Are creationists returning to their YEC roots?

I only partly agree with you but to the same extent that it requires faith to believe in a metaphysical desginer it requires faith to believe that no such entity exists.The fact is either there is an intelligence behind the existence of the universe or there isn't. When we gather all of the evidence, such as what we have learned from science, the fact that we have consciousness, morality, appreciation of beauty etc we use reason to decide whether it is more likely that this intelligence exists or not.To say that reason can only take you to the point of saying that we don't know is a cop out. It is like a court of law. In the end the jury has to decide guilty or not guilty but they can never be completely sure.I have come to the conclusion that with all thing considered that the evidence points to a metaphysical intelligence. As I understand your beliefs you have come to the opposite conclusion. Neither of us can prove that we are right. We both have faith that we have come to the correct conclusion.

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Everybody is entitled to my opinion.

The thing about me saying that I believe in Theistic Evolution is a bit presumptuous. I am not a biologist and know very little about it. I am prepared to agree with the fact that the vast majority of those involved in the scientific field and particularly biologists seem to agree that evolution is essentially correct so I'm quite prepared to go along with that.Actually I guess that basically I'm a Theist of the Christian variety. The thing about the term intelligent design is that it is a term that more accurately describes my reason for being theistic. When I say that I believe in intelligent design I am making the statement that I have used reason to come to that conclusion. If however I simply say that I am a Theist it says nothing about why I hold that position.Personally I think that it is important for those of us who see science and our faith as being compatible to not allow those who oppose evolution on religious grounds to hijack the term.Edited by GDR, : No reason given.

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Everybody is entitled to my opinion.

Au contraire. The reason the creationists tried this little stunt was that the witnesses for the prosecution in the Dover Pandas Trial explicitly said that they would have no objection to students studying the philosophical aspects of ID; what they onjected to was students being taught rubbishy creationist pseudoscience.So of course, the creationists, who could give corkscrews a lesson in being twisty, decided to teach the same old pseudoscience but to call it philosophy.Now reciting the standard fundie nonsense about, to take one example, the laws of thermodynamics, is not a philosophy any more than it's science. It's telling lies to children.

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I only partly agree with you but to the same extent that it requires faith to believe in a metaphysical desginer it requires faith to believe that no such entity exists.

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Do you require faith to disbelieve in the existence of Thor, or Ganesha, or Isis, or the FSM, or Santa Claus, or Invisible Pink Unicorns?I don't.

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The fact is either there is an intelligence behind the existence of the universe or there isn't. When we gather all of the evidence, such as what we have learned from science, the fact that we have consciousness, morality, appreciation of beauty etc we use reason to decide whether it is more likely that this intelligence exists or not.

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What do the existence of consciousness, morality, and aesthetics have to do with the existence of an Intelligent Designer?Morover, why does it follow that it is a single supernatural entity who is also the designer of everything?Couldn't it also be just as likely that there is an entire pantheon of unfathomable numbers of gods, each controlling only a single particle of matter?

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To say that reason can only take you to the point of saying that we don't know is a cop out. It is like a court of law. In the end the jury has to decide guilty or not guilty but they can never be completely sure.

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Never heard of a hung jury?

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I have come to the conclusion that with all thing considered that the evidence points to a metaphysical intelligence.

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But those things (consciousness, morality, aesthetics) are simply the result of our really big brains and the need to live peacefully in groups.You cannot or do not understand how such things could have come about naturally, so you assign their cause a supernatural origin.Considering that we have only been studying the brain for a few decades, don't you think it's a bit premature to use our lack of understanding of certain aspects of it's function as a basis for your religious faith?What happens to your faith if there is a breakthrough and a naturalistic, evolved mechanism for consciousness or aesthetics is discovered?Furthermore, just because we do not currently, or may not ever, understand the natural origin of some phenomena doesn't indicate that any supernatural designer exists, nor had a hand in the design of it.That is just a God of the Gaps fallacy.

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As I understand your beliefs you have come to the opposite conclusion.

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No.I don't know if the supernatural exists or not. There hasn't been any evidence to suggest that it does, but absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

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Neither of us can prove that we are right.

