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ID/Silverback's content

Since you've historically objected to Silverback's content in the article, upon seeing his latest reinsertion of it, I rolled it back (along with some additional 'example creep' added by some passersby). Silverback promptly reverted my reversion. Since I'm not inclined to participate in yet another revert war on this article, I've reverted the bits of example creep but let Silverback's content stand anticipating your return to the article. If you still object to the content, you have my endorsement, if for no other reason than it's rather long and the article is on a diet. FeloniousMonk 12:12, 3 August 2005 (UTC)

It sounds like your decision is based more on allegience to a cabal than an independent assessment of my contribution. Why not edit in good faith instead?--Silverback 21:50, August 4, 2005 (UTC)

Ed Poor

Hi.

You may wish to take a look at my recent post to Ed's page, which I made before I happened across your departure note. You may find that I share some of your concerns. I suspect that many others do to, but I am among the few who is willing to speak up. The Uninvited Co., Inc. 20:41, 3 August 2005 (UTC)

Theistic Evolution

Thanks for the note, Tznkai. I'm glad to see you're sticking around and would enjoy tag teaming on some non-controversial articles. ID-related articles have a twisted attraction to me... I'm like a moth attracted to the dazzle of a fire. I flicker around, dive in and out, and often get singed in the process. But I can't help it.

As for thesitic evolution... When it comes right down to it, I'm not quite sure what my answer is to a question of "How did all these diverse species come about?" ID (if successful) tells us that there was a designer(s), but it cannot tell us who or how. I am a Christian, but (like St. Jerome and CS Lewis) I think the creation story is written in a poetic manner, not a scientific one. I do believe in a creator, but there are many way He could have done it. Here are my opinions on each.

6-Day creation. My fiancee holds this position, and I can see its appeal: God doesn't waste any time getting to the humans. Surely a God that can pull off creation in 6 days is a powerful and wonderful God... and if He could do it in 6 days, why would He choose to take billions of years? However, physicists triangulate stars to be more than 10 billion light years away. Meaning that the universe must at least be 10 billion light years old. So long as the physicists are accurate (and I see no reason to doubt their calculations), believing in a 6-Day creation also means believing in a deceiving or trickster God. That's not for me. So even though I agree with Melita, that God could create it all in six days (I believe in His omnipotence), it just doesn't seem like He did.

Theistic evolution. Many of my friends take this position, and I can also see its appeal. God wound up all the universe at the beginning such that it would play itself out into human beings after several billions of years. Using Kenneth Miller's analogy, sure it's a great pool player that knocks a ball in with every shot, but it's an even greater player who can knock them all in with one shot. A great and brilliant God, in this vein, would set it up such that in the initial creation act (the Big Bang) it would all be taken care of. He never needs to intervene. He never needs to "cheat", so to speak, and break natural laws. He's like a genius chess player who can solve all the problems with one move, and doesn't need to *poof* any new pieces onto the board.

However, here again, I don't see the scientific evidence. The "theistic" in theistic evolution is meaningless in terms of the science, since it limits God's action to only the beginning. (Some theistic evolutionists also believe that God created the first cell, but either way they accept the evolutionary process as being wholly unaided by God.) So when it comes to things like the human eye and the bacterial flagellum, a theistic evolutionist is no different from an atheistic evolutionist. They both think that it came out of a series of mutations with no outside help. But as it stands, I am currently convinced that irreducible complexity nullifies natural selection... leaving IC components only able to be formed by pure randomness. (You can see my reasoning on the IC talk page, section "Justification".)

So I guess I would have to be considered an old-Earth creationist. The evidence (to me) points to a God who basically put together a miracle for the creation of each species. The fossil record points to this. (If you think about it, the fossil record for old-earth creationism would look identical to the fossil record for puncuated equilibrium.) Irreducible complexity points to this. But old-Earth creationism really has no imaginative appeal. In comparison to 6-Day, the Old-Earth God is a lazy bum dinking around for millions of years between creating each species... taking His sweet time before making humans, the "crown of His creation." And in comparison to theistic evolution, the old-Earth God is a cheater. He wasn't smart enough to pull it off in one move, so He has to meddle all the time. The only thing one can say about the old-Earth God is that He is mysterious. But I don't pick my beliefs based on how they appeal to my imagination.

And to make things more complicated, the evidence for universal descent seems pretty convincing. (And I think Behe says he believes in universal descent, too.) Thus, we now have species-creating miracles that somehow come out of other existing species. Eagles hatching out of chicken eggs. David Bergan 06:03, 8 August 2005 (UTC)