Re: [asa] Atheist finds God thru Behe's books....

Cameron wrote: "if we are to speak of chips on shoulders, I would say that there are quite a number of people in this group who have a chip on their shoulder -- about YECs -- that is as big as the rock of Gibraltar.  The attitude towards YEC here borders on the obsessive." Amen! And a clear example of the creation vs. evolution argument of the 20th century being dragged into the 21st. Let's marshall some support to put this obsessiveness behind us... John W. wrote: "we have no scientific basis for detecting design outside of nature." Yes, we do. Human beings 'detect design' on a daily basis. Technology is 'not natural'; it is a human-made thing that did not 'evolve' (but surely it did and does 'change'). Technology is, with a logical scientific or philosophical perspective, 'outside of nature.' Yet you, John, reject that any 'X-ology' that studies *anything* 'outside of nature' could possibly be called 'science.' This is a problem for your position, which you apparently are not prepared to acknowledge. To repeat an obvious point: 'non-natural' does *not* necessarily equate with 'supernatural.' Gregory ________________________________ From: John Walley <john_walley@yahoo.com> To: Cameron Wybrow <wybrowc@sympatico.ca>; asa <asa@calvin.edu> Sent: Wed, October 14, 2009 2:50:12 PM Subject: Re: [asa] Atheist finds God thru Behe's books.... " Designed objects, if they exist, are not something outside of our experience, up in some supernatural world; they reside in our empirical world.  Even if the source of their design lies outside of nature, the design embodied in them does not.  You still seem to me to be confusing "supernatural intervention" and "design"." No I think it is valid to say that we have no scientific basis for detecting design outside of nature. You cannot say that supernaturally sourced design does not exist outside of nature. On one hand I can sympathize with this conclusion because I agree detecting design at least within nature is obvious and intuitive, but once we consider supernatural design then we have no basis on which to evaluate it. As I have said many times, I am happy to admit this conclusion may be logical and rational, but it is just not scientific. Granted the atheists take advantage of this but I think we have to give them that. I dont believe God has given us the abilty to know him scientifically, it is a much more subjective knowing that resists us using it to "prove" Him to others. That is what you are trying to do with your design argument. John __________________________________________________________________ Connect with friends from any web browser - no download required. Try the new Yahoo! Canada Messenger for the Web BETA at http://ca.messenger.yahoo.com/webmessengerpromo.php

To unsubscribe, send a message to majordomo@calvin.edu with
"unsubscribe asa" (no quotes) as the body of the message.
Received on Wed Oct 14 09:32:21 2009