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But you just tried to.What do the existence of consciousness, morality, and aesthetics have to do with the existence of an Intelligent Designer?Morover, why does it follow that it is a single supernatural entity who is also the designer of everything?Couldn't it also be just as likely that there is an entire pantheon of unfathomable numbers of gods, each controlling only a single particle of matter?

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We both have faith that we have come to the correct conclusion.

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I have not come to any conclusion because it is not possible to do so.I don't know if the supernatural exists, and neither do you.Nobody does.I happily live with the ambiguity of not knowing if the supernatural exists or not, although I realize that most people cannot or choose not to and therefore make that leap of faith.

What a red herring. I'm not talking about any specific deity or creator. I am only talking about whether there is intelligence that is responsible for what all that exists or not. Two choices and either choice requires a faith that we have made the correct choice. My reasoning leads me to believe that there aren't natural causes for those properties of our existence, therefore there must be some other reason for them. I only said that I believe that there is an intelligence and that there is intelligent design. I didn't limit it to one entity. (We're only discussing Theism and not a specific faith.) Frankly I'm only interested in sorting out as much truth as I can. The more science advances the more truth I have. If science is able to determine a physical cause for consciousness etc then that's fine with me. (Mind you, I will be very surprised.) From my point of view whether consciousness is physical or metaphysical, I still believe that it requires a designer(s). I am not trying to prove anything. I can't. I am only looking at the evidence and coming to an opinion. Sure there is evidence, it just that you don't accept it as such. It is not scientific but it is still evidence. It is like finding a glove at the scene of a robbery. Just because someone's glove was found there, doesn't prove that they were there, but it is evidence. That's fine, but I still say it's a cop-out. You are right in saying that I can't know. I have an opinion. You have chosen the position it seems not to have an opinion. I don't see it as a leap of faith at all.My Christianity is a leap of faith, but that is a totally different topic

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Everybody is entitled to my opinion.

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I'm not talking about any specific deity or creator. I am only talking about whether there is intelligence that is responsible for what all that exists or not. Two choices and either choice requires a faith that we have made the correct choice.

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You claimed that it takes faith to believe in the supernatural and also to not believe in the supernatural.The question of needing faith to disbelieve in Isis and Santa Claus is a perfectly valid question given your premise.Now in this post, however, you are using a different definition of "faith" than the one you initially used."Faith" in a correct choice is very different from what you were talking about.

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My reasoning leads me to believe that there aren't natural causes for those properties of our existence, therefore there must be some other reason for them.

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No, your faith leads you to that belief, not your reason.Your reason would lead you to the realization that we don't know enough about those properties of our existence to say one way or the other.How do you know that there aren't natural causes for those properties of our existence?In other words, how do we tell the difference between a Intelligently Designed system and a naturalistic one that we do not currently or will never understand?

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I only said that I believe that there is an intelligence and that there is intelligent design. I didn't limit it to one entity.

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That's fine for you to believe that, of course.But faith gets you there, not reason.

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Sure there is evidence, it just that you don't accept it as such.

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Like what?

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It is not scientific but it is still evidence.

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If it isn't scientific than it isn't woth much from a reasoning point of view.

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It is like finding a glove at the scene of a robbery. Just because someone's glove was found there, doesn't prove that they were there, but it is evidence.

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But you, nor the ID movement, has not shown that the glove was either supernatural in origin, nor placed there by a supernatural method.Given all of our knowledge of the natural laws of the universe,
which is more likely; that the glove was put there by natural processes or that it was zapped there by supernatural magic? I notice that you didn't acknowledge my refutation that there HAS to be a verdict in your trial analogy.

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That's fine, but I still say it's a cop-out.

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Are hung juries copping out of making a decision, or are they just not able to given the evidence given to them?In other words, why don't you consider "I don't know" to be a valid conclusion if there is no way to know?Edited by schrafinator, : No reason given.

