In a message dated 9/18/2000 9:23:56 AM Pacific Daylight Time,
Bertvan@aol.com writes:
<< Fear of religion seems to be common among people either promoting
Darwinism
or opposing ID. (I'm unsure which most of you are doing, fighting traditional
religion or promoting your own religion - materialism. The tone of the
arguments resembles the emotionalism usually associated with religious
zealotry.) >>
Care to support your assertions?
In discussions about evolution, I'm finding religious people more
<< tolerant and open minded that the materialists. >>
Interesting, I have found that both sides seem to have their fair share of
tolerant
and open minded people. Of course both sides also have a fair share of people
that
are less open minded.
Most ID supporters seem
<< willing to tolerate any number of naturalistic explanations. >>
Really? Does that mean that ID will accept natural selection as the design
agency?
However they do
<< not regard random processes adequate to completely explain nature's
complexity. >>
Interesting faith assertion.
Fear of religion seems silly to me. Historically, the trend is
<< toward a lessening power of organized religions. However I suppose fear
is
often not rational.
>>
Indeed.
<< I am a politically liberal agnostic, and don't believe that traditional
religion and materialism are not the only alternatives. I have nothing
against materialistic explanations. I, myself, considered them a reasonable
explanation of evolution before learning how complex nature actually is. ID
probably means different things to different people, but all those supporting
ID seek to look beyond materialism -- materialism, as we now know it, in any
case. No one is ever going to prove the nonexistence of God. Those trying
to explain the universe materialistically are as doomed to failure as the
alchemists were. >>
Unsupported assertion
I suspect we have to consider things we now regard as
<< "supernatural", such as mind, free will, creativity, intelligence,
consciousness, spontaneity, etc. In the meantime I embrace ID as the only
effective opposition to "random mutation and natural selection".
>>
That's a poor reason to embrace anything. Especially when random selection
and mutation
do so well in explaining so much and ID does so poorly.
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