11 year old not allowed to join Scouts as atheist

[packsaddle 753]

Peregrinator, what part of that do you think was an attack?

I asked what you think because I was interested in what you think is a weakness for YEC. It's that simple. I asked because you seemed to indicate your ambivalence and I wanted to find out the nature of that ambivalence.

 

But to answer your question, technology is the result of the application of science. This is especially true for many of today's technologies. Science, on the other hand, proceeds through a critical self-correcting process in which hypotheses are tested in various ways. One of the most critical aspects of this process is that such tests must be capable of being reproduced independently by others using the same methods.

IF the relationships, physical or otherwise, vary unpredictably with time, then replicability is impossible, strictly speaking, especially at the fine resolution that increasingly dominates our measurements. With unpredictable variation of the relationships, development of the technologies we enjoy today would be highly unlikely.

[SSScout 1616]

 

All this from a poor kid who wants to go camping without praying about it. I say let him go. And he can go with his buddies and when they sit back and admire the creation, he can say it is beautiful too. Only without benefit of a Creator.

 

Immanuel Velikovski, anyone?

[Outdoors 10]

Wait?!

 

You mean the Earth isn't flat?

 

Shucks, don't tell the Muggles.

[qwazse 4345]

Outdoor, It's flat at p

[BSA24 10]

> it is not mainstream science

 

Translation: It is not science.

[AZMike 173]

Peregrinator,

Actually, while you may not be up to it yourself, a virus HAS been assembled by other persons from off-the-shelf reagents. It was subsequently inserted into a bacterium and it did what viruses do. So yes, that one is possible.

 

That doesn't support abiogenesis, though. Life created other life. Heck, I've done that three times myself. Can we show how increasingly complex life forms were created by random happenstance, without a thinking causative agent? No.

 

Directed evolution seems to be the best explanation for the creation and increasing complexity of life.

[packsaddle 753]

Yes, it does seem that way to some people.

[SSScout 1616]

 

AZ: God the "experimenter"?

 

When, o when will we have the appropriate forum for this wonderful stuff?

 

I might even call it, oh, let's see..... "Faith and Chaplaincy"

 

This really isn't an "issue" or a "politics" anymore...............

[AZMike 173]

SSScout - how would that be "experimenting?"

[BSA24 10]

>>>>>

Directed evolution seems to be the best explanation for the creation and increasing complexity of life.

 

[packsaddle 753]

BSA24, the process is neither random, nor arbitrary. Selective forces wouldn't be 'selective' if they were random. The difficulty with this concept is that it also isn't necessary to invoke external 'guidance' to explain those selective processes.

This is not to say that external 'guidance' is excluded by science. It isn't. External 'guidance' simply can't be addressed by science. Science is 'indifferent', for want of a better term to describe the 'relationship'. The problem is that there are some persons of faith who consider that indifference to constitute an active rejection. That's 'their' problem, IMHO.

 

Now, if you want to argue that the circumstances and conditions in which selection operates are somewhat constrained and perhaps independent of the process I agree. The fact that the process is constrained by whatever biological structures which exist at the time of a selective force is applied is obvious. The process has to work with whatever existing material there 'is' as a starting condition and then proceed from that point. Those kinds of constraints prevent the process from being either random or arbitrary. The selective process itself is also neither random nor arbitrary but rather proceeds according to forces such as gravity and under laws such as thermodynamics.

 

Moreover, the external environment is mostly independent from the process Examples include things like climate, solar radiation, and tectonic activity. We just saw an example of that imposed on the Northeast. But that is by no means random. It might not be predictable in the long run but it certainly is not random. By the way, I was impressed by the accuracy of the European model prediction of how that storm would develop and behave. Too bad that accuracy can't be extended much farther out at this time but who knows how it might be improved in the future?

 

I know it's tempting to react to the false dichotomy which is often laid out by creationists: that without external direction, the only option is random chance. But to react by defending your idea in terms of THEIR false dichotomy only gives false credence to their flawed thinking.

[qwazse 4345]

The pure naturalist would have you take the leap of of faith that, by producing an explanation that precludes divine intervention for the origin of all things, you should withhold credit to the divine for the origin of anything.(This message has been edited by Qwazse)

[Merlyn_LeRoy 72]

Kind of a meaningless assumption qwazse, since you can substitute "extraterrestrial aliens" or "Harry Potter" or "munchkins" or zillions of other things for "the divine" and it's just as true. It's just not sensible to analyze anything if you also try to assume that unseen supernatural forces can change things arbitrarily; you'd have to qualify every statement to a ridiculous degree: "At 10:32 AM (assuming leprechauns haven't changed my chronometer) I observed (assuming a passing vampire isn't controlling my mind and making me see things) that pure water (assuming Poseidon hasn't added salt) boils (assuming my short-term memory hasn't been rewritten by aliens) when heated (assuming fire:hot).

[SSScout 1616]

 

Be nice if we could do this in real time. Mebbe not

 

AZ: If evolution is "directed", wouldn't God then be able to "experiment"? One type of organism doesn't quite fit the bill , try another.

I forget who I read that commented that God created man because he was dissatisfied with the monkey.

[qwazse 4345]

Meyrl, many competent scientists proceed through their analyses under the assumption that the divine has granted a "window of stability" under which the laws of the universe may be within the grasp of the human mind.

 

Why this is allowed, well that's a matter for theologians.