Proof of ID the World is Looking For

1. The theory of evolution and speciation by natural selection, though widely accepted, has never been able satisfactorily to explain the following phenomenon...(The existence of any existence whether animate or inanimate.

2. This is because... (scientifically, If there was no creator, there is and always will be nothing, which means existence has never happened. Scientifically, no creator = no existence for there would be no "big bang, Fiat or other "spontaneous existence") Mathematically, in the simplest form, 0 = 0.
3. Instead, we contend that the phenomenon can best be explained as the result of Divine Fiat, because... (see answer to question 2).
4. This can be tested by means of the following experiment... (0=0).
5. If our hypothesis is true -- and only if it is true -- the following results may be expected from the experiment. We exist. --> Must be true
6. We ran the experiment. Here are the results. darwin:0=0 creation:0+1 Creator = inf.
7. Therefore we conclude that you are wrong simply by existing.
8. We invite others to assess our arguments, repeat our experiment, and verify the results for themselves. Math is precise and as basic as I can explain to the darwin (wasn't that the 2nd dick on bewitched?) ists.

reply to post by Conspiriology

sorry maddness unitl you learn what kinds means you got no business even arguing in this thread in my opinion one has to know english or admit their is a problem admiting you got a problem.

MiMS's posts tend to be lucid, comprehensible English. Yours, on the other hand... frankly, I must struggle to understand what you are trying to say. You, Mr. Pot, have a great nerve to advert the negritude of Mr. Kettle.

As for your attempts to particularize the meaning of the very unspecific word 'kind', they are quite entertaining. Please do not stop.

I notice that you have not yet responded to my suggestion -- my challenge, if you will -- to start a thread of your own on falsifiability and open it to comment from other members. I don't suppose you will. In fact, I have a small, nonfinancial bet going with MiMS that you will not. Prove me wrong.

reply to post by imd12c4funn

Natural selection has never been put forward as a theory about the origins of life. I think Darwin quite clearly stated, in the title of his book, that it was an explanation of the origin of species.

Originally posted by AshleyD
Oh, nice. Rudeness and accusations of dishonesty.

Vehemence is not rudeness. I offer you no discourtesy. I merely point out the truth.

Didn't I just see you get onto someone on another thread for accusing you of being dishonest?

Yes, because the accusation was unjustified in my case. In your case it is not.

Maybe we can add hypocrisy to the list of your behavioral flaws.

Please yourself.

Anyways, I'm still working on my novel-length reply to your original eight questions.

I await its submission with great eagerness.

I never said NS was not scientifically validated or could not be passed by experiment

More dishonesty. You said:

But I am glad you admit the obstacle 'God Did It'... What I am trying to hit home is how evolutionists have a similar defense before I continue: 'Natural Selection Did It.'

This is precisely equivalent to stating that natural selection is unfalsifiable. Now you deny saying it was 'not scientifically validated and could not be passed by experiment'. That's the same thing as unfalsifiable. One of your statements has to be a lie. Take your pick.

Now who is being dishonest, Asty? I said all conclusions take a bit of faith. You said all conclusions take a bit of faith. I said glad we agree on that point to which you now say we do not agree when you just agreed with me- but then label me as the typical dishonest creationist.

In trying to equate your use of the word 'faith' -- belief in something for which thousands of years of earnest search have not turned up one atom of reliable evidence -- with my use of it -- which is also known by the term 'inductive logic', you are either being very stupid or you are being dishonest. I know you are not a stupid person.

And that is very definitely all I have to say to you on this subject.

Originally posted by Astyanax
reply to post by imd12c4funn

 

Natural selection has never been put forward as a theory about the origins of life. I think Darwin quite clearly stated, in the title of his book, that it was an explanation of the origin of species.

Just typical atheist sophistry from asty...

Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Biology books and evolutionist, Jonathan Weiner says something quite different.

Another Darwin enthusiast, Jonathan Weiner, concedes that despite its title, Darwin's book "does not document the origin of a single species."

