Re: West Virginia Governor signed the vague creationist education bill

Martin Harran wrote:

On Sun, 21 Apr 2024 16:43:57 -0400, Ron Dean
<rondean-noreply@gmail.com> wrote:
 

Mark Isaak wrote:

On 3/30/24 9:37 AM, Ron Dean wrote:

RonO wrote:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/03/22/west-virginia-intelligent-design-religion-teaching/367f8bba-e894-11ee-9eba-1558f848ec25_story.html
>
>
>
The claim is that if a student asks a teacher about some alternative
"theory" the teacher can answer that question, but there is no
recommendation on what an honest and acceptable answer would be since
the "theory" that they want to get into the public schools isn't a
scientific theory, and should probably be labeled as to what it is in
any discussion on the topic.  If the legislators believe otherwise
they should have made that clear in the act, and they should have
been more honest as to what they were doing.

  >
Considering the Intelligent design argument does not identify a
designer? How should this question be answered? A student wanted to
know why Intellignet Design is wrong,

>
The Intelligent Design hypothesis is not necessarily wrong. What
students need to know about it is, first, that it violates Occam's Razor
in that it posits superfluous and unnecessary entities;
>

What entities does ID posit?
>
second, that it requires multiple designers, some of which work at
cross-purposes and

some of which are inimical to humans;
>

Where did you multiple designer? You provided no examples regarding
cross-postoing and inimical to humans.
>
  and third, that past explanations

of natural phenomena in terms of the supernatural have a perfect record
of failure.
>

Really the origin of life, itself could very well be the work of God.
The appearance of the complex unicellular animals of the Cambrian
explosion. And the abrupt appearance and of most species in the strata
could be explained as a act of God. And the origin of the universe
called the Big Bang everything from nothing. Only God could create
everything out or nothing. Of course, it comes down to anyone who denies
the existence of God, has no alternative, but to try finding natural
explanations for what is observed and known.

 It has been pointed out to you many times that accepting natural
causes is not incompatible with religious belief. I am a religious
believer and have no difficulty in accepting them. I have given you
numerous examples of scientists who are religious believers and not
alone have no problem accepting natural causes, they actually promote
them as explanations for how life including humans have evolved. It
seems from your lack of response that this is yet an area that you
prefer to ignore rather than disturb your comfort zone.

 >
I've been aware of these scientist. And I know about some of them: I think Dr. Francis Collins, who was manager of the human genome project is the most famous of these scientist. As a result of his research of the DNA changed him from an atheist to a Christian, according to his YouTube video. But he did not give up evolution, which I think is  a bit curious. I think evolution should never be beyond questioning. They remained evolutionist, I would like to know if they questioned the theory  of evolution. . I could understand how you, as well as these scientist, could conclude that a designer created evolution to achieve its objectives. I could accept this, if I found a large pool of empirical evidence supporting evolutionary change. But my problem is that the evidence which supports the theory of evolution can also be observed as supportive evidence of the ID paradigm. Another problem, no one ever points to the holes, the shortcomings and the weaknesses of evolution.
 >
Of course there are a few hundreds of "intellectuals" who question Darwinism.
http://www.ideacenter.org/contentmgr/showdetails.php/id/1207
 >
I'm sure you are aware that. there are scientist who think we need an new revision to the theory of evolution.
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2022/jun/28/do-we-need-a-new-theory-of-evolution
 >

But where did these natural
laws, mathematics, and natural processes come from - IOW what is the
origin of nature? For decades, I thought that agnosticism was the most
rational point of view to have, but I recently come much closer to think
there is evidence pointing to a strong possibility that there must be
some thing out there beyond our universe called God calling the shots.
But I don't pretend to know! But I think the evidence poijnting to God
is there, and no contrary evidence.

 >

>