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"Science is like a blabbermouth who ruins a movie by telling you how it ends! Well I say there are some things we don't want to know! Important things!"
- Ned Flanders"Question with boldness even the existence of God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason than that of blindfolded fear." - Thomas Jefferson

If we decide that there is an intelligent designer then history shows us that the majority of people would also conclude that the intelligence that designed us would have a preferred standard of behaviour for us.If we decide that there is no one outside of our physical existance that cares about our standard of behaviour then it is only us as individuals and as a society that sets that preferred standard of behaviour.Either way it requires a faith to put our trust in the source of our standard of behaviour. This is going in circles. We've covered that ground.Certainly there is a mixture of faith and reason in my beliefs, but in this discussion we are only dealing with what I can come to from reason alone. Is it science? No. Your response makes no sense. The fact is that we exist and the universe exists. We can come to our own conclusions of why anything exists but that isn't to say that we can know in the scientific sense. No metaphor is perfect. Substitute judge for jury then.I don't know is an answer but it is still a cop out. To decide that there isn't enough information is to say that the evidence for one or the other is completely equal. Why does anything exist. Is it strictly from random chance and natural selection or are we the creation of a greater intelligence? C'mon it can't be that hard to decide which is the more likely scenario.

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Everybody is entitled to my opinion.

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C'mon it can't be that hard to decide which is the more likely scenario.

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I agree. We know of lots of things that are the result of the impersonal workings of the laws of nature. Some people only guess that some things are the result of a deliberative supernatural being, and the only reason to suspect the existence of this supernatural being is to explain phenomena that aren't understood.So I'd say the most reasonable conclusion is that whatever the reason anything exists, it is not because a supernatural being caused it to exist.But that is just my opinion. Others may have their own opinions.

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"The fact that a believer is happier than a skeptic is no more to the point than the fact that a drunken man is happier than a sober one." -- George Bernard Shaw

The only thing that I would add is that it seems to me that your rejection of the supernatural is based on the premise that all phenomena does in the final analysis have a physical explanation. In a sense that is the basis of deciding one way or the other.

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Everybody is entitled to my opinion.

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The only thing that I would add is that it seems to me that your rejection of the supernatural is based on the premise that all phenomena does in the final analysis have a physical explanation.

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Kind of. Except that the "premise" that all phenomena have a physical explanation is a conclusion I have reached based on what I have personally observed, and on my evaluations of the conclusions and claims of others.Except that I don't necessarily believe that all phenomena have a physical explanation. The origin of the universe, which might also include the origin of time itself, is a concept that I have trouble even grasping in terms of the physical. I accept that the origin of the universe may not have physical explanation -- the universe may simply exist without any cause, for example. Unless we want to call "existing without cause" to be a physical explanation.

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"The fact that a believer is happier than a skeptic is no more to the point than the fact that a drunken man is happier than a sober one." -- George Bernard Shaw

In a way that is one reason I am Theist. You and I look at the same world with pretty much the same information and we come to entirely different conclusions. It seems to me that if we were product of natural selection alone we would come to similar conclusions. Time is such an enigma. It seems that many physicists suggest that time is an illusion. What does that do to all of our calculations of time and space.It seems that everything that we experience in life has cause so I'm inclined to believe that the universe is not likely to exist without cause. Even if we find physical explanations for such things as consciousness there still has to be a cause for it at some point.So much to learn and so little time eh? (Whatever time is. )

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Everybody is entitled to my opinion.

I think you have misunderstood. What physicists show is that the flow of time is an illusion. It doesn't change any of the calculations; they remain concerned with the four dimensions just as always.

I'll try ans stay on topic. This is the Coffee House so we have a little more latitude don't we?

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My reasoning leads me to believe that there aren't natural causes for those properties of our existence, therefore there must be some other reason for them.

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How do you know that there aren't natural causes for those properties of our existence?

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In other words, how do we tell the difference between an Intelligently Designed system and a naturalistic one that we do not currently or will never understand?Until you can answer those questions in bold, (and you haven't answered the questions in the slightest) you are not using reason alone to come to the ID conclusion.AbE: I suppose that it's possible you could be using reason alone.It would just be very, very poor reasoning . Edited by schrafinator, : No reason given.

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You and I look at the same world with pretty much the same information and we come to entirely different conclusions. It seems to me that if we were product of natural selection alone we would come to similar conclusions.

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Why on Earth would it be likely for people to think in the same ways or come to similar conclusions if we were a product of mutation and natural selection?Could you walk me through the reasoning here?