JF>If God designed species to form a harmonious ecology, one might
>well expect species to be designed to help one another. But, as far
>as we know, they aren't.
>> This is typical of evolutionary "pop theology", what Johnson calls the
>> "God wouldn't have done it this way" argument. I am amazed at the
>> confidence, that atheists/agnostics assert about what God would or
>> would not do. Their self-assurance in the things of God is truly
>> breath-taking, doubly so because they believe that God does not
>> exist or cannot be known!
Actually, I was responding to Robert van de Water's argument that the
design of rabbit guts was evidence of a creator.
>> Human beings have trouble working out what other human beings
>> (including themselves) would do in any given circumstances, let alone
>> what an omniscient Creator would do in designing a world!
It's creationists who are fondest of pointing out how beautifully the
universe is designed for us to live in (e.g. Hugh Ross). And I've read
a few young earth creationists who were quite sure that evolution
couldn't be true because God wouldn't use such a cruel, wasteful system.
Both points of view, especially the latter, suggest certain
preconceptions about how God would or would not have gone about his
business. Both sides of this debate often use the argument that God's
design should reveal evidence of its designer.
>> Perhaps Jim will now conclude that the because there is in fact a
>> brilliantly successful "harmonious ecology", where "species" are
>> "designed to help one another", by paradoxically helping themselves,
>> that this is evidence of a Super-Intellect behind the scenes?
It is certainly consistent with a Super-Intellect who set up an
evolutionary mechanism, knowing that letting natural selection run wild
would result in complex ecologies. I have no quarrel with such an
interpretion, but hypothesizing that A caused B, and then showing that B
exists, does not show that A exists.
-- Jim Foley Symbios Logic, Fort Collins, COJim.Foley@symbios.com (303) 223-5100 x9765 I've got a plan so cunning you could put a tail on it and call it a weasel. -- Edmund Blackadder