Since the creator is more than all of his creation combined, he is certainly nothing you could ever describe.....nor can you rule out his existence because you don't have a clue what is "out there". Its the terminology you stumble over. The Creator and his attendants have been placed in the realm of myth and legend...something a scientific mind must reject at all costs. But what if the Creator and his assistants are living beings that share existence along with us, but on a much higher plane? What if we are ants in comparison to them? Are the smartest ants on Earth in a position to doubt that they are the product of a higher power?
You don’t have a clue what is out there, any more than anybody else does. Maybe Thor is out there. From what you describe, it sounds like there’s no way of actually knowing, so I wonder how it is that you claim to know that the specific god you worship is out there.
Your response seems evasive to me. I’m just following your line of reasoning to its logical conclusion here. Are you not claiming that complex things require designers?
Can't mere humans alter the genetics of lower creatures? Can't selective breeding produce an animals that are more beneficial or aesthetically pleasing to humans? e.g. horse/donkey....dog and cat breeds? Not accidental, but intelligently planned.
If artificial selection (selective breeding) works, then so does natural selection. They are just different forms of the same process, with the difference being that the former involves intentional motive on the part of the humans (i.e. selecting for desired traits) while the latter involves naturally occurring processes in an organism’s environment (i.e. no intention or guidance is involved). Both require the presence of genetic, heritable differences in a population and both lead to changes in allele frequency over time. The overall mechanism involved in both is the same. If you acknowledge that artificial selection is possible, I wonder how you can deny the existence of evolution.
Facts are certainties, not suggestions. Facts don't change on a whim.
We were talking about your assertion that complex things must have designers. That’s a suggestion, not a fact.
It was when I asked you if your god was more complex than His creation that you started talking about uncertainty and started tap dancing around the question.
If I gave you 20 cupcakes that all looked delicious but different, and I told you that you can only choose 4, on what basis would you 'select' them?
You have 5 senses to help you determine your choice. These 5 sense are coordinated and processed by an intelligent brain and selection is made by cognitive means.
Out of the genetic material from which all living things are made, how is "selection" made without any intellect guiding the choices?
Selection is made by pressures in the organism’s environment. Organisms with certain traits that allow them to be better adapted to their environment tend to survive and reproduce more successfully than those that don’t possess those traits and aren’t as well adapted to their environment. The well adapted organisms tend to live long enough to pass their favoured traits onto their offspring while the lesser adapted organisms tend to die off before reproducing and passing on their unfavourable traits to their offspring, so that over time, those traits disappear from the population, leaving only the favoured traits. No “intelligent brain” necessary.
Genetic mutations are randomly produced. They are not planned. They usually result in a defect, not an enhancement. Beneficial mutations are so rare that they almost never happen.
Yes, genetic mutations are random, but natural selection is not.
Most mutations are neutral. And as you can see, harmful mutations don’t actually survive very long in a population. The beneficial ones tend to survive much longer than the harmful ones. A mutation that is beneficial in one environment may be harmful in another, so the determination in whether or not a mutation is beneficial depends on the environment.
Like I pointed out before, something like 99.9% of every species that has ever lived has gone extinct, which is what we would probably expect if evolution is a reality. I’m still wondering how it points to a designer.
Natural selection explains only survival of the fittest....it fails to explain how life began. But which of the two questions is the most pressing? How did life begin?...or how did it change over time?
Well, there’s more to evolution than just natural selection. I would suggest reading a bit about it.
http://press.princeton.edu/chapters/i10100.pdf
Abiogenesis is the field of research that delves into questions about how life began. Evolution explains what happens when life already exists. And I don’t think it excludes the existence of some deity that could have put it into motion. I don’t understand why some theists don’t think evolution could have been designed by the god(s) they worship.
Isn't it the one that tells you how life came into existence....because then you will know why things changed and to what extent and reason the Creator made those changes possible. Human guesswork, designed to eliminate ID could then be completely discounted. Problem solved...no ifs or buts and no suggestions needed.
I don’t think “god did it” actually explains how life came into existence. It doesn’t tell us anything about how it happened at all. It just inserts a bigger mystery into the equation.