D'Souza, Dinesh What's So Great About ChristianityReginery Publishing, Inc., 2007; p.93.

[edit on 5/6/2008 by Bigwhammy]

Originally posted by Astyanax
I merely point out the truth...

More dishonesty...

One of your statements has to be a lie...

You are either being very stupid or you are being dishonest. I know you are not a stupid person...

You are jumping to conclusions and making false accusations. But unlike your accusation, my examples leave nothing to be assumed.

Let's look at some of the things you have said throughout this thread:



"You don't have to prove the existence of a creator to prove intelligent design. It's exactly the other way round." - Astyanax

compared to:

"I never said you could prove a creator." -Astyanax

compared to:

"This is yet another example of the logical fallacy already committed by BigWhammy and pointed out by Evil Genius: affirming the consequent." [referring to the attempt to show a designer based on the design and how you believed it to be a logical fallacy] -Astyanax

compared to:

"Here's something you posted on the thread much earlier: ['If you do not believe in a creator or designer, then there is really nothing in this world that would convince you of creationism or intelligent design. - AshleyD'] I think that more or less clinches it, don't you? To believe in creationism or intelligent design, you have to believe in God." -Astyanax

compared to:

"We do not." [where you disagree with my statement where we agreed when you just agreed with me... after numerous contradictions.] -Astyanax



"Stop trying to disprove evolution" -Astyanax

compared to:

Your original post that pitted ID against evolution in the first place. You set it up that way instead of having ID stand alone for testing. I'm expounding on this problem in my next reply.



And now to re-quote the same thing from you I quoted above in this comment:

You are either being very stupid or you are being dishonest. I know you are not a stupid person...

Asty. You are either being very stupid or you are being dishonest. And being that you are not a dishonest person...

The fallacy that natural selection disproves a design.

In the book Natural Theology, 1802, theologian William Paley made an irrefutable argument for the existence of God. "In crossing a heath," Paley wrote, "suppose I pitched my foot against a stone, and were asked how the stone came to be there, I might possibly answer, for anything I knew to the contrary, it had lain there forever." But instead, Paley continued, "I found a watch upon the ground, I should hardly think of the answer I had given before."

Richard Dawkins, in his book The Blind Watchmaker, arrogantly states that Paley was "gloriously and utterly wrong." Dawkins desperately argues that Charles Darwin had discovered a way for nature to produce the appearance of design without the guiding of a creator. Dawkins is so blinded by his arrogant anti religious motivations he can not see how truly childish his argument is. Dawkins has actually strengthened the case for design.

Physicist Stephen Barr writes:

When examined carefully, scientific accounts of natural processes are never really about order emerging from mere chaos, or form emerging from mere formlessness. On the contrary, they are always about the unfolding of an order that was already implicit in the nature of things, although often in a secret or hidden way. When we see situations that appear haphazard, or things that appear amorphous, automatically or spontaneously "arranging themselves" into orderly patterns, what we find in every case is that what appeared to be haphazard actually had a great deal of order built into it.... What Dawkins does not seem to appreciate is that his blind watchmaker is something even more remarkable than Paley's watches. Paley finds a "watch" and asks how such a thing could have come to be there by chance. Dawkins finds an immense automated factory that blindly constructs watches, and feels that he has completely answered Paley's point. But that is absurd. How can a factory that makes watches be less in need of explanation than the watches themselves?

reply to post by AshleyD

You have done well by laying out the facts in that order. They speak for themselves, demonstrating quite clearly that I have been neither dishonest, nor stupid, nor accidentally inconsistent. I owe you thanks, and to offer them I have broken my resolution to discuss the matter no further with you.

Those quotes are not in contradiction to one another. They all emerge from the basic proposition of the thread -- that you cannot prove intelligent design.

Look (all the statements within double quotes are mine):

"You don't have to prove the existence of a creator to prove intelligent design. It's exactly the other way round."

That is because, by definition, if you prove intelligent design, you prove a creator. But you cannot prove intelligent design, and therefore

"I never said you could prove a creator." And indeed, I never did.

