Re: 3 Questions

"Ilas" <norbody@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:Xns9778AA21EC8D9lurker@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
First things first, I've been lurking here for a while now (very
addictive,
isn't it?), so hello to everyone. I may as well set out my opinions up
front:

I'm not a scientist, merely someone with an interest and hopefully a
brain.
I believe in the ToE.
I can't see how any rational person doesn't.
I do not believe in any god (although like the teapot circling Jupiter, I
can't actually disprove the existence of god or of gods, it's simply that
I
do not believe he, she, it or they exist).
I think ID is a front to bring creationism into schools (and it's not just
an American problem, here in the UK it can and will be a problem,
especially with Blair's frankly astonishing acceptance of Vardy's faith
schools).
I'm not sure if creationists/ID proponents actually believe what they
espouse. In other words, I can't decide if they knowingly lie, misquote
and
distort, or whether their faith is so strong they believe what they're
saying. I have no doubt they do lie, misquote and distort continually
though.

OK, now I've endeared myself to the IDers/creationists amongst you, I want
to ask you 3 simple questions:

1. I ask this because as far as I can see, IDers/creationists spend pretty
much all their time attacking the ToE. So, let's say you do eventually
provide convincing and unequivocal proof that the ToE is wrong. In what
way
does that even begin to validate your opinions?

Let's use flat earth as an analogy; the proof wasn't actually that the
earth is not flat, the proof was that the earth is spherical (nearly).
That's not the same thing. In other words, had there been a Cubic Earth
society that spent all its time attacking the flat earth majority, the
fact
that the flat earth theory was eventually proved incorrect would not have
validated the cubic earth "theory". Just because one idea is wrong does
not
make the other right.

For anyone with strong religious beliefs, the only possible alternatives to
their own beliefs are those in direct opposition. If you live in an area
with two primary religions, it's the other religion that provides the only
alternative. You barely notice that the others exist, and implicitly assume
that anyone converted away from the competitor will by default go to yours.

In the US, the only serious competitor is agnosticism/atheism. Therefore,
Christians on the whole tend to discount Islam (it's "over there", in
obvious error, and of course no one in their right minds would convert TO
it...), Judaism (it's just an old closed religion to them), and are only
peripherally aware of Budhism, Hinduism, and others. To them, you either
believe or you don't. If you don't, you simply don't believe in THEIR God.
They rarely consider the fact that you do not believe in many others as
well.

The fact that so many self-professed atheists are specifically oriented
towards their disbelief in the Christian God suggests a similar principal in
the other direction. When they think about it, they feel the same towards
others... but the fact that there is a dominant opposing viewpoint colors
their views in much the same way as that of a more religiously-inclined
person.

So, for ID enthusiasts, disproving evolution implicitly supports their
beliefs.

2. For IDers. If the "designer" was not god or a god or a supernatural
being, then we have to assume it was a non human sentient being or beings
(ignoring idiotic theories of time travel, etc). So who designed that
being
or beings? And who designed the designer of the designer? Since we must
(in
my opinion) eventually say either god (or gods), why not have the honesty
to admit that your idea is simply creationism?

I've asked that question. It really comes down to the belief that a Creator
is implicitly eternal, but that existance cannot be eternal. It's like
asking a moralist: "who made killing wrong?". It's a meaningless question
to them, based on their own beliefs. They have no chicken-and-the-egg
paradox - it's obvious that a Creator always was, and that it created
everything that is.

3. This is from my godless, secular, atheistic viewpoint. Given that there
are at leat 100 billion stars in our galaxy, and at least 100 billion
other
galaxies (if my memory is right) with approximately the same no. of stars,
why did god create (quick calculation here) at least
10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 stars for us to look at? Bit of overkill
there, no?

I'm an agnostic, but taking it from a religious stance... who said that it
was made for us, and not Him?



.

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