>At 10:02 AM 10/18/2000, you wrote:
>>>SJ>Here is a test of "dogmatism". I have in the past stated that I
>>>am prepared
>>>to admit that I could be completely wrong about theism, Christianity, ID
>>>and/or creationism and that atheism, Darwinism, and/or naturalistic
>>>evolution could be completely right.
>>>
>>>I have invited Chris and other atheists to similarly state publicly that
>>>they could be completely wrong about atheism, Darwinism, and/or naturalistic
>>>evolution and that theism, Christianity, ID and/or creationism could be
>>>completely right.
>>>
>>>To date, AFAIK, no atheist has been willing to admit this.
>
>Susan
>>atheism/Darwinism and Christianity/creationism are two big lumps in
>>your mind. They are four separate issues for me.
>>
>>Theism:
>>Someone once asked H.L. Menken what he would do if he died and woke
>>up in heaven and saw Jesus surrounded by the apostles. He said he
>>would walk up to Jesus and say "Sir, I was wrong." I'm afraid it
>>would take a similar level of evidence for me to admit the same
>>thing.
>
>Chris
>How would he know it was Jesus? He might be in some pseudo-hell
>created by some naturalistic alien sadist. :-)
Nah. Jesus is easy to spot. He looks like a 14th century Italian
aristocrat. Haven't you ever seen the Shroud of Turin?
>Chris
>Gould says that in principle, naturalistic evolution could be wrong.
>I agree, in that some designer *could*, in principle, have been
>manipulating things. But, why? And where's the evidence? I could
>accept design if it served some valid explanatory function,
>especially one not already served better by evolutionary theory, and
>if some major and irremediable flaw were found in evolutionary
>theory.
well, such a designer would have been content to design only
micro-organisms for about 2 billion years, then spent the next
several million years designing only soft-bodied jelly-fish-like
creatures and worm-like creatures. Then really got busy designing
things in the Cambrian explosion, except for the vertebrates which
he/she apparently didn't design until the very end of the Cambrian.
Then the designer would have focused mainly on fish and marine
animals before turning to the task of designing land animals. After
designing a few land animals then he/she would have changed his/her
mind on a few of them and re-designed them to live in the ocean.
Meanwhile the designer would have been designing plants, but only
ferns and such leaving the design of flowering plants until fairly
recently. After designing mostly reptiles and for a really, really
long time and only designing a few rat-like mammals, he/she
apparently got bored with the dinosaurs, wiped all (or nearly all) of
them out and then started in re-designing those little rats, until
lots and lots of different kinds of mammals had been designed. Then
he/she finally decided to design apes--the kind that live in trees.
Then redesign them as bipedal terrestrial apes. Then, slowly over the
next four million years kept re-designing them with bigger and bigger
brains, allowing all the small-brained ones to die out. Finally when
the large-brained bipedal hominid was designed to the designers
satisfaction, after 3.5 billion years he/she stopped designing and
hasn't designed a dern thing in the last 6000 years. *Just* when our
species would have been able to observe and document such a wondrous
thing!
or it *could* be evolution, I suppose.
Susan
-- ----------I am aware that the conclusions arrived at in this work will be denounced by some as highly irreligious; but he who denounces them is bound to shew why it is more irreligious to explain the origin of man as a distinct species by descent from some lower form, through the laws of variation and natural selection, than to explain the birth of the individual through the laws of ordinary reproduction.
---Charles Darwin
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