Stan Pawlukiewicz wrote:
> robert bristow-johnson wrote:
>
>> in article 9S4qf.3035$[email protected], Bryan Hackney at
>> [email protected] wrote on 12/20/2005 23:28:
>>
>>
>>> ID and macro-evolution should both be hauled to the trash heap. They
>>> have
>>> exactly the same amount of physical evidence in support.
>>
>>
>>
>> oh really? i didn't know that "macro"-evolution required the
>> establishment
>> of a deity, something kinda hard to measure with scientific instruments.
>> the *theory* of (macro|micro|whatever) Darwinian evolution and natural
>> selection has holes in the fossil record, unanswered questions, and parts
>> that will be revised in the future (meaning those parts, now generally
>> accepted are *wrong*), but its amount of physical evidence is not zero.
>> until some scientist makes a "God-detector", ID and Creationism have
>> *zero*
>> physical evidence.
>>
> Kind of depends on your viewpoint. One could argue that all of creation
> is evidence.

Maybe, but it seems mostly to be evidence that, given enough time (infinity?), a
random process (e.g. quantum jitter) can, at least once, produce something
extra-ordinary and, at least in the short-term, non-reversible. Indeed we only
need it to happen once, and all the evidence indicates that indeed it has
happened at least once - we are here, observing it. And in a few years, we
should know if the delightfully named "God particle" (Higgs boson) exists.
Somehow, particles exist, in very, um, particular forms, with and without mass,
and given the extra-ordinariness of this, the emergence of the cell from a
similar random process should be less surprising. Intuitively we might suppose
the existence of particles without mass to be the weird part, but in practice
scientists are struggling more to explain the particles ~with~ mass.

In the meantime, ID has a real problem (among many others) in that its founding
premise is that something is intrinsically inexplicable; which is different from
acknowledging that something hasn't been explained yet, and which is totally
opposite from actually explaining anything!

So so far, the best evidence for the existence of God is the existence of
randomness; without which was not any thing made that was made.

On which note, I wish a Happy Solstice to everyone, and a Happy Christmas too to
those for whom that is meaningful.

Richard Dobson








Richard Dobson