><snip>
>>It is my personal observation that most of the people
>>passionately fighting ID are engaged in some juvenile, paranoid crusade
>>against religion.
Considering the history of the behavior of millions of religious folk
towards non-religious folks, it seems hardly "paranoid" to be concerned
about what religious crackpots are up to, particularly when they start
making allegedly "scientific" claims on the basis of their religious beliefs.
<snip>
Bertvan
>> At the moment no one is trying to impose ID upon anyone. It is
>>being suggested as an alternative way of viewing nature. Materialists are
>>still free to dream up their elaborate "chance" explanations. That doesn't
>>appear good enough for them. They seem to want to prevent anyone even
>>considering anything but "chance variation and natural selection".
ralph
>I don't think ID is being suggested "as an alternative way of viewing nature".
>That's playing down what they're after, IMHO. They want ID recognized as
>a *scientific explanation* of the facts of evolution. That's considerably
>different.
Chris
Worse, they *are* trying to impose it on our nation's public school
children -- as science, too. I guess Bertvan hasn't been paying attention.
And, of course, we can dream up "alternative ways of viewing nature"
endlessly. But, are any of these alternative ways worth pursuing either
philosophically or scientifically? The idea is not to dream up as many
theories as we possibly can, but to find some that have some chance of
being *true*. Dreaming up theories is not an end in itself, however much
fun it may be.
What we need to ask of any proposed theory is: What objective support does
it have? If it's supported merely by someone's feelings, we should probably
be looking elsewhere for a *true* theory. Merely asserting that you believe
something (as you so often do) is not even remotely scientific. You can
*believe* almost anything you can think of. Belief is cheap; where's the
objective evidential support? Your endlessly repeated assertions about what
you *believe* don't count as evidence. Faith doesn't work any better in
science than it does in philosophy.
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