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Originally Posted by TeaSea
How did he get into this thread?
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First, it is related (Hawking's work and evolution). Suppose that the big bang is wrong - can evolution hold up then?
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Originally Posted by TeaSea
Stephen Hawking is a theoretical physicist, not an evolutionary biologist.
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LOL, no one's words on evolution are credible unless they're evolutionary biologists? OK, fine, no one can comment on the existence of God unless they're a Christian theist.
It's really farcical when you put it into perspective.
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Originally Posted by Slartibartfas
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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OK, just for argument's sake let's suppose that God did spare the infants. How do you think they'd survive without their parents? It's irrelevant.
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Originally Posted by Slartibartfas
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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If you're angry at God go complain to him. It isn't
my law, I haven't even said that I beleive in the Bible. You see, I have this very fundamental legal beleif - the appropriate punishment for violations of the law should be that which is laid out. If the law states that the punishment for rape and murder is life to execution, is it appropriate for a rapist/murderer to get a slap on the wrist?
Further, just assuming that there is a God, would you really think that you're in any place to judge God?
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Originally Posted by Slartibartfas
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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Now
you are trying to put the theories of gravity and the heliocentric universe on par with evolution nad the big bang - they are not. And that's just it, they
are not. They are on par in just the same sense as they are with the geocentric theory.
Now, as much as you would like to jump around it, I stand by what I said - evolution/big bang and creationism/ID ALL require assumptions, and no small assumptions.
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Originally Posted by Slartibartfas
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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Go back to pg 13, I'm not calling evolution a random guess. Below, in italics, are your words:
If your point is that at some point one has to make assumptions, yes one has to make assumptions. But its a difference if you make some random assumptions because you like it that way, or if you make "assumptions" that are complying with good scientific practice and are not the result of some random guess but rather indicated by some damn good arguments.
To set everything assame, scientific rules or not, randomn guesses or not, and stir it around to deliver that comparision between the scientific theory of evolution on one side and creationism on the other, thats not a honest comparision.
In your more recent post you seem to be thinking that I'm calling evolution a series of random guesses, but I'm actually contesting your statement that non-evolutionist theories are.
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Originally Posted by Slartibartfas
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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To the bold, actually there is a subtle expression of that in my claim, look for it again, it's pretty obvious, though it may not be in as much as you would
like to hear.
If it can happen it will
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