Pointing to evidence of design (whether intelligent or the product of evolution) and saying it proves only intelligent design is

"(an) example of the logical fallacy already committed by BigWhammy and pointed out by Evil Genius: affirming the consequent."

Hence, when you

"posted on the thread much earlier, 'If you do not believe in a creator or designer, then there is really nothing in this world that would convince you of creationism or intelligent design'"

you demanded that we, too, assume the consequent, and in doing so demonstrated that

"To believe in creationism or intelligent design, you have to believe in God."

"We do not" agree with each other's statements because your use of the word faith and my use of it referred to entirely different things.

I recommended that you

"stop trying to disprove evolution"

by trying to pick holes in already well-established data, such as the fossil record, and instead suggested that you try to prove intelligent design. I made this suggestion with great confidence, because I know very well that

you cannot prove intelligent design. Nobody can.

My original post pitted ID against evolution because that's the way it is, not because I was trying to trap you. There are two competing explanations for the complexity and variety of life. If one of those explanations is eliminated in a particular case, the other has to be accepted until a third explanation comes along. This, too, was patiently explained in an earlier post. Please note that eliminating evolution as the explanation of a specified phenomenon is very different from disproving evolution, the thing I said you did not have to do.

I hope this explanation makes it clear to you that I am neither stupid nor a liar. I shall withdraw my accusation of dishonesty if you will admit to a misunderstanding.

[edit on 7-5-2008 by Astyanax]

Originally posted by Bigwhammy
In the book Natural Theology, 1802, theologian William Paley made an irrefutable argument for the existence of God...

Irrefutable, my aching big toe. Paley was assuming the consequent. So are you.

Originally posted by AshleyD
"You don't have to prove the existence of a creator to prove intelligent design. It's exactly the other way round." - Astyanax

compared to:

"I never said you could prove a creator." -Astyanax

compared to:

"This is yet another example of the logical fallacy already committed by BigWhammy and pointed out by Evil Genius: affirming the consequent." [referring to the attempt to show a designer based on the design and how you believed it to be a logical fallacy] -Astyanax

compared to:

"Here's something you posted on the thread much earlier: ['If you do not believe in a creator or designer, then there is really nothing in this world that would convince you of creationism or intelligent design. - AshleyD'] I think that more or less clinches it, don't you? To believe in creationism or intelligent design, you have to believe in God." -Astyanax

Gee asty,, lookin at your posts she has on display like that, I got to tell ya, it sure looks I made the right decision about arguing with you on falsefiable test model theory. Jeez she put you together pretty darn good and you are just being argumentative here.

Asty. You are either being very stupid or you are being dishonest. And being that you are not a dishonest person...

I think it's just that air of intellectual snobery that clashes when ever the pseudo intellectually minded attempt to illustrate thinking it is more convincing to us when they are condescending but it comes off looking like they got no class.

reply to post by Astyanax

I suppose I should just sit back and collect the points, but I'm getting a little bored with the opposition's thus-far futile attempts to answer the OP challenge. They're now so desparate they've resorted to impugning my good name.

So guess what: I'm going to give them a little help.

Here goes.

1. The theory of evolution and speciation by natural selection, though widely accepted, has never been able satisfactorily to explain homosexual behaviour in humans.
   
   
2. This is because natural selection presupposes that a trait has selective value. No selective value has been conclusively proved for homosexuality, yet the trait is universally prevalent in human populations. In explanation, a kin-selection-style thesis has been proposed in which it is argued that homosexuals help rear and protect genetically related juveniles, thus increasing the survival and spread of homosexuality in the population; however, no study has yet been able to identify a strong positive correlation to support this thesis.
   
   
3. Instead, we contend that the phenomenon can best be explained as the result of Intelligent Design, because...
   

Okay, ID supporters. You can take it from there...

Originally posted by Astyanax

you cannot prove intelligent design. Nobody can.



I hope this explanation makes it clear to you that I am neither stupid nor a liar. I shall withdraw my accusation of dishonesty if you will admit to a misunderstanding.

