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Old 03-19-2008, 06:45 AM
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Slartibartfas Slartibartfas is offline
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Originally Posted by Troianii View Post
OK, as has been said a half a dozen times (when you combine posts made by others and myself), they broke God's law and received the punishment. The Bible says that there were few that were innocent, and they were spared.
Maybe I am just not creative enough, so can you help me out in imagening how a new born or 1 year old baby is able to have broken God's laws?

Their number hardly was small back then, and if they were the sole who were spared, they were doomed as well.

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To your repeated point about unequal guilt, let me propose a situation. Let's say that the law for killing another man is death. So, what if person x kills two men? Are you going to drown him twice?
Your law does not seem to be "death for murder", but "death for every crime, no matter how small". Whereas I guess the babies committed the crime of crying too much or eating with not enough manners...

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I've put in italics what I feel is the only portion actually addresses my point which you had originally disputed, that evolution requires assumptions.

I first want to say that I think you're making the error in thinking that I'm defending creationism. I wasn't putting forth Creationism as the right idea at all, I originally said that both require assumptions, neither are proven, but I did say that evolution is a very good theory.
I don't assume that you are defending creationism. You are trying to set a scientific theory onto a comparable level of a religious pre-enlightment dogma.

I contest this by all means.

This "neither are proven" is an absolute nongoer. In the very strict sense of the word NO scientific theory can be ultimatively proven. Not that the earth is not flat, not that the stars are stars rather than nice night laterns hanging on the sky, not that gravity exists...

This is misleading those however who think science is about ultimative proofs, because its not as those proofs would be impossible. Scientific theories can however be confirmed and some theories have been confirmed time over times again. Some of them even had the chance to get confirmed by means that the inventor of the theory could not foresee that they should ever exist. In this case the confirmation by those new means gets an extra value because the inventor of the theory had no chance to adopt his theory to be supported by those new means.

One of those most solidely confirmed scientific theories is the one of evolution. Other theories like the one about gravity for example are far less confirmed. (Maybe the Large Hadron Collider at CERN has the chance to change that and put also the gravity theory on more stable grounds, we will see)

Your lines of, "both base on assumptions" reads for me like the argument "but its not fact but only a theory". Its an attempt to fool those who are not used to scientific terminology and practice, its an attempt to relativize it in comparision to creationism.

Evolution and Creationism can not be compared for a simple fact: they dont play along the same rules. Some might trust the rules of relgion, their choice and their right, but I am proud that the enlightment managed it to emancipate science from the rules of religion and to be honest I would be pretty glad if this stays that way. I have nothing against religion, as long as it is not tried to compete with science on their homefield. Creationism and the ideologic son of ID is such an attempt.

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Secondly, ok - no "random guesses". No matter how much you or anyone else wants to disrespect ID (or evolution), neither of them are "random guesses".
Those assumptions are not only not random guesses, they are based on good scientific practice (and have to face continous scrutiny) and not on something that is written in a 2000 year old religious text.

ID is no scientific theory. It does not play in the same liga as evolution either.

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As far as the comparisons not being fair, I wasn't trying to equate them. I said that they both require assumptions in order to be accepted, and they do. If it's unfair to say that, then I'm an unfair person and will say it outright.
The nature of those assumptions is completely and fundamentally different, this does not find any expression in your claim, so I can't help myself other than believing that you are trying to relativize the fundamental difference between the evolutionary theory and creationism.
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Last edited by Slartibartfas : 03-19-2008 at 06:50 AM.
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