you can't directly observe something, then it's clearly only speculation and guess-work. This is an argument that is made ad nauseum by proponents of this movement you've entrenched yourself in as a way to discredit the majority of knowledge, if you really want to break it down. The same concept that lets you know that a trillion dollars exists, when you probably have only ever seen a few thousand in your lifetime, is prevalent in all of these "imaginary" sciences that you're trying to debunk simply to maintain your faith in something that shouldn't really require evidence to begin with...

There are whole host of sciences and studies that go into understanding vestigial organs. Since we are talking about the pelvic bones of whales, I'll just stick with that example.

Zoology, Mophology, & Osteology alone would be sufficient fields to read up on if you want to learn about the skeletal structure of animals, the biological reasons for requiring those bone structures, and the tie-in to an animal's morphological development within a certain environment. Each of those three disciplines accepts and understands the existence of vestigial structures...

Zoology - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Morphology (biology) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Osteology - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

On top of that, Myology is the study of the muscular systems of animals. It's the study of how bone structures and muscles combine in animals to allow for motion, and ranges of motion. That same study also gives insight into shape and muscle density, which in turn would from how an animal looks(looked) It's not only art and make-believe, as you suggested earlier, when paleoanthropologists and paleontologists are recreating life-size specimens of the fossils that they uncover. They don't take random guesses as to how many vertebra are in an animal's spine when certain pieces of fossilized remains are missing. They use compounded knowledge and data make very educated models of what biology dictates that the animal would have required in order to function and survive.

Myology - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

If you find 3 fossilized examples of the same organism, and each one has a different set of bones with it, you only need 1/3 of the spine of each organism. If one has the pelvis and lumbar, one has some midsection, and one has vertebrae from the skull down, then you've essentially an entire specimen.


The following link, using Google Scholar, contains 1,780 references combining Osteology and Vestigial structures. Read some of them.

osteology and vestigial organs - Google Scholar

You can perform the same search using the sciences listed above, combined with the word vestigial, and you'll start to get some actual understanding of what you're trying to say is simply make-believe.

This one is rather on point for the topic of conversation.
https://www.jstage.jst.go.jp/article/jvms/66/7/66_7_761/_pdf

 

[Nietzsche]

Can I get the opinion of the evolution supporters here on these statements please......
Do you have reason to disagree with any of this?

"The fossil record is incomplete. This incompleteness has many contributing factors. Geological processes may cause confusion or error, as sedimentary deposition rates may vary, erosion may erase some strata, compression may turn possible fossils into unrecognizable junk, and various other means by which the local fossil record can be turned into the equivalent of a partially burned book, which is then unbound, pages perhaps shuffled, and from which a few pages are retrieved. Beyond geology, there remains taphonomy -- the study of how organisms come to be preserved as fossils. Here, there are further issues to be addressed. Hard parts of organisms fossilize preferentially. The conditions under which even those parts may become fossilized are fairly specialized. All this results in a heavily skewed distribution of even what parts of organisms become fossilized, and that affects which features of morphology are available for use in classification. The issue of geography enters into all this, as a consequence of the fact that living lineages occupy ecological niches, and those niches are bound to certain features of geography.

Paleospecies, then, have to be recognized as species from morphology alone, where the available morphological characters are drawn from a skewed distribution, the pattern of fossilization is skewed, and the geographic correlates of fossilization are limited in extent."

If this is true, what does it mean for the truthfulness of fossil evidence?

We aren't aware of your entire history either. Are we to assume then that because we lack a person-by-person detail of your entire family history that you aren't what you seem to be? No, we're not, because that's ****ing stupid.

Also, question;

You bring up the fossil record. What do you have to say to genetics? The stuff that isn't up for debate? We know how closely related life is. We know how much DNA we share with Apes, especially Chimpanzees. Do you have an answer for that?

 

[gnostic]

. . . Then Darwinian Evolution is untestable. If intelligent design is unfalsifiable, then Darwinian evolution is unprovable.

Why? Logic 101.

Logic, you say?

It's not logic at all. It is utter ignorance.