[edit on 7-5-2008 by Astyanax]

Do not do it Ashley, until you consider what he has done is not done by his intelligence or his "deal” which is really clever if you like being tricked into a choice between two equally distastefull alternatives.

Asty, it must be hard being you huh, I mean it really must be some experience a day in the life of someone who thinks he knows so much he can say such absolutes.

Let me tell you a story I heard recently.

Two men standing in front of Mount Rushmore and the Christian said to the atheist: Isn't that great, how the wind carved these faces out of the rock? No way did the wind do this, the atheist answered. The Christian went further and said: How long, do you think it took the wind to do it? There is absolute no way, the wind could do it, no matter how much time he had, the atheist replied. So why then do you believe that the much more complex systems of this earth have been created by less than the wind in a long time?

Oh I know that story is not going to get by someone like you astyanx.

Nope, you are already thinking like the smart aleck atheist and have a stunning blockbuster to share with us while showing us how dumb that analogy was. Something I could easily anticipate from the likes of you, Dave or Madness because as Dave always says,, "Clearly" we do not know how things are made. "Clearly" we do not know the difference between what has intelligent causation and what does not.

You would tell us the particular shapes on Mount Rushmore represent ordered information - ordered according to the criteria of a human designer. The particular shapes of the Norwegian fjords also represent a vast amount of information - but it's not ordered information much like the pattern of fallen leaves on a forest floor. A designer did not produce the fjords; they were produced by the immense power of glaciers during a succession of ice ages.

This is the kind of answer we can expect to see from you.

You always have a comeback that does not ever seem to be answering the right supposition. You would think the Christian was talking about mountains, when he was not. He was talking about the proof of intelligent design and that anyone can recognize it when we learn how to see without being blinded by what we believe cannot be.

The moral of the story is right there in front of the Atheists own eyes and he admits it because he KNOWS the faces on MT Rushmore were created.

HOWEVER,,

Why he would think the Christian was talking about fjords Ill never know,


Why he thinks he has to explain how fjords were made, I will never know.

What I DO know is this,

Atheists do not know an intelligently designed artifact when it is right in there very "eyes".

Want proof?

Is the complexity of the human eyeball unordered information?

NOPE.

Asty is right, it can't be proven until you open your eyes but he, like madness are blinded by what they refuse to see, what they just don't want to look at, or don't want to understand.

So I agree, you are right, it can't be proven to you

Not that it isn't proven, I see it,

Everywhere

- Con




[edit on 7-5-2008 by Conspiriology]

Originally posted by Astyanax


MiMS's posts tend to be lucid, comprehensible English. Yours, on the other hand... frankly, I must struggle to understand what you are trying to say. You, Mr. Pot, have a great nerve to advert the negritude of Mr. Kettle.

Not the same comparison asty, I would have thought you would have seen the difference. Whether you think he is lucid or not, whether you think he speaks comprehensible english is what I have a problem with.

You see "Kind" is not what makes it specific, what makes it specific is what the word "kind" is referring too. Having said that I can now assume what YOU know about comprehensible english I can put on the same stamp as what madd does.

In fact, I have a small, nonfinancial bet going with MiMS that you will not. Prove me wrong.

How small is non financial? You gonna trade house cleaning services or is that too large? Not that it matters but why on earth would I want to make either one of you right you just asked me to prove you wrong so I can assume you doubt I would, and I know mims doesn't think I would.

So why are you being dis honest?

- Con

[edit on 7-5-2008 by Conspiriology]

reply to post by Astyanax


Paley's argument has never been refuted. He assumes nothing, you are side stepping the truth in your usual reptilian style.

reply to post by Bigwhammy

Paley's argument is refuted by the fact that its premises are false. End of story.

What, precisely, is my 'reptilian' style? Would you care to elaborate?


[edit on 7-5-2008 by Astyanax]

reply to post by Conspiriology

Asty, it must be hard being you huh, I mean it really must be some experience a day in the life of someone who thinks he knows so much he can say such absolutes.

Nah, it's easy. You do it every day.

