Why is this pessimistic? Does every enquiry of any kind have to lead inexorably to the Truth, with a definite article and capital T? Not just leading to truth, but leading to The Truth? Seems like a pretty limiting approach to me.
Design requires a designer. Once they prove design then they have proven there was a designer. If not God what other choice would you have, aliens?
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Hi Bill,
I believe God created all things. However if scientists find proof of design and have a choice between God and AliensâŚ
I would say, a good no: of them would prefer aliens to God.
Strictly speaking, proof of a designer is not proof of God. However the nature of the designer revealed by nature would point to a very God like figure ;)âŚ
But then again, many evolutionists already go around saying creation does not point to a perfect, infinite God⌠they call it bad design.
Nothing limited to it the way I see it.
Since Truth with a capital T can be known⌠Why not?
That would be âatheistic evolutionists already go around saying creation does not point to a perfect, infinite Godâ. What else would you expect?
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I would expect them to continue along the same lines even if there is evidence of designâŚ
Those claiming to have âThe Truthâ often contradict each other. The real question is if humans can ever know anything with absolute certainty.
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So humans cannot know the Truth with absolute certainty anymore�
Then what do you do with basic Christian claims such as existence of God, the diety of Christ, assurance of salvation etc⌠Are we supposed to be agnostics about these things?
Bear in mind that not everyone on the BioLogos Forum ascribes to the BioLogos statement of faith. There are atheists, unitarian universalists, and others among us. Itâs just a nice big space for conversation. Donât assume youâre talking to BioLogos bloggers and board members. Youâre not.
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Thanks for the update.
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Sure, truth can be known, but not every way of pursuing truth necessarily leads to a certain conclusion about the creator. If itâs my job to study the behavior of a particular Amazonian tree frog, I donât want to be shackled into thinking that it has to lead to some conclusion about the Designer.
Then again, I suppose most of us live in the gray area between âScience must lead to the Truthâ and âScience cannot lead to the Truth.â I hope most of us live in the space where âScience might lead to the Truth.â I donât think thatâs pessimism. I think it just frees us from insisting on finding evidence for âDesignâ at every turn.
But I think a long discussion of ID is quite off-topic here. Surely there are lots of places here on the Forum to discuss ID⌠and if not, maybe you want to start a new topic about it? In my previous response, I tried to get back to the whale evidence, but so far you havenât seemed interested in pursuing that.
The really big difference between I.D. and the statements presented to you here is that a large number of I.D. supporters are YECs who think it all happened in 6000 years. While Old Earther I.D. folks think that God specially created life on Earth a species at a time ⌠when the geology and physics that God has left for us to evaluate shows that either God intentionally engaged in sequential special creation (to LOOK like the evolution of species) - - or God intentionally used God-Guided-Evolution to fill the earth with life forms.
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All of it?! And it has to be science that is saddled with illuminating the whole shebang for us? Thatâs quite a lot of invested confidence toward science you have there!
Why canât science just tell us little things ⌠like what is the average mass of these adult tree frogs? Or what provides their main nutrition? And then some questions can work their way up toward more connective concepts ⌠like how is this tree frog different from that tree frog that lives in a different jungle? Are they related? Do they interbreed? Higher questions yet ⌠where do these tree frogs come from? If they evolved, what would their common ancestor look like?
Science modestly builds its way up from the initial observational depths and tries to get higher and more encompassing with its explanations. It sounds like you want it to start with some forced conclusions and then work its way backward to provide post-hoc justification for what you âjust knowâ must be true. Let science do its modest job that itâs fairly good at; donât try to elevate it into some larger gatekeeper for all truth!
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Thatâs what âTruth with a capital Tâ is, absolute certainty that something is true.
You can do whatever you want with those claims. Personally, they arenât something I believe in, but there are obviously many who do believe in those claims. However, I doubt many (any?) would claim that the tenets of Christian belief have been absolutely proven True. From what I have read, heard, and experienced, one believes that these are true through faith.
I have discussed this specimen on other threads. Iâll try to track it down
Iâll just do it on here. First this is the press release. The later paper dated it at 40-46mya which is consistent with other Basilosaurids worldwide. But letâs say it is 49mya, all this would mean is there are likely older Pakecetids. This is a real possibility. There arenât any Paleocene Indian mammal localities.
Note: Iâve worked on Basilosaurids and love discussing them
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Well that was the researcherâs first date. But their later publication showed them to be incorrect
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The actual paper for those interested:
http://www.bioone.org/doi/abs/10.5710/AMGH.02.02.2016.2922?journalCode=ameg&
In summary, considering that 87Sr/86Sr ratios provided for TELM 4 might be biased (because of potential reworking and oscillation of the marine Sr isotope curve during the Eocene), we interpret the age of the horizon that produced MLP 11-II-21-3 (i.e., TELM 4) as early middle Eocene (~46â40 Ma; middle Lutetian to early Bartonian based on ICS International Chronostratigraphic Chart 2015; Cohen et al., 2013) and follow the most recent chronostratigraphic interpretation for the La Meseta Formation.
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Sorry, I didnât reply earlier. I got a lot of responses and missed this.
All these are certainly possibilities. However, the fact remains that we donât have evidence of most of these transitional forms existing before whales do in the light of the latest whale fossil.
And then the rest becomes pure speculation. I could speculate in the opposite direction that whales existed before the oldest known fossils and were fully developed 60mya⌠Of courses that would be just useless speculation. Just as speculating that the transitional species existed earlier and we just donât have fossils yet.
Also there is the problem of whale evolution having to become much faster than beforeâŚ