"Mike Marlow" wrote in message
...

"Larry Blanchard" wrote in message
...
Delbert Freeman wrote:
Both positions are built, supposedly, on solid data.

Oh yeah? Please tell me what the "solid data" is for intelligent
design. All I've heard is an opinion that the universe is so complex
that it must have been created. That's not evidence. Fossils are
evidence. DNA is evidence.

Fossils are indeed evidence. DNA is indeed evidence. They are however,
evidence of *what*? Throughout all of the debate, there has been no
"scientific" evidence provided by the "scientists" in the group which
refutes the notion of an intelligent design.

ID and solid data? That's unlikely. The basic philosophy behind ID is that
it is an alternative to solid data -- that using data is a non-starter
because they don't conform to the ID preconcept.

In addition, there is no agreed-to actual hypothesis for ID, so there is no
point in trying to argue individual points. The statements on ID that I've
seen include:

The universe was created 6,000 years ago.
Man and dinosaurs coexisted.
Noah's flood was worldwide.
Noah included the dinosaurs in the complement of animals on the ark.
The "Big Bang" is false because it doesn't explain what was before the Bang,
.. . . etc.

But -- there is fossil evidence that is more than 6,000 years old
There is no fossil evidence to support the concept that man and dinosaurs
existed at the same time.
The "worldwide flood" has some obvious logical contradictions (e.g., when
the waters receded, where did they go??)
How did Noah get the dinosaurs onto the ark (the rationale, Noah sought out
juvenile dinosaurs!)
In comparison to the "Big Bang," which is supported by observation -- it's
disingenuous to ignore that arm of science because it doesn't account for
what was before the big bang, but insist on an intelligent designer, without
worrying about who/what created the designer!

Intelligent design as it has been presented is incompatible with more than
Darwin, it is incompatible with astronomical observations, calculations of
interstellar distances, Einstein's theories of relativity, the tested
relationships between time, space and energy, geology, particle theory,
Brian Greene's "Arrow of Time" and almost any science that seeks to
understand the world around us.

Now if someone were to come out with an ID theory which hypothesized that an
intelligent designer created the precursor to the Big Bang and everything
after that has been a testable consequence, there might be some converts.

But it's impossible to calibrate any current ID theory with the real world
of observation of our universe. For one example, read Brian Greene's "The
Fabric of the Cosmos," and try to figure out how intelligent design as now
described could calibrate with the variety of experiments which have gone
into space, time, energy, Higgs Fields, etc.

Regards --