Look:

'Evolution is BUNK!'

Doh.

By the way, do you have anything on-topic to add to the thread?

And further by the way, the name is Astyanax.

reply to post by Conspiriology
>Removed post. Forget it. I'm just encouraging your off-topic ramblings<

[edit on 7-5-2008 by Astyanax]

Note: While beginning this comment last weekend (I've been working on it a little at a time while saving it in the form of drafts), I had started out directly answering the questions outlined in the eight steps. The original 'theme' I was going to use was the 'phenomenon' of abiogenesis as this very important step is not even included in The Theory of Evolution (TOE) therefore TOE (and secular science in general) has never been able to 'satisfactorily explain' what exactly caused the spark or essence of life to begin the process of evolution in the first place in spite of numerous attempts and experiments. However, I began to notice some fatal flaws in the way test was posed so I'm changing my 'theme' for the time being to address these issues. If anyone wants to see what I have done in terms of the original, actual answers, I will be happy to post my progress although it was impossible to complete after realizing the flaws in the OP's request.

Note: To follow the theme of this thread's title, I changed the title below from 'God did it (GDI)' to 'A Designer Did It (DDI).'

The Way to Prove A Designer Did It

1). The theory of evolution and speciation by natural selection, though widely accepted, has never been able satisfactorily to explain:

Commentary for step one: Although I was accused of typical creationist 'dishonesty' [an accusation I mentioned in one of my very first comments to this thread that creationists often receive whenever they disagree with evolution] for bringing up this point, I still stand by what I said before and will therefore mention it again without apology. Perhaps a clarification will help Astyanax retract his false accusation that stemmed from his own misunderstanding of what I was implying. Because the TOE only begins with organic matter already being in existence, the main question evolution really seeks to answer is the variety of life and species. Regardless of the oddness, complexity, variety, or how perfectly a creature relates to its environment, the one-size-fits-all solution to the variety of life and complexity is "natural selection, mutation, and adaptation did it" or what I will refer to in this comment for the sake of brevity as 'NSDI.'

If ID places itself at the same starting level as TOE (when organic material was already in existence), then IDists also have an out, which is the reason Astyanax said he could not answer the eight questions if they had been targeted to evolution. He claims all we would have to say is DDI in order to explain the same things evolutionists explain by NSDI: Complexity, variety, a creature's 'perfect' relationship to its environment, etc. However, his concern was over simplified due to the fact IDists have more to go on than having to simply resort to the explanation that DDI without any supporting evidence.

Astyanax's objection to me saying evolutionists have any easy out as well with the explanation 'NSDI' was answered by mentioning the fact evolutionists claim natural selection has supporting evidence and can be observed, even if it takes making a connection to believe that is how all variety of species have come to be from the very first living simple organisms. He also claims natural selection is falsifiable and I will agree that it is to a certain extent.

However, I do not agree with Astyanax when he says ID cannot stand up to the same scrutiny. ID does have supporting evidence in that we have a design in the form of DNA coding. All living organisms are embedded with a code as part of their design. Like evolutionists who have evidence of natural selection and make the leap to take it back as an explanation for the origins of the species, IDists also have evidence of design and they too make the leap to take it back to our origins. None of us were there at the beginning of time so that is the best that can be expected from either side in all fairness. Organisms have the design, the design can be manipulated, and in some experiments it has been completely created or rewritten (See: HERE for one example), and in many cases predicted expectations have been met. Therefore, ID is also falsifiable to an extent just like natural selection is falsifiable to an extent. Evolution believes NSDI all the way back to our origins and ID believes DDI all the way back to our origins. Both have supporting but incomplete evidence because both views require making some connections based on the existing evidence.

2). This is because:

I am going to take the time to reiterate this because I feel it is important. Because the TOE only tries to explain what happened once life was already in existence, there is no 'unexplained phenomenon' ID can address concerning evolution that cannot be explained by evolutionists with the predicted response, 'NSDI.' Astyanax could not answer the eight questions from the view of an evolutionist because there is nothing an IDist would consider an 'unexplainable phenomenon' because we would resort to 'DDI.' Therefore, if ID is on the same level of the playing field regarding starting out at the existence of organic matter, there is nothing unexplainable from TOE's point of view as well to explain the variety of life and for the time being we are only focusing on the origin of the species and not the origin of life.

