rote:
tice where we were screwing it up.
other.
You just answered the question of whether unicorns exist. You said there a re no members of the set of horses with horns which means there are no unic orns. So you can say it is invalid to ask how big a unicorn is, or how fas t it is or what color it is, but you justified the question of whether they exist by answering it.
No, it does not. It merely says that rationality (doing things for a reason) does not support belief in intelligent design. That's why believers refer to faith, as an impulse beyond/outside reason.
Intelligent design doesn't require a God, just some intelligence.
You've never been told about the laryngeal nerve in the giraffe?
-- Bill Sloman, Sydney
Let's be clear here - this is all highly speculative, totally unprovable, and with no evidence whatsoever. And personally I don't think there was any kind god involved anywhere.
But if we assume - as many people believe - that there /is/ a god, and that he (as it is in most religions) somehow created the world and humans. Either he did that in recent times, all ready-made with people all across the world suddenly popping into existence along with fake dinosaur bones and fake evidence for evolution and the physical development of the earth over 4.5 billion years, or he set the whole universe in motion at the big bang in a way that would allow stars and planets to form and life to evolve. Since then, he's been nudging things a bit along the way (if god doesn't nudge things, what would be the point of praying?).
Or like the Magratheans. (I didn't say it was a likely theory, I said it was a possible interpretation of what Bill wrote.)
We've all been there, and made things with lots of very clever bits interspersed with the occasional cockup.
That's the contradiction. What is a godly nudge vs. controlling the universe? Which is it?
They didn't create the universe, they just took control of the galaxy.
No, that was my pirate voice "arrrggg!"
You can measure them, but not "god", whatever that might be.
If you find a lot of people bowing down to a lump of rock, you might infer the existence of a high concentration of god in that rock, but a more sophisticated measuring system would find a high concentration of god-botherers in the immediate vicinity.
But you can't find a link to it, because nobody bothered to publish it?
This is not exactly a contradiction - it is a matter of levels. Micromanaging versus small nudges and hints. There are all sorts of contradictions in many people's beliefs and religions, such as a belief that the world is all controlled according to some divine plan, yet god can be persuaded by prayer. But if you believe that there is detailed plan, perhaps just a vague strategy or goal, then the contradiction disappears. It's like playing a simulation game where you tweak parameters a bit underway to get the effects you want.
More accurately, they made some of the planets in the galaxy. But I said /like/ the Magratheans, not identical to them. However, if it were a cooperative effort then perhaps it was one of the better designers who figured out the regenerative abilities of the axolotl, while the back-to-front retina was an intern prank.
That works too.
You are making my case for me. Either God is all powerful, all knowing and has a plan for the universe or not. If He nudges the universe, that is controlling it.
It is a binary choice.
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