Belief in God is scientific.

Brains aren't "stand alone", they require bodies.And the Mandelbrot set is infinitely complex: So the brain isn't the most complex thing. Because the conclusion of God didn't arrise from following the scientific method. Be that as it may, science works. Its gets shit done.So what's the problem?

Excuse me? Simpleton? How so?The Mandelbrot set IS, in fact, more complex that the human brain.But if you'd prefer another example, our circulatory system is more complex than our brain. So there; the brain still isn't the most complex thing.Edited by Catholic Scientist, : No reason given.

That picture isn't moving...

Well, you've been wrong about almost everything else you've posted in this thread too. So being wrong about this is no surprise.

And you call me simple. The illusion is produced in your brain. Its a good reason for why we can't trust them.

Yes, Ug, science funny wurd. There might be other intelligence out there in the known universe. You should trust science more. It works better. Well, I did try discussing something with you.

We have no reason to suppose that other intelligent life in the known universe wouldn't be able to be observed.

Then there's something wrong with you.Hell, even cats can see it: Non sequitur.In fact, your inability to see the optical illusion suggests something is wrong with your brain.Edited by Catholic Scientist, : No reason given.Edited by Catholic Scientist, : No reason given.

Something has an 'e' in it. And you don't know what "scientific" means so whatever.But you're right, and that's partly why I said that we shouldn't suppose what you did suppose. The proverbial "we"... but I said we don't have a reason to suppose what you did.

I don't. Its not the first time he's claimed that for an argument.

What would "evidence of chance" look like?Do you ever see scientists talking about "chance"? Why is it always creationists saying it? Could it be a misunderstanding?lol - I just did a Google Scholar search for the word 'chance'... all I got was a bunch of papers written by people that were named Chance You know how babies are made. New animals come from existing animals. How do you get variety from that process?

Is your god not omnipotent?

It IS a fact that species change over time. Species are not immutable. That is, they evolve.It is also a fact that the ToE provides a model for how it works.It is also a fact that another model doesn't explain it better.It doesn't matter who accepts those facts or not, but they are, in fact, true statements.

Okay, what would evidence of unplanned changes look like?In my opinion, a change could be considered unplanned if it happen spontaneously (note that doesn't mean "instantly").Would you agree? That's only half of it... the other half is the selection process.Let me use the dice example. Here's a dice rolling mechanism:1. Re-roll all the dice that you have not set aside.
2. Set aside all rolled dice that have the number 6
3. If there are any dice that have not been set aside, go to step 1.Okay, now imagine I've just handed you 100 dice and you're going to follow the steps. You roll them all, set the 6's aside, and keep rolling the rest. Eventually, all of the dice will be sitting there rolled as 6's.Now I walk in and proclaim that because it was impossible for that to happen by chance (100 rolls of 6's), then you must have intentionally place all those dices with the 6 facing up.Realize that all of the dice were rolled and randomly ended up on their 6's by chance. It was the selective process, not the random rolling, that produced the effect that looked like it was planned.So no, evolution is not supposed to happen by random mutation, it is that plus the selective process that makes evolution happen. Because the fittest survive, in hindsight it can look like it was planned so that they would, but really those fitnesses did arise through random chance, its just that they were selected for. So how do you get the variety?Let's break that down regardless...I don't have the same genotype as my parents, I got some of my genes from each of them. And the process that replicates DNA is imperfect, so the copies that are made are not going to be exact, so my DNA couldn't be the same anyway. The phenotypic variety that we see comes from changes to the genotypes. The changes to the genotype that come from replication errors are spontaneous. And that means they are unplanned.So some of the variety we see is certainly not planned.

I'm not talking about supporting evolution or refuting the Bible... (though its telling that those two criteria determine what you're willing to accept).You said that:

quote:

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the observable world offers much more evidence of intelligent design than of chance.

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And by "chance" you meant "unplannd changes". But I'm still at a loss for what you mean by "evidence of unplanned changes"?Say there's a coin sitting on a table, its heads; how do you determine if it landed on heads by chance or not?I say we'd have to see how it got there. We can't just look at it after the fact and determine that. No, the dice analogy does not adequately represent how animals evolve, that's not what it was meant to show. The point of it was to show you how a selective process can make chance look designed. If you saw 100 dice that were all rolled as 6's, then you would say that someone put them there like that on purpose, and that there wasn't any chance involved. But if the process I outlined was used, it would still include that chance element even though it would look like it was designed, and that's because of the selective process. That's how it relates to evolution: natural selection makes it look like the results didn't include any randomness even though it did.So when you look at an animal that is well fit to a particular niche, I can understand how it would look to you like it was designed to be that way. Where you go wrong is assuming that there wasn't any chance involved. If you want to get into the particulars of the way that things evolve, we should do it in another thread.From Message 247: Why not? And how do you know?