3). Instead, we contend that the phenomenon can best be explained as the result of Intelligent Design [and interference] because:

Although I see emphasis on the word 'best' in the requirement above, I have already pointed out the fact that the ID community does not wish to replace TOE in education but wishes to have the two taught side by side. Therefore, 'best' is unnecessary in this case as both TOE and ID have supporting evidence in genetics, biology, the fossil record, etc., and both can be tested scientifically to a certain extent although not completely.

I have said this before and will say it again because it ties into how Astyanax has set up his test by implying only one option can be viable. I disagree. Even if evolution is completely proven to be false, that does not mean ID would automatically be proven true. Ruling one option out does not mean the alternative option is correct by default. Turning that around, proving ID would not dismiss evolution automatically. This again goes back to ID not attempting to replace TOE in education but being taught along side it as another explanation for our origins. The way these questions are set up are fundamentally flawed because both fields should be able to stand alone as their own theory because they are not necessarily mutually exclusive.

For example, theistic evolutionists who believe that the TOE is the design. Although I disagree with theistic evolution, they feel the evidence for both evolution and design is sufficient enough and combine the two concepts. It's not like the argument over the shape of the earth where only one view can be true and only one view was proven to be true while the other was proven to be false. Although I do not remotely believe in evolution on a wholesale level, I can still recognize the OP for the false dichotomy that it is from a scientific view.

It would be more scientifically sound to set up ID as a stand alone hypothesis through the actual steps of the scientific method instead of the steps outlined in this thread that do include steps contained in the scientific method but muddies the water by inserting challenges that not even evolutionists would be able to satisfactorily answer. When I asked Asty to answer his own questions from the view of evolution, he made it clear he could not get passed step one. Although I understand why, hopefully he will now see how his outline in the OP was flawed from the very beginning.

4). This can be tested by means of the following experiment (Exhaustive description of experiment, including an explanation of how it addresses the problem. Note that the experiment will have to be ingeniously designed to eliminate all other explanations for the phenomenon apart from DDI):

This step amuses me for obvious reasons especially with how it is worded. Not even evolution eliminates 'all other explanations.' Also, not even evolution can be tested wholesale when it comes to macroevolution. They claim to have supporting evidence of macro but it cannot be observed to occur, what evidence they do present has not gone uncontested, their predictions of what should have been found in the fossil record have failed in some aspects, and macro cannot be tested by itself through scientific experiments. Evolutionists work off the evidence they can validate through micro and genetics but then they must make 'the leap of faith' to connect it to the complete the TOE.

Even after repeatedly asking Astyanax to skip the other steps but to at least answer this step from the point of evolution while focusing on macro, this was not done. I'm not surprised because it is impossible to be done. Finches in the Galapagos Islands might have different shaped beaks, certain differing species might have similar DNA, and we can see bacteria mutating under the microscope but there is still nothing that has been done or can be done to set up macro as a scientific experiment. Accurate predicts are also extremely difficult and some would say impossible. So, evolutionists view the evidence they can through micro and take it all the way back to connect it to macro because macro cannot be absolutely proven by other means and the fossil record support is abysmal in terms of expectations.

Likewise, ID can also prove a complex code making up living organisms, has support in the fossil record with the sudden appearance of complex creatures during the Cambrian period, can replicate certain processes in lab settings, and make predictions. However, like evolution making the connection between micro and macro through the evidence they have, ID makes the connection between the evidence they have to link the design to a designer.

5) & 6): If our hypothesis is true -- and only if it is true -- the following results may be expected from the experiment. We ran the experiment. Here are the results. They tally well with our expectations.

