[Osx-nutters] The separation of church and state.

[Chris Gehlker]

On Dec 3, 2007, at 2:28 PM, Stefano Mori wrote:

> A purely Darwinian explanation of why evolution happens probably
> doesn't include Eros, and so the ID people can say that Darwin is
> flawed, that there must be something more, and if you think Eros
> exists then they are right, there is something more, there's Eros. But
> that's it. There's a force and we have a word for it.


Teleological Darwinism has been around for awhile now. Mike Huckabee  
claims to be a believer. One of the big criticisms of Creationism is  
that it doesn't recognize that natural selection could be used as a  
mechanism by a creator.

> Does God make apples fall to the ground? Or is it just a force called
> gravity?

Did you know that Newton found the  notion of gravity very  
unsatisfying? Unlike the Aristotelian notion of substances seeking  
their natural level, gravity doesn't explain anything. Mass behaves  
according to certain consistent formulas, but  nobody can say why.

> But as for the scientists, it is a worry--their arguments are turning
> into scientism--if they simply _believe_ that Darwin explains all of
> evolution, rather than demonstrating arguments for why it does.

Exactly.

Wikipedia says:
'The U.S. National Academy of Sciences has stated that "intelligent  
design, and other claims of supernatural intervention in the origin of  
life" are not science because they cannot be tested by experiment, do  
not generate any predictions, and propose no new hypotheses of their  
own.'

The problem I have with that is that it leaves out astronomy, huge  
swaths of biology, lots of the human sciences and a lot of physics  
since string theory came along.
--
Conscience is thoroughly well-bred and soon leaves off talking to  
those who do not wish to hear it.
-Samuel Butler, writer (1835-1902)