Re: 3 Questions


Ilas wrote:
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?

http://groups.google.com/group/talk.origins/browse_thread/thread/f0edcc07f454600d/a23eb300fc224165?hl=en#a23eb300fc224165

According to the article, the ToE doesn't cover the origin of life.
Therefore, if the origin of life is attributed to a Creator, an
intelligent design or Puff the Magic Dragon, it's beyond the scope of
the ToE. And following that chain of logic, evolutionists must be
committing perjury in these school board cases by inferring that the
ToE provides evidence as to the origin of life that eliminates a
Creator, an intelligent design or even Puff the Magic Dragon.

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.

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?

It's not Intelligent Designer, it's Intelligent Design.

Nature is a design that we recognize in our universe. To say that
Nature demonstrates some level of intelligence, as do its creatures, is
clearly obvious. Intelligent Design is the underlying condition of
Nature. No Gods, no designer required.

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?

Well, in Physics, they're looking at a multiverse. So, with practically
unlimited universes to build from, 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 stars
may only be an insignificant fraction of stars available in the
multiverse. It's doubtful that their sole purpose is ornamental.


JTG 2/28/06

.

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