Hello Ack,
Originally posted by Ack-Ack
Please tell us what concrete scientific data have any of the ID/Creationist provided that show that man and the universe was created by some omnipotent being?
While all the evidence of Evolution hasn't been discovered yet, what has been discovered has shown evolution happening. Again, to cite an exampe again...whales. Why do whales have a pelvic bone? Is it because they were at one time mammals that lived both on land and in the ocean until eventually the evolved into pure marine mammals or did God just make a mistake and add an extra bone?
ack-ack
You present me with a hill and ask me to roll the "evidence" boulder, Sisyphus like, up it. We both know that when it reaches the top it will roll down the other side and I'll have to choose to give up the endeavor or begin again without any real hope of reaching a goal. I think we both know that there are no evidences I could provide that would change your mind on this. If I can try to make some distant tenuous connection to the original subject of this thread there are many people in the world who will never believe that Islam actually promotes violence, no matter how much evidence of that fact accumulates in the news media. One can even point to the history of the origins of Islam and its fundamental doctrines, and yet get nowhere because of an unshakeable presupposition that "Islam is peaceful." If Islam is peaceful then the only evidence that will be admitted is evidence buttressing that claim.
Anyway, if you want an answer with ironic origins to your "Whale Pelvis" homologous structure question here is a refutation from a
Muslim scholar -
http://www.trueorigin.org/ng_whales01.aspOr for other responses on this subject, try -
http://www.trueorigin.org/whales.asphttp://www.trueorigin.org/homology.aspBut what I personally find more interesting, is how in your question you actually make not a scientific but a theological argument, asserting that the existence of the extra bone would be "a mistake" if Creation was true. This assumes a lot about the nature of the Creator as well as the value of the bone itself (I haven't heard whales complaining about it, have you?
)
Anyway, not that it will make a whit of difference, but this is the same kind of argument that Darwin made throughout
the Origin. As Dr. Paul Nelson pointed out:
While current evolutionists may not share (or in fact may be opposed to) Darwin's theological motivations, their use of the imperfection and homology arguments for descent presupposes the intelligibility of notions rooted in Darwin's theological metaphysics. The notion of perfection as an observable quality of organic design, and the intuition lying at the heart of Darwin's metaphysics--that a rational and benevolent God would have created an organic world different from the one we observe--continue to inform the philosophical foundations of evolutionary theory (as should be evident from the passages I have cited from Gould above).
So what Nelson exposes in his paper, entitled "
Jettison the Arguments, or the Rule? The Place of Darwinian Theological Themata in Evolutionary Reasoning" is that from the very beginning Darwinianism has followed a line of argumentation less well adapted to establishing Darwinian evolution, than it is for attempting to debunk the idea that the God of the Bible created the world. Which isn't exactly following the scientific ideal.
Anyway, having been converted away from an early adherence to Darwinianism as my chosen (and more than a little inherited) myth of origins myself, I can see from past experience the uncomfortable truth that Nelson is getting at. As the British author and poet Kingsley Amis responded to a question about his Atheism in an interview -
"It's more than that. You see I hate Him." It seems like a contradiction, but at heart it makes a lot of sense. It's why a Pastor friend of mine, starts apologetical conversations with Atheists by asking in an amiable way,
"so tell me, why do you personally hate God?"