I'm not going to spend too much time on this step or emphasize it too much as most of these capability of scientists to manipulate, rewrite, and even create new codes through DNA is common knowledge. Furthermore, due to ATS character limits in posts I am running out of available room for text. But here are a couple of interesting examples (although I found dozens) in addition to a link provided earlier in this article:

As DNA research advances, science plays God ever more

Synthetic biology applies engineering approach to biological components

It is still in its infancy but fascinating nonetheless to see the progress in designing with DNA. If there was no code, ID would not have a leg to stand but obviously such a code exists. Therefore, like micro making the leap to macro, IDists make the leap of believing in a designer (whether it be supernatural or extraterrestrial) through seeing the existence of a code, its complexity, its importance in making organisms what they are, fossil record evidence, and many experiments and successful results.

7). Therefore we conclude that DDI.

Nah. I already knew.

8). We invite others to assess our arguments, repeat our experiment, and verify the results for themselves.

Sure go ahead. I'm going to get back to shampooing my carpets and will be back to argue later.

[edit on 5/7/2008 by AshleyD]

Originally posted by Astyanax
Paley's argument is refuted by the fact that its premises are false. End of story.

What, precisely, is my 'reptilian' style? Would you care to elaborate?


[edit on 7-5-2008 by Astyanax]

You are only offering a contradiction astyananax and that isn't using "inductive logic" to support your assertion it is a false premise.

EXAMPLE: You say paley's premises are false, and that is not true.
end of story.

See? Why would any of us let you get away with that when you do the same thing?

What, precisely, is my 'reptilian' style? Would you care to elaborate?

Why should he, he just saw me respond to your posts only to be accused of going off topic as soon as I refer to the comments you have made or asked,. You have done that several times to me so I am being careful to watch for it and see this question could do just that if you aren't aware of the meaning BW is using to describe with what I agree is your usual reptilian style.

I get it that I am not welcome to join in here or at least get the feeling I'm not. It is your thread and Ill respect your wishes and stay out of this one letting you have this small victory where I was wrong and you are right.

It is true, I agree about making absolute statements that saying evolution is bunk is not only easy to say,

it is even easier to prove.

- Con





[edit on 7-5-2008 by Conspiriology]

Originally posted by Astyanax
reply to post by Bigwhammy

 

What, precisely, is my 'reptilian' style? Would you care to elaborate?

The style of arrogance, avoidance and deception.

Case in point, first you said,

Originally posted by Astyanax
Irrefutable, my aching big toe. Paley was assuming the consequent. So are you.

And the consequent he assumed was? Oh wait!! the goal posts are moving too fast for me to keep up: (jogs down field)

Originally posted by Astyanax
Paley's argument is refuted by the fact that its premises are false. End of story.

Which premises are those that are false? Are you even familiar with Paley's entire argument?

(reader should note how Asty never address the argument in specific terms only in broad generalizations with terms like premises and consequent to give himself slither room later)

Either you don't even know the argument you are arguing against, you can't quite make up your mind which tactic your going to take or you just spout off whichever dishonest ruse pops into your head first. Perhaps you should review the entire argument

Being its a classic argument there and there are volumes written about it and never in history have such elementary logical objections been raised. I find your simpleton ruse laughable and pathetic. Richard Dawkins could have spared himself writing an entire book on the subject (which still failed to refute it anyway). Wonder why he didn't? He couldn't. Which proves you are dishonest. Paley's teleological argument still stands unrefuted.

But exactly where, we may ask, was Paley refuted? Who has answered his argument? How was the watch produced without an intelligent designer? It is surprising but true that the main argument of the discredited Paley has actually never been refuted. Neither Darwin nor Dawkins, neither science nor philosophy, has explained how an irreducibly complex system such as a watch might be produced without a designer. Instead Paley's argument has been sidetracked by attacks on its injudicious examples and off-the-point theological discussions. Paley, of course, is to blame for not framing his argument more tightly. But many of Paley's detractors are also to blame for refusing to engage his main point, playing dumb in order to reach a more palatable conclusion.

ndbf.blogspot.com...

[edit on 5/7/2008 by Bigwhammy]