• Evolution is biology about that explain why life change over period of time (with "time" being number of generations) or how they changed (the mechanics, eg Natural Selection, Mutation, Gene Flow, etc), hence it is about biodiversity, so it is not about the origin of first life. The scientific theory about origin of life is abiogenesis, not evolution.
  (Why creationists and ID advocates cannot understand the distinction, is because they are religious biased and utterly uneducated).
• Evolution is A FIELD in biology, but that aid in understanding other fields in biology, such genetics, genetic engineering, pathology, in many specific fields relating to researches of diseases, medicines, etc. For you to say that evolution is "untestable", only demonstrated tour ignorance.
  Seriously, if evolution is untestable, as you say it is, then why do other fields of biological researches required to understand or study evolution? They study evolution because it is practical field, not just theoretical field. The study of evolution, actually lead to better understanding of diseases and medicine.
• There is more to evolution than Charles Darwin, so your continuous use of "Darwinian" Evolution is outdated. Darwin without a doubt is the pioneer for the study of evolutionary biology, especially with his own theory of evolutionary mechanism - Natural Selection - but evolution has gone far beyond Darwin's theory.
  Even his Natural Selection, though still very valid today, has since been expanded and updated, during the 20th and 21st centuries, to take into account mutations, DNA, microbiology, etc.
• Intelligent Design is not science, it is Christian creationism. It is not a scientific theory. Heck, it even failed to be scientific hypothesis, because it is not falsifiable. ID is creationism, therefore it is a religion, or a field in theology.
  The Discovery Institute(DI) is not scientific research organisations, nor are they run by scientists; DI are run all by Christian creationists. They have resorted to PR, propaganda, deception.

Just because evolution is scientific, doesn't make ID scientific too. Again, I would repeat that ID is a religious subject, not scientific one. That you think both has to be accepted if one is accepted, only demonstrate you are not thinking at all.

Your attempt at logic is faulty and flawed.

And BTW, only creationists - and that mean ID advocates too - would use utterly stupid Watchmaker analogy. It is a lame duck analogy because the creationists don't really understand what a real watchmaker "is" or "do". And it is lame because it defy common sense.

 

[dust1n]

Be still my bleeding heart. The only reason these things are terrible is because the creation of man and woman is so great.

Like I said, a deity not worth the praise.

 

[Sapiens]

Evolution is based on interpretation of the evidence. What has been observed is not macro-ecolution...it is adaptation within specific species. The documentation is also based on human interpretation of the "evidence" they find.

This is a useless discussion, if someone is so ignorant as to not know that speciation has been clearly observed, they are too ignorant to have their thoughts (or lack there of) taken seriously.

Humans have come to conclusions about a lot of things over the centuries and time and further research has forced them to change what was once accepted as fact. This is the human track record. The Bible, on the other hand has not changed its story ever.

Science is self-correcting, it makes mistakes and fixes them, unlike the Bible that continues to wallow in and compound it's mistakes.

I have no faith in man to evaluate anything that must of necessity rob them of their claim to know better than the Creator.

Err ... and which creator might that be?

In whose opinion? Those who think they can't be wrong?....until the next discovery forces them to change their mind again?
Not an exact science, is it? Hardly honest to call a theory, a fact. Adding the word "scientific" does not automatically make something right.

No "science" makes it changeable as new information is obtained, bringing it closer to truth. Reigion makes it cast in stone and less and less useful as each day brings new contradictory discoveries.

The Bible tells a rather condensed story about the Creator and his creation. It gives simple explanations for very complex events and the reasons why humans lost what God originally gave them. And then it tells us how the Creator will rectify the problems without forcing humans to give up the gift of free will.

Err ... and which creator might that be?

The simplicity is deceptive. But the Bible has not changed its message since it was written.

It was wrong then and it has not gotten better with time.

It is what the Bible doesn't tell us where evolution wants to jump in and fill the gaps with things that are merely their opinion about what happened before the Bible's narrative begins in the garden of Eden.

Gaps? Science has clearly falsified a great deal of the mythology of the Bible.

There is no reason for me to believe that scientists are more knowledgable than the Creator.

Err ... and which creator might that be?

What science is coming to terms with at present, is that the more they find out....the more they realize how much more there is to know. They have barely scratched the surface.....and yet look at the grandiose claims? Many here claim that evolution is a FACT....we all know that it is not. It is the opinion of those who are making educated guesses about what they unearth, nothing more.

I'll take science's educated guess over religion's uneducated dogma any day (and twice on Sunday).

The "evidence" they have is wide open to their own interpretation of what they "think" happened.

Clearly you have not the vaguest idea of how science works, stick to trying to rationalize religion.

Man is claiming to place his limited knowledge on the same level as the one who created all things.....the very one who created the science that they are only just beginning to understand. To accept what they say over what God says, to me is ridiculous. It always will be.

[/quote]Err ... and which creator might that be?

Adaptation is an established fact.....adaptation explains small changes within one species.

Please look up speciation in Wiki, which has been given to me as a reference many time by those want to demonstrate where the experiments in speciation took scientists.

When you look at the three spine stickleback fish, was there ever a time when the limited experiments they performed ever produced a different creature altogether? If they didn't, then it is pure speculation about what happened over the millions of years that preceded their experiments.

Please define: species, kind, adaptation, and evolution.

You are different than your parents, your offspring are different from you. Filter those differences through any form of selection and the differences will accumulate and, in time, produce different species, different genera, different families, etc.

Did the fruit flies become anything other than fruit flies? If not, then again the scientists are filling in the gaps with educated guesses....not facts. Their assumptions, no matter how plausible they sound, are not facts.

