Gee Ed you and Reggie are hitting them out of the park.
That’s an assumption, of course. What is your proof that DNA is the same as a language that has been designed?
Ed, I don’t know about Republicans, so I can’t answer that. I am concerned, however , that you believe science to be a religion. Where does that place priests who are also scientists? Do you think they believe science to be a religion as well? Do you have evidence to support this claim about them?
My example there was one where “anti-science” was being inserted in a science class, perhaps to fill in the gaps of the “woefully inadequate” explanations for man’s destiny. Would this be satisfactory to you, the Zodiac as the “beyond science” explanations that are more full and fulfilling about man’s fate and destiny in this world?
Woefully inadequate and incomplete with respect to WHAT? Your whims? Reality doesn’t work that way does it? We aren’t owed any particular level of completeness or bliss in understanding our reality. Real knowledge is hard won, and there’s a whole lot of important questions that remain unanswered. But just as we don’t look to astrology to fill in the blanks – what will happen to me today? – we’ve got no knowledge-driven basis for some origins narrative that isn’t supported or indicated by the evidence from the world around us.
There’s a lot of science that’s very difficult to understand. For me, anyway, and a lot of others I talk to. But really, the primary obstacle to many scientific ideas, and this is particularly true of evolution, is the individual’s strong desire to disbelieve it, or to believe something else that conflicts with it. One has to make it a priority to set aside such passions that interfere with clear analysis on the merits, and even then, it’s difficult. Understanding is a always a challenge, but if everybody “got” the science, even in the details, a whole lot would keep those ideas at arms length nevertheless… it’s just not what they want to believe.
Well, what would falsify your theory. You know what they say about conspiracy theorists, right? There’s no possible counterfactuals – they can never be persuaded otherwise, no matter what the evidence.
Touchstone, the odd thing is, Ed and others like him seem devoid of what I would call religious faith. They exhibit a desperate need to “prove” design by aping the methods of science (e.g., DNA proves the existence of God because it’;s like a language). What they don’t realize is how methodologically inappropriate it is for ID to attempt to use science to prove religion.
Share with me a language that does not come from a mind.
All human languages come from human minds.
You do realize that’s exactly what nonbelievers say about the Bible - right?
I suggest you contact the scientists at the SETI Project.
Science is not religion. From a Catholic perspective, this adds evidence to my point that there is no such thing as Theistic Evolution. There is no way to connect God to the science, according to some. The Catholic Church teaches that without the explicit causal action of divine providence, evolution simply cannot exist.
That is just being obtuse. If an intelligence which is responsible for design in nature isn’t divine, exactly what is it?
Exactly where do I ridicule the idea? The thing I ridicule is the attempt to call it “science,” when it is in fact natural theology. Unless you think that calling something theology is to ridicule it of course. (Your problem might be that you secretly worship science, and think that not to call something “scientific” is to denigrate it.)
It’s important to view the theory within the limits of what it claims. For example, St. Thomas Aquinas’ classic arguments on the existence of God do not attempt to prove that the Holy Trinity exists, but merely that a Supreme Being exists.
Apparently, you think the only way to refute Michael Behe’s claims regarding mutation rates in bacteria is through a philosophical rebuttal and not through science?
That is utter nonsense. An intelligence with the ability to introduce design into natuire is divine by definition. It certianly isn’t a super smart professor in a university physics department.
I do not recall even mentioning Michael Behe’s claims about the mutation rates in bacteria, but if I did the refutation would be on the basis of what his peers in the biological sciences make of his claim; not philosophy.