I am catching up in reading this thread, and stopped around p. 9 to chime in with some thoughts I wish to contribute. If items I am bringing up are touched upon in detail elsewhere on this thread, or other threads, I'll appreciate anyone who draws my attention to that.
What is interesting about following all of these Evolution vs. Creationism threads is the close ambiguous word play that evolutionists employ that comes close to admitting that they may have a deity called Nature. This nature judges what is good, bad, productive, purposeful
I agree with this. Not verbatim, but in the dialogue of this thread, I have seen this at work. I would acknowledge that many evolutionists, I observe, do not appear to call nature or natural selection a process governed by a deity. And I feel that claims made in that vein are received as insult (of intelligence). But the ambiguous word play that is employed leaves a distinct impression of something greater than humanity at work. Or at very least, outside of humanity's role (in the process). IMO, this is inescapable given the nature of scientific explanation as I understand it.
Example(s):
You can se (sic) Nature as a god if you choose to, but you can also see nature as the very mundane outcome of a very mundane process.
The assumption here being, I think, that evolutionists tend to see nature (and natural selection) as a mundane process. Which is entirely value judgment, and is not accurate, I believe, for how some evolutionist see the (explanation of the) process.
The explanation of the process comes off mundane to me. Interesting at a certain level, but mundane and I would say, not explaining anything (really).
Wikipedia excerpt:
Natural selection acts on the phenotype, or the observable characteristics of an organism, but the genetic (heritable) basis of any phenotype which gives a reproductive advantage will become more common in a population (see allele frequency). Over time, this process can result in adaptations that specialize populations for particular ecological niches and may eventually result in the emergence of new species.
I randomly picked this quote, via natural selection, and is one of countless examples where the mundane statements, I find, are not explaining anything (to me). It is telling me "what" the process involves, but not "why" it is occurring. Such as - why does the process (selection) act on the observable characteristics of the organism? Or - why does the process, over time, result in adaptations that specialize populations? Or why are there ecological niches? My inquiring mind desires to know / understand. (Many) Scientific explanations read to me like, "why did you cheat on me? (Explanation equals) Well you see, I got in an automobile, traveling at 30 mph, heading north. I later entered into a room where I engaged in sexual activity with another person, which resulted in exchange of bodily fluids and may eventually result in the emergence of a new life form."
Explanations such as this (from Wikipedia, and several others), are generating conceptual frameworks pre-supposed (by humans, mind you) to be outside the domain of sentience. When the very explanation itself, as well as the observations, rest entirely on pre-supposed basis of sentience and intelligence. We are that which is giving all meaning / value to the processes we observe, through a detection system that is part of the very process. Such that it is entirely reasonable to say that evolution is sentient where humans are making (conscious) determinations regarding their environment, their genetical data, and the like. I would also argue that it is plausible that all of evolution (as humanity has explained it) is sentient even where humans are making unconscious determinations regarding their physical environment, regardless of how those determinations are made (aka humans are not apparently involved in outcomes).
Otherwise, it is plausible, that evolutionary theory, of itself, is an unintelligible, (ahem) randomly occurring event within the cosmos, selected (or determined) not by human rationality, but by chemical reactions within an organism. On par with par with poetry, prayer and pontificating.
