Subject:
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Re: Atheism (was: Santorum Fails In His Effort To Pervert The Constitution)
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.off-topic.debate
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Date:
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Fri, 20 Aug 2004 14:29:53 GMT
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Viewed:
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2965 times
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In lugnet.off-topic.debate, Mark Bellis wrote:
> Surely the models can be allowed to evolve. Then models with God as the
> designer can be compared with models without a designer and the results
> compared. i.e. you can determine for yourself whether it makes more sense for
> there to be a God who designed it all or no designer. Is this not a genetic
> algorithm?
In order to test your suggestion, I must ask that you present to me something in
nature that, in your judgment, was not designed by God and also something that,
in your view, *was* designed by God. Are you able to provide examples of each?
If not, then your algorithm fails. And if you are able to provide examples of
each, I must ask how you distinguish one from the other, without assuming
outright the conclusion that you're trying to prove! As a testable scientific
hypothesis, your proposal is inadequate.
> Genetic algorithms require repeated testing, not abandoning the testing by
> saying "I can't prove it either way and I don't want to try it out"! Even
> agnostics should continue to seek evidence and include models in the algorithm
> for which they have little evidence.
>
> The fact that there are many people who favour each type of model is more reason
> to keep testing.
Well, I'd dispute this point. The reason to keep testing is to keep improving
our understanding. And science shouldn't be about who favors which model; it
should be about which model provides the better (ie, more complete) explanation.
Intelligent design, as a theory, is inferior to the theory of evolution via
natural selection because the former theory makes no predictions, has yielded no
subordinate, productive sciences, and is at its core untestable by definition.
Additionally, intelligent design sets certain areas off-limits to inquiry and
requires greater suppositional leaps than does evolutionary theory. For that
matter, if evolution via natural selection is incorrect, then all of modern
biology and pharmacology--not to mention most of modern agriculture--must be
abandoned. Until intelligent design can offer superior explanatory models than
all of these disciplines, intelligent design will remain a fringe theory with
little correlation to actual science.
> Personally, I consistently find that it makes more sense to me
> for God to have designed things the way they are, simply because of how well
> everything fits together.
Do they? I can name a hundred examples of things that I, a finite man, would
have designed better, if I'd had the power to do so. A thorough examination of
the natural world reveals a system whose components have evolved to a high
degree of interdependency, and at no point in the system do we have to appeal to
a deity for explanation.
> No man could have designed it so well, so it makes sense for there to be a
> greater intelligence. My repeated testing is part of questioning my faith.
I appreciate your willingness to pursue the question, and I mean that sincerely.
However, I am concerned that the way you've framed your inquiry has forced you
to ignore much of the available data.
Let me put it another way--can you indicate to me something that would cause you
to conclude either that God does not exist or that your faith in/worship of him
is unfounded? If you cannot offer such an example, then I suggest that this is
an area of your life that you are not willing to examine objectively. That's
your right, of course, but I hope you understand that this kind of selective
examination is unsatisfactory to someone seeking to examine the universe
empirically.
In previous posts here I have named numerous examples of evidence that would
cause me to conclude that God does exist, none of which would undermine my free
will. If a believer cannot indicate an example, even a theoretical example, of
something that would demonstrate the falsity of belief, then I can't accept that
the believer has honestly examined the belief.
Further, I find that there is no value in having a love that cannot be lost,
just as there is no value in winning a game of pinball that cannot be lost.
Similarly, a theory that cannot, in principle, be disproven offers no
explanatory value.
Dave!
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