No, the became different species of fruit flies, in time their paths will continue to diverge and (barring extinction) the will become different genera, different families, etc.

There is no more hard "evidence" for evolution than there is for an intelligent Creator. Those are the facts.

No, those are not the facts, that is the world as you'd like to see it, sorry but all the data, all the evidence shows that your views are wrong.

I am sure that a scientist would have a very different interpretation of the Bible than believers.....just as those who are believers have a very different view of evolutionary science. It's all in the interpretation.

Again: No! One believes in the Bible, one does not believe in evolution. It is not an even playing field with two equally likely possibilities. On one hand you have religious belief based on bronze age fables, on the other you have scientific knowledge ... subject to change and refinement as the knowledge base grows.

Again, that is not true. Random mutations asserts absence of intelligent design. When you positively assert random mutations, you are equally positively asserting the absence of intelligent design.

OK, I'm happy to positively asserting the absence of intelligent design, but that is not actually a requirement.

the womb is where the human being created, that is why we're a creation, IOW we're product of creation and not evolution, i wasn't evolved but i was made and developed in a womb which means creation and not evolution.

Take a look at ontological development in utero. While no a perfect ontology recapitulates phylogeny, it is close enough to give an intelligent person pause.

Were you developed and made in a womb or evolved by the nature ?

Both.

 

[JayJayDee]

Here's the thing; a skeleton will only fit together one way. If I were to bring the skeleton of a house-cat to someone who's never seen one, but is supremely familiar with Lions, they will put the cat together properly. Why? Because if you understand anything about animal morphology, this is no longer a guessing game.

You know, you amaze me with your analogies sometimes.....why will a person who knows cats immediately identify a cat's skeleton? Because it is still a cat. No guessing required there....eh?

 

[JayJayDee]

How exactly does one go about somehow proving that something doesn't exist somewhere in our universe?

Exactly. All you can do is wonder when there is nothing to base your speculation on but a few bones and fossils....wide open to the imagination of their interpreter. The fact is, no one was there to tell us exactly what happened.

It isn't that some alien creatures left an ancient book about how they left some kind of life on earth that was designed to morph into all the other creatures we see on this planet, is it? If there was such a book...that would be something.....a starting point at least.....but there is such a book from the Creator about how life began and how all the forms of life originated.
Evolution was born in the imagination of man. It offered a way to for the brilliant minds of the 20th and 21st centuries to run riot with their interpretations of what the fossil record was saying.
We have their word for how they interpreted their findings.
We have God's word for how life began....so who do we believe?

We have a dilemma because some accept the Bible as an authentic account of how life began and see man's musings about the accidental origins of life as laughable. Some elevate the scientist's explanations to infallible scientific fact that cannot be challenged (sort of like the proclamations of the popes of science) and they claim that all life evolved from a single organism to all we see on earth, both past and present.....all you have to do is throw millions of years into the story and somehow it is believable without a single shred of solid evidence.

Science works on the basis of objectively-derived evidence, and if there is no objectively-derived evidence for something, then we definitely cannot accept it as a fact. This doesn't mean it isn't a fact, only that we cannot assume that it is.

I don't see how you can call it objective when it is all designed to lean one way.

You see, that is all we are asking for.....the honesty that actually says...you know what? We could be wrong. There could be an all powerful Creator that is beyond human ability to comprehend.....but we prefer to believe that there isn't.

That would be acceptable.

Since you note that there is no objective test for your theistic beliefs, are you willing to go to the point of believing you could be wrong?

Does science really believe that macro-evolution is wrong? We don't believe that creation is wrong either. Neither has concrete proof.....Impasse.

I'm not making any claims one way or the other about whether there's a god or gods, but you are. Therefore, it is up to the one making such claims to provide objectively-derived evidence if they are determined to make any scientific claims. The ToE is based on science and not some religious-belief system, and if anyone's beliefs are to deal with science, they must provide objectively-derived evidence.

No one who believes in creation is forcing anyone to give up their belief in science. And yet science's beliefs are being forced upon young and impressionable minds in our school systems, eliminating the need for a Creator altogether.

Since we each have a belief system and each of us claims to accept what we believe on the face of what we see with our own eyes, you are as free to believe in science as we are in God....just don't claim that science's version of events is established fact when it isn't.....and never was.

I have been accused of being dishonest on these forums by people who stated categorically that evolution is a fact.

The true dishonesty is in stating that the beliefs of science are more important than the beliefs contained in God's word, when there is no more concrete evidence for evolution than there is for an intelligent designer of all things.

 

[Nietzsche]

You know, you amaze me with your analogies sometimes.....why will a person who knows cats immediately identify a cat's skeleton? Because it is still a cat. No guessing required there....eh?

Progress!

Now wrap your head around this;

Why can we put dinosaurs together? Because they're birds.