Daniel Smith
Posts: 970
Joined: Sep. 2007
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| Quote (Reed @ Dec. 01 2008,21:10) | | Quote (stevestory @ Dec. 01 2008,19:05) |
Having a scientific revolution is a process of convincing the scientific community that your hypothesis is more useful in some way. When evolutionists are producing tons of research using their idea, and your 'theorists' are producing jack, Ur Doin it Rong. |
And that really is the crux of the matter isn't it ? If ID actually produced something that was useful, people would use it, and push the boundaries of it's usefulness as far as they could... regardless of the philosophical implications.
If ID theory helped you create pharmaceuticals faster, the pharma industry would be all over it. If YEC theory predicted where you could find oil, you know Chevron and Shell would hire YEC geologists, and YEC geology would be taught in every university. The oil companies have no stake in the biblical account being false. If astrology worked, the countries with the best astrologers would dominate the world. If prayer worked better than penicillin, your HMO would demand prayer.
But here's the rub Daniel... Observation shows that to a very good approximation, we don't live in that universe. Natural explanations displace supernatural ones, not because of some materialist agenda, but because the supernatural ones don't fucking work. If you are going to claim that yours is different, you'd better be prepared to show it.
All you have to do to defeat materialism is come up with magic that works better than materialist science. With the infinite power of God on your side, that should be pretty easy, right ? |
I don't see what the big difference would be. What difference does the current theory make in regard to pharmaceuticals or oil exploration? The fossils will all still be in the same places whether evolution was front-loaded or accidental, and drug research will still depend on molecular interactions and the specifics of whatever disease we're talking about. None of that will change. None of that research is dependent on believing in accidental mechanisms for evolution. In fact what difference does the current theory actually make when it comes to scientific research? Not much that I can see. It is largely powerless to explain origins, and it really has nothing to do with how things work. If you doubt this, read your average scientific paper and note exactly how much their research hinges on the theory of evolution. You'll be surprised at how little actually depends upon it and how tentative the connections really are. To me, you all are making a mountain out of a molehill here. If science were to allow for the assumption that the universe and life were the result of a supreme mind, what exactly would that alter in its approach? Everything would still work the same - so all research into 'how things work' would continue unchanged. The only difference I can see would be in regard to the mechanisms for origins. If we assumed a supreme mind, we would not waste a bunch of time chasing after illusive accidental mechanisms in order to explain the origin of things. That's really about all that would change. You'd be swapping systems supposedly built by accidental mechanisms sifted through an often arbitrary selection process (an unproven mechanism that has never been demonstrated capable) for carefully crafted systems based on engineering, chemistry and physics (a mechanism that has been proven many times over). What's to lose?
On the other hand - what's to gain?
Well for starters, science will once again be free to explore all options. No longer shackled by a limiting materialist ideology, science will be able to look into every possibility. Many of you forget, but science worked before atheism took over, and atheism (and it's more presentable cousin "materialism") are not necessary ingredients for science but are instead an artificial constraint upon research.
Second, science may be able to actually discover the supernatural world through the study of the natural world. It is a cosmic opportunity. We can look into living things and try to determine what a being capable of designing life might have been thinking. It could conceivably reveal to man the mind of God! Even if you don't want to call it "God" (with all the religious connotations) and just want to study "higher intelligence", that opportunity would be available to you. Right now such talk is shouted down by militant atheists like yourselves. All one has to do is look at the vitriolic, straw-grasping blather presented here, in defense of an indefensible ideology, to see the type of stranglehold atheism has on current scientific thought. As more and more is learned about life, and as the gaps within natural explanations widen, I envision a return to Paley's Natural Theology. I envision a world where science and religion are no longer hostile enemies, but where instead each confirms and shapes the other. Like I've said before, I've learned more about God reading a biochemistry text than in all the sermons I've heard combined - and my theology has been altered because of it. Perhaps we'll finally get to the bottom of things this way. We surely won't the way we're going now.
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"If we all worked on the assumption that what is accepted as true is really true, there would be little hope of advance." Orville Wright
"The presence or absence of a creative super-intelligence is unequivocally a scientific question." Richard Dawkins
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Atheism "took over," news to me.
