Respectfully, this seems like a principle of arms races, not of science.
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I have said no such thing.
If you knw me you will also know I do not classify TOE as the same ass all other science. It is not me who defends TOE with other science, or compares it.
I have always claimed TOE as a special case. Neither do I claim any sort of conspiracy either within or outside science, including TOE. I just have the audacity to claim that they ae wrong. Oh Dear. never mind. But then, who am I?
Richard
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I do apologize if I got the wrong impression from our discussion thus far, but from your previous statements (including these above), I felt as though you believed that scientists were acting with some degree of malicious intent. You had put the blame of weapons of mass destruction onto their shoulders, and accuse them of not using common sense (and making excuses for it). It was for these accusations that I wondered why you seemed to be so hostile against scientists. Is there a particular reason why you had made these statements about scientists? As I mentioned before, I’ve had this perspective before, and I too had felt that scientists were, for whatever reason, lying or wrong about evolution or whatever principles I felt were in conflict with my faith. However, I have come to find these fears somewhat silly.
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Not silly.
But not life changing either.
I think that Dirty Harry got it right when he said
“We all need to know our limitations”
Forgive me, but I think that some scientists do not know them.
Richard
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Wow. Arrognorance in spades.
It appears to be a garbled misapplication of Newton’s 3rd law of motion.
I think one thing that we should keep in mind is that these scientists have been working with theory that has been developed for several centuries now (Darwin published On Origin Of A Species in 1859). If we are lead to believe that scientists have been wrong about evolution, then we need to accept that several generations of scientists (people who have been specifically trained to look at the data and draw conclusions) have been overstepping their boundaries or drawing conclusions they shouldn’t have. I feel this is a bit of a leap to try and justify; would none of the many thousands of scientists working with this theory not have discovered these fatal flaws for themselves? Why wouldn’t they try to expose the obvious lie being pushed by science?
As I mentioned before, I feel like it is needed to try and give the benefit of the doubt to the people working in this theory. They aren’t trying to mislead or discredit anyone. They just found a whole lot of fossils and needed a way to connect them all. I understand why you may feel upset (shouldn’t God have made each species by hand?), but we need to understand a few bits of information.
Genetically, humans are really, really closely related to other apes (they share about 99% of their DNA). If we were to believe that God made us solely special, then shouldn’t our DNA be beyond anything that is in the animal kingdom? Well, it isn’t that way. And I’m glad it is. When I look at modern science, I see a great humbling effect. We used to think that Earth was the entire universe; now, we know it is a pathetic speck in a massive Cosmos. Humans believed that we were special and beyond anything animal; yet, our mothers were monkeys and we share a history with everything that has ever lived. If God needed a way to check human hubris, he surely did it. Knowing our small place in existence, and only slightly uncommon place in the animal kingdom, we humans need to appreciate everything we get. Every mineral we use is one we cannot get back from our planet, and every species we kill is a species we’ll never get back. I don’t see why God would not have put us here, especially considering that Genesis says we were made from dirt and God created humans on the same day as animals.
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The Raelians are consistently odd in various ways. Besides the psychic alien stuff (claiming that Jesus was an example of the alien receptivity before Rael), their parades to promote their “free love” position generated complaints about obscenity. In Paris.
ID includes a wide assortment of positions, but tends to bill itself as supporting the perceived view of the audience rather than being straightforward about the range of views. But also the tendency of YEC to false dichotomy leads to the assumption that someone saying anything appealing must agree with me on everything.
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I don’t think Richard would classify it a lie. He just can not accept macro-evolution if it doesn’t require God as a part of the process.
I can accept a process that doesn’t include God when God’s involvement is undetectable. The knowledge of the presence of God comes from Scripture, not science.
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Never trust a quote from an evolution opposer. 95+% of them are misquotes, miscited, out-of-context or invented.
This is no exception.
The actual quote, “A man’s GOT to know his limitations.” And in context was referring to just one man, not an entire profession. So would you call this a out-of-context, misquotation? 
Did he actually make such an assumption?
Something being natural indicating that said something is not divine is a false dichotomy I’m not sure Franklin would have fallen into.
Excellent point!
No more than noting that everything in a landscape painting was put there by the artist deflects the fact of his having used a brush.
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Especially when offering up a series of papers systematically challenging the prevailing paradigm is a great way to get fame and funding.
No, because our special status does not rest on biology.
This is a category error made by apologists on a regular basis.
So far, anyway.
That sixth day is a nice little literary passage that when read carefully tells us that humans were made just the way the animals were, just with a small bonus.
False dichotomy. That God’s involvement is not detectable isn’t a statement about the process, it’s a statement about our limitations.
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Thank you for the correction. From what I could tell, he did believe a natural cause but not at all with an intention or idea of it challenging God’s position. I wasn’t trying to say that the two were mutually exclusive events, I was just trying to explain that if he assumed that there was no underlying natural cause (and instead assumed it was some sort of miracle or other supernatural phenomenon), then he wouldn’t have been able to make his discovery.
What I was more trying to say was this:
Why do animals change over time? Well, because God made them do that. Case closed!
I think that simply saying this and not trying to find a natural explanation (such as evolution) “deflects” our proper understanding of the nature of this situation. Perhaps “deflect” isn’t the proper wordage but from the many anti-evolution apologists I’ve seen online, they go about showing how evolution is all wrong but then do not provide a sufficient solution to the question of why the animals change other than “because God told them to do so.” Again, I’m not trying to paint the two as mutually exclusive (how I see it is that God allowed the process of evolution to do its thing without interference and relying solely on environmental factors than Divine ones, so as to maintain the tenant of free will in Creation).
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It isn’t our limitations. It is God choosing to remain hidden no matter how hard we look.
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Yeah, that makes sense. I was just trying to highlight the fact that the line between our physical existence and that of animals is somewhat blurred, as we share a great number of major anatomical features with animals (I.e. as all other mammals, we have milk glands and hair; like many other animals in general [including birds and lizards], we have four limbs and two eyes), which indicate our status as being firmly present in the evolutionary chain. I have no doubts that humans are inherently different from animals (our planet emits light on the side facing away from the sun, a feat possible only by us creatures capable of learning and wielding the forces of nature), but sometimes those differences are hard to “see.”
I can’t seem to find the exact podcast episode but one of the earlier Language of God episodes talked about this idea.
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Just a misquote, I think, since there’s no context that affects the meaning. Though its use is ironic.
Interesting dilema.
Do you claim that this process is correct even though there is an element (God) missing? How can it be be so?
I understand why a non theist sees Evolution as they do. It is a shame that they cannot see why I cannot accept it.
All it needs (IMHO) is a little less chance, and a little more guidance and Evolution works fine. Of course, the amount of guidance (Both where and how) becomes the issue.
Richard
The ‘?’ includes Berlinski, an ID supporter who claims to be an agnostic.