Michael, you get today's prize for speaking the most and saying the least.
On Nov 20, 2008, at 3:08 PM, Michael Luscombe wrote: > > On 20-Nov-08, at 4:28 PM, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > >> Actually, I believe you are the one asserting the origin of life is >> either creationism or Darwinism. Despite your assertions to the >> contrary from a few years back, that is a false dilemma. >> >> The more we learn about microbiology and cosmotology, the more >> complexity we see and the more difficult it becomes to accept as >> fact that the origins of the universe and life are simply randon >> acts. >> >> Are you really satisfied with the Darwin explanation for the >> explosion of new life forms in the Cambrian period? Any idea how >> all those new life forms with new proteins and DNA strands full of >> info and instructions became available at the same time? You need >> faith in Darwinism to believe that it happened by chance. >> >> So, if it wasn't chance, what was it? That's one of the things ID >> wants to answer -- if all that intelligence didn't evolve by >> chance, where did it come from? > -- > > Firstly, there's nothing simple or random about the current state of > our DNA. You realize that's a premise of ID, don't you? > We are alive today in our present form because this > particular strain, with all of its mutations, has succeeded where > countless generations have failed. Our DNA has been honed by the > natural events on this planet. It is successful simply because all > the unsuccessful strains are dead. Yeah. Evolution. Got that. But it doesn't answer the question of our origins. > Darwinism is simply that: living species are more successful > organisms than dead ones, and tend to reproduce more. Is that Canadian for "survival of the fittest?" I don't dispute that survival of the fittest leads to improvements in any particular species. But it doesn't answer the question of origins, nor does it explain how one species evolves into another. > I do have faith. I have faith in humanity. Good for you. > That's a choice. I know > that humanity is going to have to come up with solutions to our own > problems or die trying. Science is merely a vehicle for human > curiosity and the product of our successful guesses. Faith in > fundamentalist religion pushes for an end to curiosity, an end to > rational thought, which is simply unacceptable. Arguing that science > doesn't have all the answers is a straw man. Of course science > doesn't have all the answers, that's why the effort continues. Again, for the one-thousandth fucking time, we're not talking about fundamentalism. We're not even talking about religion. > Religion has more answers simply because more of the answers are > "because". Religion hasn't satisfied my curiosity about our origins. > That falsely allows you to maintain that your belief > system is somehow more complete. I find one of the more interesting > tenets of the bible to be "god helps those who help themselves." If > we aren't going to be inquisitive about our environment and our own > biology, even your god is not going to come to your rescue. Funny, you presume ID is about proving that God exists and that science is about proving the God doesn't exist. There's the false dilemma again. > But regardless of my feelings on religion, science is never going to > answer the questions you worry about. Hmph. In your opinion. > Unless we find videotape of the > first amoeba tripping on a mote of dust and accidentally kick- > starting evolution, there's just no way to prove that we're > accidental or intended, and no way to know how that amoeba got there > in the first place. How can you be so sure? > Science will never give us meaning. Science will > never give our lives purpose. Discovering the "meaning of life" will > always be of a personal and spiritual nature, and thus remain the > purview of priests, philosophers and phone-in psychic hotlines. I'm beginning to sense you don't know a damn thing about science. > My personal feelings on religion notwithstanding, religion and > science are not mutually exclusive and never will be. We agree! We agree! > The bible is > metaphor and allegory, a mix of hard reality and blatant fables. If > it were not, there would be no "interpretations" of it. Well, at least we know from whence the Bible came. > The bible may say that God created heaven and earth, but it's short > on details. Our current understanding of evolution may be incomplete, > but it's still better than not searching at all. So, why constrain that search? > The bible appears to > leave plenty of room for explanations without discounting the > existence of god, or refuting that evolution or any other science is > not the will of god. Dayum! I agree. That's two instances in one thread. Are you really Michael? > It's corrosive to religion to heap scorn on science rather than > embrace it and adopt it as the will of god. The converse is true, too. And, ID isn't about "heaping scorn" on science. > If the only thing you can > count on is change, adaptation is the hallmark of success. The > children of Abraham have spread and adapted in many different ways, > and all believe they follow the true path. The rigidity of your faith > is an illusion. So, are you opposed to finding our origins, or just some of the methods used to do so? I'm not clear on where you stand on that particular issue. Were Paley and Darwin alive today, knowing what we now know, I wonder how different their theses would be. “If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down.” -- Charles Darwin BTW, isn't Darwinism a hypothesis rather than a theory? I know we've witnessed species variations through mutation and adaptation, but have we adequately observed or proven (which is necessary to make a theory from a hypothesis) that such changes result in separate species, which, by definition, can't successfully interbreed? --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "StrataList-OT" group. 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