Steve Peterson wrote:
"Fletis Humplebacker"

"Larry Blanchard"

"Fletis Humplebacker" ! wrote:


All I suggest is the possibility of a designer, especially since it's so
unlikely that the universe and life jump started itself into existence.
If someone says there's a better likelyhood that there is no designer,
they do so out of faith, not science.

Once again, the only rational answer to where the universe came from is
"I
don't know".


Only agnosticism is rational? Even if one sees more evidence one way or
another?


One can accept religion and still not know where the universe came from.
The only way to surely "know" is to accept on faith the Genesis account, or
something similar, i.e. nonscientific. The Bible is not a science book.


We never "know" anything that we can't see or touch. We take most
things on faith. If we see news stories, photos, etc. we believe that
that they really did put a man on the moon, although not all are convinced.
Evidence is in the mind of the beholder.



But once it did exist, evolution seems to account quite well for the
diversity of species present and extinct. Our increasing knowledge of
DNA
only reinforces it.


That's an overstatment if there ever was one. Many things are not
explained
by evolution by chance. You are pretending there's no controversy on
things
like The Cambiran Explosion within the evolutionist's camp.If you picked a
theory that you favor the most I fail to see any consistency with your
agnosticim.


the existence of heated debate about something that happened 600 million
years ago, and left only a very sparse fossil record, does not equate with
controversy about evolution, although the anti-science camp will grasp at
any straw to make it seem so.


Sounds like a grasp to me. First of all, the evolutionary model doesn't explain
the mechanism behind the Cambrian Explosion, which is why there's a
debate. Secondly, if there were only sparse remnants, it wouldn't have
been called an explosion. Thirdly, your assertion that believing in an
intelligent design makes you anti-science is getting rather old. It was weak,
repeating it doesn't make it any stronger.

There are many scientists, some quite notable, that do believe in ID,
to demean them as being anti-science is bordering on bigotry.


So you can only be rational if you don't know about a designer but
insist on a particular evolutionary model? Hmm.

So evolution should be taught in schools - where the universe came from
should not.

Evolution by itself leaves more questions than it answers. Perhaps
intellectual curiousity will finally be purged out of public ed but I hope not.


I will be most interested to see your lists of answered and open questions,
to see which is greater.


# ORIGIN OF LIFE. Why do textbooks claim that the 1953 Miller-Urey
experiment shows how life's building blocks may have formed on the
early Earth -- when conditions on the early Earth were probably nothing
like those used in the experiment, and the origin of life remains a mystery?

# DARWIN'S TREE OF LIFE. Why don't textbooks discuss the "Cambrian
explosion," in which all major animal groups appear together in the fossil
record fully formed instead of branching from a common ancestor -- thus
contradicting the evolutionary tree of life?

# HOMOLOGY. Why do textbooks define homology as similarity due to
common ancestry, then claim that it is evidence for common ancestry --
a circular argument masquerading as scientific evidence?

# VERTEBRATE EMBRYOS. Why do textbooks use drawings of similarities
in vertebrate embryos as evidence for their common ancestry -- even though
biologists have known for over a century that vertebrate embryos are not most
similar in their early stages, and the drawings are faked?

# ARCHAEOPTERYX. Why do textbooks portray this fossil as the missing link
between dinosaurs and modern birds -- even though modern birds are probably
not descended from it, and its supposed ancestors do not appear until millions
of years after it?

# PEPPERED MOTHS. Why do textbooks use pictures of peppered moths
camouflaged on tree trunks as evidence for natural selection -- when biologists
have known since the 1980s that the moths don't normally rest on tree trunks,
and all the pictures have been staged?

# DARWIN'S FINCHES. Why do textbooks claim that beak changes in Galapagos
finches during a severe drought can explain the origin of species by natural selection
-- even though the changes were reversed after the drought ended, and no net evolution
occurred?

# MUTANT FRUIT FLIES. Why do textbooks use fruit flies with an extra pair of wings
as evidence that DNA mutations can supply raw materials for evolution -- even though
the extra wings have no muscles and these disabled mutants cannot survive outside
the laboratory?

# HUMAN ORIGINS. Why are artists' drawings of ape-like humans used to justify
materialistic claims that we are just animals and our existence is a mere accident --
when fossil experts cannot even agree on who our supposed ancestors were or what
they looked like?

# EVOLUTION A FACT? Why are we told that Darwin's theory of evolution is a scientific
fact -- even though many of its claims are based on misrepresentations of the facts?